[Mod comment - Accidentally split these post from the main thread when trying to get rid of an offensive post. We’ve got no easy way to link them up again.
My apologies,
Matt]
I’ll swear all I want about the fucking absurdity of becoming violent over a depiction in a cartoon
of course scientists are just people… but i’m wondering just how many of those you know you met (for real… scientifically educated people… like a master in chemistry or something) 
because i certainly havn’t seen many of those around here… one biologist… that’s about it … and he was very clear, but also very civil about his point ^^
most, i think, (think) wouldn’t even visit this forum as it’s simply not any of their interest
Very good… 
I’ve met a fair few scientists. I once took apart the presumptions of one leading scientist in a public forum about the Human Genome Project (of which he was a senior member). He didn’t seem to understand the difference between linear and non-linear notions of causality. Now, he was making all sorts of grand claims on the basis of an indefensible theory of causality that was essential to everything that he was saying. I merely highlighted this and he fobbed me off at great length by talking about Francis Fukuyama in a highly irrelevant fashion.
Now, this isn’t representative of all scientists by any means, but if the ones at the top are taking key ideas purely on faith then I don’t see that the scientific claim that ‘science is based on empirical evidence’ means anything more than ‘science is based on habitual and convenient interpretations of empirical evidence’ which makes it a parareligion (or makes religion parascientific).
So there’s a major conflict between religion and science because a lot of people believe there is one? So, you are resorting to the religious ‘a lot of people believe this’ to try to defend the belief that science and religion are in opposition? How very, very bizarre. And totally unsound.
So you’ve moved on from using the beliefs of people to justify your own (a fallacy typical of the religious) to nothing short of explicit ad hominem. Neither add the slightest weight to your arguments and both just make you look irrational and desperate.
Feel free to try again.
And I’ll swear all I want about the fucking absurdity of throwing a hissy fit about the absurdity of becoming violent over a depiction in a cartoon. Great, then we’re both really immature. Pass the wooden cube, this sphere won’t fit through the hole…
yes… this is very true… some scientists are more aware of this than others i guess…
in my experience, the ones who do realise this are usually very much a pain in the ass for their students 
A note to Twiffy: Although I think your insights are occasionally sophisticated, the entirety of your correspondence here seems inescapably tarnished by your foul attitude. The fact that this attitude has nothing to do with SIATD at all, by your own (perhaps inadvertent) admission, except in an entirely impersonal (and therefore (hypocritically) disingenous) sense, means that such an attitude stands or falls on its own merits, and cannot be justified in relation to anything specific to this particular discussion.
As such, I do not need to bother addressing SIATD’s contribution to this thread. You address him as another instance of a general class of intercolutor whose rational authority you are already predisposed to dismiss. For this reason then, it is only this general pre-characterization which must be addressed: in terms of the fact of the matter which you contend (i.e. that those who reject evolutionism are irrational), and the prescriptive conclusion you conclude from this (that you are therefore entitled, or perhaps even obligated, to be antagonistic towards them).
Does it perhaps become clear to you when I put it in these terms? Your attitude is absolutely irredeemable for the reasons you adduce, or implicitly adduce, in its favor. The crux of what I take to be your error is crystallized in the following quote;
Now earlier today I posted in another thread, the theme of which was whether something called “science” should seek to destroy something called “religion”. In that thread Rounder made the claim that religion is the source of all or most of our social and communal antagonisms. Now what interests me about this current thread about evolution is the possibility that your behaviour might serve as a case of someone who no doubt adhers to Rounder’s position, yet whom is arguably part of the problem rather than the solution, given the very terms of this position.
It is important that I am not misunderstood about this point. I am not merely making a trivial point about “etiquette” - what I want is rather to display a more prevalent and widespread phenomenon with an objective sense. Or in other words, the last thing which this is about, ultimately, is psychology. (Which, incidentally, is what SIATD’s responses lack when they rest content in returning your own facile, hack-psychological assessments.)
Now as I said above, there are two contentions implicit in your position. One is a negative assessment of the rationality of those who dismiss evolution. The other is an ethical prescription for what might loosely be labelled the “politics of culture war”. It is this second element which disgusts me so much about the current debate concerning evolution, and which has nothing to do with the science, putative or otherwise, upon which it is waged. I imagine that probably there are some (if not yourself), who maintain a sense of “righteous anger” at those who oppose the discourse of evolution: or should I say, who “dare” to do so. Certainly I get this impression from Rounder, though honestly I do not generally read what he writes, and so this characterization could well be incorrect. In any case, what is generally associated with this attitude is a deeply felt fear of the possible dangers of the supposed enemy. I believe, incidentally, that it is exactly in relation to this point that John Searle labelled Daniel Dennett “pathological”. Personally, I feel that if you want a properly scientific assessment of the social reality and effect of “religion”, you would do be better to study economics or sociology, not “sociobiology” or any of its sister disciplines.
