I am posting this after having been temporarily suspended from another forum for mocking the notion of a certain person's actual death and actual coming back to life after the equivalent of a long weekend rotting in the grave. Apparently, I have given offense.
However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?
I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.
I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.
Simple. They believe that their deity can work miracles and that there has been good evidence for actual miracles happening. There really is not much more to discuss.
"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."
- Franz Werfel
What evidence would convince you of the correctness of the Biblical stories, or for that matter of the claims of any other religious texts?
Quote from: Treehugger on August 15, 2020, 08:45:40 PM
I am posting this after having been temporarily suspended from another forum for mocking the notion of a certain person's actual death and actual coming back to life after the equivalent of a long weekend rotting in the grave. Apparently, I have given offense.
However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?
In my protestant religion nobody knew how much of it anyone believed, but the shared idea was everyone believed that people long ago were so powerfully affected by some goings on to do with the Supreme Being that there was too much there not to take heed of it. As a little kid I was earnest and was ready to believe all of it literally. I found out that my eagerness impressed people, but was seen as a bit over the top.
Now I find things have changed, so hundreds of people cheered wildly while George Carlin took apart the whole theory of 'The Man in the Sky" with total ridicule. So now I believe him. Well, within reason. I also believed him when he said comedians sometimes had to exaggerate for effect. Of course entertainment is not faith, but there's some relationship.
The 1960's, 70's popular music, books and movies of the time, changed things.
So I conclude that we pick something to believe that's somewhere in the range of what we are allowed to believe. Whatever gets us approval and belonging, makes a little sense, and lets us believe we are sane.
I don't really know what it means to "believe" something, and I certainly don't know what it means to "believe" something as abstract as religion "literally".
I just assume that when someone says they believe something literally, that they probably mean something different by that than I might.
I recommend reading Influence by Robert Chialdini. The book goes over a number of reasons why people are influenced in a variety of contexts such as sales, voting and dating, but one some of the examples involve religious cults. (Presumably avoiding the "big 3" cults so as not to offend...) I won't get into the specifics but when the main tenants of a specific religion is disproved (the leader was to return at x time and did not) the followers strengthened rather than rejected their faith. An overly simplistic explanation would be rationalization based on sunk cost but I highly recommend reading.
My own premise is that very few actually believe literally, but pretending they do is a powerful in group signal to others who have made the same public statement in the same way that wearing a condom on one's head has nothing to do with a fraternity's stated purpose but shows a level of commitment to do/say/believe something so absurd that it could only demonstrate the elevation of the group inclusion above one's own rational thought. This is basically the purpose of a marriage ceremony as well. Agreeing with something rationally does not prove group loyalty. Going along with something that is irrational supports the fact that one has submitted to the group. The more who do so, the more this is reinforced.
If you want to further the premise of your statement, I find it difficult to fathom that people "believe" in the necessity of government for things to "work" despite ample evidence as small as potholes and as large as the numerous genocides of just the last century to prove they do anything but. This is the religions of the left. At least I can't "disprove" the resurrection. I can easily prove the non-functionality of governments by pointing to over a hundred million deaths in the just the 20th century.
Because we do.
Because faith isn't about proof, or it wouldn't be faith.
Because religious texts offer a transcendent way of integrating wisdom, understanding, and experience about life.
M.
(You might want to ask the mods to fix the title, there's an error in the text).
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 15, 2020, 09:04:52 PM
I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.
I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.
I wasn't mocking a certain poster's belief. We were discussing conspiracies theories and I was using that as an analogy for how really intelligent people could believe crazy conspiracy theories.
Quote from: mamselle on August 16, 2020, 01:08:28 AM
Because we do.
Because faith isn't about proof, or it wouldn't be faith.
Because religious texts offer a transcendent way of integrating wisdom, understanding, and experience about life.
M.
(You might want to ask the mods to fix the title, there's an error in the text).
And are dangerous when they are taken literally, which they are by many people. Also, what you say may be applied to QAnon "believers." Believing that Trump is secretly fighting an international rising of pedophiles is what they actually believe and it gives them a sense of meaning, purpose and whatever in life. And, in my book, it is not OK.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 04:51:58 AM
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 15, 2020, 09:04:52 PM
I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.
I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.
I wasn't mocking a certain poster's belief. We were discussing conspiracies theories and I was using that as an analogy for how really intelligent people could believe crazy conspiracy theories.
The problem is that modern rationalism is, itself, a belief system which presupposes lots of unprovable ideas about cause and effect and a million other things. It only makes sense within a certain historically contingent belief system. You don't think these things because you're more logical and rational than other people, you think them because of a cultural world you inhabit.
Also the important thing to realize about Christianity is that it is supposed to be weird, bizarre and outside the realm of the ordinary. Arguing that the story is implausible is a little like looking at a Rothko painting and saying "this guy doesn't know to paint, its just a bunch of colors!" You're not required to like modern art, but this isn't exactly a sophisticated critique.
Quote from: Caracal on August 16, 2020, 05:10:49 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 04:51:58 AM
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 15, 2020, 09:04:52 PM
I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.
I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.
I wasn't mocking a certain poster's belief. We were discussing conspiracies theories and I was using that as an analogy for how really intelligent people could believe crazy conspiracy theories.
The problem is that modern rationalism is, itself, a belief system which presupposes lots of unprovable ideas about cause and effect and a million other things. It only makes sense within a certain historically contingent belief system. You don't think these things because you're more logical and rational than other people, you think them because of a cultural world you inhabit.
Sure, modern rationalism involves "believing" certain things. But even if we use the same word as is used in discussing religion, we are not talking about the same thing. There is everyday rational belief and there is religious belief. They are qualitatively different. The belief that I use to navigate my way through the world is built up from my personal experience, vicarious experience and reason. My beliefs about they way the world works are open to change. Like others, I can use my experience and reason to come to conclusions and believe things that turn out to be incorrect. But, in general, I am much more likely to be "correct." That is — I am much more likely to interpret the world in such a way that I can act within it to bring about the outcome that I desire.
For example, I can say, hmmmm ....I don't feel sick at all and I thought I wasn't sick, but these CT scans show that I have a "mass" and the biopsy shows that it is malignant. Then I can also say I know (or believe?) that chemotherapy is literally poison (Taxol, to take but one example, is derived from the poisonous yew tree). But I also know (believe?) that its net benefit will be therapeutic because it will wind up killing more cancer cells than normal cells because the former grow at a faster rate than the former. Based on these facts (objects of belief?) I think that this course of treatment will be my best bet for a "cure" or long-term remission. I may turn out to be wrong about any number of these facts or beliefs. I doubt it, but we may learn that chemo doesn't actually work they way we think it works and in fact is usually worse than simply doing nothing at all. Or, what is much more likely, it just doesn't work for me, for my body and the genetic makeup of my particular cancer in exactly way we had hoped.
Alternatively, I could believe in the religious sense. Religious belief, from what I understand, seems to be defined the opposite of rational "belief." After all, if something were rational and easily believable, why would we need to have faith? God works in mysterious ways and all that. So, if I were a true believer, I would simply pray to God, the omnipotent being who has my best interests at heart and he would protect me. That's all I would need to do.
So, which belief or set of beliefs is "better"? That is, which is more likely to bring about the desired outcome (cure or long-term remission)? I think we all know the answer to that.
Of course, in the real world, lots of religious folk go and get treated with modern medicine ... in addition to petitioning the almighty. Why?
One possibility is that they don't actually believe what they say they believe — they don't actually believe that their God is omnipotent and capable of working miracles on the behalf of true believers.
Or, if they are deep thinkers, they will build up some complicated theory about how God is actually working through the oncologists and cancer researchers to bring about a modern-day miracle (their cure). But what they are actually doing is just adopting rational, scientific beliefs and reaping the benefit of medical science without giving science its full due. (It's not scientists doing this. It's God!)
Or, finally, they can just compartmentalize. They can say: I believe in medical science, so I'll get the chemo. But I believe that prayer will help me emotionally, so I will pray to give myself psychological/spiritual comfort. This latter is probably the least harmful way of approaching the situation, but I do not agree that it is somehow better than a full-on atheist approach, one great advantage of which is that you do not need to go through life compartmentalizing and attempting to believe different things in different circumstances.
But to go back to your post, Caracal. I agree that modern rationalism is historical and culturally contingent, not absolute (in any case, that is already implied by the qualifier "modern"). However, it is still the best "belief" system we have available to us at this time. Again, where "better" means most likely to produce the results one aims for.
That's pretty much the answer as I would see it, Treehugger.
One could say that I believe in gravity due to evidence and a coherent theory, but to link all of the observations I'd personally see, such as falling apples, the motion of the Moon and the complicated apparent motion of planets on the sky, to Newton's theories really takes some leaps of faith in my book. I think I tend to believe it because it works for keeping buildings standing, rockets moving and can predict where a home run will land. Quantum mechanics is even more of a stretch. I'm still not sure I really really believe it, though it works.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 06:07:14 AM
Sure, modern rationalism involves "believing" certain things. But even if we use the same word as is used in discussing religion, we are not talking about the same thing. There is everyday rational belief and there is religious belief. They are qualitatively different. The belief that I use to navigate my way through the world, is built up from my personal experience, vicarious experience and reason. My beliefs about they way the world works are open to change. Like others, I can use my experience and reason to come to conclusions and believe things that turn out to be incorrect. But, in general, I am much more likely to be "correct." That is — I am much more likely to interpret the world in such a way that I can act within it to bring about the outcome that I desire.
This is a way biger topic than can be addressed easily, but I'm happy to discuss it.
This assumption of the difference between "rational" belief and "religious" belief is partly based on charicatures. (And of course, different people will present both of those ideas very differently. Is an anti-vaxxer, having been exposed to a lot of incorrect science, exhibiting "rational" belief based on bad data?)
Here are a few things that "rational" people accept, but requiring a lot of what would be called "faith" in a religious context.
- Quantum mechanics. A quotation, perhaps incorrectly attirubed to Feinman says "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."
- Consciousness. The "scientific" fudge on this one is to say that "consciousness in an emergent property of certain systems." (Emergent property is scientific gibberish for "it obviously exists, but we have no clue how it works".)
- Free will. See quantum mechanics and consciousness. If brain function is either deterministic or probabilistic, the idea of "changing one's mind" is pretty meaningless. If we don't actually make decisions, our brains are an incredibly realistic simulation of it.
- Morality. See all of the above. Show me a rationalist who does not think genocide, child sex trafficking, and so on as deserving of punishment. But that requires an assumption of free will and a sense that all values are not completely culturally relative.
Faith is basically admitting that an idea which is incomplete or paradoxical in many details may nevertheless describe some apparently fundamental truth about reality.
Many (most?) religious people would not suggest that their faith dictates exactly what to do in any given situation, but that it provides general principles which apply.
(And I would never try to kick anyone off here for questioning religious belief, and I imagine most religious people on here would express a similar sentiment.)
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 16, 2020, 06:54:02 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 06:07:14 AM
Sure, modern rationalism involves "believing" certain things. But even if we use the same word as is used in discussing religion, we are not talking about the same thing. There is everyday rational belief and there is religious belief. They are qualitatively different. The belief that I use to navigate my way through the world, is built up from my personal experience, vicarious experience and reason. My beliefs about they way the world works are open to change. Like others, I can use my experience and reason to come to conclusions and believe things that turn out to be incorrect. But, in general, I am much more likely to be "correct." That is — I am much more likely to interpret the world in such a way that I can act within it to bring about the outcome that I desire.
This is a way biger topic than can be addressed easily, but I'm happy to discuss it.
This assumption of the difference between "rational" belief and "religious" belief is partly based on charicatures. (And of course, different people will present both of those ideas very differently. Is an anti-vaxxer, having been exposed to a lot of incorrect science, exhibiting "rational" belief based on bad data?)
Here are a few things that "rational" people accept, but requiring a lot of what would be called "faith" in a religious context.
- Quantum mechanics. A quotation, perhaps incorrectly attirubed to Feinman says "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."
- Consciousness. The "scientific" fudge on this one is to say that "consciousness in an emergent property of certain systems." (Emergent property is scientific gibberish for "it obviously exists, but we have no clue how it works".)
- Free will. See quantum mechanics and consciousness. If brain function is either deterministic or probabilistic, the idea of "changing one's mind" is pretty meaningless. If we don't actually make decisions, our brains are an incredibly realistic simulation of it.
- Morality. See all of the above. Show me a rationalist who does not think genocide, child sex trafficking, and so on as deserving of punishment. But that requires an assumption of free will and a sense that all values are not completely culturally relative.
Faith is basically admitting that an idea which is incomplete or paradoxical in many details may nevertheless describe some apparently fundamental truth about reality.
Many (most?) religious people would not suggest that their faith dictates exactly what to do in any given situation, but that it provides general principles which apply.
(And I would never try to kick anyone off here for questioning religious belief, and I imagine most religious people on here would express a similar sentiment.)
Wow. There is so much to discuss here. But in regards to your last point — morality — there is no reason to believe atheism or a more rational approach to the world is either immoral or amoral. There is no incompatibility at all between being an atheist and trusting science on the one hand and abhorring child trafficking on the other. Some eighteenth century philosophers referred to this an innate moral sense. But you can also see humans' moral connection to others as being an evolutionary advantage. Humans were simply more likely to survive if they behaved morally — if they cared for their children and others in their tribe, no matter what their belief systems actually were. Today, most parents have an entirely natural love for their children, their other family members and their friends that has nothing at all to do with religious belief.
Of course, humanity's natural moral sense only extends so far. It only extends to those who are close and not those who are "other." But here is where reason comes in. For those who have thought about it, they can see that it is indeed rational for us to extend our moral sense to others, to children whom we have never even met and who might be if another race because we understand that this will ultimately make the world a better place for everyone. Really, you don't need a God or a sacred text to do this.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 06:07:14 AM
Quote from: Caracal on August 16, 2020, 05:10:49 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 04:51:58 AM
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 15, 2020, 09:04:52 PM
I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.
I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.
I wasn't mocking a certain poster's belief. We were discussing conspiracies theories and I was using that as an analogy for how really intelligent people could believe crazy conspiracy theories.
The problem is that modern rationalism is, itself, a belief system which presupposes lots of unprovable ideas about cause and effect and a million other things. It only makes sense within a certain historically contingent belief system. You don't think these things because you're more logical and rational than other people, you think them because of a cultural world you inhabit.
Sure, modern rationalism involves "believing" certain things. But even if we use the same word as is used in discussing religion, we are not talking about the same thing. There is everyday rational belief and there is religious belief. They are qualitatively different. The belief that I use to navigate my way through the world is built up from my personal experience, vicarious experience and reason. My beliefs about they way the world works are open to change. Like others, I can use my experience and reason to come to conclusions and believe things that turn out to be incorrect. But, in general, I am much more likely to be "correct." That is — I am much more likely to interpret the world in such a way that I can act within it to bring about the outcome that I desire.
For example, I can say, hmmmm ....I don't feel sick at all and I thought I wasn't sick, but these CT scans show that I have a "mass" and the biopsy shows that it is malignant. Then I can also say I know (or believe?) that chemotherapy is literally poison (Taxol, to take but one example, is derived from the poisonous yew tree). But I also know (believe?) that its net benefit will be therapeutic because it will wind up killing more cancer cells than normal cells because the former grow at a faster rate than the former. Based on these facts (objects of belief?) I think that this course of treatment will be my best bet for a "cure" or long-term remission. I may turn out to be wrong about any number of these facts or beliefs. I doubt it, but we may learn that chemo doesn't actually work they way we think it works and in fact is usually worse than simply doing nothing at all. Or, what is much more likely, it just doesn't work for me, for my body and the genetic makeup of my particular cancer in exactly way we had hoped.
Alternatively, I could believe in the religious sense. Religious belief, from what I understand, seems to be defined the opposite of rational "belief." After all, if something were rational and easily believable, why would we need to have faith? God works in mysterious ways and all that. So, if I were a true believer, I would simply pray to God, the omnipotent being who has my best interests at heart and he would protect me. That's all I would need to do.
So, which belief or set of beliefs is "better"? That is, which is more likely to bring about the desired outcome (cure or long-term remission)? I think we all know the answer to that.
Of course, in the real world, lots of religious folk go and get treated with modern medicine ... in addition to petitioning the almighty. Why?
One possibility is that they don't actually believe what they say they believe — they don't actually believe that their God is omnipotent and capable of working miracles on the behalf of true believers.
Or, if they are deep thinkers, they will build up some complicated theory about how God is actually working through the oncologists and cancer researchers to bring about a modern-day miracle (their cure). But what they are actually doing is just adopting rational, scientific beliefs and reaping the benefit of medical science without giving science its full due. (It's not scientists doing this. It's God!)
Or, finally, they can just compartmentalize. They can say: I believe in medical science, so I'll get the chemo. But I believe that prayer will help me emotionally, so I will pray to give myself psychological/spiritual comfort. This latter is probably the least harmful way of approaching the situation, but I do not agree that it is somehow better than a full-on atheist approach, one great advantage of which is that you do not need to go through life compartmentalizing and attempting to believe different things in different circumstances.
But to go back to your post, Caracal. I agree that modern rationalism is historical and culturally contingent, not absolute (in any case, that is already implied by the qualifier "modern"). However, it is still the best "belief" system we have available to us at this time. Again, where "better" means most likely to produce the results one aims for.
Best for what aims? And who determines those aims? I think what you're saying is that it is best for your aims, which is rather different. Look, that's my relationship to bio medicine too, but it isn't like we both just were transported from a galaxy far, far away, saw this system, carefully studied it and decided it would provide the most benefit. Its a system that has a dominant place in our world and we have chosen to mostly go along with it.
The example you give, actually shows all of the ways in which it requires lots of faith. That cancer may not actually be growing much. Doctors know that some cancers are more or less malignant than others, but they aren't always that great at knowing which ones are dangerous. It is entirely possible you could have just gone on much happier and more content not knowing you had some mass that was never going to cause any problems. Even if it growing, there are hardly any assurances that chemotherapy is going to result in improved quality of life. It is certainly going to result in a whole cycle of anxiety and visits to the doctor and all the rest. Now, I'm not going to turn it down, but that's mostly because I've grown up within this belief system about the benefits of bio medicine, but if you go outside the metrics of that system (lifespan, chance of cure, etc) you could certainly make an argument that it isn't "better."
I'm not a theologian, or even very theologically inclined, but theologians have spent lots of time on questions of god and man's agency in the world and have come up with lots of different, sometimes complicated answers. I think the problem with most modern atheism is that they are unwilling to engage with it, which doesn't make for very interesting arguments.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 07:31:32 AM
Wow. There is so much to discuss here. But in regards to your last point — morality — there is no reason to believe atheism or a more rational approach to the world is either immoral or amoral. There is no incompatibility at all between being an atheist and trusting science on the one hand and abhorring child trafficking on the other. Some eighteenth century philosophers referred to this an innate moral sense. But you can also see humans' moral connection to others as being an evolutionary advantage. Humans were simply more likely to survive if they behaved morally — if they cared for their children and others in their tribe, no matter what their belief systems actually were. Today, most parents have an entirely natural love for their children, their other family members and their friends that has nothing at all to do with religious belief.
Of course, humanity's natural moral sense only extends so far. It only extends to those who are close and not those who are "other." But here is where reason comes in. For those who have thought about it, they can see that it is indeed rational for us to extend our moral sense to others, to children whom we have never even met and who might be if another race because we understand that this will ultimately make the world a better place for everyone. Really, you don't need a God or a sacred text to do this.
I think you're accidentally making the case against your argument. Those kinds of arguments about the evolutionary advantages of some idea are about as unprovable as you can get. The problem is that you could always argue the reverse perfectly plausibly. In this case "it confers an evolutionary advantage to only care about your own offspring and not anyone else's." Of course there's no reason to think atheism is amoral or immoral, any more than there's a reason to argue that theism is.
Quote from: Caracal on August 16, 2020, 07:48:49 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 07:31:32 AM
Wow. There is so much to discuss here. But in regards to your last point — morality — there is no reason to believe atheism or a more rational approach to the world is either immoral or amoral. There is no incompatibility at all between being an atheist and trusting science on the one hand and abhorring child trafficking on the other. Some eighteenth century philosophers referred to this an innate moral sense. But you can also see humans' moral connection to others as being an evolutionary advantage. Humans were simply more likely to survive if they behaved morally — if they cared for their children and others in their tribe, no matter what their belief systems actually were. Today, most parents have an entirely natural love for their children, their other family members and their friends that has nothing at all to do with religious belief.
Of course, humanity's natural moral sense only extends so far. It only extends to those who are close and not those who are "other." But here is where reason comes in. For those who have thought about it, they can see that it is indeed rational for us to extend our moral sense to others, to children whom we have never even met and who might be if another race because we understand that this will ultimately make the world a better place for everyone. Really, you don't need a God or a sacred text to do this.
I think you're accidentally making the case against your argument. Those kinds of arguments about the evolutionary advantages of some idea are about as unprovable as you can get. The problem is that you could always argue the reverse perfectly plausibly. In this case "it confers an evolutionary advantage to only care about your own offspring and not anyone else's." Of course there's no reason to think atheism is amoral or immoral, any more than there's a reason to argue that theism is.
Exactly. And my point was that regardless of whether one is a theist or an atheist, people don't calmly explain that a child trafficker is being "irrational"; they denounce the person as "evil" in some way or other. To be a complete rationalist, one should allow the possibility that someone else may rationally come up with a very different set of moral values, based on different circumstances, data, etc. However, rationalists seem to all have situations in which they exhibit
moral outrage at the actions of others, suggesting that there is some part of morality which is either innate or ought to be self-evident, so that those who reject it are exhibiting not merely a different thought process, but willful anti-social behaviour.
To clarify; the rationalists are welcome to have their own morality. What is surprising is their insistence that
everyone else must subscribe to some fundamental parts of it as well. The more universal the expectations, the harder they are to justify by some sort of dispassionate and unquestionable calculation.
Quote from: Caracal on August 16, 2020, 07:42:15 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 06:07:14 AM
Quote from: Caracal on August 16, 2020, 05:10:49 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 04:51:58 AM
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 15, 2020, 09:04:52 PM
I find it simpler just to respect people's beliefs without accepting them. Debating matters of faith is rather like trying to figure out exactly why any two people fell in love...looking into it too deeply doesn't really have you learning much.
I suppose a psychologist can answer your literal question.
I wasn't mocking a certain poster's belief. We were discussing conspiracies theories and I was using that as an analogy for how really intelligent people could believe crazy conspiracy theories.
The problem is that modern rationalism is, itself, a belief system which presupposes lots of unprovable ideas about cause and effect and a million other things. It only makes sense within a certain historically contingent belief system. You don't think these things because you're more logical and rational than other people, you think them because of a cultural world you inhabit.
Sure, modern rationalism involves "believing" certain things. But even if we use the same word as is used in discussing religion, we are not talking about the same thing. There is everyday rational belief and there is religious belief. They are qualitatively different. The belief that I use to navigate my way through the world is built up from my personal experience, vicarious experience and reason. My beliefs about they way the world works are open to change. Like others, I can use my experience and reason to come to conclusions and believe things that turn out to be incorrect. But, in general, I am much more likely to be "correct." That is — I am much more likely to interpret the world in such a way that I can act within it to bring about the outcome that I desire.
For example, I can say, hmmmm ....I don't feel sick at all and I thought I wasn't sick, but these CT scans show that I have a "mass" and the biopsy shows that it is malignant. Then I can also say I know (or believe?) that chemotherapy is literally poison (Taxol, to take but one example, is derived from the poisonous yew tree). But I also know (believe?) that its net benefit will be therapeutic because it will wind up killing more cancer cells than normal cells because the former grow at a faster rate than the former. Based on these facts (objects of belief?) I think that this course of treatment will be my best bet for a "cure" or long-term remission. I may turn out to be wrong about any number of these facts or beliefs. I doubt it, but we may learn that chemo doesn't actually work they way we think it works and in fact is usually worse than simply doing nothing at all. Or, what is much more likely, it just doesn't work for me, for my body and the genetic makeup of my particular cancer in exactly way we had hoped.
Alternatively, I could believe in the religious sense. Religious belief, from what I understand, seems to be defined the opposite of rational "belief." After all, if something were rational and easily believable, why would we need to have faith? God works in mysterious ways and all that. So, if I were a true believer, I would simply pray to God, the omnipotent being who has my best interests at heart and he would protect me. That's all I would need to do.
So, which belief or set of beliefs is "better"? That is, which is more likely to bring about the desired outcome (cure or long-term remission)? I think we all know the answer to that.
Of course, in the real world, lots of religious folk go and get treated with modern medicine ... in addition to petitioning the almighty. Why?
One possibility is that they don't actually believe what they say they believe — they don't actually believe that their God is omnipotent and capable of working miracles on the behalf of true believers.
Or, if they are deep thinkers, they will build up some complicated theory about how God is actually working through the oncologists and cancer researchers to bring about a modern-day miracle (their cure). But what they are actually doing is just adopting rational, scientific beliefs and reaping the benefit of medical science without giving science its full due. (It's not scientists doing this. It's God!)
Or, finally, they can just compartmentalize. They can say: I believe in medical science, so I'll get the chemo. But I believe that prayer will help me emotionally, so I will pray to give myself psychological/spiritual comfort. This latter is probably the least harmful way of approaching the situation, but I do not agree that it is somehow better than a full-on atheist approach, one great advantage of which is that you do not need to go through life compartmentalizing and attempting to believe different things in different circumstances.
But to go back to your post, Caracal. I agree that modern rationalism is historical and culturally contingent, not absolute (in any case, that is already implied by the qualifier "modern"). However, it is still the best "belief" system we have available to us at this time. Again, where "better" means most likely to produce the results one aims for.
The example you give, actually shows all of the ways in which it requires lots of faith. That cancer may not actually be growing much. Doctors know that some cancers are more or less malignant than others, but they aren't always that great at knowing which ones are dangerous. It is entirely possible you could have just gone on much happier and more content not knowing you had some mass that was never going to cause any problems. Even if it growing, there are hardly any assurances that chemotherapy is going to result in improved quality of life. It is certainly going to result in a whole cycle of anxiety and visits to the doctor and all the rest. Now, I'm not going to turn it down, but that's mostly because I've grown up within this belief system about the benefits of bio medicine, but if you go outside the metrics of that system (lifespan, chance of cure, etc) you could certainly make an argument that it isn't "better."
You are absolutely right in most of what you say here. The picture is very complicated when it comes to cancer treatment. And it is indeed possible that by taking treatment you will actually be sacrificing quality of life in the fleeting search for quantity. But being rational and making rational choices does not mean that you necessarily accept the standard institutional choice. You can rationally choose treatment because you think it is a good bet for you (after doing research and consulting with your doctors, you decide that you taking the treatment is your best bet to maximize the quality and quantity of life, or maybe maximize the integral of time and quality of life). However, you can also use your reason to take into account the inherent biases of the cancer industry and the reluctance of oncologists to recommend against treatment when you see that the benefits of treatment are much less likely to be clear cut in your particular case. So, let's say you have small cell lung cancer, you may use your reason to refuse certain treatments like prophylactic whole brain radiation and instead choose to travel overseas to a right to die clinic in Switzerland (well, if we were allowed to travel).
It is not as if the cancer industry is some kind of new religion that has take away your individual capacity of thought and choice. It is not a new religion simply telling us what we should do. In fact, in my experience, it is often the most religious who do not question what their oncologists have to say. In practice for them, trusting God amounts to trusting the authority of individual oncologists and the cancer industry
or rejecting their influence completely. Religious thinking tends toward more black and white and less nuanced realistic decision-making. In other words, it makes for worse decision-making.
Quote
I'm not a theologian, or even very theologically inclined, but theologians have spent lots of time on questions of god and man's agency in the world and have come up with lots of different, sometimes complicated answers. I think the problem with most modern atheism is that they are unwilling to engage with it, which doesn't make for very interesting arguments.
Just because an answer is complicated doesn't mean it is any better or more valid than a simple common sense answer. In fact, the very complexity of theological argument is useful for building up a certain mystique around religious authority. Take the arguments about the supposed Triune God. Already having an omnipotent God creates all kinds of thorny problems, most notably the problem of theodicy. Trying to somehow shove three Gods into one just makes things more complex, but doesn't necessarily make anything better for the average person (although it gives theologians a lot more to argue about). The simplest explanation is just to say, you know there is only one God. Or better yet, there is no God and bad things happen to good people because the universe is basically random and you don't magically not get cancer because you are a good person. Nor is God tying to teach you something through your cancer. It just is. End of story. It's a whole heck of a lot simpler and frankly much more believable.
Also, it may surprise you that many atheists are atheists precisely because they have engaged deeply with theology. (I count myself among them.) People might not know that one of the occupational hazards of going to seminary is losing your faith. (I did not go to seminary, but I was a very serious, philosophical Christian for a long time - read Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, engaged in very serious textual Bible study.) The true believers are usually (not always) the ones who have not really dug into their faith but simply believe what people tell them.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 09:01:21 AM
Just because an answer is complicated doesn't mean it is any better or more valid than a simple common sense answer. In fact, the very complexity of theological argument is useful for building up a certain mystique around religious authority. Take the arguments about the supposed Triune God. Already having an omnipotent God creates all kinds of thorny problems, most notably the problem of theodicy. Trying to somehow shove three Gods into one just makes things more complex, but doesn't necessarily make anything better for the average person (although it gives theologians a lot more to argue about).
