In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
Well then, this is something I didn't know about...
"So wait if it's 'Normandy' and the kids are invading, doesn't that make you the Nazi's?"
OPERATION NORMANDY
The Minuteman Project’s “Operation Normandy” has been launched as of 1200 hours Monday, July 7. This event will dwarf the original Minuteman Project of 2005. I expect at least 3,500 non-militia volunteers to participate, plus uncounted groups of militias from all over the country.
If you are familiar with the Normandy invasion of France in 1944, then you have an idea how large and logistically complicated this event will be. However, there is one difference. We are not going to the border to invade anyone. We are going there to stop an invasion.
I think there is more than one difference but ok guy...
On September 07 2014 06:02 KwarK wrote: British military required us to swear an oath on a book. Used to be the Bible, now it's literally any collection of printed pages. There is no reason not to adapt traditions to meet modern realities.
I take it you weren't incensed and refused to undergo the process? All this hate leveled at traditions is not equal to the significance attached to them. The responsible position is to change the oaths administratively (advocacy, suits) and comply with the status quo. Mountains out of molehills for all these wanton religious crusaders.
I swore it on my standard issue notebook because that was all I had to hand. Had I been forced to swear it on a Bible I probably would have because I don't care enough about religion to dignify it but I wouldn't have liked it. The point is that if the Air Force feels it is absolutely necessary to make an oath to someone for whatever traditional reasons they have then I'm sure they can find a solution that doesn't impose on religious freedoms. The man may have been perfectly happy to swear an oath to Oprah, for example.
On September 07 2014 06:02 KwarK wrote: British military required us to swear an oath on a book. Used to be the Bible, now it's literally any collection of printed pages. There is no reason not to adapt traditions to meet modern realities.
One of the congress reps from my state swore his oath on Thomas Jefferson's koran instead of the bible. Legaly speaking in america there already is no requierment for what you swear on.
Probably beacuse of the problems between the different translations of the bible and the catholic/protestant split.
EDIT: The more interesting hypothetical question might be if the atheists really got their way and they demanded that the military should not only scrub "so help me God" from the oath but ban anyone from saying it. That is a far more direct push and it probably wouldn't pass constitutional muster because it would damage the rights of religious people from expressing their beliefs, although it would set that against the non-establishment clause in an interesting way.
Why do you think that atheists secretly want to ban people saying "so help me God". That's a big fucking leap from the thing atheists are actually asking for, which is that they'd rather not be forced into saying, "so help me God". How about we leave your strawman out of it.
I'm sure some atheists would like to see theism banned just as some theists would love to see atheism banned, but in this country specifically that is far outside mainstream values. Freedom of religion is something that is very deeply held by atheists and theists alike.
I personally find atheism almost as obnoxious as theism.
I think the only honest position is agnosticism, but the two are often used interchangeably (even if they shouldn't be).
In the commonly accepted definition, atheism refers to a lack of a belief in a god whereas agnosticism refers to a lack of certainty about the existence of a god. The two are often used interchangeably because most atheists are also agnostics, and most people who refer to themselves as agnostics when prompted about their religion are also atheists. The terms are not mutually exclusive. Refering to yourself as an agnostic may be truthful, but it says nothing about your beliefs, it is very possible to belief in God and also be agnostic about it. It is not generally more honest, often people are too much of a pussy to call themselves what they are and go for something that sounds more neutral.
Sorry, probably not very relevant to the discussion, but misconceptions such as these annoy me.
That definition of atheism isn't even quite right. Atheism is rooted in a positive assertion: That God does not exist. It's not merely a lack of belief. There was an atheist blogger I saw linked who tried to correct this... let's see.....See here.
I'm ignoring his actual arguments for or against atheism, but at least he sets out a narrower definition.
This is off topic, so I wan't say more. I just bristle at incorrect characterizations of things.
Edit: as far as I'm aware, this is the definition of atheism that has been used throughout most of philosophy, in the past up until now. This new definition is a popular one, but not technically correct.
Fair point. It does however still not make agnosticism a correct term for describing a belief or lack thereof.
Edit: Upon reading his argument I find the case for a narrower definition unconvincing. It seems to me we would need many more words. His characterization of how beliefs must come about is also not really in line with how they actually do come about. ANd the whole bit about assigning probability to the existence of a god is problematic to me, I have no interest in such a thing, would we need a new word for me? I think the word atheist capturing all people who are not believers is fine.
I was trying to find other sources, because from what I know I'm fairly certain that the narrow position of atheism is based on the assertion that God does not exist. Maybe some of the philosophy students would like to chime in. And there is this.
