quote:tol·er·ance [tol-er-uhns] –noun 1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry. 2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own. 3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one's own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.
quote: —Synonyms 1, 2. patience, sufferance, forbearance; liberality, impartiality, open-mindedness. Tolerance, toleration agree in allowing the right of something that one does not approve. Tolerance suggests a liberal spirit toward the views and actions of others: tolerance toward religious minorities. Toleration implies the allowance or sufferance of conduct with which one is not in accord: toleration of graft.
quote:If you wish to directly contradict my experience, that's up to you; there is no possible response to the man who is willing to merely call you a liar.
It's equally difficult to respond to someone who calls you crazy.
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True; as noted, the art of curing insanity is in its infancy. But cheer up, you may yet be saved; I don't recall whether you are numbered among the nuts, or among the merely misguided. Is your belief based on evidence, or do you take it on faith, as a conscious 'choice to believe'?
quote:A fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.
Quite so: I draw your attention to 'permissive'. To permit someone to take an action presupposes that one has the power not to do so; if I have no power of preventing you, then my permission is irrelevant. Ultimately, such power rests in violence. What you do not see in these definitions is mention of an approving attitude; my mere disapproval is no intolerance as long as I cannot or will not enforce it.
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You seem to think the default position should be whatever the minority wants. Frankly that's why your kind is afraid of immigration, afraid of change, afraid of young people and new ideas- you think anything that isn't directly under your control, at the heart of an overwhelming majority, is a danger to you. The constitution was put there specifically to make sure that we *could* live at peace with each other despite our society changing over time. Why would you want to undermine such a great thing? Something that helps you, every day?
No, my default position is not whatever the minority wants. Being a Christian puts me in a HUGE majority. But this debate aside, I'd really like to point out how bigoted your opinion of me is. I am not afraid of immigration, I favor amnesty, and a relaxed system that helps immigrants come to this country and become citizens, I believe the US is for everybody not just those that are born here. I'm not afraid of change. Change is neither a good or bad thing, it's neutral. Please, afraid of change. What's next are you going to tell me I'm against motherhood? And young people? Man, I'm 27 last I checked, that isn't old. Am I afraid of totally incompetent zombies that believe everything they here on the daily show (or Glenn beck for that matter)? Yes. Am I afraid of a demographic that goes out and literally votes for whoever MTV's vote or die campaign tells them to? A little bit. But what I'm really afraid of, Orincoro is people is who are bigot's and don't even know it. I bet you consider your self an open minded liberal thinker, you don't harbor ill will towards people who think differently than you, and you would never assume think that just because someone is white, black, gay, or straight, that you could generalize their opinion or state of mind as inferior to yours. Yet you DO NOT HESITATE to address a statement to me headed by the words YOUR KIND. What does that even mean? who are my kind? IF you want to put me in box, Ono, here are some parameters for you. I'm a libertarian but not a Radian Randroid, I'm a Christian who doesn't belong to any particular denomination. I like to think of myself as constitutionalist. I land just right of center on the bell curve. I'm against abortion and the death penalty, I voted for John Carey and John McCain, respectively. So, their you go, now you can figure out who my kind is, if you really want to bother.
Edited for typos and the such due to typing at the speed of rant.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Tolerance does not mean agreement, it does not even mean respect; it means agreeing to live in the same society without violence.
I agree with this. At the risk seeming to pucker up, That some wisdom being dropped right there.
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quote:tol·er·ance [tol-er-uhns] –noun 1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry. 2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own. 3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one's own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.
quote: —Synonyms 1, 2. patience, sufferance, forbearance; liberality, impartiality, open-mindedness. Tolerance, toleration agree in allowing the right of something that one does not approve. Tolerance suggests a liberal spirit toward the views and actions of others: tolerance toward religious minorities. Toleration implies the allowance or sufferance of conduct with which one is not in accord: toleration of graft.
Lol I guess my definition of tolerance was wrong. I kind of equated to the feeling of tolerating something, even if it bugs crap out of you.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: In case I'm the one being mis-read, let me try to restate my thesis in different terms: To reach a wrong conclusion from evidence is not evil, but only misguided. But to reject evidence as a means for reaching conclusions is evil. It is, if you like, an epistemological form of evil; it is the rejection of all that make humanity more than an ape. To reject evidence and reason is to reduce yourself to the level of a child or animal, or to willingly take drugs that will damage your brain. To borrow from within the Christian faith, it is a sin akin to suicide: The horror that a Christian might feel at seeing someone throw away the gift of life, I experience when someone tells me that it's "not about evidence".
I think this is central to where you and Kate Boots keep talking past each other. She asserts that faith is not about propositional truth claims, and therefore not a matter for evidence. You persist in interpreting her as saying that it is about chosing to believe propositional truth claims without evidence.
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I realise of course that the minds of such people are necessarily like Escher drawings, as they hide from themselves exactly what it is they believe, or don't believe, or whatever. Nonetheless, if you ask kmb "Does God exist" (with appropriate qualifiers on the meaning of 'God') she will say yes, and if you ask her what her evidence is, she will say that she chooses to believe. That's a belief without evidence, I don't care how you dress it up.