The triune God is like the wave-particle duality of light. The problem is that all of our experience leads us to see two ideas as distinct from one another. A single situation which violates that experience only shows that our previous categorization was an oversimplification.
It's a black swan situation. Until we see a black swan, it is completely reasonable to belive that "black" and "swan" are mutually exclusive.
Quote
Also, it may surprise you that many atheists are atheists precisely because they have engaged deeply with theology. (I count myself among them.) People might not know that one of the occupational hazards of going to seminary is losing your faith. (I did not go to seminary, but I was a very serious, philosophical Christian for a long time - read Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, engaged in very serious textual Bible study.) The true believers are usually (not always) the ones who have not really dug into their faith but simply believe what people tell them.
There are examples like C.S. Lewis of people who have gone the other way; atheists who became theists. Neither one "proves" which is right. And the reality is that most people, regardless of whether they call themselves theists or atheists, have probably
not come to their belief system by a process of rigourous study, but rather they have adopted the basic worldview of their family, community, or peer group. Again, that doesn't make any belief system right or wrong.
Before Newton came along, most people adopted the Greek ideas about the physical laws. Now people similarly adopt Newtonian ideas. People in the past weren't more stupid, and people now aren't smarter; the default may be right or wrong, but it is (by definition) what most people wil automatically accept.
Quote from: Caracal on August 16, 2020, 07:48:49 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 07:31:32 AM
Wow. There is so much to discuss here. But in regards to your last point — morality — there is no reason to believe atheism or a more rational approach to the world is either immoral or amoral. There is no incompatibility at all between being an atheist and trusting science on the one hand and abhorring child trafficking on the other. Some eighteenth century philosophers referred to this an innate moral sense. But you can also see humans' moral connection to others as being an evolutionary advantage. Humans were simply more likely to survive if they behaved morally — if they cared for their children and others in their tribe, no matter what their belief systems actually were. Today, most parents have an entirely natural love for their children, their other family members and their friends that has nothing at all to do with religious belief.
Of course, humanity's natural moral sense only extends so far. It only extends to those who are close and not those who are "other." But here is where reason comes in. For those who have thought about it, they can see that it is indeed rational for us to extend our moral sense to others, to children whom we have never even met and who might be if another race because we understand that this will ultimately make the world a better place for everyone. Really, you don't need a God or a sacred text to do this.
I think you're accidentally making the case against your argument. Those kinds of arguments about the evolutionary advantages of some idea are about as unprovable as you can get. The problem is that you could always argue the reverse perfectly plausibly. In this case "it confers an evolutionary advantage to only care about your own offspring and not anyone else's." Of course there's no reason to think atheism is amoral or immoral, any more than there's a reason to argue that theism is.
I think God's existence is probably less provable.
As for the evolutionary advantage of loving your children: It doesn't have to be proven. It is more or less obvious. Ask yourself, which would help early humans thrive more? Loving and taking care their children? Or abandoning them? I don't think we need to fund any studies to settle to this. Also, do you think early humans needed a religion to tell them to take care of their children and/or other family members. But maybe you think early humans were so entirely different from modern humans, modern primates and modern mammals in general that we can't know anything at all about them?
Also, I'm not arguing that theism is immoral or amoral. I was responding to Marshwiggle who was suggesting (I think) that atheism and morality are incompatible (although I may have misread that). The point I was trying to make was not about morality. It was that religion is not the best way of making decisions about the world, practically speaking. And I think it is difficult to contest this.
I don't know about literal belief, but judging from students and people on the internet, a big driver of religious belief simpliciter seems to be moral: they cannot imagine a non-religious basis for morality. That's patently silly, of course, and even just a little reflective thinking should be able to correct it. But since few of us get any real training in ethics and meta-ethics, the error can persist for a long time.
Similarly, most students/people seem to unreflectively believe in natural law theory (the idea that law reflects morality). It takes no time to disabuse them of the idea, once you actually get them thinking about it. Although it sneaks back in once you start talking about some of the problems with legal positivism and looking at particular cases. At least at that point it's chosen for reasons, rather than just some gut feeling.
Quote from: quasihumanist on August 15, 2020, 11:41:37 PM
I don't really know what it means to "believe" something
Like 'knowledge' (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/), 'belief' is surprisingly complex (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/). You can build an entire (boring!) career as an epistemologist on the subject.
Quote from: financeguy on August 16, 2020, 01:07:35 AM
If you want to further the premise of your statement, I find it difficult to fathom that people "believe" in the necessity of government for things to "work" despite ample evidence as small as potholes and as large as the numerous genocides of just the last century to prove they do anything but. This is the religions of the left. At least I can't "disprove" the resurrection. I can easily prove the non-functionality of governments by pointing to over a hundred million deaths in the just the 20th century.
This is silly. People don't believe that government is necessary to deliver these kinds of goods; what they actually believe is that it's an efficient way of doing so--or, at least, more efficient than the alternative. And there's plenty of evidence for it, starting with better health outcomes in countries where the government provides healthcare. The evidence you cite here is not evidence for your thesis.
Compare: I can easily point to
at least 100 billion human deaths over the course of human history, plus
trillions of non-human deaths, to show that DNA-based life is futile, a waste of everyone's time, and an evolutionary dead-end. (The future is made of RNA!)
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 16, 2020, 06:54:02 AM
Here are a few things that "rational" people accept, but requiring a lot of what would be called "faith" in a religious context.
- Quantum mechanics. A quotation, perhaps incorrectly attirubed to Feinman says "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."
Deferring to someone with mathematical expertise who can show you a proof, or the gaps which quantum phenomena are supposed to fill, seems like a stronger (and different) basis than deferring to someone's conviction that something is true.
Quote
- Consciousness. The "scientific" fudge on this one is to say that "consciousness in an emergent property of certain systems." (Emergent property is scientific gibberish for "it obviously exists, but we have no clue how it works".)
I mean, sort of. It's true that we don't ultimately have a clear grasp of what's going on where complex phenomena like consciousness are concerned, because we don't yet understand the lower-level phenomena sufficiently well. But we
do understand how emergence works in other contexts. You're a computer scientist, aren't you? Don't we understand how basic physical input, governed by a system of logic, gets translated into the top-level phenomena that are The Fora, or PhotoShop? Sure, the average person doesn't. But surely you, as a computer scientist, do.
The difference, of course, is that we haven't built consciousnesses, so we're not privy to all of the elements involved, or the steps required to put them together. But we
can glimpse how it might happen, and a lot of good work has gone into thinking through (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/) just what emergence is.
Quote
- Free will. See quantum mechanics and consciousness. If brain function is either deterministic or probabilistic, the idea of "changing one's mind" is pretty meaningless. If we don't actually make decisions, our brains are an incredibly realistic simulation of it.
You're right that libertarian free will is incoherent. Unfortunately, we also know that hard determinism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/) is false--it's the universal quantifier that gets it into trouble with our best accounts of the special sciences (e.g. lack of upper bounds on the velocities of moving objects in classical mechanics, it has an especially hard time in GTR, where it fails spectacularly and often, the Earman and Norton hole argument, wave-function collapse interpretations of QM, etc.).
Most people who study free will (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/) have been left to conclude that we're equivocating when we talk about free will, and that what we actually mean (or should mean) is something else; they adopt a position known as 'compatibilism' (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/), or sometimes 'soft determinism'. (Some interpretations of QM are friendly to determinism, however, and a fair few people have opted for that kind of account instead.)
Quote
- Morality. See all of the above. Show me a rationalist who does not think genocide, child sex trafficking, and so on as deserving of punishment. But that requires an assumption of free will and a sense that all values are not completely culturally relative.
Cultural relativism is incoherent. For one thing, it ignores evidence of widespread agreement between cultures about most moral issues. (You couldn't actually have a large-scale society if people didn't share the value of truth-telling and the prohibition against murder, for example.) For another, it's not clear what's meant by a 'culture' in the first place. And there's plenty about
our own culture that we don't understand; if you're a cultural relativist, then that means that you can't even judge members of
your own culture (whatever that is).
Relativism can be attractive because we often have the intuition that we should avoid forming crude opinions of other cultures. But that's a problem with the quality of our knowledge, not with which culture we belong to. We're (rightly) nervous about interfering in the affairs of others, we (rightly) feel that we should be tolerant of others and their customs, and we're (rightly!) reluctant to express contempt for societies we criticize. But judging a practice is not the same as trying to change it, not every practice is equally admirable (else there'd be nothing to tolerate!), and to criticize a practice is not the same as to condemn an entire culture or be contemptuous of it.
The upshot is just that cultural relativism requires us
not to engage in moral reasoning
at all. And that's just silly.
As for free will... you're right that it's widely believed that free will is necessary for moral responsibility. It's not clear, however, that what's required is libertarian free will (which, as you know, is incoherent and thus doesn't do much to ground morality) rather than some species of compatibilism. More importantly, there are plenty of deterministic accounts of morality out there. Indeed, consequentialism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/) is one of the most popular ethical frameworks out there, and it's perfectly compatible with determinism.
In any case, all of that is independent of the
meta-ethical question of whether moral realism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/) is true, or whether some species of anti-realism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/) is, instead. (Interestingly, the case for moral realism today is closely tied to that for
mathematical realism. IMO that's a much more interesting issue, but I guess that's why I'm not an ethicist, I only play one at the front of the classroom.)
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 16, 2020, 09:39:44 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 16, 2020, 06:54:02 AM
Here are a few things that "rational" people accept, but requiring a lot of what would be called "faith" in a religious context.
- Quantum mechanics. A quotation, perhaps incorrectly attirubed to Feinman says "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."
Deferring to someone with mathematical expertise who can show you a proof, or the gaps which quantum phenomena are supposed to fill, seems like a stronger (and different) basis than deferring to someone's conviction that something is true.
The point is that quantum mechanics can be seen to
work, even though any attempt to explain how is problematic. The acceptance
despite the lack of a reasonable explanation is faith.
Quote
Quote
- Consciousness. The "scientific" fudge on this one is to say that "consciousness in an emergent property of certain systems." (Emergent property is scientific gibberish for "it obviously exists, but we have no clue how it works".)
I mean, sort of. It's true that we don't ultimately have a clear grasp of what's going on where complex phenomena like consciousness are concerned, because we don't yet understand the lower-level phenomena sufficiently well. But we do understand how emergence works in other contexts. You're a computer scientist, aren't you? Don't we understand how basic physical input, governed by a system of logic, gets translated into the top-level phenomena that are The Fora, or PhotoShop? Sure, the average person doesn't. But surely you, as a computer scientist, do.
The difference, of course, is that we haven't built consciousnesses, so we're not privy to all of the elements involved, or the steps required to put them together. But we can glimpse how it might happen, and a lot of good work has gone into thinking through (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/) just what emergence is.
Consciousness is entirely unrelated to
intelligence (in this instance). To say that bigger, more complex systems can exhibit complex behaviour (as exhibited by many AI tools) is pretty well established. However, there is no remote rationale for self-awareness in any computational system.
I can write a trivial program to count the lines of code in that program, but no-one would remotely call that "self-aware". A program a billion lines of code is no more self-aware than a single line of code. A distributed system running on multiple processors does not exhibit an atom of self-awareness. Does anyone
realistically (i.e. not in some writer's fantasy) suggest the entire Internet is actually self-aware?
Self-awareness is utterly and completely beyond any understanding of technology, despite any advances in things like natural language recognition which can allow some mimicry of self-awareness.
Quote
Quote
- Free will. See quantum mechanics and consciousness. If brain function is either deterministic or probabilistic, the idea of "changing one's mind" is pretty meaningless. If we don't actually make decisions, our brains are an incredibly realistic simulation of it.
You're right that libertarian free will is incoherent. Unfortunately, we also know that hard determinism (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/) is false--it's the universal quantifier that gets it into trouble with our best accounts of the special sciences (e.g. lack of upper bounds on the velocities of moving objects in classical mechanics, it has an especially hard time in GTR, where it fails spectacularly and often, the Earman and Norton hole argument, wave-function collapse interpretations of QM, etc.).
Most people who study free will (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/) have been left to conclude that we're equivocating when we talk about free will, and that what we actually mean (or should mean) is something else; they adopt a position known as 'compatibilism' (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/), or sometimes 'soft determinism'. (Some interpretations of QM are friendly to determinism, however, and a fair few people have opted for that kind of account instead.)
This illustrates my point; it obviously exists, so attempts at explanation are made, even though they are sketchy and incomplete. This again is faith, since the problems with the explanation do not prevent people from accepting the reality of the phenomenon.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 16, 2020, 09:35:09 AM
Also, I'm not arguing that theism is immoral or amoral. I was responding to Marshwiggle who was suggesting (I think) that atheism and morality are incompatible (although I may have misread that). The point I was trying to make was not about morality. It was that religion is not the best way of making decisions about the world, practically speaking. And I think it is difficult to contest this.
I probably communicated badly. My point was
not that atheism and morality are incompatible; morality can be based on many things. What is surprising is the concept of some
universal moral expectations, to the point that people who violate those expectations are seen as somehow
intentionally ignoring underlying principles. Care for one's own biological offspring is an example of something that has obvious evolutionary advantage; forbidding genocide is not so clear cut, since eliminating competition for resources would seem to benefit one's own offspring greatly.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 16, 2020, 10:44:54 AM
Consciousness is entirely unrelated to intelligence (in this instance). To say that bigger, more complex systems can exhibit complex behaviour (as exhibited by many AI tools) is pretty well established. However, there is no remote rationale for self-awareness in any computational system.
I can write a trivial program to count the lines of code in that program, but no-one would remotely call that "self-aware". A program a billion lines of code is no more self-aware than a single line of code. A distributed system running on multiple processors does not exhibit an atom of self-awareness. Does anyone realistically (i.e. not in some writer's fantasy) suggest the entire Internet is actually self-aware?
Self-awareness is utterly and completely beyond any understanding of technology, despite any advances in things like natural language recognition which can allow some mimicry of self-awareness.
The point of the analogy was that the top-level phenomena look nothing like their basic building blocks, and for someone with no experience programming or building circuits (for example), the top-level phenomena look completely inexplicable in terms of the building blocks. For them, sure, PhotoShop is billions of lines of code, but how do lines of code go from numbers to the pictures I see and manipulate on my screen? But the explanation is there, and not too hard for an expert to give.
Those who advocate for emergent accounts of the mind don't typically talk about consciousness as some sort of brute fact. They (typically) treat self-awareness as an artifact of the brain's cognitive architecture and its different modules, including various monitoring modules. The point is this: generally speaking, those who advocate emergent accounts argue that that a phenomenon like self-awareness is illusory. That's not to say it isn't real; it's just that its structure is not what it looks like to us, looking from the top-level down. (Not unlike what compatibilists say about free will, in fact.)
(It's absolutely true that not all emergentists think that, of course. I'm tarring with a very broad brush to make the point that, contrary to what you seem to believe, mysterianism is not very popular in accounts of the mind these days. It had a significant hold over the eighties and early nineties, but it's pretty well dead in serious circles. Folk belief is a different matter.)
QuoteThis illustrates my point; it obviously exists, so attempts at explanation are made, even though they are sketchy and incomplete. This again is faith, since the problems with the explanation do not prevent people from accepting the reality of the phenomenon.
Sorry, I don't follow. What is the referent of 'it' here? Free will, or determinism, or something else?
More broadly, I think your account of 'faith' is overbroad. You can point to problems with just about any explanation of anything; not all problems with explanations are of a kind that should prevent us from accepting the reality of the phenomenon. The existence of some non-fatal problems with explanations doesn't mean we're taking everything on faith. In fact, I'd think that the very existence of a plausible, rational explanation is itself an indication that something is
not being taken on faith.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 15, 2020, 08:45:40 PM
I am posting this after having been temporarily suspended from another forum for mocking the notion of a certain person's actual death and actual coming back to life after the equivalent of a long weekend rotting in the grave. Apparently, I have given offense.
However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?
Good people use religion to make themselves better people.
Bad people use religion as an excuse for being a**holes.
I can see which type you are based on your post.
My wife, a very observant Muslim, went into gales of laughter when she watched this scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80Kq75MY4mo) from A Serious Man. When I asked her why she thought it was so funny, she said "Because that's how religious people think."
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 16, 2020, 11:10:28 AM
Those who advocate for emergent accounts of the mind don't typically talk about consciousness as some sort of brute fact. They (typically) treat self-awareness as an artifact of the brain's cognitive architecture and its different modules, including various monitoring modules.The point is this: generally speaking, those who advocate emergent accounts argue that that a phenomenon like self-awareness is illusory.
Shoot. I thought I existed. My bad.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 16, 2020, 11:36:58 AM
Shoot. I thought I existed. My bad.
As long as you keep thinking. But once you stop, all bets are off.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 15, 2020, 08:45:40 PM
However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?
The same way that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe that chemicals combined into self-replicating systems. (abiogenesis)
The point is that both the origin of life and the resurrection are considered to be essentially singular events; i.e. they are "one-off" events that are focal points of history. By definition, science is about patterns and repeatability. A completely non-repeatable event is not really subject to scientific analysis. That is the case unless and until there is a claim that such an event can indeed be replicated.
Quote from: financeguy on August 16, 2020, 01:07:35 AM
This is the religions of the left. At least I can't "disprove" the resurrection. I can easily prove the non-functionality of governments by pointing to over a hundred million deaths in the just the 20th century.
Uh huh. You think that is a rational non-zealous, non-religious comment?
I know very little about it, but there are scientists who believe that there is a neurological relationship to religion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion#:~:text=This%20contrasts%20with%20the%20psychology,categorized%20as%20spiritual%20or%20religious.)
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 16, 2020, 02:12:50 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 16, 2020, 11:36:58 AM
Shoot. I thought I existed. My bad.
Well now you know.
Thanks to all the commenters for a fun discussion. I never took philosophy or anything in the vein in college, so this is a pretty good recap of some key points. I appreciate people being informative on something that could have devolved immediately into a flame war.
Plus, I had not previously considered George Carlin a prophet, but it turns out he was for somebody.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 15, 2020, 08:45:40 PM
However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?
Lots of people believe lots of things. How far do we have to go before we find one of yours that is just plain wrong?
Are you staying home except for medically necessary trips or to get food? There are very few places in the US right now where going out is a reasonable thing for intelligent adults to do.
Do you believe that reading the news makes you informed and limit yourself to just a couple complementary outlets that seldom cover much of the world other than the US, Britain, and the occasional story on Europe or Canada? The stories that aren't being covered are often much more interesting as illuminating the blind spots. The lack of good science reporting in most mainstream media is shocking. Equally shocking is how little of even the US/UK is covered outside of a handful of cities.
Are you somehow a great critical thinker without any math skills beyond basic arithmetic? I am amused every time someone makes that assertion and then fails on basic statistics and probability.
Do you really not believe in many superstitions and yet bless the people who sneeze, throw the salt over your shoulder, are extra careful on Friday the 13th, and check your horoscope regularly just for fun? Yeah, lots of people do and then wonder why a society that prints horoscopes in the media are light on the good science reporting.
Quote from: Hibush on August 16, 2020, 04:20:04 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 16, 2020, 02:12:50 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 16, 2020, 11:36:58 AM
Shoot. I thought I existed. My bad.
Well now you know.
Thanks to all the commenters for a fun discussion. I never took philosophy or anything in the vein in college, so this is a pretty good recap of some key points. I appreciate people being informative on something that could have devolved immediately into a flame war.
Plus, I had not previously considered George Carlin a prophet, but it turns out he was for somebody.
Well, does atheism have prophets? If so, who sends them? If no one needs to send them, then old George is good enough.
He was classified as a comedian or a comic entertainer, but mention his name among baby boomers and chances are nobody will recite any of his lines fishing for laughs or even mention how funny he was. Instead, he is taken very seriously as a perceptive serious commentator. In lay society, I mean. The heir to Lenny Bruce. Any why I mentioned popular music changing the landscape: John Lennon's 'Imagine' appears to me to have brought the idea of atheism as a place of morality back into the mainstream (though conveniently avoiding the question 'how do you get there?')
Quote from: polly_mer on August 16, 2020, 05:57:31 PM
Do you really not believe in many superstitions and yet bless the people who sneeze,
Personally I prefer the Seinfeld option of "You're sooooooo good lookin'!"
QuoteAre you staying home except for medically necessary trips or to get food? There are very few places in the US right now where going out is a reasonable thing for intelligent adults to do.
i think that depends on one's priorities. I would think that going out to do something truly worthwhile is not worth the risk if I believed that if I never went outdoors again I would never die.
Hmmm... I notice that the OP (and no one else for that matter) has refused to answer my thought query.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 15, 2020, 10:39:19 PM
What evidence would convince you of the correctness of the Biblical stories, or for that matter of the claims of any other religious texts?
What evidence would convince me of the literal resurrection of someone who was actually dead for three days back 2,000 years ago way before modern medicine?
Well, for starters there would have to be multiple credible eye witness accounts with some semblance of realism (not just mythical hyperbole) from more than one political perspective (I.e. not just the apostles). But even that wouldn't be enough. There would also have to be a credible, natural explanation as to how this could have possibly happened.
However, this evidence will never be forthcoming because the whole point of the
literal resurrection is that it is one of two things, depending on your perspective: 1) a miracle which defied the laws of nature, because otherwise it wouldn't have showed Jesus's supposed divinity and wouldn't have called upon a believer to believe (have faith) or 2) a non-event.
How can it ever be something else beside those two things?
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 03:30:43 AM
However, this evidence will never be forthcoming because the whole point of the literal resurrection is that it is one of two things, depending on your perspective: 1) a miracle which defied the laws of nature, because otherwise it wouldn't have showed Jesus's supposed divinity and wouldn't have called upon a believer to believe (have faith) or 2) a non-event.
How can it ever be something else beside those two things?
That is exactly the point.
- Even though Jesus told the disciples it would happen, they didn't believe it.
- When they were told the tomb was empty, they didn't know why.
- After most had seen Jesus, Thomas, who wasn't there, didn't believe the others; he said he'd need to put his fingers in the nail holes and his hand in the gash in Jesus side to believe.
- Mary and the men on the road to Emmaus, even when they first saw him, didn't recognize him.
- Saul went around jailing and executing his followers until Jesus appeared to him specifically. (While he hadn't met Jesus, he certainly would have had lots of access to people who had.)
So, yeah, even the people closest to Jesus who'd heard him and seen his miracles thought it was a non-event until he actually appeared to convince them otherwise.
I'm reminded of the scene from the old M*A*S*H tv show in which a shaman is brought in for an exorcism. Frank is in a huff with the chaplain, ranting about how sacrilegious it is, and the chaplain, or maybe one of the other physicians, says "there are many ways to skin a ghost."
The concept of an invisible, powerful sky god has been with us for at least 3,000 years, courtesy of, at minimum, various Mesopotamian and Semitic peoples. I don't really see the attraction of believing in such a thing myself, but I'm content to let others do so as long as they don't try to limit the freedoms of others to believe something different. Unfortunately Biblical literalism is usually more like Bible buffet in the USA -- people using selective interpretations of selected passages to promote ideological agendas that will lead to the acquisition of wealth and power. E.g., U.S. evangelicals clinging to the false idol of Trump in the hope of gaining political power -- which, if one is reading the Bible literally, is not something Moses, Jesus, or God (or El Elyon, or Yahweh, or whatever word you want to use) would have found acceptable.
Every religion I am aware us has a most-high, most-powerful god king in the sky and a death-father (or mother if you lived in fertile-crescent-era Babylon) underground.
What is interesting is how culture shapes the concept of deity, how paleolithic cultures generally perceive animals as personifying the forces of the universe, how warrior cultures such as Rome or the Vikings tend to favor their war-gods, and how the more sophisticated we become technologically the more abstract and symbolic our deities become, for instance. My favorite is what we know of the Bikini Island sky-god conception (a religion obliterated by Christian missionaries): an albatross floating on the warm wind.
Carl Sagan's aphorism that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" seems appropriate to kaysixteen's mind-query.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 06:11:09 AM
Every religion I am aware us has a most-high, most-powerful god king in the sky and a death-father (or mother if you lived in fertile-crescent-era Babylon) underground.
What is interesting is how culture shapes the concept of deity, how paleolithic cultures generally perceive animals as personifying the forces of the universe, how warrior cultures such as Rome or the Vikings tend to favor their war-gods, and how the more sophisticated we become technologically the more abstract and symbolic our deities become, for instance. My favorite is what we know of the Bikini Island sky-god conception (a religion obliterated by Christian missionaries): an albatross floating on the warm wind.
Carl Sagan's aphorism that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" seems appropriate to kaysixteen's mind-query.
Proof of all kinds of things is pretty much impossible to establish. The more important question is whether a system of belief (be it a scientific theory or a religious system) provide a
more complete and consistent explanation of reality than the alternative(s). So while any direct physical evidence for things like miraculous events millenia in the past is unavailable, it is completely reasonable for a person to accept religious beliefs if they provide a more complete description of their universe and life within it. Specifically, if questions of human value, the purpose for existence, and so on are more satisfactorily answered in a religious framework, then it is reasonable for someone to accept those beliefs
on that basis even without being able to verify specific factual claims about ancient events.
In other words, it's much more likely that people believe in miracles
because their religious faith makes sense of their life than the other way around.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 03:30:43 AM
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 15, 2020, 10:39:19 PM
What evidence would convince you of the correctness of the Biblical stories, or for that matter of the claims of any other religious texts?
What evidence would convince me of the literal resurrection of someone who was actually dead for three days back 2,000 years ago way before modern medicine?
Well, for starters there would have to be multiple credible eye witness accounts with some semblance of realism (not just mythical hyperbole) from more than one political perspective (I.e. not just the apostles).
This is a historical point, not christian apologetics. One of the weird things about history once you get past the early modern period/late medieval period is that sources are very, very thin. That's really obvious if we're talking about somewhere like 7th century Britain, where there may be no evidence of something beyond a line or two in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. However, it is true even where we do have somewhat detailed accounts. I was reading about the history of in the Roman period and the writer pointed out that the vast majority of our information on Judaism and Israel from that period comes from one writer, Josephus. It isn't like we just have newspapers from Judea or someone went around and did some oral histories of Jesus.
Of course, it is totally reasonable for you to just say that you don't believe things unless you have evidence for them. But, the argument gets incoherent when you start applying standards of evidence that aren't possible. It all gets rather reductive.
Quote from: spork on August 17, 2020, 05:27:38 AM
I'm reminded of the scene from the old M*A*S*H tv show in which a shaman is brought in for an exorcism. Frank is in a huff with the chaplain, ranting about how sacrilegious it is, and the chaplain, or maybe one of the other physicians, says "there are many ways to skin a ghost."
The concept of an invisible, powerful sky god has been with us for at least 3,000 years, courtesy of, at minimum, various Mesopotamian and Semitic peoples. I don't really see the attraction of believing in such a thing myself, but I'm content to let others do so as long as they don't try to limit the freedoms of others to believe something different. Unfortunately Biblical literalism is usually more like Bible buffet in the USA -- people using selective interpretations of selected passages to promote ideological agendas that will lead to the acquisition of wealth and power. E.g., U.S. evangelicals clinging to the false idol of Trump in the hope of gaining political power -- which, if one is reading the Bible literally, is not something Moses, Jesus, or God (or El Elyon, or Yahweh, or whatever word you want to use) would have found acceptable.
Yes. This is what I am primarily worried about. I don't care in the slightest what people believe in private. I do care a lot when their religious beliefs shape political agendas.
More particularly, at the moment, I care a lot about people believing QAnon, about people believing that Biden and other liberal elites are secretly running an international pedophilic sex trafficking operation and that Trump is secretly working to free the children. This is where believing whatever you want to believe becomes not OK. This is where we need to say: "No you're wrong! And here's why ... " Not "Everyone's free to believe whatever they want to." The only problem is consistency. How can I tell QAnon believers they are wrong to believe nonsensical beliefs and somehow have it be OK for others to believe equally far-fetched things (like a human being came back to life after having been dead for three days).
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 06:31:42 AM
it is completely reasonable for a person to accept religious beliefs if they provide a more complete description of their universe and life within it. Specifically, if questions of human value, the purpose for existence, and so on are more satisfactorily answered in a religious framework, then it is reasonable for someone to accept those beliefs on that basis even without being able to verify specific factual claims about ancient events.
I was once channel-surfing and ran across one of those mega-church broadcasts at exactly the moment that the preacher was saying "What would you rather believe in? A God that is all-powerful and benevolent or a cold impersonal universes?" or something right along those lines. My thought, of course, is that there are all sorts of things I'd
like to believe in (I am a rock star in the world's biggest band; I can bench-press 500 lbs; I've won the Nobel Prize in Basket-weaving), but reason and experience suggest otherwise.
And the "framework" of religion has given us some of the worst times in human history, so it is not a clear-cut answer.
This is not to say that religion doesn't provide a worthwhile framework----it does...sometimes. This is to say that just because we want to believe something doesn't mean it is objectively true. People really truly believe in Bigfoot, the belief answer some call in their lives. But there is no Bigfoot.
