Anti-Humanism Thread

[Hospes fori]

Oh, well, since we're just going with "faith", I say screw all this Christian stuff. Hmm, let's see. Hinduism. Yes, that's a good one. Let's go with that. I mean, surely if the Christians are right about there being one good, the Hindus could be just as right about there being many gods, yes? It requires only as much faith to believe in multiple gods as it does in one god.

HAIL HINDUISM!

I doubt faith is measurable in any way. Some people just have a stronger confidence in certain things than others. As I already explained, the kind of faith is unimportant regarding its justification. Either a perception can be logically reasoned or not and faith is per definition not logically justifiable. Monotheism is equally justifiable as polytheism or Christianity with its trinity between them. However I have to disappoint you. You can not become a Hindu, because you would otherwise contradict your faith, since they believe people to be born as Hindus or not. As long as you are not a Hindu by birth you can not become one.

"faith is the denial of observation so that belief may be preserved"

Faith itself has nothing to do with observation. Certain observations can support or weaken the faith in certain things, but likewise people can also believe in things, which contradict some observations. However we all have to rely on faith in cases, when observation is not possible. Alternatively we can just ignore these cases. For instance agnostics ignore divinity, because they can not observe it. Atheists and theists on the contrary deal with it, although they can not observe it.

If an atheist has no evidence that there is a god, then the default conclusion is that there is no god, yes?

No. The conclusion of not having evidence for any divinity is that nobody can know if there is one or not. It is like with Schrödinger's cat. Before you open the chamber you have no evidence that the cat is dead, but that does not necessarily mean that the cat is still alive.

An atheist who does not deny the observation that there is no evidence for god is then not using faith.

He is not using faith as long as he does not consider the non-existence of god to be certain, which would in turn render it impossible for him to be an atheist.

In this case the evidence rather than the faith is used to preserve the belief.

For the stated reasons what you call "evidence" here is in fact no evidence. It is just evidence for mankind's limited ability of understanding the world.

 

[FrisianDude]

my point was that an atheist's belief of there being no god is different from a theist's belief that there is one.
A theist believes there is one despite there being no conclusive evidence to suggest so.
An atheist believes there is none because there is no conclusive evidence to suggest there is one.

 

[Pharaoh Llandy]

I doubt faith is measurable in any way.

That is what makes it "faith" and not "science". Science is measurable. For example, age of the Earth. Established by carbon- and radiometric- dating. If somebody has "faith" in, for example, the bible, then they cannot also believe that science is correct, because the bible says one thing, and science indicates another.

Some people just have a stronger confidence in certain things than others.

Again, this would be the difference between faith and science. The difference is that religious people are going off the assumption that what was written down thousands of years ago is correct even today, and that what was said and done really was said and done and not just made up by somebody with too much time on his hands, and scientists are going off the assumption that their instruments are giving correct readings and that their interpretation of data, when re-interpreted by others, is correct.

"God is watching me" is a statement of faith.
"Gravity makes me fall if I jump" is a statement of scientific fact, because gravity is a measurable force, whereas god is not.

Monotheism is equally justifiable as polytheism or Christianity with its trinity between them.

No it isn't. In the bible, God says something along the lines of being the one true god, and people shouldn't worship false idols, blah blah blah. By their logic, anybody who is not worshipping God, either by worshipping no god, the wrong god, or multiple gods, is sinning.

If the bible is that absolute, how can polytheism be reconciled with it? If we use the scientific principle called Parsimony, then we can deduce that one of the following things must be true:

* There is only one god, who created everything in the known universe. He likes to masquerade as other gods for the fun of it. Polytheists are wrong.
* There are many gods, and monotheists are wrong.
* There are no gods, and the universe works according to the laws of physics.

Secondly, it would probably help the position of religious people if they could all agree on how to interpret the will of their respective gods. God wants people to blow up infidels. God wants everyone to live in peace. God hates homosexuals. God doesn't mind homosexuals. Even in Christianity, the different factions are split on how God wants to get things done.

However I have to disappoint you. You can not become a Hindu, because you would otherwise contradict your faith, since they believe people to be born as Hindus or not. As long as you are not a Hindu by birth you can not become one.

I was being facetious. I have no intention of switching faith. Hinduism was merely one of the most prevalent forms of polytheism in modern society.

