quote:Originally posted by Scott R: It's actually pie.
I think Tom was making a Portal (computer game) reference. A nice sounding robot with progressively obvious sinister motives keeps coxing you along with promises of cake.
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Good people aren't good people because they are religious. They are good people because they are emotionally sound people, who happen to use religion as a way of structuring their moral code.
There is no evidence that people are "better" if they are devout. It just makes emotionally unsound people take different, church-determined routes to express their emotional unsoundness.
You may argue that 'evil' Christians aren't Christians who follow the life of Christ and that the Bible almost certainly doesn't advocate child abuse.
Well-- it doesn't seem to prevent it.
quote:Really I would like to see what science would be like if it were "publish" rather than "publish or perish."
Go back fifty years. People still carried out reasonably sound scientific work.
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posted
Teshi, you think that, but you don't really know either. You don't know any of that - it's just your opinion. You don't how many would be worse off without their religion.
The existence of sinners hardly proves that the atonement which was created precisely for sinners is untrue. It's like pointing at people with broken legs as proof that modern medicine is a sham.
There are so many misconceptions here, no wonder there can't be any real conversations. I've never so much tilting at windmills in my life. When you attack someone and they wonder why you are throwing yourself at a straw man two counties over, it isn't a devestating triumph when you don't hit anything.
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katharina: It's hard to take you seriously when only tresopax will give any arguments of why he believes. (well, and Christine's "I believe because I want to" statement)
Both you and Scott have expressed a deep desire not to have your rational vetted.
So answer me this.. Why don't you believe in Thor? Thor's a good guy with a mighty hammer. And the way he saves us all from Frost Giants is certainly noble... What makes you think he doesn't exist?
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Teshi, you think that, but you don't really know either. You don't know any of that - it's just your opinion. You don't how many would be worse off without their religion.
You've made statements like a number of times and I don't understand what you are trying to show. It can be rational to not know something is true yet also not remain agnostic about it. I don't see why Teshi's opinion should be discounted just because it is an opinion (maybe that's not what you were saying but you haven't been very detailed in your responses and that's how it comes across).
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posted
I don't think, "it doesn't seem to prevent abuse" with a link to a horrible abuse scandal is particularly a huge leap.
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Pixiest: No, I have expressed a deep conviction that this audience is hostile, biased, narrow-minded, prideful, uncharitable, rude, and not worth it.
Not the same thing.
Teshi: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the claims and purpose of Christianity. A magical immunity to sin was never one of the claims.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Teshi: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the claims and purpose of Christianity. A magical immunity to sin was never one of the claims.
Whoever said this disagrees with you:
quote:*The fact that the way of life modeled by Christ seems to lead people to become good people...
quote:No, I have expressed a deep conviction that this audience is hostile, biased, narrow-minded, prideful, uncharitable, rude, and not worth it.
Then why the hell are you talking to us, oh gentle, unbiased, open-minded, humble, charitable, polite and worthy person that you are?
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Pixiest: No, I have expressed a deep conviction that this audience is hostile, biased, narrow-minded, prideful, uncharitable, rude, and not worth it.
...
except to lecture and vent hostilities at, apparently.
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posted
Anyway, thank you, Trex, for providing your reasons.
It's always interesting to see such things.
Perhaps, sometime, I should present, in a similar fashion, my reasons for believing something different, and I can expose myself to the danger of ridicule from the other side too!
If you'd like, I could do so.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Pixiest: No, I have expressed a deep conviction that this audience is hostile, biased, narrow-minded, prideful, uncharitable, rude, and not worth it.
I'm not saying that you are wrong to believe that katharina, and though it may be presumptuous and down right arrogant of me to say, I find that when one goes into an argument with this deeply held belief, the belief itself becomes self-fulfilling. Just saying.
That applies to everyone I think. Posts: 457 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dobbie: Jews don't do charity. Jews do tzedakah.
A bunch of non-Jewish homeless people memorized that word outside my school. They mispronounce it when they ask for tzedakah. I thought that was cool that they learned the Jewish word for charity because they thought it would score them cash. Actually, it does.
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quote:Teshi: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the claims and purpose of Christianity. A magical immunity to sin was never one of the claims.
