Does this Gulch believe religion and Objectivism are compatible?
Posted by SonofAyn 5 years, 5 months ago to Ask the Gulch
Just getting a sense of where I landed.
- Hot
- New
- Categories...
- Producer's Lounge
- Producer's Vault
- The Gulch: Live! (New)
- Ask the Gulch!
- Going Galt
- Books
- Business
- Classifieds
- Culture
- Economics
- Education
- Entertainment
- Government
- History
- Humor
- Legislation
- Movies
- News
- Philosophy
- Pics
- Politics
- Science
- Technology
- Video
- The Gulch: Best of
- The Gulch: Bugs
- The Gulch: Feature Requests
- The Gulch: Featured Producers
- The Gulch: General
- The Gulch: Introductions
- The Gulch: Local
- The Gulch: Promotions
- Marketplace
- Members
- Store
- More...
There is no way to determine conclusively the existence or non existence of God. To say conclusively there is or isn't God (and all the surrounding subjects) is not rational. It is better, and more intellectually honest, to say I do not know and leave open the possibility than to say definitively no.
But that's only my take on the subject. As a conservative it's one of the areas objectivists and I do not agree.
My 2 bits
At the root of it is Ayn Rand's entire approach to philosophy based on reason and objectivity. It rules out faith as a means of attaining knowledge.
Regardless of what anyone says, Rand included, at the very least there is archeological proof of events and people of the time who put their quill (?) to paper for posterity. Do we discount those because what they have seen is too much for contemporary reason to believe?
In 1812 as DC was being sacked by the British, literally burning the city to the ground, Dolly Madison and a band of soldiers stayed behind at the White House to gather and rescue documents precious to our Nation. As they were fleeing the British were hot on their tail as the city literally burned around them (the White House too) when a torrential rain came from nowhere, so heavy they could barely see 6 feet ahead of them, and halted the British from advancing while simultaneously quelled the fires.The First Lady escaped, DC didn't burn entirely.
A miracle. Not the storm but the precise timing of the sudden storm. And before your cast doubts on my claim,many personal journals from the British soldiers and the Americans soldiers who were there claim that this was God acting to protect the fledgling nation. You can read these journals at the Library of congress or the British Library - eye witness accounts and personal text on two continents.
If we can't take word of mouth, experience and the written word, do we then doubt the veracity of the Constitution? The Magna Carta? Isn't what you're contending just another flavor of 'flat earth' argument or perhaps the global climate change hockey stick?
My point, you cannot discount something just because it defies your degree of understanding or desire to comprehend in a specific an certain way. To think we know all, or even very much about what is, is foolhardy and naive. To deny the possibility is, as I said many times, when you cannot possibly know is dishonest intellectually.
This particular story is part of a set preserved and promulgated in order to prove that god is always on the winning side, whatever happened it was caused by or with permission of god.
The twin towers were brought down as the occupants were evil like the traders in the temple, Romulus and Remus were nurtured by a wolf as god wanted to start the Roman Empire, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by the inquisition as god did not like him, god (as well as Obama) was on the Persian side when Lysander the leader of the Spartans at Thermopylae was captured and decapitated, etc.
The concept is put in one word in Arabic - insha’Allah
'an event in the future will happen only if God wills it', but it works in retrospect as well.
I prefer the view of human life an a heroic adventure.
So many things in history came down to timing...it hurts one or a nation not, to consider their good fortune in a time of great need.
In my opinion, it is no less objective to admit the outcome was beyond any human action or fore knowledge.
Any religious person may be "more reasonable than one may think" if he is able to compartmentalize and not corrupt his thinking in at least some important areas.
I have accused anyone oh defender of the Gulch. I simpky spoke of my personal experieces, some stemming from you.
"Oh defender of the Gulch" is another of your snide sneers.
The claim of divine intervention by the soldiers was written into history. While the history doesn't make it divine intervention, it is history and divine intervention was those witnesses perception.
The same can be said, exact same historical context, for the life of Jesus Christ. Any belief more than that, what people said He did, is faith. Even so, He is a piece of history recognized by 3 major world religions and the historical content of the places and times has been validated to be real.
