drowbot0181 wrote:
ike wrote:
I don't personally think that it can be reasonably argued that generalizations about groups of people are necessarily invalid...
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.)
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.
Again, I'm not arguing the dictionary definition of the word atheism, which makes the comments about definitions a straw man argument. I've already expressed what behaviors I feel are similar throughout several of the previous posts, so if you want to argue on those specific behaviors, you'll have to go back and read the previous posts where I presented them.
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ike wrote:
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...
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.
Then you really weren't paying attention.
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ike wrote:
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.
True, but atheism still doesn't have any dogma. If it does, then what is it?
Previously addressed. However ... there's further clarification below because there seems to have been confusion about the definition of the word "dogma".
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ike wrote:
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.
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.
Atheists are immune to dogmatism. Right, got it. I disagree.
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ike wrote:
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?
...
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.
First, a straw man argument is one where you are arguing against a position the other party doesn't hold.
Yep.
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You began to argue against the bright movenent, assuming that as an atheist I was part of it.
Nope. I never assumed you were a part of the bright movement, nor did I ever state that I had assumed or even suspected that you were a member of the bright movement. I didn't "argue against the Bright movement" (I'm not sure what the context for doing that would have been in this discussion). I only offered the bright movement as an example of concept supporting my premise.
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And I do have a reasonable understanding of your meaning of "atheism" and that is why I have repeatedly said it is wrong.
Apparently not. My definition of the word (strong) atheism is "disbelief in the existence of god(s)". Again, I'm not arguing the definition of the word. I put forth a model of behavior for a subculture, which is not the same thing as a definition for the word "atheism". You seem dead set on proving that this straw man argument is legitimate... I'd really much rather support the arguments I actually made.
(Dictionary.com actually includes a definition for the word "atheism" which describes it as a "doctrine"... and when you then go to the definition of "doctrine" you get "1. a principal ... presented for acceptance or belief, as by a ... group; dogma"... So I could have gone that route, but didn't. I'm not interested in debates about lexicographic correctness.)
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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.
No the causal link is between being human and being influenced by dogmatism. In the subsequent messages I clarified that I merely don't believe that atheists are immune to dogmatism and that the previous messages in which I had described specific behaviors (which you seem to have missed, forgotten or discounted) were simply examples of dogmatic influence at work.
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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).
So the logical induction still stands that, since you feel that I don't understand the definition of the word atheism, you believe that I must either be too lazy to read it or too stupid to understand it. Would you care to propose another hypothesis in which I am both proactive and intelligent and still unwilling or unable to grasp a concept that is "pretty simple to understand"?
I really don't think you're making any ground here with the argument that calling people ignorant was neither insulting nor ego-inflating. At least not in this context. In another context you might be able to argue that legitimately... but you kind of dig yourself into a hole when you follow up "ignorant" with qualifiers like "pretty simple to understand".
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ike wrote:
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".
Atheism isn't a belief, it is a response to a claim, there is a BIG difference.
Seems like a stretch.
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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.
Again, not paying attention, because I've mentioned 2 groups now. The Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Brights. The Brights are an informal group - the FFRF are a formal legal entity.
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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.
I would argue that there are rules that could not be changed within the Freedom From Religion Foundation. For example, the FFRF spend money on law-suits every year for the purpose of promoting the separation of church and state (an idea I actually support). I don't believe anyone could change the rules of the FFRF in such a way that the organization spends funds in defense of the creation of religious monuments in public areas, such as the ten commandments monument that was taken down outside of that courthouse a while back.
This however is actually getting off-track... perhaps I shouldn't have offered this example... but anyway... the question of whether or not dogma can change is apparently a bit of confusion about the definition of the word "dogma", so the above paragraph isn't really relevant. See below.
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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.
This is actually adding quite a bit to what I was saying about dogmatic influence. I never said that dogma prevented doubt. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite, I pointed out that the members of ALL religions disagree about things. Throughout history this is often responsible for the creation of new religions as they frequently are splinters of previous groups. Even Mormonism which is comparatively quite young has had 2 splinter religions.
I also never said that dogma could not change. Nor is that idea mentioned in the dictionary definition of the word dogma (using dictionary.com as the reference here). Nor is it mentioned on the wikipedia article for the word dogma. Here are those:
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?gwp=13&s=dogmahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DogmaYes, granted, definition 1 of the word dogma requires a church. Definition 2 however does not require even an organization, it only requires that someone "consider" a thing to be "absolutely true". Definition 3 which is hardly uncommon is an even more liberal definition. My premise is somewhere in definitions 2 and 3. If I had realized that I'd used a really uncommon definition for the word "dogma" when I checked, then I would have offered a more relevant substitute to indicate what I'd actually meant, but it appears that given the available reference material the word I chose originally is reasonably viable in this context.
Which makes this thing about doubt actually not relevant to the original debate. I'm going to follow that line of reasoning a little bit though even though it's not as relevant.
With regard to atheism being "about doubt", let me pose this question. As an atheist, would you support the idea that we should doubt that science is a good thing? I mean ... would you encourage people to consider that maybe physics and other sciences are actually bad for us? I'm not talking about doubting methods or doubting specific studies -- I'm talking about doubting the core philosophical ideas of science. Would you encourage people to consider that rigorous scientific testing is fundamentally a bad thing?
I don't believe that dogma is entirely a bad thing actually... I think that we kind of need some of those cognitive biases that lead to dogma... a proverbial "necessary evil". I do think that most atheists feel that dogma is a fundamentally and entirely bad thing and I think that's the reason why many of the atheists I've met personally will so vehemently insist that atheists are immune to dogmatic influence. I'm sure there are some atheists who don't feel that way about dogmatism (or religion) and therefore don't get into debates like this... But of course if a person happened to be one of those many atheists who (as many of the ones I've met) believe that "we must rid the world of religion", then there's an obvious incentive to insist that atheists are immune, because admitting to having the same human dogmatic influences might be seen as hypocritical.
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ike wrote:
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.
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.
You didn't argue that. That's why I didn't say you had argued it, but merely suggested it as something you may like to argue. Whether or not you actually want to argue it is up to you.
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ike wrote:
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.)
It wasn't gratuitous. I made the comment to point out the hypocrisy of of saying that I wanted to stroke my own ego when I'm not the one being "stroked" here.
How is it that another person's actions make me a hypocrite?
I think I would have understood your intent here the first time if you'd pointed out something I said that appeared to be stroking my own ego, rather than pointing out something that someone else said, since another person's actions don't make me hypocritical. Even then, I never claimed to be immune to dogmatic influence or behavior (or self aggrandizing), I merely claimed that atheists aren't immune either.
I'm sorry that you found the ego-stroking comment offensive. I hadn't intended my original couple of messages to seem as caustic as they did. And the reason why I directed the ego-stroking comment toward you is because of the inductive reasoning I described above regarding the "ignorant" comment. I probably should have phrased that reply some other way.
Last edited by ike on 08 Jan 2009, 1:48 pm, edited 3 times in total.
07 Jan 2009, 2:28 pm
