Theophobia

[brekin]

American Dream wrote:

Does this mean I have a global prejudice against people of faith? No- it depends very much what they say and do...

I think this really is the litmus test for whatever belief system (religious, spiritual, scientific, ethical, social etc).
People believe all kinds of things, but it is how they express them to others that I think everything hinges
and reveals more about the individual then the system.

And extrapolating out I really care less about the supposed validity of the system, or the defenses and proclamations regarding it, then the results.
As Ernst Mach said:

A piece of knowledge is never false or true --
but only more or less biologically and evolutionary
useful.

[barracuda]

In light of any assertion by anyone that 'that stuff doesn't exist at RI' (meaning that a prejudice against people of faith doesn't exist at RI) I am forced to counter by saying that it does. I've felt it, seen it, read it, experienced it. I am not really offended by it nor do I feel oppressed by it, rather I think it is a shame. It is a crying shame.

Firstly, if you're saying that there are people here who reject spirituality and have demonstrated a "prejudice against people of faith", you ought to back that up with some pretty hard evidence in the form of citations. Otherwise it seems to me a baseless and reckless accusation. And before you simply point at a review of this thread as your citation, I'd say that virtually everyone who has disagreed with you here has in one way or another stipulated their personal respect for various forms of spirituality. But honestly: some quotes please. I don't think it's asking for too much.

Secondly, if those individuals exist for whom spirituality is meaningless, and for whom people of faith compel a knee-jerk reaction, I find it hard to understand why their position might be viewed in any way as less valid than your own in which you reject the beliefs of those for whom spirituality is unimportant. Why does the opposite of faith have less credence or substance than faith? Why is their belief for some reason to be considered a "crying shame" as opposed to your own? Are you saying that your embrace of the spiritual has some intrinsic value that makes it nominally better than the lack of that embrace? Does their rejection of faith in some manner impede your own ability to practice your own faith? Why is it so important that you must portray their beliefs as less worthy, or shameful vis-a-vis your own?

The absence of what you consider faith may be just as important to some people as your faith is to you.

[Canadian_watcher]

Why does the opposite of faith have less credence or substance than faith? Why is their belief for some reason to be considered a "crying shame" as opposed to your own?

Read it again. Here it is:

I do see that there is a prejudice, and that some otherwise perfectly open-minded, forward thinking, out-of-the-box type people (the best kind of people, IMO) are blinded by a bias they don't see that they have.

In light of any assertion by anyone that 'that stuff doesn't exist at RI' (meaning that a prejudice against people of faith doesn't exist at RI) I am forced to counter by saying that it does. I've felt it, seen it, read it, experienced it. I am not really offended by it nor do I feel oppressed by it, rather [b]I think it is a shame. It is a crying shame[/b].

the bias is the shame. bias locks people away from pursuing certain paths - those paths of course are whichever are covered over by the forest of bias.

Are you saying that your embrace of the spiritual has some intrinsic value that makes it nominally better than the lack of that embrace?

I don't know. Perhaps. It seems to me that great discoveries and leaps forward are taken by people who can embrace things that are out of the realms of perceived, mainstream possibility and not by people who block their eyes and ears.

Does their rejection of faith in some manner impede your own ability to practice your own faith? Why is it so important that you must portray their beliefs as less worthy, or shameful vis-a-vis your own?

I have never said either of these things nor implied them.

The absence of what you consider faith may be just as important to some people as your faith is to you.

right back at you.

[Canadian_watcher]

Dissociation of sensibility is a literary term first used by T. S. Eliot in his essay “The Metaphysical Poets”[1] It refers to the way in which intellectual thought was separated from the experience of feeling in seventeenth century poetry.
...
Eliot asserts that despite the progress of refined language, the separation between thought and emotion led to the end of an era of poetry that was “more mature” and that would “wear better” than the poetry that followed.

interesting... thanks for this, jd.

[brekin]

Canadian_watcher wrote:

In light of any assertion by anyone that 'that stuff doesn't exist at RI' (meaning that a prejudice against people of faith doesn't exist at RI) I am forced to counter by saying that it does. I've felt it, seen it, read it, experienced it. I am not really offended by it nor do I feel oppressed by it, rather I think it is a shame. It is a crying shame.

barracuda wrote:

Firstly, if you're saying that there are people here who reject spirituality and have demonstrated a "prejudice against people of faith", you ought to back that up with some pretty hard evidence in the form of citations. Otherwise it seems to me a baseless and reckless accusation. And before you simply point at a review of this thread as your citation, I'd say that virtually everyone who has disagreed with you here has in one way or another stipulated their personal respect for various forms of spirituality. But honestly: some quotes please. I don't think it's asking for too much.

