Oh noes! The evil monopolistic entities, run away!
Dude, you’re nuts. You might have a hypothesis, or even a working theory that some form of government, even a minimalist one, is not necessary. But without a working model, all you have is a theory. Working models are proof, the population and population densities they support, goods and services they produce. We have working models of systems of government, more than you can shake a stick at. Unless you can show me a model without some form of government, then all you have at best is a theory.
But I guess I’m just a victim of this evil monopolistic entries that induct children through complex brainwashing techniques, and the fact that I don’t buy your assertion is proof that I can’t think for my self and break this brainwashing. Strawman? No, that’s what you sound like, quite quixotic and quite mad.
The world does not exist in terms of binary values. It’s your assertion that atheism is the DEFAULT position. What you propose is babies not born believing in a god. Do you have ANY evidence to support this. Is this even an observation or an assertion you pulled from your arse?
What you don’t seem to be understanding is this is more the domain of sociology, but psychology. I don’t assert babies are born believing in anything, but I do observe the vast majority of societies develop rudimentary theistic, shamanistic, or mystical beliefs. Measuring which is more likely is THE DEFAULT. I don’t claim to actually know for a fact what the default is, but you do. How do you reach this conclusion.
Labeling someone as ignorant, unable to think for them selves, is frankly childish when they are asking what can only be described as a reasonable request for information. Your assertion is interesting, but you don’t seem to have any interest in sharing information how you came up with it. Assertions, like beliefs, are not proof.
I find the proposition to be interesting but as you have no interest in discussing it, well, I’ve plopped it over to dawkins.net
Perhaps someone there would have actual information on the subject.
This message was bought to you by your friendly neighborhood monopolistic entity. Trust the corporation, or we’ll come to your house and break your windows. Monopoly good - competition bad! LULZ
You’re missing the point. Whatever hypothesis Knight_of_BAAWA might or might not have is entirely irrelevant to his point: you’re the one making the positive assertion, therefore the burden of proof is on you.
Wrong on both counts. Working models are not proof (“perpetual motion is possible; here’s a working model - that proves it!”…of course it doesn’t prove anything of the sort: you start from a bad theory and misinterpret the result. You have to have a good theory through which to interpret the results before empirical results (working model) are even meaningful), and “we” do not have “working models of systems of government” (or at least, I’ve never heard of any government that works as advertised)
I didn’t bring up governments at all. Someone else did, I believe it was Knights_of_BAAWA who asserted they are not necessary. Burn of proof isn’t on me, I didn’t bring it up, it was not an issue I was interested in.
If it helps, I’m an agent of the Vatican, and as such I’m part of the evil monopolistic entity set forth to brainwash kids in schools into thinking goverments are necessary, and asserting my control by initiating force against others. There is no purpose to our existance other than our desire to propagate the notion we need to exist. No one can stop the evil monopolistic entity. Mahahahaha
(good rule of thumb, one isn’t a moron or brainwashed just because they don’t buy someone else’s theory)
The issue I bought up is the assertion that atheism is the default position. I find it a silly assertion as, while technically logically sound, is effectively meaningless. Firstly, it would have to be proven that atheism is the default. I don’t know that it is, I don’t know if worms are atheist. What would matter is what is the default conclusion when the mind is developed enough to understand the concept.
If you don’t understand how ludicrous the assertion is, let me illustrate. If we start labeling babies as things they are not, they could be labeled atheist, apolitical, ananimistic, anomianistic, anaspheteristic, acosmotheistic, aneidolist, afallibiliistic. ahumanist, ahylomorphist, anomnist, apancosmist… etc… etc… So why don’t we label everything based on it’s negative attributes? Because we would quickly run out of labels, and positive attributes have more meaning. From a babies perspective, parents are rather god like. The notion that babies don’t start out with belief in gods could be perceived as incorrect if they perceive their parents as gods, but even that is meaningless. What would have meaning is when a given child develops cognitive skills, whether or not without external influence develops theistic, shamanistic, or otherwise mystical beliefs. The societal norm is theistic rather than athestic. My question is, if the assertion is true that atheism is the default, why is it so common place to develop god(s). That’s a reasonable question, and I’m not shifting the burden of proof.
