Autism and atheism

Post Reply New Topic

Huh? Seems like a contradiction. Libertarianism by definition has a weak central government while socialism is all about centralized control. Or so I thought. I suppose if you answer it would count as a thread hijack

No, I think it's pretty much statistically verifiable, and I think we can deduce from this that people's over-identification of their dx with and their belief system (and I consider any atheism a belief system too) is inherently false, irrational and based in subjectivity and ego.

Authoritarianism is centralized power. Socialism is cooperative management of resources and wealth, which can be in either authoritarian form or egalitarian/liberation form.

Sorry if this a thread hijack, but I feel a social responsibility to respond to that bit of glaring misinformation.

Heh heh. I suspect an interesting conversation could ensue, but it would then definitely be a hijack. Another thread, another day, perhaps.

Libertarian socialism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

It is its own thing.

No....I just believe that people should be free to do whatever they wish so long as no one else (including non-human life forms aside from whatever we may need for our sustenance and so forth and the environment as a whole) is being significantly and negatively impacted by their actions.


That includes things like ALL manner of sexual relations between consenting adults, the freedom do whatsoever we will with our own bodies (smoke pot/tobacco, drink, have an abortion, etc...) and countless other things.

I DO NOT see any reason, logical or ethical, for economic stratification of any sort....hence a major reason i'm a socialist and proud of it. This awful state of affairs has existed to one degree or another since the dawn of civilization and it really is time for it to end if we truly want the most positive aspects of humanity to evolve. That will never happen under capitalism and these vulgar, cruel and unjust divisions between the "haves" and the "have nots". Furthermore.....in a world in which money is directly proportional to one's quality of life, (notice I did not say HAPPINESS) I think our society is one giant enabler for the most appalling behaviors among rationally self-interested beings like humans.

Would we still have Al Capones, Prostitution and violent drug cartels were this not the case?


Would we still have wars like Vietnam and Iraq in which the only real beneficiaries can be found within the defense industry, it's blood-drinking parasites known as "shareholders" and a loathsome lot of war criminal politicians like Dick Cheney, LBJ and Robert McNamara?

I think not.


Last, but not least, since the belief in human "free will" is unproven (and likely false IMO) by ANY standards of proof we usually demand for countless other things, there is no justification for the idea that anyone "deserves" or "has earned" more than anyone else.


If I hijacked this thread.....so be it. These are my fundamental convictions and i'm sticking to them so there is no need for any counter-arguments in any case.


"Liberty without socialism is privilege injustice, socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality".

Mikhail Bakunin

I am actually agnostic.

To be fair, some people don't look very hard, either. And there's not actually an "atheist community" seeing as we have no over-arching dogma to which we all subscribe.

Also, there are plenty of sensationalist elements in any given theistic community. Crashing planes into the World Trade center was pretty darn sensational.



Which morals, specifically?

Why so much effort into being 'nothing'?

No "belief", no community.

Rational Response Squad is DEFINITELY a community. But not an atheist one?

I'm sorry, but I don't quite get what you mean here.



It can be a community of people of people who are atheists, but it doesn't follow that atheists are a "community" based on the existence of one group of people claiming to be atheist who happened to form a community. The Rational Response Squad cannot be described as THE atheist community; it is only AN atheist community.

The only thing "atheists" as a whole have in common is a lack of belief in the existence of any particular deity. "Atheists" are too disparate as a group to be said to have a "community."

Yeah. OK.

What this really is is an over reaction to religious organizations. There is a Christian Community, even if there are multiple flavors of Christianity. Some atheists are so intent on being "without god think" that they deny the fact that there are enough similarities among them that calling them a community is an effective categorization. That there are sub-groups among them is irrelevant.

Uh-huh. That's because all Christians have the Bible and a similiar concept of "god" to rally around, which, more often than not, tends to engender similiar worldviews. Christians have a hell of a lot more in common than atheists.



It's pretty hard to base a "community" on nothing more than not believing in a deity. There needs to be a great deal more. Not believing in a deity doesn't give people similiar worldviews, common politics, traditions, an over-arching dogma, ect. Atheists tend to be all over the map in terms of politics, lifestyle, and background, seeing as how not believing in a diety is a position that can be arrived at in numerous ways.

A mentally ret*d child who lacks the capacity to form belief in a god is technically an "atheist" as is the physics professor with years of academic study under his belt as is the teenager who doesn't believe in a god because he's too lazy to think about it. I fail to see how these three form a "community" as "community" implies shared values, beliefs, and outlooks.

Nothing you have mentioned here is any different than any other community in this world. There is no totally homogeneous community anywhere. "Community" is a way of talking about people that interact around a shared set of ideas. EVERY community can be parsed up into various sub sets, and every member of a community can be part of other communities as well.

So while you parse the meaning of community and engage in verbal gymnastics to deny that a community of atheists exists, when I talk to someone less rigid and I link the terms community and atheist in a conversation, they know what I mean.

If by "community" you simply mean "group of people," then yes. If you mean "community" by way of a shared set of beliefs, values, and ways of relating to the world, then no. Atheists are only linked by a lack of belief in a particular diety; that in of itself implies absolutely nothing else.

It's rather difficult to define a "community" that is based on its LACK of something. I am no more a part of an "atheist community" than I am a part of the "community" of people who have never eaten pickled pigs' feet. I am as likely to have something in common with other atheists as I am with my fellow non-pickled-pigs-feet eaters. Are you going to claim that I am part of a community of people who have yet to try pickled pigs' feet?

You're confusing the terms "group" and "community:"

com·mu·ni·ty   /kəˈmyunɪti/
[kuh-myoo-ni-tee]

–noun, plural -ties.

1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

2. a locality inhabited by such a group.

3. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually prec. by the ): the business community; the community of scholars.

That's about it. A "group" of people whose only shared trait is a LACK of something can hardly be described as a "community." Christians and whatnot can be described as a "community." Atheists....not so much.

So if I commissioned a study regarding atheists, their beliefs and their tendencies I would find no commonalities among them?

You might. You also might find commonalities among those of of who have never tried eating pickled pigs feet. Still not a "community" as by the definitition I posted.