Religous debates and questions [2]

He is a clever one....

Urgghhh... I think I saw this on FB and I got about as far into the video then as I did now. About 24 seconds or so. The stupidity hurts my brain, I can't dealt, it's just not worth it.

It's quite the irony that he is suggesting everyone who subscribes to the evolution and big bang (and the others he didn't mention) theories are the stupid ones.

And that there are LOTS of people like this!!!

Yep, and most them are over HERE.

{{{Best thing Britain ever did- packing all our religious nutters into ships and sending them to the other side of the world (mind you I don't think anyone thought they'd actually survive! )}}}

We still have plenty of them.

Has anyone ever watched Fern Brittain doing that programme about famous people's lives? She did one about Niger Benn recently (well, I saw it recently).

Towards the end she talked to him about how he finally found god. When she asked him she sounded like she thought this was the superior state of being and Nigel had joined the enlightened club.

So could have punched her if I was in the same room!

Lancebloke wrote:He is a clever one....

check out the brachycephalic forehead. nuf said.

Looking at the cup as being half full - or was that a glass, never mind --- looking at the cup half full: war does thin out the population, and as most of the species is either Homo boobiensis or Homo ignoramus - or an ungodly cross breeding, which explains Trump supporters - it may be just as well. (Not ALL Trump supporters, mind. )

when super Volcano Vesuvius plodes, and it will, we might have a good bit of population thinning, I bet it happens before 2016 finishes.

Ooooooer, that gives me the willies Incredible things volcano's, & Tsunami's frighten me shitless !

Argument against intelligent design... man flu!

Well why would they ? they have the backing of Royalty.

Not here they don't.

Not sure what you are talking about halfy... but it seems churches over there have backing of the federal government and various state authorities too... much more power than royalty.

If that wasn't what was meant... ignore me!

Historically the Anglican church was an extension of royal power. It may not be exercised these days, but the Monarch is theoretically head of the church of England. The rulings of the general synod must be approved by parliament.

Here all churches are distinctly separate from government (by law) and have been from the beginning.

The government 'support' is in the form of tax-free status as befits a non-profit, has nothing to do with the religious orientation. We wouldn't say the government supports them - quite the opposite - it ignores them!

At least on paper. You wouldn't know from the way many conservatives behave.

It ignores individual churches, but not religion as a whole.

And everyone knows the monarchy has no real power in anything!

A rare article from the Federalist: intellectually wide ranging and rather fun.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/10/darwinianism-birthed-secularism-actually-favors-religiosity/

There's nothing new in here, but has an engaging way of pointing out atheists are the victim of their own Darwinism: religious folk tend to out-breed them.

Oh man, I'd almost forgotten that there are people who unironically claim that "scientism" is a religion. I've clearly been out of the religious-arguing loop for too long.

I don't think that most people, regardless of their religiosity or lack thereof, go through life worrying about how to improve their Darwinian fitness. Speaking anecdotally, I've seen no evidence in the online atheist circles I used to move in that social Darwinism was a common motivation for becoming an atheist (and for the record, I think there are plenty of atheists who are unable to articulate sound reasons for their unbelief). But regardless, the idea that Darwinian fitness is something worth trying to control on a societal level - ie, eugenics - has been pretty comprehensively debunked as well. I for one am very glad for the progress that has been made in the fields of disability rights, medical intervention for the severely ill, and equal opportunity for oppressed populations, and the implicit dismissal of all this really rubs me the wrong way. So I disagree with this guy's most basic premises, but you know me and I couldn't resist digging deeper.

A central claim of our friend at The Federalist is that most children of religious people will stay religious, but his evidence for this is pretty shaky. He points to Hispanic Catholics in the US as an example, despite the fact that the Hispanic population is rapidly becoming less Catholic (source). He also links to a Pew piece that claims there is little evidence that religiosity declines with economic development, in part because "in Hindu-majority India, religious affiliation is still nearly universal despite rapid economic and social change". This is a strawman since India's history of substantial economic growth is less than 30 years old and the only industrialized countries that saw major declines in religiosity that fast were Communist dictatorships (many of which have become more religious since the fall of Communism since being forced to give up your religion is a different phenomenon than the observable trend in many Western liberal democracies).

Maybe I didn't read it close enough, but I saw him as saying simply that atheists are more likely to believe in Darwinism, but ironically Darwinist principles seem to favor the religious who tend not to believe in it.

Scientism may not be a religion, but I think the author more accurately meant 'mindset'. You can see that in that hedonism is included in the same list.

The conflation of the belief that Darwinian evolution is how nature works with Social Darwinism (the idea that humans should consider reproductive fitness a moral good) is a classic canard of the anti-science religious right, as well as textbook example of the appeal to nature fallacy.

halfwise wrote:Scientism may not be a religion, but I think the author more accurately meant 'mindset'.  You can see that in that hedonism is included in the same list.

Read up on the religious right, man (or don't, it can be kinda painful); the idea that science is literally a religion like any other is a very common one in certain circles. EDIT: the same accusation is leveled at various philosophical ideas as well, including humanism and (less commonly, but relevant here), hedonism (link).

EDIT 2: I dunno how common the phrase "religious right" is outside of the US so in the interest of clarity I would like to stress that I am not referring to all political conservatives who happen to be religious or to all members of theologically conservative religious denominations. The American religious right has only really existed in its current form since the 1970s. Politico had a good piece about the movement's origins a few years ago that can be read >here<.