I’m an atheist with the mentality of a religious person who seeks self-enlightenment and even though a positive perspective can be achieved through atheism, some people are better off with their positive perception of religion. Atheism recognizes the reality of situations (in this case, there being no God and no afterlife). Even though it is good to recognize the reality of a situation in most cases, this is not always the case. In situations where not recognizing the reality of a situation does no harm to you or anyone else and brings you personal pleasure, then recognizing the reality of the situation is pointless. In other words, since believing in God and such would do me no harm and wouldn’t make me harm others and would bring me personal pleasure in life, it would be pointless for me to be an atheist that I am now.
I am going to present something here for people who think that atheism has more value than any amount of pleasure through religious belief (even perhaps the greatest amount of pleasure a human being can have through belief in religion). No amount of intelligence or great things we do in life will ever make up for a lack of pleasure because in order to have such value towards these things is to have pleasure in the first place (as pleasure is what allows us to give value in terms of emotion towards these things). So it would be illogical to say that these things have greater value than our pleasure. Now if you were to somehow have value towards something with no pleasure, then this value would be nothing as it is nothing more than a thought. Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more. It is the processes in our own brains that give these things value. Without such a process (which would be the process of experiencing pleasure in the brain), then they will have no value.
You know, I “was” happier when I believed in Sant Claus. But, couldn’t sustain that belief and ultimately did not suffer when I discovered the truth. I have never believed in a religion or a deity, so I can’t comprehend how that delusion would be so comforting. My observations of those around me who did believe included a great deal of desperation that they needed to be right about it. I didn’t see many who were comforted as you say. More like, they were desperate to be comforted. Your conclusions about your understanding of the human atheist condition does not apply to everyone. Thanks to people like Carl Segan, I find my existence amazing, astounding, and filled with wonderful mysteries. And, I take great comfort in knowing that I don’t have or require the answers to the ultimate questions. The realization that this is all we have makes it all that much more precious.
I know I make long posts sometimes, so I’ll do you the favor of reading this one, but I can’t guarantee I’ll read the next one. I tried to pick out your major points and respond to them.
Since obviously it's a scientific fact that pleasure overcomes depression and the more pleasure you have (positive outlook on life), the more you will be able to overcome and prevent depression.I don’t think that’s true. I think pleasure is the opposite of depression, but we can’t just turn on pleasure by adopting beliefs. There are many ways to achieve a pleasurable response, like working toward a goal, or creating a peaceful environment. The kind of pleasure you seem to be pointing to is a short-term response to stimuli. What science are you talking about?
Both of these situations are the same in the sense that they both use a positive outlook in combating life's stressors.True, but how are they different? As you say, one is an escape. Simply avoiding stress does not automatically lead to pleasure, especially if you are fooling yourself to do it. Even the most fervent believer has some awareness that they are rationalizing away their fears. I think that causes a much more debilitating long-term stress.
Now if you had the choice, would you be a person who is a genius and has absolutely no pleasure in life (as in literally no pleasure center at all), or would you be someone who is retarded and has all the pleasure in the world?Sorry, I’d rather be a genius. I don’t think this part of your argument holds up.
Reasoning #1: .... then completely rewiring your brain to live a positive life through atheism just might be an impossible goal. Therefore, you would of been better off believing religion in this case.I’m not clear on this “rewiring" thing. I can use reason and think about things, and sometimes that leads to other insights, but I’m still me.
Reasoning #2:There is no evidence that religious people are happier. That’s as scientific as I can get.
I know of no atheist who has become an atheist because he thought it would give him a life of greater pleasure. Many theists make tnis claim, however.
There could be a point to be made that atheism gives more value to one’s life and that could include pleasure. But when theists talk of atheism giving more pleasure they usually mean being able to act immorally. They often take the position that the only thing that keeps them moral is embracing religion, a ridiculous notion.
I love arguments like this. It reminds me of a “How to Get Rich” program I saw awhile ago (which was tongue in cheek): Step 1 - Get a million dollars, Step 2 - produce a product everyone wants, etc…
It’s no different: Step 1 - Assume this whopper of a tale is true, Step 2 - Feel happy about it, etc.
I’m quite happy that Handydan, Lausten, Lois, and CuthbertJ gave excellent responses to this first post, since I only skim insanely long posts to assure no spam, insults or vulgarity.
If one cannot state one’s idea in fewer than 300 words, one isn’t thinking clearly. 1,848 words is really excessive. That’s especially true when one writes his/her magilla off-line then posts it as a block with too long lines so readers have to keep scrolling left and right to read them.
Occam
I’m going to make another point here which is that no amount of intelligence or great things we do in life will ever make up for a lack of pleasure because in order to have such value towards these things is to have pleasure in the first place (as pleasure is what allows us to give value towards these things). So it would be illogical to say that these things have greater value than our pleasure.
