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
It’s an ideal, not a prediction of what most people are capable of.
Cynic
It’s the ideal that I object to!
You think evidence and logic should be set aside in favor of emotion?
Survey says emotion is the #1 answer on the Family Feud board of top reasons people continue to believe in their gods dispite the utter lack of evidence in its favor.
Can you clarify your feelings and, preferably, your thoughts on this subject?
Cynic,
I’d have to agree with What. Emotion plays (and should play) an important roll in our thought processes, and thus, our decision-making.
Certainly there are examples where making decisions on an emotional basis (i.e., positions on faith for example) produces tragic results. But by removing emotion from the process, you eliminate an important mechanism of judgment.
Thinking emotionally in certain situations (and making logic secondary) often leads to positive outcomes. For example, a fire fighter doesn’t rush into a burning building to save a family?s pet because he/she is thinking about it logically. And if I were a member of that family, I would consider that fireman a hero.
I’m not saying suspend logic in favor of emotion. I’m saying you can’t remove emotion from the process, and you shouldn’t. It plays too important a roll.
It’s difficult setting aside emotions during our thought processes, but there are times when it is necessary or prudent to do so. One should set emotions aside when punishing a child, for example, and not do so out of anger or frustration. Serving on a jury requires emotional distancing in favor of logic and reason. Even DVanW’s firefighter needs to think reasonably when entering the burning building, to ensure that s/he’s following a logical route rather than one that will only lead to disaster.
I’m actually having trouble finding an example of when emotion should be allowed to lead the way. I once went to the pound aiming to adopt a male kitten, because males were cheaper to neuter and I wanted to bond with the cat from an early age and train it as young as possible. But there was a one year old female destined for euthanasia if she wasn’t adopted very soon, and my emotional side got the better of me and I took her home, reasoning that the kittens there had a better chance than she did. (Besides, she looked straight at me and communicated to me that I was hers.) She was with me for 18 years.
Other than that, I can’t think of anything offhand.
how about an emotional leader on a football team that could inspire others to perform at thier best….go bills
could emotions lead to hysterics
Maybe I wasn’t clear. It’s emotion that drives someone to enter a burning building ? not logic. But applying logic to how one might do so, is another set of thought processes.
Karen,
I have one…when a bear sticks his head in your tent at 3am and begins dragging you out. I immediately go into reacting on fear-based emotions.
And given how often that hapens to us all, tha’s a perfect example : )
DVanW
How could I overlook the 3AM bear in the tent? I HATE it when that happens! Now that is emotion driven thought process for sure. No time to even engage bladder control. ;-D
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