I don't believe that every word in the Bible is true.
I was considering bits of it when I ran across this question:
Some background.
Genesis. The snake (not Satan. In Genesis its just the first snake that is to blame) convinces Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was expressly forbidden by God. Eve convinces Adam to do the same. God is not happy with their choice and curses them.
They are kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Death begins taking their tole. They have to work for their bread. And women have to give birth in pain. This is the Original Sin.
Fast forward several good books in the Good Book. Jesus dies on the cross as payment for our sins. If we believe in him, truly believe in him, then all our sins are forgiven.
Death is no longer haunting us since we will have eternal life.
All of our sins are forgiven.
So why do Christian Women still give birth in pain?
If their sin, this original sin is removed by their faith, why do they still suffer the curse? God took away death, but not the pain of child birth because....?
It can't be because Eve's sin was so much more than Adams, because Jesus's sacrifice removed all sin.
It can't be because the pain is a result of those actions (we are forgiven, but must still endure the results of our actions) because death is also a result of those actions.
There are certainly answers to be interpreted from the Bible to explain this--but that is Interpretation. Literalists don't believe in interpretation. They believe that the Bible is the fact and should be taken by itself without the need for interpretation.
So if you have an answer to this question, just put it in the form a Literalist would use.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote: Literalists don't believe in interpretation. They believe that the Bible is the fact and should be taken by itself without the need for interpretation.
I think this is problematic because even the people who say 'literally every word in the bible is literally true as the word of god' are necessarily engaging in a severe degree of interpretation. There's not just interpreting the meaning of passages in the bible, there's the significant degree of subjectively interpreting which statements in the bible are more important and which are less important, and whether it's more important to, say, keep gays from marrying or to stone people to death for wearing cotton/polyester blend clothing or whatever.
This is beyond the issue of figuring out which version of the bible is supposed to be literally true. Does it have to be the KJV or do others count or etc etc etc.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Without speaking too much for the Biblical literalists, I will merely note that if we're taking the whole Bible at face value, the book of Revelation refers to the devil as "that ancient Serpent." As far as I know that's the only link between the devil and the serpent, but it's there.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
His remarks to Adam and Eve were a description of the sort of life they would now be living as a result of their new fallen natures.
Without getting into any arguments about the nature of grace, I will simply state that I do not believe we have all been saved from death in the way you are saying. While it is true that everybody will be resurrected, eternal life indicates that one lives with God and will never be severed from him again.
That deliverance does not come until the next life. So while one lives on earth, they must endure the travails of this planet including the actions of other fallen human beings.
I'm not talking about the Original Sin, I do not believe in that concept. Merely than men are by their natures carnal, sensual and devilish, to quote a scripture. So we live in a world that reflects that standard of living.
I suppose one might argue that if all human beings were living righteously, our very earth would become transformed (either by God's help, or by the altruistic intelligence that would fill everybody into accomplishing it) into the paradise Adam and Eve lived in.
TLDR version: Christ prepared a way to escape death, and our sins. That saving act isn't completely in effect right now, otherwise everybody who has died would already be living again.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Does Jesus dying on the cross wipe out original sin? I think that is really the question. What you state is that he died for our individual sins, not necessarily that of Adam and Eve.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
Great topic. I know that in the translation to English the Bible has many words that were changed. I'd be interested to know if "curse" was translated incorrectly.
I seem to remember that in the Greek version some words can be strictly translated but can mean different things. The word "teleos" was translated as "perfect" but a more proper translation would be "complete" or "finished." When Christ taught his followers to be "perfect" the word used in the Greek version was "teleos."
The Bible can be interpreted many different ways. The very translation can cause people to interpret the Bible in various ways as well.
As far as "Original Sin" I don't believe that phrase is ever used in the Bible if I remember correctly. There are actually more verses that teach against the doctrine of Original Sin.
In Genesis God gives Adam and Eve instructions. He commands them to multiply and replenish the earth. He also tells them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Earlier it states that Adam and Eve were as little children, and didn't even know they were naked.
They didn't know the difference between good and evil before they partook of the fruit. If you don't know the difference between good and evil, how can you sin? It wasn't exactly a sin, it was more a transgression.
Eve was actually the smart one. She knew that unless they ate the fruit, they wouldn't have the knowledge in order to multiply and replenish the earth, which was the first commandment they had received.
In essence, no fruit = no knowledge of good and evil = no point in Christ even coming or for us to even be here.
That and the the Bible doesn't even mention sin until Cain killed his brother. So I guess literally, that answers the question. Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :
(I could have replied first, but chickened out and saved my answer in Notepad.)
I'm not a scholar, and don't think I'm a literalist, but here's my opinion:
It wasn't a curse, it was a consequence. When my kids were small, I would tell them not to touch the hot stove because they would get hurt. If they then touched the stove and got burned, it wasn't me cursing them, it was a consequence of their actions.
Because of Adam and Eve's actions, they had to leave the Garden of Eden and work to survive. They would experience pain and suffering and love and joy and death. And their descendents would, too.
On the other hand, had Adam and Eve not eaten the fruit, ever, they would still be there and we wouldn't be here.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:They didn't know the difference between good and evil before they partook of the fruit. If you don't know the difference between good and evil, how can you sin? It wasn't exactly a sin, it was more a transgression.
Eve was actually the smart one. She knew that unless they ate the fruit, they wouldn't have the knowledge in order to multiply and replenish the earth, which was the first commandment they had received.
This has always seemed kinda obvious to me.
From my very first reading of the passage, it seemed clear that the Tree of Knowledge was a test we were set up deliberately to fail (fail being perhaps not even the right word) as a means of teaching us a lesson and setting in motion a world that was deeper and more meaningful than Eden was.
Posted by shadowland (Member # 12366) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Death is no longer haunting us since we will have eternal life.
All of our sins are forgiven.
So why do Christian Women still give birth in pain?
If their sin, this original sin is removed by their faith, why do they still suffer the curse? God took away death, but not the pain of child birth because....?
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but you still have to die before you gain eternal life, no? From a completely literal perspective, if all sins are forgiven, why would a person need to die at all? But since everyone does still die, it would seem to make sense that the other effects would still also be felt, that is, at least until death.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
There are some problems with the way you frame your questions, Darth--one of them being your definition of what it means to be a "Biblical literalist." Another is that if you are a Biblical literalist, then there is no room for "interpretation." Another is your equating Biblical literalism with thinking that every word in the Bible is true.
Since anyone can see the Bible makes extensive use of metaphor, analogy, simile, symbolism, and typology, it would be impossible to understand the Bible if you construe every word as being literally true. The real dividing point needs to be using objective scholarly methods to interpret what the Bible says, as opposed to jumping to conclusions based on sheer imagination that produce what the Apostle Peter condemns as a "private interpretation." (See 2 Peter 1:20.)
I believe that the Bible is the Word of God. This is not the same thing as saying that every word is to be taken literally. God Himself uses metaphor, analogy, simile, symbolism, and typology.
There is also an important division of viewpoint here among those who believe the Bible is the Word of God:
Some say the Bible is divinely inspired and is inerrant "word-for-word," at least in the original languages. Others, probably a larger number, object that the human writers of the Bible were God's penmen, not His pen. In other words, they were not robots, but rather were inspired with messages from God, even guided by Him in the manner of setting them forth, and yet allowed to write what they wrote in their own words, using human language and human approximations. As God cautioned us:
quote:"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8, 9; NASB)
For instance, the Bible talks about God being angry, or God hating someone. These are human manners of speaking. God is not on trial in these human expressions. These are human attempts to communicate as well as the writer is able to.
But it also must be noted that none of this means that the Bible can be construed to mean anything and everything. Comparing Bible passage with Bible passage, taking things in textual and cultural context (necessary to understand idiomatic expressions common to the period), and observing basic principles of reasonable, objective determination of the meaning of the text, can reliably allow you to be sure in the vast majority of cases what is actually the message God intends for us to come away with.
There are a few cases where the orginal language is unclear to translators, and they make the best guesses they can. But for every passage that might seem unclear, there are dozens more on the same topic that are crystal clear.
Let me note one more point before addressing your questions directly. The serpent in Eden was an actual snake, but was being used or possessed by Satan. The Bible notes that in Eden, snakes were "more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." (Gen. 3:1; NKJV) It is also widely believed (based on prophetic visions) that the serpents of Eden were very beautiful creatures, that had wings. It was only after the Fall that serpents were condemned to "go" on their "belly" and "eat dust." (Gen. 3:14)
Satan used a serpent as a means for deceiving Eve. The serpent was very impressive, and commanded Eve's respect--especially when it started talking to her! Had Satan appeared in his true form, as a fallen angel kicked out of Heaven, Eve would have instantly have been on her guard. But the serpent could lead Eve to the conclusion that the forbidden fruit would not cause death as God had said, but was responsible for the Serpent's ability to speak, as if eating the fruit exalted the eater into a higher plane of existence. Which was the lie he told to Eve.
The sin was doubting God, especialy doubting the goodness of God, and entertaining the thought that God might be trying to keep something good from Eve and her husband. These doubts, when acted upon, led to disobedience of God's specific command not to eat of this one forbidden tree. There was of course nothing wrong with the fruit. It was the test of Eve's relationship to God that led to the death sentence. Eating the fruit of this one tree was the one and only thing in all the world that God had forbidden to Adam and Eve. This was the only access to Adam and Eve that God allowed Satan to have.
What has happened here on earth must be understood in the context of the larger controversy between God and Satan. God wants the universe He created to be governed by love. But love requires free will, the ability to freely choose to love, to have faith--or not. So God had to allow the possibility of rebellion and doubt of His good intentions. The angel Lucifer came along, and questioned the goodness of God. He suggested that God was selfishly keeping some higher, greater experience from His creatures. Lucifer accused God of showing no self-sacrifice on behalf of His creatures, even while He required them to be self-sacrificing in their love for others and for Him.
God could have destroyed Lucifer. But then all the other angels, all the other intelligent people on other worlds, would thereafter serve God out of fear, suspecting that perhaps Lucifer had been right.
So God allowed Himself, along with Lucifer, to be placed on trial before all His creatures.
Lucifer (now called Satan, the enemy), was allowed the time and freedom to develop the principles of his philosophy, so all could see clearly manifested the real nature and result of the kind of selfish striving and self-exaltation that Lucifer advocated. We see this demonstrated in nature, which is now "red in tooth and claw." We see this in all the cruelty and misery that sinful humans have visited upon each other.
God did something that seemed really risky. He went ahead with His plan for the creation of Mankind, and announced that His purpose in creating Man was to refute Satan and prove that it is truly God Who is right and good. Mankind was going to justify God, and provide the final answer to all of Satan's criticisms and charges against God.
When Satan induced Eve to sin, and then Adam chose diliberately to join her in rebellion (his sin was also to doubt the goodness of God, by supposing that unless he joined with Eve in sin, God would not spare Eve from the death sentence), the human race fell. They had embraced doubt of God's goodness, and had followed Satan's lead. Now Satan claimed that he had usurped man's position as prince or steward of the earth, and was the victor in his controversy with God.
But God did not obliterate Adam and Eve. There were dire consequences of their sin, reflected in nature, even in their own bodies. They began to die, cut off from the Source of continuing life. But still God sustained them for many years, and gave them the promise that He would provide a way for them to be reconciled to Him, and eventually be fully restored to eternal life in Paradise.
The principles of Satan's kingdom needed to be fully worked out, for all the universe to see, so that finally all would be satisfied that Satan's way is wrong and evil. Thus it would be ensured that never again would sin arise. All questions would be settled.
Included in the questions that would be settled, is whether God is willing to sacrifice Himself for His creatures.
By taking responsibility for Mankind, His fallen, erring creatures, and by giving them time to come to repentance and of their own free will choose to respond to the subtle influence of His Spirit, offered to them to enable them to repent and change their behavior--God demonstrated a profound humbling of Himself. Man's sin was not God's fault, but He accepted responsibility for it, so that He could continue to sustain our lives and give us the time we needed to come back to Him.
God went even further. He joined Himself to human nature, and was born as a human. This way He could take the position of Head of the Human race, as a New Adam, and in Himself create a new sinless heritage for all people who turn to Him in faith and trust.
The exact nature of the relation between those we call God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is not spelled out in the Bible. We are presented with the paradox that they are Three Persons, and yet remain truly One God.
On Calvary the full responsbility for all the sins of the human race--past, present, and future--was imputed to Christ. In Himself, Christ executed the sentence of divine justice against sin. Sinful human nature was punished with death.
For creatures, this would have been the end, since God is the Source of all life, and to be cut off from God is to be cut off from life, from existence itself. But because Christ is Himself God, and Has life unborrowed and underived in Himself, He could survive when the Father turned away His face from His Son.
The risk to Christ and to God was real. Had Christ failed in any regard during His life to live a life of perfect righteousness, had there been any flaw in His Sacrifice, then Christ might have had to remain unconscious for eternity. Alive, but asleep.
At Calvary, when the Father turned His face away from His Son, and allowed Christ to sink into unconsciousness, He showed that He Himself absolutely will not ever choose to embrace sin, no matter what the cost to Himself. All creation thus has been reassured that God will remain truly righteous and good. After all, God has freedom of choice too. On Calvary He made known to us His choice for all time.
When Christ rose from the tomb, when the assurance came that His sacrifice and His righteous life were fully acceptable, Christ was allowed to restore Himself to fully conscious life. When He arose, he was still the Head of the Human race, just as when He died on the Cross. So in Him was established a new human race, one at peace with God, one fully righteous and joined to God in perfect faith.
Thus Christ has already saved every human being, forgiven and washed away all their sins. The good news of the gospel is that salvation and restoration of man--even more, the exaltation of man to sit on the throne of Christ (for wherever He is, humanity is)--are a finished work.
But God still believes in freedom of choice, because He desires for His universe to be ruled by love. So salvation is not forced upon every human. They must choose it. They must choose to agree that Jesus Christ is the New Adam, the Head of Humanity--He is for each one of us, our Saviour, and the Lord of our life.
Because we still need to make this choice, the consequences and pain of sin remain with us. This should keep before our minds the reality of the true evil nature of sin, of selfish striving, of self-exaltation--so we will have every possible motivation to make a full break with Satan's kingdom, let go of all the things of this world we may fondly cling to that keep us from surrendering completely to the Spirit of God, who convicts us of the Salvation we need, and have in Christ.
When everyone on earth has made his or her final decision for or against turning to God, then the end will come, and Christ will return to glorify His people and deliver them from this world, until it also can be made new, and Eden is restored.
Posted by Godric 2.0 (Member # 11443) on :
I misread the title of this thread as 'Christian Liberalist Question' and got excited. Then, I realized my mistake.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: It is also widely believed (based on prophetic visions) that the serpents of Eden were very beautiful creatures, that had wings. It was only after the Fall that serpents were condemned to "go" on their "belly" and "eat dust." (Gen. 3:14)
So...Satan was an evil talking dragon? Interesting....
(Liked your post by the way)
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
I'm not a Bible Literalist by any means, and I don't even accept the classic concept of Original Sin, but ... it seems that forgiving a sin doesn't mean wiping away all of its effects. We still die, and a lot of non-Eden-y things still happen to us. There are just new, compensating benefits from Christ's sacrifice and our receipt of forgiveness, which balance out those negative effects.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Nice to see you again Geoffrey. Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
quote:It is also widely believed (based on prophetic visions) that the serpents of Eden were very beautiful creatures
I think I'm fairly familiar with the evangelical prophetic scene, at least for an outsider... I've never heard of this idea. How "widely believed" is it?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Two Bible texts, Isaiah 14:26; 30:6, speak of a "fiery flying serpent." As previously noted, Gen. 3:14 says that the curse God pronounced upon the serpent was that in the future the serpent would "go" on its "belly," and "eat dust." This implies that before this, the serpent had some other means of getting around. Legs would seem unlikely. That leaves wings. I cannot say how many people have noticed these texts, and drawn the logical conclusions about the serpents of Eden.
There are traditions in ancient cultures where beautiful serpents with wings are depicted in their religious art. Even today, some snakes are brilliantly colored, such as the coral snake.
The National Geographic website notes: "There are five species of flying snakes, all of the genus Chrysopelea." These snakes do not have actual wings, but can flatten and undulate their bodies enabling them to glide through the air. Link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0807_020807_flyingsnake.html
The world membership of the Seventh-day Adventist church is about 16 million. Many people besides Adventists have read her four-book "Conflict of the Ages" series, of which PP is the first. (The other books in the Conflict series are Prophets and Kings, The Desire of Ages, and The Great Controversy.)
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Legs would seem unlikely.
Why? Snakes with legs would be something like lizards, to whom they are related.
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
Considering that we've lived for ages with two genesis stories that seam to contradict each other about the order of creation, alot of this stuff seems a little too deep if you're just trying to debunk a word for word literalism.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
quote:They didn't know the difference between good and evil before they partook of the fruit. If you don't know the difference between good and evil, how can you sin? It wasn't exactly a sin, it was more a transgression.
Eve was actually the smart one. She knew that unless they ate the fruit, they wouldn't have the knowledge in order to multiply and replenish the earth, which was the first commandment they had received.
This has always seemed kinda obvious to me.
From my very first reading of the passage, it seemed clear that the Tree of Knowledge was a test we were set up deliberately to fail (fail being perhaps not even the right word) as a means of teaching us a lesson and setting in motion a world that was deeper and more meaningful than Eden was.
See, I go the opposite way with the Tree. The only way it makes sense for God to give Adam and Eve a rule is if He knew they could obey it. That, to me, implies that they already had knowledge of good and evil - making the serpent one slick salesman. He got them kicked out for stealing something they already had. Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
rivka, yes, as you said--a snake with legs would be more like a lizard. It wouldn't be a snake.
This is perhaps a minor point--but understanding it this way does make it clearer why Eve was so fascinated by the serpent, and was readily deceived that eating the forbidden fruit would grant her a more exalted state, like it apparently had for the talking snake.
AvidReader, it is one thing to know about evil in theory. It is another to know it by experience, from the inside you might say. Notice that Bible phrasing in Genesis uses the word "know" to refer to having sexual relations. So the word had a complexity of meanings.
God had an experiential knowledge of good and evil, because He was sustaining the lives of the angels who sinned, and thus knew them inside an out. As Paul said of all of us human creatures, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." (Acts 17:28) This is also true of the angels, whom God also made, and of whose lives He is also the Source. Satan and his fellow devils are fallen angels.
[ January 05, 2011, 11:26 AM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: rivka, yes, as you said--a snake with legs would be more like a lizard. It wouldn't be a snake.
It is no more or less a snake than a snake with wings would be. Moreover, the current skeletal structure of modern-day snakes supports them having had legs; it rather definitely does not support them having had wings.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
rivka, how do you differentiate between a skeletal structure that allows legs, and a skeletal structure that allows wings? Bats have wings that are also structurally legs (or arms)--they even have little claws coming from part of their wings.
If they were lizards, the Bible narrative would have called them lizards. The word did exist in the Hebrew of the Pentateuch. (See Lev. 11:30.)
Note the statement from National Geographic about five known species of modern flying snakes, of the genus Chrysopelea. They can glide from tree to tree by flattening and undulating their bodies. Perhaps the serpents of Eden had some specialized scales or a scaley membrane that they could spread out.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
A snake with legs is not a lizard, just similar to one. And modern flying snakes most assuredly do not have wings, any more than gliding (aka flying) squirrels do.
But you are certain that you are right, so little things like well-understood skeletal mechanisms aren't going to sway you.
Have fun.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Well, in a world that does not have millions of years of evolution behind it that Ron believes in, I don't see wings any more illogical then legs. Especially when only the family that boas and pythons belong to have the skeletal structure rivka brings up (according to Wiki). For that matter, who says it didn't swim up to Eve?
But in such a world, why were all types of snakes punished when it was just the one? It would be like condemning a blue jay for the actions of a hawk.
Posted by Flying Fish (Member # 12032) on :
If you get R Crumb's illustrated Book of Genesis, you'll see that he illustrates the tempter as a humanoid reptile, not unlike the extraterrestrials who keep abducting hillbillies out of my neighborhood.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: But in such a world, why were all types of snakes punished when it was just the one? It would be like condemning a blue jay for the actions of a hawk.
That's just how the God of the OT rolled. Punish the children unto the 7th generation, kill some children for making fun of someone's baldness, you know, the usual "do I have to come down from Heaven and choke a believer?" pimpin' style the gods of the time and place tended to favor.
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
I suppose this as good a place as any to take the plunge and start participating in this forum.
Flying Fish, your post made me almost fall out of my chair.
I have a couple of questions.
How many of you believe that Adam and Eve would never have had children if they had not fallen - indeed, were physically incapable of it before the fall?
Or to put it another way. If they had never fallen we all would have eventually been born but would now live in a state of Edenic paradise? (is “Edenic” even a word?)
The reason I ask this is because I think the answer to it may be a big factor in the way one views what went on in Eden and why.
And my second question is: How many of you believe that we all lived as spirits with our own individual identities and personalities before we were born into mortality?
The reason I ask this is because I think my Church may be the only one which believes in that concept but I could be wrong about that and I am kind of curious to see if others believe it too.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee: And my second question is: How many of you believe that we all lived as spirits with our own individual identities and personalities before we were born into mortality?
You mean like Buddhists/Hindus/Taoists? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that most people in the world believe in some form of reincarnation. This may be a Christian/Mormon-heavy forum, but it's not really representative of the human race as a whole, religiously-speaking.
OTOH, if you're talking about souls existing and having identity/personality prior to ANY incarnation, I don't know about that. That would be a very minute point of doctrine in most of those religions, I would guess. You'd probably get different answers on that from different Buddhists/HIndus/Taoists, I would think.
I'm trying to figure out how a soul would gain individual/personal qualities without having life experience. Does your religion believe that souls have a pre-life, where they have a life and have experiences as a soul before incarnating?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
rivka, I think I am probably right about the serpent in Eden being able to fly, based on the textual and other evidence I presented to you. You can disagree if you wish, but why be so snarky about it?
Stephen, let me repeat: God is not on trial in the human language expressions of the Bible. When the Bible says God punishes "unto the third and fourth generation," this means that the natural consequences of sin follow to the third and fourth generation; for parents who hate God will encourage the same disposition in their children.
God does not hate anyone, or anything (except sin). The actual truth of God's justice is set forth explicitly in this: "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself." (Ezekiel 18:20; NKJV)
(This also, by the way, is the reason that Christ could not just step in and say "Punish me in mankind's place." Many people may say it this way, but it is an over-simplification. In order to bear the responsibility for the sins of all mankind, God had to join Himself to humanity in Christ, and become the whole human race, as the New Adam.)
As for the "curse" on the serpent, remember that an animal that is not a free moral agent cannot be condemned. God did not decree death for serpentkind. But in acknowledgment--as a remembrance--of the role the serpent played, God changed the living conditions of serpents. That was for our sakes, as an object lesson to us.
God also cursed the ground, for man's sake (because of sin), so it would bring forth thorns and thistles. That did not mean the ground was being punished. Actually it was nature in general--the DNA of plants and animals--that was involved. Not only thorns and thistles came forth, but also the animals produced fangs and claws, and predatory behavior. As the Apostle Paul said: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." (Romans 8:20, 21.)
The animals, so often now characterized as "red in tooth and claw," serve to demonstrate to us the true nature of sin's selfish striving, and where self-exaltation ultimately leads. Thus they are an object lesson God has given to us to encourage us to see through Satan's sophistries and return to God in our loyalties.
Even the thorns are an object lesson. When Jesus Christ was crucified, He wore a crown of thorns. Though meant to mock Him, it served to symbolize the fact that for us, Christ even bore the curse on the ground, so the ground could still yield to us its strength. Otherwise our race would have perished in Eden.
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
About snakes.
I’ve enjoyed everyone’s posts on this thread and Ron’s and Cay’s especially grabbed my interest. Cay, I suspect we share a common theology. Ron, I enjoyed your post too. There are several points in there that differ from my views on the subject but that’s OK. Your post was thoughtful and well stated. I especially liked what you said about the flying snake thing. I’m aware of Isaiah reference to fiery flying serpents but I never made the kind of connection you mentioned. It is worth thinking about.
I happen to really like snakes so this my be just my own prejudice speaking, but I personally think snakes have gotten a bad rap in this whole thing. In one of the four books we use as scripture (specifically The Pearl of Great Price: Moses 4:7) it says that Satan “spake by the mouth of the serpent” to entice Eve to eat the fruit. Then in every scriptural account we have, the story goes on to say that God cursed the snake so that he and all snakes from then on would have to crawl on their bellies.
I have a problem accepting this as literal. I’m not sure if there is a standard doctrine about this in my Church which states that it is literal, so I will play it safe and just say that this is my own personal view. I think “serpent” was used as a symbol for Satan in this instance. I don’t think actual snakes were involved in this at all. My reasoning goes something like this:
We believe that it was a necessary part of God’s plan for His children that Adam and Eve eat that fruit, become mortal and start having babies so that we, God’s children, could be born into mortality, which was the next step in our progression. God did not “curse” Adam and Eve nor us in the sense that “curse” is thought of as a punishment. Why would He punish us for something that had to be done and which we had all agreed we wanted to do in order to help bring about that which is God’s own work and glory, namely to “bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man”?
The reason God did not force Adam and Eve to become mortal but set it up so that they had to make that decision themselves, has something to do with the principle of Freedom of Choice, also sometimes called free agency or free will. I don’t fully understand it but I do know that it had to be their choice and that we will forever revere and honor them for making it.