QuoteEvery religion I am aware us has a most-high, most-powerful god king in the sky and a death-father (or mother if you lived in fertile-crescent-era Babylon) underground.
Buddhism doesn't have a god.
But the point is--aside from political gain, conspiracy theories, and so forth--that there are many who have a religious faith, and that reason vs. faith arguments aren't going matter to them. I go to church (a traditional one, not an evangelical one), and find faith a great comfort. There are many scientists, doctors, and even philosophers who attend my church, since it's in an academic town. None of them has any problem reconciling their faith, interpreting parables, and squaring this with their scientific beliefs.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 08:27:40 AM
Yes. This is what I am primarily worried about. I don't care in the slightest what people believe in private. I do care a lot when their religious beliefs shape political agendas.
It's likely much more the other way around. People justify actions by all kinds of different things, including religion. If one justification were not allowed, there would be lots of others available.
Specifically, in politics, you will find, for instance, Christians all over the political map. The fact that a bunch of very vocal ones show up on the far right is at least partly due to it being clickbait for the media; the trope of fanatical religious people gets eyeballs, even if most religious people are much more moderate than that.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 08:32:40 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 06:31:42 AM
it is completely reasonable for a person to accept religious beliefs if they provide a more complete description of their universe and life within it. Specifically, if questions of human value, the purpose for existence, and so on are more satisfactorily answered in a religious framework, then it is reasonable for someone to accept those beliefs on that basis even without being able to verify specific factual claims about ancient events.
I was once channel-surfing and ran across one of those mega-church broadcasts at exactly the moment that the preacher was saying "What would you rather believe in? A God that is all-powerful and benevolent or a cold impersonal universes?" or something right along those lines. My thought, of course, is that there are all sorts of things I'd like to believe in (I am a rock star in the world's biggest band; I can bench-press 500 lbs; I've won the Nobel Prize in Basket-weaving), but reason and experience suggest otherwise.
You can't really
believe you've won the Nobel Prize. You can say it; you can try to get other people to believe it, but that's all. What you can actually believe is what
makes sense. Which is part of why religious groups, political parties, etc. contain hypocrites - people can
claim to believe things for a variety of reasons. What they
actually believe will become apparent by observing their actions over time in a variety of settings.
Quote
And the "framework" of religion has given us some of the worst times in human history, so it is not a clear-cut answer.
As I said above, people justify their actions all kinds of ways. Horrible things have been done in the name of "freedom", "love", safety", and probably any other cause you can think of.
Quote
This is not to say that religion doesn't provide a worthwhile framework----it does...sometimes. This is to say that just because we want to believe something doesn't mean it is objectively true. People really truly believe in Bigfoot, the belief answer some call in their lives. But there is no Bigfoot.
And no serious religious person has ever said that. (That was Disney; "Wishing can make it so!" And Andrew Lloyd Webber, (or actually Tim Rice), riffing on the Bible; "Any dream will do". Not very close to the biblical original.)
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 03:30:43 AM
What evidence would convince me of the literal resurrection of someone who was actually dead for three days back 2,000 years ago way before modern medicine?
Shrug. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, crucifixion is quite a slow death. It can take days for the victim to suffocate, die of dehydration, or be dispatched by their friends. If you took someone down before they'd actually died, they'd have ghastly but not immediately life-threatening wounds, and they might well
seem dead. If they woke up sometime later, you'd be pretty surprised by it. More recently, we have plenty of evidence of people who were thought to be dead, but who came to life suddenly (in some stories, during the funeral services, although that may well be apocryphal). It doesn't stretch my imagination to believe this happened at some point to someone who'd been crucified. Maybe Inanna? It's the kind of story you'd tell for a while after.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 06:11:09 AM
Every religion I am aware us has a most-high, most-powerful god king in the sky and a death-father (or mother if you lived in fertile-crescent-era Babylon) underground.
Buddhism? Jainism? Daoism?
Quote
What is interesting is how culture shapes the concept of deity, how paleolithic cultures generally perceive animals as personifying the forces of the universe, how warrior cultures such as Rome or the Vikings tend to favor their war-gods, and how the more sophisticated we become technologically the more abstract and symbolic our deities become, for instance.
I dunno about the rest, and a historian can and should weigh in to correct us, but I think the 'warrior culture' analysis is wrong. There's a tendency among some strands of historians to reduce ancient cultures to mythological systems, even when it's inappropriate. IIRC, it's inappropriate with Iron Age Scandinavia, and probably also Rome. How important was Mars to Romans outside the armies (where, it has to be said, a bunch of other deities, including Mithras, seem to have enjoyed a significant following)? How important were
any of the war gods to your everyday soldier? My impression is 'not very' (at least insofar as a Christian, Muslim, or Jew would see things), but it may well be mistaken.
Where Iron Age Scandinavia is concerned, my understanding is that there's not much evidence for a mythological system at all; rather, religion was part of the social community, and was reflected more in ancient customs and stories (e.g. the Edda, the sagas, festivals, etc.) than anything else (e.g. regular prayers to someone, personal intercessions, various prohibitions, etc.).
While it's true that Odin was chief of the gods and the god of war, you also have to understand that he's a treacherous bastard who's just as likely to kill you if he likes you as he is to save you. That's because he needs doughty companions to help him with the frost giants et al. come Ragnarok. So he's not a reliable patron if you're viking around. Thor's much more reliable, and is consequently better represented in terms of amulets in settlements and graves. But even then, my understanding from the sagas and other sources is that Frey (god of fertility) had a bigger, more important role in everyday Iron Age Scandinavian life than Odin--again, to the extent that anyone had much of a role in everyday life.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 08:56:04 AM
You can't really believe you've won the Nobel Prize. You can say it; you can try to get other people to believe it, but that's all. What you can actually believe is what makes sense. Which is part of why religious groups, political parties, etc. contain hypocrites - people can claim to believe things for a variety of reasons. What they actually believe will become apparent by observing their actions over time in a variety of settings.
Like I said earlier, belief is complicated (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/#BeliAcce). On the evidence, it's absolutely possible to believe false things, unlikely things, and even impossible things. The situation is different for knowledge--you can't know a proposition that's false or impossible. Similarly for trying, at least according to most action theorists: you can't genuinely try to jump over the moon, provided you understand how far away it is and how it relates to the Earth in space.
But belief? Some accounts of the representational structure of beliefs won't allow for inconsistencies, but I think it's fair to say that generally speaking, it's thought that the conditions on belief are weak enough to allow for contradictions. At least, as long as you don't recognize the contradiction. If you do, then we get into nittier and grittier territory.
So yeah. I think your intuitions about knowledge are crowding into your intuitions about belief.
This is offered by way of personal explanation of the original question posed in this thread:
I was raised by parents who were and are devout evangelical Christians. They both had higher education (Met in college, in fact). Dad gave up studying engineering to go to seminary to prepare to be a bi-vocational minister. He worked several day jobs over the years to support the family. Mostly he laid bricks. Mom was a school teacher who later earned two MAs in modern languages and for many years taught Spanish language and literature at the college level. They taught me both to believe in God and God's word, and to value education.
I spent six years training as an academic historian in a PhD program at a leading R1 university. In those years I was exposed to quite a wide diversity of people and views. Although I washed out of academia and eventually became a public librarian, I have spent my adult life studying history, and have long had a lay interest in comparative religion, philosophy, and science and technology. All of which is to say that I've had no lack of exposure to different sorts of ideas, perspectives, and people.
And I have never doubted the fundamental truth of the Bible--God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, creation, Heaven, Hell, future prophecy, the whole nine yards. Why? Mainly it comes down to Jesus. Since I was a child, Jesus/God/the Holy Spirit--they're all ultimately the same Deity--has been a living presence in my life. With the experience I've had of God's presence in my life, I could no more doubt God's existence than I could that of my parents, whom I still talk to and sometimes see face-to-face. To me it would be insane to question God's existence.
In my tiny individual's experience of God I've found what the Bible says to be truthful. So have a lot of people I know, with diverse backgrounds and life experiences. This makes me inclined to accept the truthfulness of those aspects of the Bible's teachings that lie beyond my experience to date.
Quote from: ciao_yall on August 16, 2020, 11:25:36 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 15, 2020, 08:45:40 PM
I am posting this after having been temporarily suspended from another forum for mocking the notion of a certain person's actual death and actual coming back to life after the equivalent of a long weekend rotting in the grave. Apparently, I have given offense.
However, how is it that full-grown, otherwise intelligent adults can believe literal accounts of the resurrection or other religious miracles?
Good people use religion to make themselves better people.
Bad people use religion as an excuse for being a**holes.
I can see which type you are based on your post.
that's really sweet, Ciao.
Now as regards actually proving anything in the Bible, or convincing anybody of its truth, there's only so much I can do. The only "proof" I and other Christians can really offer is the effect God has had on our lives.
Is that extraordinary enough to prove some extraordinary claims? Well, I've seen some pretty extraordinary stuff. I've seen lives completely turned around after they met Jesus. I've seen people who did vile things to those closest to them become wonderfully kind and loving people. I've seen people (including myself) find joy even after absolutely crushing life experiences. I've seen people whom society increasingly says ought to be at war with each other instead treating one another as brothers and sisters.
I know of a man on his deathbed who told a visitor who was living a very messed-up life that he "expected to see him again someday"--and the man afterward experienced a totally transformed life. I know of a thirteen-year-old girl who died a lingering death from an extremely rare cancer who praised God for her life as long as she had consciousness--and members of her family were moved to make needed changes in their own lives. I know of another teenager who could forgive the youths who murdered her grandmother and left the girl herself for dead.
Are things like that extraordinary enough? YMMV, I guess. The thing is, it's not my or any other Christian's job to make anybody believe anything. All we're responsible for doing is telling others what we know, and living the most extraordinary lives that we can. It's a pity most of us don't take that seriously enough. Heaven knows I've fallen behind on that for a lot of my life.
One thing about it, though. The more we as Christians get to know God and understand God's Word, the more we start to understand that even the most terrible things that happen in our lives are really God's way of making our lives more extraordinary for him. That understanding makes life a whole lot freer and more livable.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 17, 2020, 09:28:55 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 08:56:04 AM
You can't really believe you've won the Nobel Prize. You can say it; you can try to get other people to believe it, but that's all. What you can actually believe is what makes sense. Which is part of why religious groups, political parties, etc. contain hypocrites - people can claim to believe things for a variety of reasons. What they actually believe will become apparent by observing their actions over time in a variety of settings.
Like I said earlier, belief is complicated (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/#BeliAcce). On the evidence, it's absolutely possible to believe false things, unlikely things, and even impossible things. The situation is different for knowledge--you can't know a proposition that's false or impossible. Similarly for trying, at least according to most action theorists: you can't genuinely try to jump over the moon, provided you understand how far away it is and how it relates to the Earth in space.
But belief? Some accounts of the representational structure of beliefs won't allow for inconsistencies, but I think it's fair to say that generally speaking, it's thought that the conditions on belief are weak enough to allow for contradictions. At least, as long as you don't recognize the contradiction. If you do, then we get into nittier and grittier territory.
So yeah. I think your intuitions about knowledge are crowding into your intuitions about belief.
This was my point about the Nobel Prize example. As you say, belief is possible with unrecognized contradictions, and even with small recognized ones, I would say, but it is still in principle falsifiable. I can't really believe I have a Nobel Prize since I've never been contacted by the Nobel committee or invited to Sweden.
This is an irritating and disingenuous strawman that non-religious people employ against religious belief; the idea that people can choose to belive
whatever they want. The classic example is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The choices people have about what to believe are always limited to things that they feel have a
reasonable liklihood of being true. So to use a recent example of false belief, when Trump suggested hydrochloroquine and bleach, some people tried them, but people didn't try consuming every chemical in the house. Why? Because there is a reasonable liklihood that a national leader will provide correct information to the public. (Spend as long as you like enumerating the cases where leaders in general, and Trump in particular, have violated that principle..... However, if leaders' advice had
no statistical improvement over random guesses society would break down completely.)
People do not "choose" their religious
beliefs, as much as they choose a
belief system which fits their beliefs. Someone who does not believe in any sort of afterlife is not really free to choose many religions, since in most the afterlife figures prominently. (Buddhism, as I understand it, is a possibility in that case.)
So, while belief and knowledge are not the same thing, belief is possibly
only insofar as it does not
directly contradict knowledge.
Quote from: apl68 on August 17, 2020, 10:09:16 AM
The more we as Christians get to know God and understand God's Word, the more we start to understand that even the most terrible things that happen in our lives are really God's way of making our lives more extraordinary for him. That understanding makes life a whole lot freer and more livable.
Last fall, when I took over a sick colleague's courses, I found myself having to teach this kind of apologetics and theodicy (which I encountered in classes on the history of the discipline years ago, but hadn't touched since) in the work of some contemporary figures. Although in the readings my colleague had assigned, the purpose tended to be to guarantee free will, rather than provide some benefit for God. Very few of the students came from a Christian religious background (they were mostly international, and these were mostly Muslim, but also mostly not devout), so it was their first exposure to this sort of reasoning.
I have to confess that I thought it was pretty monstrous. Not so much the reconstruction of god's purpose, as the practice and purpose of the apologetics itself, and our collective contemporary interest in these kinds of justifications. The deeper I delved into it all so that I could teach it, the more horrified I became. Thinking through particular cases and applying the reasoning to them left me seriously disgusted.
I'm not quite so horrified by 13th-century theodicy.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 17, 2020, 09:20:09 AM
I dunno about the rest, and a historian can and should weigh in to correct us, but I think the 'warrior culture' analysis is wrong.
I was just simplifying to make a point----same with the sky-god. Ares is a brute and bully in Greek Myth; Mars is a braver more acceptable deity in Roman myth because the Romans were colonizers. Most mythologies have a hierarchy with a king-god somewhere above us. I am not as familiar with Eastern religions. And sure, the fertility goddess has always held an important place in the pantheons; Joseph Campbell made the point about the Virgin Mary being a reiteration of this fundamental figure. Innana is a resurrection story.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 17, 2020, 10:40:58 AM
Quote from: apl68 on August 17, 2020, 10:09:16 AM
The more we as Christians get to know God and understand God's Word, the more we start to understand that even the most terrible things that happen in our lives are really God's way of making our lives more extraordinary for him. That understanding makes life a whole lot freer and more livable.
I have to confess that I thought it was pretty monstrous. Not so much the reconstruction of god's purpose, as the practice and purpose of the apologetics itself, and our collective contemporary interest in these kinds of justifications. The deeper I delved into it all so that I could teach it, the more horrified I became. Thinking through particular cases and applying the reasoning to them left me seriously disgusted.
Even this needs to be compared to a completely materialist worldview, where there is no meaning
whatsoever to anything in life. Given the choice between believing that having one's family wiped out by a terrorist bomb will result in some (as yet unknown) good in the future, and believing that the deaths had
no purpose whatsoever, it is no surprise that there are people who will still find the religious interpretation more satisfying.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 11:02:43 AM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 17, 2020, 10:40:58 AM
Quote from: apl68 on August 17, 2020, 10:09:16 AM
The more we as Christians get to know God and understand God's Word, the more we start to understand that even the most terrible things that happen in our lives are really God's way of making our lives more extraordinary for him. That understanding makes life a whole lot freer and more livable.
I have to confess that I thought it was pretty monstrous. Not so much the reconstruction of god's purpose, as the practice and purpose of the apologetics itself, and our collective contemporary interest in these kinds of justifications. The deeper I delved into it all so that I could teach it, the more horrified I became. Thinking through particular cases and applying the reasoning to them left me seriously disgusted.
Even this needs to be compared to a completely materialist worldview, where there is no meaning whatsoever to anything in life. Given the choice between believing that having one's family wiped out by a terrorist bomb will result in some (as yet unknown) good in the future, and believing that the deaths had no purpose whatsoever, it is no surprise that there are people who will still find the religious interpretation more satisfying.
I won't get into the specifics because I find them disturbing, and this doesn't seem like the place to do that (especially when that wasn't at all the idea expressed by apl68), but when you present it as a choice between a world where bad things happen because some people want them to happen but it's not part of some bigger plan and one where bad things happen to people so that the victims and perpetrators will be blessed with the privilege of exercising their free will (and that's the Big Plan), I find the former interpretation vastly preferable, and I'm not sure I have the right words to express my revulsion to the latter.
Other theodicies are available, of course, and I don't find them all as morally horrific as this particular one as expressed by those particular Big Names In Apologetics.
Quote from: apl68 on August 17, 2020, 10:09:16 AM
Now as regards actually proving anything in the Bible, or convincing anybody of its truth, there's only so much I can do. The only "proof" I and other Christians can really offer is the effect God has had on our lives.
....
Is that extraordinary enough to prove some extraordinary claims? Well, I've seen some pretty extraordinary stuff. I've seen lives completely turned around after they met Jesus. The more we as Christians get to know God and understand God's Word, the more we start to understand that even the most terrible things that happen in our lives are really God's way of making our lives more extraordinary for him. That understanding makes life a whole lot freer and more livable.
This sounds wonderful and I am happy for you, and I would never directly challenge someone's personal experience with faith, so please forgive me----this is not meant to be an attack on your personal beliefs...
...but you must be aware of Catholic abuse of children, Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, and the relationship between the church and Hitler, just as the most overt examples of faith gone badly wrong.
And as a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, I can attest to a number of experiences and steps which have had just exactly these sorts of changes in people's lives that are unrelated to any concept of deity. In other words, its not just the Christian religion which inspires people to be better than they are.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 08:56:04 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 08:27:40 AM
Yes. This is what I am primarily worried about. I don't care in the slightest what people believe in private. I do care a lot when their religious beliefs shape political agendas.
It's likely much more the other way around. People justify actions by all kinds of different things, including religion. If one justification were not allowed, there would be lots of others available.
Specifically, in politics, you will find, for instance, Christians all over the political map. The fact that a bunch of very vocal ones show up on the far right is at least partly due to it being clickbait for the media; the trope of fanatical religious people gets eyeballs, even if most religious people are much more moderate than that.
I think it maybe hard to quantify, but there are certainly instances of conspiracy theories having pretty negative real world outcomes, of the theories actually producing the actions, not merely serving as a pretext or justification for something that would have happened anyway.
Take Edgar Welch's infamous misguided attempt to free the children supposedly held prisoner at Comet Ping Pong in DC. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689/pizzagate-gunman-sentenced-to-4-years-in-prison. He was not some kind of criminel who would have just found some other outlet for his violent tendencies. It is not like he was just going to invade some restaurant and the conspiracy theory pointed him to Comet Ping Pong. It doesn't mention this in the article, but I remember reading elsewhere that he did not have a criminal record, nor did he have a history of mental health problems. Instead, he honestly thought he was doing the right thing. But he was wrong.
I'm sure the same could be said in many other cases. How about the 9/11 terrorists? Was this group just aching to fly planes into buildings, and radical Islam gave them an excuse to do so? I think not.
Upon reflection, I am sorry that I brought up the case of the resurrection. I really don't care that much about one particular element of one religion.
I do care about about what is real and what is not real. It is incredibly important now as there are all kinds of fake news, "fake news" and radicalization out there thanks to the internet. We need to be empowered to say: "No, that belief is incorrect and dangerous (and here's why). And no, you are not simply entitled to believe whatever the hell you want to believe. But I am willing to listen to you make an argument for your views." Instead, most of what I hear is that we are to respect others' beliefs no matter how crazy, no matter how objectively false. I also think there is also a tendency in academia to want to make an issue interesting, to have sophisticated conversations about a question and if a matter is to clear cut, no one is interested.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 12:14:47 PM
I do care about about what is real and what is not real. It is incredibly important now as there are all kinds of fake news, "fake news" and radicalization out there thanks to the internet. We need to be empowered to say: "No, that belief is incorrect and dangerous (and here's why). And no, you are not simply entitled to believe whatever the hell you want to believe. But I am willing to listen to you make an argument for your views." Instead, most of what I hear is that we are to respect others' beliefs no matter how crazy, no matter how objectively false. I also think there is also a tendency in academia to want to make an issue interesting, to have sophisticated conversations about a question and if a matter is to clear cut, no one is interested.
This is the opposite of what is happening now; as more academics refer to themselves as "activists", they shout down and "cancel" anyone who has a different view than theirs. Sophisticated conversations are considered to be "giving a platform to XXXists/XXXphobes", where XXX can be one of any number of things. They want to make it
seem that the issue is clear cut, and that no one is interested, but it's only because most peole who disagree are cowed into silence.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 12:44:21 PM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 12:14:47 PM
I do care about about what is real and what is not real. It is incredibly important now as there are all kinds of fake news, "fake news" and radicalization out there thanks to the internet. We need to be empowered to say: "No, that belief is incorrect and dangerous (and here's why). And no, you are not simply entitled to believe whatever the hell you want to believe. But I am willing to listen to you make an argument for your views." Instead, most of what I hear is that we are to respect others' beliefs no matter how crazy, no matter how objectively false. I also think there is also a tendency in academia to want to make an issue interesting, to have sophisticated conversations about a question and if a matter is to clear cut, no one is interested.
This is the opposite of what is happening now; as more academics refer to themselves as "activists", they shout down and "cancel" anyone who has a different view than theirs. Sophisticated conversations are considered to be "giving a platform to XXXists/XXXphobes", where XXX can be one of any number of things. They want to make it seem that the issue is clear cut, and that no one is interested, but it's only because most peole who disagree are cowed into silence.
Ok, I need to qualify that .... except when it comes to identity politics.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 12:48:48 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 12:44:21 PM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 12:14:47 PM
I do care about about what is real and what is not real. It is incredibly important now as there are all kinds of fake news, "fake news" and radicalization out there thanks to the internet. We need to be empowered to say: "No, that belief is incorrect and dangerous (and here's why). And no, you are not simply entitled to believe whatever the hell you want to believe. But I am willing to listen to you make an argument for your views." Instead, most of what I hear is that we are to respect others' beliefs no matter how crazy, no matter how objectively false. I also think there is also a tendency in academia to want to make an issue interesting, to have sophisticated conversations about a question and if a matter is to clear cut, no one is interested.
This is the opposite of what is happening now; as more academics refer to themselves as "activists", they shout down and "cancel" anyone who has a different view than theirs. Sophisticated conversations are considered to be "giving a platform to XXXists/XXXphobes", where XXX can be one of any number of things. They want to make it seem that the issue is clear cut, and that no one is interested, but it's only because most peole who disagree are cowed into silence.
Ok, I need to qualify that .... except when it comes to identity politics.
But that's exactly the problem; who gets to decide what discussions are about "facts" and what aren't? Whoever has the power of determining what has already been decided and what is still open for debate is in an immensely powerful (and dangerous) position.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 12:01:30 PM
Quote from: apl68 on August 17, 2020, 10:09:16 AM
Now as regards actually proving anything in the Bible, or convincing anybody of its truth, there's only so much I can do. The only "proof" I and other Christians can really offer is the effect God has had on our lives.
....
Is that extraordinary enough to prove some extraordinary claims? Well, I've seen some pretty extraordinary stuff. I've seen lives completely turned around after they met Jesus. The more we as Christians get to know God and understand God's Word, the more we start to understand that even the most terrible things that happen in our lives are really God's way of making our lives more extraordinary for him. That understanding makes life a whole lot freer and more livable.
This sounds wonderful and I am happy for you, and I would never directly challenge someone's personal experience with faith, so please forgive me----this is not meant to be an attack on your personal beliefs...
...but you must be aware of Catholic abuse of children, Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, and the relationship between the church and Hitler, just as the most overt examples of faith gone badly wrong.
And as a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, I can attest to a number of experiences and steps which have had just exactly these sorts of changes in people's lives that are unrelated to any concept of deity. In other words, its not just the Christian religion which inspires people to be better than they are.
Of course I'm aware of all these things. But priests and ministers abusing children, cult leaders setting themselves up as gods who have the power of life and death over their followers, and church leaders cynically supporting dictators because they feel it's in their own best interests to do so don't have anything to do with following the teachings of Jesus. Neither do things like fighting holy wars. You can call yourself a Christian, but if you're doing things contrary to Jesus' teachings, you call whether you're actually a follower of Jesus into question. Jesus himself said explicitly that not everybody who claims to be his follower really is. I can't control what other people purport to do in Jesus' name, only what I do.
I'm also well aware of people who've made positive changes in their lives without invoking Jesus. Good for them, I suppose. I know that I and a lot of others I know don't have it in us to do things like that without his help. Nietzsche wasn't wrong when he characterized Christianity as a religion for weaklings and losers. That is indeed what we tend to be.
Okay apl68, I understand. I've heard that argument before. But (and again, I am just asking and debating and do not mean to attack you personally) aren't you cherry-picking what you term "following Jesus"?
I wouldn't argue that Jim Jones was a true follower (or that he believed in anything really) but at some point he convinced himself and a number of other people that he was God incarnate. His effect was as powerful on his followers as your beliefs are on you, maybe even more so.
Can we argue that following Jesus is really the power of God when people also do some of the most terrible things in His name? If we invoke the good that Christianity does, shouldn't we also acknowledge the evil?
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 12:57:02 PM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 12:48:48 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 12:44:21 PM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 12:14:47 PM
I do care about about what is real and what is not real. It is incredibly important now as there are all kinds of fake news, "fake news" and radicalization out there thanks to the internet. We need to be empowered to say: "No, that belief is incorrect and dangerous (and here's why). And no, you are not simply entitled to believe whatever the hell you want to believe. But I am willing to listen to you make an argument for your views." Instead, most of what I hear is that we are to respect others' beliefs no matter how crazy, no matter how objectively false. I also think there is also a tendency in academia to want to make an issue interesting, to have sophisticated conversations about a question and if a matter is to clear cut, no one is interested.
This is the opposite of what is happening now; as more academics refer to themselves as "activists", they shout down and "cancel" anyone who has a different view than theirs. Sophisticated conversations are considered to be "giving a platform to XXXists/XXXphobes", where XXX can be one of any number of things. They want to make it seem that the issue is clear cut, and that no one is interested, but it's only because most peole who disagree are cowed into silence.
Ok, I need to qualify that .... except when it comes to identity politics.
But that's exactly the problem; who gets to decide what discussions are about "facts" and what aren't? Whoever has the power of determining what has already been decided and what is still open for debate is in an immensely powerful (and dangerous) position.
But no one "decides" what reality is. It just is. No one can ever know all of reality.... But they can know some of it and move towards more of it. We can be on the way ... or we can just throw up our hands and say since no single group can
always say what is a fact and what is not and since knowledge can
never be
completely separated from power ("who gets to decide?"), then it's best just not to go there. Just because something can't be done perfectly, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
Do you think that the 9/11 terrorists are up there in heaven with their 100 virgins or whatever the number of virgins was? Is someone's opinion on this matter just as good as someone else's? Or can we use what we know of science, psychology and humanity's great capacity for self-deception and wishful thinking to say, we are 99.9999% sure that those hijackers are not actually screwing a bunch of virgins in the great beyond. And 99.9999% sure is good enough.
How could this be done? Well, how about really teaching critical thinking in the humanities in public schools AND in Sunday schools. You can think critically and still experience awe, oneness with the universe, connectedness with your fellow human beings and everything else that is typically associated with the religious experience.
A little while back, I was reading Doris Lessing's
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside and she asks why doesn't education include teaching children how to recognize and resist techniques of persuasion, deception, brain washing etc.? Teaching people how to think critically is not just a matter of finding good sources, using logic and constructing good arguments, there is a whole emotional component to it as well. We have to be suspicious of that which we want to believe (for a whole host of reasons) and teach our children this self-suspicion as well.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 02:06:21 PM
Okay apl68, I understand. I've heard that argument before. But (and again, I am just asking and debating and do not mean to attack you personally) aren't you cherry-picking what you term "following Jesus"?
I wouldn't argue that Jim Jones was a true follower (or that he believed in anything really) but at some point he convinced himself and a number of other people that he was God incarnate. His effect was as powerful on his followers as your beliefs are on you, maybe even more so.
Can we argue that following Jesus is really the power of God when people also do some of the most terrible things in His name? If we invoke the good that Christianity does, shouldn't we also acknowledge the evil?
It depends on what we're talking about when we talk about "Christianity." If we're talking about institutions and groups of people called "Christian," then certainly, there's a lot of evil that has come from those. Human beings and human institutions have a powerful natural bent toward evil. Wherever one has humanity, one has evil. We humans have messed up all kinds of essentially or potentially good things. It's something we're naturally adept at doing.
I understand "Christianity" in the truest, most meaningful sense to be living a life of drawing closer to Jesus and God by practicing the teachings of Jesus, which have to do with love and selflessness. Doing terrible things in Jesus' name is not practicing the teachings of Jesus. It is acting under false pretenses and dishonoring Jesus' name.
Neither I nor anybody else I've ever met has done a perfect job of following Jesus. This is because being conformed to the image of Jesus is a lifelong process. And it will only truly be complete after this life is over.
What is 'evil' anyway? Sounds like superstitious nonsense.
Maybe some people are just supreme dickheads. Maybe they were born that way. Maybe their brains were wired wrong. Maybe they learned it from someone.
Physics doesn't care about people. Faith is personal and utterly irrelevant to causality in life.
Most modern day Christians would tar and feather and fake news the actual son of God should He appear from the clouds in his bearded thirtysomething year old self.
