re theism and fanatism was islamic genocide in article bb b i dbstu rz tu bs de i dbstu rz tu bs de benedikt rosenau writes in article r sn r 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 your argument is as silly as proving mathematical statements needs mathematics and mathematics are therfore circular anybody else think godel was silly 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 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 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 frank o dwyer i m not hatching that odwyer sse ie from hens by evelyn conlon
