Religions

[RedQueen.exe]

If you harbor a desire to kill me for debating you in this forum, have you commited a culpable act? I hear what you are saying, that culpability isn't the issue, free will is. But think of complaints by people here (and not just Jaxon and his brother) how boring "potato paradises" are. Did you ever stop to ask why that should be so? The Rabbis of old have said that despite its name, our "Evil Inclination" isn't all bad. "Were if not for the Evil Inclination, no man would build a house, marry a wife, or beget children." (Gen. Raba 9:7) It's our discontent that drives us to improve ourselves, and indeed, led to establishment of science. Not a bad thing at all. We could all be sitting around, navel-gazing, eternally happy, and achieving nothing, but really, that wasn't God's plan. But one must not give in ONLY to the Evil Inclination (and really, we might call it Id in modern parlance), because that way lies the destruction of civilization, when the world's importance is only "what can it do for ME?"

Right, but I think the point that Chris is talking about stopping him at is at the point beyond which it has become just an idea - when say, I'm in your house, knife/pistol in hand. Obviously some such attempts fail there, when the move from intent to action has already been observed, so why not more/all of them?

I must agree, to a degree, with the latter point of the motivating factor of discontent. I do think though, that such a state could have been achieved without some of the more pernicious evils such as child abuse. Particularly so, because we are very good at often ignoring such evils like the pillaging of the undeveloped portions of the world.

But then my question comes, if such a utopia would feel unfulfilling, then why wouldn't heaven as well? If it is because our perspective somehow changes in heaven, then why not give us that perspective to begin with? If the initial pain and suffering is necessary to enjoy utopia properly - then why not just plant in us false memories of it?

"Natural Evils" is of course a loaded term. It presumes "evil". But let's overlook that. Yes, deaths from natural occurrences are difficult for understand. It seems to be that is there is no justice. Little baby suffocating in its crib? How can that possibly be just? For the faithful, we just have to accept that we cannot know God's reasons for all things. For those that don't have a belief in God, that is unremarkably unsatisfying. Especially with no belief in an afterlife. There are anecdotal stories in the Talmud of people being shown the underlying reasons behind seemingly capricious deaths, but they are just that-- anecdotal, so not useful for this discussion. So of course I understand, on the hand, those who are believers, but who are angry at what they perceive as an unjust God, and, on the other hand, those who can't conceive of a God that is supposed to be just that allows such things to happen, therefore conclude God must not exist. But that's why neither side can ever convince the other of the veracity of their viewpoint. It's outside the realm of the provable/falsifiable. And that's why I would never try. *Shrug* Sorry if this answer is unsatisfying, but it's the nature of the beast.

No problem. That is what I expect, as it is the generally accepted answer. My reply to such a God would be that if he can not show his reason for it in this life or make his presence clearly known to assure me that it will all be explained later, then he can not ask that I accept it during this life - since it looks more like randomness, and saying that it is part of something we can't understand without evidence of why we wouldn't be able to understand it, is special pleading.

[RedQueen.exe]

Ingersoll had a great insight:

Oooh, I hate to risk running down a rabbit hole, but Ingersoll is phenomenal. If I had three people who's brains I could get inside, it would probably be Ingersoll, Hitchens, and Feynman.

[curious]

Yes, I see your point, and apologies for speling your name wrong.

It's interesting in that (aside from any religious views) that current methodology in 'soft' research is, and has been for a little while starting to embrace more and more concepts like Hermeneutic principles.

Interesting assertion. Can you expand upon that with examples?

I suppose the best examples in research would be appropriate for health, in which things like Hermeneutic Phenomenology have become popular (but also misused), and more so in things like Delphi studies.

Both of the methods of research entail a methodology of apprehending a 'working' knowledge from participants in the former and 'experts' in the field i the latter, but it is important to say that the nature of an 'expert' is also changing, and not necessarily the person with the training.
Research is seeking different ways of understanding the 'truth' of the world, which is becoming less and less attributable to a single and dogmatic ontology... it is becoming more post-modern.

Even research enailing Grounded Theory... and the inherent saturation of data it seeks to pull out of the world is still strong in health, and very useful.

