quote:To say I have some evidence of quantum mechanics other than appeal to authority and its consistency with certain other prior beliefs I hold would be a lie.
You may not have it in front of you, but it exists, and can be provided to you. I don't think your clergy can do the same.
If my clergy said they had evidence they could provide to me, but that I couldn't understand it myself without several more years of study under people who already understand the evidence, and that even then I couldn't see the evidence myself unless I had access to a bunch of equipment that I do not currently have access to, would you count that as me having the evidence myself?
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: MightyCow, Whether you believe it or not, there are some fairly significant differences between your story and commonly accepted religious beliefs. There is a large amount of scholar work looking at new religious movements and the qualities that make them believable. You should at least look at what's been done in the area before you start making claims. That is, after, the scientific approach.
Can you give some examples of these significant differences that don't boil down to cultural acceptance or appeal to authority?
Since I'm referring to the scholarly study of new religious movements, none of the factors are closely related to cultural acceptance or appeal to authority.
Its a pretty complicated question that I can't really do justice to. My very short and inadequate answer is this, religion isn't solely or even primarily about the mythology. Religious practices, rituals and theology are far more important than what it says about supernatural beings or creation. Religions thrive for two key reasons that have little to do with their underlying mythology. First, they encourage practices (like fasting, meditation, prayer, and other rituals) that stimulate the areas of the brain which create a sense of well being and altruism. Second, they offer compelling visions about how an individual relates to community and universe.
If the subject interests you, you should study it because a lot scholarly research has been done in the area. I have a general beef about people who make strident claims (in any area whether be it climate change, civil war history, or religion) without bothering first to learn what others have already discovered. I find it most ironic when its done by new atheists claiming to promote objectivism and reason.
I'm pretty familiar with these ideas, though not so much with the specific research. These are excellent reasons for defending the importance of religion in general to many people. I, too, am put off by militant atheists who cannot see that adherence to religious beliefs is far more complicated than simple logical fallacy.
But MC isn't making this claim. What you've summarized above could just as easily apply to his proposed leprechaunism. To ignore this, along with dismissing it because *he* clearly made it up, I think misses the point he's trying to make.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: [quote]"So what are you claiming is the difference between the doctor and the shaman if not the fact that the doctor has the evidence on his side, and the shaman doesn't?" The difference is that everything I've seen leads me to believe doctors are trustworthy authorities, which is not true for shamans.
Likewise, everything the torturer has seen leads him to believe that his inquisitor boss is a trustworthy authority on the state of your heretic spouse's soul.
He has no evidence, of course, he has only his authority, and his prior beleifs based on his personal judgment, but according to you, that's all he needs, right? It's not like he should allow the evidence to usurp his personal judgment's place as the final arbiter of decisions, right? Because that would be immoral, according to some.
quote:"How do you decide which is which, other than chosing to believe authorities which agree with you, and believing the "evidence" when it agrees with you?" I use my best judgement based on all the information available to me.
Including astrology books? Well, that's just what the torturer does.
quote:"For instance, (for the millionth time) how did you decide whether Muslim religious leaders are authorities on the divinty of Jesus?" I used my best judgement based on the information I have about them, particularly the fact that their teachings conflict with many other of my beliefs and the fact that they base their conclusions on authorities I haven't accepted.
Do you really not understand that a circular answer is no answer at all? When I ask you how you pick authorities, you can't answer "I compare to the other authorities I previously picked".
And if those prior beliefs are based on authorites like you say they are, then you are circular again.
I note that "what does the evidence say" apparently plays absolutely no part in this process, does it?
quote:"And though you disagree with the conclusion, you apparently find no fault with his method of drawing that conclusion?" If by "his method" you mean "using authorities along with evidence and reasoning to derive your beliefs" then yes, I find no fault in his method even though I believe his conclusion is totally wrong.
Reason and evidence? After pages and pages of saying that personal judgment and reliance on authorities as the way to go, now you are dropping reason and evidence in?
When just yesterday, you argued that people should ignore reason and evidence, and trust authorities (doctors) instead?
And now you are arguing something else?
The torturer's personal judgement, which is based on "all the information he has" including his respect for his chosen authorities, tell him that torture is the right thing to do. The evidence tells him that it won't accomplish anything but agony for your spouse. Are you arguing that he should or shouldn't allow the evidence to usurp his personal judgment as the final arbiter of this decision?
quote:"How do you check the scale to know if you are weighing your feelings about your mind and brain are accurate?" Keep asking questions, keep being skeptical, and keep comparing your beliefs against new information.
Okay, so the torturer might change his mind if he had new information on the state of your spouse's soul. How do you suggest he go about collecting information on this topic? Won't he just reply that since your alternate authorities have "teachings [that] conflict with many other of [his] beliefs and the fact that [your alternate authorities] base their conclusions on authorities [he] haven't accepted", that he'll reject them, just like you reject the Muslim religious authorities?.
quote:"Really, this is a simple yes-no. I can answer it quite easily in a sentence, but why can't you?" I can answer all these questions in a sentence, like I did above, but I'm thinking you probably want to know WHY I answer them the way I do and how my answers fit together.
But the WHY doesn't take more than a sentence either. And I can do it without being circular. I trust the doctor because her claims have been reality-tested, and passed. The shamans haven't. There's no evidence about the state of anyone's soul, or if one even exists, or that God wants people to do or believe certain things, or even that God exists at all. The evidence says that torturing your spouse won't accomplish anything but pain, so that's why I conclude that torture is pointless. I disregard the Muslim religious teacher, not because he disagrees with what my Mommy told me about God, but because he has no evidence to support his claims.
And the reason evidence has primacy is not because it can tell me when I'm right, but because it forces me to see when I'm wrong.
Christians and Muslims can't both be right about the divinity of Jesus. One of them has to be wrong. How do you propose we figure that out? How would you detect if you were the one who was wrong?
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quote:Whether you believe it or not, there are some fairly significant differences between your story and commonly accepted religious beliefs. There is a large amount of scholar work looking at new religious movements and the qualities that make them believable.
