A Facebook friend of mine is a conspiracy nut. She was tagged in a post by a friend of hers, so up in my ‘news’ feed comes a post offering incontrovertible evidence that persistent contrails are in fact chemical spraying of the populace or the planet for nefarious purposes. I was dimly aware of this notion but was taken aback when encountering such people in the (virtual) flesh.
People who don’t buy it are portrayed as ‘ignorant’ or ‘duped’, and are urged to open their eyes and their minds to the Obvious Truth. Just Look Up! A rash of ‘proof’ videos gets posted in comments. If the statements were subsequently retracted, they’ve been ‘got at’. If they admit hoax, they’ve been got at or it was all part of the plot. The world is sharply divided into Believers and Non-Believers; the latter are either ‘sheeple’ or part of the Disinformation Plot. There is no conceivable evidence that can convince a Believer that they err, that the trails have a simple physical explanation, or that there is not a massive international Them out to get us. Non-believers could be convinced, but their evidential standards are clearly different. Yet both sides wrangle on, certain that if they can just find the right form of words, the other will see sense.
This all has a familiar ring.
To me, conspiracy theories don’t even get out of the starting gate because of basic human nature. The implausibility of a sustainable conspiracy involving even a handful of people with no blabbing, pricked conscience or deathbed confession, is enough to dismiss the entire lot. In the case of chemtrails we have airlines, airports, security allowing tankers airside, mechanics, ATC, airplane breakers yards, chemical factories, transportation, governments of every conceivable political hue, including those whose relations extend only to grudgingly allowing each others’ planes to land … tens of thousands of people having supposed knowledge of and complicity in the spraying of toxins on family, friends, neighbours or foreign nationals (and, incidentally, on Them), in a co-ordinated manner coming in from all points of the compass. Yet none of these people carries a smartphone? This elaborate hogwash is preferred over the physical explanation, that under certain atmospheric conditions contrails (like clouds) persist. It’s an approach to evidence I cannot even begin to comprehend. It beggars belief that people should subscribe to such tosh, but subscribe they do, in droves. One sees some amusing exchanges – such as here, where a surprising number of people takes it seriously, and is subjected in return to some hilariously deadpan responses (“Who needs mass vaccination anyway?” “You do”). Of course such sites, to the committed, are part of the disinformation plot, to make chemtrailers look ridiculous (!). It stops being funny when one sees people so incensed by the ‘poisoning’ to which they believe they are subjected that they advocate violence to pilots and planes. I suspect it is only a matter of time before someone takes action.
I know that some here have supported one conspiracy or another, so I thought an OP may generate some interest.
fifthmonarchyman,
Oh, for God’s sake. Not much of one for a bit of light banter, are you?
Incidentally, it’s not technically impossible to monitor visitors to a thread that never posted a comment… obviously.
Go naturalism! LOL
I disagree.
Reply “agnostic” is, at least, saying that they do not have an answer to “atheist or theist”, which they may well see as a false dichotomy.
Could you explain that? Either one has a belief in a god or gods or one does not.
fifth,
If ever there was a subject in dire need of more skepticism, it’s religion. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that it’s a frequent topic at The Skeptical Zone.
Yeah, according to that picture you like. Other pictures are possible.
There’s nothing to explain.
I’m neither a theist nor an atheist.
Okay. So you are one of those crazy people who believes that the English language is a logic calculus.
The point is that there’s more than one dichotomy possible here. It could be
believes P——-fails to believe P
but it could also be
believes P——-believes not-P
Patrick apparently saw a picture that he enjoyed and inferred from his enjoyment that anybody who prefers a different picture must be wrong.
Again, the catch-all term I’d recommend for belief non-existence on this subject is “non-theist.” In their non-theism, Patrick et al may happily join with haystacks.
I love light banter. I do a lot of that when I’m not “playing” on the internet to avoid work.
