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Author Topic: Theological inconsistencies with Christianity
dkw
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
People have killed over the issue of whether the Son proceeds from the Father, or through the Father.

Not even close.

You are perhaps thinking of the debate over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father or from the Father and the Son.

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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:
A Mercator projection does agree with a globe. We already went through this.
We did? Where, exactly? A Mercator projection assumes a perfect sphere, which doesn't reflect reality-the Earth is slightly flattened. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, most globes are perfect (or nearly perfect, anyway) spheres as well, so they'd be untruthful too. I'm not so sure about that, I vaguely recall reading it somewhere.
Ron's post, and mine following it. I admit my 'we' assumed you had read those. That the map is not the terrain does not change whether they are useful or not; a Mercator map will give you the same course as a globe, if you use it to navigate. A left-justified fantasy map won't.

quote:
quote:

There is no such consensus, as you well know. You don't get to handwave the huge differences of assertion between the different stripes of theist and call that agreement. People have killed over the issue of whether the Son proceeds from the Father, or through the Father. That's not consensus, that's hardly even meaningful assertion.

Oh, I see. So, I was right. It's not a consensus unless you agree with it. Because the distinctions you're drawing are completely arbitrary. There is a consensus, among the majority of humanity. You're the one deciding that it doesn't count because that's as far as the agreement goes. [/qb]
If two people tell you there is a dragon in your cellar, but cannot agree on - indeed come to blows over - the colour, size, shape, and scaliness of the dragon, then you may in some sense say that they have a consensus, but it's not one you would give weight as evidence of the dang dragon.
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by dkw:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
People have killed over the issue of whether the Son proceeds from the Father, or through the Father.

Not even close.

You are perhaps thinking of the debate over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father or from the Father and the Son.

[Roll Eyes] Imagine my concern. Do you dispute that people have died over this form of words?
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dkw
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Yes.
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Tresopax
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quote:
If two people tell you there is a dragon in your cellar, but cannot agree on - indeed come to blows over - the colour, size, shape, and scaliness of the dragon, then you may in some sense say that they have a consensus, but it's not one you would give weight as evidence of the dang dragon.
If two people tell me there is a mouse in my cellar, then I'm going to believe there is a mouse in my cellar. Why the difference?

Here's the answer: In both cases the people's claims DO give weight as evidence of the dragon/mouse. The only difference is that for dragons, there is other evidence with weight AGAINST the existence of dragons. Whereas for mice, we no reason to doubt it. Claims by other people do count as rational evidence; the question is whether there's additional rational evidence that is conflicting with and is weighter than those claims.

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King of Men
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Well done, Tres. At this rate, you'll be updating correctly in just a few hundred years. Now consider that one witness claims the mouse to be brown, weigh 100 pounds, and bark; the other claims that it is black, has retractable claws, and meows. They both agree, however, that it is invisible, and cannot be heard unless you already believe that it barks or meows. How much are you going to spend on traps to get rid of this mouse?
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Rakeesh
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quote:
If two people tell you there is a dragon in your cellar, but cannot agree on - indeed come to blows over - the colour, size, shape, and scaliness of the dragon, then you may in some sense say that they have a consensus, but it's not one you would give weight as evidence of the dang dragon.
Well now you're adding qualifiers. I never suggested that just because there was a consensus that the supernatural exists must mean that it does.

I was simply pointing out a problem you apparently didn't realize you had. You claimed it was obvious that consensus can be considered evidence.

There's consensus that the supernatural exists. Therefore it's obvious there's evidence for the supernatural, by your own reasoning. Unless, as I said, it's only consensus if you agree with it.

Whether the people come to blows over the precise qualities over the dragon in the cellar has no bearing on whether or not there is a consensus there is a dragon in the cellar.

Of course, should as appears likely agnosticism and atheism continue to increase in the world, if we're both alive to see it documented, I suspected that then that particular consensus will matter.

