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Art is not the same thing as color, though.
Art can motivate people without using color. Seeing as how we're all geeks here, a good example of that is Maus by Art Spegelman. If I remember correctly, the only place Maus used color was on the cover of the book.If you consider Art to be "magic" and "supernatural" feel free.
I find it to be completely natural.
Gah, I had almost the same conversation at tedious length with some people about music once. It took pages for them to admit that music was patterns of sound.
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Of course music is patterns of sound, but is its ability to motivate us testable and replicable? If I put 10 people in a room and play the same sheet of music, how do I independently test each of them to prove that they responded to the music in the exact same way?
They wouldn't respond the same way. If you gave a diabetic and a non-diabetic insulin, they also wouldn't respond the same way.
Of course music is patterns of sound, but is its ability to motivate us testable and replicable?
Yes and trivially so.
If I put 10 people in a room and play the same sheet of music, how do I independently test each of them to prove that they responded to the music in the exact same way?
You observe their responses. If they all had the same responses, we're done. If not we investigate how they differed, which will all come down to personal histories and present circumstances.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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BNW: Let me give some examples.
OK: I don't like broccoli. Not OK: People who like broccoli must be stupid.
OK: I could never be a furry because it creeps me out. Not OK: Furries are all perverts.
OK: I don't believe in God. Not OK: Anyone who believes in God is stupid.
OK: I am heterosexual. Not OK: God hates fags.
The theme here is that me saying that I don't like the same stuff you like isn't the same as me being a jerk to you because you like those things. I'm not sure how I can make this distinction clearer.
Of course music is patterns of sound, but is its ability to motivate us testable and replicable? If I put 10 people in a room and play the same sheet of music, how do I independently test each of them to prove that they responded to the music in the exact same way?
You put them in a room with an MRI while playing the music and you scan their brains. They've actually done this for a bunch of different studies.
The thing is that their brains DON'T all act the same. Different people have different reactions to music. There still however is a statistically significant trend in how people react to it, so music does X to people is still correct even if music does X to everyone isn't.
You couldn't get me to visit my grandmother without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as fire lighters.
If I wanted to know which song would best motivate you to visit your grandmother's grave, I couldn't test that with an MRI
No, because biology is too complex, variable and random to test one individual for one very specific action. There are still general feelings that are generally true across the population. Thats why you have to use a large number of subjects before you can draw any general conclusions.
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Using that approach, religion is as testable and replicable as music.
Of course music is patterns of sound, but is its ability to motivate us testable and replicable?Yes and trivially so.
If I put 10 people in a room and play the same sheet of music, how do I independently test each of them to prove that they responded to the music in the exact same way?You observe their responses. If they all had the same responses, we're done. If not we investigate how they differed, which will all come down to personal histories and present circumstances.
I'm delighted that you agree. Religious claims, to the degree they're intelligible at all (many are pretty much gibberish) and make claims about the universe, are science claims. There thus can be no grounds for objecting to putting them under scientific scrutiny and assessing their veracity on the basis of this investigations.
This isn't picking on religion in particular, mind. We'd do the same thing for a fellow who insisted he had a dragon in his garage or that he had five testicles arranged equidistant around his penis. Claims about the universe are claims about the universe.
I will reiterate: If atheism is a religion, describe to me its tenets. Plural. Otherwise you're a sandman atheist, and a unicorn atheist, etc. merely because of your DISbelief in A deity.Modern atheism?
1.) There is no God
2.) I hate himAtheists are far more likely to spend time posting on message boards about how 'ridiculous' belief in God is then they are to post about how ridiculous beliefs in Unicorns is.
How can you hate "him" if you don't believe "he" exists?
No, the reason atheists are coming out in force and why they talk more about people's belief in god/gods is because, unlike those who believe in unicorns, theists actually have an (at times very negative) impact on our lives.Here's a, IMO, good blogpost that describes why "we care" so much about religion, even though we don't believe in any of them:
Why Can't You Leave Religion Alone?
o, its not testable and replicable except in a very shallow and generalized sense?
Not conforming to the precise neat and easy logic that you think everything has to fall into doesn't make it shallow or non replicable. You CAN replicate it. You consistently get similar trends when you retest it.
