Jon: Is the Atheists tribe the largest "religious" tribe on tribe.net?
I couldn't find one that had more members.
Very interesting.
Swarm: Buddhism has 902.
Jack: We should wage a godless affront on the Buddhism tribe- I mean, all out ideological war. 902 is nothing- atheists should all be used to being outnumbered and seemingly unwinnable odds/arguments.
Jon: I think we'd kick their ass.
The lotus position isn't exactly tactically advantageous. ;-)
Alise: Let's do it. Peace vs... Wait, what exactly do we stand for?
Swarm: Something about "no god" I thought, but buddhists don't necessarily do the god thing either so its going to be tough to pick that fight with them.
I can see it now...
A: There's no god.
B: Sure, no god.
Darn short fight.
Jack: oh, no doubt we'd find something to contest.
I think an affront on the Buddhists could be fun - I certainly think they could hold their own against any army of non-believers in a way that say, a "Jehovah's Witness" tribe could not.
Yes, Buddhists don't beleive in God, per se, but they're not big on evolution and no-afterlife...
There are plenty of flakey religious buddhists.
But technically, buddhism is a skeptical system. No one is supposed to take anything on faith or authority. Instead one is supposed to prove things for oneself.
Even the DL is on record as saying the if science and buddhism disagree on a point about the material world, he's going with science.
I don't see why evolution would ever be a hangup except as a cultural superstition.
Reincarnation, or reintarnation if you're a hillbilly, got tacked on but even then its not really part of the core. Mr. B is on record as saying we are like a flame on a branch and when we go out we are as gone as it is.
Even the ones who believe such nonsense have to admit that only buddhists and such are "reincarnated," buddhas, by definition, are not reincarnated. See, reincarnation is actually a mistake. :)
Jack: what do you mean, "reincarnation is a mistake"? Swarm: Historically it seems to have mainly been tacked on to appease the hindus. It is in obvious conflict with the buddhist position of no soul (anatman) since on is left wondering what is being reincarnated and the B himself basically said when you die, you die. (Having a believer "explain" what is being reincarnated is a hoot.)
Also, if one accepts the reincarnation stuff, the whole point of buddhism is to achieve a state of "nirvana" which is freedom from reincarnation. A buddha, who has achieved this final liberation and is what all good buddhists aspire to, is not reincarnated.
So if you get sucked back into the cycle of reincarnation, you "goofed."
06-02-05 8:31 • Science as a Religion
I was going over one of your essays (The Falsity of Religion) and had some comments on your reason #1.
Science is actually a religion: Its faith involves such beliefs as that the future will be like the past in certain ways, that explanations should be based on objectively-verifiable evidence, and that the best explanation is the simplest one which fits all the facts ("the Law of Parsimony").
This is a common misconception of science. I feel it arises from the unfounded premise that because science employs rational methods, it must be a rational endeavor which is subject to the problems of rationalism.
Science however is not a rational endeavor. It is an empirical endeavor. The cornerstone of science is not a belief, it is an observation.
That the future tends to be similar to and follow from the past is not a belief, it is a conclusion based on series of observations in which that is what happened and is happening. Should it prove incorrect based on new observations it causes science no fundamental problems because nothing essential hinges on a conclusion. As long as one is able to observe and the conclusions are consistent with the observations, science is satisfied.
This prevents in science the primary problem with rationalism, that its conclusions are based on unfounded beliefs. Science does have its own problems, such as what to do with what cannot be observed, but its basis is the fact of observation and not some unfounded belief.
Likewise it isn't that explanations should be based on objectively-verifiable evidence, its that they are based on objectively-verifiable evidence since that is what can be observed and discussed empirically.
Parsimony isn't a "law." It is a natural extension of the empirical nature of science. When you have explained all the observations / facts, there is nothing more to say about them in an empirical system.
People become converts to science because they see that it works.
Exactly. The beauty of any empirical system is that its truths really are self-evident if you just bother to observe them.
On the other hand, people become converts to religion because they think they see that it works, but are mistaken.
I think you are underestimating the virulent and infectious nature of the religious meme which plays on extremely deep-set and fundamental ignorance, fear and greed.
It's not that they think it works but are mistaken. It's that they know it doesn't work and can't, or won't, stop.
This is why rational arguments fail to effectively sway them. To be religious is to be fundamentally irrational. Such a person values empty promises of heaven, fears empty threats of hell and cannot understand the most basic facts of the world around them.
Instead of objectively-verifiable evidence, they live in a delusional fantasy which obscures observation of anything they do not wish to accept.
R: Phamaceutical companies and oil companies are not evil, they are just trying to make money.
They aren't *just* trying to make money. They are trying to make money at all costs including to the determent of their customers and the environment we live in.
R: Do you really believe that oil companies and drug companies are different than any other commercial enterprise?
Just for a bit of establish, I've worked for both Exxon and Conoco at their headquarters. At Exxon my group was directly under the CEO.
I've also had access to fairly candid infomation from phamaceutical companies.
Most of the people who work there are just normal people who are concerned like normal people, i.e. mainly when they bother to stop and think about it for a moment.
But the problem is that both these industries control critical infrastructure in a close to total monopoly situation with no serious oversight.
That is way too tempting for the kind of personality which is able to force its way to the top in a big business.
The people at the top are entirely ruthless and see nothing but power and money. Enron isn't the exception, it is the rule. Their main fault was becoming so arrogant that they stopped even pretending to care at all.
They aren't just "being profitable" any more than a rapist is just "having sex."
