The Southern Baptists are continuing their centuries long silliness–see http://www.ajc.com/living/content/living/stories/2008/09/18/gospel_magazine_pulled.htmlHere’s my take: The current fight among the Southern Baptists–who are bickering, bizarrely enough, over where or whether to display a Christian publication featuring five women pastors on the cover–demonstrates just how absurd religion gets. The angry female pastors involved are of course right to be offended at anyone objecting. But the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention are right that anyone who takes the Bible seriously should not allow women to be teaching men in churches–that’s actually what Paul commands in the New Testament. This is not a church/state issue, and the Southern Baptists will have to resolve this dilemma without any help from Atheists. But this is yet another piece of evidence that we’d all be better off without religion.Ed Buckner
I figured I’d mention it since no one seemed to be bringing that obvious example up.
I think we’re dealing with a false dichotemy here. You can’t remove emotions from the equation when you’re trying to decide what to do. That’s the mistake every TV show that’s ever tried to deal with logic has made, from Bones (damn them) to Star Trek.
Take the fireman example. What does the fireman desire? If he desires to save the familiy pet, he might run into the fire. If he doesn’t desire it, he might not. What determines what matters to him?
Not logic. That’s beyond the pervue of logic. Not because it SHOULDN’T be, but because it CAN’T be. No matter how much you analyze it, no matter how many levels you dig through, logic will NEVER supply a desire. And there are a lot of levels.
Does the hero fireman value the pet’s life over his own? Does he desire the feeling of accomplishment over his own safety? Is he just not very in touch with his values? Is he emotionally unstable, his desires unmolded and fragile?
You can try to pinpoint what you desire using logic to try to optimize it, but that’s not going to make you actual want it, right?
So this idea about “removing emotion from the process” is contradictory to reality, impossible. When it comes to the principles of freethought (as I understand them from Wiki), the idea is to temper it — especially when there’s time to reflect upon it. It’s about owning your thoughts and actions and even your emotions.
phreedm asked:
“Are you telling me that the moral foundation of atheism can be summed up by the “Golden Rule”?”
I don’t speak for all atheists. But what i am telling you is that our children were raised to treat others as you would be treated. That one concept covers all the non-god commandments. the kids all turned out great even by xtian standards.
i know it’s hard for you to accept because it seems to easy. but when religion isn’t injected into the equation the individual thinks for themselves rather than follow dogma blindly.
try it sometime if you dare or can bring yourself to.
Cynic, DVW and Karen
My objection to the phrase “should not be influenced by emotion” is at least three fold. Some of you have touched on these objections already but in my own words:
(1) Try as you may to remove emotion’s influence but you will be unsuccessful. Its like setting as an ideal the ability to simultaneously measure two noncommuting observables. It is just not going to happen.
(2) Emotions form the most fundamental propositions to which we apply logic. “I don’t want to be sad” or even “I want to be sad” are perfectly well defined propositions that can be considered in one’s application of logic. I find absolutely nothing objectionable emotions as propositions. I can’t imagine life without such propositions.
(3) We are influenced by emotion at a “subconscious” level as well. That is, we are influenced at a level where we are unable to apply logic. This has given us great survival advantage over “lesser” animals. We are able to react quickly to situations and even prime our physiology (fight or flight response) to take life-saving action because of these emotion-based responses.
Anyhow if that’s what “free thought” is about then I wont being wearing that label.
Strangely “free thought” appears to have an ideology and is therefore not all to free.
to free -> too free
EMOTION:
If you haven’t seen someone control their emotions in the face of the great turd which is Bill O’Reilly, watch Obama. You Amurcans are lucky to have such a candidate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJH2n4aFEhA
Obeah,
Where are you from?
The rethuglicans are getting really really desperate. Rush “Druggy” Limbaugh is claiming that Obama is an Arab.
Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
… and for the rest of us too thanks to the piggies.
Canadia, Ontario to be specific.
Obeah
Obama is one calm and collected dude!
Vote Obama/Biden
The rest Palin comparison
What,
Obviously Rush has never been to Kenya.
Not only is Kenya not an Arab country, he can’t even argue it’s made up of Muslims. Islam makes up about 10 percent of the religious in Kenya. Christians make up some 78 percent (divided between Catholics and Protestants). I can’t believe people listen to that guy.
They must enjoy being constantly lied to.
Why doesn’t someone throw that man in mental institution?
What
I concur with your post at 2:11. Well said.
Rush Limbaugh, is quite the comical character, but what is even funnier than his ridiculous vision of the world is that there is a real cross section of American society that tunes in religiously and hangs on his every word as though it eminated from god.
Even after he expounded his wisdom upon America that drug users should be shot, when discovered to be one of the most common type of drug addict among the affluent, abuser of perscription pain killers, his adoring public forgives him and listens on as though nothing has changed. He’s still the guiding light eminating from the intersection of god’s will and man.
NeoWolfe