Harvester on 5/8/2009 at 10:37
Quote Posted by Turtle
Oh, so you're one of those "Christians" who has never even read the Bible?
I read the Bible almost daily, but if you mean that I don't know it
completely by heart yet, then yes, guilty as charged. There are still parts of the Bible that when I read them, I can't remember that I've ever read them before or at least I haven't remembered them.
EDIT: one more thing I wanted to say about SD's claim that all believers in God should be locked in a mental institution: I don't know if you really meant it, but if you really do think that all the people who believe in God should be locked away simply for believing in God, then all the claims you have made in the past about being morally superior to religious people (because they are intolerant towards gays and you are not, etc. etc.) are completely bullshit.
SD on 5/8/2009 at 10:40
What do you think about the bit where the Bible says that bats are a type of bird?
For a perfect being, he sure does make errors that even a 10th-rate journo would be embarrassed by.
Beleg Cúthalion on 5/8/2009 at 10:42
Quote Posted by Vivian
Beleg - justification for keeping 'serial killers' etc alive is study, far as I can see.
Now that sounds sadistic. :weird:
Quote Posted by Vasquez
In real world they become rules very quickly, if you're shunned or excommunicated for not following "the ideals".
Of course that might happen but this is again a matter of execution and the undetectable line between (positive) plurality and (negative) aberration or whatever you call it. I didn't exclude the institution of "church" from criticism in general but I wanted to point out that you need something like it if you want to keep a religion/idea/whatever alive without having it twisted by every single person according to its will. It is very easy to bash something for its flaws but it seems to me incredibly hard to find an alternative - hoping that people live together peacefully by executing their religion reasonably or even without any religion is rather naive indeed.
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Well, if you need religion not to kill a murderer, it doesn't mean others couldn't reach that in other ways. And it's been done, even before our times! The ancient celtic/gaelic tribes had plenty of deities, but their so-called Brehon laws were not based on their religion. Brehon law was also quite fair and sensible, and it preferred monetary punishments rather than physical/capital punishment.
It still won't protect human life until the end... unless it refers to something intangible. And that's how I meant "religion" in this case: The belief that there is a higher cause not to live the eat-or-be-eaten life.
@jay pettitt & Vivian: I think even without a religious context you can get the different image that all the world and its pretty things (I won't enthuse about anything right now) are not merely accidents. That's at least as "reasonable" as believing that there is nothing behind it because we cannot see it. And that's nothing to do with fear of death or other stuff. Before anyone puts me into a category: I grew up in eastern Germany where atheism was a fashionable thing for a long time (or at least the practical thing) and I've seen both people who just lead their wordly life and those with a religious core to it who still don't turn it into some exclusive club. It's already different in western Germany but I'm lucky enough to see neither exaggerated faith (which IMHO would miss the point of religion) nor exaggerated atheism (which would be nearly a religion itself).
Quote Posted by SD
What do you think about the bit where the Bible says that bats are a type of bird?
For a perfect being, he sure does make errors that even a 10th-rate journo would be embarrassed by.
You're the guy to call the youth welfare office after reading Little Red Riding Hood, aren't you? :D
jay pettitt on 5/8/2009 at 10:47
Quote:
The state for instance doesn't care about marriages but usually people are better off
I think you've got to look at why people are better off in marriages. It's probably less to do with being married than it is being in a stable relationship and, particularly if you're a kid growing up, seeing people and relationships as reliable, beneficial and worth investing time in.
Exchanging vows in front of a guy wearing a skirt and then dancing the agg-ah-doo-doo-doo probably hasn't got a lot to do with it.
Similarly, if there is value in religion then it's in the social communities of people that form around religions, not the actual spiritual beliefs. There's not reason to think that super natural idols are an essential ingredient of communities. But yeah, if you were to hypothetically set about dismantling religion, then I think you'd have to recognise that the need to build other communities if society wasn't to be poorer afterwards and that religions promote some values which are desirable.
As a militant atheist I think there are inherrant, unresolvable problems with religion and I think it's noble to want to see the influence of relgion on public and private life reduced. But I don't want to scrap anything and everything that religion has ever had anything to do with. If you want to pigeon-hole me, I'm a humanist. Humans have done some extraordinary and very smart things in the name of religion. I've got a lot of time for humans.
Certainly in the UK marriage is on the political agenda, though perhaps not as high up as it could be. If you were to ask me, I'd probably say that religious influence confuses the issue - because I don't think the state should use it's influence to organise society so it actively benefits people with religious beliefs by supporting marriage because the proxy of that action is to penalise those without religious convictions unfairly.
There's no reason that nation states shouldn't be interested in and promoting healthy societies; in fact that is precisely what they should be doing (I think the extent that governments reject of social politics in favour of free market principles is a mistake and perhaps an unfortunate residue from the Cold War). But I think if you are going to promote lasting, stable relationships then perhaps you need to investigate the reasons why relationships fail and then do something about those, rather than awarding people carrots for going to church and beating people with a stick if they don't.
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evolution V morality
The idea that you can say 'evolution can not produce morality' seems wrong to me on several counts.
First, it's not something we know a huge amount about, I wouldn't like to say anything about it with any kind of certainty.
Second, I think it's wrong to presume that evolution always arrives at sensible or efficient solutions or should follow whatever rationale you might prescribe to it. The human back is an appalling piece of design, the retina is on back to front, the appendix is a ticking time bomb and so on and so on. It's a common misconception to think that evolution is a natural law and that things should behave or develop in a certain way. It's not. Evolution is merely a consequence of random mutation and variability. There's no reason to think that evolution will actively seek to drop anything cumbersome or that if you find something cumbersome in the natural world it means it hasn't evolved that way. The watchmaker
is blind.
