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Author Topic: General thread drift SHOWDOOOWN June 1st 2:09 MST
Rakeesh
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Paul,

quote:
No, I don't. Nowhere have I said that non-religious people do not engage in illogic, or irrationality, nor have I said they do not do awful things. You can try to pretend that's what I said, but that doesn't make it so.
You just said, like two posts ago, that the higher the degree of religion, the more crime there will be. I wasn't saying you were saying atheists don't do bad things. I was saying you were saying that we would do less bad things if we didn't have religion. Which unquestionably you are.

quote:
But the problem is, a belief in god is not rational. It can't be arrived at through sound logic with premises rooted in reality. Asserting otherwise doesn't make the problem go away.
Well, that's certainly not an argument I'm going to get in with you. It would be as futile as discussing nuances of Christianity with Ron Lambert. No nuance of meaning, no variation on definitions, is allowed with either of you. For you, words like 'logic' and 'rational' mean lots of things, but they also very specifically don't mean one thing: religious.

That's just not going to be a productive discussion. I'll just insist that I certainly know my own experiences better than you do.

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Tresopax
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quote:
But the problem is, a belief in god is not rational. It can't be arrived at through sound logic with premises rooted in reality.
That could only be true if you start with the assumption that God doesn't exist, because if God does exist then there are plenty of potential premises rooted in reality that could logically lead one to a belief in God. Doesn't that make your argument rather circular, or at least mostly pointless when arguing with someone who obviously doesn't start with the assumption that God doesn't exist?

And in truth, I don't think your point is true even if God doesn't exist - I suspect some set of assumptions rooted in reality exists either way that would logically lead one to believe in God as long as no other mitigating assumptions were added.

[ May 31, 2009, 01:00 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]

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Samprimary
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quote:
That could only be true if you start with the assumption that God doesn't exist
Or if you come to the understanding that no evidence for God exists.
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Paul Goldner
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"That's just not going to be a productive discussion. I'll just insist that I certainly know my own experiences better than you do. "

You know, Scott did this recently. "I arrived at a belief in god through rational processes," and then refused to discuss those processes. In hypothetical, he explained how someone COULD reach a belief in god through rational processes... but as it turned out, he was talking about reaching a belief in god through logical fallacies. This is my general experience.

I do not believe you reached a belief in god through rational processes. If you wish to discuss the processes you used to arrive at the conclusion, I'll listen with an open mind. But I also won't hold back from pointing out illogic in your reasoning.

" I wasn't saying you were saying atheists don't do bad things. I was saying you were saying that we would do less bad things if we didn't have religion. Which unquestionably you are."

I apologize. I misunderstood what you were saying when you said "But here's the bogus part of your argument: plenty of people who don't embrace religion are highly illogical, irrational, and awful.
"

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Paul Goldner
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"That could only be true if you start with the assumption that God doesn't exist, because if God does exist then there are plenty of potential premises rooted in reality that could logically lead one to a belief in God."

One should start with no assumptions about whether or not god exists. If one does, I do not believe that there is a reality based rational process that leads to a belief in god. No one has yet demonstrated one, at any rate. Which doesn't mean there couldn't be one. But a lot of people have tried and failed.

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ClaudiaTherese
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quote:
Originally posted by Paul Goldner:
"That could only be true if you start with the assumption that God doesn't exist, because if God does exist then there are plenty of potential premises rooted in reality that could logically lead one to a belief in God."

One should start with no assumptions about whether or not god exists. If one does, I do not believe that there is a reality based rational process that leads to a belief in god. No one has yet demonstrated one, at any rate. Which doesn't mean there couldn't be one. But a lot of people have tried and failed.

[Added: I agree with you, Paul. In technical terms,] Starting by assuming the conclusion is true is the classic definition of "begging the question," making it not so much a logical argument as a simple assertion.

[edited out unnecessary digression]

FWIW, there are reams of academic resources on that fallacy already available online.

[ May 31, 2009, 07:20 AM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]

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Paul Goldner
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say in reference to my post, CT. I understand what begging the question is, and I don't think i'm asserting a process that includes it.

Ahhh. With your edit it makes more sense now!

[ May 31, 2009, 07:17 AM: Message edited by: Paul Goldner ]

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ClaudiaTherese
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No, I am merely restating what you said in different terms. I am agreeing with you -- just furthering the conversation.

I couldn't who you were directly quoting, so I just quoted your full post for context when I elaborated.

