The problem is that there is no objective way to measure offensiveness. What may be heated and ugly to you is not what may be heated and ugly to anyone else. There is a clear distinction between addressing someone's person and addressing someone's argument however (the former being bad argumentation). And I see more Christians address someone directly by name, and I rarely see any atheist address anything other than religion, religious people in its entirety, or the beliefs of religious adherents.
Thank you for reiterating/re-emphasizing that significant distinction in argumentation. Based on the evidence of posted content, it can be posited that such a distinction tends to escape those who conflate their religious beliefs with themselves and a person is not their beliefs, (beliefs would be an
aspect of a person's mental state).
The second statement I bolded leads me to believe you think that people on this forum is denying you your rights to decide what religious ideology you want to follow. Let me make it clear that there has no been any single incident in which an atheist attempted to deny the rights of religious followers. On the other hand, I have seen call-out threads and attempts to troll atheist who are simply sharing their own view point. Let me also make it clear that even if we broke the rules, that to suggest breaking said rules can be an attempt to deny you of your faith is really rather ridiculous. Getting ridiculed on a forum is in no way a serious threat to your being, and in no way should be seen as someone trying to deny you of your faith. Such feelings of injustice should be reserved for those who would physically or mentally harm you by means of violence, harassment, and endangerment. Something Christians had practiced on atheist for hundreds of years.
Let me make this clear: Disagreeing with someone (even ridiculing someone) is not paramount to censorship.
In regards to those "calling-out" threads, (eleven of them in recent weeks), which here started by religious adherents; there is no doubt that those were initiated to censor/silence the dissenting viewpoints of non-religious adherents, (since such were posted mainly to me, by 'nym, immediately after I'd responded in dissent to initially-posted religious contentions).
The third statement I bolded is absolutely inconceivably infinitely 100% false in every way shape or form. Your understanding of what makes up reality is 100% wrong. Reality cannot be definitively defined by human beings. Reality is what is regardless of what we believe or how to preseve it. Just because you believe something exist does not make it real. Just because you believe in god, just because gravity is a theory, just because we see things, just because we think we know we exist does not mean that any of these things match what is reality. Reality would exist in its form regardless of whether or not humans existed. Our understanding of reality could be absolutely inconceivably infinitely 100% false in every way shape or form no matter what be believe.
The only thing humans could possibly achieve is an attempt at understanding what is reality. Science is simply a way for us to measure and attempt to objectively view the universe (that is to say reality) in the best way we can. We use as much evidence and logical reasoning as possible to simply explain reality by use of theorizing. The very notion of science assumes that we don't have absolutely understanding of reality. Religion, on the other hand, throws all this out the window and states that it does in fact understand reality and that this reality is god. To suggest that we come up with our own realities undermines the very definition of reality itself.
Reality is completely objective. In order to understand it we has human beings have to be 100% objective. But this goal is pretty much impossible, since we as human beings we have an automatic bias towards our experiences. Our experiences may or may not have anything to do with what is reality. Would you trust the experiences of someone who is on LSD as reality? Would someone on LSD trust the experiences of someone who isn't on LSD? We as human beings naturally have different view points, therefore to state that our experiences make up what is reality is mindbogglingly incorrect.
That human bias you've mentioned is subjective perception. Some would say that the "reality" we
experience is an admixture of objective reality and subjective experience however, this means that the same "reality"
outside of one's skull isn't
perceived in exactly the same way by everyone, (objectively). Having said that, one person's subjective perception of objective reality isn't the 'gold standard' of what "reality" is for all. That means subjective religious beliefs do not reflect objective reality, even if others choose to hold such "beliefs" despite the lack of objective evidence to support them.
If we are to understand anything we have to realize that arbitrarily attributing reality to a god is in no way going to help us move forward in our understanding of what is reality.
Exactly so. As "nhendrickson" goes on to point out, "The average person in the Middle Ages had no idea what caused disease. The same things caused disease then that cause them now. The lack of knowledge doesn't change that." This implicitly accounts for even earlier superstitious beliefs attributing such things as disease and other natural phenonmenon to various supernatural causes because they had no other explanation for such at the time. Continued attribution of phenonmenon, (or events), which are not yet fully-understood to supernatural causes remains superstitious.
