Religious but otherwise sensible and intelitgent people

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Do not assume that any belief is immune to analysis by whatever the speaker's standards may be. You may be bored or offended by discussions of what constitutes a usable concept of reality but tolerance does not mean total censorship of philosophical discussion. If somebody believes something is stupid he or she is owed an indication as to why it is not.

You might want to read my post again. I said nothing about "total censorship". And there was no "philosophical discussion", anyway ... there was simply ranting about those whose beliefs are different.




I see ... to your way of thinking, being tolerant includes accepting intolerance. Haha. Nice try.

Ok, I've said all I need to say. I'll bow out of this discussion now.

QFT.

Although I'm an atheist...I really don't have a strong view against people of any faith system. It is also not in my cards to use words such as delusional, stupid, crazy and mentally ill for the same double standards in which fundementals have been known to use. It has been my experience that not all people of faith or non-faith share such extreme stereotypes that've suited some threads with initial insults. However the scales are probably more bound to tip in favor of nonbelief vs belief since one is basing their validity off something that is tangible and otherwise proven while the other is loosely based off books or ideas coming from emotions, ideas and myths that may or may not have some truth to them...depending on what is percieved as truth. The human mind is too complex and not well understood to just accept the concepts revolving around intuition, emotions, opinions, beliefs and thoughts. At least....when it involves metaphysics...


Then again...I'm not passionate nor gifted in the art of arguing or giving good insight. I lack the persistent patience due to my executive dysfunction, poor IQ, and being unable to go to a fancy college. So these all might be words coming from someone who is delusional and high off catnip......

If you are high off catnip, why am *I* trippin on your avatar?

"The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." -Galileo
Science and religion answer different questions. They are not in opposition any more than mathematics and English literature are. They are simply different fields.


Hm. You have some study to do on Scriptural interpretation, I'm afraid. There are a variety of beliefs, such as the idea that the inspired message from God was filtered through imperfect human messengers, leaving us with a good, but not perfect, record. And very little of the Bible really addresses natural phenomena.


Aside from the fact that I don't believe Christianity can be accurately described as "superstitious clap trap from an age of unenlightened ignorance," you can find brilliant people who believe any number of silly things. Imagine, you can even find apparently reasonable people who think Communism is a good idea!

First, I think you are missing an obvious solution: Brainwashing.

If you are raised in a society where everyone believes one thing, and threatens you with eternal damnation if you doubt it, your sense of self-preservation may force you to thow a mental switch that is like putting on permanent blinders. These people have, in some sense, engaged in mental self-castration.

I recall when I was about 11, being taught that you had to have faith in Jesus to be saved, and being taught that ANY doubt means you do not have faith. Thus, it was not enough to believe Jesus PROBABLY existed and was the son of God. You had to be CERTAIN. But I wasn't there, how could I know one way or the other? It was a mental dilemma. How did I MAKE myself certain of something I could not, objectively, be certain about? Perhaps in part due to my AS, I turned atheist. However, it probably helped that my parents were holiday christians, if that, so the church was not part of our daily lives or social activities. Otherwise, I could see where I might have tipped the other way.

Anyway, if you combine mental self-castration with those who simply want the social benefits of belonging to a religion and are willing to lie about their belief for that reason, that could amount for the number of religious people in the world.

That said, I'm no longer an atheist. I had a spiritual awakening and am Taoist (Buddhist lite). I still have little respect for organized religion, but I also think atheists are wearing their own blinders.

I do think some fundamentalist religious views are pretty easy to dispose of, because they simply make no sense. What sense does it make that you spend a few dozen years on earth (if you are lucky) and how you behave defines where you spend the next....Gazillion years!! I mean, that's not the tail wagging the dog. That's the tiniest part of the tiniest atom of the tiniest molecule of the tiniest hair on the tail of the dog wagging the dog. It's so mindbogglingly disproportionate, it just makes my head ache. It just cannot work like that.

And consider the Genesis creation myth -- nothing existed but God, an infinite, omnipotent being. Being omnipotent means any need can be instantly satisfied. Hungry? You don't even need to create food. You can wish the hunger away. Why stop there? You can wish yourself a nice warm, satiated feeling. Every good feeling you could want, you could have WITHOUT ACTION. Well, the upshot is, if you analyze it, it is logically impossible for an omnipotent being to ever DO anything because any need or desire is instantly satisfied, probably before it is even processed.

That said, I do believe there is a fundamental spirituality in the universe, that IS the universe, us included.

Take this assertion: "Either it is the word of a super being or it is a compilation of superstitious beliefs from people that did not understand the natural environment, it cannot be both."

