Why are you are an atheist

Originally posted by moonbus
This has been explained so many times here, and the issue is so elementary, and yet certain theists still don't get it. I'll try one more time. Logic 101, ok:

"Surely you either believe that he [God] exists or you believe that he doesn't exist. So which is it?"

Here is an exact analogy: Either the present king of France is bald or he is not bald ...[text shortened]... l college and then continue this thread later on, as to why some people lack this belief.

Could you possibly present an argument for your position that does not involve "logic"?

All of these "logic" posts in this forum that go on and on about some statement p, and then not p drive me completely batty. Sorry, that's not how I approach the world. To me, the world is not abstract. To reduce serious problems to some abstract equation belittles these problems. And people do not always follow equations, no matter how "logical".

When people start explaining things to me like Spock would, they lose me pretty fast. I prefer human discussions about human problems. If your belief system requires arguments based in classical logic, then hey, prepare to be misunderstood. I'm pretty easy to understand. Just remember that I was a psych major, not a math major, and we'll get along just fine. 🙂

Originally posted by googlefudge

I see you saying No. I see you being very careful with your words so that you can later come through with your 'logical lawnmower'.

Can't really see any difference between which way you want to say it.

You really and truly need to stop trying to read between the lines and just read what people actually write.
I am not being ...[text shortened]... ue about what and how I think.
You are not even in the right solar system, let alone ball park.

Clearly (to me, anyways), the reason we disagree so much is that you perceive your opinions to be absolutely correct, all of the time, and I feel the same for my own opinions. Since there is so much dichotomy between our ideas, we both end up showing a bias for our own ideas and reject each others ideas out-of-hand. And then, since we are intelligent human beings, who get bored very easily when discussing ideas which run counter to our own (which we immediately deem to be inferior positions), we start getting cranky and develop snarky arguments which take shortcuts across what the other has said. The problem between us is that we do this arguing over the medium of an internet discussion board, with all of its inherent limitations on the ability to discern emotion. If you were here listening to my voice, you could probably learn to recognize when I start pulling your chain a little bit. Since you're not, you instantly perceive this as me "not paying attention" or "not caring one whit what you said previously". I think that aside from our dichotomous opinions on religion, we might agree on a great many things. Perhaps we just need to take a step back once in a while and realize that it's okay to just "give each other a break", so to speak, instead of constantly being on the knife's edge of being ready to instantly recognize (even if we have to make it up due to the afore-mentioned inability to discern emotion in this medium) an attack and reacting accordingly. We're human, with all of the potential and all of the failings normally associated with humans, and perhaps we just need to learn to not be quite so rough with one another, and recognize that there is common ground in there somewhere, at least most of the time.

Again now, /soapboxmode OFF. 🙂

Originally posted by googlefudge
In the interests of being equal and fair... Good post but need to work on the gendered language. Fixed it for you.

You know something? I see you are quite the champion of all this pointing out the "gendered language".

Well, as a woman, I am so used to this by now in the written word (from all sources) that I can't say that it especially bothers me, and in order to be more readily understood, I often use this same "gendered language". I have noticed you commenting on my use of it in the past, and I find that more offensive to me, a person who should be more aware of it, than its general use to begin with. Kind of like a white person calling out a black person for the black person's use of the "N-word". I mean it's not quite as annoying as that, but still faintly annoying nonetheless.

Just sayin'.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
A belief system is merely something someone believes.

Not in standard English it isn't. I believe I am going to go ice skating next Sunday. That is not a 'belief system'.

A belief system implies a collection of related beliefs that form a 'system'. It also usually refers to major beliefs regarding reality such as the belief that there is a particular type of God.

It doesn't cease to be one simply because someone else does not share that belief. Since you have admitted that you believe there is no God, is that belief not part of 'Twhiteheadism?'.
Yes, it is part of 'Twhiteheadism', but not a significant part.

Do you not use that belief to try to make sense of reality?
No, I do not.
I also believe there is no Santa Claus and no Easter Bunny and I also do not use those beliefs to make sense of reality either.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Could you possibly present an argument for your position that does not involve "logic"?