This is a little off target. Your later post clarified how there's some science that may indicate why religions thrive. But MC is talking about reasons for accepting the specific mythology.
If you have two different religions making contradictory mythological claims, which confer similar benefits to their adherents through the mechanisms of shared ritual and persuasive worldview, what justification is there for choosing to believe one over the other?
That's a pretty narrow question, and I'm not sure your criticism applies unless you interpret it more broadly than intended.
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rollainm and scifibum: thank you. I'm glad that I'm not being incoherent in my posts, as you both knew what I was saying.
The Rabbit: This is the second time in as many days that you've attacked me for things I haven't said and made claims to my stupidity based on your own lack of reading comprehension. Clearly my posts rub you the wrong way, but I wish you didn't feel the need to resort to name calling. I would much rather have a productive discussion.
I do understand why some people believe in religious ideas. It's silly for you to keep insinuating that I am ignorant of things I'm not even addressing. Bad faith.
What I'm specifically asking is that people who hold specific religious beliefs and reject similar beliefs of other traditions think about what makes their beliefs "true" and nearly identical beliefs not only false, but often foolish, backward or repugnant.
Are you willing to answer the question? Human sacrifice vs human sacrifice. Cannibalism vs cannibalism. Spirit caused sickness vs spirit caused sickness.
Foolish when primitive tribes believe them, but logical and right when Christians change the wording a little bit?
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quote:He has no evidence, of course, he has only his authority, and his prior beleifs based on his personal judgment, but according to you, that's all he needs, right?
Right.
quote:It's not like he should allow the evidence to usurp his personal judgment's place as the final arbiter of decisions, right?
You just said he has no evidence. If he does have evidence available to him, that changes the question. In that case, he needs to weigh the evidence and factor it into his decision.
quote:The torturer's personal judgement, which is based on "all the information he has" including his respect for his chosen authorities, tell him that torture is the right thing to do. The evidence tells him that it won't accomplish anything but agony for your spouse. Are you arguing that he should or shouldn't allow the evidence to usurp his personal judgment as the final arbiter of this decision?
Generally speaking, he should go with all the information he has - but it appears you've set up a situation where all the information he has is going to lead him to the wrong answer in that particular case. Similarly, I could say "What if the evidence tells a man he needs to torture your spouse, but a voice in his head speaks to him and tells him he should not. Should the man listen to the voice or the evidence?" In such a situation, listening to the voice would lead him to the right answer - but that doesn't prove that listening to voices in your head is generally the best way of choosing beliefs. All it proves is that I can invent one scenario where it turns out better.
quote:Do you really not understand that a circular answer is no answer at all? When I ask you how you pick authorities, you can't answer "I compare to the other authorities I previously picked".
And if those prior beliefs are based on authorites like you say they are, then you are circular again.
I note that "what does the evidence say" apparently plays absolutely no part in this process, does it?
This isn't circular logic. It's a regression. If you want to know how I began to trust the initial authorities in the regression, it was probably when I was a child, and it began by me simply trusting them and seeing what happens. People and things that proved trustworthy over time became authorities.
And yes, I've said multiple times that evidence is a big part of the process.
quote:When just yesterday, you argued that people should ignore reason and evidence, and trust authorities (doctors) instead?
And now you are arguing something else?
No, I've consistently argued that reason and evidence need to be weighed alongside authorities.
quote:Okay, so the torturer might change his mind if he had new information on the state of your spouse's soul. How do you suggest he go about collecting information on this topic? Won't he just reply that since your alternate authorities have "teachings [that] conflict with many other of [his] beliefs and the fact that [your alternate authorities] base their conclusions on authorities [he] haven't accepted", that he'll reject them, just like you reject the Muslim religious authorities?
Once he has the new information he has to reconsider the old information too - if the new information is convincing enough then he might reject the old authorities that contradict it. Or if the new information is not very convincing, he might decide to stick with what the odl authorities said.
quote:Christians and Muslims can't both be right about the divinity of Jesus. One of them has to be wrong. How do you propose we figure that out? How would you detect if you were the one who was wrong?
I don't think we can figure out for sure who's wrong, given the information we have. I propose we each try our best to make our own good judgement about it, given the best information available to us - including the teachings of authorities and the evidence we've gathered.
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Rakeesh: First, I'd like to point out that there are indeed significant populations who believe the various versions of Christian beliefs I have used, but I'm willing to alter the wording to suit you if it will let us get on with the question at hand.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Well, one big, obvious answer to that question is to point out how you're, according to Christian belief at least, partially comparing apples and oranges. Jesus being God and all raises the question: why is the death and resurrection of Jesus being compared to a human sacrifice? Or, in other words, it's beautiful and awesome to Christians because it is believed that God loved us human beings so much that God was willing to endure great pain, suffering, and even death, for our sakes. I'm putting that in very broad terms to apply to as many Christians as possible.
Christians believe the sacrifice of Jesus was in order to obtain a much greater reward than improvement in weather, is another very obvious answer.
Actually, I'm arguing apples to apples. Christ was both Fully God and Fully Man.
The Mayans believed that they were sacrificing only the most perfect and holy of their people, who were anointed by the Gods and actually took on the mantle and image of the God, attaining a holy status and being physically worshiped by the people as the God himself.
Christians believe that Jesus died so that we could live. The Mayans believed that they must make these human sacrifices so that they would receive rain, which would insure that their crops would grow and their people would survive.
The two sacrifices are very nearly identical.
You're just arguing that the Christian story sounds cooler, so it makes sense to believe. Which is completely illogical and again, falls back on nothing more than cultural norms and appeal to authority.
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quote:I'm pretty familiar with these ideas, though not so much with the specific research. These are excellent reasons for defending the importance of religion in general to many people. I, too, am put off by militant atheists who cannot see that adherence to religious beliefs is far more complicated than simple logical fallacy.
But MC isn't making this claim. What you've summarized above could just as easily apply to his proposed leprechaunism. To ignore this, along with dismissing it because *he* clearly made it up, I think misses the point he's trying to make.
