AC Grayling gets it bang on re faith group daftness.

[SolidGoldBangers]

There's a pint on the bar for him all right. Good effort.

1800-odd in the UK that is. According to the census.

Why do you come on here looking for your understanding, UQD? It is a mystery to you, and to many -- but you aren't looking for answers here, you are looking to have an argument and prove your point.

If you were genuinely trying to understand you would ask, not lecture and argue -- you would read the scientists, the physicists, the professors and great minds, who do believe in a god, or gods.

They won't convert you but they might give you an understanding. Not only do you not have it, you don't seem to want it and you don't even seem to have the space for it in your mindset.

But you always do this, you just seem to want to be in this endless mn student type cycle, as if you've only just discovered atheism and you've found religion doesn't make sense and you need to share it, and say "myth" and "superstition" over and over again.

You can't argue people into belief, or argue them out of it. That's what you fail to understand.

Well it's fairly easy to argue that Scientology is not a mainstream religion in the UK, given that its numbers are tiny compared to Christianity, Islam etc. But I'm sure that Scientologists are free to lobby for a place on any Inter-faith panel if they want it.

I don't "fail" to understand anything.

I don't come in here looking for understanding either.

You may have noticed I don't start religious threads these days. Haven't done so for a long time. My policy is that I don't talk about it unless anybody else does. But my policy is also that I don't let smug know-it-all statements about religion go unchallenged if I have something to say.

I'm not in a "student type cycle" (what a bizarre suggestion), any more than someone who refers to Greek or Egyptian myths as precisely that - MYTHS - is in one. I find it astonishing really that people can't get that.

It really is an Occam's Razor situation. Religious/superstitious types tend to like to attempt to make the argument more complex. It doesn't need it. To suggest that it does, and that I am somehow failing to engage with its finer points by not accepting this, is disingenuous in the extreme.

You said yourself you fail to understand, you can't understand. You basically can't understand why people think differently to the way you do. Do you want to? Have you tried? Do you think you have all the answers? What have people said to you when you've asked how they can stretch beyond Occam's Razor?

As for smug know it all statements -- talk about blind to the faults of your own colleagues in debate.

and stuffitllama - you are quite patronising with your high-handed "fail to understand" nonsense. I know you can't argue someone out of faith. You can't argue someone rationally out of a position they haven't rationally argued themselves into. The doesn't mean it has the "god-given" right to go unchallenged, though.

But I do find the religious incredibly smug sometimes.

It so often seems to be a case of "well, some people, including me, can see this thing which you can't see and have had this experience you seem to be unable to have." There is a whiff of really smug superiority about that, which I don't find in the arguments from atheists.

But that's true, UnquietDad, and I speak as a non-believer. A lot of religious people do indeed have this thing that we can't see and experience something that we can't
experience. Rather like synaesthetics.

I just find it bizarre that your response to that would be "well I can't see it so it's all obviously just rubbish". If that's not smug superiority I don't know what is.

Challenge, yes, debate, yes that's all fine -- I don't think many religious believers are afraid of challenge. But if they are anything like me they find aggression and name-calling and a general "if you don't believe this you're irrational" attitude to be an extremely immature approach to debate.

How is it being patronising to repeat something you said yourself. You don't understand. You said so.

stuffit, there is a slight difference in nuance - I said I find it hard to understand, not that I fail to do so.

How can it be smug superiority to ask for evidence of these so-called experiences? How can it be wrong NOT to take these things on trust? Once you go down that route there is no stopping you.

Do you understand then?

The atheists haven't simply "asked for evidence" as you know.

UQD: The word 'superstitious' is a perjorative term, and offends people who hold a faith as something which is extremely important to them. Whether or not you feel it is accurate or appropriate is irrelevant. My grandparents think it's accurate and appropriate to refer to black people as 'coloured' and people from Pakistan as 'Pakis'. Do you not see that the argument is the same?

Can you explain to me why I should engage with you when you are using a term to insult me?

Well, I use "religious/superstitious" because some are one and some are the other and some are somewhere in between, and it's often hard to tell the difference, frankly. That's a million miles from racism.

"because some are one and some are the other and some are somewhere in between, and it's often hard to tell the difference, frankly"

Nope, sorry, you are still sounding just like my grandmother talking about non-white people

She needs a bit of educating and experience so she can tell the difference, don't you think?

'Hence the need to fight for the right to be critical and contemptuous of religion in public spaces such as debating forums.'

Well, at least you've had the honesty to admit that you feel contempt for people with religious belief.

I'm not bothered. I expect it was the same in the Dark Ages in the tavern, their equivalent of the internet, when some babbling fool came in talking about how the earth was actually round.

"Arf arf, olde Fredde doth be goin' on again about the earth bein round."

"I know, 'e did called us ignorante. The foole. Doth he not know the earth be flatte? Tis written in all the bookes."

"Aye, least, those who can readen do say so."

"Why dothe he notte leaven it? Tis as if he wanten to causen a fighte."

(Apologies for somewhat random and probably anachronistic vocabulary of Rude Mechanicals.)

And again morningpaper somewhat offensively compares me to a racist. I'm going to have to invoke Godwin's law soon. In fact, I could have done that way back when swastikas were mentioned.

This thread will go biscuit very soon.

Abraid: I have contempt for religion/superstiton(and the two are utterly interchangeable) which is not the same as having contempt for individuals who happen to cling to one or other myth system: it;s ridiculous for educated people to believe in fairies, pixies, astrology and gods, which are all on the same intellectual level (there are plenty of educated people who believe in homeopathy etc). I treat individuals as individuals - an otherwise sociable and smart and likeable person isn't made less so by clinging to some or other ancient mythology as fact, and a horrible person isn't made more likeable for renouncing a particularly toxic brand of superstition as such a person will simply find another way of being horrible.
But the constant demands of the superstitious for faith to have special status is basically saying that to be superstitious is to be superior to those who are free from superstition and therefore the actual superstitions must be above criticism.

Haven't read all of this but I'm a bit confused that this is news. As MP has already said - the government regularly consults members of faith groups. As a civil servant I've done it myself many a time when I've wanted a faith perspective for an initiative or a policy - to me it simply shows respect if something I'm doing might be open to offending someone from a different culture or faith. The 'secularist' groups are everyone else that I get advice from. I really don't understand why this is an issue.

god you think you're just so great uqd

sgb unreadable

I love this "I have contempt for religion but not for people who are religious" thing - it's so exactly like "hate the sin, love the sinner".

I know it's well meaning, but it always sounds so phoney whichever side it comes from. Still, better than out-and-out contempt/hatred I suppose.

UQD: I see no difference between you and a racist

morningpaper, perhaps UQD sees the difference in that people of colour can't change their race but religious people could and should attempt to educate themselves out of their superstition . . . one is a matter of fact, and perhaps the second is seen as a matter of choice.

SGB - I simply cannot relate to your perspective.

I suspect he does think that theists should educate themselves out of their theism.

This is where I get baffled though, because he appears to be basically saying that atheism is a matter of intellectual maturity, which people of faith are lacking. Thickies like Aquinas.

However, I'm sure lots of people of faith are fairly aware of the argument: "You can't see Him? Eh? Where is He? Not here you numpty! Let's go to the pub eh?" which appears to be the level of comprehension about the concept of the divine that is being demonstrated here.

MP I didn't know you felt so strongly about it until this thread: your patience with that simplistic and tiresome approach is amazing.