quote:spiritual enlightenment, community-building, subjective self-understanding and growth, moral agreement and moral teaching, the propogation of culture, etc, fall much lower.
In fact, I do not think religion does any of these things well.
quote:very many intelligent people who actually find value in religion
Actually, this is not entirely true. Within the communities I belong to, the smartest people tend to be atheists. I admit that this might be just my subjective impression; but in my academic communities, that impression tends to be confirmed by the grades given - not a perfect measure of intelligence, by any means, but more objective than my own impression, I'm sure you'll agree. Now, it;s true that in a physics department, even the lesser lights are pretty bright by ordinary-mortal standards; still, I find find it instructive that the outstanding ones tend to be non-religious. And, incidentally, my impression is backed up by several studies.
The remaining cases, I understand in terms of sheer social inertia; considered as a meme, religion is an extremely good one. Even highly intelligent people are capable of compartmentalising their minds to a remarkable degree; it'll take a bit of time for religion to fade completely even from the most intelligent strata of the population. Against habit and custom, intelligence fights in vain.
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Glen, I was just being silly with the titter. 'Foxhole' sounds like 'tit-mouse' or 'Uranus' to me.
My point in my post was that, outside of the individual, what you believe doesn't matter as much as what you do. You say your friends say that religious people wouldn't see things for what they are but for what they wish they were and give up. While this is possible, let me point out that it often goes the opposite way. That religious people see things not for what they 'are', but what they might be and they work for something positive while those without 'vision' do not. But again, the important thing to me isn't what someone believes so much as what they do and whether they can change.
The problem here htat I see you and other atheists making is that I think you are buying into the whole religious hype. Objectively, there's nothing special about 'religious' thinking. What is it but human thought? How can thought, in and of itself, be bad? It seems to me that it can't, no more than a heartbeat can be bad.
Am I defending 'religion' or 'religious thinking' in general? No. I don't know what religion is, for one thing. I am just pointing out what I think is a fallacy in your argument.
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Um. Without explicitly drawing the cheap and obvious analogy, are you sure you want to say that human thought cannot be bad?
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So, taking an example completely at random, 'Malleus Maleficarum' is not a bad thing? You don't have to consider it religious if you don't want to, but it's certainly an example of human thought.
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Let me see if I can make it clearer. Let's say you are a master painter. You can make paintings of great beauty or you can make paintings of the worst perversions. If you don't show your paintings to the world, what effect can they have on the world? Sitting in your basement, how can they help or hurt anyone? How are they good or bad in and of themselves?
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I see your point. But I would think that a man who has deep convictions, but never transforms them into the least action, is a rare bird indeed. Hence atheists object to the thoughts because they are the cause of actions we disapprove. In the example of your painter, certainly my paintings do little mewed up in my basement; but they have a mind of their own, and are always escaping to please or horrify my neighbours.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:In fact, I do not think religion does any of these things well.
My experience with my own religion is that it does these things well. Your perspective as an outsider to religion who treats it with prejudicial disdain does not impress me.
quote:Actually, this is not entirely true. Within the communities I belong to, the smartest people tend to be atheists.
Are you suggesting that this is true of Hatrack?
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quote:Are you suggesting that this is true of Hatrack?
Yes, I am; though I admit that it is not so easy for me to judge the intelligence of Hatrackers, since I cannot watch them solve problems. Also, the demographics here are a bit skewed; I think the believers are a touch over-represented, and certainly the Mormons are.
quote:My experience with my own religion is that it does these things well. Your perspective as an outsider to religion who treats it with prejudicial disdain does not impress me.
That is not entirely relevant to the point I was making. Given that I believe, for my own good reasons, that religion does not perform, your criticism
quote:You could do that by applying some simple creative prioritization
is not true. I am not prioritising creatively, I am arguing that religion does badly whatever your priorities are.
