Ethics of religious discussions?

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Certainly. Obviously I am not referring to posters who avoid it and don't have much at all to say about it. I am referring to certain users who actively argue here about topics of interest that have importance *besides* religious implications and complaining when people point this out by arguing back...

The problem is many theists see disagreement as disrespect since apparently the belief system is all encompassing and should not be questioned. No matter how polite I am it does not change that many of the fundamentalist theists take the fact that a person is an atheist or apatheist as a personal insult and thus all following interactions will likely be done in the manner according to such prejudice.

Here is how I see the issue;

If a theist were to create a thread in PPR that did not make illogical, false claims...then they would not be attacked by nearly as many atheists.

The problem is the approach.

An open discussion about "what is, or is not" is fair game, and deservers to be critiqued by any and all rational minds.

However, discussions about how something from a book is interpreted or comparing of mythologies and their symbolic messages etc. That should not really be debated on a fact or fiction angle, and generally won’t be.


Religious folk really should learn to differentiate fact from belief, and most of this problem would be solved for them. If they choose to discuss beliefs as facts, they deserve what they get.

Last edited by NarcissusSavage on 10 Feb 2012, 4:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

I agree with that.

So what you're saying is that as long as a Deist/Theist accepts Scientific THEORY as some sort of sacred, untouchable, self-evident truth, then that's fine but otherwise ripping them apart is the acceptable thing to do? how exactly is this any different than what atheists accuse religious fundies of doing?

You should at least understand what science is (Scientific Theory? What? lol) before accusing it of being "sacred and untouchable". If you actually knew anything about science you would know that "untouchable" is not part of a scientist's lexicon. Religion is what does not change or attempt to find the truth

Last edited by Vigilans on 10 Feb 2012, 4:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I thought Buddhism is essentially an atheistic religion, so I do not understand why you would be picked on by atheists for your religion as you are not a theist.

Anyways, are there not other fora on WP where people may express belief in unsubstantiated and irrational things without fear of futile debate?

Here you go Cleekster - this might help a little:

what i mean't by theory is that it's the best explanation we can come up with that works with what we consider evidence......but subject to change in the future. based on additional evidence that may present itself.. I find however that many Atheists consider these theories as if they were absolute fact and any interpretation other than their own is delusional.....and dealt with in the most condescending way possible.

thanks.....what they call a principle i call a theory....my bad

Quoted for truth. I view Buddhism more as a life philosophy with spiritual elements than a religion. I don't think there is a lot that Buddhists and (other) atheists would disagree on.

that new theory however has to hold up to the same standards and usually the same effects as the previous one though,
meaning that some things would be very very hard to fit into any valid theory.

I understand where TallyMan is coming from, but I think that this might be difficult to achieve in a forum that is home to all kinds of religious and non-religious people. I have seen the other side too: Threads that were targeted at atheists and agnostics (such as the "what turned you" thread) draw comments like "atheism is stupid / arrogant / close-minded". I think that's in the nature of a mixed forum.

If we had theist or spiritist only threads, we would also need threads for conservatives or liberals to share and bond in without involvement of the political opposition. Doesn't that kind of miss the point of having a place for political and religious debates?

Last edited by CrazyCatLord on 10 Feb 2012, 5:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Yep

true....unless of course it proves the original theory wrong and gives a sufficient new explanation that works better.

anyway back on topic:

Long post sorry, but read it if you want to know why debate falls to this level.

When I say the word debate I mean 'debate' and not 'unquestioned verbal diarrhoea'.

I spent many, many patient years explaining carefully and respectfully the evidence for evolution and getting nowhere. The modern christian that is arguing for creationism has rejected all sense of rationalism and reason and resorts to tactics that should have gotten them thrown out of school at six years old.

For example words have definitions, for two people to communicate effectively they have to understand the definition and the meaning of the words that each person is using.

Unfortunately the religious will decide to substitute their own definitions for words in place of the accepted and argue their case from that position. When you knock that position down instead of accepting defeat they simply redefine the word to mean something else and carry on the argument. Or they will decide to simply invent a new word with exact same definition as the old word claiming that this new word is completely different.

For example, 'creationism' was ruled to be religious dogma and not science in court. So the religious open up creationist textbooks, use a word processor to find and replace the word 'creation' with 'intelligent design' and hit save. So now we start the exact same debate with the exact same arguments all over again. This was demonstrated in court in the Dover case. They were too lazy even to proofread their own textbooks so all the misspelt instances of the word creation still appeared in the intelligent design textbooks because the find and replace function had skipped over them.

The other problem is that the religious are mentally incapable of distinguishing between belief and evidence. They have redefined the word belief to mean evidence and the word evidence to mean lies.


Because of this threads usually progress along these lines:

A: The moon does not exist, there is a giant whale in the sky called Bob.
B: Really? How do you know this?
A: The cat told me.
B: What cat?
A: The cat in my head.
B: Come and look outside, you can see the moon right now but I can't see any whales.
A: No.
B: Why not?
A: Because the dogs will eat me.
B: What dogs?
A: The cat says there are dogs outside and they will eat me.
B: There aren't any dogs outside and you won't be eaten, look I'm standing outside and I'm not being eaten.
A: No you aren't.
B: Yes I am.
A: No you aren't. The cat says if you were outside the dogs would eat you so you aren't outside.
B: Ok, you won't go outside, lets try something else. Here I've just spent several weeks gathering up thousands of hours of video, documents and historical records from the last 3000 years detailing everything you want to know about the moon, in addition 3 astronauts that have stood on the moon have agreed to come and talk to you.
A: No you haven't.
B: Yes I have.
A: The pigeon says you haven't.
B: What pigeon?
A: The pigeon that lives in my head. The pigeon says the cat is right. That definitely proves the moon doesn't exist.
B: You are a f*****g idiot.
A: WAAHHHHH! You are mocking me! Bob will smite you!

After thousands of iterations this exchange simply gets whittled down to:

A: The moon does not exist
B: You are a f*****g idiot
A: WAAHHHHH! You are mocking me!





If the mods are getting annoyed with this level of exchange, I suggest you look up some formal debating rules and then enforce them rigorously on PPR. Until the religious actually agree to have a 'debate' instead of simply regurgitating crap, the result is only ever going to be the same.

Honestly, I don't see what the problem with that would be. If there was a Libertarian thread, I think I would like reading it very much, because I'm somewhat interested in it, but I know very little about it. It's not like it would stop debate outside that thread.