I find the argument for a narrow definition convincing, anyway. It makes sense with the word, as well. "a" "theism." The new definition it not the opposite of the definition of "theism." This is again historical, since we don't define words this way.
But it is a matter of historical fact that the definition of atheism at least used to be the narrower one.
But I always get warned for posting on this stuff, so I'll stop.
As that philosophy student you were asking for (I have a B.A. in philosophy), I can tell you that this is a really hotly debated topic in philosophy and has been for many, many, many years. Philosophers define it both as a positive and negative claim.
So no, you're incorrect. It is not fundamentally a positive claim and it isn't a matter of fact.
It doesn't literally say that. I imagine many opponents of a change would argue that it isn't a religious test. You can say the words even if you are openly an atheist.
Dutch military swears allegiance to the monarch, even though some are republican. Everyone seems to agree that republicans should be allowed in, but they should just say the words because tradition or something. I geuss it is the same for most other monarchies and arguably not too different from the US situation.
It's completely different.
Dutch soldiers, whether they like it or not, are actually fighting for a nation that is headed by a monarch. This is a fact, even if they believe that there shouldn't be a monarch, as it is part of the political system. U.S. soldiers aren't fighting for a Christian God if they don't believe in him, and you can't force them to. The U.S. isn't a Christian state.
When I was in the Navy I had to go through this oath and I was given the option to remove the last line about God from my oath. They even re-printed my contract so it didn't have it in there. There's absolutely no justification for this and the Air Force will get a swift ass-kicking in court for it.
ok thanks. My understanding was that the meaning began to change in the 1970s (due to a book)- are you saying that it wasn't defined that way before? After looking a little more, that's what I found. That's what I meant by fact, historical fact.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, called for a progressive estate tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires during a speech on Saturday.
“A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little,” Mr. Sanders said at the Vermont AFL-CIO annual convention.
“We need a tax system which asks the billionaire class to pay its fair share of taxes and which reduces the obscene degree of wealth inequality in America,” said Mr. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
According to Mr. Sanders, taxing the top .25 percent of wealthiest Americans is the fairest way to reduce wealth inequality, lower the $17 trillion national debt and pay for investments in infrastructure, education and other neglected national priorities.
On September 07 2014 08:06 Cordell wrote: I should add that as a computer scientist, if I can mathematically prove that a problem is unsolvable, I'm not going to spend huge chunks of my life trying to solve it anyway. Same thing with my agnosticism. I'm under no obligation to you, myself, or anyone else to "take a stand one way or another" about the existence of a diety
You are under no obligation to prove anything to anyone, but to think of this one aspect of life as any different than any other decision you make is absurd. Do you acknowledge then that taking no stance on whether fairies, unicorns, and wizards are real is equally valid as saying you don't believe wizards don't exist? When are lives and work are largely based on assuming something doesn't exist until proven otherwise why do you take a different approach when it involves a god? Even if you feel unqualified to make this decision, you don't think one way or the other?
EDIT: The more interesting hypothetical question might be if the atheists really got their way and they demanded that the military should not only scrub "so help me God" from the oath but ban anyone from saying it. That is a far more direct push and it probably wouldn't pass constitutional muster because it would damage the rights of religious people from expressing their beliefs, although it would set that against the non-establishment clause in an interesting way.
Why do you think that atheists secretly want to ban people saying "so help me God". That's a big fucking leap from the thing atheists are actually asking for, which is that they'd rather not be forced into saying, "so help me God". How about we leave your strawman out of it.
I'm sure some atheists would like to see theism banned just as some theists would love to see atheism banned, but in this country specifically that is far outside mainstream values. Freedom of religion is something that is very deeply held by atheists and theists alike.
I personally find atheism almost as obnoxious as theism.
I think the only honest position is agnosticism, but the two are often used interchangeably (even if they shouldn't be).
In the commonly accepted definition, atheism refers to a lack of a belief in a god whereas agnosticism refers to a lack of certainty about the existence of a god. The two are often used interchangeably because most atheists are also agnostics, and most people who refer to themselves as agnostics when prompted about their religion are also atheists. The terms are not mutually exclusive. Refering to yourself as an agnostic may be truthful, but it says nothing about your beliefs, it is very possible to belief in God and also be agnostic about it. It is not generally more honest, often people are too much of a pussy to call themselves what they are and go for something that sounds more neutral.
Sorry, probably not very relevant to the discussion, but misconceptions such as these annoy me.
That definition of atheism isn't even quite right. Atheism is rooted in a positive assertion: That God does not exist. It's not merely a lack of belief. There was an atheist blogger I saw linked who tried to correct this... let's see.....See here.