Forgive me if I'm not expressing my point clearly. I don't have much time to devote to this. If I understand it correctly, MC is claiming that the primary reasons people find the mythology of various religions more believable than "leprechaunism" are familiarity and accepted authority figures.
But new religions arise with relative regularity, and people change religions frequently, so that can't be the whole story. People get really sidetracked if they presume that religious mythology is trying to explain the same things science is trying to explain, which is why scientific arguments against creationism are generally ineffective.
Religious mythology may talk, for example, about the creation of the world, but the point of that mythology is quite different from the point of theories like the big band. The point of religious creation stories isn't physical, its metaphysical. It provides a context that helps explain the individuals relationship to everything else. People accept specific religious mythology not just because its a familiar part of a world view they find compelling but because it supports a world view they find compelling. Its part of the greater tapestry of their religion and is part of what makes the ritual and the doctrines hang together. People don't choose between different religious mythologies, they choose between different religious world views.
Pointing out that if you strip away the rest of the religion, there is nothing to recommend one mythology over another completely misses the point of religious mythology. Its sort of like saying,"If you eliminate relativity and quantum theory, there is no more reason to accept the big bang theory". Its missing the point.
Leprechaunism differs from religious myths because it doesn't say anything meaningful to me (or anyone else here) about life's larger questions. It does nothing to support a world view that anyone would find compelling. I suppose someone might try to build a religion around this new myth, but its unlikely to work. Leprechaunism is simply missing the characteristics that make good religious mythology. Religious mythology evolves from the particular religious worldview and not vice-versa.
There are scholars who have studied this in detail and identified features that make new religions (and their mythology) believable. If you are interested, look at what they've found. I've already dedicated more time to this than I have.
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quote:Christians believe that Jesus died so that we could live. The Mayans believed that they must make these human sacrifices so that they would receive rain, which would insure that their crops would grow and their people would survive.
The two sacrifices are very nearly identical.
Nearly identical. You have stretched the point beyond reason.
Christians did not and do not sacrifice Jesus. We believe that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice for us. While its true that he was killed by people, those people weren't Christians and they weren't killing him so they could live. That's a pretty significant difference.
What you have said if that killing your neighbor for your own benefit is nearly identical to honoring the death of a neighbor who was killed protecting you. I'm sure you can appreciate how different those two are.
I'm also sure you can see how different it is to believe God wants you to kill people and eat them, them to believe God ask you to eat bread which he will magically transform into his flesh. The difference is glaringly obvious.
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quote:He has no evidence, of course, he has only his authority, and his prior beliefs based on his personal judgment, but according to you, that's all he needs, right?
Right.
quote:It's not like he should allow the evidence to usurp his personal judgment's place as the final arbiter of decisions, right?
You just said he has no evidence. If he does have evidence available to him, that changes the question. In that case, he needs to weigh the evidence and factor it into his decision.
But authorities can trump evidence, right? You wrote that. And so can "personal judgement". You wrote that too. What's the point of collecting evidence if you can just decide that your chosen authorities and the prior beliefs that your personal judgment gives trump evidence?
quote:
quote:The torturer's personal judgement, which is based on "all the information he has" including his respect for his chosen authorities, tell him that torture is the right thing to do. The evidence tells him that it won't accomplish anything but agony for your spouse. Are you arguing that he should or shouldn't allow the evidence to usurp his personal judgment as the final arbiter of this decision?
Generally speaking, he should go with all the information he has - but it appears you've set up a situation where all the information he has is going to lead him to the wrong answer in that particular case.
I am simply repeating a scenario which your religious forebearers enacted a thousand times over the last thousand years. Don't blame me for simply describing the past.
And no, in the scenario he has all the tools needed to draw the conclusion that he should not torture your spouse, if he acts based on reason and evidence, as I've been arguing he should. He knows that he can't point to real evidence concerning your spouse's soul. It's when he draws conclusions they you think he should, where he listens to his chosen authorities, and ignores any information that disagrees with his prior beliefs and chosen authorities, that leads to his ugly and unshakable conclusion.
To put it another way, he's as likely to change his mind about his beliefs about your spouse's soul as you are to change your mind to agree with the Muslim religious teacher about Jesus' divinity. He holds his beliefs there exactly as you hold yours; he believes in his authorities just as you believe in yours, he dismisses contrary ideas based on their conflicting with his prior beliefs and unchosen authorities just like you do. You could suggest to him that he ignore all that, and just believe what the evidence says, and then your spouse would go free...but you'd have to do the same thing with regard to Jesus' divinity. And you aren't going to do that.
quote:Similarly, I could say "What if the evidence tells a man he needs to torture your spouse, but a voice in his head speaks to him and tells him he should not. Should the man listen to the voice or the evidence?" In such a situation, listening to the voice would lead him to the right answer - but that doesn't prove that listening to voices in your head is generally the best way of choosing beliefs.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you have that extraordinary evidence (say, the 'torture' is a necessary medical procedure), then it should be done.
But if you are asking me "Did Daniel Hauser's mother do the right thing in preventing her sick son from getting life-saving, but painful chemo treatments"?, my answer is a resounding "no". I guess your answer is different.
quote:
quote:Do you really not understand that a circular answer is no answer at all? When I ask you how you pick authorities, you can't answer "I compare to the other authorities I previously picked".
And if those prior beliefs are based on authorites like you say they are, then you are circular again.
I note that "what does the evidence say" apparently plays absolutely no part in this process, does it?
This isn't circular logic. It's a regression. If you want to know how I began to trust the initial authorities in the regression, it was probably when I was a child, and it began by me simply trusting them and seeing what happens. People and things that proved trustworthy over time became authorities.
The torturer did the exact same thing. So how does that path turn out for your spouse?
And really, as dumb as it is to claim that people are good at making scrupulously honest judgments, it's even dumber to claim that children are good at it. So Mommy tells you that Baby Jesus is waiting for you, and you then ignore every other bit of information that disagrees with that prior belief for the rest of your life? Because Mommy trumps the evidence, right?
quote:And yes, I've said multiple times that evidence is a big part of the process.
