Pony, until you are actually willing to discuss the nature of your religious ideas, stop using them as an argument, you're making shit more confusing than it needs to be.
The "irrational" and "imaginary" talk just made me think of this re: God and unobservable phenomenon that exist.
√-1. It exists in math. Its not observable. Its sometimes used a notation device in science but only pared with a real number. You can never actually have i somethings. In a real way i does not exist in our observable universe and yet i exists.
We need a church for non-religious purpose; just a bigass club with hundreds or thousands of local members who are all cool with each other because they are all part of the same club.
With Singles mixers and day care.
This exists. It's called Unitarian Universalism.
Unitarian Universalism: Gays and Deists welcome because God, if he exists, would be cool with it!
Its pretty much exactly why such congregations exist (and why they exist largely in the most liberal parts of the country)
Up until very recently, there were some very rational reasons for oppressing women, based on societal and economic, rather than religious, reasons.
I might be able to get on board with the idea that, in other kinds of economic systems, it makes sense for women and men to specialize in different things. Nevertheleess, trying to convince me that out and out oppression of women is ever rational is a hard sell.
"Rational" doesn't mean "nice" or "just."
Up until very recently, we didn't have any real way to be sure who the father was of a given child, unless you could be sure that the mother had only one sexual partner (i.e., her husband). In societies where transfers of wealth and political power could only happen from a father to his legitimate male offspring, allowing women any sort of freedom to choose their sexual partners and/or divorce would have had seriously destabilizing effects. Furthermore, marriages were one of the few ways to increase a family's wealth and power and it was therefore the right of the family patriarch to decide who his children would marry.
Furthermore, demographics is destiny- if the women of Tribe A are basically treated as baby factories, while the women in Tribe B are given the freedom to choose what they will do with their lives, Tribe A will produce more warriors and will be able to subjugate Tribe B.
Over time, these various practices were given a religious gloss, but in a pre-industrial society, controlling women so as to use them as a resource for the tribe/clan was a rational approach.
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I'm among the most die hard antitheists you'll ever meet.
But the topic name is ridiculous. There's no way to seriously know that. Yes, religion sucks. Yes, I hate it. Yes, I think that it's best if we as a species move on from religion, along with superstition and psuedoscience.
But you cannot effectively demonstrate that the net sum of religion has NEVER been positive in ANY society. That's such an extreme statement. It's implausible. Surely somewhere, religion has done good. In fact, I can name a few different areas where religion is making things better for a certain type of problem than any other current solution. And besides, there's simply not enough information to make a statement like that across all time and across all cultures.
Oh, and the reason I neglected Zeus is because the old religions are all so patently not true that one doesn't even need to bother. Is the moon pulled by a great chariot across the sky? No? Good, then thats that dealt with.
This is no more obviously untrue than the Mesopotamian mythology of the Old Testament of the New Testament's assertion of virgin birth, or Islam's belief that Muhammad rode up into the sky.
Also, Golden-Age Greece, much like modern Christianity, had "interpreted" its mythology such that the gods lost all of their obviously untrue, petty humanlike traits and became basically "high gods" like our friend Yahweh. You can see this at work in the writings of Plato, where he suggests that the real Zeus wouldn't ever rape people like the stories about him say, so those stories must be fallible. This is exactly like how modern Christians interpret the parts of the Bible they don't like.
So, the old religions went through this phase too, or at least some of them did. I think you should have included them.
Not to mention that more primitive beliefs with regard to religion coincided with a more primitive understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. I mean, the understanding of chemistry has come along way since belief in four classical elements, but everything has to start somewhere. You might as well say "Four Elements?!? LOLsubatomicparticles!!!" as use Greek Gods as a way of disenfranchising religion.
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
Yes. Christianity in particular is full of people who go because "my parents did". That's dumb.
I hate religion as much as the next guy, but even Douglas Adams (a staunch "hard" atheist) wrote about how in certain societies, the agricultural rules and practices that had developed with the religion of the region worked much better and provided better crops than when they tried alternative science-based methods.
Yes, but he's arguing the net effect is negative, not that all parts were negative or at least that's what his thread title implies.
Are there any religious folk on this board? I recently broke up with someone who was an Anglican (she didn't strictly abide) after 10 months. Although it wasn't initially an issue, it became one over time, particularly after we watched Religulous. She always explained that faith wasn't rational and that's why atheists and agnostics didn't get it. I've never understood why irrationality is an appealing defense, when several rational explanations are readily available.
Hi, I'm Pony and I'm a religious dude! Very much so! It's actually a significant portion of my daily life and activities, although most don't know it because I am not preachy and I keep my shit on the down-low.
Faith is, ultimately, an emotional response. It's a feeling. Feelings can have rational and logical foundations, but that isn't necessary for you to feel them. Generally speaking, if you believe something more because feel it is true rather than because you can prove it is, you are performing an act of faith and believing in something based more on faith than reason.
Atheists are not immune to this, either. Essentially any codified statement of belief on the greater state of the universe, it's creation, whatever, goes into faith territory as soon as you step outside what you can scientifically prove.
If you say you have a theory, that's not faith. If you say you believe in a theory, because you feel, given what you know and the lack of contrary evidence, that it's true... that's faith.
Endorsing a theory as true until proven otherwise is faith. It just is. This doesn't just apply to scientific theory, it applies to theory in general.
