1 2 3
#1392319
Often Partisan
"Being an atheist, like being a sociopath, is a defective mutation of the genes human beings use to recognize meaning in life."
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." ~ Karl Marx
No Gods Required, bitch. You lose.
4/14/2012 3:28:51 AM
#1392328
Frelus
Atheists: People who do not believe in any deities.
You mistook us with fundies, dude.
4/14/2012 4:14:24 AM
#1392331
Pule Thamex
Hark! Heed ye the portentous words of John C. Wright as his stentorian proclamations tell it like it's not.
See how he manfully shrugs aside his debilitating "Jesus Jaundice", see how he makes light of his crippling "Pinocchio Nose", how he stoically overcomes his "Mendacity Complex" and heroically masters his "Delusionitis". All this ignoble blather and vigorous ineptitude in his desperate search for untruths and in his intense struggle to preserve the base idiocy of his drooling ignorance.
O! How we laud thy paternalistic magnificence thou staunch teller of driveling nonsense.
4/14/2012 4:21:55 AM
#1392361
Argle Bargle
All I could take from this is that he doesn't like atheists very much.
Also, I like how being bookish is a bad thing. Anti-intellectualism much?
4/14/2012 5:46:43 AM
#1392405
Flah
There's a reason that sociobiologists would never say something like that. Because they actually have to know the basics of history before getting those letters after their names.
My favourite part of this is coining "Dawkins Syndrome", and then using a concept that Dawkins actually came up with as its justification.
4/14/2012 8:51:50 AM
#1392437
farpadokly
Do human beings use genes to recognize meaning in life? Or do they use myths, stories, art, religions? "Robbed of this basic faculty of thought" What faculty? Imagination? Story-telling? Mythologising? Explaining things?
For most of the time man has existed, he was a hunter-gatherer, as you helpfully point out, and probably had some sort of animistic nature religion with shamans and that. From that developed polytheism and from that, monotheism. These can be seen as pre-scientific attempts to understand the world.
4/14/2012 10:35:39 AM
#1392438
farpadokly
There were atheists in ancient Greece and there have been ever since. In Europe, this was not openly expressed because you could often be severely punished for apostasy and heresy. In England you could be fined for not going to church. As recently as 1697, here in Scotland, a man was executed for blasphemy, specifically denying the truth of the Bible. It wouldn't have been that different in the Catholic countries. Da Vinci, for instance, had to keep all his researches secret and write in a secret hand, for fear of persecution. Vasari says that Perugino, the master of Raphael, was basically a secret atheist, and certainly his paintings look very insincere.
Since the eighteenth century, atheism in philosophy and art has grown more and more widespread until it is now almost the rule, for every very good historical reason you can think of.
4/14/2012 10:36:52 AM
#1392439
farpadokly
Did Russia and China kill all those people because of atheism, or did they kill all those people because of paranoiac authoritarian communism, in a desperate bid to cling on to power and root out "counter-revolutionaries" because perpetually in conflict with the West? Did they not just replace the old religion with a new, barely different one?
What opportunity or motive would the modern "New atheist", who likes a bit of Dawkins, have for genocide?
4/14/2012 10:37:48 AM
#1392484
Ebon
Lots of words that basically just convey that you're pissed at people smarter than you.
4/14/2012 12:33:43 PM
#1392495
Old Viking
John C. doubtless believes that he is known, valued and loved by the creator of the universe. Atheists entertain "paranoid fantasies of superiority."
4/14/2012 1:08:30 PM
#1392505
aaa
Man, i don't think you even know what the fuck you are talking about.
4/14/2012 1:32:06 PM
#1392558
MadcatTLX
It appears the Mythbusters were wrong when they said it wasn't possible to build a mirror big and shiny enough to be used as a fucking death ray. (Archimedes death ray myth)
4/14/2012 3:30:36 PM
#1392560
Osiris
Of course they are never going to say that because it's kind of not true at all.
4/14/2012 3:43:36 PM
#1392574
Mister Spak
Just for the sake of contrast I'd like to see a fundie say something along the lines of " Being a theist, like Downs syndrome, is a defective mutation of the genes human beings use to be intelligent and control themselves.