No, you explicitly denied it a hundred times. Remember when you said that kids shouldn't bother carrying out Monty Hall simualtions, they should just ask their 5th grade brothers instead? Evidence can't be important if prior beliefs and chosen authorioties trump it. Remember when I asked you what "evidence" supported your claim that your mind and brain were separate, and you could only cite your feelings as "evidence"?
You keep insisting that the torturer is correct in his decisions, while he has no evidence to support them; only his personal judgment and chosen authorities.
And you call this a "big part in the process"?
quote:
quote:When just yesterday, you argued that people should ignore reason and evidence, and trust authorities (doctors) instead?
And now you are arguing something else?
No, I've consistently argued that reason and evidence need to be weighed alongside authorities.
No, you haven't, and anyone reading this baord can see that plainly. I don't know what you hope to accomplish by transparently misrepresenting yourself. "Authorities trump evidence" does mean "weighed alongside".
quote:
quote:Okay, so the torturer might change his mind if he had new information on the state of your spouse's soul. How do you suggest he go about collecting information on this topic? Won't he just reply that since your alternate authorities have "teachings [that] conflict with many other of [his] beliefs and the fact that [your alternate authorities] base their conclusions on authorities [he] haven't accepted", that he'll reject them, just like you reject the Muslim religious authorities?
Once he has the new information he has to reconsider the old information too - if the new information is convincing enough then he might reject the old authorities that contradict it.
He is exactly as likely to do this as you are to question Jesus' divinity. So you tell us. What are the odds that the torturer can be argued out of his beliefs? Imagine your spouse's life hangs in the balance.
quote:
quote:Christians and Muslims can't both be right about the divinity of Jesus. One of them has to be wrong. How do you propose we figure that out? How would you detect if you were the one who was wrong?
I don't think we can figure out for sure who's wrong, given the information we have. I propose we each try our best to make our own good judgement about it, given the best information available to us - including the teachings of authorities and the evidence we've gathered.
Great. What evidence have you gathered?Posts: 575 | Registered: Feb 2007
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quote: People accept specific religious mythology not just because its a familiar part of a world view they find compelling but because it supports a world view they find compelling.
This is pretty similar to the point that MC was making, you know.
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Key difference: MC is saying that religious people accept the factuality of the mythology because the religion supports their worldview. Rabbit is saying people associate with a religion because the mythology conveys the worldview.
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But remember, the contrast he was drawing was between religions that seem outmoded, barbaric, or just quaint, and those that people find attractive/sensible today.
What's the difference? Why are modern (or surviving old) religions more attractive?
The answer must have something to do with culture.
(This conversation might not be pointful, I dunno.)
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Rabbit: In both cases, we are expected to believe religious authority figures who tell us that a particular death contained magical transformative, world-changing power.
I'm assuming that nobody here believes that the death of the god-men (and women) of the Mayan sacrifices actually had a supernatural power to change the state of the world, yet many people here believe that the death of the god-man Jesus did.
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quote:First, I'd like to point out that there are indeed significant populations who believe the various versions of Christian beliefs I have used, but I'm willing to alter the wording to suit you if it will let us get on with the question at hand.
Of course there are, though I suspect that if you performed a survey asking detailed questions, the spread of answers illustrating an incredible gray area, just as a matter of percentages let us say, of how much Jesus was human and how much God, well, I think things aren't as clear-cut as you appear to believe.
But, of course, let us say for the sake of argument that all Christians believed, with no qualifications or percentages, that Jesus was 100% human and absolutely nothing else. His sacrifice was still at God's behest, and that separates it from human sacrifices for a rainier or less rainy season. Because obviously Christians don't believe those sacrifices were at God's behest.
I recognize how frustrating that must be from the outside, but consider what your comparison is basically asking: "Given that these two sacrifices are equally ridiculous, why won't you admit they are equally ridiculous?" Begging the question is just as pointless a debate tactic when it comes from an atheist or agnostic as when it does from a theist.
quote:Actually, I'm arguing apples to apples. Christ was both Fully God and Fully Man.
You can't possibly be comparing apples to apples. You talked about human sacrifices compared to the death of Jesus, Jesus being, according to what you've just said, both Fully Human and Fully God. How can that possibly be apples:apples? It's apples:applesandoranges.
quote:The Mayans believed that they were sacrificing only the most perfect and holy of their people, who were anointed by the Gods and actually took on the mantle and image of the God, attaining a holy status and being physically worshiped by the people as the God himself.
Christians believe that Jesus died so that we could live. The Mayans believed that they must make these human sacrifices so that they would receive rain, which would insure that their crops would grow and their people would survive.
Well, now we're getting into specifics, finally. From the outlook you've described - I don't know much about Mayan culture - the two sacrifices are, indeed, quite similar at least in the views of the people performing them, except that in the Christian setting only one was required, and that was not the case in the Mayan setting. But qualitatively similar, if not quantitatively.
I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge that. My reason for believing the one and not the other, though, has nothing to do with the Christian sacrifice sounding cooler than the Mayan, unless of course you profess to know the space between my ears better than I do. After which claim could I perhaps refer you to theists who will say, with total certainty, that your mind is in the clutches of Satan?
Such a claim is absurd from a 'scientific' standpoint not only because of its mention of Satan, but because of the notion that you can really have some grasp of another person's mind enough to make that sort of judgment. The sooner you acknowledge that, perhaps, you don't have as keen an insight into all theist minds, the more productive these discussions will be.
For one thing, you'd stop making false comparisons.
ETA: As Rabbit succinctly pointed out, MC, your comparison of sacrifices is flawed on a great many fundamental levels.
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quote:What's the point of collecting evidence if you can just decide that your chosen authorities and the prior beliefs that your personal judgment gives trump evidence?
