morality

[William Flynn Wallace]

I was thinking of how to build a moral system.  What should be the basic assumptions?  Start with the Bill of Rights?  Certainly a good place.

Another is this from Pope John xxiii: https://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html

I ran across this in Feynmann's book.

Certainly more detailed than the Bill of Rights.

Then I got to thinking:  who are the authors I occasionally re-read because they are just so sane.  Feynman, Robert Fulghum (Unitarian minister), Matthew Ridley, Stephen Pinker, Montaigne, Twain.  Who are your sane people?  bill w

[SR Ballard]

Are you familiar with the works of Fortescue or Selden whose philosophy is what helped create the Bill of Rights, and how it ties in with the Common Law system?

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[John Clark]

On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 2:23 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was thinking of how to build a moral system.  What should be the basic assumptions? 

I would say the basic assumption should be that the moral thing to do is whatever will cause the least amount of human suffering, I'm not saying that axiom is complete and doesn't have some inconsistencies, Kurt Godel proved that even the axioms of arithmetic cannot be complete and self consisted and it would be unrealistic to expect morality could be made to work more reliably than arithmetic, but I think that's about the best we could do. However the Trolley Problem shows us that most people's intuitive feeling about what is moral and what is not has little relationship with minimizing overall suffering, in fact some ethicists, especially medical ethicists, almost seem to be saying that the moral thing to do is whatever will kill the most people.

> Start with the Bill of Rights?  Certainly a good place.

I would get rid of freedom of religion, as long as you have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly you get freedom of religion automatically, it's just one of the infinite number of things you can talk about or have a meeting about. However the fact that the US Constitution specifically mentions it has been interpreted to mean that worshiping an invisible man in the sky gives somebody rights that somebody who doesn't worship an invisible man in the sky does not have.  If somebody does something for a religious reason it's legal but if they do the exact same thing for a reason other than religion it's illegal, and that's nuts. 

 John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

interpreted to mean that worshiping an invisible man in the sky gives somebody rights that somebody who doesn't worship an invisible man in the sky does not have.  If somebody does something for a religious reason it's legal but if they do the exact same thing for a reason other than religion it's illegal, and that's nuts. John K Clark

It rather incenses me that churches pay no taxes.  But I need examples of religious people doing things legally that nonreligious people cannot   bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sat, May 20, 2023 at 4:49 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

 > I need examples of religious people doing things legally that nonreligious people cannot   bill 

If you avoid the draft during wartime because you don't want to get killed then it's illegal, but if you avoid the draft during wartime because an invisible man in the sky told you to do so it is not illegal. If you show up in the US because if you stayed in your original country you'll starve to death then it's illegal, but if you show up in the US because in your original country the government told you to stop flattering an invisible man in the sky then it's not illegal.

John K Clark

 

On Sat, May 20, 2023 at 1:28 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 2:23 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was thinking of how to build a moral system.  What should be the basic assumptions? 

I would say the basic assumption should be that the moral thing to do is whatever will cause the least amount of human suffering, I'm not saying that axiom is complete and doesn't have some inconsistencies, Kurt Godel proved that even the axioms of arithmetic cannot be complete and self consisted and it would be unrealistic to expect morality could be made to work more reliably than arithmetic, but I think that's about the best we could do. However the Trolley Problem shows us that most people's intuitive feeling about what is moral and what is not has little relationship with minimizing overall suffering, in fact some ethicists, especially medical ethicists, almost seem to be saying that the moral thing to do is whatever will kill the most people.

> Start with the Bill of Rights?  Certainly a good place.

I would get rid of freedom of religion, as long as you have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly you get freedom of religion automatically, it's just one of the infinite number of things you can talk about or have a meeting about. However the fact that the US Constitution specifically mentions it has been interpreted to mean that worshiping an invisible man in the sky gives somebody rights that somebody who doesn't worship an invisible man in the sky does not have.  If somebody does something for a religious reason it's legal but if they do the exact same thing for a reason other than religion it's illegal, and that's nuts. 

 John K Clark

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[William Flynn Wallace]

from Google:

Who Qualifies? Beliefs which qualify a registrant for CO status may be religious in nature, but don't have to be. Beliefs may be moral or ethical; however, a man's reasons for not wanting to participate in a war must not be based on politics, expediency, or self-interest.  bill w

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[Stuart LaForge]

Example of religious people doing things legally that non-religious people cannot include the Navajo being allowed to legally consume peyote on their reservations. Peyote is an entheogen which brings them closer to the Great Spirit. Which brings me to why religious freedom is necessary for any equitable multi-cultural empire to exist. It allows diverse and distinct cultures to persist in  a global economy. Every culture is their particular god's chosen people, and as, should have special legal privileges as a result. If religious people did not receive special privileges under the law, then there would be no advantages to being in a religion in the first place. Therefore, to threaten the freedom of religion is to threaten cultural diversity and equity.

