Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical...

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bskeptic
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Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical...

Post by bskeptic »

Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical, and I Like It!

By John W. Loftus

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.c ... sader.html


I have written a few posts about Peter Boghossian's book, A Manual for Creating Atheists.To read other posts in review of his brilliant book click on the tag below. In this last one I want to highlight how much of a crusader he is, a radical, and how much I like it. He is dead serious. We know this from his radical remedies for the present faith virus pandemic.

In his final chapter titled "Containment Protocols" we see this clearly. He utilizes the theme of Darrel Ray's book, God Virus, The: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture, very effectively for this.

Since religious faith is a mind virus that can infect others in our society, then in order to help get rid of it we must get serious about containing it as we try to eradicate it.

His remedies are radical, but important and needed....



2) Stigmatize faith-based claims like racist claims. He argues we should deploy the models of the civil rights and the women's rights movements. Basically it should be politically incorrect to argue something based on faith. He aptly quotes Sam Harris here: "People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of society."

3) Parrhesia: Speaking truth in the face of danger. We should not sit at the back of the segregated bus, so to speak. "Be honest. Be direct. Be blunt. Be unapologetic....Don't tone it down or talk baby talk....Instead, tell people exactly what you think and why you think it. Take a punch and give a punch. Speak truth in the place of danger be a part of Team Parrhesia" (p. 214).

4) Stay informed. He even recommends reading faith peddlers like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. Boghossian is so radical he recommends against buying their books new, but rather getting them second hand, so they don't profit from us in any way.



8) Treat faith as a public health crisis. Two words: "contain" and "eradicate." We must do this with ethical and Constitutional concerns in mind, he says. Rather, "interventions need to be designed that counter the spread" of the virus. Our "containment strategy should promote the 'value' of believing on the basis of evidence."

9) Financially cripple purveyors of false epistemologies, especially religious institutions. Take away their tax exempt status. Hell yeah! While Boghossian isn't hopeful that can be done in America anytime soon, "Ultimately, the tax-exempt status of religious organizations must be removed."

10) Create skeptical (atheist) children. He makes no apologies for this bold suggestion, saying, "It may seem odd: raising a child so she doesn't hold preposterous metaphysical beliefs. Strange indeed, but also vital." What he means is that "it is important to develop within our children the "attitudinal disposition to be skeptical."

11) Finally, remove the religious exemption for delusion from the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' (DSM). He says, "There is perhaps no greater contribution one could make to contain and perhaps even cure faith than removing the exemption that prohibits classifying religious delusions as mental illness." For the reasons why he makes this statement you'll have to read them yourselves. At the very least, faith should be listed as a cognitive bias everywhere cognitive biases are listed.

All in all Boghossian's book is brilliant, needed, and radical....

It will draw a lot of fire from faith-heads. But until they base what they think on sufficient evidence and quit pretending to know things they don't know, there is no reason to do otherwise than what the good doctor has prescribed to heal our society from our faith pandemic.
beowulf
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by beowulf »

Religion is often considered by some observers to be a disease and believers to have been infected with a malignant virulent ‘virus of the mind’.

For some other people, however, religious beliefs are a by-product of the working of the human mind and therefore a part of our human condition. There are people for whom ‘L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.’(1)

Finally, there are people for whom only the knowledge acquired through the use of their senses is important.
Should they be waging deadly war against each other?

1-Voici mon secret. Il est très simple ,on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
LE PETIT PRINCE
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret, It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/pdf/st_ex ... prince.pdf
CHAPITRE XXI, page 83
Last edited by beowulf on Mon Dec 23, 2013 3:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
blindjoedeath
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by blindjoedeath »

It sounds more like a "final solution" of faith based ideas. The idea of eliminating a way of thinking is Stalinist and backwards.
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by stephan happy huller »

This so fucking stupid. Why does everything have to be so dogmatic with white people. Isn't a dog owner kind of like a guardian power for the animal. Some have nice masters, others are mean. I always wonder WTF my dog thinks the nature of our relationship is. The same applies for children and their parents. The world is massive. Who knows for certain that their interpretation is the true one? Atheism is just uncontrolled egoism. Why is the human point of view the correct one? Why is my dog's understanding of our relationship inferior to mine? Why is the human perspective always the right one?

I think my dog knows me the best of everyone in the world. Seriously. So how can I pretend that humans have the final word on anything; that anyone should hold human beings in the greatest esteem.

Maybe there are things beyond our collective powers of reasoning. What makes us so special that our POV is right?
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by Peter Kirby »

stephan happy huller wrote:Atheism is just uncontrolled egoism.
Not the case. :thumbdown:
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by stephan happy huller »

Of course it is. Dogmatism of any kind is a sign of vanity. Everyone should be prepared to admit that everything they know is wrong. That those closest to you don't really love you. That all your judgments were miscalculations. The question about God is properly unanswerable. But maybe I don't know everything. Maybe there is something I am not seeing.

To my eyes there is a direct relationship between certainty that God doesn't exist and materialism and what material being do we know than ourselves?
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by Peter Kirby »

When it comes to personal attributes like your "uncontrolled egoism" thing and so on, there's as many shades of "atheism" as there are "atheists."

That's the thing you're not seeing.

You could make batshit crazy statements like this about any opinion and the people who hold it, but it doesn't fly because there are always a wide variety of people and a wide variety of rationales for holding any opinion.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by A_Nony_Mouse »

If a thing has done well for the world, music, art, be it rational, logical or not, there is no reason to be against it. It is rational to be against things that do harm. Zeus never commanded a war. No one ever had to choose between belief in Odin or death. Everything that marked western civilization, art, literature, math, science, architecture, poetry and a host more were non-existent in bibleland. Christianity openly suppressed much of it save for religious uses. The place of women in Greece and Rome was not great although Egypt was positively modern they were chattel property among Jews, Muslims and Christians. The required clothing for women did not rise above the burkah until less than a century ago.

Ending the chains of these religions took over a thousand years to get started and there is still a long way to go. Today we are lulled into judging religions by what they are like when out of power. Look back on what they did when the were in power. Expect the same should they regain power.

Us Americans have it perhaps the worst in western nations. A politician in Europe who brings god into political speeches would nearly be ridiculed out of public life. In the US it is almost obligatory. Earlier this month a member of the Supreme Court, Scalia, made clear in no uncertain terms he believes there is a devil and that he is active in the world promoting evil. I'd say that is grounds for impeachment.

At least atheists should start speaking out against this crap in government. And not in polite terms. At best only with the thickest and most obvious and most insulting condescension.
The religion of the priests is not the religion of the people.
Priests are just people with skin in the game and an income to lose.
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stephan happy huller
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Re: Boghossian is Very Serious; He's a Crusader, a Radical..

Post by stephan happy huller »

Peter,

We should all be true to ourselves. We can't stop what comes naturally. In the end our character is our fate.
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