my favourite exchange of the month
Sometimes, on the lurk round other blogs, one stumbles across gem-like interactions between fellow bloggers in the comments section. Two of my very favourite bloggers had something very cool to say to each other in the exchange below that under ordinary circumstances would be worth republishing, but given the personalities of the two bloggers (if you’re lucky enough to know them), makes the exchange unmissable! I hope you can all enjoy this as much as I did, from Silenceofmind‘s most recent post lambasting atheist immorality and wheeling out the unsuspecting Christian Hitler as evidence:
Good post Silence. Atheism is immoral simply because even if God were not real, the placebo affect alone would have great value to society. Telling people that they shouldn’t believe in God or that God isn’t real is a bit like telling a cancer patient that the placebo drug that is curing them is wrong to take because it isn’t “real”. If it’s healing them, then who cares if it’s just a placebo? Science has finally caught on to the fact that placebos sometimes work, so to step in at that point in self righteous indignation, would be immoral.
God is very real and quite wonderful, too. But even if you did not know that, the benefits to a society that come from believing in things like Divine love, justice, and accountability, are so huge, that the only moral thing to do would be to keep your mouth shut. Therefore, atheists are immoral because they put their own prideful selves before the needs of individuals and the common good.
Insanity,
I always enjoy, and greatly benefit from, your fresh take on things.
I’m just a nuts and bolts guy who deals in simple principles, but you are somehow able to weave those simple principles into quite a very beautiful tapestry that illustrates the complex ramifications of truth and falsehood.
Thankfully, Insanity is a happily married submissive Christian wife. Otherwise, I would be sensing romance in the air!
But, I digress. I just wondered how other atheists feel about the challenge to us to accept that belief in Christianity’s god God should be encouraged because even if it’s clearly not true, it’s hugely beneficial for society. Some more food for thought from the beautiful tapestry weaver, our dear friend Insanity.
Yeah, I was going to latch onto Insanity’s admission “its all bogus, but who cares,” but figured she just turn around and say, “I didn’t say that!”
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She really does bring a fresh perspective, as Silence says. It’s like you just can’t guess what she’s going to come out with next.
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It is, quite literally, an adult declaring “Even though he doesn’t exist, I’m going to believe in Santa Claus, just because I can”
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Ah yes, we could make the same argument for Santa Claus. Who in their right moral mind would ever let a child know that the jolly man who leaves them presents every year isn’t real? It’s immoral if you think about it …
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Well, she never actually admitted it was all bogus. So technically she would be right to turn around and say that she didn’t say that!
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Wow. Sit down and shut up, because your objections to our misunderstanding and mischaracterization of your viewpoint are toxic. Weak, if it were for real, but I’m pretty sire this all turns out to be satire. Nobody’s that stupid.
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Oops. “Sure”, I’m pretty sure this all turns out to be satire.
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Oh, you clearly aren’t familiar with the work of either Insanity or Silence if you think this is satire.
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Ach! I have to believe it is satire. Otherwise, I’ll completely lose my faith in humanity and come to think the species will go extinct someday. Then what’s the point in going on living? How dare you take my hope from me. You are immoral.
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Sorry. It’s just that I’m an atheist so I can’t help myself …
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Christianity is immoral because telling people that they should believe in God or that God is real is a bit like telling a perfectly healthy person that they need a cure for cancer that they do not have. “Here, take this chemo. It’ll burn your insides up, but you really need it.”
If people don’t have cancer they don’t need a placebo.
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Oh nice twist on the Insanity tapestry! You two should go head to head! 😀
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I’ve lived the insanity so I know how it’s done.
This whole idea that Christianity would serve as a good placebo even it it weren’t true is immoral. Thou shalt not lie?
So, what you’re saying is, even if it isn’t true we’ll tell people it is so that they will conform to my idea of what is moral. You do realize that if God isn’t real and Christianity isn’t true a lot of the things you hold to be immoral actually aren’t, right?
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You talking to me? 😎
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No, no. I meant “you” in the broad sense of Christians who think that Christianity is just some placebo.
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Oh I know, I just wanted to put the sunglasses face up ….
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Here…a cute kitten to look at:
🐱
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Oh nice, I’ll start using that one after insults to Ark, thanks!