So a person who states very clearly openly that they are strongly atheist and do not believe in God or anything that could be associated with theistic beliefs is making a statement of faith.
Not religious faith. Some people might say "atheism is a religion too!" but I don't think that's accurate. I think it's more accurate to say that declaring yourself an atheist is an act of faith, but that faith doesn't equal religion.
I'll quote Isaac Asimov, a brilliant man (and atheist!) on this subject:
I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
Also, it's sad when people of faith, any faith, are so intolerant of dissenting views merely existing that say, the person they are dating must have the same faith as them.
I am a very religious person, but my girlfriend can very safely be described as agnostic and ambivalent to anything related to religion (or strong atheism, for that matter).
This isn't an issue for us as a couple, because I ain't a pushy dick about my religion.
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
No.
Setting aside that "going to church" doesn't accurately describe my relationship to the institutions of my faith, no, that isn't something I would do.
My faith is mine. If my children, as adults, decided that it was also for them, wonderful! If not, also okay.
I have no interest in foisting my religious beliefs on children in general, my own (theoretical future) children included.
I mean obviously as such children grew in age, understanding, and maturity they would naturally come to their parents with questions on the universe, etc.
But in those instances I would be quite careful to explain the difference between reality and "what Daddy believes, hun."
If I went to Egypt and dub up a parchment and carbon dated it to 35 AD and did some DNA tests or something and found out it was owned by St Peter and it was a newpaper report talking about how he and his 13 buddies bluffed their way around the middle east pretending to be the son of god then do you think Catholicism would give up and go home?
They are a multi-national government organization.
Oh, and the reason I neglected Zeus is because the old religions are all so patently not true that one doesn't even need to bother. Is the moon pulled by a great chariot across the sky? No? Good, then thats that dealt with.
God of the Gaps syndrome. People still worship Zeus.
I guess my point is that Science has now advanced to the point where there are no gaps. There are things we don't know, but we know enough about the universe to say "God, as in a SUPREME being who governs the universe, does not exist in any relevant way" If God doesn't exist, then religion is without purpose.
The counterpoint about smaller fallible Gods is another line of attack of god of the gaps. Its saying, OK, you know that the Abrahamic God doesn't exist in terms of Omniprescience and Omnipotence, but what about Zeus, or Odin. They had defined abilities and were fallible. These mythical things however have no relevance. Of course they might have existed, maybe they are like the Asgard in Stargate or whatever, but thats no reason to base an irrational belief and morality system about them.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
Yes. Christianity in particular is full of people who go because "my parents did". That's dumb.
Well, it's a way of life. And it's only natural for people to want to spread their way of life on to their children, isn't it?
Pony, while I don't agree with the OP's definition of religion, I also don't agree with your definition of religion. I wouldn't call you a "very religious dude" based on what you have said in previous threads. You don't appear to behave significantly different from an atheist like me, and I base my definitions on functionalism.
In these threads, I think it's important that we all define our terms and try to find common ground, but I also think it's important not to get too worked up about it because any definition of "god" or "religion" or "belief" is going to be a line in the sand. And more importantly, arguing about definitions—as opposed to the content of the actual ideas being defined—is really a waste of time.
Oh, and what's that, Qingu?
You seem awfully confident in commenting on my religiousness based on... what exactly?
I actually intentionally avoid discussing the particulars of my beliefs and practices, because they're quite personal. I feel it's sufficient to simply state they exist and are important to me, for the sake of clarifying my position on the subject.
Qingu, you are the sort of person who has a giant hate-boner for Abrahamic religions, and Christianity in particular, and it seems your mental framework on the subject of religion and faith is so clouded by that it leaves you incapable of adequately contemplating or understanding people to whom those ideas do not apply.
Of course, I might be wrong, but that's what I conclude given your statement that I am "functionally atheist", something you've said in the past. Because, in actuality, you know very little of what I believe or practice but are drawing that conclusion based on... well, I guess that I'm not preachy about my religion, and I'm not a monotheist, and... that I therefore don't fit into your preconceived notions, I guess?
That's sad, Qingu.
Well, explain what actions you take that make you religious. I mean, I certainly could be wrong, but from what I've gathered from other threads your religion is so "personal" that it does not seem to affect your outside behavior in any meaningful sense.
But if you regularly go to church, pray, perform rituals, observe laws that non-religious people would not, or anything like that, let me know and I will retract my statement.
And you seemed to have missed the entire point of my post, which is that it doesn't really matter what we call your beliefs (i.e. "spirituality" or "religion" or "functional atheism"), what matters is the content of your beliefs.
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
Yes. Christianity in particular is full of people who go because "my parents did". That's dumb.
Well, it's a way of life. And it's only natural for people to want to spread their way of life on to their children, isn't it?
Religion, specifically, specific religious practices and organizations, are a problem right now, and do need to be dealt with out of what little predictive power we DO have. But you cannot predict how the past would go. War gave us the internet and women's rights, for crying out loud.
Oh, well I guess you are right there would have been wars, I'm sure even in a society with no religion ever they would have found some way to get the people to fight since the ones at the top of society weren't fighting for religion really, but instead for greed or in defence from someone elses greed. So yes, a secular society wouldn't have been perfect, but it would have been better. A society where everyone from birth was taught to question the world around them, and to take nothing on pure faith would have been better than ours.