To answer the question posed in this thread, it's quite simple, really, and you don't even have to think about it very hard. People believe what they want to believe and what makes them feel good, full stop. Why do you think conspiracies like chemtrails, Q-Anon, Pizzagate, and '5G towers cause coronoavirus' exist? In America where I live, we LOOOOOVE our fantasyland horse-hockey. It defines us. And we're really religious.
Quote from: apl68 on August 17, 2020, 03:26:29 PM
It depends on what we're talking about when we talk about "Christianity."
Well, I think the question is actually how we believe what we believe.
One cannot debate that some people have done some wonderful things in the name of Christianity while others have done some absolutely terrible things. And, if one excludes a number of events and ideas in the Bible (such as the treatment of slaves, homosexuals, righteous plagues and floods, or the psalms about shattering the teeth of one's enemies) it is a book of love. We can believe that it is a literal record of the past if we ignore the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Deucalion myth, or any of the other myriad flood myths---most especially the Gilgamesh flood myth---and the sheer unlikeliness of many of its events.
But that doesn't answer the problem of why we believe. I don't want to come off as someone out to tear down someone else's beliefs (which one really can't do discursively) but you seem very convinced of the presence of a divine power based on some pretty subjective evidence that is repeated by a great many other things that are not Christianity.
How do you know you haven't just convinced yourself of what you want to believe? And, as always, apologies for asking this.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 02:50:31 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 12:57:02 PM
But that's exactly the problem; who gets to decide what discussions are about "facts" and what aren't? Whoever has the power of determining what has already been decided and what is still open for debate is in an immensely powerful (and dangerous) position.
But no one "decides" what reality is. It just is. No one can ever know all of reality.... But they can know some of it and move towards more of it. We can be on the way ... or we can just throw up our hands and say since no single group can always say what is a fact and what is not and since knowledge can never be completely separated from power ("who gets to decide?"), then it's best just not to go there. Just because something can't be done perfectly, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
This isn't so clear cut. For instance, there's lots of research about gender disphoria which shows that the vast majority of kids grow out of it, however trans activists reject all of that. How can society objectively establish what scientific claims are sufficiently well-established? There will always be powerful and/or vocals interests lobbying for certain claims to be accepted and others to be rejected. I don't see any safe, reliable way of doing that without the potential for it to be horribly abused.
Quote
Well, how about really teaching critical thinking in the humanities in public schools AND in Sunday schools. You can think critically and still experience awe, oneness with the universe, connectedness with your fellow human beings and everything else that is typically associated with the religious experience.
A little while back, I was reading Doris Lessing's Prisons We Choose to Live Inside and she asks why doesn't education include teaching children how to recognize and resist techniques of persuasion, deception, brain washing etc.? Teaching people how to think critically is not just a matter of finding good sources, using logic and constructing good arguments, there is a whole emotional component to it as well. We have to be suspicious of that which we want to believe (for a whole host of reasons) and teach our children this self-suspicion as well.
The problem with this is that schools are
in the business of persuasion, brain washing, etc. All of the well-meaning efforts to promote harmony and acceptance now typically include a lot of ideological indoctrination, specifically related to identity politics. To use the trans situation as an example, schools are focussed on making all children feel accepted. With the trans activists' assertion that children ought to be allowed to transition, if schools were to support honest scientific inquiry then they would get labelled "transphobic" for doing so. There is only a very limited scope for that sort of instruction in the course of
compulsory education. At the point that education becomes optional, it becomes a more viable possibility.
I'm sorta amazed at how everybody is throwing these arguments forth as if none of this has ever been discussed before. It's like a bunch of five-year-olds opining on why the sky is blue. Every single one of these ideas, even the terrible ones, has a mountain of learned literature behind them. There's really no need to reinvent the wheel, and badly to boot. Except that I do believe that many people actively relish issuing statements with as much power to offend as possible, and getting into big arguments where each person shouts past the others.
Quote from: Hegemony on August 18, 2020, 05:52:21 AM
I'm sorta amazed at how everybody is throwing these arguments forth as if none of this has ever been discussed before. It's like a bunch of five-year-olds opining on why the sky is blue. Every single one of these ideas, even the terrible ones, has a mountain of learned literature behind them. There's really no need to reinvent the wheel, and badly to boot. Except that I do believe that many people actively relish issuing statements with as much power to offend as possible, and getting into big arguments where each person shouts past the others.
I agree that these issues have been discussed before, (for millenia, in the case of religion), but that doesn't preclude people here discussing them.
As far as "power to offend" and people thrying to "shout past the others", I haven't felt that anyone has done that to me. Strong opinions expressed fairly bluntly do not constitute "violence", to use the preferred claim today. Even though I'm unlikely to change anyone's mind, I find these discussions helpful to refine my own thinking.
Quote from: Hegemony on August 18, 2020, 05:52:21 AM
I'm sorta amazed at how everybody is throwing these arguments forth as if none of this has ever been discussed before. It's like a bunch of five-year-olds opining on why the sky is blue. Every single one of these ideas, even the terrible ones, has a mountain of learned literature behind them. There's really no need to reinvent the wheel, and badly to boot. Except that I do believe that many people actively relish issuing statements with as much power to offend as possible, and getting into big arguments where each person shouts past the others.
I don't get the impression that people are shouting on this thread.
Also, there is very little "new" on this forum or other forums for that matter. Favorite snacks and breakfasts? If people really wanted to know about snacks they can just go research it themselves. No need to have a thread about it.
But people do have threads like this because the point isn't the content (or only the content). It is about having relationships through the content. Discussing issues with someone even though the issues have already been written about for centuries is one way of having a relationship with others (while also learning and clarifying one's own ideas).
Some people like to talk about their favorite snacks. Some people like to give emotional support to others. Some people like to debate. Most people like doing all of the above at different times.
So, what was the point of this thread? Was it just so you could announce :"God doesn't exist. Discuss among yourselves. Go!" and then watch to see what happens? I don't get it, but I'm 55 and kind of sick of arguing well worn topics on which folks have very fixed opinions, and justified ones (even if everyone doesn't see it that way). Then again, for those who really really want to know
why a very intelligent person can believe in God, follow a religion, and also, say, believe in both miracles and science at the same time, well, at least one person explained that pretty well (from their own perspective, not that of a sociologist or psychologist), so perhaps that was beneficial.
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 18, 2020, 07:28:09 AM
So, what was the point of this thread? Was it just so you could announce :"God doesn't exist. Discuss among yourselves. Go!" and then watch to see what happens? I don't get it, but I'm 55 and kind of sick of arguing well worn topics on which folks have very fixed opinions, and justified ones (even if everyone doesn't see it that way). Then again, for those who really really want to know
why a very intelligent person can believe in God, follow a religion, and also, say, believe in both miracles and science at the same time, well, at least one person explained that pretty well (from their own perspective, not that of a sociologist or psychologist), so perhaps that was beneficial.
If I am not mistaken, the thread evolved away from that precise topic. I think I explained what really interested me and it wasn't miracles.
OK
Quote from: Hegemony on August 18, 2020, 05:52:21 AM
I'm sorta amazed at how everybody is throwing these arguments forth as if none of this has ever been discussed before. It's like a bunch of five-year-olds opining on why the sky is blue. Every single one of these ideas, even the terrible ones, has a mountain of learned literature behind them. There's really no need to reinvent the wheel, and badly to boot. Except that I do believe that many people actively relish issuing statements with as much power to offend as possible, and getting into big arguments where each person shouts past the others.
I suppose most of us know this but not many of us are well read on these topics.
And there is a lot of shouting on the Fora but I don't see that here.
What I think this thread is about is the vernacular, everyday Christianity, not the scholarly, philosophical, apologist Christian literature which, frankly, has very little to do with most people's beliefs----the Christianity, in other words, that got Treehugger suspended.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 18, 2020, 08:01:18 AM
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 18, 2020, 07:28:09 AM
So, what was the point of this thread? Was it just so you could announce :"God doesn't exist. Discuss among yourselves. Go!" and then watch to see what happens? I don't get it, but I'm 55 and kind of sick of arguing well worn topics on which folks have very fixed opinions, and justified ones (even if everyone doesn't see it that way). Then again, for those who really really want to know
why a very intelligent person can believe in God, follow a religion, and also, say, believe in both miracles and science at the same time, well, at least one person explained that pretty well (from their own perspective, not that of a sociologist or psychologist), so perhaps that was beneficial.
If I am not mistaken, the thread evolved away from that precise topic. I think I explained what really interested me and it wasn't miracles.
So I am curious.
Has this thread given you any insight into why rational people might believe in things like the resurrection, or has the discussion gone far enough off topic to miss that? (Or, I suppose, have all of the comments been simple repititions of *unconvincing arguments you've already heard?)
*"unconvincing" that they are
rational, as opposed to "unconvincing" for you specifically. Obviously people can have different positions on something, and all of them may be rational. In this case, I don't think atheists are irrational; I think the issue of what counts as "evidence" differs between different positions in this discussion.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 18, 2020, 08:31:48 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 18, 2020, 08:01:18 AM
Quote from: Ruralguy on August 18, 2020, 07:28:09 AM
So, what was the point of this thread? Was it just so you could announce :"God doesn't exist. Discuss among yourselves. Go!" and then watch to see what happens? I don't get it, but I'm 55 and kind of sick of arguing well worn topics on which folks have very fixed opinions, and justified ones (even if everyone doesn't see it that way). Then again, for those who really really want to know
why a very intelligent person can believe in God, follow a religion, and also, say, believe in both miracles and science at the same time, well, at least one person explained that pretty well (from their own perspective, not that of a sociologist or psychologist), so perhaps that was beneficial.
If I am not mistaken, the thread evolved away from that precise topic. I think I explained what really interested me and it wasn't miracles.
So I am curious. Has this thread given you any insight into why rational people might believe in things like the resurrection, or has the discussion gone far enough off topic to miss that? (Or, I suppose, have all of the comments been simple repititions of *unconvincing arguments you've already heard?)
*"unconvincing" that they are rational, as opposed to "unconvincing" for you specifically. Obviously people can have different positions on something, and all of them may be rational. In this case, I don't think atheists are irrational; I think the issue of what counts as "evidence" differs between different positions in this discussion.
Well, to be honest, as someone who once believed in the resurrection herself (I took my Christianity seriously or at least tried very hard to do so until I experienced a rapid deconversion when I was about 26), I can understand perfectly well how smart people :) can believe it. I guess my question is why do people persist in believing it and not all deconvert eventually. For me, the problems weren't actually the resurrection, but the afterlife and the discernment of God's will. What finally freed me was realizing how incredibly political the selection of the Biblical canon was and also how certain (maybe many) books of the Bible far from being divinely inspired were actually cobbled together out of various scroll fragments. There's a lot more I can say about this. Hopefully, I'll have more time later today or tomorrow. (I've let this thread become a little too distracting...).
Quote from: Treehugger on August 18, 2020, 08:44:21 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 18, 2020, 08:31:48 AM
So I am curious. Has this thread given you any insight into why rational people might believe in things like the resurrection, or has the discussion gone far enough off topic to miss that? (Or, I suppose, have all of the comments been simple repititions of *unconvincing arguments you've already heard?)
*"unconvincing" that they are rational, as opposed to "unconvincing" for you specifically. Obviously people can have different positions on something, and all of them may be rational. In this case, I don't think atheists are irrational; I think the issue of what counts as "evidence" differs between different positions in this discussion.
Well, to be honest, as someone who once believed in the resurrection herself (I took my Christianity seriously or at least tried very hard to do so until I experienced a rapid deconversion when I was about 26), I can understand perfectly well how smart people :) can believe it.
Oh yeah. I'd forgotten that :)
Quote
I guess my question is why do people persist in believing it and not all deconvert eventually. For me, the problems weren't actually the resurrection, but the afterlife and the discernment of God's will. What finally freed me was realizing how incredibly political the selection of the Biblical canon was and also how certain (maybe many) books of the Bible far from being divinely inspired were actually cobbled together out of various scroll fragments. There's a lot more I can say about this. Hopefully, I'll have more time later today or tomorrow. (I've let this thread become a little too distracting...).
Certainly churches often vastly oversimplify all kinds of things, like how the canon developed. (One of my favourites is how a lot of very conservative Protestant churches overlook the fact that for
centuries the Catholic church was more or less the only game in town.) From a theological perspective, if faith is something that is intended to be graspable at some level by children, then it follows that the core principles need to be presentable in some simplified version. (And along those lines, if the point is about
how to live, rather than intellectual abstraction, that becomes much more feasible.)
And as far as "inspired" versus "cobbled together", the traditional answer is that the
cobbling was inspired. (The fact that the first parts of the New Testament weren't written until
2 or 3 decades after Jesus is itself fascinating from that standpoint.) In summary, all of those to me are intriguing
because they challenge my previously-held simple ideas.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 05:08:29 PM
But that doesn't answer the problem of why we believe. I don't want to come off as someone out to tear down someone else's beliefs (which one really can't do discursively) but you seem very convinced of the presence of a divine power based on some pretty subjective evidence that is repeated by a great many other things that are not Christianity.
How do you know you haven't just convinced yourself of what you want to believe?
So, I was feeling stumped as to how to articulate a reply to this. I took a break to step outside and ponder it (I mostly spend my breaks at the library in the periodical room reading the news). We have a picnic table in back of the library, under some shade trees. It's a pleasant spot, although the parking lot beside it, the HVAC unit buzzing away nearby, and the highway on the other side of the building detract from its idyllic qualities.
I sat there for a couple of minutes thinking about the question. How
do I explain the presence of the divine? And then came an overwhelming sense of the thing itself. God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit was right there with me. Among the trees. Among the sunlight, and the comings and goings of the vehicles on the parking lot and highway, and the humming of the HVAC. Just as present with me as any of my closest friends or loved ones when I'm with them. An overwhelming and joyful sense of God's presence. It's something I experience fairly often, but this was to a degree that I have generally experienced only two or three times a year.
I didn't induce an altered state of consciousness by performing some ritual, or engaging in meditation, or chewing peyote and smoking wacky tobacco. I've never to my knowledge shown any symptoms of brain tumors, epilepsy, or schizophrenia, and have no family history of such. All I did was get by myself, get quiet, and ask God a question. And this was the reply I received. The best I can translate it into words is this: I know when the divine is present
because he is. Just as surely as I know when my mother or father is present.
In answer to the objection that it's a subjective experience--well yeah, it is. How could I empirically prove it? I don't have audio or video of God standing there talking to me. If I did it would be easy enough to dismiss it as a hoax. If empirical proof is what's needed here, I'm afraid I can't offer it, much as I'd like to oblige.
Faith's not about empirical proof. That's why it's called faith. The Christian life and experience in its fullest sense can only be accessed by faith. Which requires admitting to God that he is in charge and I am not, and then putting myself at his disposal. It's not an intellectually easy thing to do. But anybody
can do it, given the willingness to do so. I'm reminded of Shaw's
Saint Joan:"Oh your voices, your voices! Why don't the voices come to me?"
"They do come to you, but you do not hear them."
But you can change that, if and when you should become ready to.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 05:08:29 PM
And, as always, apologies for asking this.
Please don't apologize! As explained (as best I could) above, pondering your question led me to the most joyful experience of God's presence I've had in at least a couple of months. It made my day!
I feel like I should apologize to you, for being unable to explain it any better. I wish I could. I wish I could give it to you. But I can't do it for somebody else.
Quote from: apl68 on August 18, 2020, 11:10:18 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 05:08:29 PM
And, as always, apologies for asking this.
Please don't apologize! As explained (as best I could) above, pondering your question led me to the most joyful experience of God's presence I've had in at least a couple of months. It made my day!
I feel like I should apologize to you, for being unable to explain it any better. I wish I could. I wish I could give it to you. But I can't do it for somebody else.
Thank you, apl68. I was worried that I came off as an assailant and not someone asking an honest question. You have explained it very well, I understand your wonderful concept, and I believe you. There is absolutely no reason that God wouldn't share Himself with you personally and privately.
If it makes any difference, I was raised in an Episcopalian household with parents who dutifully took us to church every Sunday and said grace before every dinner. I was an acolyte for my entire adolescence and even considered joining the Episcopalian priesthood...and then I went to college, and any feelings of piety or communion with the church evaporated in the wake of beer, marijuana, LSD, and various other experiments (in that order), a pretty wild social life, and then a battle into sobriety and various work-a-day concerns. In other words, I guess I didn't really feel what I thought I felt, at least not to any depth. Any faith I thought I had wilted at the first big challenge to my spirit. Once my parents moved out of my hometown they attended a much larger Episcopalian church in a much larger city, and they failed to establish any deep ties to their new church. After a couple of years, they simply ceased attending. I guess their devotion was not particularly deep either. I think they were just following the "proper" rout of a good Eisenhower Era couple.
Nevertheless, I truly believe in a creator or a self-aware creative force in the universe. I think there is something which made the world and which gives us consciousness to experience it.
The nature and motives of this creative force elude me, however. And this is what troubles me about faith.
I know, as Hegemony rather stridently pointed out, that there is a ton of theodicy and apologetic philosophy, even some neurology, out there explaining the nature and purpose of God. And, thank you all , I know the basics of Buddhism (although while there is not the focus on a creator god as in Christianity, it is incorrect to say that there is no cosmology or Brahma) but I am actually uninterested in all of that. I cannot see how any of this answers the unanswerable. I've been told I am something called "a deist"----which I don't think I am.
I guess I was just interested in how someone approached the miraculous and you've answered very well.
Thanks for your calm and intelligent responses, apl68. God bless.
That sorrta sounds like deism, Wahoo.
Deism has a fairly compressed, short-lived history as a prominent religious approach in this country, but that era was largely coincident with the revolutionary era. It is hard for me, off hand, to name a nationally prominent deist today, at least in terms of someone who either publicly asserts his deism, or if not, publicly asserts a belief structure that is pretty consonant with historical deism.
apl gives an excellent testimony of her faith, in the finest tradition thereof. She and I differ probably on a few nuances, some of which I can see from what she said, though we are both baptists (I can explain if anyone wants to hear, either publicly or via PM). I confess to having experienced substantially more religious doubts than she seems to have, but that is probably largely due to what I think are likely very different personal backgrounds.
BTW, I have to rephrase whilst reiterating my claim about what evidence the atheist, agnostic, or general skeptic would need to see, in order to embrace belief in Christianity... or Islam, or any other theistic religious position. Often times such folks consistently move the goalposts when asked this question, and probably they should, instead, acknowledge that there really would be no evidence that would convince them of theism, or at least none that they can think of now. But let's take the Resurrection of Christ, as a concept. In one sense, it is obviously a miracle, but certain salient facts remain 1) if this were done by God (whether or not Christ himself is God), and God is as Christianity teaches the sovereign creator of all things, and of the universal truths of science, etc., then He as said creator gets to stand above His creation and, well, bend the rules. One-off miracles do not contradict His power, in the same way they would if there were no god and everything really were a mere function of mechanized and unchanging physical laws (not that there is any necessary law that says that a human being, once his body is dead, can never become un-dead). And, perhaps more cogently, 2) if one believes in the Big Bang, the bang itself was a one-off event, whatever caused it. One-off events can exist.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 18, 2020, 09:52:37 PM
BTW, I have to rephrase whilst reiterating my claim about what evidence the atheist, agnostic, or general skeptic would need to see, in order to embrace belief in Christianity... or Islam, or any other theistic religious position. Often times such folks consistently move the goalposts when asked this question, and probably they should, instead, acknowledge that there really would be no evidence that would convince them of theism, or at least none that they can think of now. But let's take the Resurrection of Christ, as a concept. In one sense, it is obviously a miracle, but certain salient facts remain 1) if this were done by God (whether or not Christ himself is God), and God is as Christianity teaches the sovereign creator of all things, and of the universal truths of science, etc., then He as said creator gets to stand above His creation and, well, bend the rules. One-off miracles do not contradict His power, in the same way they would if there were no god and everything really were a mere function of mechanized and unchanging physical laws (not that there is any necessary law that says that a human being, once his body is dead, can never become un-dead). And, perhaps more cogently, 2) if one believes in the Big Bang, the bang itself was a one-off event, whatever caused it. One-off events can exist.
(Not specifically directed at Kay, but this raises a common issue.)
The discussion of miracles is based on the idea of, as suggested above, God "bending
the rules". However, this implies that "the rules" were somehow set out by God in the first place. But "the rules", i.e. physical "laws", are actually empirically-derived from observation of patterns. If I usually take the bus to work on Tuesdays, and people note that, am I "breaking the rules" if I take my car one Tuesday? Does it matter if I've taken the bus for a year? 10 years? 20 years?
To accuse God of bending or breaking the rules implies that if we observe a
consistent pattern, we are
entitled to expect it to be always maintained. God is in kind of a Catch-22; if there were no "miracles", and everything always followed consistent patterns, then God would be irrelevant; the universe could be described in purely atheistic terms. On the other hand, if there are "miracles", then God has "cheated" by not "following his own rules".
So God is either uneccessary or a cheater.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 19, 2020, 05:12:03 AM
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 18, 2020, 09:52:37 PM
BTW, I have to rephrase whilst reiterating my claim about what evidence the atheist, agnostic, or general skeptic would need to see, in order to embrace belief in Christianity... or Islam, or any other theistic religious position. Often times such folks consistently move the goalposts when asked this question, and probably they should, instead, acknowledge that there really would be no evidence that would convince them of theism, or at least none that they can think of now. But let's take the Resurrection of Christ, as a concept. In one sense, it is obviously a miracle, but certain salient facts remain 1) if this were done by God (whether or not Christ himself is God), and God is as Christianity teaches the sovereign creator of all things, and of the universal truths of science, etc., then He as said creator gets to stand above His creation and, well, bend the rules. One-off miracles do not contradict His power, in the same way they would if there were no god and everything really were a mere function of mechanized and unchanging physical laws (not that there is any necessary law that says that a human being, once his body is dead, can never become un-dead). And, perhaps more cogently, 2) if one believes in the Big Bang, the bang itself was a one-off event, whatever caused it. One-off events can exist.
(Not specifically directed at Kay, but this raises a common issue.)
The discussion of miracles is based on the idea of, as suggested above, God "bending the rules". However, this implies that "the rules" were somehow set out by God in the first place. But "the rules", i.e. physical "laws", are actually empirically-derived from observation of patterns. If I usually take the bus to work on Tuesdays, and people note that, am I "breaking the rules" if I take my car one Tuesday? Does it matter if I've taken the bus for a year? 10 years? 20 years?
To accuse God of bending or breaking the rules implies that if we observe a consistent pattern, we are entitled to expect it to be always maintained. God is in kind of a Catch-22; if there were no "miracles", and everything always followed consistent patterns, then God would be irrelevant; the universe could be described in purely atheistic terms. On the other hand, if there are "miracles", then God has "cheated" by not "following his own rules".
So God is either uneccessary or a cheater.
Though I am not a deist, I don't really see a distinction between the function of natural forces and the work of God. If we understand that God is omnipresent--present through all of space and time--then it makes sense that he is continually at work through the natural forces that he created. "Miracles" serve as an occasional way of reminding us that God is not limited by these forces. This is why I've learned to have no problem with the scientific understanding that species evolved over vast stretches of time (Actually, I've come to find paleontology a rather fascinating subject. God made some pretty weird, wild stuff in earlier eras!).
I'm a "Creationist," but not a "young-Earth" Creationist. Though a lot of fellow Christians get upset about young-Earth views, the idea that the "days" of Creation were eras and not 24-hour days is an old one, and hardly heretical. C.I. Scofield, one of the codifiers of modern millenarianism, endorsed it.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 18, 2020, 09:52:37 PM
That sorrta sounds like deism, Wahoo.
Yeah, I guess so.
My understanding of "deism" (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) is that God created the universe and turned it on, kind of like clockwork, and then stepped back without any intervention----which I certainly could believe in.
I, on the other hand, do believe that there is some sort of interchange between the universal creative force and our existence. What the interchange or exchange is, however, seems very mysterious to me. It seems that God (for lack of a better term) favors some beings----apl68 and myself, for instance----while tormenting others (and yes, thank you, I know this has been argued ad nauseam throughout the ages). So the nature and purpose of God simply cannot be fairness in the manner we conceive of it----the concept of "free will" notwithstanding.
Anybody seen this photograph (https://www.truthorfiction.com/is-frozen-rattlesnake-died-california-wildfires/)? This is the terrible last moment of a creature which I doubt had any concept of God, at least that we would recognize (but who knows, maybe the poor beast did?). This is not the work of a benevolent creator. Just not. No way.
There are many more images and stories on the Web, of course, that mitigate the concept of a warm and loving deity.
So sure, Billy Graham may argue that suffering makes us better Christians, or C.S. Lewis may argue that suffering is a way for us to invest spiritually in each other, or maybe we should be like Job and just wait for our reward for enduring, or we suffer because of The Fall, or we actually live in Satan's world beneath God's world in Heaven, or somehow (even though God can apparently pop down to Earth and perform any miracles He likes at any time) He wants us to come to Him because we are in pain...but none of that means anything to that poor snake trying to fight the only way it could against a forest fire caused in one way, shape, or form by humans._
I think there is form and reason there on the part of the creative force, but it is not benevolent or justifiable. God simply seems to be much different from us and incomprehensible. And thus theodicy and apologetics are worthless.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 19, 2020, 08:21:03 AM
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 18, 2020, 09:52:37 PM
That sorrta sounds like deism, Wahoo.
Yeah, I guess so.
My understanding of "deism" (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) is that God created the universe and turned it on, kind of like clockwork, and then stepped back without any intervention----which I certainly could believe in.
I, on the other hand, do believe that there is some sort of interchange between the universal creative force and our existence. What the interchange or exchange is, however, seems very mysterious to me. It seems that God (for lack of a better term) favors some beings----apl68 and myself, for instance----while tormenting others (and yes, thank you, I know this has been argued ad nauseam throughout the ages). So the nature and purpose of God simply cannot be fairness in the manner we conceive of it----the concept of "free will" notwithstanding.
If we restrict ourselves to "fairness"
within the scope of our knowledge, experience, etc. A surgeon operating on an infant may inflict great pain to save the infant's life, but the infant is incapable of comprehending the situation. So, to the infant, the pain is just cruelty.
Uh yeah...Marshy...so in your analogy God correlates to the surgeon (who presumably used anesthesia on the infant unless hu was working in the early 19th century?) and the infant correlates to the snake flash-burning to death for its own good?
God turned the rattler into charbroil because of some plan that benefits the snake?
We don't perceive the good that comes from an agonized animal with an IQ of around, what? 2 points or something?
I didn't come up with this basic scenario anyway. Rowe first proposed the problem of the fawn in the forest fire (I couldn't remember the name so I had to Google it).
You might want to try that one again, or not at all.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 19, 2020, 12:07:30 PM
Uh yeah...Marshy...so in your analogy God correlates to the surgeon (who presumably used anesthesia on the infant unless hu was working in the early 19th century?) and the infant correlates to the snake flash-burning to death for its own good?
God turned the rattler into charbroil because of some plan that benefits the snake?
We don't perceive the good that comes from an agonized animal with an IQ of around, what? 2 points or something?
I didn't come up with this basic scenario anyway. Rowe first proposed the problem of the fawn in the forest fire (I couldn't remember the name so I had to Google it).
You might want to try that one again, or not at all.
So how bubble-wrapped should life be? Whether it's natural disasters or actions of people, to what degree should we be kept safe from any harm? Is "Brave New World" the ideal?
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 19, 2020, 01:08:10 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 19, 2020, 12:07:30 PM
Uh yeah...Marshy...so in your analogy God correlates to the surgeon (who presumably used anesthesia on the infant unless hu was working in the early 19th century?) and the infant correlates to the snake flash-burning to death for its own good?
God turned the rattler into charbroil because of some plan that benefits the snake?
We don't perceive the good that comes from an agonized animal with an IQ of around, what? 2 points or something?
I didn't come up with this basic scenario anyway. Rowe first proposed the problem of the fawn in the forest fire (I couldn't remember the name so I had to Google it).
You might want to try that one again, or not at all.
So how bubble-wrapped should life be? Whether it's natural disasters or actions of people, to what degree should we be kept safe from any harm? Is "Brave New World" the ideal?
I have no idea what you are on about. Are you suggesting that I am somehow being a wimp for wondering why there is needless suffering and harm? I'm being ridiculous because I question the validity of a simple animal's torment?
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
If there is a benevolent omnipotent god it should keep us from harm. I would never let anything I love suffer if I could help it. For that matter, I would never let anything I don't love suffer if I could help it. A benevolent omnipotent god should certainly keep its creation from needless agony if it could. If I were god I would pop down to the planet in all my magnificence and tell all of humanity to stop the crap; provide a miraculous rain of meat to every predator everywhere so they would not rend and tear any other creatures; cure all the birth-defects, diseases, and accidents and make sure no other accidents ever happen. I would be a god of utopias because I am kindly and I really don't want to hurt or see others hurt. I went vegetarian a decade ago because I could not abide the cruelty of factory farming, and so if I were god there is no question that every creature would prosper; all pollution, and natural disaster would vanish in the blink of a cosmic eyelid. Being omnipotent I would simply make humanity love me in the deep, profound, fulfilling way they are supposed to. And this is what we should expect from an omnipotent, benevolent, all-loving father. If God's idea of bringing us to Him is to hurt us, this is not a nice god. It is getting harder and harder to support the idea of a wise joyful god who tortures us. Seen what is happening to Christian church attendance in the last couple decades?