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Or you could use this:
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LOL
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Wow! That’s amazing, I’ll have to go post that somewhere before he sees it here!
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How do you do it?? Just copy and paste the link location?
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Go edit my comment and you can see the code.
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This must be what John Zande feels like (dinosaur)
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Heh!
This place has all kinds of cool emoticons.
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Oooh, nice tip, thanks!
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Done! Just the location.
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Ruth nailed it. Also, I’ve never known a sugar pill to have toxic side-effects, unlike authoritarian religion, which is sugarcoated to appear non-toxic.
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Of course Insanity didn’t discuss which version of Christian morality atheists should be promoting. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ as in no death penalty, no drones and no killing animals for unnecessary food? Who knows … And as Ruth points out, ‘Thou shalt not lie’ seems to be slipping by the wayside in her vision of the atheistic moral utopia.
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“Of course Insanity didn’t discuss which version of Christian morality atheists should be promoting. ”
Right. If she did, she’d be casting a spotlight on her prejudice.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201305/belief-in-god-supports-prejudice-against-gays-and-atheists
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Great poster! But are you sure you understand slavery in the context of the Bible? The god God said slave owners couldn’t beat their slaves to death so it was actually quite a moral system! 😉
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Morality god God style.
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Sadly, this simple sentence told me more than I ever wanted to know about IB22: “Good post Silence.”
I can see her point, after all Humankind has gone from Pre-Yahweh wars in the Middle East that killed hundreds of thousands, to 21st Century wars in the Middle East that kill hundreds of thousands – the placebo effect is definitely working.
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Love your opening sentence! The next bit’s pretty good too. You’re on form today. 😀
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After all, I live for your critique —
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When you consider their blog addresses, it is easy to understand how such insane ideas can be seen to be great insights.
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Good point! At least they know deep inside when they’re naming themselves …
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How you manage to read Insanity’s posts that frequently is beyond me. This comment from her is enough treat for a whole week
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Insanity’s post are great! You really should dip in more often. This gem is from a SOM post – now those can get a bit tiring – ‘blah blah I’m a troll blah blah atheists are evil’ etc.
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Let me read her comments when she visits her blog, that would be enough for. There is already enough insanity around me there is no need of looking for more online
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meant to say your blog and not visits her blog.
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My problem with the statement made by IB is two-fold. First, it’s an unnecessary generalization. There are plenty of atheists who see religion as being a potential force for good and beneficial to facing this suffering and challenges. It’s unfair to the diversity of atheistic thinking on the subject. Second, for the atheists that think religion needs to go, I don’t think we can judge them as immoral. Some atheists really are convicted that religion is ultimately not good. Victoria would be in this camp. Are these atheists really immoral for having honest carefully-thought convictions? They don’t want to remove religion by violence, but through education and finding some alternative to fill religion’s niche (i.e., secular humanism, secular churches, meditation for anxiety).
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“Some atheists really are convicted that religion is ultimately not good. Victoria would be in this camp.”
Correction: Some atheists really are convicted that authoritarian religion is ultimately not good. Victoria (me) would be in this came.
Not only is it disadvantageous to humanity, many people with mental health issues slip through the system because their symptoms are of a religious nature.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16439158
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And yes, I see what you did there — 🙂
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*camp
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I shouldn’t be saying your view without directly quoting you, sorry about that! One of my great life lessons is that people are more nuanced in real life than how my brain classifies them.
Are you saying that the mental healthcare system fails to recognize some or that laypeople fail? Because that’s an important distinction to make. I do not think the US mental healthcare system misses diseases because of variable religiosity. I’m not sure what religiosity can possibly mask as far as diagnostic criteria for these mental illnesses.
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No problem, Brandon.
“Are you saying that the mental healthcare system fails to recognize some or that laypeople fail? Because that’s an important distinction to make.”