Understanding a trend is harder than understanding a simplified version of how the world works. "All old men are bald. Socrates is an old man. Therefore Socrates is bald" is much easier than "A significant portion of the male population, and a much smaller portion of the female population, have a condition known as male pattern baldness wherein most of the hair falls out of the top of the head. So while you can say that its LIKELY that socrates is bald on top of his head at his age you can't guarantee it without actually seeing him and checking for a weave" is a deeper understanding of reality than the simplified version.
Likewise, atheism sharing some things in common with a religion does not make it a religion. Yes its a belief. So is "I'm sitting in a chair". You can't just say that it has something in common with religion or it has nothing in common with religion. It has some things in common and some things different. You have to compare the entire list of what makes a religion and see if it still fits.
We'd do the same thing for a fellow who insisted he had a dragon in his garage
Right. That's crazy. Dragons stay in the HOUSE. And if you could burn down a town you wouldn't put up with second rate accommodations either.
I'd like a reference that indicates that MRI images are that sensitive.Actually you could.
If I wanted to know which song would best motivate you to visit your grandmother's grave, I couldn't test that with an MRI.
Just google FMRI.
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Just google FMRI.I'd like a reference that indicates that MRI images are that sensitive.Actually you could.
If I wanted to know which song would best motivate you to visit your grandmother's grave, I couldn't test that with an MRI.
And once again, a "miracle" becomes science.
And above the clouds is space, not heaven. We checked on the way to the moon.
And once again, a "miracle" becomes science.And above the clouds is space, not heaven. We checked on the way to the moon.
And we didn't splatter against any firmament when we did.
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I'm a militant atheist, believe that anyone with a faith is irredeemably stupidI'm an atheist myself, but... really?
Does that include whoever came up with "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?"
I may not believe in a god, or that we are all going to keep being reborn until we can achieve oneness with the Brahma, but to claim that anyone with a faith is "irredeemably stupid" is just, to borrow a phrase, irredeemably stupid.
Throughout human existence, as far as we know, the majority of us have had some sort of religious faith, and you'll have to excuse me if I disagree with the notion that Isaac Newton was stupid because he dabbled in magic and thought of the universe as a clock created by God.
If you want more people to turn away from religion, I suspect that a good start would be to not insult their intelligence.
Oh, look, somebody already responded to that!
This is the second religon thread where people have had to jump back 15 days to find something that offends them. Blah blah blah.
Once more, art != color.
Because people react nearly the same way to colors. Red has been shown to make people more aggressive. Blue is more calming.
Black and white are colors.
Artful misdirection.
Bravo!
/golfclap
The jig? It's up.
No more troll food!
Artful misdirection.
Bravo!
/golfclapThe jig? It's up.
No more troll food!
I'm very puzzled by what you say here.
Are you saying I'M the troll? Or that I have finally sussed out DD's subtle trollery? Or that I'm a troll for pointing out his trollery?|
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Artful misdirection.
Bravo!
/golfclap
The jig? It's up.
No more troll food!
I'm very puzzled by what you say here.
Are you saying I'M the troll? Or that I have finally sussed out DD's subtle trollery? Or that I'm a troll for pointing out his trollery?
[snark] Apparently, I was trolling earlier today and was extremely offensive to everyone, so the definition of troll seems a bit plastic to me. [/snark]
fMRI can determine what areas of your brain are active, giving a certain pattern. Now, I imagine a study would go something like taking an obscenely huge number of people as test subjects (and thus a ridiculously large budget), putting them in an MR scanner, doing a proper fMRI scan on them as you test various songs on different people. Then you tag them with a GPS tracker, and see which ones come within a certain distance from their grandmother's grave coordinates, as reported by them. Once you have a scale of "strong" song candidates, you take the top ones and do the testing on another huge group, to confirm if they visited their grandmothers' graves. Then you compare this to the baseline "visit your grandmother's grave" frequency if there is one, or you need a control group, using one of the worst songs for provoking VYGG responses in the first study. If you could find a significant difference between the two groups, you would know something about what patterns in your brain that deal with the VYGG response.
I am not saying it would be feasible, but it would be possible.
Just like actual religions, some people take Atheism too far. Too far, to the point where it's bordering the hypocritical.