Eliminating religion would promotee monoculture and all mono-culture is a evolutionary liability. Monoculture is brittle and would quickly lead to the extinction of the organisms and organizations that adopt it. Monoculture embodied as racism, or other inherent bias, is not just wrong, it is weak and loses wars to diversity. The two biggest wars in American history, the American Civil War and WW2 were wars fought by multiculturalists against racists, and the racists lost both wars, empirically proving their inferiority.

To refute John's argument that giving religious people special freedoms and protections over non-religious is crazy, I would say that such special freedoms are what allows religious people to be rational. There would be no advantage for these people to be religious, if religions did not have special legal privileges by virtue of the government recognizing their place as a god's chosen people.

So to summarize, religious freedom and privilege is necessary to maintain cultural diversity and equity, and cultural diversity and equity are necessary to maintain a strong organization, nation-state, or empire. Religious people, regardless of which religion, have numerous cultural and legal advantages over infidels, apostates, and non-believers. Atheists have the virtue of being "right" at the cost of much companionship and social support through religious networks. Nte that this is true even if "thoughts and prayers" sent through social media are worthless.

Stuart LaForge

[William Flynn Wallace]

I doubt very seriously if people join a religion to get legal advantages.  If you asked them they would scratch their heads and say Huh?".  They join because they believe in their god.  I am not saying that Stuarts' thesis is incorrect.   bill w

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[John Clark]

On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 1:53 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Example of religious people doing things legally that non-religious people cannot include the Navajo being allowed to legally consume peyote on their reservations.

Another example is Jewish mohels who use their mouth to suck blood away from a baby's recently wounded penis as part of the circumcision ritual. If a non-religious person did that they would be instantly arrested for sexual battery on a child and sent to prison for a very long time. The practice causes other problems too because viruses and bacteria do not know if an infant is religious or not.

Baby Dies of Herpes in Ritual Circumcision By Orthodox Jews

New York Mohel Accused of Infecting Infant With Herpes During Circumcision

> If religious people did not receive special privileges under the law, then there would be no advantages to being in a religion

So you believe there is no innate reason that anybody should be religious, and I agree with that part, but then you go on and conclude that the government should artificially produce such a reason because otherwise religious people would not exist. I don't see why religion should be singled out for special treatment because you could make a similar argument with regard to other beliefs, predilections and occupations. 

If athletes did not receive special privileges under the law then there would be no advantage to being an athlete.

If scientists did not receive special privileges under the law then there would be no advantage to being a scientist.

If movie stars  did not receive special privileges under the law then there would be no advantage to being a movie star. 

If Republicans did not receive special privileges under the law then there would be no advantage to being a Republican.

If [fill in the blank] did not receive special privileges under the law then there would be no advantage to being a [fill in the blank].

 

> I would say that such special freedoms are what allows religious people to be rational.

If people were rational then there would be no religious people, but by singling them out and giving them and only them special privileges the government provides a rational reason for non-religious people to pretend that they are religious. It's a sort of thing that gives hypocrisy a bad name.

> There would be no advantage for these people to be religious,

You almost make it sound like a lack of religious people would be a bad thing.  

> if religions did not have special legal privileges by virtue of the government recognizing their place as a god's chosen people.

It can't be everybody so if the government says one particular group of people is God's Chosen People then logically the government must also say that other groups of people are NOT God's Chosen People, and I believe it is not inconceivable that inequity of that sort might cause societal strife in the future. If you look really really hard you might even be able to find historical examples of religion causing such problems.

 

> So to summarize, religious freedom and privilege is necessary to maintain cultural diversity

It is not a law of physics that cultural diversity is ALWAYS a good thing, for example I don't think we need Nazis to balance out the anti-Nazis, nor do I think it would be wise to encourage young people to be illiterate so we can balance out all those people who are literate. 

 John K Clark

[Stuart LaForge]

On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 12:14 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 1:53 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Example of religious people doing things legally that non-religious people cannot include the Navajo being allowed to legally consume peyote on their reservations.

