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I see this as an attempt to divide and conquer atheists. We have here thoughtful atheists, fashionable atheists, and lazy atheists. This is wrong because atheists are not united anyway except by their lack of belief in gods.
You're choosing to see that, much like a commissar would choose that stance in old Russia, a groove to fall into. That's because you couch everything in 'either/or' contrasts. There are many views (like in 3D chess) that we don't fully get, that change everything and seem paradoxical to that old dialectical thing. Is death the end? To an atheist 'yes'. To a 'believer', 'no'. But they can BOTH be true, there ARE ways to see that involve many more space/time dimensions that we usually allow for. It's not all equivocating.
Religious folk're like everyone else. There are as many bad reasons for adopting that stance as good ones. Much of the rhetoric is premature on both sides. Many of religion's spokespersons are an embarrassment.
I do not understand how anyone could jump onto an atheist bandwagon. If they were not really atheists, fear of damnation would prevent them from declaring themselves as such.
Why so? You assume that all atheists are reacting against just Christianity, Judaism or Islam in their fundamentalist forms. That could be very revealing y'know. Hindus or Buddhists don't really fear 'damnation' in that way. If you ask a Buddhist if he's an atheist, he'll be forced to answer, 'Yes and No'. Does that seem like folly to you?
Declaring one's (true) atheism may be fashionable but in many countries such as the US it is far from an easy option. I have read many accounts of ostracism from family and employment because of it. In some cultures the results would be even worse.
You don't make absolute cases from the ad hominem extremes. There'll be nutters everywhere, perhaps religious ones ESPECIALLY, but that's not it. And institutional exploitation and abuse. The very reason people find these extremes so obscene in religion is precisely BECAUSE they contradict what it's really supposed to be about.
'True' atheism? I've learnt never to judge people by what they profess to believe or disbelieve. We're multi-layered. People often haven't looked at their own deepest layers to truly know WHAT they believe, no matter the vociferous professions. It's not all in the intellect what we believe.
Atheists are simply gaining the courage to make themselves known. This is down to personal honesty. Condemning this is despicable and is part of the reason that many atheists despise religion.
I think I hear the violins. It's a rough time for atheists nowadays, burning at the stake, racking, hanging, firing squads etc. etc.. Brings a tear to the eye. In many places, it's a religious profession that takes the courage. It cuts both ways. But atheism itself MAY be defined as a 'religion' in its own right, a set of beliefs and maybe dogmas about the nature of meaning and reality. True religion is always tolerant and 'secular' oddly enough.
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Posted: |
Sep 20, 2010 - 8:50 AM
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By: |
Jehannum
(Member)
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I do not understand how anyone could jump onto an atheist bandwagon. If they were not really atheists, fear of damnation would prevent them from declaring themselves as such.
Why so? You assume that all atheists are reacting against just Christianity, Judaism or Islam in their fundamentalist forms. That could be very revealing y'know. Hindus or Buddhists don't really fear 'damnation' in that way. If you ask a Buddhist if he's an atheist, he'll be forced to answer, 'Yes and No'. Does that seem like folly to you?
Any religion that does not condemn unbelief is fine by me and, I suspect, many other atheists. This is why atheist reaction is mainly targeted at the three Abrahamic faiths. You have guarded yourself by restricting those threats of damnation to fundamentalists but in these cases fundamentalist means those who accept what is written in their relevant holy book.
Declaring one's (true) atheism may be fashionable but in many countries such as the US it is far from an easy option. I have read many accounts of ostracism from family and employment because of it. In some cultures the results would be even worse.
You don't make absolute cases from the ad hominem extremes. There'll be nutters everywhere, perhaps religious ones ESPECIALLY, but that's not it. And institutional exploitation and abuse. The very reason people find these extremes so obscene in religion is precisely BECAUSE they contradict what it's really supposed to be about.
Ad hominem extremes? You mean 'actual cases'. Research the social acceptance of atheism in the United States. Unless all of the incidents I have heard about are lies then that country is not somewhere I would enjoy being an atheist.
Atheists are simply gaining the courage to make themselves known. This is down to personal honesty. Condemning this is despicable and is part of the reason that many atheists despise religion.
I think I hear the violins. It's a rough time for atheists nowadays, burning at the stake, racking, hanging, firing squads etc. etc.. Brings a tear to the eye. In many places, it's a religious profession that takes the courage. It cuts both ways. But atheism itself MAY be defined as a 'religion' in its own right, a set of beliefs and maybe dogmas about the nature of meaning and reality. True religion is always tolerant and 'secular' oddly enough.
No violins required; none were asked for.
Your list of religion's historical wrongs which have now been righted by secular reason in our society (no doubt to the ire of those who wish their religion still had the powers it used to) is another irrelevant strawman. If the worst an atheist has to face is ostracism and ignorant prejudice then that is a price worth paying. However, it is worth remembering that the price of apostasy in Sharia law is rather higher.
Your misunderstanding of atheism seems complete. Atheism has no set of beliefs, no dogma. It may not be defined as a religion because it is not one. It is simply the absence of belief in gods. One may be an atheist and believe in an afterlife, for example.
As always you have over-complicated everything with analogy (3D chess - a bad analogy since 3D chess is as deterministic as 2D chess) and allusion to mysticism. With your unimaginable space / time dimensions in which the afterlife and the existence of gods can be both true and not true you are beyond the stage at which you can participate in a logical argument, in which case I wonder at the point of any discussion at all.
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....... but in these cases fundamentalist means those who accept what is written in their relevant holy book.
The 'relevant holy books' are open to interpretation, they aren't bus timetables. You're oversimplifying in the same way that a machine-gunner prefers a narrow group target to a wider field.
Research the social acceptance of atheism in the United States. Unless all of the incidents I have heard about are lies then that country is not somewhere I would enjoy being an atheist.
The US isn't everything. Actually the US is quite polarised. In the late '60s/'70s it was as trendy as anywhere else to be atheistic there. But you can't attack Christianity by its more extreme practitioners any more than you can attack the plumbing profession on the basis of that muffed cistern job.
However, it is worth remembering that the price of apostasy in Sharia law is rather higher.
You seem to like lumping things together. Because some religious traditions are exploitative and backward and demeaning, then all religion is false. That's self-evident over-simplifying. Try more complexity. Parsimony has its limitations.
Your misunderstanding of atheism seems complete. Atheism has no set of beliefs, no dogma. It may not be defined as a religion because it is not one. It is simply the absence of belief in gods. One may be an atheist and believe in an afterlife, for example.
Your misunderstanding of BELIEF seems complete. Belief is not something really that one can DECIDE to do (that might be hypocrisy), and though open maybe to rational analysis, is not in itself rational within the individual who's doing the believing.
Belief stems in the individual from a mixture of things, intuition, knowledge (or lack of it), probablilities, experimentation, complexes, needs, wants etc. etc. and experiences, never mind revelation etc. First you need to define a 'god'. If a 'god' might be defined as the most basic motivating principle, then everyone has one. For some it's atheism. But there are many FANATICAL atheists who go at it with all the zeal of the religious obsessive. 'No point in denying that. You are very confident in what you believe and don't believe. In this you resemble the fundamentalists. But even life itself can throw up spanners in these certainties. I put it to you that very few of us know WHAT we truly believe, we only know what STANCES we adopt. Belief is not totally rational, and that includes atheistic belief.
As always you have over-complicated everything with analogy (3D chess - a bad analogy since 3D chess is as deterministic as 2D chess) and allusion to mysticism. With your unimaginable space / time dimensions in which the afterlife and the existence of gods can be both true and not true you are beyond the stage at which you can participate in a logical argument, in which case I wonder at the point of any discussion at all.
Better to over-complicate than to oversimplify, which is the misuse of Occam that most atheists use. Who says that the universe and everything in it is so simple that it should be convenient for us and our little patterns?
3D chess may be as 'deterministic' as 2D chess, and it's in this 'deterministic' (not a good word) quality that my point has strength entirely. There are still winners and losers.
