(December 27, 2014 at 8:29 am)tantric Wrote: Many people, even most people, treat science like magic and scientists like priests.

That may be the view of the disinterested layperson regarding stuff like physics, which might seem like magic without any context or understanding. Most people treat science like what it is: a way to learn about the world around us, which happens to produce the technology that we tend to take for granted even though it might seem like magic.

I find that most people treat god like magic and priests like priests, then project that worldview onto anyone who doesn't believe in god because pretending that they substituted one "god" for another is less stressful than thinking that they might be onto something.

(December 27, 2014 at 1:54 pm)tantric Wrote: To me, everyone has a religion. It's the combination of your beliefs on cosmology, eschatology, teleology, theology, morality and other fields. I don't see belief in the God of Abraham and belief in No God as fundamentally different. However, after being dragged down by semantic one too many times, I've yield and now use the word 'dharma' instead of 'religion' to describe this.

I completely disagree.

There are plenty of us who aren't afraid to question our own premises.

I also think equivocating atheism with the Abrahamic religions belies your real point here. If you cannot see the fundamental differences inherent in the two worldviews, I don't know what to tell you, except to say that there's a hell of a lot of muddled conceptualizing you've got going on, by all appearances.

(December 27, 2014 at 12:42 am)tantric Wrote: If fact, I answered an exam question correctly and got no credit because it wasn't the answer mentioned in the lecture.

I have dealt with this in my years of college. What I found, is that one must always answer according to the text being taught. If you have a good professor, you should be able to discuss alternative ideas during the class. These 'new' ideas, however, ultimately belong in your thesis.

(December 27, 2014 at 2:26 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote:

(December 27, 2014 at 1:54 pm)tantric Wrote: To me, everyone has a religion. It's the combination of your beliefs on cosmology, eschatology, teleology, theology, morality and other fields. I don't see belief in the God of Abraham and belief in No God as fundamentally different. However, after being dragged down by semantic one too many times, I've yield and now use the word 'dharma' instead of 'religion' to describe this.

I completely disagree.

There are plenty of us who aren't afraid to question our own premises.

I also think equivocating atheism with the Abrahamic religions belies your real point here. If you cannot see the fundamental differences inherent in the two worldviews, I don't know what to tell you, except to say that there's a hell of a lot of muddled conceptualizing you've got going on, by all appearances.

Are you saying that you don't have a worldview? You have no opinion about the structure of the cosmos, the meaning of life, what happens after death, the existence of God(s) and/or the basis of morality? Questioning has nothing to do with it.

Everyone has beliefs about these things. You do, too. Everyone also thinks that their beliefs are correct and has a standard to prove this. You might use the scientific method, Bob might use divine revelation. Don't get me wrong, I'm on the side of science, but I'm capable of seeing the world from other POV's.

But this is the issue - I just insinuated that an atheists has something in common with a Christian. Atheists define religions as 'wrong' ergo atheism can't ever be considered in any way a part of a religion. Please just skip this part - it doesn't go anywhere.

This in part illustrates my point. Atheism has become more than nonbelief, it's become an identity.

(December 27, 2014 at 2:43 pm)tantric Wrote: Are you saying that you don't have a worldview?

No, I'm saying that a worldview is not a religion, no matter your personal redefinition of the word.

My atheism is not my identity. My atheism derives from my commitment to rationality as epistemology. Rationality is my worldview. My self-identity has nothing to do with either.

It seems like you're desperate to equate science and religion, but I don't know why.

They are nothing like each other, and neither science nor atheism is a religion. Sure there are going to be stupid atheists, or even dogmatic atheists, but that's down to the individual. Science and atheism are very simple concepts from which you build from. Attacking them is pointless, and making huge assumptions about what they lead to is bogus.