Both. Laypeople generally say that someone having these symptoms are either experiencing the “Holy Spirit” or demons or even Satan himself. “Spiritual Warfare” is often the term used when they presume that a person is being oppressed or possessed, or have some sort of “sin” in their life that they have trouble overcoming. Regarding the healthcare system and hyper-religious behavior, I quote from:
“A Complex Presentation of Complex Partial Seizures — Official Journal of the Association of Medicine and Psychiatry”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470651/
In his book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain , neurologist David Eagleman writes:
That’s just one neurological disorder (yet the most common) that is often misdiagnosed due to the culture of authoritarian religion, i.e., Christianity. Those who are obsessed by religion and have feelings of religious certanity slip through the system. I recommend the BBC documentary “God on the Brain” which highlights one person (now deceased) with TLE, considered a prophet, now has a Christian following of 25 million worldwide. This denomination, endorsed by 2 former (contemporary) American presidents and former Secretary of State, is one of the fastest growing Protestant denominations in the world.
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That makes sense, Victoria. I agree with both of your points here. Religious belief about the spiritual realm can prevent or delay professional treatment of mental illnesses, and this is something we would expect to see from laypeople who either do not know about psychiatry or have rejected it for some reason (i.e., Scientology). And, definitely I can imagine TLE being missed if the primary symptom is hyperreligiosity. These are good points.
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Thanks Brandon.
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Ha! That conversation reveals what these people think is moral. I can not help it, but to me it is incredibly condescending to assume people are unable to be moral without beliefs about supernatural mind police. Is it not immoral to lie to people?
What happens when people who have grown up not understanding ethics, so that their only reason to act humane and morally is the fear of an imagined mind police, finally do realize no such supernatural agents exist? That is indeed the wellspring from wich such monsters as Stalin and Pol Pot emerge. Ultimately, their victims and they themselves were the victims of religion, not of atheism because religion had prevented them from learning ethics and instead replaced it by this authoritarianism. Authoritorianism was at the root of their power drawn from religious beliefs. But we have equal monsters who believed in gods who even believed the same gods gave them justification to act inhumanely, like for example genrals Batista and Pinochet and many, many other military governments such as the ones in El Salvador and Greece who did not reject their gods.
if religion is a placebo to stop the psychopat from acting unempathetically, it has failed miserably.
But does the notion of religion as a placebo also contain the idea, that these two individuals engaged in the quoted conversation would act immorally themselves, if they lost their religious beliefs? Hear me all atheists, stop making sense with the two of them, by their own admission they might turn into monsters! Or is it only, that they have allready realized there are no gods and hold on to and argue for their religious cultural heritage only to stop other people becoming monsters by spreading the placebo? Or is this merely the last line of defence after all the intellectual arguments for gods have failed?
Are atheists responsible for telling people that no mind police exists? Yes. If we are unable to also convey, that no gods are required for morality, then we have indeed failed. But the belief that religious delusion should be held only to suppress this is just creating the problem and then waiting for the situation when the lie will inevitably be revealed.
Atheism is not a position about morals. It is a position about gods and other supernatural agents, that remain unverified claims. Morals has to be drawn from other sources – natural to all humans regardless of their particular beliefs about the supernatural – such as empathy and reason. Whose morals is drawn from religion anyway? Thomas de Torquemada’s? Arbitrary commands from ignorant ancient people are not a very solid base for informed moral. They are merely tribal moralism. But that is what the religious conservatives want and expect – tribal moralism. It is the safeguard of the small and selfish mind.
If morals is drawn from divine commands in fear of supernatural reprizal, or even in hope of afterlife rewards, it is not ethical and not even moral at all. Moral is to act for what you believe is ethical regardless wether you are going to be rewarded, or punished.
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Very well said, Rautakyy. Your last paragraph reminded me of something Albert Einstein once said:
<blockquote<"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
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Very profound, Rautakyy, but then I’ve come to expect that from you.
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Fantastic. I’m glad you posted this exchange. I’ve had far too many brick-wall-head-hitting discussions with Silence at this point, and it’s nice to see someone note his and Insanity’s flawed sense of… well, reality, really.
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They’re interesting characters. SOMs a troll but he’s so good at it I frequently forget, and perhaps he does actually mean at least some of what he says. Insanity’s wonderful, she has terrible opinions but an engaging and surprising way of delivering them. I’m still laughing about that exchange above though, love it!
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Good assessment! Very true. It’s too bad trolls won’t just stay under their bridges. But, alas, at least we have entertainment.
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