I would really like to be wrong about this. But when it just keeps coming up over and over again. I'm know there are some smart ones, even one's that I thought were smart and flexible have turned out to be very literalistic. Maybe it's just me but I can't help equating literalism with stupidity. Apparently atheists have a hard time understanding concepts, they cant' sort out one idea from another, and they are very very literalistic in their thinking. This shouldn't surprise me since I've seen before that atheist are fundies. Fundies are literalistic. Even some atheists who I considered very intelligent turn out not to understand ideas.

On CARM I put up the following entitled "Parable." Now if they know anything at all about the Gospels they should understand up font that it's not a literal story.

There was an isolated island off the Coat of Siberia. In the 30s a group of scientists went there to study the people, who had little contact with civlization. They found that monks had gone there in the middle ages and told them about Chrsitanity. So the people were not only Chrsitians but they followed a form of mystical prayer when meant that they spend hours every day praying.

they told the scientists they they felt the presence of god very strongly and that they felt very close to God, who gave them love and made their lives better.

one of the major scientists was a proponent of chemical determinism. He had a formula that he thought demonstrated that all experinces were just the result of chemicals in the head. So he explained to the people why this was not possible they were not feeling the presence of God.

The people on the island were not stone age natives. They even had a car and they some electricity. Although most had horses and karosein lamps, some of htem could do math. So he explained the formula and what it meant and got them to memorize it.

HRG = PDQ + CIA -BBC = HRG

So when they left the scientist felt really good that he has vanquished the evil superstition of religion and brought science to the lives f the people.

When they got on the ship one said "what's that moving across the water?" they looked, it seemed to be a man. they were astonished, one of the natives was running across the waves. He was running the water. He was calling out to them. As the got closer they heard "we forgot the formula!"

I practically give the point dead on, who cares if you have a scientific explaination that reduces a phenomena out of existence if it works, it's wroth doing or believing or following. Religious experience words, so practice it. Who cares if there are explanations that try to explain it away, if it works it has not be explained away. The explanations don't disprove the studies that show that it works.


here's what the atheists said:

Zhavric

A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors.
Following contact with people from more technically advanced societies through exploration, colonization, missionary efforts, and international warfare, cargo cults were initially documented in New Guinea and other Micronesian and Melanesian countries in the southwest Pacific Ocean.
Members, leaders, and prophets of cargo cults maintain that the manufactured goods ("cargo") of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that, unfairly, the foreigners have gained control of these objects through attraction of these material goods to themselves by malice or mistake[citation needed].
Cargo cults thus focus on efforts to overcome what they perceive as the undue influence of the others attracting the goods, by conducting rituals imitating behavior they have observed among the holders of the desired wealth and presuming that their deities and ancestors will, at last, recognize their own people and send the cargo to them instead. Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members.

In other instances, such as on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, cult members worship certain Americans, who brought the desired cargo to their island during World War II as part of the supplies used in the war effort, as the spiritual entity who will provide the cargo to them in the future.

He's looking at it literalistic. the facts about the story must be literally true. when I corrected this he says:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
why would you think any of that is relevant?

Z:

There was an isolated island off the Coat of Siberia. In the 30s a group of scientists went there
A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures.

Quote:Meta:
Cargo cults are not anything like major world religions.

Z

Yeah... because a group of people waiting for their mythical savior to come back to them from the great beyond doesn't sound like anything we see in modern religions . Clearly, you've never read about John Frum.

Quote:Meta
the point of the peice is...

Z:

The point of this piece is that remote people can be easily tricked into believing nonsense. You see, this is what you've never been brave enough to deal with intellectually: people can be deluded in positive ways, but that doesn't make them any less deluded. The cargo cults were deluded. The folks on your island are deluded. It's the gorilla in the room and the reason no one takes your argument seriously. "All the deluded people's delusions prove they're not deluded!LOL" What a joke?

Quote:
the thing is atheist don't have

Z

thing that atheists don't have is delusion. What we do have is intellectual honesty and the truth. That's far superior to your silly delusions.

Of course if it works why is it a delusion. So they can't think an they can't listen and they argue in a circle. I expects this guy to do this since he is literally the stupidest person I've ever encountered. But the next guy is someone I always admired because I though the was very intelligent.


Teabag Salad

So I am supposed to accept your story as real because I can't explain how someone can walk on water? Erm...maybe the story was made up.

Just because it contains something fantastic it doesn't mean that we should accept it as truth. Do you accept Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter stories as being true just because they contain things you can't explain.

Even he can only approach it as a literal story. He know very well I've been arguing the religious experince studies and he should know exactly what I've said and that no one has touched them. So he should get it. And yet he doesn't approach it as an illustration of an idea but as a literal story.

The same can be said for every single atheist on the thread.

It boggles the mind. they can't understand concepts, that's why they don't read theology. They have to have a nice little literalistic moral put in front of them and take it factually, that's why they are reductionists. they can't process new information.

I have decided to take the reductionists seriously. I think atheism is just a matter of brain chemistry, or too much gluten or something. that's why they cant' learn.