Mises and "New Atheism"

[pvn]

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Smoking creates all the problems that it fixes. It is only relaxing because it's a relief from the withdrawal pangs. It only seems to taste good because the smoker has acquired that taste, and learned to associate it with pleasure.

[/ QUOTE ] These assertions are simply false. Tobacco contains drugs that have effects on the mind no matter what, and you can posit that it is an "acquired taste" all you want but many people who aren't addicted to it enjoy the taste.

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Same thing with religion. I'm not missing out on anything really by being an atheist. I don't need heaven, because I don't fear hell.

[/ QUOTE ] I listed 5 positive functions religion plays for people, none which had anything to do with going to hell. What about all those benefits that it does and has brought to billions of people throughout history?

In my view, all that you are showing is that the process of cognitive dissonance reduction has set in very staunchly within your mind in these two cases, convincing you that there are not any benefits to these things that you don't do. Now, cognitive dissonance reduction is very good for improving an individual's utility (they no longer have to worry about whether or not the path they have taken was the correct one, because there is nothing good about the alternate path!), but terribly awful at helping them to understand the world as it is.

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I'm in with moorobot.




The fact that snowball doesn't enjoy smoking doesn't mean that people who "think" they do are merely brainwashed, or deluding themselves.

And religion, while it can be abused, does not *require* that one engage in aggressive behavior. The people who use religion as an excuse to commit violence would find something else to blame their thuggery on if they didn't have that crutch.

[Kaj]

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One of my big gripes with the new brand of atheism championed by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens is that they don't offer an alternative. They seem to simply say, "don't believe in God, it's dumb." Even though I agree to a certain extent, you can't just ask people to abandon a major part of their life and not offer anything to fill it with. And, unfortunately, I don't think science will fill the void.

Anyway, I found an interesting quote for those of you who happen to be both ACists and "militant atheists". It may make you reconsider how you approach religious conversations:

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"An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be."

--Ludwig von Mises


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I'm FOR freedom, rational thinking, and peaceful coexistence. Those seem like good things to me. Unfortunately, it makes me anti- most everything about authority and institutional organizations. But the way I see it, that's due to THEIR shortcomings, not mine.

[oe39]

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One of my big gripes with the new brand of atheism championed by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens is that they don't offer an alternative. They seem to simply say, "don't believe in God, it's dumb." Even though I agree to a certain extent, you can't just ask people to abandon a major part of their life and not offer anything to fill it with. And, unfortunately, I don't think science will fill the void.

Anyway, I found an interesting quote for those of you who happen to be both ACists and "militant atheists". It may make you reconsider how you approach religious conversations:

[ QUOTE ]
"An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be."

--Ludwig von Mises


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did you get this from the scientific american opinion? i read that and didn't like it.

[John Kilduff]

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How do you characterize the "old brand" of atheism?

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I guess when you would get burned at the stake for atheism, old atheism was not believing in god an not liking being told that you were a bad person for believing that. New atheism is telling other people they're bad people because they believe in god. The ironing is delicious.

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Ummm...you don't see a bit of difference between "burning at the stake" and "vociferously disagreeing"? There is no irony to be found here.

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Yes, I do, I kid.

But seriously, from the view as communicated by the OP, the "new" atheism involves openly attacking the true believers. Old atheism was about seeking accpetance of a minority view, which is a defensive position.

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So the "new atheism" is just much more intolerant of other points of view regarding god, etc. than the "old atheism" was. Not surprising actually.

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Hm yes, and now that you mention it...I've been getting the impression that a lot of the newer ways of thinking are actually more intolerant than their older counterparts (not just limited to religion and politics although probably concentrated there).

edit: by "newer" I am referring to spans of recent years or decades, not spans of centuries.

[vhawk01]

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That doesn't explain why people believe something when it has no benefits for them. Furthermore, smoking as well has benefits, although they may seem absurd to non-smokers (e.g. taste, enjoyment of the drug effects on the brain, fitting in with a social group/alleviating peer pressure as a youngster, a way to fulfill one's oral or manual fixations, etc.).



Which leaves us at the tautology that people do things because they want to do them. True, but not very useful.

[/ QUOTE ] ??? I'm not arguing for a basic axiom of human conduct or anything here...I'm simply stating that what another poster said was false.

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The point I'm trying to make is that you offer no proof that religion really provides these benefits. It clearly doesn't answer any of those questions, at least not in any satisfactory way. So, when pressed, you say that people do it, therefore they get some benefit out of it. This is true, but in this narrow view people benefit from every single action they take. People benefit from cutting themselves, they benefit from drinking themselves to death, they benefit from everything. If they didn't, why would they do it?

