quote:I would love to see, actually, not so much building more Centers for Inquiry, which would be great, but why don't we take over the planetaria of the country
Brilliant. If someone would pay me room and board to buy up and turn planetaria and museums into beautiful buildings about science and skepticism and the wonder of living how and where we do I would do it in a heartbeat.
EDIT: Just got to the end. It's Carl Sagan's wife. Of course she's amazing (edit again-- not because only she was Carl Sagan's wife, but having only just "met" her I would not be surprised that somebody Carl Sagan was married to was quite lovely.)
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Oddly enough, I didn't get through the slanted interpretation of Genesis. I largely agree with it but I would have stopped at the "Eve is punished for wanting to know" without going on claim the garden was a dictatorial grove of perpetual fear.
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Well, she's also wrong about Giordano Bruno, but it didn't stop me reading all the way through.
I see enough slanted visions of atheism to not be phased by a slanted interpretation of an aspect of a religion.
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thats simply her interpretation of genesis. she gives the definitions, the qualities of the garden, of eve, of god then basically builds a case against her own premises. the first few paragraphs read like scripture; 'god does not want..'. im struck by her prophetic knowledge of the mind of god. after every declarative sentence she used i was left thinking 'oh really?'. clearly im not alone in my sentiments.
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Perhaps she presented that slanted view because it is those whose view mirrors the one she presented (though viewing what she thought was negative as positive about it) present the largest problem to the world.
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Quite a few people seem to know the mind of God. Why is she any different?
clearly, she doesnt seem to be. im not really interested in criticizing her religious beliefs or interpretation of the bible. but i think the premises upon which she builds her case arent sound; how can they be when theres no consensus regarding the events she refers to? personally, i would avoid trying to come to any scientific conclusions while starting in religious theory because when you dont agree with the 'if' its likely you wont agree with the 'then'.
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Alright. She has explored a unique interpretation on Genesis. But what about this?
quote:What happened four or five hundred years ago? During this period there was a great bifurcation. We made a kind of settlement with ourselves. We said, okay, so much of what we believed and what our parents and our ancestors taught us has been rendered untenable. The Bible says that the Earth is flat. The Bible says that we were created separately from the rest of life. If you look at it honestly, you have to give up these basic ideas, you have to admit that the Bible is not infallible, it’s not the gospel truth of the creator of the universe. So what did we do? We made a corrupt treaty that resulted in a troubled peace: We built a wall inside ourselves.
It made us sick. In our souls we cherished a myth that was rootless in nature. What we actually knew of nature we compartmentalized into a place that could not touch our souls. The churches agreed to stop torturing and murdering scientists. The scientists pretended that knowledge of the universe has no spiritual implications.
I am constantly looking for facts and truth about reality. When something I believe contradicts something I see or learn, I change my beliefs. And I do get the feeling that many (not all) religions institutions are putting more emphasis on previously held beliefs and little to no emphasis on new information, new discoveries. I see these as roadblocks. As counter-productive institutions that are holding us back.
There are many that take the creation stories of their religion/culture/place as stories, rather than objective and accurate accounts of reality, and can incorporate them into the new knowledge that we are constantly discovering. They can (with varying degrees of success) combine the old with the new. They are adapting, changing, and incorporating life experiences into their realities.
So I do believe that these adapting institutions (and other non-religions institutions) have as much of a claim to spirituality as the churches and institutions that claim a corner on spirituality.
I do not want an obliteration of all the world religions. I do not want people to lose the spirituality, community, and structure that has defined their lives. But I do want the new discoveries and new realities that we find every day to drive us.
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Quite a few people seem to know the mind of God. Why is she any different?
Well for starters, most people who suppose to know the mind of God, are talking about a God they themselves believe int. She is claiming to know the mind of a God other people believe in but she does not.
Few things are quite are offensive as drawing an ugly caricature of things other people hold sacred.
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quote:Perhaps she presented that slanted view because it is those whose view mirrors the one she presented (though viewing what she thought was negative as positive about it) present the largest problem to the world.
No, I'm afraid people believing what you (and I, in this case) are ignorant things about God isn't the largest problem to the world, Javert. Not by a long shot.