To sum up with a question then. How do you establish the prescriptive element of your position based on the facts you maintain support it? Clearly there just is no justificatory relation between the two. So here what we seem to have is another example of political agenda masquerading as science. Is this perhaps what it means to be a “Bright”? Sign up for the science and get the ideology for free? I wonder.
James
Can you just talk normal for once, #2? Jesus man, its okay…really.
I used to think that #2 beat around the bush. This guy beats around the entire forest.
Here, I’m going to translate what you said into what you wanted to say:
You’re a smart dude but your attitude sucks.
You can’t blame SIATD because you’re attitude sucks.
You don’t like smart people, even if it isn’t SIATD, and that is the problem.
(Sarcasm. #2’s way of saying “you stupid sonofabitch! You’ll never understand what the hell I’m saying…hahahahahaaaa!!!”)
Now, don’t you think my way was better, #2?
It was funnier…
detrop,
After some of your more turgid theoretical efforts, I would have thought you’d be more understanding…
Actually I thought it was pretty clear, what I wrote. In any case, if I had written your response to Twiffy, I doubt that what I had intended to convey would have gotten through. Now perhaps you want to have another go at paraphrasing my response? All I can see at the moment is what is missing from my intended message in your first attempt. You might as well go one step further, in the interests of “brevity” and “concision”, and simply translate my entire message into: “Fuck You!” 
You missed the allusion to Twiffy’s claims that SIATD was somehow being disingenuous and was uninterested in “serious” discussion. In fact you missed, or at least “failed to translate”, the entire point of discussing something like ‘attitude’ in the first place. It is never extrinsic to the point of a view of a position.
Nope. It has nothing to do with intelligence: it is more a point about dialogue - the structure of which serves as a partial (though not complete) microcosmic paradigm of community. As such I alluded in my response to the possibility that Twiffy’s interaction with particular intercolutors mirrors or reflects (the creation/cause of) antagonisms on a larger scale - hence implying that his “hypocrisy” is more than merely ‘subjective’. I dare say you failed to reproduce this in your restatement of my position. As I said, this has nothing to do with SIATD - not even in the ‘negative’ sense. I would not argue his position here, nor I am required to do so for my purposes.
Again, this is not really a point about intelligence, though I did allow this phrase to carry that connotation, and also added a bit of bite to my last paragraph. In this case though the predominant point is about self-awareness.
Don’t worry though detrop: You still the man. Now fuck off back to Oblivion. 
Regards,
James
I cant believe you actually wrote that;
I’m starting to think that your opposition to religion derives from an innate lack of belief on your part. You’ve said this ‘I can’t believe that you wrote that’ a couple of times in our recent exchanges, which would suggest that you lack faith and imagination and because of this the idea of God is untenable.
I could be wrong, I’m just throwing it into the ring for consideration.
I can say i made up my mind at about 13~14 years old because i already realised the inconsistencies regarding religious dogma… and miracles.
Before that i was dragged into church by my grandmother (my parents were busy people) with no say on the matter; i remember watching the ceremonies as a young child and couldn’t make anything of them. They fed me wine and bread and said it was blood and flesh; now the ideea of drinking blood and eating raw human flesh was already too much for me and i realised that no matter what these people were saying it was in fact red wine and bread and nothing more.
I also remember hearing the priest talk about miracles which to me didn’t make any sense even at that young age.
I was forced to hold candles and kneel at the feet of this man dressed in fancy clothes and that made no sense to me either. Alsoi could see my own grandparents and sometimes my own parents doing the same; i didnt know who jesus really was or what god was but i could tell neither was present and that basicly everyone was worshipping this man, kissing pictures of other people and putting money in the basket every time it came about. Every time that happened my grandmother gave me some money and told me to place it there when it was my turn… and i couldn’t understand why i couldn’t buy icecream with those money since they were ours.
I could go on and on… and dont even make me go into what i was told about hell and satan.
Oh ho, someone speaks to me!
James No. 2,
That’s an old debate, man. The posts between myself and SIATD were long and repetitive, and I certainly don’t blame you for not reading most of it - which I’m assuming you didn’t - but you can easily read back and note my apologies regarding my tone. But regardless of that, you still misunderstood my perception of the situation. Although your misunderstanding was probably more my fault than yours.
Sure, my attitude began exclusively because I am disgusted by the fact that there are people who believe evolution is false. I also found many of SIATD’s beliefs independently nasty - he seems to believe that because induction is unprovable (with which I agree), that induction is false (with which I don’t agree), and thus that all of science is false, and that we should check our TVs every time we turn them on if we want to believe that they’re working due to science and not ghosts. This separate idea I think is intellectually wrong, not because induction is RIGHT per se, but because there’s no reason whatsoever to consider it wrong. So that bothered me too.
I don’t know how you got “hypocritically disingenuous” from all that, but you’re certainly wrong. There were beliefs I disliked. I raged against them. Done.