The history of claims of divine intervention is a history of the claims and nothing more. Collective subjectivism is not objectivity and neither are the primitive "major religions" and their sacred texts. Historical evidence for the existence of ancient peoples and some of the mythology does not validate their beliefs.
On the positive side, some of the accomplishments of Ancient Greece, the scientific revolution, and Ayn Rand's culmination of a philosophy of reason provide principles for how the individual can know and properly act based on his own understanding of the reality he perceives.
Rejecting the meaningless does not require "denial" of anything but the falsely claimed cognitive worth of your own arbitrary assertions and illogical demands to be taken seriously, along with your attempted moral intimidation dramatically accusing those who reject you as dishonest.
No one has said "we know all". No one. Knowledge does not mean omniscience. We start with reality and proceed to build knowledge with new discoveries, not by working backwards from the arbitrary claims of mystics and whatever you feel in your faith beyond knowledge.
Your dramatic injunctions against those you keep insisting think we "know all" are irrelevant. Your repeated accusations that rejecting the arbitrary is a claim to omniscience are a false, dishonest strawman, not a basis for your accusations of "intellectual dishonesty". It is your own claims based on your faith and feeling, and your false accusations, that are intellectually dishonest.
One issue many here, objectivists generally, have is with the individual right to determine one's own beliefs. If it's not consistent a-z it simply can't be or isn't right. Life dictates that this is patently bullshit.
The irony is not lost on me, but I know for a fact it chafes some here when I say that some Objectists are fluent with a Rand reference(title, chapter and line) as the sharpest minister quoting scripture. That ability, Biblical or Objectivist doesn't end conversation or validate a point with me.
To me Rand was an American treasure, a visionary, but she does not hold all the answers or every thing.
The "individual right to determine one's own beliefs" does not mean that there are no principles of logic and anything can subjectively be believed to make it true or even meaningful. Rejecting "If it's not consistent a-z it simply can't be or isn't right" as "bullshit" is Ashinoff's distortion of the fact that contradictions do not exist, which has been recognized since Aristotle. "Life" does not "dictate" the opposite.
His vacuous smears against other forum members as "the sharpest minister quoting scripture" are a dishonest strawman, not a response to the numerous explanations that have been given here.
But perhaps, "God" is really just be nature or the culmination of physical laws that define existence itself and all the things in it...if that was the case, I'd call it "Causation".
Perhaps, the question should be defined in unicameral conscious terms instead of bicameral pre-conscious terms.
Many here don't agree, and that is fine, but in these matters I refer to the works of Julian Jaynes. Breakdown of the bicameral Brain. (he uses the the word mind...but the mind in not split in two, the mind is not physical- at least that we haven't found yet).
I'll need to look up all those big terms haha, thanks for the homework! ( <-- I don't mean this in jest)
God cannot be observed, therefore god does not interact with existence, therefore god can only interact with nonexistence, therefore god does not exist.
AJAshinoff has a much more solid stance: to simply say I have not observed but that does not preclude observation which may be.
Just got done watching a well-done piece on black holes on Nova (PBS). The initial speculation about Black Holes actually came from a German who calculated artillery trajectories. He sent his theory to Albert Einstein who received the computations with extreme skepticism. Despite his development of Relativity and the Photoelectric effect, Einstein could never bring himself to believe Black Holes existed. In fact, the scientific community was bitterly divided until proof (via indirect observation) was discovered in the late 1990's. Now we find that there are confirmed Black Holes (again through indirect observation) at the center of every galaxy so far examined.
It is the same with an entrepreneur. There is little or no guarantee that any given entrepreneur will succeed in business. The facts actually discourage entrepreneurship in that 2 out of three entrepreneurs fail within three years. Yet a capitalistic society depends on the small-business entrepreneur and their willingness to fail.
There's one example of faith from Atlas Shrugged which illustrates the point perfectly. When Dagny pursues Galt's plane and ends up crashing through the barrier/illusion into the Gulch, what principle other than faith is she operating on?
Once you understand that faith is a motivation to act, you see that actually faith is intertwined in nearly every action one takes. Can one prove that a "god" exists? Well, to do so, you would have to follow the proper steps. First you would have to define just exactly what that "god" would be. You have to assume existence and define what that existence would look like before you can ever attempt to construct a method of confirming your hypothesis. If you assume non-existence, then you poison the hypothesis right out of the door and all you succeed in doing is confirming your own bias - not discovering truth. The other problem comes in defining the attributes of "god" so as to go about attempting to devise a test for that god's existence and all too frequently the definition given is inherently contradictory and again serves only to confirm an atheist's bias.
