The substantial cost of theistic morality

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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

drumdude wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 7:29 pm
Over in the largely atheist angry ex-Mormon region that I sometimes call the Peterson Obsession Board, one commenter has demanded that he be shown an atheist suicide bomber. (Plainly, he assumes that there are none.) I’m happy to suggest some reading for him:


“Polemical atheist crusader, meet the facts about suicide bombing!”
Which links to:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ction=edit


Dan, the facts didn't come through, could you try again? Also I quite like the ring "Atheist Crusader," it sounds like I'm a member of the Avengers :lol:
How perfect is it that his knowledge on the topic consists of a Google search and then a c&p link to an empty log-in page? I feel like it’s a metaphor for his academic career …

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Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

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I'm not really sure why Dr. Peterson thinks that Pape's book helps his case. He even provides this quote from the book:
Pape wrote:Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.
Can atheism be used as "a tool...in recruiting and in other efforts service of the broader strategic objective"? His entire piece, in fact, strikes a devastating blow to his arguments against Gemli, since he says, in effect, that suicide bombings are not about religion *at all* but are instead politically-oriented. I guess that would hold true for the Nazis as well, eh? It's not a matter of "avowedly atheistic regimes," it's all strictly a matter of politics.

He ought to quit getting his nose out of joint any time someone suggests that religion might cause harm or be stupid, etc. (And I'll just note in passing that he recently cited a scientist who said that Mormons are uniquely equipped to deal with the arrival of aliens, should such a thing ever happen. Beam me up to Kolob, eh?) If he's comfortable and confident in his beliefs and religious choices, then why such an apoplectic need to defend them?
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by doubtingthomas »

Chap wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 9:48 am
On your rules, your question can never be given an evidence-based answer. Fine by me.
In your opinion, would you agree a religious person is more likely to be willing to die in battle?
Physics Guy wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 1:45 pm
How much readiness to risk one’s life is a good thing is another question. I wouldn’t want to share a slit trench with a coward who was going to leave me to do all the shooting, but I also wouldn’t want to share it with a fanatic who was going to get us both killed.
But wouldn't gun battles or wars be less common if everyone was not religious in any way?
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus. :roll:
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by huckelberry »

doubtingthomas wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 12:47 am
Chap wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 9:48 am
On your rules, your question can never be given an evidence-based answer. Fine by me.
In your opinion, would you agree a religious person is more likely to be willing to die in battle?
Physics Guy wrote:
Sun Jan 09, 2022 1:45 pm
How much readiness to risk one’s life is a good thing is another question. I wouldn’t want to share a slit trench with a coward who was going to leave me to do all the shooting, but I also wouldn’t want to share it with a fanatic who was going to get us both killed.
But wouldn't gun battles or wars be less common if everyone was not religious in any way?
doubtingthomas
I suppose if you were able to somehow program all imagination out of people then the resulting lack of religion might be associated with less war. There might also be associated loss of desire ,ambition and invention.

But you may say you want to eliminate religion not imagination. There is a difficulty here I think . I am quite sure that religion is a result of human imagination not something applied to humans . It is to a degree, channeled limited and controlled by authorities who hope to utilize it. Some of that authoritarian control may also trim off some of the dangerous extremes people come up with. Well some of that authoritarian control may fan the flames of fanatic imagination into war and other ugly things.

The fanatic beliefs that peoples imagination can come up are sometimes religious dreams, sometimes they are political dreams. Consider that fanatic belief that communism created for some people. I don't know if you wish to say it had a religious quality but it generated war and death.
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by doubtingthomas »

huckelberry wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:22 am

I suppose if you were able to somehow program all imagination out of people then the resulting lack of religion might be associated with less war. There might also be associated loss of desire ,ambition and invention.
Why?
huckelberry wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:22 am
The fanatic beliefs that peoples imagination can come up are sometimes religious dreams, sometimes they are political dreams. Consider that fanatic belief that communism created for some people. I don't know if you wish to say it had a religious quality but it generated war and death.
True, for hundreds of years the Russian people were indoctrinated to believe that their leader, the czar, was something more than a human ruler. Instead the czar’s religious government placed him as a sort of divine figure. Stalin simply had to take advantage of the servility and credulity built up by the czar’s regime in order to establish himself as the absolute ruler. So perhaps religion itself is not the problem, the real problem is religious indoctrination. The word indoctrination means "the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically".

Perhaps Stalin would have started WW3 had he remained a Christian.
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus. :roll:
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by Res Ipsa »

doubtingthomas wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 7:31 pm
huckelberry wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:22 am

I suppose if you were able to somehow program all imagination out of people then the resulting lack of religion might be associated with less war. There might also be associated loss of desire ,ambition and invention.
Why?
huckelberry wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:22 am
The fanatic beliefs that peoples imagination can come up are sometimes religious dreams, sometimes they are political dreams. Consider that fanatic belief that communism created for some people. I don't know if you wish to say it had a religious quality but it generated war and death.
True, for hundreds of years the Russian people were indoctrinated to believe that their leader, the czar, was something more than a human ruler. Instead the czar’s religious government placed him as a sort of divine figure. Stalin simply had to take advantage of the servility and credulity built up by the czar’s regime in order to establish himself as the absolute ruler. So perhaps religion itself is not the problem, the real problem is religious indoctrination. The word indoctrination means "the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically".

