As I’d mentioned before, I see the term ‘Respect my beliefs’ as equivalent to ‘Follow my beliefs’.  This doesn’t mean I go around blaspheming at a religious person for the hell of it - I’m more inclined to respect someone’s feelings in this case.

However, I do take some offense at anyone who decides it’s their business to inform me of my ’sins’.  It’s bad enough that you assume moral authority without some form of objective justification - but to judge another person based on your arbitrary rules is decidedly rude.

And, yes.  To this, I respond in turn.  I live by a set of rules - one of which is intellectual honesty.  I am inclined to, and often do force people attacking me with accusations of iniquity to question how often they lie to themselves.

It’s, unsurprisingly, a lot - even if they won’t admit it.  Hell, even with the rule in place, I have the occasional self-deception going on.  It’s one of those things that takes constant vigilance - but is pretty rewarding in a real sense when it comes down to it.

That is, when you avoid lying even to yourself, you tend to get a reputation for almost superhuman honesty.  Such a rep is a valuable thing in a society that, primarily, is based on trust.  Such a rep also tends to excuse the almost immediate smile accompanied by a polite ‘No thank you’, when presented with things like offers to accompany another person to church, crosses, pamphlets, etc.  I may be a heathen, but at least I’m honest.

All the cool kids are doing it…

Please rate fairly and discuss on YouTube (not here).

Today, I address only theists.

I will not be attacking religion, nor shall I be harping on the fallacies of theism in general. No, today, I will be be philosophizing in an attempt to understand the need to believe.

In order to do this, I’m going to make an attempt to think like a theist; this requires me to assume that a God or Gods exist. I will be speaking in primarily that context.

I realize the tendancy to gravitate towards a strawman, or to derive cynical positions. I will attempt to restrict myself to some level of piety as far as it goes.

I also realize that it is impossible for me to completely remove my knowledge of reality and certain bits of information; as such, I’ll get that out of the way before I really get into the ’spirit’, as it were.

Often times, I hear that those who are indoctrinated into X-religion early are often X-religians. This ostensibly applies to Chrisitans, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. While that rings true for the particular denomination, I don’t believe it also holds true for theism itself.

Once abstract thought kicks in in one’s teen years, it occurs to me that with the rebellious instinct, the ability to discern fact from fiction, and the knowledge that much of the scripture is in the form of parables, fables, and poetry, one might be easily able to reject theism without too much remorse.

Of course, only about a fifth of adherents diverge from theism entirely, and only another tenth rejects their particular denomination for a more deistic view.

In order to explain this, I was thinking of how God is defined: If we think heirarchically, we can think of God as the ultimate authority. If we think creatively, the master builder. If we think administratively, the primary resource.

Essentially, whatever God is, he’s responsible for all creation, and speaks for all mankind.

So, I’ll start small and work my way out.

In individual accomplishment, when something is done well, we often want to congratulate the person that did well on a job well done. Similarly, when something is screwed up, we usually want to give a stern talking to to the parties responsible.

In team accomplishment, when the team does well, not only is there external congratulations, but internal as well. If the team does bad, there is external judgement, generally focused on the team’s leader, as well as internal condolences and potentially punishment.

So, consider the team to be the human race, and the leader to be God: When we screw up, it’s God’s responsibility, and God’s punishment that must be faced, though we are remorseful for our error; when we do well, it’s to God’s glory and we may congratulate ourselves and each other.

Overall, you’ll notice, the balance is positive in life; we feel remorse at an error, but are not directly responsible for it - but individually, we get to enjoy our accomplishments and even feel good about praising God.

So, that seems a good deal, doesn’t it? Meanwhile, it gives us something else that we as humans seem to instinctively need: when we can’t - or are unwilling to - ascribe a win or failure to any individual - ourselves included - we get to praise or blame God. We have a target for our joy and frustrations, so that we can vent them - express our emotions. We can even bring a modicum of solace to ourselves as we know that an infallable God must allow these minor ‘failures’ as part of his plan.

