re theism and fanatism was islamic genocide in article bb d c i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article r tqo ook horus ap mchp sni de frank d s uucp frank o dwyer writes theism is strongly correlated with irrational belief in absolutes irrational belief in absolutes is strongly correlated with fanatism deletion theism is correlated with fanaticism i have neither said that all fanatism is caused by theism nor that all theism leads to fanatism the point is theism increases the chance of becoming a fanatic one could of course argue that would be fanatics tend towards theism for example but i just have to loook at the times in history when theism was the dominant ideology to invalidate that conclusion that that is the basic mechanism behind it imo the influence of stalin or for that matter ayn rand invalidates your assumption that theism is the factor to be considered bogus i just said that theism is not the only factor for fanatism the point is that theism is a factor that s your claim now back it up i consider your argument as useful as the following belief is strongly correlated with fanaticism therefore belief is a factor in fanaticism true and utterly useless note this is any belief not belief in gods tiring to say the least i have backed it up read the first statement i have read it conspicuous by its absence is any evidence or point the latter is the fallacy of the wrong analogy saying someone believes something is hardly an information about the person at all saying someone is a theist holds much more information further the correlation between theists and fanatism is higher than that between belief at all and fanatism because of the special features of theistic belief truth by blatant assertion evidence gullibility blind obedience to authority lack of scepticism and so on are all more reliable indicators and the really dangerous people the sources of fanaticism are often none of these things they are cynical manipulators of the gullible who know precisely what they are doing that s a claim you have to support please note that especially in the field of theism the leaders believe what they say if you believe that you re incredibly naive you frank o dwyer are living in a dream world i wonder if there is any base of discussion left after such a statement as a matter of fact i think you are ignorant of human nature even when one starts with something one does not believe one gets easily fooled into actually believing what one says to give you the benefit of the doubt prove your statement the onus of proof is on you sunshine what makes you think that theist leaders believe what they say especially when they say one thing and do another or say one thing closely followed by its opposite the practice is not restricted to theism but it s there for anyone to see it s almost an epidemic in this country just for instance if it is harder for a camel to pass thru the eye of a needle why is the catholic church such a wealthy land owner why are there churches to the square inch in my country now some brands of theism and more precisely some theists do tend to fanaticism i grant you to tar all theists with this brush is bigotry not a reasoned argument and it reads to me like a warm up for censorship and restriction of religious freedom ever read animal farm that s a straw man and as usually in discussions with you one has to repeat it read what i have written above not every theism leads to fanatism and not all fanatism is caused by theism the point is there is a correlation and it comes from innate features of theism no some of it comes from features which some theism has in common with some fanaticism your last statement simply isn t implied by what you say before because you re trying to sneak in innate features of all theism the word you re groping for is some bogus again not all theism as is is fanatic however the rest already gives backup for the statement about the correlation about fanatism and theism and further the specialty of other theistic beliefs allows them to switch to fanatism easily it takes just a nifty improvement in the theology truth by blatant assertion gullibility by the way is one of them no shit sherlock so why not talk about gullibility instead of theism since it seems a whole lot more relevant to the case you have as opposed to the case you are trying to make because there is more about theism that the attraction to gullible people causing the correlation and the whole discussion started that way by the statement that theism is meaningfully correlated to fanatism which you challenged indeed i did as i recall i asked for evidence what is the correlation of which you speak and to say that i am going to forbid religion is another of your straw men interesting that you have nothing better to offer i said it reads like a warm up to that that s because it s an irrational and bogus tirade and has no other use than creating a nice them us split in the minds of excitable people such as are to be found on either side of church walls blah blah blah i am quite well aware that giving everyone their rights protects me better from fanatics than the other way round of course other people are always fanatics never oneself your wish to slur all theists seems pretty fanatical to me it is quite nice to see that you are actually implying a connection between that argument and the rise of fanatism so far it is just another of your assertions so you can do it define irrational belief e g is it rational to believe that reason is always useful irrational belief is belief that is not based upon reason the latter has been discussed for a long time with charley wingate one point is that the beliefs violate reason often and another that a process that does not lend itself to rational analysis does not contain reliable information well there is a glaring paradox here an argument that reason is useful based on reason would be circular and argument not based on reason would be irrational which is it that s bogus self reference is not circular and since the evaluation of usefulness is possible within rational systems it is allowed o k it s oval it s still begging the question however and though that certainly is allowed it s not rational and you claiming to be rational and all another of your assertions no proof no evidence just claims hey i learned it from you did i do good at the risk of repeating myself and hearing we had that before we didn t hear a refutation