PZ Myers. 2004 Oct 29. FreethoughtFilter. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/freethoughtfilter/>. Accessed 2009 Jul 04.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, October 29, 2004
FreethoughtFilter
Tom Morris has put together a useful new site, FreethoughtFilter. It's a kind of metafilter for us atheistical heathenish types—check it out if you fit that description.
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What, exactly, is meant by 'freethought' as y'all use it?
#: Posted by Charles Rozier on 10/29 at 10:49 AM
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Ask Tom. I use it to mean thought free from all of that religious, revealed knowledge, veneration of old dogma, piss-poor silly foolishness of the churched.
Some people have definitions that are a bit more sympathetic to the deluded. -
When you think about it, it's pretty stupid to be an aetheist. It defies the odds, here's why:
1. A person is either an aethiest or not;
2. Heaven exists or not
3. If Heaven exists, aetheists aren't going there.
4. If Heaven doesn't exist, aetheists and believers end up in the same place (worm bait).
So, there's 4 possible scenarios:
1. Yes Heaven, Aetheist = No going to Heaven
2. No Heaven, Aetheist = No going to Heaven
3. Yes Heaven, Believer = Possible go to Heaven
4. No Heaven, Believer = No going to Heaven
So, a believer has up to a 25% chance of going to Heaven, while an aetheist has no chance, other than to end up as maggot food, like the pea-brained midgets found by those archaeologists.
So, even if there ain't no God, and, hence, no Heaven, the odds suggest you should be a believer, anyway, since there ain't a real downside.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:05 AM -
Bob,
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't have a degree in mathematics, and that it seems unlikely that you've taken (or passed, rather) a course in statistics.
I'll give you a C- in Trolling 101, though.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:11 AM -
You're assuming a 50% chance of heaven existing. I'd like to see you defend that number.
This is Pascals wager . I've always figured that a) if God exists and would send me to hell for not believing, he would likely see through me trying to fake it, and b) if God exists and will send me to hell for not believing, then God is an asshole unworth of my worship anyway.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:13 AM -
Man, I sure confess ignorance about Mr. Pascal, but he seems to be saying some of things I'm saying
JSM,
Yes, it is true, I am not a math geek! Now, go crawl back to your dorm room, son.
Evan Murdock,
It seems like you have some anger at God to process. But I don't git it. If you don't believe in God, why are concerned about his hypothetical rules and regs?#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:22 AM -
I need a little button which turns off the displaying of certain commenters' comments.
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:29 AM
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Bob,
I'm afraid I'm going have to downgrade you to a D at this point. Successful trolling requires a little more adherence to the topic at hand in addition to slags. If you don't have at least a basic understanding of the principles that are the foundation for what you present as an argument, you're certainly no "thinking geek" either. Geeks can usually think their way out of paper bags.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:30 AM -
A little checkbox could say
Display Retards: _On/Off#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:39 AM -
Welp.
Bob, you win.
The rest of you, it's been fun. Bye. -
Kids are fortunate now. If they get a clue that the religion of everyone around them is just a stupid fairytale, they can be hanging around atheists in minutes via the internet. Being 28, I grew up just before the internet, in a small redneck town, and was pretty isolated as far as that topic went. It wasn't until I moved to the somewhat big town of Raleigh that I found myself around people who openly admitted to being atheists. I'm sure I'd been around other atheists before, but in parts of the south at least, there are headaches and repercussions to being known as such.Even here, I'm still somewhat careful about admitting it.
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:45 AM
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People, please don't rise to the trollbait.
Steve, I think this is an important development. In these ingrown small towns in rural America, you'd rarely encounter an open atheist (or a gay person, or in many places even a non-white person). On these here internets, though, we're here, we're loud, and we may even be over-represented relative to the population as a whole. And that's a good thing. A kid growing up with doubts can find plenty of places that say doubting is OK.
I know my daughter was ostracized a bit when we first moved here because she wasn't shy about plainly stating that she never went to church and didn't believe in that gobbledygook. She's since found her own little online community, and has also found friends at school -- maybe they're learning, too, that atheists aren't evil.