Javert already pointed out who I was responding to. I do not say that following Christianity makes people bad or better, which is what the original poster seem to be claiming. You seem to agree that it doesn't make people immune from sin as well. Therefore, we agree.
I, personally, do not believe that religion is necessarily evil. People seem to manage evil deeds without religion just as they manage good ones.
I would be perfectly okay with unconditionally tolerating religion were it not for my belief that although religion does not promote evil acts it excessively complicates situations. Would Israel be quite so complicated and inextricable if it weren't for religion? Would Islamic terrorists be quite so righteously violent? Would Fred Phelps be visible at all? "I hate fags" doesn't have a fraction of the punch as "God hates fags".
Would the fear of Jews that dug deep into Europe have been quite so deep if the differences had been 'only' cultural? Perhaps. With religion gone, culture and nationalism would reign supreme: Communism killed thousands, perhaps millions, without invoking God.
But I think invoking God still adds a certain cachet to arguments that nationalism doesn't. A war of Heaven is a step easier to justify than a war of ideas, although the latter has its own virulence. A war of Heaven is one step more difficult to escape from.
Religion carries its share of positive effects, especially at the individual level. The Red Cross and like organizations have their roots in religious orders. But religion provides a highly convenient seat for what are ultimately personal beliefs, fears, prejudices etc. We may fear or mistrust the ideas that Galileo or Darwin bring to the table, but without the weight of God behind us, we are just men opposing men (so to speak). Historically, that has been less complicated to untie.
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quote:Teshi: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the claims and purpose of Christianity. A magical immunity to sin was never one of the claims.
Whoever said this disagrees with you:
quote:*The fact that the way of life modeled by Christ seems to lead people to become good people...
Becoming a better person doesn't mean you have become a perfect person. Everyone still make mistakes sometimes, and sometimes they are horrible mistakes. So, I don't believe that Christianity gives an immunity to sin.
Incidently, I should add that there are people who intend to be Christian who seem to me to be clearly not following the model of Christ. For instance, the ones who seem overly angry and hateful - I've never quite understood how they could come to interpret Christianity in such a way, but I don't believe it helps them much (at least in this life).
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Pixiest: No, I have expressed a deep conviction that this audience is hostile, biased, narrow-minded, prideful, uncharitable, rude, and not worth it.
I'm not saying that you are wrong to believe that katharina, and though it may be presumptuous and down right arrogant of me to say, I find that when one goes into an argument with this deeply held belief, the belief itself becomes self-fulfilling. Just saying.
Nope, I came to this conclusion after years of experiences. I used to be much, much more open and the crappy, horrible, dreadful, and unfortunate experiences on Hatrack led me to this conclusion.
It is definitely not what I want to be true. It is very apparent that it is, however.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: For instance, the ones who seem overly angry and hateful - I've never quite understood how they could come to interpret Christianity in such a way, but I don't believe it helps them much (at least in this life).
Jesus in the temple seemed a bit angry and hateful. (Whether justifiably or not.)
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posted
Some people seem to think that love means being angry and hateful. And Javert is right, Jesus himself is not entirely immune from this. He says specifically that he has come to break families apart, for example, should the entire family not convert. Depending on how you interpret the story, he killed that tree for apparently not bearing good fruit.
I think many people justify trying to improve the godliness of others with hateful actions, as they believe that ultimately they are undertaking an act of love.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: Becoming a better person doesn't mean you have become a perfect person.
Who's expecting perfection? All those Irish priets and nuns took vows to serve Christ. No one asked or expected them to be perfect, they were asked to not beat, rape, and otherwise abuse their charges. Do you really think that this is too high a standard to hold people to when they claim to be trying to live like Christ?
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That would be my point if I were involved in this discussion... religion doesn't really make people behave any better than not-religion.
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rivka, we're not "blaming religion", that's the point (or at least, I'm not). Somebody made the claim that people who endeavour to "be like Christ" (which within accepted boundaries nuns and priests are supposed to) "seem" to be better people than those who do not.
I linked to the news article and said, "clearly not". It wasn't religion that drove these people to abuse children, but religion didn't prevent the abuse either. It likely would have happened with or without religion.
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posted
Posting a single counterexample doesn't prove what you think it did. You can't point to Bill Gates and say he proves it's better for you financially to drop out of college.