That said, let me go through your list :
spiritual enlightenment
A null term. A religion which is not true by definition does not enlighten. But even taking some particular religion at face value, all the others are plainly doing a rather bad job.
community-building
Anybody can build a community by excluding people. The trick is to include everyone.
subjective self-understanding and growth
Inventing a father figure to help you is 'growth'? Most people grow out of their imaginary friends. Incidentally, just how much self-understanding do you think our friend the priest, from my linked story, has? Granting that he's a fairly horrible example, though, building a life on lies is not usually considered 'self-understanding'. And again, even if we grant your religion is true, it is rather a minority.
moral agreement and moral teaching
Ridiculous. The Christian sects can't even agree on the death penalty. Moreover, the morality they teach comes in two kinds : The good bits were invented before the Jews ditched their mother goddess; the bad bits are straight desert-tribe punishments, one step up from driving pink monkeys out of the tribe.
the propagation of culture
Quite so, like the culture that beats children for being witches. I don't think you can blame that one on isolated nutjobs, either, belief in witches is apparently quite widespread. Apart from that, though, how about the nice practice of burning people at the stake for printing Bibles? Not to mention what missionaries usually do to a culture when they first encounter it.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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HOLY FREAKING CRAP, I was almost done with a HUGE FREAKING POST when I hit the Backspace key, and for some reason, IE took it to mean I wanted to go BACK several links. So I lost the post.
WHY THE HELL DOES THAT HAPPEN?!
I'll answer your annoying post later, KoM. I'm WAY too pissed off right now to deal with you civilly.
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Puppy, I don't know why you even give KoM your time or your energy, especially if he upsets you like this. He's already demonstrated that he doesn't care who he offends or how badly, he won't change his mind, nor will he concede any other point of view as anything approaching plausible. So, I repeat, why give him your energy?
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Actually, I'm really glad that Geoff takes the time to counter posts like KoM's. Regardless of how KoM takes Puppy's posts, I often find that *I* learn a lot from 'em. Posts: 1595 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: See? The universe is on my side. This kind of thing never happens to atheists.
You are quite right. God doesn't help those who don't want it. I find that when one of my posts bombs out, 9 times out of 10 it was better that I didn't post it (at least not without some intensive editing).
Funny, some of your posts remind me (in tone only) of the ones I'm glad later I haven't posted.
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You know, if god exists, he also doesn't help plenty of people who do want it.
I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but saying "god only helps those who want his help" is the same as saying "god only reveals himself to those who already believe in him."
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quote:I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but saying "god only helps those who want his help" is the same as saying "god only reveals himself to those who already believe in him."
In other words, speaking the truth. Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Those are some pretty useless -- and, unsurprisingly, condescending -- truths.
Added: Wow, that's snarky. Well,
Added 2: Jeepers, I'm still being rude. Sorry. That is more or less how I feel about those statements, though -- there's no point in saying either one to someone who doesn't believe.
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Actually, these aren't condescending at all. They are, in at least two religions, fundamental underlying reasons for the way God interacts with humanity.
Calling them useless shows either great lack of understanding of what they mean or great condescension in and of itself.
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quote:there's no point in saying either one to someone who doesn't believe.
That's not true. There's no point in saying them to you.
But there's a perfect point in saying them in response to a snarky, passive aggressive comment implying the invalidity of religion based on a believer losing a post made by an anti-religious troll. It's both on point and proportional.
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quote:But there's a perfect point in saying them in response to a snarky, passive aggressive comment implying the invalidity of religion based on a believer losing a post made by an anti-religious troll.
If you wish to respond in kind, yes. Do you think they're useful in other situations, though? Would you tell an atheist who you were discussing religion with that god only reveals himself to those who already believe? What use would it be?
That's what I was talking about. I never claimed to be sticking up for KoM; he's quite capable of doing that himself.
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rivka, that's pretty different, and unlike the other one is a statement worth mulling over, even for atheists.