Are there fundamentally-flawed definitions of "gods" today which are still nonetheless treated as valid? Assuredly. The Greek Pantheon was debunked by none other than Socrates and his student Plato. One has only to read The Republic to see a thoughtful examination of the fundamental problem between holding nearly limitless power and being capricious. I do not assert that all religions are equally valid because no two definitions for their respective "gods" are equivalent. Does that mean, however, that just because there are 99 demonstrably false definitions of "god" that there may not be one correct one? Thomas Edison tried nearly 2000 variants of the light bulb before he arrived at one which worked consistently. His example was one not only of faith, but in absolute pursuit of truth.
"faith". This is an Ayn Rand forum, not a place for your obnoxious, repetitious promotions of faith. We have been through this before. Please take it somewhere else.
People do not "want to hear" his repetitious rationalizations because they are very old and still make no sense. No "counterexamples" to his faith are required.
In the novel Dagny did not pursue John Galt based on faith. Your arbitrary religious pronouncements contradict the entire basis of the novel and the nature of rational knowledge.
Ashinoff does not have a "solid stance". He, and you, have been refuted many times for your arbitrary claims. There are no grounds to believe in the alleged "possibility" in which you have faith. Nothing is required to dismiss out of hand the arbitrary hand as cognitively worthless, and the contradictory cannot exist.
Although, more fundamentally, as someone pointed out to me recently, you don't need to disprove god, because it's just a random assertion, and random assertions shouldn't be asserted in the first place. Much less need any refuting.
This is the biggest flaw in conservatism, not Rand's philosophy. You can't support the constitution, not consistently, but still believe in religion and all the collectivist, authoritarian, mystical and all round unconstitutional baggage that comes with it.
Religion has destroyed conservatism.
The trappings of religion are problematic, which is why I have faith, not religion.
'can't support' is a poor choice of words as I am and have always been a Constitutional Conservative. You act as if a person can only choose one complete ideological vein to follow. Hogwash. I, and you, construct and define our personal beliefs and no one has the right to blueprint our beliefs for us. Ask it should be we are the sovereign authors of our own philosophy and it need not be 100% consistent to anyone but you.
Mischaracterizing Peter Smith's support for a consistent philosophy as "hogwash" forcing you to believe anything is a strawman smear. You choose what to think and live with the consequences. Follow bad principles and you get bad results.
"Ask it should be we are the sovereign authors of our own philosophy and it need not be 100% consistent to anyone but you" is not a coherent sentence.
The denial of systematic principles in philosophy, including consistency, is Pragmatism. Pragmatism opposes principles, let alone coherent consistent principles, on principle. It's a false but entrenched philosophy resulting from Kantian skepticism and corrupting thinking in this country for over a century.
Denouncing principles of consistency in Ayn Rand is typical status quo Pragmatist dogmatism posing as anti-dogmatism.
I consider myself atheist; I can't speak for the other members here, though I imagine they would share this viewpoint, or at least a similar one.
Even Jesus was 'individualist' -- in the sense of advocating saving your own soul -- but the religion was entirely other worldly, focused on the supernatural and leaving no guidance for living on earth or even being motivated to do so. It promoted living for an otherworldly afterlife in accordance with duties imposed by mysticism. "Do unto others" here on earth was a distant second, only intended to serve the primary, supernatural goal.
The first five pertain to the myth. The latter five pertain to the conceptualization of metaphysical Theft regarding living in Community.
A good way to live is to think for yourself, which requires rejection of commandments.
If I keep from commanding people they behave themselves
If I keep from meddling with people they take care of themselves
If I keep from preaching at people they improve themselves
If I keep from imposing upon people they become themselves
This was a starter course at age 14. A lot of experience in living was necessary to understand the philosophy. Still....the hundreth monkey principle applies in order that it manifest in any community.
1: Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2: Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3: Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
4: When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5: Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6: Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7: Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8: Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9: Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Some are common sense but some specific rules are destructive, starting with the first in which he says he is certain of nothing, requiring a "feeling" for pervasive skepticism. (Where does that leave the whole list?)