Suppose you play 16D chess? No matter how 'deterministic' that too might be, it'll fox those of us who operate in just 4. There are many examples of paradoxical relationships that seem quite irreconcilable UNTIL all the dimensions are called into play. Any Zen Buddhists who deal in being/non-being notions will know what I'm on about, far better than I. You can't do microsurgery with a chainsaw, just because Occam likes it kept simple. If there was space here we could go into it. But it needs a LOT of space.
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Posted: |
Sep 21, 2010 - 1:56 AM
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By: |
Jehannum
(Member)
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The 'relevant holy books' are open to interpretation, they aren't bus timetables. You're oversimplifying in the same way that a machine-gunner prefers a narrow group target to a wider field.
I leave you to interpret 'put to death' as used in Deuteronomy, for example. You probably think it means 'given a nice present and told not to be so silly'.
The US isn't everything.
But it is something.
But you can't attack Christianity by its more extreme practitioners any more than you can attack the plumbing profession on the basis of that muffed cistern job.
As I said, 'its more extreme practitioners' are those who follow what the holy books say.
You seem to like lumping things together. Because some religious traditions are exploitative and backward and demeaning, then all religion is false. That's self-evident over-simplifying. Try more complexity. Parsimony has its limitations.
I did not claim that the evils of religion prove it false, only harmful. Because religions can say whatever they want to say, whatever people have added, whatever people have taken away, that purpose might be good or bad; it's a lottery.
Your misunderstanding of BELIEF seems complete. Belief is not something really that one can DECIDE to do (that might be hypocrisy), and though open maybe to rational analysis, is not in itself rational within the individual who's doing the believing.
Unless that individual is naturally rational.
Belief stems in the individual from a mixture of things, intuition, knowledge (or lack of it), probablilities, experimentation, complexes, needs, wants etc. etc. and experiences, never mind revelation etc.
I know about beliefs. I have them.
First you need to define a 'god'.
No I don't, you do. I do not claim the non-existence of all undefined entities. Show me your definition and we'll work from there. After all, it's you who is making the claim that there is something. I was happy in my childhood agnosticism until the patently false information I was fed from religion made me an atheist.
If a 'god' might be defined as the most basic motivating principle, then everyone has one.
If that's your definition of god then I am not an atheist in your religion.
For some it's atheism. But there are many FANATICAL atheists who go at it with all the zeal of the religious obsessive. 'No point in denying that. You are very confident in what you believe and don't believe. In this you resemble the fundamentalists. But even life itself can throw up spanners in these certainties. I put it to you that very few of us know WHAT we truly believe, we only know what STANCES we adopt. Belief is not totally rational, and that includes atheistic belief.
So there are fanatics for everything: football, musicals. As you say, you can't judge these by their worst practitioners.
Edit: Addition Not many atheists claim to KNOW there is no god. I certainly don't. Any that do I would myself regard with suspicion of fanaticism. That degree of certainty about anything seems ridiculous and unnecessary to me.
Better to over-complicate than to oversimplify, which is the misuse of Occam that most atheists use. Who says that the universe and everything in it is so simple that it should be convenient for us and our little patterns?
No one. Not Ockham. I seem to remember in another thread that it was you who had a misunderstanding of that principle. You were getting it mixed up with Sherlock Holmes' method of 'that which remains must be the truth'.
3D chess may be as 'deterministic' as 2D chess, and it's in this 'deterministic' (not a good word) quality that my point has strength entirely. There are still winners and losers.
Suppose you play 16D chess? No matter how 'deterministic' that too might be, it'll fox those of us who operate in just 4. There are many examples of paradoxical relationships that seem quite irreconcilable UNTIL all the dimensions are called into play. Any Zen Buddhists who deal in being/non-being notions will know what I'm on about, far better than I. You can't do microsurgery with a chainsaw, just because Occam likes it kept simple. If there was space here we could go into it. But it needs a LOT of space.
If you could only understand the Ockham principle perhaps you'd spend less time on bad analogies. There is a thought that all analogies are imperfect. In my experiences with the religious, they are the most guilty of making bad ones. 'You believe in the law of gravity, don't you? If there's a law then there must be a lawmaker ....'
Edit: Change Ockham's Razor doesn't like simplicity. It likes no more complexity than is necessary. That's probably why you have a problem with it.
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I leave you to interpret 'put to death' as used in Deuteronomy, for example. You probably think it means 'given a nice present and told not to be so silly'.
No, you're deliberately making 'religion' a STATIC thing, and representing your own stance as progressive. The 'Deuteronomic' law was a national stage of development. Judaism developed quite a lot after that, and Christianity questioned the whole basis of Deuteronomy in the gospels, though few fundamentalists will admit that. Most of the Old Testament was written in retrospect after the Babylonian exile, as a nationalistic rallying point for a people whose backs were against the wall. Religions, like anything else DEVELOP.
As I said, 'its more extreme practitioners' are those who follow what the holy books say.
I'd be interested in how YOU'D follow such books if you were a believer. You do seem to have a literalist interpretation of things. I was harangued recently (not as part of an argument, but because this guy was a fanatic who felt he'd been abused by being forced to sing 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam' as a kid!) by an atheist who shouted, 'Ah, you can't pick'n'mix the Bible!' He had in fact been brainwashed into a very literalist thinking which, as an atheist he still displayed. Your lumping of all religionists into one club of fanatics is a flaw in your attack.
I did not claim that the evils of religion prove it false, only harmful. Because religions can say whatever they want to say, whatever people have added, whatever people have taken away, that purpose might be good or bad; it's a lottery.
Welcome to the real world! It IS a lottery. Again, just like the fundamentalists, you want absolute certainties. Once we eat of the tree of knowledge and self-consciousness, we're responsible for our own thought and belief. Religion doesn't change that. The big leaders, Christ, Moses, Buddha etc. all said it'd be so, that there'd be lies and mistakes. Show me any other arena where that isn't so. It's as true in science. But you allow for 'real' science against 'false' where you WON'T allow for 'real' religion against false. You judge scientific endeavour by its best and religion by its worst.
Unless that individual is naturally rational.
I can think of no philosophical system that would not call that inflated.... to call onself 'naturally rational'. The flaw of Icarus. Very few people are totally rational, in fact probably none. Psychosis for instance MIGHT be rationally causal and explicable, but that doesn't make a psychotic rational in his attitudes or behaviour. You're using two different definitions of the word.
To me, your own stance is always an emotional one here, usually about your 'contempt' for this or that, or a sort of 'goading'. You too use your intellect to serve your emotion, and you don't question that emotion.
I know about beliefs. I have them.
I say that few of us REALLY know what we believe. We're all very spoilt nowadays, belief is cheap... or is it?
First you need to define a 'god'.
No I don't, you do. I do not claim the non-existence of all undefined entities. Show me your definition and we'll work from there. After all, it's you who is making the claim that there is something. I was happy in my childhood agnosticism until the patently false information I was fed from religion made me an atheist.
No, it's verboten here for me to 'preach', and I won't. And if you look very closely, though you may extrapolate from all I say what I believe, I actually have made no actual 'claim'. The claims are all yours. On many threads, often inserted whenever the tiniest microbe of context gives opportunity. It's emotion.
If a 'god' might be defined as the most basic motivating principle, then everyone has one.
If that's your definition of god then I am not an atheist in your religion.
That's not my definition. I'm saying that everyone tends to worship something, and you do too. You claim to worship rationality, but you (despite being a mathematician) don't like expanding the parameters of that rationality to see if unexplained things can actually fit in a bigger picture. You like closed systems.
So there are fanatics for everything: football, musicals. As you say, you can't judge these by their worst practitioners.
Well, take it on board.
Not many atheists claim to KNOW there is no god. I certainly don't. Any that do I would myself regard with suspicion of fanaticism. That degree of certainty about anything seems ridiculous and unnecessary to me.