Brave New World is a scientific dystopia.
Facile explanations, Marshy----avoid them and don't be obnoxious.
Most people here seem to be avoiding the issue of sin. If one is a sinner, one deserves consequences for that sin, or needs someone or something to take those consequences for one. If one does not believe in sin, that would of course be a different issue.
There is also the concept of 'the noetic effect of the fall', which suggests that sin affects our minds the same way it affects the rest of our bodies, and, thus, as Paul notes, we 'see as through a glass, darkly', IOW, our ability to understand God and His ways, even for the most wise and spiritually mature person in this life, is by definition flawed.
Well, yeah, one has to buy into the concept of sin and the concept of The Fall as a justification.
I'm still troubled by the snake (symbolism accidental in this context) burned to a crisp in a forest fire.
That animal did not sin.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 08:56:04 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 17, 2020, 08:32:40 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 06:31:42 AM
it is completely reasonable for a person to accept religious beliefs if they provide a more complete description of their universe and life within it. Specifically, if questions of human value, the purpose for existence, and so on are more satisfactorily answered in a religious framework, then it is reasonable for someone to accept those beliefs on that basis even without being able to verify specific factual claims about ancient events.
I was once channel-surfing and ran across one of those mega-church broadcasts at exactly the moment that the preacher was saying "What would you rather believe in? A God that is all-powerful and benevolent or a cold impersonal universes?" or something right along those lines. My thought, of course, is that there are all sorts of things I'd like to believe in (I am a rock star in the world's biggest band; I can bench-press 500 lbs; I've won the Nobel Prize in Basket-weaving), but reason and experience suggest otherwise.
You can't really believe you've won the Nobel Prize. You can say it; you can try to get other people to believe it, but that's all. What you can actually believe is what makes sense. Which is part of why religious groups, political parties, etc. contain hypocrites - people can claim to believe things for a variety of reasons. What they actually believe will become apparent by observing their actions over time in a variety of settings.
But by the same reasoning, couldn't we call the vast majority of Christians hypocrites? If they truly believed, wouldn't they be positively thrilled when they found out they had a terminal illness, because then they would go to heaven, see God, live in eternal bliss and all that? And yet most Christians (just like atheists) seem to want to avoid dying.
Just an observation I've made over the years ...
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on August 17, 2020, 09:20:09 AM
Quote from: Treehugger on August 17, 2020, 03:30:43 AM
What evidence would convince me of the literal resurrection of someone who was actually dead for three days back 2,000 years ago way before modern medicine?
Shrug. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, crucifixion is quite a slow death. It can take days for the victim to suffocate, die of dehydration, or be dispatched by their friends. If you took someone down before they'd actually died, they'd have ghastly but not immediately life-threatening wounds, and they might well seem dead. If they woke up sometime later, you'd be pretty surprised by it. More recently, we have plenty of evidence of people who were thought to be dead, but who came to life suddenly (in some stories, during the funeral services, although that may well be apocryphal). It doesn't stretch my imagination to believe this happened at some point to someone who'd been crucified. Maybe Inanna? It's the kind of story you'd tell for a while after.
But this does not actually make a case for the validity of the resurrection. The whole point of the resurrection was that Jesus was actually dead. In the words of one translation of the Apostles creed: "I believe ... in Jesus Christ ... who ... was crucified,
died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day, he rose again."
In your scenario, he didn't actually die. In order to prove that the resurrection happened, you would have to prove that Jesus was actually dead for three days, then came back to life on earth before ascending into heaven. Which you cannot do. The whole point of the story is that it is not in the slightest bit reasonable or amenable to empirical investigation.
As Mark Twain famously said: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Which is, I believe, why most Christians aren't happy to die (even a quick pain free death) — because deep inside they "know [it] ain't so."
Quote from: Treehugger on August 20, 2020, 04:25:57 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 17, 2020, 08:56:04 AM
You can't really believe you've won the Nobel Prize. You can say it; you can try to get other people to believe it, but that's all. What you can actually believe is what makes sense. Which is part of why religious groups, political parties, etc. contain hypocrites - people can claim to believe things for a variety of reasons. What they actually believe will become apparent by observing their actions over time in a variety of settings.
But by the same reasoning, couldn't we call the vast majority of Christians hypocrites? If they truly believed, wouldn't they be positively thrilled when they found out they had a terminal illness, because then they would go to heaven, see God, live in eternal bliss and all that? And yet most Christians (just like atheists) seem to want to avoid dying.
Just an observation I've made over the years ...
Being inconsistent is part of being human. Back in the '80's, there was a physicist named Jearl Walker, who used to do all kinds of physics tricks, like walking on hot coals, putting his hand in molten lead, and drinking liquid nitrogen. He did this in live shows, and explained the physics behind it. I sat in the front row and even kept a souvenir of a blob of molten lead, but there's NO WAY I'm ever going to try those things. I undertsand physics; I've seen it with my own eyes, but I don't have enough faith to do it.
There are inconsistencies in various areas of my life, regardless of how strongly I hold the principles that I try to live by.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 19, 2020, 02:08:35 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 19, 2020, 01:08:10 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 19, 2020, 12:07:30 PM
Uh yeah...Marshy...so in your analogy God correlates to the surgeon (who presumably used anesthesia on the infant unless hu was working in the early 19th century?) and the infant correlates to the snake flash-burning to death for its own good?
God turned the rattler into charbroil because of some plan that benefits the snake?
We don't perceive the good that comes from an agonized animal with an IQ of around, what? 2 points or something?
I didn't come up with this basic scenario anyway. Rowe first proposed the problem of the fawn in the forest fire (I couldn't remember the name so I had to Google it).
You might want to try that one again, or not at all.
So how bubble-wrapped should life be? Whether it's natural disasters or actions of people, to what degree should we be kept safe from any harm? Is "Brave New World" the ideal?
I have no idea what you are on about. Are you suggesting that I am somehow being a wimp for wondering why there is needless suffering and harm? I'm being ridiculous because I question the validity of a simple animal's torment?
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
If there is a benevolent omnipotent god it should keep us from harm. I would never let anything I love suffer if I could help it. For that matter, I would never let anything I don't love suffer if I could help it. A benevolent omnipotent god should certainly keep its creation from needless agony if it could.
So no sports, no wilderness hikes, no climbing stairs, ........
Almost EVERY activity imaginable carries some risk. As I said, unless you want people to live in bubble wrap, OR turn them into Stepford people, who only do what is "safe", this would make the world mind-numbingly dull and existence pretty much without purpose. But safe.
Quote
If I were god I would pop down to the planet in all my magnificence and tell all of humanity to stop the crap; provide a miraculous rain of meat to every predator everywhere so they would not rend and tear any other creatures; cure all the birth-defects, diseases, and accidents and make sure no other accidents ever happen. I would be a god of utopias because I am kindly and I really don't want to hurt or see others hurt. I went vegetarian a decade ago because I could not abide the cruelty of factory farming, and so if I were god there is no question that every creature would prosper; all pollution, and natural disaster would vanish in the blink of a cosmic eyelid. Being omnipotent I would simply make humanity love me in the deep, profound, fulfilling way they are supposed to.
If any human said this, you'd put them on a watch list for some sort of predatory abuse.
Quote
And this is what we should expect from an omnipotent, benevolent, all-loving father. If God's idea of bringing us to Him is to hurt us, this is not a nice god. It is getting harder and harder to support the idea of a wise joyful god who tortures us. Seen what is happening to Christian church attendance in the last couple decades?
Brave New World is a scientific dystopia.
Of course, but the soma-induced fog seems to be the closest to the kind of world you desire.
Quote
Facile explanations, Marshy----avoid them and don't be obnoxious.
A world where
any kind of suffering is
impossible is about as facile as it gets.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 20, 2020, 06:13:13 AM
So no sports, no wilderness hikes, no climbing stairs, ........
Almost EVERY activity imaginable carries some risk. As I said, unless you want people to live in bubble wrap, OR turn them into Stepford people, who only do what is "safe", this would make the world mind-numbingly dull and existence pretty much without purpose. But safe.
Nope. Sports. Climbing. Hiking. Skiing. Karate. Skydiving. Fire walking. I'm God. It's all there. I can make all these things safe and wonderful at all times. You think you've made a statement, Marshy, but you haven't. I, God, am omnipotent and benevolent----I can do anything. Bubblewrap us. We are incredibly fragile, all of us on the planet. Out bodies are maimed, our psyches are victimized, our lives are snuffed out in an instant. I, God, apparently did not make you in My image because you are so easily damaged. I am God. I made you. I love you. I will keep the things I made safe and the things I love safe. And because I am omnipotent, I can give you depth and personality. I would say, "Go forth, My creation, and create beauty and industry, seek depth and knowledge and personality in My safe and wholesome world" and you would, because I am God.
You think the Holocaust keeps us from being "Stepfords" (another sci-fi dystopia themed around the idea of unthinking robot drones) or that cancer makes us better, more interesting people, and that this is a "plan" for our own good? Really!? Or do these simply make our world more painful and terrifying.
Quote
If I were god I would pop down to the planet in all my magnificence and tell all of humanity to stop the crap; provide a miraculous rain of meat to every predator everywhere so they would not rend and tear any other creatures; cure all the birth-defects, diseases, and accidents and make sure no other accidents ever happen. I would be a god of utopias because I am kindly and I really don't want to hurt or see others hurt. I went vegetarian a decade ago because I could not abide the cruelty of factory farming, and so if I were god there is no question that every creature would prosper; all pollution, and natural disaster would vanish in the blink of a cosmic eyelid. Being omnipotent I would simply make humanity love me in the deep, profound, fulfilling way they are supposed to.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 20, 2020, 06:13:13 AM
If any human said this, you'd put them on a watch list for some sort of predatory abuse.
Yeah? How so? I've just eliminated abuse. And predation.
And anyway, I'm God there, not a human. I just want to make things nice. Nobody can put me on a watch list, and human's wouldn't even have the concept of "a watch list"----we never would have had reason to invent such a thing.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 20, 2020, 06:13:13 AM
Of course, but the soma-induced fog seems to be the closest to the kind of world you desire.
Nothing there about soma. That's you very lamely trying to poke holes in a very simply premise.
As a matter of fact, I'm God, I've eliminated drug abuse and drug addiction. There is no need for drugs of any kind anyway, there is no disease, injury, or psychological dysfunction. My creation is at one with nature and the cosmos. I'm omnipotent. The Earth I am describing is actually very much the vernacular conception of Heaven. I, being God, just don't force you through this miserable, dangerous planet, tempting and testing you at every turn, just so you can get to sit at my feet in perfect bliss...maybe...one day, if my planet doesn't break you----'cause you know, being a sinful creature, you might not even get to Heaven after I've endangered and tortured you through a lifetime. The way we have it now, you might make a mistake (probably based on the biology I programmed into you) and, Bang! Trap door open: into the Lake of Fire with you!!!
But no; I, being God, would not trick you in this manner. I would give you depth upon birth. I would give you wholesomeness and piety. No need to torture you into being better than I initially designed you.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 20, 2020, 06:13:13 AM
A world where any kind of suffering is impossible is about as facile as it gets.
Why? I'm God. Why should there be suffering? Why should it be impossible not to suffer? There's nothing facile about that question. It's actually one of the profoundest and most considered questions in Christianity. You just have a simplistic, not-well-thought-out response that sounds a lot like the crap they fed us in Sunday school when I was a kid.
And none of that explains the last terrible moments of a snake in a forest fire.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 20, 2020, 07:20:06 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 20, 2020, 06:13:13 AM
A world where any kind of suffering is impossible is about as facile as it gets.
Why? I'm God. Why should there be suffering? Why should it be impossible not to suffer? There's nothing facile about that question. It's actually one of the profoundest and most considered questions in Christianity. You just have a simplistic, not-well-thought-out response that sounds a lot like the crap they fed us in Sunday school when I was a kid.
And none of that explains the last terrible moments of a snake in a forest fire.
One could point out that the steady stream of small animals that died to sustain the snake's life hadn't sinned any more than the snake had--and each one probably died just as horribly in the snake's maw as the snake did in the fire. Of course you said above that if you were God you would eliminate predation. That would mean no more snakes, since a snake is an animal specifically designed--by God, evolution, or both--to be a predator. So, to a large extent, are human beings. The suffering-free world you're talking about would be entirely alien to anything we know, or can really imagine (Unless we imagine a world that consists only of inert matter that can't suffer). We can't live in such a world because if we did we simply wouldn't be us.
The thing that really strikes me about your most recent posts, though, is your assertion that if you were God you'd do things differently. You're sure you can do better than God has done (Sort of like Woody Allen's comment that "if there is a God, he's an underachiever"). It appears that, at some level at least,
you want to be God. That's what we're saying when we tell God that we have a problem with something that he has done or allowed to happen. Which, not incidentally, I have done myself. We all have. Wanting the world around us to confirm to our desires is a fundamental human desire. There have been times in my own life where I have made myself miserable for extended periods of time because I was so determined to be angry and disappointed over something very important to me that God didn't make turn out the way I wanted.
I felt that way when my dreams of an academic career failed. I felt that way when my marriage turned out childless and abusive, and ended with my being abandoned (Though in hindsight that was the biggest favor my ex ever did me). And I felt that way in the past year when my mother, myself, and father each suffered serious injuries and health crises in turn, and I experienced another severe disappointment in life, which I won't go into here.
Each time I found I had a choice. I could decide to be angry and bitter and resentful toward God for the rest of my life, or maybe decide I didn't want to believe in God anymore and be angry and bitter toward the blind Universe instead. Or I could say "Okay, God, this is the situation you've given me to face. Please help me to deal with it." Each time I've made the second choice, and have found myself freed from that anger, bitterness, and resentment. And in the process have found myself becoming far better able to help, love, and serve other people.
I make this choice because when I look around at the vast world of humanity, and nature, and the solar system and galaxies and all the rest of Creation's vastness, I just can't muster that sublime confidence that I know best. That the world, or even my own life, would actually be better if
I got to be God. I've known others who went down that road of being bitter and resentful because God wouldn't conform to their wishes. It hasn't work out well for any of them. Somebody near and dear to me literally went crazy doing that.
Life goes better when we drop the burden of wanting to be God.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 20, 2020, 04:25:57 AM
But by the same reasoning, couldn't we call the vast majority of Christians hypocrites? If they truly believed, wouldn't they be positively thrilled when they found out they had a terminal illness, because then they would go to heaven, see God, live in eternal bliss and all that? And yet most Christians (just like atheists) seem to want to avoid dying.
Just an observation I've made over the years ...
A few things. First, who says we all want to avoid dying? Many Christians throughout history, dating back to Paul of Tarsus, have expressed a wish to be released from this life to go to their eternal home. There's a part of me that would really like to excused from the next thirty years or so that I can reasonably expect to live in this world. It doesn't look like they're going to be pretty.
Second, as others have already acknowledged, many of us are aware of our inconsistencies. We know that our desires for God and the things of God are not perfect. It's something we're working on. There is a part of me that really likes good books, and sunsets, and occasional vacations, and other pleasant things of this world--and would like to remain alive and healthy to keep enjoying those for awhile longer.
Third, and most important for a more mature Christian, is the realization that in this, as in the rest of life, it's not our call to make. God didn't just save us to take us to Heaven. He has work for us to do right here and now. Paul of Tarsus spoke of being torn between a desire to go on to be with God, and an understanding that it was best for others if he stayed and continued with his work. So it is for each of us. We've all got people depending on us--in our jobs, our families, our friendships, and in the work of telling others about Jesus. Life here may not be as good as Heaven will be, but it's very meaningful and important while it lasts. It's not something that we need to be in a hurry to bail out of.
One last thing. There's nothing that says in the New Testament that we have to be miserable in this world, even as we look forward with anticipation toward the next. I'm perfectly fine with enjoying good books, sunsets, etc. Those are things to thank God for right now. I'm glad I have my work, even if it drives me crazy sometimes. I'm glad I still have a chance to be useful. There have been times in the past when I was so down that I really was about ready to die. I'm glad I didn't. Whether I live, die or get diagnosed with a terminal illness next week, or keep going until I'm 90, or live to see Jesus return (Which is looking more and more like a distinct possibility), what's important is serving God and enjoying his presence.
Quote from: apl68 on August 20, 2020, 08:31:01 AM
One could point out that the steady stream of small animals that died to sustain the snake's life hadn't sinned any more than the snake had--and each one probably died just as horribly in the snake's maw as the snake did in the fire. Of course you said above that if you were God you would eliminate predation. That would mean no more snakes, since a snake is an animal specifically designed--by God, evolution, or both--to be a predator. So, to a large extent, are human beings.
Yup. Snake is pretty bad if you are a mouse. They does not lessen the problem in the least----it actually makes it more acute. The mouse laughs and flips the flash-charred monster-snake the bird and celebrates the agony of it's enemy. But no, wait: I am God. My snakes are miraculously fed meat everyday. Or, since I am God, snakes eat turnips. Or, since I am God, the snake lives off the friction of slithering across the ground----a happy electric snake. Mouse and snake are friends. We are friends with mouse, snake, tiger, etc. and because I am God, I can evolve anything I like, or not. I've made the world perfect for those I love, why would I change it?
Quote from: apl68 on August 20, 2020, 08:31:01 AM
The suffering-free world you're talking about would be entirely alien to anything we know, or can really imagine (Unless we imagine a world that consists only of inert matter that can't suffer).
Respectfully disagree. The world is NOT complete suffering. We wouldn't stay in it if it was. An Edenic would not be alien at all, simply free of suffering. I am God, and my world is filled with art, literature, industry, exploration, gourmet restaurants, love, sex, and platonic companionship. It is very much the world we know, just without the suffering. Sure, our novels and movies are considerably different, but since I am God I gift you with narrative and empathy and an innate concept of beauty.
Quote from: apl68 on August 20, 2020, 08:31:01 AM
It appears that, at some level at least, you want to be God.
Come on, apl68. Don't be silly. God knows, I do not want to be God. I don't even want to listen to my students complaints that they can't open a Zoom link much less deal with the horrors of humanity and nature red in tooth and claw (which comes from a pretty profound examination of the problem of worldly suffering, BTW).
You, like poor Marshy, are trying to figure out how my own minor selfish concerns are distorting my conception of God's justice and wisdom in the world. It's a typical defensive posture of frustration. I'm simply pointing out the unsustainable belief in a benevolent, omnipotent, joyful, loving God who allows what happens to happen via a objectively logical argument (if we didn't have predators, we wouldn't have evolution! No. We could have evolution by divine intervention, which is maybe what evolution is anyway)----I am by far not the first to wonder aloud about this, as I am sure you know.
At some level, the concept of a benevolent, omnipotent god who makes us better through trauma and torment is simply an untenable argument. You cannot logic your way through it. This is where faith comes in.
And suffering does not necessarily make us better. I speak as someone who has had a very lucky life but am witnessing mental illness in my family, is a friend of someone who suffered violent childhood sexual abuse, and someone who watched my father lose a long, humiliating and painful battle with lung cancer to leave my mother alone to develop Alzheimer's disease. These experiences do not redeem us. They hurt and damage and kill us.
Quote from: apl68 on August 20, 2020, 08:31:01 AM
There have been times in my own life where I have made myself miserable for extended periods of time because I was so determined to be angry and disappointed over something very important to me that God didn't make turn out the way I wanted.
Yeah, that's not very nice of Him, is it? I wouldn't trust a human who denied me something very important, why would I trust a god who denies me many important things?
Quote from: apl68 on August 20, 2020, 08:31:01 AM
Each time I found I had a choice. I could decide to be angry and bitter and resentful toward God for the rest of my life, or maybe decide I didn't want to believe in God anymore and be angry and bitter toward the blind Universe instead. Or I could say "Okay, God, this is the situation you've given me to face. Please help me to deal with it." Each time I've made the second choice, and have found myself freed from that anger, bitterness, and resentment. And in the process have found myself becoming far better able to help, love, and serve other people.
I think that speaks more to your character than to the presumptive character of God.
God, being omnipotent, could have made you able to help, love, and serve other people. Does He have to hurt you to do that?
Quote from: apl68 on August 20, 2020, 08:31:01 AM
I make this choice because when I look around at the vast world of humanity, and nature, and the solar system and galaxies and all the rest of Creation's vastness, I just can't muster that sublime confidence that I know best. That the world, or even my own life, would actually be better if I got to be God. I've known others who went down that road of being bitter and resentful because God wouldn't conform to their wishes. It hasn't work out well for any of them. Somebody near and dear to me literally went crazy doing that.
You don't mean to, but your examples actually bolster a god of suffering, denial, and eventual insanity and a faithful follower who refuses to believe this. You choose to see the infinity filled with righteous divine love, your own dialogue illustrates this; others find a cold existential void.
Quote from: apl68 on August 20, 2020, 08:31:01 AM
Life goes better when we drop the burden of wanting to be God.
Yeah, I'll agree.
Life would go a lot better if God would quit torturing His own creatures, too.
Wahoo, it appears our conversation here is at an impasse. I joined in to try to explain, not to debate. I've offered the best explanations I can. To the extent that I have them to offer--I can't say that I have all the answers. And I am okay with not having them all. That's where faith comes in.
All I can say more is that Jesus' invitation to trust him remains open.
Sure, I hope I made that clear before---I accept your vision and would not challenge you any more than you wish to be challenged. We need not debate at all; I was just responding. And I did say pretty much exactly what you said---this is where faith comes in. Faith is a wonderful thing.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 20, 2020, 01:42:13 PM
Faith is a wonderful thing.
I'm not a fan. Anecdotally, my life really only began once I lost mine. But I understand its power.
Quote from: fast_and_bulbous on August 23, 2020, 02:05:41 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 20, 2020, 01:42:13 PM
Faith is a wonderful thing.
I'm not a fan. Anecdotally, my life really only began once I lost mine. But I understand its power.
I agree with everything you wrote F & B.
I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment I stopped believing. It was as if I had been watching some lame, silent, black-and-white film and all of a sudden, I was living in a vibrant, multicolor world, a world that was real, that was really, really real. It was a world that mattered. It was all I had and suddenly it was incredibly precious. And I felt free to act in this world exactly the way I saw fit (what I believed was best for myself and others) and I didn't have to worry constantly about what some God thought about my opinions.
And yet I understand or believe I understand the power of faith. When I am in a really bad place (I'm worried about the plane crashing or something like that), I sometimes feel the power of God or the universe protecting me. I
know I will be fine. I feel comforted. On some level, I know that I am believing in a fiction, but I also believe that somehow as a human being I am wired to believe in this fiction when the going gets tough and I don't beat myself up about it. I just let myself believe what I need to believe the .0001% of the time I feel like I need this other worldly support it get through whatever the horror is. Then, when all is clear I just return to my normal, realistic atheistic self. And I refuse to let any faith tradition guilt me into thinking I'm a hypocrite.
In fact, I really, honestly think it is normal and healthy to "believe" sometimes and not other times.
I had been having lots of questions for years before I suddenly realized that God doesn't actually exist. But it was John Shelby Spong's
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (https://www.amazon.com/Rescuing-Bible-Fundamentalism-Rethinks-Scripture/dp/0060675187) that was the actual trigger for my deconversion epiphany. Somewhere in this book, Spong discusses Mark 2:27: "Then Jesus told them 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath'." Spong interprets this verse as saying that religion is for us, it should help us, not harm us. I agree, but now understand that verse even more broadly than Spong does. I understood it as giving me the freedom to believe in the very rare occasions that I needed to, but not believe at all the vast majority of the time.
What exactly is the nature of a 'belief' that one picks and chooses when to take, as though it were an aspirin?
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 23, 2020, 07:08:24 PM
What exactly is the nature of a 'belief' that one picks and chooses when to take, as though it were an aspirin?
Belief is what I believe it the moment when I believe it. When I was a Christian, I didn't actually believe. At least I didn't actually believe 99.999% of the time. I just tried really hard to believe. Trying hard to believe, praying to believe is not actually believing.
What's best is what actually works. Not what you have been told should work. But what actually works for you. At least, that is what I think ...
If inconsistencies in one's beliefs actually make one a better person (more functional; more helpful for others, less of a basket case) then what the heck? Go ahead and be inconsistent.
If someone today really believed the fantastic things reported in the Bible (The Resurrection, The parting of the Red Sea, etc) actually happened then logically he should believe they are happening now somewhere, and also be planning for it. We would probably call him schizophrenic. He wouldn't blend in with a protestant congregation. Likewise if someone believes he is Jesus Christ (I met one once) he's probably schizophrenic. Maybe Jesus Christ was schizophrenic. If he had been just a con man, he picked odd things to do with his opportunity. And I mean no offense to believers here. I think religions have done a ton of good for society. I don't ridicule religion, except maybe Scientology (whether it should be called one).
If you'd never heard of the "big 3" you wouldn't find their beliefs any less crazy than those of Scientology.
Quote from: mahagonny on August 23, 2020, 09:51:17 PM
If someone today really believed the fantastic things reported in the Bible (The Resurrection, The parting of the Red Sea, etc) actually happened then logically he should believe they are happening now somewhere, and also be planning for it. We would probably call him schizophrenic. He wouldn't blend in with a protestant congregation. Likewise if someone believes he is Jesus Christ (I met one once) he's probably schizophrenic. Maybe Jesus Christ was schizophrenic. If he had been just a con man, he picked odd things to do with his opportunity. And I mean no offense to believers here. I think religions have done a ton of good for society. I don't ridicule religion, except maybe Scientology (whether it should be called one).
To be fair, believing you are JC is not the same as believing in JC. I mean, as far as the craziness factor goes.
Quote from: mahagonny on August 23, 2020, 09:51:17 PM
Maybe Jesus Christ was schizophrenic. If he had been just a con man, he picked odd things to do with his opportunity. And I mean no offense to believers here. I think religions have done a ton of good for society. I don't ridicule religion, except maybe Scientology (whether it should be called one).
Actually C.S. Lewis basically said that several decades ago; Jesus was either a lunatic, or a liar, or who he said he was. The "great teacher" idea doesn't really work in the context of the things he said, because they rely so completely on the claims of his own divinity.
Quote from: financeguy on August 24, 2020, 01:16:43 AM
If you'd never heard of the "big 3" you wouldn't find their beliefs any less crazy than those of Scientology.
I see. No doubt. Scientology gets my ridicule and scorn though because they are so controlling, mercenary, vengeful (at the top levels). Whereas, who is really harmed if you believe in the big three, or the stuff the Joseph Smith taught?
My views on faith are also kind of contradictory, but I think three illustrations put it in perspective:
From Vivekenanda: "See Christ, then you are a Christian. All else is talk." The Swami gets right to the point for me. I think it's also a message to a) bossy believers who mock non-believers or those who don't believe the right way, as well as b) bossy non-believers who mock believers. Did you see Christ? Cool. We're good. You didn't? Cool. We're good.
Jesus' sermon on the mount: "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." Again, Jesus knew the score--if you believe and you're mocking non-believers or showing off for them, you're being a poopy-head. If you're a non-believer and you're mocking believers, you're also being a poopy-head. Jesus clearly tells us: don't be a poopy-head.
And finally, "Oh, God!", a movie from 1977 directed by Carl Reiner, and featuring then-unlikely movie star George Burns and amiable singer/total non-actor John Denver. How deep this movie really was snuck up on me over the last 43 years. I remember I was perplexed when I first saw it--toward the end religious experts are asking God questions through the John Denver character, and they've written their questions in Aramaic. God wryly notes that the experts did that so that Denver couldn't possibly answer. But God does answer (also writing in Aramaic as he speaks). And I thought, why didn't they believe John Denver then, when he was able to give the answers? (Still later, George Burns/God reveals himself, and that doesn't convince everybody either.) It wasn't till much, much later that I realized the point--you could make a list of what you required a being to do to "prove" they were God, then the being could do those things, and the response would be like, "Okay, something was wrong with my list, or something is wrong with my perception." It taught me a great deal about the nature of belief and non-belief, and if I'm in any way tolerant or enlightened, it is because of the 19th century Swami, the man identified as Jesus in the New Testament, and a old vaudeville comic gaining a second career as a movie star. So it goes.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 23, 2020, 07:45:54 PM
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 23, 2020, 07:08:24 PM
What exactly is the nature of a 'belief' that one picks and chooses when to take, as though it were an aspirin?
Belief is what I believe it the moment when I believe it. When I was a Christian, I didn't actually believe. At least I didn't actually believe 99.999% of the time. I just tried really hard to believe. Trying hard to believe, praying to believe is not actually believing.
Absolutely. I think that's what muddies the waters so much about "faith" and "belief" in religious terms. The way I would describe "faith" is as action
without certainty about the outcome. It is doing what you think is the right thing even if you're not sure the universe is going to reward you for it.
Quote
What's best is what actually works. Not what you have been told should work. But what actually works for you. At least, that is what I think ...
If inconsistencies in one's beliefs actually make one a better person (more functional; more helpful for others, less of a basket case) then what the heck? Go ahead and be inconsistent.