Without religion there is no basis for oppressing women for example, so we wouldn't need to fight a war to give us womens rights since there would have been noone telling us women were worse with any higher power to back them up. So, when you ask a philosopher why women should be oppressed, and he loses the argument then the logical basis for oppression is gone. When you ask a priest, and he loses, then he can just claim that its what God wants.
Sexism is routed in things far deeper and more complicated than "religion caused it." Religion was used as a means to practice something that people already had in mind.
OK, so my first statement you quote is wrong. Perhaps having an argument about God is not useless. I guess it can sometimes be worthwhile to do silly things. I like skiing, because skiing is fun, but it doesn't really have a purpose so my statement there should have been "One second thinking about god is silly" The reason why it is however a silly argument is that god does not exist, and there isn't any evidence for him existing in any form.
Skiing nets you exercise and stress relief.
And debating God/religion/philosophy/whatever is like calisthenics for your brain.
I don't find the search for truth to be entirely without benefit.
I think that's kind of what I meant to say.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Pony, until you are actually willing to discuss the nature of your religious ideas, stop using them as an argument, you're making shit more confusing than it needs to be.
I guess my point is that Science has now advanced to the point where there are no gaps. There are things we don't know, but we know enough about the universe to say "God, as in a SUPREME being who governs the universe, does not exist in any relevant way" If God doesn't exist, then religion is without purpose.
Magic doesn't need a big gap, any little gap will do.
Religion has many purposes, and those purposes vary between individuals and their situation.
The counterpoint about smaller fallible Gods is another line of attack of god of the gaps. Its saying, OK, you know that the Abrahamic God doesn't exist in terms of Omniprescience and Omnipotence, but what about Zeus, or Odin. They had defined abilities and were fallible. These mythical things however have no relevance. Of course they might have existed, maybe they are like the Asgard in Stargate or whatever, but thats no reason to base an irrational belief and morality system about them.
When factual statements are disproved they become metaphors.
The "irrational" and "imaginary" talk just made me think of this re: God and unobservable phenomenon that exist.
√-1. It exists in math. Its not observable. Its sometimes used a notation device in science but only pared with a real number. You can never actually have i somethings. In a real way i does not exist in our observable universe and yet i exists.
I actually like this parallel.
Imaginary concepts, like gods, do exist ... as patterns of thought in our brains. Those patterns of thought, however, can affect changes in the material world through the interaction of memes.
Just like imaginary numbers exist as probability distributions in the wavefunctions that underlie the behavior of quantum particles.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
Yes. Christianity in particular is full of people who go because "my parents did". That's dumb.
Well, it's a way of life. And it's only natural for people to want to spread their way of life on to their children, isn't it?
Natural, yes. Thinking critically, no.
Oh for sure, and that's why the bolded part above is part of my answer. It does suck that people don't get taught critical thinking skills when growing up. My parents never actually did this for me, but teachers in school did in a variety of ways.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
That seems like the reverse way to do it, nabbing the kids and putting them in church when they're youngest, most impressionable and willing to latch on to the ideas of Jesus and the 12 Super Friends. It seems like you'd present it to your kids when they were of the age to think outside the bun and challenge it and then decide if it's something they want.
Pony, until you are actually willing to discuss the nature of your religious ideas, stop using them as an argument, you're making shit more confusing than it needs to be.
Bullshit.
They're unimportant to the conversation at hand, so I don't need to obfuscate things by trying to make this conversation about me and the particulars of my religious beliefs and practices.
If you want to engage me personally on what I believe in detail, you can do so on your own time. I am generally uncomfortable with discussing it, but you're an intelligent chap and I don't mind if you do so by PM or whatever.
But that's not the topic here. People (and by people I primarily mean tbloxham) are making generalized and incorrect statements about religion in general that simply do not apply to many religions or the practices of religious people. Getting into the details of my personal religious faith is un-necessary to pointing this fact out, since I can point to many different religions around the world and practiced by millions that tbloxham's narrow and ridiculous definition of "religion" simply does not apply.
I am honest and straightforward about where I am coming from on these subjects. I don't think I'm deceptive or misleading or confusing (except to Qingu, it appears) and I think the points I am making are very clear and capable of being argued with directly if you disagree with them.
So if you disagree with what I am saying, do so, and show your work! Show me what you actually disagree with and what your reasoning is for doing so.
Trying to bait me into trotting out my personal faith so you can derail the thread doesn't substantiate anything.
Religion, specifically, specific religious practices and organizations, are a problem right now, and do need to be dealt with out of what little predictive power we DO have. But you cannot predict how the past would go. War gave us the internet and women's rights, for crying out loud.
Oh, well I guess you are right there would have been wars, I'm sure even in a society with no religion ever they would have found some way to get the people to fight since the ones at the top of society weren't fighting for religion really, but instead for greed or in defence from someone elses greed. So yes, a secular society wouldn't have been perfect, but it would have been better. A society where everyone from birth was taught to question the world around them, and to take nothing on pure faith would have been better than ours.
Without religion there is no basis for oppressing women for example, so we wouldn't need to fight a war to give us womens rights since there would have been noone telling us women were worse with any higher power to back them up. So, when you ask a philosopher why women should be oppressed, and he loses the argument then the logical basis for oppression is gone. When you ask a priest, and he loses, then he can just claim that its what God wants.