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quote:To reach a wrong conclusion from evidence is not evil, but only misguided.
I agree, but here's the first stumbling block: you have no way of knowing the ultimate conclusion is wrong, that is, that there is a God. I mean, you just don't. There are gobs and gobs of evidence against various specific ideas of God, but none whatsoever against the notion that God exists. That's why I took care to talk about specific individuals, and please note that I'm not saying that's sufficient reason to believe in God.
quote:But to reject evidence as a means for reaching conclusions is evil.
I don't know that I'd say it was evil, though I can see where you're coming from. I would certainly say it's pretty dumb, though. But I'm quite certain we would disagree very much on just how many people actually reject evidence as a means for reaching conclusions.
quote:To borrow from within the Christian faith, it is a sin akin to suicide: The horror that a Christian might feel at seeing someone throw away the gift of life, I experience when someone tells me that it's "not about evidence".
For example, I would be astounded to discover that even a small fraction of people who say that mean 'not about evidence' the way you mean it. If you would broaden your discussion past, "Nuh-uh, that's not evidence," you might actually get somewhere aside from yelling at theists about how stupid and crazy they are.
quote:You also appear to object to my using the word 'evil' and simultaneously denigrating faith as a route to truth. Why is that? Do you think that only theists can believe there is evil in the world?
No, I don't, it's just a bit unusual to hear someone so vehemently rejecting imprecise thoughts and terms as you do throw a word like 'evil' out there. What is evil to you? Do you know it when you see it? etc.
quote:If you wish to directly contradict my experience, that's up to you; there is no possible response to the man who is willing to merely call you a liar. What I have said is based on my experience with Christians; perhaps you have interacted with a different set, and so formed a different conclusion.
And what I have said is based on my observations of your interactions with Christians over the years on this board. I can't and don't speak to your motives and methods outside of Hatrack. How could I? But I can speculate as to both here, which is what I did. Or do you think there is someone who your approach has reached? Could you point them out? Point to a meaningful discussion in which the thoughts you intended to provoke were actually provoked on the other side?
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quote: To call people who literally cannot tell right from wrong 'crazy' is accurate use of language: That's what insanity means.
"Crazy" and "Insanity" are not the right terms for that. "Human" is the word you are looking for.
Well, redifining terms to prove that your beliefs are "right" is a very convenient way to prevent cognative dissonance.
Believing that shoes are made by Elves isn't silly, I like to call it "smart." Damn, that was fun!
I think you misunderstood what I intended to say. What I was saying is: Making mistakes about what is right and wrong is not a sign of insanity. All human beings make mistakes like that.
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What was he saying then? As I understood it, he was defending calling the religious crazy based on the fact that they fail to tell right from wrong, in his opinion.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: True; as noted, the art of curing insanity is in its infancy. But cheer up, you may yet be saved; I don't recall whether you are numbered among the nuts, or among the merely misguided. Is your belief based on evidence, or do you take it on faith, as a conscious 'choice to believe'?
quote:A fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.
Quite so: I draw your attention to 'permissive'. To permit someone to take an action presupposes that one has the power not to do so; if I have no power of preventing you, then my permission is irrelevant. Ultimately, such power rests in violence. What you do not see in these definitions is mention of an approving attitude; my mere disapproval is no intolerance as long as I cannot or will not enforce it.
Yes, it is. And it's not your disapproval that bothers me, and other people who disagree with you. It's the ridged intolerance for other people's views, and that disdain you show for their right to disagree with you.
My beliefs are that there are many things we don't know, or will ever know, about our world. I don't believe that science has all of the answers, or ever will. I DO believe that science is one of our greatest tools for understanding our world, and have a high respect for it. But it doesn't solve all of our problems, particularly social ones.
I also believe that a lot of people have experiences that are hard to quantify, and they turn to religion to explain them. Sometimes it is a good thing, sometimes it is a bad thing. But I think that has to do with the type of religion they choose, and how they choose to practice it, not with any flaw in religion as a whole.
I also don't see a problem between science and religion. They don't have to be in opposition. If there is a God, as I believe, that doesn't mean that science is less valid. As a matter of fact it actually makes me MORE amazed at our lives, and the world we live in.
I think that things we can't see or quantify still exist. Our world is filtered through our bodies, so or course the physical impacts us in relationship to those things, but I don't believe they are the sole cause of them.
Love exists beyond chemical reactions, as does happiness and a myriad of other emotions. We can't see them, or touch them but we feel them and know they exist. We can understand the chemical reactions, a little bit, that allow us to feel them, but I don't think n our relationships can be summed up simply by saying "Chemical x causes reaction M.".
There are far more things we DON'T know than we do, IMO. Science will help us learn about our world, and maybe other worlds as well. It will shed light on who we are, and who we can be, and raise our horizons to new heights.
But religion will feed our spirits, and help us remain human even amongst the stars. It will provide social stability, and help us educate the next generations on both their rights and their responsibilities as human beings.
None of that really matters to this discussion, though.