before so we re back deal with it you can t use reason to demonstrate that reason is useful someone who thinks reason is crap won t buy it you see that is unusually weak even for you the latter implies that my proof depends on their opinion somehow who does not accept that there are triangles won t accept pythagoras wow that s an incredible insight i don t have to prove them wrong in their opinion it is possible to show that their systems leave out useful information respectively claims unreliable or even absurd statements to be information totally circular and totally useless their wish to believe makes them believe things are judges by their appeal and not by their information it makes you feel good when you believe that may be good for them but it contains zillions of possible pitfalls from belief despite contrary evidence to the bogus proofs they attempt truth by blatant assertion i ve seen as many bogus proofs of the non existence of gods as i have of their existence rational systems by the way does not mean that every data has to come from logical analysis the point is that the evaluation of the data does not contradict logic it easily follows that such a system does not allows to evaluate if its rational in itself yes it is possible to evaluate that it is rational in a system that is not rational by the fallacies of that system but since the validity of the axioms is agreed upon that has as little impact as the possibility of a demon ala descartes this just doesn t parse sorry so far it just a matter of consistency i use ratiional arguments to show that my system is consistent or that theirs isn t the evaluation of the nor this predictions does not need rationality it does not contradict however your argument is as silly as proving mathematical statements needs mathematics and mathematics are therfore circular anybody else think godel was silly stream of consciousness typing what is that supposed to mean the first part of the second statement contains no information because you don t say what the beliefs are if the beliefs are strong theism and or strong atheism then your statement is not in general true the second part of your sentence is patently false counterexample an axiomatic datum does not lend itself to rational analysis but is assumed to contain reliable information regardless of what process is used to obtain it i ve been speaking of religious systems with contradictory definitions of god here an axiomatic datum lends itself to rational analysis what you say here is a an often refuted fallacy have a look at the discussion of the axiom of choice and further one can evaluate axioms in larger systems out of which they are usually derived i exist is derived if you want it that way further one can test the consistency and so on of a set of axioms what is it you are trying to say that at some point people always wind up saying this datum is reliable for no particular reason at all example i am not dreaming nope there is evidence for it the trick is that the choice of an axiomatic basis of a system is difficult because the possibilities are interwoven one therefore chooses that with the least assumptions or with assumptions that are necessary to get information out of the system anyway i d like to see this alleged evidence one does not need to define axioms in order to define an evaluation method for usefulness the foundation is laid by how one feels at all that s not how one feels about it i see you have no irrational beliefs but then fanatics never do do they compared the evidence theists have for their claims to the strength of their demands makes the whole thing not only irrational but antirational i can t agree with this until you are specific which theism to say that all theism is necessarily antirational requires a proof which i suspect you do not have using the traditonal definition of gods personal supernatural entities with objective effects on this world usually connected to morals and or the way the world works imo any belief about such gods is necessarily irrational that does not mean that people who hold them are in principle opposed to the exercise of intelligence some atheists are also scientists for example they don t use theism when doing science or it wouldn t be science please note that subjective data lend themselves to a scientific treatment as well they just prohibit formulating them as objective statements ergo nothing is objective fair enough the affinity to fanatism is easily seen it has to be true because i believe it is nothing more than a work hypothesis however the beliefs say they are more than a work hypothesis i don t understand this can you formalise your argument person a believes system b becuase it sounds so nice that does not make b true it is at best a work hypothesis however the content of b is that it is true and that it is more than a work hypothesis testing or evaluating evidence for or against it therefore dismissed because b already believed says it is wrong a waste of time not possible depending on the further contents of b amalekites idolaters protestants are to be killed this can have interesting effects peculiar definition of interesting but sure now show that a belief in gods entails the further contents of which you speak why aren t my catholic neighbours out killing the protestants for example maybe they don t believe in it maybe it s the conjunction of b asserts b and jail kill dissenters that is important and the belief in gods is entirely irrelevant it certainly seems so to me but then i have no axe to grind here the example with your neighbours is a fallacy that your neighbours don t says little about others and there were times when exactly that happened nope it s not a fallacy it just doesn t go to the correlation you wish to see and tell me when it is not irrelevant why are such statements about amalekites and idolaters in the holy books please note that one could edit them out when they are not relevant anymore because gods don t err what does that say about that message excuse me the holy books and how come we had theists saying genocides ordered by god are ok a god is the easiest way to excuse anything and therefore highly attracting to fanatics not to mention the effect interpretation by these fanatics can have on the rest of the believers happens again and again and again a god is neither the easiest way to excuse anything nor the only way frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