That certainly doesn’t follow. You can address his contribution or not - I really don’t care. Both our posts had a lot of objectionable material in it. Independent of the validity of our arguments, my main fault was in starting off hostile, and SIATD’s main fault was in encouraging the thread to become more hostile. Our arguments each had their strengths and weaknesses; his arguments were hardly settled, validated or invalidated by the emotional trend you observed in my posts.
Hmm… you know, a lot of people really like Kant. He’s ok - had some worthwhile ideas - but the biggest complaint I had about him is that most of his work was 1) somewhat interesting but not terribly remarkable, and 2) worded poorly. Made very dense, without adding anything to the content. I came away with the impression that he put more effort into making his ideas sound complicated than he did in developing the ideas.
Honestly, I get the exact same vibe from you. I can see how you got the impression you apparently have. And it’s true that Detrop’s summary obviously missed a few things you had to say. But the POINT of his summary was right on - if he had read more carefully, three sentences would’ve done it. There is no virtue in making things unnecessarily complicated - and once you come across people whose vocabulary can match yours and who judge intelligence by the validity of argument and not complexity of form, you definitely hurt your own arguments by formulating them with that kind of phrasing.
If that is less of an affectation, and more “just the way you write”, that’s fine too - but if that’s just the way you write, you’re probably reasonably intelligent - and if that’s the case, you could probably learn to write more immediately comprehensible text without too much difficulty. I recommend it! Function over form, dontcha know.
Anyway, I don’t mean to offend with that discussion on your writing style - and I don’t mean to dodge your points, either. Just wanted to give my honest opinion.
Yes yes yes. Look - you’re saying that you think I think I’m morally entitled to be outraged and pissy at people because they don’t believe in evolution. Right? As I said before, I can see where this misperception comes from, and it’s probably my fault in being antagonistic in the first place, but that being said, I don’t really understand WHY you chose that interpretation over the other, more obvious (although rather similar) one. I don’t think I’m morally entitled to act like a jerk. (Obviously; that’s why I apologized for my part in starting the war between myself and SIATD.) Obviously, it’s explicitly part of this forum that one should avoid ad hominem attacks, be emotionless and discuss factual and logical aspects of various viewpoints, and so on. And I agree that these are good goals, and that they facilitate more in-depth discussion than the alternative. It’s just that I got pissed off.
Do you understand that? I never said or claimed to or implied that I had some absolute moral right to be antagonistic. I simply acted on an emotion that I felt regarding some posts. As for justifying my animosity - as I said, I never claimed it was justified at all. In terms of my posting on this forum, it WASN’T justified. But in terms of having an emotional reaction to the disbelief in evolution, I believe it was profoundly and easily justified.
Those who don’t believe in evolution almost universally are religious, ignorant people who make decisions based on irrational fervor and whim. These people cause a great amount of harm to our country (after all, they elected Bush!), all because of faith, ignorance, and stupidity.
There is a huge correlation between those who don’t believe evolution is true, and those who propound Intelligent Design, and try to get it taught in our schools. Education really is just about the most important thing around, because someone who is well-educated doesn’t just have greater capacity to improve the world - he has greater capacity to educate others, and carry on the trend. Intelligent Design is an intellectually bankrupt doctrine, that is either science or even remotely well argued, from a scientific and even a rational / mathematical point of view. Trying to teach our children this “theory” as if it were anything but tripe is potentially damaging to their abilities to think critically.
If you accept induction, evolution has absolutely no good argument against it whatsoever, that I am familiar with. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.)
Since I view anti-evolution people to share traits with the above categories of people, certainly you can understand why that view disgusts me.
So, to repeat, I was acting on emotion, not on a perceived moral high ground. Interestingly, the exactly same categorization applies to you - although of course any negative consequences of your post, if they exist at all, are much smaller than mine. However, you dragged up a fairly long-dead issue (look at the dates on the post), assumed something that you would have known to be incorrect had you read all the posts (although I don’t blame you for not reading them all - I just blame you for posting as if you had), and - most important - felt disgusted, and posted motivated by your disgust.
Now, I am not at all saying that you have harmed this thread, as I harmed its predecessor. I am merely saying that you have followed the exact trend of my actions, so surely you can appreciate that a) your post was entirely unnecessary, and b) you shouldn’t have assumed that I was aggressive from some perceived moral high ground, rather than just acting based on emotion.
Make sense?
Twiffy,
Two points to begin with. The second one is that I don’t care about what SIATD wrote; I care rather about your attitude, which is symptomatic of so many, and which demands a more thorough diagnosis than “Well I know it was wrong, but I was emotional…†The additional point about your ‘hypocrisy’, which you appear to have not understood (thereby subverting the distinction you attempt to draw between the ‘function’ of my writing, and its ‘form’), is attached to this line of thought, which now requires further elaboration.
The first point concerns the emboldened portion of the above quote. What does it mean to predicate a belief as ‘nasty’? Suppose you encountered someone, who may or may not be SIATD (we are not in a good position to know), that presented all of SIATD’s arguments, but with no subjectively ‘nasty’ disposition whatever? Would we say that the content of his positions harbored a certain ‘objective’ emotional tonality, or rather a certain meaning above and beyond what he intended to convey by wielding them? It seems unlikely to me that you can maintain your position without admitting the validity of this kind of reasoning into the present discussion. It grounds all of your antipathies, inasmuch as they concern not particular beliefs or persons, as such, but what you perceive to be the larger implications and effects of these beliefs/persons, on the level of society at large.
