[Suongadon]

****. Sudden understanding of how Christians/Muslims/Jews feel while being told what their religion is by atheists, check.

You got to be kidding me. Bhuddism may not be about the thunger god lightning up a pair of tablets, but it is about how Bhudda told everyone how he himself reached to be a "full enlightened being" (i.e., gain nirvana).

I'm just going to go with 'close enough', except that Buddha encouraged people to investigate the claims on their own, and criticize as they can rather than accepting them out of respect.

And there's also the whole conversation about how people are really rebirthed and stuff like that.

How does this have anything to do with revelation? Or well, anything?

Bhuddism is different from the other major religions in the sense that the revelation of metaphysical reality does not happen through God's intervention, but through Bhudda's and his acolytes own meditations (iow, by being so awesome ).

I... erm... what revelation? Right knowledge isn't about understanding some metaphysical reality, it is about understanding the empirical world with a mind free of dogma and desire.

[Nuclear1]

****. Sudden understanding of how Christians/Muslims/Jews feel while being told what their religion is by atheists, check.

Well, atheists and agnostics do usually know more about the Bible than Christians...

[Luis Dias]

You got to be kidding me. Bhuddism may not be about the thunger god lightning up a pair of tablets, but it is about how Bhudda told everyone how he himself reached to be a "full enlightened being" (i.e., gain nirvana).

I'm just going to go with 'close enough', except that Buddha encouraged people to investigate the claims on their own, and criticize as they can rather than accepting them out of respect.

Except that I've been offered the exact same proposal by christianity, so that's utterly irrelevant. I can even give you details on it.

It doesn't matter if people tell you to "figure it out by yourself", when it's clear that the practice of said religion and the "literature" of it all points towards one direction.

In the past I had much more respect for Bhuddism than, say, for christianity. And in many respects, it's better. It's less "religious" and more "philosophical". As Nietzsche pointed out in Antichrist, it's a "dead" religion, a matured one. Christianity has that positive point. It's still epistemologically much more naive than bhuddism, but at least they preach a revolution, not the search for an empty void...

How does this have anything to do with revelation? Or well, anything?

Because it isn't a "theory" that is verifiable, now is it? How come bhuddists get to believe it? The answer may be more complex than what I'm giving, but I think it can be summed up as "the enlightened ones say this is how life is, therefore they are right". The only way this argument has a chance of being minimally followed is if there is the assumption that the enlightening process of Bhudda (et al) does reveal to you the real nature of the universe.

So it does not matter the "kind" of relevation happening. Religion is always about revelations. Of course, I have my work really eased up with the religions of the book.

I... erm... what revelation? Right knowledge isn't about understanding some metaphysical reality, it is about understanding the empirical world with a mind free of dogma and desire.

If only. If you are trying to redefine bhuddism as a philosophy of positivism, then you have all the work ahead of you, for you have to explain many, many beliefs espoused by bhuddists. Sorry, it doesn't fit.

[Mars]

On a side note, please preserve the authors in your quotes; it makes the discussion much more understandable.

[SypheDMar]

If only. If you are trying to redefine bhuddism as a philosophy of positivism, then you have all the work ahead of you, for you have to explain many, many beliefs espoused by bhuddists. Sorry, it doesn't fit.

Only if you're saying that there's only one Buddhism.

[Ravenholme]

****. Sudden understanding of how Christians/Muslims/Jews feel while being told what their religion is by atheists, check.

Well, *American atheists and agnostics do usually know more about the Bible than **American Christians...

* + ** - Corrected that for you.

[Luis Dias]

If only. If you are trying to redefine bhuddism as a philosophy of positivism, then you have all the work ahead of you, for you have to explain many, many beliefs espoused by bhuddists. Sorry, it doesn't fit.

Only if you're saying that there's only one Buddhism.

Which is another nice point you bring up. The fact that religions diverge in their denominations, rites and metaphysical beliefs runs counter to the convergence that happens in science everyday, when hypothesis get falsified and consensus over overwhelming evidence towards one path or another emerges.

[Suongadon]

**** it. you win. Religion is evil, wholly incompatible with Science! and what the **** ever your touched-by-a-priest hardon requires.

[General Battuta]

Yep, this is what I mean by belief being eternal. The fundamental wiring that produces and perpetuate religion is also responsible for most other human attitudes. Just as I don't really have a rational reason for most of the things I do - I just recruit reasons aftewards - Luis Dias doesn't have an array of evidence which converge to the conclusion that religion and science are incompatible. He begins from that belief and recruits reasons to believe it, just as selectively as Goober's belief that his religion is the only one with objective backing.

Most of us haven't even thought most of our attitudes out until we're pressed on them. We satisfice, because we're cognitive misers.

Most atheists I meet are deeply religious. Atheism is their religion; it shapes their worldviews as powerfully as Christ or Mohammed or what have you, and it shuts down rational thought just as effectively. In an ideal world, we'd be able to think rationally, apply the tools of empirical investigation to our own cognition - but we can't do it. We all hit affective death spirals and come to believe we, of all people, have won the great belief lottery and stumbled on the correct worldview.

Until we hit the transhuman stage, religion is the fundament our minds are based upon, and we've got to rely on clumsy prosthesis to think scientifically.

[NGTM-1R]

Until we hit the transhuman stage, religion is the fundament our minds are based upon, and we've got to rely on clumsy prosthesis to think scientifically.

I'm sorry, did you just reject the possibility of science or indeed any sort of rationality before the computer or what?