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posted
Perhaps not. Religion does give you, to a greater extent than other kinds of human organisation, authority figures which cannot easily be questioned. Notice, for example, the lack of official reaction at the time to these abuses even when they became known. Unaccountable authority leads to abuses no matter the source, this is just a sad fact about humans; but religion is a particularly fertile source of such authority.
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posted
"Goodness, can you imagine how horrible those people would have been otherwise!"
Well, yeah. All I have to do is read about them. If you honestly think religion makes people better than they would be otherwise, I'd say you probably haven't looked very closely at the issue.
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quote:KoM, I would say that (as well as other lesser organizations) the military has the same authority hierarchical structure.
Yes, and some quite nasty things have happened because of that; but an officer's authority doesn't extend as far into private life as a priest's, and moreover it tends to be over adults. What's more, it's not just the authority but the unchallengability. If an officer abused recruits, he might or might not be court-martialed but it would not be impossible to speak out. But in the priest-abuse scandal linked above, it was socially impossible even to make the accusation; you could not say such things about a man of God, not in Ireland at that time. People would have refused to believe you.
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posted
I am hardly denying that any kind of hierarchical structures are dangerous. And that the Catholic Church is a very old and very large hierarchical structure. I am just adding to the list of dangerous hierarchical structures.
And some did speak out. And their faith had a lot to do with that.
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: That would be my point if I were involved in this discussion... religion doesn't really make people behave any better than not-religion.
Religion is a tool.
I can use a hammer for its intended purpose, I can drop it on my toe, I can use it to smash someone's head in. The latter two don't stop it from being an excellent way of nailing things together. And there may be other tools that would do either the same job or a similar one.
Religion, used properly, makes people better. Many people are walking around with the spiritual equivalent of squished toes.
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"Religion, used properly, makes people better."
Compared to what? We need to be measuring against some standard in order to say that people are better than that standard. The thing is, taken as a whole, religious people aren't any better than non-religious people, and people of a given religion aren't any better then people of different religions within the same context.
Better than the individual would be if he abandoned all ethical systems, I'll give you. But that seems a rather trivial comparative.
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This seems inconsistent to me. Your religion, so you say, is based on revelations made by the creator of the universe to your ancestors at Mount Sinai. Its purposes, therefore, are not human purposes. Your religion may with consistency be claimed to be a tool of your god, but you cannot claim it is a tool for humans.
In fact, I do not think there is any monotheistic religion which makes the claim that it is only a tool for helping people be better. Rather they claim to be the real truth, systems for understanding the world, and in some cases definitions of what better is, as with the dreaded gay. It's a very bad analogy.
Edit: Suppose it were shown by time-travel and by exhaustive experiment that Judaism was
a) Absolutely true and b) Made people worse, in the sense of being more likely to murder, rape, and steal.
(I understand that these are against the actual laws of Judaism; it's a hypothetical, "What if professing Judaism makes you a worse Jew?") If this were the case, which part would be more important, the truthiness or the bad influence? Unless you think it is the latter, I don't think it's useful to say that religion is a tool, any more than a show is a tool because you can hammer a nail with it.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Religion, used properly, makes people better. Many people are walking around with the spiritual equivalent of squished toes.
I think this should be qualified because, as Paul pointed out, it needs a reference point. However, there is definitely some truth to the claim. There are all sorts of people who are better today because of religion.
That doesn't mean that people will act better in a world with religion than in a world without (I know this doesn't contradict your post, I just think it's a useful statement to make alongside it).
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quote:Somebody made the claim that people who endeavour to "be like Christ" (which within accepted boundaries nuns and priests are supposed to) "seem" to be better people than those who do not.
I linked to the news article and said, "clearly not". It wasn't religion that drove these people to abuse children, but religion didn't prevent the abuse either. It likely would have happened with or without religion.
I was the one who said that, but I did not say that people who "endeavour" to be like Christ end up being better people. Plenty of Christians endeavour to act like Christ, yet do it wrongly, and end up becoming a person almost the opposite of what Christ modeled. Inversely, I know atheists and non-Christians who have no intention of acting like Christ, yet end up doing so anyway, because that is how they were raised to act. I've found that the people who succeed in acting in a Christ-like way, even atheists who aren't doing it out of a belief in Christ, seem to live better lives than those who do not. It is not those who "endeavour" to do it that I'm talking about; it's those who actually DO do it.
