(April 18, 2015 at 4:44 pm)whateverist Wrote:(April 18, 2015 at 10:29 am)wallym Wrote: I will say, I think a big part of the Atheist movement is 1) Our generation has 40 years of life where death isn't a real threat. We're not being shipped to war, or getting the plague, or expecting to die at 45. Not having death looming over our heads gives us some time to think things through without it being a huge influence. 2) Atheism is popular. It's the idea people associate with being smart. Kind of like sharing I LOVE FUCKING SCIENCE bullshit on facebook. People REALLY want to be smart. It's an amazing sociological control. If you can frame any position as the 'Smart' position, people will stampede eachother to get onto that bandwagon. 3) I think we see a lot of right conclusions in general atheism with the same shitty quality logic that people use to believe in God. I think many people just like the conclusion of No God, and half-ass the implications. There's a lot of the same really wonky grade school logic thrown around here with atheists justifying their belief system that we're so quick to criticize Theists for.
I'll accept some of that criticism. Some of us here are sometimes prone to over state our case, seemingly more interested in being convincing that being correct.
Not sure what implications concern you. Mortality doesn't seem like such a bad deal. Hell it is a great deal.
(April 18, 2015 at 10:29 am)wallym Wrote: In the end, we all want to believe we are smarter than others for having figured out this puzzle, but in reality, if it was 1950, we'd be most likely heading to church tomorrow, and saying prayer before each meal. And if it were ancient egypt, we'd all be worshipping Ra. The point being, we are not smarter than everyone in the history of mankind, we just got lucky in our circumstances. At least that's how I see it, which is why I cringe a little at the maliciousness and vitriol focused on religious people.
I don't think it is really a matter of wanting to think we're smarter. We all prefer our own opinion because, really, what else do we have? If we're content to defer to an expert, we'd still need the competence to select the right expert. May as well cut out the middle man and commit to cultivating our own wits and judgement.
Re implications: There are a lot, in my opinion. Mostly involving meaning, morality, purpose, free will, behavior, dealing with others, etc.. I think we've been conditioned to behave a certain way via evolution/sociological stuff, and it's let us outgrow the need for religion as long as we just stick to what we "feel" rather than dig into what makes sense. But a lot of the Atheist attitude is that we are about logic rather than 'feels.' So to me, there's a bunch of it that just seems about the same as religion, but not even bothering with God.
Re mortality being good: Screw that!
Re smarts: It's one of the more interesting, to me, that I've been pondering lately. What's the evolutionary purpose of people's certainty in their own critical thinking. Even objectively dumb people, who may even know they are dumb, are very confident in what we think of as common sense. I talk about sports on another forum, and the NHL Draft is coming up. A professional scouting service ranks the kids who will be drafted, and have one kid ranked 5th. A slew of fans, who have at best seen him play once or twice, are convinced he should be more like 12th. I ask why they think they know more than a professional scouting service, and they say "Pros aren't always right." Which is true, but irrelevant to why they view their own terribly informed amateur opinion over that of an expert. And this is something you see everywhere. Science/politics/religion/economics/etc.. It's not that they have different opinions, or individual thoughts, it's the crazy level of confidence they have in those opinions or thoughts despite the lack of reason to place any confidence in them.
So if anyone has any reasons why this would have developed, and what purpose it serves, I'd be super interested to here. Maybe it's a side effect of some other thing that does have a purpose?
Every time I respond in one of these threads, I feel like I could start 5 more threads on different topics.