The point is to base your decision on the most and best information possible. (And again, you don't get to "just decide". Your judgement says what it says, and sometimes you won't like what it says. But you have to go with it regardless. If it says a piece of evidence trumps the authority, then you have to believe that. If it says the authority is more convincing, you have to believe that. If you are being rational, you don't get to say "Well, I like what X is telling me better, so I'm going to ignore the fact that Y seems more convincing than X.")
quote:And no, in the scenario he has all the tools needed to draw the conclusion that he should not torture your spouse, if he acts based on reason and evidence, as I've been arguing he should. He knows that he can't point to real evidence concerning your spouse's soul. It's when he draws conclusions they you think he should, where he listens to his chosen authorities, and ignores any information that disagrees with his prior beliefs and chosen authorities, that leads to his ugly and unshakable conclusion.
Again, would you admit to a man that he should listen to a voice in his head, if listening to the voice in his head was the only way to convince him not to torture your spouse? And if so, would that imply listening to voices in your head is generally a good strategy for making choices, or does it just imply I've invented one scenario where it is?
quote:
quote:No, I've consistently argued that reason and evidence need to be weighed alongside authorities.
No, you haven't, and anyone reading this baord can see that plainly. I don't know what you hope to accomplish by transparently misrepresenting yourself. "Authorities trump evidence" does mean "weighed alongside".
I'm fairly confident most people who are reading my posts carefully and who are out to understand what I'm trying to say rather than simply find something wrong with what I'm saying would have seen the many times where I've flatly said that evidence and authorities should both be considered.
Please note that saying "Authorities occassionally can trump evidence" is different from saying "Authorities always trump evidence" or "Ignore evidence."
You don't have to believe me about what I believe, but I think its probably a waste of time for you to center your argument against a point I don't hold and have said I don't agree with.
quote:Great. What evidence have you gathered?
A lot more than I can list here, but most of it involves the successful results of applying the teaching of the Bible in modern life. But if you are limiting it only to direct evidence of Jesus' divinity, I am essentially unable to gather evidence of the sort you mean, because he has lived 2,000 years ago and I am not an archeologist. I'd love to consider any evidence someone could show me though.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Rabbit: In both cases, we are expected to believe religious authority figures who tell us that a particular death contained magical transformative, world-changing power.
I'm assuming that nobody here believes that the death of the god-men (and women) of the Mayan sacrifices actually had a supernatural power to change the state of the world, yet many people here believe that the death of the god-man Jesus did.
The fact that you can draw some parallels does not negate the fact that there are significant differences.
Mayans were asked to believe they needed to participate in killing people to bring about a magical effect. Christians are asked to believe that the death of someone who was executed ages ago unjustly for a crime has a magical effect. That difference is clear and dramatic and pretty much negates the point you are trying to make no matter how many other parallels you can find between the two.
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Rabbit: You are just confirming my point that the major differences are cultural. The supernatural element, which you are conveniently ignoring, is simply appeal to authority in both cases, regardless of context.
You seem to be arguing that one case of magic sacrifice is more likely to be true because you are more comfortable with the context.
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Rakeesh: Both you and Rabbit are nitpicking my argument, rather than dealing with the meat of it, that there is no logical reason to believe the baseless supernatural claims of one faith over another, except that one chooses to believe o e tradition, and uses that prior belief and authority to justify those cases of magic, while denying similar cases in other religions.
It is silly to keep insisting, as Tres is, that there is any reason or logic involved in which supernatural claims one believes are true, when any claimed "evidence" or reason for believing one works equally well for the other, or falls back on fallacious reasoning.
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quote:Rakeesh: Both you and Rabbit are nitpicking my argument, rather than dealing with the meat of it...
The flaws in your argument are at the foundation of it, MightyCow. You're attempting to make your point by asking, "What is the difference between these two very similar sacrifices?"
They're actually quite different, at least as much as they are similar. You've been given at least half a dozen very excellent responses to that comparison highlighting why they are not as similar as you suggest. Since your argument began by resting on that comparison, it is hardly 'nitpicking' to point it out.
You could just try admitting, "Yeah, that was a flawed comparison, my bad." It would certainly establish some credibility, anyway.
quote:...that there is no logical reason to believe the baseless supernatural claims of one faith over another, except that one chooses to believe o e tradition, and uses that prior belief and authority to justify those cases of magic, while denying similar cases in other religions.
That's a very self-satisfying way to put the argument, but not very rhetorically persuasive since - again - it relies entirely on begging the question. "Why do you believe these baseless claims when they're baseless?" You're preaching to the choir and acting surprised when it only works on the choir.
The claims are not, to me at least, baseless. I have my own evidence for them, and it has very little to do with being more comfortable with it or its being tradition. My tradition, before I converted, was comfortable agnosticism. Having spent much time considering the matter and repeatedly come to the conclusion that, no, I'm not nuts, and no, the evidence I have is not self-manufactured, you're basically asking why we won't admit we're crazy because we're obviously crazy.
To put it in terms you will appreciate, you might approach someone with Munchausen Syndrome and say, "You're clearly crazy. See, look at that kleptomaniac over there, he's crazy too, so that means you're crazy." That's about as effective and relevant as what you're doing.
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quote:You could just try admitting, "Yeah, that was a flawed comparison, my bad." It would certainly establish some credibility, anyway.
I guess what's confusing MC -- and what's confusing me, certainly -- is why you think the arguments made so far address the core of MightyCow's point. In other words, you are speaking as if you believe the details of Christ's sacrifice somehow meaningfully distinguish it from a Mayan sacrifice in ways that make it somehow more credible.
quote:To put it in terms you will appreciate, you might approach someone with Munchausen Syndrome and say, "You're clearly crazy. See, look at that kleptomaniac over there, he's crazy too, so that means you're crazy."
More accurately, I think he's saying "you and that guy over there have both stolen things." And you're replying, "I've stolen a frog, whereas he's stolen a doorknob! Those are two completely different things!"
