Half an hour in

It's an important work in the field of Evolutionary Biology. The book's potency/effect is dulled by random jabs at the big G and shit, though.

And I think the meme chapter was more of a thought experiment at the time of the writing. Or that's how I read it anyway.

The Extneded Phenotype is better/has less mass appeal. My copy has tiny fucking text, though. Like size 8. Not sure what the fuck they were doing. I'd say they're both worth reading if you can get over his personality in the text.

>half an hour in
lol

>Scientist doesn't believe in ancient desert people's cult
>Shocked Enquirer reader rants on the internet about it
SHOCKING

>Bat-Boy divorces. Son confesses "I am gay"

Way to put words in his mouth.

Atheism is a belief system. Its like saying you don't like republicans and creating a new party called the anti-republicans.

It is autistic drivel in itself, reading a book about it just shows how fucking stupid the reader is.

See

>Atheism is a belief system.

Yes... you did. Get out while you still can.

Yes it is. If this is as confusing for you as you make it out to be, then you've got a long way to go in your development.

JIDF pls go

It is the absence of a belief in man made cults. It is not a faith of any sort, it is not a system, as walking is not another type of car, it is another type of transportation now lacking that system car.

Develop.

>It is the absence of a belief in man made cults.
It certainly is not that.

Many people who claim the be atheist are referring to their loss of religion. this is in the word after all (theism) though they go about their lives obeying pseudo-religions like capitalism and the like, they are free from the ancient cults.

Don't use flowery language to hide bullshit bro, the fact is there are atheistic cults and religions (cult of reason, kopimism etc). You may not want atheism itself to be a belief, but you'll just end up defining something removed from common language and understanding and most likely your own experience.

The sort of words you're looking for are lapsed, irreligious, non-religious and agnostic.

So do you think atheism and naturalism (at least methodological naturalism) are unrelated?

Do you think atheists can reject this naturalism and still call themselves atheists?

Why did Dawkins go from a biologist to a pop-science guy that makes passive aggressive tweets on the internet

Because deep down he does not understand human nature and it kills him.

A lot of it is to do with that Oxford chair his friend paid for that is now filled by Marcus de Sautoy. This atheism thing is like a mid-level financial elite thing. Him, I think Hitchens too and that de Botton guy with a few others tried to form a new university along those lines a few years back too.

Of course.

My question: do you think people are rational?

>Atheism is a belief system.

yeah in the same way that having no bananas is the same as having some bananas

jesus fuck this board is full of fucknuts

also if you don't understand the ideas he's presenting in the selfish gene, you should probably just go back to your woo special deep thoughts pop-thinkers like zizek or whatever and leave science to the clever kids

pic unrelated

lol butthurt Veeky Forumsontologist detected

So if a person rejects methodological naturalism, on what grounds do they reject spirituality?

My answer: They have a rational capability but this is a small fragment of the person.

Whats the relationship to the topic?

>on what grounds do they reject spirituality?
Which grounds would you prefer?

>My answer: They have a rational capability but this is a small fragment of the person.
What an irrational view.

People aren't rational, and can easily hold logically contradictory views at the same time; this is the least of it. This applies to me and you.

Belief in no-God is a belief, yes.

Having no bananas is having no bananas, because in the discussion we are talking about bananas.

>zero isn't a number
still a mathematic entity
>bald isn't a hairstyle
still a style
>black isn't a color
still a crayon
>apathy isn't an emotion
still a mood

you're just raising a shield of semantics between you and people you dislike, but it's nothing, it's just words, an abstraction.
rejection of one belief for another still requires systemic thought. whether you say something is or is not real requires reasoning.
you are not an atheist as a stone is atheist, you're atheism requires a conviction

So your point is simply that people don't need rationality or logic to refute God, they can just not accept it because why not?

Your a snide cunt, mate. And you're not as clever as you think you are.

Yep. Among other things.

Fair enough.

What other things?

