posted
Well, obviously there are many religious people who don't agree with them, but you can hardly deny that science contradicts a literal reading of Genesis.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote: In this scenario, atheism is really a standard of proof, not a belief. But it's sure confusing that the word has almost contradictory meanings. [Smile]
Which is why I campaign so hard for consistent and usable definitions of atheism and agnosticism. But we've been through that before.
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quote:The picture that has emerged from this line of development is that a small closed universe can spontaneously nucleate out of nothing, where by 'nothing' I mean a state with no classical space and time.
So the model is: we start out with a 0-dimensional spacetime, which is a mathematical way of describing nothing, no universe. Over time there is a non-zero chance that such a 0-dimensional spacetime can turn into a 4-dimensional universe like the one we live in. Thus, the creation of a universe without a creator.
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posted
Actually, I just noticed the irony in your definition of atheism, since agnosticism is precisely a standard of proof.
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posted
I should note that my use of the words "over time" in my last post was a category mistake, since "prior" to the tunnelling from 0 to 4 dimensions there's no such thing as time. My mistake. Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Very good, so where is the strawman? There really exist people who argue that Genesis is literal truth, this really is contradicted by science. In what way was I advancing a weak argument for the express purpose of shooting it down?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote: Scott, you do not believe in Allah, who is the One True God (tm). Therefore you are lying when you say you believe in God.
You do not believe in Odin, who is the One True God (tm). Therefore you are lying when you say you believe in God.
Do you see where I'm going? Possibly your irony meter needs a slight adjustment.
What it boils down to is this: You can say that I'm mistaken; You can say that I'm misled; but when I say 'I believe in God,' you CANNOT say I'm lying. You have no proof, you have no ground to stand on, you have less than a straw man with which to argue.
I'm defining lying as the willful attempt to deceive.
Where is your proof?
quote: I stated earlier that I thought religious beliefs came from lying (to oneself or to others), or from brainwashing, or from being not very bright. In your case, I think it is the middle cause at work, based on the evidence that I don't think you're lying and you seem reasonably intelligent in other matters. Elementary, my dear Dr Watson!
Okay, so I'm "reasonably intelligent," and not lying. Somehow, though, I've fallen under the spell of social conditioning, which makes me make huge, irrational, stupid leaps of illogic. . .
Why do you think that I (or any religious person) only believe because of social conditioning?
Are you willing to consider the idea that you may not be able to believe because you lack the proper skills, or discipline for the faith?
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posted
You know, it offends me that people spend more time here than I do. How am I supposed to stay current?
Anyway, from pages ago:
Kwea, If everyone knows about the parts of Freud's writing where he uses tricks like circular justification but me, it should be easy to point out where this takes place. as I've said, I've read a lot of Freud. I've taken quite a few 400 level classes, some focusing exclusively on personality theory, and I haven't come across this. I don't think somone going through The Interpretation of Dreams or Psychopathology of Everyday Life is going to come up against a bunch of circular reasoning, and that seems to me to be what you are suggesting. But you seem sure that you know this better than I, so no doubt you can show me where I am wrong.
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quote:Why do you think that I (or any religious person) only believe because of social conditioning?
Did you read my exchange with Dagonee? My basic argument is that the overwhelming majority of the believers in a given religion are born to parents of the same religion. (Disregarding fly-by-night cults with two hundred members.) It is therefore reasonable to assume that, had you been born to Catholic parents, you would be a Catholic, and so on. Hence I conclude that your faith is determined by your conditioning.
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posted
We're conditioned to speak and write English. What if children want to speak and write Chinese? Why shouldn't we let them choose what language they want to learn?
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posted
No, I doubt that I do, but I would say that since every one of my teachers mentioned it, independently of each other...some who have never met each other....that it might exist.
I am not saying all his work is circular, but I did mention the specific case where it becomes an issue....repression in particular. Also, I mentioned the specific circular reasoning....that anyone disagreeing with his theories were doing so because they were repressing their natural impulses. Not because the theories don't fit, not because they have a different theory that fits better...but because they were exhibiting the very thing they disbelieved.
Obviously I am NOT the only person to have thought this after all, huh? I didn't go to the sites to check out all the info on them, but I did look at a few. Since I wasn't trying to do an in-depth biography of Freud in the first place, I think I have proved my point....the point that Freud has been accused of this type of circular reasoning more then once....and by more than just me and my teachers.
Kwea
P.S. I DO know how you feel about trying to keep up with these threads sometimes, though...
quote: Hence I conclude that your faith is determined by your conditioning.
While that may be enough to convince you, I don;t see that convincing anyone else. It is flawed logic...incomplete at best, sloppy at worst.