Perhaps Stalin would have started WW3 had he remained a Christian.
There’s no true Scotsman fallacy that I see fellow atheists commit from time to time when talking about atheistic regimes that committed mass murder of their citizens. This reminds me of that. It involves either trying to somehow tie the regime to religion or claiming that the regime was like religion in some way.

I think the better approach is to acknowledge that the problem isn’t religion, per se, but something more akin to fanaticism or dogmatism as applied to any philosophy, whether religious or secular.
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by drumdude »

I'm still waiting for DCP to find an atheist suicide bomber. Do they yell "praise humanism!" right before they detonate themselves?
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by huckelberry »

doubtingthomas wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 7:31 pm
huckelberry wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:22 am

I suppose if you were able to somehow program all imagination out of people then the resulting lack of religion might be associated with less war. There might also be associated loss of desire ,ambition and invention.
Why?
huckelberry wrote:
Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:22 am
The fanatic beliefs that peoples imagination can come up are sometimes religious dreams, sometimes they are political dreams. Consider that fanatic belief that communism created for some people. I don't know if you wish to say it had a religious quality but it generated war and death.


True, for hundreds of years the Russian people were indoctrinated to believe that their leader, the czar, was something more than a human ruler. Instead the czar’s religious government placed him as a sort of divine figure. Stalin simply had to take advantage of the servility and credulity built up by the czar’s regime in order to establish himself as the absolute ruler. So perhaps religion itself is not the problem, the real problem is religious indoctrination. The word indoctrination means "the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically".

Perhaps Stalin would have started WW3 had he remained a Christian.
why?because imagination is the engine of invention, the desire to explore and learn. It is the first step toward understanding. It is the power for people to seek after something more than what is right in front of them or that they were programed to perform. It is power for good and it can be a power for bad and lots of mundane stuff in between. I can imagine something for dinner and start the process of preparation in order to reach the substance of the image my imagination created.

The only way I can see humans without imagination is if they become completely automated programed entities. Of course the programing would have to be done by a master group with imagination. The programed people would've course have no war. oooh unless the group of programmers developed contradictory plans in their imagination. Then war could be generated. Perhaps one master programmer would be a solution preventing war.

doubting Thomas, I share your desire to reject indoctrination. I doubt that it can be erased Indoctrination can come from many directions. Religion can do it , fox news can do it . Some guy named Trump can do it, communist party can do it, white nationalist can do it, some rabid progressive groups can do it..I do have some hope people can learn to hold on to and develop critical thinking.

It is common to observe Russia had a tradition of autocratic power. Still a civil war followed by many murders was necessary to actually establish Stalin's control. I think your what if he was Christian is a pretty empty what if.
Last edited by huckelberry on Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by huckelberry »

drumdude wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:52 pm
I'm still waiting for DCP to find an atheist suicide bomber. Do they yell "praise humanism!" right before they detonate themselves?
Eric Harris
Dylan Klebold
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Re: The substantial cost of theistic morality

Post by drumdude »

huckelberry wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:20 pm
drumdude wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:52 pm
I'm still waiting for DCP to find an atheist suicide bomber. Do they yell "praise humanism!" right before they detonate themselves?
Eric Harris
Dylan Klebold
To be clear, I wouldn't call a Muslim robbing a liquor store a terrorist attack. He just happens to be Muslim, he is with all likelihood robbing the store completely apart from his religious beliefs. The same with someone who doesn't have publicly known strong religious beliefs committing a crime, you can't just associate that automatically with atheism. This is why I made reference to the common yell, "Allahu Akbar" that jihadists make before suicide bombings. They are very clearly announcing to the world why they are doing this. They aren't yelling "Free Palestine"

Maybe you referring to the myth that they specifically targeted Christians?
Vox wrote: A martyrdom mythology sprang up around Cassie Bernall, who was 17 when she was shot by Eric Harris at Columbine. As the story was first told, Harris asked Bernall if she believed in God moments before he shot her, and she said yes.

What actually happened at Columbine doesn’t quite match the popular narrative.

Understandably, the accounts of what exactly happened when both Scott and Bernall were shot are a bit muddled. But in the months that followed, the facts didn’t really matter. The Columbine massacre fit a previously constructed narrative for the country in 1999, with widespread ongoing fear about violent youth culture, video games, and music and how they were affecting kids and teens. It’s human nature to make the facts fit a narrative, rather than the other way around. Columbine was no different.

And as the public mourning began to fade and the FBI conducted its investigation, it started to become clear that the story about Bernall, in particular, was probably falsely reported. It was likely another girl entirely, Val Schnurr, who told Klebold — not Harris — that she believed in God before he shot her in the school library. (Schnurr survived.) Bernall was also in the library, though further from Klebold, and Harris did find her. But later eyewitnesses stated that Harris found her cowering under a table, said “Peekaboo,” and then shot her, without Bernall uttering a word.

The eyewitness accounts seemed to point to the fact that while Bernall was tragically murdered, the martyrdom story was built on false evidence. However, who actually said what in the library on April 20 became a point of major dispute, as Hanna Rosin reported in the Washington Post on October 14, 1999. When Schnurr told her story at the youth rallies that were held in the months following the events at Columbine, she — a Catholic — was seen as suspicious, perhaps a copycat trying to ride her martyred classmate’s coattails. Bernall’s story had completely overshadowed her own.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/20/1 ... -martyrdom
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