Lawsuit seeks to take 'God' out of inaugural

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Yup yup... continuing in that same trend.

Lets first note that I did not choose a label to separate myself from anyone else. I merely pointed out that (some) other people do. I did not make blanket statements about ALL people under a given label. I ascribed a particular type of behavior as being common and was speaking to people exhibiting that kind of behavior.



And by implication therefore that anyone who agrees with my statement is automatically ignorant. Automatic demonization of dissenting opinions. The ego stroking comes (as it always does) as a result of this specific pattern of behavior in which the "other" is automatically ridiculed in some way. Christianity describes others as "sinners", implying that they are automatically superior to non-christians. You described others as "ignorant", implying that you are automatically "enlightened" and therefore superior to others who hold a different opinion.

This dovetails rather nicely into (some) atheists starting to call themselves "bright". That movement is actually pretty slick from the perspective of understanding historical context and propaganda... assuming of course that polarizing propaganda is what the people in the bright movement want. It's modeled after the appropriation of the term "gay" by homosexuals, which took a really long time to become mainstream usage. The term "bright" makes an immediate distinction between the "enlightened" atheist and the "stupid" others -- implying via the name itself that if you're not an atheist, you must be stupid.



You did nothing of the kind. You stated your opinion as a fact. Providing someone with "correct" information would be in the form of offering an explanation of the reasoning behind your argument, which you did not do. You merely insisted that I was ignorant and told me to go do research, without even a hint of evidence about what research you consider valid. For that matter, use of the word "correct" here continues to reinforce the implication that I am automatically inferior to you merely because I've disagreed, and implies that if I were to go "read up" I would automatically come to the same conclusion you have.



Well this just means you weren't paying attention... which happens frequently when people get caught up in their emotions (which I do too). I did not say that "all atheists" behave this way. What I said was that like many subcultures, there are a lot of atheists who behave this way as a result of polarizing experiences that tend to affect all people (atheist or otherwise) in similar ways. And that I view the nature of a certain "main stream" subset of atheists as being fundamentally the same thing as religion, because although the labels have changed, the social structure hasn't changed much. The social structure is largely that way because of cognitive biases that result in behavioral trends.

I don't usually express these opinions actually -- as a matter of fact, I think this is a first for me in terms of giving an explanation of how I've felt for a long time about a lot of the atheists I've met. But I probably know a lot of very cool atheists as well and am just unaware because I don't tend to talk about religion very much. So I probably don't even know the religious affiliation of most of the atheists I know.



I'm not opposed to atheism. What annoys me is extremism. I'm equally as annoyed by Christian extremists, Muslim extremists, Pagan extremists or even Gay extremists (yeah, I've met a lot of those too).



I'm pretty sure you'll be getting some yourself.

I'm sure my original explanation could have been much better worded. Though based on your responses I doubt there would have been any wording on my part that would have produced a different response on your end. I do however try to provide evidence of the reasoning for my opinions, rather than simply declaring my opinion as fact and insisting that others go "read up" with the assumption that when they're done they'll reach the same conclusions I have. The former is the nature of "discussion" - the latter is just a polarized, "knee jerk" response. I have had polarizing experiences and knee jerk responses from time to time myself because I'm subject to those same cognitive biases, so I don't mean this as a derogatory thing, it's just something that people experience.

Again, you are adding your own spin on my statement. Your ideas about atheist were misinformed and colored by your own perceptions. You, as far as I could tell, were adding a lot of baggage on a term that can't carry it. The major religions of the world DO carry a great deal (but not all) of the baggage associated with their respective labels because they actually have books of rules that contain them. Atheism does not. The only thing that you can say about all atheists or even a small group of people that label themselves atheist is that their answer to "Does God exist?" will not be "yes." That is all that atheism is. The rest that you complain about comes from sources outside of atheism. The difference between so-called fundamentalist atheists and fundamentalist theists is that the theists have a system of belief that directs them to fundamentalism. Atheism, again, doesn't not. You appeared to be ignorant of this, so that is why I said so. Ignorance is not an insult. It is simply a statement that you lack information on a certain subject. I am ignorant about a great many things, as is any honest person. That is not a point of shame.

Again, you are adding meaning of your own to my statements.


Acutally, the goal of the bright movement is to distance atheists from the baggage, misconceptions and bias that the religious have burdened the term with in coloquial usage. I, for one, don't think a new label is the answer and I am opposed to the whole "bright" movement.


And that's one of the main reasons I am opposed to it. You are constructing a straw man there...


The definition of the word "atheist" is not opinion, it is fact.


