Paul Crowley

Thanks - fixed!

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hairyears.livejournal.com

I'll ask as sensible question later... But tell me, what's the original source for please choke on a bucket cocks? The link seems to be a locked post.

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The post isn't locked; the link was broken. Fixed now (see above).

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A lot of atheists seem to take the same approach to morality as they do to God - that moral statements have no meaning. Hence, for many people their only justification for behaving morally is "because it's in my interests". Do you agree with this?

[I'm just rather confused at the moment about how to reconcile atheism and morality.]

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some-fox.livejournal.com

Cool idea. As an agnostic and believer in the importance of embracing uncertainty (not that I always manage it so well) I'd ask you how you can be so certain (a question I'd also ask religious believers).

And - along similar lines - given that atheism involves taking a pretty critical position on things, how do you pick and choose which things to turn that critical lens on and which you simply accept.

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I am I think a moral non-cognitivist. That means that there's no ultimate justification either for self-interest or for generosity. We work towards the world we would like to see.

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keirf.livejournal.com

As an atheist I assume that you believe the universe emerged without any conscious intention behind it. What's your take on consciousness, and determinism versus free will?

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Certainty is relative. An individual belief may move in one direction or another on the scale of certainty, but it doesn't really do anything useful to try and move the entire scale; the scale is measured by its end points. In other words, there have to be some things of which I am most confident. Into that category goes my opinion of beliefs which appear to make no sense, where I have gone to great lengths to find out what the arguments in favour are and been astonished by their poverty, and where it's very easy to see how they could come to be widely believed while lacking all real merit.

The second question is a smidgeon away from "how do you decide what you think?", because obviously you can't turn your critical lens on everything at once and so you have to have some way of settling on what really needs it. The answer is (1) I try not to decide what I think, but to find myself persuaded of things - deciding what to think doesn't seem to have a role for evidence and such. (2) in order to describe how that process works, I would pretty much have to describe my entire brain, which I think will exceed LJ's comment limit.

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I'm pretty much a determinist, modulo quantum mechanics which doesn't really change the philosophy here. I am pretty much persuaded by the account of consciousness provided by Consciousness Explained.

I made quite a few comments here on my beliefs re determinism and free will...

Edited Date: 2008-08-03 11:58 am (UTC)

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I have friends who are Catholic and who believe with all possible seriousness that I and all non-Catholics are headed for Hell, for sure, just for not being Catholic. They believe that I and all non-Catholics could be saved from that if we converted, and that that would be a good thing and worth promoting. Nonetheless, I don't hear much about it from them, and I've never heard snideness or insult from them on the subject. I've never had a Catholic call me an idiot to my face for not converting to Catholicism.

I have friends who are Evangelical Protestant and it's the same story. I have at least witnessed some Evangelical Protestants engaging in snideness and insults towards Catholics and others who aren't Evangelical Protestants, but never any of the ones who are my friends, and my friends don't seem to condone that kind of behaviour.

But when it comes to atheism, snideness, insults, and venom seem to be the order of the day. Many people I otherwise like a whole lot, stop behaving in a way I could call admirable when they start talking about their anti-religious beliefs. Calling all non-atheists idiots is routine. Calling me an idiot to my face if I mention that I'm not an atheist, is routine. The standard of what's acceptable discourse is completely different from what I expect from people who have other strong opinions and beliefs. It is also different from the standard of discourse between professional scientists. Religion is, by what looks like common agreement among very many of the atheists I've seen, so vile that there is no reason to have any respect whatsoever for anyone who follows any of it, there is no need to learn anything about religion before rejecting it, and it's perfectly okay and acceptable to be an asshole.

Even atheists who do not engage in those behaviours themselves openly associate with the ones who do and don't seem to feel any need to disclaim or distance themselves from anything. The assholes are treated as valued assets to the cause. I don't think you've ever called me an idiot directly, Paul, but you've certainly posted with approval and no disclaimer links to people who did. My Catholic and Evangelical Protestant friends have never done that, despite having at least as strong disagreement with my eclectic neo-pagan beliefs.

If that's what atheists are like, then I sure wouldn't want to be one. It is fortunate, since I'm employed as a scientist myself, that I know not all scientists are like that - but I'm certainly annoyed and disappointed by those of my colleagues who think that the only true scientists have to be atheists and the only true atheists have to be assholes.

So my question is, and I'm sorry if this is less polite than you were hoping for but I think it's pretty important: why do atheists seem to be such assholes, and especially, why are they different in this respect from adherents of theistic religions? It'd be easy to say - not convincing, but easy to say - that atheists are different from adherents of theistic religions in the way of being right, but how and why would it lead to also being different in the way of often being assholes? It'd also be easy to say that I don't know enough atheists and non-atheists, or enough about how good atheism is and how bad theism is, to judge, but that's unfalsifiable; no matter how many people I meet and how much I know one could always claim that if I met a few more or learned a little more I'd feel differently. Even if it were possible to somehow measure the proportion of theists and atheists and find out how many of each are assholes, and even if it turned out that actually a far larger proportion of theists are assholes about their beliefs, there remains the question of what led me to form the impression of atheists being unique in this way.