I'm ignoring his actual arguments for or against atheism, but at least he sets out a narrower definition.
This is off topic, so I wan't say more. I just bristle at incorrect characterizations of things.
Edit: as far as I'm aware, this is the definition of atheism that has been used throughout most of philosophy, in the past up until now. This new definition is a popular one, but not technically correct.
Fair point. It does however still not make agnosticism a correct term for describing a belief or lack thereof.
Edit: Upon reading his argument I find the case for a narrower definition unconvincing. It seems to me we would need many more words. His characterization of how beliefs must come about is also not really in line with how they actually do come about. ANd the whole bit about assigning probability to the existence of a god is problematic to me, I have no interest in such a thing, would we need a new word for me? I think the word atheist capturing all people who are not believers is fine.
I was trying to find other sources, because from what I know I'm fairly certain that the narrow position of atheism is based on the assertion that God does not exist. Maybe some of the philosophy students would like to chime in. And there is this.
I find the argument for a narrow definition convincing, anyway. It makes sense with the word, as well. "a" "theism." The new definition it not the opposite of the definition of "theism." This is again historical, since we don't define words this way.
But it is a matter of historical fact that the definition of atheism at least used to be the narrower one.
But I always get warned for posting on this stuff, so I'll stop.
As that philosophy student you were asking for (I have a B.A. in philosophy), I can tell you that this is a really hotly debated topic in philosophy and has been for many, many, many years. Philosophers define it both as a positive and negative claim.
So no, you're incorrect. It is not fundamentally a positive claim and it isn't a matter of fact.
It doesn't literally say that. I imagine many opponents of a change would argue that it isn't a religious test. You can say the words even if you are openly an atheist.
Dutch military swears allegiance to the monarch, even though some are republican. Everyone seems to agree that republicans should be allowed in, but they should just say the words because tradition or something. I geuss it is the same for most other monarchies and arguably not too different from the US situation.
It's completely different.
Dutch soldiers, whether they like it or not, are actually fighting for a nation that is headed by a monarch. This is a fact, even if they believe that there shouldn't be a monarch, as it is part of the political system. U.S. soldiers aren't fighting for a Christian God if they don't believe in him, and you can't force them to. The U.S. isn't a Christian state.
When I was in the Navy I had to go through this oath and I was given the option to remove the last line about God from my oath. They even re-printed my contract so it didn't have it in there. There's absolutely no justification for this and the Air Force will get a swift ass-kicking in court for it.
ok thanks. My understanding was that the meaning began to change in the 1970s (due to a book)- are you saying that it wasn't defined that way before? After looking a little more, that's what I found. That's what I meant by fact, historical fact.
thanks.
Atheism has never been "rooted" in a positive assertion because the oldest examples of atheism in human history come from Hinduism and Buddhism's early years. These examples of atheism were negative claims (it cannot be proven therefore it doesn't have a place in our religion/we choose to not have faith in a creator).
Similar examples can be shown in early modern philosophy when atheism began to gain a foothold against the Church. Many philosophers argued against propositions or explanations based on divine power; in other words, they disproved God's hand in explaining particular things (and instead explained them with natural explanations), but they didn't try to disprove God himself.
Furthermore, etymologically, atheism means "without theism", and theism is "the belief in a deity". Therefore, in its strictest sense, atheism purely means "lack of belief" or "lack of faith", and not "knowledge of a deity's non-existence", since knowledge has a different root altogether (gnosis). So yes, the "new" definition (as you describe it, since it isn't actually new) does make sense.
The blogger you quoted is also way off base and he could be quite easily counter-argued on his major points.
there's no mystery involved with le unknown god. there is a strong positive account of what religion is and how humans have dicked around with religious beliefs for various reasons in forever and ever. this account would be a naturalistic explanation for god without explaining the entity first order. just explain the human process of belief and be done with it. for people with a naturalistic anthropological udnerstanding of religion, the question of god does become as absurd as asking whether mickey mouse exists.
now agnosticism is nominally/abstractly an epistemic claim, but in the context of having absolutely 0 interest in the god question, it is a sort of atheism. people simply do not find the issue compelling enough to care. wondering about religious objects is in itself a religious preoccupation, if your agnosticism is characterized by disdain, rather than caution, then it's just behavioral atheism.
I prefer areligious. Who the fuck really cares, honestly? You spend all this time wasted on this 'topic' that you have no control over one way or the other (if you happen to give a fuck that is). Aren't there more important things to do with your time?