We don’t believe in Original Sin. We teach that every person will be punished for their own sins and not for what Adam and Eve did. So although this mortal life here on Earth can be punishing at times, it is not a punishment. (PUNishness intended. Sorry.)
So: We believe that we are children of God, that we have intelligence and free will, and therefore are capable of sin. We believe that God is not punishing nor cursing the descendants of Adam and Eve for the Fall of Adam and Eve. We believe that animals are innocent, without free will, and free from sin; that they do what God has programmed them to do.
So why would God punish all future generations of snakes for something some snake did in the Garden when He, God, is not punishing all future generations of man for something Adam and Eve did? It just does not make sense to me in light of our teachings which I have stated above. Furthermore, we, as well as other religions have used snakes as a symbol for both good and evil, depending on the context. Nope, I just can’t wrap my mind around the “bad snake” idea. The only thing that makes sense to me is that the serpent in the garden is not literal but allegorical and symbolic of something else. Like Satan and Evil for instance.
Hopefully I will find out someday if I’m right or not. Fortunately it is not something that is totally essential for me to understand right now.
The subject of women suffering in childbirth was mentioned. Well, I for one would do away with women’s suffrage if I could but somebody forgot to put me in charge of the universe so it will have to stand.
Seriously though, since I don’t believe that we are being punished because of the Fall, it follows that this pain women endure is a natural consequence, part of the human condition, a reality of mortality, if you will. So it is not an individual sin nor a punishment for some supposed original sin and therefore does not need any forgiveness. The only connection between Christ’s atonement and the pain of childbirth would be that He suffered all the pains and sicknesses of mankind and therefore knows what women go through and can give solace and serenity where needed.
Fathers don’t get off the hook, though. I was privileged to be at every one of the births of our several children. And I also suffered every time. Granted, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pain my wife suffered but, aside from her nearly crushing my hand during transition that one time, I had the pain of the anguish of worrying that she and the babies would be OK. But then the pains of having and rearing children are often as exquisite as the joys.
I stand in awe of my wife and other women that they are willing to endure this process again and again. If it had been me giving birth we would have been lucky to have just one child. There certainly would not have been a second. Because I’m a pansy.
I think there is a school of thought in some religions that women are meant to suffer - the more suffering the better. I hope this philosophy is rare. But I believe that it is right for us to do what we can to ameliorate whatever suffering we can for everyone. There is no point in deliberately seeking suffering like some do as a religious rite to mortify the ‘evil’ physical body. We are going to get plenty of suffering as just part of the mortal condition without seeking it.
Isaac Asimov wrote an interesting article about how technological innovation has never hurt sensible religions. In it he mentioned how advances in anesthesia methods led to the ability of doctors to help ease the pain of childbirth. But then many of the ministers of the day (mostly men of course) immediately started to thunder from their pulpits how the pain of childbirth was the will of God and that it was a sin to try to do anything to thwart these judgment of God. This nonsense was pretty much put to rest by Queen Victoria who basically told the ministers that they could go jump in the lake, SHE was going to have anesthesia.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: but why be so snarky about it?
Ron, do you own a mirror?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee: Well, I for one would do away with women’s suffrage if I could
Um, suffrage does not mean what you think it does.
And welcome to Hatrack. Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Stephen, let me repeat: God is not on trial in the human language expressions of the Bible. When the Bible says God punishes "unto the third and fourth generation," this means that the natural consequences of sin follow to the third and fourth generation; for parents who hate God will encourage the same disposition in their children. God does not hate anyone, or anything (except sin).
So, for "Do I have to choke a believer?", I can't even get a chuckle out of you?
Clearly, Ron, you need to watch more of Dave Chappelle's show. Take a quick look at this short clip from Dave Chappelle's show here. Start watching around 2:20.
On another note, don't you believe that Jesus' sacrifice took away the need to punish until the 4th generation (or whichever generation it is)? I assume you do, but your explanation doesn't exactly cover wny you think the "bad parenting" excuse for punishing great-grandkids doesn't still apply.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
And yes, rivka is the official welcoming committee.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
When the heck did THAT happen?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Ron, I am curious about why, if you know that often Scripture is meant to be understood metaphorically, do you think that the Creation myth is meant to be literal?
ETA: Yes. I know that I will regret asking.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
rivka, perhaps you cannot see past your own reflection in the mirror, when you ascribe things to me. I wouldn't say this, except you are joining with that caviling pack who do this habitually.
It is true, as the Scripture says: "Just as water reflects the face, so one human heart reflects another." (Proverbs 27:19; NRSV)
But there is also the New Testament writing that says: "For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise." (2 Corinthians 10:12)
You may be imputing things to me that you see in your own heart. What you impute to me may not be real.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
When the heck did THAT happen?
Oh, you missed the meeting?
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Steven, thanks for your response. I guess I could have been more clear but yes, that question was aimed at the Jewish and Christian people since the thread is about Adam and Eve and the Bible and that is our creation story. Although, now you have me curious about those other groups you mentioned. I know a little about some of their ideas. I think I might read up on that.
Anyway, you said, “I'm trying to figure out how a soul would gain individual/personal qualities without having life experience. Does your religion believe that souls have a pre-life, where they have a life and have experiences as a soul before incarnating? “
Yes, that is what we believe. And that belief shapes how we view the creation of the world, why it was created, and what happened in Eden and why. Basically we believe that we each had different personalities, talents, and interests there and that we had progress as far as we could. The next step, then, would be mortality.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
kmboots, no need to regret asking an honest question sincerely.
I take the creation accounts in Scripture literally because they are presented as literal, and all the Bible writers who refer to them take them literally. The fourth commandment, written by God's own finger, takes the creation account of Genesis literally. (See Exodus 20:8-11.) Jesus Christ takes the creation accounts literally. (See Matthew 19:4-6.) The Apostle Paul takes the creation accounts literally. (See Romans 8:20, 21; 1 Corinthians 15:21, 45.)
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Thanks for the welcome, rivka.
I may have been Mrs. Malaprop in a previous life. There is this other entity that forces me to type puns and stuff. It's not my fault.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
steven, my point was that God does not "punish" unto the third and fourth generation. Consequences may last that long.
Let me give this example of the way the Bible sometimes attributes things to God that are not literally true. In 1 Chronicles 10:14, we are told that the Lord slew King Saul. Earlier in that chapter, you will find that the Philistines are credited with killing Saul. The actual narrative shows that King Saul fell on his own sword and killed himself, after being mortally wounded by an arrow, rather than fall into the hands of the Philistines to finish him off.
What is happening here is attribution and responsibility. The literal truth is that Saul killed himself. The attribution is that the Philistines killed him, since they forced him into it. The responsibility is that God takes responsibility for allowing Saul to die, because by disobeying God grievously in seeking the counsel of the Witch of Endor, Saul had finally forfeited God's special protection.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Thanks for answering. I disagree that the passages you noted are arguments for literalism. They seem to me to be simply referencing a known mythology.
Posted by CT (Member # 8342) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Nice to see you again Geoffrey.
Oh, yes. Posted by CT (Member # 8342) on :
Hi, iglee, and welcome to Hatrack. Please feel free to start an introductory thread and tell us a bit about yourself if you like. It's always interesting to learn how someone made his or her way here.
quote:Originally posted by iglee: There is this other entity that forces me to type puns and stuff. It's not my fault.
Oh, dear, then you'll never fit in around here.
---
<.< >.>
Posted by 0Megabyte (Member # 8624) on :
Ron, I need you to sit down and understand something. That is, the reason so many, even people like rivka, react to you the way they do.
You are a smart guy, and so it shouldn't be too hard for you to understand, once it's explained. Human beings really aren't that hard to figure out.
Let me put it this way. Have you ever in your life met the kind of person who, for example, tells their group of friends an urban legend they've heard, and once someone in that group points out the factual impossibility of that urban legend, or that it's been debunked or whatever, the person fights it, refusing to admit they were wrong, and disputing the actual world itself if that's what it takes?
I'm sure you have. Or at least, I'm sure you can understand how embarrassing and infuriating that is.
I'd like you to think on this for a moment, and recognize that when rivka of all people doubts you'd care about the actual facts known about the way bones work, it might mean something not on her, but on you. Act with humility. Instead of throwing things back on others, try to see your own faults and work on them.
Because, if you were shown a course on bone morphology, and you were actually shown the difference, and it did not fit your theory that snakes originally flew with wings, would you give up that theory, or just state that the ones who have spent collectively thousands of years in man-hours studying these things are wrong, because your theory has to be correct?
If there are people who don't believe you would, who believe you'd act like the kind of person who would stick to their guns even when shown they're wrong out of pride (a cardinal sin in the religion I was brought up in, btw) then maybe you should think on what that means.
And by that, I don't mean talk about how it speaks badly of them, as though by some sort of defensive reflex. You keep talking about projection... but to quote someone famous, "the lady doth protest too much, methinks."
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee: I may have been Mrs. Malaprop in a previous life.
Muh....muh...Ms. Malanthrop?
*eye twitches*
Sorry you probably aren't sure what I am talking about, but others are.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by CT:
quote:Originally posted by iglee: There is this other entity that forces me to type puns and stuff. It's not my fault.
Oh, dear, then you'll never fit in around here.
---
<.< >.>
CT could be lying. Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I'm trying to figure out how a soul would gain individual/personal qualities without having life experience. Does your religion believe that souls have a pre-life, where they have a life and have experiences as a soul before incarnating?
Newborn babies very often have distinctive personalities, which they retain through out their lives. How do you suppose they gain those personalities, having no life experience?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by iglee: I may have been Mrs. Malaprop in a previous life.
Muh....muh...Ms. Malanthrop?
*eye twitches*
I was about to make the joke 'hey, that's better than being miss malanthrop!'
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:I'm trying to figure out how a soul would gain individual/personal qualities without having life experience. Does your religion believe that souls have a pre-life, where they have a life and have experiences as a soul before incarnating?
Newborn babies very often have distinctive personalities, which they retain through out their lives. How do you suppose they gain those personalities, having no life experience?
Was that rhetorical?
If not, then let me say I'd point to genetics and the prenatal environment as some pretty powerful correlating factors or causes.
If there are such things as souls, I think it's possible that they shape a newborn's personality, to a measurable extent, even, perhaps, in some cases.
I'm betting, though, that if there are souls, then there is also reincarnation (or some process that allows transfer of memory). I also would bet that very few souls start out as human. I would imagine that most souls work their way up the chain, from germ to invertebrate to vertebrate to human. That's all guesswork and speculation, though. Seriously, though, why wouldn't souls evolve, just like species do?
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Because, if you were shown a course on bone morphology, and you were actually shown the difference, and it did not fit your theory that snakes originally flew with wings, would you give up that theory, or just state that the ones who have spent collectively thousands of years in man-hours studying these things are wrong, because your theory has to be correct?
quote:By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.
I'd be curious to know if Ron agrees with this statement.
Posted by shadowland (Member # 12366) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: The animals, so often now characterized as "red in tooth and claw," serve to demonstrate to us the true nature of sin's selfish striving, and where self-exaltation ultimately leads. Thus they are an object lesson God has given to us to encourage us to see through Satan's sophistries and return to God in our loyalties.
I don't think it makes sense that the current condition of the animals is merely a demonstration for us. After all, it wasn't human sin itself that caused the animals to be that way, it was specifically God. So if it's supposed to be an object lesson for us, it seems the object lesson is this: The effects of sin's selfish striving may be bad, but they're nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you.
If the negative effects of self-exaltation where so clearly self evident, I hardly think a global demonstration on all the creatures on earth would be necessary as well.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
MattP, I prefer not to allow anyone to put words in my mouth. That's a debating technique for suckers. There are some people I have encountered in this forum who are too keen on being in control, and when I resist them, they accuse me doing what they in fact are the ones doing.
0Megabyte, I have a right to disagree with those who think their evolution-dominated scientific worldview is "the truth." I do not have to defer to them in the slightest. The fact that I always back up my positions with evidence and logical arguments, just seems to make them more incensed. They seem to studiously ignore my examples, evidences, and reasoned arguments based on them.
For example, instead of ignoring my counter-arguments to rivka's argument (which was basically an assertion of an opinion, no proof was presented), why don't you explain why the example of bats I gave (where a bat's wings are also legs) does not answer rivka's argument? Why do you just ignore the point I made that the Hebrew of the first five books of the Bible did include the word for "lizard," so if the serpent of Eden were actually a lizard, the text would have said so? Do you think that ignoring my arguments refutes them?
Of course, I do not accept that modern snakes "evolved" from the serpents of Eden. Evolution is impossible. Complexity cannot be increased by genetic damage. After the curse on the land because of human sin, the nature of many animals and plants was changed. Things were lost. DNA was damaged as God's protection was partly withdrawn from the earth. So if rivka or anyone else is trying to present an argument about skeletal structure in modern snakes precluding wings on serpents in Eden which is in fact based on the idea of evolution, it is flawed reasoning.
[ January 05, 2011, 09:56 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
shadowland, again you impute to God things of which He is not guilty, even though He takes responsibility for allowing them. God did not punish the creatures of earth. He did allow the natural consequences to follow, from Him partly backing off from protecting earth from the damaging effects of radiation, etc., as a consequence of humans making a separation between themselves and God. Since humans are the stewards of earth, and earth was subordinated to us, we are responsible for any damage in the realm of nature resulting in fear, pain, and death. God allows it. But it is not His fault.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: God did not punish the creatures of earth. He did allow the natural consequences to follow, from Him partly backing off from protecting earth from the damaging effects of radiation,
I'm not trying to be a smartass or anything, but are you saying that radiation caused animals to grow fangs and claws and start eating each other? Forgive me if I'm misinterpreting.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Have you ever in your life met the kind of person who, for example, tells their group of friends an urban legend they've heard, and once someone in that group points out the factual impossibility of that urban legend, or that it's been debunked or whatever, the person fights it, refusing to admit they were wrong, and disputing the actual world itself if that's what it takes?
....when rivka of all people doubts you'd care about the actual facts known about the way bones work, it might mean something not on her, but on you. Act with humility. Instead of throwing things back on others, try to see your own faults and work on them.
First of all, I must object--I feel it is very offensive for you to liken the Creation narratives in Genesis to an "urban legend." You would lecture me on being respectful of other's views?
It appears to me that you are saying that your real complaint against me is that I have the effrontery to argue back. Once an evolutionist has presented his or her arguments, I have to meekly submit, and if I dare to refute those arguments and show WHY any evidences that may have been cited are invalid, I am doing something wrong?
You need to examine your own heart a lot more closely before you presume to lecture me about humility and open-mindedness.
Posted by just_me (Member # 3302) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: It appears to me that you are saying that your real complaint against me is that I have the effrontery to argue back.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it's the close-minded asinine way you "argue" back that gets me.
You don't argue - you insist that you are 100% right and back it up with "evidence" that is only acceptable as evidences to someone who agrees with you. Real arguments/debates use evidence that can be agreed upon and deals with the proper interpretation or meaning of that evidence. You CAN'T use scripture to try and prove something to someone unless they agree that scripture is true. Otherwise you might as well try to convince them using urban legends or fairy tales.
If you can't understand that and adjust to it you you aren't nearly as smart as you seem to think you are.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
It amuses me to no end, Ron, that your fallback positions are: 1) "I'm rubber; you're glue!" 2) "No, you're wrong."
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:I prefer not to allow anyone to put words in my mouth.
What then, in your words, are the implications of evidence which appears to contradict your interpretation if scripture. Is it possible that your interpretation of scripture is incorrect, or must that interpretation of such evidence be incorrect?
quote:Complexity cannot be increased by genetic damage.
Please provide an objective definition of complexity by which this claim can be tested. I'll provide a contrived and obviously incorrect example to demonstrate to you what I mean by an objective definition:
"Genetic complexity can be determined by counting the number of base pairs in a species genome. A species that has more base pairs in its genome is more complex than a species with fewer base pairs."
With such a definition we can come to a conclusion about whether complexity can be increased without resorting to arguing our individual world views - we merely have to count base pairs.
What is your worldview-independent definition of genetic complexity?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
MattP, complexity of the great extent needed to convert a simple lifeform into a more advanced species requires that some natural processes are capable of writing new information on the order of millions of new meaningful steps into the genetic code. There are no such natural processes. That requires an Intelligent Designer.
just_me, there is nothing asinine or close-minded about any of my arguments. Such insults and sneering ridicule do not gain you any debate points, no matter how loudly people of similar low standards of debate may applaud you for your snide cleverness. I only quote the Bible to show where my concepts are based, that I didn't just make them up out of thin air. You know good and well that I provide solid, concrete evidence, and scientifically valid arguments. Why are you denying this? That does not constitute refutation.
Obviously I do not expect atheists or agnostics to accept the Bible as authority. But I do like to show them what good, consistent sense the Bible makes when it is not deliberately misrepresented.
steven, I was merely suggesting that increased radiation may have been one factor in producing the genetic disruption that caused distortions and harmful mutations in nature. The main cause of the general deterioration of nature (including the human genome) is God backing off, and not excercising as close control and protection as He did before mankind fell and caused a separation from God. Now, whether radiation is the whole explanation, I would say probably not. Though through the damage it causes, it may have produced many of the "lethal genes" now known to be part of the human genome. It could be that Satan was permitted to do a little genetic engineering, like a sort of genetic hacker desiring to mar God's creation further. He is certainly capable of it. His scientific knowledge after thousands of years of life here on earth must greatly exceed ours--and we are capable of genetic engineering. (Satan is the ultimate terrorist!) I suspect that this could be where most or all diseases come from, especially the modern new strains of harmful viruses that seem to show up every year. But this is my own speculation. The Bible merely indicates that all creation "was made subject to vanity" and to "the bondage of corruption" because God allowed it. I get that from Romans 8:20, 21. And see right here, I am not referencing that as proof, but as demonstration of where I get the idea.
Posted by 0Megabyte (Member # 8624) on :
Ron, no matter how much you talk of my failures, the fact of the matter is that within your own post you prove my point.
You have stated without ambiguity that you will refuse to consider any evidence that is based on evolutionary theory, which, incidentally, is the basis of biology as it's currently known.
Why on earth do you think rivka would go into detail, when you reject whatever she's going to say before she gets to say it?
Why do you have the gall to ask me to back up my claims, when you've already said that you will reject it, whatever it is?
As I said, human beings are not hard to understand. When you tell a human being you are not going to listen to what they say, and have done so in the past, acting all offended that they don't go and take the time out of their lives -and take the effort- to do so is cruel and petty.
You are not dumb. You have to be aware of this. So how can you lambaste rivka for this, when it's easy to see why she'd react the way she did? To then go and say she's just caviling you is not merely irresponsible, it's asinine. Where is your empathy? Where is your ability to see things from the perspective of others? Do you truly, in your heart of hearts, believe that all those who disagree with you are enemies here to attack you? Do you truly imagine they're all just waiting in the wings with malice in their hearts, trying to stop you from telling God's Own Truth due to their wickedness?
Stop shrouding yourself in self-righteousness for one second and take a look at yourself. If you could see yourself, just see yourself, without the bias of the person being you, you'd see the way you treat people, and the way your attitude carries, for what it truly is.
Incidentally, and here I acknowledge I am being somewhat nasty, and beg your forgiveness for this instance of it, but you clearly don't understand the concept of an analogy.
I did not say that religion was equivalent of an urban legend. What I said is that you are the equivalent of the kind of person who, when shown they are shown factually wrong, act out like a child and insist instead that you are right regardless, and thus drive people away.
That is, yes, a critique. It is not a critique of religion, however. It is a critique of you, as an individual.
You have the gall to impinge my motives, and in the same breath of claiming righteousness, read things into me that have no basis in the facts. For I do not fit into the category you are trying to place me into. I have not the motive you claim for me. I don't honestly care what you believe. I care about how you treat people. I ask you to use the empathy that is a common human trait, and which I refuse to believe you do not possess, and see things from rivka's point of view, the point of view of one who you have already told you will disregard whatever evidence she'll give, and see why she would doubt your claims of wanting evidence. To see why she would say what she said, not as "one of those people who are against me" but as a human being no different from you, and as worthy of love and understanding as you yourself are. Do this for me, please, show the humility and grace and love needed for this, and you will prove me wrong and show yourself as the man of righteousness you claim yourself to be.
I am prepared to give you as detailed an account of evidence I can, and I am in fact listening to your claims, regardless of what you think. Disagreement is not equal to disregard, you must know that as a human being. But I will give you a reasoned point, as I continue trying in matters of fact, but if you are just going to disparage any efforts I take in either explaining my view, trying to explain possible misunderstandings, or in showing why I don't agree with your view, then I won't bother either, for the post I have planned is extensive, will take quite a bit of time and numerous cited sources, and I am not going to do it if you will act like a swine before a pearl. That is not stating that if you do not agree with me, it won't be worth it. Disagreement is not equivalent to disrespect or disregard. But if you will automatically disregard the actual physical observations of the world around us, and the best interpretations we can give them, before even seeing them, then once again you prove your righteousness as hollow as that of the pharisees Christ disliked so intensely.
(P.S. You have every right to state your view. This is a free country. I would never try to silence you, and I never have. But, just as you have every right to state your view, I have equal right to disagree, and challenge you. I have no gun to your head. I am a person on the freaking internet, and you can ignore me at your leisure. I will criticize you, I will point out where you are not what you think you are, I will state the evidence of this world as best I can, and you will say whatever you want, and perhaps neither of us are correct, but we are both allowed to say it. Do not imagine yourself gaining any points by claiming the same right that we have both been using all along, as though I am trying to take it away, merely by using the same right myself.)
To sum it up, be the man you claim to be. Apologize to rivka, for you have wronged her with your words and actions.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:complexity of the great extent needed to convert a simple lifeform into a more advanced species requires that some natural processes are capable of writing new information on the order of millions of new meaningful steps into the genetic code.
You're getting ahead of the discussion. For now let's just pin down what "complexity" means in this context. I get that you don't think natural processes can produce millions of "steps" in the genetic code. But that's a different claim than your previous one - "Complexity cannot be increased by genetic damage."
Do you believe that even one "meaningful step" is impossible (your first claim), or just that natural processes cannot account the number of such "steps" necessary for natural speciation (your second claim)?
I ask because your first claim is pretty easy to disprove for any meaningful definition I can think of for "complexity." The latter claim probably goes much further into areas where our ideological differences will be obstacles than I care to tread at this time.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
0Megabyte, you are misrepresenting me when you say that I "refuse to listen to any evidence based on evolution theory." How could I put together cogent and reasonable refutations if I refused to listen? What you are really complaining about is that I am not convinced by the arguments put forward by the evolutionists. I believe evolution theory is not the truth, and I argue against it, and show solid and concrete evidence why Creationism is a better explanation for the origin of life. I have done so repeatedly in this and other forums, for years. What I object to is your insistence that I do not have a RIGHT to dispute evolution theory. You imply that if I am not bowled over and bow to the evolution gospel you and others belive in so implicitly, there must be something wrong with me. But you have failed to persuade me, because your arguments and evidence are deficient, and are not persuasive. That is not because there is something wrong with me (as you want to believe), but because there is very much wrong with your arguments and use of evidence.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
MattP, I believe I have explained what I mean with perfect clarity already. You know what I am talking about. Deal with what I am actually saying, don't try to make up things, as if you could trap me with some sophomoric gambit.
Tell me what natural processes could turn a mouse into a man. Or else quit pretending that you can defend evolution theory.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:You know what I am talking about. Deal with what I am actually saying, don't try to make up things, as if you could trap me with some sophomoric gambit.
Quite the opposite. I'm trying very hard to practice a bit of "active listening" here by asking you to define your terms and, in some cases, attempting to restate what I believe your position to be in order to verify that I understand it correctly.
You made a very specific claim - "Complexity cannot be increased by genetic damage". I feel fairly confident that when you say "genetic damage" that you are referring to mutation - any change in genetic sequence. Since mutation is well defined I don't need any clarification there unless I have made an incorrect assumption about what you mean by "genetic damage" in which case I would appreciate a correction.
Assuming I got that bit right, we now have the claim "complexity cannot be increased by mutation." This is the point at which I must pause and ask for clarification. Because you use the word "increased" it's apparent you are talking about a quantitative measure when you use the word "complexity." To make a statement about whether a value can be increased, you would need a method by which to measure that value. For the few rigorous definitions of complexity that I am aware of, it's trivially easy to demonstrate that mutation does increase complexity.
Given all of that, I must assume either that you are unfamiliar with this fact or that you are using a different definition of complexity than those I'm familiar with.
Posted by CT (Member # 8342) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattP: For the few rigorous definitions of complexity that I am aware of, it's trivially easy to demonstrate that mutation does increase complexity.
I'd agree with you.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:You have the gall to impinge my motives...
I've seen this malapropism a lot very recently, for some reason. I believe you mean "impugn."
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
There are no Biblical literalists, at least I have never met of interacted with one. There are only "cafeteria" biblical literalists, who pick a few parts that support their agenda and ignore the rest.
Until I find someone who believes that the earth and atmosphere are sandwiched between two infinite expanses of water (which is what it literally says in Genesis), I will maintain that BIblical literalism is total hogwash, a misnomer.
Posted by Flying Fish (Member # 12032) on :
Rabbit, submitted for your perusal. If you have never encountered this fellow and his school of "thought" before, then prepare to have your mind boggled.
quote:Originally posted by Flying Fish: Rabbit, submitted for your perusal. If you have never encountered this fellow and his school of "thought" before, then prepare to have your mind boggled.