The idea of spiritual growth as a lifelong process is pretty universal; absolute consistency is going to be impossible for any mortal. And often
recognizing the inconsistencies lead to more insights.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 23, 2020, 07:08:24 PM
What exactly is the nature of a 'belief' that one picks and chooses when to take, as though it were an aspirin?
The nature of belief is, as I said earlier, really quite complicated (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/#BeliKnow). One common distinction that's drawn is between beliefs and the kind of stuff that's under the subject's voluntary control (usually called 'acceptance'). But then, on the belief side of things, it's also common to distinguish between the things we believe implicitly (aliefs) and explicitly (beliefs), or between representational vs. dispositional belief.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 24, 2020, 07:46:43 AM
Absolutely. I think that's what muddies the waters so much about "faith" and "belief" in religious terms. The way I would describe "faith" is as action without certainty about the outcome. It is doing what you think is the right thing even if you're not sure the universe is going to reward you for it.
The faith-as-belief (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/#FaiBel) account of faith is fairly popular (although so is faith-as-knowledge (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/#FaiKno)). Generally speaking, on that account what distinguishes faith and belief is just their content (at least when their degrees of credence are comparable; faith is supposed to be high-credence belief). But, as you can see from those links, other accounts are available.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 23, 2020, 07:08:24 PM
What exactly is the nature of a 'belief' that one picks and chooses when to take, as though it were an aspirin?
I'd say that is a pretty typical human belief structure, even for the religious professionals.
Christianity places much more emphasis on belief than many other religions. Ritual, group membership, and a moral code are some elements that hold more weight in others. Even in Christianity, belief is not as central an element as some people make out, and certainly not precise belief rooted in theological reasoning. Just talking to students about their religion makes that clear, even those who went to Catholic high schools. If you start asking them what the differences are between their brand of Christianity and other brands, you rarely get clear answers that make sense. Or try asking them about the nature of the Trinity.
I've often wondered what kind of belief your average ancient Greek had in Zeus, Poseidon, Athena and the rest. They probably made offerings to their gods, and they had their stories about them being up on Mt Olympus. But did they really believe that if you went up that mountain you would see the gods hanging out? I find it hard to get my head around that.
Picking up the thread on suffering...
As a non-observant half-Jew, I hit the Jewish ritual scene when there is enough alignment.
So one year I fasted on Yom Kippur. What a humbling experience.
Being aware that I was choosing not to eat when others could not eat.
When I finally had enough of it, being aware that I could choose what to eat to break my fast (oatmeal!) instead of whatever I was given.
Today, because of that, I think of hunger, and food choices, with a completely new insight.
If we need to suffer to empathize with those who suffer so we can take action; and if we can feel grateful instead of taking our blessings for granted, then ritual and suffering have their place.
Hmmm... good points about words like 'belief' and 'faith' being almost meaningless if one does not know clearly how the user thereof is using it, what he means by it, etc.
But one does not have to exactly know what an author means by 'belief' to know that the Bible does not really equate belief in Christ, and/or faith in Him, as a vehicle to get God to give you stuff. IOW, you aren't to try to turn on 'belief' when you are in a dangerous situation, when you are trying to get something, etc. Of course, and sadly, this runs quite contrary to the 'gospel' regularly presented on TV by the name-it-and-claim it prosperity teachers who nowadays are nigh-onto ubiquitous there.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 24, 2020, 06:25:55 PM
Hmmm... good points about words like 'belief' and 'faith' being almost meaningless if one does not know clearly how the user thereof is using it, what he means by it, etc.
But one does not have to exactly know what an author means by 'belief' to know that the Bible does not really equate belief in Christ, and/or faith in Him, as a vehicle to get God to give you stuff. IOW, you aren't to try to turn on 'belief' when you are in a dangerous situation, when you are trying to get something, etc. Of course, and sadly, this runs quite contrary to the 'gospel' regularly presented on TV by the name-it-and-claim it prosperity teachers who nowadays are nigh-onto ubiquitous there.
I don't "turn it on" to get something. It just happens. I just start believing in extreme and highly stressful situations. I feel like an entirely different person. I'm not "me." I'm suddenly this incredibly stressed out person who just so happens to be a believer.
Obviously, I am physically the same person, but emotionally and psychological I am in an entirely different space. And in this space I believe.
Just so that we are clear, this kind of situation happens to me about once every 10 years. It's very unusual, but it happens.
There are many, many times in the course of un-heightened, everyday life that I want something I don't have. I certainly do not turn on belief and pray to get it. Instead, I just do my best to work towards my goals using entirely non-supernatural means or maybe just accept that I'll never get what I want. One example: Last year, I went through a scary cancer diagnosis (stage IIIb lung cancer) and the concomitant treatment and I can honestly say not once did I feel the need for prayer.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 25, 2020, 01:31:52 PM
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 24, 2020, 06:25:55 PM
Hmmm... good points about words like 'belief' and 'faith' being almost meaningless if one does not know clearly how the user thereof is using it, what he means by it, etc.
But one does not have to exactly know what an author means by 'belief' to know that the Bible does not really equate belief in Christ, and/or faith in Him, as a vehicle to get God to give you stuff. IOW, you aren't to try to turn on 'belief' when you are in a dangerous situation, when you are trying to get something, etc. Of course, and sadly, this runs quite contrary to the 'gospel' regularly presented on TV by the name-it-and-claim it prosperity teachers who nowadays are nigh-onto ubiquitous there.
I don't "turn it on" to get something. It just happens. I just start believing in extreme and highly stressful situations. I feel like an entirely different person. I'm not "me." I'm suddenly this incredibly stressed out person who just so happens to be a believer.
Obviously, I am physically the same person, but emotionally and psychological I am in an entirely different space. And in this space I believe.
Just so that we are clear, this kind of situation happens to me about once every 10 years. It's very unusual, but it happens.
There are many, many times in the course of un-heightened, everyday life that I want something I don't have. I certainly do not turn on belief and pray to get it. Instead, I just do my best to work towards my goals using entirely non-supernatural means or maybe just accept that I'll never get what I want. One example: Last year, I went through a scary cancer diagnosis (stage IIIb lung cancer) and the concomitant treatment and I can honestly say not once did I feel the need for prayer.
My father had been a paratrooper in the special forces. He told me that no one swore on the airplane before the jumps. These soldiers, who were a pretty rough bunch (my dad was one tough dude), would not use the Lord's name in vain. My dad swore a lot in terms that were acceptable to the Eisenhower Era ethos, frequently using "God**** it!" as an expletive but not before jumping from a C-130 into the night sky.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 23, 2020, 02:44:09 PM
Quote from: fast_and_bulbous on August 23, 2020, 02:05:41 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on August 20, 2020, 01:42:13 PM
Faith is a wonderful thing.
I'm not a fan. Anecdotally, my life really only began once I lost mine. But I understand its power.
I agree with everything you wrote F & B.
I still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment I stopped believing. It was as if I had been watching some lame, silent, black-and-white film and all of a sudden, I was living in a vibrant, multicolor world, a world that was real, that was really, really real. It was a world that mattered. It was all I had and suddenly it was incredibly precious. And I felt free to act in this world exactly the way I saw fit (what I believed was best for myself and others) and I didn't have to worry constantly about what some God thought about my opinions.
And yet I understand or believe I understand the power of faith. When I am in a really bad place (I'm worried about the plane crashing or something like that), I sometimes feel the power of God or the universe protecting me. I know I will be fine. I feel comforted. On some level, I know that I am believing in a fiction, but I also believe that somehow as a human being I am wired to believe in this fiction when the going gets tough and I don't beat myself up about it. I just let myself believe what I need to believe the .0001% of the time I feel like I need this other worldly support it get through whatever the horror is. Then, when all is clear I just return to my normal, realistic atheistic self. And I refuse to let any faith tradition guilt me into thinking I'm a hypocrite.
In fact, I really, honestly think it is normal and healthy to "believe" sometimes and not other times.
I had been having lots of questions for years before I suddenly realized that God doesn't actually exist. But it was John Shelby Spong's Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (https://www.amazon.com/Rescuing-Bible-Fundamentalism-Rethinks-Scripture/dp/0060675187) that was the actual trigger for my deconversion epiphany. Somewhere in this book, Spong discusses Mark 2:27: "Then Jesus told them 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath'." Spong interprets this verse as saying that religion is for us, it should help us, not harm us. I agree, but now understand that verse even more broadly than Spong does. I understood it as giving me the freedom to believe in the very rare occasions that I needed to, but not believe at all the vast majority of the time.
For me it was Thomas Merton that kind of sealed the deal. I read a bit about Buddhism, thought it was interesting but not for me, went to a few Unitarian services, which I hated, ironically, because it felt so "lite" - I decided after that I'd either go back to Catholicism or just be the agnostic atheist that I think I always was.
I am content knowing that after I die will be just like before I was born, full stop. Once you stop worrying about eternal torture for arbitrary natural human urges it makes life a lot more pleasant. I could go on but I won't out of respect for others who still have faith. Just be good to other people no matter what your belief system, eh?
Quote from: fast_and_bulbous on August 29, 2020, 12:06:22 PM
I read a bit about Buddhism, thought it was interesting but not for me, went to a few Unitarian services, which I hated, ironically, because it felt so "lite" - I decided after that I'd either go back to Catholicism or just be the agnostic atheist that I think I always was.
This is why mainline denominations are declining and more conervative denominations are growing; religion that doesn't demand much doesn't inspire much committment. You're either all in or not at all.
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 29, 2020, 12:31:27 PM
Quote from: fast_and_bulbous on August 29, 2020, 12:06:22 PM
I read a bit about Buddhism, thought it was interesting but not for me, went to a few Unitarian services, which I hated, ironically, because it felt so "lite" - I decided after that I'd either go back to Catholicism or just be the agnostic atheist that I think I always was.
This is why mainline denominations are declining and more conervative denominations are growing; religion that doesn't demand much doesn't inspire much committment. You're either all in or not at all.
This is why, when certain members accuse me of just wanting our UU church to be "a social club," I say: "Yes, I think that would be best." Better a social club, than a watered-down self-help religion or social justice transformed into a religion.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 30, 2020, 03:39:27 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on August 29, 2020, 12:31:27 PM
Quote from: fast_and_bulbous on August 29, 2020, 12:06:22 PM
I read a bit about Buddhism, thought it was interesting but not for me, went to a few Unitarian services, which I hated, ironically, because it felt so "lite" - I decided after that I'd either go back to Catholicism or just be the agnostic atheist that I think I always was.
This is why mainline denominations are declining and more conervative denominations are growing; religion that doesn't demand much doesn't inspire much committment. You're either all in or not at all.
This is why, when certain members accuse me of just wanting our UU church to be "a social club," I say: "Yes, I think that would be best." Better a social club, than a watered-down self-help religion or social justice transformed into a religion.
Absolutely! Any of the things like feeding the poor, providing community, etc. that are associated with church have external organizations
dedicated to that specific purpose. The point of the church is that those functions are
consequences of the spiritual context there. The church isn't a great
means to a social
end; it is the place to develop people spiritually, and all of those other things should come out of that.
(In case you hadn't heard, a few years ago there was a minister in Canada who became an
atheist, and wanted to keep her church and congregation. Google Greta Vosper. To me, that's the most insane example of church as a means to an end. Without the spiritual core, it's going to be much less effective at any social goal than an organization explicitly devoted to that.)
In the final analysis the Judaeo-Christian tradition is all about receiving some sort of communion with God; the church is the means to that. The ideas are much deeper, of course, but Christianity is predicated on a sort of spiritual quid pro quo.
Just some reading:
Why fewer Americans go to church. (https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/why-fewer-americans-are-attending-religious-services)
Membership down sharply last 2 decades (https://news.gallup.com/poll/248837/church-membership-down-sharply-past-two-decades.aspx)
Melenials not going (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-millennials-are-skipping-church-and-not-going-back/2019/10/27/0d35b972-f777-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html)
I trust that Canadian woman's church did indeed send her packing?
Religious hypocrisy is a bad thing, whatever the nature of the hypocrisy. A couple of years back, my brother embraced the Masonic lodge (he remains an essentially lapsed, non-practicing Catholic, but he has gone all-in on the Lodge). I confess he spent a bit of time afterwards pretty obviously scoping me out on whether I might be interested, and I confess for maybe a sec or two I considered it, largely because Lodge membership would be a good career move, and I could use a good career move. But I just cannot do it, as it would require me to make too many obviously insincere religious compromises. Sadly, I may well also be coming to the point where I need to consider whether continued participation in my current church may well be approaching the border of what could be seen as 'hypocrisy' as well, though I am hoping I might still be able to avoid it. In any case, the election will be over soon... one hopeth.
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 30, 2020, 08:55:21 PM
I trust that Canadian woman's church did indeed send her packing?
Religious hypocrisy is a bad thing, whatever the nature of the hypocrisy. A couple of years back, my brother embraced the Masonic lodge (he remains an essentially lapsed, non-practicing Catholic, but he has gone all-in on the Lodge). I confess he spent a bit of time afterwards pretty obviously scoping me out on whether I might be interested, and I confess for maybe a sec or two I considered it, largely because Lodge membership would be a good career move, and I could use a good career move. But I just cannot do it, as it would require me to make too many obviously insincere religious compromises. Sadly, I may well also be coming to the point where I need to consider whether continued participation in my current church may well be approaching the border of what could be seen as 'hypocrisy' as well, though I am hoping I might still be able to avoid it. In any case, the election will be over soon... one hopeth.
Just because some follow what others consider "religion lite," doesn't mean they are hypocrites. I'm sure many sincerely believe their religion lite and live accordingly. Actually, the biggest hypocrites are probably those who insist that the Bible should be understood and followed literally and yet still pick and choose which verses they will conveniently ignore.
Quote from: Treehugger on August 31, 2020, 03:42:48 AM
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 30, 2020, 08:55:21 PM
I trust that Canadian woman's church did indeed send her packing?
Actually, no, the church was so into "diversity" that she's still at it.
Quote
Just because some follow what others consider "religion lite," doesn't mean they are hypocrites.
No, but it does kind of question the point. If a prof declares at the beginning of a course that everyone will get A+, all kinds of smart students are going to realize they don't need to worry about tests and assignments, and even why they should even bother to come to class. Unless they really enjoy the subject, why inconvenience themselves on behalf of something if there will be no concrete consequences to their choice?
Quote
I'm sure many sincerely believe their religion lite and live accordingly. Actually, the biggest hypocrites are probably those who insist that the Bible should be understood and followed literally and yet still pick and choose which verses they will conveniently ignore.
Sure, and hypocrisy is pretty endemic to human nature, so it's not restricted to religious people. Any good religious teaching will, among other things, remind people of that reality and help them to see it in themselves so they can attempt to change it.
Not taking various verses of Scripture literally is not the same as wholesale disbelief of the basic message of the scriptures. IOW, if erstwhile believing Pastor Jane has come to embrace atheism, she is a liar when she attempts to continue to act as a pastor. If my doctor comes to disbelieve the germ theory of disease, he's fired, no need to ask for the fora's opinion on this action.
Further, if one defines 'religious lite' the way the poster appears to have intended it to be defined, as faking religious belief in the context of getting some warm and fuzzies and/or having some quasi-spiritual underpinning for a social institution or welfare society, this is indeed hypocrisy and defeats the overall purpose of such an institution, harming its mission and legitimacy.
Quote
Quote
Just because some follow what others consider "religion lite," doesn't mean they are hypocrites.
No, but it does kind of question the point. If a prof declares at the beginning of a course that everyone will get A+, all kinds of smart students are going to realize they don't need to worry about tests and assignments, and even why they should even bother to come to class. Unless they really enjoy the subject, why inconvenience themselves on behalf of something if there will be no concrete consequences to their choice?
I don't think that a university course is the best analogy for a religion. Or, at least, God help us, it shouldn't be.
It seems, based on this analogy, that you have a rather authoritarian view of religion. Religion for you seems to be about getting things right (getting an A+) on the exam of life.
I believe that religion is ideally involved with living well, with living the "good life," philosophically understood. But it is not competitive. And any hypothetical grade would be jointly given by both the professor (society in general, not just the earthly representatives of some supposed numinous being) and the "student."
Quote
Quote
I'm sure many sincerely believe their religion lite and live accordingly. Actually, the biggest hypocrites are probably those who insist that the Bible should be understood and followed literally and yet still pick and choose which verses they will conveniently ignore.
Sure, and hypocrisy is pretty endemic to human nature, so it's not restricted to religious people. Any good religious teaching will, among other things, remind people of that reality and help them to see it in themselves so they can attempt to change it.
And, of course, it is not just religious teaching that can help people understand their hypocrisy. There are wise, helpful people in all walks of life (not just amongst the clergy).
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 31, 2020, 08:00:58 PM
Not taking various verses of Scripture literally is not the same as wholesale disbelief of the basic message of the scriptures. IOW, if erstwhile believing Pastor Jane has come to embrace atheism, she is a liar when she attempts to continue to act as a pastor. If my doctor comes to disbelieve the germ theory of disease, he's fired, no need to ask for the fora's opinion on this action.
She's not a "liar," if she is honest about her atheism, which apparently she was. Lots of people understand the scriptures metaphorically, so I don't really see a problem with both being an atheist and a minister. In other words, people understand "spirituality" in different ways. It is certainly possible to be a lot more spiritual, understood broadly as deeply connected the interconnected web of existence, open towards experience, wise, deeply compassionate, etc., as an atheist than as a rigid, doctrinaire Bible-thumper (not that I believe we have any of the latter on these fora).
Quote
Further, if one defines 'religious lite' the way the poster appears to have intended it to be defined, as faking religious belief in the context of getting some warm and fuzzies and/or having some quasi-spiritual underpinning for a social institution or welfare society, this is indeed hypocrisy and defeats the overall purpose of such an institution, harming its mission and legitimacy.
I don't see it as faking anything. I just see it as naïve. I just sat through a UU Covenant group meeting where three attendees waxed lyrical about Tolle's
The Power of Now for most of the meeting. I went through a big self-help phase a couple of decades ago and have thankfully moved beyond it. Also, even then, I could recognize trash writing when I saw it. Apparently, not everyone can. However, I bit my tongue and mostly just listened? Why? Because it was clear that this book was actually, genuinely helping them navigate their current lives, and if something is helping someone else be wiser, more centered, calmer, happier, etc. I am certainly not going to say: "Look, can't you see that this book is garbage?" Because apparently it is not garbage for them.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 01, 2020, 04:01:26 AM
Quote
Quote
Just because some follow what others consider "religion lite," doesn't mean they are hypocrites.
No, but it does kind of question the point. If a prof declares at the beginning of a course that everyone will get A+, all kinds of smart students are going to realize they don't need to worry about tests and assignments, and even why they should even bother to come to class. Unless they really enjoy the subject, why inconvenience themselves on behalf of something if there will be no concrete consequences to their choice?
I don't think that a university course is the best analogy for a religion. Or, at least, God help us, it shouldn't be.
It seems, based on this analogy, that you have a rather authoritarian view of religion. Religion for you seems to be about getting things right (getting an A+) on the exam of life.
I believe that religion is ideally involved with living well, with living the "good life," philosophically understood. But it is not competitive. And any hypothetical grade would be jointly given by both the professor (society in general, not just the earthly representatives of some supposed numinous being) and the "student."
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires
commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
The sacrifice required is typically material comfort in the present, such as giving to the poor, making effort to help others, etc.
For a universalist, who believes that the afterlife is the same for everyone, then the only specific benefit to religious commitment is therefore the spiritual fulfillment in the present. In that case, the more material comfort a person has, the less likely the religious commitment will "pay off", since the spiritual fulfillment will have to be really huge to compensate for giving up personal comfort.
So this is why "religion lite" (which is what I would call the universalist position) is not terribly compelling; the only time religion becomes "worth it" is one is suffering greatly in some way, so that the material comfort is minimal, so the sacrifice will potentially be worth it.
Thus, to me it's no surprise that the churches of a more universalist persuasion are dying.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 01, 2020, 04:17:53 AM
Quote from: kaysixteen on August 31, 2020, 08:00:58 PM
Not taking various verses of Scripture literally is not the same as wholesale disbelief of the basic message of the scriptures. IOW, if erstwhile believing Pastor Jane has come to embrace atheism, she is a liar when she attempts to continue to act as a pastor. If my doctor comes to disbelieve the germ theory of disease, he's fired, no need to ask for the fora's opinion on this action.
She's not a "liar," if she is honest about her atheism, which apparently she was. Lots of people understand the scriptures metaphorically, so I don't really see a problem with both being an atheist and a minister. In other words, people understand "spirituality" in different ways. It is certainly possible to be a lot more spiritual, understood broadly as deeply connected the interconnected web of existence, open towards experience, wise, deeply compassionate, etc., as an atheist than as a rigid, doctrinaire Bible-thumper (not that I believe we have any of the latter on these fora).
Like you, I don't think she's lying; I just think church is not the best way to any of those "secondary benefits" without its core. Each of those can be pursued much more directly some other way. So her "church" is kind of pointless to me. (Kind of like caffeine-free diet Coke- what's the point????)
I'm reminded of a blog from a midwest academic--they mentioned something to the effect that we're dealing with the most intimate and personal relationship imaginable. That relationship is between us and our notion of the Infinite. And while we might get help, we're ultimately the ones who decide what answer works for us.
This is a piece written by my BIL-IL, in which he talks about the comfort he takes in religious rites.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-31/synagogue-coronavirus-pandemic-seat
She's not lying if the church/ denom she serves does not explicitly teach theism. She is lying if it does, and she gets up publicly and leads prayers, reads creeds, etc., that profess belief she does not have. Why is that hard to grasp?
And 'metaphorical' belief in the scriptures is not the same as disbelieving their basic message, which is a theistic one, including the idea that Jesus is God, and that He died and was resurrected. How can these concepts be understood 'metaphorically' in a way which denies their essence, their essential theism, etc.? Explain that to me, I really want to know how you are using this term, etc. I can understand saying 'metaphorical' understanding of the scriptures would include disbelieving the specs of the creation story of Genesis, embracing theistic evolution and an old earth, etc., but it would not and could not include believing the basic inverse of the underlying theistic spiritual message of the scriptures.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 01, 2020, 07:14:05 AM
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
The sacrifice required is typically material comfort in the present, such as giving to the poor, making effort to help others, etc.
For a universalist, who believes that the afterlife is the same for everyone, then the only specific benefit to religious commitment is therefore the spiritual fulfillment in the present. In that case, the more material comfort a person has, the less likely the religious commitment will "pay off", since the spiritual fulfillment will have to be really huge to compensate for giving up personal comfort.
So this is why "religion lite" (which is what I would call the universalist position) is not terribly compelling; the only time religion becomes "worth it" is one is suffering greatly in some way, so that the material comfort is minimal, so the sacrifice will potentially be worth it.
Thus, to me it's no surprise that the churches of a more universalist persuasion are dying.
Marshy, churches of all stripes are contracting.
Southern Baptist biggest decline in 100 years (https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/june/southern-baptist-sbc-member-drop-annual-church-profile-2019.html)
Catholic Church Decline (https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/catholic-church-decline-western-world-53951)
Protestant Decline (https://www.vox.com/2018/11/5/18058768/white-mainline-protestantism-religion-america-midterms-trump)
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Christianity_in_various_countries)
It is not just your "religion lite" that people are abandoning. Your very high-handed, prescriptive ideas are typical of why.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 01, 2020, 07:14:05 AM
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.
The premise of this thread has bothered me. The significance of religion for all of us has nothing to do with taking texts literally.
Rather, religions are like big containers, filled with little boxes. Some boxes contain garbage, some boxes contain nothing, and some boxes contain jewels.
Examples of jewels are contained in the 10 Commandments. Societies that behave according to most thrive and supplant others, because they get imitated. No actual need for violence. Meanwhile, the great religions, better or worse, at least make it easier for individuals to get along with their near fellows.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 01, 2020, 06:12:50 PM
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 01, 2020, 08:03:52 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 01, 2020, 07:14:05 AM
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.
In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be
logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions,
if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.
So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What
can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 02, 2020, 05:17:30 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 01, 2020, 06:12:50 PM
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 01, 2020, 08:03:52 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 01, 2020, 07:14:05 AM
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.
In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.
So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.
No, the question was not about how one could support religious belief, it was about believing the religious texts literally. These are two very different things.
I think most non-religious people understand the allure and reasons why people would be religious, but believing the Bible literally takes some real mental gymnastics. It has been revised by man so many times, is riddled with contradictions, and is generally incomparable with logic. In addition, people who state they believe it literally only believe in the parts they want, and ignore what they don't.
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 02, 2020, 05:41:12 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 02, 2020, 05:17:30 AM
In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.
So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.
No, the question was not about how one could support religious belief, it was about believing the religious texts literally. These are two very different things.
I agree, but taking texts "literally" means something different depending on whether it's talk of "an army of 10000" (in which case 9999 would be
wrong), versus the resurrection.
Most Christians wouldn't put those two things in the same category.
Quote
I think most non-religious people understand the allure and reasons why people would be religious, but believing the Bible literally takes some real mental gymnastics. It has been revised by man so many times, is riddled with contradictions, and is generally incomparable with logic. In addition, people who state they believe it literally only believe in the parts they want, and ignore what they don't.
I agree with this, but as I said, the hardcore literalists are a small fraction of Christians.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 02, 2020, 05:17:30 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 01, 2020, 06:12:50 PM
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 01, 2020, 08:03:52 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 01, 2020, 07:14:05 AM
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.
In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.
So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.
Sigh. You "win," I guess. Still, there isn't any afterlife. Yes, I state it that boldly, because:
1. There is absolutely no proof an afterlife exists.
2. Although we cannot actually prove 100% that the afterlife does not exist, much that we know about the world and our bodies, suggests, no, screams that it does not. Do people really believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies? Really? In spite of all we know for a fact happens to physical bodies after death? But maybe it is just the "soul" that has eternal life? But what does that even mean to live without a body? What will there be in heaven? Will there be a future and a past? Will there be time? Will you make plans and have goals? Will you just remain in a state of endless praise of God? Will there be choirs? Will there be organized sports? (You think I jest, but in a Pew Research survey, 20% of those who believed in the afterlife thought there would be sports teams.)
3. What we
do know about human psychology gives us a very convincing and simple explanation for the belief an afterlife: collective wishful thinking. And to that you might add political convenience. How better to get a bunch of people to submit to your authority than the humongous spiritual carrot of heaven and stick of hell. And no one can ever prove they don't exist. Genius solution!
Well, so what? What's the harm in believing something that doesn't exist? Live and let live! To each his own! Or Spadify! Well, at the very least, to the extent that people make decisions based on an illusion, they are losing out on fully living in the real world, you know, the one we are currently living in and actually exists.
Another issue is finite resources. All the time, money and other resources spent on fostering an illusion are not spent on dealing with actual problems in the real world. A personal example: My sister and her husband are conservative Lutherans and true believers. Ok, great! More power to them! Right? However, one source of great stress in my sister's life is that her husband insists on tithing (they donate $$,$$$ every year) although they really cannot afford it, what with my sister's disability which keeps her out of the workforce and the fact that they have two children in college (yes, they have loans and financial aid, but they have to pay some themselves). She will never put it so bluntly, but she is hurt that they cannot even afford to take vacations anymore and they scrimp and save (and I mean really scrimp and save) when they are giving away so much money.
But back to the afterlife. For a very moving take on an atheist's view of what happens to us after we die, see: daylight atheism: stardust (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/stardust/), particularly the last full paragraph.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 01, 2020, 06:12:50 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 01, 2020, 07:14:05 AM
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
The sacrifice required is typically material comfort in the present, such as giving to the poor, making effort to help others, etc.
For a universalist, who believes that the afterlife is the same for everyone, then the only specific benefit to religious commitment is therefore the spiritual fulfillment in the present. In that case, the more material comfort a person has, the less likely the religious commitment will "pay off", since the spiritual fulfillment will have to be really huge to compensate for giving up personal comfort.
So this is why "religion lite" (which is what I would call the universalist position) is not terribly compelling; the only time religion becomes "worth it" is one is suffering greatly in some way, so that the material comfort is minimal, so the sacrifice will potentially be worth it.
Thus, to me it's no surprise that the churches of a more universalist persuasion are dying.
Marshy, churches of all stripes are contracting.
Southern Baptist biggest decline in 100 years (https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/june/southern-baptist-sbc-member-drop-annual-church-profile-2019.html)
Catholic Church Decline (https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/catholic-church-decline-western-world-53951)
Protestant Decline (https://www.vox.com/2018/11/5/18058768/white-mainline-protestantism-religion-america-midterms-trump)
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Christianity_in_various_countries)
It is not just your "religion lite" that people are abandoning. Your very high-handed, prescriptive ideas are typical of why.
Churches of all stripes practice forms of "religion lite." "Religion lite" seems to have been defined above as the practice of those who still maintain some involvement in church after abandoning most of their church's core beliefs. There's another form of "religion lite," which I've found all too common, in which people still profess belief in all the traditional core teachings, but can't seem to understand that Christianity is also a matter of day-to-day practice. In churches where a majority of members have developed this attitude, the church tends to become more of a social club than anything else. Youths raised in these social-club churches tend to get bored and leave eventually. Because a social-club church doesn't have much of the real power of faith.