"“The fact that no civilization and no tribe in the history of the world has been atheist, except for a very few malign Twentieth Century regimes of unparalleled savagery and bloodshed, "
You might want to compare Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to your Atheist regimes "unparalleled savagery and bloodshed". You'll see that the theist regimes beat them by an order of magnitude.
4/14/2012 4:32:56 PM
#1392590
Agahnim
You're a denialist. Do not pass go.
4/14/2012 5:50:03 PM
#1392603
demodocos
No atheist tribal cultures, eh?
"A riveting and hugely satisfying report on BBC Radio 4 today tells the story of a missionary who was charged by an American missionary group with taking the Gospel to the little understood Pirahàs tribe in the Amazon – only to realise how ridiculous his faith in Christianity was.
Daniel Everett, 57, a linguist in the Departmental Chair of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Illinois State University, told presenter John McCarthy on the Excess Baggage programme, that he had travelled to the Amazon in the 70s to bring the tribe “the joy of faith” only to discover that they were a deeply contented people. In fact they seemed far better contented than he was.
Tribe members asked the missionary whether he had seen or experienced any of the things he was telling them about. He had to admit that he hadn’t; that he was simply passing things onto them that were told to him by people who hadn’t seen or experienced them either.
The Pirahàs, he said, “believed that the world was as it had always been, and that there was no supreme deity”. Furthermore they had no creation myths in their culture. In short, here was a people who were more than happy to live their lives “without God, religion or any political authority”.
Despite Everett translating the Book of Luke into Pirahà and reading it to tribe members, the Pirahàs sensibly resisted all his attempts to convert them."
http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/
Fact is, most indigenous people follow an archaic system of beliefs populated by shamans and spirits, but no gods.
4/14/2012 9:26:40 PM
#1392604
Blue the Thief
@demodocos
4/14/2012 9:36:27 PM
#1392606
demodocos
oops, double post
4/14/2012 11:04:39 PM
#1392614
myheadhurts
wait... I thought people who studied the bible were bookish... and I know plenty of sects that recommend cutting ties to family and friends...
Okay, right, lets just burn all books and then nobody will every be selfish or arrogant again.
BTW Hunter gatherer groups tend to be incredibly violent.
4/15/2012 12:06:38 AM
#1392644
Freethinker
evolutionary sociobiologist
Is this even a science in the first place?
4/15/2012 3:16:54 AM
#1392732
farpadokly
@ Amadaun et al: It's certainly true that Christianity didn't "cause the dark ages". But the Catholic Church certainly held up progress and learning during the Renaissance.
Protestantism has historically been kinder to science and learning, but only in its less extreme forms. In its extreme forms, it was intensely puritanical, patriarchal, and superstitious, burning witches left right and centre.
In that form, some of it migrated to America and there its descendants remain, and fuelled by arrogant exceptionalism, paranoid racism, and traditional anti-communist hysteria, they provide 90% of the quotes on this site.
4/15/2012 6:54:24 AM
#1392737
Philbert McAdamia
Just for the sake of contrast, I’d like to see a religious fundie say something along the lines of: "Oh, of course we all know what a load of crap it all is. About the Jesus, trinity, miracles, conflicting stories, etcetera, hahaha . . Gotcha! It really is all about control, so what?"
4/15/2012 7:07:12 AM
#1392744
Often Partisan
@ Freethinker "evolutionary sociobiologist: Is this even a science in the first place?"
I think most people would call it "evolutionary psychology",at least when you apply it to humanity. E. O. Wilson wrote a book called Sociobiology in the 1960s/70s where he discussed the applications of evolution to social behaviour.
Technically the "evolutionary" in "Evolutionary sociobiology" is Department of Redundancy Department as sociobiology is about evolution of behaviour by definition.
4/15/2012 7:25:25 AM
#1392786
Polymeron
Science. You're doing it wrong.
*facepalm*
4/15/2012 9:39:36 AM
#1393856
Ludd
I like that he decries the social skills of atheists while being a complete fucking asshole.
4/18/2012 10:31:12 AM
1 2 3