 

[Nahkuri]

I don't suck, so I must be of a different species.

****ing chinaman

 

[Argeus the Paladin]

I saw the topic of conversation switching from anti-humanism to theism, and I immediately thought Jhess would have posted somewhere. I was not disappointed.

Seriously though, back to the discussion about dinosaurs vs. human in the last few pages, the length of time dinosaurs reigned supreme is irrelevant as far as dominance and survival as a species is concerned. What dinosaur lacked and humans have is the flexibility to adapt nearly perfectly to any living condition and alter the earth to accommodate that. Hence dinosaurs died out when the world becomes uninhabitable for them, while humans... let's just say the Earth can be long gone, and we can still survive as a species depending on how far our space programs have gone.

This is progress.

 

[Untitled.]

Science and religion have nothing to do with each other. They are (as of yet) completely compatible with each other.

Depends. If the religious person in question is one of those crazy "the bible is 100% right and the Earth is only a few thousand years old" people, then they very incompatible.

Ironically enough, that is false. The problem appears when people interpret a religious text in one way and science in another way. The religion in question and science don't contradict each other. People's perceptions do.

The faith of atheists says that there is no god. But that science is not able to supply evidence for the existence of any divinity is not automatically evidence against its existence. Hence they need to rely on faith to reason their perception.

Edit: Both convictions, that a divinity does exist and that it does not exist, are absolute and every absolute opinion finally relies on faith.

Oh, well, since we're just going with "faith", I say screw all this Christian stuff. Hmm, let's see. Hinduism. Yes, that's a good one. Let's go with that. I mean, surely if the Christians are right about there being one good, the Hindus could be just as right about there being many gods, yes? It requires only as much faith to believe in multiple gods as it does in one god.

HAIL HINDUISM!

As a matter of fact there are both monotheistic and polytheistic Hindus, and some Hindus don't even think it's a religion (defining religions is hard >.>). But yes, in essence we cannot know if there is one God or several. Some people simply choose to believe, others choose not to.

That is what makes it "faith" and not "science". Science is measurable. For example, age of the Earth. Established by carbon- and radiometric- dating. If somebody has "faith" in, for example, the bible, then they cannot also believe that science is correct, because the bible says one thing, and science indicates another.

This is assuming science describes the truth, which we cannot know. We only believe to know something. Aside from that, scientific views often change over time. The only difference between believing in a religion that contradicts science and believing in 'scientific facts' is that a person thinks the explanation proposed by the religion is a better one. Most people tend to think the scientific explanation is a better one, and if they assume religion and science are incompatible, or if they are closed-minded in general they will end up as atheists.

 

[Pharaoh Llandy]

What dinosaur lacked and humans have is the flexibility to adapt nearly perfectly to any living condition and alter the earth to accommodate that.

They were hit by a giant meteor (the K-T event). 70% of life on Earth was wiped out. No amount of flexibility can help you with that.

let's just say the Earth can be long gone, and we can still survive as a species depending on how far our space programs have gone.

No argument there. But life in space is pretty precarious, even when you are on a planet. It's full of interesting meteors and solar flares and random things which aren't all that good for the continuation of life. Granted, humanity has a far, far better chance of making it out of the solar system in manned spacecraft than any other species on the planet so far.

 

[Nahkuri]

An atheist believes there is none because there is no conclusive evidence to suggest there is one.

I'd say Atheist doesn't believe there is a god. Instead of believing there isn't god. You know, the whole lack of faith thing. Yes, I just joined the discussion to be a nitpicky idiot.

Atheism is a belief just as much as not collecting stamps is a hobby.

 

[Argeus the Paladin]

What dinosaur lacked and humans have is the flexibility to adapt nearly perfectly to any living condition and alter the earth to accommodate that.

They were hit by a giant meteor (the K-T event). 70% of life on Earth was wiped out. No amount of flexibility can help you with that.

let's just say the Earth can be long gone, and we can still survive as a species depending on how far our space programs have gone.

No argument there. But life in space is pretty precarious, even when you are on a planet. It's full of interesting meteors and solar flares and random things which aren't all that good for the continuation of life. Granted, humanity has a far, far better chance of making it out of the solar system in manned spacecraft than any other species on the planet so far.