Flackle makes several good points. This is in the Debate and Discuss forum. There is a clear disclaimer by the moderators to enter at your own risk. It is hard to tell what may be offensive to a particular individual. If you are that sensitive to dissenting points of views, why are you here?
I would also agree that disagreeing with you does NOT constitute religious persecution. It does NOT prevent anyone from going to church or from holding your religious beliefs. No one is threatening, physically harming or killing anybody or his or her loved ones due to the mere fact that he or she holds these beliefs or in an attempt to force them to repudiate those beliefs. Simply finding those that disagree with you annoying or even offensive is not religious persecution.
Thank you for also reiterating that point. There have been insidiously-specious laments concerning that point have consisted of attempting to characterize dissenting viewpoints as "rude"/"disrespectful"/"hate speech", etc., to try establishing a false basis to invoke the "golden rule" against dissention, (and thus enjoin moderated censorship by speciously reporting dissent/refutations as 'violations' of the general "golden rule"). It's been speculated that such ongoing attempts to censor dissenting viewpoints in such a manner stem from a certain degree of frustration on the part of those unable to counter logical challenges/refutations to religious contentions
initially posted by religious adherents. Further, that such posited frustrations have lead to those "calling-out" threads, attempts to censor dissent, false claims of 'religious persecution' and avoiding the burden of proof obligations for making initial claims.
I respectfully disagree that reality is completely objective. The observer effect refers to the changes that the act of observation has on the phenomenon being observed. To my mind, this means that "reality" is not necessarily unchanging and that we at least can influence, if not actually change, "reality". This is a good explanation for the placebo effect in which an individual has a measurable improvement in health that isn't attributable to treatment. This occurs all the time in drug trials where subjects improve despite receiving essentially a "sugar pill" that logically should have no effect at all on their condition. Possibly some of them may have improved on their own. It is also possible that they improved because they hoped or believed that they would because they thought that were getting the trial drug rather than the placebo.
There's a
subtle difference between affecting objective reality subjectively
or, objectively however. An objective
effect can be observed by anyone whereas a subjective 'effect' may only be experienced subjectively and not detectable by anyone else. The results of a placebo effect may be detectable as an objective result of a subjective influence or, not. An individual's "beliefs" cannot be unambiguously correlated with a placebo effect, (c.f., numerous medical studies which those interested can cherry-pick from).
Our understanding of reality has changed along with scientific understanding and the ability of scientific instrumentation to observe and measure phenomena. In particular, I think quantum physics and mechanics can hold the key to many things that are regarded as supernatural now. As Arthur Clarke pointed out, magic is simply science we don't understand.
I tend to agree with those contentions with the exception that Mr. Clarke actually stated that "Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This quote is sometime misinterpreted by religious adherents as implicitly referring to superstitious beliefs in supernatural causes as "magic" being a "sufficiently-advanced technology" for a 'g-d'. This is not the case because it remains an unfounded attribution of phenomenon/events not yet fully-understood to supernatural/magical causes without objective evidence to support such contentions.
I am not advocating throwing logic and rationality at the window. I'm questioning whether we actually can advance the quest to understanding reality simply by saying that there is no evidence at present to support such beliefs.
Conversely, such superstitious beliefs, (sans evidence), have been
not advanced that quest and in fact, have significantly inhibited it throughout history, (c.f., the dark ages and other suppressions of rational inquiry which challenged the religious contentions). It remains that those who initial make a claim have the burden of proof obligation to support it with substantive evidence, (and "belief"/"faith" do not constitute substantive evidence; such are subjective opinions lacking in evidence).
I think as we evolve so will our knowledge. In the meantime, I think we have to accept that we may never understand reality despite our best attempts to do so. I'd like to think that people could discuss their differences in a calm way and accept the fact that we can debate to our heart's content and we may change the other party's mind. If they aren't hurting or persecuting us, why worry?
For the most part, I concur.
Community Forum
Topic: How To Handle Christian Persecution On FusionCash (Read 38736 times)
September 10, 2011, 07:09:14 am