Both Mayan sacrifices and the Christian sacrifices are blood sacrifices which are said to have supernatural effects. Unless you think the details meaningfully change this equivalence, I don't see why the details matter.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Rakeesh: Both you and Rabbit are nitpicking my argument, rather than dealing with the meat of it, that there is no logical reason to believe the baseless supernatural claims of one faith over another, except that one chooses to believe o e tradition, and uses that prior belief and authority to justify those cases of magic, while denying similar cases in other religions.
It is silly to keep insisting, as Tres is, that there is any reason or logic involved in which supernatural claims one believes are true, when any claimed "evidence" or reason for believing one works equally well for the other, or falls back on fallacious reasoning.
MC, The meat of your argument seems to change from post to post as we refute what you appear to be saying. Now you seem to be saying is that there is no substantive difference between the Mayan belief that human sacrifice invokes some sort of magic that will make crop grow and the Christian claim that Jesus' sacrifice invokes some sort of magic that will absolve his followers of sin and allow them to be reunited with God in the after life.
If that is your claim, then you are still comparing apples and oranges. The Mayan belief you describe related to the physical world, a world that is accessible to scientific exploration. It's a claim that can be tested and falsified by scientific exploration. But the central, most important claim in Christianity has nothing to do with physical reality. Its a claim about spiritual matters that are not accessible scientifically.
Now I know that some Christians believe in myths that deal with physical, scientifically accessible questions in addition to the spiritual questions. Maybe the Mayans had beliefs that focused on this spiritual realm rather than the physical world as well, but I really have no idea what those might be. What you are missing, is that Christians who believe in, say for example, young earth creationism believe it because it is part of a tapestry whose primary purpose is to explain things that science can't explain. Things like the nature of good and evil, the purpose of life, people's relationship to the universe, how to face death, how we become better than we are and what "better means. They believe the myths because they arise from a world view that they find personally compelling. That's not just culture any more than quantum theory and relativity are the culture of science.
If your point is simply that if you remove all the rest of the religion, there is no reason to believe any of the supernatural claims then your right, but its a rather stupid point. Yes, if you remove all the reasons people have for believing something, then there is no reason to believe it.
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quote: They believe the myths because they arise from a world view that they find personally compelling. That's not just culture ...
How is it not culture? That's almost my definition of culture.
That depends on how you define culture.
In the context of this discussion, MC seemed to be saying that Christian religious mythology is only more believable to modern Christians than Mayan mythology because its part of the culture in which they have grown up , it is familiar, they know lots of other people who believe it, they've been taught to respect the authorities who teach it, etc. If that is what MC meant, then no it absolutely is not just culture.
If MC meant by culture was "an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge" then yes people believe religious mythology because of culture but it can just as accurately be said that people believe the big bang theory solely because of culture.
People believe in religious mythology because it arises from an integrated pattern of human knowledge and experience which they find personally meaningful for dealing with the life questions they think are important. That isn't the same as holding a "baseless" belief.
[ May 28, 2010, 06:00 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:If MC meant by culture was "an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge"...
I would dispute the assertion that anyone, anywhere, has ever had positive knowledge of God transmitted to them. While knowledge of religion can certainly be transmitted, that's simply another form of culture; knowledge of God would not be, but neither does it exist.
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quote:If MC meant by culture was "an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge"...
I would dispute the assertion that anyone, anywhere, has ever had positive knowledge of God transmitted to them. While knowledge of religion can certainly be transmitted, that's simply another form of culture; knowledge of God would not be, but neither does it exist.
Yes Tom, we know you are an atheist. Is this somehow relevant to the discussion at hand or are you admitting that there is no more substance to your claims than this completely circular argument.
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Tom? Tom, are you okay? Are you still with us, Tom? There seems to be a substantial amount of blood flowing from your jugular.
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It's not completely circular. You cannot demonstrate that anyone, anywhere, has positive knowledge of God. Lacking that demonstration, we do not have any means by which we might make a distinction between knowledge of God and knowledge of religion. As knowledge of religion is cultural, we have no reason to assume that people who make decisions based upon their asserted knowledge of God -- which is, again, indistinguishable from their knowledge of religion -- are not also basing those decisions on culture.
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If your argument is that most religious people believe that their moral decisions are based on something other than their culture, but we have no way of knowing whether this is actually true or not, I'll freely concede that point.
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quote:In the context of this discussion, MC seemed to be saying that Christian religious mythology is only more believable to modern Christians than Mayan mythology because its part of the culture in which they have grown up , it is familiar, they know lots of other people who believe it, they've been taught to respect the authorities who teach it, etc. If that is what MC meant, then no it absolutely is not just culture.
If MC meant by culture was "an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge" then yes people believe religious mythology because of culture but it can just as accurately be said that people believe the big bang theory solely because of culture.
People believe in religious mythology because it arises from an integrated pattern of human knowledge and experience which they find personally meaningful for dealing with the life questions they think are important. That isn't the same as holding a "baseless" belief.
Rabbit, this hair you are splitting seems so fine I don't think I can see it. Why do they find this "integrated pattern" meaningful, when to someone else with a different cultural background it seems silly? I think you're fighting against the notion that religious beliefs are trivial because they're just the product of enculturation. But as you do so, you're just coming up with more and more verbose definitions of culture.
(I'm sympathetic to the argument that religion is meaningful and important; I don't think religious beliefs are all silly. And I do think people can transcend or deviate from their culture.)
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Tom, Since you seem to have missed it, I put "an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge", in quotes because its quoted from the websters online dictionary and is the definition of culture I thought was most relevant to this discussion. Since you seem to be claiming that belief in God is purely cultural but does not fit under this definition, please explain what you mean by culture.
In answer to Scifibums question "Why do they find this "integrated pattern" meaningful, when to someone else with a different cultural background it seems silly.",
It is my contention that people find religious beliefs silly because they have stripped bits and snippets of them and built a strawman. When people make an effort to understand the whole integrated pattern, it rarely ever seems silly. At least in my experience, when I have made the effort to gain more than a superficial understanding of any religion, I have always found that the religion has some beautiful insights into the world and the way it works. That doesn't mean I agree with everything the religion teaches. There is a vast gulf between thinking a belief system is silly and adopting it.
