Dak

First off: I thought that this was the original thread and that 'why atheist' had been split from it, so sorry if I somewhat misunderstood the context of the thread. Secondly, the above actually gives your opinion and isn't rude; 'it's all nonsense', at the very least, is merely a tautaulogy -- "I don't believe in it because I don't believe in it". Finally: I don't know if you were around for the last incarnation of the Philosophy and Religion forum, but there is a reason we're being so anal, and that's because the last P&R forum degenerated into crap because both sides were arrogant and rude, so we're being a bit intolerant of it this time round. if that results in no-one being able to unsubstatiatedly summarize other people's beliefs as nonsense, and that seems a bit excessive, then sorry. We might loosen up a bit, depending on how this goes.

'Religious belief in deities is bullshit' isn't even an argument. How would someone counter it? "No, you're bullshit!!!"? Or maybe "No, Atheism and/or faith in the Scientific Method is bullshit"? I suppose the argument would continue "No, your Mum is bullshit"? "religion is bullshit, because ..." would be better, but if you're going to meaningfully contribute to threads and stuff, you may as well go the whole hog and not be overly provocative and rude. e.g., "religion is wrong, because ..." DID YOU SEE HOW I DID THAT WITHOUT SUMMING UP RELIGIOUS PEOPLE'S BELIEFS AS BULLSHIT??? THE BIT WHERE I SAID THEY WERE 'WRONG' INSTEAD, BECAUSE IT MEANS THE SAME BUT IS LESS RUDE??? OMG THIS IS HARD!!!!!!!1

Motor Daddy has been perma-banned, for pretty much the same reasons as above. Unless it was one of the mods who changed his avitar to a picture of a troll, we probably should have banned him earlier tbh

just out of interest, how does diliberately posting porn violate our hazmat rules? was it tubgirl?

Vexer has been suspended as the next natural step in SFN's crusade against him, and it was is in no way simply because we got pissed off with him disrupting threads to tell us about this crusade that we are waging against him for no reason at all!. Vexer, when you come back: drop it. ---------------- drochaid: banned at own request.

it was in refference to pangloss' earlyer accusation of an unfair bias against conservatism, not directly related to the paper being discussed. the thread's all over the place, if you hadn't noticed with that bit, all i meant is that some conservatives/traditionalists don't want to conserve aspects of our society due to any aversion to tinkering, but rather because certain aspects of our societies are bigoted, and they quite like that because they themselves are bigots (of the 'don't like gays' variety). I'd be quite happy to differentiate them from 'true' conservatives, same as i'd like to differentiate the more loony 'tinker till it explodes without thinking' and 'femnazi' liberals from the majority, but the fact is that these bigots usually get lumped in under the umbrella term of 'conservatism'. when talking about 'liberalism' being intelectually superior to 'conservatism', i get the feeling somewhat that what's being compared is liberalism with bigotry, as opposed to with conservatism of the lets-not-do-anything-drastic variety. if that makes sense? lol, depends on wether you count sub-optimal as being broken, but i do recognise the kind of liberal to which you are alluding they're stoopid agreed. you certainly shouldn't tinker without thinking nor when it's unneccesary -- in fact, i'd go as far as to say that even when you do tinker you should be conservative (just not neccesarily so conservative that you don't tinker in the first place). doh. should've read the whole post first...

for the record, this is exactly what i meant! changing things that need changing is all well and good, but it is risky and can go wrong -- which isn't even addressing the cost of changing things -- neither of which are problems that conservatism has. otoh, sometimes things need changing, in which case there's nothing wrong with being conservative in your changes if that'll suffice (small, cheap, reletively risk-free cautious changes, rather than dramatic, expensive, risky ones). I guess I can see how 'easy and risk-free' could come across as glib, but they are the benifits of conservatism, same as 'actually improving the situation' is the benifit of progressivism. cheers

do i take it you get nature and have read these arguments and answres? if so, was the age factor that pangloss(?) D H brought up earlyer mentioned? i.e., that both conservatism and the mentioned mental traits correlate with age? ta.

so in other words, you're going to ignore anything good said about conservatism, assume anything else said about conservatism is bad, and complain about a persieved bias against conservatism on this board? well then, pangloss, give me an example of what you'd accept as non-dismissive, non-pejorative, relevent compliments of conservatism. what would you say conservatism's good points are? just so i know how to word it for future refference to make it clear im 'doing my bit for PC' and 'being fair' to conservatism.

did you not see my bit about it being less risky and less effort? and the bit where i pointed out those are good things?