Being wrong on one thing doesn't make anybody wrong on everything or inferior in any way to somebody that has a the correct answer. You are calling yourself inferior.


No, I was paying attention. As I said before, it doesn't matter that you didn't make a statement about ALL atheists. The behoviors your describe have nothing to do with being an atheist. You are implying a causal link between these behaviors and atheism, and that is the issue I have with your statements.


I don't really care if I do.

I don't personally think that it can be reasonably argued that generalizations about groups of people are necessarily invalid. We have cognitive science studies that show that when you put people in x particular situation, 90% of them respond in y way. Well in order to get that study result that shows this pattern of behavior, someone has to first hypothesize that a certain set of people behave in a particular way. In some cases it may be described as "all people", although that's harder with cog. sci. than with say medicine because cultural differences alter some biases.

I put forward my hypothesis that the behaviors exhibited by a large body of atheists (maybe a large minority, but a good number of them anyway) are inspired by the same cognitive biases that encourage similar behaviors in religious groups... hence, if the contributing factors are the same and the resultant behavior is fundamentally similar, then whether it's described as a "religion" or not imo is merely an issue of semantics. (And this is probably a better explanation than my first couple of posts.)

Your response to this was "anyone who thinks atheism is just like religion is ignorant".

You didn't support that argument with any kind of evidence to the contrary, which left me to a rational inference that seems possibly inaccurate... see below (@ "calling yourself inferior")



Dogmatism doesn't come from a book. Dogmatism comes from human cognitive biases like the trend to conformity in social groups. Whether or not they codify their particular social agreements in written form is secondary. And even for those who do write it down, the interpretation of the writing and sometimes the writing itself changes over time to accommodate ideological drift within the social group. Imo dogmatism predates the written word.



That would be an actual argument against the notion that atheism is "just like religion". I disagree that not having a rulebook changes the social dynamic enough to make the social structure of mainstream atheism fundamentally different... or different enough that I would consider them "non-dogmatic". Dogma is tough to avoid... heck, there might even be dogmatic agnostics... maybe I'm even one of them... The UU church (my preference) describes itself as "non-dogmatic", but even there conformity has its effect.



Being subject to the human biases that encourage conformity and thereby dogmatism wasn't intended as an insult. (Although I probably should have expressed that thought much earlier.) So it wasn't intended as a demonization of atheists... as I mentioned, I see it happen in virtually all social groups that people tend to give up some personal identity in favor of conformity - it happens in the gay community, it happens in every religion, it happens here on WP. I'm a computer programmer by trade -- or I have been -- and it happens there.

When I was in my teens and living with my mother, I tried to convert some folks to Mormonism. In the long run I left that church and decided that I dislike religious conversion. But I admit because of this that I'm not immune to dogmatic influence either.

People with AS or other forms of autism might be slightly less susceptible to dogmatism than others. It may depend more on the social makeup of a specific individual. But as a group we still seem to grow a bit of dogmatism here on WP as well, and knowing with certainty that I personally am not immune, I can't say that I feel autism makes us significantly non-dogmatic.



I think that makes you pretty astute in that regard. Although I don't think it's a straw man argument to point out that the label has an implied meaning... Unless you don't believe in implied meaning in a general sense. A straw man argument might have been to say for example that the word "bright" implies that non-atheists are dark-skinned. Imo anyway.

Or maybe you're thinking it's a straw man because being an atheist doesn't automatically cause one to support that movement? See below for answer to this (@ "paying attention").



That's a straw man. It would be a good argument if I had originally posed the idea that the dictionary's definition of the word atheism was inaccurate. But by the time of your response, I feel it was already evident from my clarification (2nd post) that I wasn't arguing the dictionary definition of the word. (This is the reason why when _ said I wasn't talking about atheism "the belief" but rather about atheism "the subculture", I responded in the affirmative.)

In your comment that "anyone who believes atheism is just like religion is ignorant", you didn't specify that you had intended to move the discussion to a discussion of dictionary definitions. I wouldn't have followed you down that particular line of reasoning, because it wasn't what I was saying (or interested in).

Since you seemed to be responding to my comments, I took your response to mean that you had a reasonable understanding of my original meaning of "atheism" (from my clarification) as a generalization about an indeterminate subgroup and were arguing that any reasonable person would not be able to make the generalization I made after any sufficient study of atheism. Such study would have necessarily required evidence that is not found in a dictionary. You provided no suggestions at the time of competing evidence or references to sources which might contain such.



Granted.



There was a logical inference here.

It starts with the original supposition described above in which I formulated logically that you had intended to declare that any rational person must obviously conclude from any significant study that there is no viable comparison between the behavior of religious enthusiasts and the behavior of any subset of atheists.