I think this perception is badly malformed, to the extent that it mistakenly projects the cause of many social and political problems onto this mysterious entity called “Religionâ€, and therefore perpetuates the perception that the “problem†is not ours but theirs. This is how I have made sense of your antagonisms: I do not think it has anything primarily to do with the theoretical consideration of evolution or induction (“Good heavens – someone refuses to believe! What ever shall we do! Heresy! Heresy!â€), but rather with a set of, shall we say, ‘sociological’ or ‘philosophical’ inferences concerning the ‘ailments’ of society, its heroes and villains, its problems and their causes/solutions.
There was a person that you raged against, who you ‘counted’ as an embodiment of beliefs which you feel the need to rage against. In other words, It was not SIATD in his specificity, but SIATD as an instance of Type X, the evil Type X that must be hated upon at every opportunity, for the “sake of humanity†or whatever. I remember you accusing SIATD on a couple of occasions (that I noticed) of not being interested in ‘genuine’ discussion. Yet it seems to me that your own participation here began by taking your supposed interlocutor as an instance of a type, towards whom there would appear to be very little possibility for genuine discussion or dialogue at all. This is why I considered it unnecessary to address SIATD’s position, when it would be much easier to look directly at that of Type X.
So what is your reason, your “social†reason so to speak, for disliking this Type X? Is it, perchance, because ‘he’ is dangerously close-minded, frequently bigoted, conceited, or whathaveyou? Part of the “problem†rather than the “solution� One of “them†rather than one of “us�
Two points then. First, I think your typological assessment of “the enemy†is itself criminally superficial, close-minded and arguably bigoted. Secondly, there is a sense in which the way we function, or ought to function, as a community has nothing to with this or that difference in belief: a point which you violate repeatedly by crossing the line from ‘is’ to ‘ought’: whether you defend this with “I agree in principle but…†(which would be a violation in fact); or whether you adopt one of the several variants of the “ends justify the means†argument (which would be a violation in principle, if you follow). Now you contend that I have mistakenly attributed to you a (willful) violation of principle, when in reality all that has occurred is a violation in fact. I apologize if this is the case, though it does seem there is a little ambiguity in your position on this account. For instance, note the ‘ambiguity’ in this declaration;
In any case, this is not a question of beliefs, but rather politics. As I said, I sense an ambiguity between your response: “I apologized several times but, you see, I was emotionalâ€, and the larger modus operandi of this particular “culture war†(“Those dirty religious scum: we must use their own methods to destroy their methods: we must become dirt in order to vanquish dirt, etcâ€â€¦ See quote above). Now I suppose it would be contrary to my position to argue against the principle “hate the Sin, not the sinnerâ€: a position which you seem now to endorse as your own. Although…;
Or maybe this;
Or this;
But let’s move right along…
…
You appear to have misunderstood. I was not arguing from the emotionality of your response to the validity of SIATD’s arguments. I was arguing for the irrelevance of SIATD as to the question of what caused your emotional response, and so was negatively delineating the point of my own response. That SIATD then produced a further emotional response from you, and that you felt compelled to apologize for this, is less relevant to my concerns.
I don’t particularly like Kant. It is ok to distinguish between ‘function’ and ‘form’: just be sure the distinction is not merely in your head (“The limits of my thought are the limits of Thoughtâ€). That is the first point.
It hurt the perception of my arguments, which is already a character judgment on your part. However, you have no idea what my personal motives are in this case, aside from the hasty inference to the effect that my wording is “unnecessarily complicatedâ€. I understand what you are saying, but if it’s all the same to you, I’ll keep right on keeping on, for now at least.
Vocabularies aside, I also think the comparison to Kant is unfair to the extent that he frequently coins neologisms, whereas I merely convolute, using existing terms, for the sake of brevity. It is a form of shorthand, both in the sense that simplifying it would take more space, and also in the sense that simplifying it would take more time. Now you said that if I can write this way than I am intelligent enough to write simpler. I say that if you are intelligent enough to understand what I am saying, than I don’t have to. Which one of us then ought to be required to make the extra effort?
You wrote explicitly;
You didn’t just “get†pissed off – you came into the discussion that way. I don’t think my interpretation is “less obviousâ€, even if it is wrong, which again I am still not sure about, in spite of your protestations. Like I said originally, it is not merely a matter of “etiquetteâ€, or else I would not have bothered intervening when I did. I am not a moderator nor am I moralistic by nature.