Well, what if the superstitious people who wrote the bible ARE ALSO superbeings, they just don't realize it? I mean, sure, the Bible is the word of God, as is everything written, because everyone is part of God.

To put it in more scientific turns, consider the creation / evoluation debate. What I think a lot of people are missing is that evolution is largely self-selected. animals CHOOSE their mates. Why do giraffes have long necks? Because long ago their ancestors said, "You know what, I choose to hook up with that long-necked dude...I like that look, it turns me on." Or something like that. Natural selection, where what is doing the selection is natural, is necessarily self-selection.

Look at people today. Every man and woman who selects a sex partner is casting a vote for how they want the human species to evolve. Whatever the human race looks like 5000 years from now, WE ARE CHOOSING IT. Anyway, to the extent evolution is self-selection, it is both creation AND evolution. Evolution is not just some external force shaping us, it is the process whereby we shape ourselves and choose our destiny. I see this as a form of created evolution.

So when I hear people debate creation versus evolution, I think its funny because it is both. God is creating the unverse through evolution and when I say God, I mean us. And when I say us, I mean everything.

You see Orwell this is the kind of BS that I am talking about. For centuries if you spoke out against something that was ''written'' you stood a bloody good chance of being mutilated. The bible was the word of god and if you dared to go against this belief you risked becoming a BBQ. Now that we are a little more enlightened, theological scholars such as yourself know how ridiculous it would be to claim the bible is the true word of god and you make up adjustments to a once rigid belief.



Yes you are correct, however the small amount of space given up to natural phenomena pretty much covers the all of nature. I would think the very first page of the bible should tell the reader that this book is complete and utter nonsense





At least my beliefs have a grounding in objective analysis of real events.



Indeed at the moment the whole planet is gripped by fear all because a bunch of whack jobs believe this kind of BS

False. Biblical literalism is, historically, a relatively recent phenomenon. As far back as the fifth century, St. Augustine was writing against trying to interpret Genesis literally. John Calvin also rejected literalist views of the Bible. And Christianity was always a more flexible belief system than its sisters, Judaism and Islam. Christianity dispensed with the petty legalism (no eating pork, no shaving, etc) in favor of a looser set of behavioral rules.


Very few actual biblical scholars have historically taken Genesis literally. It is allegory, not history. As I said, St. Augustine and John Calvin both explicitly wrote against trying to use Genesis as a science text.


No they don't. You Marxists still hold to absurd notions like the labour theory of value over a century after it was demonstrated to be plainly wrong. But a more realistic theory of value (the marginalist theory of value, originally championed by Menger) does not support communist ideology as well. You also interpret history through a deeply biased perspective. The notion of class warfare throughout history is just plain wrong.


The biggest mass murderer in human history was an avowed atheist. Just sayin'.

I don't think you understand my reply to ruveyn. He asked if Atheists had ever done any acts of terrorism, such as hijacking planes or being human bombs in particular. I was trying to refer to the incident at Columbine. You said, "You're implying that because there are murderers who are religious, anyone who is religious is a murderer?", which is incorrect.

QFT. The idea that holding one belief implies superior intelligence is ridiculous, even if one belief is demonstrably true and the other false (which is not the case in matters of religion). It is entirely possible to hold a true belief based on blind indoctrination, or to come to a false belief after intensive study and careful deliberation.

On this issues I like to quote Dawkins, he like me is NOT an avowed atheist, he however qualifies this '' I am agnostic about god in the same way as I am agnostic about the Tooth Faerie". The probability of the existence of both god and the tooth faerie is extremely minute, however because neither can be proven non-existent with absolute surety I have to admit to the possibility however small that they may exist. By the same token I do hope that you will acknowledge the possible existence of Bertrand Russell's tea pot, or the creation beliefs still held by Australian Aborigine's involving the Rainbow Serpent.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 14 Aug 2009, 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well I do not see how you come to that conclusion, I have acknowledge the intelligence of the people I am commenting on. What I am interested in is how they managed to circumvent their intelligence to enable a belief in god

There actually are better arguments for the general idea of theism, and for Christianity in particular, than a random teapot that Russell postulated. An atheist friend mentioned the book Simply Christian by N.T. Wright to me recently. He claimed it put forward a pretty compelling case for Christianity. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but it sounds interesting at least.

This is still based on the false assumption that belief in God and intelligence are somehow incompatible. You are begging the question, assuming that God does not exist as a foregone conclusion. Why do a number of intelligent people believe that God exists? Because He does, they will tell you.

Ahhh but Stalin did not do this because of his atheism, I would never be so foolish to suggest that without religion we would have no war. However to war over superstition seems even more futile to me than war over say water rights

Too bad. It means you have stopped listening and perhaps stopped thinking.