Thus the part where I explicitly chose not to use the word 'religion' and replaced it with 'dharma'. You have a dharma - it is your coherent worldview. Secular humanism, Christianity, Neopaganism and various other isms are all dharmas. I'm not equating them - they are obviously not the same. I'm grouping them. Science isn't a religion, it's a method for proposing and testing hypotheses. Atheism is a nonbelief. Yet there are people who use atheism and scientific ideas as the basis for their dharma. For them, atheism isn't a non-belief, it's their Position. Why object to a nativity scene - it's a bunch of mannequins. Because of instinctive tribalism, the need to get your slice of the pie. Considering the persecution that atheists face in the US, the formation of group identity is probably inevitable. It's a sociological process that goes far beyond the bits in your head, and it's worth studying. You can't deny that it's happening - it's all over the place, from taking down the ten commandments to prayer in school. This is not simple non-belief. It's about cultural rituals and symbols, about the 'face' of your society. Is America a Christian country? Is your answer an objective evaluation of the evidence, or a social position?

Requiring people to keep their own superstitions out of your face is not the same as creating your own. Religion (in America at least) constantly wants to stick its nose in everywhere.

If I had kids, I wouldn't care if they took part in a nativity, as long as it didn't include a preaching element. I consider indoctrination child abuse, no matter how long or little it is done for.

I'm in England and it's not much of an issue here, so I just try to support other atheists.

I might be being really thick but I still don't get your point. What action are you suggesting?

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Atheism is not a worldview, sorry. You are making it into more than it is.

So, what do you think needs to be done? I agree there will probably be a post-theist era in the free countries at least, but I cannot understand the problems you foresee.

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Also, atheism, science, humanism and evolution are all separate things. To treat it as a package is over simplifying.

(December 27, 2014 at 12:42 am)tantric Wrote: Several years back, I took an evolutionary biology class as part of getting in an ecology phd. I had some very serious issues with the class. Now, understand, I believe in evolution explicitly and have no use for creationism.

My issue was how the culture of the science is taking on religious traits, like the Darwin Messiah bit. I did a little analysis on the required reading - it mentioned Darwin more often than the Old Testament mentions God. I took three semesters of calculus and never once was Newton mentioned, because Newton is irrelevant to the science of calculus. So why did the final have a question about Darwin's exercise habits? "If you see the Buddha walking down the road, hit him with a stick" = hero worship only interferes with learning a subject.

I believe that the explanation of the origin of life on earth will always be speculation. My prof dismissed panspermia with creationism, but I don't see that. We've been testing it for decades, throwing lumps of metal covered with bacteria at dead worlds. No dice yet, but we're not dealing with good candidates either. He also used the fact that rabbits eat their feces as an argument against the existence of God, meaning I had to argue it, as the proposition is mindless (so, are nice smelling flowers an argument for God?), and was henceforth labelled a creationist (because, apparently, there are only Rational Scientists and Bible Thumpers in the world). In any case, that doesn't belong in the class. It's like taking embryology and getting pro-abortion lectures. The only way to describe the lectures is 'dogmatic'. If fact, I answered an exam question correctly and got no credit because it wasn't the answer mentioned in the lecture.

The whole experience bothered me a lot. I consider science to be a method for forming and testing hypotheses, and, secondarily, the body of data so collected. There seems to be a process whereby people who are persecuted become like their tormentors (copying a prosurvival trait), and I think it's happening to evo bio. Or maybe it was just one nut case.

That's almost like taking a physics class and hearing the words "Newton" and "Newtonian" like a gazillion times. OMG. hock:

(December 27, 2014 at 2:43 pm)tantric Wrote: Are you saying that you don't have a worldview? You have no opinion about the structure of the cosmos, the meaning of life, what happens after death, the existence of God(s) and/or the basis of morality? Questioning has nothing to do with it.

Everyone has beliefs about these things. You do, too.

I can understand the structure of the Universe at a basic level but it's immensely difficult to visualise. That's my only opinion on it. I do find reading the subject fascinating though.

The 'meaning of life' is just about surviving and reproducing as far as I can tell for all species on this planet.

My intuition (not belief) tells me that death is quite final and you cease to exist at that point.

Existence of gods has yet to be supported by evidence.

But I don't have any beliefs in these subjects unless it has plausible evidence. In fact, I dislike the word 'belief' the more I hear it. It plays no part in my life.