I found this an interesting topic, but moved it here since no one here was interested in discussing it, nor offer any proof to the assertion.
You understand that is NOT perpetual motion? It depends on a SUN to operate, or some form of thermal differential. Even then the useable amount of energy you can extract from such a device is rather minimal in contrast to the what it costs to assemble it. I like the idea of solar power, but solar power is NOT perpetual motion.
It is however good a good experiment, though I have to admit ignorance why it works. One CAN measure how much energy it takes to produce the device, how much time, and how much the way of energy it can produce. Near as I’m aware there is no practical application for the light mill. Photo-voltaic cells, solar heaters, reflective solar boilers and smelters on the other hand do have some practical applications that I’m aware of.
Near as I’m aware, direct wind or tidal power are far more practical.
No government works as advertised that I’m aware of. But working models are proof. Show me a society without a government. That would certainly prove that one can exist, though I would agree it doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t. With a working model we can measure key factors such as life expectantly, hours of day worked, goods and services produced, cost of said goods and services. Most important, population, population density supported. Just like the solar-mill example you sited. While your assertion that it’s proof that perpetual motion is possible is incorrect (LULZ), we can easily measure exactly how much it takes to make the device, and how much power we can extract from it. Again, near as I’m aware there is NOT a practical application for it as one could with moderate ease setup a windmill, which work so long as there is wind, no complex compensation for air pressure is required. Tidal generators are a tad more tricky.
Working models are proof, it’s silly to assert that they are not.
Doesn’t matter who brought it up; you’re the one taking the position that it is necessary.
Yes, you could; those would all be true statements, I suppose. Why not do that? Only because it isn’t necessary - nobody asked. You explicitly asked about whether they’re theist or not.
Yes, of course I understand that - that was my point! You can hold up something as “proof” of some hypothesis, and many people will buy into it, but that doesn’t mean it actually is proof. It’s only evidence; and if the theory through which you interpret your evidence is bad, it’ll be misleading evidence. E.g., you’re saying something to the effect of “everywhere we look, there’s government; there are no stateless societies. This is proof that government is necessary” - you have a bad theory, and you’re misinterpreting the evidence as support for that theory.
Except that measuring those things wouldn’t tell you anything. Closest thing we have now is Somalia. But you can’t measure life expectancy, etc., etc., in Somalia and compare with other countries and conclude that government is better than “anarchy” on that basis…Somalia sucked in all those measurements back when it had a “proper” government, as well!
And someone else asserted in the first place that it wasn’t necessary. Burned of proof is the one who proposes the hypothesis. I have a hard time swallowing the idea as some organization is necessary when the population reaches a certain density.
While I concede to your semantics, in order to demonstrate the lack of a need of government , one would need to test it out, or observed. Otherwise it’s just at best a hypothesis.
It wouldn’t? A working model would be the ultimate test of the hypothesis to see if everything naturally evens out, or if there are more haves than have nots. How much labor is required for food and lodging is, IMHO, valuable data. Is the essential infrastructure maintained, or does water, rail, and roads break down. Or, without central authority and planning, does heavy rail interfere with water or transportation, or does industry interfere with municipal water a la toxic waste dumping.
Again, I didn’t first propose governments were not necessary, and as such it’s not MY burden of proof. In fact I didn’t come on here to debate the merits of market anarchism or other minimal approaches.
The issue is whether atheism is the default position or not. I submit it’s worthless if a baby doesn’t have beliefs, it is an assertion it doesn’t, and it’s an assertion that theistic beliefs MUST BE INDOCTRINATED (actually I think the words used were brainwashed LULZ). It’s hardly a logical fallacy to observe that theistic belief IS the norm, and it’s hardly a valid explanation that all things to assert babies are atheist their for belief in god(s) must be indoctrinated. It hardly answers the question where the hell do these beliefs come from in the first place. Given no exposure to science, or religion, or any social influence what so ever, does man or a group
Establish mystical explanation to how the world works
Establish naturalistic explanation to how the world works
(1) is overwhelmingly more popular than (2). Yes I’m aware that the motivation to indoctrinate others is pretty strong, but planet wide the norm is still (1). If you are aware of any studies done that suggest at what age one has the cognitive skills to propose a mystical model to the world, and at what point during a social development gods are introduced, I would be very interested to read up on it.
