ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Aaaaand here we have one in the wild, folks. This is like maybe five comments away from someone saying this is a weak/straw man.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Yeah, I still can't find anything of any value in this comment. The first paragraph is nearly unintelligible. The second paragraph, well, would you like me to hold your hand on the way to the various comments where I did explain what Girard meant? I will admit, I was unprepared for quite so many people seeming to honestly have no idea at all about the entire enterprises of science and metaphysics.
we have managed to have plenty of intelligent discussions prior to your arrival
I've been around these parts since the old old old old old place. You remember those days?
You never explain yourself, even when you claim to it's just "go read Foucault"
Aaand, you've shown that you haven't read my comments. I said that this was the response I got from the academic wokies.
"this forum needs more Girard."
This was just a general observation. My actual response to the particular concern was to point to other comments that I had made explicitly explaining myself. Which of course you didn't read.
Prior to our last exchange
Oh my, I'm super excited to back through the comment history and see what other comments of mine you didn't bother to read.
either you can maintain your ego on a forum full of strangers, or you can set it aside to learn and have interesting discussions. It's one or the other. Step one is reading the things that other people write.
EDIT: Oh, I see it now. You linked to it, too. ROFL. Apparently, you didn't read my reply there. You just swooped in to say literally nothing at all. At the very least, you didn't respond to me again explaining the very basics. Because of course you didn't. You just wanted to act like you didn't understand. ROFL.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Anyways, I think most atheists, if pressed, will say that they're technically agnostic.
So, why don't we ridicule the remaining atheists more?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
I mean, I'm mostly gathering comparative data, and I can now include the way you've responded here as part of that data set.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Are you sure the constraints on science are not actually constraints of reality?
I'm sure that the irrational confidence in the converse is irrational.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
What in the heck are you even saying here?
I've explained it in a few comments downthread. Man, if anything came out of this post, it's that this forum needs more Girard. And basic metaphysics/philosophy of science.
atheism is correct in the sense that if there's not sufficient compelling evidence then people should default to a position of not knowing instead of just blindly believing things on faith
That would more accurately be described as a type of agnosticism. A particular type, in fact.
Implying atheism gave rise to wokeism is nonsense. The two were aligned a few decades ago, but they have very separate origins, goals, motivations, etc. which is why they split.
The claim is that wokeism was only able to rise so quickly and so broadly was due to the effects of atheism on the masses, not that they had the same origins/goals/motivations.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Do you have something actual to say? This is just sneering. There's literally nothing here.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
So, even if we don't ridicule the agnostics, why don't we ridicule the atheists more?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
If you are proposing that Atheism is just as ridiculous as Wokism, then I'll register that I don't actually agree and probably a large chunk of the Motte doesn't agree either
Why not? And why did you immediately retreat to agnosticism instead of robustly defend it in the first place?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
I think mistaking methodological constraints for a metaphysical theory is pretty darn near to the core belief for most atheists.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Listen man, see Entelecheia's comment. Then go back to rippin' your bong all you want.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
My metaphysical theory is that it is unproductive to subscribe to (any other, esp. adversarially wrought) metaphysical theories that are untestable given my methodological constraints.
How did you test that metaphysical theory?
Is this some in-joke I am not privy to?
Ohhh, shoes were all the rage. You do better than to fall into that hole, but it's mostly a funny dig.
that does not have any bearing on the correctness of atheism
I didn't say that it does. It's just a bonus that atheism likely enabled the very thing that OP was decrying.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Ok, um, what do you think counts as "science"?
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Nah, basic engagement with metaphysics would probably be sufficient.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
You might have missed the line about mistaking methodological constraints for a metaphysical theory. That's pretty darn close to the central claim of most atheists, especially the ones 'round the internets who would be most apt for not-kid-gloves treatment.
a lot of old-school atheists got really uncomfortable about "atheism+" or "New Atheism", and those are the steps that really defined the transition. I could also argue that this confuses correlation and causation if 2010s atheism was really just a corpse piloted by SJWs.