Who's in the don't care one way or the other camp with me? (indifference / areligious)
On September 07 2014 11:39 Wegandi wrote: I prefer areligious. Who the fuck really cares, honestly? You spend all this time wasted on this 'topic' that you have no control over one way or the other (if you happen to give a fuck that is). Aren't there more important things to do with your time?
Who's in the don't care one way or the other camp with me? (indifference / areligious)
Now, back to doing something useful with my time.
Well, more relevantly there are some people in power of government who believe in these things and base their governance on them. Even if you're areligious or don't care, it may be important that people are making laws based on their assumptions in this area.
Simply throwing ones' hands up in disapproval when confronted with a religious debate with US politics as the backdrop doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Though they might be a dwindling demographic, those that figure their religious beliefs into their politics with a heavy hand are still common enough among the US population to warrant attempting to understand them if only to see how we might discourage those attitudes in the future. There are a lot of things that are out of our control and yet still worth having a conversation over.
On a side note, Obama pussied out on immigration reform and that sucks.
On September 07 2014 04:01 IgnE wrote: That wasn't a strawman. It was a digression about what he considered an interesting hypothetical. You just did the same thing thing that all the conservatives in this thread did a few pages back in response to my post about curfew laws. You read a trigger phrase out of context and got all worked up about it.
"if the atheists really got their way..."
This suggests he believes this is what the atheists want. He wasn't making a strawman argument, more of a strawman hypothetical. My point still stands.
I think you are being disingenuous by implying that all things being equal you would rather leave the god stuff in the standard recital than taking it out. If you were responsible for drafting a new oath would you put god in or leave him out?
His hypothetical wasn't about drafting a new oath, but rather atheists banning the phrase for use in the military, which is a pretty over the top characterization of what an atheist might want.
I'm not really the type of atheist to get worked up about references to God in oaths or pledges or on money or whatever. I don't think people should be forced to swear to God if it makes them uncomfortable, but I would've taken the oath as is. My atheism is an intellectual position, but I still hold largely Christian values and swearing to God still holds meaning to me.
If I were to draft a new oath from scratch I'd probably replace the God stuff with some more secular language, sure, but I also don't see a need to draft a new oath. I'm not an evangelical atheist.
On September 07 2014 04:01 IgnE wrote: That wasn't a strawman. It was a digression about what he considered an interesting hypothetical. You just did the same thing thing that all the conservatives in this thread did a few pages back in response to my post about curfew laws. You read a trigger phrase out of context and got all worked up about it.
"if the atheists really got their way..."
This suggests he believes this is what the atheists want. He wasn't making a strawman argument, more of a strawman hypothetical. My point still stands.
I think you are being disingenuous by implying that all things being equal you would rather leave the god stuff in the standard recital than taking it out. If you were responsible for drafting a new oath would you put god in or leave him out?
His hypothetical wasn't about drafting a new oath, but rather atheists banning the phrase for use in the military, which is a pretty over the top characterization of what an atheist might want.
I'm not really the type of atheist to get worked up about references to God in oaths or pledges or on money or whatever. I don't think people should be forced to swear to God if it makes them uncomfortable, but I would've taken the oath as is. My atheism is an intellectual position, but I still hold largely Christian values and swearing to God still holds meaning to me.
If I were to draft a new oath from scratch I'd probably replace the God stuff with some more secular language, sure, but I also don't see a need to draft a new oath. I'm not an evangelical atheist.
If Christianity and God means something to you personally, I'd say by definition you are religious wouldn't you?
On September 07 2014 11:39 Wegandi wrote: I prefer areligious. Who the fuck really cares, honestly? You spend all this time wasted on this 'topic' that you have no control over one way or the other (if you happen to give a fuck that is). Aren't there more important things to do with your time?
Who's in the don't care one way or the other camp with me? (indifference / areligious)
Now, back to doing something useful with my time.
Well, more relevantly there are some people in power of government who believe in these things and base their governance on them. Even if you're areligious or don't care, it may be important that people are making laws based on their assumptions in this area.
That doesn't have anything to do with the existence or non-existence of God. Isn't that the whole point on the definition / view of atheism and theism? Not some quibbles about body politik.
I have nothing against singing hymns, they are often great songs. I am not a believer and doubt I will ever be. I think that the US expectation of speeches containing references to god is a bit strange. I don't find it wrong, just wondering what part it has in the speech. Same thing applies to oaths.
On September 07 2014 04:01 IgnE wrote: That wasn't a strawman. It was a digression about what he considered an interesting hypothetical. You just did the same thing thing that all the conservatives in this thread did a few pages back in response to my post about curfew laws. You read a trigger phrase out of context and got all worked up about it.
"if the atheists really got their way..."