I didn't know this thread was about masturbating conservatism's ego, but conservatism is an easy, cheap, low-risk 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' approach afaict, which is cool tho theres a time and place for it. I mean, it's not as if i deside which knot would be ideal for tying my shoes each morning, i just use a double-bow-knott, 'cos that's how i've allways done it (and it's how my parents did it) and it works adequately theres a lot in favour of the less-effort/risk, lazy way of doing things.

if you define conservatism as 'sticking with what we've allways done', then i'd say it's lazy and cautious, which isn't neccesarily a bad thing: why bother going through the effort and risk of changing our society if our society allready works well enough? an improvement isn't allways worth the cost and risk. comparing conservatism with liberalism is like comparing cheese and chalk (or progressivism with bigotry) -- i think it's more the progressivism aspect of liberalism that is contrastable with conservatism. and, tbh, it's not surprising that someone who wants to see things how they are and not take any great effort/risk in changing them unless absolutely neccesary (i.e., conservative) would have different mental traits than someone who is more inclined to change things in order to improve them -- eg, i'd also guess that conservatives are more inclined towards realism, whilst progressives would lean towards idealism. otoh, you have to realise that the reason that the otherwize uncontrastable liberalism and conservatism get compared so often is that our societies, untill quite recently, have been bigoted, and so unselective conservatism will often work to conserve the bigoted aspects of our society (iow, conservatism can act like bigotry, which IS directly contrastable to liberalism) and if you happen to actually be bigoted -- say, a far-right christian who wants legally-enforsed adherance to aspects of the bible simply because it's what you believe -- what you'll want is often an aspect of our current/recent society, and thus you'll get labelled as a 'conservative' for wanting it; this is where, i would guess, the 'liberalism is more intelectual than conservatism' sentiment comes from -- not a comment on progressivism v conservatism (presumably, if our societies became truly liberal, then all the liberals would change to conservatism), but as a comment on liberalism v bigotry (which, i think, has some justification to the claim 'liberalism is smarter'). none of which implys that conservatives are stupid

if they publish in peer-reviewed journals so that any errors can be discovered by others who don't share their biases, then yeah -- tho i'd be sceptical at first (i.e., would wait untill it had actually survived peer-review for a bit). insidentally, i've seen on a few papers a 'full disclosure' bit, where it says something like 'this research was funded by blah', so maybe some journals demand that potential biases be stated?

you offered it as an example of far-left ideologies being determined to prove a correlation between liberalism and intelligence. so, what, science is a "far-left ideology" now is it, because one paper was published that youve interpreted as an attack on conservatism? contrary to what? and omitting something from the abstract != 'burying' followed by: talk about kettle calling the pot black! those 'extra dots' are called elipses, and indicate an ommision from the sentance. in this context, they indicate that i was after a responce, but was too lazy to type 'so would you mind telling me?' on the end (i.e., it was a question, despite not being phrased as such). they're pretty standard punctuation, pangloss. interesting how, from "..." you managed to infer what you did, just after you admonished me for seeing what i wanted too. I wonder if, after i critisised your logic, you just wanted too see and dismiss me as some kind of 'liberal nut' then...

abstracts are limited to 250 words. no doubt the observation is made somewhere within the paper, but the abstract has to be uber-consice. and, tbh, i'm not sure i see the relevence of the study? if it claims that liberals are more intelectual, then this justifies liberals' desire to make this claim (as it lends weight to the idea that it's actually true). if it doesn't claim this, then i don't see the relevence...