Added: I've been lucky enough in my life that if I believed in god I'd certainly be grateful for how things have gone for me.
Added 2: ...but of course the kicker is whether or not my unusual luck is evidence of divine assistance.
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quote: Would you tell an atheist who you were discussing religion with that god only reveals himself to those who already believe? What use would it be?
While I don't believe it precicely the way you have said, and I wouldn't say it that way even if I did, explaining that idea (or a very similar one) could be very useful in explaining one's beliefs about God.
Are you bothered that people believe that, or are you bothered that they would admit that they believe it?
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Or whether you're willing to deal with the implications that the flipside of having unusual luck means that God is helping you out while crapping on other people, and why that would be.
Smug self-satisfaction tastes less sweet when it comes on the back of someone in a concentration camp screaming for God's help to be met with nothing.
Honestly, I think Calvin came up with the only good answer to that problem that I've ever seen. Of course, his God was evil.
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quote:Would you tell an atheist who you were discussing religion with that god only reveals himself to those who already believe? What use would it be?
My belief is actually a little different: that peopl can stop God from helping them in certain ways and in certain circumstances. Disblief in God might not be enough to stop such help, but active hatred would likely be.
As for the God only reveals Himself to those who believe, there is a very real possibility that direct interaction of God will rob a person of free will, something God finds precious. Only certain people are capable of maintaining their identity in such a situation, and belief is likely a prerequisite for that.
So if an atheist said to me, "If God wants me to believe in Him, He should reveal Himself to me," my response would likely start with something similar to "God only reveals Himself to those who believe in Him."
As for indirect revalation, I believe all of us get that constantly. But that's clearly different than what an atheist in that situation means. And yes, I've had that exact sentence said to me more than once, so it's not purely hypothetical.
As for rivka's post being a response in kind, it really wasn't. It's the only real response to the implied point KoM was making. I think a more fully-explained version would be more accurate, but that doesn't make it condescending.
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quote:Are you bothered that people believe that, or are you bothered that they would admit that they believe it?
I'm bothered that they think it can help others toward making the same leap of faith. It's similar to people who tell me, when they learn I'm an atheist, that I just didn't look hard enough for god (or something similar). They have no knowledge of how I looked, or how hard.
quote:Or even just part of it.
Well, yes. But there are enough unlucky people in the world that my good fortune is not, to me, compelling enough evidence to merit reopening the question of god's existence. I prefer to take that ball and run with it, so to speak -- that is, I set aside the question of god's existence some time ago because I realized I don't need a final answer in order to live a happy life, so I'm going to get on with living the happy life and not worry about whether god exists. You could call me an apatheist after Chris Bridges' style, I suppose.
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Squick, I think that post is over the top. You don't need to phrase it like that to make your point about the problem of suffering.
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Given human nature a human community cannot be viable by doing this, KoM. You certainly do not include everyone, simply those who believe precisely as you do. Everyone else is a brainwashed, unworthy, almost-certainly stupid sheep.
You also demonstrate constantly how worthless your own anectdotal experiences are that atheists are smarter than theists. You think that theists are fairy-tale believing nitwits-are you suggesting those are the people with whom you spend your time? I would think that you'd go out of your way, as much as you can, to associate with your own dittoheads.
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Not to mention the fact that you do not know they received nothing, Mr. Squicky. Unless atheism includes certainty of what happens after death-definition of faith-you cannot make that assumption.
Your own smug self-satisfaction, and that of KoM, becomes more murky when you hear of Jews who found some power and solace in their faith in the face of their horrible ordeals.
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Rakeesh, you have to understand that it only other people's self-satisfaction that is offensive. Their own smells like roses.
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The article mentioning the study which cited no statistics, Mr. Squicky, must reach some strange conclusions about religious people who work for, say, Habitat for Humanity or in soup kitchen or in homeless shelters.