I don't mean to be exasperated, but come on. This is a world where people kill, rape, cheat, steal, do horrible violence or nothing at all in the name of greed, apathy, lust, and vanity and all so frequently in the name of all sorts of things having nothing whatsoever to do with religion. This is also a world where billions of people are capable of believing all sorts of things about religion without descending (or ascending, for that matter) into the worst or best aspects of humanity, but of course religion is going to be blamed (not, I expect, credited by you) for it.
Largest problem to the world indeed.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: No, I'm afraid people believing what you (and I, in this case) are ignorant things about God isn't the largest problem to the world, Javert. Not by a long shot.
I don't mean to be exasperated, but come on. This is a world where people kill, rape, cheat, steal, do horrible violence or nothing at all in the name of greed, apathy, lust, and vanity and all so frequently in the name of all sorts of things having nothing whatsoever to do with religion. This is also a world where billions of people are capable of believing all sorts of things about religion without descending (or ascending, for that matter) into the worst or best aspects of humanity, but of course religion is going to be blamed (not, I expect, credited by you) for it.
Largest problem to the world indeed.
Forgive me for not being specific. When I wrote 'largest problem in the world', my intent (and I clearly failed to get it across, so there is no fault on your part) was to mean it is one of the largest problems in the way of what Ann Druyan is trying to accomplish.
Yes, rape is worse than fundamentalists trying to stop scientific progress. But I think they're in completely different categories.
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Javert, people have done horrible things in the name of science, but that doesn't mean science is to blame completely.
I am religious, yet have an issue with people trying to use religion to prohibit scientific progress.
Fundamentalist are the face of religion only as long as we let them claim to be. The problem isn't with their religion as with heir belief they have a right to impose them on others.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Javert, people have done horrible things in the name of science, but that doesn't mean science is to blame completely.
I am religious, yet have an issue with people trying to use religion to prohibit scientific progress.
Fundamentalist are the face of religion only as long as we let them claim to be. The problem isn't with their religion as with heir belief they have a right to impose them on others.
I don't believe I was saying that all religion was to blame. I was saying the religious with those certain beliefs were.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I am religious, yet have an issue with people trying to use religion to prohibit scientific progress.
Fundamentalist are the face of religion only as long as we let them claim to be. The problem isn't with their religion as with heir belief they have a right to impose them on others.
From your viewpoint, this may be true. Since you have your own religious understanding of the world, of course this is the face of religion that you perceive to be dominant. But from a non-religious viewpoint (i.e. mine), your viewpoint stands next to every other viewpoint, and there are a lot of fundamentalist religious viewpoints that stand next to (are are often more vocal than) yours.
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Sure the fundamentalist viewpoint is more vocal. It doesn't help that they also seem to be the only viewpoint that atheists want to listen to.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Sure the fundamentalist viewpoint is more vocal. It doesn't help that they also seem to be the only viewpoint that atheists want to listen to.
Because that's the viewpoint that we see as causing problems.
Sure, I still disagree with moderate religious believers (if 'moderate' is the right term), and will discuss and debate and criticize. But I won't actively try and prevent anything you're doing like I would with the more vocal fundamentalists.
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When one is at war, does not one strike most aggressively at the largest threats first? I'm not sure why *either* group would want atheists to direct their most aggressive efforts against the less objectionable first.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: When one is at war, does not one strike most aggressively at the largest threats first?
It's also traditional to paint one's entire enemy of consisting of the most objectionable elements. That doesn't make the tactic unobjectionable.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to show. We can take it as a given that both tactics are traditional. But showing that the second tactic is objectionable doesn't say anything about the first.
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My personal take on the matter is that fundamentalist beliefs (religious or otherwise) need to be actively fought because they are too dangerous. Many (most?) other religious beliefs are are irrational and ideally would eventually be replaced with non-irrational beliefs that fill the same niches, but history suggests that'll happen automatically as science education improves, so actively "waging war" in that department causes suffering for no particular benefit. The only other area atheists may want to focus on is providing "temples" of the sort that Ann Druyan is advocating here that emphasize the wonder of science as opposed to the fallibility of religion.