Another example is Jewish mohels who use their mouth to suck blood away from a baby's recently wounded penis as part of the circumcision ritual. If a non-religious person did that they would be instantly arrested for sexual battery on a child and sent to prison for a very long time. The practice causes other problems too because viruses and bacteria do not know if an infant is religious or not.

Yes, or the simple church bake sale which charges neither sales tax nor is required to purchase a food vendors license or submit to health department inspections. This is all without even getting into corporate soles and other legal structures specifically designed for religions.

 

> If religious people did not receive special privileges under the law, then there would be no advantages to being in a religion

So you believe there is no innate reason that anybody should be religious, and I agree with that part, but then you go on and conclude that the government should artificially produce such a reason because otherwise religious people would not exist. I don't see why religion should be singled out for special treatment because you could make a similar argument with regard to other beliefs, predilections and occupations.

Because 250 years ago, it was the compromise that got a bunch of Quakers, Catholics, and Lutherans to throw their lot in with a bunch of Puritans and declare a war of independence from the British Empire and subsequently agree to ratify a Constitution. The athletes and the movie stars were nowhere to be found when Washington crossed the Delaware, so they didn't get a constitutional amendment that gave them special freedoms.

 

 

> I would say that such special freedoms are what allows religious people to be rational.

If people were rational then there would be no religious people, but by singling them out and giving them and only them special privileges the government provides a rational reason for non-religious people to pretend that they are religious. It's a sort of thing that gives hypocrisy a bad name.

That's not true. Religion is very rational, even if it is make believe, if you consider things from the point of selfish genes. Religious people have far more offspring than atheists and that alone makes it rational. But it has other benefits and network effects that give religious people advantages over atheists. If all gods are false, then are not all religious people pretending to be religious? Or does their simple faith grant reality to their god's divinity within the collective consciousness and consensual reality of the faithful?

 

> There would be no advantage for these people to be religious,

You almost make it sound like a lack of religious people would be a bad thing.

Since religion underpins many if not most cultural and ethnic differences between tribes, lack of religion would result in a monocultural homogenous society that would simply stagnate until a disaster, plague, or war wiped it out.

 

> if religions did not have special legal privileges by virtue of the government recognizing their place as a god's chosen people.

It can't be everybody so if the government says one particular group of people is God's Chosen People then logically the government must also say that other groups of people are NOT God's Chosen People, and I believe it is not inconceivable that inequity of that sort might cause societal strife in the future. If you look really really hard you might even be able to find historical examples of religion causing such problems.

No, because of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, the government itself is not supposed to be religious. That means the United States is designed so that an atheistic government that guarantees the freedom of its citizens to believe their own religious narratives in a free market of ideas and a meat market of genes. 

 

 

> So to summarize, religious freedom and privilege is necessary to maintain cultural diversity

It is not a law of physics that cultural diversity is ALWAYS a good thing, for example I don't think we need Nazis to balance out the anti-Nazis, nor do I think it would be wise to encourage young people to be illiterate so we can balance out all those people who are literate. 

It is not a good thing or a bad thing. It is an evolutionarily stable thing that has become the status quo and simply is. Consider it a brute fact of circumstance, if you want.  Physical conservation laws of matter, energy, and quantum information have made the competition for resources a zero-sum game. Therefore, there are winners and losers and the losers pay for the winners, so yeah, in the end they sort of balance out. You need multiple teams to play the game and at least some of them must lose. It is no accident that 80% of prison inmates are functionally illiterate, while 80% of free society is literate, in a country with private prisons.

Stuart LaForge

 

 

 John K Clark

I would say the basic assumption should be that the moral thing to do is whatever will cause the least amount of human suffering, I'm not saying that axiom is complete and doesn't have some inconsistencies, Kurt Godel proved that even the axioms of arithmetic cannot be complete and self consisted and it would be unrealistic to expect morality could be made to work more reliably than arithmetic, but I think that's about the best we could do. However the Trolley Problem shows us that most people's intuitive feeling about what is moral and what is not has little relationship with minimizing overall suffering, in fact some ethicists, especially medical ethicists, almost seem to be saying that the moral thing to do is whatever will kill the most people.

> Start with the Bill of Rights?  Certainly a good place.

I would get rid of freedom of religion, as long as you have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly you get freedom of religion automatically, it's just one of the infinite number of things you can talk about or have a meeting about. However the fact that the US Constitution specifically mentions it has been interpreted to mean that worshiping an invisible man in the sky gives somebody rights that somebody who doesn't worship an invisible man in the sky does not have.  If somebody does something for a religious reason it's legal but if they do the exact same thing for a reason other than religion it's illegal, and that's nuts. 