I have friends that are just as annoying (about their atheistic life choice) as my religious friends can be (about their non-secular choice). Some have actually been worse, as a friend has never shoved their gods into discussions, while an atheist friend has certainly enforced a debate of non-existence... when no one was debating it, or you know... talking about it.
The TLDR here is that of course Atheism can be viewed as a religion... just not to Atheists.
Much like how a solitary pagan may not view worshiping his Goddess as a religion; but all the clear signs are there to onlookers.
Just like actual religions, some people take Atheism too far. Too far, to the point where it's bordering the hypocritical.
I have friends that are just as annoying (about their atheistic life choice) as my religious friends can be (about their non-secular choice). Some have actually been worse, as a friend has never shoved their gods into discussions, while an atheist friend has certainly enforced a debate of non-existence... when no one was debating it, or you know... talking about it.
The TLDR here is that of course Atheism can be viewed as a religion... just not to Atheists.
Much like how a solitary pagan may not view worshiping his Goddess as a religion; but all the clear signs are there to onlookers.
Again, no. As has been said before here, by that definition football fans would be considered religious, so would some music fans, RPG fans, politics fans etc.
You misunderstand activism with religion. Pushing back against the ostracism from the religious institutions and the privilege of religions in society =/= religion.
Sorry, I'm a goalpost atheist, and can't help you.
Agoalpostist?
Again, no. As has been said before here, by that definition football fans would be considered religious, so would some music fans, RPG fans, politics fans etc.
You misunderstand activism with religion. Pushing back against the ostracism from the religious institutions and the privilege of religions in society =/= religion.
By your explanation, Activism is to be viewed as a theory. And that theory is something along the lines of "the essence of reality is pure spiritual process".
If you're trying to turn this into a spirituality =/= religion debate, you certainly can engage my opinion-o-meter. Until then, I think you misunderstand religion in meaning.
By definition, zealots, activists, sects and groups of any type, who live by a set of quasi-universal beliefs, can and will be classified as a religion.
Jokingly, that includes sports fans. ;)
By definition, zealots, activists, sects and groups of any type, who live by a set of quasi-universal beliefs, can and will be classified as a religion.
Jokingly, that includes sports fans. ;)
What definition? Yours?
And, again, atheists don't live by a set of quasi-universal beliefs. They have one, the non-belief in a god/gods. That's it.
Some atheists band together to try and even out the odds stacked against them in a society riddled with religion and religious references.
It's quite simple actually, keep religion private and atheists don't need to be activists.
Again, by no definition I know of, bar wonky ones like yours and to some degree DD's, is atheism (or the list you gave above) equal to being a religion.
For something to be a religion, you need certain things. You need an organisation of sorts, you need some kind of rules for how things are done in this religion, and you need a promoted idea. This idea needs to deal with metaphysical matters. This is for religion, meaning the organised form of faith, which generally confuses the issue. At least it confuses things enough for this thread. So, let's just plop down, then: Atheism doesn't have an organisation, it does not have rules for how atheists do things, so it's not a religion despite the fact that it has an idea about metaphysical matters. This is rather obvious. Things could change, of course, if the atheists started to make organisations and write rules.
Is atheism then a faith? There are two systems for judging whether something is true or not. One is based on belief, the other on doubt.
Belief means that you accept something despite the express absence of proof and evidence - it's true because it's true, and because it's useful to those who consider it true. Generally, this refers back to some text or other, often very old texts. What is written in that text is True, anything not in accordance with that text is False.
The other strategy for judging truth is doubt, the method used by science. While aware that doubt never provides a complete and undoubtable Truth, you can by this method make a clearer and clearer view of what things actually are. The idea is that you consider that which has withstood testing something akin to "probably true".
Atheism is an expression of doubt, an unwillingness to accept something as true if there is nothing to support it. Thus, it does not even play on the same playing field as belief, and you can only call it a faith by ignoring several relevant factors.
Note that yes, football fans do approach the idea of religion pretty well, as does several transcendent ideologies such as communism (the Classless Society is their transcendental element). What matters is not what you consider true, but rather what evidence you need to do so.