But the only thing I’m getting is
BABIES ARE BORN WITHOUT BELIEF IN GODS Q.E.D.
And that’s hardly a proof by any stretch of the imagination, it’s an assertion.
Kids play with imaginary friends, atheism is now dead, Shamaism is the default. Invest in ouija boards.
See, doesn’t work, one doesn’t play with imaginary friends for their lifetime, well, unless you count talking to a deity which in most cases, at least from what I’ve observed, doesn’t talk back. Indoctrination into a culture and ecclesiastical membership, that’s patently obvious. But given no other influences, what is the default conclusion?
But if you are trully interested in discussing this issue, if you can offer a valid opinion on it, I moved the dialog over to
It has broken down somewhat to a semantic discussion, but it at least the question is being addressed, rather than a baseless assertion that babies are born without belief in god(s), which may not be true, but regardless is meaningless.
OK; but nobody needs to “demonstrate the lack of a need of government”, any more than, e.g., saying there’s no Celestial Teapot requires “demonstrating the lack of Celestial Teapots”. The burden of proof is with the positive claim - i.e., the need for government is what has to be proved (or least made strongly plausible), if that claim is to accepted.
But only if you compare with an otherwise-identical situation. If you could compare “The United States in 2008 with no government” vs. “The United States in 2008 with government”, that would be meaningful. But if you compare “Somalia in 2008 with no government” with “The United States in 2008 with government”, or even “Somalia in 2008 with no government” with “Somalia in 1965 with government”, etc., you’re simply comparing apples to oranges - it’s meaningless. And you can’t do the former.
I’m not sure that’s at all clear. You’re looking at things in the context of a long history without benefit of what led up to that history (i.e., you don’t know much about what people thought before they started keeping records of their thoughts). ISTM that at some time in the past, (2) was more popular than (1) - as evidenced by the gods being named after natural phenomena, etc. - but (1) is the most likely outcome of passing that knowledge down through the generations, so it’s natural to expect that (1) might be what we’d see today. Not because of “indoctrination” (in the sense you appear to mean it), but just because most people are not that smart - perhaps the most intelligent people work out how to predict, e.g., large-scale weather-related events that allow them to increase crop yields by planting at the right time of year, the use of fertilizers, etc., but the only way to make that knowledge available to others is by making up stories that they can follow, anthropomorphizing nature, etc., the people they’re instructing might well understand that it’s just a story to aid understanding, not to be taken literally, but it gets passed down from generation to generation that knowledge could be lost.
But it’s a good one. If children were born with belief in gods, you’d expect one of two results (a) {if the god(s) were real entities} all children, all over the world and at all times, would believe in the same god(s); or (b) {if god(s) are not real entities} people wouldn’t believe in the same gods, but children wouldn’t often believe in the same god(s) as their parents, either. Neither of those is true.
I freely admit, I have no idea how a system of NO government would actually work in practice, and as such, I must concede that I actually don’t now the necessity of government. Population densities on the order of 20 people per square mile or so to me suggests a need for SOME organization. The best I can do is site Washington state as an example that experimented with volunteer services. Oregon too experimented with volunteer taxes. The system IIRC broke down between 1890-1910 when the population exploded from 75,000 in 1880 to 1.1 million in 1910.
But again, the burden of proof is the one who proposed the hypothesis. It’s not unreasonable to ask HOW THE HELL IT WOULD WORK. I can imagine possibility on the community level, where all members can actually see everything. Larger scale operations, where a given person can only see a fraction of the area, I can’t see anything less than a council, some structured public meeting place where issues with the community are discussed, and addressed. I would describe a council, even one without assigned leaders, as a rudimentary form of government. North Dakota, 9people per square mile, perhaps.
Technically speaking, if you propose the hypothesis that there is no Teapot orbiting Saturn, it is up to you to prove it. I don’t envy the responsibility of the person to prove this, this would require a a probe that can classify all objects larger than about 12 cm^2. Why don’t scientists propose no teapots orbiting Saturn? Because it would be nutty. As a rule, if it ever came up, the best they can say is there is no evidence of a teapot orbiting Saturn.