Believe it or not, very few 'believers' claim to KNOW there is a God either. That's why there's faith. But faith can be a KIND of knowledge as Paul said. I know you'll cite the extremists and fundies, but they're always there. I know people who've had the most remarkable experiences, precognitive experiences, some think they've seen healings etc.. . but they're very cautious to talk about these things in 'religious' terms OR 'scientific' because they don't want to balspheme on one hand or to or to mislead on the other.
Better to over-complicate than to oversimplify, which is the misuse of Occam that most atheists use. Who says that the universe and everything in it is so simple that it should be convenient for us and our little patterns?
No one. Not Ockham. I seem to remember in another thread that it was you who had a misunderstanding of that principle. You were getting it mixed up with Sherlock Holmes' method of 'that which remains must be the truth'.
Ockham assumes that when the impossible is removed, what is left contains the truth of a thing. No more, no less. It's actually not very useful. And it's NOT accepted as a 'law', just a theorem. Parsimony and empiricism are practical, we go on what we know. But the day we think we know everything, we've lost it.
3D chess may be as 'deterministic' as 2D chess, and it's in this 'deterministic' (not a good word) quality that my point has strength entirely. There are still winners and losers.
If you could only understand the Ockham principle perhaps you'd spend less time on bad analogies. There is a thought that all analogies are imperfect. In my experiences with the religious, they are the most guilty of making bad ones. 'You believe in the law of gravity, don't you? If there's a law then there must be a lawmaker ....'
No, you're losing the argument there. You're projecting onto me that analogy about lawmakers, because you want me in an easily dealt with box. It's not that simple. Before the Big Bang there was (probably) no TIME. That changes all your notions of causality. You don't realise you're just being self-centred. The very fluidity that you say I need to use re analogies, is the same fluidity you're not giving to the bigger picture. All our cosmologies INCLUDING the Big Bang are only analogies until the nature of the ORIGIN is unravelled. All scientific theories are just analogies. As are myths. The more answers, the more questions. To use imagination, you have to explore from both ends.
Edit: Change Ockham's Razor doesn't like simplicity. It likes no more complexity than is necessary. That's probably why you have a problem with it.
Again, you like it kept simple. Most dogmatists do. The great weakness in your argument is that you don't KNOW how simple or otherwise the universe actually is. (Transcendentalists are a lot closer to getting that.) Parsimony and radical conservative theory assume that the universe will all fall into a neat simplicity because WE need that to understand it. That's human-centric arrogance just like the anti-Galileo lobby. We don't KNOW how little complexity is necessary.
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Posted: |
Sep 21, 2010 - 7:45 AM
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By: |
Jehannum
(Member)
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No, you're deliberately making 'religion' a STATIC thing, and representing your own stance as progressive. The 'Deuteronomic' law was a national stage of development. Judaism developed quite a lot after that, and Christianity questioned the whole basis of Deuteronomy in the gospels, though few fundamentalists will admit that. Most of the Old Testament was written in retrospect after the Babylonian exile, as a nationalistic rallying point for a people whose backs were against the wall. Religions, like anything else DEVELOP.
By its own definition it is static. The holy books forbid change. Religions change due to outside, secular, or societal pressure. They resist change even if they are eventually forced to succumb to reason.
I'd be interested in how YOU'D follow such books if you were a believer. You do seem to have a literalist interpretation of things. I was harangued recently (not as part of an argument, but because this guy was a fanatic who felt he'd been abused by being forced to sing 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam' as a kid!) by an atheist who shouted, 'Ah, you can't pick'n'mix the Bible!' He had in fact been brainwashed into a very literalist thinking which, as an atheist he still displayed. Your lumping of all religionists into one club of fanatics is a flaw in your attack.
If I believed a book was the word of truth I would follow what it said. Some things written in the holy books are meant to be taken literally; other things are metaphorical. "Kill unbelievers" is literal. Such a dangerous commandment, if it were meant to be metaphorical, shows criminal recklessness on the part of its writer. If it no longer applies why do we still have it?
Welcome to the real world! It IS a lottery. Again, just like the fundamentalists, you want absolute certainties. Once we eat of the tree of knowledge and self-consciousness, we're responsible for our own thought and belief. Religion doesn't change that. The big leaders, Christ, Moses, Buddha etc. all said it'd be so, that there'd be lies and mistakes. Show me any other arena where that isn't so. It's as true in science. But you allow for 'real' science against 'false' where you WON'T allow for 'real' religion against false. You judge scientific endeavour by its best and religion by its worst.
If religion doesn't offer me absolute certainty why would I want it? How would it be better than just muddling through life on my own? That certainty is a major part of why many (non-fundamentalist) believers believe. By the way, the absoluteness I am talking about is not certainty that the religious belief is true, it's that if it is true it's absolute, universal.
I can think of no philosophical system that would not call that inflated.... to call onself 'naturally rational'. The flaw of Icarus. Very few people are totally rational, in fact probably none. Psychosis for instance MIGHT be rationally causal and explicable, but that doesn't make a psychotic rational in his attitudes or behaviour. You're using two different definitions of the word.
Some people are naturally sceptical from childhood. Logic and rational thinking are tools of the sceptical, and are a natural extension to this mode of thinking. I don't think it's particularly inflated to claim oneself to be rational, although the claim is certainly open to error.
To me, your own stance is always an emotional one here, usually about your 'contempt' for this or that, or a sort of 'goading'. You too use your intellect to serve your emotion, and you don't question that emotion.
Emotion may compel me to bother to write anything at all, to care about what other people think. So what? It's not at the root of my stance.
I say that few of us REALLY know what we believe. We're all very spoilt nowadays, belief is cheap... or is it?
Very vague. I can't really get what you're saying here.
No, it's verboten here for me to 'preach', and I won't. And if you look very closely, though you may extrapolate from all I say what I believe, I actually have made no actual 'claim'. The claims are all yours. On many threads, often inserted whenever the tiniest microbe of context gives opportunity. It's emotion.
It's forbidden to talk about religion and you're doing that. Of course I have noticed that you never write what your beliefs or thoughts are. You allude to mysticism, Buddhism .... everything, really, but you never have the courage to say what you personally believe.
With me it's part of my online persona.
That's not my definition. I'm saying that everyone tends to worship something, and you do too. You claim to worship rationality, but you (despite being a mathematician) don't like expanding the parameters of that rationality to see if unexplained things can actually fit in a bigger picture. You like closed systems.
I'm not a mathematician and have only ever claimed an interest in maths. I venerate rationality but I do see potential limitations with it; it's only a model of reality. All human thought of the outside is. However, human thought is what we're lumbered with and rationality is the best of that. It's repeatable; it's learnable; it's teachable; it works; each step follows from the previous.
Believe it or not, very few 'believers' claim to KNOW there is a God either.
Oh? I've had that claim made to my face, several times.
I know people who've had the most remarkable experiences, precognitive experiences, some think they've seen healings etc.. . but they're very cautious to talk about these things in 'religious' terms OR 'scientific' because they don't want to balspheme on one hand or to or to mislead on the other.
People have all sorts of experiences. That's good for them. I don't see why you mention this.
Ockham assumes that when the impossible is removed, what is left contains the truth of a thing. No more, no less. It's actually not very useful. And it's NOT accepted as a 'law', just a theorem. Parsimony and empiricism are practical, we go on what we know. But the day we think we know everything, we've lost it.
It really, really doesn't, you know. Let me spell out the theorem (I agree it's not a law) one more time:
If there are two competing explanations of a phenomenon choose the one with fewer assumptions
It does NOT imply that when the impossible is removed the truth remains. That is something else entirely.
No, you're losing the argument there. You're projecting onto me that analogy about lawmakers, because you want me in an easily dealt with box. It's not that simple. Before the Big Bang there was (probably) no TIME. That changes all your notions of causality. You don't realise you're just being self-centred. The very fluidity that you say I need to use re analogies, is the same fluidity you're not giving to the bigger picture. All our cosmologies INCLUDING the Big Bang are only analogies until the nature of the ORIGIN is unravelled. All scientific theories are just analogies. As are myths. The more answers, the more questions. To use imagination, you have to explore from both ends.