Now what you wrote immediately below the above seems to indicate that you have not understood what I meant by saying that I was not concerned with “etiquetteâ€. You wrote;
Now this is precisely what I have trouble with. I am not at all concerned with how you treat other ILP members, but with your general attitude, which even in this instance, and even after all of your qualifications, still seems to draw an inadmissible, or at least non-self-evident, connection between epistemic states (belief), and our dispositions towards them (“politicsâ€). ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’, if you will. What I want to know is where your “emotional reaction†comes from: I mean in the broad sense that it is symptomatic of larger social forces, and not in the merely subjective sense of your personal psychology. What this quote seems to indicate is not so much that I “missed†your apology, and therefore misinterpreted you as believing you were morally ‘entitled’ to your outburst here on ILP, but rather that you do feel morally entitled (“justified†as you put it) to respond in the way you do to disbelief in evolution (just not on the level of “personal etiquette”) – this being, of course, the very thing I was interested in questioning.
……….
Let’s face it, though; If you want to talk about what is a convincing argument and what is not, I fail to see how you can consider the following as being at all valid;
Are you serious? Firstly, most people who believe in evolution don’t understand it any better than most people who believe in Intelligent Design. Which is to say that it is people on a whole who are ignorant and stupid; who feel more irrational fervor at a football match than at Church; and who indulge their whims by voting for Ralph Nader, not George Bush.* I simply don’t understand how someone as seemingly intelligent as you, after writing such a thoughtful response, could finish up where you started, back with this bullshit.
*A joke, that last one.
On a more civil note, what I want to suggest is that what you view as a causal relationship is merely one of correlation. Oh, no, Twiffy, there are irrational people who believe in evolution also. Ignorant Atheists (Hello Richard Dawkins), and many other a symptom of our society’s “imperfectionsâ€. There are people who voted for Bush who are just like you, only, not. There are others who believe all the right, “rational†things, yet who don’t recycle (God help us!). All in all, people who don’t believe in evolution are almost universally religious: hell, people in general are almost universally religious, which means either that most people don’t believe in evolution, or that most people don’t see the two as being in conflict. In any event, Twiffy, the world continues to turn, people still die, and if Religion wasn’t available as an excuse – Surprise! – nothing would be different.
There is a correlation between religious belief and stupidity because: a) the majority of people on the planet are stupid; and b) the majority of people on the planet are religious. I can’t believe that you would actually base such strong emotions on superficial generalizations like the above.
Not quite. Because we appear to disagree about the importance of believing in evolution for social harmony, or the importance of destroying religion for the same goal; we also thereby appear to disagree about the varieties of ‘ought’ that, err, ought, to accompany the facts in question.
In other words then, your anger is misdirected, in my eyes: your passion senseless and even perhaps counter-productive.
Peace,
James
I’m going to respond to this somewhat out-of-order.
I never said it was his disposition that was nasty (although it was, as was mine). His ideas were nasty. They were morally wrong, if you like - and I’m sure you don’t. But I’ll explain shortly.
I think you misunderstand. I disliked his ideas. His ideas are independent of how he presents them. How he presented them was somewhat nasty, but had he presented the same ideas in a polite and non-antagonistic manner, I would have had the same view of his beliefs. Of course it is true that my emotional reaction was stronger because of his manner of presentation; but that doesn’t change my logical opinion of his beliefs.
Well, yes and no. My original raging post (which was before SIATD even posted) was against not individuals so much as people of Type X - this is very much true. However, when SIATD came into the picture, it did become a discussion about specific beliefs. Of course, it was a very heated and not very productive discussion - and certainly a good portion of my emotional heat did carry over from my anti-type-X mentality. But this was independent of my logical views of his arguments, although both were obviously blended in my posts. Had he argued against evolution but given points that I thought were more reasonable, and been less antagonistic, I probably would’ve begun with still some heat, and then calmed down quickly, instead of, ya know, getting worse.
So with your accusation here, you’re half right and half wrong. I did have the “Type X” mentality before SIATD, but I didn’t have it very much when posting against him specifically. To his credit, I don’t think SIATD fits a “type” as easily as most, and I certainly haven’t ever met someone with quite that set of beliefs. He doesn’t fit at all into the type X I was raging against, or the type X I mentioned to you that specially bothers me regarding the topic of evolution.
Ah, I see. I thought you meant that you need not address SIATD’s contribution because it lacked similar flaws. Apparently you are fixated on the context of my attitudes and my postings, and see no need to analyze SIATDs role in helping generate those.
If you wish. There is certainly a world of difference between the Type X that I vehemently dislike, and SIATD. But although you’re being reasonably clear about what it is about my posts that you didn’t like, you’re not really giving any justification for the claim (mostly implicit) that they were bad. It also seems clear that you take issue with my posts in ways entirely other than how I take issue with them - I regret being antagonistic, but it seems to be more my mindset, and less my direct antagonism, that you dislike. So, what is the point of your posts? Are you curious, and trying to determine what I was thinking, and how I generate my opinions? Are you trying to point out to me personal failings you think I have? Are there logical inconsistencies in my arguments? It seems to be more along the lines of “personal failings”, but this seems to conflict with your claim to not be moralistic by nature. It might help the conversation if you would be specific about your goals here. However, you were specific about some things, and I’ll address those the best I can.