Given a few decades of development and NASA or whatever becomes of them could, IMO, start to accurately predict when meteors are bound to crash on Earth, and then every nation in the world could turn their entire nuclear arsenal into the sky and blew the bastard off orbit. CRISIS AVERTED.

While humans can hope with no small possibility that can happen, dinosaurs never could do that, unfortunately.

 

[Dusk Voyager]

And typing human ingenuity gives me an angle to argue from here; I'm going to argue that humans CAN be better than animals simply because humans can put themselves partially outside of

the way 'nature' works

It could be said if we can 'fight' the nature, that means it lets us.

simply because humans can make sure there is no equal trade-off between gaining an advantage and gaining a disadvantage as you presented with the sickle-cells.  Humans can guide the evolution of humans.

Animals can be cross-bred, but they can also do it themselves while choosing their mates. Even though they don't consciously have long-term goals, they end up doing it with their momentary instincts, but not 'by accident' or 'for no reason'.

Another problem this anti-humanist codswallop presents is that it pretends that because humans are animals they can't be cool. Idiocy, of course, animals can easily be cool and there is nothing which prevents humans from being cool.

That does not exactly appear to be an entirely new perception. At least every secular person agrees that humans are first of all a faunal specie amongst others. What else could humans be? They consist of the same materials like other animals and developed in the course of evolution as well.

IMO it's one thing to acknowledge that for all our intelligence we're animals and whatever it covers, but another to just make similarity out to be 'sameness', on top of that calling it a gilded new name. I believe in the convenient similarity in difference in these kinds of cases, where it's all philosophical, even rhetorical and analogies or examples can be used both ways to argue X is similar/identical/equal or different/unequal to Y in general.

 

[Arzeal]

@Llandy: we are not strongest, fastest, top of the food chain animal but we are the ones who survived and adapted to the current environment on earth.

Are you kidding me? Humanity has been 'dominant' for less than ten thousand years. Do you know how many millions of years the dinosaurs were dominant for? In another 3 million years, some dominant avian species parent is going to look back and say to their nest of avian kids "Let that be a lesson to you. We don't want to go the way of the mammals."

"current" AND "survived and adapted"
NOT "dominant for X years".
Did you even read the part you quoted?
Btw, I didn't see any dinosaurs walking around lately, or any "dominant avian species" arguing on the Internet, or hoarding enough Atomic-bombs to fvck up the Earth several times.

 

[Sound Chaser]

I'd say Atheist doesn't believe there is a god. Instead of believing there isn't god. You know, the whole lack of faith thing. Yes, I just joined the discussion to be a nitpicky idiot.

Atheism is a belief just as much as not collecting stamps is a hobby.

In other word, atheist think they have no reason to believe there could be one. Good point. If we assume that atheists think according to some kind of scientific logic or reasoning, they may simply ditch the idea of a religion as irrelevant because it's lacking in evidence at the moment. I think this is a matter that divides atheists into different schools of thought, though.

I don't suck, so I must be of a different species.

****ing chinaman

**** you, sucky caucasian.

 

[Hospes fori]

my point was that an atheist's belief of there being no god is different from a theist's belief that there is one.

Objectively treated their beliefs do not differ in principle. I have tried to illustrate it with the reference to Schrödinger’s cat, but let me use another example. If you open the door to an absolutely dark room and look inside, it is equally reasonable to think that somebody is inside it as well as that nobody is inside it, since the only information you have about the room is that it is dark.

A theist believes there is one despite there being no conclusive evidence to suggest so.
An atheist believes there is none because there is no conclusive evidence to suggest there is one.

Let me paraphrase these sentences:
A theist believes there is one because there being no conclusive evidence not to suggest it.
An atheist believes there is none despite there is no conclusive evidence not to suggest there is one.

All these statements are equally reasonable.

That is what makes it "faith" and not "science". Science is measurable. For example, age of the Earth. Established by carbon- and radiometric- dating. If somebody has "faith" in, for example, the bible, then they cannot also believe that science is correct, because the bible says one thing, and science indicates another.