If, before the big bang, there was no time then causality doesn't apply. They're not my notions of causality anway. If, before the big bang, there was nothing at all - well, no mind is capable of understanding true nothingness so there's really not a lot that reasoned thought - or ANY kind of thought can do about it.
Again, you like it kept simple. Most dogmatists do. The great weakness in your argument is that you don't KNOW how simple or otherwise the universe actually is. (Transcendentalists are a lot closer to getting that.) Parsimony and radical conservative theory assume that the universe will all fall into a neat simplicity because WE need that to understand it. That's human-centric arrogance just like the anti-Galileo lobby. We don't KNOW how little complexity is necessary.
Most dogmatists surely complexify to obfuscate.
I do not know how simple or otherwise the universe actually is. To find that answer is the job of science. People like Hawking suspect that the nature governing the universe is very simple. This is the grand unified theory that is the goal of many scientists. This is only a suspicion, however, based on induction from other areas of science which at first seem poles apart (such as magnetism and electricity, no pun intended) but which turn out to be part of the same unity.
But perhaps there is no simplicity. Perhaps nature is infinitely divisible and infinitely complex.
So science and rational thinking have limitations. I accept that. This does not mean, could not ever mean, that I will ever accept the vague, rambling anecdotes, the bizarre revelations and unrepeatable miracles, the quack cures, the pseudoscience of homeopathy and crystals and energies and chakras, and the clearly evolved and man-made religions in which this world is drowning.
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Loved the speech, and it's probably all true what Fry says.
I'm not catholic, i despise the institution.
The people it killed 'in the name of God' are countless.
I'm living in Belgium, where a new scandal of child-abuse by a Bishop, covered up by a Cardinal is big news.
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[By its own definition it is static. The holy books forbid change. Religions change due to outside, secular, or societal pressure. They resist change even if they are eventually forced to succumb to reason.
No. You have to approach a Holy Book with the same rigour that you approach ANY book, even more so. There are no shortcuts. There are MANY reasons that religions change, often from within. And you forget how often religions have been the very agents who INITIATED the changes. The Enlightenment sprang from the Reformation and the Renaissance.
If I believed a book was the word of truth I would follow what it said.
Why doesn't that surprise me? You'd be a fundamentalist. Just with a different polarity.
Some things written in the holy books are meant to be taken literally; other things are metaphorical. "Kill unbelievers" is literal.
What book is that? If you're talking about the genocidal passages in Joshua etc., you need to know that there's not a lot of evidence that that was ever taken seriously. The thing is a DEVELOPMENT. Anyone can see that a lot of the OT was written by a priestly caste who wnated to make sure they got the best meat at sacrifices etc.. But they did hold a nation together in the Exile. Sometimes religions function as COMPENSATORY fantasies for a collective. There's no evidence that the very sensualist ancient Israelites went around slaughtering any more than anyone else. Now if it's Muslims you're on about, they were very tolerant. That one's in your own head. Even the gallery knows better than that.
Vicky Coren (how'd you spell that?), nice daughter of Alan Coren said recently that people who take those old injunctions literally are akin to the sort of people who accost soap-opera stars in supermarkets and berate them for what they did on TV the night before.
Such a dangerous commandment, if it were meant to be metaphorical, shows criminal recklessness on the part of its writer. If it no longer applies why do we still have it?
We don't. Where do you get that from? No Jewish or Christian person is into that!!! AND you know it. Simple extremist scaremongering there.
Yer average redneck fundy will tell you that every word of the Old Testament is sacrosanct, because JC said, 'Not one jot of the Law will pass away'. But they conveniently forget he ALSO said that 'All who came before me were thieves and liars' in his Good Shepherd speech. He berated the Pharisees for their obsessive INVENTION of traditions, and debunked the 'You get what you deserve' Deuteronomic thing. That's why he got strung up in fact. See the 'woman taken in adultery' story in John's Gospel. He got around things.
It's not a bus-timetable. You have to do the work.
If religion doesn't offer me absolute certainty why would I want it? How would it be better than just muddling through life on my own? That certainty is a major part of why many (non-fundamentalist) believers believe. By the way, the absoluteness I am talking about is not certainty that the religious belief is true, it's that if it is true it's absolute, universal.
The ancients who were into monotheism didn't know if there was a great power behind everything. So, in their efforts to understand the universe, they postulated there WAS one. And they couched their appeals to HIM since he'd be the most just, with all the answers. Don't put the cart before the horse. The believer goes to that absolute however he can, in a sense of experiment. The 'Books' followed that eventually, not the other way round.
Some people are naturally sceptical from childhood. Logic and rational thinking are tools of the sceptical, and are a natural extension to this mode of thinking. I don't think it's particularly inflated to claim oneself to be rational, although the claim is certainly open to error.
It's an easy claim. The Nazis, the Apartheid people, the extreme Communists, the fascists, the eugenicists, the Social Dawinists .... all thought they were being 'rational'. You have to have all the variables you can and THEN to admit what you don't know to be worthy of the name.
Emotion may compel me to bother to write anything at all, to care about what other people think. So what? It's not at the root of my stance.
If emotion compels you, then your conclusions may be contaminated. A rational stance may be taken by malcontents for all sorts of reasons, envy, arrogance, hatred. You have to admit that emotion is per se amoral unless mixed with empathy and awareness. People can USE rationality whilst being at root irrational.
I say that few of us REALLY know what we believe. We're all very spoilt nowadays, belief is cheap... or is it?
Very vague. I can't really get what you're saying here.
Deliberately vague indeed. Shall I clarify just a little? Take fundamentalists as an example. Some of them think they are certain of their 'salvation'. Well, maybe. I wouldn't comment. But the founder of Christianity said that many will be surprised. 'Depart from me: I never knew you'. So, given that some people will be WRONG about themselves, it's a bit of a wonder that they can be so confident, no? We all think we 'believe' this or that. Suppose a malevolent world religion arose that put atheists up against the wall and shot them? Would your 'belief' modify in the face of that? It might. Belief is not entirely rational. Deeper layers need examoned to see if we're all what we think we are. You'll tell yourself that even when you chicken out, you're really rational underneath. But is that the only dimension that matters?
I know some atheists who give the impression that they're over-compensating for a deep held belief that they're trying to suppress. That's what happened to old Saul on the Damascus Road. And Carl Jung once said that religious fanatics in turn are often overcompensating for inner doubts they need to keep down.
It's forbidden to talk about religion and you're doing that. Of course I have noticed that you never write what your beliefs or thoughts are. You allude to mysticism, Buddhism .... everything, really, but you never have the courage to say what you personally believe.
With me it's part of my online persona.
We're all doing it: the thread is probably verboten from the start. But you're at it again. YOU require people to formulate simple definitions of belief so that YOU can get a handle on them. You like them in a box YOU can handle. But transcendental truths don't fit nicely in boxes. There are too many dimensions and variables. I know YOUR box, but you don't know mine. To you, this looks like cowardice. The boxes are for the cowards actually.
I'm not a mathematician and have only ever claimed an interest in maths. I venerate rationality but I do see potential limitations with it; it's only a model of reality. All human thought of the outside is. However, human thought is what we're lumbered with and rationality is the best of that. It's repeatable; it's learnable; it's teachable; it works; each step follows from the previous.
I agree with all of that, but I'd just add that human thought is NOT all we're lumbered with. There's more. Intuition, instinct .... but something else. It could be inspration, it could even be revelation. But it works on too many dimensions to be just 'thought' as we humans know 'thought'.
'The wind blows were it likes.... you can't tell whence it came, or where it's going'.
So it is with him who is born of the Spirit ...'
Believe it or not, very few 'believers' claim to KNOW there is a God either.
Oh? I've had that claim made to my face, several times.
So? Get over it. You may just meet the wrong people, y'know. I dunno.