Meanwhile, mostly in the Christian faith, is the idea that God loves each and every one of us. He created us as his special children, has a plan for all of us, and over all other things, loves us - loves you, personally.

Moving back to my secular home base, now.

On the first topic, that is, readily having a target for blame and credit: I feel the problem with this sort of thinking is that it denies intellectual rigor. The emotional need to find the source of success or failure is a driving force of investigation - the root discipline of police work, scientific endeavor, and everything down to high school homework. To subvert this primal need, rather than to tame and discipline it into curiosity, I see as a grave threat to the cerebral advancement of civilization.

As for the unconditional love of the most important character possible: Human beings are social creatures, and the idea that the source of all humanity - that special one that has been here and is responsible for all of it - is a wonderous and warm feeling, to be sure. I can see how it can be a strongly attractive force for belief - but it only truly works if one is either unaware or sufficiently convinced of the presence of this being.

In short, I think I see the point of the delusion of God for people; you need to hold someone responsible for all the good and bad things in the world, and better, you need to know that the bad things that aren’t your fault are also not something that is being done to you on purpose (they’re part of the plan). It’d also be nice if this ultimately responsible being shared a connection with you.

I understand. I get it. Knowing that what we call ‘good’ is an emergent property of interactions between members of a society may be hard to understand - as hard to understand as it is to fathom that what is refered to as ‘evil’ is an emergent property of competition for survival when resources are scarce. Shimming in God as the source of good and evil seems an easy, if poorly formulated patch.

Meanwhile, turning to an imaginary friend to act as a placebo for the need of love when one can just get out there to look for someone to love and be loved - you’ll think this is the ultimate in cynicism, but I see that as weak-minded and pathetic.

As an atheist and a Digg member, I often get pitted in arguments with Creationists over the pan-pariahical Evolution v. Creationism v. Intelligent Design v. Why Can’t We All Just Get Along debate.

In prudish terms, these discussions can be described as ‘heated’. In candid terms, the colloquialism ‘clusterfuck’ comes to mind.

Now, it’s likely no mystery as to which side of this debate I land on: Yes, evolution is real. No, you can’t remain theist after having grokked all the implications of that fact.

I recently came across a pair of videos on how to debate Creationists by good ol’ DonExodus. I like this guy’s videos, as he’s reasoned and properly accurate when he lays the science upon you, while maintaining a good sense of humor and flow*. That, and the continuous flame war that occurs around not only the genesis debates got me thinking: why do I, more often than not, utilize dismissal and ad hominem rather than actual argument?

So, I reviewed some of my more vitriolic Digg comments and I think I have a framework for this - and I think, psychologically, there may be crossovers with other Diggers, Atheist, Creationist and moderate alike.

1. The most obvious is when a comment is posted that shows such blatant ignorance of the subject argued against that my brain freezes up in raw self-defense. This applies most of the time; the commenter has said something blindingly stupid, or made so many logical fallacies, that it’s easier just to call him on it. As an argument, this never works, but it’s got that instant gratification factor working in its favor.The appropriate response to this, of course, is point-by-point refutation of the offending claims, with a couple of links to research. Mind you, in EvID, there is no “objective” source; there are just creationist sources and scientific sources. The links should come from the most percieved objective source available for the claim, but sometimes there’s just no helping.
2. Response to ad hominems. I know it’s trollfeeding, but I can never seem to help myself.The proper response here is to let it go.
3. Willful ignorance or refusal to research. I don’t mind making a reasoned argument against a reasonable sounding comment, but when the same point is repeatedly thrown at me, even after it’s been torn apart, I tend to lose it.My response in these cases should be to reframe the argument so that my point can be made using another approach.

Note that none of those points is that I don’t have an argument. You know the old saying: ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Not the ideal, but that’s just how the human mind - my human mind works. I realize I should respond with better tact and poise.

I have a saying that I like to drop at the end of the occasional reasoned response to a dedicated troll: “No regard to those who merit no respect” It’s dismissive, but at least it’s realistic - it’s also, far as I can tell, a good corollary to “Consider the source”.

* That is, he does not stutter or pause for exceptionally long times in his videos.