So you personally, do you think that naturalism is a good model for the world?

Never reply to me or my posts ever again.
Literally any view you can think of. "Evil exists therefore God cannot exist", "oh well I just never really thought about that kind of thing", "I am a literal sophist and don't believe in anything but me", and good old nihilism.
Nope. What's that got to do with anything?

Solipsist fuck me.

>there are atheistic cults
There are people who have clubs, say the Masons, who wrap themselves in play cults. They could have Christian membership though.

I don't even know what you mean by "naturalism" so I'll pass.

Fallacious nonsense. An atheist who is in fact a theist isn't an atheist.
Life is the journey, the walker is the atheist, the car is religion. If your form of transport is the car, you are using a system. Walking is the absence of a system.

You're a disappointment to the species.

I'm just curious, is all. Most of the people I've met counter supernaturalism with naturalism. I am used to atheism being very strongly linked to belief in (at least methodological) naturalism.

My personal suspicion (and I'm sorry for this) is that you're lying about that lack of preference for naturalism to prove your point.

But I also take the other perspectives as possible, I just don't think they hold much weight for someone like you who has clearly spent time thinking about this sort of stuff. That is, I have not met self-described atheists who would pitch those perspectives day to day.

Masons are de facto theistic, you have to believe in a cognisant higher power. They don't accept atheists.

You just disobeyed my orders. That's the last mistake you'll make, pal...
>I don't even know what you mean by "naturalism" so I'll pass.
Kinda like positivism. TL;DR only nature exists.
Speaking of which I'd say positivism suits you more than naturalism.

Also, I'm not an atheist.
Masons are deists, IIRC.

>No one takes memetics in the scientific community seriously and Dawkins himself misunderstood it.

Not true.

Oh. Whatever.
To remake my point. There are no legitimate atheist churches, ceremony or dogma. It's not something to believe in. Its just a word for a state of being.

>TL;DR only nature exists.
So like materialism. Ones own inner thoughts exist, but that's no evidence for a soul. It's a part of nature to me.

>Masons are deists
Are they really? I know the founders of the US were, but I didn't know that was a fixture of theirs

Behead Those Who Insult The Virgin Mary

>There are no legitimate atheist churches, ceremony or dogma.
Only to the same degree there are no theistic ones. You can be a theist just by being vaguely spiritual and not having any part in organized religion, or you can join a strict religious order or whatever. Same with atheism.

>Masons are deists
To me that would still come under theist, otherwise we get a lot of weird nomenclature with gnostics and such.

>To me that would still come under theist,
Yeah.

There are cults and religions that don't have gods. Like cults to flying saucers and sects of Daoism and Buddhism.

>vaguely spiritual
>Prescribing to some form a dogma
Hm. No.

Name me two countries of the Moon, and their spoken language if you can.

Right. All of which aren't atheism.
People that fall into those are agnostic-theists, who probably see themselves as agnostic-atheists, but are wrong of course.

No

>>vaguely spiritual
>>Prescribing to some form a dogma
That's my point. Theistic doesn't necessarily entail being dogmatic, any more that atheism entails being non-dogmatic.

>Speaking of which I'd say positivism suits you more than naturalism.
>Also, I'm not an atheist.
No thanks and me neither. I don't want any ism.

Tell us more about your fascinating life philosophy, Mr. Bueller; it intrigues me.

>Not true.

True.

I'm sorry, I rather read something like "Understanding Physics" by Asimov then go through pop sci garbage like "The Selfish Gene".

No. You picked up the obly dawkins worth reading. Push ahead to the prisoner's dilemma and ultimately youll see this book isnt about his usual atheistic shpeal but a well constructed argument for altruism in an indifferent universe.

An atheist that is a theist is most definitely an atheist. But being either requires conviction. That's the point. Walking is another system of travel. The result of either the car or walking is that you travel.