The fifth on authority is ambiguous. What kind of authority? Don't respect the law? Don't respect someone with specialized knowledge as contextually authoritative? Don't respect dictators only because there are other dictators rather than out of individualism?
You asked me if I was working on authorship regarding ethics. I'm working on your question. Objectively self-evident and teachable. That is the most valid Quest-I-On to ask of all humanity of all time.
If there had never been expression of Diety or Creator how might we live in community equitably?
The trend of leaning towards science is good -- the progress it has brought in such a brief time relative to the millennia of primitivism preceding it has been spectacular. But science has been undermined by bad philosophy holding back understanding.
Part of that is ethics, with altruism and collectivism still retained without basis. Modern ethics is rationalization of variations on previous religious ethics, and when spread will be no better -- other than a more worldly view --unless the fundamental outlook is changed. So in that sense you are right that it almost doesn't matter. What does matter is a move to a this world, life on earth, view as at least a start.
For the same reason you shouldn't concern yourself with religionists not understanding their own sacred text. It's so contradictory that the details don't matter. There are more important things to pursue.
Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff recommended to read the Bible because it has been so influential, so your current project is good education.
Whether or not people over time choose Objectivism for their ethics depends first on their understanding that it exists as something fundamentally different and understanding it. The best that you can do for yourself is to make sure you understand it very well.
I do agree that an individual's "choice" matters (and that one choice is better than the other). However, there's nothing that could change a true religious person's mind unless they do the research themselves. So... to each their own.
Glad you support my Bible-reading!
Welcome your insights.
Another rash of cowardly, mindless 'downvotes' attacking a simple question asking 25n what she intended her comment to mean in the context of the post she responded to has no rational justification. The simple question has still not been answered.
Objectivism is the philosophy for life on earth, by using your mind and living in accordance with the facts of reality.
Religion is about life after death (death cultism) and rejects life on this earth, using your mind and living in accordance with the facts of reality.
So you see, they are opposing ideologies.
There are plenty of smart people that remain religious because they choose not to attempt to answer everything. Ignoring them is very much like ignoring the allegory of the Bible. It may not be based on logic, but if you look closely, there is wisdom there, and finding the gaps is enlightening.
Most American Christians are better than, retaining some of the old mythology in the background, with mixed, contradictory premises, but largely living as self-reliant, productive, benevolent, proud, independent individuals. That overwhelmingly better values were generally absorbed into the culture and then called "Christian" does not make them religious. They are secular, pro-man values with no basis in religion. Turn the other cheek "kindness", indiscriminate sacrificial "love" and "charity", "unselfishness" and duty to "commandments" were not the basis of this country and not what built it.
A Baptist neighbor who plays with theological contradictions debated by Medieval religionists pondering the nature of their god is not an example of someone who is not religious. Contradictions in religion do not make it nonreligious. The one you cite was the theological problem of "if god can do anything then can he do something preventing him from doing something"? There are many more. It didn't make it not a religion.
We have had these discussions here, mostly fruitful except for a few comments here and there.
The Big problem is "Religion" is only an organization of some teaching, while some or all of the teachings may have value or lessons to learn, the organization of those teachings seems to ruin the whole intent.
There are a whole lot of organizations these days we could put in that category like, environmentalism, global warming caused by man masquerading as climate change, socialism, communism, progressivism and post modernism...not to mention political correctness and the whole cultural marxist thing attached to post modernism...yes these are religions too, just as satanism, gaiaism or even sciencism and yes, for a few, it might be objectivism.
Objectivism is valuable but those that try to organize it, regulate it, impose it...ruin it too.
Objectivism is not religion and neither is what you disparage as "scientism". "Religion" has a philosophical meaning, which is not whatever you don't like. No one is "regulating" or "imposing" it, it has the meaning that Ayn Rand gave it when she formulated it. When you make pronouncements here that are rejected as irrational that is not "imposing" anything. Either you understand or you don't.
I think this might be a minority view. I have only read one non-fiction book by Rand, so I can't speak for Objectivist theory.
If someone gets something from religious mythology, something non-falsifiable by reason, I see no reason to condemn.