 John K Clark

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[John Clark]

On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 5:21 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

 > 250 years ago, it was the compromise that got a bunch of Quakers, Catholics, and Lutherans to throw their lot in with a bunch of Puritans and declare a war of independence from the British Empire and subsequently agree to ratify a Constitution. The athletes and the movie stars were nowhere to be found when Washington crossed the Delaware, so they didn't get a constitutional amendment that gave them special freedoms.

So religious people get privileges that non-religious people don't have because it was expedient to do so 250 years ago? 

>> If people were rational then there would be no religious people, but by singling them out and giving them and only them special privileges the government provides a rational reason for non-religious people to pretend that they are religious. It's a sort of thing that gives hypocrisy a bad name.

> That's not true. Religion is very rational, even if it is make believe, if you consider things from the point of selfish genes.

Why on earth should I consider things from the point of view of my selfish genes?  They have their opinions and I have mine and if my genes don't like what I do my genes can lump it.  If the human viewpoint were always the same as that of their genes then humans never would've invented condoms, or crashed airliners into skyscrapers.  

 

Religious people have far more offspring than atheists and that alone makes it rational.

Not if doing that makes those religious people miserable. And it is simply not rational to passionately believe that something is true when the evidence is overwhelming that it is not true. So I believe it is rational for non-religious people to be resentful that religious people have rights and privileges that the government refuses to give them.   

 > does their simple faith grant reality to their god's divinity within the collective consciousness and consensual reality of the faithful?

No.

 

> Since religion underpins many if not most cultural and ethnic differences between tribes, lack of religion would result in a monocultural homogenous society that would simply stagnate until a disaster, plague, or war wiped it out.

The US has more literate people than illiterate people, so to avoid your dreaded "monoculture" do you think we should encourage parents to stop teaching their children how to read and write?  

 > the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, the government itself is not supposed to be religious.

And yet the US government gives paychecks to chaplains in the army, the Congress starts each session with a prayer, the motto of the countries in God we trust, and Trump put Amy Coney Snakehandler on the Supreme Court. 

> It is not a good thing or a bad thing. It is an evolutionarily stable thing that has become the status quo and simply is. Consider it a brute fact of circumstance

You act as if it's inevitable, but that's nonsense. The USA is an outlier among advanced technological nations when it comes to belief in an invisible man in the sky. In South Korea 56% have no religious affiliation and 15% are not just agnostics but full blown atheists, most Japanese say they do not believe in a deity or follow any religion, and Europe is the least religious place on the planet.  

John K Clark

[Stuart LaForge]

On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 1:06 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 5:21 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

 > 250 years ago, it was the compromise that got a bunch of Quakers, Catholics, and Lutherans to throw their lot in with a bunch of Puritans and declare a war of independence from the British Empire and subsequently agree to ratify a Constitution. The athletes and the movie stars were nowhere to be found when Washington crossed the Delaware, so they didn't get a constitutional amendment that gave them special freedoms.

So religious people get privileges that non-religious people don't have because it was expedient to do so 250 years ago? 

Yeah. That's pretty much the gist of it, IMO. Expediency has always been the most popular solution to political problems, from dictatorship to democracy.

>> If people were rational then there would be no religious people, but by singling them out and giving them and only them special privileges the government provides a rational reason for non-religious people to pretend that they are religious. It's a sort of thing that gives hypocrisy a bad name.

> That's not true. Religion is very rational, even if it is make believe, if you consider things from the point of selfish genes.

Why on earth should I consider things from the point of view of my selfish genes?  They have their opinions and I have mine and if my genes don't like what I do my genes can lump it.  If the human viewpoint were always the same as that of their genes then humans never would've invented condoms, or crashed airliners into skyscrapers.

I can't argue with that. Part of the grand game of life is the constant tension between the selfishness of genes and that of memes. It is a competition between replicators: biology versus culture, nature versus nurture, hardware versus software. You obviously consider the truth value of memes to be superior to or more important than the survival of genes. I find myself to be a bit more balanced.. It is a value judgement and being a free American you are entitled to your opinion. All I can say is that the survival of genes have been necessary for the mere existence of memes thus far.

  

Religious people have far more offspring than atheists and that alone makes it rational.

Not if doing that makes those religious people miserable. And it is simply not rational to passionately believe that something is true when the evidence is overwhelming that it is not true. So I believe it is rational for non-religious people to be resentful that religious people have rights and privileges that the government refuses to give them.   