If any rational person must obviously come to the conclusion that the behavior of atheists and religious people is not comparable because it is self-evident after having read any material on the subject, then any person who has not discovered it must be too lazy to do the research or too stupid to understand the "self-evident" facts.

Therefore the person who considers the other person either lazy or stupid then considers that person inferior, since they perceive themselves as being neither lazy nor stupid.



My apologies. You were paying attention and you misunderstood my intent, nothing wrong with that.

My intended supposition was not that there is a causal link between the atheism (the belief) and dogmatic behavior. Rather I thought that I had clarified the proposed link as being between human cognitive biases (including conformity), socialization, polarizing events and subsequent dogmatism. Therefore because these cognitive biases and other events are inherently human rather than being "inherently religious" that dogmatism therefore essentially exists in all subcultures. In other words human nature leads to dogmatism in social groups. With the final conclusion being that atheists as a group are not immune to the dogmatic trend merely because they choose not to label their belief as "a religion".

Though you might like to argue the idea that dogmatism and religion are not the same thing. I happen to believe that dogmatism is the fundamental essence of religion (organized or not) and that the organization and the labels are semantically secondary. I admit this is an opinion.

There have been many studies in which it's shown that the highly educated, the intellectually gifted, scientists and self-identified "realists" have just as much cognitive bias as other people. They do tend to believe different things and this shifts the subject of those biases around somewhat, but it doesn't reduce the amount of bias, it just shuffles the cards so to speak.

Sorry that the nuance of my commentary seems to have been a bit obscure. Oops.



I'm sorry that you found my previous explanations offensive.

I did feel the cheer squad comment was a bit gratuitous, but the reason why I responded the way I did was because I was trying to politely indicate that I felt it gratuitous (particularly since it was a jab at me in response to someone else's actions), rather than "return fire". (I realize I have "returned fire" a couple times in this conversation previously.)

I am really starting to hate this stuff. So here it goes...

If a Jewish judge wants to wear a skullcap because it reminds them that they answer to a higher power, or a Christian lawyer for the state wants to wear a cross because it brings them comfort this IS what the First Amendment means. It means Congress shall not imped on anyone's religious freedom by telling them what they can and can not do. That's what religious freedom means!

And let's be real for a minute. Atheism isn't a religion. It's a line of thought that says "I do not believe in god." While I understand their plight the problem is they are trying to usurp the FIRST Amendment... not the THIRD or the FIFTH, but the FIRST. The founding fathers made it FIRST because that was precisely WHY the pilgrims fled Britain.

Of course they have every right to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances"



So whether or not I agree with them the point is they do have the right to make their case.

I believe that in the intervening years since the first amendment was written, the courts have generally upheld an interpretation of it in which "no law ... prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is understood in the context of the lives of private citizens. A public servant is actually still a private citizen and this affords them the right to practice their religious preferences however they want when they're "off the clock", but while they're "on duty" in a public servant role (such as police), their activities are considered to be a function of the state as distinct from their lives as private citizens. Hence "on the clock", they're not allowed to "respect an establishment of religion".

(And this being the reason why that small ten commandments monument was removed too.)

I'm not sure if this is the reasoning given by the court, but my reasoning for this is that there are a variety of other religious symbols that would certainly never be allowed in a monument like that in my lifetime (such as a pentacle), or that even if it were allowed, there are simply far too many different religious groups to include them all in such a monument, so irrespective of what you actually put there, you would be using public money and a public place to state a preference for one group over other groups. Oddly, Washington DC is chock-full of old-style pagan symbols (sculptures of various pre-christian deities), but because hardly anyone notices this fact (because old-school paganism isn't practiced much anymore), that issue never bubbles up to the surface.

There was a cop in Texas some years ago who got fired for refusing to remove a cross from his uniform. It was ruled that the uniform was a function of the state's public service and that therefore it was not subject to modification in support of the individual's right to express his religion because his job as a public servant is not a part of his constitutionally entitled freedoms.

And going even further than that there are a wide variety of cases in which a person's first amendment rights have been continually overruled by various courts in favor of some other "less important" law. Drug use is a good example of this. Many Indian tribes included the use of opiates in their religious practices. And even though drug laws are further down on the official priorities list, they still trump a person's right to practice their religion every time.

In practice it's very similar to the way courts interpret the 2nd amendment. NRA enthusiasts insist that the 2nd amendment means everyone everywhere has a right to keep as many of any kind of gun they want, whenever and wherever they want them. But the supreme court has consistently ruled that the meaning of the 2nd amendment has a more specific context in which it confers the right to keep weapons ONLY as a member of a standing militia in your state... and since no state has kept a standing militia (separate from the nationalized armed forces) for many many years, that the 2nd amendment isn't really relevant anymore. At least that's the supreme court's judgment.