>No one takes memetics in the scientific community seriously

No.
Atheists exist. The main trust of this argument is that there are none, or rather that atheism is theism under another name, not humans lack the conviction to ever do without theism, or whatever you're driving at.
>The result of either the car or walking is that you travel.
The journey=life. Walking is self-propelled, system-less

It's simple, really. I am the walrus.

>You picked up the obly dawkins worth reading.
>implying The Ancestor's Tale isn't worth reading

Explain, pls

>being this fucking dumb

Did you even read what that guy wrote? Kek

I don't know what you mean by bananas, I've never seen any what the hell are you talking about

you're nitpicking
it's not a belief system, but it is a belief
>nuh uh it's a lack of belief
which is the same as belief in a negative, an atheist believes there is no divine power

>an atheist believes there is no divine power

an intelligent atheist would ask you to qualify what exactly you're talking about

clearly there are emotional, historical, and traditional associations with divinity, every culture talks about entering altered states to contact higher beings or seeing monsters and demons

but I mean your job to qualify what you mean by divinity, is to get an atheist to experience Divinity, and after failing to find that experience in the Bible or any similiar religious texts or stories, how exactly does one do that

the fuck are you even saying?
I only said "divine power" instead of "higher power" because I thought someone would go "nuh uh I believe we live in a simulation and I worship the machines that run it because of Roko's basilisk but they're not gods so nyaah"

I'm saying its not very constructive to call atheism a belief system, there are some clear cultural associations of god or gods but if an atheist has never experienced divinity they'll reject your statements because they don't know what you're talking about, being color blind isn't a belief system, but there are people who have experienced colors they have not

No. The book's actual contribution is the idea that evolution is truly taking place at the level of individual genes and gene sequences that are in and of themselves competing for survival via their effect upon the host organism who's proteins they code. He goes well out of his way to warn off any notion of consciousness or design on the part of the genes themselves. He also points out that human perception too is a product of it's evolutionary environment and thus is inherently essentialist and thus our view of "species" as a concept is inherently warped into a collection of seemingly individual entities all of which are actually part of a branching continuum leading back to the Last Universal Common Ancestor which is probably a small, single-celled organism which is the creation of abiogensis aka the dawn of life.

The book was written in the 1970's and these ideas are largely accepted today by evolutionary scientists, you probably already believe most of them yourself but couldn't express them as concisely as he does in this book. You're reading a circa generation X biology textbook, basically.

Lots of people don't like Dawkins because he's openly a millitant atheist and deliberately tries to promote millitant atheism with the influence he has at hand. This is his "thinking about theists" face.

I wonder what would happen if Dwakins read Tempest of Shakespeare or something lol

Solid post.

you didn't even read my post, I'll post it again
>you're nitpicking
>it's not a belief system, but it is a belief

For you
>Only to the same degree there are no theistic (churches) ones. You can be a theist just by being vaguely spiritual and not having any part in organized religion, or you can join a strict religious order or whatever. Same with atheism.
>Same with atheism
No. Not only is there is no church for an atheist, there is no vaguely spiritual feeling. How did you miss that in my first response?
>Being this fucking dumb.

No, I'm atheist. Theists are nitpicking and wrongly placing me, and other atheists, back in their mental bin "theist"
>it's not a belief system, but it is a belief
A lack of belief in THEISM. The word is quite specific.
I believe as far as I care to in "atheism" in that there's a nearly 0% chance for any of the three tenants (creator, immortal soul, afterlife) but I'm not dogmatic enough to count any of them out 100%, as highly unlikely as any of it is.

So. No one can tell the names of two of the nations of the moon?

>I believe as far as I care to in "atheism" in that there's a nearly 0% chance for any of the blah blah blah
THERE WE FUCKING GO WAS THAT SO HARD

>Not only is there is no church for an atheist,
there are
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
>there is no vaguely spiritual feeling.
there is
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology

>I believe as far as I care to in "atheism" in that there's a nearly 0% chance for any of the three tenants (creator, immortal soul, afterlife) but I'm not dogmatic enough to count any of them out 100%, as highly unlikely as any of it is.
you're not an atheist, you're agnostic, verging on atheism.

it doesn't help anyone, yourself included, to move the goal posts as much as you have while arguing your point.

