
Atheism, a Computer Model - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/atheism-the-computer-model
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dropit_sphere
This sort of thing annoys the crap out of me.

Religion is a complex subject. So is atheism. Complex _enough_ , that the idea
of being able to model either of them for research purposes (as opposed to
game purposes, like in Civ IV), just seems incredibly silly.

Incorporate all of the following into your model, and it will still be
insufficient: kin altruism, war, banditry, social trust, epistemology, famine,
genetic defects, mate selection and sexual strategies, the hedonic treadmill
---and then, for _each doctrine_ , incorporate signaling, countersignaling,
hypocrisy.

Does it sound like I'm holding the model to impossible standards? Hey, I'm not
the one who titled the article, "Atheism, a computer model."

Or you can just do boring projections from current trends, but who clicks on
that?

~~~
mlhaufe
The towers of belief may be assaulted through formal systems such as Doxastic
Logic:
<[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxastic_logic>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxastic_logic>)

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awinter-py
Hmm -- the american religion is the ballot box, public school and TV. Without
commenting on their effectiveness, these things legitimize our social order.
Compare this to the ceremony identifying a pharaoh with the egyptian pantheon
-- that's what legitimized them.

If somebody watches 4 hours of TV a week and thinks without any critical
examination that public school works, that person isn't an atheist.

What these researchers are modeling in 1700 isn't the emergence of modern
ideas, it's the liberation of european academia from control of the church as
printing proliferates. Anti-authority isn't a 'modern' idea, it's just an idea
that is easy to suppress when the forces of authority control the media.

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milesf
The problem with this line of argumentation is atheism does not explain or
give reasons for the most basic questions we have as human beings. Who am I?
Why am I here? Where am I going?

Also, in the realm of morality, everything atheism purports to be true is
completely optional. We can all agree that murder is wrong, but what's to stop
an independent person from asking the logical question "who says?".
Objectively, why is murder wrong? Societies are very delicate things, and it
does not take much to spin them out of control. When chaos rises, people will
trade their freedoms for order, and there will be guns in the street. Just
look at the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

Have a look at the series "How Should We Then Live?" by the late Dr. Francis
Schaeffer. His insights into art, music, and architecture being a reflector
and record of history is fascinating.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Hr0RLHxnI&list=PLl7doUcMOr...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Hr0RLHxnI&list=PLl7doUcMOrBYczX5XwN83qg8I9iUMeCxV)

So people may very well give up their beliefs, for a time, but then the
pendulum will swing back the other way hard, and societies will be grasping at
some other explanation to answer those basic questions: who am I? why am I
here? where am I going?

This is all very well trodden territory. People chase their tails their entire
lives trying to live without God, and end up being right back where they
started at the end of their lives, just like Bertrand Russell did.

~~~
baconner
>Also, in the realm of morality, everything atheism purports to be true is
completely optional.

Well, no. Atheism does not purport anything to be true at all.

It's a lack of belief in one thing. I don't understand why that's so difficult
for religious people to understand. Atheism is not a replacement for religion.
There is no atheist rulebook, no set of beliefs, nothing.

Atheists can of course have morals but they don't derive from atheism and are
not hindered by it either. They're unrelated.

*Edit, expanding...

Your argument presupposes that the only place morals can be derived from is
religion where that the rules exist is the entire argument for why you should
follow them. God says so, end of discussion.

There are better ways to derive morals based on day to day reality. There are
better reasons not to murder than god says so.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> It's a lack of belief in one thing.

This is the biggest misconception I see amongst atheists. They think they are
rejecting one idea, so-called "God", when in fact they are rejecting 4.7
billion different ideas, without having even understood what 4.6 billion+ of
them are. They reject the God of their parents, and then extrapolate to all
the others, deeming them all "one idea".

Atheism is a hold-out of the old "single reality" idea. Ironically both
atheists and strict religious fundamentalists share that property: the belief
in one true way to understand reality, whether it's God or not-God. Rather
than a willingness to allow others to define reality on their own terms.

~~~
baconner
Oh also... This is not true of aethism either

> the belief in one true way to understand reality

Again, there are no tenants of atheism, no rules, no insistence that there's
only one way everyone should define reality. We just don't believe in God and
that's the entire thing. Some atheists may think that but I don't and it is
not atheism.

We're not in a religion, a club, or anything. I don't get to tell another
atheist they're doing it wrong because there's no affiliation between us.

~~~
posterboy
>I don't get to tell another atheist they're doing it wrong because there's no
affiliation between us.

With respect to erikpukinskis' statement, I believe you are trying to, though.

~~~
baconner
not my intent. I might tell another atheist to go read the definition of the
word which is very narrow, but i wont tell them that being an atheist means
you have to subscribe to any additional beliefs. that's my point.

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kapauldo
Atheism and religion are not peers. Religious believers should not read things
like this article or this thread, because they think its an invitation to
debate atheism as if its a peer to religion.