Sexism is routed in things far deeper and more complicated than "religion caused it."
Yes, but religion trains people not to question ideas. If each generation had to question the logic of its parents morality as it pertained to modern society rather than being trained to just accept what the man in the sky said then it would have faded a lot earlier.
Religion is not the true cause of societies ills, however it is a highly useful tool for those who profit from those ills to use to get others to go along with them. Religion doesn't cause hate, but it gives you a justification. It doesn't make you beat your wife, but it tells you why she deserved it. It doesn't make you kill a man for being different, but it tells you why you get to go to heaven now that you have.
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
That seems like the reverse way to do it, nabbing the kids and putting them in church when they're youngest, most impressionable and willing to latch on to the ideas of Jesus and the 12 Super Friends. It seems like you'd present it to your kids when they were of the age to think outside the bun and challenge it and then decide if it's something they want.
I choose this way because it's the way I came up through things. In the end, I still had my fit of stepping away from religion and I went back to it when I was older, but with my own ideas about it and not strictly adhering to what I was told growing up. Just above, someone mentioned critical thinking, and that's something that I appreciate having been taught in school. So while sure, my kid will have doses of church before doses of school (where I hope critical thinking is something whatever teachers s/he gets do), I want my kids to get both. And I'd have to do my part at home to reinforce that critical thinking side.
Yes, but religion trains people not to question ideas. If each generation had to question the logic of its parents morality as it pertained to modern society rather than being trained to just accept what the man in the sky said then it would have faded a lot earlier.
Religion is not the true cause of societies ills, however it is a highly useful tool for those who profit from those ills to use to get others to go along with them. Religion doesn't cause hate, but it gives you a justification. It doesn't make you beat your wife, but it tells you why she deserved it. It doesn't make you kill a man for being different, but it tells you why you get to go to heaven now that you have.
The thing you need to understand is that horrible people have secular backup reasons for when their religious reasons won't work.
Pony, until you are actually willing to discuss the nature of your religious ideas, stop using them as an argument, you're making shit more confusing than it needs to be.
Bullshit.
They're unimportant to the conversation at hand,
No they're not. You've repeatedly cited them as evidence that someone's definition of religion doesn't include you.
If you're not willing to explain why this is the case, then stop bringing up your mysterious beliefs and stop objecting when people use definitions of religion that you don't think include your beliefs. It's obnoxious.
So if you disagree with what I am saying, do so, and show your work! Show me what you actually disagree with and what your reasoning is for doing so.
There's nothing to disagree with. You haven't explained what your beliefs are. It is pretty amazing that you actually think we have some kind of burden of proof here.
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
Yes. Christianity in particular is full of people who go because "my parents did". That's dumb.
Well, it's a way of life. And it's only natural for people to want to spread their way of life on to their children, isn't it?
Natural, yes. Thinking critically, no.
Oh for sure, and that's why the bolded part above is part of my answer. It does suck that people don't get taught critical thinking skills when growing up. My parents never actually did this for me, but teachers in school did in a variety of ways.
the point is, you feel thats its fine to imprint or indoctrinate your kids before they can truely think critically about the concept. Which makes it all the harder to leave later because thats the way you were brought up. It's not impossible to make a clean break from that, but its an ingrained pattern of thought. I've met people, myself incluced, that sort of have to not slip back into thinking a certain way about religion because that the way we were raised for a decade in our formative years. It also doesn't help that for catholics, you're put through confession, eucharist, and confirmation before/around the time you hit high school, which asks a ton of faith based confirmation and its not like every kid can or will go against their parents at that point.
plus, i feel that if you went from raising a kind to not blindly follow any faith, and then they chose themselves to follow in your chosen faith, that would be far more genuine and real that feeling like they're obligated to do so.
Yes, but religion trains people not to question ideas. If each generation had to question the logic of its parents morality as it pertained to modern society rather than being trained to just accept what the man in the sky said then it would have faded a lot earlier.
Religion is not the true cause of societies ills, however it is a highly useful tool for those who profit from those ills to use to get others to go along with them. Religion doesn't cause hate, but it gives you a justification. It doesn't make you beat your wife, but it tells you why she deserved it. It doesn't make you kill a man for being different, but it tells you why you get to go to heaven now that you have.
The thing you need to understand is that horrible people have secular backup reasons for when their religious reasons won't work.
If you understand that religion is justification and not cause, than how can you NOT believe that humanity would not find other justification?
The "irrational" and "imaginary" talk just made me think of this re: God and unobservable phenomenon that exist.
√-1. It exists in math. Its not observable. Its sometimes used a notation device in science but only pared with a real number. You can never actually have i somethings. In a real way i does not exist in our observable universe and yet i exists.
I actually like this parallel.
Imaginary concepts, like gods, do exist ... as patterns of thought in our brains. Those patterns of thought, however, can affect changes in the material world through the interaction of memes.
Just like imaginary numbers exist as probability distributions in the wavefunctions that underlie the behavior of quantum particles.
Careful, there. i has very real observable properties in the real world and can be used to explain very real things. You are close to claiming that the X coordinate does not exist. Or that negative numbers in general do not exist. (I mean, how do you have negative 3 apples? I can think of several things that could explain.)