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posted
English and Chinese both do a reasonable job of describing the world; even so, many people do learn both. I am bilingual myself. Religion does not do a reasonable job of describing the world, and it's difficult to have two positions on it.
To put it another way, we are conditioned to believe the Earth is round; shouldn't Flat-Earth theory have the same opportunities? When one set of conditioned beliefs is just plain wrong, it is not reasonable to give it equal time.
With language, there is a reason other than conditioning that we use it : To wit, it enables us to communicate with other humans, and if it does that job badly, we can learn another. But with religion, there is no reason other than conditioning (excepting the very few people who convert as adults). Thus the two cases are not really comparable.
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posted
Kwea, if you want to criticise my logic, why not point out the flaws instead of saying "It's bad! It's bad!"
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posted
I think I should get an award for all of the posts that have have declined to post in this thread.
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posted
And now, an NPR break while we make up awards for each other.
quote:That's Funny, You Don't Look Jewish.
Chaim and Billy both lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just blocks away from each other, in worlds that almost never collided. Chaim was a Hasidic Jew โ he'd never heard pop music or watched MTV. Billy Campion, known as the rocker Vic Thrill, was the star of an underground band. Billy put Chaim, who took on the name Curly Oxide, into the band, and in just one year, he leapt from the 19th Century into the 21st. David Segal, rock critic for the Washington Post, reports. Listen to program (start from six minutes into the program)
[ March 21, 2005, 11:21 PM: Message edited by: Beren One Hand ]
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Over and over you have said X is bad, so it MUST mean Y is correct....when in reality they don't ahve anything to do with each other. You ahve also claimed more than once conclusions that you said were obvious and inescapable, when in reality you were the only one who agreed with those claims.
quote: It is therefore reasonable to assume that, had you been born to Catholic parents, you would be a Catholic, and so on. Hence I conclude that your faith is determined by your conditioning.
Your assumption is wrong for a great many people, which you refuse to admit, or at least you minimize their numbers. The Cathloic Church has lost a lot of people lately, but their members haven't stopped having kids. Islam is showing signs of a huge upsurge in the USA, but most of those people are converts.
You assumptons are over the top...look at how many times you ahve used the words "assume" and "imply" in your arguments.
Over and over again people have challeneged you assumptions regarding their faith, and you ahve dismissed them by saying basically..."that isn't what I believe".......
I would have pointed out the flaws in your logic sooner, but to be honest I haven't seen a lot of logic to begin with.
Just assumptions, and false claims about what other people think and believe.
Here is the real truth...you don't have the answer either, and you assumptions are no more valid than anyone elses. What you lack is any qualifications to judge others sanity, or state of mind.
In doing so regardless of your lack of knowledge, compassion, empathy, or qualifications, all you have show us is how little you know, and how much you presume.
posted
Kwea, you are attacking my lack of faith as an unprovable assertion, which is strictly true, though I believe there is a good inductive argument that any creator is not the Christian god. But you have not shown how my logic is bad in the following case :
The faith to which people belong is 99% correlated with the faith of their parents. Therefore, it is 99% caused by the faith of their parents, rather than any such factor as thinking rationally about which theology suits them best.
Now, I know that correlation is not causation, but I think you'd have a hard time showing that the faith of children causes that of parents! I also know that my 99% number is made up on the spot, but I'm comfortable with it. Conversion is pretty rare. In fact, from what I can glean from this article, most conversions are to atheism or agnosticism, away from faith. I should note that most Christian cults are pretty similar, particularly the Protestant versions; changing churches, as I've seen some people here discussing, is not a conversion in this sense.
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posted
You're right, I didn't mean to imply that - bit of bad wording. I think it's reasonable to assume causation in this case, though; can you suggest an alternative mechanism for this correlation? If both faiths are caused by something else, you're going to have to explain why it doesn't cause people of other religions to believe the same.
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quote: I also know that my 99% number is made up on the spot, but I'm comfortable with it
Next time you don't know why I disagree with you on a lot of these points see the statement above.
You are talking out of your a**, and have been on a lot of those type of statements. You have no real idea of the numbers, nor do you care to find out........because that might conflict with the conclusions you have made up, supported by numbers you made up.
quote:Cult: In religion and sociology, a cult is a group of people devoted to beliefs and goals which are not held by the majority of society, often religious in nature. Its marginal status may come about either due to its novel belief system or due to idiosyncratic practices that cause the surrounding culture to regard it as far outside the mainstream.
Dictonaries help, too. If the majority of people here in the US are Christians, of one sort or another, how is Christianity a cult?
Were you making that up as well, or did you "borrow" that from athiesm.com as well, because they are so impartial?
posted
Indeed, Kwea, size is pretty much the only way to distinguish groups commonly called cults that political scientists have been able to identify.