I’m not sure if you intended to, but you’ve stumbled on one of the great philosophical questions of the ages. That is, what is good? You’re using “pleasure”, but what kind of pleasure? I hinted at short and long term but didn’t want to bother with anymore detail than that. Sam Harris uses “human flourishing”, Hume spoke of the “greater good”. I’m a little more dark, so I talk about the lack of suffering.
My problem with the way you are talking about pleasure, is you seem to be valuing it above everything. If we had 7 billion happy retarded people running around, the world would be a miss pretty fast. So I don’t value it in the way you are expressing it. Even if you meant to ask if I’d rather be happy and dumb within a world of otherwise normal people, I still wouldn’t, because I’d be choosing to have others watch out for me and take care of me. I don’t want that.
I'm not sure if you intended to, but you've stumbled on one of the great philosophical questions of the ages. That is, what is good? You're using "pleasure", but what kind of pleasure? I hinted at short and long term but didn't want to bother with anymore detail than that. Sam Harris uses "human flourishing", Hume spoke of the "greater good". I'm a little more dark, so I talk about the lack of suffering. My problem with the way you are talking about pleasure, is you seem to be valuing it above everything. If we had 7 billion happy retarded people running around, the world would be a miss pretty fast. So I don't value it in the way you are expressing it. Even if you meant to ask if I'd rather be happy and dumb within a world of otherwise normal people, I still wouldn't, because I'd be choosing to have others watch out for me and take care of me. I don't want that.Now if you were to somehow have value towards something with no pleasure, then this value would be nothing as it is nothing more than a thought. Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more.
Now if you were to somehow have value towards something with no pleasure, then this value would be nothing as it is nothing more than a thought. Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more.It's important to remember that you are asking me a hypothetical question. I'm answering as myself, knowing the consequences. If I was dumb and happy, I couldn't even consider the choice. If I was smart but without feelings, I could reason but as you say, it would be "just thought". Anyway, your evidence doesn't support your conclusion. There are many things that give value to life. I'm wondering what you mean that you have the "mentality of a religious person who seeks self-enlightenment", since valuing pleasure over everything is very non-spiritual, almost by definition. You remind of the conversation in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle". The guy was a professor and he realized everything he did was subjective. He couldn't figure out how to grade things, so he had to quit. “Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all." ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Pleasure is too subjective to argue about or even talk about. Everyone’s pleasure is different and everyone interprets it differently. It’s an emotion. No one can understand another person’s emotion and no one can describe his own emotion adequately so that others understand it completely.
Lois
I’m quite happy that Handydan, Lausten, Lois, and CuthbertJ gave excellent responses to this first post, since I only skim insanely long posts to assure no spam, insults or vulgarity. If one cannot state one’s idea in fewer than 300 words, one isn’t thinking clearly. 1,848 words is really excessive. That’s especially true when one writes his/her magilla off-line then posts it as a block with too long lines so readers have to keep scrolling left and right to read them. OccamI agree that if someone can't express his idea in 300 words or less, he taking up people's time. Any idea can be expressed in a few sentences. If it's too complicated for a few sentences, the writer or speaker has not worked his idea through. He is trying to talk about too many things at once. Anyone who finds himself writing or speaking more than that should write an abstract of five sentence or less of what he is saying. If he can't do it nobody is going to read the screed, nor should anyone be expected to. You will lose your audience after 300 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has 272 words. The preamble to the Constitution has 52. A good practice is to think what you would say on any topic in an elevator. You have to make your point before your listener gets off. Lois
First of all I’m going to go along with everyone else in saying your first post was entirely too long. You need to work on paring your thoughts down to a digestible level. Then later on you can clarify what you meant if necessary.
Now if you were to somehow have value towards something with no pleasure, then this value would be nothing as it is nothing more than a thought. Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more.I'm going to take the liberty of completely disagreeing with you here because I happen to be a Trekkie! On Star Trek there are people called Vulcans who are extremely intelligent, and because they are intelligent they practice controlling their emotions. Pleasure is NOT the only thing that has value. Sitting on your rump all day swilling beer and watching the Three Stooges may give a person pleasure (it doesn't me, but there's no accounting for taste), but would you say that doing that had VALUE? Of any kind? Posit this -- what if you discovered a food that acted directly upon your pleasure center, so that all you wanted to do was eat it. All day long. Doing nothing else. Until you died from malnutrition. Do you still think that pleasure is the only thing of value?
I’ve also met people who produce value with their work, even though they hate that job and get no pleasure from it. Conversely, a teenager who lies in his bed pleasuring himself sexually, doesn’t seem to be producing any value.
Occam
Somebody had to say it. No matter what is meant, the choice of the word itself is poor.