---

Added: But given the full context of the discussion and my propensity to hives, I'll leave it at agreement with you and happily continue on with other things. [Wink]

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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by Paul Goldner:
"That's just not going to be a productive discussion. I'll just insist that I certainly know my own experiences better than you do. "

You know, Scott did this recently. "I arrived at a belief in god through rational processes," and then refused to discuss those processes.

Dude, just the watchmaker argument suffices as a rational argument for the existence of a Creator. Heck, it suffices as a rational argument for the irrationality of atheism.
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MrSquicky
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
If you insist on arriving at premises by irrational means

That doesn't make any sense. All fundamental premises are irrational.
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Lisa
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Not so. A is A is not irrational, and it's a fundamental premise.
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fugu13
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The watchmaker argument is at best a suggestion to someone predisposed. It is easy to find complex things that many people think are designed, but that are not designed. Thus the argument from analogy in the watchmaker argument is insufficiently supported to be convincing.
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Paul Goldner
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The watchmaker argument? Seriously?
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Lisa
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Seriously. And Paul, you accept the watchmaker argument yourself all the time in your life. You just don't want to accept it in this one case.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
The watchmaker argument is at best a suggestion to someone predisposed. It is easy to find complex things that many people think are designed, but that are not designed. Thus the argument from analogy in the watchmaker argument is insufficiently supported to be convincing.

Come on. Give me an example of something that looks designed and isn't.

Did you ever see 2001: A Space Odyssey? Cruddy movie, but what was interesting was the way people reacted to it.

Okay, we land on the moon, and what do we find? A big black monolith. No writing, no nothing. The only thing special about it is that it's a perfect rectangular prism.

But everyone just assumes that this means it's an artifact. And hell, of course it's an artifact. But why? I mean, the odds of a shape like that coming about by pure happenstance aren't that outrageous. Certainly not in comparison to an eyeball or a pocketwatch. But no one walked out of the movie saying, "I don't get it. Why did that monolith 'prove' that there was another intelligent race in the universe?" It was obvious.

You have to be strongly agenda driven to say otherwise.

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MrSquicky
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quote:
A is A is not irrational, and it's a fundamental premise.
Yes, it is irrational. There is no rational reason to believe it.
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Tresopax
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quote:
One should start with no assumptions about whether or not god exists. If one does, I do not believe that there is a reality based rational process that leads to a belief in god. No one has yet demonstrated one, at any rate. Which doesn't mean there couldn't be one. But a lot of people have tried and failed.
If you don't start with any assumptions about God, it's pretty easy to come up with sets of assumptions that would logically lead one to a belief in God. Here's a simple example:

Premise 1: Joe heard God speak to him
Premise 2: When Joe hears something speak to him, it likely exists
Premise 3: If something likely exists, Joe should believe it exists
Conclusion: Joe should believe that God exists

The conclusion follows from the premises. Now, you can argue that the premises are not "reality based" but the only reason you'd have to make such a claim is if you started with the assumption that God doesn't exist. Otherwise, there's no reason to think they aren't, in Joe's case, reality based.

Hence, the point you are making here only follows if we assume God doesn't exist. If, as you say, we should start with no assumptions about whether God exists, then there's no reason to assume there's no set of reality based assumptions that wouldn't logically lead one to conclude God exists.

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Paul Goldner
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"Come on. Give me an example of something that looks designed and isn't.
"

Graphs of a mandlebrot set. Any organism.

"And Paul, you accept the watchmaker argument yourself all the time in your life."

Yes, I assume people build watches. But I know from other evidence that people build watches. So, analogously, I'd have to know from other experience that god exists, and that god build's universes, before accepting the watch-maker argument. To do otherwise is irrational.


"If you don't start with any assumptions about God, it's pretty easy to come up with sets of assumptions that would logically lead one to a belief in God. Here's a simple example:

Premise 1: Joe heard God speak to him"

Your premises include the conclusion, so its begging the question. Not logical.

[ May 31, 2009, 10:33 AM: Message edited by: Paul Goldner ]

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Teshi
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quote:
But everyone just assumes that this means it's an artifact. And hell, of course it's an artifact. But why? I mean, the odds of a shape like that coming about by pure happenstance aren't that outrageous. Certainly not in comparison to an eyeball or a pocketwatch. But no one walked out of the movie saying, "I don't get it. Why did that monolith 'prove' that there was another intelligent race in the universe?" It was obvious.
Ah, but if there was a planet scattered with hundreds of thousands of monoliths in various states of perfection: some smaller, some bigger, some without smooth sides, or pointy corners, you might come to a conclusion that these are in fact some kind of localized mineral that forms large, black crystals.

