Forum:On Right-Wing Fatalism

For a while, I've been concerned that the atheist movement's allegiance with fatalism in order to oppose the notion of free will which is associated with creationism has exposed atheism to right-wing subversion.

That is some right-wingers are fatalists who don't believe primarily in the value of free markets via the usage of free will to subjectively define utility preferences, but rather they believe in conserving the status quo of social status of those in society who are lucky. They will even go so far as changing their positions on the War on Drugs, abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, illegal immigration, affirmation action, and income inequality as long as this fundamental position remains untouched.

By no surprise, the above articles refer to Jews a lot as well. After all, Jews vote 60-70% Democrat which is the party that is traditionally skeptical about religious positions:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/02/jewish-americans-vote-democratic https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/11/08/jonathan-kay-why-american-jews-dont-and-wont-vote-republican/ http://spectator.org/blog/28920/why-most-jews-dont-vote-gop

Has atheism exposed itself to being subverted by right-wing fatalists, and is there anything that can be done to stop it?

I especially ask this in light of how many right-wingers are anti-intellectuals despite how atheists have gotten caught up in denying objective morality, especially due to the alliance between atheism and amoralism which insists on moral relativism and emotivism as well. In conjunction with fatalism, the idea would be that those who are emotionally relatable are entitled to social status by fate since people don't choose their emotions. This will even go further when they insist on abusing people with the excuse of blaming the victim as obviously emotionally unrelatably impractical, and saying it's OK to neglect the victim by saying objective morality doesn't exist and it's OK since victims can pull themselves up by their bootstraps especially when they have future potential that can be actualized in the name of equality.

Furthermore, Jews believe they're chosen by God to bring light to the world which is fundamentally fatalist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_as_the_chosen_people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Unto_the_Nations

(Wiki includes scriptural citations, so it seems to be a reliable source here.) ^{— Unsigned, by: Nolidor / talk / contribs} 20:49, 27 July 2014‎ (UTC)

There is no such thing as an "atheist movement." Indeed, considering the lack of deity beliefs to be a "movement" is falling in to the hands of right wing theocratic extremists in that they would wish to pretend that atheism is some how an ideology, a religion, anything other than what it is: the lack of belief in the hundreds of thousands of gods and goddesses that people have created for themselves.

Also what you might consider to be "fatalism" is in fact realism, accepting reality, not contriving delusional hopes that one won't have to die like everyone else. I don't see any fatalism among atheists. Indeed, compare atheists with theists and I find that atheists enjoy vibrant aspirations and hope for the future of humanity whereas theists -- at least the so-called "monotheistic" death cults -- are the ones who harbor fatalist ideologies.

One of the thing I have to ask is how many of those Democratic Jews are also atheists. The more intelligent someone is, the fewer gods they have, and progressive voters are overwhelmingly smarter than right wing, fascist-oriented voters. If there's any correlation between Jews voting overwhelmingly Democratic, it would be a matter of higher IQ than their right wing-leaning Jewish colleagues.

Any way the only tainting of groups of atheists that I have seen has been that horrific "Atheism Plus" nonsense that washed across the Intertubes some months back, the supposed "A+" as it was called. THAT was abject lunacy driven by right wing taint yet thankfully "A+" did not last very long. Damotclese (talk) 00:41, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not sure why atheists should be ashamed of having a "movement". If they have an ideology or organization to campaign for their ideology, that's just ordinary socializing. Creationists don't have a monopoly on socializing. If a creationist accuses an atheist of being ideological or organized, an atheist should just say, "So what? (That's what people do. Do you believe you're the only type of person who's allowed to be that way?)" --Nolidor (talk) 02:30, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I mean let's not confuse atheism with anarchism either, you know? If anything, atheists can be idealists who aren't concerned with might makes right power politics where social organization doesn't exist, and if anything, fatalists endorse anarchy since those who are born (independently of choosing) with might get to determine what's right. --Nolidor (talk) 05:57, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm probably the closest thing you're going to find to a right-winger here, though US movement conservatives will not recognize me as one. I am also something of a fatalist, and reject the idea of free will. And I'm quite confused by all this.

Whenever I open my mouth about political philosophy, it's always about dialing down blame, muting calls for scapegoating and punishment, stopping the labelling and namecalling, and listening to people's excuses and taking them seriously. That's my shtick in a nutshell.

I'm against the notion of free will, mostly because it seems empirically so true as to be utterly obvious: people seem to me to be born with not only their sexualities but other large portions of their personalities preset. Life experience really changes them only a little if at all. People generally can't help but become the people they were born to be, whether they are saints, criminals, or somewhere in between.