I've seen this before. It is truly mind boggling, but easy to dismiss as the ravings of a lunatic. There are far too many highly functioning people who call themselves biblical literalists for me to be able to dismiss it the same way.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
From my particular atheist POV, the distinction between "highly functioning" delusional people and "raving lunatics" is one of degree. Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: From my particular atheist POV, the distinction between "highly functioning" delusional people and "raving lunatics" is one of degree.
Do you have any scientific, psychological or medical data that support that opinion? If not, what differentiates you from religious people who hold opinions that are not supported by scientific data?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:For the few rigorous definitions of complexity that I am aware of, it's trivially easy to demonstrate that mutation does increase complexity.
One of the many odd things about painting one's self into a corner with a belief system like this is that you've effectively hamstrung God's own creation, Ron. It's a pretty strange thing to believe that a thing that occurs naturally in the universe couldn't increase the complexity of an organism, as though God either could not or would not design a system which wouldn't grow in intricacy sometimes as time passes.
But you're compelled to refuse to acknowledge it. If you did acknowledge it, well. Too many other unpleasant questions. It's just strange and a bit sad to me because one of my personal outlooks on God is that God certainly designed things in such a way as to 'self-manage', that if left alone they would for example increase in complexity over time. One reason why we've got such a cool planet.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If not, what differentiates you from religious people who hold opinions that are not supported by scientific data?
Not all opinions are created equal. Someone who holds the "opinion" that he is Napoleon is not equivalent to someone who holds the "opinion" that Fergie is a talented singer, even though both are wrong.
In fact, what you're actually saying is that you share my position on this: you believe people who think the Bible is the literal word of an actual being we call God must be raving lunatics, whereas people who think the Bible is a collection of stories -- some true, some metaphorical -- about an actual being we call God are frequently "high functioning" enough to not be loony.
From my perspective, again, both groups are full of high-functioning delusional people.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:In fact, what you're actually saying is that you share my position on this: you believe people who think the Bible is the literal word of an actual being we call God must be raving lunatics, whereas people who think the Bible is a collection of stories -- some true, some metaphorical -- about an actual being we call God are frequently "high functioning" enough to not be loony.
No, not all. I do not share your opinion that people who believe the Bible is the literal word of an actual being are raving lunatics or even mildly ill.
I have expressed the opinion that who ever created the time cube website, is a raving lunatic. That is a long long way from what you have said.
What you have said, is that you view diseases like paranoid schizophenia and any belief in anything supernatural to be part of the same disease spectrum. That is as absurd as suggesting that a mosquito bite is a minor form of chicken pocks because a mosquito bite itches and looks a lot like a pock. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that the typical belief in God is caused by the same kind of biomolecular processes as mental illness. Belief that the are the same, in the absence of supporting evidence is not only irrational, it is arrogant, condescending, and insulting.
In all the years that we have interacted on Hatrack, I have seen no evidence that you warrant this overly inflated image of yourself that allows you to look down on anyone who is religious. If you are going to claim atheism actually makes you smart, more rational, more ethical, more successful, happier, or better in any way, start producing some evidence to back it up or loose the condescending cocky attitude.
[ January 06, 2011, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Ron, you do understand that evolutionary theory does not claim that mice turn into men, don't you?
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
quote: From my particular atheist POV, the distinction between "highly functioning" delusional people and "raving lunatics" is one of degree.
Tom, I’m glad you winked when you said that because, if you hadn’t I might have got riled up enough to make a blanket statement about atheists like:
Atheists deny there is a God because there is some abhorrent behavior they don’t want to give up, and rationalizing away God makes it easier to live with themselves.
But since you winked I won’t make a statement like that. Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee:
quote: From my particular atheist POV, the distinction between "highly functioning" delusional people and "raving lunatics" is one of degree.
Tom, I’m glad you winked when you said that because, if you hadn’t I might have got riled up enough to make a blanket statement about atheists like:
Atheists deny there is a God because there is some abhorrent behavior they don’t want to give up, and rationalizing away God makes it easier to live with themselves.
But since you winked I won’t make a statement like that.
Good. Because that would be pretty obnoxious. Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee:
quote: From my particular atheist POV, the distinction between "highly functioning" delusional people and "raving lunatics" is one of degree.
Tom, I’m glad you winked when you said that because, if you hadn’t I might have got riled up enough to make a blanket statement about atheists like:
Since you took offense at that, I assume you identify either with "delusional people" or "raving lunatics". Which one is it?
Oh yeah, Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee:
quote: From my particular atheist POV, the distinction between "highly functioning" delusional people and "raving lunatics" is one of degree.
Tom, I’m glad you winked ...
Oh, you've met Tom. Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
How does a mouse turn into a man due to mutation?
Simple.
Mutation does not mean destruction. A mutated gene is a changed gene, not a defective gene. Sometimes this change is defective. Sometimes it is not.
Here is how it would work. The genes of a mouse are mutated to those of a man.
The odds of that happening are nearly 0, but not quite.
The odds of one mutation happening that brings the mouse closer to man are also very small, but no where near as small as all the cells having all their genes changed at once. (There is also the question of mass. A mouse can not become a man in a moment as there is not enough Mouse to make even a small Man).
Considering the number of cells, the number of mice, and a couple of million years for this to work out--the odds slowly begin to show it as probable.
Mutation is only half the answer. Natural Selection is the other half. That means that any negative mutation is removed from the equation, some times instantly, some times slowly.
Oh, and I have heard Biblical Literalists. I've heard sermons arguing that every word is literally true, and it is proof against Evolution, since how could God use natural selection when Death didn't exist before the fall of man?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:What you have said, is that you view diseases like paranoid schizophenia and any belief in anything supernatural to be part of the same disease spectrum.
No, that's not what I said. Specifically, I think the mental illness that produced TIMECUBE differs in degree from the mental illness that leads people to say they think the Bible is literally, word-for-word, true. I do think people who believe they've spoken to God are delusional, of course -- and believe people who think they've "felt" the presence of God to be not necessarily delusional but certainly mistaken -- but that's neither here nor there.
quote:If you are going to claim atheism actually makes you smart, more rational, more ethical, more successful, happier, or better in any way...
I haven't claimed any of these things of atheism. Frankly, I think my atheism simply makes me more correct.
quote:Tom, I’m glad you winked when you said that because, if you hadn’t I might have got riled up enough to make a blanket statement about atheists like:
Atheists deny there is a God because there is some abhorrent behavior they don’t want to give up, and rationalizing away God makes it easier to live with themselves.
*whew* We dodged a bullet there, then; I'd hate to have been responsible for your saying something phenomenally stupid.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
kmboots, it is the principle of the thing. Of course, evolutionists will try to weasel around the point by saying mice are on on a separate branch of their imaginary evolutionary tree. Ho-hum. But they also say that during the time of the dinosaurs, it was only the little furry, mouselike mammals that kept the genus alive--and then when the dinosaurs mysteriously went kaput, those tiny furry mammals gave rise to all other mammals, including humans. Evolutionists are just trying to be cute and dodge the issue of the obvious absurdity of evolution.
I might be willing to allow that evolutionist propagandists might be evolved from weasels. Though that would be an insult to weasels. And it would be more a matter of devolution, than evolution.
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Matt, I didn’t take offence at it. I was attempting a little light-headed banter. I think Tom knows as well as I do the folly of making sweeping generalities. I think Tom knows as well as I do that not all atheist have abhorrent habits and that not all God believers are irrational. But if our indictments happen to fit any particular member of the too groups, well . . . If the shoe fits, wear it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Ron, why not simply admit that, yes, evolutionary theory does not in fact claim that mice evolved into men?
That, rather than trying to be "cute," and "dodge the issue," evolutionists actually have legitimate reasons -- by their own reckoning, at least -- for believing that both mice and humans are descended from a very distant common ancestor, one that was neither mouse nor man?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I think Tom knows as well as I do that not all atheist have abhorrent habits and that not all God believers are irrational.
I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational. But I will concede that there are some forms of belief in the divine that are not irrational -- and that a tiny minority of those are not even based on delusion.
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Rabbit said
quote: There are no Biblical literalists, at least I have never met of interacted with one. There are only "cafeteria" biblical literalists, who pick a few parts that support their agenda and ignore the rest.
Until I find someone who believes that the earth and atmosphere are sandwiched between two infinite expanses of water (which is what it literally says in Genesis), I will maintain that BIblical literalism is total hogwash, a misnomer.
I agree. Well stated.
I’ve heard that concept called “harmony of the gospels” - meaning that one must not only take into consideration a few verses before and after the statement in question, but must also consider the whole canon of scripture to make sure that what you think it means is actually consistent with the rest of the gospel. And that “canon of scripture” could be just the Bible if that is what that person considers scripture, or like in the case of Mormons like me, the canon would be the four books and other revelations we consider to be scripture.
That is what I was trying to do earlier in the thread when I expressed my doubts that actual snakes were involved.
Flying Fish, thanks for introducing me to that time cube thing. That made my day. Now I don’t feel so irrational. We really need to find out what that guy was smoking so we can avoid it.
Rabbit, I was going to try to warn you not to read it for fear you might think you were back in Wonder Land with Alice, but I was too late. You’d already read it. Alas. (Sorry! With a name like Rabbit, I just couldn’t resist. )
I actually did think of Lewis Carol when I was reading it. I thought to myself, Wow! At least Carols stuff rhymes and . . . er, ends.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Tom, I seriously call into question the quality of the "reckoning" of evolutionists.
OK, if you are not willing to get the point of my poetic reference to mice becoming men, name a species evolutionists do regard as a direct, distant ancestor of homo sapiens sapiens, then come up with natural processes that could produce the change from one to the other.
Or, to make it even simpler, tell us about the natural processes that could turn a dinosaur into a bird. And no hand-waving vague generalities. If you want to invoke "natural selection," then explain HOW natural selection could do this. If you want to add in "mutation" (from whatever cause), then show HOW something that is inherently random and destructive could write coherent, meaningful new DNA sequences on the order of the millions of precisely ordered data bits needed to transform dinosaurs into birds.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:tell us about the natural processes that could turn a dinosaur into a bird
quote:show HOW something that is inherently random and destructive could write coherent, meaningful new DNA sequences on the order of the millions of precisely ordered data bits
It is important to note that these are two different questions. Seriously.
The second question is "how is it possible for new physical traits to be expressed as a consequence of genetic mutation?" And when you word the question that way, it's almost self-answering -- assuming, of course, that you are willing to understand (or already understand) what mutation actually is, and what it does.
The first question is: "can you give me a complete list of all the genetic mutations necessary to produce a sparrow from a therapod?" Sadly, we don't yet have a complete genome for any early therapods (although I believe we're working on it), so it's not possible to simply do a straight comparison. But I don't think that's the question you want to ask.
I think the question you're really asking is: "in what important ways does a bird differ from a therapod, and what genetic changes do we believe must have happened to permit this differentiation."
Is that a correct restatement?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Time, Ron. Lots and lots of time. Time enough for billions upon billions of tiny changes, some of which "took" and some of which didn't.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Ron, it doesn't write a whole new DNA sequence. It changes the existing sequence one small bit. Over generations those small bits add up to a new change.
Take the Argos question. Jason had the Argo's built and went on his great voyage. He wanted to keep it around so he kept maintaining it. Every year some of the boards rotted and had to be replaced. It took about seven years, but eventually all the boards were replaced by new boards. Is this a new boat or still the Argo?
Same situation on the DNA. Due to radiation and natural causes every generation had a slight change in the DNA of a couple of their offspring. Some of these changes were negative, and the animals died out. A few of these changes were positive, and the animals procreated and continued to pass on these changes to their children--except for a small few that were effected by mutations.
So what was the path from Dino to Bird? Basically the lightening of the skeleton and the transformation of arms to wings. It makes sense that animals that lived in the tree tops would survive better with lighter bones--they could climb higher to get food their heavier cousins couldn't reach. Gliding was useful for both falls, and for escaping (or being) prey. Longer Arms become useful again for reaching food or moving along the tree tops.
Is that simple enough or do you want it spelled out in a more basic format?
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Tom, I’ve never met the vast majority of atheists so I don’t know what to believe. I have had dear friends who are atheists who are nicer than I am and better fathers and better citizens and who are way smarter than me. But I’ve also had dealings with others who are . . . well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t turn my back on them.
Posted by Flying Fish (Member # 12032) on :
Sadly, Iglee, I don't think the timecube man was actually smoking anything. Buried in one of those long screeds is a sentence in which he states that some "evil bastard" doctors have told him he's schizophrenic (a fact which, by his logic, only serves to prove his theories).
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Egad! I guess I better stop joking about there being a voice in my head that forces me to make pun once in a while.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
kmboots, no amount of time could be sufficient. Furthermore, there is solid, concrete evidence that there was not billions of years.
Darth, your reasoning is not convincing. I know you evolutionists try to camoflage the basic impossibility of evolution by saying it all took place one little step at a time. But the impossible is still impossible.
As for your Argos analogy--birds are substantially different from dinosaurs, even though some common traits can be observed. Changing one basic genus to another requires that whole new genetic information structures be added to the genome. You do not get that merely by piecemeal editing of the existing genome. Does that actually seem reasonable to your mind?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Changing one basic genus to another requires that whole new genetic information structures be added to the genome. You do not get that merely by piecemeal editing of the existing genome.
Why not?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: kmboots, no amount of time could be sufficient. Furthermore, there is solid, concrete evidence that there was not billions of years.
Why not? Just stating that doesn't make it so. And what solid evidence are you talking about?
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
Watching this thread is very reminiscent of watching an old episode of Seinfeld.
Spoiler alert: a challenge will be issued, and someone will call into question the speed of light.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
What I'm hoping is that Ron will eventually realize that all of his arguments are, at bottom, "because I believe the Bible says so" -- and, more importantly, that the conclusions drawn by researchers who do not start from the primary assumption that the Biblical account is correct are very different from the conclusions of researchers who do, not for reasons of vapidity or cupidity or idiocy but rather because the claims of the Bible are not on the face of it the best match for the observable evidence.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I would say "what Ron believes are the claims of the Bible". I do not believe the Bible makes those claims.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Changing one basic genus to another requires that whole new genetic information structures be added to the genome. You do not get that merely by piecemeal editing of the existing genome.
Why not?
You don't have to get it by piece meal editing of the existing genome. Point mutations are not the only type of mutations out there. We have observed many different types of mutations processes in nature that could reasonably lead to genus, even phylum level changes. One of the most common types of mutation is replication of an extra full chromosome. Cells exchange genes, even fuse together. Fungi, for example, are known to take large segments of genetic material from other organisms. Symbiotic organisms can pool their genomes to become a single complex organism. We know and have observed many types of "mutation" that lead to an increase in complexity. This isn't just speculation, these phenomena and more have all been observed.
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Surely you jest, Tom. I’m having a hard time believing you said
quote: I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational.
Are you sure you don’t want to rephrase that?
Let’s do a little fill-in-the-blank game.
I believe the vast majority of ________ are __________.
Now fill in the blanks with you favorite whatever. Someone might say:
I believe the vast majority of blacks are not as smart as Caucasians. Or: I believe the vast majority of Black slaves were better off and happier in slavery. Or: I believe the vast majority of gay men are loaded with pedophilic tendencies Or I believe the vast majority of politicians are liars. Oh wait a minute, that one is true. Bad example.
Anyway, I think you get what I mean. All those statements reek of the P word which is much too dirty a word to write out in a public forum. (besides which I can’t spell it anyway) And nobody likes being accused of being P*&%*#%*.
Someone, maybe even me for instance, might even say something like :
quote: Atheists deny there is a God because there is some abhorrent behavior they don’t want to give up, and rationalizing away God makes it easier to live with themselves.
Which you were right in calling
quote: something phenomenally stupid.
If I wasn’t deliberately being over the top with that crack about atheists, just to show how stupid it is, I’d be ashamed I said it.
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee: Let’s do a little fill-in-the-blank game.
I'm no expert on logical fallicies, but wouldn't this fall under false equivalence? You're taking a statement someone made, removing key words, replacing them with completely unrelated key words to make unrelated new statements which are absolutely ridiculous, and using that to imply that the original statement is ridiculous. Your last statement, which you jokingly claim to be a bad example, is actually a good example of why this fill-in-the-blank game doesn't make sense.
Also,
quote:Originally posted by iglee: Surely you jest, Tom. I’m having a hard time believing you said
quote: I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational.
I lol'd.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
iglee: I suspect you will find that for Tom's definition of irrational, a majority of believers fall into that category, as he sees it. I'm sure he feels he's considered the gravity of the statement and stands by it.
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: iglee: I suspect you will find that for Tom's definition of irrational, a majority of believers fall into that category, as he sees it. I'm sure he feels he's considered the gravity of the statement and stands by it.
I may be in the minority, but I always looked at 'irrational' as a descriptor as opposed to a put-down. Much like 'ignorant'.
I am incredibly ignorant about a number of different subjects. And I am particularly irrational when it comes to the subject of women and romance. Those words are both merely describing me and my actions. And while they can sound like insults aren't necessarily meant to be so.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
iglee, I believe that, for Tom, saying that the majority of believers are irrational is more like saying that the majority of black people are darker. The irrationality is a function of the belief (or the other way 'round). I don't recommend trying to change his mind except by behaving in an (otherwise) rational way. Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
I’m not sure I follow your reasoning, Sean, so maybe my fill-in-the-blank thing is, as you say “absolutely ridiculous” maybe not. Whatever.
So I will just come out and say it clearly: The statement, “I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational.” is an example of prejudice.
Now, is it an example of prejudice or not? Yes or No
If it is prejudice then it fits in just fine with the other prejudicial statements I wrote as examples and the “game“ is valid.
If it isn’t prejudice then I stand corrected.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
iglee, it is not an example of prejudice if, by definition, belief is irrational.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Saying it in a general sense like "the majority of believers are irrational" is hard not to take as a put-down. It would be easy to add "in that their belief in God is not based on such and such definition of rationality" and avoid all the misunderstanding.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
prejudice:
quote:an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
I would probably word it differently. I would say that most believers believe first and foremost for emotional reasons rather than logical ones. Which amounts to the same thing as what Tom said. Do you see my statement as a prejudiced statement?
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Rabbit, you are the first evolution proponent in this whole thread to actually attempt to make a logical argument. It was a decent attempt, by suggesting that mutations could eventually produce whole new genes to be added to the genome, by adopting portions of the genomes of other species. However, have you noticed that what you are really saying is that genomes do genetic engineering on themselves, spontaneously, with no outside help or guidance? With all due respect, I do not believe that is reasonable.
So where did the supposed dinosaur precursors of birds come up with feathers and hollow bones? What other genus did they raid to acquire those genes? Where did the supposed first mammal come up with the genes that allowed it to be warm-blooded, when supposedly that trait had never existed before in any genus up to that point?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:However, have you noticed that what you are really saying is that genomes do genetic engineering on themselves, spontaneously, with no outside help or guidance? With all due respect, I do not believe that is reasonable.
I don't know why you think its unreasonable. It's indisputable. It has been observed in nature repeatedly by numerous mechanisms. This isn't a theory, its an observation. Plane and simple.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I would probably word it differently. I would say that most believers believe first and foremost for emotional reasons rather than logical ones. Which amounts to the same thing as what Tom said. Do you see my statement as a prejudiced statement?
I would say that most atheists (at least the outspoken ones) disbelieve first and foremost for emotional reasons rather than logical ones. That much is evident in the passion with which the argue.
Of course my saying this about "most" atheists is purely speculation, extrapolating from my experience with atheists. On the other hand, I've observed Tom Davidson's atheism and the reasoning he used to defend it evolve for a decade now so I'm not blindly speculating about him. I am more than confident that his atheism arose first and foremost for emotional reasons and that he has with time build a reasoned edifice to defend what he feels to be true. In this sense, he differs little from the religious.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Rabbit, you are the first evolution proponent in this whole thread to actually attempt to make a logical argument.
That probably because I'm the only one in this argument who knows enough modern molecular biology to make the argument. The rate at which our understanding in the field is growing is truly phenomenal. No one can keep up with everything that's being learned.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:you are the first evolution proponent in this whole thread to actually attempt to make a logical argument.
I'm still waiting for you to answer my question. When you do, I'll give it a shot.
---------
quote:So I will just come out and say it clearly: The statement, “I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational.” is an example of prejudice.
You are wrong. You're actually wrong in a variety of ways, in fact; far more "prejudicial" would be saying something like, "you personally must be irrational because you are a believer."
While it's off-topic here, I would be happy to talk with you in another thread (or over email) about the ways in which most religious believers tend to be irrational and/or delusional on the subject of their belief. (It has nothing, by the way, to do with believing things for emotional reasons.)
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:That probably because I'm the only one in this argument who knows enough modern molecular biology to make the argument.
Well, I think there are a few of us with at least the level of knowledge required to make the argument you made. It's just tricky trying to figure out which line of argument might possibly be compelling enough to Ron to be worthy of a non-dismissive response. Well, at least a less dismissive response.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Well, I think there are a few of us with at least the level of knowledge required to make the argument you made.
Sorry if I offended anyone by underestimating their expertise in the area. I don't know peoples background well enough to know who is and who is not likely to know any molecular biology. This field is changing fast enough that I wouldn't fault anyone for not knowing much outside their particular niche.
I'm pretty sure that unless God himself comes down, knocks Ron on the head and tells him all life on earth evolved through natural processes, Ron will find no argument for evolution convincing. And even if he heard it from God's own mouth, I expect he'd put up a fair argument before conceding he was wrong.
[ January 06, 2011, 06:39 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
There's also the fact that this has largely been done before, and it will just result in dismissals and moving goalposts.
In addition, there is only Ron arguing one side, and it's unseemly to gang up on lone crazy people.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sean Monahan:
quote:Originally posted by iglee: Let’s do a little fill-in-the-blank game.
I'm no expert on logical fallicies, but wouldn't this fall under false equivalence? You're taking a statement someone made, removing key words, replacing them with completely unrelated key words to make unrelated new statements which are absolutely ridiculous, and using that to imply that the original statement is ridiculous. Your last statement, which you jokingly claim to be a bad example, is actually a good example of why this fill-in-the-blank game doesn't make sense.
It's not a false equivalency, because no equivalence is established between the terms being discussed. The fallacy presented here is, I think, argumentum ad lapidem (argument against stone) which is just a fancy way of saying it is a dismissal of the original argument as ridiculous without addressing the terms employed by the argument.
So, for instance, an argument that states: "Communism is a morally bankrupt enterprise," is dismissed because the respondent holds all arguments in favor of political systems to be ridiculous. The counter-argument being: "one can't seriously characterize communism in any meaningful way."
It also presents itself as a false dichotomy and an argument from ignorance: "this statement is false because it cannot be proven true" That's why he listed a number of other statements that can be informally defeated by an appeal to incredulity.
iglee:
quote: So I will just come out and say it clearly: The statement, “I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational.” is an example of prejudice.
No it is not. The interpretation of the statement as being prejudicial depends upon the application of the terms in play, specifically the term "irrational." You are not interpreting the use of this term correctly, and moreover you are likely applying a great deal of your own prejudice in regards to that statement.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by natural_mystic: There's also the fact that this has largely been done before, and it will just result in dismissals and moving goalposts.
In addition, there is only Ron arguing one side, and it's unseemly to gang up on lone crazy people.
I would appreciate it if we did not needlessly disparage other posters, no matter how much we disagree with them or earnestly belive their mental states to be suspect. Ron is staying within the TOS, this comment is not.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:No it is not. The interpretation of the statement as being prejudicial depends upon the application of the terms in play, specifically the term "irrational."
In so far as the Tom is judging people with whom he has little or no interaction to be "irrational", it is, virtually by definition prejudice. It is a judgment made without careful examination of the facts.
If Tom were arguing that most (or even all) belief in God was irrational, that would be a different issue. But he was not expressing an opinion about particular opinions or beliefs, but a sweeping opinion of the majority of people who hold them -- that is prejudice.
I suppose you could define an "irrational person" to be any person who has a single irrational opinion or belief, in which the distinction I made above becomes irrelevant. By that definition, however, all people are irrational render the entire discussion irrelevant. You might as well be saying "I believe the vast majority of believers have two eyes, a nose and 23 chromosomes."
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee: I’m not sure I follow your reasoning, Sean, so maybe my fill-in-the-blank thing is, as you say “absolutely ridiculous” maybe not. Whatever.
Well, the point I was making was that I didn't follow your reasoning.
quote:Originally posted by iglee: So I will just come out and say it clearly: The statement, “I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational.” is an example of prejudice.
Now, is it an example of prejudice or not? Yes or No
You can't know this until you know why he came to that conclusion.
Edit: Also, you misread, because I didn't say your fill-in-the-blank game was ridiculous; I said each of the new statements you created was ridiculous. Which they were, as you intended.
[ January 06, 2011, 07:24 PM: Message edited by: Sean Monahan ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:No it is not. The interpretation of the statement as being prejudicial depends upon the application of the terms in play, specifically the term "irrational."
In so far as the Tom is judging people with whom he has little or no interaction to be "irrational", it is, virtually by definition prejudice. It is a judgment made without careful examination of the facts.
If Tom were arguing that most (or even all) belief in God was irrational, that would be a different issue.
Why? Because saying: "people who believe in God are irrational," and "belief in God is irrational" are so different? Again, you are ignoring the terms: "irrational," doesn't mean raving lunatic, nor does it even mean illogical- certainly it does not mean stupid. Implications to that effect were clearly not intended in his post, or he would have made them. I would make them, Tom wouldn't.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Because saying: "people who believe in God are irrational," and "belief in God is irrational" are so different?