And finally, it is important to understand the idea of secularism, that there needs to be a separation between church and state for a healthy society. It's no wonder most theists consider this a problem, after all, they see a healthy society as being one where their religion is strongly promoted.
every body does not consider it a belief system, many definitions, both common usage and specialist define atheism as a negative belief,Which is still a belief. If atheism is not a religion because it does not have a belief in god, then most of the religions which have ever existed (note that most religions which have ever existed have been animist, animaetist, pantheist, etc.) are not religions either because they do not have belief in a god either.
No.
Nice dodge, squirmy!
Nope. It's not a system of beliefs because there's no system.
You're trying to strawman here and it's not going to go. No one made the argument that all atheists are irreligious, only that atheism is not a religion IN AND OF ITSELF, but rather a descriptor.I will reiterate: If atheism is a religion, describe to me its tenets. Plural. Otherwise you're a sandman atheist, and a unicorn atheist, etc. merely because of your DISbelief in A deity.
Modern atheism?
1.) There is no God
2.) I hate him
'I absolutely believe in God... And I absolutely hate the f'er. ' -Riddick
1. is Atheism
2. is Antitheism
Not all atheist are Antitheist, and not all Antitheist are by necessity atheists. The later is unlikely (in fact the only example I can think of is from fiction ), but not impossible.
Atheists are far more likely to spend time posting on message boards about how 'ridiculous' belief in God is then they are to post about how ridiculous beliefs in Unicorns is.
When was the last time believers in Unicorns stoned some one to death for trying to ride unicorns when they where no longer virgins? When did toothfairy believers last try to block advances in dentistry on moral grounds? When did UFO believers last try to take over school boards and remove all mention of special relativity, because it interferes with the idea aliens are visiting us?
If any one of those groups did those things, you can be certain that after I stopped laughing, I'd be here giving it every bit the attention I give religions.
In the same vain, I don't think I have ever said a single bad thing about Shinto. While I don't agree with them about the existence of spirits, I have never had a reason to say a bad thing about Shinto, because to my knowledge, the highest authority in Shinto isn't covering up child abuse at Shinto shrines, or any one of the other horrible things other religions are forever doing
My reasons for criticising is not my atheism. If it where, I would have as big a problem with the Shinto as I do with the worse extremes of Islam. But as stated above, I'm not out there saying bad stuff about shinto on the grounds that they believe in invisible, intangible entities, without good reason.
I'm out there criticising groups that try to prevent the most efficacious forms of sex education, groups which try to prevent children learning science, groups which try to hamper medical and scientific research. All of these things come from other areas of my personality, the only way atheism gets involved is a general sense of "and there doing this because they think invisible magic sky daddy told them too?" *facepalm*
Look at this message board. In the past month or so we've had how many threads where people brought up atheism and how allegedly superior it is to belief in God? And, during that time, how many similar threads have we had on non-belief in Unicorns and how allegedly superior non-belief in Unicorns is to belief in Unicorns? For people who want so desperately to convince us that there is no belief system in atheism, you sure are spending an awful lot of time hammering on your belief system.
Point me at someone who is an adult believer in unicorns, and I will happily demonstrate that I consider myself, in one tiny fraction of my life just as 'superior' to them, as I do to theist. But commenting that unicornism is stupid, is utterly redundant. There just arn't that many people who believe in unicorns. I don't view the belief in unicorns any differently to the belief in gods, but it never gets mentioned because it NEVER COMES UP.
As for atheism in general? This gets back to understanding in what context one is using the word 'atheism'. Are you comparing it to theism? Then, I could just as easily ask 'what is the tenets of theism?' Are you referring to a more specific version of atheism? Then which version of atheism?
I can actually list common tenets of theistic religions
1. the belief in powerful supernatural beings.
2. that said supernatural beings take an active roll in the world.
3. that said supernatural beings are removed for our every day lives
4. that said supernatural beings can appear to us
5. that said supernatural beings receive our properly offered prayers
I have no doubt that others could add to the list. It is the fact that you can make lists of such tenets that allow us to differentiate between theism and say pantheism and deism. Ofcause theism isn't actually a religion, it is a glassification that describes one of the three common classes of religion. It does not meet the very wide definition of religion i provided earlier, just as atheism does not.
For clarity here is the broad definition again:
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values
Atheism is by contrast not even a belief system, it is simply a single belief.