People have all sorts of experiences. That's good for them. I don't see why you mention this.
To try to show you that people aren't all arrogant. They're careful about how they define even the most profound experiences. They don't all leap to the 'God' explanation, or to the scientific reductionism. They have enough sense of the sacred AND the logical integrity to be very cautious. They tend to be the silent ones. The ones who get their psychosomatic flatulence cured or see the face of Christ in a pancake tend to be more vocal.
If, before the big bang, there was no time then causality doesn't apply. They're not my notions of causality anway. If, before the big bang, there was nothing at all - well, no mind is capable of understanding true nothingness so there's really not a lot that reasoned thought - or ANY kind of thought can do about it.
NO. You don't know that. It may imply a different TYPE of causality in dimensions we don't yet understand. If omnipresence is real, then the past may not be unalterable, nor the future unknowable. Perhaps the universe (or God) gave birth to himself/itself.
But if you reach the limits of 'rationality', there may still be other abilities we have that DO experience these things in different ways. If you close yourself off to the possiblility, you actually doom rationality.
Most dogmatists surely complexify to obfuscate.
Like politicians, they tend to keep it simple actually.
I do not know how simple or otherwise the universe actually is. To find that answer is the job of science. People like Hawking suspect that the nature governing the universe is very simple. This is the grand unified theory that is the goal of many scientists. This is only a suspicion, however, based on induction from other areas of science which at first seem poles apart (such as magnetism and electricity, no pun intended) but which turn out to be part of the same unity.
But perhaps there is no simplicity. Perhaps nature is infinitely divisible and infinitely complex.
There are people who read Vedantic scriptures etc. AND Christian ones who see there a possibility (some claim to have experienced it) of a perspective where all things are inter-related, all time and space infinitely intertwined and omnipresent. If so, then complexity AND great simplicity are part of one paradox. Some quantum physicists like that too.
If I could get you to think differently in ONE way, it would be to dissuade you of this slavery to the 'either/or' which you caricature as rationalism.
So science and rational thinking have limitations. I accept that. This does not mean, could not ever mean, that I will ever accept the vague, rambling anecdotes, the bizarre revelations and unrepeatable miracles, the quack cures, the pseudoscience of homeopathy and crystals and energies and chakras, and the clearly evolved and man-made religions in which this world is drowning.
This is just silly, Jehannum. You lump everything you call 'irrational' together, the sublime and the ridiculous. It's like a man who stands over the wall from a pile of diamonds and a dunghill, and says that the smell has prevented him from ever climbing the wall.
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Posted: |
Sep 22, 2010 - 4:52 AM
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By: |
Jehannum
(Member)
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No. You have to approach a Holy Book with the same rigour that you approach ANY book, even more so. There are no shortcuts. There are MANY reasons that religions change, often from within. And you forget how often religions have been the very agents who INITIATED the changes. The Enlightenment sprang from the Reformation and the Renaissance.
There may be many reasons why religions change but, as the threats of the holy books make plain, that wasn't the writers' intention. They're meant to be the revealed word of god.
Why doesn't that surprise me? You'd be a fundamentalist. Just with a different polarity.
If I truly believed in a particular holy book surely I would trust it to be right in all circumstances. Does that make me a fundamentalist? Is one's degree of fundamentalism proportional to how closely one follows holy text literally? If so, surely the best way to avoid fundamentalism is to stray as far from the text as possible. In the most extreme case one would be an unbeliever regarding that religion. Perhaps there's a middle ground where we can follow some bits but not others. The only problem is deciding which bits to follow and which bits would make one a fundamentalist.
What book is that? If you're talking about the genocidal passages in Joshua etc., you need to know that there's not a lot of evidence that that was ever taken seriously. The thing is a DEVELOPMENT. Anyone can see that a lot of the OT was written by a priestly caste who wnated to make sure they got the best meat at sacrifices etc.. But they did hold a nation together in the Exile. Sometimes religions function as COMPENSATORY fantasies for a collective.
Stating that the book is the work of man as you have makes you as bad as I am in the eyes of some believers (whom you would no doubt call fundamentalists).
Vicky Coren (how'd you spell that?), nice daughter of Alan Coren said recently that people who take those old injunctions literally are akin to the sort of people who accost soap-opera stars in supermarkets and berate them for what they did on TV the night before.
Victoria Coren. Very nice indeed. I agree with that. And she's probably right.
Yer average redneck fundy will tell you that every word of the Old Testament is sacrosanct, because JC said, 'Not one jot of the Law will pass away'. But they conveniently forget he ALSO said that 'All who came before me were thieves and liars' in his Good Shepherd speech. He berated the Pharisees for their obsessive INVENTION of traditions, and debunked the 'You get what you deserve' Deuteronomic thing. That's why he got strung up in fact. See the 'woman taken in adultery' story in John's Gospel. He got around things.
This is an argument of Christianity and Judaism. As an atheist I'm not interested in interpreting what Jesus said and whether or not it rewrote the old laws. I merely note that the continuum of disagreement by the followers of those and other religions indicates a human, not divine, source and that not all of them can be right (at least in my monochromatic, bipolar world view).
It's not a bus-timetable. You have to do the work.
Or not. That's one of the benefits of being an atheist.
The ancients who were into monotheism didn't know if there was a great power behind everything. So, in their efforts to understand the universe, they postulated there WAS one. And they couched their appeals to HIM since he'd be the most just, with all the answers. Don't put the cart before the horse. The believer goes to that absolute however he can, in a sense of experiment. The 'Books' followed that eventually, not the other way round.
I don't know about the ancients; I don't really care what they believed. I do have a nice fantasy of some ancient kid, sceptical of the mythology around him and forced on him, simply seeing nature for itself.
It's an easy claim. The Nazis, the Apartheid people, the extreme Communists, the fascists, the eugenicists, the Social Dawinists .... all thought they were being 'rational'. You have to have all the variables you can and THEN to admit what you don't know to be worthy of the name.
If emotion compels you, then your conclusions may be contaminated. A rational stance may be taken by malcontents for all sorts of reasons, envy, arrogance, hatred. You have to admit that emotion is per se amoral unless mixed with empathy and awareness. People can USE rationality whilst being at root irrational.
Godwin Law rears its head at last.
Those groups you mentioned were being rational. They just had bad axioms. Logic doesn't guarantee truth if it starts from wrong assumptions. It merely ensures self-consistency. Rationality can, of course, be used as you describe to develop false conclusions.
But it does not follow that a deliberately irrational stance is a good thing. There could be no criteria or method to judge it. It could be anything: chaos, randomness. It's a fallacy to think that if all of the impulses of the brain were allowed free rein (as I think they are in the case of epiphany and revelation, etc) they would be of any value or have any universal significance or truth.
I must add that a rational stance may be taken for good reasons too. Fairness, objectivity, consistency. Again, it depends on the starting point.
A rational stance can be good and it can maintain that goodness through to a conclusion. An irrational stance can only be random.
Suppose a malevolent world religion arose that put atheists up against the wall and shot them? Would your 'belief' modify in the face of that? It might. Belief is not entirely rational. Deeper layers need examoned to see if we're all what we think we are. You'll tell yourself that even when you chicken out, you're really rational underneath. But is that the only dimension that matters?
It's not hard at all to envisage such a malevolent world religion. If I were subjugated by it I'd lie about my unbelief. I'd play-act at the rituals. I wouldn't or couldn't believe in it. That's the only dimension that matters to me.
I know some atheists who give the impression that they're over-compensating for a deep held belief that they're trying to suppress. That's what happened to old Saul on the Damascus Road. And Carl Jung once said that religious fanatics in turn are often overcompensating for inner doubts they need to keep down.
The psychology of other people is too complex a subject. It's not worth worrying about too much.
We're all doing it: the thread is probably verboten from the start. But you're at it again. YOU require people to formulate simple definitions of belief so that YOU can get a handle on them. You like them in a box YOU can handle. But transcendental truths don't fit nicely in boxes. There are too many dimensions and variables. I know YOUR box, but you don't know mine. To you, this looks like cowardice. The boxes are for the cowards actually.