You don’t get a lot of banter here though. Folks are too busy talking about how terrible God is………. while vehemently denying he exists……while not bothering to explain what they mean by the term………While demanding that Theists explain exactly what they mean by the word…….While yammering on an on how stupid folks are who acknowledge God’s existence……. While comparing God to a leprechaun…… while claiming that God is a nonsensical concept……
And while fighting about whether that sort of thing is a positive claim or not
It all just seems like an obsession to me.
peace
Not at all, but words in English have meanings. In this case the exhaustive set of possibilities for the state of your belief in a god or gods is (positive-belief, lack-of-positive-belief, positive-disbelief). Either of the last two make you an atheist (everyone in the third category is also in the second). The first makes you a theist. What alternatives do you see?
When you god botherers stop trying to use government force to push your sectarian dogma on the rest of us, I, for one, will stop “obsessing”.
I have provided alternatives. What is your evidence for your claim that your parsing is best?
PS: If anybody is interested in Patrick’s responses to my queries, they will have to quote me. It seems to be some sort of point of honor for him not to respond to any of my posts. As he’s a moderator, I assume he can’t have me on “ignore” but he won’t respond to me anyhow. Oho! Shows he’s big!
Yes, they do.
However, dictionary definitions are not meanings. And etymology is not meaning.
As Wittgenstein put it, “meaning is use”. The meaning of “atheist” depends on how people actually use that word.
There you go, treating language as if it were logic.
Language is for communication, rather than for logic. If I say that I am an atheist, then many people will get the wrong idea. That would be a failure of communication.
That’s a fair point, but the reason for the failure of communication is that many people, usually theists of one sort or another, hear “atheist” and think “Satan worshipping monster”. That doesn’t change the fact that the only characteristic shared by all atheists is a lack of belief in a god or gods. That means that saying you’re not an atheist, if you do in fact lack a belief in a god or gods, is also a communication failure.
It’s also important to note that the context in which you are communicating matters. In this forum, with a higher percentage of atheists than in the general population, would it be accurate to describe yourself as an atheist given the (range of) ways we understand that word?
Begging the question 101.
I suggest you try not to “read minds”.
Some people see “atheist” and think “asshole”. And maybe there’s lots of evidence to support that association.
No, that would not be accurate. You can call me “non-religious” or “non-theist” or “agnostic”.
I prefer not to be called an
arrogant twit>atheist.1) How exactly does fighting about whether atheism is a positive claim or not fight “sectarian dogma”?
2) The two candidates for president are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Which of those two are my “god botherers” ?
3) When exactly was the last time that “sectarian dogma” was forced on you in the USA? When was the last time a OP at the SZ was dedicated to reporting on that sort of thing?
4) There is a handy remedy if the evil “god botherers” try to force some “sectarian dogma” on you. It’s called the constitution. It’s been around for a while you might check it out. That might be something worth obsessing about.
5) Folks from my tradition would rush to your side if you were being forced to obey some “sectarian dogma”.
We were the ones who invented the separation of Church and State after all. We non magisterial Christians would be your natural allies in that fight unless you alienated us by obsessively mocking them and their beliefs while using government to force them to remain silent about it .
peace
Interesting. I was just idly curious about your religious beliefs. Thank you for sharing so much more.
fifthmonarchyman,
I can’t be held responsible for everyone else’s content. My own comment was simply wryly pointing out that people who are indifferent to a topic do not tend to make themselves known. Ha ha, smiley face etc.
But … you have a bunch of people here, on both sides, who will cheerfully argue with a house brick. If someone says ‘atheism is a faith’, how can they be expected not to respond on cue, simply on semantics?
Everyone here has some interest in the topic of religion, because the site arose from The Banned at UD, and operates at the intersect of science and faith. It’s hardly surprising that people discuss the topic. But my own interest, for one, is anthropological.
Allan Miller,
I am simply separating transcription from other types of proteins. I call transcriptional proteins epigenetic. Am I in error here.
I pretty much fit what KN described as a radical agnostic.
When I see somebody with 20-30 posts in this thread, demanding that everyone follow his exact definition of “atheism”; when I see Rob Sherman filing a law suit to demand that the city of Zion, IL change it’s name — those cannot but help affect what I take “atheist” to mean.
In short, I see an atheist as someone who is not merely a non-theist, but as someone who is strongly committed — even religious — about his atheism. And that does not fit me at all.