What do they all do..? Well... I suppose they gain a knowledge of the world that is 'true' but lacks permanence... that is it is vauable at the point of obtaining information, but this is no guarantee that it will always be seen as useful.

Incidentally, all these research positions would be entirely consistent with any religious system. To me, that's a scary thought, but who am I?

[gejyspa]

It's also worth noting that God in days of yore was, according to Biblical stories, active in overt ways. He visibly and with great force promoted the causes he favored, not just sitting back and avoiding interference with free will. What explains the change from this (supposed) period of active partisanship to a subtlety indistinguishable from nonexistence? Ingersoll had a great insight:

Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense, to the natural.

If you should tell a man that the dead were raised two thousand years ago, he would probably say: "Yes, I know that." If you should say that a hundred thousand years from now all the dead will be raised, he might say: "Probably they will." But if you should tell him that you saw a dead man raised and given life that day, he would likely ask the name of the insane asylum from which you had escaped.

Thus, we have a single principle that explains the situation, not only in the Abrahamic religions, but also in other religions with personal gods: some circumstances make supernatural claims easier to get away with than others. The far past and the far future are removed enough to make investigation difficult. The gullible can be convinced of overt miracles today (e.g., Benny Hinn and other faith healers). There are warnings against testing God, so people don't jump off cliffs with the faith that God will catch them. I doubt that it's often a self-conscious scam on the part of the clerics, but this principle of avoiding scrutiny works its way into the fabric of religion because it has such great synergy.

You're absolutely right. It does somehow seem "convenient" that the age of open miracles is over, but will happen again in the future, doesn't it? (Although plenty of clinically dead people are revived these days, so....) I fall back here on my earlier assertion that God interacts with each generation according to the way they need to be interacted with. It was important for the generation that left Egypt to have the whole sound-and-fury light show with the ten plagues, and then the revelation at Sinai. But as people became (for lack of a better word) more "sophisticated", they were able to see the miracles implicit in everyday life, so the more audacious "shifting the odds around" type of miracles could be hidden in ways that could be explainable by ordinary means. On the other hand, to an earlier generation, something that could be explained by ordinary means today would have been more easily taken by them to be a miracle, so who is to really say that the level of miracle has actually decreased, as is generally asserted? Maybe they were just more (pick one) able to understand the hand of God behind it/more gullible into believing there was a God behind a random, yet remarkably fortuitous occurrence? The wonders of probability are that even events with a bizarrely low probability of occurrence can, in the fullness of time, occur. For a personal anecdotal example, I've now had three cars that were hit by trucks (once with me driving, once when my son was driving, and once when I was changing a tire). In none of them was I cited as being at fault. Tens of thousands of dollars of damage to my cars (and I don't know how much to the other vehicles), yet with none of the thirteen people involved having more than the most minor of injuries. I could have been killed in any one of them, with the merest change of trajectory of a few feet. I choose to believe it was miraculous, but of course it is conceivable that it could just be coincidence. I've certainly had my share of tragedies, as well -- my mother passed away from cancer in her 50s when I was 16, my brother from a brain bleed in his 50s. My father is currently suffering from Parkinsonian dementia, and my uncle passed away from Alzheimer's (and did my grandfather). I've had difficulties with my kids that I won't go into here. But the hand of God is in all of it (I believe). And of course, there are plenty of stories of miraculous stuff happening, but the non-believer will choose to say "anecdotal randomness", while the believer will say "miracle" ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/58026067/Mira ... ar-of-1991 http://www.snopes.com/luck/choir.asp ) I am sure that if (as I've said before, and as I'm equally will never actually happen) the stars arranged themselves to spell out "I am here -- God", Richard Dawkins will be on television offering a natural explanation for it.

But I still challenge you, as I've said before, to explain away the revelation at Sinai. What happened there? Nothing? It was suddenly made up, 500 years later, with the claim that your parents told you that their parents told them that it their parents told them... that it happened, because they witnessed it? How do you bootstrap that at any time subsequent to the supposed time? (Remember, we're not leaning on a someone's word of a far-distant event that they put down in a book, like with Xenu, but with a simultaneous claim passed down by oral family histories). Write me a book that says something happened 500 years ago, and I may not be able to refute it, but write me a book that says that something happened 500 years ago AND says that my father told me happened, and that's falsifiable.