You are absolutely right that it hurts the perception of your arguments and not the argument itself. This is what I intended to convey, but I apologize for stating it poorly. Certainly it can hurt the perception of your arguments. This is by no means a character judgment on my part, because it doesn’t hurt MY perception of your arguments, although it’s understandable that you got that impression from my phrasing. It does affect my perception of your CHARACTER, which is perfectly reasonable.
I am skeptical that your manner of writing is for the sake of brevity. Detrop’s attempt to summarize your first post, despite its failings, is a reasonable demonstration that you could express the same concepts in much less space. Further, communication (excepting when there is value mostly in the form, arguably as with poetry) is about conveying concepts accurately and efficiency; this is why it is advantageous for you to have the capacity to write more simply. Detrop’s summary shows that he doesn’t necessarily take your points with ease; were you to have a similar conversation with him, your style would be much more counterproductive than it is with me. However, I don’t think your style significantly affects our conversation, so certainly do as you please.
Meaningless. I read the posts, got pissed off, and made an angry post in response.
There is no absolute connection between “is” and “ought”. Such connections are exactly the nature of morality - morality says, given a certain situation (the “is”), what one “ought” to do. And morality is subjective. It is objectively subjective.
My personal moral system is Utilitarianism. I can defend it well, but I will never attempt to do so without making it clear that all I can do is draw a very strong connection between Utilitarianism and social morality, and between Utilitarianism and intuitive morality (depending on the person possessing the intuition, of course). So unless you wish to debate me on the matter of whether or not morality is subjective, you can content yourself with the fact that I use the system of Utilitarianism to guide my actions.
In a Utilitarian sense, it’s true that happiness is happiness, and in an immediate sense, Hitler’s happiness counts the same as my happiness. But of course this is a naive manner in which to apply the maximization principle. In Utilitarianism, there are such things as negative personality traits - personality traits that cause more harm than other possible traits. In many ways such traits are consistent and independent of culture, simply because of the common human reactions that tie us together. Universally (with exceptions, although extremely few), we like life and fear death. We like pleasure and dislike pain. We like being comfortable and dislike uncertainty and poverty and hunger. We like health and dislike disease. By many of these measures, Hitler was a terrible person, because he caused the suffering of many people, by means that are fundamental to humanity, as opposed to, for example, insulting Muslims, which is not harmful to anyone on a genetic level, but only possibly on a cultural level.
In a similar vein, I believe that rationality and compassion are very much positive character traits, in a fundamental sense. If one is a rational utilitarian, one is much more likely to act correctly for the greater good than someone who is irrational, or rational but evil. Similarly, if one is an empiricist, one will take sensory data and connect those directly to beliefs in the world. This is obviously essential for one to act as a utilitarian, or as a good person in any intuitive sense. And rationality and empiricism (together with induction, depending on whether or not you couple that with empiricism) leads to a belief in the pursuit of science.
In one sense, I object to the religious and to those who reject evolution because it’s rationally undefendable. It’s simply an incorrect stance. But on a more important level, I reject being religious and being against evolution, because they are almost always associated with the negative character traits of being irrational. And in a utilitarian sense, being irrational can cause all sorts of long-term harm. A rational and moral approach to life allows for individuals and society to overcome all sorts of crap that we see going on now. A rational empirical person knows that qualities necessary for US President DO include “intelligence and political ability” and do NOT include to any respectable degree “if I could sit down and have a beer with him”. And yet many Americans voted for Bush for precisely that reason. Had they been rational and discerning individuals, the world would be other than it is now, and most likely for the better.
Rational people wouldn’t put trust in “faith healing” when a child swallows lye and has a hole burned through her throat. Instead they’d take her to a doctor. Religion in general, although it certainly has done good, has done a great deal of harm - not because it’s religion, but because the practitoners were irrational. And it’s this irrationality that allowed them to be religious in the first place.
Does this make sense? I have a moral system, and under that system I concluded that certain things are bad. I don’t like bad things. It’s that simple. It certainly is a matter of is / ought - but so is all morality. Why did you bother posting in response to what I had written? You found an “ought” in there somewhere, even if only one that applied to you personally. Just identifying “is” isn’t enough to justify or engender ANY action. Moral systems are essentially axiomatic gap-fillers that ALLOW the connection from “is” to “ought”.
No, not at all. I don’t know where you dug this up from. It’s because people who are irrational, or who don’t think, do an enormous amount of harm to other people, almost exclusively without realizing it, or while thinking they are doing good. Much of this harm is wrapped up in the irrational guise of religion; and certainly I dislike religion, but I have the biggest problem with irrationality. So irrationality, and irrational people, bother me - and when they make irrational philosophy postings, it bothers me. As I have said, I think it is perfectly reasonable and in fact proper that this bothers me - I would rather be the sort of person bothered by negative traits than apathetic. It was the actions based on the “being bothered” that didn’t work out so well. That is what I mean when I say that I didn’t have a moral high ground from which to insult - but I did have a good (if subjective and individual) moral justification for my disliking certain things.