If you are going to propose a hypothesis that we don’t need a government, even a rudimentary minimalistic one to manage transportation, water, power, you’re going to need some evidence. Is it unfair to expect the burden of proof of those who challenge the status quo? No it isn’t.
Now you can say government isn’t required for organization, that the people could just do it on their own. Again, I’d have to see an example of this, even a small scale community that operates in such a fashion. I’m sure there are some communities in Oregon that might fit the bill for study. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request.
FINALLY SOMEONE WHO GETS IT
Yes, we are looking at a long history, one plagued with a number of climate changes, natural disasters, exhausting the resources, plague, the sort of thing that makes a population what to pack up and move---- alot.
Anthropomorphizing nature is something that does seem to be common place, Sun, Moon (odd that both the Japanese and Mayan perceive the moon as a rabbit). What you describe could be correct, that mystical beliefs could have started with some form of hero worship, that the wise one was either seen as having some mystical connection to the numinous, or perhaps she/he told a narrative to help put order to the environment.
We can presume all these things, but the assertion atheism is the default would require some evidence. It would require understanding of pre-stoneage man that I don’t think we have. It would require some understanding of how man, without any explanation of how the world works, explains his natural surroundings. That’s the default. It would seem to be the norm to assign order to things, to want explanations even if they are total horse shit, just to put things into terms one can understand. It seems to me that atheism, as such, can’t be the default given man’s tendency to want answers and willing to accept crap in lue of real ones.
As such, what a baby believes is meaningless. We learn not just from our elders and our peers but by experience. Anecdotal evidence is good enough for most people even in modern times. But the real question remains, a man who has been exposed to no cultural influence, seeing the sun rise, if he even bothered to think about it, which conclusion would he reach regarding the order to the world. What ever happens most often is the default.
If you are familiar with studies in this regard I’d be VERY interested in reading them, but it seems to me that many people are offering a very weak assertion to support atheism, one which doesn’t pass the sniff test. Babies are born without beliefs on any sort so far as we can tell. From my observation, it seems to me the first association they can create is between yelling in the dark and a guardian appears. If we had to assign a label to this, I’d class this as ancestor worship where mom and dad are seemingly all knowing, magically appear when needed, and provide the things asked for, mainly food and a nappy change, perhaps a spiffy toy.
See where I’m coming from, not only do I consider the assertion babies don’t believe in the gods meaningless, but it might not even be true. It’s hard to prove what a baby actually believes.
It’s not actually a good one because a child is born without any real beliefs of any kind really, save the associations they can draw between screaming and a guardian magically appearing. And some to think about it, the sky daddy or earth mother models for gods are rather common.
What you say sounds good, but respectfully it’s bunk as it requires a refined god model, which is obviously taught. A child might very well develop it’s own unique relationship with the world. Try talking with children. The stories they come up with are rather remarkable. They believe in all sorts of things, most of which I’m sure they get from popular media. But to a 5 year old, the ice cream man might seem to be rather god like. He appears on those blistering hot days. How is this possible? Must be magic. Even with mainstream Christianity, it’s been my observation that anything mystical, magical, and good is reinforced with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or any one of a number of angles or saints. Without that influence, what conclusion would a child reach?
Again, this is meaningless since we grow out of that phase, we lose our imaginary friends, we can’t talk with animals or trees anymore, at some point something clicks and we start to get our reasoning and cognitive skills. The default conclusion is the only one that has meaning, with a group devoid of external cultural influences, new to the world, discovering how to exist for the first time. With the world as their only teacher, how does early man see the world? Does he presume there is a natural order to the sun and the moon, or does he anthropomorphize them into things he can understand? Does he look above at the full moon in the night sky and see an eye watching benevolently, an animal chasing the sun, or men pushing a silver disk? Is the default conclusion a natural one, or a mystical one. I don’t presume to know the answer, which is rather the point of my rant. If I hazard to guess I would lean toward mystical. But this would require actual studies, such as not indoctrinating a group of children with either theistic or atheistic beliefs and observing what they conclude.