First of all, I know the difference between faith and science, but you are discussing religiosity now and not faith itself. One has to watch out for generalisations. Although every religious person is a theist, not every theist is a religious person. There is a huge difference between merely regarding the existence of a divinity to be true and believing in one certain divinity. Science can proof certain religious beliefs to be false, but it can not proof the belief in a divinity itself to be false.

All in all you are discussing religion vs. science and not faith vs. science as I did. Therefore your statements do not contradict what I said.

Monotheism is equally justifiable as polytheism or Christianity with its trinity between them.

No it isn't. In the bible, God says something along the lines of being the one true god, and people shouldn't worship false idols, blah blah blah. By their logic, anybody who is not worshipping God, either by worshipping no god, the wrong god, or multiple gods, is sinning.

I have never claimed that monotheism and polytheism would be compatible. What I have tried to say is that it is equally reasonable to believe in monotheism as well as in polytheism, since they are both based on faith, which can never be logically justified. All religious orientations are equally logic, in being basically unlogic.

I was being facetious. I have no intention of switching faith. Hinduism was merely one of the most prevalent forms of polytheism in modern society.

I already assumed your statement to be sarcastic, but nevertheless we should always try to draw on suitable examples to illustrate our points.

 

[Jhessail]

I can assure you, I am not a retard.

No, apparently you're a smug, semantic-wrangling agnostic. Again, the logic is not the same. Religious person believes in supernatural without or even against evidence, this requires faith. Atheist does not believe in supernatural because there is no evidence to support their existence. They are polar opposites. Your examples are also tortured and not really about current situation either. To continue using your last one, it would go like this:

Person A says that in a dark room, there is a person. A describes this person and what it does in great detail. Person B is not convinced. Person B mimics all the stuff Person A has described that the DarkRoomPerson is doing and finds out that this produces sound. However, as long as Person B has been standing outside the Dark Room, no sounds have been heard.

It's still a ****ty example and not descriptive enough of the current situation but already much better than what you came up, since, for some reason, you have a hardon for trying to paint atheists and religious people with the same paint brush. Too  bad you have to use lies and misconjecture to achieve that.

Ironically enough, that is false. The problem appears when people interpret a religious text in one way and science in another way. The religion in question and science don't contradict each other. People's perceptions do.

I cut off all the rest of your mumbling because you're just repeating your same inane "argument". No, it's not about people's perceptions and no, we don't have to wonder whether SCIENCE!!! is telling us the TRUTH!!!

Must be Sunday, religious apologists crawling out of the woodwork after attending sermon or something.

As for dinosaurs, the fact is that we are already capable of averting a extinction-level event if we want to. Sure, a wandering black hole will still wipe us out but a K-T style asteroid we could prevent. That takes us a level beyond the dinosaurs, no matter how many million years they were the dominant species on Earth.

 

[Almalexia]

Also I believe our capability of initiating an apocalyptic extinction level event ourselves puts us a leg up above any species that ever came before us.

 

[Ludial]

And how about the following view:
Humans are a swarm of filthy omnivores who can settle into any environment, destroy anything that gets in their way, enslave any plant and animal useful to them and be even more debased if they wish to (plus building all those gadgets). But...
The above qualities, which put our species pretty close to an intelligent virus/tumor in practice, are exactly what makes our species strong and capable of expansion beyond the boundaries of the planet. Not to mention surviving all but the most devastating of cataclysms. So basically we're as bad as we can be, but we should keep doing it because that's what defines us and helps us survive as a species. Regardless of what them pesky hippies say  Now, if we could only stop wasting our time and resources with virtual realities and bubble economies and actually put some serious effort into colonising Mars...

As for the whole religious argument - I'm a pastafarian, discordian, agnostic and slowly converting to Buddhism. Nuff said 

 

[Pharaoh Llandy]

@Llandy: we are not strongest, fastest, top of the food chain animal but we are the ones who survived and adapted to the current environment on earth.

Are you kidding me? Humanity has been 'dominant' for less than ten thousand years. Do you know how many millions of years the dinosaurs were dominant for? In another 3 million years, some dominant avian species parent is going to look back and say to their nest of avian kids "Let that be a lesson to you. We don't want to go the way of the mammals."

"current" AND "survived and adapted"
NOT "dominant for X years".
Did you even read the part you quoted?