All good points ike. I'm just saying that the first amendment gives them the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, but at the same time congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. If their case is upheld and Obama wants God in the ceremony basically they've infringed on Obama's wishes.

Well yeah, you always have the right to petition... there's just never any guarantee that the court will agree with the petition. And while I'm certainly in favor of keeping that particular tradition alive, I personally think the people who put this petition forward could be doing something more productive with their time. Doesn't mean I want to stop them from doing it if that's what they want to do though.

Again, I am fully aware of your argument and the hypothesis you put forth. But I don't see it. The whole thing is based on your perception that atheists (people that do not have positive belief in gods) behave in a similar way to fundamentalist theists. This is the point I disagree with. What behaviors are similar? And you can't, by the way, just make up your own definition for a word like atheist and apply it to a group of people and then expect everybody else to take you seriously when discussing it. The word "atheist" isn't like the word "Christian" in the sense that it has it's own meaning to everybody. It has one meaning, and one alone. I could argue that all theists behave like cheeseburgers if I'm allowed to change the definition of cheeseburger.



The burden of proof is on the person making the claim (you), and I have yet to see you put forth any evidence for your initial premise that atheists behave like theists.


True, but atheism still doesn't have any dogma. If it does, then what is it?


Dogma is easy to avoid. Just don't consider anything sacred or unquestionable. And yes, of course there are dogmatic agnostics. There are agnostic theists and thus they are open to having a set of dogmatic beliefs.


First, a straw man argument is one where you are arguing against a position the other party doesn't hold. You began to argue against the bright movenent, assuming that as an atheist I was part of it.
And I do have a reasonable understanding of your meaning of "atheism" and that is why I have repeatedly said it is wrong. The generalization you made is wrong. And again, you made the claim, so the burden of proof is on you, not me. By labeling the "subculture" you are referring to as "atheists", to me at least, it seemed you were making a causal link between the traits you claim they share with theists and their atheism. Perhaps I misunderstood you at first and you aren't making a causal link there, but your generalization, IMHO, is still dead wrong.


The word was "ignorant", not "lazy" or "stupid". And yes, that is exactly what I was trying to say. You either don't know enough about atheism or aren't understanding it (and it is pretty simple to understand, which is why I said ignorant, not stupid).


Atheism isn't a belief, it is a response to a claim, there is a BIG difference. And I am aware, now, that you aren't arguing a causal link, but that is not really the part of your hypothesis I have a problem with. Dogmatism doesn't exist in all subcultures. Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by an organization, thought to be authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from. Atheism has no such thing. To even have dogma, there has to be an actual group. And while there are official atheist groups, you did not name one. You made only a general reference to people that are atheist. And even if you did, and that group had a set of rules and rituals that they follow, it would still not be dogma because it can be CHANGED. That is the key difference between atheism and religion that I think you are missing. To have dogmatism, a group must actively surpress doubt in all forms. Atheism, by it's nature, is about doubt.


I don't know where I ever argued that... I have argued that religion and atheism aren't the same... I would agree that dogmatism is the essence of religion.


It wasn't gratuitous. I made the comment to point out the hypocracy of of saying that I wanted to stroke my own ego when I'm not the one being "stroked" here.

I don't see anywhere where he says "oh poor us", can you maybe quote the part I missed? He is saying it is about seperation of church and state.

The closest I can see to where you might be extrapolating that is when he talked about not having to chose between watching the innaugaration and having the words taken out. Well, that is what seperation of church and state is about.

Lawsuit just refers to the civil courts. It would be better if they said "started legal proceedings".

I agree with what you said, there should be nothing to stop him saying it, but the obligation should not be there, neither should you have references to god on currency, and in courts, and many other examples.

The money thing (and I thing the pledge of allegiance) annoyingly has it's roots in the cold war era. There was this bright idea that we needed something to distinguish us from the communists, who were seen as athiests.

Even more unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans seem to think God was always on our money and in our pledge.

Then most americans wonder why they are treated with disdain when going to other parts of the world.

It's all part of doing one thing while saying the opposite. It's the back bone of American culture! (sadly)
"We aren't a theocracy...I swear to God and Jesus, we're not..."

In a democratic system, you have freedom of conscience. You can choose to vote for or against someone for any reason you choose.

I don't think "God" should be in the inaugural (or the pledge, or currency) but it's probably too late to take it out.