In churches where both belief and actual Christian practice remain or have become vibrant there is often significant growth in attendance, and not just by poaching members from other churches. I've seen it happen. There's still a great hunger in today's society for what the New Testament offers. There just aren't that many churches today offering it in the U.S. In some parts of the world there are, and churches have grown in numbers. There has been explosive church growth in mainland China in recent decades, for example.
So kay and marshwiggle aren't wrong about "religion lite." They're just perhaps overlooking the fact that there are different kinds of it.
A church informed by biblical teaching--all of it, including resurrection, final judgement, salvation by faith in Jesus, AND what Jesus taught about following him day-to-day and spreading his message by living it--is still a powerful thing. We need more of them.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 02, 2020, 06:14:12 AM
1. There is absolutely no proof an afterlife exists.
2. Although we cannot actually prove 100% that the afterlife does not exist, much that we know about the world and our bodies, suggests, no, screams that it does not. Do people really believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies? Really? In spite of all we know for a fact happens to physical bodies after death? But maybe it is just the "soul" that has eternal life? But what does that even mean to live without a body? What will there be in heaven? Will there be a future and a past? Will there be time? Will you make plans and have goals? Will you just remain in a state of endless praise of God? Will there be choirs? Will there be organized sports? (You think I jest, but in a Pew Research survey, 20% of those who believed in the afterlife thought there would be sports teams.)
(they donate $$,$$$ every year)
I'm actually surprised that it took this long for people to discuss the metaphysical problems of belief.
One of the difficulties in discussing belief in our culture is that, no matter what, people always seem to default to Christian concepts of the "afterlife" as some sort of reincarnated "us" in a perfect Heavenly place, which does not seem empirically possible. My wife is an atheist, and I irritate her if I try to discuss the subject---so we never do---and she always defaults to the ridiculousness of believing in a benevolent "sky daddy" or an "Iron Age mythology."
Almost every atheist conversation or tract I've read is predicated upon practical impossibility of a Christian cosmology and a loving God/Father/Shepherd watching over us. "Oh yeah!? Well what about The Holocaust?" which is a valid argument if one begins with this premise. Christopher Hitchens anyone?
My father passed away 10 years ago this month of cancer. He was a former Army paratrooper and government attorney without a spec of mysticism about him. He dutifully took us to church growing up but I think it was just paint-by-the-numbers good American sentiment that good people go to church. In his later life he actually took some classes on religion that explained the presence of Jesus as an amalgam of several prophets patrolling the Middle East at that time; this idea pleased him. He was so opposed to anything not concretely Earthly that he got angry at a party when someone mentioned the possibility of flying saucers. He made such a scene that my mom had me dress up as an alien and come to another dinner party and invite my father to visit my "home planet" to great hilarity. Later I asked him why UFOs annoyed him so much and responded very directly, "There's no secret way to travel through space!!" (exclamation points included). Never mind that we don't yet entirely understand time and space and physics---there was just "no secret way!!"
Then he got cancer and had a reaction to morphine that almost killed him. They had to resuscitate him, and he had the whole "tunnel of light" and "people coming to meet him" and then "telling him to go back." It is entirely possible that this is the subconscious at the moment of death----but I don't think my dad thought so. He didn't really want to talk about it.
Then there was the very professional, practical hospice nurse who said, "Your loved one is going to start having conversations with people from his past who have died" and then she said (and again, I emphasize the almost bland, hard professionalism of her nurse-persona) "and this is contact with 'the other side.'"
And yeah, dad said on several occasions, "I just talked with my father." Sometimes they'd talk about death. Sometimes they would just talk. And there were other people too, but my dad did not want to talk about them
I've never known what to make of these things. If my father had been another kind of person I might have dismissed them as wishful thinking...but there they are. Right on the mark for what others have said about the near-death experience.
We must acknowledge that these experiences can be explained by unproven (if we are talking about "proof") and incomplete observations by neuroscientists, and we must also acknowledge that we don't know what these are.
Remember that we are Earthbound creatures who don't really, truly understand the cosmos yet and how it all works. It might be a tad early to be denouncing the "after life" based upon our very, very limited empirical evidence. So much discussion just strikes me as typical hubris.
Oh yeah----people waste money on all sorts of things. There are a couple posters here that think education is largely a waste of money, if one chooses the wrong major, that is.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 02, 2020, 06:14:12 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 02, 2020, 05:17:30 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 01, 2020, 06:12:50 PM
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the problems with believing in a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 01, 2020, 08:03:52 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 01, 2020, 07:14:05 AM
Let me try again. Any worthwhile accomplishment in life requires commitment; marriage, having children, completing a degree, getting a job, buying a house, etc. Sacrifice of some sort is made for the sake of the potential benefit. Religious commitment is no different. The potential benefit typically consists of
- spiritual fulfillment of some sort in the present; i.e. the "good life"
- pleasant afterlife
I hate to break it to you, but there is no afterlife. So, that sheers off one of your two points.
In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.
So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.
Sigh. You "win," I guess. Still, there isn't any afterlife. Yes, I state it that boldly, because:
1. There is absolutely no proof an afterlife exists.
2. Although we cannot actually prove 100% that the afterlife does not exist, much that we know about the world and our bodies, suggests, no, screams that it does not. Do people really believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies? Really? In spite of all we know for a fact happens to physical bodies after death? But maybe it is just the "soul" that has eternal life? But what does that even mean to live without a body? What will there be in heaven? Will there be a future and a past? Will there be time? Will you make plans and have goals? Will you just remain in a state of endless praise of God? Will there be choirs? Will there be organized sports? (You think I jest, but in a Pew Research survey, 20% of those who believed in the afterlife thought there would be sports teams.)
3. What we do know about human psychology gives us a very convincing and simple explanation for the belief an afterlife: collective wishful thinking. And to that you might add political convenience. How better to get a bunch of people to submit to your authority than the humongous spiritual carrot of heaven and stick of hell. And no one can ever prove they don't exist. Genius solution!
Well, so what? What's the harm in believing something that doesn't exist? Live and let live! To each his own! Or Spadify! Well, at the very least, to the extent that people make decisions based on an illusion, they are losing out on fully living in the real world, you know, the one we are currently living in and actually exists.
Another issue is finite resources. All the time, money and other resources spent on fostering an illusion are not spent on dealing with actual problems in the real world. A personal example: My sister and her husband are conservative Lutherans and true believers. Ok, great! More power to them! Right? However, one source of great stress in my sister's life is that her husband insists on tithing (they donate $$,$$$ every year) although they really cannot afford it, what with my sister's disability which keeps her out of the workforce and the fact that they have two children in college (yes, they have loans and financial aid, but they have to pay some themselves). She will never put it so bluntly, but she is hurt that they cannot even afford to take vacations anymore and they scrimp and save (and I mean really scrimp and save) when they are giving away so much money.
But back to the afterlife. For a very moving take on an atheist's view of what happens to us after we die, see: daylight atheism: stardust (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/stardust/), particularly the last full paragraph.
What we do know about human cultures is that every single one has some concept of a spiritual world and an afterlife.
So, is that pure psychology? Or some sort of awareness of something going on beyond the material world that gets interpreted and explained differently in different cultures?
Sorry to hear about your sister and her husband. Even the devil can ask for money "In Jesus' name." The husband gets something out of what he is doing, and clearly he prioritizes whatever that is over a vacation and other niceties for his wife. That's not the church's fault.
Still, SPADIFY.
Quote from: ciao_yall on September 02, 2020, 08:39:13 AM
What we do know about human cultures is that every single one has some concept of a spiritual world and an afterlife.
That's a rather strong claim, and I rather doubt it's true. For one thing, plenty of modern (atheist!) cultures do not subscribe to either a spiritual world or an afterlife
qua culture (although they of course possess the concepts, because human beings can communicate with one another). Québeckers are a cultural group, for example, and a vociferously secular one to boot. For another, our evidence only actually covers recent human history, and even then it's not always clear that the cultures in question subscribed to beliefs in a spiritual world and an afterlife (it's a pretty fraught issue in scholarship concerning Iron Age Scandinavia, for instance). And AFAIK, Jehovah's witnesses don't believe in the afterlife, and neither do some Jewish groups. Nor do Taoists, and I
think I'm right in asserting that many Indigenous groups don't, either (but I'm no kind of expert). But religious and cultural groups, of course, are not necessarily one and the same.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 09:11:44 AM
Quote from: ciao_yall on September 02, 2020, 08:39:13 AM
What we do know about human cultures is that every single one has some concept of a spiritual world and an afterlife.
That's a rather strong claim, and I rather doubt it's true. For one thing, plenty of modern (atheist!) cultures do not subscribe to either a spiritual world or an afterlife qua culture (although they of course possess the concepts, because human beings can communicate with one another). Québeckers are a cultural group, for example, and a vociferously secular one to boot. For another, our evidence only actually covers recent human history, and even then it's not always clear that the cultures in question subscribed to beliefs in a spiritual world and an afterlife (it's a pretty fraught issue in scholarship concerning Iron Age Scandinavia, for instance). And AFAIK, Jehovah's witnesses don't believe in the afterlife, and neither do some Jewish groups. Nor do Taoists, and I think I'm right in asserting that many Indigenous groups don't, either (but I'm no kind of expert). But religious and cultural groups, of course, are not necessarily one and the same.
Yes, and even if that were true, it is just as likely a result of the human condition than any deeper understanding. Who doesn't want to go to heaven?
Personally, as an athiest, I don't have an opinion about if there is an afterlife or not. This is far beyond our current grasp of things It is possible that we just cease to exist and our afterlife is identical to our pre-life. It is also possible that the quantum mind people (or another as of yet unknown theory) are right and our consciousness is more complex with some form of existence after. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter to me, I will find out soon enough.
What I do know is that I find organized religion and their versions of God and afterlife to be silly. I can respect religious people who take the texts metaphorically and recognize the inherent flaws, but the literalists are insane.
Respectfully, we sometimes get lost in our academic-style pedantry.
It is possible to assert that the concept of the afterlife is archetypal, as is the concept of a creator god, sky gods/chthonic gods, personification of natural forces as gods, demons, ghosts, etc. All of that is innately human. There is plenty to support this. I am sure that with all these learned people here someone knows of some culture that does not possess the concept of "[whatever]," but that is not necessarily the point. This is not peer-review.
I cannot say for sure but I am pretty sure that almost every culture and religion has a very similar cosmology, including an afterlife---Jung and all that.
And please, folks, yes, the Eastern religions have a much different concept, but look it up----metaphoric perhaps, but there is a cosmology there. And we think that the cave paintings and rock gatherings in a number of deep caves are the results of stone age rituals.
I think that even in ordinary discourse, we need to be careful about making universal claims, especially when we're trying to use those universally-quantified claims to draw conclusions about human nature or the structure of human psychology. At that point, we're shifting out of ordinary discourse and into academic and empirical territory.
We should also strive to be clear about our terms, even in ordinary discourse. In this case, the boundaries of 'culture' are unclear and, just as importantly, it's not at all clear what was meant by 'spiritual world' (or, indeed, how it differs from the 'afterlife'). The vaguer and more general we are, even in ordinary discourse, the more trivial our conversations.
Not sure I entirely agree. It's legitimate to use specific examples----in fact the things people have said here are very interesting----but again, we can make accurate generalizations that can be applied to human nature.
Fine, there are some religions which don't have a "sky god," but there are enough to say that the sky god is a constant of human mythology. I am sure that someone who is an expert can make the lineage from Babylon to Egypt to the Etruscan culture to Greece to Rome to Christianity clear (in fact, that would be great) and argue that there is no collective subconscious just a line of appropriated deities, and then point out that the Norse goddess "Hel" probably infused the word and conceptualization of "Hell" into European Christianity, but again I think that misses the point. None of which explains the Yoruba "Shango" in Africa, for instance, the king/sky god and his thunder.
The point is that there is something innately human in seeking the spiritual through some personification of a king/lord deity and a vision of the afterlife. We can concede that even if "culture" is not clearly defined.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 02, 2020, 06:14:12 AM
Well, so what? What's the harm in believing something that doesn't exist? Live and let live! To each his own! Or Spadify! Well, at the very least, to the extent that people make decisions based on an illusion, they are losing out on fully living in the real world, you know, the one we are currently living in and actually exists.
Another issue is finite resources. All the time, money and other resources spent on fostering an illusion are not spent on dealing with actual problems in the real world. A personal example: My sister and her husband are conservative Lutherans and true believers. Ok, great! More power to them! Right? However, one source of great stress in my sister's life is that her husband insists on tithing (they donate $$,$$$ every year) although they really cannot afford it, what with my sister's disability which keeps her out of the workforce and the fact that they have two children in college (yes, they have loans and financial aid, but they have to pay some themselves). She will never put it so bluntly, but she is hurt that they cannot even afford to take vacations anymore and they scrimp and save (and I mean really scrimp and save) when they are giving away so much money.
A couple of thoughts. First, I don't see how it's not possible for one who believes in a life to come to live fully in this one. I've known many strong believers in the life to come. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, rich and poor and in between, educated and uneducated. Some have had generally fortunate lives, some have gotten a pretty raw deal out of life. They all seem to me to have lived pretty full lives, no two of them just alike.
Second, while you no doubt have examples to cite of people who have taken money they once spent on religion and put it to better use, I don't see much evidence of our increasingly post-religious society in general making wiser use of resources than it did in its more religious days. If anything the decline of religious practice has been accompanied by dramatic increases in alcohol and drug abuse, ever-growing amounts of screen time that's mostly a waste of time, a growing prevalence of dysfunctional relationships of all kinds, and a growth in consumer wastefulness that has largely cancelled out any environmental progress we've made. None of this makes it seem like we as a society are getting any better at using resources as we leave religion behind--or are living more fulfilling lives, for that matter.
It's hard for me to speak specifically of your sister and brother-in-law's situation since I don't know more about it. Maybe he is mistaken in insisting on paying a legalistic, formulaic tithe of the family funds when they can't really afford it. Tithing is an Old Testament formula that so many ostensibly New Testament churches have latched onto. The New Testament teaches stewardship, the idea that all our resources are to be managed with an eye to serving God. It's not me giving God 10% of my money, it's a recognition that ALL resources rightfully belong to God. There are times when good stewardship can mean taking care of family needs first. Then again, some people can afford to give much more than 10% of their finances to God's service, if they make it a real priority. Again, I don't know enough about the specific situation to tell whether your brother is misguided, or whether perhaps your sister is. Or maybe they're both doing what they really should be, and she, being only human, just feels hurt about it sometimes.
Quote from: Treehugger on September 02, 2020, 06:14:12 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 02, 2020, 05:17:30 AM
In both of these cases, the original question of the thread was around how people could support religious belief. The points I've made have been to suggest that religious belief can be logically consistent. It is reasonable to reject logically inconsistent worldviews, whether they are religious or not, but it is also reasonable to have respect for logically consistent ones, even if you don't agree with them. And to evaluate whether a view is logically consistent, you have to consider whether the unprovable assumptions, if they were true, would make the system of belief logically consistent.
So, whether there is "a metaphysical or supernatural presence in the world" and/or "an afterlife" cannot be proven. What can be evaluated is whether any system of belief including those is internally consistent. That doesn't prove it, but it does allow a rational person to follow it honestly.
Sigh. You "win," I guess. Still, there isn't any afterlife. Yes, I state it that boldly, because:
1. There is absolutely no proof an afterlife exists.
Do "dark matter" and "dark energy" exist?
Quote
Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect, or emit light, so they cannot be detected by observing electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is material that cannot be seen directly.
(And is thought to account for 85% of the "matter" in the universe.)
How is that any less metaphysical than God or heaven?
Physicists aren't usually thought to be a fanciful lot.
Quote
2. Although we cannot actually prove 100% that the afterlife does not exist, much that we know about the world and our bodies, suggests, no, screams that it does not. Do people really believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies? Really? In spite of all we know for a fact happens to physical bodies after death? But maybe it is just the "soul" that has eternal life? But what does that even mean to live without a body? What will there be in heaven? Will there be a future and a past? Will there be time? Will you make plans and have goals? Will you just remain in a state of endless praise of God? Will there be choirs? Will there be organized sports? (You think I jest, but in a Pew Research survey, 20% of those who believed in the afterlife thought there would be sports teams.)
Since, more or less by definition, no-one who has been there has been able to talk about it, it makes sense that any ideas about the afterlife would be extremely vague; the idea that human consciousness transcends the physical body is the important point.
Quote
3. What we do know about human psychology gives us a very convincing and simple explanation for the belief an afterlife: collective wishful thinking. And to that you might add political convenience. How better to get a bunch of people to submit to your authority than the humongous spiritual carrot of heaven and stick of hell. And no one can ever prove they don't exist. Genius solution!
Well, so what? What's the harm in believing something that doesn't exist? Live and let live! To each his own! Or Spadify! Well, at the very least, to the extent that people make decisions based on an illusion, they are losing out on fully living in the real world, you know, the one we are currently living in and actually exists.
Another issue is finite resources. All the time, money and other resources spent on fostering an illusion are not spent on dealing with actual problems in the real world.
From much of the research I've seen, religious people on average give more to charities, even
non-religious ones, than non-religious people.
Quote
But back to the afterlife. For a very moving take on an atheist's view of what happens to us after we die, see: daylight atheism: stardust (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/stardust/), particularly the last full paragraph.
That's very poetic and well-written.
The point is, a person's wordview influences how they
interpret reality. The thing that stands out to me from there is how much the writer yearns for something transcendent.
Quote
I mentioned earlier how many veterans' graves there are to be seen in this cemetery, but even beyond the sad legacy of hatred and warfare inextricably bound up with our history, there are more common, more mundane instances of inhumanity even in our daily lives. How much do most of us do to help those in need? How often do we put our own desires and feelings ahead of other people's? How often do we remember that those we meet in everyday life, as well as those starving and dying in conflicts around the globe, are not just statistics or faceless strangers, but other human beings who feel, dream and have hopes and aspirations just as we do?
If the body we see is indeed the closest continuer of a departed loved one, it makes sense to pay our respects.
I chose to come to this place in order to have these thoughts, in order to reflect on our mortality. I do not view this as morbid at all, but as one of the most powerful affirmations of life there is. Nothing else I know of makes one appreciate and cherish life as much as a walk through a graveyard; nothing else makes one realize just how fragile, and therefore how valuable, life really is.
I also view this experience as a test, the most profound test of an atheist, to see if I truly live my life in accordance with the principles I claim to follow.
If I, as an atheist, can confront it and still endure, then I will know that the worldview I have chosen can withstand the harsh truths of reality.
We cannot prevent death, and so instead we should do the next best thing: work to make sure that life is not wasted, that both our lives and the lives of those around us are filled with happiness and purpose and free from suffering.
Once or twice I see other people standing over graves in the distance, but it is a large cemetery, and that is all. No voices, no sounds from the outside world disturb the reverent silence. I cannot say I am ungrateful for the solitude, but still, does no one else come to these peaceful graves? Does no one else remember these people? They must have living relatives, somewhere among the branching and intertwining family trees. Are these distant ancestors, people to whom their living descendants never felt particularly close? Do people become so involved with the minutiae of day-to-day life that they forget to pay their respects as often as they would like?
Might it be that our all-too-frequent lack of respect for human life, the dreary mundanity that pervades so many of our own lives, the absence of a true spirituality in human society, all ultimately stem from our reluctance to confront death and acknowledge that it awaits us all?
I firmly believe that, if we ever fully realized the fragility of life and the finality of death, we would never speak a word of anger or impatience to anyone close to us in our lives ever again. Such an epiphany might have other beneficial effects as well. It might help us realize that there are more important things than money and material gains. It might make us less willing to expend the future for the sake of the present. Almost certainly, it would give us perspective, help us see beyond the everyday – help us recover some of that sense of spirituality, that sense of cosmic awe, that is found in our lives far too rarely.
But the molecules that once were me will still exist. The atoms that made up my body – iron, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, all the heavy elements forged in the crucibles of dying stars – will remain. Liberated from their temporary home, they will rejoin the rest of the planet, taking new shapes, finding new arrangements, becoming part of other life. I will become merged with everything.
I will become part of the trees that grow wherever my ashes are scattered, joining the ecosystem of the forest. I will be in the slow green heartwood of the trunks as they patiently tick off the centuries, in the buds that burst forth in spring and in the leaves that explode with color in autumn. I will be the sparkle of sunlight on the surface of a flowing mountain stream. I will sink into the earth and mix with the groundwater, eventually flowing back and rejoining the ocean where all life on this planet ultimately began. I will be in the waves that crash on the shore, in the warm sheltered tidal pools, in the coral reefs that bloom with life, and in the depths that echo with whale songs. I will be subducted into the planet's core and join the three-hundred-million-year cycle of the continental plates. I will rise into the sky and, in the fullness of time, become dispersed throughout the atmosphere, until every breath will contain part of me. And billions of years from now, when our sun swells and blasts the Earth's atmosphere away, I will be there, streaming into space to rejoin the stars that gave my atoms birth. And perhaps some day, billions of years yet beyond that, on some distant planet beneath bright alien skies, an atom that once was part of me will take part in a series of chemical reactions that may ultimately lead to new life – life that will in time leave the sea that gave it birth, crawl up onto the beach, and look up into the cosmos and wonder where it came from.
For an essay about the finality of death, the writer is absolutely convinced of the importance of
values that are universal, of the need to "pay respects" to non-existent people,
and that somehow the ongoing existence of the
atoms from a person's body still have some significance in consequence.
The attempt to claim belief in a purely material world is riddled with reverence for abstractions like values, humanity, compassion, and so on.
I do know that following Jesus leads to a different understanding of what counts as "fulfilling" and what is good use of resources.
Here's a situation I know intimately. My father has a very well-developed mind, with a strong aptitude for mathematics and spatial reasoning. He went to college intending to go into architecture or engineering. Instead he found himself called to preach and to pastor small rural churches as a bi-vocational minister. He altered his college plans and studied for the ministry. His family did not pressure him into this--they insisted that he think long and hard before taking that step, even though his father had already been serving as a bi-vocational minister himself.
So Dad spent many years pastoring small churches and making a living at several occupations. Mostly he laid bricks five days a week to support our family, studied to deliver pastoral messages on Wednesdays and Sundays, and engaged in such pastoral work as making three-hour round trips to Little Rock to visit people in the hospital. He did other things too, like using some of his limited available time off to go on short-term mission trips. And rescuing stranded people from the local interstate highway, arranging for temporary lodging and helping them to get their vehicles fixed. Sometimes they were Spanish speakers, and Mom, being a Spanish teacher, was able to help translate. He made sure to set an example of giving financially to the church, even when that sometimes meant giving more than he was receiving from them in salary.
My brother and I weren't deprived growing up. But we did grow up without pricey vacations and a lot of other stuff that even rural kids not uncommonly get in modern America. We grew up accustomed to using stuff until it was used up, and living in a house with a very home-made look, because Dad had built it himself (With some help from brothers and church members--they helped each other out on stuff like that some).
We could have had more money and time to do fun stuff with if we hadn't gone to church. But looking back, I don't feel like we missed out (Well, it would have been nice to have done some camping out--wouldn't have cost either much money or time, but Dad wasn't into it, and Mom sure wasn't). Mom and Dad have never indicated that they feel they missed out. I think my brother feels the same way. It's not like we grew up in a joyless household. It was a place of regular hugs and I-love-yous and laughter. It was also a place where trying to serve God was a priority. I didn't grow up seeing any conflict between these things.
With no family of my own to support, I could live much better than I do on my librarian's salary. There are trips I could take and stuff I could have. But I'd rather spend what I have on showing Jesus' love by helping to meet their needs. It's not about trying to meet some 10% target (I've been going well over that in recent years). It's about making priorities in life. My priorities are informed by what I learn in God's word, and how God's word informs what I observe in the world around me. The more I take the Bible--all of it--seriously, the more I feel free to serve other people, instead of trying desperately to grab all the fleeting happiness I can before dying. That's another reason why I take the Bible's teachings at face value.
apl is quite right about the other form of 'religion lite' that she mentioned. She lives in a part of the country that sees much more of this than an overly secularized place like Mass.
The nature of the afterlife is an important question for Christians (or for that matter for adherents to any faith system) to discuss amongst themselves, but perhaps it is less important for it to be discussed in general amongst folks of different faith perspectives (though, of course, Pascal's wager remains a thing). But even theism does not require an afterlife, and these would be two different questions.
Tithing is an example of something latched upon by many churches, using OT precepts incorrectly applied to a church, and often with more or less explicit financial motivations. But it does not matter, when discussing the concept of just how much good has been done by individual Christians, churches, and denominations, over the years, with the money their people have given, often very sacrificially so. There really are no corresponding examples that atheists can show here.
Quote from: apl68 on September 02, 2020, 10:36:55 AM
Second, while you no doubt have examples to cite of people who have taken money they once spent on religion and put it to better use, I don't see much evidence of our increasingly post-religious society in general making wiser use of resources than it did in its more religious days. If anything the decline of religious practice has been accompanied by dramatic increases in alcohol and drug abuse, ever-growing amounts of screen time that's mostly a waste of time, a growing prevalence of dysfunctional relationships of all kinds, and a growth in consumer wastefulness that has largely cancelled out any environmental progress we've made. None of this makes it seem like we as a society are getting any better at using resources as we leave religion behind--or are living more fulfilling lives, for that matter.
Well...okay, apl, but do you have anything that can definitely tie any of that to religion?
I might wonder at the notion that the generations of the 20s-50s did a particularly good job of making use of our "resources." I mean, the 60s environmental movement didn't come out of thin air, nor the Cold War (talk about a waste of resources!), nor even the television (which I am not sure is such a bad thing). And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
And, as always, we need point out that a great many of these religious Americans were slave-owners, then Jim-Crow-purveyors, etc. Not to mention, again, the relationship between the Nazis and the Catholic church.
I'm just not sure you can argue what you just argued.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
If you're looking for examples of money that was once spent on religion and is now put to better use, I'd suggest looking at the social safety net. Even in a shithole country like the US, the extant social safety net, such as it is, is more effective and efficient than the collection plate.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
If you're looking for examples of money that was once spent on religion and is now put to better use, I'd suggest looking at the social safety net. Even in a shithole country like the US, the extant social safety net, such as it is, is more effective and efficient than the collection plate.
That's not a fair comparison. Since the collection plate is
voluntary, but the social safety net is paid for by
compulsory taxes, the amount of money involved (and the source) are totally unrelated. If you wanted to do that fairly, you'd do something like comparing, on a per-capita basis, how much religious people contribute to social causes (including money used for those purposes through religious agencies) to the amount of taxes, again on a per-capita basis, that go to the same causes. You'd also have to factor in
efficiency. Good religious charities have very low overhead, whereas some government agencies have very high overhead.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 02, 2020, 01:18:10 PM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
If you're looking for examples of money that was once spent on religion and is now put to better use, I'd suggest looking at the social safety net. Even in a shithole country like the US, the extant social safety net, such as it is, is more effective and efficient than the collection plate.
That's not a fair comparison. Since the collection plate is voluntary, but the social safety net is paid for by compulsory taxes, the amount of money involved (and the source) are totally unrelated. If you wanted to do that fairly, you'd do something like comparing, on a per-capita basis, how much religious people contribute to social causes (including money used for those purposes through religious agencies) to the amount of taxes, again on a per-capita basis, that go to the same causes. You'd also have to factor in efficiency. Good religious charities have very low overhead, whereas some government agencies have very high overhead.
Re the social safety net, churches, along with extended family, WERE the social safety net long before secular governments got involved. And the architects of the social safety net were in large part believers who saw creating a secular social safety net as a way of mobilizing government's resources to create a more godly society. The social safety net as we know it was in most respects in place before the recent wholesale decline in religious observance. Yes, I know that many religious voters vote for candidates who have undermined the safety net in recent years. It's shameful how many professing Christians are failing to follow Jesus' commandments to meet the needs of those around them. That and other voter phenomena we've been seeing in recent years is a measure of how many believers are not paying
enough attention to what the Bible says, rather than too much.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
Really? You really don't see the wholesale collapse of nuclear and extended family structures across so much of society, and the rise of the disposable marriage, as signs of growing relational dysfunction? One can argue causation, but there's certainly a big correlation there.
Quote from: apl68 on September 02, 2020, 01:51:11 PM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
Really? You really don't see the wholesale collapse of nuclear and extended family structures across so much of society, and the rise of the disposable marriage, as signs of growing relational dysfunction? One can argue causation, but there's certainly a big correlation there.
Forgive me, but God bless divorce!!! You're imagining a world in which the nuclear and extended family was automatically a good thing, was automatically functional, and should be preserved. This was simply not the case. We had dysfunction, abuse, and familial collapse and people entrapped by societal norms and the situation swept under the rug. The family may be redefining itself now, divorce may be the new norm, but this is a good thing.
And again, can any of this be tied to religion? In context of the above, I would say that religion, particularly the Catholic church, held people in a kind of earthbound, human-made hell.
Religion has done much good in the world, there is no doubt about that. But we can't pretend that it is the best way to do good.
Quote from: apl68 on September 02, 2020, 01:51:11 PM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
Really? You really don't see the wholesale collapse of nuclear and extended family structures across so much of society, and the rise of the disposable marriage, as signs of growing relational dysfunction? One can argue causation, but there's certainly a big correlation there.
