User:Proxima Centauri
I'm Proxima Centauri here and at a number of other Wikis. I try to follow the scientific method and like to refute religious ideas that go against science.
I'm also into astronomy, science fiction and other subjects. I'm writing a sci-fi story about Proxima Centauri.
Is religion or Non-belief better for society?
On Atheism wiki I started a page with the title Can Decline in religious belief improve society?.
- As far as I have found out so far decline in religion can improve society but there is no guarantee it will. The dark side of faith To the church, he’s public enemy No. 1 Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies
- Without faith metaphysical naturalism at least in theory can lead to rational decisions about how to improve society.
- Faith based secular systems like Marxism and Objectivism can do comparable harm to what happens in the United States Bible Belt.
- It certainly looks plausible that rational ideas uncontaminated by any faith can improve society but there's no proof either way.
For the case against religion see:-
- Antitheism
- Militant atheism
- New Atheism
- How stereotyping atheists as immoral can do harm
- Religion Does No Harm, Bill Maher reflects Hilarious video
A few important points
- We need free discussion between faith based systems and secular systems.
- Comparing faith based ways of running communities with rationally based systems is complicated as there are many different faith based systems with different effects. Also other factors affect the health of any given society as well as how far people in that society pursue faith or follow the scientific method.
- Finding rigid scientific proof in generally more difficult in the social sciences than in the physical sciences.
- Sorting out which system (faith based or rational) if any is best overall is possibly beyond what one human being alone can do.
- The best hope of finding out whether secularism or any religion is best for society is free discussion between people of faith and secularists.
- There are plenty of websites where people of faith express their differing viewpoints. We can and sometimes do link to those websites in the spirit of scientific enquiry, that is a good thing.
- RationalWiki is a secular website and can assist the debate best by focusing on the case for secularism which religious websites sideline.
- Since RationalWiki is a secular website especially here we should not allow religious people or atheist accomodationists to whitewash religion.
Should atheists shut up?
The tone of the section below is very forceful, I wrote it in the middle of a battle with a user who claims to be an atheist accomodationist and was very humiliating with efforts to shut me up.
Even liberal Christians generally want atheists to shut up while they tell everyone how good they think Christianity is and indoctrinate educate the young. Accommodationism means keeping quiet while Christians keep on promoting their view. Christians and other believers on either side of the Atlantic Ocean see any attempt to promote an atheistic or naturalistic viewpoint as a threat to their beliefs. Believers are only satisfied if we shut up entirely about good points in atheism and reasons to be an atheist.
The quote below is from an American atheist lady, UK Christians are in the main more tolerant than the quote suggests provided we keep quiet and don't actively promote atheism.
Atheists trying to be accommodationist with Christianity is like Obama trying to be bipartisan with Republicans. You can bend and bend and bend all you like… but they aren’t going to bend back. (...) what do the accommodationists hope to accomplish? How do you accommodate someone whose only response to your efforts is to demand that you accommodate some more? (...) How will accommodationism accomplish anything other than atheists turning ourselves into doormats? (...) we do not need to accommodate religion by declining to criticize it. Why Accommodationism Won’t Work, Or, Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition
Should we let a minority pressure us into being nicer to Christians? Should RationalWiki become a website where atheists feel uncomfortable about editing Articles on Christianity. Should atheist editors here fear some sanctimonious editor might come along and tell us what we’ve written is all wrong?
Many of us here have studied Christianity diligently for years. Some have studied Christianity since the wiki was founded in 2007 or before. No experts can reasonably tell us to stop editing because the experts think only they understand things. We understand religion too. Incidentally:-
Accomodationists don't even make especially good doormats. So say Pharangulites.
Below are several websites that say as atheists we should speak our minds.
- Should Atheists Shut Up and Stop Upsetting Christians?
- Why don’t atheists just shut up and stay home?
- Atheist, why don’t you just shut up?
- Atheism and the "Shut Up, That's Why" Arguments
Christians insult us
We need to refute claims that Atheists aren’t moral or are morally defective.
- Here’s an example. Atheism. Note! Those Christians don’t even try to prove that we are corrupt or have done abominable works. They just quote the Bible and take care to translate it in a way they think is accurate. If the Bible says it they think it must be true.
- Here's a worse example. This one though other users have since modified it Christians like Yerranos disregard that reasoning faculty which humans evolved and which sets us apart from the rest of animal life. They think with their emotions.
I think we should all feel thoroughly insulted. I’ve started refuting the idea of Christian superiority in the article Christian morality which is linked to the Main Page. Here a Baptist Pastor thinks he’s morally better than we are despite his unkindness. The team here can do much better than I can single handed.
It will be cool if we can have articles about Christian morality on this website, we have one on Secular humanism.
As a confirmed mustard jar for taking on this job as a Sysop on RationalWiki: I, Proxima Centauri, pledge to only block users if they ask for it, or insert unfunny vandalism.
I furthermore pledge that if I indulge in secret private conversations about you, we will make a formal report to the mob. Is that all?
If you impugn my motives without warrant, or challenge my "AUTHORITY", er, there is nothing I can or will do.
The star
I'm Proxima Centauri. It seems I'm roughly 4.2 light years away but no other star is closer to the Solar System than I am. I’m just that bit troublesome. I flare up unpredictably. Some scientists who’ve been quoted at Wikipedia think stars like me could have life sustaining planets. Others think that’s impossible.
See Habitability of red dwarf systems
Video games
Essay:The case for regulating of video games
Geocentrism
User:Proxima Centauri/The Bible says the earth is fixed
Unconditional election
User:Proxima Centauri/Unconditional election
User Boxes
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Freedom of speech can be dangerous, but must be upheld by every one of us. |
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and so are you. |
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This user believes the Bible is just another book |
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in universal healthcare |
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This user was banned from Conservapedia. |
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This user has stealthily inserted something interesting into Conservapedia |
I've done this more than once.
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Celebrating over 25,000,000 IP blocks at Conservapedia. Godspeed! |
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This user believes that Conservapedia is about as trustworthy as North Korea is democratic. |
Block comment
I've escaped a rangeblock when I changed my Internet Service Provider. I added a serious edit that the paranoid sysops might have mistaken for vandalism. As of now that edit refering readers to a very sensible website has remained and I hope my edit will remain undetected acceptable to a new class of more liberal CP sysops for years.