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Right. See when God answers my prayers or even just decides to do me a good turn by, I don't know, curing me of cancer, he's being a just God. But when a 5 year old dies of cancer, well, God saw fit to answer the desperate prayers that he be cured with him dying in agony...well, we don't know that he didn't give him something.
The simplistic "God answers my prayers for material benefits or a good life or a miracle." carries with it the dark side that he doesn't do this for tons of people who are more deserving than you. Good people suffer, historically (and Biblically) at the hands of people who pray for the power to make them suffer. Bad people prosper. If God turns bad stuff away from you, you have to realize that for some reason he doesn't decide to do this for plenty of other people and that they often suffer and die in horrible ways without solace, without understanding.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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God has ignored my prayers a thousand times. My step-brother got better, but my mother died, at 47, of the exact same thing.
You speak in willfull ignorance when you say that religious people are those who have not suffered and had their prayers go unanswered. I have been blessed in many ways, but I have also been NOT blessed in many ways, and I didn't get to pick which prayers were answered the way I wanted them to be.
If you want to continue in your ignorance, do what you are doing. If you want to know the truth about the people you scorn, turn off your prejudices and listen.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote: Mr. Squicky, must reach some strange conclusions about religious people who work for, say, Habitat for Humanity or in soup kitchen or in homeless shelters.
This statement makes no sense to me. Could you explain how that came out of anything I said or linked?
And jeez, even if you're willing to disagree with an idea based on a quick blurb on a website and not look into the large amount of information on it, give me at least the credit that I may know a little bit more about it than fits on a page or even just admit that the issue is not bounded by what was mentioned on one web page.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:If God turns bad stuff away from you, you have to realize that for some reason he doesn't decide to do this for plenty of other people and that they often suffer and die in horrible ways without solace, without understanding.
You do not know they died without solace, without understanding, Mr. Squicky, as I said before. Unless your understanding of sociology and psychology extends into the realms of the mindset of people dead and on the deathbed?
quote:Right. See when God answers my prayers or even just decides to do me a good turn by, I don't know, curing me of cancer, he's being a just God. But when a 5 year old dies of cancer, well, God saw fit to answer the desperate prayers that he be cured with him dying in agony...well, we don't know that he didn't give him something.
When someone prays for, say, a cure for cancer and they are cured, they don't know for sure that God cured them of cancer or why. Few theists indeed believe that God grants prayers just because the person asks nicely for stuff. Similarly, the small child who dies in agony, we do not know why God chose not to directly intervene and cure him (although there are those theists who believe God lacks that power).
We don't know why. We mourn the death and weep with the pain of it. We comfort ourselves by our faith that there is more to life than this world. That is part of the nature of faith, and it's something you do not believe in, I realize.
But for you to say that nothing was done for that child is a statement of faith, too.
As for my HfH quote, I was remarking that although the article you linked implies that religious people tend to be less just than other people, I wonder what it makes of people whose faith motivates them to do charity work or to make efforts towards a more equitable, just world? Such as religious people who work for HfH, or homeless shelters, etc.
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quote:See when God answers my prayers or even just decides to do me a good turn by, I don't know, curing me of cancer, he's being a just God.
I don't see what that has to do with justice. Mercy -- perhaps. But I don't see how justice is served by keeping people from dying from cancer.
quote:Is this a roundabout way of telling me you think I'm out of line?
No it wasn't.
But now that I think about it, I think you are a little bit. It's almost, but not quite, like you took something somebody said and then got upset because if that were said in a different context, it could be condescending.
But I've done the same thing. Recently.
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Rakeesh, We do acutally have deathbed statements from many of these types of people. Certainly this is true for the some of the good people that praying folk tortured to death. We have reports from life and living in the concentration camps and, yeah, there was a little bit of intense crushing despair in evidence there. edit: Many of those people then died. More than a few of them killed themselves. I can't say with 100% certainty that they weren't filled with soalce and understanding when they died, but I think that the conclusion that they weren't may be somewhat more reasonable than that they were,
And again, I fail to see where what you are saying comes out of what I said or what I linked, none of which implies that religious people are uniformly anything.