I didn't use the word 'coward'. Anyone who chooses not to reveal their beliefs is not a coward. I would say that they lacked courage though, which is not the same thing.
I agree with all of that, but I'd just add that human thought is NOT all we're lumbered with. There's more. Intuition, instinct .... but something else. It could be inspration, it could even be revelation. But it works on too many dimensions to be just 'thought' as we humans know 'thought'.
Thought is the best we can do. Intuition and instinct are animal impulses, hardwired into us by evolution. They're excellent for what they do - better than rational thought - but they shouldn't be trusted for anything beyond basic human / animal function.
Revelation, in my world view is internal, a misfiring of the brain or a freak connection of synapses as happens with certain drugs. It is not to be trusted in oneself, not to be believed in others. I hope it never happens to me else I'll suspect I'm going nuts.
To try to show you that people aren't all arrogant. They're careful about how they define even the most profound experiences. They don't all leap to the 'God' explanation, or to the scientific reductionism. They have enough sense of the sacred AND the logical integrity to be very cautious. They tend to be the silent ones. The ones who get their psychosomatic flatulence cured or see the face of Christ in a pancake tend to be more vocal.
Their caution is fine, even commendable, but not very helpful when you're trying to find out the truth of things.
NO. You don't know that. It may imply a different TYPE of causality in dimensions we don't yet understand. If omnipresence is real, then the past may not be unalterable, nor the future unknowable. Perhaps the universe (or God) gave birth to himself/itself.
Perhaps anything. It all means nothing.
I note that Richard Dawkins raises no great argument against deism and nor do I. I consign that which is outside the universe as unknowable and I'm happy with that. I don't want to know. A god may have begun the universe or not. In this I'm agnostic. I don't think it's possible to know the truth of it.
The multiverse theory is quite pleasant. It satisfies any need for conjecture on these things I may have. It says there is an infinite number of universes each infinitesimaly different from its neighbours. In some of those universes the conditions are just right for life. One of those universes is ours.
As for mysteries that do interest me: the nature of conscious experience is a complete mystery that I want to understand.
Like politicians, they tend to keep it simple actually.
Oh, do they? I didn't realise. I never listen to them.
There are people who read Vedantic scriptures etc. AND Christian ones who see there a possibility (some claim to have experienced it) of a perspective where all things are inter-related, all time and space infinitely intertwined and omnipresent. If so, then complexity AND great simplicity are part of one paradox. Some quantum physicists like that too.
There are no doubt resonant patterns in the universe of which we're only vaguely aware. That kind of thing is nice for daydreaming about but there's nothing of any substance to it.
If I could get you to think differently in ONE way, it would be to dissuade you of this slavery to the 'either/or' which you caricature as rationalism.
Put simply, I believe that SOME things are either TRUE or FALSE. I also believe that SOME things are continua. It can be difficult to decide. This isn't slavery to either / or. Some things ARE either / or.
Either god (as described by Christianity) exists OR it does not. Binary. This can't be a little bit true, or both true AND false. I would hate to inhabit the nebulous brain in which it could.
This is just silly, Jehannum. You lump everything you call 'irrational' together, the sublime and the ridiculous. It's like a man who stands over the wall from a pile of diamonds and a dunghill, and says that the smell has prevented him from ever climbing the wall.
All woo, pseudoscience, religion and so on has the same 'smell' to me. It's just a lot of different dunghills.
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There may be many reasons why religions change but, as the threats of the holy books make plain, that wasn't the writers' intention. They're meant to be the revealed word of god.
The old Chinese proverb: 'You can point at the moon, but there will always be those who stare at your finger'. The book is the finger. The dogma is a snapshot of a moving river. The writers of Exodus or Leviticus don't affect the sincerity of the Moses they're writing about, if he existed.
If I truly believed in a particular holy book surely I would trust it to be right in all circumstances. Does that make me a fundamentalist? Is one's degree of fundamentalism proportional to how closely one follows holy text literally?
That's how it's defined. But the basic limitations of writing and literature, and words apply to scripture as to ANY books. St. Paul put it, 'The letter kills but the spirit gives life'.
The only problem is deciding which bits to follow and which bits would make one a fundamentalist.
That's called the real world. It's true of histories, journalism, you name it.
Stating that the book is the work of man as you have makes you as bad as I am in the eyes of some believers (whom you would no doubt call fundamentalists).
True. The notion of the 'Logos' or 'Word' or Divine Principle that's supposed to have created all things, was never limited to a 'book'. It was supposed to express something supposedly incarnate in Christ, but also to revelation and inspiration from 'God'. It was never just the Book. The Germans have a word, 'Heilsgeschichte' or 'Salvation History' about the PROGRESS of the Word in the world. It was never a bus-timetable.
This is an argument of Christianity and Judaism. As an atheist I'm not interested in interpreting what Jesus said and whether or not it rewrote the old laws.
Oh, but you HAVE to be interested if you're going to be activist in attacking what he said. If he undercuts your argument, then you haven't beaten him.
I merely note that the continuum of disagreement by the followers of those and other religions indicates a human, not divine, source and that not all of them can be right (at least in my monochromatic, bipolar world view).
No, it doesn't indicate that. A 'Divine' source might have its messages refracted or garbled. ALL science and art is like that. Because your beloved bus-timetable gets one or two digits wrong, doesn't mean it's not useful in pointing out how to get your bus. Fundies like to abuse scripture for their own comfort, or for power, but the obvious fact is that those scriptures claim to be a record of the accumulated revelation and experiences of LIVING generations. That means an ongoing thing.
You have to do the work.
Or not. That's one of the benefits of being an atheist.
Maybe, but it's NOT one of the benefits of being an activist atheist as you clearly are. If you attack a text, you need to know it, otherwise .... you aren't rational, and your stance is dishonest.
I don't know about the ancients; I don't really care what they believed. I do have a nice fantasy of some ancient kid, sceptical of the mythology around him and forced on him, simply seeing nature for itself.
Well, you SHOULD care. Even just from an educational/historical point of view. It's ungrateful. They had NONE of your luxuries or advantages. They had to start with nothing in their quest for knowledge. There were as yet no differentiations between 'science' and 'wisdom'. You can't stand on the shoulders of giants and then crap on the giants' heads. That's the spoilt narcissism of today.
Godwin Law rears its head at last.
Those groups you mentioned were being rational. They just had bad axioms. Logic doesn't guarantee truth if it starts from wrong assumptions. It merely ensures self-consistency. Rationality can, of course, be used as you describe to develop false conclusions.
Two things wrong and self-defeating in your argument there:
(1) The axioms they used were flawed OR not properly balanced by the over-determinants, yes. But we NEVER have all the data and variables to formulate COMPLETE axioms, and if we did, we'd not need axioms. My point is different anyway. They were motivated by economic, political, psychological, ideological, envious and racist factors within themselves and their societies. They PRETENDED that these were not just rational actions, but rational PRINCIPLES AND MOTIVATION. They weren't. Even apart from projection theory, the '30s depression etc., the Nazis killed the Jews because of ENVY when you get right down to it, under all the other determinants. Envy is not rational.
(2) To quote Jung again, (and I don't say he needs to be any authority for anyone) there are TWO 'rational' polarities of the psyche, 'thinking' and 'feeling', over against the two 'irrational', namely 'intuition' and 'sensation'. I think he was right. Our FEELINGS are important as 'rational' because they include EMPATHY and SYMPATHY. These are rational aspects alongside the intellect. So by HIS definition, those groups were NOT rational because they excluded their better feelings.
But it does not follow that a deliberately irrational stance is a good thing. There could be no criteria or method to judge it. It could be anything: chaos, randomness. It's a fallacy to think that if all of the impulses of the brain were allowed free rein (as I think they are in the case of epiphany and revelation, etc) they would be of any value or have any universal significance or truth.