Not that it matters, but I’m a radical agnostic: I think that it is metaphysically impossible for beings such as ourselves to know whether or not God exists. Beyond that, everyone is entitled to make whatever leap of faith they want, consistent with permitting others to do the same.
The reason why I don’t get involved in theological discussions is because I don’t see anything there that’s worth discussing. Religious convictions (or lack thereof) are a matter of taste.
Allan Miller,
It appears that most the difference is due to alternative splicing differences which I think would be a part of exon shuffling. The data I have shows a 50% difference in alternative splicing patterns. The paper I have is pay walled but I can send you a pdf. There is also a difference in gene expression. I have a paper on this but it is pay walled. I can send you the abstract. There are 30 to 50 novel genes. I think these require SNP’s to account for them. There are greater than 10000 different proteins many of which are a few SNP’s difference. Biochemically the differences are quite dramatic. Seems like a different tree to me 🙂
Right one one of UD’s regular commenters is asking if portraying traditional male and female roles in the media is going to become illegal.
So no, I don’t think there is a right combination of words in that particular case that would make him see sense. To get from what’s actually happening to that requires no bridge of logic that could be traversed.
colewd,
You can just paste the text that supports your claim that ‘most’ human-chimp differences are due to alternative splicing.
It does depend what you count. But even if alternative splicing did account for a substantial fraction (if scoring phenotypic characters, rather than counting bases), it is under genetic control. The sequences shuffled are genetic sequences, and the exon order and skipping are controlled by genetically specified sequences. This is not evidence of a sudden transition.
And what about HGT?
colewd,
More confused/confusing. Most proteins are transcribed, including those that influence transcription. One could separate out proteins whose substrate is the genome from those whose substrate is something else, but I don’t see why one would wish to.
But the point is, whether one does or does not, the source of those protein sequences is the genome in every case. As such, that is the thing of interest in evolution, regardless of the phenotypic means by which the gene (which may not be a coding unit) levers itself into the next generation.
🙂 Good catch, Neil.
Oh no. I can’t stand to look.
Oh, whom am I fooling: I can’t resist. Now I want to know where, exactly, is that idiot commenting?
Is there some reason the same cannot be said of philosophical convictions?
Here you go. http://www.uncommondescent.com/legal/society-rights-and-self-identification/
That is actually a very interesting position in my opinion.
I hope you don’t mind if I ask a couple of clarifying questions before I move on to other things.
1) Do you think it is it is metaphysically impossible for beings such as ourselves to “know” whether or not any other minds exist?
2) Why do you think an omnipotent being is unable to reveal his existence to beings such as ourselves if he chooses to?
3) Do you think that an omnipotent being could create beings “not like ourselves” that could know he exists? If so why could he not change us so that we were no longer “like ourselves”?
peace
Ugh. Feckin eejits.
Why is it so goddamned important to them to insist that certain people get stuck with the label of a “woman” or a “man”? And moreover only in reference to a bit of anatomy seen at birth which becomes a checkmark on a birth certificate, fixed forever …
And how the fuck are they expecting to out a trans person in the restroom anyways, without requiring everyone to be visibly tattooed with DNA test results? It’s not as if you can tell just by peeping at what’s in an adult’s pants, even if you can justify being rude enough to look.
Ugh. I hate bigots.
I look at it differently.
They lost on gay marriage. So now they are fighting valiantly to prove that they can hold their ground.
And they are going to lose again, because this is such a stupid issue.
Mung,
No it doesn’t. Not-believing-in-Gods does not make one’s position on anything any less assailable, if one makes a positive claim about reality. But the only claim ‘I’m an atheist’ makes is that one considers the label appropriate to oneself, not that one has the inside track on any other metaphysical or scientific position supposedly ‘entailed’ by not-believing.
It is indeed among the stupidest issues ever. Who knows who is going into various restrooms dressed as mom now?
Funny no one seems to care about women in the men’s room
I like having no one in mine (whether in spite of or because of my “endowments” I won’t hazard a guess).
This subthread started when I responded to Robert Byers’ claim that atheism is faith based. It is not.