Priests are supposed to be Christ-like, but that doesn't mean they always succeed. After all, even in the Bible it is often the priests who get it wrong - it was the good Samaritan, not the priest, who helped the injured man.
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quote:And some did speak out. And their faith had a lot to do with that.
The woman who spearheaded the claims was clearly non-religious. "The Religious" she said in her interview, and it was not including her. When you're beaten and tortured by men and women of religion, you tend to abandon that kind of thing.
Even more so when, when you attempt to speak out, people accuse you of lying because they can't imagine these nuns and priests doing anything wrong.
quote: It is not those who "endeavour" to do it that I'm talking about; it's those who actually DO do it.
But this could be true of any positive role model character in any story. The fact that Jesus is a reasonably good person (although I wouldn't model myself on him, for reasons I have touched on above) simply means that he's the hero of the story. You could say that wise, kindly, protective people are like Gandalf. They may not know who Gandalf is or deliberately try to be like him, but they're like him and they're good people... and that means that the Lord of the Rings is a true story.
Many little girls want to be like Cinderella and many little boys like Spiderman (or vice versa!). Both of those characters are heroes, and they are reasonably kindly, protective, good-hearted people. If they grow up like their idols, that's great, they will likely be better and happier people. But that doesn't give Cinderella and Spiderman any more veracity than other stories with equally "good" characters.
You can't ignore the groups of people who fail at being like Christ and say, "all these people who succeed, even the atheists, prove..." No. In this argument, the people who follow the church are a set and the people who don't are a set and evil and good seems roughly equally prevalent among them.
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In what argument? I was giving the reasons why I find Christianity to be a convincing religion. That's an argument between me and myself, and in that particular argument the two sets are people who actually do succeed in living the model of Christ, and the people who actually don't. Those are the two sets of people I'm making a point about.
The reason Cinderella and Spiderman are not the same is primarily that I don't think people who succeed in living their lives like Cinderella and Spiderman would actually end up living very good lives. Also, they are fictional.
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quote:And some did speak out. And their faith had a lot to do with that.
The woman who spearheaded the claims was clearly non-religious. "The Religious" she said in her interview, and it was not including her. When you're beaten and tortured by men and women of religion, you tend to abandon that kind of thing.
Even more so when, when you attempt to speak out, people accuse you of lying because they can't imagine these nuns and priests doing anything wrong.
Teshi, google Father Thomas Doyle sometime.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Pixiest: No, I have expressed a deep conviction that this audience is hostile, biased, narrow-minded, prideful, uncharitable, rude, and not worth it.
What part of your faith has blessed you with this outlook, which is most likely unavailable to the faithless, without such a wonderful moral compass to guide us?
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: I've found that the people who succeed in acting in a Christ-like way, even atheists who aren't doing it out of a belief in Christ, seem to live better lives than those who do not. It is not those who "endeavour" to do it that I'm talking about; it's those who actually DO do it.
That doesn't really have anything to do with Christianity though. Actually acting like any good person makes you a better person. That isn't a particular strength of religious faith in general or Christianity specifically.
All you're really saying is, "Acting the way a really good person acts makes you a good person also."
quote:Originally posted by Teshi: The woman who spearheaded the claims was clearly non-religious. "The Religious" she said in her interview, and it was not including her.
The woman probably didn't mean "believers" when she said "religious". Catholics also call priests and nuns "the religious". Non-lay people, basically.
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posted
Hm, that could be it. It doesn't have any bearing on whether she's herself is a theistic, though. All I can say is that there was nothing friendly in her voice when she said "the religious".
But I'd like to register my complaint against the assumption that people require Godly faith to pursue justice or to survive ordeals. Many people use faith in this manner; others have a more secular hope.
I suspect that when the source of the horror is the religious establishment, fewer people turn to religion than in more secular tragedies.
quote:That's an argument between me and myself, and in that particular argument the two sets are people who actually do succeed in living the model of Christ, and the people who actually don't. Those are the two sets of people I'm making a point about.