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Tresopax
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KOM, just reread my previous post again. Now you've thrown in evidence with weight AGAINST the existence of the mice, since I have reason to believe mice don't bark and aren't invisible. You've made the mice example into the dragon example.

But if one witness claims the mouse is black and the other claims the mouse is white, I'd still buy the traps. The disagreement on that detail is not enough to warrant rejecting their agreement on seeing a mouse.

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King of Men
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quote:
There's consensus that the supernatural exists. Therefore it's obvious there's evidence for the supernatural, by your own reasoning. Unless, as I said, it's only consensus if you agree with it.
Ok, I skipped a step. You're right, consensus is evidence. The additional step I took was that evidence can be weak or strong, and when you look at the qualities of this consensus on the supernatural, it's pretty weak. Again, how much would you spend on traps for the mouse I described in my reply to Tres? You might say "There seems to be something in the cellar, I'd better have a look." But if you did so and saw nothing, the consensus of your two friends would not cause you to believe in the mouse.

We are perhaps seeing symptoms of the problem I touched on earlier with 'proof' versus 'evidence'. There is no proof, but evidence doesn't have to convince you, either. Unfortunately that's not the way it gets used in ordinary English; we say 'proof' and 'evidence' interchangeably to mean "things that convinced me".

You will notice, though, that we have moved well away from where we started with 'faith'. It was suggested that faith is a method of acquiring truth separate from reasoning. But now we are right back to quite ordinary scientific, or rational if you prefer, reasoning on evidence. Faith does not appear either in your post or in Tres's; you both have just witness statements and then reasoning.

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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
KOM, just reread my previous post again. Now you've thrown in evidence with weight AGAINST the existence of the mice, since I have reason to believe mice don't bark and aren't invisible. You've made the mice example into the dragon example.

But if one witness claims the mouse is black and the other claims the mouse is white, I'd still buy the traps. The disagreement on that detail is not enough to warrant rejecting their agreement on seeing a mouse.

You may recall that we are not actually arguing about the existence of mice in your cellar. The differences between the world's religions are not minor.
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Tresopax
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Just for the record, I've not claimed faith is a method of truth separate from reasoning. I think faith is normally hand in hand with reasoning. Faith is, in my view, the leap I made between incomplete evidence of the mice and confidently accepting a conclusion that the mice exist.
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Ron Lambert
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Tom, can you at least acknowledge that I did answer you, whether you accept my answer or not? In the past you have just rejected my answers, then pretended I did not answer.

And what about my argument is difficult to follow? It is not just a matter of "selecting" experts.

Does anyone here deny that the argument Lisa (and others) used that the second "Lord" in Psalms 110:1 is a different word from the one in Psalms 97:5 is based totally on vowel pointings, that were not in the original text, and were only added in the seventh century A.D. by Jewish scribes? Does anyone here deny this historical fact of when the vowel-pointings were added to the text? The scholar I quoted referred to the fact that Jerome (a scholar who died in 420 A.D. and is known as the medieval scholar behind the Latin translation of the Bible) did not mention anything like this in his discussions of the text, which he surely would have if vowel pointings had already been added. Does anyone deny that the original Hebrew of the Old Testament did not have any vowel pointings, so that in the original Hebrew inwhich Psalms was written, there was no difference between the word translated "Lord" in Psalms 110:1 and Psalms 97:5? DOES ANYONE DENY THIS?

Why Tom, do you refuse to acknowledge the reasonableness and validity of my argument? It does not matter whom I quoted. It does not matter who went to Hebrew School as a child. Can you not follow the argument for yourself? If vowel-pointings were not added until the seventh century A.D., and the attempt to counter the Christian use of Psalms 110:1 depends upon vowel-pointings, then logically that attempt to explain away the Christian use of that text is not valid. It results from a contrived alteration of the text.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
If it is rational for you to casually make beliefs about what is going on inside Ron's mind, with no knowledge about him other than posts he writes on an internet forum, then you should not be making the claim that religion requires rock solid proof in order to be rational.
I have not said that religion requires "rock-solid proof." However, the basis of religious epistemology depends on some "premises" -- here put in scare quotes because they really shouldn't be premises -- that constitute extraordinary claims in order to justify the appeals to authority integral to that epistemology.