Yes, but religion trains people not to question ideas. If each generation had to question the logic of its parents morality as it pertained to modern society rather than being trained to just accept what the man in the sky said then it would have faded a lot earlier.
Religion is not the true cause of societies ills, however it is a highly useful tool for those who profit from those ills to use to get others to go along with them. Religion doesn't cause hate, but it gives you a justification. It doesn't make you beat your wife, but it tells you why she deserved it. It doesn't make you kill a man for being different, but it tells you why you get to go to heaven now that you have.
The thing you need to understand is that horrible people have secular backup reasons for when their religious reasons won't work.
Yes, but they aren't as good, and they aren't as cunningly packaged as religion. If their 'reasons and logic' for being bastards are weaker, they'll be able to persuade less people of their cause and thus things will be better.
Yes, but they aren't as good, and they aren't as cunningly packaged as religion. If their 'reasons and logic' for being bastards are weaker, they'll be able to persuade less people of their cause and thus things will be better.
You appear to be horribly ignorant about the Enlightenment, the cultural response to the discovery of Evolution, etc.
Pony: If they are unimportant to the conversation at hand why the hell do you bring it up?
If you are going to show Qingu to be wrong you have to actually SHOW him to be wrong instead of just go "You're wrong but the proof is secret!"
With Qingu in particular I was trying to point that he was essentially jumping to a conclusion based on limited information, based on what he feels is true given what he knows to be fragmentary information. That he's essentially operating based on belief, not evidence.
In the case of Bayesian, who I was responding to directly, asked if there were religious people on this board (there are!) and what their opinion on a point he presented was.
So, I pointed out that I am a religious person and offered my viewpoint on what he said.
That's why I brought it up.
If that frustrates you, that's your problem, chief. I don't owe you anything.
If you had kids, would you make them go to church?
I know this was directed at Pony, but I'd like to take a shot at it:
For a while, yes. Only up to the point where my kids started questioning it, and not because it's a boring thing for a kid to have to do (I was there once, church as a youngster is boring as fuck). The day my kids (should I have them) are able to start questioning things about the Bible or the religion, I'll leave it up to them to decide if they want to go to church, or if they think it isn't necessary to still hold some amount of religious belief (that is, is church necessary to still hold those values true to one's life).
I'd rather my kids have the ability to make choices and have free will than that shit. And honestly, I'd be more concerned about whether or not they're good people. People don't need religion to be as such.
That seems like the reverse way to do it, nabbing the kids and putting them in church when they're youngest, most impressionable and willing to latch on to the ideas of Jesus and the 12 Super Friends. It seems like you'd present it to your kids when they were of the age to think outside the bun and challenge it and then decide if it's something they want.
I agree. And I also why you arbitrarily decided to take them to church, as opposed to Scientology church or a mosque, or a Richard Dawkins Bright convention.
The "irrational" and "imaginary" talk just made me think of this re: God and unobservable phenomenon that exist.
√-1. It exists in math. Its not observable. Its sometimes used a notation device in science but only pared with a real number. You can never actually have i somethings. In a real way i does not exist in our observable universe and yet i exists.
I actually like this parallel.
Imaginary concepts, like gods, do exist ... as patterns of thought in our brains. Those patterns of thought, however, can affect changes in the material world through the interaction of memes.
Just like imaginary numbers exist as probability distributions in the wavefunctions that underlie the behavior of quantum particles.
Careful, there. i has very real observable properties in the real world and can be used to explain very real things. You are close to claiming that the X coordinate does not exist. Or that negative numbers in general do not exist. (I mean, how do you have negative 3 apples? I can think of several things that could explain.)
Yes, if God was as real as i, then god exists. i influences the universe in a real way with no need for human agents to assign it power and act on it's behalf. God does not.
tbloxham on
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Yes, but religion trains people not to question ideas. If each generation had to question the logic of its parents morality as it pertained to modern society rather than being trained to just accept what the man in the sky said then it would have faded a lot earlier.
Religion is not the true cause of societies ills, however it is a highly useful tool for those who profit from those ills to use to get others to go along with them. Religion doesn't cause hate, but it gives you a justification. It doesn't make you beat your wife, but it tells you why she deserved it. It doesn't make you kill a man for being different, but it tells you why you get to go to heaven now that you have.
The thing you need to understand is that horrible people have secular backup reasons for when their religious reasons won't work.
Yes, but they aren't as good, and they aren't as cunningly packaged as religion. If their 'reasons and logic' for being bastards are weaker, they'll be able to persuade less people of their cause and thus things will be better.
Do yourself a favor and read Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Hachface on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
the point is, you feel thats its fine to imprint or indoctrinate your kids before they can truely think critically about the concept. Which makes it all the harder to leave later because thats the way you were brought up. It's not impossible to make a clean break from that, but its an ingrained pattern of thought. I've met people, myself incluced, that sort of have to not slip back into thinking a certain way about religion because that the way we were raised for a decade in our formative years. It also doesn't help that for catholics, you're put through confession, eucharist, and confirmation before/around the time you hit high school, which asks a ton of faith based confirmation and its not like every kid can or will go against their parents at that point.