Yes. Using a term to describe a person and using it to describe and idea are very different. Using a term to describe a large group of people, who have only one thing in common, is (virtually by definition) prejudice. It is judging people based on extremely limited information.
Whether or not irrational means stupid or raving lunatic or has any other negative connotation is essentially irrelevant. If I said "almost all religious people are kind and generous", that would also be prejudice, a judgement made without adequate data to support.
As I said, unless by "irrational person" you mean any person who has at least one irrational opinion or belief, then Tom's statement about "almost all religious people" is fundamentally different from the statement "almost all religious beliefs are irrational". Tom's statement is prejudiced because the only thing he knows about "almost all religious people" is that they have atleast one belief he considers irrationa. Almost all people hold hold some irrational opinions and beliefs. Singling out religious people, as Tom does, implies that they differ in this respect from non-religious people. That's prejudice.
[ January 07, 2011, 09:03 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Isn't prejudice irrational?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee: Isn't prejudice irrational?
Not necessarily, presuming that you define prejudice to mean making judgements or forming opinion with based on insufficient or unreliable data. There are many many situations in life that require a person to make choices and judge things without sufficient data. In these cases, its completely rational to base ones judgement on the data one has, however limited it may be. It's certainly better than ignoring the data altogether.
I would, however, agree that it is irrational to place a high level of confidence on an opinion formed based on limited or unreliable data. Since this accurately describe most of what we call "prejudice", I think it's fair to say that most prejudices are irrational.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: You need to examine your own heart a lot more closely before you presume to lecture me about humility and open-mindedness.
Hey ron, this might be the best advice you have ever given that you, more than anyone else on the entire forum, need to do for yourself.
Desperately. Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Why? Because saying: "people who believe in God are irrational," and "belief in God is irrational" are so different? Again, you are ignoring the terms: "irrational," doesn't mean raving lunatic, nor does it even mean illogical- certainly it does not mean stupid. Implications to that effect were clearly not intended in his post, or he would have made them. I would make them, Tom wouldn't.
Setting aside the fact that in order to have a case of prejudice one doesn't have to be experiencing the most frothing feelings of contempt (raving lunatic), but only milder feelings of prejudgment - usually negative...it's prejudice because without having some idea arrived at through valid means* of how all of those people came to believe in God, it's prejudice. Pretty straightforward, really. Not that it's a huge thing, it's just a bit of prejudice.
*I just know, the only ways they could've come to believe in God are..., and I've met enough believers to know don't count as valid reasons. They certainly wouldn't when making, say, a judgment about the rationality of atheists as a whole.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... Tom's statement is prejudiced because the only thing he knows about "almost all religious people" is that they have atleast one belief he considers irrationa.
Technically, we know a lot more than that.
We can simply go to a site like this to find out that "almost all religious people are theists", or that "almost all religious people belong to religions founded over 100 years ago", or that "almost all religious people are not Jewish." All these facts are not based on the definition of being religious.
It should be emphasized, less for you than for iglee, that the definition of prejudice is clearly not based on simply using one term to describe a group of people with only one thing in common, but also on having inadequate evidence to support that one term.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by iglee: Isn't prejudice irrational?
No. Prejudice based on insufficient information interpreted in a fallacious manner is irrational. Prejudice based on well interpreted personal or theoretical experience is not irrational.
For instance, European anti-semitism is historically mostly irrational, whereas prejudice against the Roma is typically not. This doesn't imply a value judgement about Jews or Gypsies, it is accounted for by the two different groups having widely different cultural backgrounds, both having been the subjects of a great deal of prejudice. So, to make that clear, Jews have been hated for reasons which are not rational (as causes of hatred), such as their philosophy of life, attitudes to family and government, religion, etc. Whereas the Roma have typically been hated for perfectly rational reasons: being poor and uneducated, being widely involved in crime, having a disregard for personal property due to a nomadic heritage. It's not *right* to hate gypsies, and it is wrong not to work to stop this cycle, but they are hated for rational reasons (well, sometimes, but I'm just addressing the big picture).
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I just know, the only ways they could've come to believe in God are..., and I've met enough believers to know don't count as valid reasons.
It's worth noting that believers are pretty regularly surveyed to a fair degree of statistical accuracy. And where your typical believer might have met and conversed with a handful of atheists about secular morality, I can guarantee you -- and, in fact, have evidence to back up the claim -- that your typical atheist is comparatively more thoroughly steeped in the culture and beliefs of the religious. (After all, for every self-described atheist that you meet in this country, you are likely to meet forty-seven self-described Christians.)
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: [QUOTE] As I said, unless by "irrational person" you mean any person who has at least one irrational opinion or belief, then Tom's statement about "almost all religious people" is fundamentally different from the statement "almost all religious beliefs are irrational". Tom's statement is prejudiced because the only thing he knows about "almost all religious people" is that they have atleast one belief he considers irrationa. Almost all people hold hold some irrational opinions and beliefs. Singling out religious people, as Tom does, implies that they differ in this respect from non-religious people. That's prejudice.
I think the issue with that is that espousing an actual religious belief is a highly conscious and deliberate statement of affinity for an irrational worldview. A lot of people have irrational thoughts, however, not everybody bases their conception of reality on an irrational concept. I think you can have an irrational thought and *be* rational. But an irrational belief? That's seems different to me. It seems much more substantive.
I would put it that: A) religious beliefs are irrational, and B) that religious people hold religious beliefs, C) that holding irrational beliefs is positive evidence of an irrational mind, and therefore D) Religious people are irrational.
I suppose in order to accept that, you would have to concede to agree with me that there are some irrational thoughts that are more "acceptable" for rational people to have and still not be termed "irrational people," because despite having such thoughts and even allowing themselves to be influenced by them, they remain aware of the fact that they are not acting within clear reason. Essentially they know that they are crazy, and are therefore not that crazy. For instance, phobias, crushes, petty jealousies, celebrating birthdays- these can all be acted upon by a rational person as long as that person intellectually acknowledges that their motivations are not based in reason.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yes, I'm familiar with those studies as well, Tom. Your 'typical' atheist (whatever that means) is more likely to score well on a test about Christians than a Christian is about atheists, of course. The trouble is, the kinds of questions that really get down to why a person believes in God aren't necessarily the sorts of things that can be quantified in a survey...well, perhaps they are, if you grant the notion that the answer really is just 'because my parents taught me to', in which case you're really just believing in a different argument from the start. Prejudging, so to speak.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:quote: Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... Tom's statement is prejudiced because the only thing he knows about "almost all religious people" is that they have atleast one belief he considers irrational. Technically, we know a lot more than that.
We can simply go to a site like this to find out that "almost all religious people are theists", or that "almost all religious people belong to religions founded over 100 years ago", or that "almost all religious people are not Jewish." All these facts are not based on the definition of being religious.
I'm not sure if you are being pedantic or have some real point. Technically we know all kinds of stuff about almost all religious people. Almost religious people have two eyes, speak some language, are between the ages of 1 and 100, breath air, have suffered from some illness, have heard of Mohammed, and believe the world is round. I don't see how any of that is relevant.
Do you think there is something I've missed that Tom knows about almost all religious people that justifies his judgement that "almost all religious people are irrational." or are you just being snarky?
Do you think that "almost all religious people are theists", differs in some important way from my saying "almost all religious people believe something Tom considers irrational."
Do you have some reason to believe that Tom thinks belonging to an organization that is over 100 years old is irrational or that most rational people are Jewish?
Aside from the one item I pointed to above, that almost all religious people believe in the existence of God(s) (something Tom finds irrational), do you believe any data on that site (or any other) played a key roll in forming Tom's opinion that almost all relgious people are irrational?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Rabbit, are you saying that holding a belief based on aggregated data is not irrational, but holding a belief based on personal experience is? Or are you simply arguing that opinions based on experience can be prejudiced, whereas opinions based on data are not?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
The Rabbit: I think that given the real racial and ethnic prejudices that occur in the United States, where many people can exhibit real xenophobia and prejudice without ever leaving the country and interacting with foreigners (or even interacting with particular groups segmented by SES) that prejudice shouldn't be carelessly thrown around in a way that devalues it.
TomD (and arguably all atheists in North America) have grown up and experienced decades of life interacting with, being prosletized to, and being exposed to media about the religious. This is pretty much unavoidable and is not true in reverse.
Consequently, making an assessment of the religious seems to me to be based on a wealth of knowledge that directly contradicts the idea of pre-judging.
You can complain about measurement error, maybe TomD's sample is biased away from Africans or Russians, whatever. But the issue is clearly not that he hasn't measured at all!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I just know, the only ways they could've come to believe in God are..., and I've met enough believers to know don't count as valid reasons.
It's worth noting that believers are pretty regularly surveyed to a fair degree of statistical accuracy. And where your typical believer might have met and conversed with a handful of atheists about secular morality, I can guarantee you -- and, in fact, have evidence to back up the claim -- that your typical atheist is comparatively more thoroughly steeped in the culture and beliefs of the religious. (After all, for every self-described atheist that you meet in this country, you are likely to meet forty-seven self-described Christians.)
And your point is what? Is there some sort of competition going on to decide whether your opinion of "almost all religious people" is based on more data and better data than the average Christian's opinion of atheists?
Do you know anything about selection bias? In my experience (which I have reason to believe is both very deep and broad and broad in this respect), the people who regularly join in religious debates are a highly biased sample of humanity. If your opinion of atheists (or Christians or Muslims or any other group) is based on the most outspoken members of the group, it's a heavily prejudiced opinion because it's based on a prejudiced sampling of the population. I know thousands of Christians, but I only talk about religion in any detail with a tiny fraction of them. I know hundreds of atheists/agnostics/non-religious people, but I only talk about religion with a tiny fraction of them. It isn't rational to presume that the opinions and thought patterns of the most outspoken argumentative group members are representative of the much larger group. It's a heavily biased sample.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Is there some sort of competition going on to decide whether your opinion of "almost all religious people" is based on more data and better data than the average Christian's opinion of atheists?
Not on my part. I'm confident that my opinion is more informed.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Consequently, making an assessment of the religious seems to me to be based on a wealth of knowledge that directly contradicts the idea of pre-judging.
B.S. I'd be willing to bet that you've never had a religious discussion of any kind with 99% of the people you've met. Among the people you know well enough to know what religion (if any) they adhere to, what fraction have you spoken with in enough detail to understand what they believe and why? 75% of the people in the US and Canada are (by some definition) Christians, what fraction of those have tried to proselyte you?
If I based my opinion of atheists and agnostics based solely on those I've debated with at hatrack, it would be vastly different from the opinion I've formed over years of working and associating the atheist/agnostic academics. If I based my opinion of Jews based on the most vocal member of this forum, it would be radically different than the opinion of formed based on my real life interaction with many Jews. If I based my opinion of Jehovah's Witnesses on the few virtual strangers I've debated with, it would be radically different than my opinion formed based on those I've worked and associated with at greater length.
A biased data set is a biased data set no matter how big it is. Concluding that "almost all members" of any group share the characteristics of the small percentage with whom you have argued is prejudiced, whether that small percentage is 2 people or 2000 thousand.
The number of people hurt by a prejudice and the severity of the crimes committed because of it, may be a valid way to judge the seriousness of a prejudice. They are not a valid way to determine whether or not it is a prejudice.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Is there some sort of competition going on to decide whether your opinion of "almost all religious people" is based on more data and better data than the average Christian's opinion of atheists?
Not on my part. I'm confident that my opinion is more informed.
Your arrogance is really impressive Tom. Explain to me the evidence you have which makes you confident that your opinion is more informed than the opinions held by "almost all" other people on the planet.
To start off, why don't you quantify what you mean by "almost all". If 1% of religious people were better informed than you would, that modify your assessment, or would it take 20%. If you thought it was only 51%, would you be as vocal about it. Next, why don't you define what you mean by "religious people". 75% of North Americans say they are Christian. Only about 40% say they attend church regularly. Of those who say they attend church regularly, its estimated only about half actually do. Which group are you talking about when you say "religious people."
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: B.S. I'd be willing to bet that you've never had a religious discussion of any kind with 99% of the people you've met. ... Concluding that "almost all members" of any group share the characteristics of the small percentage with whom you have argued [my emphasis] is prejudiced
First, I'd ask you to keep your profanity to yourself.
Continuing onward, 99% is an absolutely silly goalpost to try to establish. With that kind of threshold, Gallup would never be able to say whether the vast majority of Americans favour healthcare, oppose the war, etc if they needed to poll 99% of people. You only need a random sample of roughly 1000 adults to do the kind of assessment that is currently done on Gallup with acceptable significance.
Second, the fact that you repeatedly come back to the example of "arguments" as a way that atheists learn about the religious shows what a clear misunderstanding of the position of minorities in society you're labouring under.
We can make this more clear if we guessed that the the primary way that Chinese Americans learn about White Americans would be by confronting them in arguments. This is clearly absurd. You can read something like Iris Chang's 'Chinese in America' to illustrate this.
Atheists are simply submerged in the media and culture of the religious, there is no way to get around it. We get radio and television programming intended by religious people for religious people. We get to attend ceremonies where the presumption is that everyone present is religious. Even the curriculum in schools ensures that atheists will be exposed to religious thought and history (which is a good thing, I might add). This is not exposure to radicals, this is just a fact of growing up.
Arguments may be the first thing that comes to your mind about how you learn about atheists. It is not remotely the first thing that comes to the mind of an atheist (in North America anyways) about how one learns about the religious.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Your arrogance is really impressive Tom. Explain to me the evidence you have which makes you confident that your opinion is more informed than the opinions held by "almost all" other people on the planet.
So you're saying that you want there to be a competition between my opinions and other peoples'?
quote:If 1% of religious people were better informed than you would, (sic) that modify your assessment...
Which assessment? My belief that my opinion of the typical Christian is more informed than the typical Christian's opinion of atheists? Or that the vast majority of believers are irrational, an assessment that does not depend upon their familiarity with atheism in any way?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Continuing onward, 99% is an absolutely silly goalpost to try to establish. With that kind of threshold, Gallup would never be able to say whether the vast majority of Americans favour healthcare, oppose the war, etc if they needed to poll 99% of people. You only need a random sample of roughly 1000 adults to do the kind of assessment that is currently done on Gallup with acceptable significance.
You are conflating way too many things. First, I didn't set 99% as a goal post. I asked Tom to define what he meant by "almost all religious people". In my mind, "almost all" implies far more than a majority or even a vast majority. It implies there are very few exception.
For example, If someone said "almost all Asian Americans live on either the west coast or New York", I would consider it reasonable to point out that there are 200,000 Asians living in Houston (even though that's only 2% of the total). Exactly how reasonable would depend on the context of the argument. If for example, the person was telling you not to bother looking for authentic Asian food in Texas because "almost all the Asian Americans live on California or New York", it would be an obviously rational contradiction.
A properly randomized poll by Gallop surveys has very little in common with the kind of experience you and Tom are talking about. That is part of my point.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Arguments may be the first thing that comes to your mind about how you learn about atheists. It is not remotely the first thing that comes to the mind of an atheist (in North America anyways) about how one learns about the religious.
QFT. I don't know when I stopped "arguing" about religion with people in person. My middle teens probably. Since I haven't seen a compelling (at least to me) argument in favor of religion in my whole adult life, I don't find the prospect of actually allowing people to voice their thoughts on it to me in an argumentative way. In person, I usually just listen- maybe I question, but it's rarely, rarely interesting to me in the slightest. Online I suppose you can just very easily pick the parts of the discussion that interest you, and talk about that- and the lack of immediacy cuts down on chatter, though it focuses the discussion in a way that couldn't happen in person.
I do sometimes wonder whether that little "don't talk about religion" part of etiquette came about because people do argue about it, or because it is so insufferably *boring* to people who don't care. And, of course, there are plenty of "religious" people who really don't care either. For my part, I do think religious people are fundamentally irrational in their world views, but since I think most people would just be fundamentally irrational anyway, and religion is just an expression of the tendency, I don't really care that much.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Or that the vast majority of believers are irrational, an assessment that does not depend upon their familiarity with atheism in any way?
:Anecdote Alert: It occurs to me that generally I do not assume anything about the specifics of the beliefs of any person I meet, even when they tell me about their religion (which is only sometimes). However, I have on at least several occasions had religious people state that I believe in "nothing," "chaos," "only yourself," or "that God is dead." It always seems to flip their cookies when I tell them no to all that. Then they get downright anxious when I start talking about the 2d planet and the 3d visitor and north of the north pole and Carl Sagan crap like that.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: You are conflating way too many things. First, I didn't set 99% as a goal post. I asked Tom to define what he meant by "almost all religious people". In my mind, "almost all" implies far more than a majority or even a vast majority. It implies there are very few exception.
Note: the first appearance AFAIK of the phrase (in this thread) "almost all religious people" is your post at January 07, 2011 08:57 AM. TomD has never used this phrase in this thread, using instead qualifiers such as "vast majority" and "most religious believers."
By my reading, I'm the only person that has offered descriptors of religious people along the lines of "almost all religious people" as a response to that initial appearance.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Your arrogance is really impressive Tom. Explain to me the evidence you have which makes you confident that your opinion is more informed than the opinions held by "almost all" other people on the planet.
So you're saying that you want there to be a competition between my opinions and other peoples'?
No, I'm just trying to figure out why you brought it up. Whether or not your opinion of religious people is or is not better informed than the the typical christian's opinion of atheists, has little relevance as to whether or not your opinion is based on prejudice.
quote:
quote:If 1% of religious people were better informed than you would, (sic) that modify your assessment...
Which assessment? My belief that my opinion of the typical Christian is more informed than the typical Christian's opinion of atheists? Or that the vast majority of believers are irrational, an assessment that does not depend upon their familiarity with atheism in any way?
I was presuming that the things you throw out were rationally connected in some way. Since I can see no rational reason to proclaim that "almost all religious people are irrational", unless you mean to imply that irrationality is something significantly more characteristic among religious than the among people in general. I was presuming that your argument that Christians were less informed in their opinion of atheist than you are in your opinion of Christians, that this was intended to support your opinion that almost all Christians are irrational.
I was presuming that there was some logical thread that relating your comments and that you had some point in engaging in discussion beyond massaging your own ego or venting your bitterness over the fact that God has not forcefully intervened to prevent your major life mistakes.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Note: the first appearance AFAIK of the phrase (in this thread) "almost all religious people" is your post at January 07, 2011 08:57 AM. TomD has never used this phrase in this thread, using instead qualifiers such as "vast majority" and "most religious believers."
I stand corrected. I should have checked the quote rather than relying on memory.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Anecdote Alert: It occurs to me that generally I do not assume anything about the specifics of the beliefs of any person I meet, even when they tell me about their religion (which is only sometimes). However, I have on at least several occasions had religious people state that I believe in "nothing," "chaos," "only yourself," or "that God is dead." It always seems to flip their cookies when I tell them no to all that. Then they get downright anxious when I start talking about the 2d planet and the 3d visitor and north of the north pole and Carl Sagan crap like that.
Counter anecdote: I have on many occasions had people tell me that because I am LDS I believe a long laundry list of things which I don't. When I correct them, many have argued stridently that I'm wrong (about what I personally believe). I've had them make all kinds of false presumptions about my politics, my education, and my family life. I've even been verbally assaulted for things I don't do or support. People, some on this very site, have said more or less outright that being an LDS scientist makes me dishonest and unreliable in one way or another.
This experience is a small part of why I think its important to recognize all prejudices. If you are offended (even slightly) when people falsely presume they know what you believe, why make the same error in reverse?
Rationality begins with recognizing what we don't know. When it comes to what other people think and believe, we all know very little. Most people are so poor at articulating their most cherished beliefs that even when they've gone to great lengths to do so, it is can be very very difficult to truly understand.
[ January 07, 2011, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Rationality begins with recognizing what we don't know.
I agree. But my experience with religious people - particularly those I'm close to and LDS in general, is that they are quite ready to declare that they "know" things which at best they strongly believe/hope. Children are taught to repeat rote phrases that begin "I know" followed by doctrines of the church long before they have any capacity to evaluate those doctrines for validity, strongly biasing any earnest investigation when they are older.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I was presuming that there was some logical thread that relating your comments and that you had some point in engaging in discussion beyond massaging your own ego or venting your bitterness over the fact that God has not forcefully intervened to prevent your major life mistakes.
You would be correct.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I was presuming that there was some logical thread that relating your comments and that you had some point in engaging in discussion beyond massaging your own ego or venting your bitterness over the fact that God has not forcefully intervened to prevent your major life mistakes.
You would be correct.
Then perhaps you might reveal what it was since you have scorned my attempts to identify it.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattP:
quote:Rationality begins with recognizing what we don't know.
I agree. But my experience with religious people - particularly those I'm close to and LDS in general, is that they are quite ready to declare that they "know" things which at best they strongly believe/hope. Children are taught to repeat rote phrases that begin "I know" followed by doctrines of the church long before they have any capacity to evaluate those doctrines for validity, strongly biasing any earnest investigation when they are older.
I don't disagree with this but I also don't see its relevance to the broader point I was making.
There are many possible ways I could interpret it, but the most obvious to me is that, this was your backhand way of saying that since I am LDS, I'm some sort of hypocrite for talking about recognizing what I don't know.
If that was your intent, it's pretty ironic that you'd post in response to my post on the hazards or presuming you know what others think and believe.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Rabbit, is your goal here really to discover why I noted that the distinction between Biblical literalists and "typical" believers, as measured in rationality, was merely one of degree? Is that the question that has occupied your mind for the last couple of pages?
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:There are many possible ways I could interpret it, but the most obvious to me is that, this was your backhand way of saying that since I am LDS, I'm some sort of hypocrite for talking about recognizing what I don't know.
Mostly I was just sharing my own anecdote that my opinions about the rationality of religion are informed by substantial personal experience with a large group of people which, by fate and circumstance, has largely been LDS. Virtually everyone I know is a member of that faith and the abuse of the phrase "I know" by its membership is prevalent. I've come to accept it, as much as I can, as a special use of language - that when LDS say "I know" they mean what everone else says when they talk about believing strongly or having great faith. The problem though is that it leads to equivocation - where by using "I know" they actually come to believe stronger because of the certainness of that phrasing and what it means in any other context. I've even heard people at church advise people to "say it until you believe it."
Your particular affiliation with the LDS church wasn't a consideration.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
It is a rote recitation for kids during fast & testimony meeting. You can tell by the way they say it. I don't put a lot of stock in it. The kids start to break out of it around 15 or 16, when I think they really start to consider the meaning of the word "know." To truthfully say "I know" does prompt you to consider your beliefs and the path to knowledge. Saying it definitely can be for an affirmation of strong beliefs; it is said as part of an affirmation of belief, after all. However, having heard many, many people say it in my lifetime, it's not always just a special use of language invented by the LDS, but is carefully considered and meant as it sounds.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Rabbit, is your goal here really to discover why I noted that the distinction between Biblical literalists and "typical" believers, as measured in rationality, was merely one of degree? Is that the question that has occupied your mind for the last couple of pages?
No Tom, I'm pissed at your intellectual dishonesty on the subject and this question pretty well captures what I mean.
1. You didn't note the distinction between "Biblical literalists and typical believers" as one of rationality. You started off by saying that the difference between a diagnosed schizophrenic (namely the timecube guy) and typical believers was one of degree.
That is not only extraordinarily insulting and condescending, it's unsupportable by any kind of scientific evidence.
2. You and others have been arguing that there is nothing wrong with claiming "the vast majority of religious people are irrational" because its their personal experience justifies them pronouncing judgements on the vast majority of the world population. I find that argument prejudiced and repugnant.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:No Tom
I didn't think so. That's why I didn't answer right away; you seemed far more interested in throwing out insults, and I wanted to make sure you got enough of that done before actually answering any questions you might have.
quote:You started off by saying that the difference between a diagnosed schizophrenic (namely the timecube guy) and typical believers was one of degree.
I started off by saying, and I quote: "From my particular atheist POV, the distinction between 'highly functioning' delusional people and 'raving lunatics' is one of degree."
quote:You and others have been arguing that there is nothing wrong with claiming "the vast majority of religious people are irrational" because its their personal experience justifies them pronouncing judgements on the vast majority of the world population.
I have not said anything of the kind. That said, I will gladly go on record as saying that I don't believe there's anything wrong with pronouncing judgments on the vast majority of the world population. For example, most of them are very bad at reading Cyrillic.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:If Tom were arguing that most (or even all) belief in God was irrational, that would be a different issue. But he was not expressing an opinion about particular opinions or beliefs, but a sweeping opinion of the majority of people who hold them -- that is prejudice.
Back to this. Clearly when Tom says "most religious people..." he's making a statement about the nature of religious belief, not about individual personalities. When it comes to the latter, I doubt Tom would disagree with the claim "everyone is irrational", making it even more clear that Tom was in fact addressing particular beliefs rather than the class of people that hold them.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Mostly I was just sharing my own anecdote that my opinions about the rationality of religion are informed by substantial personal experience with a large group of people which, by fate and circumstance, has largely been LDS.
Let me repeat and clarify. I have no particular problem if you want to argue that a particular religious belief or religious belief in general is irrational. I don't see a problem with arguing that religions in general discourage rational exploration of certain questions, or that a particular religion might discourage rational inquiry in general.