(over the comment length limit - continued below)

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(continued)

I've read (and, sometimes, cited) Karla Mclaren's article "Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures (http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html)" - I think it was you who brought it to my attention, and thank you - and I think it's a wonderful start but I don't think she's completely right. In particular, I think there's not really so much difference between science and what she calls "the New Age" in terms of cultural standards of discourse. Interactions among scientists, when they're doing their actual jobs instead of attacking non-atheists, are not the pure rational fact-based activity she seems to imagine. If I want to publish a paper saying that someone else is WRONG, it's not enough that I can prove I'm right; I still have to say it respectfully or that article is not getting published. There are the scientists who get up in the question periods at conferences to call other people idiots to their faces, and those scientists are rightly treated as being way out of line. They're certainly not considered assets to the profession. Atheists, including the ones who are off-duty scientists and the ones who seem in all other ways to be decent people, seem to think that being right is enough and in fact some of them seem to think they get bonus points for stating their positions as snidely as possible. I almost never see this occur in any other realm of human endeavor. (Though I also don't watch US political television and maybe if I did...)

Why?

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Oh - I did think of one exception. I do hear comparable levels of venom emanating from the pro-abortion lobby.

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you've certainly posted with approval and no disclaimer links to people who did.

Are you sure? Could you give an example?

If I've ever linked to Christopher Hitchens without a disclaimer, let me say again as I say many times - the man is a gigantic cock, but he's sometimes so witty, insightful and compelling that it's worth putting up with his cock-ness to hear what he has to say. But even he doesn't think that all believers are idiots, and you'd have to be pretty blind and/or idiotic to think that, since there are so many very obvious counterexamples of whom you are clearly one. Could you give an example to where I've linked to/quoted with approval someone who's said something so patently ridiculous? Honestly, I don't think I have, and if I have I'd like to know.

If you go looking you'll find people who say this and worse, of course, especially if you apply John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Naturally, if you go looking you can find some pretty rude believers too.

I think that atheists do show less respect towards belief than believers show each other, and that's quite on purpose. In common with Dawkins, I believe that what is termed "respect" is closer to a conspiracy of silence with regards serious attempts to evaluate religious propositions, and it's one that I think does more harm than good. If any challenge to religious belief is rude, I'll just have to be rude, if you like. However, I would like to maintain the standards of politeness that are common in other contentious debates, such as debates about politics or philosophy, where you can robustly disagree with a point of view without insulting the intelligence of the believer.

I've even heard Greta Christina dismissed as rude and snide, and frankly if even she is to be considered so then questioning the validity of religion without being rude and snide may be impossible. Still, even in that case I should like to keep rudeness and snideness to a minimum, and if I fail in that then do let me know.

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I'm not sure I can offer an example of you linking to someone as patently ridiculous as Christopher Hitchens in particular, but I wasn't thrilled with this posting (http://ciphergoth.livejournal.com/317284.html). I looked at the comic you directly quoted and thought "Oh. That's sort of amusing. Let's see the rest of the strip." Then I looked at this one (http://cectic.com/163.html) and thought, "Well, that one wasn't funny, but okay, whatever, my own strip (http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/bonobo-conspiracy/) doesn't hit a home run every day either, let's see the next one." Then I looked at this one (http://cectic.com/155.html) and thought, "Wait a minute, are these all the same \"joke\"?" and after looking at the others you linked to, it appears that yes, they are. Oh, ha ha. That and the chorus of approval in the comments section don't make me feel that I'm looking at a community I want to join.

That doesn't mean jokes about religion can't be allowed. I like SinFest (http://www.sinfest.net/), for example. It might be interesting to think about what's the difference between the two.

I don't know Greta Christina's work and I'm due out the door for something else basically right now without time to read it and form a real opinion. I do notice, in a glance at the front page of her Web log, that she has a bold headline asking "DO BELIEVERS REALLY BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAY THEY BELIEVE?" and I wonder how many atheists would be happy to have the same question asked about atheists and answered in the negative by theists discussing it among themselves without, y'know, asking the atheists.

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OK, so your ethical beliefs (whatever they are) are just a choice? It seems that it would be difficult to persuade anyone else to behave differently if you can't show them that your beliefs are ultimately justified. So if someone decides "I want to behave like a self-interested bastard" you can't really show them that they are ultimately wrong in doing so. You can show them that they are not ultimately justified in behaving in such a way, but behaving generously is equally unjustifiable. That is to say that unless another person has decided that generosity is good, you cannot really persuade them of anything.