The statement that I think you're compeltely misunderstanding is
quote:They found that people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to "feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims."
That doesn't say anything like what you seem to think it's saying.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Mr. Squicky, are you ignoring my posts because it is personal, or because it messes up your theory and you ignore all information that doesn't fit your theories?
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quote:Yes, I am; though I admit that it is not so easy for me to judge the intelligence of Hatrackers, since I cannot watch them solve problems. Also, the demographics here are a bit skewed; I think the believers are a touch over-represented, and certainly the Mormons are.
A clearer admission of prejudice I have never before seen
The fact that you apparently only recognize or value the kind of intelligence that is measured by aptitude tests is strange and telling ... I mean, you've seen Hatrackers solve problems every second you've been here — but they've all been social, political, and philisophical problems, which apparently ... don't count? Or perhaps you're unable to recognize the intelligence of a person who comes to a different conclusion than yours, which eliminates, by default, every person here who believes in God.
Rather circular reasoning there ... you think believers in God are relatively unintelligent because if they WERE intelligent, they would obviously not believe in God. Fun when your premise "proves" your conclusion, eh? Removes the need to ever think critically or question yourself.
quote: spiritual enlightenment
A null term. A religion which is not true by definition does not enlighten. But even taking some particular religion at face value, all the others are plainly doing a rather bad job.
I'm not talking about someone reading a book and then suddenly realizing that the world is flat. I'm talking about (for example) someone reading the teachings of Christ, and having an epiphany that a life lived for others is more valuable and rewarding than a life lived for the self. This kind of moral ideal is of inestimable value to society, yet it cannot be arrived at through hard science. Who is to say, from a scientific perspective, what a human "should" or "should not" do? Science can experimentally and statistically lay out the likely consequences of different actions, but who determines which consequences are desirable and which are not? For what greater purpose are individual human beings ever going to choose a necessary sacrifice over an immediate gain? Even if God or an organized church never comes into the equation, those kinds of choices are, by their nature, moral and spiritual and not scientific. Religion gives society a vehicle for progogating moral ideals and offering spiritual enlightenment to the common man, and not just to the rare individual with a strange penchant for philosophy.
quote: community-building
Anybody can build a community by excluding people. The trick is to include everyone.
A bizarrely irrelevant point. Human beings have needs that are best provided for by communities of only a few hundred individuals — a neighborhood, a workplace, a school, or in this case, a church. Communities this size allow all their members to personally know and value one another as individuals, which encourages friendship, fair treatment, support in times of need, mutual raising of children in a stable environment that enforces standards of behavior, etc. If you can come up with a way to create a community of this scale that also "includes everyone", you will probably receive a Nobel prize in mathematics
200 != 6 x 10^9
Anyway, ANY true community that is smaller than six billion people will involve some kind of common thread that draws these particular people together. That's not exclusion, it's just community. People in a neighborhood typically share a common socioeconomic status. People at work or school usually belong to the same industry or have the same educational background. And people who belong to the same Church share a set of moral and spiritual beliefs. Honestly, I can't think of a BETTER unifying factor than shared belief for bringing together a community that provides the amenities listed above, especially as the concept of the "neighborhood" suffers through its final death throes, at least here in America.
My own Mormon ward brings together people from a wide variety of socioeconomic, educational, language, racial, personality, and experiential backgrounds. I have resources as a member of this community that help me do anything from moving to a new house to fixing a leak to getting a used crib to raising my children to finding an immediate social support network when I move into a new area. Everyone should have a community like this, however they come by it.