Third, there are a number of reasonable hypotheses for evolution arriving at morality. It's not unintelligent to suppose that potential sexual partners look to select mates that are kind, fair and generous because these might be seen as attributes that demonstrate success and that such a mate might make a good partner and parent. Also, if you assume acts of generosity may evolved because in small groups generosity may be reciprocated or contribute to a social group from which you benefit by being a part, then there is no reason to think that those traits evolve in such a way as they are subtle enough to differentiate between between feeling the desire to show kindness in your immediate group and feeling the need to show kindness to someone on the other side of the world.
Fourth, I think it's just a bit odd to presume that societies, or for that matter individuals, can't supplement or even overturn any ethical notions that we might naturally lean toward because of our genes. Clearly religions 'develop' ethical ideas and notions, but I'm not sure religions have any qualities that make them particularly apt for doing so (other than being a forum for people to sit down and mull over ethical notions) - and given that I think religions tend to internalise rather than engage with the real world and don't falsify, then I worry that they have inherent flaws that actually make them rather unsuitable for developing sound ethical principles. Sciences like sociology might be better placed to do that.
So yeah, you can look at the way we apply ethics universally and if you think a certain way decide that it's irrational. But I don't think irrational is a good indicator that something can't be natural and must instead have required super natural interference.
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Honestly I cannot see the church interfering with my daily life to the extent you just described
One of the things that religion encourages people to do in their own homes is to indoctrinate their children with fluff and nonsense.
--edit--
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@jay pettitt & Vivian: I think even without a religious context you can get the different image that all the world and its pretty things (I won't enthuse about anything right now) are not merely accidents.
Sure. And I don't doubt that is why the world has seen so many different religious beliefs come and go. For what it is worth I absolutely don't think the world we live in arrived here by accident. I think the world is the way it is because that's the consequence of existing in the natural universe with it's physical properties.
Herr_Garrett on 5/8/2009 at 11:02
Quote Posted by Chade
Really? How does he leap from "I exist" to "something created me"?
The fact that the idea of something greater than me - in this case, God - exists, proves that the thing exists. Were I the only thing in existance, I would have no ideas of anything but me. Yet I do. There you go.
Also, the other argument is that I don't remember creating myself. I clearly am a finite being. Thus, a creator of mine (badly put, but yes) and an infinte thing exists. Since finite can only come from infinite, and not the other way round, the
ultimate creator of a finite being is infinite. That, according to Déscartes, is God.
Religion has nothing to do with God. If it does anything, it clouds the perception of people (which is rather clouded anyway) even more. Religion is a society-forming power, not the keeper of the way towards a God. Why, in any case, should one turn towards God? God exists, he created the world, and that's it. Period.
Religions (except the Hammers and the Kathars, of course) simply totally suck.
Matthew on 5/8/2009 at 11:06
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
Honestly I cannot see the church interfering with my daily life to the extent you just described.
On a reasonably related note: Magdalene Laundries.
jay pettitt on 5/8/2009 at 11:25
Quote Posted by Herr_Garrett
The fact that the idea of something greater than me - in this case, God - exists, proves that the thing exists. Were I the only thing in existance, I would have no ideas of anything but me. Yet I do. There you go.
Also, the other argument is that I don't remember creating myself. I clearly am a finite being. Thus, a creator of mine (badly put, but yes) and an infinte thing exists. Since finite can only come from infinite, and not the other way round, the
ultimate creator of a finite being is infinite. That, according to Déscartes, is God.
Religion has nothing to do with God. If it does anything, it clouds the perception of people (which is rather clouded anyway) even more. Religion is a society-forming power, not the keeper of the way towards a God. Why, in any case, should one turn towards God? God exists, he created the world, and that's it. Period.
Religions (except the Hammers and the Kathars, of course) simply totally suck.
I'm perfectly happy that I and all I see was created. Question: is there any reason at all to think that anything was created by an intelligent, supernatural being rather than natural, inescapable processes?
--edit--
Also, I don't think I buy the idea that finite things prove the existence of infinite things. I think that's just being cute.
DDL on 5/8/2009 at 11:28
Quote Posted by Herr_Garrett
Also, the other argument is that I don't remember creating myself. I clearly am a finite being. Thus, a creator of mine (badly put, but yes) and an infinte thing exists. Since finite can only come from infinite, and not the other way round, the
ultimate creator of a finite being is infinite. That, according to Déscartes, is God.
...Or you have a short memory? Or you popped into existance spontaneously? Or you were created by the fusion + rearrangement of genetic material from two parents who were themselves created by the same deal and so on and so on in increasing primitive variations as you go back until it's all asexual reproduction and 'creation' is fairly meaningless as a term until you get to a self-replicating molecule in some organic chemicals that spontaneously arose? Who knows?
"Also, finite can only come from infinite, and not the other way round" is utterly unprovable, since finite things may well be capable of making infinite things, but they're never going to last long enough to
know it, are they? Also it fails to note that finite can also come from
finite, and so on and so forth (see above).
uncadonego on 5/8/2009 at 11:50
Quote Posted by SD
What do you think about the bit where the Bible says that bats are a type of bird?
For a perfect being, he sure does make errors that even a 10th-rate journo would be embarrassed by.
Literally "owner of a wing" or "winged creature". A seventeeth century translation says "fowl".
*Zaccheus* on 5/8/2009 at 11:57
Quote Posted by Queue
BTW--I'd seriously love to hear/read a Jewish perspective (as I find I still have respect for those of the Jewish faith) instead of Christianity-this and Christianity-that.
Seconded.
