h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now, I'm not going to speak about atheists who are intolerant of religious people. That's way too easy! No, how about atheists who are intolerant of other atheists?

What I intend is to demonstrate a very important point. Not that atheists are bad, not at all! I know many atheists who are great people. And ... not even the people I am about to mention (though not by name) are bad people, really. I want to *disprove* the claim that religion is the source of intolerance. This is called proof by counterexample. Of course this comes up in the claims of many atheists ... including the above two: that if we eliminate religion from the world, we'll also elimintate intolerance.

But what about this then: the following are two real people. I won't identify them by name except to say both are equally convinced atheists. Both go so far as to say they hate religion. Both do not distinguish religions ... they hate all religion. Both of them specifically ask (on a social network site where they are friends - yes, friends, as the network calls it - of mine) that nobody says anything about religion in any conversation of theirs, and one requests that religious people should not be his friend.

I think both of them would agree if just asked without any further context, if they think the world would be a better place if religion was eliminated from it.

Now here's the kicker. These two as far as I know don't know each other. The one is a militant vegan. The other is an anti-vegan, perhaps not so militant but still enough to keep going on about it. The militant vegan posts about three hundred anti-meat/eggs/dairy/leather/honey/silk/etc. postings every day, and about hating meat eaters/whatever/sometimes just hating humans in general. The other one keeps posting how he is sick and tired of vegans, cannot understand their arguments, find them annoying etc. etc.

If you locked these two in a room I think there's a good chance one of them would be dead before many days. If you gave both of them lots of followers and LOTS of money and power they would soon be waging war against each other. Really. They are both completely intractible about their positions.

Bottom line? If everybody were atheists they would still find things to violently disagree about. It's not religion as such that causes the problem, people! It's that people WILL form powerful opinions, WILL believe that they are right about these, and there WILL be people who come to opposing opinions and believe in them with the same vehemence. It is because people are inherently different, just that! We are not all alike, we have different ideas, about *whatever*. Which might cause problems, or not. But when we understand this then already we have taken a step towards tolerance. For a practical example, I will not unfriend either of these people, because both of them contribute some good things to think about. But for both their sakes I hope they never meet.

I once attended a meeting where the view was that any belief of an individual must be considered to be potentially dangerous to that individual’s view of reality.

The idea put forth was that when we believe something, even something quite passive like, “The color red is good,” that belief can have profound results over time. What happens is that what we even tenuously believe something, it will create an expectation to see the evidence of that belief. We have all heard that we see what we expect to see. Therefore we will usually see evidence of our tenuous belief. Having seen for ourselves evidence of some tenuous belief, that belief become a bit less tenuous.

At this point the belief can easily be changed. The problem develops when that [perhaps innocent] belief is not changed over a long period of time. Like the threads of a spider that can easily be broken, when they are bundled into threads of silk and woven into fabric, they become powerful enough to bind us.

Having been bound for a long period of time, breaking such binds can seem like a death defying act. To this day I get a funny feeling when I wear a blue shirt.

Æ

I like that last sentence, AE.

Willem, you've hit the nail on the head. Anyone who thinks beliefs about the spirit world/afterlife/etc are necessarily dangerous is a witchhunter. After all, that's all religion is - a set of beliefs about the invisible. Which, by the way, atheism is, as well - a belief that says I'm not allowed to believe, because Mr X thinks he's cleverer than I.

Yes, I know many practitioners of religions have done, and continue to do, massive harm. So does any -ism. Social Darwinism killed more people than the Spanish Inquisition. Yuck.

It's people being sure they're right, and not doing any thinking, that puts the rest of the planet in peril.

Just as some people will bet on anything, most people will turn any opinion into a tenet, and any tenet into an argument, and, just possibly, any argument into a war - if you don't ride herd on 'em.

Right or wrong, the end message of that meeting was not about riding herd on the beliefs of anyone else, but just how important it is to ride herd on our own belief systems.

Æ

While I think self-policing is an excellent idea , I also think we need to develop a very strong sales resistance against the hegemony of 'everybody knows that...', don't you think?

I have a belief that, on average, the majority is right. From that innocent belief develops a basis for believing that representatives of the majority [leaders] must be right.

Perhaps our first line of defense against being misled is control of our own beliefs.

Æ

Perhaps the first lesson in control of our beliefs is that we have very little control.

Having precious little real control, we must be very judicious about how we use that tiny grasp on reality.

Æ

Tolerance of others is another form of self control


lil x

Tolerance has its place, appeasement may have a place as well, but each within the boundaries of some ethic.

Æ

Well, we might have different approaches, since I firmly believe that the majority is usually wrong about most things, and need a nudge from the one child in the crowd who notices the emperor's lack of clothes.

Yes, well given my respect for your intelligence, I am confidant that our differences are mainly semantics.

AE

After all, it was only a blink of an eye ago when, in human history, the majority thought the *world* to be flat.

AE

I think I get where you're coming from, now.

We still need a better irony smiley...

Our favourite quote from the week turned out to be Stephen Colbert's crack about deciding reality by majority vote...

Oops, that was only true from a Western Society point of view.
Not only did the Greeks know the Earth to be spherical in the third century, but they knew its circumference was about 30,000 km.

Oops, the Greeks were a root of Western Society.

Boy oh boy, the beliefs of the majority sure got balled up.

Oops, should be about 40,000 km.

Modern notions put it at 40,077 km

Actually, the idea that people didn't know the earth was round until Columbus is a myth originally perpetrated by Washington Irving, that fount of misinformation...

Of course, everybody decided to believe him......

Sorry, Willem, we're making a mess of silliness here...

Don’t worry Dmitri, I am very happy when people talk as a result of a posting of mine!

Anyways: I think a person can self-check his or her beliefs. In some circumstances, such as when one lives in a country where just about everyone is insane, this is the only option. I’ve had to do this myself and I don’t think I’ve done too badly. There are things to be careful of. In this country, and in others too as far as I’m aware, they try to cram your head full of propaganda as soon as you understand language. It was so in the past, it’s still so, the content of the propaganda simply has changed. The thing to realize is that political parties, organized religion, the mass media, advertisers, and commercial companies, rarely, if ever, have your psychological health and wellbeing in mind. Even your loved ones might do things and teach you things that are harmful to you because they, too, have been brainwashed. Whether deliberate or not, they’re filling your head with nonsense. Now … ‘facts’ that are wrong are no big deal if you can later easily replace them with the right facts. What is the problem is as A.E. Hill here said: beliefs that are so ingrained that they are very hard to get rid of. The thing is to really, really probe your own belief and value system, figure out just what it is … a difficult first step already, because many people may find out that they don’t actually believe what they believe they believe! But once you do know what you believe, start thinking about *why* you believe all that. You may find that your reasons for at least some of your beliefs are not as good as you thought they were. You now have to decide what you still want to believe. You may still end up with silly or wrong beliefs, but certainly fewer than if you had not done all this!

Quotable indeed:
“…many people may find out that they don’t actually believe what they believe they believe!”

When having done a deep internal search about some belief, i.e., the color red, and coming to know [really logically know] there is nothing really wrong with the color blue; I still get a funny feeling wearing a blue shirt. Logic can counteract intuition, but subconscious thoughts are nigh on to imposable to obliterate.