I dislike the notion of free will because it suggests a wide scope of ways in which you might force your neighbors to change, to compel them to be more like what you'd prefer. They imagine they can change themselves because it feeds their vanity, and despite the contrary evidence that all resolutions are inevitably broken. I'm sure you had perfectly good reasons for breaking them, but break them you surely did. It's OK, really. We know your excuses are good and satisfying in your own mind. All I ask is that you grant the same grace to everyone else.

Free will is an idea that flows solely from our vain self-regard, and leads to the war of all against all over things that people really are helpless to change. Free will feeds persecutory manias and the naming, blaming, and shaming industry. It encourages people to hate their neighbors. It should disgust everyone like it disgusts me. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:31, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, the point here isn't to discuss the merits of fatalism. It's to discuss how if atheism allies with fatalism, it could expose itself to being subverted by creationists behind the scenes since creationism is often correlated with free will (since free will can be associated with a "soul" and a soul and a creator are both spiritual ideas). In turn, fatalist creationists get the opportunity to accuse atheists of wrongdoing if they acknowledge free will. This is especially important in the campaign to "deconvert" people since it assumes that people can choose within themselves what they believe in. --Nolidor (talk) 22:27, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

In that case, I'm doubly the wrong guy to respond here; I don't just disbelieve in free will, but I also believe in God. The place of free will in Christian theology is a bit more complicated than the dichotomy you're proposing; Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards didn't believe in free will, either. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 03:23, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware. My concern here is that atheism has become "anti-Catholicism". It's ignored other forms of creationism such as Protestantism, Judaism, and (Sunni) Islam nevermind non-Western forms of creationism. --Nolidor (talk) 11:21, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

atheism has become "anti-Catholicism"

There is another word for the kind of discussion that treats "evidence" as dead weight to be avoided: Bullshit. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 13:40, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. Those who confuse atheism with fatalism are out of focus. It's like they're just being anti-Catholic since Catholics recognize free will, but then they give all other religions a pass. They don't see that there's no evidence to recognize all beliefs in a god or gods associating with free will.

That said, there is such a thing as common sense and not falling for sarcastic passive-aggression just because evidence isn't gathered nonstop in reality. Some atheists might be fatalists because for all practical intents and purposes, Catholicism is what they're really against. Perhaps atheists would be prudent to focus on what's ideal instead of what's practical in order to not get cynically distracted. --Nolidor (talk) 15:28, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Determinism isn't fatalism[edit]

The two are often treated as equivalent by people who want to assert that making attempts at understanding the universes' processes is ill-advised. Both determinism and fatalism share a very important assertion: that a resulting state of the world is inevitable. Where they differ is that fatalism portrays this as a lack of choice, but determinism allows for choice to be a crucial part of why things turn out as they do. Your thoughts and ideas are part of how the universe works.

It's worth noting that neither is objectively known to be true, but their conflation is stupidly reductionist. Ikanreed (talk) 16:29, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Eh... you're jumping to conclusions. Determinism includes a determination of personal choice by previous events. It's just not pre-determinism which includes a determination of everything by the origin of the universe. For example, some people believe the world eternally existed. There is no "origin". There's just a perpetual flow of time where past events lead to the future with no particular spark of instantiation. Do you mean to talk about compatibilism instead where somethings are personally chosen, but other things are not?

This is also actually a non-evidentalist argument for atheism as well. Creationists can argue that the universe had to come from nothing to something somehow, but an atheist can just argue that the world could have always existed, especially according to conservation of matter and energy. --Nolidor (talk) 20:43, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

I'm suggesting that the preposition that your choices naturally flow from the state of both yourself and the universe you're observing doesn't imply the non-value of the intent and thought put into those choices. You aren't "fated" to a conclusion, because the processes that arrive at the conclusion incorporate who you are and what you think in ways that can be personally meaningful. Ikanreed (talk) 20:50, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Alright. That sounds like compatibilism. Fatalism kind of accommodates that though. It's like no matter what path you take, a conclusion will happen. You can go this way, that way, or the other way. No matter what, the future takes its course. For example, a fated world could include having determined beliefs no matter what's meaningful to you. --Nolidor (talk) 21:09, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