The downside is that this is also why conservative parents are so enthusiastic about filtering software for their kids' computers. I caught a few AOL commercials the other day, and was shocked to see them advertising extensive 'parental controls' as a selling point. I don't know about others, but I trust my kids, and there is no censoring software anywhere in our home network. -
Okay, I define freethought as coming to reasoned decisions about the world around you free from revelation, church dogma and faith alone. It is used as an umbrella term for atheists, agnostics and those who are not really in to the whole religion thing and prefer a rejection of it. The site is a way of keeping up to date with what's going on in the world as it pertains to this situation of lack of belief.
Covered on the site will be topics as varied as science, philosophy, political issues and stuff just for living.
With that bit done, I'll respond to Pascal's Wager. I am presuming that most people who do it reject natural theology (they wouldn't have to use such a weak argument if they believed in natural theology). Surely, though, they are then labouring under the delusion that it's Christian God or no god. Surely, if you worship the Christian God and it turns out to be that Hinduism is correct or, maybe, the Muslims are correct, then your chances are severely diminished.
If you are also stating that God is omniscient, then surely that God would be able to see through Pascal's Wager - that the only reason you are religious is that you are trying to protect your butt from going to this mystical hell. Put yourself in that position - would you prefer someone who sat in pure ignorance of your existence and didn't bother you or would you prefer someone who worshipped you solely to curry your favour. What a crock.
You are also grossly underestimating the loss that a believer suffers if there is no God - all those wasted Sundays in church, all that Bible reading. And worst of all, the loss of honesty and integrity.
Pascal's Wager is a simplification - the situation is not one of a simple coin flip (either god exists or he doesn't). With the supernatural, there are so many possibilities that it branches out from the coin flip until it's like a Vegas casino. The slot machines represent theistic belief, the craps tables represent New Age, the roulette wheel is ghosts, the poker players near death experiences, the football pools players are really betting on reincarnation. Pascal was wrong - there is so much that simplifying it to a binary option is silly. The very existence of thousands of different Christian denominations is evidence that this binary option is a near-infinite chicane of guesses.
(And they condemn evolution as a "chance" process!)#: Posted by Tom Morris on 10/29 at 02:20 PM -
Maybe another way to look at Freethinking is to focus on the THINKING part of the term. I, as Steve says, had to go away to college to find a community of thinkers/atheists in Eugene (now there were some freethinkers!). My children also were never subjected to blocking software and instead were encouraged to explore, analyze and think about what they found out there on the internets. I am quite proud of how they are turning out. Aint a churchgoer or Republican in the bunch.... well there is the one that went astray before I married her mom, but she is only 30 so there is still hope for her too.
Pharygula rocks today, even moreso than usual.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 02:26 PM -
Translation on latest Osama tape coming soon folks, some excerpts "Your security is not in the hands of Bush or Kerry or even Al Qaeada, your security is in your own hands." "We won't attack you if you don't attack us" and a jab at Bush for "Freezing up reading a childrens story about a goat while 9-11 took place" or something like that.
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 02:26 PM
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... oops, dropped the n ... Pharyngula rocks ....
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 02:27 PM
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And Bob needs to weight the value of his options ... i.e. who wants to spend eternity with Bob. I pick worms if they will have me.
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 02:29 PM
- It's an odd thing, but if Pharyngula rocks today, I can't take too much credit -- site visits are just soaring recently, probably drawn in on searches for good ol' Homo floresiensis. I really think a weblog is a product of the community of commenters it draws in, and we've got a pretty good bunch here (with a few exceptions, of course).
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The pea-brained, 18,000-year old midgets are a real magnet for blogging, I would suggest.
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 02:43 PM
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"I can’t take too much credit..."
Bosh. If I had a blog I'd have titles like "Check out my keen new notebook" and "I'm hungry".
And there'd be no one there.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 02:51 PM -
Evan Murdock wrote:
"b) if God exists and will send me to hell for not believing, then God is an asshole unworth of my worship anyway."
That's always been the aspect of religion that boggles my mind the most. Well said.
Dr. Meyers wrote:
"I caught a few AOL commercials the other day, and was shocked to see them advertising extensive ‘parental controls’ as a selling point."