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I submit, Kate, that it is absolutely unnecessary to tear down one of your arguments. "God exists, but I can't prove it and His existence doesn't really affect anyone's life in a way I can define" isn't one of those things that's going to require a lot of debate. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Mucas, she's clearly showing that making the claim that a tactic is used in war is no justification for that tactic.
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Ah. I do think that's a fair point. But I think attacking things that are dangerous is a perfectly good thing to do. (With the caveat that, when it comes to a war of ideas, direct attacks aren't necessarily beneficial).
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: It's also traditional to paint one's entire enemy of consisting of the most objectionable elements. That doesn't make the tactic unobjectionable.
Is that done? Or are the unobjectionable just ignored?
Perhaps the fact that both the objectionable and unobjectionable elements claim very similar names is what causes a lot of confusion?
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: When one is at war, does not one strike most aggressively at the largest threats first?
It's also traditional to paint one's entire enemy of consisting of the most objectionable elements. That doesn't make the tactic unobjectionable.
I don't know if I've given this impression, but I do not view all religious people as a unified group. I take issue with the objectionable elements of extreme groups. I wouldn't call them 'enemies,' though. I have little to no issue with a large chunk of the religious people I encounter every day.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Mucas, she's clearly showing that making the claim that a tactic is used in war is no justification for that tactic.
Oh, I see the confusion. The claim isn't that attacking the strong is justified because its a war tactic. The claim is that we're already at war (albeit a culture war) and I rather thought that attacking the strong was self-evident as being more justified.
To elaborate, the usual consensus is that it is better to attack soldiers rather than civilians, the strong rather than the weak. There are other theories like "strangling a chicken to scare the monkeys" but usually those are more questionable, not less and as Tom pointed out, many of us don't even see the point.
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quote:What happened four or five hundred years ago? During this period there was a great bifurcation. We made a kind of settlement with ourselves. We said, okay, so much of what we believed and what our parents and our ancestors taught us has been rendered untenable. The Bible says that the Earth is flat. The Bible says that we were created separately from the rest of life. If you look at it honestly, you have to give up these basic ideas, you have to admit that the Bible is not infallible, it’s not the gospel truth of the creator of the universe. So what did we do? We made a corrupt treaty that resulted in a troubled peace: We built a wall inside ourselves.
It made us sick. In our souls we cherished a myth that was rootless in nature. What we actually knew of nature we compartmentalized into a place that could not touch our souls. The churches agreed to stop torturing and murdering scientists. The scientists pretended that knowledge of the universe has no spiritual implications.
It is probably accurate to compare it to a sickness, although not in the way she means it. It's more akin to a young girl having her heart broken by a boyfriend, and then jumping to the conclusion that she can never again trust males of any kind. We naturally have the emotional tendancy to jump to conclusions when we discover new things, particularly when those new things touch upon ideas that are very important to us. The "sickness" that stemmed from the scientific revolution 500 years ago is an instance of that tendancy. When a few elements of our cherished religions were called into question by science, rather than simply adapting our previous beliefs to incorporate the new discoveries in a rational fashion, many jumped to the conclusion that everything religious could no longer be trusted. In response to that, others jumped to the conclusion that science could not be trusted. Both of those skeptical responses are based more on emotion than reason.
One of religion's roles is, more or less, to "hold us back" to prevent us from jumping to such conclusions too quickly. That's not the only role religion plays (it also pushes us forward to learning new things about areas of life about which things like science are ill-equipped to inform us), but that particular role is what I think tends to push religious groups in with the more conservative elements of society.
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I wouldn't say it is an objectionable tactic. Just futile. It is exactly what they want. They get validation and recognition and to complain about being victimized. They get attention instead of being ignored and marginalized on the fringe where they belong.
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When 45% of the country doesn't believe in evolution, I think we're passed the "fringe" point.
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quote:I see enough slanted visions of atheism to not be phased by a slanted interpretation of an aspect of a religion.