[gejyspa]

Yes, I see your point, and apologies for speling your name wrong.

It's interesting in that (aside from any religious views) that current methodology in 'soft' research is, and has been for a little while starting to embrace more and more concepts like Hermeneutic principles.

Interesting assertion. Can you expand upon that with examples?

I suppose the best examples in research would be appropriate for health, in which things like Hermeneutic Phenomenology have become popular (but also misused), and more so in things like Delphi studies.

Cool, thanks. I'd never heard of those before.

[curious]

Cool, thanks. I'd never heard of those before.

Good, I hope you have a look... be warned though, the Hermeneutic stuff exists with an interpretive phenomenology, and is more about making reference to the 'Messenger of the Gods: Hermes'.... who translated the word of the Gods so man could understand them. It's in this sense that (certainly health) research is 'listening' to other world views in its endeavour to progress knowing.

Delphi simply makes a clear refernce to the oracle, and looks to shed light via exploring just what people who are 'knowing' about things have to say.

Enjoy

By the way... I appreciate I have sidetracked this thread somewhat.
I don't really have anything to say about religion at all, unless it's the 'what is', and 'how do we know' something bit

[RedQueen.exe]

For some reason, I am reminded of one of my favorite comics involving the whole theism/atheism/agnostic thing:



I'm not exactly sure what it really means to be a non-atheist agnostic. Do they worship in a catholic church one week, a synagogue the next, a mosque on the third, etc, etc.? Of course not. I suspect many, perhaps most, are actually atheists either trying to avoid of the negative connotations that the word atheist summons up, think that being an atheist means you have to go around arguing with people, or just haven't given it a great deal of thought (which, of course, is perfectly okay).

I do wonder though, how people so shy to form an opinion based on imperfect knowledge, manage to get anything done.

[Henkie]

LOOOOOL my mother laughed as well haha

Anyway, I'm staying out of the discussion now, my last points where directed at snicky, and quite frankly, I'm not that interested in the current discussion (A) (just FYI, not complaining or anything)

[gejyspa]

For some reason, I am reminded of one of my favorite comics involving the whole theism/atheism/agnostic thing:



I'm not exactly sure what it really means to be a non-atheist agnostic. Do they worship in a catholic church one week, a synagogue the next, a mosque on the third, etc, etc.? Of course not. I suspect many, perhaps most, are actually atheists either trying to avoid of the negative connotations that the word atheist summons up, think that being an atheist means you have to go around arguing with people, or just haven't given it a great deal of thought (which, of course, is perfectly okay).

I do wonder though, how people so shy to form an opinion based on imperfect knowledge, manage to get anything done.

Great comic. Just showed that to my kids and one of them said, "Wait... You're atheist?"

I give all three answers.

But anyhow, as far as a non-atheistic agnostic, that's because to you, "atheism" includes "weak atheism", which is basically what agnosticism is. If atheism is exclusively "hard atheism" (as it used to be, back in my day, before it usurped agosticism in its defitional grasp), then you can see that the certain conviction there is no god/God is quite different from the assertion that it impossible to know whether or not there is one.

[RedQueen.exe]

I wrote up a reply for Snickie and then retracted it. I may still have to post it though, since she asked for it.

But yes, and I think you are wise to do so. I like to keep these kinds of back-and-forths from dragging on too long. The research is fairly clear that people rarely change their minds during the course of an argument. The best we can typically do is just plant a few seeds in each others heads - maybe they'll take root in time, maybe they won't, but you almost never convince someone just by continuing to hammer them into submission. Come back to it in time, and one side or the other may have changed their mind in the meantime.

On that note, maybe I should take a break for a while to regroup before I go not-so-subtly provoking non-atheist agnostics.

[curious]

I do like the cartoon... thanks for that.

the prefix 'a' just refers to the absence or omission of, and literally 'gnosis' means knowledge (granted usually in relation to spiritual in its most common usage)
so a-theism... without God
a-gnostic... without knowledge (of a spiritual divinity)

Loosely.