My problem with Tom's argument (and those that have been made by many other atheists in this forum) is that it goes way beyond that. My problem is the implication that non-religious people are as a group fundamentally more rational that religious people. I object to the idea that some aspect of irrationality is unique to religion, and completely absent in secular philosophy. I object to the view that irrationality is a problem of religious people, rather than a problem that plagues all people. I object to the implication that its fair to presume that because a person is religious, they will behave less rationally in aspects of their life that are not directly religious belief.
Those arguments and implication are unwarranted prejudice that cannot be support with objective scientific data. I find it highly ironic, when atheists, who persistently tout the ills of religious irrationality, are so completely blind to their own bias in this area.
I'm not alone in that opinion. I have in fact heard it expressed by many who describe themselves as atheists or secular humanists.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Clearly when Tom says "most religious people..." he's making a statement about the nature of religious belief, not about individual personalities.
It most certainly was not clear or we wouldn't be having this argument. There is an enormous difference between saying a person is irrational and that an opinion or behavior is irrational.
The first is a statement about how people think, develop opinions and resolve complex issues, the second is a statement about the nature of a particular idea. If Tom intended the latter rather than the former, he should choose different language in the future.
I should, however, add that we have had this conversation enough times that I am reasonably confident in this case that Tom intended the former. Sufficiently confident that it would take a great deal to convince me he sincerely did not.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:My problem with Tom's argument...
As long as you recognize that it's not actually my argument, I have no problem with your problem with it.
quote:If Tom intended the latter rather than the former, he should choose different language in the future.
Or, again, you could ask for clarification before running off half-baked. I refuse to accept responsibility for your hair-trigger, knee-jerk offense.
Really, should Ron be lambasting you for implying that all the Biblical literalists who exist must be mentally ill? Because that was what you were saying, right?
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
The non-religious tend to be more likely to fetishize rationality. I don't know that they necessary then become better at it, but I can see why they think they might be better at it. Religious people tend to do the same thing with charity and they tend to be more charitable.
I believe I avoid a lot of "false positives" because there are certain modes of knowledge which I find invalid which are generally not rejected by religious people, but it's very possible that in doing so I also miss some actual true things. If I "know" fewer things, but am confident that a higher percentage of things that I do know are true, does that make me more rational? *shrug*
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I object to the view that irrationality is a problem of religious people, rather than a problem that plagues all people
I am not sure that we have established that irrationality (at least selective irrationality) is a problem at all.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I'm not even sure how we started discussing rationality, since my original comment compared "highly functioning delusional people" and "raving lunatics."
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Really, should Ron be lambasting you for implying that all the Biblical literalists who exist must be mentally ill? Because that was what you were saying, right?
Perhaps you should indicate where I implied this. The closest thing I can find is this.
quote:I've seen this before. It is truly mind boggling, but easy to dismiss as the ravings of a lunatic. There are far too many highly functioning people who call themselves biblical literalists for me to be able to dismiss it the same way.
The intent of which was exactly the opposite of what you keep claiming. But since you misunderstood it the first time, I clarified saying.
quote:No, not all. I do not share your opinion that people who believe the Bible is the literal word of an actual being are raving lunatics or even mildly ill.
And now that I have clarified that twice, I ask you to stop claiming I've said all self proclaimed biblical literalists are mentally ill when I said precisely the opposite.
quote:Tom said: Or, again, you could ask for clarification before running off half-baked. I refuse to accept responsibility for your hair-trigger, knee-jerk offense.
Asking for clarification is precisely what I've been doing but the clarifications you've given like this,
quote:I think the mental illness that produced TIMECUBE differs in degree from the mental illness that leads people to say they think the Bible is literally, word-for-word, true.
tend to confirm that I'm not running off on a half baked interpretation or offended by some knee-jerk hair trigger response.
I repeat. There is no scientific or medical evidence to support your claim that most biblical literalists suffer from any form of mental illness or that the typical religious person's spiritual experiences are related to schizophrenic delusions. In the absence of any supporting data, it is not rational of you to keep making this claim.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I'm not even sure how we started discussing rationality, since my original comment compared "highly functioning delusional people" and "raving lunatics."
We are discussing it because you said
quote:I believe the vast majority of believers are irrational.
Iglee called this remarked prejudiced. Other atheists chimed in to say no, because their experience supported the claim no prejudice was involved. I disagreed based on numerous points.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Rabbit, examine your post before that one. The TIMECUBE guy was brought up as an example of someone who believes some very strange things about the physical universe in response to your claim that no one is crazy enough to take the Bible literally, and that you are unwilling to recognize the existence of actual Biblical literalists because you don't think the people you've met who call themselves Biblical literalists are crazy enough to take the Bible literally.
quote:Iglee called this remarked prejudiced. Other atheists chimed in to say no, because their experience supported the claim no prejudice was involved. I disagreed based on numerous points.
Ah! So you weren't talking to me, then. I'm glad that's cleared up.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... There is no scientific or medical evidence to support your claim that ... the typical religious person's spiritual experiences are related to schizophrenic delusions.
I would think that at least this point would be fairly controversial and currently under investigation.
For example:
quote:The line between religious inspiration and psychosis is unclear and subject to dispute. Freud (1927) and Ellis (1983), for instance, argued that all religious experience is irrational, delusional, and antithetical to mental health.
quote:The current edition of the DSM (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) no longer contains negative references to religious experiences and behavior. Instead, religious experience is primarily ignored, and when addressed, DSM-IV does not provide clarity, but rather reveals the ambiguity. One of the few instances where religiosity is addressed is in a discussion of hallucinations related to schizophrenia: “Hallucinations may also be a normal part of religious experience in certain cultural contexts” (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 275). Although the problem of discrimination between normal and abnormal religious experience is acknowledged, no criteria are provided to help make that discrimination. The differentiation between authentic religiosity and psychopathology must rely solely on the vague reference to “certain cultural contexts.”
Edit to add: I think it would make more sense to say that while there is evidence of a relationship, there is no consensus on what that means yet.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I object to the view that irrationality is a problem of religious people, rather than a problem that plagues all people
I am not sure that we have established that irrationality (at least selective irrationality) is a problem at all.
Agreed, although I really don't see why Tom would bother to post that he thinks the vast majority of religious people are irrational unless he sees this as a problem. But then again, since he evidently sees great similarity between saying that the vast majority of people on the planet can't read cyrillic and that the vast majority of religious people are irrational, I should probably stop presuming Tom is actually trying to make some rational point and give up trying to figure out what it might be.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Agreed, although I really don't see why Tom would bother to post that he thinks the vast majority of religious people are irrational unless he sees this as a problem.
I did so in response to this statement, which I quoted at the time: "I think Tom knows as well as I do that not all atheist have abhorrent habits and that not all God believers are irrational." I felt that leaving iglee with the wrong impression would be a disservice. While it's true that I don't believe all "God believers" are irrational, I didn't feel that this technicality was honestly within the spirit of iglee's observation.
quote:But then again, since he evidently sees great similarity between saying that the vast majority of people on the planet can't read cyrillic and that the vast majority of religious people are irrational, I should probably stop presuming Tom is actually trying to make some rational point and give up trying to figure out what it might be.
It intrigues me that you seem to define a "rational point" as "a point I understand."
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I should probably stop presuming Tom is actually trying to make some rational point
m'key, that's handwaving. your reaction to tom needs to be less emotionally driven.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I would think that at least this point would be fairly controversial and currently under investigation.
I'm curious why you think this would be fairly controversial and under investigation? Do you have some evidence for this.
My statement that there is no evidence for it is based on my reading of studies that use brain imaging and/or psychopharmocology to study what's happening during the brain during spiritual experiences. The results of these studies do not show any similarity between the changes in neurological function during a spiritual episode and those seen in people suffering from schizophrenia. In fact, enough studies of meditation have revealed trends that are counter to those seen in schizophrenia that meditation is being seriously considered as a treatment of schizophrenia.
I am by no means an expert in neurology but its something I follow more or less as a hobby. I have some close friends who developed severe mental illness in their early to mid-twenties and I also have several friends that are deeply involved in Buddhist meditation or Christian contemplation. So I kind of keep an eye on the neurological studies being done in those two areas. If there is a legitimate scientific controversy about this, I've yet to see any mention of it in the literature or read a study that even hints at a link.
The idea that spiritual experiences and mental illness are different degrees of the same thing is something I've heard expressed by atheists here on many occasions. The data does not fit this hypothesis. Certainly there are mentally ill people who have religious delusions, but the evidence does NOT fit the hypothesis that typical spiritual experiences are a much milder form of the same thing. In fact, everything we know about the fundamental biology of severe mental illness and spritual experience indicates they aren't related.
[ January 07, 2011, 05:52 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:It intrigues me that you seem to define a "rational point" as "a point I understand."
I find it intriguing that you think I didn't understand why you posted the snip about most people not reading cyrillic. It was a strawman argument that, while perhaps addressing the letter of what I said, missed the substance of it by a mile. I'm pretty sure you know that. If you really don't, I'd be happy to explain why your strawman lacks the substance of a rational point.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm curious why you think this would be fairly controversial and under investigation? Do you have some evidence for this.
I'm not sure what you're asking here. Isn't "The line between religious inspiration and psychosis is unclear and subject to dispute" enough to indicate that there is a controversy?
quote: Certainly there are mentally ill people who have religious delusions, but the evidence does fit the hypothesis that typical spiritual experiences are a much milder form of this.
I fully agree. By no means do I mean to imply that typical religious experiences are remotely as serious as diagnosed mental illness. I'm sure that it is much more mild. Merely that as the introduction to that paper states, there is evidence linking religion to both poor and good mental health and that in their words "Empirical investigation has not provided clarity."
Edit to add: Have to leave, saw your edit, but you get the general idea.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:I should probably stop presuming Tom is actually trying to make some rational point
m'key, that's handwaving. your reaction to tom needs to be less emotionally driven.
Why does my reaction to Tom need to be less emotionally driven?
Perhaps it should be more polite, but why should I be less emotional about my arguments. I'm fully aware I'm biased on this issue but nonetheless am quite confident that my irritation with Tom is fully deserved.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Because, Rabbit, non-emotion-driven thoughts are more NOBLE than emotions. Why, newborn babies can emote!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I'm not sure what you're asking here. Isn't "The line between religious inspiration and psychosis is unclear and subject to dispute" enough to indicate that there is a controversy?
That's a different argument. The line between sanity and insanity is unclear. That isn't something that's specific to religious inspiration. The fact that the line between wanting to be clean and tidy and obsessive compulsive disorder is unclear does not imply there's any controversy about whether every one who wants to wash the grease off their hands is displaying a mild form of OCD.
If you image the brain of a normal healthy individual while they are washing dirty hands you see a very different neural response than you see when a person with OCD washes dirty hands. The same is true for schizophrenia and typical spiritual experiences. When scientists have imaged the neural activity in people (judged to be in good mental health) while they are having a spiritual experience, the patterns of neural activity they observe are inconsistent with the hypothesis that the spiritual experience is related to schizophrenia or any other mental illness.
Of course the very definition of what is a mental illness is controversial. Not long ago, homosexuality and transgender issues were widely classed as mental illnesses. There may come a time when having spiritual experiences is classified as a mental illness. But no matter how you define mental health, we know enough right now to know that the average spiritual experience is different from psychotic delusions at a fundamental biological level. We know that "different degrees of the same thing" is not an accurate description of what is going on biologically.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: [QB] Rabbit, examine your post before that one. The TIMECUBE guy was brought up as an example of someone who believes some very strange things about the physical universe in response to your claim that no one is crazy enough to take the Bible literally, and that you are unwilling to recognize the existence of actual Biblical literalists because you don't think the people you've met who call themselves Biblical literalists are crazy enough to take the Bible literally.
I never claimed that no one is crazy enough to take the Bible literally and if that is what you got from my post, you were completely missing the point. What I said was
quote:There are no Biblical literalists, at least I have never met or interacted with one. There are only "cafeteria" biblical literalists, who pick a few parts that support their agenda and ignore the rest.
Until I find someone who believes that the earth and atmosphere are sandwiched between two infinite expanses of water (which is what it literally says in Genesis), I will maintain that BIblical literalism is total hogwash, a misnomer.
My point was that "Biblical Literalism" is something of a misnomer. Even the vast majority of those who argue that Genesis should be taken literally, pick and choose what parts they think are literal and what parts aren't. I never at any time implied this was some sort of mental illness.
I made no speculation whatsoever about why the vast majority of Biblical literalist don't think its necessary to take the part about outer space being full of water literally. I merely pointed out that they don't. It was you who suggested mental illness was involved and I was quite explicit that I do not agree with that assessment.
I'm about 90% convinced that you understand my points just fine are being deliberately obtuse because it gives you some sort of pleasure to irritate people. That's why I have't felt there is any reason to respond politely. If I'm wrong in that assessment, I'm sorry. Either way, rivka has a point that it would be more NOBLE of me to respond politely.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
*rivka resets Rabbit's sarcasmometer*
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'm in the middle of marking exams and projects. My sarcasmometer is completely non-functional. Even with your reset, I'm unsure who was being sarcastic. I guess I should get back to grading.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Rabbit, is your goal here really to discover why I noted that the distinction between Biblical literalists and "typical" believers, as measured in rationality, was merely one of degree? Is that the question that has occupied your mind for the last couple of pages?
Well no truthfully, I'm just seeking a diversion from grading papers. I can only stand to do it for about 20 minutes before I need a break and this has been the easiest diversion I could find.
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Matt said:
quote: Virtually everyone I know is a member of that faith and the abuse of the phrase "I know" by its membership is prevalent. I've come to accept it, as much as I can, as a special use of language - that when LDS say "I know" they mean what everone else says when they talk about believing strongly or having great faith.
Matt, you bring up a good point here. Once in a while I’ve been uncomfortable with that phrase “I know” but as long as I keep in mind it means, as you say, “believing strongly” I’m OK with it. Orson Scott Card has written an excellent article on this very subject in Sept. in his column in Mormon Times.
quote: The problem though is that it leads to equivocation - where by using "I know" they actually come to believe stronger because of the certainness of that phrasing and what it means in any other context. I've even heard people at church advise people to "say it until you believe it."
I think I agree with you here also. Those people you have heard say stuff like “say it until you believe it. “ have a slightly skewed perspective. And you can tell them I said so. What they should have said was “obey it until you believe it.” Our theology teaches that mere lip service does not increase a person’s faith and conviction, but obedience and actually doing something about your faith does. That is what these two scriptures are taking about.
If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.(John 7:17)
And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. (Ether 12: 6)
Your post brings to my mind something else I have noticed. I’ve heard and read a bunch of times where scientists and teachers have expressed the idea that they know their theories are true. To try to be certain of something seems to be a normal human tendency. I have no problem with that as long as everybody keeps in mind that their conclusions may turn out to be wrong as new evidence comes along.
But I see nothing wrong with a person sticking with something that works. For instance, the way those people at JPL and NASA have proved many times that they can calculate and achieve some amazingly accurate trajectories. Well, there is no point in dumping those methods just because physicists don’t yet know everything about the universe.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:I should probably stop presuming Tom is actually trying to make some rational point
m'key, that's handwaving. your reaction to tom needs to be less emotionally driven.
Why does my reaction to Tom need to be less emotionally driven?
Because between your dialogue with him and his dialogue with you, yours is degrading and becoming snippy and defensive.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm unsure who was being sarcastic.
That would be me.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: [QUOTE] My statement that there is no evidence for it is based on my reading of studies that use brain imaging and/or psychopharmocology to study what's happening during the brain during spiritual experiences. The results of these studies do not show any similarity between the changes in neurological function during a spiritual episode and those seen in people suffering from schizophrenia. In fact, enough studies of meditation have revealed trends that are counter to those seen in schizophrenia that meditation is being seriously considered as a treatment of schizophrenia.
Please don't take what I'm about to say as an attack on religion, either yours or any other. Seriously, OK?
Are you equating meditation with ALL types of religious/spiritual experience? Prayer, maybe. I could see at least SOME forms of prayer being very similar to meditation. However...visions and "revelations from God" are a whole other subject. I think most people who have "visions" and "revelations" are either crazy (yes, schizophrenic, or something else) or need to eat some food (since a time-tested way of producing visions in many cultures is excessive fasting). IOW, I think most visions and revelations are the result of some biological malfunction. Probably not absolutely all of them are, but...most, in my book.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Anecdote Alert: It occurs to me that generally I do not assume anything about the specifics of the beliefs of any person I meet, even when they tell me about their religion (which is only sometimes). However, I have on at least several occasions had religious people state that I believe in "nothing," "chaos," "only yourself," or "that God is dead." It always seems to flip their cookies when I tell them no to all that. Then they get downright anxious when I start talking about the 2d planet and the 3d visitor and north of the north pole and Carl Sagan crap like that.
Counter anecdote: I have on many occasions had people tell me that because I am LDS I believe a long laundry list of things which I don't. When I correct them, many have argued stridently that I'm wrong (about what I personally believe). I've had them make all kinds of false presumptions about my politics, my education, and my family life. I've even been verbally assaulted for things I don't do or support. People, some on this very site, have said more or less outright that being an LDS scientist makes me dishonest and unreliable in one way or another.
You *are* unreliable in certain ways. But I base that judgement on my actual experiences with you. You understand science and are an advocate of it, but you also espouse certain modes of thinking that I find counter-productive. But do tell, who were these people who made these assumptions about you, and how did you handle that?
quote: This experience is a small part of why I think its important to recognize all prejudices. If you are offended (even slightly) when people falsely presume they know what you believe, why make the same error in reverse?
I am not offended by such idiocy. It's really just contemptible nonsense that annoys me, but I could rightly say that it *offends* me, in the sense that my honor or my sense of self is threatened by it. Rather the opposite really, which is not atypical I'm sure.
quote: Rationality begins with recognizing what we don't know. When it comes to what other people think and believe, we all know very little. Most people are so poor at articulating their most cherished beliefs that even when they've gone to great lengths to do so, it is can be very very difficult to truly understand.
See, I think if you are incapable of articulating your "most cherished" beliefs, then there may be something missing in what you believe. I don't know, but for me, there are many things I can't articulate well or even at all, and I do not walk about with the assumption that these are things I really have any kind of handle on at all. Interpersonal relationships, love, the meaning of life- these are not subjects on which I can articulate my most inner feelings. So how can I cherish beliefs I myself don't understand well enough to express? I never understood that, about myself or anyone else- that one could "believe" something, and be unable to state the nature of that belief. On the things I'm sure of, I'm also fairly sure that I can express myself well. That's my instinct, anyway.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:See, I think if you are incapable of articulating your "most cherished" beliefs, then there may be something missing in what you believe. I don't know, but for me, there are many things I can't articulate well or even at all, and I do not walk about with the assumption that these are things I really have any kind of handle on at all. Interpersonal relationships, love, the meaning of life- these are not subjects on which I can articulate my most inner feelings. So how can I cherish beliefs I myself don't understand well enough to express? I never understood that, about myself or anyone else- that one could "believe" something, and be unable to state the nature of that belief. On the things I'm sure of, I'm also fairly sure that I can express myself well. That's my instinct, anyway.
Why should the ability to frame an idea in words indicate whether the idea is sound? That implies that we have words enough to describe anything, when one of the most common lamentations artists and even lay people make is having an idea that defies description.
Because language doesn't completely evolve around the idea of describing all that can be described, it is totally inadequate, and yet miraculous that we have it at the same time.
A common metaphor thrown around Mormon circles who have difficulty describing spiritual experiences is,
"Assuming I have never tasted salt before, now describe to me what salt tastes like."
The idea being that although all of us know intimately what salt tastes like, our language cannot begin to explain to an ignorant person what saltiness is.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Why should the ability to frame an idea in words indicate whether the idea is sound? That implies that we have words enough to describe anything, when one of the most common lamentations artists and even lay people make is having an idea that defies description.
Because language doesn't completely evolve around the idea of describing all that can be described, it is totally inadequate, and yet miraculous that we have it at the same time.
A common metaphor thrown around Mormon circles who have difficulty describing spiritual experiences is,
"Assuming I have never tasted salt before, now describe to me what salt tastes like."
The idea being that although all of us know intimately what salt tastes like, our language cannot begin to explain to an ignorant person what saltiness is.
To be fair, I think Orin's point was that it's rather silly to be so certain about something as major as the nature of life, the universe, and everything when you can't even put it into words. Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
quote:Darth, your reasoning is not convincing. I know you evolutionists try to camoflage the basic impossibility of evolution by saying it all took place one little step at a time. But the impossible is still impossible.
As for your Argos analogy--birds are substantially different from dinosaurs, even though some common traits can be observed. Changing one basic genus to another requires that whole new genetic information structures be added to the genome. You do not get that merely by piecemeal editing of the existing genome. Does that actually seem reasonable to your mind?
Why is this impossible.
If I wanted to walk from New York to Los Angeles, you might think that it is impossible. There is no way such a walk could be done because the human body could not travel that distance without wearing out. But if I did it over a long stretch of time, stopping to eat, sleep, rest, etc--such an impossibly large event could occur--and has happened many times.
You argue that to change a whole genus would take too many changes to occur. Why? How much change is too much change? Does not water dripping drop by drop wash away mountains?
It is only impossible if you do not consider the immensity of the time scale and quantity of individual creatures that go into evolving new genuses.
When you state--"That is impossible" or "Does that actually seem reasonable to your mind" your arguments are lacking. One is flat out denial with out support, the other borders on name calling.
Posted by shadowland (Member # 12366) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: So how can I cherish beliefs I myself don't understand well enough to express?
You're assuming that the ability to articulate a thought is an indication of how well that thought is understood. While that may be true in most cases, that's certainly not always true.
I would certainly have a difficult time trying to convey a very basic concept to someone that only speaks Russian, for example. That's not a failure on my part in understanding the concept, it's a consequence of the limitations of language.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:A common metaphor thrown around Mormon circles who have difficulty describing spiritual experiences is,
"Assuming I have never tasted salt before, now describe to me what salt tastes like."
The idea being that although all of us know intimately what salt tastes like, our language cannot begin to explain to an ignorant person what saltiness is.
To be fair, it's easy to give someone salt so that they can experience it for themselves. You may not be able to describe it, but you can at least share it with them. It's a lot more difficult to give someone a spiritual experience that allows them to draw the same conclusions that you've drawn.
That said-- I admit there are experiences that can be felt but not precisely described. One of the reasons we developed literary devices like metaphors and analogies is to help us communicate these often too-powerful-for-words stories to others.
I'm afraid that I believe that anyone who thinks all experiences can be described precisely is just...inexperienced. Sometimes words fail.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: We know that "different degrees of the same thing" is not an accurate description of what is going on biologically.
Ummm, I think we're talking about different things again. "Different degrees of the same thing" is a phrase that no one has actually used aside from yourself. The phrase that I'm responding to is, "There is no scientific or medical evidence to support your claim that ... the typical religious person's spiritual experiences are related to schizophrenic delusions."
The question as to whether there is a relationship is I think one that clearly is yet to be determined given how much we have yet to learn. However, crossing the threshold of "no evidence" to some evidence of a relationship is pretty easy to reach.
quote:In conclusion, these preliminary imaging studies in patients with schizophrenia support the theory that the misattribution of self-generated thoughts or actions to outside entities/forces may contribute to the psychotic state. The inferior parietal cortex has been implicated. The few studies that have been completed in healthy individuals suggest that this region may also be important to normal religious experience
quote:I think I agree with you here also. Those people you have heard say stuff like “say it until you believe it. “ have a slightly skewed perspective. And you can tell them I said so. What they should have said was “obey it until you believe it.”
It is certainly the case that performing a duty leads to quicker internal justification than simple recitation. (Heck, even something as basic as smiling winds up producing post-hoc emotion.)
For the record, BTW: I have no doubt that people have had experiences of the "numinous" that they feel incapable of describing, but which they attribute to the divine. I believe these experiences are misattributed.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Why should the ability to frame an idea in words indicate whether the idea is sound? That implies that we have words enough to describe anything, when one of the most common lamentations artists and even lay people make is having an idea that defies description.
Because language doesn't completely evolve around the idea of describing all that can be described, it is totally inadequate, and yet miraculous that we have it at the same time.
A common metaphor thrown around Mormon circles who have difficulty describing spiritual experiences is,
"Assuming I have never tasted salt before, now describe to me what salt tastes like."
The idea being that although all of us know intimately what salt tastes like, our language cannot begin to explain to an ignorant person what saltiness is.
To be fair, I think Orin's point was that it's rather silly to be so certain about something as major as the nature of life, the universe, and everything when you can't even put it into words.
Sure, the fact that words are so difficult to find is an indication to me, primarily, that the concepts one is dealing with may be too difficult or subtle to actually be fully understood. And if you can't fully understand something, I'm not sure why you would so deeply believe in it. Moreover, I can't see why you would speak as an advocate for it if your ability to describe what it does for you is diminished in this way. I can see why people fall in love without understanding the nature of their feelings- but this is something to do with worldview, and with the logical and rational underpinnings of that worldview. Things like love have less to do with belief- you aren't required to believe that you *are* in love, but you are required to believe that you are a Christian, if you are one. Nobody becomes one accidentally- it takes some amount of conscious choice.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by shadowland:
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: So how can I cherish beliefs I myself don't understand well enough to express?
You're assuming that the ability to articulate a thought is an indication of how well that thought is understood. While that may be true in most cases, that's certainly not always true.
I would certainly have a difficult time trying to convey a very basic concept to someone that only speaks Russian, for example. That's not a failure on my part in understanding the concept, it's a consequence of the limitations of language.