All of these "logic" posts in this forum that go on and on about some statement p, and then not p drive me completely batty. Sorry, that's not how I approach the world. To me, the world is not abstract. To reduce serious problems to some abstract equa ...[text shortened]... nd. Just remember that I was a psych major, not a math major, and we'll get along just fine. 🙂

Well first, Spock was seldom if ever actually logical or rational, hence the 'Straw Vulcan fallacy'
being a thing...
The Straw Vulcan, Julia Galef Skepticon 4
YouTube
Well worth watching.

Second, you [and this post] are a poster child for why I argue that we should have mandatory
logic and rhetoric classes from a young age right the way through until graduation.

Could you possibly present an argument for your position that does not involve "logic"?

A valid logical argument is one where if the premises are correct [and/or agreed upon] and the argument
is sound, then the conclusion must also be correct [and/or agreed upon].

An argument that isn't logical does not [by definition] have this property.
So what you are asking for are arguments that do not prove the point they are trying to make.
You are asking for intentionally bad arguments.

So the answer is always going to be no. [at least in my case, and I suspect for most people]
I am not going to make deliberately wrong arguments simply because you have an aversion to logical
reasoning.

I suspect a large part of why you don't like logic is that you know that it doesn't allow for faith based
belief... Or rather that it allows it to be proven ineffective in theory and practice... However that's just a
suspicion.

It's also something that just isn't taught, at all, at school. And as it's unintuitive that means most people
don't understand it and can't/don't use it... Which helps explain how large numbers of people fall for scams
and make really bad decisions. They don't have the tools that might protect them from those mistakes.

And people do not always follow equations, no matter how "logical".

Yes they do, and they go horribly wrong because of it.

Originally posted by Suzianne
You know something? I see you are quite the champion of all this pointing out the "gendered language".

Well, as a woman, I am so used to this by now in the written word (from all sources) that I can't say that it especially bothers me, and in order to be more readily understood, I often use this same "gendered language". I have noticed you commenting o ...[text shortened]... mean it's not quite as annoying as that, but still faintly annoying nonetheless.

Just sayin'.

That you are used to it isn't any sort of argument that it isn't wrong.

Also, while it is often sexist, most of the time it's just stupid.
If you refer to a group of people who can be of any gender using a gendered pronoun
when there is a perfectly acceptable and easy alternative is dumb. It fails equally hard
if you use she instead of he.

I've read books where they have alternated between using he and she for some kind of
balance and it was horrible, tripped my up on every other sentence... THEY works
perfectly well and nobody notices if you do it, which proves it's not a problem to do so.

Gender Neutral Pronouns: They're Here, Get Used To Them by Tom Scott
YouTube

Originally posted by Suzianne
You know something? I see you are quite the champion of all this pointing out the "gendered language".

Well, as a woman, I am so used to this by now in the written word (from all sources) that I can't say that it especially bothers me, and in order to be more readily understood, I often use this same "gendered language". I have noticed you commenting on m ...[text shortened]... I mean it's not quite as annoying as that, but still faintly annoying nonetheless.

Just sayin'.

"The state of Washington has been working for several years to change the language in its laws to gender-neutral terms. If legislation passes as expected, no longer will there be penmanship, freshmen, and watchmen. Instead, Washington will have handwriting, first-year students, and security guards.

Several other states have followed suit, with about half making moves toward gender-neutral language. Such language is often lampooned as politically correct and excessively burdensome, but research shows that language affects perceptions. Perceptions, in turn, affect behavior, and using gender-neutral language can be a meaningful move toward gender equality.

The Pervasiveness of Gendered Language
Gendered language is so common that it’s difficult for some people to even notice it. From job postings to laws, words such as policeman, councilman, mankind, and fireman abound. This omnipresence of gendered language may be part of the problem. When people stop noticing gendered language, it’s easier to think of male as the default. People who do a double-take when they see words such as policewoman or police officer may be doing so because there’s an incongruence between what their expectation of a police officer is—a male—and the possibility of a woman filling the role. The more frequently gendered language occurs, the more likely it is that people develop male as the prototype for a particular role.

This can affect a wide range of behaviors and lead to subtle biases. A company that posts a job seeking an ombudsman, for example, may envision a male in the role because of the use of gendered language. This can give women a slight disadvantage when they seek out the job because women applicants don’t completely match the hiring manager’s vision for a future employee. The person in charge of hiring may never even be aware of this subtle bias, but this doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Effects on Women
From the time they’re children, women experience an onslaught of gendered language, and this can subtly alter their perceptions of themselves. Even women report that their prototype of police officers and firefighters is male, and this may be due in part to gendered language.