While there have certainly been evil religious and quasi-religious organizations, they are actually extremely few and far between, and are often better characterized in ways other than cult (such as terrorist organization). Most groups that are talked about as cults are merely as your definition states -- marginalized. There's nothing "brain-washed" about cults (in fact, there's nothing brain-washed about suicide bombings that people have found -- most seem to be remarkably rational acts, in the sense of rational choice theory).
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I think this is why so many of these discussions, even when people are trying to be polite, wind up insulting somebody: because, at heart, what KoM (and I, and others) are saying is that we think you're imagining your evidence. And I don't know how this could fail to be insulting.
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posted
Tom, in the five years that I've been at Hatrack, I've only ever tried to convert you once (that I remember).
And that was my first post ever.
I understand that you don't accept the validity of the evidence I've received. But you've been gracious enough not to call me a liar, or publically say my feelings are the product of social conditioning. I know you think I'm delusional, but I don't feel insulted by your opinion in the way that I feel insulted by KoM's.
It's the same with Irami-- I don't feel particularly insulted when he goes on about honkies.
Maybe because it's been a while since you've called me a crazy, brainwashed, lying zealot.
Maybe it's because I'm convinced you have considered the issue, and while I don't agree with your conclusions, I know (or think I know) the circusmstances that brought you to them.
Maybe it's because, at the heart of it all, I believe you are one of the most honest virtual people I know. While you are an arrogant son-of-a-gun, there is a certain trust there that you can recognize errors in your own logic, acknowledge them, and move on.
I don't have these assurances with KoM. In fact, this discussion has proven so far that I cannot expect honest or open discussion with him/her at all.
[ March 22, 2005, 08:19 AM: Message edited by: Scott R ]
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posted
Tom, while I don't care what you think about my faith (or lack of it), and you have not been shy about your opinions regarding religions, you don't go around making sure that everyone knows you feel you are intellectually superior to people who believe otherwise.
You probably do think that, for who holds an opinion that they believe to be false, but you don't call every person who believes otherwise a lunatic or liar.
And you don't make up figures to support spurious claims about what other people think and feel.
Does upbringing have anything to do with a persons religious beliefs? Absolutely...I never said it didn't. But there are plenty of people who are raised one way and who change their beliefs, or lose their faith completely. Nurture is only a part of the answer, not the whole kit and caboodle....as any psychologist would probably be glad to tell you, if one bothered to ask.
Also, while I don't want to get into a debate about the validity of any specific religion, the belief in a God of any sort is a reccuring theme in human history, and is not something to be dismissed out of hand. It is ignorant and rude, not to mention incredibly naive to do so.
My point was never to convince anyone here that there is a God, and that I have all the answers. I don't, but I know what feels right to me, and I am not convinced that science is the answer to all life's questions. I just wanted to show that the two things, science and religion, don't always require excluding the other and that no one, not even a person 100 times smarter than KoM, TomD, and me combigned, does. (not that I would be adding a lot to that mix, but....)
And until someone has a definitive answer, the possibility of a God is not "obviously" silly, uninformed, or crazy, false claims to the contrary aside.
quote: And until someone has a definitive answer, the possibility of a God is not "obviously" silly, uninformed, or crazy, false claims to the contrary aside.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. There's plenty of reasons to believe in the possibility of a God. It gets a bit trickier with specific gods, but even then there's more than a little justification for belief.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
KOM, if a person growing up in a religious family saw the positive effects religion had on themselves and their family members, would you still consider them to be irrational for following in their parents' footsteps?
quote: Religiously involved families of early adolescents, ages 12 to 14, living in the United States appear to have significantly stronger relationships between mothers and fathers than families that are not religiously active. The National Study of Youth and Religion (The NSOYR is based in Univ. of North Carolina but funded by the Lilly Endowment, an openly pro-religion organization.)
quote:Various measures of religiosity are associated with a variety of healthy, desirable outcomes across a diversity of areas of concern, including juvenile drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, and dlinquency (citations ommitted), suicide; depression and hoplessness; adolescent health-enhancing behaviors; life satisfaction, involvement with families, and skills in solving health-related problems; effective coping with problems; risky sexual behaviors; pro-family attitudes and values; academic achievement; political and civic involvement; and commitment to and involvement in community service. The National Study of Youth and Religion
***
quote:It is therefore reasonable to assume that, had you been born to Catholic parents, you would be a Catholic, and so on. Hence I conclude that your faith is determined by your conditioning.
But if God wanted you to be Catholic, what better way to introduce you to the religion than to give you two Catholic parents? Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Genesis plainly was intended to be read as literal history.
Prove it. I would say that Genesis 1 was plainly intented to be a worship liturgy and Genesis 2-3 plainly was a story. And various other parts of Genesis are various other genres, but very little of it is plainly intended to be read as a history book.