I don't buy this. I think it's hand-waving away a legitimate concern.
You understand many things intuitively when you observe them, and have them explained. For instance, you may not have the words necessary to describe the process which causes particles in water to move ceaselessly, known as Brownian Motion, but you may understand the concept fully having seen it happen, and having that process explained to you by a teacher or a scientist. The limitation then is that you don't have the linguistic tools to relay that information to another person without, say, showing them the process as well.
But with religion and religious beliefs, particularly those that are based on appeals to emotion, and which typically play upon the convert's or parishioner's need to be loved by parents and society, the demonstrative aspect of most of these concepts is either non-existant, or potentially dubious. For instance, a preacher evokes an emotional response in a listener, and then attributes the source of that emotional response to god. The person then explaining the process by which he or she was converted or preached to, and why and how that person believes in god, would also be required to evoke the same emotional response, and likewise attribute that response to god.
That which you can't fully explain in words has to be demonstrated- but I think a key issue here is that no reliable demonstration of god exists. Seemingly all testaments to belief in god are tied to emotional experience and the implantation of this concept- that the emotional response is of a divine nature.
So, in the case of Brownian Motion, the concept can be reliably demonstrated and the concepts involved communicated through an appeal to reason and logic. The inability to express the concept in words is simply a lack of mutual communicative tools. You or the listener are not strong in the language of physics concepts, but when it is demonstrated, the process is relatively clear, given a grounding in basic physics. However, religious ideas that were taught through emotional appeals, and *never* were communicated in other ways, should be considered highly dubious, because at no point can it be reliably demonstrated that two people are understanding the same concept in the same way.
This is, by the way, the reason why I harbor the personal belief that there is actually no such thing as organized religion- only organized worship. Despite centuries of time and thousands of volumes of religious texts, the concept of god is non-demonstrable, and so actually logically incomprehensible to any person thinking rationally. That's why belief in god is irrational, and all appeals to faith rely on irrational thoughts- and appeals to emotion.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I'm afraid that I believe that anyone who thinks all experiences can be described precisely is just...inexperienced. Sometimes words fail.
Yes, sure. Absolutely. The point I'm raising is that it's rather a large thing to base your view of the universe on something like that. Words fail, I think, for reasons we ought to pay attention to.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:The point I'm raising is that it's rather a large thing to base your view of the universe on something like that.
Of course, it's not just the ineffable that makes up one's religious point of view; I know only a few people whose religious experience is based entirely on indescribable events.
Usually, people have building blocks to their point of view; and some of them are quite describable.
Alternatively: when my youngest was finally released from the hospital, the feelings I felt toward the doctors and nurses who cared for her during her open heart surgery was perfectly indescribable. The emotion was larger and more complex than just gratitude; it had the inertia of three months of sleepless nights and tense days; it had images of her bloated body on the bed, and her nurses tenderly washing her, or changing her bandages; it had the frustration of dealing with a family, and the satisfaction of seeing how the rest of the family responded to the trial.
You understand-- that's not a precise description of the event, or the feeling. But a lot of my family's relationship, and our reality, is based on those elements. I can describe pieces; I can show you some building blocks. But there are parts of the whole that are essentially indescribable. Those pieces are not the whole, but they are important parts, even if I can't exactly lay my hands on them.
Self-examination is important; that's a given. But an inability to precisely describe an experience is not a failure. It's perfectly human.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
And yet your experience doesn't comprise a worldview. It is an emotional experience for which you do not have all the words. Fine. But your worldview needs to be more than an appeal to emotion, doesn't it?
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:And yet your experience doesn't comprise a worldview. It is an emotional experience for which you do not have all the words. Fine. But your worldview needs to be more than an appeal to emotion, doesn't it?
The experience doesn't comprise a worldview (assuming we mean the same thing; worldview to me means a general outlook on life). Correct.
However, the experience certainly affects my worldview. Generally speaking, traumatic or powerful events, no matter what they are, may tend to alter one's outlook on life, the universe, and all that. That's pretty normal.
So while I may be able to tell you what I think, I may not be able to perfectly describe why I think that way. I can give you the facts of my experience, and trace those to how I view life now; but it's an imperfect translation because some of the process isn't understood.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I'm extremely distrustful of any worldview that believes that it can fully describe human experience in clear, declarative sentences. There are inherent limits to this and to scientific investigation that I think preclude this, most specifically, their analytical nature makes it impossible to capture unitive aspects of existence.
There is, to me, a compelling similarity between many religious fundamentalists and many evangelical atheists, besides their shared disdain for actual scientific study of human behavior in preference for their theoretical models. There are many factors, but, as I've said many times, I think probably the biggest one is a lack of tolerance for ambiguity. I think psychology and history have both shown us that there is a great deal to fear in ideological movements who don't admit limits on what they know, who are unwilling to say "I don't know."
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I'm distrustful of that as well. My point is, with Christianity you get both things. You get a clearly defined idea about god and jesus and all the other stuff, with lots of very clearly defined stories and facts, and as proof of all that, you get an emotional appeal, and not something easily expressed. That, to me, is not expectable. Nobody has the answers. To claim to have the answers, and then to obviate that responsibility with an emotional appeal? That's bull****.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that all forms of Christianity are like that. They pretty clearly aren't.
For many people, some form of Christianity seems to fit their experience or how they choose to see the world. Often times, this includes...what's a good word...transcendental experiences.
It would be a mistake to say that their choice of Christianity hangs solely on those transcendental experiences, that there isn't much more to the structure of many Christian faiths, or that all these faiths or people who belong to them lack a tolerance for ambiguity.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I think the idea that there are fixed answers in the way you seem to be treating them is a problem. In the realm of human experience, most of the questions don't really have one time defined answers. "How should I live?" for example.
To me, looking for a simple, defined answer for that misunderstands the true nature of the question. What is needed is not a set answer, but rather a framework of more or less fixed anchor points that form a basis for one's exploration of life and of the question of how to live it.
The interesting thing for me is that, while there are certainly "bad" frameworks or structures of beliefs, from a practical standpoint, truth/falsity doesn't seem to correspond strongly with whether a given framework is useful or positive (at least in how I would judge it). Truly great things have been accomplished and built around a skeleton of false ideas.
One of life's interesting contradictions to me is that while a lack of tolerance for ambiguity is pretty clearly a bad thing, so is a lack of choice (or often, rather an ability to admit one has made a choice) on a foundation on which to build on.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote:I think the idea that there are fixed answers in the way you seem to be treating them is a problem. In the realm of human experience, most of the questions don't really have one time defined answers. "How should I live?" for example.
I'm not sure Orincoro is suggesting that, and I'm not sure anyone who considers themselves atheist except nutcases who also happen to be atheist believes that science answers a question like "how should I live?"
Atheism does not answer those questions, even vaguely. It recognizes there are no set answers to said questions and then it points people towards humanism to get generalized ideas about how we should best approach life.
To suggest that atheists don't know how to say, "I don't know," is problematic.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:To suggest that atheists don't know how to say, "I don't know," is problematic.
In what way?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Well, for one thing, it's pretty clearly false.
-------
quote:Truly great things have been accomplished and built around a skeleton of false ideas.
While on one hand I recognize the truth of this statement, the idea that there are entire worldviews structured around "I have no idea if there is any truth to this claim, but it makes people act better if they believe it" is profoundly troublesome to me.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I'm distrustful of that as well. My point is, with Christianity you get both things. You get a clearly defined idea about god and jesus and all the other stuff, with lots of very clearly defined stories and facts, and as proof of all that, you get an emotional appeal, and not something easily expressed. That, to me, is not expectable. Nobody has the answers. To claim to have the answers, and then to obviate that responsibility with an emotional appeal? That's bull****.
This is my exact take on religion. Nice job, dude. I don't need anything better on this subject.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
The idea that some evangelic atheists have a real problem with tolerance of ambiguity is clearly false?
To me, that's been pretty well established by scientific study and is one of the major reasons for the character of the Reign of Terror. So I may be missing where it is so clearly false.
---
quote:While on one hand I recognize the truth of this statement, the idea that there are entire worldviews structured around "I have no idea if there is any truth to this claim, but it makes people act better if they believe it" is profoundly troublesome to me.
I think we may have different ideas of what it means for something to be true in this context. No fundamental beliefs can be known to be true. For example, your foundational materialism is true for you, but there's no of actually knowing if it is true in an objective way.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:atheists don't know how to say, "I don't know,"
quote: some evangelic atheists have a real problem with tolerance of ambiguity
observe: the goalposts are moving again.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
errr...I think you might get that when you are comparing an inaccurate summary of my statements made by someone else with what I actually said.
---
edit: Also, I think you may get more out of this conversation if you approach it with good faith, which I don't think you are doing now.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I don't think you'll find a single prominent evangelical atheist who will claim to be certain that no supernatural forces exist. You'll find a few who claim to be certain that no specific supernatural forces, as described in one source or another, exist, but I don't think that's evidence of an "intolerance of ambiguity" as much as it's evidence of rationality.
Heck, I'm a materialist, myself, but I don't claim to be certain that I'm not a brain in a jar.
Posted by iglee (Member # 12455) on :
Right on, Mr.Squicky
quote: There is, to me, a compelling similarity between many religious fundamentalists and many evangelical atheists, besides their shared disdain for actual scientific study of human behavior in preference for their theoretical models.
And don't forget an other similarity: sanctimonious and arrogant
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Heck, I'm a materialist, myself, but I don't claim to be certain that I'm not a brain in a jar.
I suppose you might claim to be certain that, rationally, your dealings with the world around you and the experience that has provided you indicate that even if you were a brain in a jar, that would have no bearing on your present actions. Essentially, that the idea that you are a brain in a jar is fine, but has no effect on anything you observe, or your rationale for your own moral choices. Personally I have always suspected that this is not actually different for a lot of religious people, but that they are just uncomfortable with the naked ambiguity of atheism.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: errr...I think you might get that when you are comparing an inaccurate summary of my statements made by someone else with what I actually said.
This is not to pick on any one person. I am just observing a general shift per that one angle.
Tom has the rest of it.
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
Weird. I'm totally on Squick's side in this discussion. I'm not sure if that will lead him to change his position ... Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:No fundamental beliefs can be known to be true.
On reflection, this may be part of our disagreement, Squick. Under what definition of "fundamental" can a religious belief be called "fundamental" without its truth value actually mattering?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
What do you mean by truth value? Is that relative to the person believing it or relative to ultimate reality?
I think that it most likely is very important that it have a high truth value to the person believing it, but to ultimate reality, whatever that may be, I think it matters much less.
---
I don't think you get my point about lack of ambiguity tolerance. This is not a characteristic attached to the belief, but rather an underlying trait of the person that is expressed in the way they hold beliefs.
I know you're not going to take my work for it, especially since I don't have to time to go into in depth, but I think this is a vital thing to understand in terms of a lot of Western behavior, and especially in this specific case. I highly recommend looking into the study of it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Is that relative to the person believing it or relative to ultimate reality?
I think that it most likely is very important that it have a high truth value to the person believing it, but to ultimate reality, whatever that may be, I think it matters much less.
Do you think it's irrelevant that, for example, some people may be burning in Hell for all eternity based on their behavior? Is that, from an "ultimate reality" standpoint, not likely to matter?
Or, if Hell does not exist at all: is that also irrelevant?
Are you really asserting that the value of religious belief is in its secular cultural product? That it is in fact the opiate of the people?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
You're going to have to define what you are talking about in terms of relevance. Irrelevance to what?
quote:Are you really asserting that the value of religious belief is in its secular cultural product? That it is in fact the opiate of the people?
No, I'm arguing almost the exact opposite of that.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:No, I'm arguing almost the exact opposite of that.
Then isn't the "rightness" of a given religion remarkably relevant?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:No, I'm arguing almost the exact opposite of that.
Then isn't the "rightness" of a given religion remarkably relevant?
No, why do you think it would be?
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Because if we're not caring about religion's instrumental value, then the only other reason to care is its intrinsic value, and if that's the case then it only actually matters if it's actually true.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Because if we're not caring about religion's instrumental value, then the only other reason to care is its intrinsic value, and if that's the case then it only actually matters if it's actually true.
I don't believe that this is the case. That is, I believe that valid religious belief has intrinsic value largely unrelated to how well it matches ultimate reality.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
What could that intrinsic value possibly be?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Personal connection to the divine.
---
That's misleading. I don't believe that this connection is certainly not exclusive to religious activities/belief.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Your going to have to explain all your terms from the ground up. Right now I honestly do not understand what you're saying.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I think I do.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
It's a lot more complex than this, but think of it this way. We have two possibilities. Either there is some force or entity that fills the sport of the prime mover (e.g. is outside the bounds of space-time and causality) and we have some connection to this "divine" or there isn't.
I believe that there are fundamental differences in those two worlds, the potential of free will - in some capacity - being one of the biggest.
If you grant a second thing, that at some level, our subjective perceptions are of themselves objectively true - that is, at some level, that I perceive something is true, even if what I perceive is not objectively true - then we have, through our potential ability to choose our perceptions, the power to shape objective reality.
Of course, because we can't perceive objective or ultimate reality - whatever that actually means and if such as thing actually exists - whatever reality we create is really an illusion.
I have a lot of affinity to combining the two senses of the concept of maya. It is both the dream stuff that the world is made out of and the illusion that lies in front of ultimate reality.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
I can *guess*, but there's already enough miscommunication in this thread.
Edit: was replying to kmmboots. I'll respond to Squick later, although I suspect Tom will beat me to the punch.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I believe that there are fundamental differences in those two worlds, the potential of free will - in some capacity - being one of the biggest.
I fail to see why the existence of an entity outside space-time makes free will possible. More relevantly, it seems to me that it matters a great deal to you that such an entity exists; is this not the same thing as asserting the importance of religious truth? After all, if the "divine" does not exist, are you not contending that free will does not exist, and moreover that for some reason the objective possibility of free will matters to you?
quote:If you grant a second thing, that at some level, our subjective perceptions are of themselves objectively true - that is, at some level, that I perceive something is true, even if what I perceive is not objectively true - then we have, through our potential ability to choose our perceptions, the power to shape objective reality.
Why does that logically follow? Or, more to the point, why is that impressive? Note that the objective reality we are shaping here is limited to what it is that we perceive; in other words, we aren't shaping what actually is, but rather simply shaping our subjective awareness of perception. That's as subjective as reality gets, if you ask me; there's nothing even slightly objective about it. Either you're choosing to subjectively interpret a valid perception, or you're subjectively manufacturing an invalid perception; either way, objective reality has only obliquely been touched by your choice.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:More relevantly, it seems to me that it matters a great deal to you that such an entity exists
I'm not sure why you would think that. It matters that I believe it exists, but how is my life any different if it exists or not?
Does it matter that free will does or does not ultimately exist or that I believe that it does?
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quote:Either you're choosing to subjectively interpret a valid perception, or you're subjectively manufacturing an invalid perception; either way, objective reality has only obliquely been touched by your choice.
There's a lot more to this than getting eye chart right or not. In ultimate terms, everything we perceive is wrong.
But, if it exists, the ability to create something new comes from the ability to control one's perspective. Being able to think of things that are not and choose among them is incredibly powerful. Likewise, this is the facility that allows us to construct meaning, which is really what we're talking about, when we're talking about religion and the like.
With both of those, it often isn't a question of accurate or not, but of building some sort of coherent structure. Not in all cases, but in many/most, this seems more important than if it is actually ultimately true, which is also usually impossible to know.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Likewise, this is the facility that allows us to construct meaning, which is really what we're talking about, when we're talking about religion and the like.
So it doesn't actually matter whether or not someone really gets to be a God in the afterlife, along with his or her family, as long as their constructed meanings are satisfactory?
How is that not the same as saying that religion has no intrinsic value?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
It's called "belief in belief". These people don't actually believe, but they think it's virtuous or beneficial for them to believe, so they pretend to believe, even though they don't really.
No actual believer ever argues that truth doesn't matter. The people who say that only belief matters are the people who've actually already lost their belief, they just hesitate to say so because they're afraid of the (moral/societal/supernatural/whatever) consequences.
"Where it is difficult to believe a thing, it is often much easier to believe that you ought to believe it"
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:You *are* unreliable in certain ways. But I base that judgement on my actual experiences with you. You understand science and are an advocate of it, but you also espouse certain modes of thinking that I find counter-productive. But do tell, who were these people who made these assumptions about you, and how did you handle that?
Thank you for proving my point Orincoro.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Which point was that? That athiests like me judge you without knowing you? Because I know a fair bit about you and the way you think. No, we were talking about people who have just met you- not people like me. I pointed out that you are unreliable- but that doesn't have to be apparent to someone who just met you, right?
Unless of course every single seemingly rational and logical person they had ever met and talked to on this subject who turned out to be religious also turned out to have a fairly wide streak of irrationality to go along with it... then they might fairly mark you as unreliable from the get-go. So what point was it that *you* were making? Other than of the nose-thumbing variety.
And lest your response is a tit-for-tat: I'm well aware most outspoken atheists are rather arrogant and condescending about the fact. They have a right to be, but it's also a defense mechanism. Many people are unreliable for many reasons- it's just with religion you get the name of the problem up front. Hello, my name is Susan, I'm an Irrational Person... are you also a member of a church?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Orin, You clear don't understand my point. I don't believe you have the slightest interest in understanding my point so I'm no going to try to explain it any more. You are however, doing very good job of illustrating my point. If there is any one out there who did get my point, I'm sure they are enjoying your performance,
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Ok, take your ball and go home then. I'm not the scientist with an existential crisis on my hands.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Bravo!! That was brilliant. Encore!!!
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
I will give a dollar to the one who lets the other one have the last word.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I am fully prepared to sell out for a digital subscription to Cataclysm, what does it take to get that out of you?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I'm well aware most outspoken atheists are rather arrogant and condescending about the fact. They have a right to be...
I'm sorry, is there a commission that grants this right? Are you card carrying?
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Speaking of card carrying...
"He's no pervert. I'm a pervert and he's never attended any of the meetings."
I think that was from an episode of M*A*S*H, or something close to it. I use it all the time for similar situations.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:So it doesn't actually matter whether or not someone really gets to be a God in the afterlife, along with his or her family, as long as their constructed meanings are satisfactory?
It doesn't matter to what I'm talking about, no.
What happens in the afterlife is unknowable, so it's impossible to really talk about in this context. For all we know, everything people believe about the afterlife is true for them.
But that's irrelevant to what I believe is the "divine" actions of the creative exercise of free will in constructing meaning. In the only objective reality that people have access to, these are true acts of creation and are therefore reflective of absolute reality. In doing this, people are, I believe, either communing with the divine or expressing their nature as an extension of the divine.
---
It may help - or it would if you were interested in what I had to say outside of finding ways to attack it - to point out that I'm coming at this from a perspective that regards dynamic actions and not static states as the true expression of what I'm talking about. That is, the act of creating things is much more important than the thing created, although that is important as well.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
And why is belief in the divine relevant to that creative impulse, Squick, except as just one of many possible inspirations?
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
quote:I fail to see why the existence of an entity outside space-time makes free will possible.
For me, it isn't the idea of God, specifically, that validates free will, but rather, the idea of consciousness or intelligence being something distinct and eternal, rather than solely a byproduct of the mechanical functions of the brain. Something on par with matter and energy and gravity, rather than on par with smell or touch or reflex.
Humans typically have a difficult time reconciling mechanical cause with moral responsibility. IE, if you can define a mechanical cause leading to someone's behavior, it becomes much harder to ascribe responsibility to them for that behavior. Whenever we DO ascribe responsibility, we usually have to cite the supposition that they COULD have made a different choice, but didn't.
Yet if we are completely mechanical, there is good reason to doubt that this is true. Whatever choice they made really is the only thing they could have done.
One reason I like my own religious views is the fact that we treat consciousness and intelligence as something separate from the mechanics of our brains. Something that is unique, uncreated, and self-defined, which is free to make independent choices. While our brain's processes are still heavily involved in our choices, there is a sense that at the deepest level, there is some determining influence that makes the difference between ME living this life, and "someone else" living the same life with the same brain and the same environment.
That entity can be held responsible for its choices, because it was never created or defined by another entity or process, and thus its decisions are completely self-determined. Even though, with a brain, you can trace back a mechanical chain of causation that created it, with one of these entities, the chain of causation quickly hits a point where it continues eternally into the past without any further causation involved. If a particular entity makes selfish, harmful choices, there is no process to blame besides the entity's own self-defined nature. You can call it evil, without having to qualify that statement with a lot of hemming and hawing about its genetics and upbringing.
Once genetics and upbringing get involved, their influence is not insignificant, of course. But having that kernel of uncaused free will makes a big difference in justifying the placement of responsibility on an individual, rather than on his circumstances.
Anyway. That's a major reason why I like my own religious philosophy. Not why I believe it, necessarily, but why I like it Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: And why is belief in the divine relevant to that creative impulse, Squick, except as just one of many possible inspirations?
It's not the inspiration. It's the method/medium.
Without something outside of causality, there's no actual creativity, just the response to environment and genetics.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:That entity can be held responsible for its choices, because it was never created or defined by another entity or process, and thus its decisions are completely self-determined.
If I build a machine that, over time, eventually wears out and stops functioning, I do not feel the need to blame the machine; I prevent it from doing further damage and work to repair it. If I build a machine that works well until it's struck by lightning, I don't "blame" the lightning (or the machine's vulnerability to it); I prevent the machine from doing further damage, then work to either find a way to reduce the incidence of lightning strikes or build machines that are not vulnerable to lightning.
I don't see what purpose the concept of "evil" would serve in this scenario. Something can still be bad, still be in need of repair or replacement or disassembly, without needing to be supernaturally wicked in itself.
Edited to add: heck, "evil" in that framework might as well be a diagnosis akin to "malfunctioning." I see no reason why possessing the intent to do net harm might not be considered a symptom of brokenness.
--------
quote:Without something outside of causality, there's no actual creativity, just the response to environment and genetics.
Why does that matter? As you've pointed out, there's no way for us to tell the difference. If what we have is what we have, does it matter whether it's "actual" creativity or "fake" creativity?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Why does that matter? As you've pointed out, there's no way for us to tell the difference. If what we have is what we have, does it matter whether it's "actual" creativity or "fake" creativity?
It matters to me. I choose to believe it and that's the meaning that I have constructed. The world that I live in is completely different if I construct one way or the other.
Does it matter to you?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Depends on what you mean by "me," I suspect. If you mean "does it actually make a difference to your perception of reality if it's true," the answer is no. If you mean "are your conscious appraisals of your perceptions interpreted differently if you believe it's true," then yes.
But here's the trick: if you're doing the latter, Squick, you are definitely making the conscious choice to "believe in belief." And that's not actually belief, as has been previously observed. If you think, "I choose to believe that some non-material element of 'soul' or 'will' exists to enable non-deterministic behavior, which is the only thing that permits me to consciously appreciate this individual's attempt to create art as anything more than the rote expression of pre-programmed circumstances," you've left actual belief a ways behind you.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Yeah, I believe in believing. I also believe. So what?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I don't think it's possible to both believe in believing and believe; the former undermines the latter. After all, you don't believe that belief is useful because it makes someone a better person, or because it somehow ensures them an afterlife, or because it provides any sort of actual intrinsic benefit; you believe that the act of believing can be used to construct personal meaning, regardless of the subject of the belief. There is, I submit, absolutely no way that this can help but make the actual subject of belief appear incidental.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
That's a really awful summary of what I believe. You've consistently done a really bad job of actually telling me what I believe. I'm telling you, you're not going to get it if all you're trying to do is tear it down.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Free will is a trivially easy problem to solve. We do have free will: Mechanics don't constrain our choices, we *are* our mechanics, and therefore it's we who determine our choices, and thusly our choices aren't constrained by something external to us, and therefore we do have free will.
People who get confused about this arrive to their confusion by somehow imagining the brain's mechanics as something "external" to the 'true self' that constrains the self.
Self-awareness is a rather trickier and much more interesting problem than free will.
quote:Yeah, I believe in believing. I also believe. So what?
Which do you value more, knowledge of truth, or belief?
E.g. do you prefer to know there's no actual Santa Claus in the North Pole, or would you prefer it if you still believed in him?
The Santa Clause example is the best way to understand how atheists feel about belief in gods.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:That's a really awful summary of what I believe.
Go ahead and provide a better one, if you'd like.
Posted by 0Megabyte (Member # 8624) on :
" I don't "blame" the lightning (or the machine's vulnerability to it); I prevent the machine from doing further damage, then work to either find a way to reduce the incidence of lightning strikes or build machines that are not vulnerable to lightning."
To be fair, I might blame the lightning. At least, I'd probably yell out obscenities about it if it fried my car or something. "@#$% lighting! What the @#$%?!" etc.
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
Tom, your machine analogy illustrates my point. I think it's legally and morally problematic to treat humans as though they are machines with varying degrees of brokenness. It's hard to explain the problem without getting circular (eg, "Don't treat humans like machines, because it's dehumanizing!") But it just seems like, if you treat people as machines, you absolve them of responsibility for their actions, and rob them of any sense of pride or investment in their decisions.
It is helpful to consider the source of a human choice to be something different and a step removed from mechanical causality, so that the human can be treated as something more than a machine when it comes to assigning responsibility, and expecting things of people. ("Blame" has a lot of negative connotations, and I'm talking about responsibility for both good and bad decisions.)