It is reasonable for me to assume that, having interacted with Ron, I can make educated guesses about how Ron behaves and how he is motivated -- keeping in mind, of course, that I might always be wrong.

But what if I believed that I was interacting with a nebulous "ROff" who exists everywhere and nowhere, and whose posts can only be read by the pure of heart under special light that can never be duplicated except by those who already believe ROff existed? If I were having a conversation with ROff here, you'd be perfectly justified in your accusations of hypocrisy.

--------

quote:
Tom, can you at least acknowledge that I did answer you, whether you accept my answer or not? In the past you have just rejected my answers, then pretended I did not answer.
Um....I actually replied to you. You didn't answer my question, but I certainly saw your post.

quote:
And what about my argument is difficult to follow? It is not just a matter of "selecting" experts.
I never said it was difficult to follow. I said it was weak and made appeals to authority that are themselves questionable, especially in light of other contradictory appeals to authority made by other people who consider themselves familiar with the same topic. For my part, I think it's very likely that the vowel points WERE added later, and ARE inconclusive. I don't have a horse in that race, since I think the whole book has been heavily edited and redacted to keep some of its prophecies "current."

quote:
Why Tom, do you refuse to acknowledge the reasonableness and validity of my argument?
Mainly it's because you don't present a single argument as if it matters; you throw up a wall of arguments, like verbal chaff, and defy people to individually address each one. And if they don't, even if they leave just the least compelling one standing, you will sit back and insist that no one can prove you wrong. It's like beating one's head against a wall.

Like I said earlier, what evidence would it take to convince you that you're wrong about your religion? The data points don't exist that would suffice for that.

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King of Men
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Indeed, this is the most unfortunate part of being an atheist. I've often wished I believed in at least half-an-hour's worth of afterlife, just so you could shoot people and know that they would be going 'Ooops' rather than ''.
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
Just for the record, I've not claimed faith is a method of truth separate from reasoning.

You certainly give a good impression of making such a claim:

quote:
The point is that I cannot offer you proof of religion's "better-ness" as an epistemological method, but it is nevertheless better in many cases.
But I think perhaps we are running into the usual thing with your private language; you use these words that have meanings, and you mean something completely different by them, and things get very confused because you're not claiming what it looks like you're claiming. Case in point:

quote:
Faith is, in my view, the leap I made between incomplete evidence of the mice and confidently accepting a conclusion that the mice exist.
By this standard, any belief in anything at all is 'faith', because you can never have complete evidence. If you're going to use the word this way, it ceases to be useful for anything; it leaves us no way to distinguish between believing that the sun will come up tomorrow, and that Apollo will harness his horses and bless the land with his light tomorrow. (And I am not using a metaphor here, so kindly don't try to equivocate that the two are actually the same.)
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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
DOES ANYONE DENY THIS?

You already know the answer to this is yes, and it was explained to you why in some detail the last go-round.
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Mucus
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But he put it in capital letters this time.
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fugu13
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Yeah, it is almost as if he has forgotten that the difference between the two is a consonant difference in Hebrew, and has thus been part of the document since long before vowel annotations were added.
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natural_mystic
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quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:

quote:
The issue is not whether someone can be convinced of something in the absence of scientific proof - it is abundantly clear that people 'know' both true and untrue things.
Of course it's part of the issue. 'Evidence' and 'rationality', to folks such as KoM and Tom, means, "What can be proven to someone else," among other things. If it cannot be tested in such a way that it can be proven or disproven to someone else, it's neither rational nor evidence.