Gender conditioning can affect the choices men and women make, and when women grow up learning that they’re not the ideal image of a particular role, their options are limited.

Male as Default
The use of terms such as mankind is particularly problematic because it treats men as the default. When “man” is used to refer to “all of us,” women are completely excluded, even if the term is intended to be gender-neutral. Thus, men are established as the norm against which everything is judged, and women are treated as deviant from this norm.

Real-life examples of this can be found in the long-time medical practice of using only male research subjects—a practice that has changed over the past few years.

Setting an Example
While gender-neutral language can seem frustrating and cumbersome at first, this is primarily because it’s new, not because there’s anything particularly onerous about its use. When states establish gender-neutral language, they help this language become part of the common lexicon and set an example demonstrating that gender-neutral language is just as easy to use as gendered language." http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/how-gendered-language-affects-perceptions-0209137

Originally posted by Suzianne
Clearly (to me, anyways), the reason we disagree so much is that you perceive your opinions to be absolutely correct, all of the time, and I feel the same for my own opinions. Since there is so much dichotomy between our ideas, we both end up showing a bias for our own ideas and reject each others ideas out-of-hand. And then, since we are intelligent huma ...[text shortened]... common ground in there somewhere, at least most of the time.

Again now, /soapboxmode OFF. 🙂

I certainly agree that it's very hard to get tone off of a forum post... It's nearly impossible to get it right.

But that is why I almost always tend to write posts meant to be taken literally at face value, because I
know that you can't get the tone I intend off of those posts. Which is why I get irritated with people thinking
that they can read the tone off of my posts and know what I'm thinking as I write them. Even more so when
they ignore my telling them every-time that they have got the wrong end of the stick and they keep doing it
anyway.

If you/people just deal with my posts as written and don't try to guess anything about my motivations while
writing the post then there would be far fewer problems.

And I don't think that I'm always absolutely right. [there are a few things for sure that I am convinced about
but they're a really small subset, most things I am by no means that certain and know I could always be
wrong about them] But what I am looking for is a good and valid argument as to why I am not right [if that
is what the other person is claiming]. Simple assertions that I am wrong have little to no effect and rightly so.

However I think the reason we disagree so much is our fundamentally different attitudes to logic and rationality.
It's not so much what you believe, but why you believe it that is the biggest wedge between us.
It all comes back to faith and logic and evidence.

But yes, in real life we would have far less of a problem as we do seem to agree on a large number of things
and away from a forum designed for the purpose I spend little to no time talking about religion.

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
"The state of Washington has been working for several years to change the language in its laws to gender-neutral terms. If legislation passes as expected, no longer will there be penmanship, freshmen, and watchmen. Instead, Washington will have handwriting, first-year students, and security guards.

Several other states have followed suit, with about ...[text shortened]... red language." http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/how-gendered-language-affects-perceptions-0209137

The person you're quoting seems to know what they are talking about.

You could have managed to put some words down that were your own instead of pure copy pasting.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Also, while it is often sexist, most of the time it's just stupid.

It has traditionally been part of the language. Although people nowadays may choose to go 'gender neutral', it isn't necessarily stupid not to.
I'd like to see you try that argument on European languages that have gender even more deeply embedded in the language.

Originally posted by twhitehead
It has traditionally been part of the language. Although people nowadays may choose to go 'gender neutral', it isn't necessarily stupid not to.
I'd like to see you try that argument on European languages that have gender even more deeply embedded in the language.

No it's still stupid, it's just a harder to fix stupid. [as the video I linked points out quite neatly,
it's worth watching for 5 minutes.]

There is a very easy and clear way to go gender neutral in English and considerable upsides and
no downsides to doing so.

Therefore it's stupid not to.

Originally posted by googlefudge
No it's still stupid, it's just a harder to fix stupid. [as the video I linked points out quite neatly, it's worth watching for 5 minutes.]

No, the video says that the gender part of language is stupid. It doesn't say that anyone who speaks those languages is stupid (which is essentially what you are claiming).

There is a very easy and clear way to go gender neutral in English and considerable upsides and
no downsides to doing so.
No, there isn't. There are ways to fix one or two of the gender related aspects of English, but you almost certainly cannot fix all of them without being completely misunderstood.