There isn't just one human standing alone on a biologically inactive planet. There are billions of humans, with billions of ancestors, also humans and humanoid. There are human-like creatures still living today. There are the bones of human-like creatures that are not quite what we see today buried in the ground. Humans share tracts of their DNA with all the living creatures on the Earth, right down to the very simplest.

We are not just a single monolith, we are a whole slew of monoliths, all slightly different from each other. There is huge amounts of evidence that we as "monoliths" have not spontaneously been placed in a world that is unfamiliar to our chemical makeup. We are all of us built of the same stuff the unbiological bits of the Earth is built of. Not only that, there is evidence as to how that occurred, there is evidence of the mechanism of change. Every time a pregnant animal builds a baby we see how each animal came to be built out of

As a result, we cannot immediately conclude that life on Earth was built by an alien intelligence. We might at first be taken aback by how brilliantly well adapted and peculiar we are compared to, say, a hunk of coal. But if we consider at all we will say, "hang on a second, these monoliths (animals, plants) may look amazing, but there are so many of them, and they're all slightly different in a way that suggests that the most astonishing examples-- the humans-- are a kind of derivation of the "less perfect" monoliths. And perhaps each monolith is a derivation of another monolith and on and on all the way down to this sand that we're walking through." And when our scientists look at the sand, they find that the chemical make-up is the same, and not only that, there are the little nubbins of monoliths buried in it, growing their way up into the huge perfect monoliths that made us imagine in that initial moment of wonder that they could have been put there by an alien intelligence.

This is what Darwin did and what every single scientist has done science Darwin first noticed this. It's incredible it took us that long to figure it out from the Alien Hypothesis.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Not so. A is A is not irrational, and it's a fundamental premise.

As presented (an axiomatic assertion hijacked by Objectivism) It is actually only rational under the auspices of the philosophical premise that redefines as 'rational' only as those things which agree with that philosophical premise. It's actually absurdly circular when all things are taken into consideration.

Likewise there is a mistake with using a teleological argument to 'rationally' assert the existence of God. One might as well use Irreducable Complexity or a weak anthropic principle to 'logically' or 'rationally' conclude the existence of God; you're relying on fallacy, and only mistakenly refer to there being 'evidence' or the 'rationality' of your conclusions.

quote:
Give me an example of something that looks designed and isn't.
An eye. Hexagonal granite stone pillars. The human immune system. A planet ('wow, it's perfectly spherical and has a perfectly assembled self-perpetuating atmospheric balance!'). A fractal. Any lifeform. A snowflake.
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Juxtapose
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This argument always struck me as weird.

1. You find a black monolith on the moon.

2. You believe, with reason, that the monolith has been designed.

3. The monolith and the universe share certain characteristics.

4. This is good reason to believe the universe is designed.

But if that's true, why would the monolith stand out in the first place? Inherent in the discovery of the monolith is the notion that it stands out in some way. If the reason it stands out is that it's been designed, then that's an argument against the universe [ETA: or the moon, for the purposes of this analogy] having been designed.

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fugu13
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Yep, that's another fun aspect of the argument. The first part of the argument relies on an assumption that the watch is designed in a way that other things are not, yet when you extend it to the universe, there are no other things. The argument says that "everything is designed" is a logical conclusion, but the original premise, about the watch, is not consistent with the conclusion, since the conclusion asserts there's nothing to make the watch stand out from everything else.
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Glenn Arnold
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quote:
Okay, we land on the moon, and what do we find? A big black monolith. No writing, no nothing. The only thing special about it is that it's a perfect rectangular prism.
Which is why it was referred to as the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly.

Then there's the fact that it transmits a radio signal directed toward Jupiter. And has physical properties unequaled by anything else we've ever seen. Nope, nothing special at all.

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Glenn Arnold
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What the hell does this have to do with Prop 8?
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Dobbie
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Nothing. That's the beauty of it.
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Juxtapose
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Threads drift, as does the moral zeitgeist. All is one.
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Tresopax
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quote:
"If you don't start with any assumptions about God, it's pretty easy to come up with sets of assumptions that would logically lead one to a belief in God. Here's a simple example:

Premise 1: Joe heard God speak to him"

Your premises include the conclusion, so its begging the question. Not logical.