I said it wasn't the issue because it is trivially true - clearly, throughout history, many people have 'known' some thoroughly false things, as well as some true things. Discriminating between these classes is much harder.

quote:

quote:

I am completely fine that those who wish to be religious be religious. However, it would be nice if the religious accepted that the absence of a system whereby they can provide verification of the truth of their beliefs to others meant that it was not legitimate to try and force society at large to live in accordance with these beliefs.

What would be even better is if people would accept that it's not legitimate to force society at large to live in accordance with their own specific beliefs. Religious folks hardly have a lock on that.

I don't know. I think it inevitable that society be forced to live in accordance with specific beliefs insofar, at least, that laws and their implementation are representative of said beliefs. The point is that not all beliefs are equal. Beliefs without any empirical backing should be very cautiously enacted (if at all), and probably should not be enacted when empirical data supports an alternative. An example would be, when combating teen pregnancy, the implementation of abstinence only education in preference to sex-ed courses that teach contraception. Beliefs stemming from atheist ideology, as for religious beliefs, should conform to this standard.
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natural_mystic
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
quote:
Can you describe the subjective component found in science?
Yes - the subjective components are mainly the assumptions on which scientific models are based. The biggest one is probably the assumption that the future and past will and have followed the same laws as the present, because scientific induction is based upon that. Others include things along the lines of "Occam's Razor".

Beyond that, science is also based originally in sets of observations, which themselves come from subjective senses.

Certainly the inductive assumption is an assumption. And justification of it inductively is obviously circular, as Hume pointed out. I'm not sure that it's subjective in any sense beyond the trivial. It's worth pointing out that any functioning human at least implicitly acts as if this assumption were true.

I can't speak to how Occam's razor has been used in the past, however I think it is currently just a rule of thumb in how to conduct research rather than an underlying assumption which influences scientific truths.

The last is pretty much just saying that science is subject to Cartesian doubt. Fine. In the real world the scientific method goes to great lengths to compensate for and/or understand variation in observations. And seems to be successful at doing so.

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Tresopax
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quote:
I have not said that religion requires "rock-solid proof." However, the basis of religious epistemology depends on some "premises" -- here put in scare quotes because they really shouldn't be premises -- that constitute extraordinary claims in order to justify the appeals to authority integral to that epistemology.

It is reasonable for me to assume that, having interacted with Ron, I can make educated guesses about how Ron behaves and how he is motivated -- keeping in mind, of course, that I might always be wrong.

But what if I believed that I was interacting with a nebulous "ROff" who exists everywhere and nowhere, and whose posts can only be read by the pure of heart under special light that can never be duplicated except by those who already believe ROff existed? If I were having a conversation with ROff here, you'd be perfectly justified in your accusations of hypocrisy.

Okay, we are getting somewhere now.... So rationality doesn't require rock-solid proof. Rational beliefs can be based on educated guesses, based on anecdotal observations.

So it sounds like the reason you disqualify religious thinking from rationality is because it requies "extraordinary assumptions" - things like "ROff can exist everywhere and nowhere" or "ROff's posts can only be read by the pure of heart". If you take away those "extraordinary assumptions" it would be perfectly reasonable to make conclusions about ROff. And similarly, if religion required no "extraordinary assumptions" then it could be rational to use religious thinking, even without rock-solid proof, in your view?

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Tresopax
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quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
Just for the record, I've not claimed faith is a method of truth separate from reasoning.