G: You ever notice that people never say "recovered"--in the past tense, like it's finished? Because it never is, even though you learn to live with it, grow beyond and become sane and healthy and god free, every angry blow, every violation, every ugly hateful word is always there. Every day you have to get up and commit to moving on, to not giving into the tapes that say, "You're stupid" "I wish you had died" "I'm sending you to the children's home where they put bad children like you that no one loves."
I disagree. I feel that "never recovered" is the big lie of psychology.
One of the things I like about buddhism is that admidst the BS, and it has its share, are mental techniques to get to the end of something, set it down, walk away and not look back.
You don't have to carry all that crap around. Ideas have to be thought. Memories have to be recalled. Emotions have to be felt. Being able to stop, refocus and then continue in a new direction is not impossible to learn, but no one ever talks about it.
I find that there is limited utility in constantly dredging up the past to drag down the present. I'll go over something once or twice and then I set it down and leave it be.
G: And some days that is just harder than others.
Some dead zen guy had a saying for that: This too will pass.
Have a happy day today on me. Anything that bugs you today you can just know that I will worry about it for you. Don't worry about how, I'm already on the job on that one. ;)
05-26-05 5:26 • Xtianity - the Big Lie
Would I be correct in saying that you think ALL people that consider themselves "Christian" and attend church regularly have bought into the "Big Lie" and are doing colossal damage to themselves and the world around them? All people who accept a Christian god have bought into the big lie of the judeo-xtian-muslum system. That system operates as a whole even though people like to try and embrace the aspects they consider "good" while denying the aspects they consider "bad."
The overall effect of that system is one of intolerance, war, eco-distruction, despotism, prudishness, enslavement and anti-intellectualism even though it can have individual pockets which run counter to these for the purpose of spreading.
It is this very amorphous interplay of "good" vs "bad" which is central to the spread and operation of the lie.
The colossal damage is the turning of all intellectual and creative function towards useless worship while surrendering all vestiges of individuality to the church. Once this is accomplished the cycles of religious persecution, holy wars and inquisitions can continue without interferance from rational inquiry or dissent.
05-25-05 5:25 • Individual vs. Society
S: The optimum solution is to consider the best result for both the society and the individual.
R: I have to disagree with this statement.
Of course, you are an objectivist and are egocentric, greedy and self centered. :o
But if you want to argue it you should take it up with John Nash. He proved it mathamatically and won a noble prize for it, but I haven't kept my math up over the years enough to go into game theory and can't discuss it directly any more.
For a less technical explanation watch the bar scene in "A Beautiful Mind."
R: determining what is best for the individual will always be what is also best for society.
No, there is a phenomena called sub optimization where it is possible to highly optimized certain individual aspects to the great detriment of the whole. (The reverse case of optimizing the whole to the detriment of all individuals is also possible.)
Only when each individual considers what is best for both himself and the group as a whole is an actual optimum solution arrived at.
Communism is just a fancy name for despotism and had very little to do with actual socialism.
Social Democracies seem to work extremely well because taking care of your people is a good idea.
R: Similar altruistic concepts lie at the heart of most other religions and Buddhism appears to be no exception.
When Buddhism is degraded into a mere religion it does function like other religions in many ways, though as such its history is still pretty clean of violence.
But the reality of buddhism is not a religion and the "altruism" which you describe is not present. There is nothing really to worship and nothing divine so the priests, which accumulate like flies, are really just people who claim to have the clue. No one has any right to claim superiority and the group has no intrinsic value beyond lending support. Indiviuals have an onus to prove for themselves what is offered and discard any crap that creeps in (and it does).
So people think of the group not because it is imposed or the group is more important. They think of the group because they want to and doing that works. Or they don't and go do their own thing.
Like compassion it is a pragmatic activity.
Buddhism is not theism and its core has nothing to do with religion.
Religion is just a shell that buddhism fits in for the religious just as buddhism can fit in the shell of philosophy for the academic.
But ultimately buddhism is just an effective way of living and dying much like the teachings of Epicurus in the west.
J: A lack of innovation/creativity/productivity due to lack of reward in the more strick socialist societies, and in ones like ours it creates a sense of entitlement that leads to more poverty than would exist if you allowed people the opportunity and gave them the responsiblity to do for theirself.
That is the claim of the protestants, but it hasn't proven to be true.
The fact is you can make sure every one has the bare minimum basics taken care of and that leaves plenty of opprotunity for advancement and it does away with most of the social ills we suffer from.
Plus it is far, far cheaper for the society as a whole.
Take a poor person who turns to petty theft. Let's say he steals $10K worth of your possessions. If he is caught in our current system, its about $40K a year to jail him and about $60K to try him. He'll probably get 2 years of actual jail time so $140K we have to pay plus you don't get squat for what he stole.
He could be housed, feed, sent to school and given basic medical coverage for about $20K a year. That's 7 years of schooling ($140K), a master's degree, MD, or a butt load of technical training. He's now a productive member of the society instead of a criminal.
Our current technological superiority is a direct result of the socialized education of the GI Bill which did exactly what I described and instead of just dumping vets on the street, it sent them to college and educated them.
J: I'm athiest, not protestant, lol.
You have thoroughly bought into their ideals. The "work ethic" and the "screw the poor" are protestant values.
Atheist values tend to be more humanitarian ala the Epicurians and Humanists.
J: Please do not confuse social programs which are something in exchange for nothing with vetrans benefits which are benefits in exchange for military service.
I'm not confusing anything. One is work before the other is work after. You could even have work during if you can't let go of those protestant values. The point is to get the most people cared for and engaged in the society.