But even if one could say a child is born without belief in any gods, even presuming it had any meaning to associate not labels to babies without beliefs in the first place, apa would be more appropriate. I would find it easier to accept that children could be apatheistic if they don’t have the cognitive skills to even propose the question of gods let alone form an opinion on the subject. But again, I don’t presume to know what the default conclusion if someone isn’t exposed to the idea of gods is.
At least it would be a working model examine. 9,118,773 people or 37/sq mile.
If the assertion that we don’t need government is true, and Somalia is presently without government, we can actually observe how it deals with problems, such as social ones (clan wars), medial ones (Aids, bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, and typhoid fever, vectorborne diseases: dengue fever, malaria, and Rift Valley fever), trade ( UAE 50.7%, Yemen 21%, Oman 6.1% (2007)). We can measure the literary rate (male: 49.7% female: 25.8% (2001 est.))
I’ll even agree, and quote Billy Bragg, “You can borrow ideas but you can’t borrow situations”.
This could be an effect of Catholic school brainwashing (lulz), but to me, I have always associated wide scale problems like clan wars, high risk of infectious disease, and education as being something handled on the government level. I have no idea how it would be handled in let’s say a social anarchy. Sure I can imagine a person standing up with a reasonable education and offering to organize systems of water treatment, someone else standing up and promoting sexual education, and someone else standing up and offering to help provide teaching materials. But I would have to actually see it in practice. But really such wide scale concerted efforts require large scale programs. I have no idea how it would work without some from of centralized body to at least compile said information together. Perhaps with a wide scale communication system, but that also requires telecommunications infrastructure. I’m trying to give this assertion the benefit of the doubt, but if it was my proposing a solution, I would propose a centralized authority to handle the infrastructure, the water treatment, the roads, communication, heavy transport. I would put together a budget how much it would cost to manage it by the state, and take bids from existing companies. For communications at least I would propose to have at least two options. It would be less practical with water treatment depending on the geography. Power again large scale plants are usually more efficient than several small scale ones, but still at least one chemical or nuclear option, hydro, and certainlly take bids on renewable recourses, wind, tidal, solar if practical. I would be remiss if I didn’t at least consider, dare I say it, a monopolistic solution for a public service, just for comparison. To me, at least a minimal government paid for by the people assigned to the duty of maintaining the region’s infrastructure makes sense, even if that duty is limited to taking bids from companies proposing wide scale solutions. But I could be wrong, there might be a workable solution without centralized government. I would have to see it to believe it, and this is not unreasonable.
You see proposing ideas that challenge the norm does require strong burden of proof of concept, and a working example is not an unreasonable expectation. And yes, proposing there is no teapot orbiting Saturn does require proof.
But you implied privatizing the function of government is corporatism. Go on from there. You clearly meant this in a pejorative sense, implying you do believe (statist) government is necessary, to avoid that consequence. So the burden is squarely on your shoulders. If you want evidence of how such societies (or approximations of them) worked/would work, read Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, or the Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty, or Hoppe’s Democracy - the god that failed or Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, or Stringham’s Anarchy and the Law.
Logically speaking, the theist/statist has the burden of proof. It is utterly irrelevant who believes what, and to continue hammering on it is merely chasing windmills. Statists assert, with no proof given, that some goods cannot be provided by the market (even when they have been so provided historically.)
If you are going to challenge the societal norm, you’re going to need some proof.
Here’s how it goes
We don’t need goverment
There is nothing to support the need for goverment
I don’t need to prove it because it’s a negative claim
Logical? Yes, but useless. If you are going to propose a hypothesis, it’s up to you to back it up. I concede that I don’t know for a fact that we don’t need a government as I am unaware of a working model without one. Does that make you right? No. You need a working model to answer the important question of how a given society can operate without one. In large scale operations do people automatically stand up and address issues such as social conflicts, clan wars, disease, education. These are very important questions. This is rather why one needs to test their hypothesis.
But silly me, I thought people here were interested in discussing the issue.