You certainly give a good impression of making such a claim:
quote:
The point is that I cannot offer you proof of religion's "better-ness" as an epistemological method, but it is nevertheless better in many cases

I didn't mention reasoning in that quote at all. The context of the quote was that I was arguing that religion was better in some situations to answer some questions than other epistemological methods (like science). But both science and religion and many other epistemlogical methods fall under the umbrella of rationality - because they all start with observations and assumptions and then use reason to reach conclusions.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
And similarly, if religion required no "extraordinary assumptions" then it could be rational to use religious thinking, even without rock-solid proof, in your view?
How are you defining uniquely religious thinking for your purposes here, Tres? Are you again merely thinking of it as an appeal to a third-party claiming to speak for a higher authority?
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Tresopax
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I'd rather not define religious thinking, because I don't know how and if I do then someone will probably try to accuse me of playing semantics. But no, trusting a third-party claiming to speak for a higher authority probably doesn't always qualify as religious thinking. And some religious thinking probably doesn't involve a third-party (like someone who thinks God has spoken to him directly), or a higher authority (like someone who belongs to a nontheist religion).

I realize you may be thinking that all religions have extraordinary assumptions. But my question still stands - IF a given religion did not, could it be rational in your view? Or, to put it another way, are the "extraordinary assumptions" involved the reason why you consider religion to be inherently irrational (rather than just sometimes irrational)?

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fugu13
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Could you give some examples of uniquely religious thinking?
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Tresopax
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I'd think things like these are often considered sorts of religious thinking, although I doubt they are all uniquely so:

*Praying or meditating and then having a sense that you should do a certain thing
*Reading a Bible and inferring conclusions from the Bible on the assumption that it is an accurate telling of events
*Soul-searching or reflecting on what you observe to be morally right
*Having God or gods speak to you
*Going to a church or temple and learning from a religious leader
*Having an significant experience that radically changes your viewpoint on certain religious topics (like what to value in life, whether God exists, etc.)

Most of these do seem to involve some sort of authority - whether it be God, a religious leader, a text, or an inner "sense".

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TomDavidson
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Questions:

1) How is meditating and then having a sense you should do something different from reflecting on what you consider morally right?
2) How is reading the Bible and inferring conclusions from it different from reading any other ancient book of history?
3) How is having God speak to you distinct from having your uncle speak to you?
4) Is learning ethics from a religious leader different in any way from learning biology from, say, a biologist? Is learning biology from a religious leader who claims to speak for God different from learning biology from a biologist?
5) How is changing your mind after a significant experience different from changing your mind after meditation or reflection?

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Tresopax
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You didn't answer my question, Tom - if a given religion did not rely on any "extraordinary assumptions", could it be rational in your view?

As for your questions:
1) They are similar, but I think latter tends to involve less of a feeling and more reasoning. Reflecting would include things like reading a book on philosophy and deciding if the arguments are correct. This is a debatable distinction though.
2) It isn't really, except that it has been protected by the church and is thought to be "God's word" by many, so religious people tend to trust it.
3) You'll have to ask someone who had God speak to them. But I don't assume my uncle is all-knowing, for one thing, so I wouldn't trust him nearly as much.
4) The answer to this is going to vary a whole lot depending on the religion. People approach learning from religious leaders in different ways.
5) I'd think the difference is that an experience gives you new external data, whereas meditation or reflection just gives you information from your own mind/soul/self.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
if a given religion did not rely on any "extraordinary assumptions", could it be rational in your view?
I don't think it'd be a religion. A religion without extraordinary assumptions is a philosophy.
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dkw
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Only in your incredibly biased and circular definition-argument loop.
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TomDavidson
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Tell you what: remove the "extraordinary assumptions" from any of the world's major religions and tell me how much they look like religions when you're done.
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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Tell you what: remove the "extraordinary assumptions" from any of the world's major religions and tell me how much they look like religions when you're done.

But can't you simply flip that concept so that now philosophy is merely "religion lite?"
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TomDavidson
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Sure. Except that Occam's Razor suggests that, all else being held equal, "religion lite" is natively superior to "religion."
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Tresopax
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Well, here's the thing.... What determines if an assumption is extraordinary?

How about tiny invisible particles within everything that are actually waves in addition to being particles, and which don't occupy a determined point in space? Is that extraordinary?

Or what about the idea, mentioned by you previously, that there exist multiple universes. Extraordinary?