But that's kind of the whole point. They created the corpse! They knew what they were doing when they killed it. But like any social fad, they shrugged it off, thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong. Only after they saw the fruits of their labor did they start feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. Let's put it this way, I've seen arguments that Christianity is to blame for wokeness, and some of those arguments are actually not all that bad. But if you look at, like, a random Protestant 'barely believer' church that is now headed toward wokeness, you probably wouldn't say that they caused the rise of wokeness. You certainly wouldn't use that in particular to claim that Christianity in general caused the rise of wokeness. But you might say something like, "Look at these churches who have basically abandoned any real faith, are honestly basically agnostic already, don't even really believe in any sort of real morality. Those choices have left a corpse of a church which was just too vulnerable to 'woke mind virus'." In a sense, those choices caused wokeness to rise up in those churches rather than in others. In the same sense, that's what a lot of the 2010s atheism did to large portions of the masses.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
For example, the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory, or further implying that shoes are atheists. Or that New/Internet Atheists almost certainly led to a willingness to embrace relativism everywhere and ultimately wokeism by the masses of "laypeople". Or perhaps other things, I'm not sure how general the OP was, but I don't think we're allowed to hypothesize that they just want to bash the outgroup generally for the lulz. We probably want to keep it to the motte.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Nobody showed any sign of dodging the mockery of an argument he made when he randomly brought it up. And be serious; this whole chain was started by someone say, "Why don't we mock my opponents more?" Whelp, I guess we're mocking opponents now. Them's the grounds you wanted to live on.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Nah, you started the sneering in your OP. My turn now.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
I didn't say they were one in the same. I more directly attacked the inherent absurdity in atheism. It's just a bonus that the atheism movement very likely set up the conditions for the very thing OP was complaining about to spread so quickly and so widely.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
I mean, I'm not sure what I can say besides that I disagree? That I lived through the internet wars? That the OP attached to the comment I linked mentioned how shoe atheist was brought up "a lot", because it was a pretty massive thing that was seen all the time?
If anything, one could say that you don't see people say such things anymore, mostly because atheists don't get pressed on their beliefs anymore. They mostly don't have to explicitly say much of anything.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Ah yes, my opponents don't actually believe things, and when they do, they're clearly crazy. Oh, by the way, my personal interpretation is the obvious thing that is implied by what they would believe if they actually believed things. Which is how we know they don't actually believe any of it at all. This is all right and good then. Carry on! Sorry I ever said anything!
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Ok, given the modding, I'm just surprised by your position. It's got nothing to do with maximizing reproduction/fitness, which is obviously the One True Message from your belief system. We even have examples of scientific eugenicists through the years to demonstrate that this is, without question, the real interpretation.
You may not like this argument, but you can engage with it properly.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
Least you could do is read the entire chapter.
I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat atheism with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems. For example, the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans is widely called out here as being simply wrong. Which it almost certainly is, in my opinion. But consider the idea that methodological constraints actually are a metaphysical theory, or further implying that shoes are atheists. These ideas are, I think, even less likely to be true than the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans (at least the latter can be empirically shown true or false; the former is just a category error). But atheism on The Motte is usually not met with accusations that it is as absurd, indeed perhaps more absurd, as any flavor of wokeism. Nor is the history acknowledged that New/Internet Atheists almost certainly led to a willingness to embrace relativism everywhere and ultimately wokeism by the masses of "laypeople". Wokeism gets often and in my opinion properly pilloried on here for being nonsensical on the level of correspondence to objective reality, but atheism typically gets a free pass. Even the philosophers on here mostly refuse to really call it out as being absurd when the topic comes up.
Does this happen because atheism is largely not viewed as a threat anymore (since its birth of wokeism is already in the past) and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and atheism is vaguely internet-weirdo-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"? Or, to be more charitable, maybe it is because wokeism can fairly easily be criticized on the level of normal scientific investigation, whereas the claims that atheism makes go so far beyond typical constraints of the scientific method that one actually does just quietly make an exception for it because its claims are fundamentally viewed as being orthogonal to scientific investigation (and people just fail to ever mention such)?
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