What it does is sidestep the greater question of whether these are OPTIMAL ways, or even +EV ways, of addressing these concerns. People may very well believe something that "has no benefits for them" in some grander sense. But of course no one believes anything that has no benefits for them in the strictest sense...else they would never believe it. By definition. Tautologically.

[vhawk01]

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How do you characterize the "old brand" of atheism?

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I guess when you would get burned at the stake for atheism, old atheism was not believing in god an not liking being told that you were a bad person for believing that. New atheism is telling other people they're bad people because they believe in god. The ironing is delicious.

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Ummm...you don't see a bit of difference between "burning at the stake" and "vociferously disagreeing"? There is no irony to be found here.

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Yes, I do, I kid.

But seriously, from the view as communicated by the OP, the "new" atheism involves openly attacking the true believers. Old atheism was about seeking accpetance of a minority view, which is a defensive position.

[/ QUOTE ]

So the "new atheism" is just much more intolerant of other points of view regarding god, etc. than the "old atheism" was. Not surprising actually.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hm yes, and now that you mention it...I've been getting the impression that a lot of the newer ways of thinking are actually more intolerant than their older counterparts (not just limited to religion and politics although probably concentrated there).

edit: by "newer" I am referring to spans of recent years or decades, not spans of centuries.

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As we move from a position of ignorance to a position of knowledge, shouldn't we become progressively less tolerant? What is the virtue of tolerance, if not to "cover our bases" when either we don't know the right answer or there is no right answer? Creationists should have been tolerant of evolutionists because creationists had no good answers. Evolutionists have far less reason to be tolerant of creationists. Tolerance isn't a virtue in its own right, its merely a useful strategy. At least IMO.

[vhawk01]

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Smoking creates all the problems that it fixes. It is only relaxing because it's a relief from the withdrawal pangs. It only seems to taste good because the smoker has acquired that taste, and learned to associate it with pleasure.

[/ QUOTE ] These assertions are simply false. Tobacco contains drugs that have effects on the mind no matter what, and you can posit that it is an "acquired taste" all you want but many people who aren't addicted to it enjoy the taste.

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Same thing with religion. I'm not missing out on anything really by being an atheist. I don't need heaven, because I don't fear hell.

[/ QUOTE ] I listed 5 positive functions religion plays for people, none which had anything to do with going to hell. What about all those benefits that it does and has brought to billions of people throughout history?

In my view, all that you are showing is that the process of cognitive dissonance reduction has set in very staunchly within your mind in these two cases, convincing you that there are not any benefits to these things that you don't do. Now, cognitive dissonance reduction is very good for improving an individual's utility (they no longer have to worry about whether or not the path they have taken was the correct one, because there is nothing good about the alternate path!), but terribly awful at helping them to understand the world as it is.

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I'm in with moorobot.




The fact that snowball doesn't enjoy smoking doesn't mean that people who "think" they do are merely brainwashed, or deluding themselves.

And religion, while it can be abused, does not *require* that one engage in aggressive behavior. The people who use religion as an excuse to commit violence would find something else to blame their thuggery on if they didn't have that crutch.

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I think the smoking analogy is a great one but perhaps I'm not using it in the way Snowball is. I agree with everything you are saying here, but I think that most theists would be STRONGLY opposed to accepting this version of the smoking analogy, at least the astute ones. Its hardly flattering to them.

[Misfire]

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Objectivism?

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THERE IS NO SUCH THING AYN RAND WAS NOT A PHILOSOPHER

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good argument.

[pvn]

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I think the smoking analogy is a great one but perhaps I'm not using it in the way Snowball is. I agree with everything you are saying here, but I think that most theists would be STRONGLY opposed to accepting this version of the smoking analogy, at least the astute ones. Its hardly flattering to them.

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I agree with the smoking analogy, too (to an extent). You don't "need" to replace smoking/religon with anything. That doesn't mean people don't enjoy smoking or religion. I disagree that religion is inherently harmful to the participant (or others). Organized religion quite often is, but there's nothing essential about religion that requires this sort of destructive behavior.

[vhawk01]

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I think the smoking analogy is a great one but perhaps I'm not using it in the way Snowball is. I agree with everything you are saying here, but I think that most theists would be STRONGLY opposed to accepting this version of the smoking analogy, at least the astute ones. Its hardly flattering to them.

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I agree with the smoking analogy, too (to an extent). You don't "need" to replace smoking/religon with anything. That doesn't mean people don't enjoy smoking or religion. I disagree that religion is inherently harmful to the participant (or others). Organized religion quite often is, but there's nothing essential about religion that requires this sort of destructive behavior.

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Agreed on all points.