I don't necessarily agree with the bolded statement. Kids can ask curveball questions before the age of 10. In fact, this is why I didn't give any sort of hard timeline regarding when I'd leave it up to my kid about wanting to go to church or not. As for indoctrination, I'm not going to be one of those people who tells their kid evolution is a bad thing. It'd be nice for my kids to embrace some amount of my religious belief, but I want them to embrace the things we know to be true in the world, or have the most evidence supporting it.
Ultimately, it's all in how I raise my kids. Which is a staggering thing to think about right now.
Yes, but religion trains people not to question ideas. If each generation had to question the logic of its parents morality as it pertained to modern society rather than being trained to just accept what the man in the sky said then it would have faded a lot earlier.
Religion is not the true cause of societies ills, however it is a highly useful tool for those who profit from those ills to use to get others to go along with them. Religion doesn't cause hate, but it gives you a justification. It doesn't make you beat your wife, but it tells you why she deserved it. It doesn't make you kill a man for being different, but it tells you why you get to go to heaven now that you have.
The thing you need to understand is that horrible people have secular backup reasons for when their religious reasons won't work.
Yes, but they aren't as good, and they aren't as cunningly packaged as religion. If their 'reasons and logic' for being bastards are weaker, they'll be able to persuade less people of their cause and thus things will be better.
It's entirely subjective whether those reasons are better. For the prosperity of your country for which you'll ultimately be rewarded can work just as well as for the prosperity of God for which you'll ultimately be rewarded.
Yes, but they aren't as good, and they aren't as cunningly packaged as religion. If their 'reasons and logic' for being bastards are weaker, they'll be able to persuade less people of their cause and thus things will be better.
You appear to be horribly ignorant about the Enlightenment, the cultural response to the discovery of Evolution, etc.
Err, if religion is not a reason for war and hate, then it is an excuse.
If it wasn't a good excuse people wouldn't use it so much
If people didn't have such a good excuse they wouldn't seem as persuasive and wouldn't be able to get as many other people on board with their bad ideas.
[
I choose this way because it's the way I came up through things. In the end, I still had my fit of stepping away from religion and I went back to it when I was older, but with my own ideas about it and not strictly adhering to what I was told growing up. Just above, someone mentioned critical thinking, and that's something that I appreciate having been taught in school. So while sure, my kid will have doses of church before doses of school (where I hope critical thinking is something whatever teachers s/he gets do), I want my kids to get both. And I'd have to do my part at home to reinforce that critical thinking side.
the bolded, italicised part makes me think that you feel you're kids should follow you, and challenge believes you've shown them after accepting the for awhile, and then eventually come back like you did.
this pretty much goes against the idea most people on here have of giving childern a unbaised choice based on religion. If you emphasize one over all the others at a young age, doesn't usually matter how smart or critically thinking minded the kid is, they're going to biased towards what you've shown them in the long run
Meh. Religion isn't all bad (I say this as an atheist)
I know a few people who claim to find strength in their invisible sky man. As long as their faith doesnt excuse forcing your beliefs on others through things like restrictive laws, persecution, or prejudice then it doesn't bother me too much.
The idea of people believing in an entire moral code/way of life that is based on something completely irrational/devoid of logic does bother me some.
But hey, as long as they aren't trying to persecute me, then they can believe all they want.
Darkchampion3d on
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence --Thomas Jefferson
The "irrational" and "imaginary" talk just made me think of this re: God and unobservable phenomenon that exist.
√-1. It exists in math. Its not observable. Its sometimes used a notation device in science but only pared with a real number. You can never actually have i somethings. In a real way i does not exist in our observable universe and yet i exists.
I actually like this parallel.
Imaginary concepts, like gods, do exist ... as patterns of thought in our brains. Those patterns of thought, however, can affect changes in the material world through the interaction of memes.
Just like imaginary numbers exist as probability distributions in the wavefunctions that underlie the behavior of quantum particles.
Careful, there. i has very real observable properties in the real world and can be used to explain very real things. You are close to claiming that the X coordinate does not exist. Or that negative numbers in general do not exist. (I mean, how do you have negative 3 apples? I can think of several things that could explain.)
Yes, if God was as real as i, then god exists. i influences the universe in a real way with no need for human agents to assign it power and act on it's behalf. God does not.
Again, this feels wrong to me. i does not influence the world. i can be used to describe how the world works. Just as a regular Cartesian map can be used to describe in a decent enough way how the world acts, so can i. Maybe we'll have better methods later. Maybe not. Don't forget the equations describe what happens, they do not cause it.
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√-1. It exists in math. Its not observable. Its sometimes used a notation device in science but only pared with a real number. You can never actually have i somethings. In a real way i does not exist in our observable universe and yet i exists.
Unitarian Universalism: Gays and Deists welcome because God, if he exists, would be cool with it!
Its pretty much exactly why such congregations exist (and why they exist largely in the most liberal parts of the country)
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Up until very recently, we didn't have any real way to be sure who the father was of a given child, unless you could be sure that the mother had only one sexual partner (i.e., her husband). In societies where transfers of wealth and political power could only happen from a father to his legitimate male offspring, allowing women any sort of freedom to choose their sexual partners and/or divorce would have had seriously destabilizing effects. Furthermore, marriages were one of the few ways to increase a family's wealth and power and it was therefore the right of the family patriarch to decide who his children would marry.