But "falsibiability" is no standard. It was all Karl Popper had left in his epistemological negativism.
I don't believe in it, but it doesn't stop me from respecting people who do. I don't have the answers to the fundamental questions that religions try to answer. My not having the answers does not make other answers right, but I feel humble. I respect people's search for truth and meaning, even when they're on paths I disagree with.
I am often amazed at how hard-working religious people seem to be. They tend to see themselves as empowered to solve problems rather than as victims. It doesn't make religious claims correct. It's just that traits I admire seem to crop up in people who believe in religion.
If I point out to people how illogical their religion seems to me, it will often been seen as a personal attack, unless they asked for my opinion. In any case, I try to be accepting of people's faith and reject only bad actions or irrational claims.
Using reason, you reject religion.
So you can't get anything out of religion using reason.
Is reason all that matters? Maybe the answer should be yes. If something outside the purview of reason matters to someone, such a person could get something out of religion.
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
Yes.
I mean, asking such a question of a rational being is like asking a fish if the ability to breath under water is all that matters.
Reason is the means by which man lives and flourishes. What could be outside that?
I think one of the things that tends to give many religions and philosophies perceived flaws is that they confuse the principles with the inconsistent behaviors of their respective subscribers with respect to their professed tenets. Human beings are notoriously flawed: fickle and emotion-driven. Thus any religion or creed which demands perfection such as the Judeo-Christian tradition is going to appear to be flawed because it contradicts with basic human frailty. The question is how the religion attempts to resolve this seeming contradiction.
To me, however, there is one question which the common philosophy tends to ignore and only the theistic "religion" approaches: that of the end state of the soul. People want to know what the end-game is to existence. The major flaw I see in atheism is that it provides no such postulation aside from nihilism. People want more than this. They want to matter. And I think this core rationale is key: it is fundamentally unreasonable to accept as a precept of existence one's eventual non-existence.
But that's not religion. You can't choose your own definitions.
"Atheism is as much a religion as any theistic creed, as it drives one's values and choices."
Atheism is a rejection of religion, so is not a religion of it's own.
Whether something is a set ideals for life or not, is not alone sufficient to define something as religion or not. Religion is the specific set of ideals that reject reason, in favor of mysticism. That reject life on this earth, in favor of an after life.
I think you are trying to redefine terms to try and reverse engineer them into your preset conclusions, instead of thinking rationally and honestly and arriving at the correct conclusions.
Please see definitions #2, #4 on Merriam Webster's site: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...
"Atheism is a rejection of religion, so is not a religion of it's own."
See above. BTW - an anti-definition is not a definition of what something is.
"Whether something is a set ideals for life or not, is not alone sufficient to define something as religion or not."
The Supreme Court begs to differ with you. Their protection of atheism under the First Amendment was based entirely on this rationale. If you would prefer not to have your ideas protected...
"Religion is the specific set of ideals that reject reason, in favor of mysticism."
You do precisely what you accuse me of. And yet your proposed definition is poisoned from the start. When you start with an obvious straw man definition, you will reach erroneous conclusions.
The Constitutional protection of rejection of religious belief under the law falls under freedom of thought and speech, in particular in the realm of religious debate and thought, i.e., about religious topics. It does not mean that rejection of religious belief is itself on religious grounds.
Obviously, his "if you would prefer not to have your ideas protected..." is a non-sequitur. The Constitution is not based on religion and the Bill of Rights does not depend on subservience to religious belief, let alone Blarman's promotion of faith.
Common word usage described in dictionaries does not distinguish between valid and invalid concepts and is not the basis of rational philosophy, but the dictionary link Blarman pretentiously intones to "please see" is the opposite of what he claimed.
"Definition of religion
"1a : the state of a religious a nun in her 20th year of religion
b(1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural
(2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
"2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
"3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
"4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith"
"Definition of religious"
1 : relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity"
Blarman contradicts himself again even in his own appeal to authority.
"Don't bother to examine a folly, only ask what it accomplishes". Yet we have examined it. It has been examined and refuted over and over following his repetitious and inappropriate faith promotions here for years. He keeps coming back with his evangelizing as if nothing had been said rejecting it, which he refuses to acknowledge. It is not honest. It is obsessive, repetitive evangelizing oblivious to all rational response.