Luckily, whether they literally believe it or not, humans seem to be predisposed to consider each other to be entities very much like what I described. We DO blame and congratulate each other for our choices, even when we don't necessarily think there is anything more than a causality machine involved in events transpiring as they do. To do otherwise feels wrong and insulting. Treating a human as a machine feels like the kind of mental process you would go through to tolerate atrocities like slavery and genocide.
Basically, I guess I was saying that I like my model because the model you described sounds like a terrible and unhelpful way to think about a human being. I have a bad reaction when modern folk replace the words "right and wrong" or "good and bad" with "healthy and unhealthy" (a close analogy to "broken and unbroken") because eliminating the superficial buzzwords of traditional morality doesn't actually do anything to remove subjectivity and prejudice from the process of judging others' behavior, but it DOES add in a dehumanizing factor that makes it easier to treat people you disagree with or disapprove of as "broken things" whose perspectives do not need to be given any weight. Someone making a "wrong" choice, in the opinion of the speaker, needs to be opposed, argued with, engaged. Someone who is doing "unhealthy, broken" things merely needs to be treated, fixed ... infantilized, dismissed.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:But it just seems like, if you treat people as machines, you absolve them of responsibility for their actions, and rob them of any sense of pride or investment in their decisions.
I understand why most people feel this way. So I don't usually emphasize free will or lack thereof when I'm arguing with people. But the above statement just doesn't have to be true.
I believe people are essentially machines. I do not believe a murderer should be blamed, in an absolute sense, for murdering. Maybe they had a (insert bad childhood here). Maybe they (insert random chemical imbalance here). Or maybe, for mysterious reasons that we simply can't figure out, they just are the sort of person who murders people.
Nor do I think that someone who goes around helping people is an inherently, better person. They may have lucked into good parents. They may have some genes that naturally incline them to altruism. Or they may, for mysterious reasons, simply be the sort of person who helps people.
So I don't punish or reward people because, on an absolute cosmic justice scale, they deserve to be.
BUT.
People still need to be punished or rewarded. They still have feelings. They still have trials and tribulations and encouraging them with love and pride is vital. There is no rule that says that all mechanical things must be treated with the passion you award your toaster. Whether something is mechanical and scientifically understandable is completely irrelevant to whether something is a person that we should care about.
If you view people as machines, and then conclude that they are not people, you are a bad mechanic. If people did NOT treat people with love and respect, the world would be an unhappy place. When all is said and done, after all your manipulations, the only thing that can actually "fix" a "broken person" is that person. They may need help. They may be misguided about how to fix themselves. But eventually they must make the effort to change themselves. If you didn't hold people as responsible for their own actions, nothing would get done.
I think that Aris touched on this, but I think it's a mistake to leap from a belief that human behavior is deterministic, to the conclusion that individual perception and experience of choice is meaningless.
This seems to happen most often from the outside. e.g. (response to determinism) "well then we cannot hold people responsible for their actions", "you are saying people are like machines, but they aren't - they are human."
This is an unnecessary and incorrect inference. The distinction (between "free will" and the alternatives) is fairly academic, since either way we all FEEL we are making choices.
I'm sympathetic to the concern that softening or changing the language from "right vs. wrong" to "healthy vs. unhealthy" might correlate to a diminished valuation of responsibility, but I don't think that inheres to the belief that behavior is deterministic. We can all appreciate the way choices feel, and the levers available to influence them, whether we choose a belief in free will or not.
Someone who believes that human behavior is deterministic and also believes that the conscious experience of choice is pretty crucial to modeling our ethical and moral systems has to wonder, though, what we're going to do when machines start indicating to us that they are having similar experiences.
Edited to add: Just read Raymond's post. I actually do think there are better and worse people. I don't think my belief that free will is an illusion means I can't also evaluate and judge the rightness and wrongness of actions, or the relative virtue of other machines like myself. After all, such judgments influence my machinery; they seem to be effective inputs to the algorithm.
But I agree with Raymond on most of his points.
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
I understand that it's possible to consider humans to be machines and not invalidate the need for punishment and congratulations, and other vital aspects of human interaction.
However, thinking that way about people is very similar, for me anyway, to thinking of other naturally counterintuitive things like the implications of relativity, or the wave/particle nature of light. I can do it, and I can accept it as a possible explanation of the world — I can even have fun stretching my mind that way — but it sort of "feels wrong" the whole time
I attribute it to the fact that a person who thinks of other people as machines is called a sociopath, and human empathy is deeply rooted in the idea that I and the people around me are unique actors with individual value, who are responsible for their choices. Forcing myself to think a different way is possible, but if it felt natural, I would be missing a core part of what makes me human.
So while I don't think that the pleasantness or naturalness of an idea is necessarily a good reason to believe it, it does make me enjoy my religious views more to find that they offer a way to look at human decisions as being rooted in something beyond mechanical cause and effect
That article was pretty cool, by the way, Raymond. Like I said, I do enjoy exploring different ways to think around inherent assumptions in the human brain, and the article brings in some interesting perspectives.
A lot of this comes down, for me, to the temptation some have to say, "It's not my fault that I am the way I am!" as an argument against punishment. If the entity who will experience the punishment could not have done anything different to avoid the punishment, then how sadistic do you have to be to inflict that punishment on them?
It's a universal appeal to diminished capacity. We don't punish people who clearly don't know better than to commit their crimes because of unusual circumstances ... but if everyone's actions are deterministic, then shouldn't everyone get a pass on punishment for the same reason?
(I guess one could argue that the act of treating someone like a broken machine, and thus dehumanizing them to a certain degree, is a punishment for whatever they did. Though for those who want to be infantilized, it seems a bit like throwing them in the briar patch.)
Anyway. I don't have a defined agenda, here. I'm just sort of exploring. The question, I guess, is, who is a person talking about when they say "me"? The "me" who made a choice, and the "me" who experiences the fallout for the choice ... are they the same? Is there an irreducible entity at the heart of each person that is responsible for both? Is there another definition of "me" that fairly encompasses all uses of the term? Or is there some difference between these two that creates injustice?
If the "me" who makes choices includes all of the determining factors in my past that I cannot control, but the "me" who experiences fallout is only my isolated consciousness (ie, the part of me that observes and processes the world), then it seems somewhat legitimate for my consciousness to rebel and say that bearing the responsibility for its own choices is unfair if its choices are determined by something outside itself that predates it, and that cannot be changed.
(I don't personally make this argument, as I do see myself as being sufficiently in command of my decisions that I bear responsibility for them.)
Incidentally, from my perspective, these questions seem to be less of an issue for areligious skeptics than they are for traditional Christians. One of my biggest concerns with other Christian philosophies is the belief that each soul was created individually by God ... which really does seem to rob people of choice.
If all of my choices are determined by that God-created soul, then ultimately, they were predetermined by God at the time of creation, which seems particularly unfair, given that He is also the meter out of punishments. It feels wrong to punish someone for an act that you personally predetermined, and that you could have prevented by creating that person differently.
[ January 14, 2011, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: Geoffrey Card ]
Posted by Paul Goldner (Member # 1910) on :
"If the entity who will experience the punishment could not have done anything different to avoid the punishment, then how sadistic do you have to be to inflict that punishment on them?"
Of course, if we are deterministic, than there's no sadism associated with inflicting someone with punishment for misbehaving... that behavior is built into the machine.
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
Haha Yeah, I decided not to pursue that spiral of madness ...
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If the entity who will experience the punishment could not have done anything different to avoid the punishment, then how sadistic do you have to be to inflict that punishment on them?
It depends why we're inflicting the punishment, doesn't it? If the goal is to repair the machine, or to isolate it from situations in which it could do further harm, then there's no sadism at all involved.
And I submit this as an argument: that if we are as a society inflicting punishment for any other reason, we're behaving sadistically whether or not we think free will exists.
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
Well, that I agree with. Still, something in me feels like there is probably a situation where fairness requires that punishment or reward be meted out equally to people who performed the same action with different long-term mechanical processes leading up to each individual's choice. The person with the most mitigating background could argue that his circumstances make him less deserving of punishment, but as long as the IMMEDIATE circumstances of the choice are the same, it's very hard to say that the person with one upbringing is more deserving of a particular punishment than the person with another. Even if we're talking about a punishment that was devised specifically to match the criteria you outlined.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
As far as "society" is concerned, there may be value to saying "this is what the punishment is for this crime, no matter what," because it's necessary to create an adequate deterrent. But that's different than saying, in an absolute sense, that the two crimes are identical. And oftentimes it IS beneficial to show that the system understands individual circumstance. Showing mercy to the repentan woman who stole to take care of her family, but not for the woman who stole purely for herself, helps to establish that society as a whole is compassionate. People are more likely to respect the rules of an institution that seems fair.
I still don't think that in an absolute sense than one person is better than the other. The second woman is who she is, for a number of reasons. She may be "broken", and it is in our collective interest to either try to fix her or at least encourage other people not to become like her.
(Note: I'm actually undergoing some serious pondering of the above statement and all that it implies and I intend to start a new post about it soon, but I don't have time to explain it in detail here).
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
There is "better" as in "more intrinsically valuable", "better" as in "more admirable", "better" as in "more beneficial to others" ... plus a bunch of other possible uses. How are you using the word "better" here?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:it's very hard to say that the person with one upbringing is more deserving of a particular punishment than the person with another
Again, what is the point of "punishment?" Are we intending to repair the problematic criminal, to isolate the criminal from opportunities for further wrongdoing, or to repair some harm done to the victim?
It seems to me that whether or not someone "deserves" a punishment -- unless we're punishing someone to, again, be sadistic -- has less to do with how evil they are than it does how well the punishment achieves one of the three goals above. If we don't think the person can be repaired, and think there's a high chance that he or she will do harm again, we should "punish" them in such a way that they are deprived of the opportunity to repeat the act. If we think there's a chance the offending individual can be taught to function more appropriately -- either through negative or positive pressure -- we should apply such pressure as necessary. And if we think the victim will be harmed further by being denied the opportunity for revenge (or reparation), we provide that opportunity (hopefully in a way that does not damage the criminal and inspire further malfunctions.)
None of this requires that we worry about whether the criminal "deserves" punishment.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
What is lacking is a standard of judgment. How do you MEASURE good vs. evil, right vs. wrong?
A person may be "broken" if he has a chemical imbalance in his brain that causes objectionable behavior, so that he is physically incapable of recognizing reality. If someone is bipolar, we can administer certain medicines, to help keep him on a more even keel, so he does not sink into dangerous depths of depression. But in most cases, a serial killer is not a bad person because anything in him is broken. He made wrong choices. There comes a point were determined, consistent wrong choices produce behavior that must be called evil. We punish people like the Unibomber because they committed acts of horrendous, undeniable evil--and not because they are merely "broken."
I believe in a divine standard of right and wrong. The only other alternative I am aware of is using human beings as the standard of right. But anthropocentric morality requires some way of determining what is right behavior for a human--do we take an average, or a democratic vote, or go by the prevailing customs of society at the moment? I don't know any humans--as individuals or as whole societies--who are themselves reliable standards for judging what is right and wrong, good and evil.
Some people talk about conscience. But conscience must be educated. Again, we are really back to finding a standard for judging. Unless you accept the divine standard for morality, ultimately we are left with the arbitrary tyranny of human perversity, which is constantly changeable.
I would like to know how professed atheists are capable of having conscientious objections to murder and theft, aside from the question of society's laws and threatened punishment if you are caught. I think most atheists will probably admit that there is something that educates their conscience, and it is not just civil law and what they can get away with. Perhaps some of them will admit it at least somewhat has to do with how they were raised. And was that upraising given them by their parents influenced in any way by a knowledge of God, and the standards He has set?
Today's youths are being raised--at least in public schools--on a philosophy of morality that denies any absolutes, denies any certainty about God, or right or wrong; good, or evil. And as a result, we have generations of young people who clearly do not value human life. They will kill someone for their shoes. This truly is a case of chickens coming home to roost, or of reaping the whirlwind.
[ January 15, 2011, 07:43 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But in most cases, a serial killer is not a bad person because anything in him is broken. He made wrong choices.
A brain that makes wrong choices, insofar as those choices can be identified as empirically wrong, is broken.
quote:I would like to know how professed atheists are capable of having conscientious objections to murder and theft, aside from the question of society's laws and threatened punishment if you are caught.
I've answered this question for you before. Do you remember?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I think there's been a marked decline in the percentages of people who are going to kill others for their shoes, and that it trends in the opposite direction relative to the rise of atheism in secular countries than would be needed to assert that it is a result of atheism.
At any rate it seems to have far, far more to do with affluence, and the most affluent countries have the highest percentage of atheists (uh oh!)
sooooo
nope.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
What world are you living in? Sam, you report things that are exactly opposite of the way they really are. Kids killing kids for shoes and jackets, etc., happens most commonly in schools in poor, gang-infested neighborhoods. And the manifest disregard for the sanctity of human life is increasing on all levels of society, not decreasing. Maybe we might wish it were not true. But don't confuse what you wish were true with what is really true.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote:And the manifest disregard for the sanctity of human life is increasing on all levels of society, not decreasing.
You think that we kill people less than people killed people in the Medieval Ages? Or under the Romans? Where's your proof?
quote:I would like to know how professed atheists are capable of having conscientious objections to murder and theft, aside from the question of society's laws and threatened punishment if you are caught. I think most atheists will probably admit that there is something that educates their conscience, and it is not just civil law and what they can get away with. Perhaps some of them will admit it at least somewhat has to do with how they were raised. And was that upraising given them by their parents influenced in any way by a knowledge of God, and the standards He has set?
No.
Both my parents were atheists. We were raised with the knowledge of religion as a story. I don't think my parents ever gave us moral instruction. They never said, "Thou shalt not kill."
What an empty instruction I find that to be. Clearly, killing is not always wrong. We laud most soldiers as heroes and their job usually involves some kind of death-- often other people's. If killing was universally wrong as Moses was told, no Abrahamic religion would ever have gone to war and yet so many people have died for one reason or another, justifying in their minds-- sometimes rightly-- the death of another to save someone or something who, they think, deserves it.
Growing up with an understanding of morality from the life I and the people around me have lived, has given me an understanding of morality that does not seat itself on flat, uncompromising statements.
This allows me to understand the reality of the situation-- that death, although always a tragedy, has clearly occaisionally been an inevitable side-effect of something we as a society have regarded as necessary.
I teach religious studies and when we study Moses, the kids always ask me, "But Miss, Moses has already broken that commandment."
You could and do argue that he hadn't got the commandments yet (that's my response). But there are plenty of Biblical gentlemen following Moses who go to war and are considered to be roughly in the right. Nowadays of course, going to war is still fine, provided you consider it worthwhile.
Why assert an absolute to a youth that can clearly see that absolute is never followed?
Better to raise them in a kind and caring environment that clearly and emphatically values life.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:What an empty instruction I find that to be. Clearly, killing is not always wrong. We laud most soldiers as heroes and their job usually involves some kind of death-- often other people's. If killing was universally wrong as Moses was told, no Abrahamic religion would ever have gone to war and yet so many people have died for one reason or another, justifying in their minds-- sometimes rightly-- the death of another to save someone or something who, they think, deserves it.
Teshi, Your analysis is based on a poor translation of the original Hebrew. If you had looked at virtually any English Bible other than the King James version, you would see the word translated "murder" rather than "kill". You do not need to be an expert in Hebrew to confirm that the word "murder" is a much more accurate translation of the original Hebrew "ratsakh". The Bible does not contradict itself when it justifies killing in wars, self defense, as punishment for crimes, and so on. This is consistent with the actual Hebrew text of the commandment. I'm kind of shocked that a religious studies teacher would not be aware of this.
[ January 16, 2011, 09:20 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I teach religious studies and when we study Moses, the kids always ask me, "But Miss, Moses has already broken that commandment."
You could and do argue that he hadn't got the commandments yet (that's my response).
While it is correct that one could make this argument, as a religious studies teacher you should at least be aware that it is technically incorrect. Murder was forbidden long before Moses, the commandment forbidding murder is clearly articulated at the time of Noah and at least implied at the time when Cain killed Abel.
While there are a few Christian sects, like the Quakers, that do interpret this commandment to literally forbid killing any human for any reason, I'm sure you are aware that these sects are a tiny minority. The vast majority of Christians and Jews, even those who adhere to the King James translation, have always understood the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" to refer specifically to murder and not all types of killing. This isn't even a post hoc rationalization, its justified by the original Hebrew text.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Sam, you report things that are exactly opposite of the way they really are. Kids killing kids for shoes and jackets, etc., happens most commonly in schools in poor, gang-infested neighborhoods. And the manifest disregard for the sanctity of human life is increasing on all levels of society, not decreasing.
1) You misunderstand Sam's point, which was that random murder more closely correlates (negatively) to affluence instead of religious belief, and in fact affluence tends to correlate to a lack of religious belief. In other words, you get more murders in religious, poor countries.
2) I'm not sure what metric you're using to measure respect for life, but the murder rate has been steadily declining for some time.
[ January 16, 2011, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:1) You misunderstand Sam's point, which was that random murder more closely correlates to affluence instead of religious belief, and in fact affluence tends to correlate to a lack of religious belief. In other words, you get more murders in religious, poor countries.
In order for this point to represent anything more than a rush to judgement against religiosity, we would need data that controlled for poverty and intelligence. With in poor communities, are those who actively participate in religion more or less likely to be involved in crime. Within affluent communities, are those who actively participate in religion more or less likely to be involved in crime. I haven't been able to find an answer to that question. In the absence of properly controlled studies, its rational to withhold judgement. The hypothesis that dire circumstances promote religiosity is at least as reasonable as the hypothesis that religiosity promotes poverty and violence.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:The hypothesis that dire circumstances promote religiosity is at least as reasonable as the hypothesis that religiosity promotes poverty and violence.
Neither Samp nor Tom indicated a causal link. They just pointed out that the correlative data didn't support Ron's claim.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattP:
quote:The hypothesis that dire circumstances promote religiosity is at least as reasonable as the hypothesis that religiosity promotes poverty and violence.
Neither Samp nor Tom indicated a causal link. They just pointed out that the correlative data didn't support Ron's claim.
If there is no causal link, what relevance does it have to Ron's claim?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I'm intrigued by this implicit rise of atheism in gang-ridden poor communities in the US.
Posted by Paul Goldner (Member # 1910) on :
"If there is no causal link, what relevance does it have to Ron's claim?"
Ron's claim has neither correlative nor causative support. Pointing that out would seem to have fairly significant relevance to his claim.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I'm intrigued by this implicit rise of atheism in gang-ridden poor communities in the US.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:If there is no causal link, What relevance does it have to Ron's claim?
I'm surprised you ask this. While correlation doesn't prove causation, a lack of correlation is a strong argument against a claim of causation. Pointing out to Ron the lack of correlative data for his claim - indeed, the existence an inverse correlation - seems the most persuasive response.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I'm intrigued by this implicit rise of atheism in gang-ridden poor communities in the US.
I thought it was pretty obvious as Ron elaborated.
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: And as a result, we have generations of young people who clearly do not value human life. They will kill someone for their shoes. ... Kids killing kids for shoes and jackets, etc., happens most commonly in schools in poor, gang-infested neighborhoods.
The implicit assumption seems to me is that these kids are being raised in increasing numbers to be atheist, which explains the increasing crime rate. Well, *are* these communities experiencing a surge of atheists?
Because the alternative implicit assumption is that the kids are killing people as a result of other people in other communities in the US being less religious, which I first thought would be insane, but who knows on second thought.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: "If there is no causal link, what relevance does it have to Ron's claim?"
Ron's claim has neither correlative nor causative support. On the other hand, the claim that religion and violence are connected at least has correlative support.
Correlated does not imply connected.
Examples:
Over the past 100 years, there has been an increase in global average temperatures and an increase in the number of people who describe themselves as atheists.
There is a correlation between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global spread of HIV/AIDS.
There is a strong correlation between latitude and per capita GDP
The populations of the planet is strongly correlated to the rise in scientific understanding of genetics.
Correlation does not imply any connection, causal or otherwise. Not in any way. In the absence of proper controls, even a lack of correlation does not necessarily disprove a causal relationship.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:The implicit assumption seems to me is that these kids are being raised in increasing numbers to be atheist, which explains the increasing crime rate. Well, *are* these communities experiencing a surge of atheists?
Not necessarily. There are many other possibilities for example
Rising atheism has lead to a decrease in moral teaching in the public schools which in turn has contributed to rising violence and delinquency among the youth
A rise in atheism has lead to lower standards for moral behavior in the popular media, which in turn has lead to the increase in violence among poor youth.
A rising in atheism among the wealthy has contributed to the increasing gap between rich and poor, which in turn has lead to violence
Please note, I'm not suggesting that any of the above hypotheses are correct, I'm simply pointing out that there are many alternatives to the single interpretation you presented.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
Rising atheism has lead to a decrease in moral teaching in the public schools which in turn has contributed to rising violence and delinquency among the youth
A rise in atheism has lead to lower standards for moral behavior in the popular media, which in turn has lead to the increase in violence among poor youth.
A rising in atheism among the wealthy has contributed to the increasing gap between rich and poor, which in turn has lead to violence
These points are exactly what I had in mind. It may not be atheism itself directly which causes an increasing loss of respect for human life; but atheism impacts what public schools are allowed to teach concerning morality. In place of the Biblical instruction all schoolkids used to receive, now they get all kinds of mysticism and Castenadas type philosophy, which is pretty much a morality based on a sliding scale of relativism--I saw this in my sister's textbook years ago when she was going to highschool.
How do you determine the value of a human life? If humans are just animals, and there is no God to judge us in the end, then why should humans have any real value? Only if you believe that humans were created by God and that He will hold us all accountable in the end for how we treat each other, can you really have the innate sense of the great value of human life, sufficient to instruct your conscience.
If it were not for the inhibiting effect of a vast majority of still religious people who still believe in a divine Creator, then the small minority of atheists would have no conscience at all about killing humans with impunity, whenever it is convenent, with no fear of judgment in the end.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:Both my parents were atheists. We were raised with the knowledge of religion as a story. I don't think my parents ever gave us moral instruction. They never said, "Thou shalt not kill."
Just to comment here, as an atheist parent, I don't think it's possible to raise children without giving your child some sort of moral instruction. Whether you choose to use the bible as a standard of morality, it's pretty hard to avoid teaching your children that killing is immoral.
quote:If you had looked at virtually any English Bible other than the King James version, you would see the word translated "murder" rather than "kill".
"virtually any English Bible"? Nope. My Standard Revised version says "You shall not kill," and the current "murder was mistranslated as 'kill'" meme is only about 10 or 20 years old. So anything published before then probably said not to "kill," as opposed to "murder."
And for that matter, I argue that "thou shalt not murder" is not a commandment, it's a guideline. "Kill" is black and white, but "murder" is left open to interpretation. The whole point is to instill a sense that the morality is externally defined, so you can't just rationalize your decision and go ahead and kill anyway. The author may have been fully aware that killings are justified in certain circumstances, but the wording must have been intended to cause serious internal struggle when making that decision, so I'll stick with "thou shalt not kill," thank you.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
The Rabbit + Ron: I must say I find your reasoning very difficult to follow. How do you square this ...
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: These points are exactly what I had in mind. It may not be atheism itself directly which causes an increasing loss of respect for human life.
... with this ...
quote:If it were not for the inhibiting effect of a vast majority of still religious people who still believe in a divine Creator, then the small minority of atheists would have no conscience at all about killing humans with impunity, whenever it is convenent, with no fear of judgment in the end.
So inner-city children aren't in fact increasingly becoming atheists, but they are taught in public schools, systems of morality that cause them to kill people for shoes. They're corrupted religious people for lack of a better description.
However, the actual atheists are held in check from killing by some aura that religious people have around them while the shoe-killing kids aren't.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:"virtually any English Bible"? Nope. My Standard Revised version says "You shall not kill," and the current "murder was mistranslated as 'kill'" meme is only about 10 or 20 years old. So anything published before then probably said not to "kill," as opposed to "murder."
http://www.biblegateway.com/ gives 23 English translations of the Bible, 20 of which translate the word as "murder" rather than "kill". This is not a new meme. It goes back at least to the publication of the Talmud.
I am by no means a Hebrew scholar so I can only refer to what I have read from those who are. They all indicate the word used in the Hebrew Torah is more accurately translated as murder, and should not be interpreted as an injunction against war, self defense, or capital punishment. This is consistent with the way the commandment has been interpreted by the vast majority of Christians and Jews for centuries.
I'd be interested to hear from those on this board who do know Hebrew, but until I do I will presume that the comments I've read from Hebrew scholars are accurate.
I should also add that my personal bias is toward an overall injunction against killing. I lean toward total pacifism and would be pleased to argue this scripture demanded we end capital punishment and oppose all wars. It is however my understanding that the it does not and that reading it as such would be twisting it to fit my personal philosophy and unjustified from the text itself.
[ January 16, 2011, 01:02 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by just_me (Member # 3302) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
Rising atheism has lead to a decrease in moral teaching in the public schools which in turn has contributed to rising violence and delinquency among the youth
A rise in atheism has lead to lower standards for moral behavior in the popular media, which in turn has lead to the increase in violence among poor youth.
A rising in atheism among the wealthy has contributed to the increasing gap between rich and poor, which in turn has lead to violence
These points are exactly what I had in mind. It may not be atheism itself directly which causes an increasing loss of respect for human life; but atheism impacts what public schools are allowed to teach concerning morality. In place of the Biblical instruction all schoolkids used to receive, now they get all kinds of mysticism and Castenadas type philosophy, which is pretty much a morality based on a sliding scale of relativism--I saw this in my sister's textbook years ago when she was going to highschool.