Really, for the reasons Wahoo stated. I don't think of relationships which are characterized by marital rape and other sexual violence, physical abuse (of wife and children, to be clear), verbal abuse, and substance abuse (viz. alcohol) to be especially 'functional'. People made do, but we're a lot better off now that, for example, we don't beat the living crap out of our kids just so that they'll remember special events (e.g. public executions). And, of course, now that women and children are afforded equal rights and protections under the law.
Like Wahoo, I think that the relative ease of divorce is a fine thing. And, for the record, I grew up with a single parent.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 02:07:35 PM
Quote from: apl68 on September 02, 2020, 01:51:11 PM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
Really? You really don't see the wholesale collapse of nuclear and extended family structures across so much of society, and the rise of the disposable marriage, as signs of growing relational dysfunction? One can argue causation, but there's certainly a big correlation there.
Forgive me, but God bless divorce!!! You're imagining a world in which the nuclear and extended family was automatically a good thing, was automatically functional, and should be preserved. This was simply not the case. We had dysfunction, abuse, and familial collapse and people entrapped by societal norms and the situation swept under the rug. The family may be redefining itself now, divorce may be the new norm, but this is a good thing.
No, I'm not imagining an idyllic world of the past. I'm far too much of an historian to believe in golden ages of that sort. I've also suffered in an abusive marriage myself. But I do not believe that abuse was so near-universal that today's world of divorce--or relationships that never involved marriage in the first place--is an improvement. I've seen plenty of divorces where there was no abuse where the marriage--and the children's home life--could have been saved if there had been a greater commitment to it. The initiators of these divorces have told me so themselves.
I never said in the first place that the society of the past in which religious belief was the norm was any sort of ideal. A previous poster asserted that the decline of religious belief would make the world a better place. What I was trying to say is that we've not seen much evidence of that happening despite the decline of recent decades. Maybe you disagree with me that things have gotten worse off in the last few decades. But pretty much nobody right now seems to be of the opinion that they're doing better. If a decline in religious observance is supposed to make for a better society, then it doesn't seem to have been working so far. That was my original point.
I am a divorcee myself, and while there was nothing that could be construed as abuse on either part, I thank Heavens for the ability for the two of us to go our separate ways.
I may have to disagree with you about the last 20 years or so----the years of religious decline----as being "worse" than anything that has come before. I could come up with a pretty long list of examples for how we are better off, but I suspect they are all stuff we know.
Our current moment is doing badly because of a pandemic that is not as terrible as the last Spanish Flu pandemic and a president that is supported by evangelicals. And even now, given that at one point in time it would not be an issue to shoot an unarmed black man, things are better.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 09:11:44 AM
And AFAIK, Jehovah's witnesses don't believe in the afterlife
Yes, they do. But there is limited seating in heaven.
Based on their understanding of scriptures such as Revelation 14:1-4, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that exactly 144,000 faithful Christians go to heaven to rule with Christ in the kingdom of God. (from Wikipedia).
I've always been curious why they don't think heaven is already full up by now.
Quote from: apl68 on September 02, 2020, 01:51:11 PM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
Really? You really don't see the wholesale collapse of nuclear and extended family structures across so much of society, and the rise of the disposable marriage, as signs of growing relational dysfunction? One can argue causation, but there's certainly a big correlation there.
There is also the issue that divorce is not limited to the non-religious. The collapse of the family unit seems quite prevalant in religious families as well, so I think this goes beyond religion and has more to do with other cultural shifts (so yes, I would argue causation). I also know many non-religious families that simply did not get married but live as a family unit and have been together for many years, so marriage is not the only way for family units to exist.
This reminds me of when I moved to Mississippi. What stood out to me is how many very young pregnant women and mothers there were. Many religious people will try to act as though religion and abstinence is the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy, meanwhile teenage pregnancy rates are higher in more religious states.
Quote from: apl68 on September 02, 2020, 01:46:31 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 02, 2020, 01:18:10 PM
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on September 02, 2020, 01:10:48 PM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 02, 2020, 12:19:24 PM
And I really doubt the notion that relationships are more dysfunctional than they ever have been; I really doubt that.
Given how widespread and accepted abuse (in all its forms) was until very recently, yeah, I don't buy it either.
If you're looking for examples of money that was once spent on religion and is now put to better use, I'd suggest looking at the social safety net. Even in a shithole country like the US, the extant social safety net, such as it is, is more effective and efficient than the collection plate.
That's not a fair comparison. Since the collection plate is voluntary, but the social safety net is paid for by compulsory taxes, the amount of money involved (and the source) are totally unrelated. If you wanted to do that fairly, you'd do something like comparing, on a per-capita basis, how much religious people contribute to social causes (including money used for those purposes through religious agencies) to the amount of taxes, again on a per-capita basis, that go to the same causes. You'd also have to factor in efficiency. Good religious charities have very low overhead, whereas some government agencies have very high overhead.
Re the social safety net, churches, along with extended family, WERE the social safety net long before secular governments got involved. And the architects of the social safety net were in large part believers who saw creating a secular social safety net as a way of mobilizing government's resources to create a more godly society. The social safety net as we know it was in most respects in place before the recent wholesale decline in religious observance. Yes, I know that many religious voters vote for candidates who have undermined the safety net in recent years. It's shameful how many professing Christians are failing to follow Jesus' commandments to meet the needs of those around them. That and other voter phenomena we've been seeing in recent years is a measure of how many believers are not paying enough attention to what the Bible says, rather than too much.
I think we all recognize that religion served as an early social safety net. Many non religious people would agree that religion playsed an important role in earlier society for this, and other reasons, but that it is not longer needed and only causes issues now.
To attribute the modern social safety net to religion seems to be a stretch. In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
I think we all recognize that religion served as an early social safety net. Many non religious people would agree that religion playsed an important role in earlier society for this, and other reasons, but that it is not longer needed and only causes issues now.
To attribute the modern social safety net to religion seems to be a stretch. In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Really? Examples? Soviet Union? China? North Korea? Revolutionary France? Venezuela? The history of communism is basically shared misery. The countries (such as Denmark) which have the best social safety nets are the ones allowing religious
plurality; i.e. there is no state-prescribed metaphysics,
including atheism.
So even if the safety net cannot be ascribed to religion, official atheism has a terrible record of compassion and justice.
Quote
That's not a fair comparison. Since the collection plate is voluntary, but the social safety net is paid for by compulsory taxes, the amount of money involved (and the source) are totally unrelated. If you wanted to do that fairly, you'd do something like comparing, on a per-capita basis, how much religious people contribute to social causes (including money used for those purposes through religious agencies) to the amount of taxes, again on a per-capita basis, that go to the same causes. You'd also have to factor in efficiency. Good religious charities have very low overhead, whereas some government agencies have very high overhead.
That's exactly right: collections are voluntary,
and that's a major problem. We know that the poor give more generously to charity, as a share of their income, and that's a bad thing. It's the rich who should be giving more. A progressive system of taxation fairly distributes the harms of giving across society. The result is not only a larger collection, but a fairer one.
Perhaps more importantly, however, charitable contributions are distributed according to individual whim. This means that the funds are distributed unfairly, according to a non-neutral party's priorities. Look at billionaires like Bezos. They give away loads of money--to pet causes. They insist on controlling the distribution of their unfairly-earned funds, to ensure that it goes to causes they think are priorities and people they deem to be deserving. We'd be massively better off if instead of doing that, they just paid the equivalent sum in taxes (to say nothing of a larger sum, which fairness would demand). What's needed, instead, is a fair distribution according to society's needs.
Plus, governments have much more clout than individuals and private organizations, and need their work done on a large scale. This means they have the ability to secure better outcomes for all kinds of public projects, including sanitation and healthcare.
None of this is to say that charitable giving is a bad thing, as such. The point, rather, is that it's no replacement for a social safety net.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 06:08:26 AM
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
I think we all recognize that religion served as an early social safety net. Many non religious people would agree that religion playsed an important role in earlier society for this, and other reasons, but that it is not longer needed and only causes issues now.
To attribute the modern social safety net to religion seems to be a stretch. In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Really? Examples? Soviet Union? China? North Korea? Revolutionary France? Venezuela? The history of communism is basically shared misery. The countries (such as Denmark) which have the best social safety nets are the ones allowing religious plurality; i.e. there is no state-prescribed metaphysics, including atheism.
So even if the safety net cannot be ascribed to religion, official atheism has a terrible record of compassion and justice.
You typically missed the point, Marshy.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 03, 2020, 07:43:26 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 06:08:26 AM
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
I think we all recognize that religion served as an early social safety net. Many non religious people would agree that religion playsed an important role in earlier society for this, and other reasons, but that it is not longer needed and only causes issues now.
To attribute the modern social safety net to religion seems to be a stretch. In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Really? Examples? Soviet Union? China? North Korea? Revolutionary France? Venezuela? The history of communism is basically shared misery. The countries (such as Denmark) which have the best social safety nets are the ones allowing religious plurality; i.e. there is no state-prescribed metaphysics, including atheism.
So even if the safety net cannot be ascribed to religion, official atheism has a terrible record of compassion and justice.
You typically missed the point, Marshy.
How so? The argument was that communism provided the
strongest safety net; I can't think of a single example of a communist country safety net that is better than what is provided by other countries which are not communist, (such as Denmark). So what did I miss?
The medieval monasteries saved Western civilization, and Pope Urban II set us on the road to 9/11.
We cannot just whisk away either the good the church has done or the damage. We can't just insist that Catholic priests who abuse children are "ungodly" or some such: they are also purveyors church agency in the world. And we cannot ignore Catholic Charities either.
It's a pretty simple deduction from there.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 07:53:27 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 03, 2020, 07:43:26 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 06:08:26 AM
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
I think we all recognize that religion served as an early social safety net. Many non religious people would agree that religion playsed an important role in earlier society for this, and other reasons, but that it is not longer needed and only causes issues now.
To attribute the modern social safety net to religion seems to be a stretch. In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Really? Examples? Soviet Union? China? North Korea? Revolutionary France? Venezuela? The history of communism is basically shared misery. The countries (such as Denmark) which have the best social safety nets are the ones allowing religious plurality; i.e. there is no state-prescribed metaphysics, including atheism.
So even if the safety net cannot be ascribed to religion, official atheism has a terrible record of compassion and justice.
You typically missed the point, Marshy.
How so? The argument was that communism provided the strongest safety net; I can't think of a single example of a communist country safety net that is better than what is provided by other countries which are not communist, (such as Denmark). So what did I miss?
Communism doesn't work. We all know that. No need to point it out. Kron's point is simple: the modern social safety net is the creation of modern culture, not the church. Re-read.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 03, 2020, 08:06:18 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 07:53:27 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 03, 2020, 07:43:26 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 06:08:26 AM
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
I think we all recognize that religion served as an early social safety net. Many non religious people would agree that religion playsed an important role in earlier society for this, and other reasons, but that it is not longer needed and only causes issues now.
To attribute the modern social safety net to religion seems to be a stretch. In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Really? Examples? Soviet Union? China? North Korea? Revolutionary France? Venezuela? The history of communism is basically shared misery. The countries (such as Denmark) which have the best social safety nets are the ones allowing religious plurality; i.e. there is no state-prescribed metaphysics, including atheism.
So even if the safety net cannot be ascribed to religion, official atheism has a terrible record of compassion and justice.
You typically missed the point, Marshy.
How so? The argument was that communism provided the strongest safety net; I can't think of a single example of a communist country safety net that is better than what is provided by other countries which are not communist, (such as Denmark). So what did I miss?
Communism doesn't work. We all know that. No need to point it out. Kron's point is simple: the modern social safety net is the creation of modern culture, not the church. Re-read.
I believe you need to re-read:
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Kron specifically argued that communism produces the strongest safety nets. That is demonstratably false. The implication that the less religion, the better the safety net, is again, demonstratably false.
All of the
other failures of communism are beside the point.
You should stay away from "implications," Marshy. You make terrible inferences based upon what you want to see. Rightly or wrongly, these communist countries are cradle-to-grave social safety nets. Social safety nets are indeed strongest in countries with the religious systems weakened by the government, even if said nets are ineffective. Kron's comment is no more complicated than that.
Upon reflection, I've realized that I made a serious mistake in letting myself get drawn into a debate over whether religion makes the world a better place. I could continue to marshal evidence and arguments for my own position, but I've observed from numerous threads on all sorts of topics that that sort of thing only serves to prolong arguments, and doesn't really do anybody any good.
Arguing isn't what I came here to do in the first place. I've been trying on this thread to offer personal explanations for how somebody can still take the Bible (Can't speak to other religious texts because I don't follow those) literally. I tried to do some of that yesterday, but what I said there was ignored in favor of picking apart comments I was foolish enough to make regarding religion and society, and I compounded my error by answering that.
Sometimes religious practices make the world better, sometimes they make it worse. The thing is, the teachings of Jesus aren't really about making the world better. They're about how to live in an inherently evil world, with the promise of someday being able to get out of it. Jesus didn't promise his followers that if they followed his teachings they would create a better world. On the contrary, he warned them many times that following him would get them into all kinds of trouble. And when it did, they were to demonstrate their faithfulness to him by how they responded.
Somebody slaps you on the cheek? Offer to let him slap the other cheek too.
Somebody curses you? Bless him. Somebody hurts you and treats you spitefully? Pray for him.
You see somebody in need? Offer whatever help you can to that person. It's the same as seeing Jesus himself in need and helping him.
You have the means to hold a celebration? Don't invite your friends and relatives who might pay you back for it. Invite the poor who can't pay you back, and trust that God will pay you back in his own good time.
And much, much more.
I've been trying to live my life this way for a long time, and you know what? Trying to live like that in a world where most people don't is kind of like hanging a "Kick Me" sign on your own back. You'd be better off in terms of money and success and achieving standard personal goals if you followed Jesus' teachings only up to a point--only when it didn't cost you very much, and made you look good. You're not going to make the world around you a better place. The world's going to remain stubbornly bad. Because that's the way people in general are.
But here's something I've realized. If you not only believe in following Jesus' teachings about the right way to live, but also accept what he said about being the Son of God, who will somebody come back and finally put the world to rights, and will make good all the things you've lost in his service, you start to realize that it doesn't matter. You realize that you don't have to be angry and bitter at those who've abused you in your marriage, or taken advantage of you, of murdered one of your friends, or voted for bad political candidates. Because God's going to see too it that everybody ultimately receives justice. In the meantime you can learn to love all those people, because God loves them just like he loved you when you yourself were living an evil life, and still loves you when you mess up. And once in a while you get to have the joy of seeing one of those people wake up like you did and start following Jesus too.
Anyway that's why I take the Bible literally. I would encourage not taking my word for it, or anybody else's. Just sit down and read the Bible for yourself, starting with the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. If you've read it before, read it again. Forget what other people have told you about it. Just read it with an open mind. If you've got questions, ask some believer about it. Just make it an honest "What do you think this means" question, okay? Not something along the lines of "How on earth can you be such a moron as to believe this?" I already know I'm a fool! We're all fools. Some of us just try to be fools who follow Jesus.
Quote from: apl68 on September 03, 2020, 10:40:30 AM
Upon reflection, I've realized that I made a serious mistake in letting myself get drawn into a debate over whether religion makes the world a better place. I could continue to marshal evidence and arguments for my own position, but I've observed from numerous threads on all sorts of topics that that sort of thing only serves to prolong arguments, and doesn't really do anybody any good.
Arguing isn't what I came here to do in the first place. I've been trying on this thread to offer personal explanations for how somebody can still take the Bible (Can't speak to other religious texts because I don't follow those) literally. I tried to do some of that yesterday, but what I said there was ignored in favor of picking apart comments I was foolish enough to make regarding religion and society, and I compounded my error by answering that.
Sometimes religious practices make the world better, sometimes they make it worse. The thing is, the teachings of Jesus aren't really about making the world better. They're about how to live in an inherently evil world, with the promise of someday being able to get out of it. Jesus didn't promise his followers that if they followed his teachings they would create a better world. On the contrary, he warned them many times that following him would get them into all kinds of trouble. And when it did, they were to demonstrate their faithfulness to him by how they responded.
Somebody slaps you on the cheek? Offer to let him slap the other cheek too.
Somebody curses you? Bless him. Somebody hurts you and treats you spitefully? Pray for him.
You see somebody in need? Offer whatever help you can to that person. It's the same as seeing Jesus himself in need and helping him.
You have the means to hold a celebration? Don't invite your friends and relatives who might pay you back for it. Invite the poor who can't pay you back, and trust that God will pay you back in his own good time.
And much, much more.
I've been trying to live my life this way for a long time, and you know what? Trying to live like that in a world where most people don't is kind of like hanging a "Kick Me" sign on your own back. You'd be better off in terms of money and success and achieving standard personal goals if you followed Jesus' teachings only up to a point--only when it didn't cost you very much, and made you look good. You're not going to make the world around you a better place. The world's going to remain stubbornly bad. Because that's the way people in general are.
But here's something I've realized. If you not only believe in following Jesus' teachings about the right way to live, but also accept what he said about being the Son of God, who will somebody come back and finally put the world to rights, and will make good all the things you've lost in his service, you start to realize that it doesn't matter. You realize that you don't have to be angry and bitter at those who've abused you in your marriage, or taken advantage of you, of murdered one of your friends, or voted for bad political candidates. Because God's going to see too it that everybody ultimately receives justice. In the meantime you can learn to love all those people, because God loves them just like he loved you when you yourself were living an evil life, and still loves you when you mess up. And once in a while you get to have the joy of seeing one of those people wake up like you did and start following Jesus too.
Anyway that's why I take the Bible literally. I would encourage not taking my word for it, or anybody else's. Just sit down and read the Bible for yourself, starting with the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. If you've read it before, read it again. Forget what other people have told you about it. Just read it with an open mind. If you've got questions, ask some believer about it. Just make it an honest "What do you think this means" question, okay? Not something along the lines of "How on earth can you be such a moron as to believe this?" I already know I'm a fool! We're all fools. Some of us just try to be fools who follow Jesus.
There are good Christians and bad Christians. Just like there are good and bad Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, Wiccans...
Good people use religion to make themselves better people.They find moral and spiritual support for doing the right things for their fellow human beings. Maybe good people don't always agree what the right thing is, but they believe they are coming from a good and loving place and trying to make the world better.
Bad people use religion as an excuse to be a$$holes. They justify their prejudices and convince themselves that others are inherently evil, less than human, or simply flawed/broken. Their vision of a better world involves exalting themselves and crushing those who they decide are "less-than."
To borrow loosely from
Schitt's Creek, "It's the wine, not the label."
Quote from: apl68 on September 03, 2020, 10:40:30 AM
Upon reflection, I've realized that I made a serious mistake in letting myself get drawn into a debate over whether religion makes the world a better place. I could continue to marshal evidence and arguments for my own position, but I've observed from numerous threads on all sorts of topics that that sort of thing only serves to prolong arguments, and doesn't really do anybody any good.
Arguing isn't what I came here to do in the first place.
You seem like a very good, genuine person, apl, and I find your commentary interesting and I would not upset you personally, but this is a place where people are discussing this particular issue. The thread was posed as a debate from the beginning. If the commentary here is indeed upsetting, maybe don't post here.
I have read the Bible and find it most beautiful as a literary object---in fact, I am working on a manuscript that talks about the KJV versions of Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes!-----but you must realize that this writing is not going to have the same effect on everybody that it has on you.
God bless.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 08:42:44 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 03, 2020, 08:06:18 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 07:53:27 AM
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 03, 2020, 07:43:26 AM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 06:08:26 AM
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
I think we all recognize that religion served as an early social safety net. Many non religious people would agree that religion playsed an important role in earlier society for this, and other reasons, but that it is not longer needed and only causes issues now.
To attribute the modern social safety net to religion seems to be a stretch. In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Really? Examples? Soviet Union? China? North Korea? Revolutionary France? Venezuela? The history of communism is basically shared misery. The countries (such as Denmark) which have the best social safety nets are the ones allowing religious plurality; i.e. there is no state-prescribed metaphysics, including atheism.
So even if the safety net cannot be ascribed to religion, official atheism has a terrible record of compassion and justice.
You typically missed the point, Marshy.
How so? The argument was that communism provided the strongest safety net; I can't think of a single example of a communist country safety net that is better than what is provided by other countries which are not communist, (such as Denmark). So what did I miss?
Communism doesn't work. We all know that. No need to point it out. Kron's point is simple: the modern social safety net is the creation of modern culture, not the church. Re-read.
I believe you need to re-read:
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Kron specifically argued that communism produces the strongest safety nets. That is demonstratably false. The implication that the less religion, the better the safety net, is again, demonstratably false.
All of the other failures of communism are beside the point.
You are conflating countries that call themselves communist with what communism actually stands for. None of the countries you list are actually communist, nor has there ever actually been a truly communist country. These are all dictatorships with communist ideals (perhaps) that have been corrupted in various ways (perhaps inevitably so). That being said, if you look at dictatorships with communist ideals such as the USSR, Cuba, etc., you will see that they offer free education, medical care, and other social safety nets, as long as you don't disappear or something. Also note that I am not saying that it works this way in practice, I am simply stating that the whole basis of communism is equality and a strong social safety net in the absence of religion.
As for Denmark allowing a religious plurality, this is true but the level of religion there is relatively low. The point of this is that social safety nets tend to be stronger in countries that are less pious. This could be correlation rather than causation, or it could be that more religious regions see less need for the government providing this and would prefer to see it done by the church (or whatever).
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 01:06:25 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 08:42:44 AM
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 05:48:14 AM
In fact, I would argue that the social safety net and other services aimed at equality tend to be stronger in less religious countries (ie Denmark) and if anything there is a negative correlation. In the most extreme form, communism has the strongest social net with the least religion. You can argue about the outcomes of communism, but the theoretical intent is equality and prosperity for all without a need for god to tell us to do so.
Kron specifically argued that communism produces the strongest safety nets. That is demonstratably false. The implication that the less religion, the better the safety net, is again, demonstratably false.
All of the other failures of communism are beside the point.
You are conflating countries that call themselves communist with what communism actually stands for. None of the countries you list are actually communist, nor has there ever actually been a truly communist country. These are all dictatorships with communist ideals (perhaps) that have been corrupted in various ways (perhaps inevitably so).
I've heard that argument since the '80's. (Albania was supposed to be closest to Marxist paradise then.....)
The question is, if communism is such a wonderful system, how has it failed to be reasonably instantiated
even once? In a
century, across
hundreds of countries?????? The most obvious interpretation is that is is so inherently unstable or self-contradictory that it is impossible.
Quote
That being said, if you look at dictatorships with communist ideals such as the USSR, Cuba, etc., you will see that they offer free education, medical care, and other social safety nets, as long as you don't disappear or something.
Every rose has its thorns.....
Quote
Also note that I am not saying that it works this way in practice, I am simply stating that the whole basis of communism is equality and a strong social safety net in the absence of religion.
The fact that no country actually can be investigated for this because there are no "truly" communist countries makes it purely speculative, with NO empirical evidence.
Quote
As for Denmark allowing a religious plurality, this is true but the level of religion there is relatively low. The point of this is that social safety nets tend to be stronger in countries that are less pious. This could be correlation rather than causation, or it could be that more religious regions see less need for the government providing this and would prefer to see it done by the church (or whatever).
The point is that the countries enived for their social safety nets are NOT officially atheist. Denying religion in any of the countries where it has been done, has NOT led to the best societies; it has led to grim, opressive ones.
Based on empirical evidence, attempts to
stamp out religion have made societies worse, not better.
Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 03, 2020, 11:32:25 AM
Quote from: apl68 on September 03, 2020, 10:40:30 AM
Upon reflection, I've realized that I made a serious mistake in letting myself get drawn into a debate over whether religion makes the world a better place. I could continue to marshal evidence and arguments for my own position, but I've observed from numerous threads on all sorts of topics that that sort of thing only serves to prolong arguments, and doesn't really do anybody any good.
Arguing isn't what I came here to do in the first place.
You seem like a very good, genuine person, apl, and I find your commentary interesting and I would not upset you personally, but this is a place where people are discussing this particular issue. The thread was posed as a debate from the beginning. If the commentary here is indeed upsetting, maybe don't post here.
I have read the Bible and find it most beautiful as a literary object---in fact, I am working on a manuscript that talks about the KJV versions of Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes!-----but you must realize that this writing is not going to have the same effect on everybody that it has on you.
God bless.
No, everybody isn't going to get the same thing out of the Bible. I still encourage people to read it. And people who read it once have been known to get more out of it upon reading it again.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 01:26:56 PM
Denying religion in any of the countries where it has been done, has NOT led to the best societies; it has led to grim, opressive ones.
Based on empirical evidence, attempts to stamp out religion have made societies worse, not better.
What empirical evidence are you referring to?
The roots of communism begin in a class struggle against the aristocracy. Religion is one of the victims of the Lenin's and Stalin's totalitarian reign. But you must realize that the Russian Orthodox Church was heavily involved with the autocratic, aristocratic government before Communism. In other words, the church was an oppressor and helped to bring about its own demise.
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 01:26:56 PM
Based on empirical evidence, attempts to stamp out religion have made societies worse, not better.
Based on historical evidence, attempts to stamp out
anything or anyone, such as a religious group, ethnic group, political organization, or other "other," have been a sign that a particular society has deeper problems. Those attempts to
stamp out are a symptom of that society's deeper problem.
Quote from: ciao_yall on September 03, 2020, 03:05:29 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 01:26:56 PM
Based on empirical evidence, attempts to stamp out religion have made societies worse, not better.
Based on historical evidence, attempts to stamp out anything or anyone, such as a religious group, ethnic group, political organization, or other "other," have been a sign that a particular society has deeper problems. Those attempts to stamp out are a symptom of that society's deeper problem.
Excellent point. Since a communist system has much more government control over everything, it gives much more scope for that kind of damage. (As does a theocracy, or any other kind of authoritarian regime.)
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 03:26:59 PM
Quote from: ciao_yall on September 03, 2020, 03:05:29 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 01:26:56 PM
Based on empirical evidence, attempts to stamp out religion have made societies worse, not better.
Based on historical evidence, attempts to stamp out anything or anyone, such as a religious group, ethnic group, political organization, or other "other," have been a sign that a particular society has deeper problems. Those attempts to stamp out are a symptom of that society's deeper problem.
Excellent point. Since a communist system has much more government control over everything, it gives much more scope for that kind of damage. (As does a theocracy, or any other kind of authoritarian regime.)
You may think you are arguing against my points, but you are actually missing the point and arguing things I was not stating. Just because communism has never worked does not mean the theoretical principles are not good. It simply means that humans are not capable of making it work.
World piece is a good theory, hard to deny, but has also failed to materialize. This doesn't mean world piece is a bad idea, just that it doesn't work for humans, or at least not now. Based on your logic, it has always failed so it is a bad idea.
Likewise, I never argued that stamping out religion is a good thing, I was mearly pointing out that interest in a social safety net is not exclusive to religious people. In fact, it seems that less religious, more secular governments are more likely to do this. Communism was just the extreme example of this where they are stamping out religion, but their founding principles is a social safety net.
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 04:39:54 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 03:26:59 PM
Quote from: ciao_yall on September 03, 2020, 03:05:29 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 01:26:56 PM
Based on empirical evidence, attempts to stamp out religion have made societies worse, not better.
Based on historical evidence, attempts to stamp out anything or anyone, such as a religious group, ethnic group, political organization, or other "other," have been a sign that a particular society has deeper problems. Those attempts to stamp out are a symptom of that society's deeper problem.
Excellent point. Since a communist system has much more government control over everything, it gives much more scope for that kind of damage. (As does a theocracy, or any other kind of authoritarian regime.)
You may think you are arguing against my points, but you are actually missing the point and arguing things I was not stating. Just because communism has never worked does not mean the theoretical principles are not good. It simply means that humans are not capable of making it work.
World piece is a good theory, hard to deny, but has also failed to materialize. This doesn't mean world piece is a bad idea, just that it doesn't work for humans, or at least not now. Based on your logic, it has always failed so it is a bad idea.
Likewise, I never argued that stamping out religion is a good thing, I was mearly pointing out that interest in a social safety net is not exclusive to religious people. In fact, it seems that less religious, more secular governments are more likely to do this. Communism was just the extreme example of this where they are stamping out religion, but their founding principles is a social safety net.
You can try to explain how Marshy misreads, but no matter what he just sees what he wants to see.
We've been discussing the modus operandi of literalism/devout faith in the face of reality. And I think we have an example.
Quote from: ciao_yall on September 03, 2020, 03:05:29 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on September 03, 2020, 01:26:56 PM
Based on empirical evidence, attempts to stamp out religion have made societies worse, not better.
Based on historical evidence, attempts to stamp out anything or anyone, such as a religious group, ethnic group, political organization, or other "other," have been a sign that a particular society has deeper problems. Those attempts to stamp out are a symptom of that society's deeper problem.
Reminds me of a line from the movie
Harry Met Sally: Well, that symptom has been f!cking my wife! :-( :-)
Quote from: Kron3007 on September 03, 2020, 04:39:54 PM
Just because communism has never worked does not mean the theoretical principles are not good. It simply means that humans are not capable of making it work.
I don't think this really needs any reply.