What is it intended to "accomplish"? He is his trying to rationalize religion as intellectually impregnable by claiming it includes everything, even the rejection of faith. That is the package deal. We supposedly can't reject religion without rejecting all of philosophy, inverting the hierarchy, leaving us with a false premise and no choice but to argue over what kind of religion rather than reject his faith out of hand as cognitively worthless.
But there is a sense in which it is deeper than that logical flim-flam: In proclaiming the rejection of religion itself to be religion he's foisting the notion that all thinking is the same psychology of arbitrary, rationalistic, religious thinking, and in that respect objectivity, as we know it, in science or anything else, including atheistic rejection of religion, can be no better than the religionists and not essentially different. As long as he and others of the embedded religious ilk remain entrenched with that psychology of thinking they will never be able to know the difference.
His "by the way" -- as if he had never tried it before and had not been refuted many times -- repetitive dismissal of the definition of a-theism as rejecting theism by pronouncing it to be an "anti-definition" that "is not a definition of what something is" is patently absurd. Of course it is says what something is: "the rejection of religion". As a definition of the concept it has a genus and a differentia: "rejection" and what is being rejected.
We saw a ghost inside our house
Or was it wishful thinkin'?
Oh god, don't leave us by ourselves
Or we're bound to take up drinkin'
Please send us a miracle
So I know that there is meaning
I said, "I think that it's a miracle
Just to be breathin'"
So live on
Baby live on
Live on
Baby live on
Packed up my clothes in a grocery bag
I'm going to find the creator
An old man in the clouds or a happy little alien
Whoever it is I need to thank her
And even though I don't know God
I'm happy with the mystery
And I'm certain that I feel it
Every time that you sing to me
Songs, you say
Life is like a song
It's a song
A hum-able song
I watched you sleep until 5 am
Cause I want to be part of your dreaming
Oh love, don't leave me by myself
Or I'm bound to lose my meaning
We'll start a little family
And call it our religion
Hunt for ghosts inside our house
'Cause we'll never give up wishing
That we live on
May we live on
In our song
Our hum-able song
Atheism is not a religion. A-theism means rejecting theism. It is a consequence of reason. It is not "nihilism". This has been explained to you many times here and you continue to return with the same nonsense and no acknowledgement as if nothing had been said.
Rejecting your faith is not "fundamentally unreasonable". Religion does not "resolve contradictions", it creates them. There is no "end game to existence". This isn't a game at all. Telling us that people "want to matter" is not an argument for rejecting reason for faith. It is not "fundamentally unreasonable" to acknowledge that people die after a finite life span and does not mean that people "don't matter". This is not the place for you to repetitively promote your faith out of psychological desire for immortality.
Were you raised in a culture where theism was prevalent? I'm going to make that assumption with the next question. What process, significant events, emotional, intellectual changed your awareness?
The question is in earnest....not prodding.
than being bald is a hairstyle,
not-collecting-stamps is a hobby,
and people who do not play sports are a type of athlete.
(From: theatheistconservative.com/)
What women (and men) want-
when you want something you cannot have, that is religion.
If membership of a class is set by defined attributes of an individual entity, then the absence in an entity of that attribute precludes membership of that entity in that class.
His claims that such a rejection takes "zero thought" and is "zero useful information" are false. It takes thought to judge what you accept and what you don't, and the "information" is identifying the choice you made.
He is also still confused over the fact that atheism does not say what you are for. People may be atheists for good or bad reasons or none at all. Here we are basing discussion on a rational approach to knowledge from which atheism is a consequence, not a "religion". He uses his confusion over that to rationalize calling atheism "nihilistic" because he wants everything not religious to be damned as nihilistic. Whether or not someone is a nihilist depends on what, if anything, he is for. Being atheist doesn't imply anything about that either way. It doesn't make it "nihilistic".
I do it for fun. I do not speak for Aristotle.
sorry...my sarcastic font lock is in-op
I think for many people religion is a set of songs, scriptures, and holidays that connect them with how their ancestors tried to understand the world. It doesn't mean they themselves use the stories literally to understand the world.
Catholics have perfected it. They're born guilty because the first humans sought knowledge. If they break the rules, they can just confess.