It bothers me that you seem to generate so much of what you think I believe out of thin air. Certainly it is true that there is a category of people that I believe are wrong, bad for the world, who harm other people more than is at all necessary, etc. And I dislike this category of people, and I would change them if I could. Are any of us different? You certainly aren’t - you have alluded to the fact that you are disgusted or bothered by certain categorizations, certain perspectives. You are clearly posting against me in order to point out my failings or justify your own position somehow. Presumably this isn’t about me specifically any more than it’s about people with the characteristics that allow them to have made the posts I’ve made.
It isn’t true that I dislike all religious people. I just dislike all RELIGION. There are assuredly even some bible-banging science haters that I would think are generally good people, despite their obvious failings. But I DO think that religion, on the whole, is bad. And I do think that irrationality is very bad, and that one cannot be religious without being at least somewhat irrational - or possibly just not very bright. I think irrationality has more to do with it, however. So it’s true that I would press a button to eliminate all bible-banging science haters if I could. I’d take the losses of the very few of that group who may have been good people, and be glad that many of the world’s most irrational people were now gone.
This categorization may come across as superficial because it’s an easy category to make; but that is a very naive mistake. Everyone would kill someone in the set of all people they would kill. Just because it’s easy to describe a group of people you consider bad, or possessing of bad traits, doesn’t mean that the categorization is superficial, bad, unfounded, or whatnot. Saying “I would kill all Jews” IS bad / superficial / unfounded, not because it’s an easily definable group, or because it’s a group someone might rage against - but rather because it’s very difficult to imagine any reason why there would be a correlation between being Jewish, and a truly negative character trait.
Of course, I never MADE a typological assessment of “the enemy” until this post, so I’m a little wary of the fact that it seems you generated your opinion of my typological assessment yourself based on scanty evidence. I’m also bothered you seemed to assume I had no good reason for being against these character traits, but rather was - what do you think? - eager to develop a category of people I could politically define as “the enemy”? I don’t think you had any good reason to believe this. Passion, misguided or not, does not have any necessary correlation with irrationality or hatred.
To claim that my categorization is close-minded and bigoted is absolutely ridiculous. You had no meaningful evidence whatsoever with which to make a full assessment of my categorization, that I can tell. Bigoted? Do I at any point claim that black people are genetically irrational, that asians are genetically religious? Simply because I identify a group of people I dislike does not in the least imply any bigotry. Even in the strict sense of “prejudice”, I prejudge traits left and right, and make statements about averages - but never do I dogmatically insist that all religious individuals are bad people. I simply claim that religion in general is bad.
Now, if you do think my assessment is wrong, by all means, give me a utilitarian argument why religion or irrationality is good, and I will listen. Argue that there is objective morality, and that utilitarianism is not it. But if you cannot, please do not authoritatively judge my position while knowing very little of it.
I’m not sure I follow you completely here. The way in which a community functions is very dependent upon the beliefs of its members. The way in which America theoretically functions is locally independent of differing philosophical beliefs - we treat muslims and christians and atheists equally. In theory. Now, my belief in Utilitarianism is a subjective one - I don’t think Utilitarianism can be logically proven, nor do I think it’s at all inherent in our universe. However, I would like for everyone to have character traits that are generally good in a utilitarian sense. This isn’t an objective claim - it’s just my preference. It isn’t inconsistent for me to desire this in America’s culture, any more than it’s inconsistent when Christians try to convert a Muslim, or when a softie liberal berates someone for trying to persuade someone else of their views.
I’m not at all sure that addresses your point. If it doesn’t, please clarify.
I don’t think that seeing my views as a “culture war” is particularly useful or warranted. Also, when you say “dirty religious scum, use their own methods against them”, I’m not sure where that comes from. I don’t advocate being irrational towards religious people so that they’ll go away. When I advocate pressing the “kill all religious people” button, I don’t think that’s at all using their own methods against them; nor do I dislike religion primarily because of the historical role of religion in justifying violence. As far as “hate the sin, love the sinner” goes - in a psychological and no-free-will sense, this seems reasonable - but there’s definitely a point where you have to kill the sinner, because he sins too damn much. Not as punishment, or because he “deserves” death in some sense-of-justice way, but because killing him is the most efficient way to prevent him from hurting others.
Absolutely serious. There are many obvious differences between religious people and non-religious people. Your point, that people who believe in evolution don’t understand it any better than those who believe in ID, is reasonably accurate, although probably not true on a broad average - either way, your point is meaningless. It’s not about which group understands their theory better. It’s about - in my eyes, anyway - what character traits and beliefs are going to be best for the world. As you suggest, there are ignorant and stupid people. What is best for these people, given that they influence those around them, and have the right to vote? Is it to wallow in their default irrationality? Or is it for them to believe the products of the minds of the intelligent and rational, even if they don’t understand those products?