[General Battuta]

Until we hit the transhuman stage, religion is the fundament our minds are based upon, and we've got to rely on clumsy prosthesis to think scientifically.

I'm sorry, did you just reject the possibility of science or indeed any sort of rationality before the computer or what?

No. But you can read the actual meaning in the second half of that sentence!

[NGTM-1R]

No. But you can read the actual meaning in the second half of that sentence!

If that were true, I wouldn't be asking the question. Clarify your meaning.

[Bobboau]

Most atheists I meet are deeply religious. Atheism is their religion

/*vomits*/

[General Battuta]

Scientific methodology, like most higher-order thought, does not come naturally to the human mind, which is based on prototype schema and a set of heuristics that rely on availability, deceptive attribution, and skewed probabilities. That layout is incompatible at a basic level.

Emulating rationality requires clumsy prosthesis using methodological adjuncts.

Most atheists I meet are deeply religious. Atheism is their religion

/*vomits*/

It's cognitively impossible for anyone* to constantly deploy the type of examination and evidence-based thinking required to avoid falling into the religious trap. All beliefs eventually become self-justifying.

[General Battuta]

The term prosthesis might deserve further examination. As a metaphor, imagine that you have a very severe form of alien hand syndrome. You are aware only of your left arm; it is all that responds to your volition. Not only is the rest of your body out of your control, acting on its own, but you do not realize it is acting on its own; you constantly rationalize reasons you would have willed it to do the things it does. (This is an actual medical condition, though it rarely affects so much of the body.) In our metaphor, this stands in for the fact that most of the brain runs dark, conducting powerfully influential operations that we are not aware of. We have access only to a minority of the things that impact our behavior.

Now imagine that you wish to conduct an action that requires your whole body. Assuming, first, that you become aware of your condition - in our metaphor, the rise of the scientific method - you must construct a prosthesis which can emulate the function of the rest of your body, but using only the actions of your left arm. You can do it, but it will never be as nice as having control of all your limbs.

The consequences of human self-confirmation are powerful, and they show up in groups as well as individually. Groups can assign a devil's advocate to help ward off groupthink - this is critical in any decisionmaking body - but individuals have to rely on forcing themselves to question and examine their own beliefs.

And because we're all misers, and we dislike effortful cognition (because it is expensive), in the end we're never very good at it. You can see it in internet arguments; rare is the post that asks 'Is this what you are saying? Have I understood it? I have processed it; allow me to resynthesize it from my own perspective'. Instead you see reflexive deflections and selective hunts for weakness.

[Bobboau]

There is a difference between holding an opposing a concept and not accepting a concept.

[General Battuta]

There is a difference between holding an opposing a concept and not accepting a concept.

This isn't an argument that atheism is a religion. It's an argument that atheism is the atheist's religion, in the same way that belief in a sports team can be a religion: it is generated in the same way, it is maintained the same way, it is expressed in the same fashion, and it has strikingly similar consequences. It's a different symptom of the same disease. Religion comes from somewhere - a deeper cognitive shortcoming in a profoundly imperfect mind.

The great advantage of atheism is  that it at least aims those belief circuits in a direction that is useful - towards the maintenance of empirical methodology and scientific pursuit. Don't think I'm saying that the fact that atheism is maintained by the same system means it's somehow on the same footing as religion; there's no question in my mind it has greater real-world utility. But we shouldn't hoodwink ourselves into believing that we atheists are somehow free, unshackled minds.

[Ravenholme]

  Nicely put forward argument there Battuta, and I agree with you on pretty much everything.

Atheism is a matter of faith/belief, so, yes, it's as much as a religion as any theist or spiritual stance. It's the faith/belief in the absence of a higher power etc.

[General Battuta]

Example: when we have a debate about religion, there's no question the prototype of 'religion' we're deploying, the phantom we gesture to in all our arguments, is based on the available examples we can recruit tossed together into a big glut. It's not a balanced look at all the world's faiths; it's a chimera made of religious people we've encountered, religious things we've heard, religious services we've attended. For me, it's heavily Christian. My prototype of 'religion' is bad for discussing Suangodon's Buddhism or another member's Zen Islam.

Atheism is a matter of faith/belief, so, yes, it's as much as a religion as any theist or spiritual stance. It's the faith/belief in the absence of a higher power etc.

On other days I've argued heatedly against this - I don't necessarily think that should be considered a religious belief, in just the same way that I don't think not having an opinion on the existence of the tooth fairy is a religious position.

But I suppose there's no denying that most atheists do not so much blink in incredulity at the notion of supernatural powers as they do actively reject the existence of certain, defined powers, which is in a sense a religious statement.

[Bobboau]

>>This isn't an argument that atheism is a religion.
>>It's an argument that atheism is the atheist's religion


>>it is generated in the same way
Religion: made by a guy hearing a voice telling him to burn a sheep while walking through the desert
Atheism: made after giving all evidence a fair examination and finding it unconvincing.

>>it is maintained the same way
Religion: god works in mysterious ways and you will go to hell if you question it
Atheism: constantly challenged by the majority and often reevaluated by the individual.

>>it is expressed in the same fashion
Religion: fish emblems on bumpers
Atheism: fish emblems on bum..p...er ok, so you have a point here


"But we shouldn't hoodwink ourselves into believing that we atheists are somehow free, unshackled minds."
no, confirmation bias is the bane of intellectuals everywhere, and most atheists who came to the position via a scientific mindset are well aware of this because they had to overcome it to get were they are. we know we are still subject to it, hence forcing ourselves to give any new argument a fair chance.