I'm curious, would you even be interested in involving yourself in a tight-knit community that involved people with strong religious faith, or who were less educated than you? From your inability to even recognize the intelligence of people who disagree with you, I find this incredibly unlikely. So now it leaves me to wonder ... which of us is eager to exclude people?
quote: subjective self-understanding and growth
Inventing a father figure to help you is 'growth'? Most people grow out of their imaginary friends. Incidentally, just how much self-understanding do you think our friend the priest, from my linked story, has? Granting that he's a fairly horrible example, though, building a life on lies is not usually considered 'self-understanding'. And again, even if we grant your religion is true, it is rather a minority.
I'm not sure how you think your little jabs here are in any way relevant. I bring up personal spiritual growth, and you jump to the existence or non-existence of God? And wait ... this is supposed to convince me that atheists are MORE intelligent than religious people?
quote: moral agreement and moral teaching
Ridiculous. The Christian sects can't even agree on the death penalty. Moreover, the morality they teach comes in two kinds : The good bits were invented before the Jews ditched their mother goddess; the bad bits are straight desert-tribe punishments, one step up from driving pink monkeys out of the tribe.
Congratulations, you found an issue about which some Christians disagree! For your next task, how about we drop you in the savannah, and you find us a blade of grass! Ready, GO!
Seriously, of COURSE people within a religion disagree about stuff. It would be frightening if you found a group that had no disagreements. I think those are called cults
But here is the real question you're trying to dodge. Is it good or bad for a society to adopt a set of shared moral ideals to govern their expectations of one another? Ideals like "it is wrong to exploit someone else for your exclusive benefit" or "harming another person is wrong" or "emotional abuse that goes beyond THIS limit should be punished"? Or even values as simple as "avoiding the deaths of many humans is a good thing" or "our way of life should be continued into the next generation". Are these important for us to establish as standards for society that people are held to?
quote: the propagation of culture
Quite so, like the culture that beats children for being witches. I don't think you can blame that one on isolated nutjobs, either, belief in witches is apparently quite widespread. Apart from that, though, how about the nice practice of burning people at the stake for printing Bibles? Not to mention what missionaries usually do to a culture when they first encounter it.
Missionaries from my church do not do ... whatever nameless horror it is that you are citing Yes, some terrible things have been done in the past, but I think that the behavior of my own people demonstrates that the concept of a "missionary" does not necessarily bring with it all the horrible things you would like it to.
Culture does not ONLY include the horrifying anecdotes that you like to drag out as though they were relevant to the religious people represented here. Culture includes everything humans transmit to one another through memes, rather than genes. Moral values, for instance (and I'm talking about the kinds of things I cited above, not the usual pundits' definition of that phrase), are well-propogated by religion, as are many other community rituals and customs that draw people together. Such things are easy to dismiss if you have never been a part of them, but realize that it is (among other things) the suppression and destruction of such cultural edifices for which "missionaries" are so commonly derided. Are you eager to join their number, as the inquisition of atheism?
One final point ... if you insist upon citing the most extreme examples of the misuse of religion as though it represented religious behavior in general, even in the face of a group of very reasonable, intelligent religious folk, should I also cite the acts of Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot as examples of what happens when you let atheists run wild? Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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gah! I read the first page of this thread and thought, "my my, a cool tact to take by the gay/lesbian movement towards those abusing their tax-free status" and moved on to the last page where, lo and behold, the original thread idea is long gone and it was Godwyned by page three.
Ugh.
Anyway, I don't know if it was covered but I know of a lot of tax-free religious organizations that GET money from the government daily. In fact, I will be authorizing payments to Catholic Charities and the Lutheran run LEAP (an organization that helps people with disabilties get jobs).
Churches posturing and internally refusing to marry gay couples is totally cool. Go for it. There are plenty of churches that will do it (Unitarian-Universalist, many UCC congregations, some Methodist, some Lutheran, etc.). When a church goes outside of its walls to actively work towards oppressing a group of people in what is clearly a partisan issue (contrary to the first page response that said it wasn't, it is...).