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Or what about the idea, mentioned by you previously, that there exist multiple universes. Extraordinary?
Sure. Also theoretically falsifiable.
Get enough of 'em together -- like, say, claiming that philotes in multiple universes somehow interact with heavy water inside our bodies to create electromagnetic impulses that constitute our higher brain functions -- and you've got a religion.

But here's another thing: the idea behind multiple universes actually exists as a predictive theory; it's meant to explain certain observed physical behavior, and also predicts other behavior. The problem is that when we treat certain religion assertions as theories cut from the same cloth -- e.g. try to identify the predictive value of "There is only one God, and Mohammed is His prophet" -- we rapidly discover that either all the expected events fail to come true as predicted, or believers have defined the situation so vaguely that no single prediction can actually be falsified.

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Tresopax
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But that doesn't answer the question - what makes an assumption extraordinary?

I'd argue that modern scientific models rely on far far more extraordinary assumptions than Christian religion, for instance. God, as a concept, makes a lot more sense than some of the things that come up in quantum mechanics.

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Javert
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
God, as a concept, makes a lot more sense than some of the things that come up in quantum mechanics.

A god, by some definitions, is an omnipotent, omnipresent thing. Which, I think, would make it the most complex and extraordinary thing possible. Much more extraordinary and complex than anything in quantum mechanics.
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Javert
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Also Tres, don't confuse "makes sense" or "is simpler" with "less extraordinary" or "less complex".

If we're talking about the creation of the universe, invisible universe-creating pixies is a very simple answer, and it makes sense. I mean, "universe-creating" is in their name!

But the fact that they are a simple explanation doesn't make them un-extraordinary.

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Tresopax
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quote:
Also Tres, don't confuse "makes sense" or "is simpler" with "less extraordinary" or "less complex".
In the same way, make sure you don't confuse "more extraordinary" with "more complex". God isn't more extraordinary just because He'd be such a complex thing. A galaxy is far more complex, far more powerful, and far bigger than a living dinosaur in New York City, but the dinosaur would probably be considered more extraordinary.

I'm inclined to think the only actual criteria for "extraordinary" is that it defies our common sense assumptions or expectations. If you casually assume that mammals live on land, then a whale is extraordinary to you. If you assume particles are tiny solid spheres like they are portrayed in some textbooks, quantum mechanics will be extraordinary to you. If you expect that spiritual sounding things don't exist, then souls are an extraordinary concept to you. But that makes "extraordinary" a subjective concept that's going to vary from person to person.

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King of Men
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quote:
How about tiny invisible particles within everything that are actually waves in addition to being particles, and which don't occupy a determined point in space? Is that extraordinary?
Only to human intuition; and hardly an assumption in any case. This is well-supported empirical data.
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King of Men
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quote:
A galaxy is far more complex, far more powerful, and far bigger than a living dinosaur in New York City.
Bigger I will give you; powerful seems a rather strange concept to apply to a galaxy - what does it have the power to do? - but complex is false. A dinosaur is more complex than a galaxy. Galaxies are really quite simple.
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TomDavidson
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More importantly: a galaxy existing somewhere does not violate the predictive models we have already constructed. A galaxy (or a dinosaur) appearing in downtown New York does violate that model.

When something violates that model, it becomes necessary to question the thing and then, if it resists vanishing, change the model.

God violates the holy heck out of the model. But God also evaporates the instant you question or attempt to test Him.

Some people are willing to reject a shared model of reality in favor of a personal one. That personal model might well make plenty of room for the existence of God. But when people opt for personal realities that differ from observable, shared reality, we usually call them delusional.

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dkw
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Tell you what: remove the "extraordinary assumptions" from any of the world's major religions and tell me how much they look like religions when you're done.