Furthermore, demographics is destiny- if the women of Tribe A are basically treated as baby factories, while the women in Tribe B are given the freedom to choose what they will do with their lives, Tribe A will produce more warriors and will be able to subjugate Tribe B.
Over time, these various practices were given a religious gloss, but in a pre-industrial society, controlling women so as to use them as a resource for the tribe/clan was a rational approach.
Rigorous Scholarship
But the topic name is ridiculous. There's no way to seriously know that. Yes, religion sucks. Yes, I hate it. Yes, I think that it's best if we as a species move on from religion, along with superstition and psuedoscience.
But you cannot effectively demonstrate that the net sum of religion has NEVER been positive in ANY society. That's such an extreme statement. It's implausible. Surely somewhere, religion has done good. In fact, I can name a few different areas where religion is making things better for a certain type of problem than any other current solution. And besides, there's simply not enough information to make a statement like that across all time and across all cultures.
Gosh.
Not to mention that more primitive beliefs with regard to religion coincided with a more primitive understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. I mean, the understanding of chemistry has come along way since belief in four classical elements, but everything has to start somewhere. You might as well say "Four Elements?!? LOLsubatomicparticles!!!" as use Greek Gods as a way of disenfranchising religion.
Yes. Christianity in particular is full of people who go because "my parents did". That's dumb.
No.
Setting aside that "going to church" doesn't accurately describe my relationship to the institutions of my faith, no, that isn't something I would do.
My faith is mine. If my children, as adults, decided that it was also for them, wonderful! If not, also okay.
I have no interest in foisting my religious beliefs on children in general, my own (theoretical future) children included.
I mean obviously as such children grew in age, understanding, and maturity they would naturally come to their parents with questions on the universe, etc.
But in those instances I would be quite careful to explain the difference between reality and "what Daddy believes, hun."
I guess my point is that Science has now advanced to the point where there are no gaps. There are things we don't know, but we know enough about the universe to say "God, as in a SUPREME being who governs the universe, does not exist in any relevant way" If God doesn't exist, then religion is without purpose.
The counterpoint about smaller fallible Gods is another line of attack of god of the gaps. Its saying, OK, you know that the Abrahamic God doesn't exist in terms of Omniprescience and Omnipotence, but what about Zeus, or Odin. They had defined abilities and were fallible. These mythical things however have no relevance. Of course they might have existed, maybe they are like the Asgard in Stargate or whatever, but thats no reason to base an irrational belief and morality system about them.
Well, it's a way of life. And it's only natural for people to want to spread their way of life on to their children, isn't it?
But if you regularly go to church, pray, perform rituals, observe laws that non-religious people would not, or anything like that, let me know and I will retract my statement.
And you seemed to have missed the entire point of my post, which is that it doesn't really matter what we call your beliefs (i.e. "spirituality" or "religion" or "functional atheism"), what matters is the content of your beliefs.
Natural, yes. Thinking critically, no.
Sexism is routed in things far deeper and more complicated than "religion caused it." Religion was used as a means to practice something that people already had in mind.
I think that's kind of what I meant to say.
Magic doesn't need a big gap, any little gap will do.
Religion has many purposes, and those purposes vary between individuals and their situation.
When factual statements are disproved they become metaphors.
Imaginary concepts, like gods, do exist ... as patterns of thought in our brains. Those patterns of thought, however, can affect changes in the material world through the interaction of memes.
Just like imaginary numbers exist as probability distributions in the wavefunctions that underlie the behavior of quantum particles.
Oh for sure, and that's why the bolded part above is part of my answer. It does suck that people don't get taught critical thinking skills when growing up. My parents never actually did this for me, but teachers in school did in a variety of ways.
That seems like the reverse way to do it, nabbing the kids and putting them in church when they're youngest, most impressionable and willing to latch on to the ideas of Jesus and the 12 Super Friends. It seems like you'd present it to your kids when they were of the age to think outside the bun and challenge it and then decide if it's something they want.
Bullshit.
They're unimportant to the conversation at hand, so I don't need to obfuscate things by trying to make this conversation about me and the particulars of my religious beliefs and practices.
If you want to engage me personally on what I believe in detail, you can do so on your own time. I am generally uncomfortable with discussing it, but you're an intelligent chap and I don't mind if you do so by PM or whatever.
But that's not the topic here. People (and by people I primarily mean tbloxham) are making generalized and incorrect statements about religion in general that simply do not apply to many religions or the practices of religious people. Getting into the details of my personal religious faith is un-necessary to pointing this fact out, since I can point to many different religions around the world and practiced by millions that tbloxham's narrow and ridiculous definition of "religion" simply does not apply.
I am honest and straightforward about where I am coming from on these subjects. I don't think I'm deceptive or misleading or confusing (except to Qingu, it appears) and I think the points I am making are very clear and capable of being argued with directly if you disagree with them.
So if you disagree with what I am saying, do so, and show your work! Show me what you actually disagree with and what your reasoning is for doing so.
Trying to bait me into trotting out my personal faith so you can derail the thread doesn't substantiate anything.
Yes, but religion trains people not to question ideas. If each generation had to question the logic of its parents morality as it pertained to modern society rather than being trained to just accept what the man in the sky said then it would have faded a lot earlier.