Perhaps, but respectfully you assert that no baby is born with belief in gods. You consider this to be a proof, I question whether it’s a fact. There is no evidence to support babies are born with much in the way of beliefs of ANY KIND, and as such their exposure to the world is limited. The parents in most cases are the care givers, and to the child they are the all powerful. Would this make ancestor worship as the default? No, as at some point a child starts to develop cognitive skills and enters the “you are wrong” phase. They discover that their parents are not infallible and are not all knowing. Then often comes the imaginary friend phase, is shamanism the default conclusion? I “think” not but this could be a result of external influence, parent or peer reinforcing that these imaginary friends do not exist.
So I submit that what a baby is born with is meaningless. Negative labels can only exist if there is a positive label possible. It’s only when a child grows to the point that they have cognitive and reasoning skills that such labels carry any meaning. And at this point, what is the default. If a man is looking at the sun and the moon for the first time, does he
Doesn’t think about it
Presume some natural order
Presume some mystical order
We can presume he doesn’t ignore them. The moon is VERY useful for seeing at night, and the new moon is quite dangerous. We can observe in children a natural curiosity of the world, so we can safely presume the question of how the world works comes up.
I don’t honestly know if (2) or (3) is the default. Given that mystical, shamanistic, or rudimentary theistic beliefs are the norm planet wide, I lean toward (3). It could however be (2) and some mystical order gets established by some extension of hero worship. But even then, Ugric to Australic, and everywhere in between, all developed their own mystical, shamanistic, or rudimentary theistic beliefs.
Given this, what is the default conclusion when man actually has the cognitive skills to understand the question. In lue of society man learns from his environment. Does he look up at the full moon and see a benevolent eye, a curiously pale rabbit, or just bright rock. And silly me, I lean toward anthropromorphizing the world, putting things into terms he can understand.
However, it could be a “conspiracy” in order to reinforce the myth of a need for a government, some tibial centralized authority with divine authority that leads to the first monopolistic entities. This isn’t exactly a strawman, I can’t ignore the possibility that the alpha-unit’s desire to organize a tribe leads to the first mystical explanations to the world and as such the first rudimentary theocracies are bone, with man using basic anecdotal evidence of if there is enough food why question the status quo. The first need to hunt, gather, store for the community does require some organization and basic knowledge of the seasons.
What is the default conclusion?
This message was brought to you by the evil monopolistic entities. Do you have enough it eat? Don’t question authority, and work extra hours so you can afford our cola. Power to the monopoly (LULZ).
The problem is once you start talking about beliefs held by the majority, the burden of proof is on those who challenge the established belief. It may not seem fair since proving a negative tends to be more difficult, but that’s how people operate. And this is coming from an atheist. At least in atheist’s favor, there are proposed natural models of the universe, that neither include or exclude the existence of god(s), as god(s) can not be observed, measured, or tested.
Because we can propose a natural model, does that mean god(s) don’t exist? I don’t know, I don’t care. God(s) have no relevance in my life and as such are not worthy of my attention.
Ignoring the proposition of god(s) there is obviously some benefits of membership in an ecclesiastical organization. Fortunately, for those under the firm opinion of no gods, secular or atheistic organizations are starting to spring up. Unfortunately the few that I’m aware of have defaulted to autocratic groups where those who don’t hold the leader’s vision of “lack of belief” are excommunicated. Seems odd for a group that often claims to be in the freethinker category have issues with the wrong kind of disbelief.
Is it logically invalid to presume that the popular belief is the correct one? ABSOLUTLY
Do people operate logically? For the most part NO!
You claim I wouldn’t get anywhere in life because I don’t employ rational argumentation. Could be true. But I prefer things with PRACTICAL value.
Here’s your argument.
We don’t need governments
My claim is a negative one
I don’t need to back it up QED
Not I’m not saying the majority is correct. However if one person wants to challenge the majority view, the burden of proof is on them. Proposing a change to basic social order, a huge one, you got to have some form of proof. I wouldn’t get anywhere in life?
I am right
Everyone else is wrong
I don’t have to prove it
Doesn’t fucking work. Sure you’ll die with the security of knowing you are right, but you’ve done absolutely nothing to enhance man’s understanding, or improve the human condition.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that I’m 100% wrong on the assertion that we need some form of structure in order to manage the basic infrastructure required by the people in the modern age where population exceeds a certain mount and the population density is high . I have no idea how this would work. Can you show me a working example of a culture without a government? Until I can see one working, I’m going to be very skeptical.