You see, the biggest danger of irrational and stupid people, in an immediate sense, is that they will bring up a child who has much greater potential, but will destroy some of that child’s potential by training it to think poorly, and to believe irrational things. These irrational and stupid people will vote for terrible candidates based on terrible criteria - and those elected officials will change the world. Because of this, even if these stupid, irrational people don’t fully understand what they’re being taught to believe, it’s STILL better that they’re taught that there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality and that gay marriage should be a right - that religion is irrational, and that it cannot be a basis for our government or schools - and that rational thought works, whereas faith and assertion don’t.
So yes, people on the whole are ignorant and stupid - but it’s still the case that 1) religious people and those who are anti-evolution tend to be more irrational, more poorly educated, and more stupid than those who are nonreligious and pro-evolution, and 2) the religous stupid people tend to cause more harm to the world than the nonreligious smart people.
Lastly, to nitpick, fervor at a football match or at church isn’t irrational, because it’s an emotion. However, fervor at a church is usually based on irrational beliefs, whereas one can have a great deal of fervor at a football match without having any irrational beliefs. That isn’t to say that fervor at a football match is morally good - but that’s a different discussion altogether.
Absolutely you are correct. But there are proportionally FAR fewer than there are irrational people who do NOT believe in evolution.
???
True, and I’m with you on that being an unfortunate fact. But of course whether or not you recycle is a moral decision, not a rational one. Someone could have the moral belief that the sooner this planet goes to hell and all life dies out, the sooner it can start from stratch. They might do their part by not recycling. This, of course, is why I value rationality together with morality. That is to say, a morality closer to valuing quality of life than the example one above.
I like your calling me Twiffy. I will not tell you my real name in order to encourage it. At any rate, I agree absolutely. If everyone spontaneously forgot about the ideas of religion, people would still be irrational, stupid, harmful, and all the rest; and in that situation, the most that would change would be that people wouldn’t get the psychological benefit of feeling like they’re being listened to by god.
But, if everyone spontaneously became smart, rational, and moral - well, first, the world would become a MUCH better place. And religion would disappear.
If we’re going to resort to saying “I can’t believe”, I’m going to have to say, “I can’t believe you would assert that the connection is merely correlation.” There is an excellent Wikipedia article on the topic here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_intelligence
But even more than that, the causal link is pretty obvious without having to look at scientific studies. Rationality is possible at different intelligence levels - but it is easier and more natural at a higher IQ. The more rational you are, the less likely you are to be religious. That’s all there is to it.
I wouldn’t be surprised. That would simply indicate you have a different moral system from me. I am academically interested to hear what your moral system is, and how you precisely decide that my views are not particular to that system. However, I don’t have any personal interest in the matter unless you think that a) morality is objective and utilitarianism is objectively wrong, or b) under utilitarianism, my beliefs do not follow.
Ugh, this is the longest response I’ve ever written, I think. How tedious. Let’s try to keep it shorter.
Toodles,
Twiffy
sorry to be so blunt, twiffy, but i couldn’t help noticing this quote… ironically, my thoughts on this are these:
Where’s the nuance in this? some things are ‘bad’ … you mean by definition? That’s a pretty bold statement to make about anything, really, you should Always be ready to hear and consider what someone else says.
Especially on a forum with lots of clever people like this, you should keep your eyes wide open, cuz you might learn something even about your own morality.
No, not by definition. Why would you assume I meant that? I am confident that morality is subjective. I have my own system of morality, but I don’t think that that system is grounded in the universe or in logic at all - it’s just the system that I prefer. Under that system, certain things are bad.
I’m confused why you posted about this. I’ve made it pretty explicit in the very post from which you quoted that I believe this.
I agree. Clearly I am - I have never refused to listen to or consider someone’s argument. Regarding the post you seem to be responding to, you can see my own quote below. How did you come by the impression that I do not? However you did, I am skeptical you had good reasons.
I have no idea why you posted this. In the post which you apparently read (although it sounds like you read a single sentence and decided to post based on that), where did I give you good reason to believe that I do not, as you say, “keep my eyes open”?
I agree with all the points of your moralizing - objective morality doesn’t exist, listen to others, and be willing to reconsider your own beliefs. However, I can’t imagine that I’ve given you good reason to believe that I am in need of these lessons. Please correct me if I am mistaken - but I have the impression, as I have said, that you read a small part of my last post and decided to moralize based on it alone.
perhaps i was mistaken… i didn’t follow the recent discussion as closely as before, … when i think back to the debate with siatd you did seem somewhat rigid in thought… but of course, that was then
sorry to interfere… carry on ^^
Regarding my last few posts, and my posting in general, you are mistaken. Regarding my posts with SIATD, you were right on. Those were certainly the exception to the rule of how my posts go, and I can promise you needn’t worry about me posting in anger in the future.
I don’t blame you at all for not reading all of our posts, especially my last, quite long post. And I don’t mind you posting about a line or two you read from a post without having read the whole thing - just make sure not to assume too much about someone else’s position based on just a few lines!