From: "bramble" 

On 28 mar, 22:48, "CE"  wrote:
> On Mar 28, 5:10 pm, "bramble"
 wrote:

Sorry, I accidentally sent my message away.  I am not finished yet with you.

> > > Under the proposed sociological model, it
> > > would be just as valid to claim atheists and agnostics are merely
> > > following the dictates of a capitalistic elite in a secular society -
> > > and not really the freethinkers they feel themselves to be.
> > Atheist and agnostics are most times people that had been pissed off
> > badly by the pastors of his own church, so they had the need to desert
> > and flee his church.  So after a time of being pissed off,  "they
> > start to look for reasons" and  "they look for
arguments" to oppose
> > their fucking church leaders.
>
> Atheists and agnostics deserve more credit than that. You're making it
> seem as though these people were angry, started off with an agenda,
> and eventually grasped at whatever rationalizations they could to
> bolster their own prejudices against the religious establishments.

> While I have no doubt that there are some very bitter and
> intellectually shallow atheists out there - and why wouldn't there be
> when there are people like that in just about every other group? - I
> would hope that most atheists and agnostics arrived at their
> convictions by honestly examining the evidence and thinking things
> over carefully.

 Of course, they deserve more credit.
But a few of them were educated by parents that do not have any religion at
all.  So for them were easy, perhaps, if these parents have friends and
relatives to relate to each other and to be of help.

But, the hard question is not to find reasons and arguments to pull down
the castle of cards.  Many apparent religious people know very well his
religion is plain false, and for analogy all others. The serious trouble is
you have to break with parents and relatives, and go to live in another
city, big enough to be free of any interference from your former religion. 
So most of this people are sort of social martyrs, sometimes outcasts.

> > On the other hand, you can imagine also, that there is not any baby
> > that is born plainly Evangelical, or Baptist, Mormon, Presbiterian,
> > Catholic, Islamic, Hinduist, Shintoist, Leninist or Marxist.
> > No any baby is born with a religious affiliation, is he?
> >  It is the same with the language.  Not any baby is born with a
> > predisposition to speak Chinese,  English, or Japanese.  Do you agree
> > at least with this?  They have to learn to speak that way with the
> > help of his parents.
>
> Of course babies learn from their parents. They also learn with the
> help of teachers, friends, books and other educational material.
> That's the way it should be. Once they become adults or hit the age of
> reason, they can then make their own choices in life. For many people,
> this means abandonning the faith of their parents for another or to
> become atheists or agnostics. For other people, it means leaving
> behind their country, their language and their customs and making a
> new home and acquiring a new cultural identity.
>
> People are free to make their own choices. That is one of the few
> truly great things about being human: the ability to choose. With that
> freedom, many people - indeed, most people - choose to believe. They
> find themselves a place or group of people that reflects their own
> convictions and make themselves at home there.

I think this is false.  In general, people is not free to make choices.  In
general is a sort of drama.  When someone, by accident, find himself too
much attached to the truth... he realize is risking to alianate all
believers around him.  So he is divided between the truth and the falshood.
 And this is pretty much a drama.  If you choose truth they would reject
you.  Most times, you accept your religion is false, and you sooth yourself
considering that all religions are.  But you want to live without much
troubles, without fighting with parents, relatives, friends and neighbours.
 So you accept the truth is not worth that much sacrifice, then you duck
and keep a low profile.

> In your case, you seem to have found yourself a home among people who
> want to look down on those who have religious beliefs and accuse us of
> being mindless, brainwashed drones.
>
> What I find amusing - albeit somewhat pathetic at the same time - is
> that you do not seem to realize that the very processes you claim can
> lead someone to being brainwashed into a faith may in fact be at work
> in you. If constant exposure to a sanctionned point of view by the
> power elites can brainwash someone into believing in religion, then it
> stands to reason that the same kind of exposure could effectively
> convince these same people of something else. Since we live in a
> society that is capitalistic and secular and very keen on
> technological and scientific advances, it seems to me the case could
> very well be made - using your own reasoning - to show that many
> atheists may be so simply because they have similarly been brainwashed
> by the power elites.
>
> Now, I think that's unlikely to be the case. As I said, I give people,
> including atheists and agnostics, more credit than that.

There is reality and there is objctivity, to the limity degree that we can
be aware of both.  I say that because humans are not omniscient, you have
to agree with this point.
Well, by a process observing the world around you, and by observing what
people is say here and there, you discovere that men in general tell lies,
or simple repeat phrases that are lies, or are statements that produce
doubt in your mind.  You learn the rules of logic and its limitations.  I
you follow that path, you are in train of becoming an skeptic.  It is not
easy to become an skeptic for  society does not forster that quality, but
the blind faith.  Nobody among the rulers want that people would be
skeptical for this people are no easy to dupe.

And to dupe people is more lucrative than telling the truth.  So in a way,
skeptics are loners.  All the people with a great attachement to social
relations, and with social intelligence, know that they understand they
have to forget about truth in general,  that they have to accept the
general rule of the dominant thought, even if it is a lie. Well, everybody
seems to believe that, no? Well, me too.  He in general, he thinks
"primum vivendum", first to live; so the consequence is let me
live with this.  I could not care less.  I want to live in peace with my
neighbors and relatives.  This is called "social intelligence". 
And all political systems are based on that. You do not want to be
osctrized, don't want to be rejected by the others.

Bramble

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