Are you in essence asking What Constitutes Theophobia?
And requiring evidence for when someone makes accusations?

[norton ash]

OWWWWWWW. Let's just dance.

[barracuda]

the bias is the shame. bias locks people away from pursuing certain paths - those paths of course are whichever are covered over by the forest of bias.

Your rejection of their point of view constitutes a bias as well. I cannot see why I should privilege one belief system over another when they both are based upon personal perspectives regarding "belief in things that cannot be proved".

Are you saying that your embrace of the spiritual has some intrinsic value that makes it nominally better than the lack of that embrace?

I don't know. Perhaps.

This is the crux of the matter, and is really the essence of prejudice. You think your belief system is more valuable than someone else's, when both are based upon belief in things that cannot be proved. You have faith in a spirituality you cannot prove, and those who reject such a spirituality do so on an equally unprovable footing.

It seems to me that great discoveries and leaps forward are taken by people who can embrace things that are out of the realms of perceived, mainstream possibility and not by people who block their eyes and ears.

You can hardly call the embrace of faith a tendency which is in any way at all out of the mainstream. A public sign of such an embrace is, literally, a non-negotiable requirement for the position of the presidency of the United States.

Does their rejection of faith in some manner impede your own ability to practice your own faith? Why is it so important that you must portray their beliefs as less worthy, or shameful vis-a-vis your own?

I have never said either of these things nor implied them.

Well, you did say their bias was shameful as opposed to your own.

The absence of what you consider faith may be just as important to some people as your faith is to you.

right back at you.

I don't know what you mean by that, but I do notice your lack of citations to back your vague accusations of prejudice on the board, as I expected. I hope you'll either come across with some evidence or withdraw that claim, unless of course, you wish us to simply take it on faith.

[Saurian Tail]

It has been implied on this board that my use of statistics to back up one of my positions is an indication that I have a non-functioning occult third eye. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that there is a prejudice on this board against people with non-functioning occult third eyes. Do you think we should start a thread about it? I mean, we really need to get this out in the open. I really believe that getting this out in the open will help those who might be unaware of their prejudice against those of us with non-functioning occult third eyes. I feel quite certain it will help them to learn empathy and be more sensitive and aware in our future interactions. Besides, it will be fun and make me feel better!

[Plutonia]

Plut!

Yes it’s me. Hello C_W.

- That first video - interesting, but really it can be flipped perfectly on its head and the same thing can be said ( I mean the VERY same thing) if you switch the words "atheist" and "believer" and "science" and "religion" ....

I'm not sure about that C_W. There is something ephemeral about the presence of the individual speaking that is essential to the meaning that is conveyed, so it would depend on who was speaking the inversion.

There is a type of brain damage that makes the people affected immune to spin:

Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and so cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, that total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, all too easily...
We recognise this with dogs, and often use them for this purpose - to pick up falsehood, or malice, or equivocal intentions, to tell us who can be trusted, who is integral, who makes sense, when we - so susceptible to words - cannot trust our own instincts.
And what dogs can do here, aphasiacs do too, and at a human and immeasurably superior level. 'One can lie with the mouth,' Nietzsche writes, 'but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.' To such a grimace, to any falsity or impropriety in bodily appearance or posture, aphasiacs are preternaturally sensitive. And if they cannot see one - this is especially true of our blind aphasiacs - they have an infallible ear for every vocal nuance, the tone, the rhythm, the cadences, the music, the subtlest modulations, inflections, intonations, which can give - or remove - verisimilitude to or from a man's voice.
In this, then, lies their power of understanding - understanding, without words, what is authentic or inauthentic. Thus it was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice, which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients. It was to these (for them) most glaring, even grotesque, incongruities and improprieties that my aphasic patients responded, undeceived and undeceivable by words.

http://www.junkfoodforthought.com/long/Sacks_Reagan.htm

That’s the point that I think is at issue. If we live in a world where our natural tendency for religious feeling is wittingly co-opted in order to sell us products and ideologies, how can we trust the faith we are experiencing? How do we discern what is real from what is not real? If we eschew critical thinking, or if our capacity to think critically is undermined by spin, then we are truly buggered. But more than this, we need to (re) learn the discernment of the aphasiacs which we probably had as children and lost. Without that we are likely to mistake the finger that points for the moon, as they say.