Therefore it's stupid not to.
Sorry, but that doesn't follow ie its a stupid conclusion.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, the video says that the gender part of language is stupid. It doesn't say that anyone who speaks those languages is stupid (which is essentially what you are claiming).

[b]There is a very easy and clear way to go gender neutral in English and considerable upsides and
no downsides to doing so.
No, there isn't. There are ways to fix one or two ...[text shortened]... Therefore it's stupid not to.
Sorry, but that doesn't follow ie its a stupid conclusion.[/b]

No, the video says that the gender part of language is stupid. It doesn't say that anyone who speaks
those languages is stupid (which is essentially what you are claiming).

I don't think that is essentially what I said, it's certainly not what I meant.

A person is not stupid for using one of the 'romance' [or other] languages that have weirdly gendered words.
The fact that the languages have genders is stupid but that's not the fault of the person speaking them.

Which is why I made the point of saying that in English there is an easy way of not using gendered pronouns
and thus no excuse not to.

The fact that there are other languages where it may be hard to impossible to correctly use them in a gender
neutral fashion says nothing about whether English speakers should use gendered language or not.

No, there isn't. There are ways to fix one or two of the gender related aspects of English, but you almost
certainly cannot fix all of them without being completely misunderstood.

I defy you to come up with a non-gender-neutral sentence [other than speaking about specific people who are of a
particular gender where you are trying to make that distinction] that I cannot easily make gender neutral while
remaining as clear or clearer than the gendered version.

Sorry, but that doesn't follow ie its a stupid conclusion.

If you have a change with no downsides and considerable upsides that is easy to make, not making that
change is pretty much by definition stupid.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Could you possibly present an argument for your position that does not involve "logic"?

All of these "logic" posts in this forum that go on and on about some statement p, and then not p drive me completely batty. Sorry, that's not how I approach the world. To me, the world is not abstract. To reduce serious problems to some abstract equa ...[text shortened]... ..
Just remember that I was a psych major, not a math major, and we'll get along just fine. 🙂

Um, psych-talk... no can do. In the immortal words of Sheldon Cooper, in answer to the question "How do you feel?" -- he said: "I'm a physicist, not a hippie!"

How about a chess metaphor; we should both relate to that:


A: Say, would you like to play a game of chess?
B: Sorry, I don't play chess.
A: Really, how does "don't play chess" go? What are the rules?
B: There aren't any rules, I don't play chess.
A: What? No rules! There have to be. How do you checkmate the king if there aren't any rules?
B: There's no king, I don't play chess.
A: Oh, I see, you have to the checkmate the No-King. So you push the No-King into a corner with the No-Queen and the No-Rook and then you checkmate him, right?
B: There's no corner, I don't play chess.
A: What, no corner? You mean, the board is round?
B: No, it's not a board at all, not round and not with corners either.
A: Can't be. There must be corners, or it's round. So which is it?
B: Neither, there's no board. I don't play chess.
A: I think you're evading the question. This "don't play chess" game is absurd. Tell me the rules again.
B: I told you, there aren't any rules, I don't play chess.
A: No rules?! So the pieces just move randomly. This "don't play chess" game is impossible! You can't win.
B: No, not randomly. There's no moves and there's no king and there's no No-King either and there's no winning or losing.
A: You say there's no king and the board's got no corners but it's not round either and you can't win. I think you're just making this game up.
B: Say, would you like a cupcake?

Originally posted by googlefudge
I don't think that is essentially what I said, it's certainly not what I meant.

But it is more or less what you said. You said that even for European languages, it is stupid not to go gender neutral.

The fact that the languages have genders is stupid but that's not the fault of the person speaking them.
Yet for English you seem to think it is the fault of the speaker.

Which is why I made the point of saying that in English there is an easy way of not using gendered pronouns
and thus no excuse not to.
There are excuses. You may not consider them good ones, but they are there. And its not as easy as you suggest.

The fact that there are other languages where it may be hard to impossible to correctly use them in a gender
neutral fashion says nothing about whether English speakers should use gendered language or not.
Only some parts of English can be used in a gender neutral way, and not always easily.

If you have a change with no downsides and considerable upsides that is easy to make, not making that
change is pretty much by definition stupid.
And its stupid to assume there are no downsides. I would also dispute that the upsides are 'considerable'.