You’ll find that Clinton, at least, includes “God bless America” in most if not all of her speeches. Kowtowing to faith is expected from U.S. politicians.
Trump is, well, Trump.
The answer to your first question is constantly. “In god we trust” on the currency” and “One nation under god” in the pledge of allegiance are two obvious examples. I suggest you look at the legal work being done by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. There are dozens of examples of recent and ongoing litigation against schools, governments, and even the U.S. House of Representatives chaplain who openly push sectarian dogma.
Indeed, which is why I donate to FFRF and other organizations like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. They’re fighting the good fight against people like you.
Really? So you and your church supported the right of same sex couples to have their marriages legally recognized? You’ve fought against restrictions on women’s reproductive choices? You’ve stood up in school board meetings to protest prayer in classrooms and creationism in the science curriculum?
In my experience, the only god botherers who favor separation of church and state are those who are in the minority. When they have the political power, they’ll use it. They’re also the ones screaming abuse and spitting on women trying to enter clinics rather than the people escorting them.
(Sorry for responding to an older comment. Mother’s Day is an event in our house and I’m just catching up.)
Mine is more political. I don’t argue with flat earthers because their weird beliefs don’t affect my life or my children’s future. I look forward to the day when I can similarly ignore the creationists.
I don’t consider that an essential characteristic of an atheist. I know several people who don’t meet that criteria but who identify themselves as atheists because they lack belief in any god or gods.
As with any discussion, the definitions being used by each participant need to be understood for communication to take place. When I use the word atheist, I include people who hold the position you hold. I think that’s logically defensible.
If you choose not to identify with that word because of your personal definition, that’s obviously your prerogative. I’d like to see it destigmatized, but people have to make their own decisions.
That really depends on your definition of “god” though, doesn’t it? When a fundamentalist Christian claims that he or she believes in the god described by a literal reading of the bible, the numerous contradictions in that book demonstrate that such an entity cannot exist. It’s simply not coherent.
Similarly, when a young Earth creationist claims that his or her god created everything less than 10,000 years ago, it’s straightforward to point out that the existence of such an entity is disconfirmed by the objective, empirical evidence.
If you’re saying that it’s impossible to know if a god exists, you must have a particular conception of a god in mind. I suspect that your conception doesn’t bear a great deal of resemblance to what the people in the pews of most U.S. churches think of as a god. Is that the case?
In any case, I still maintain that knowledge and belief in this context are orthogonal. You might well be a radical agnostic, but that doesn’t preclude you from being an atheist as well. All that’s required is a lack of belief in a god or gods.
The poor bastard clearly stumbled into either Atheism+ or Pharyngula.
If only we were able to identify some characteristic that would serve to distinguish atheists from non-atheists. What could that possibly be?
How they do it.
The people complaining about it are just jealous.
Glen Davidson
Allan Miller,
Here is the abstract.
“How species with similar repertoires of protein-coding genes differ so markedly at the phenotypic level is poorly understood. By comparing organ transcriptomes from vertebrate species spanning ~350 million years of evolution, we observed significant differences in alternative splicing complexity between vertebrate lineages, with the highest complexity in primates. Within 6 million years, the splicing profiles of physiologically equivalent organs diverged such that they are more strongly related to the identity of a species than they are to organ type. Most vertebrate species- specific splicing patterns are cis-directed. However, a subset of pronounced splicing changes are predicted to remodel protein interactions involving trans-acting regulators. These events likely further contributed to the diversification of splicing and other transcriptomic changes that underlie phenotypic differences among vertebrate species.”
Bravo! As we won’t get a retraction, I’ll settle for this flip-flop, which seems to (finally) acknowlege that this definition is a matter of preference, not right or wrong.
I see there is some backsliding in your following post (to KN) which again includes a categorical assertion of what it means to be an atheist. However, it’s hard to deny that you’re capable of learning from this post, so maybe you’ll some day realize that your following post was both inconsistent with the one quoted above and again confused about what definitions are.
So you actually do believe that God does not exist. Do you really wonder why people might think you’re not being entirely honest about that fact?