If a church actively does work for the betterment of the nation or the world in ways that at worst only harm criminals (by reducing the amount of drugs they can sell, keeping rapists from their prey, keeping spouse abusers from their wives, etc.) then it is clearly doing the work that benefits the nation. If they take a stance that actively hurts people that aren't criminal (by national laws, not by religious laws or doctrines) then I think they are going to have to keep it in the church.
Most church organizations do keep it within their walls. Some don't and actively court their chosen representatives (Bill Frist's "Justice Sunday" comes to mind...clearly partisan mixing of politics and church). This is a bad thing. I think churches can freely interact with their chosen political candidate. All they have to do is give up the their tax-free status to do so and go for it. One would think the more vocal holier-than-thous would be fine with it...Mega-churches that put their pastor's in the 7 or 8 or figure income range shouldn't have a problem giving back to their country. I can see it being an issue when the Catholic leadership at the local level live in near poverty conditions but with some of these mega-churches (which are growing by leaps and bounds, oddly enough) then go ahead...preach the Republican way (or Democrat...being U-U I know a tightrope walk when I see it) just be prepared to file for taxes next year.
Now...I got that out. Feels much better. Back to the...er...you know...
Posts: 896 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:We do acutally have deathbed statements from many of these types of people. Certainly this is true for the some of the good people that praying folk tortured to death. We have reports from life and living in the concentration camps and, yeah, there was a little bit of intense crushing despair in evidence there. edit: Many of those people then died. More than a few of them killed themselves. I can't say with 100% certainty that they weren't filled with soalce and understanding when they died, but I think that the conclusion that they weren't may be somewhat more reasonable than that they were
Wow, that's pretty lame, the part where you said, "praying people tortured to death." Funny, I wonder what people under Stalin or Mao while they were being tortured to death by atheists.
You don't mention the people at all who got some measure of solace from their religion, and I don't think you're asserting there were none. I did not say that all people who die in agony are in fact dying in peace and comfort, despite what our senses tell us, though I can see why you'd read my words that way.
I was saying that we don't know what happens to someone after they die, Mr. Squicky. You have absolutely no more certainty on that issue than I do-anyone who claims to know is, by definition, speaking of their faith. You and I don't know that after they die, they aren't immediately granted succoor, reprieve, from their suffering. You and I don't really know how the mind works when it is dying in agony, because hey, the people who do (if they know at all) are dead.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I had an amusing and frustrating conversation with a self-termed humanist friend of mine (I say that not to be derisive, but because he told me he was a humanist in the course of this conversation) in which he explained in detail that those people were actually religious, too. They set up religions, and so once again, religion was the source of most of mankind's wicked deeds.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Errr...how are Stalin or Mao relevant? I don't see how athiests torturing people touches my point at all.
When not all people who pray receive solace, you've got the same situation as before, where God decides to help some people and to not help others. In fact, I'd say it's even worse, because while you can make the "There's some plan going on here that God's intervention in the material world by curing your sickness would disturb." for the more material "miracles", what justifiction is there for not providing someone with comfort when they are unjustly dying in suffering that you have the power to prevent but choose not to?
I have no idea what happens after we die. In fact, you'll notice, I didn't mention this at all and it doesn't make up any part of my argument, which was firmly centered around the idea that the idea that God answers prayers in this life comes with the dark side of him not answering the prayers of plenty of more deserving people. To me, there's something wrong with the idea of a being who will exert himself to make sure that one team or another wins a meaningless professional sports championship but sits by while a tsumani decimates whole countries and leaves the survivors in sufferign and squalor. And I find that whenever people credit their good fortune to something like divine intervention because of their prayers or their worthiness, they're spitting in all the faces of all the masses of people who did not have this good fortune.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Errr...how are Stalin or Mao relevant? I don't see how athiests torturing people touches my point at all.
That seems to be the point -- that the religious bent of the torturer has no bearing, so why did you bring it up?
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