MightyCow actually articulated my argument far better, so take a look at what he (she?) said for further explanation of what I'm driving at.
quote: Also, they are fictional.
That has no bearing on the argument. If the only way of knowing about Jesus, real or not, is through stories, he has exactly the same amount of moral information as any fictional character. Yes, it's conveyed in a comic book or fairy tale rather than in the form of a series of moral lessons*, but I picked those two characters because they are "everypeople" semi-mythical characters.
The trouble with many more semi-historical characters like King Arthur is that inevitably, most everypeople characters get associated, either immediately or eventually with Jesus. Heck, even Doctor Who (which as far as I can tell is pretty atheist), hints in that direction (although Doctor Who would be a good, modern example otherwise). You could look into the Odyssey (Odysseus) and the Aeneid (Aeneas) as examples of semi-historical characters [of moral integrity*], at least of their time.
If I decided Aeneas was a good person and lived like him, and turned out to be a good person, it would not be evidence that the Greek Gods were real, only that Homer had some moral character himself.
posted
Oh dear; Odysseus is a really unfortunate example to use in this context. He rapes and murders his way across most of the Eastern Med for twenty years, then when he gets home he has the gall to check up on who his wife has been sleeping with. Not to mention the mass murder of both suitors and the serving women his wife has been throwing at the suitors to keep them satisfied.
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posted
Hm. I remembered the slaughtering the suitors thing, but hoped to cover that with "of their time". I don't remember "raping his way across the Med." My memories of Odysseus may be seriously flawed by the way I was taught it. I have modified to make my post more palatable.
However, really, the point of whether Odysseus is a good person in modern terms or not (clearly not) doesn't actually undermine the more major point I'm apparently struggling to convey. Tres objected that Cinderella and Spiderman were too fictional, I was trying to find some semi-historical figures who weren't related to Jesus.
KoM's point does bring up an interesting point. I have this "Odysseus is acting within the reasonably moral right of his time" idea in my head. It may be wrong... BUT this is why the idea of Jesus (real or not) was so groundbreaking and made such an impression. For all his flaws, Jesus must have seemed like a total hippie* compared to the general ideas of his time. What? No mass murder?
Because of that, I personally am inclined to believe that there was a man who fulfilled the role of Jesus, and that he was active as a religious leader around the time that he is supposed to have been. It seems likely that he was gotten rid of in some way. Most of the details I regard as mythical.
Mythicalness doesn't make the story useless, though. I would rather that people use a more modern moral character as a model, but generally if the choices are, let's say, Odysseus, Zeus and Jesus, Jesus is probably the best.
*Which is clearly why he had a Woodstock!
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Take any generally good historical figure, Dr. King, Mother Theresa, President Regan, and only pay attention to the good things they did, ignoring any bad things as non-canonical, and live your life as well as you can based only on their good examples.
As long as we're deconstructing it, the basic rule is, "Live as good a life as you can, and you'll be a good person." No religion necessary. No particular role model necessary for that matter.
And it doesn't matter if you do particularly well or not, since being a Christian (Kingist, Theresian, Reganany, etc.) doesn't make you perfect, only saved (insert circular logic term of choice).
-Teshi: I'm a boy cow.
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The key question you are skipping over is: how do we know who qualifies as a "really good person"? Christ? Buddha? Socrates? Oprah? Michael Jordan? Warren Buffett? I'd consider all of these to be heroic, but the "good" in each of them is very different in each case. For instance, in the case of Socrates, I'd think anyone who modeled their life extensively after Socrates is probably less likely to live a very good life. They'd be very logical, but also extremely annoying, and probably not particularly productive. I've actually known people who tried to model themselves after Jordan, hoping to become great athletes, and for the most part did not succeed.
So, no, I don't think it is true that modeling yourself after any "great" person makes you a better person. My observation is that people who act in a Christ-like way lead better lives than those whose model themselves after the wealthy, or the famous, or the uber-cool who offer up a more material definition of "good".
There are several people who'd make great models - Dr. King, Mother Theresa, as you listed - but these people all are famous for acting in a way similar to Christ. These sort of heroes are common in culture, including our fiction, because we've absorbed that sort of morality from the religions have the have dominated in the western world for centuries. Without those religions, I suspect our culture would have a very different understanding of what qualifies as a "very good person".
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