A significant portion of the population is ruled more by emotion than by reason. Far from making its adherents miserable, the religious people that I know seem to derive a sense of meaning, purpose, and comfort from their religion. I never said that atheism, or resentment of religion, is irrational. I am an atheist, myself.

 

 > does their simple faith grant reality to their god's divinity within the collective consciousness and consensual reality of the faithful?

No.

Ok. What if every religion has at its heart a post-human intelligence that created an ancestor simulation of itself?  If it happens to be turtles all the way down, then nested creators that are the gods of the gods become a possibility. Do you place the probability of intelligent design at exactly zero, even as we are on the verge of creating intelligence ourselves?

 

> Since religion underpins many if not most cultural and ethnic differences between tribes, lack of religion would result in a monocultural homogenous society that would simply stagnate until a disaster, plague, or war wiped it out.

The US has more literate people than illiterate people, so to avoid your dreaded "monoculture" do you think we should encourage parents to stop teaching their children how to read and write?  

We don't need to; nature takes care of that for us in the form of poor parenting. Little Johnny is telling his middle school teachers to "fuck off" because his dad is in rehab for booze and his mom is in prison for dealing drugs. So he is living with his aunt who resents having to juggle him and her own kids as a single mom so she constantly reminds him of what a pain in the ass he is and that if he fucks up again, she will kick him out.

Why would little Johnny give a shit about "To Kill a Mockingbird?" or the commutative property? Little Johnny could use some love, even if it is from an invisible friend in the sky.

 

 > the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, the government itself is not supposed to be religious.

And yet the US government gives paychecks to chaplains in the army, the Congress starts each session with a prayer, the motto of the countries in God we trust, and Trump put Amy Coney Snakehandler on the Supreme Court.

Well there is always some gap between theory and practice. "In God we trust" did not become our national motto until 1956. Before then, it had been "E pluribus unum" or "Out of many, one" since 1782. Maybe you have legitimate complaints about unconstitutional abuses by politicians, etc. But the theory is sound. Freedom of religion without an established national religion seems to be the ultimate expression of humility and agnosticism by the Founders.

 

> It is not a good thing or a bad thing. It is an evolutionarily stable thing that has become the status quo and simply is. Consider it a brute fact of circumstance

You act as if it's inevitable, but that's nonsense. The USA is an outlier among advanced technological nations when it comes to belief in an invisible man in the sky. In South Korea 56% have no religious affiliation and 15% are not just agnostics but full blown atheists, most Japanese say they do not believe in a deity or follow any religion, and Europe is the least religious place on the planet.  

The U.S.A. is a republic with democratically elected officials. If religious candidates are being voted into office, then it is because that is the will of the people. No politician that ever ran openly as atheist has ever won office to my knowledge; thus they all at least pay lip service to God. The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca once observed, "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

But that doesn't mean all hope for secularism is lost. Religion seems to be slowly giving way to spiritualism, secularism, and rationalism. It will just take time.

Stuart LaForge

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[John Clark]

On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 8:24 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

> So religious people get privileges that non-religious people don't have because it was expedient to do so 250 years ago? 

> Yeah. That's pretty much the gist of it, IMO. Expediency has always been the most popular solution to political problems, from dictatorship to democracy.

But is what was expedient 250 years ago still Expedia today?  It's certainly not, as I mentioned in my previous post, the case in Japan, South Korea, or Europe. And in Taiwan 50% of the people are not members of any religion and 14% are atheists. And in mainland China Muslims are 1.8%, Christians are 5.1%, followers of folk religions 21.9 percent, and atheists or unaffiliated persons 52.2%.  By contrast only 0.06% of the people in India are atheists, and if you look at recent history I don't think you could say that India has done better than these other countries. And Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, and Jordan are also extremely religious but I wouldn't be thrilled to see the USA becoming more like them.  Would you?

> All I can say is that the survival of genes have been necessary for the mere existence of memes thus far.

But why was it a wise move for genes to invent brains in the first place?  Because 500 million years ago genes that invented brains reproduce faster than genes that did not invent brains. This is because in an extremely complex environment there is not nearly enough information storage capacity in any animal's genome to preprogram it on how to respond in any given situation an animal might find itself in. And because genes have zero intelligence themselves they had to invent something that did have intelligence, brains. The difficulty, from the genes point of view, is that not only do they have no intelligence, genes have no foresight either, so they couldn't  have foreseen what those brains would someday come up with. Hence the invention of condoms.  

 

> A significant portion of the population is ruled more by emotion than by reason.