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quote: But as you do so, you're just coming up with more and more verbose definitions of culture.
I've only presented one definition of culture and it was copied directly from a dictionary. I went to the dictionary because I decided I had no idea what you guys meant by culture. If you have a more concise definition, I'd be happy to work with it.
[ May 29, 2010, 11:09 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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I think we may simply be arguing past one another. I don't know about the rest of you but I feel like I'm arguing against a moving target. Every time I say something to refute MCs and Tom's claims, they come back with a response that seems radically different from the original claim. So let me be explicit about what I'm arguing against. If it turns out this still isn't what people have meant, I give up.
MC seems to be saying that my religious beliefs only seem less silly to me than Mayan religious beliefs because I am wearing some sort of cultural blinders. If I'd just take off those cultural blinders, I'd recognize how silly my beliefs really are.
My point is that if my religious beliefs seem silly to you, it is because you have stripped them out of the broader integrated system. I'm confident that any person who made an effort to actually understand the depth and breadth of my beliefs rather than building a strawman of them, would not find them silly or abhorrent. They might not embrace my beliefs, but they would no longer find them ridiculous.
I say that because it is true of my experience with religions other than my own. Take for example the Catholic belief that the eucharist is literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ. This was a belief I always found silly until I actually bothered to talk to a Catholic about what this meant to them. (Has anyone read "The Sparrow"). I still don't accept the belief, but I no longer find it at all silly. I find many aspects of the belief beautiful. I've had similar experiences with Buddhists and Hindus and people who follow various Native American religions.
You can make just about anything look silly if you strip it out of its context. You can make science look silly if you strip it out of its context. All this proves is that a superficial understanding of things is misleading.
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"My point is that if my religious beliefs seem silly to you, it is because you have stripped them out of the broader integrated system."
No. Your religious beliefs seem silly because they are built upon a foundation that appears silly. MC and Tom's point is that believing in imaginary magic is silly, regardless of what type of imaginary magic you believe in.
The reason the eucharist can seem non-silly to you is because there is a shared belief in the imaginary foundation upon which a Catholics magic, and your magic, rests.
For someone who believes that the foundation is imaginary, the only way to make ANY religious belief appear non-silly is to demonstrated that the foundation is not imaginary.
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I actually did think Rabbit's last explanation was pretty decent, largely because it included the point that she does not find other religious practices silly when she understands the context. In light of that, there's nothing inconsistent about her logic.
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The fact that you consider the foundations of all religion to be "imaginary magic" suggests you are wearing blinders of your own.
The foundations of all religion are unprovable but so are many of the foundations of science. For example, Newton's third law of motion (every actions has an equal and opposite reactions) is unprovable. All we can say as scientists is that we have never observed an exception to the law. Would it be fair to say that all science which rest on this law is based on nothing more than imaginary magic?
Furthermore, Many of the founding assumption of the scientific method (reproducibility, objectivity, reductionism) are in fact unprovable and untestable. Furthermore, the scientific method can be proven to be an inadequate system for exploring all questions of interest to human beings.
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quote:I have always found that the religion has some beautiful insights into the world and the way it works.
Oh, no argument. But it also seems silly. The more I learn about Mormonism, for example, both the sillier and more beautiful it seems to me. That it's a ludicrously outrageous religion doesn't mean that it's not capable of beauty; it just means that it's worth laughing at.
Perhaps you are making a distinction between "things that are silly" and "things that are beautiful," and asserting that one set cannot overlap with the other...?
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"For example, Newton's third law of motion (every actions has an equal and opposite reactions) is unprovable. All we can say as scientists is that we have never observed an exception to the law. Would it be fair to say that all science which rest on this law is based on nothing more than imaginary magic?"
Get back to me when you have a test I can carry out that would lend support to the idea that god exists. In the meantime, this year I demonstrated, against prior belief, to 80 17 year olds, that Newton's Third Law holds in situations when they think it shouldn't.
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I don't find it silly when people hold to an integrated system of beliefs that is as a whole beautiful and profound and which they find useful in their lives, even when some parts of that system look silly in isolation.
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I think you're placing far too much emphasis on the "integration," when in many cases that integration amounts merely to "we have these beliefs, which are enumerated in this one book." That they're all in the same text -- or part of the same cultural tradition -- doesn't necessarily make them a coherent whole. Certainly Mormonism, which is one of the more internally consistent Judeo-Christian religions out there, is still no paragon of "integration;" in fact, many of its very silliest practices and beliefs are among its least integrated elements, which is I think one of the reasons why so many Christian sects who otherwise share many core (integrated) beliefs with Mormons still think Mormons are incredibly weird.
You'll notice, by the way, that I have not called religion profound, myself.
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quote:Originally posted by Paul Goldner: "For example, Newton's third law of motion (every actions has an equal and opposite reactions) is unprovable. All we can say as scientists is that we have never observed an exception to the law. Would it be fair to say that all science which rest on this law is based on nothing more than imaginary magic?"
Get back to me when you have a test I can carry out that would lend support to the idea that god exists. In the meantime, this year I demonstrated, against prior belief, to 80 17 year olds, that Newton's Third Law holds in situations when they think it shouldn't.
Get back to me when you have a good explanation for why a hypothesis that is not falsifiable should be considered false.
Newton's 3rd law says that for EVERY action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Since it is impossible to observe EVERY action, it is not possible to prove the law correct.
I hypothesize that the big bang (edited to fix typo) had no equal and opposite reaction. Prove me wrong.
Scientifically, it really isn't possible to prove any hypothesis. All we can do is disprove hypothesis and many hypotheses of interest and importance to people aren't falsifiable.
[ May 29, 2010, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: It's not completely circular. You cannot demonstrate that anyone, anywhere, has positive knowledge of God. Lacking that demonstration, we do not have any means by which we might make a distinction between knowledge of God and knowledge of religion. As knowledge of religion is cultural, we have no reason to assume that people who make decisions based upon their asserted knowledge of God -- which is, again, indistinguishable from their knowledge of religion -- are not also basing those decisions on culture.