>half an hour in

Who the fuck counts books in time rather than pages?

people who haven't adjusted the default settings on their kindle

This made me laugh, sorry.

So because I'm not foolish enough to discount the 0.01% chance of one of the three tenants, atheism can't exist.

You dumb.

>wikipedias
This is not atheism
>[Y]ou're not an atheist, you're agnostic, verging on atheism.
I'm as far over to atheist as one can reasonably be (without taking that final foolish leap to pretending one knows there is nothing) I can go by atheist, but there are subtle levels of agnostic-atheist. The position of agnostic is a sharp fence one sits on for a few hours.
>to move the goal posts
I'm not the one moving the goal post here. I can rightly believe the sky is blue. I can start a "church of atheism" where congregants can get together and talk about Star Wars and shit. It's not a fucking faith, it's not a "spiritual experience".
I can wax poetic about Epicureanism and try to describe ataraxia or these brief bouts manufactured nostalgia I get, but they are my imagination and emotions. The notions of my former religious life have been exposed. They're gone now.
Atheism.

>This is not atheism
Aside from being an atheist, Jones was also a queer

>>zero isn't a number
Yes it is.

That's a cult same as the Jesus cult
You're arguing to call Jesus an atheist now.
Okay, I guess. Only his followers were Christians after all.
God is an atheist now.

I'm not making any statements to that effect.

You said that that there were no "atheist" churches and I simply showed you an example of that not being the case.

Jones was a marxist, and a declared atheist.

The point being that being an atheist does not preclude a belief system. In fact atheism necessitates belief as to the ontological state of the universe.

>You're arguing to call Jesus an atheist now.
No, I won't. Jesus professed his belief in God the father.

>God is an atheist now.
That would be absurd

Do you realize that North Korea is a declared Democratic People's Republic?

The point being, what's in a name?
I get it, words and idealism are squishy, but I've been quite exacting about this. Stop being so thick headed.

>Jesus professed his belief in God the father.
So his followers claimed
I bet you believe in King Arthur.

>God is an atheist now.
>That would be absurd
He requires no faith in himself. He was supposed to have come down to doll hose to experience what it was like being one of his toys. He left, not feeling too good about it as we're told.
Maybe he drank his own Cool-Aid

My point was that both the peoples temple and the DPR, as well as militant new atheism are better examples of "atheism" than your own agnosticism.

No. This is a whole new point, and it's dumb.
Pack it in, debate class kid.

>This is a whole new point

No it isn't :^)

>having no bananas is the same as having some bananas
"Having no bananas" is indeed the same as "having some bananas" in the sense that both these statements attempt to describe the number of bananas one has: zero and greater than zero, respectively. Atheism is the belief that there exists no god.

>the bible was written by ancient desert people therefore god doesn't exist

>itt: reddit refugees not understanding that atheism is a metaphysical preposition

>Doesn't understand "shoujo" means both "young woman" and "virgin"

baka baka

>It's an important work in the field of Evolutionary Biology

is NEVER an important work in the field of

>0 isn't a number

>"Having no bananas" is indeed the same as "having some bananas" . . .
FFFFFFFFFFFF N– HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA No

WRONG
> . . . ancient desert people therefore god doesn't exist
Your god is an idiot for appealing to one tribe of desert people. I mean he's failed to get his message across properly. Oh wait, your argument for that is "Mysterious ways" nm then.
HAHAHAH

>Veeky Forums is the """intelligent""" board
lollling hard @ this thread tbqh desu

Bananas do indeed exist, so the comparison seems a little too sophisticated for you to grasp.
Let me restate it.
The theist has a purple thorny Mananana. (A fruit grown on one of the nations of the Moon that no one can name for me) The atheist, poor thing, has none.