I’m even willing to accept that I’m a victim of the evil monopolistic conduing brainwashing on the state run school level. I would need some evidence to support this assertion.
But to repeat errr. yes.
You propose a hypothesis, it’s up to you to prove it.
You challenge the status quo, it is up to you to provide proof.
And FYI: Argumentum ad populum is an invalid argument based on the majority being right. It’s terribly dishonest for you to assert this. I don’t purport the majority being right, I submit that for the majority to give a shit about being wrong, they need to be proved wrong. You could have a logically sound assertion, but ot entertain it, it’s up to you to provide facts, information, and some form of evidence to back it up. Otherwise, you’re just a crackpot with just a wacky idea.
Which brings us back to
NO CHILD IS BORN BELIEVING IN GODS
It’s up to you to prove this, even though it has NO practical value as cognitive and reasoning skills come much later in life. Atheism is the default is IMHO a weak argument in support of atheism, and strikes me as being a very dishonest assertion since there seems to be no way a person without reasoning skills could be atheistic, or theistic. If we must slap labels on everything, a person without gods who never even thought of the idea of gods would be apatheistic.
If atheism is the default, then when during the development of a society do god(s) come into play? That question certainly has more value as far as our understanding of people and culture.
But the thing is, you can’t defend your assertion can you? This is rather why you bought up something that you could defend like governments, which I freely admit, I can’t defend governments as I was brainwashed at an early age by the evil corporate monopolistic entity (LULZ). I freely admit I have no idea how a society would function without one, which is why I’m asking how the hell would one work, is there one in action I can see operate. But asking the question doesn’t gratify your ego, which seems to be what this is about. I’m interested in information, dialog, discussion. Your interested in being right. I’d be happy to admit you are right, if
You can provide evidence that we are actually born without belief in gods
That children don’t consider their parents to be god like ancestor worship
That children don’t spend time with imaginary friends (atheism is dead, shamanistic is the default)
That upon reaching maturity, without any cues from society, with only cues from the environment, one’s default conclusion is a naturalistic or apathetic one, rather than rudimentary theistic, shamanism, or mystical.
Provide a working model of a society without a government. I’ll even take a commune of 200+ people as an example
Do these things, and I’ll gratify your ego, and thank you for helping me increase my understanding of culture and society.
Don’t do these things, then I must conclude that your assertions have no practical value in increasing man’s understanding of the world, or improving the human condition. Or to avoid accusations of faux-altruistic intents, it you have nothing interesting to offer.
That seems to be the difference between you and I. I enjoy dialogs because they are interesting and lead to conclusions I may have not otherwise reached. I don’t perceive everything as an argument, or the ultimate goal in dialogs winning.
This message was bought to you by the evil monopolistic entity, brainwashing your kids since before recorded history. Market competition = chaos. Chaos bad, monopoly good. LULZ
So? Nobody is arguing otherwise; but “organization” doesn’t imply “government” (i.e., coercion).
The hypothesis in question is “government is necessary”, and you’re the one supporting that position. It’s irrelevant who originally brought the subject up.
It’s not unreasonable to ask; but it’s unreasonable to demand an answer from people who don’t know - if I (or anyone here) could predict the outcome of a free market, we wouldn’t need markets - I could do central planning just as well The best we can do is “it might work like this” (for which see various books by Rothbard, David Friedman, the Tannehills, etc.)
No. It’s up to the guy who makes the positive claim (i.e., that there is a Teapot) to prove it.
No, you are just being dishonest. You see, I don’t propsoe majority = right. For the majority to care, to challenge the majority view, the burden of proof is on you. Otherwise your claim is
Majority is wrong
I don’t have to prove it
I am right
So I must conclude you can’t defend your assertion that atheism is the default belief, and can’t offer anything to support the slightly more meaningful proposition that atheism is the default conclusion. Too bad, you have an interesting assertion, but without anything to back it up, it’s just that, an assertion.
The best we can do is “it might work like this” (for which see various books by Rothbard, David Friedman, the Tannehills, etc.)