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Irrational fear of authority

no-one-particular

no-one-particular

Atheist
Joined
Jun 9, 2014
Messages
271
Location
California
Basic Beliefs
Civilizationist
Laws exist to increase your freedom.
Not decrease it.
Should people be free to enslave other people? Of course not!
Having a law against slavery increases peoples freedom.
Want to be free of murderers, thieves, and rapists? Then you need laws.

Yet many people have an irrational fear of authority

Seeing something that you have an irrational fear of causes alarms to go off inside your head.
The alarms going off inside your head causes you pain.
The pain causes you to have an irrational fear of the thing that caused the alarm which caused the pain.
Its a never ending vicious circle.

The important thing to note is that it is the alarm that is painful. Not the original stimulus.
Therefore you can break out of that vicious circle by turning those alarms off.

No alarms = no pain
No pain = no fear
No fear = no alarms

Another way of saying this is that if you believe that it will be painful then it will be painful.
But if you believe that it wont be painful then it wont be painful. (You only need to believe for a few seconds.)

If you can turn off the alarms and stop the pain then why would you choose not to do so?
Turning off alarms is easy. Even I can do it.

Fear is like dirt. Its washes right off.
 
Religion is how autistic people (strictly speaking hyper-empirical people) see civilization. They see a distorted image because they do not fully understand emergence. (Law and life are emergent properties.)
1 Corinthians 13:12
Now we see things imperfectly as though through a distorting lens but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.​

In autistic minds:
where there are laws there must be a law-giver.
where there is life there must be a life-giver.​

In autistic minds:
without a law-giver all laws are arbitrary and meaningless.
without a life-giver life is arbitrary and meaningless.​


Therefore autistic people only see 2 possibilities:
The Theist position: God exists and therefore law and life are neither arbitrary nor meaningless.
The Atheist position: God doesnt exist and therefore law and life are arbitrary and meaningless.​

But it isnt that simple. There are 2 more possibilities
God exists and law and life are arbitrary and meaningless.
God doesnt exist and law and life are neither arbitrary nor meaningless.​

So its actually 2 dimensional.
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I am not autistic and I am neither a theist nor an atheist. I am a civilizationist.

What is the purpose of living? Living IS the purpose.
What is the purpose of our purpose? Its doesnt have one. It doesnt need one.

Civilized behavior is behavior that respects civilized laws, rules, and expectations. Civilized laws are laws that do not give any one person or any one group of people any special rights above what all others have. The more a society treats everyone as equals the more civilized it is. (Equal rights. Equal protection. Equal pay for equal work. Equal punishment for equal crimes.)
 
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You do not understandind Autists at all, by the way.
Or Atheists.

But thank you for the word “dystheist.” That right there is a useful word.
 
Yet these definitions appear to be quite black and white, yes or no, right or wrong with virtually no overlap or blending of categories.....?
 
Angry Floof said:
You mean like an irrational fear of clowns?
Click to expand...
IRRATIONAL?!?!

They have literally INHUMAN features! Necrotic-pale skin, blood-red lips, feet the size of a duck. Hair that could be hiding a knife, or a rabid gerbil! It's all clues!
Clowns are the pre-industrial Scared Straight!
"The Outlander! Run! Engage Anti-predator protocols! Get Away!"

The ones to tarry, and laugh, will be the first ones culled from the gene pool at the next crisis, and we'll be better off for it.
 
I'm lost. How does autism have anything to do with a fear of authorities. And I still don't understand how this segways into religion? There's not one theist position. Theism is a happy mixture of a dizzying array of concepts of God. Some with laws. Some without. So I fail to see how rule giver, enters into this?

But nice to see you think homosexuals are great people. While I think homosexuals are like people are mostly. It's nice to see somebody really being into them. They deserve it.
 
no-one-particular said:
Autistic people lack both curiosity and anti-curiosity.
Autistic + black and white thinking = hyper-empiricism
Click to expand...

No idea where you got your little chart or who thought it was definitive.
Autism is a SPECTRUM, I thought everyone knew that.
I was raised by an autist, I have taught autists, I have sat through autism testing - and you are absolutely wrong about about them in your claims.

Not sure whether you care that your chart and your claims are completely wrong about actual live people with autism. But you are wrong - wrong like defining a pie by one mm2 of crust wrong.
 
no-one-particular said:
Laws exist to increase your freedom.
Not decrease it.
Should people be free to enslave other people? Of course not!
Having a law against slavery increases peoples freedom.
Want to be free of murderers, thieves, and rapists? Then you need laws.

Yet many people have an irrational fear of authority
Click to expand...

The bolded sentences are valid, the others are not. Yes, laws that limit actions which infringe on other's freedom, are laws that enhance freedom. This is an important point, and one ignored by anti government pseudo-libertarians who ignore that fellow citizens are often the greatest threat to liberty and government regulations are how those threats to liberty are eliminated.

However, contrary to the implicit assumption of your first sentence, that is not true of all laws. In general, laws constrain actions, which can be done to protect freedoms from actions seeking to infringe upon them, but can be used to directly infringe upon freedoms.
This is why is it is essential that the people who freedoms are to be protected has control over the laws, so that they can help ensure that laws are used to optimize freedoms. This is what makes the last sentence above invalid. Laws are not the same as "authority". Laws are what the authority enforce, but who has the authority determines what laws they enforce, and the more centralized and unchangeable that authority, the more likely the laws are to attack rather than protect freedoms.

And this is why the most centralized unchangeable authority imaginable, the concept of God, is the greatest enemy to freedom that exists.
 
Authority in and of itself is nothing to fear. When authority becomes absolute and oppressive, maybe.

The irrational worship of authority is much more dangerous and scary, and is actually what gives rise to oppressive authorities.
 
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