The 'agnostics', historically doubted the role of a single and omnipotent Christian God etc, but this is a hard interpretation.

[RedQueen.exe]

I give all three answers.

But anyhow, as far as a non-atheistic agnostic, that's because to you, "atheism" includes "weak atheism", which is basically what agnosticism is. If atheism is exclusively "hard atheism" (as it used to be, back in my day, before it usurped agosticism in its defitional grasp), then you can see that the certain conviction there is no god/God is quite different from the assertion that it impossible to know whether or not there is one.

Good for you on the first point. I think it is important to let children make up their own minds, to give them the freedom and unconditional love and respect to do so. I very much appreciated that my father for never pressuring his political opinions on me, like his father did to him.

But yes, I know and am aware (the comic unfairly glosses over some things, but that's practically unavoidable), but I do like to have a little fun teasing at what I see as a bit of a shallow distinction between the two. There are all kinds of unfalsifiable things that I cannot prove to be untrue, like invisible, ethereal gorillas in my living room, but I think it is perfectly acceptable to state that they do not exist even though TECHNICALLY I cannot know that to be true.

This is why I think I think I prefer when people believe they have evidence that god exists to acting as though because we can't know FOR CERTAIN, that all opinions must therefore be equally valid. Even if I disagree more in conclusions from the first group, I appreciate their thought process more. I think how you think is more important than what you think.

[RedQueen.exe]

I do like the cartoon... thanks for that.

the prefix 'a' just refers to the absence or omission of, and literally 'gnosis' means knowledge (granted usually in relation to spiritual in its most common usage)
so a-theism... without God
a-gnostic... without knowledge (of a spiritual divinity)

Loosely.

The 'agnostics', historically doubted the role of a single and omnipotent Christian God etc, but this is a hard interpretation.

I know. Language is fun. I feel like a lot of arguments wind up boiling down to people using two different definitions of the same word and not realizing it.

I probably should have admitted before, but I don't have anything against you personally. You are clearly a sharp and well-educated guy/gal. I just come across as an a-hole because I'm insensitive and don't always think about how I could say the same thing in a way that is less condescending. Worse still, I'm insensitive about my own insensitivity and don't worry about it too much. I think you could call me a jerk without it being an unfair assessment.

I do appreciate you (and Henkie) rekindling my interest in possibly reading more into philosophy some time. Unfortunately, as always, there are only so many hours in the day and so many things that I would like to understand better and there's always a little necessary triage in deciding what to read about.

[curious]

Yes, language will be the undoing of mankind... along with a lack of time.
Thanks.


Tom Waits: If there's one thing you can say about mankind, is that there's nothing kind about man. (It's nearly a truth :p)

[Chris]

But I still challenge you, as I've said before, to explain away the revelation at Sinai. What happened there? Nothing? It was suddenly made up, 500 years later, with the claim that your parents told you that their parents told them that it their parents told them... that it happened, because they witnessed it? How do you bootstrap that at any time subsequent to the supposed time? (Remember, we're not leaning on a someone's word of a far-distant event that they put down in a book, like with Xenu, but with a simultaneous claim passed down by oral family histories). Write me a book that says something happened 500 years ago, and I may not be able to refute it, but write me a book that says that something happened 500 years ago AND says that my father told me happened, and that's falsifiable.

What do you find persuasive about that story? According to Exodus, the events didn't seem to make a lasting impression. Days later, while Moses was up on the mountain, the people made a calf idol. After meeting Yahweh, they made a calf. Is that what they saw? Or was it the fire and smoke that is impressive?

Yahweh told Moses that this encounter is supposed to be a solid foundation, so no one has to take Moses' word alone for everything. But it seems not to have worked. Moses must rally his supporters and slaughter the others. The story seems to tell, not of unity as the result of a supernatural encounter, but rather of unity achieved through killing those who disagreed with Moses.

Where is Mount Sinai? Where is the archaeological evidence of anything uniquely non-natural from that story? We found Troy. We find evidence of what people ate and how they lived millions of years ago. We know how the solar system formed and the Big Bang. Lack of physical evidence is not a conclusive rebuttal, but it should be an embarrassment to those who believe that the stories' supernatural elements happened exactly as they are written.