Biblical fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, and shouldn't be attributed to ancient writers.
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quote: Biblical fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, and shouldn't be attributed to ancient writers.
I don't agree with this. "Biblical fundamentalist"is a term that compares different levels of belief. In the past, non-believers were less common, and those that believed in the bible as "Gospel truth" were more common. There were undoubtedly those whose beliefs were in between.
Biblical fundamentalism was simply more normal in the past. But as far as attributing fundamentalism to ancient writers:
"Ps 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works; There is none that doeth good."
"Ps 53:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity; There is none that doeth good."
Atheism is at least as old as the Psalms. (Interesting, apparently the Bible needs a better editor.)
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posted
KoM, The prevalence of religion in almost every society seems to indicate that religion satisfies (or attempts to satisfy) an inherent societal psychological need. It is obvious that not everyone is affected by this desire but I think it is equally obvious that there is a some basic urge that is being met. Your insistence that religion is a result of either insanity or brainwashing neglects to address the systemwide appearance of religion.
posted
Kwea, that was careless of me, I should have said "Christian denominations" rather than "cults". However, you are addressing minor word choice issues instead of the main thrust of my argument. Do you deny that the number of converts to a faith is very small compared to the number of people born into it? Do you have even anecdotal evidence to show otherwise?
Scott, in what way have I been dishonest? In what way have I been less than open? Abrasive I'll give you, but not dishonest. Point out these flaws in my discourse, that I might repair them.
Beren, the problem with that argument is that you have to assume that God wanted some people to be Catholics, and others to be Hindus, LDS, or whatever. While such a god could certainly exist, it would not be any of the gods described by those religions, which raises the interesting question of what the purpose of religion is.
As for benefits of religion, this time I'm going to have to insist that correlation is not causation. (And, by the way, any study by someone named 'Christian Smith' is obviously going to be biased. ) The study does not mention correcting for wealth, just to give one obvious example.
punwit, religion has certainly always been an excellent tool for keeping the peasants under control. (In this context, you may find it interesting to reflect that one of the major democratic freedoms is precisely the freedom not to attend a state church, or any church at all.) But do you really want to argue that 'opium for the people' makes it a good thing? Surely we can outgrow this need for comforting beliefs.
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posted
"any study by someone named 'Christian Smith' is obviously going to be biased."
I thought about commenting on that, but this thread doesn't seem to be in a joking mood.
I wish I found better studies. If anyone has links to more authoratative studies I would love to read up on the subject.
If it is possible to show that religion has a positive influence on family life, would you say it is completely irrational for kids to follow in the footsteps of their religious parents?
"Beren, the problem with that argument is that you have to assume that God wanted some people to be Catholics, and others to be Hindus, LDS, or whatever."
If God didn't give us religious diversity, who would we convert?
[ March 22, 2005, 10:47 PM: Message edited by: Beren One Hand ]
Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
It wasn't a quibble, it was a clear example of you penchant for making up things to fit your views rather than looking further into the subject.
Not that your lack of consideration or knowledge has had an effect on your ability to denounce others and proclaim yourself more intelligent and sane than others.
posted
I found this bizarre scientific paper about an attempt to drive a bull elephant mad with LSD while researching brainwashed, a term you, KoM, casually and thoughtlessly label others who don't share your beliefs. http://www.cesnur.org/2002/brain_aug.htm [edit:actually, the link is to a story about the paper and the event.]
quote:The Anti-Cultist and the Elephant: "A dose of madness - Forty years ago, two psychiatrists administered history's largest dose of LSD" [...][Elephant drops dead] [Conclusion] West and Pierce's conclusion, a staggering feat of positive thought, sums up an era's belief in the infallibility of science: "It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD - a finding which may prove to be valuable in elephant-control work in Africa."ยท
West, LJ, Pierce, CM, Thomas, WD (1962) Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its effect on a Male Asiatic Elephant. Science, 138, 1100-1102 .
You know, reading that paper reminded me of you and this discussion, KoM. The bland, unassailable arrogance, the elevation of science over all other concerns, ignoring or dismissing other's views on their own beliefs as irrelevant, the absurdly pointless conclusions--it's all there. Other metaphor-mongers here at HR could tease out better roles than me. But I'll give it a shot.
See now I'm thinking, maybe it means you're the elephant and I'm the righteous agnostic, and Mr. LSD-dartgun here, he's the mahout protecting my righteous ass in the Valley of Darkness. Or it could mean you're the righteous scientist, and I'm the mahout, and it's the world that's evil and selfish. Now I like that. But that ain't the truth. The truth is, you're the boring and insulting atheist, and I'm the clown. But I'm trying King of Men, I'm trying real hard to be the mahout.
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) The study does not mention correcting for wealth, just to give one obvious example. 