'Current' doesn't really mean jack **** in terms of 'top of the food chain'. A species' success can only be measured by looking back and comparing its progress to that of its ancestors. Birds, for example, doing very well. The dodo specifically? Not so great. Reptiles, meanwhile, are doing brilliantly; ancestral crocodiles were already doing quite well for themselves even when the dinosaurs were dominant. Mammals didn't really come into their own until the K-T event, when a niche opened up after the dinosaur extinction. And of the mammals that have existed, some have done better than others.

Horses, for example, have diversified, evolving from small multiple-toed ungulates of forest, to the large hoofed equines of plains we have today. The woolly mammoth and cave-lion, on the other hand, although they were at the top of their individual chains for thousands of years, lost out during the last glacial thaw.

It isn't really fair to say that "we adapted to the current environment on Earth" because that implies that the Earth is sedentary, and fixed into a predetermined model. It isn't, it's constantly changing. Some of those changes are relatively swift (global warming, desertification of sub-Saharan Africa) and others take longer (continental drift and the creation of new crust). Some things can be influenced by us (environmental impacts of deforestation and urban sprawl) whilst other things can't be (Milankovitch cycles and solar activity).

The best we as humans can do is attempt to predict the effects of our actions and try to tailor them to improve our own position, but quite often it's guess-work at best.

Btw, I didn't see any dinosaurs walking around lately

That's because they're dead, Jim.

or any "dominant avian species" arguing on the Internet, or hoarding enough Atomic-bombs to fvck up the Earth several times.

"In another 3 million years", I said. Or didn't you read the part you quoted?

 

[Pharaoh Llandy]

One has to watch out for generalisations. Although every religious person is a theist, not every theist is a religious person.

That in itself is a generalisation. Every religious person is not a theist. Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism are three religious which are not inherently focused upon a deity, thus negating you 'theist' approach to religion. There are also various different forms of ancestor-worship (similar to Confuc) and spirit-worship which do not involve deities, and yet these people would probably still call themselves religious (although I prefer the term 'spiritual', as I feel it separates me from the monotheist nutcases).

 

[Ludial]

@Hospes fori:
NOT all religious people are theists, dude. you just dismissed one of the world's leading religions as not being a religion. check your definitions.

personally, I think it all comes down to what an individual is ready to believe in. people who believe in science do so based on the plausible and fact/experiment based evidence science provides. people who believe in Yahve (or any other god) do so based on what some goat herder/fisherman/onion farmer/expert manipulator/deluded scribe wrote several thousand years ago. for me at least, it's clear which way I want to go and that doesn't stop me from having religious inclinations. despite disregarding divinity.

 

[Duh]

So, given that we are basically animals on Earth and our collective actions continue to, sadly, wreak more environmental havoc than any other species… why do we think we have the right to persecute and deal out blanket death sentences to introduced/unwanted animals and plants (aka pest species)? By definition, humans are a pest species. I would argue that those animals and plants have consciousness, a right to life and a part to play in this new ecology just as we do. There is no doubt that humans have brought about irrevocable ecological change. But all is not lost. Let’s get our act together first and trust that nature is an intelligent, dynamic, self-regulating system that will find a new balance with our compassionate support.

For the same reason, that you are able to claim any rights or apply labels such as right or wrong to any given action. We think we have a right, because we created the concepts of having rights. If you want to break it down to every living creature being the same and view things from a detached perspective, then there is neither right or wrong. It doesnt matter how much havoc we wreak, who lives or dies, there are no rights (be it to life or anything else).

Viewing the question from a human perspective, makes it fairly easy to see why we would value ourselves more than other beings and why we give ourselves the right to inflict harm upon other parts of nature. Its an advantage for us and that is what matters in the struggle for survival. Of course it becomes more difficult to determine which behavior is (the most) advantageous with our growing influence on the rest of the natural system, but we will, in the vast majority of cases, decide for things that we believe to be advantegous (either short or long term) for us - that is our nature.

in short "Anti-Humanism is the belief that we are just like animals. Only through technology do we excel past the rest of the animal kingdom."

One could reasonably argue that the further developed mental capabilities of human beings are what distinguishes them from other animals the most. Since technology is only a consequence of it and would be useless without the means to utilize it.

y'know who I hate? ... Humans

haha yeah we suck dont we ? 

You so edgy.