This suggests he believes this is what the atheists want. He wasn't making a strawman argument, more of a strawman hypothetical. My point still stands.
I think you are being disingenuous by implying that all things being equal you would rather leave the god stuff in the standard recital than taking it out. If you were responsible for drafting a new oath would you put god in or leave him out?
His hypothetical wasn't about drafting a new oath, but rather atheists banning the phrase for use in the military, which is a pretty over the top characterization of what an atheist might want.
I'm not really the type of atheist to get worked up about references to God in oaths or pledges or on money or whatever. I don't think people should be forced to swear to God if it makes them uncomfortable, but I would've taken the oath as is. My atheism is an intellectual position, but I still hold largely Christian values and swearing to God still holds meaning to me.
If I were to draft a new oath from scratch I'd probably replace the God stuff with some more secular language, sure, but I also don't see a need to draft a new oath. I'm not an evangelical atheist.
If Christianity and God means something to you personally, I'd say by definition you are religious wouldn't you?
No. I don't believe in God, and I don't go to church or partake in any religious ceremony. By definition, I'm an atheist.
I was raised Christian and I identify with Jesus' message of love. My sense of right and wrong is partially tied to that Christian upbringing. "God" retains some symbolic meaning to me in an abstract kind of way. I say things like, "God dammit", and "So help me God", from time to time. Lots of fictional stories are meaningful to me, not just the bible: The stories of Mark Twain, Issac Asimov, Douglas Adams, Roald Dahl, Phillip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke, Phillip Pullman. The movies of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. Star Trek and The Simpsons.
On September 07 2014 08:06 Cordell wrote: I should add that as a computer scientist, if I can mathematically prove that a problem is unsolvable, I'm not going to spend huge chunks of my life trying to solve it anyway. Same thing with my agnosticism. I'm under no obligation to you, myself, or anyone else to "take a stand one way or another" about the existence of a diety
You are under no obligation to prove anything to anyone, but to think of this one aspect of life as any different than any other decision you make is absurd. Do you acknowledge then that taking no stance on whether fairies, unicorns, and wizards are real is equally valid as saying you don't believe wizards don't exist? When are lives and work are largely based on assuming something doesn't exist until proven otherwise why do you take a different approach when it involves a god? Even if you feel unqualified to make this decision, you don't think one way or the other?
at first glance it may seem like dragging fairies and unicorns into this discussion is a completely asinine tangential strawman (and it is, of course) but yes, if a majority of my countrymen honestly believed in those things and planned their lives around them (hypocritically or otherwise) and tried to use the powers of our US government to compel me to profess oaths of loyalty to those creatures, then yes, in that case I would declare myself adamently a-unicornist and a-fairyist.
However, agnosticism is not about whether or not creatures exist, it's about the empicircal epistimelogical limits of human knowledge, and the folly of people claiming to know about things that can't be known (i.e. what happens after death, what happened before the big bang, etc.) which is a few levels of philosophical abstraction above debates about the existence of wizards
On September 07 2014 08:06 Cordell wrote: I should add that as a computer scientist, if I can mathematically prove that a problem is unsolvable, I'm not going to spend huge chunks of my life trying to solve it anyway. Same thing with my agnosticism. I'm under no obligation to you, myself, or anyone else to "take a stand one way or another" about the existence of a diety
You are under no obligation to prove anything to anyone, but to think of this one aspect of life as any different than any other decision you make is absurd. Do you acknowledge then that taking no stance on whether fairies, unicorns, and wizards are real is equally valid as saying you don't believe wizards don't exist? When are lives and work are largely based on assuming something doesn't exist until proven otherwise why do you take a different approach when it involves a god? Even if you feel unqualified to make this decision, you don't think one way or the other?
at first glance it may seem like dragging fairies and unicorns into this discussion is a completely asinine tangential strawman (and it is, of course) but yes, if a majority of my countrymen honestly believed in those things and planned their lives around them (hypocritically or otherwise) and tried to use the powers of our US government to compel me to profess oaths of loyalty to those creatures, then yes, in that case I would declare myself adamently a-unicornist and a-fairyist.
However, agnosticism is not about whether or not creatures exist, it's about the empicircal epistimelogical limits of human knowledge, and the folly of people claiming to know about things that can't be known (i.e. what happens after death, what happened before the big bang, etc.) which is a few levels of philosophical abstraction above debates about the existence of wizards
Doesn't it seem like a low standard of proof for you to change a position from adamantly no to a more doubtful position on either side just based of the popularity of that position. Would you consider yourself an a-climate-change? Since that is probably a better example than the one used earlier.
EPT