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I'm not sure that pointing out that people believe in things with out any evidence in a cartoon strip constitutes "being an asshole".

I can also think that someone's beliefs are rather silly, while still respecting them. There is a difference between saying "all Christians are idiots" and saying "Christian views are very silly".

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None of those strips say that all believers are idiots, though. I think it's part of what I'm trying to say above that you take them to say that when I think there's a big distinction between what they say and "all believers are idiots".

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Indeed, no, you can't make a purely rational case against pure self-interest. Fortunately, many people have instincts you can appeal to in favour by bringing rational machinery to bear on the subject. For example, if someone who does evil manages to stave off guilt through self-delusion, by rational argument you could hope to strip away the self-delusion, cause them to see things as they really are, and thus allow their better selves to hold a stronger hand.

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duranorak.livejournal.com

Without having seen this post, I was thinking about all this yet again earlier today.

I haven't read anyone else's comments here yet, I usually get caught up in what other people are saying and then don't say anything myself because I feel like everything I might say is far too simplistic. I still feel like that, because it is simplistic, but, oh well. I still have a question or two that I hope you don't feel are beneath you. :)

Dear Mr atheist,

The only thing I would ever try to assert as 'truth' about my gods is that they were once worshipped by a relatively significant number of people, and that I experience things I believe are me having an interaction of some kind with them. (NB, I would assert that I have the experiences, and that I believe etc etc, not that those experiences are me having said interaction.)

I would not attempt to tell you that they had a hand in the creating of anything, or that they have the power to affect the earth or people on it in general in any way, nor that they ever have had. I would not attempt to tell you that any stories about them are accounts of actual events, or that they are any kind of allegory - just stories. Also, the experiences I have, that I believe are connected to these gods, have not at any time involved requiring any specific action of me, and therefore I would say there is nothing remotely Bible-comparable in what I do. While I discuss the concepts with people, I have never done nor do I have any intention of ever doing anything connected with my gods or 'religious beliefs' with or in front of anyone else.

Given the above, how would you respond to what I believe compared with, say, a practising Christian or Jew? Are there differences in how you would want to go about arguing with me? Am I less of an enemy of reason than someone who follows rules because they believe those rules were put there by god/a god, or is it the same with me as with anyone else, and why? Would you class me as 'religious'?

These and other things, but if I don't post this now I will delete it in fear of being laughed at, so~ You don't have to answer, I was just wondering this earlier.

E.
x

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duranorak.livejournal.com

It seems that it would be difficult to persuade anyone else to behave differently if you can't show them that your beliefs are ultimately justified.

Why would anyone try to persuade anyone else to behave differently using morality as part of the persuasion?

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friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com

The question I've always wanted to ask you - and this is a genuine question and actually not really a 'challenge' at all, IMHO - is;

WHY DO YOU CARE SO MUCH?

I honestly don't get it. Personally, I don't like most sport. I find it confusing, tedious, expensive & time-wasting. I think it's been responsible for perpetuating a lot of damaging attitudes and stereotypes (including racism & homophobia). Therefore, I don't watch sport, read about sport, attend sporting events or join in sporting conversations, because it's just not my thing.

I just don't understand why you seem so, well, obsessed with something you neither like nor want.

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hairyears.livejournal.com

Out of sheer curiosity, what's your religious position?

To suggest that 'moral statements have no meaning' to an atheist isn't quite the same as the usual assertion that atheists have no moral sense but the difference isn't obvious without careful reading and at least an undergraduate's knowledge of philosophy.

Very few people knowingly act in their own interests alone and consider this moral: to act in the interests of others - altruistically or with some acknowledged or unacknowledged degree of self-interest - is the minimum definition of 'good' in it's moral sense. All stable societies teach a functional morality in which a good act is that which benefits the community as a whole; and it follows that a moral man who is neither a solipsist nor a psychopath would aspire to a state of grace in which his thoughts and actions are motivated by this 'greater good' first, and his self-interest second.

There is, of course, a rather barbed criticism of your comment in there. But your question is certainly relevant, as I read all too many corporate statements proclaiming some or other shocking and immoral act to be a virtuous deed with the phrase 'Our first duty to is to the shareholders' - it is clear that many corporate bodies believe self-interest to be their definition of morality. But I doubt that many individuals do, and I would question the motives of those who assert that many - or any - members of an 'out-group' such as atheists view self-interest as their moral compass.

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If someone is convinced that it is in their interest to behave like a selfish bastard. You could try convincing them that it's not in fact in their interest. For most that is true, but suppose this person is incredibly clever, and can get away with behaving selfishly. I was suggesting that the only way to try to get them to behave differently would be to persuade them that behaving generously is somehow more morally justified than behaving selfishly.

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