Best Emotional Porn Ever

[Gilly]

Great video.

[Galen]

I used to like thunderfoot, now he's just annoying. Even when I agree with his videos, which I often do, he comes off as too self-important. INTj probably.

[Gilly]

Yeah he's kind of self-righteous, but you can tell he tames it intentionally and is at least mostly neutral.

Besides...he's right.

[Creepy-male]

Yea pretty much

[Saberstorm]

ffttt..

[Galen]

Yeah he's kind of self-righteous, but you can tell he tames it intentionally and is at least mostly neutral.

Besides...he's right.

Well yeah, I agree with pretty much everything he says. He just grows tiresome at times, something about the cadence of his voice his self-righteousness or something. I'm a much bigger fan of AronRa if I want to get my Atheist rambling fill. He's much more direct about his attacks on other people's positions; I estimate he's Te-ESTj.

[Creepy-male]

lol aethist hipsters, richard dawkins is sooo mainstream.

[Gilly]

I just thought it was cool...hipsters are gay and so is richard dawkins.

[Birdie]

Gilly the title of your thread is best emotional porn. I don't think you have room to call things gay right now.

[Creepy-male]

No I meant arguing over which aethist ranter/speaker/youtube personality or whatever reminds me of hipsters arguing about what is cool or hip. I didn't mean that all aethists are hipsters.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

lol. I feel like being emotional in public and masturbating in front of him just because he said it would get under his skin.

So I like the video but you have to admit he's being a hypocrite. Not everybody is so personally offended by public displays of emotion. He's being emotional about emotions when they are just emotions!!!

[Gilly]

I don't think he's objecting to open displays of emotion so much as criticizing organized religion.

[Creepy-male]

yea @ gilly, the entire point of the video is criticizing organized religion.

The whole idea of calling it emotional masturbation is just to bring the "holy" ideas of religion more down to earth on what they actually are -- emotional fantasy.

Slightly off topic -- I find it funny how religious nuts call harry potter and the like "evil" ... it's like they want a monopoly on people's emotional fantasies, don't fantasize about wizards and the hogwarts, fantasize about angels, demons, god, jesus, heaven, and so forth. It's kind of like this out of control instinct to assimilate everyone to the same fantasy because if enough people believe it its cognitively regarded as truth, and people who don't believe are regarded as threats to this consensus. I think its accurate how he brings up people are social, to some people consensus is the same as truth. I found the whole concept of being hardwired to be social a bit disturbing. He makes people sound like robots without free will, but it fits within the context of his point on religion: that its the result of people's social instinct and emotional fantasy.

[Gilly]

Well "emotional fantasy" is kind of a misnomer, and is unnecessarily derisive IMO, as is the attitude he takes. The emotions are real; there's no denying that. And calling it fantasy...that's a stretch. There is nothing telling us for sure that we are not connected in some way that lies beyond the capacities of the brain, or even if we real understand the brain properly in declaring it as being as self-defined as our physical science would seem to claim. It's really a lot more than we're prepared to claim yet, there is still plenty we don't understand. That said, it's a necessary stance, IMO, because the opposite is held to be true by a positively destructive number of people.

[Gilly]

Personally I'd rather fantasize about angels and demons than witches and wizards...humans are so plebeian in their scope.

[Creepy-male]

Emotions are real, yea I agree with that, but the meeting of logic with emotion is a difficult area. I think my main criticism with religion which isn't brought up in this video is that it tends to place emotional gratification over logical truth. The search for some deeper meaning I am sympathetic to, but I believe it requires a harmony of logical truth and emotional gratification, rather than logical truths subordinately formed around emotionally gratifying fantasies.

Also I'm not saying I'd personally rather fantasize about wizards, I'm just saying it's interesting how it seems like some religions have a monopoly on fantasy -- that's the only way I can logically make sense of there perceived threat of things like harry potter and pokemon and so forth.

[WVBRY]

Monothiestic religions are a problem in our world today. I think the way of dealing with them as a whole is to not fall into hypocrisy and become as intolerant as they are. Or is it? Its not hypocrisy if you are aware you're doing it, and as long as you dont call your cause more tolerant than theirs out of blind faith for it isnt hypocritical, but it is absurd: why replace something intolerant with something equally intolerant? In other words, why replace existing order, with another order if the other order is not more fair than the previous one? But what if what you consider unfair about the order in question is its power to rule? Then you replace it with another order which has the same power to rule, and this is absurd. In other words, in terms of religion, why picket against "intolerant" religions when what you are reblling against is their intolerance? Doesnt that make you just as intolerant?

I think the solution is to keep in mind that its important to assert what you do believe in, rather than simply negate what you dont. If you're not being more tolerant that way, then you're at least not being a hypocrite.

I know this isnt really the subject of the video, which is about emotional highs gained from believing in fairy-tale sky men rather then about tolerance, but the video does raise the question indirectly nontheless and since these thoughts have been ruminating in my mind lately, I couldnt think of a better place to post them tbh.

[anndelise]

Great video.

I'm reading a book titled "the belief instinct" by jesse bering.
It goes into how we have the natural ability to theorize about the actions, intents, thoughts, and feelings of other people. And that this theory-of-mind assisted us in developing socially. That this natural ability of ours gets used not just in figuring out the actions, intents, thoughts, and emotions of people, but that we use it when describing animals, cars, computers, and yes, even Red Balloons that 'follow' kids (a movie based on using the audience's theory of mind to attribute human characteristics to a particular red balloon and its relationship with the main character, a young boy).

For example, we'll describe a car as being beligerant and not wanting to wake up...because it didn't start up eaily on demand. Or we'll describe a chatbox as eating our sentences/shouts, and partially wonder why its being so mean to us. And we'll even attribute emotions and intents to stuffed dolls, etc.

So what happens when we witness a tornado ripping a town apart? We want to know why. Why did it happen? Why that town? Why those people got killed, etc. So, we naturally turn towards interpreting the cause as coming from an intentional agent. It happened because it was intended to happen. Intended by whom? Intended for what purpose? Well, as humans, we'd associate it as being a creature that preys on humans (such as a demon), or we'd associate it as a punishment (by someone with lotsa power and authority... aka a god).

So then we use this theory of mind ability of ours to try to analyze the psychology and intent of this 'being', creating thoughts, emotions, intents, and actions. We may try to supplicate it, so it won't attack/punish again. We may try to call it down upon our enemies. Or ask it to aide us in our endeavors, etc.



Basically, as humans, this is a natural and spontaneous ability of ours, that carries us through so many aspects of life. It's easy to get caught up in applying it to virtually everything, even to natural forces. And then to create rituals, prayers, and scriptures/myths to interact with our creation.

Add in the specialness of such a great and powerful being actually being interested in lil ol' us, like this video mentions. And whoom...it's no wonder religious beliefs are such popular things.