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What do people think "atheist" means?
- Thread starter ArtieE
- Start date
leibowde84
Veteran Member
I'm not sure what you are asking here. Many people see deities as man-made inventions, not actual entities. Basically, they see them as concepts and nothing more. What about those people?
Cephus
Relentlessly Rational
It really doesn't matter what we're wired to do. We're wired to rape too. Should we just throw up our hands and say its got to be okay then? Or should we insist that we're better than our basic biology?
chinu
chinu
I agree, Many people see them as concepts and nothing more.
But, concept based upon what ?
"God" is a man made "Word", I admit.
But, whenever/wherever there's any concept, its always based upon something,
"God" concept is based upon what ? which invisible/formless thing is "That" ?
"That" is what all it is...
And, due to that, based upon the condition of heart, different people have different Theistic views.
But that's just a bunch of stuff, and stuff.
They're confused about what a concept is?
No, we are not wired to rape.
They're atheists.
Glad somebody pointed this out. Normally people are wired to feel bad for everything, real and made up.
How could it not?
I'd say a good 90% of evolutionary psychology research (which concerns what we're "wired" to do) is bunk, but this isn't the place for a critique of the field. More important is that even if we assume research in evolutionary psychology (along with related fields such as cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology, etc.) on rape is sound, we still don't find evidence for your claim. Perhaps the most comprehensive (and controversial) text on rape as a possible evolutionary adaption is,
Thornhill, R., & Palmer, C. T. (2001). A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. MIT press.
as well as subsequent research along these lines, suggests that there is an evolutionary basis to male rape of females as a secondary or "conditional" adaption that can manifest in situations like war, or as a sort of "abnormal" expression of a more widely accepted belief in an biologically based propensity to engage in sexual coercion especially under particular conditions, etc. The point is that even if this BS were true, it merely asserts that there exists an evolutionary/biological for certain propensities among certain males to rape. It's well known that rape is not an optimal method of ensuring the survival of one's genes; not because most rape doesn't even involve insemination, as most sexual behaviors don't either, but because, excluding the kind of rape that has been and still is socially approved in certain regions of the world (namely, places and times when females were considered basically property, or even the fairly recent widespread belief that husbands essentially couldn't rape their wives as marriage made it somehow automatically consensual), rape tends to ensure that even given the victim is impregnated both she and the fetus were likely to die (recall that, in order for behavior to be "hard-wired", it would be as a result of conditions the existed tens of thousands of years ago, when social structures were minimal and medical care non-existent).
Also, if those like Thornhill & Palmer are correct, this absolutely matters as it changes the way we approach preventing rape. If we don't know what behaviors we are predisposed to and under which conditions, we can't very well encourage those that are positive and discourage the negative.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
This is not true. There are many concepts that aren't based on things that actually exist. God could very well be one of them. Think about "wormholes" for example. They could very well be nothing more than theoretical creations.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
A "concept" is "an abstract idea or notion". So, how are they confused as to what a "concept" is?
leibowde84
Veteran Member
True.
A concept is an abstract. It doesn't stand alone, like an idea or notion does.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Your comment doesn't make sense. Concepts can certainly stand alone without being related to something that exists in reality. They certainly aren't limited to being "abstracts" of something real. A concept is an "abstract idea or notion", according to every source I've looked at, so how can you claim that it "doesn't stand alone like an idea or notion"?
An idea or notion can be put into words, a concept cannot. It is a mental representation.
I think he's simply referring to referents: all words have a "that." It's "that" that people believe in, not concepts.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Now I understand what you are saying. So, do you think that this word can accurately be attributed to God?
I know it can, as it has a real-world referent. But leaving "that" aside, the very fact of people believing in god indicates it is so. When people say they believe in god, it's not a concept that they refer to. The statement carries the sense that it has a real-world referent.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
There are many "words" and "concepts" invented to describe things that may or may not exist in reality. For example:
Unicorn
Dragon
Zeus
wormhole
Demon
But, just because people believe that there is a real world reference doesn't mean that it isn't actually a reference to something g that doesn't exist in reality.