OK, I see you're setting this up a little differently than your other threads which usually begin with some well assembled research and plenty of analysis to boot.
The idea that atheism is superior to superstition is Ok but I'm not sure I would characterize it as supremacy. I think atheists are everywhere confronted by the supremacist religiosos, who nearly everywhere are ideologically descended from Anabaptists. (Ignoring other theaters such as Shiite fundamentalism).
The more objective treatment of this (is it me or are you feeling a little edgy here?) is to simply ask which is the
correct way to think about the world -- that it is what it is in parallel with my belief in myths long-since debunked, or that it is what it is in parallel with my knowledge that such myths were actually long-since debunked?
It's impossible for me to engage that level of dialogue with the religiosos at large since they're living inside the paradox described in Plato's
Allegory of the Cave.
There's nothing supremacist about casting off illusion, and it's certainly the better position for an insightful mind to gravitate toward. This may not be what you meant by supremacy. Since you're expressing some visceral response here, I'm assuming I'm on your shit list, in some way or another, which never occurred to me before. (You did cast a pretty wide dragnet.) After all I do tend to avoid the mollycoddling given to religious ideation and when pushed with nonsense I can be strident in the throes of my own visceral nature. Guilty as charged.
My defense it that it's simply wrong to live inside the illusion of mythology. To the extent you may take umbrage at my remarks, I take umbrage at the practice of indoctrinating young and vulnerable minds with fairy tales we all know are not true.
God does not exist. This is not a matter of religion nor is it one of physics; all of those lengthy diatribes are wasted on meaningless argument. The same is true for all the epistemics. Each of those fields have no jurisdiction here. This is a clear cut question of anthropology and nothing more. It informs us that God is an invention, an artifice of human superstition as ancient people grappled to understand phenomena for which they had no science. There is no God, there never was. There was copious remnants of the Big Bang, hammering frightened people with earthquakes, lightning bolts and peals of thunder, eclipses of the Sun, falling stars, volcanoes, furious storms and floods that wiped out entire enclaves, natural disturbances and migratory patterns that caused animal populations to act strangely (swarms of locusts or frogs, etc) . . . anyway you know all of this. You know there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that God is artificial.
Therefore God does not exist. That's as simple as it gets. To say otherwise is not a matter of being better or worse, it's a matter of being blindly in denial of, or reasonably informed by, common knowledge. I put no intrinsic value on the blindness per se (devalue it that is) and wouldn't even engage the subject here if not for the way that a minority of blind people are pretending to lead the sighted into some truly nonsensical version of progress (esp in matters of public policy). Even that's not the kicker -- it's the way they are doing it under the mantle of supremacy you are attacking. So at the moment I'm lost. You always advocate on the side of reason, so I have no waypoints to measure this particular tack you're on.
In case I'm one of the posters who irritates you, I'm thinking of what I might have recently said to trigger this now (feel free to confront me as you see fit; you're probably incapable of reaching the depths of stupidity that would get me wired up) . . . and there was a post I made recently poking fun at the worship of Haile Selassie in Jamaica. Does that make me a supremacist? How so? Don't you yourself think that's ridiculous? More to the point: where do we draw the line? With the snake handlers? How about the ones luring underage girls into their harems? Somewhere, at some point there must be a kind of ideology that even you would have to feel so averse to that they would tend to think of you as the supremacist. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just winging it here since you haven't done the usual exposition which sets the factual predicate for establishing your position.
How do you view the optimum balance between (A) the appeal to common sense and preference for real evidence, as atheists view the world, and (B) the appeal to myth and superstition as preferred by the religious world view--at the cost of throwing the real evidence out? (The anthropological fact of spirits being created by people is well established, is it not?) From where I sit, the tendency for far too long has been to mollycoddle the fantasizers. Atheists have historically been second class citizens who only in my lifetime truly came out of the closet. You want a world where we go back inside? No, I don't even think that's at all what you're saying. That leaves me a little bit at loss to figure out what you're driving at.
You want me to walk on eggshells around religious folks? I'm already doing that. I barely post in the Religion forum anymore since it's like trying to hang out with the hall monitor. Forget that. There are plenty of trolls to accost in the Science threads without having to worry about whether Little Baby needs to be burped or have his nose wiped.
I'm just freewheeling here since I'm really not sure what you're driving at. Feel free to expand as you see fit, or take me to the carpet if something I've said really sticks in your craw. Also if something else is bothering you, feel free to expand as you see fit. Are you just venting or what? What's really going on? Are you OK? Get some rest, go do something cool, kick your heels up if you can and come back and square this up with me if you feel so moved.
Not any personal attacks on my belief, that's for sure (this approach would have made me dig in) What changed my mind was discussing religion (not just mine) from a historical and philisophical perspective. I was not made to feel stupid for my belief, or told that my belief was a fairy tale, nothing like that, in the end it was just a natural progression from belief to I don't believe that anymore. Even in my personal journey from believer to nonbeliever, without the ridiculing it was painful enough. Being told I was ignorant certainly would not have helped.