If you can find me someone, anyone who advocates a 'deliberately irrational stance' then I'll be very surprised. You invent these strange people who don't exist, and throw them into the opposition camp. Also, the idea that all impulses are allowed free-rein in revelation is not at all the case.
A rational stance can be good and it can maintain that goodness through to a conclusion. An irrational stance can only be random.
Again, you confuse two uses of the term 'rational stance'. A 'rational stance' is only possible if you factor in your own limitations. I can do something very rational, with 'good axioms' on a certain level, for totally evil purposes, because at root I myself might be irrational. You don't seem to get that.
It's not hard at all to envisage such a malevolent world religion. If I were subjugated by it I'd lie about my unbelief. I'd play-act at the rituals. I wouldn't or couldn't believe in it. That's the only dimension that matters to me.
Very good, but you sort of undermine your heroic persona there.
The psychology of other people is too complex a subject. It's not worth worrying about too much.
Classic. Very scientific. That's the 'brick wall'. There's always a 'brick wall'. The 'just so' barrier. You do realise I hope that our OWN psychology is the hardest to fathom, never mind the 'other people'. If you factor that out of this debate, the nature of belief and why people believe, then there simply IS no debate. Self-protection.
I didn't use the word 'coward'. Anyone who chooses not to reveal their beliefs is not a coward. I would say that they lacked courage though, which is not the same thing.
I wouldn't say any such thing. The angry young man looks for a cause to show his 'courage'. Cart before horse. 'Source of all wars. The courage is to embrace the paradoxes and sit on fences. That's the toughest. Some people don't like that, because it means you can't be exploited.
Thought is the best we can do. Intuition and instinct are animal impulses, hardwired into us by evolution. They're excellent for what they do - better than rational thought - but they shouldn't be trusted for anything beyond basic human / animal function.
Ivory-tower assumption. In everyday life we NEED to use those instincts and intuitions when we reach beyond what can be computed, when we have insufficient data. But I'm using those biological qualities as anlogies for OTHER feelers we may have that aren't so tangible. If a clown tells me I need to cross a rope-bridge, I may not trust him when he tells me it's safe. But if there's a fire behind me, I may still 'trust' him, given the options, and step on the bridge. There are many kinds of 'trust', some conflicting.
But you certainly haven't taken on board the possibility of 'collective' thought, its dangers OR benefits. What if the 'other' spoke to you? Would your prejudice dismiss it? Or would you be open at least to the possiblity?
Revelation, in my world view is internal, a misfiring of the brain or a freak connection of synapses as happens with certain drugs. It is not to be trusted in oneself, not to be believed in others. I hope it never happens to me else I'll suspect I'm going nuts.
No, that's not revelation. If I put an electrode in your brain and pass a current though it that tells you you've been stabbed in the hand, you'll feel pain, but there'll be no wound, because there's no knife. But you CAN'T then, just because you've discovered the pain stimulus area of the brain, go on to assume that there's NO SUCH THING as a knife. Knives are still out there.
I note that Richard Dawkins raises no great argument against deism and nor do I. I consign that which is outside the universe as unknowable and I'm happy with that. I don't want to know. A god may have begun the universe or not. In this I'm agnostic. I don't think it's possible to know the truth of it.
Now THERE's an admission. What a pity nobody's still reading this far. That needs a front-page scoop slot.
The multiverse theory is quite pleasant. It satisfies any need for conjecture on these things I may have. It says there is an infinite number of universes each infinitesimaly different from its neighbours. In some of those universes the conditions are just right for life. One of those universes is ours.
The multiverse is very interesting to religious people too. The notion that there are infinite options in parallel actually allows for the POSSIBILITY of miracles, redemption etc.. A sort of spiral theory where we may sometimes jump the groove on the LP. Too complex for here, but no threat to 'religion'.
There are no doubt resonant patterns in the universe of which we're only vaguely aware. That kind of thing is nice for daydreaming about but there's nothing of any substance to it.
You have to postulate. You have to experiment and speculate. It's humbler to say we don't KNOW what substance is there. Sticking to the rational as reliable in no way should preclude speculation as to what else is possible.
Either god (as described by Christianity) exists OR it does not. Binary. This can't be a little bit true, or both true AND false. I would hate to inhabit the nebulous brain in which it could.
'True' is the biggest room around a Russian-doll series of smaller rooms. What's not true in one is true in one higher up.
All woo, pseudoscience, religion and so on has the same 'smell' to me. It's just a lot of different dunghills.
Read what Yeats said about 'the place of excrement'.
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Not That You Need, Desire or Expect Any Non-Wanted Validation from Us Department:
But, Jeh, you can offer some truly sparkling insights when you wanna. And, on that
Deepening the Questions front …
I must add that a rational stance may be taken for good reasons too. Fairness, objectivity,
consistency. Again, it depends on the starting point.
IS there such a thing as
We always resoundingly rejected that nonsense as its paraded and parroted in most university journalism
classes ‘cause simply the very choice of the phrase is inherently a subjective viewpoint.
As for mysteries that do interest me: the nature of conscious experience is a complete mystery that
I want to understand.
If’n you ever decide to investigate the experience of Consciousness itself, we’d really have the basis
for a few brews of your preference.
Still, your syllable-slinging with BillyBard has been most entertaining, (not surprisingly) eloquent
(as you're hardly unintelligent) and one of your most auspicious offerings evah.
(Not that we’re unburying the hatchet, mind yu. 
Heavenstamergatroid, forbid).
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Posted: |
Sep 22, 2010 - 9:34 AM
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By: |
Jehannum
(Member)
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Time to pare down the threads of the argument a little, I think. Most of the disagreement I'll happily let pass because words won't take it any further but there are a few points I'd like to reply to:
Oh, but you HAVE to be interested if you're going to be activist in attacking what he said. If he undercuts your argument, then you haven't beaten him.
...
Maybe, but it's NOT one of the benefits of being an activist atheist as you clearly are. If you attack a text, you need to know it, otherwise .... you aren't rational, and your stance is dishonest.
Expressing an opinion does not make one an activist. I maintain that, from a position outside religion, I don't need a perfect knowledge of the minutae of its internal conflicts to decide that I reject it. Yes, it's putting religions in a box. I happen to think religion is safer there - and I hope the lock is strong.
If you can find me someone, anyone who advocates a 'deliberately irrational stance' then I'll be very surprised. You invent these strange people who don't exist, and throw them into the opposition camp. Also, the idea that all impulses are allowed free-rein in revelation is not at all the case.
Sorry, I thought that was what you were advocating.
Again, you confuse two uses of the term 'rational stance'. A 'rational stance' is only possible if you factor in your own limitations. I can do something very rational, with 'good axioms' on a certain level, for totally evil purposes, because at root I myself might be irrational. You don't seem to get that.
I'm confused at your meaning of root-level irrationality. Do you mean 'wrong'? You surely do not mean 'incapable of making a rational argument'.
Very good, but you sort of undermine your heroic persona there.
I don't think I have one of those.
Classic. Very scientific. That's the 'brick wall'. There's always a 'brick wall'. The 'just so' barrier. You do realise I hope that our OWN psychology is the hardest to fathom, never mind the 'other people'. If you factor that out of this debate, the nature of belief and why people believe, then there simply IS no debate. Self-protection.
That's the problem. I don't think psychology is very scientific. Certainly, Jung, whom you're so fond of quoting wrote an awful lot of drivel.
The one psychology I have a hope of understanding is my own. It's hard to fathom yet sometimes I realise why I'm really doing something; I become aware of the unconscious motivation. But I'm aware there is a massive scope for error and self-delusion when you use a brain to analyse itself.
But you certainly haven't taken on board the possibility of 'collective' thought, its dangers OR benefits. What if the 'other' spoke to you? Would your prejudice dismiss it? Or would you be open at least to the possiblity?
I haven't taken it on board because I don't know what collective thought means. And the 'other'?