First of all I'm going to go along with everyone else in saying your first post was entirely too long. You need to work on paring your thoughts down to a digestible level. Then later on you can clarify what you meant if necessary.Those things would still have value because you are giving value to those things (through pleasure) in being motivated to keep on doing those things in experiencing more pleasure. As for a situation such as being paralyzed and being able to do nothing but having your pleasure center constantly stimulated, pleasure is still the most important thing because value is nothing more than a thought and pleasure is obviously the greatest life force you can have. Therefore, even if you are paralyzed while having your pleasure center constantly stimulated without being able to do anything in life and not being able to attribute value to anything in life, pleasure is still the most important thing.Now if you were to somehow have value towards something with no pleasure, then this value would be nothing as it is nothing more than a thought. Pleasure is what gives any notion of value life and without pleasure, it would be completely dead. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing that matters and any notion of value is just a thought and nothing more.I'm going to take the liberty of completely disagreeing with you here because I happen to be a Trekkie! On Star Trek there are people called Vulcans who are extremely intelligent, and because they are intelligent they practice controlling their emotions. Pleasure is NOT the only thing that has value. Sitting on your rump all day swilling beer and watching the Three Stooges may give a person pleasure (it doesn't me, but there's no accounting for taste), but would you say that doing that had VALUE? Of any kind? Posit this -- what if you discovered a food that acted directly upon your pleasure center, so that all you wanted to do was eat it. All day long. Doing nothing else. Until you died from malnutrition. Do you still think that pleasure is the only thing of value?
I've also met people who produce value with their work, even though they hate that job and get no pleasure from it. Conversely, a teenager who lies in his bed pleasuring himself sexually, doesn't seem to be producing any value. OccamAgain, as for having value towards anything while having no pleasure, this value would be nothing more than a thought. In other words, they would be zombies doing things in life. And if you somehow now have a pleasurable feeling of value towards that and say something like "at least they are doing something good," if you were to somehow have no pleasure at all right now, then you would not feel that way--you wouldn't feel anything.
And if you somehow now have a pleasurable feeling of value towards that and say something like "at least they are doing something good," if you were to somehow have no pleasure at all right now, then you would not feel that way--you wouldn't feel anything.You're just repeating yourself and re-asserting yourself. This is not a discussion. If you could just review this one sentence, we might make progress. The phrase "pleasurable feeling of value towards" is not well formed, maybe not even grammatically correct. Think about what you're trying to say and rephrase that. "If you have pleasure... then you wouldn't feel anything" is not logically correct. You could be sad, irritated, in pain, confused. Then there is the whole nested if of the long sentence, almost impossible to parse it. You also need to address this zombie thing. You might want to google "philosophical zombies" or "theory of mind". The way you're using it, it's a fallacy. You're reducing what the mind is to some component of it, then declaring that is the only thing the mind is. You're taking something complex that has properties that emerge from the complexity, then breaking it into components and saying "it's just" that component. Repeating it over and over and saying it's obvious won't get you too far.
There is no evidence that religious people are happier. That’s as scientific as I can get.I'm not sure that's quite true. At least in the U.S., most polls consistently show a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness (as well as health and life-expectancy). This is also true of conservatives vs. liberals. What can I say? Ignorance is bliss. Of course, correlation does not equal causation. And besides, the personal happiness granted by religion (or conservatism) may lead to the society around you being worse off. If your faith causes you to vote in an irrational way, the consequences for your society may be unfortunate--even as you personally go your blissful, merry way, happier than those skeptics around you. Which could be why it's hard to argue that people living in theocracies are happier than those in secular nations. The least religious secular democracies--particularly the Scandinavian ones--rate the highest in happiness, health, and life-expectancy. So my take is that True Believers (in religion or otherwise) might be happier than their fellow rationalists, all things being equal. But their world view, in aggregate, makes everyone worse off.
I agree that if someone can't express his idea in 300 words or less, he taking up people's time. Any idea can be expressed in a few sentences. If it's too complicated for a few sentences, the writer or speaker has not worked his idea through. He is trying to talk about too many things at once. Anyone who finds himself writing or speaking more than that should write an abstract of five sentence or less of what he is saying. If he can't do it nobody is going to read the screed, nor should anyone be expected to. You will lose your audience after 300 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has 272 words. The preamble to the Constitution has 52. A good practice is to think what you would say on any topic in an elevator. You have to make your point before your listener gets off. LoisTell that to Daniel Dennet... (Why say something in a few sentences when you can say the exact same thing in a hundred pages or so?)
There is no evidence that religious people are happier. That’s as scientific as I can get.I'm not sure that's quite true. At least in the U.S., most polls consistently show a positive correlation between religiosity and happiness (as well as health and life-expectancy). This is also true of conservatives vs. liberals. What can I say? Ignorance is bliss. It sounds like you are referring to those "self-reported" type of polls, where people just say they are happy. Not very scientific. You kind of contradict yourself with the data from Scandinavia.