True, and you need look no further than what's in the headlines today to find a good example of irrationality, the Republican refusal to raise the debt limit. The last time we had such an idiotic self manufactured crisis was 12 years ago,  it wasn't resolved until July 31, 2011 just 45 minutes before the USA would've gone into default . Up until that day I had been a lifetime Republican, however on August 1, 2011 I changed my party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. And the similarity of those dates was not coincidental.

> Do you place the probability of intelligent design at exactly zero, even as we are on the verge of creating intelligence ourselves?

Of course not, I'm looking at my computer right now and it is the product of intelligent design. What I would say however is that the probability that intelligent design is the ultimate answer to why we exist and why there is something rather than nothing is exactly precisely zero because if God created the universe then that immediately brings another question to mind that is so obvious that I won't insult your intelligence by spelling out.  

> Well there is always some gap between theory and practice. But the theory is sound. Freedom of religion without an established national religion seems to be the ultimate expression of humility and agnosticism by the Founders.

Having the government officially being neutral in the invisible man in the sky debate and not endorsing one particular religious franchise at the expense of another is fine with me. But as I mentioned before, as long as you have freedom of speech and freedom of assembly you get religious freedom automatically, there is no need to spell it out.    

 > you are entitled to your opinion

Thank you. And you are also entitled to my opinion.  

John K Clark

[Stuart LaForge]

Ok. Then you are entitled to mine also. And my opinion is that atheists would be better served by proactively trying to preserve their own rights and freedoms than by attacking the rights and freedoms of the religious. According to many sociological and psychological studies, atheists are among the most distrusted and least liked-minorities in the entire world. And in an age where tolerance and acceptance for all manner of racial and cultural differences is becoming the norm, atheism is one of the last minorities that is considered to be socially acceptable to bear prejudices and biases against.

According to polls conducted, we atheists ranked below all racial, religious, and cultural minorities including blacks, Islamic fundamentalists, and feminists, and homosexuals with regards to trustworthiness. We statistically rank just slightly above convicted rapists on the trust scale. Basically, the fact that you are not worried about Hellfire in the afterlife for screwing them over,  terrifies the sheeples. 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-atheists-we-distrust/

https://www.soc.umn.edu/assets/pdf/atheistAsOther.pdf

Excerpt:

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Gervais and his colleagues presented participants with a story about a person who accidentally hits a parked car and then fails to leave behind valid insurance information for the other driver. Participants were asked to choose the probability that the person in question was a Christian, a Muslim, a rapist, or an atheist. They thought it equally probable the culprit was an atheist or a rapist, and unlikely the person was a Muslim or Christian. In a different study, Gervais looked at how atheism influences people’s hiring decisions. People were asked to choose between an atheist or a religious candidate for a job requiring either a high or low degree of trust. For the high-trust job of daycare worker, people were more likely to prefer the religious candidate. For the job of waitress, which requires less trust, the atheists fared much better.

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Why would you antagonize a superior force that already dislikes and distrusts you without a Hannibal-like strategy in place to defeat them?

Stuart LaForge

[John Clark]

On Sat, May 27, 2023 at 2:09 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

> According to polls conducted, we atheists ranked below all racial, religious, and cultural minorities including blacks, Islamic fundamentalists, and feminists, and homosexuals with regards to trustworthiness. We statistically rank just slightly above convicted rapists on the trust scale.

With the exception of death itself, religion has caused more human misery than anything else and yet, most people, including atheists, have taken it as a given that it's OK to criticize somebody's politics, or his looks, or his physical and mental shortcomings, or even his morality,  but criticizing somebody's religion is considered a low blow, it is simply not done in polite society. The politically correct attitude to take is that of all the forms of human behavior, religion is the one and only one that must NEVER be criticized in any way, it must always be given a free pass. And what has atheists playing Mr. Nice Guy for all these years gotten us? It got us "a rank just slightly above convicted rapists" and airliners crashing in the sky scrapers.

I must admit that the religious meme that infected the 911 hijackers that said "its a good idea to kill yourself if by doing so you can kill lots of disbelievers", has been very successful. From the meme's point of view crashing an airliner into a skyscraper was a wise move in that it increased its chances of being reproduced in other minds.  Even better is a meme that says "if you believe an invisible man in the sky exists you will get 77 virgins when you die, but if you don't He will torture you with extreme cruelty for a infinite number of years. But He LOVES you" has obvious potential for reproductive success in other minds. If atheists refuse to produce a counter meme that can challenge it because doing so would be impolite then it and similar loathsom memes will infect the entire world.

John K Clark