I didn't make it through this, but I don't make it through slanted interpretations of atheism either.
quote:The Bible says that the Earth is flat. The Bible says that we were created separately from the rest of life. If you look at it honestly, you have to give up these basic ideas, you have to admit that the Bible is not infallible, it’s not the gospel truth of the creator of the universe. So what did we do? We made a corrupt treaty that resulted in a troubled peace: We built a wall inside ourselves.
It's hard to take criticism of my beliefs seriously when the person doing them clearly has no idea what I believe. The Bible says a lot of things she is free to call ridiculous, why does she have to make up things? My guess is she doesn't think she's making them up, which means never really bothered to do any research into the beliefs of the billion(s) she's demanding change. That's why I don't care what she says. I don't think she's attacking a fringe here, she's pointing her lance at a windmill found only in her mind.
quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: It's hard to take criticism of my beliefs seriously when the person doing them clearly has no idea what I believe. The Bible says a lot of things she is free to call ridiculous, why does she have to make up things? My guess is she doesn't think she's making them up, which means never really bothered to do any research into the beliefs of the billion(s) she's demanding change. That's why I don't care what she says. I don't think she's attacking a fringe here, she's pointing her lance at a windmill found only in her mind.
Hobbes
You seem to be bouncing back and forth between your/people's beliefs, and what The Bible says. I understand completely that what a lot of the specifics that Christians believe are not what The Bible says. But the fact remains that The Bible still says those things, and there are Christians out there that believe them.
That you aren't one of them is super. Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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"The Bible says" is not as simple a concept as many people on both sides of the argument think it is.
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[Edit to add quote to which I was referring]
quote:You seem to be bouncing back and forth between your/people's beliefs, and what The Bible says. I understand completely that what a lot of the specifics that Christians believe are not what The Bible says. But the fact remains that The Bible still says those things, and there are Christians out there that believe them.
That you aren't one of them is super.
See, I don't think that's true (not the super part, that's true ). I'm sure there are Christians that believe those things but the Bible certainly doesn't say them. Just to see what she was talking about I looked up the Earth is flat thing and saw that the argument is use of the phrases "four corners" and "ends of" the earth. I suppose I'm too glib in saying there's no way to claim the Bible thus says the Earth is flat, but honestly. It's equivalent to claiming that the Bible says we can marry enclosed gardens.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: "The Bible says" is not as simple a concept as many people on both sides of the argument think it is.
Perhaps not.
But for every group of Christians who think The Bible says one thing, there's at least one other group of Christians who think it says the exact opposite. And you all call yourself Christians. So I can understand it might be confusing, or just frustrating, when we complain about the Christians who believe the opposite of your kind of Christian.
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quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: I suppose I'm too glib in saying there's no way to claim the Bible thus says the Earth is flat, but honestly. It's equivalent to claiming that the Bible says we can marry enclosed gardens.
I agree that people who believe (or believed in the past) that the Earth was flat based on what The Bible said were quite obviously wrong. That doesn't change the fact that people believed it and some increasingly tiny minority still does.
The more scientific knowledge we acquire, the less a great deal of the claims in The Bible stand up to them. (Whether those claims are plainly spelled out or interpreted by Christian sub-groups.)
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Javert, people have done horrible things in the name of science, but that doesn't mean science is to blame completely.
I am religious, yet have an issue with people trying to use religion to prohibit scientific progress.
Fundamentalist are the face of religion only as long as we let them claim to be. The problem isn't with their religion as with heir belief they have a right to impose them on others.
I don't believe I was saying that all religion was to blame. I was saying the religious with those certain beliefs were.
Then I didn't understand what you were getting at. Sorry about that.
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quote:I agree that people who believe (or believed in the past) that the Earth was flat based on what The Bible said were quite obviously wrong. That doesn't change the fact that people believed it and some increasingly tiny minority still does.
So wait, we're off this notion that the Bible says the things you say it did, as though it were that simple, Javert?
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). I'm sure there are Christians that believe those things but the Bible certainly doesn't say them. Just to see what she was talking about I looked up the Earth is flat thing and saw that the argument is use of the phrases "four corners" and "ends of" the earth. I suppose I'm too glib in saying there's no way to claim the Bible thus says the Earth is flat, but honestly. It's equivalent to claiming that the Bible says we can marry enclosed gardens.