If you want, think of the mind like a linear algebra matrix. In a fated world, you can still map out any number of vectors. You'll still end up with the same field of scalars. It doesn't matter what's meaningful to the believer. The believer will still believe in the same thing. --Nolidor (talk) 21:30, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Or you know, we can think of it as a neurological network, connected to numerous senses, and a directed nervous system, which affects the world around it. I don't see any reason to accept this particular reduction. Ikanreed (talk) 18:21, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

How would you model the nervous system's direction? Would you agree that it includes an abundance of neurons that exchange electricity between them, and that those neurons can be topographically mapped into a matrix? --Nolidor (talk) 19:43, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Sure, if you want to work with a square matrix on the order of 10¹⁰ to a side, or on the order of 10¹⁰⁰ time-varying interdependent elements. The interdependences will themselves depend on history, with interesting modes of reinforcement and decay time. Better brush up on your Faltung Integrale. Good luck modeling that in a time frame sooner than the universe turning into warm mush. There are smarter ways of dealing with it. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 20:08, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Please remember this sub-topic is discussing whether fatalism includes determinism. It isn't about whether or not free will exists in determining the course of future events, but whether or not free will matters in determining the course of future events. Ikanreed is arguing it does in order to distinguish fatalism from determinism while I'm arguing it doesn't in order to recognize determinism as a subset of fatalism.

Also, please remember this isn't discussing whether fatalism is right or wrong, but rather only what fatalism means. --Nolidor (talk) 22:13, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

So what? The matrices you mention as a "model" have a slim to nil chance of explaining "what fatalism means." Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 22:42, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

What does the probabilistic difficulty of a task have to do with the task's feasibility? Just because something's complicated and expensive to do doesn't make it impossible. For practical intents and purposes, we might choose not to pursue a project because it's inefficient, but on an ideal level of determining what we should believe in (unless we're prejudiced jerks who simply believe in things to make excuses for our own self-interest by taking advantage of the inconvenience of what's incompatible) that's another story. --Nolidor (talk) 02:38, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

OK, let me put it another way. You haven't said what the elements of such a matrix should represent. For such a model to be taken seriously, you need to get into the specifics of it, which you haven't done, and given your style of discourse, I suspect you cannot do. Without those specifics credibly established, you have no way of knowing whether that matrix would correspond to the workings of an actual nervous system well enough to support any claims about the kind of belief you have been waving your hands at.

Without doubt, the matrix will be large. I think it is safe to say that it will be sparsely populated, given the number of dendrites on an individual neuron as compared to the total number of neurons in the system. The sheer size of the matrix is one complicating factor, as is the need to catalog each neuron's connections to the others. At present, there is no way to completely inventory those connections in vivo. (If you want to claim that it will be possible to do so in future, then this whole discussion amounts to science fiction. Such speculative exercises can be entertaining, but they don't really add to humanity's store of knowledge.) Another complicating factor is the time-varying, history-dependent quality of each connection (or each element of the matrix, if I understand what you're trying to say.) The matrix elements are also influenced by global factors having to do with the chemistry of their surrounding fluids. Again: what do the elements of the matrix represent?

Shorter answer: An assertion that "those [abundant] neurons can be topographically mapped into a matrix", without a convincing demonstration that the mapping is accurate and complete, provides no basis for further conclusions. Try another tack. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 12:14, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

The elements of the matrix would represent specific neurons, the vectors would represent the exchange of electrical signals between them, and the scalars would represent the future conditions of those neurons. Obviously, the history would be represented by mapping the matrix out over time where the scalars become the vectors through reiteration. The project's big, but it's still feasible. --Nolidor (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Not even wrong. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:41, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Look. If you want to be some sort of anti-intellectual who plays words games just to screw around with creative thinking because it hasn't performed good works to your entertainment or satisfaction in advance, then look elsewhere. This is a serious ideological conversation about how atheism and fatalism should not necessarily go hand in hand, especially since a fatalist belief system would inhibit deconversion since potential deconverts wouldn't change their minds. --Nolidor (talk) 21:32, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Atheism and fatalism go hand in hand? Beg the question much? Again, not even wrong. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 21:45, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Alternatively, just completely fuck off because you're arbitrarily simplifying in order to demand that a given perspective is simplistic. Just throwing that option out there. Ikanreed (talk) 14:19, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

I gave you the linear algebra model to help understand. You didn't have to refer to it to see how fatalism includes determinism. You could have simply referred to what I originally said about going this, that, or the other way to realize the same conclusive beliefs regardless of what's meaningful. --Nolidor (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Forum:On Right-Wing Fatalism

Determinism isn't fatalism[edit]

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