Let it be said first of all though that it is presumptuous in the extreme, I think, for Zinnia (above video) to claim to speak for all atheists. I would never claim to speak for all people of faith. Not even for two people of faith. I understand that it is a personal matter... it seems to me that, if atheism is a highly personal worldview that each atheist should have his/her own formulations of why they are atheist and necessarily be offended that anyone would be out there speaking for him/her. It's like the damn Pope when it gets to that point. The Pope! Atheists shouldn't have a 'spokesman.' It'd be like people who don't eat macdonalds having a spokesman.

I think that you are doing her and the atheist community a disservice by comparing her to a spokesman for people who don’t eat macdonalds C_W.

Also, there is not much, if anything, that is only “a personal matter”, but in this case since she’s public, Out, transgendered, politically engaged and a friend of Bradley Mannings, that’s particularly true.

[Canadian_watcher]

I'm not sure about that C_W. There is something ephemeral about the presence of the individual speaking that is essential to the meaning that is conveyed, so it would depend on who was speaking the inversion.

if by ephemeral you mean robotic.. But in either case I disagree. The words could be written inverted and then the question of who speaks it is moot.

There is a type of brain damage that makes the people affected immune to spin:

Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and so cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, that total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, all too easily...
We recognise this with dogs, and often use them for this purpose - to pick up falsehood, or malice, or equivocal intentions, to tell us who can be trusted, who is integral, who makes sense, when we - so susceptible to words - cannot trust our own instincts.

That’s the point that I think is at issue. If we live in a world where our natural tendency for religious feeling is wittingly co-opted in order to sell us products and ideologies, how can we trust the faith we are experiencing? How do we discern what is real from what is not real? If we eschew critical thinking, or if our capacity to think critically is undermined by spin, then we are truly buggered. But more than this, we need to (re) learn the discernment of the aphasiacs which we probably had as children and lost. Without that we are likely to mistake the finger that points for the moon, as they say.

Yes, I'd agree. That tendency to religious feeling *is* coopted, has been for .. well probably for all of recorded history. But you'd agree though that the tendency is a naturally occurring sense and before it is co-opted is as valuable as critical thinking? That really is the point I'm trying to get to here - that the bias I see (not just on RI, and not really prevalent on RI but certainly held to fiercely by a few) - is a problem if it leads one to reject inquiry that is born of a sort of faith in that which cannot be seen....

I think that you are doing her and the atheist community a disservice by comparing her to a spokesman for people who don’t eat macdonalds C_W.

well it was a clumsy comparison, granted. What I mean is that I don't belong to a club that doesn't race cars. I don't belong to an organization that gets together and discusses how we do not watch Ultimate Fighting. If you reject something you reject it, you don't have to get together and talk about it, do you? That seems foolish.

If you wanted to oppose actions taken by leaders of a faith group or of government that's one thing - sure, go do that - but to just run around and attend lectures and write books and have little meetings with other people who don't enjoy what you don't enjoy and then to go further and make the assertion that they are virtually brain damaged - that must have a deeper agenda and the agenda cannot be based on love, can it?

Also, there is not much, if anything, that is only “a personal matter”,

From some perspectives that is true. But I think my explanation, above, holds true.

[Canadian_watcher]

the bias is the shame. bias locks people away from pursuing certain paths - those paths of course are whichever are covered over by the forest of bias.

Your rejection of their point of view constitutes a bias as well.

I don't reject people who don't believe. I would not attempt to discredit a scientist or researcher with the following: "S/he's an evolutionist." I don't make up little name-calling slang against people who don't have faith.

Are you saying that your embrace of the spiritual has some intrinsic value that makes it nominally better than the lack of that embrace?

I don't know. Perhaps.

This is the crux of the matter, and is really the essence of prejudice. You think your belief system is more valuable than someone else's, when both are based upon belief in things that cannot be proved. You have faith in a spirituality you cannot prove, and those who reject such a spirituality do so on an equally unprovable footing.

I'm going to say this one more time. I think that it is unfortunate that there are people who are not able to take seriously those people who are of faith. I do not have the same issue with people who aren't of faith. Where you see me in conflict about faith is where I observe someone of faith being treated unfairly for their faith.

It seems to me that great discoveries and leaps forward are taken by people who can embrace things that are out of the realms of perceived, mainstream possibility and not by people who block their eyes and ears.

You can hardly call the embrace of faith a tendency which is in any way at all out of the mainstream. A public sign of such an embrace is, literally, a non-negotiable requirement for the position of the presidency of the United States.