Religion is not the true cause of societies ills, however it is a highly useful tool for those who profit from those ills to use to get others to go along with them. Religion doesn't cause hate, but it gives you a justification. It doesn't make you beat your wife, but it tells you why she deserved it. It doesn't make you kill a man for being different, but it tells you why you get to go to heaven now that you have.
If you are going to show Qingu to be wrong you have to actually SHOW him to be wrong instead of just go "You're wrong but the proof is secret!"
I choose this way because it's the way I came up through things. In the end, I still had my fit of stepping away from religion and I went back to it when I was older, but with my own ideas about it and not strictly adhering to what I was told growing up. Just above, someone mentioned critical thinking, and that's something that I appreciate having been taught in school. So while sure, my kid will have doses of church before doses of school (where I hope critical thinking is something whatever teachers s/he gets do), I want my kids to get both. And I'd have to do my part at home to reinforce that critical thinking side.
The thing you need to understand is that horrible people have secular backup reasons for when their religious reasons won't work.
If you're not willing to explain why this is the case, then stop bringing up your mysterious beliefs and stop objecting when people use definitions of religion that you don't think include your beliefs. It's obnoxious.
There's nothing to disagree with. You haven't explained what your beliefs are. It is pretty amazing that you actually think we have some kind of burden of proof here.
the point is, you feel thats its fine to imprint or indoctrinate your kids before they can truely think critically about the concept. Which makes it all the harder to leave later because thats the way you were brought up. It's not impossible to make a clean break from that, but its an ingrained pattern of thought. I've met people, myself incluced, that sort of have to not slip back into thinking a certain way about religion because that the way we were raised for a decade in our formative years. It also doesn't help that for catholics, you're put through confession, eucharist, and confirmation before/around the time you hit high school, which asks a ton of faith based confirmation and its not like every kid can or will go against their parents at that point.
plus, i feel that if you went from raising a kind to not blindly follow any faith, and then they chose themselves to follow in your chosen faith, that would be far more genuine and real that feeling like they're obligated to do so.
If you understand that religion is justification and not cause, than how can you NOT believe that humanity would not find other justification?
Careful, there. i has very real observable properties in the real world and can be used to explain very real things. You are close to claiming that the X coordinate does not exist. Or that negative numbers in general do not exist. (I mean, how do you have negative 3 apples? I can think of several things that could explain.)
Yes, but they aren't as good, and they aren't as cunningly packaged as religion. If their 'reasons and logic' for being bastards are weaker, they'll be able to persuade less people of their cause and thus things will be better.
You appear to be horribly ignorant about the Enlightenment, the cultural response to the discovery of Evolution, etc.
With Qingu in particular I was trying to point that he was essentially jumping to a conclusion based on limited information, based on what he feels is true given what he knows to be fragmentary information. That he's essentially operating based on belief, not evidence.
In the case of Bayesian, who I was responding to directly, asked if there were religious people on this board (there are!) and what their opinion on a point he presented was.
So, I pointed out that I am a religious person and offered my viewpoint on what he said.
That's why I brought it up.
If that frustrates you, that's your problem, chief. I don't owe you anything.
Yes, if God was as real as i, then god exists. i influences the universe in a real way with no need for human agents to assign it power and act on it's behalf. God does not.
Do yourself a favor and read Eichmann in Jerusalem.
I don't necessarily agree with the bolded statement. Kids can ask curveball questions before the age of 10. In fact, this is why I didn't give any sort of hard timeline regarding when I'd leave it up to my kid about wanting to go to church or not. As for indoctrination, I'm not going to be one of those people who tells their kid evolution is a bad thing. It'd be nice for my kids to embrace some amount of my religious belief, but I want them to embrace the things we know to be true in the world, or have the most evidence supporting it.
Ultimately, it's all in how I raise my kids. Which is a staggering thing to think about right now.
It's entirely subjective whether those reasons are better. For the prosperity of your country for which you'll ultimately be rewarded can work just as well as for the prosperity of God for which you'll ultimately be rewarded.
By posting here you have agreed to not derail topic threads with useless statements that lead nowhere.
You owe Tube.
Err, if religion is not a reason for war and hate, then it is an excuse.
If it wasn't a good excuse people wouldn't use it so much
If people didn't have such a good excuse they wouldn't seem as persuasive and wouldn't be able to get as many other people on board with their bad ideas.
the bolded, italicised part makes me think that you feel you're kids should follow you, and challenge believes you've shown them after accepting the for awhile, and then eventually come back like you did.
this pretty much goes against the idea most people on here have of giving childern a unbaised choice based on religion. If you emphasize one over all the others at a young age, doesn't usually matter how smart or critically thinking minded the kid is, they're going to biased towards what you've shown them in the long run
I know a few people who claim to find strength in their invisible sky man. As long as their faith doesnt excuse forcing your beliefs on others through things like restrictive laws, persecution, or prejudice then it doesn't bother me too much.
The idea of people believing in an entire moral code/way of life that is based on something completely irrational/devoid of logic does bother me some.
But hey, as long as they aren't trying to persecute me, then they can believe all they want.
Again, this feels wrong to me. i does not influence the world. i can be used to describe how the world works. Just as a regular Cartesian map can be used to describe in a decent enough way how the world acts, so can i. Maybe we'll have better methods later. Maybe not. Don't forget the equations describe what happens, they do not cause it.