No, that's not revelation. If I put an electrode in your brain and pass a current though it that tells you you've been stabbed in the hand, you'll feel pain, but there'll be no wound, because there's no knife. But you CAN'T then, just because you've discovered the pain stimulus area of the brain, go on to assume that there's NO SUCH THING as a knife. Knives are still out there.
If I put an electrode in YOUR brain you might undergo any sensation. You may like to read about the 'god helmet', a crude induction device that stimulates certain areas of the brain. One supposedly common experience is the feeling that there's someone else there, even though there isn't. I maintain that revelation is a brain malfunction.
Now THERE's an admission. What a pity nobody's still reading this far. That needs a front-page scoop slot.
Not really. Dawkins makes clear at the start of THE GOD DELUSION that his target is theism, not deism. I can hardly take the position that claims made about unknowable things (such as the events before the creation of the universe) are true or false. I simply don't know.
The multiverse is very interesting to religious people too. The notion that there are infinite options in parallel actually allows for the POSSIBILITY of miracles, redemption etc.. A sort of spiral theory where we may sometimes jump the groove on the LP. Too complex for here, but no threat to 'religion'.
It allows for the possibility of events which look like miracles. For them to actually be miracles there would have to be an intelligent, controlling source outside the multiverse. The multiverse doesn't need that.
You have to postulate. You have to experiment and speculate. It's humbler to say we don't KNOW what substance is there. Sticking to the rational as reliable in no way should preclude speculation as to what else is possible.
Speculate but you do but you need some stepping stones, some certainties or near-certainties otherwise anything - and everything - goes.
'True' is the biggest room around a Russian-doll series of smaller rooms. What's not true in one is true in one higher up.
Er .... I'll think about that one.
Read what Yeats said about 'the place of excrement'.
Ok.
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Posted: |
Sep 22, 2010 - 9:58 AM
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By: |
Adam S
(Member)
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This debate touches on why I’ve never completely liked the term “atheist” for myself. As mentioned, it defines itself as non-belief in something for which there is no working definition – there are too many conceptions of God. There’s also what seems to be an irresistible temptation among many believers to associate atheism as a kind of religion. And though it is usually unfair, anything with an “-ism” can conjure up the idea of a doctrine with which a person must follow certain tenants or something like that. Again, it is not usually a fair characterization of atheists (though you can find dogmatists of any stripe) but I guess it is more a matter of recognizing the limitation of one word to accurately convey an idea.
But to me its more about trying to apply a questioning, open-minded approach to understanding the world - doing it in as rational way as possible, not because that necessarily gives all the answers but because, as I think Jehannum said, its all we got that we can trust. We can try to draw conclusions when the evidence seems to support it and anything beyond that can be interesting to think about and explore but there’s no particular reason to follow one belief system over another. And to the extent people do choose to, which they of course have every right, there seems to be a strong connection to the belief system they grew up with, not surprisingly. Some people change or reject it, but overwhelmingly people incorporate it. It may be on their own terms and with a great deal sincerity and personal meaning attached to it, but the correlation is too strong to ignore and is very suggestive in its own right.
- Adam
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Expressing an opinion does not make one an activist. I maintain that, from a position outside religion, I don't need a perfect knowledge of the minutiae of its internal conflicts to decide that I reject it. Yes, it's putting religions in a box. I happen to think religion is safer there - and I hope the lock is strong.
The problem is that you're attacking things that aren't IN religious traditions proper, in the mistaken assumption that they are. But if we're honest, at least in terms of your online persona, you are certainly activist. You are 'involved'.
I'm confused at your meaning of root-level irrationality. Do you mean 'wrong'? You surely do not mean 'incapable of making a rational argument'.
I mean their rationality is within a closed system that doesn't stand up to higher criteria from the 'full picture'. If I frame you for a crime, and then take you to court and rig the jury, I'm being very 'rational' in an expedientialist way, but not in terms of ABSOLUTE rationality which is going to take empathy, justice and ethics into the picture as rational too.
That's the problem. I don't think psychology is very scientific. Certainly, Jung, whom you're so fond of quoting wrote an awful lot of drivel.
Psychology is indeed not nearly so scientific as it pretends, and there's an inherent limitation insofar as the only thing we have to RATIONALLY examine the psyche is the psyche itself. That's one very reason why Jung advocated the more intuitive and speculative examination where the ego looks outside itself, past its limitations. Yes, not everything Jung said was totally right, and he did manage to create the single most easily misinterpreted 'system' known. But what other tools DO we have for rational self-examination? Self awareness and knowing our motivations is paramount.
The one psychology I have a hope of understanding is my own.
Actually, the only psychology you CAN'T truly be sure of objectively assessing is your own, because your own psyche is doing the understanding! Some are better at this than others. But there's a lot that can be done to expand what the ego perceives. A 'collective unconscious' is different again, and dangerous to explore, without a good 'boat' to negotiate the 'waters of chaos' like Noah's Ark. Actually some people use religious dogama or science or a philosophy as a safe 'container' from which to sail out. Unless they can walk on water .... Fundamentalists like such a boat, but often refuse to let it leave the harbour.
It's hard to fathom yet sometimes I realise why I'm really doing something; I become aware of the unconscious motivation. But I'm aware there is a massive scope for error and self-delusion when you use a brain to analyse itself.
Just my point exactly. Dreams are a real help, but they often turn out to throw up bi-polar paradoxes which we still need the ego to unravel, with all its prejudices.
I haven't taken it on board because I don't know what collective thought means. And the 'other'?
Sometimes the 'other' just arrives. Sometimes he/it is invited. Sometimes he's resisted, but he'll turn up anyway.
If I put an electrode in YOUR brain you might undergo any sensation. You may like to read about the 'god helmet', a crude induction device that stimulates certain areas of the brain. One supposedly common experience is the feeling that there's someone else there, even though there isn't. I maintain that revelation is a brain malfunction.
You've missed the whole point of my analogy. I know about the 'god helmet'. It actually disproves the 'conclusion', but the experimenter is too thick to be objective about that!
The reason the brain's 'God centre' or 'numinosity centre' can be stimulated is because it's THERE. And it's there for a biological reason. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. As I said, if I stimulate you to feel a stabbing pain in your hand, it's because the nervous system has wired you up to respond in that way to a REAL stabbing. There may be no knife in the experiment, but that doesn't mean that knives don't EXIST. What that experimenter needs to ask is WHY DOES THAT CENTRE EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE? Trust me, it's a good experiment, but a rather pedestrian experimenter.
The numinous, the 'other', the 'spiritual' has a brain receptor centre. You can stimulate it using an electrode, so that people experience visions, feelings etc.. If my above experiment shows how the brain responds to REAL knives, then the 'helmet' shoes how the brain responds to ....??? It's there for a reason. You can actually stimulate the brain to fabricate ANY of the feelings etc. we experience every day. But just because the experimenter steals the Batphone for a moment, doesn't mean that Batman still isn't there.
Not really. Dawkins makes clear at the start of THE GOD DELUSION that his target is theism, not deism. I can hardly take the position that claims made about unknowable things (such as the events before the creation of the universe) are true or false. I simply don't know.
That's an admission. You're an agnostic. Not an atheist.
It allows for the possibility of events which look like miracles. For them to actually be miracles there would have to be an intelligent, controlling source outside the multiverse. The multiverse doesn't need that.
Yes, but you forget that today's miracle is tomorrow's everyday fact. The term 'supernatural' means nothing. Dawkins is a biologist. They do tend to think in terms of 'nature' as 'life' without knowing it. If you define ALL the universe(s) as 'natural' then there are simply things we don't yet know. Don't hang up on the word 'miracle'. That word originally meant a symbolically charged event, with meaning. What is or is not a 'controlling force' is irrelevant by those definitions.
Speculate but you do but you need some stepping stones, some certainties or near-certainties otherwise anything - and everything - goes.
Don't forget that the stepping stones reach from BOTH sides of the river. Science provides the ones at OUR end. EXPERIENCES hint the chap coming across from the other side.
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