"Joe should believe God exists" is the conclusion you asked for. That is not one of the premises.
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Rakeesh
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Actually, aren't organisms filled with all sorts of redundancies and now-useless genes?

As for begging the question...

1. Joe heard God speak to him.
2. I have no reason to think Joe is not of sound mind.

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Blayne Bradley
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quote:
Originally posted by The Pixiest:
Sorry Boots, but when you're talking about something being "illogical" then logic and reason ARE the only tools available.

And religion DOES step off the deep end. A LOT.

http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/wtc-9-11.jpg

To be FAIR I can see a nationalistic pan arab movement doing something similar.
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Paul Goldner
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""Joe should believe God exists" is the conclusion you asked for. That is not one of the premises. "

Joe has a rational reason to believe god exists is the what I asked for.

One of the premises is god exists. Its begging the question. Logical fallacy.

"I have no reason to think Joe is not of sound mind. "

I do have reason to believe that joe is not a reliable reporter and interpreter of sensory input. or lack of sensory input. He's human, afterall.

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Tinros
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quote:
Originally posted by Dobbie:
Nothing. That's the beauty of it.

And Dobbie wins the thread.
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Rakeesh
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quote:
I do have reason to believe that joe is not a reliable reporter and interpreter of sensory input. or lack of sensory input. He's human, afterall.
If you really believed that, you wouldn't be such a proponent of science over religion either. Major human factor in science as well, yes?

'Not perfect' /= delusional.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
If you really believed that, you wouldn't be such a proponent of science over religion either.
That's actually the beauty of science, since it specifically addresses this problem.
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Rakeesh
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quote:
That's actually the beauty of science, since it specifically addresses this problem.
Not entirely. Human beings are the ones doing science, right?

I'm not saying that science is as imprecise as religion for dealing with concrete facts. That'd be silly. I'm saying that to doubt religion because 'joe is not a reliable reporter and interpreter of sensory input, because he's human' is a problem that also applies very much to science as well. Even though it tries to deal with the problem.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Human beings are the ones doing science, right?
Yes. But, again, the beauty of science is that it demands reproducible results. The odds that every single person able to reproduce the same result under the same conditions (without anyone not being able to reproduce the same result under the same conditions) is deluded are much, much lower.
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Tresopax
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quote:
One of the premises is god exists. Its begging the question. Logical fallacy.
No, one of the premises of my argument was that Joe heard God. "God exists" was not a premise.
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Rakeesh
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quote:
Yes. But, again, the beauty of science is that it demands reproducible results. The odds that every single person able to reproduce the same result under the same conditions (without anyone not being able to reproduce the same result under the same conditions) is deluded are much, much lower.
How much then are the odds that someone joining a populous religion isn't deluded lowered, Tom? Somehow I suspect your answer will be 'none at all' [Smile]

And of course we don't often wait hundreds or thousands of times for something to be repeated to consider it proven scientifically. A relatively few times is enough.

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fugu13
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Tres: perhaps you could go with "heard a message that identified itself as from God"? Otherwise "God exists" is a necessary implication of your premises, and that is begging the question: if God definitely spoke to him, of course he should believe God exists.
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Tresopax
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Fair enough - we can go with "Joe heard a message that identified itself as from God".
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TomDavidson
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quote:
How much then are the odds that someone joining a populous religion isn't deluded lowered, Tom? Somehow I suspect your answer will be 'none at all'
Surprisingly, no! If there's a large population of people out there claiming to hear the voice of God, the odds that they really are are higher than one solitary dude claiming to hear the voice of God. (There's a confounding factor, of course; mass hysteria is always a danger in this sort of thing. Luckily for science, few people get so hysterical that they start hallucinating inaccurate meter readings.) Unfortunately, on this specific topic, there are opposing populations claiming to hear God say different and exclusive things, so the only way to judge between them is by looking at the fruits of their claim: whether hearing God actually appears to reliably offer them any advantages as a people. Sadly, there is no evidence for this, either.
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vonk
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quote:
Unfortunately, on this topic, there are opposing populations claiming to hear God say different and exclusive things, so the only way to judge between them is by looking at the fruits of their claim: whether hearing God actually appears to reliably offer them any advantages as a people.
Is this the best way to judge religions, the result rather than the message? Some of my favorite religions have ulimately born little to no fruit. Does that make them better or worse than those with less than savory products?
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Samprimary
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quote:
Is this the best way to judge religions, the result rather than the message?
When they make testable claims, yes.