I had the same reaction. I thought the commercial was gearing up to be a satire/parody of web censorship and couldn't believe it when it became clear it was all supposed to be taken at face value. A report card for your kids web viewing activity? Krikey.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 03:18 PM -
site visits are just soaring recently
Sorry. I've been evangelizing. I think this site totally rocks. So much cool information...#: Posted by on 10/29 at 03:22 PM -
You are far too modest PZ .... You are building a great environment for us to create in, the subjects and presentation encourage thoughtful exchanges ... sounds a lot like successful parenting, or teaching (read, Not AOL parenting )
#: Posted by on 10/29 at 04:33 PM
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OT
This just cracks me up. Our friend Kent Hovind is selling the Holy Word of the Lord (KJV) in Donald Duckese. That's right, he's offering for sale the very Sacred Writ as a CD narrated by Donald Duck.
http://www.drdino.com/Ministry/NewsLetter/index.jsp
CTRL-F for "Donald Duck".#: Posted by on 10/29 at 04:46 PM -
For $99 plus shipping and handling. I think I'll pass.
But it does sound appropriate. - If there's a version available narrated by Beaker from the Muppets, I'm sold.
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'“b) if God exists and will send me to hell for not believing, then God is an asshole unworth of my worship anyway.”
That’s always been the aspect of religion that boggles my mind the most. Well said."
Yeah, ditto. When they describe god to me, i really wonder why they would worship such a being. He's described as essentially an immoral megalomaniac. A capo di tuti capi. The most horrible crime is forgiven, so long as you're loyal. If you're not, you're fucked. But i could go on and on. Instead I'll just say, check out Kissing Hank's Ass. It's right on the money.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 07:44 PM -
$99 for a bible narrarated in donald duck style. What idiot, back when I was impressionable, made me think science was a good career? I'm in the wrong goddam business.
Separating fools from their money, that's where it's at. Magnetic bracelets, alt-science Tesla junk, health crystals, homeopathic medicine, silver colloids, chakras, etc. Too bad i have a conscience.#: Posted by on 10/29 at 11:18 PM -
So, 'freethought' is thought that is "free" from 'revealed knowledge', 'veneration of old dogma', and from 'piss-poor silly foolishness' as well as making 'reasoned decisions' "free" from 'revelation, church dogma, and faith alone'.
What, then, is meant by free? And, let's also be clear, while it may be a form of thinking "free" from religious dogma and veneration of the religious sort, does this also mean that "freethought" is a repudiation of any dogma or any veneration?
Tom, when you say 'this situation of lack of belief', I take it you're of the belief that atheism, as a description of some form of believing, is properly a lack of belief? Do others agree with that assessment?#: Posted by Charles Rozier on 10/30 at 08:51 AM -
I like the wikipedia definition of free thought: "Freethought is a characteristic of individuals whose opinions are formed on the basis of an understanding and rejection of tradition, authority or established belief." I personally consider freethought as thinking that is free of cogntive delusions in general which is broader but arguably fuzzier. I post news items which I think in one way or another encroach on individuals ability to think freely (in this sense) and therefore are constained (often against their will) in obtaining the benefits of such thinking.
#: Posted by on 11/10 at 08:47 AM
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Freedom is the willingness to accept the results of your actions. There is no freedom without responsibility. I read somewhere that the vast majority of US citizens who seek better mental health are R.C. The Middle East has seen the origin of the three most destructive and vile religious belief systems invented by humans. Even the tribal atrocities carried out in sub Saharan Africa pale into insignificence in comparison with the slaughter carried out over the last 3000 years by the Xtians, Jews and Moslems.
In WWI the Germans motto was "Gott mitt uns" and the English riposte was "We've got mittens too". "Lions led by donkeys" was the German verdict on the bravery of the British soldiers and that is the saddest part of all. If those wonderful men on both sides had not been culled without issue, then the supreme quality of western thought and behaviour would still be dominant around the planet, My mother was of the opinion that the French never recovered from their revolution and the Napoleonic wars that followed and the rest of Europe has not recovered its clarity of thought and courage after the two world wars. And who is to say she was wrong?
The European gene pool was decimated by those wars, which is why the world is now a crock of shit. Roll on genetic engineering I say and let us people the planet with atheists who will do more for humanity and peace than any believer in gods will ever do. We can do this!
Pericles#: Posted by on 11/16 at 11:12 AM