How do you determine the value of a human life? If humans are just animals, and there is no God to judge us in the end, then why should humans have any real value? Only if you believe that humans were created by God and that He will hold us all accountable in the end for how we treat each other, can you really have the innate sense of the great value of human life, sufficient to instruct your conscience.
If it were not for the inhibiting effect of a vast majority of still religious people who still believe in a divine Creator, then the small minority of atheists would have no conscience at all about killing humans with impunity, whenever it is convenent, with no fear of judgment in the end.
Man, you really don't read carefully and try to understand what anyone else says, do you? You just pivot back to whatever you want to "prove"...
Did you miss the point where Rabbit said Please note, I'm not suggesting that any of the above hypotheses are correct? Basically she made some statements and then basically said "these aren't true", and you said "good point".
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Mucus, Please do not confuse my reasoning with Ron's. I am not supporting Ron's arguments.
My only point is that in the absence of proper controls, data showing a correlation between religiosity and crime in various communities are not evidence either for or against Ron's claims. I believe I have made that abundantly clear.
If you attempt to misconstrue my arguments to mean anything more than this, you are behaving as irrationally as Ron.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:The implicit assumption seems to me is that these kids are being raised in increasing numbers to be atheist, which explains the increasing crime rate.
You mean the perceived increasing crime rate. The crime rate has been pretty steadily declining for about 100 years or so. In large part, the decline of the crime rate is in fact because society percieves the crime rate to be "worse than it used to be" because we are less tolerant, and have a higher regard for human life than we used to have.
quote:Well, *are* these communities experiencing a surge of atheists?
I should certainly hope so, but atheism generally gains ground among the more highly educated, so I doubt the demographics would show the rise among the "gang ridden poor" as being a core population of atheistic growth.
quote:If humans are just animals, and there is no God to judge us in the end, then why should humans have any real value?
False premise. Belief in God has been used to define humans as having greater value than animals, whereas lack of belief in God forces us to recognize that animals' lives are as intrinsically valuable as humans. We have an innate understanding that human life has value, based on the survival instinct. Thus the "animal rights" movement.
Society in recent years has been placing a greater value on human life. For example, look at how we react to millions slaughtered in WWII, Tens of Thousands in Vietnam, and just thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also see how society holds business responsible for industrial accidents, and the expense we go to to prevent automobile deaths.
As to how atheists value human life, please realize that we aren't able to justify death with an afterlife. "Kill them and let God sort them out" is meaningless to us. Each human being gets exactly one life, so we value that life quite highly.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Mucus, Please do not confuse my reasoning with Ron's. I am not supporting Ron's arguments.
*shrug* Your points are "exactly" what Ron has in mind. I just figured you would have insight into his mind
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: My only point is that in the absence of proper controls, data showing a correlation between religiosity and crime in various communities are not evidence either for or against Ron's claims.
And why is this addressed to me? I haven't presented any data yet, with controls or without. I'm merely trying to understand what on Earth Ron is trying to say.
If you think I've presented data, you're acting just as irrationally as Ron Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Rabbit: check yo'self before you wreck yo'self, 'k? Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:This is not a new meme. It goes back at least to the publication of the Talmud.
I can certainly remember when people started presenting this idea as a "new" (and novel) idea, and I'm willing to bet that if you go back to English language Bibles published 30 years ago, you will be hard pressed to find many that use a word other than "kill."
Christianity hasn't historically paid a lot of attention to Jewish viewpoints on religion, so while this idea may have been prevalent in Jewish teachings since the writing of the Talmud, it only became a meme within Christian bible publishers recently.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I think you're arguing two different points, here:
1) Does the original Bible say "kill" or "murder?" 2) Did most Christian versions of the Bible say "kill" or "murder" until very recently?
I would argue that #1) is answered unambiguously by "murder." And I'd agree that my impression is that #2 can be answered "kill;" certainly the understanding that the Bible permits righteous killing is something that I've personally seen popularized in the Christian media over the last few years, and three of my four copies of the Christian Bible (all published prior to 1992) say "kill."
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
Actually Tom, although I'm arguing that Christian bibles said "kill" until recently, I'm more interested in promoting the idea that "murder" is an imprecise term, which gives people the opportunity to impose their own personal morality, rather than an absolute rule. "Kill" provides no such ambiguity, so I think it should be the preferred term.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Why? Has the ambiguity of the terminology, or lack thereof, ever stopped anyone from interpreting the bible in the ways they have chosen to? It's the thing about literalism anyway- it's not even internally consistent, because the "literal" reading is also based on a subjective translation, and the further subjective layering of cultural morass on top of that.
So, the idea that murder is subjective and kill isn't seems kind of mute anyway, at least to me. Your personal morality is going to be the deciding factor in anything that you do- it's going to govern your actions, as well as your stated justifications (biblical or otherwise) for those actions. I don't see why people actually believe that the bible defines any sort of morality, when even in order to read and understand the bible, a person has to be trained in all of the words and concepts by other people- from whom all their interpretations inevitably come in the more basic forms. By the time anyone can read a bible, the morality it supposedly teaches is already something they are very familiar with. And, shocker, its the morality of their parents and society, and not what the bible actually says (which is easy to see since the bible has no internal consistency at all, and can be interpreted in so many ways). And while lessons may be based on or revolve around biblical teachings, those chapters were written to compliment concepts already firmly in place before it was ever written, much less translated, annotated, and revised hundreds of times.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:Has the ambiguity of the terminology, or lack thereof, ever stopped anyone from interpreting the bible in the ways they have chosen to?
I suspect it has. If Quakers had not seen it as interpreted "thou shalt not kill" their philosophy of pacifism might never have been formed, or, even if it was, it might have been harder to sell it as a religion in its own right.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Among the translations that use "murder" rather than kill, is Young's literal translation (1866). The idea that "Thou shalt not kill" meant "murder" and was not an injunction against all forms of killing can be found in the writings of St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. It is by no means an invention of the last 10 to 20 years. It's what I was taught 40+ years ago as a kid in Sunday school. It's what my parents and grandparents were taught 60 to 100 years ago.
I'm willing to believe it first came to your attention 10 - 20 years ago, but that says more about what draws your attention than it does about Christianity. From time to time, the more pacifist Christian become vocal about issues like the death penalty and wars. Whenever they do, other Christians counter with "not kill" means "not murder". The book "Dead Man Walking" was published in 1995. I suspect that spurred considerable public discussion of this issue and may be what brought the issue to your attention. It was not however a new idea. Its a very very old interpretation and is in fact the dominant interpretation used by Christians and Jews for the past 2000 years.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold:
quote:Has the ambiguity of the terminology, or lack thereof, ever stopped anyone from interpreting the bible in the ways they have chosen to?
I suspect it has. If Quakers had not seen it as interpreted "thou shalt not kill" their philosophy of pacifism might never have been formed, or, even if it was, it might have been harder to sell it as a religion in its own right.
See, that's where I think you're probably wrong. I've always been of the opinion that the teachings of any particular sect or religion is about %99.9 to do with their actual circumstances (social, historical, economic) having an effect on their philosophies than any sacred text. It's like Taroh reading to me- the cards you throw are the cards you throw- but it changes very little ultimately in what you see in them, and even less in what you eventually decide to do in light of whatever you see.
Posted by Shawshank (Member # 8453) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold:
quote:Has the ambiguity of the terminology, or lack thereof, ever stopped anyone from interpreting the bible in the ways they have chosen to?
I suspect it has. If Quakers had not seen it as interpreted "thou shalt not kill" their philosophy of pacifism might never have been formed, or, even if it was, it might have been harder to sell it as a religion in its own right.
See, that's where I think you're probably wrong. I've always been of the opinion that the teachings of any particular sect or religion is about %99.9 to do with their actual circumstances (social, historical, economic) having an effect on their philosophies than any sacred text. It's like Taroh reading to me- the cards you throw are the cards you throw- but it changes very little ultimately in what you see in them, and even less in what you eventually decide to do in light of whatever you see.
Certainly one's life setting has an effect on the exegetical process. But that's not where most Christians draw the majority of their interpretation. I'd like to point out two things:
1. The most important aspect of a Christian's hermeneutical process comes from the church tradition- first from the larger, catholic church and then their own particular theological tradition. The Bible, as written and edited, was not intended for individual reading and interpretation. It was created to be used by the community of Christians and the church. This is not a bad thing, but rather safeguards the text. It also allows for divergent opinions on secondary and tertiary issues while still taking part in the same overall life of the church across time and space.
2. I would also like to point out that idea that even a sacred text like the Bible (which a person like myself would hold to be the most authoritative word on doctrine, and therefore an authority of truth) be informed by the particular circumstances of an individual or community's life is not a bad thing. Our lives should affect how the text is understood. The Bible isn't some absolute, monolithic text from which we receive all knowledge if we are "objective" enough. In fact, I think that the distinctive doctrines of Christianity require more flexibility in our understanding of truth- over and against fundamentalism's insistence on absolute inerrancy.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Mucus, Please do not confuse my reasoning with Ron's. I am not supporting Ron's arguments.
My only point is that in the absence of proper controls, data showing a correlation between religiosity and crime in various communities are not evidence either for or against Ron's claims. I believe I have made that abundantly clear.
If you attempt to misconstrue my arguments to mean anything more than this, you are behaving as irrationally as Ron.
That's a bit over the line Rabbit. Please refrain from using Ron as some sort of measuring bar by which irrationality is measured.
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
A quick google search on "when did thou shalt not murder appear"
quote:Traditional translations of this phrase into English have tended to use the word kill. Certain scholars have suggested that this is not the most accurate translation. The key phrase, often translated "to kill" ( rasah ), began in the twentieth century to be translated "Thou shalt not murder," is seen in newer translations of the Bible such as the New Revised Standard Version. The scholar Terence Fretheim notes, "In view of certain passages (e.g., 1 Kings 21:19) it has been suggested that the verb means murder" (1991, p. 232). He goes on to note that this phrase can refer to unintentional killing (Deut. 4:41–42) or the execution of a convicted murderer (Num. 35:30). A growing number of scholars now agree that this term for killing in Hebrew that is used in the Ten Commandments is never used in Hebrew Scripture to refer to the type of killing that takes place in a war.
As I said, my copy of the Bible (not the KJV) says kill, and from this writing it appears that although the translations began to change in the early 20th century, it wasn't a complete changeover, and has picked up steam more recently.
Regardless, this is just a diversion from my point, which is that if it's going to be a "commandment," it shouldn't be ambiguous, regardless of the source material.
And going back to my original post, my standard for morality isn't the bible, or even religion, but I still taught my kids that "thou shalt not kill" is a fundamental rule of morality. If faced with a situation where killing may be necessary, I want people to at least be internally conflicted, even if they choose to do it anyway.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Here is the entry I get from my on-line copy of Thayer's Bible Dictionary:
quote:07523 ratsach {raw-tsakh'} a primitive root; TWOT - 2208; v AV - slayer 16, murderer 14, kill 5, murder 3, slain 3, manslayer 2, killing 1, slayer + 0310 1, slayeth 1, death 1; 47 1) to murder, slay, kill 1a) (Qal) to murder, slay 1a1) premeditated 1a2) accidental 1a3) as avenger 1a4) slayer (intentional) (participle) 1b) (Niphal) to be slain 1c) (Piel) 1c1) to murder, assassinate 1c2) murderer, assassin (participle)(subst) 1d) (Pual) to be killed
Also note that in the original for Exodus 20:13, the expression translated "kill" is modified by qual. As noted in the above 1a, this signifies an emphasis on the connotation "to murder."
Besides, what ever happened to the basic principle of taking things in context? Shortly after the announcement of this commandment, the sons of Levi were instructed to take their swords and execute all those who refused to repent of their worship of the golden calf. Rather than jumping to the conclusion that this is a contradiction that no one had the wit to notice, we should recognize what is clearly implied: the forbidden kind of killing is not all types of killing.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Mucus, Please do not confuse my reasoning with Ron's. I am not supporting Ron's arguments.
My only point is that in the absence of proper controls, data showing a correlation between religiosity and crime in various communities are not evidence either for or against Ron's claims. I believe I have made that abundantly clear.
If you attempt to misconstrue my arguments to mean anything more than this, you are behaving as irrationally as Ron.
That's a bit over the line Rabbit. Please refrain from using Ron as some sort of measuring bar by which irrationality is measured.
I'm sorry. I'm curious, would it have been acceptable if I had said, "as irrational as you accuse Ron of being". That was my intent.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: And going back to my original post, my standard for morality isn't the bible, or even religion, but I still taught my kids that "thou shalt not kill" is a fundamental rule of morality.
This may sound a silly remark -- but do you understand, that "thou shalt not kill", without use of context, means not killing *anything*, any live creature? Not even bugs and spiders.
Even vegetarians kill living plants. You'd need to be a fruitarian (e.g. a Jain) to not kill anything.
If you understand 'thou shalt not kill' to mean *kill people* in general but NOT kill animals, you are already using a certain context to interpret the words.
And once one realizes that, one also realizes that the ancient Hebrews would have had a different interpretative context -- one with which they understood the commandment didn't refer to all the other forms of authorized killing.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: What world are you living in? Sam, you report things that are exactly opposite of the way they really are. Kids killing kids for shoes and jackets, etc., happens most commonly in schools in poor, gang-infested neighborhoods. And the manifest disregard for the sanctity of human life is increasing on all levels of society, not decreasing. Maybe we might wish it were not true. But don't confuse what you wish were true with what is really true.
Please show me data indicating a trend towards more murders today than were present a generation or more ago in our history. Absent this data, justify your assertion that 'manifest disregard for the sanctity of human life' is increasing in a way you can demonstrate.
note: do not expect to have your claim accepted at face value without some actual data. Your perceptions are frequently at odds with what can be demonstrated since — hypocritically — you imagine things to be the way they should be in order to support preconceptions.
Short version: put up or shut up. Show the data or admit you don't have any.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In order for this point to represent anything more than a rush to judgement against religiosity, we would need data that controlled for poverty and intelligence.
No. There are many other ways this point can represent plenty besides 'a rush to judgment against religiosity,' including but not limited to simply noting that actual real-world measurements manifestly disprove what ron is saying (a shocker).
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Mucus, Please do not confuse my reasoning with Ron's. I am not supporting Ron's arguments.
My only point is that in the absence of proper controls, data showing a correlation between religiosity and crime in various communities are not evidence either for or against Ron's claims. I believe I have made that abundantly clear.
If you attempt to misconstrue my arguments to mean anything more than this, you are behaving as irrationally as Ron.
That's a bit over the line Rabbit. Please refrain from using Ron as some sort of measuring bar by which irrationality is measured.
I'm sorry. I'm curious, would it have been acceptable if I had said, "as irrational as you accuse Ron of being". That was my intent.
That would grab me a bit better yes.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In order for this point to represent anything more than a rush to judgement against religiosity, we would need data that controlled for poverty and intelligence.
No. There are many other ways this point can represent plenty besides 'a rush to judgment against religiosity,' including but not limited to simply noting that actual real-world measurements manifestly disprove what ron is saying (a shocker).
Samp, I'm sorry but you fail. Unless you control for confounding factors, a lack of correlation does not disprove a causal relationship.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
I haven't been able to find anything that controls for individual factors, but atheism does appear to correlate with lower crime, lower poverty, and higher education. My guess is if any of the three is the cause of the others, it's education. Adding atheists to your community won't make it richer or less crime ridden, but improving education will, and also happen to increase the number of atheists.
In any case, I think Samp's actual point is just fine. He's not proving atheism causes anything. But Ron specifically was claiming that atheism DID cause something - higher crime. He also claimed crime was going up. And he's wrong on both accounts: Crime overall is going down, in particular in areas that happen to have more atheists. If atheist had any link with increased crime, it'd have to be such a minimal effect that it managed to be completely obliterated by the other relevant factors. Ignoring the fact that crime is going down in the first place.
[ January 18, 2011, 02:17 PM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Rabbit, what are you on about?
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
If I were betting (and this is mostly speculative), I'd guess that atheism is caused by many factors, including education and genetic predisposition for cognitive functioning that tends to lead to an atheistic worldview. Environment must be considered, as well. In short, I think it's many of the same factors that lead to a person being religious.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Sir Isaac Newton was arguably one of the most brilliant human beings in history--he invented calculus, and enunciated his laws of motion which are still today only superceded when we approach the velocity of light in a vacuum. He also was very religious, believed in the Bible and in Bible prophecy, and even wrote his own commentaries on Daniel and Revelation. Nearly a century in advance, he correctly predicted on the basis of Bible prophecy that "something terrible" was going to happen to the Papacy near the end of the 18th century--and in fact in 1798 the Pope was taken prisoner by the army of Napoleon led by General Berthier, and a few months later the Pope died in prison. At the time, many people believed it might mean the end of the Roman Catholic Church.
[ January 18, 2011, 06:23 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Ron: Are you a Catholic? I am extremely skeptical of the claim that the Bible discusses a Pope's, (and one of no major import) kidnapping and death in prison unless those events weave into a larger narrative.
edit: Or, of course if it turns out that I am completely wrong about the Catholic Church not being God's kingdom here on earth.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Newton was also an Arian and believed himself to be a prophet.
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
It is also a little known fact that Newton wrote more on alchemy than he did on math & physics. Read into that what you will.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In order for this point to represent anything more than a rush to judgement against religiosity, we would need data that controlled for poverty and intelligence.
No. There are many other ways this point can represent plenty besides 'a rush to judgment against religiosity,' including but not limited to simply noting that actual real-world measurements manifestly disprove what ron is saying (a shocker).
Samp, I'm sorry but you fail. Unless you control for confounding factors, a lack of correlation does not disprove a causal relationship.
You pretty much started this exchange by inferring my point had to be something it did not have to be (and in fact is not) — a 'rush to judgment against religiosity.' After stuffing that motive in my mouth, you've ... defended it so irrelevantly that I don't know where you're going with this or, really, what you're talking about. Or how you're reading my posts. Step back and think about it!
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Another interesting question is, is there a single large organization at the time that did not have some sort of event that could be termed "something terrible" at some point in time that could be called "near the end of the 18th century"? Major problems happen in all long-existent very large organizations, with fairly high frequency. Predicting something that vaguely enough that it is nearly guaranteed to happen is not predicting at all.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Unless you control for confounding factors, a lack of correlation does not disprove a causal relationship.
Rabbit, why are you being so pedantic on this point? Ron's made a claim so outrageous and superficial that noting the inverse correlation really should be a sufficient answer in this forum. If Ron thinks there are confounding factors, let him present them or withdraw the claim. If you think there are confounding factors, that would also be interesting to hear about.
But if you merely want to insist that confounding factors can render any correlation meaningless, well sure - that's always the case, even in a study that accounts for suspected confounding factors but which might miss others.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Another interesting question is, is there a single large organization at the time that did not have some sort of event that could be termed "something terrible" at some point in time that could be called "near the end of the 18th century"?
Before judging the vagueness or preciseness of Newton's prophecy, we must know the exact wording of it.
You're putting the cart before the horse, fugu, offering explanations and rationalizations before you have the facts.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
We also, of course, have to rule out the idea that Newton engineered a two-hundred-year-long plot to capture and kill the pope. Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: We also, of course, have to rule out the idea that Newton engineered a two-hundred-year-long plot to capture and kill the pope.
Sounds like a good plot for Assassin's Creed 3. Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
The point is that atheists have no corner on intellect. Sir Isaac Newton may have been the most brilliant human being in history, and he was very religious.
BlackBlade, the larger narrative is Daniel chapter seven--especially the portion about the "Little Horn" power, that would persecute the saints for 1260 years. As Protestants have historically seen it, the Papacy became a persecuting power wielding secular authority to punish dissenters about 1260 years prior to 1798.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:The point is that atheists have no corner on intellect.
Has anyone been claiming that only atheists can be intelligent? I suspect that you're trying to change the subject again.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
quote:Before judging the vagueness or preciseness of Newton's prophecy, we must know the exact wording of it.
You're putting the cart before the horse, fugu, offering explanations and rationalizations before you have the facts.
Or we could let the person making strong claims, who has the incentive to make it sound as good a prophecy as possible, be the one to have to deal with it. He used quite vague wording, including the part that appears to be intended as a quotation, and this is when trying to make Newton sound impressive!
Of course, if you happen to be able to find a copy of the prophecy, I'd be happy to destroy it more specifically. However, this prophecy doesn't seem well known at all (I do keep finding that some people think Nostradamus made a similar one), so I'll await someone else finding the wording.
Posted by Ron Lambert (Member # 2872) on :
Tom, I brought up the point about Sir Isaac Newton being brilliant and yet religious in response to what Juxtapose said:
quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: If I were betting (and this is mostly speculative), I'd guess that atheism is caused by many factors, including education and genetic predisposition for cognitive functioning that tends to lead to an atheistic worldview. [Emphasis supplied.]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
'cognitive functioning that tends to lead to an antheistic worldview' is not equal to 'only athiests have cognitive functioning' or 'atheists cognitive functioning is necessarily superior to theists'
not that i would agree anyway, i think it would have more to do with western culture beginning to shed the influence and pervasiveness of of christianity that leads to early-life indoctrination environments essentially necessary for propagating a cohesive faith between generations.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I agree that atheists have no monopoly on education and even brilliance -- however the Newton example is a weak rebuttal: his intelligence may have been extraordinary, but his education necessarily lacked the advances made by human knowledge in the last few centuries.
In more recent times, neither Laplace nor Tesla nor Einstein nor Planck nor Hawking believed in a personal god. I have difficulty remembering a modern famous scientist, e.g. in the last century or two, that believed in any particular religion. (though some of these used "God" as a metaphor for the universe while still disbelieving in any personal god)
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I have difficulty remembering a modern famous scientist, e.g. in the last century or two, that believed in any particular religion. (though some of these used "God" as a metaphor for the universe while still disbelieving in any personal god)
Then that is a limitation on either your memory or what it takes to be "famous". Quite a few Nobel winners in the sciences in the last 20 years alone have been devoutly religious.
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: I have difficulty remembering a modern famous scientist, e.g. in the last century or two, that believed in any particular religion. (though some of these used "God" as a metaphor for the universe while still disbelieving in any personal god)
Then that is a limitation on either your memory or what it takes to be "famous". Quite a few Nobel winners in the sciences in the last 20 years alone have been devoutly religious.
Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, jumps immediately to mind. He is a devout Christian. He also is a pretty good scientist. (From what I, a layman, can tell.)
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: 'cognitive functioning that tends to lead to an antheistic worldview' is not equal to 'only athiests have cognitive functioning' or 'atheists cognitive functioning is necessarily superior to theists'
not that i would agree anyway, i think it would have more to do with western culture beginning to shed the influence and pervasiveness of of christianity that leads to early-life indoctrination environments essentially necessary for propagating a cohesive faith between generations.
I would guess (again, speculation) that the trend you're talking about has a greater effect on the number of out-of-the-closet atheists than it does the absolute number.
This also touches on what I meant by education, which was not simply a code word for intelligence. Rather it had to do with scientific education, comparative religious education, and most importantly awareness of atheism as a legitimate option. It makes me sad to think about how many people must have spent large parts of their life unhappy because they didn't realize there were other possibilities.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Then that is a limitation on either your memory or what it takes to be "famous". Quite a few Nobel winners in the sciences in the last 20 years alone have been devoutly religious.
Well, ofcourse it's a limitation on my memory. I'm sure there must exist *some*: my point was that my failure to remember any name off the top of my head, is itself evidence that they much fewer in proportion than non-religious ones.
quote:Francis Collins
Is he the most famous religion-believing scientist in the past two centuries?
I have to say I'm not impressed, not when the non-religious have names like Einstein and Tesla and Hawking and all the others I mentioned on their side.
Posted by Paul Goldner (Member # 1910) on :
Gregor Mendel, and a couple others, Aris.
But yes, the believers in a personal god are WAY underrepresented in the sciences compared to the general population.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: my point was that my failure to remember any name off the top of my head, is itself evidence that they much fewer in proportion than non-religious ones.
Or of confirmation bias on your part.
I'm done arguing this one. I happen to know lots -- which is surely confirmation bias on my part as well. But hardly proof of anything.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
It's like someone should take a poll or something Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Too bad most of the scientists of the last 200 years will find poll taking out of their reach.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Just throwing Henry Eyring out there as another great believer scientist. According to him, the concept for his equation came to him while he was at temple praying about this problem. Oh man, God cares about science, who knew?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
It goes back to 1914 and the numbers are fairly stable, I'd be fairly surprised if the proportion changed all that rapidly before that and the total number of scientists is rapidly increasing anyways which decreases the ability of the earlier century to change the proportions as much.
If anything I'd expect the American sample of the poll to bias the poll toward more belief rather than less.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:"Or of confirmation bias on your part."
I didn't purposefully exclude some scientist's name that I knew to be religious, I instead started thinking up names of famous scientists and THEN I looked them up to see if they were religious. That's the proper methodology.
A few (like Madame Curie) I couldn't find information about their religious beliefs, but all the ones I thought up and found information about weren't religious.
Posted by Paul Goldner (Member # 1910) on :
"Too bad most of the scientists of the last 200 years will find poll taking out of their reach."
Considering how many scientists are working today compared to how many were working in, say, 1890, I wouldn't want to make any major wagers on this statement. When one further considers that, as has been pointed out, the polling goes back 100 years, I'd say the statement would probably be more correct if one said "The vast majority of the scientists who have ever worked have been alive when polls have been taken on this subject."
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