Or, for that matter, when one claims that they have logically deduced evidence of the fact that their particular sect of their particular subset of their particular religion is the correct one whose god/gods exist.

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Tresopax
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quote:
Unfortunately, on this topic, there are opposing populations claiming to hear God say different and exclusive things, so the only way to judge between them is by looking at the fruits of their claim: whether hearing God actually appears to reliably offer them any advantages as a people.
I don't thnk the "fruits" of religion is best described as that which gives the people of that religion an advantage.

The bottom line here is that if you are truly interested in understanding religion, you have to be willing to accept that people rationally form beliefs without complete certainty sometimes, that often those beliefs are based on evidence that is not formally testable or quantifiable, that frequently those beliefs leave more questions unanswered than solved, and that the fruits of thinking in such a way might not be things that can easily be proven. If a given person isn't willing to accept the possibility of these things, if they are unwilling to think beyond the bounds of the box they've put their reasoning in, then I'm afraid religion and the behavior of the religious will probably never make logical sense to them.

Even if a minority of Americans have put their thinking in such a box, that does not mean the majority should abide by it. We do have a separation between church and state, and we are NOT a theocracy. But we are a nation that has accepted religion as a valid and powerful way of thinking, coming to decisions, and living life. That is a premise at least as fundamental to our civil society as the division of church and state, and potentially more so. For the minority who wish to complain about it, they are pretty much free to do so. But for the rest of us, the challenge is to figure out how to practically deal with the disagreements between religions, within religion, and between religion and other fields of knowledge in such a way that people aren't getting shot over the abortion issue, that loving relationships aren't held back without strong reasons, and so on. It's a balancing act we've done for two centuries in the U.S. We've made slow but steady progress.

[ June 02, 2009, 08:39 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]

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TomDavidson
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quote:
I don't thnk the "fruits" of religion is best described as that which gives the people of that religion an advantage.
Why not? If they claim to hear the voice of God, it seems reasonable to assume that God is offering them good advice that is better than what other people are receiving.

quote:
you have to be willing to accept that people rationally form beliefs without complete certainty sometimes, that often those beliefs are based on evidence that is not formally testable or quantifiable, that frequently those beliefs leave more questions unanswered than solved, and that the fruits of thinking in such a way might not be things that can easily be proven.
I'm afraid this (broadly; your literal text does, but you don't mean exactly what you're saying) doesn't meet my standards for "rational." If you remove "rationally" from the first bit, I'm okay with that.

quote:
But we are a nation that has accepted religion as a valid and powerful way of thinking, coming to decisions, and living life.
For three hundred years, sure. I'll give it another eighty before that changes.
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Rakeesh
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So now rationality requires complete certainty?
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TomDavidson
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No, it's not the lack of certainty that's the problem.
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Tresopax
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quote:
I'm afraid this (broadly; your literal text does, but you don't mean exactly what you're saying) doesn't meet my standards for "rational." If you remove "rationally" from the first bit, I'm okay with that.
I got my first copy of Ender's Game as a gift from someone who claimed it was a great book. But after examining the spaceship cover and reading the little summary on the back, I decided it probably wasn't up to my standard for what constitutes a book worth reading. A few months later I actually read it anyway, and realized my standards were wrong. That's the ticky thing about standards; it's not hard to get caught up in measuring things against one's standards and lose track of whether the standards are accurately measuring what really matters. Apparently, cliche covers don't indicate a book I wouldn't enjoy to the degree that I'd guessed.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
it's not hard to get caught up in measuring things against one's standards and lose track of whether the standards are accurately measuring what really matters
Yeah. Bartenders eyeball their pints, too. What does the definition of "pint" matter, when what really matters is whether it's beer?
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Rakeesh
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quote:
No, it's not the lack of certainty that's the problem.
Then what is?
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TomDavidson
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Because what Tres meant to say is this:

quote:
you have to be willing to accept that people form beliefs without any mechanism by which they can attain certainty, that those beliefs are based on evidence for asserted phenomena that has never been formally testable or quantifiable, that frequently those beliefs appear to lack internal consistency or similarity to observational reality to an extent that they demand tortured speculation from their adherents, and that the fruits of thinking in such a way might be invisible or even negative to unbiased observers
Taken in toto, I think this precludes rationality.
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