Tom, Culture is (by definition) "an integrated system of knowledge and beliefs which can be learned and transmitted". Your argument, as I understand it, is that religion isn't based on positive knowledge therefore its just culture. Which based on the definition of culture presented, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. (Which isn't circular its a nonsequitor)
The original argument seemed to be "I don't believe anyone has any real religious knowledge, therefore all purported religious knowledge is nothing more than something I'll call "culture". Your only evidence that "religious knowledge" is nothing more than culture is your belief that there is no such thing as religious knowledge.
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"Get back to me when you have a good explanation for why a hypothesis that is not falsifiable should be considered false.
Newton's 3rd law says that for EVERY action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Since it is impossible to observe EVERY action, it is not possible to prove the law correct."
Are you trying to say that Newton's Third Law is not falsifiable because we can't observe every action?
If so, that's terrible logic.
"Scientifically, it really isn't possible to prove any hypothesis."
I agree. We can't prove a hypothesis. We can build evidence that a hypothesis is correct, and we can falsify hypotheses.
But my contention is that you can't build evidence for the existence of god, nor can you falsify the hypothesis that god exists.
I can build evidence for Newton's Third Law, and then extrapolate from that pool of evidence to the Big Bang, while acknowledging the possibility that if we could observe the Big Bang we might find an exception that would require we rework the wording of Newton's Third Law.
But there is no body of evidence to draw from that allows for the reasonable extrapolation to the hypothesis "God exists." And without being able to do that, any belief that rests on the foundation of the existence of god is silly.
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quote:Are you trying to say that Newton's Third Law is not falsifiable because we can't observe every action?
No, Newton's Law is falsifiable. Were we ever to observe an action that had no equal and opposite reaction, Newton's law would be falsified.
However, the fact that a law has not yet been falsified is not proof of its validity. If Newton's law is false, we may some day be able to show that with absolute certainty, but if it is true, 100% true, we can never know it.
Scientifically, we can't ever know that anything is true. All we can do is reject ideas that are demonstrably false. But science also builds on principles we believe to be true for no more reason than that we can not prove they are false.
I am not trying to argue against the validity of the scientific method. I'm only trying to point out its limitations, the most important of which is that science can not even deal with a hypothesis which can not be stated in a way that is falsifiable. Hence my comment -- "Get back to me when you have a good explanation for why a hypothesis that is not falsifiable should be considered to be false" in response to your demand that I get back to you when I come up with a testable hypothesis about God.
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quote:I have always found that the religion has some beautiful insights into the world and the way it works.
Oh, no argument. But it also seems silly. The more I learn about Mormonism, for example, both the sillier and more beautiful it seems to me. That it's a ludicrously outrageous religion doesn't mean that it's not capable of beauty; it just means that it's worth laughing at.
Edward Abbey - "Mormonism: Nothing so hilarious could possibly be true. Or all bad."
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quote:No. Your religious beliefs seem silly because they are built upon a foundation that appears silly. MC and Tom's point is that believing in imaginary magic is silly, regardless of what type of imaginary magic you believe in.
That was not, in fact, MC's point. The discussion has moved on so I'm not committed to it or anything, but MC's original point, before it shifted, was that Mayan sacrifices and the death and resurrection of Jesus were very, very similar to one another, so much so that all it would take was a quick look.
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posted
I'm trying to find a core of good argument in this thread to engage with, so I'll have to turn the clock back a page.
quote:Instead of "cultural acceptance" it should be prior justified beliefs. If you have a prior belief, which you believe is already supported by other justification, that Jesus is the physical incarnation of an all-powerful diety, then that prior belief makes it seem a lot more possible that Jesus performed miracles. That prior belief must be weighed against your other prior beliefs, such as your belief that spit is phsyically unable to cure blindless. Conflict with these prior beliefs is what makes a given thing seem crazy - and is why it might seem crazy to one person, but not to another person who approaches it having been raised in a way that led them to accept a different set of prior beliefs.
Tres, doesn't this sound suspiciously like the "building on a rotten core" cases we were talking about before?
Evidence from testimony and prior commitment is evidence, I grant you that. I think MC is being too unilateral in his attempts to downplay these things. But by itself, in the absence of the possibility of further confirmation, these sorts of evidence are weak -- as in, paper thin.
Because as you granted before, we all have somewhat rotten cores to our systems of belief. The process of childhood education and upbringing is such that we'll inevitably come to hold some unfounded beliefs. That fact has to be part of our evidence as well. Every belief you have should be subjected to the question: What is the likelihood that this is one of the beliefs I formed for the wrong reasons at an early age, before I understood how to weigh evidence?
If you and I were right before to agree that beliefs formed by testimony early in life are systematically unreliable for this reason, doesn't that give those religious people who aren't later-life converts excellent reason to discount their beliefs?
quote:But it is being unfair to religion to suggest this phenomenon is unique to religions. It's also true in other areas of life. Quantum mechanics seems just as crazy to me as religious miracles do (in fact, maybe more crazy... if someone told me Jesus had turned an ocean wave into a particle of ocean, and that it was actually both at the same time, I'd have a hard time even imagining it), yet I believe it because (1) scientists say so, (2) my prior beliefs suggest that if it weren't true then science would have found it to be false. To say I have some evidence of quantum mechanics other than appeal to authority and its consistency with certain other prior beliefs I hold would be a lie.
There's a lot of bad pop science out there about QM that makes it sound weirder than it actually is. It's a little weird, but not that weird.
For instance, "wave/particle duality" is a heuristic, analogical way of thinking about the theory rather than a literal one. So some of the weird ideas you attribute to QM aren't really there in the theory.
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For instance, "wave/particle duality" is a heuristic, analogical way of thinking about the theory rather than a literal one. So some of the weird ideas you attribute to QM aren't really there in the theory.
This is true of a fair amount of religious language as well.
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