I was careful in my above quote to say "embrace things that are out of the realms of perceived, mainstream possibility" because I want to amek it clear that I am not necessarily talking about religion. You, for one example, seem to have difficulty with that, usually based on keywords only: pseudo-science, quack, creationist, faith-based, etc.

Does their rejection of faith in some manner impede your own ability to practice your own faith? Why is it so important that you must portray their beliefs as less worthy, or shameful vis-a-vis your own?

I have never said either of these things nor implied them.

Well, you did say their bias was shameful as opposed to your own.

I said it is a shame that they are biased. It isn't the same thing.
If someone drops their keys down a volcano, that's a shame but it isn't shameful. See?
If someone's new puppy dies it's a shame, but not shameful.
If you get a bad haircut the day before your wedding that's a shame, not shameful.

Have I made my point yet? Stop taking this as an attack. Do you not want to see past your prejudices? You are fighting really hard to deny that you have them, using every means at your disposal - twisting my words, asking for examples you have already been given, going on the offensive. Can you not just stop for a minute and examine yourself?

... I do notice your lack of citations to back your vague accusations of prejudice on the board, as I expected. I hope you'll either come across with some evidence or withdraw that claim, unless of course, you wish us to simply take it on faith.

You really think that's a good idea? It wasn't when I did it before, in a post to sunny way back when she posted on this thread. You want me to name names and dredge up old posts from ages ago and make people feel defensive? I'm not up for it.

Perhaps I can give a shout out to a couple of others who might or might not be able to just confirm or deny for barracuda whether or not this OP has a place and a point at RI.

[American Dream]

I don't belong to an organization that gets together and discusses how we do not watch Ultimate Fighting. If you reject something you reject it, you don't have to get together and talk about it, do you? That seems foolish.

If you wanted to oppose actions taken by leaders of a faith group or of government that's one thing - sure, go do that - but to just run around and attend lectures and write books and have little meetings with other people who don't enjoy what you don't enjoy and then to go further and make the assertion that they are virtually brain damaged - that must have a deeper agenda and the agenda cannot be based on love, can it?

I don't think this is all personal- i.e. just about people who lack love and don't like people of a certain group. There is a very important institutional dimension to what is going on.

I will modify my previous statement a bit, for the sake of clarity:


I think the construction of a "militant atheists vs. spiritual people" struggle in the world reflects very little of what is actually going on right now here at Rigorous Intuition.

Like setting off the dueling nationalisms of Louis Farrakhan and David Duke against one another, there is the danger that it would actually reinforce flawed constructions of what is going on and that it will obscure as much as it reveals about what is happening in our world.

[wintler2]

It has been implied on this board that my use of statistics to back up one of my positions is an indication that I have a non-functioning occult third eye. .. I feel quite certain it will help them to learn empathy and be more sensitive and aware in our future interactions. Besides, it will be fun and make me feel better!

It better be fun, cos i wouldn't rely on the theophiliacs learning empathy with nonbelievers. The former always regard the latter as less than, subhuman even, and we all know where that leads.

[Canadian_watcher]

It has been implied on this board that my use of statistics to back up one of my positions is an indication that I have a non-functioning occult third eye. .. I feel quite certain it will help them to learn empathy and be more sensitive and aware in our future interactions. Besides, it will be fun and make me feel better!

It better be fun, cos i wouldn't rely on the theophiliacs learning empathy with nonbelievers. The former always regard the latter as less than, subhuman even, and we all know where that leads.

barracuda - here's one. It is like when you ask for evidence they give it to you ... It's happened a few times - but you don't see it.
Why not?

[Canadian_watcher]

*
For those of you embittered, angry people who cannot possibly separate out the Christian Fundamentalists in the US from other people of faith - have it your way.

I have tried to open the door to what I believe could be a helpful, illuminating discussion. There have been some great posts on this thread.

I see, however, that there are people incapable of putting down hostility. Simply incapable of letting go of defensiveness. Incapable of refraining from vitriol. Fuck those guys.

I have a feeling that the US will keep you all in its grip - divided and unhappy - right vs left, atheist vs theist, science vs religion. It doesn't have to be that way, but like I said... fuck it.

have it your way. two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun.

Go ahead - correct me. I'm pretty sure that 'have it your way' is BK or Harvey's. I'm sure the Americans will know it by heart, such as they are poisoned by their culture, unable to grab the lifeline thrown to them.

*