They look quite a lot like religions to me. They won't look at all like religions to you, because you've defined religion in your head as "irrational assumptions" and so the fewer or less irrational assumptions a world-view/person has the less religious you consider it. I'm not burdened by that particular prejudice of yours.
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TomDavidson
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What, then, distinguishes a club with a strong philosophy from a religion? Is the Optimist's Club a religion? It certainly has a creed, and it meets regularly, and it even has leaders; it's an organized group with shared beliefs.

Can you give me an example of a religion that you think I'm unfairly accusing of having "extraordinary assumptions?"

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dkw
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I would say that what makes a given group "religious" is two-fold. First it deals somehow with existential questions -- what does it mean to be a human being, what(if anything) is the meaning/purpose of existence, what gives something/someone value, etc. Second, it involves a community of people who intend to somehow live out of (or into) the results of their encounter with those questions. Note that religous can be theistic or atheistic or have no position at all on the theism question.

I don't know enough about the Optimists to answer your question about them, but from a quick scan of their website I would say that they're borderline. Depending on what they mean by "optimism as a philosophy of life" they could be a religion.

As far as an example, consider please to what degree you consider people who don't subscribe to what you consider the irrational aspects of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc., to be practicing a "watered-down" form of their religion.

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Ron Lambert
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Rivka, are you really sure that there are actual consonants in the text that are different for the second Lord in Psalms 110:1 and the second Lord in Psalms 97:5, so that these words were not exactly the same, indistinguishable, in the original Hebrew as it was written some 3,000 year ago? You made this claim, and I have to insist that you back it up.

I find nowhere in the scholarly debates on this by real, qualified Hebrew scholars, any mention of there actually being consonants that are different. Everyone I have read acknowledges that the difference is only because of vowel points, which were arbitrarily imposed on the text in the seventh century A.D. If you have a version of the Hebrew text that shows such a difference in the consonants, can you establish that the version you have now has not been altered, and is unchanged from the way the text was originally written by King David? That is the issue--what the inspired Scriptures originally said. What about the Dead Sea Scrolls? Do they show any difference in the words translated Lord in the two Psalms? This is what sound scholarship demands--that points be proven to be really valid.

I see no reason why I should accord the Masoretic scribes any authority at all. The Scriptures are God's Word, not the scribes' word. They had no right to change the text.

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fugu13
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I think it was Lisa who made the claim originally.
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Armoth
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::facepalm::

Why is it that when confronted with two possibilities, you choose scribes that alter text rather than dismissing one of your bajillion forced readings of a text to find foreshadowing. Don't you have a bajillion -1 others?

Aleph-daled-nun-yud vs. Aleph-daled-vav-nun

Different consonants.

You can come to my house and check out all my Hebrew Bibles, or check your local synagogue. Check it out online, or however you wanna get your hands on a text.

Do Christians have an authoritative HEBREW Bible?

And I'm sure if the Dead Sea Scrolls used a different letter combination, we would have been able to find out online. But if you like, my University has a bunch of Dead Sea Scroll scholars and I can ask them personally.

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Ron Lambert
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Rivka is the one who claimed on April 29, 5:48 pm (this page) that I have already been told yada yada. Maybe it was Lisa who originally claimed there were different consonants. But Rivka apparently agrees.

You see, this really is a crucial matter. If in fact the Scriptures in their original text had the same word for the second Lord in Psalms 110:1 and for the second Lord in Psalms 97:5, then it is most reasonable to conclude that the second Lord in Psalms 110:1 is also God, proving that there are at least two Persons in the Deity, one who is speaking to the other. But this should not be such a surprise, since the creation narrative in Genesis chapter one uses the plural elohym for God, and has God saying in verse 26: "Let us make man in our image."

[ April 30, 2009, 02:43 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]

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Armoth
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I'll not deny, and neither will our texts deny that Genesis says "Naaseh Adam" - roughly translating to "Let us make man."

We have always explained that as God speaking to the heavenly court, angels, etc. Or as God speaking in the royal we.

But you're wrong about 110:1

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