I have no issue with atheists, really. I have no issue with Muslims, or Mormons, of Roman Catholics. They all believe different things than I do, that's for sure. But if they find comfort in their beliefs, and it works for them, good for them.
What I DO dislike are extremists. I can't stand it when someone thinks they have the right or obligation to force me to believe what they do. I think that your world view, which includes your view on religion, is specific to you, and what your needs are, and that even within a religion you will never find two people who honestly believe exactly the same thing.
Sort of like a gathering of scientists. They all believe in science, and data collecting, but they usually can't seem to agree easily on what the data means. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:But religion will feed our spirits, and help us remain human even amongst the stars. It will provide social stability, and help us educate the next generations on both their rights and their responsibilities as human beings.
quote:But religion will feed our spirits, and help us remain human even amongst the stars. It will provide social stability, and help us educate the next generations on both their rights and their responsibilities as human beings.
Will it?
And even if it will, is it the only thing that can do so? Or even the best thing that can do so?
And are you using the term 'spirit' figuratively or literally?
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quote:What was he saying then? As I understood it, he was defending calling the religious crazy based on the fact that they fail to tell right from wrong, in his opinion.
What he was saying seemed pretty clear to me. Crazy wasn't making a mistake, crazy was willfully and persistently believing in an outcome that eschews evidence. In fact I agree with that, though I'm sure I disagree a great deal on just what 'evidence' is.
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I don't think we disagree even on the meaning of evidence; rather we disagree on the weight to be attached to personal spiritual experience. I agree that this is evidence, but that's a weak standard; it is not powerful or compelling evidence.
As for craziness, I'm merely applying the legal standard: A suspect is considered not guilty by reason of insanity if it can be shown that, at the time he committed the crime, he was in such a state as to be unable to tell right from wrong.
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Yes, it will. And it will continue to do so, IMO, and in the opinion of a lot of people.
Javert, I am happy with it in my own life, and in the lives of people i know. If you want to experiment with your own children and raise them otherwise, of course you are free to do so.
That's being tolerant, and accepting that my answers may not fit everyone else. And I am not saying that religion is necessary for everyone, or that people who are raised without it are defective, or flawed. I just believe that it is MUCH harder to instill those types of values into a child without the backing of a community that a good religion provides.
And yes, I DO believe in instilling values into children. That doesn't mean that you don't teach them to think for themselves, but until they get a little bit of experience themselves, religion can provide some useful guidance.
It's funny....if you listen to intolerant religious people they sound like everything is carved in stone, and that they think they have all the answers. But if you talk to people who educate themselves in their own religion, usually things are not so clear cut. Some things are, of course, but as you learn about the history of the religion, and how the beliefs and tenants were shaped, things become more fluid, at least somewhat.
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KoM, it may not be compelling evidence FOR YOU, but when dealing with issues that are not necessarily tangible, like religion, emotions, and our purpose in the world it may be the only possible evidence we can find.
I see evidence for God every time I look at nature, or hear music. I don't claim to know who God really is, or what mechanisms he uses to move the world, but my personal experiences tell me that there is one. I choose to believe, while allowing that other people's experiences may be different than mine.
None of that makes me less rigorous when conducting clinical trials for a new drug, or when doing a treatment for a patient who is dying. It doesn't make me crazy, imprecise, or unprofessional in my duties. It doesn't mean I discard physical evidence about my patients conditions. I don't think Faith healing should replace medical treatments, although they do help some people some of the time. (The placebo effect is a real, measurable effect, you know, which shows us we don't know half as much as we sometimes think me know about human anatomy and medicine).
The split you see between reason and religion is a false dichotomy. It doesn't have to exist, and it really doesn't outside of your mind and the mind of the people who think as you do.
Of course, I am not a literalist or creationist, so I have the luxury of believing in both. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:But if you talk to people who educate themselves in their own religion, usually things are not so clear cut.
Well, yes. I have in fact hazarded some guesses on why this is.
lol...yup. And I read them, and ever agreed with some of your points, without becoming insulted. Mostly. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:KoM, it may not be compelling evidence FOR YOU, but when dealing with issues that are not necessarily tangible, like religion, emotions, and our purpose in the world it may be the only possible evidence we can find.
You are evaluating this evidence wrongly. It is not as strong as you believe it to be. It is not a question of "what evidence can we find for this position". By that standard I could claim leprechauns on my garden on the basis of a Hatrack post, and when someone pointed out that this wasn't very compelling, I'd say "Not for you, but it's the only evidence we have." That would be silly, and so is your assertion.
quote:I see evidence for God every time I look at nature, or hear music. I don't claim to know who God really is, or what mechanisms he uses to move the world, but my personal experiences tell me that there is one. I choose to believe,
And there it is, the crazy, hidden just under the surface. You cannot 'choose' to believe. Either you have evidence or you don't. If you must make a conscious choice to interpret the evidence in accordance with what you want to believe, then you have departed the way of sanity and gone into the outer dark where the ape-men howl and beat hollow logs with the thigh-bones of their enemies. Repent, and come into the light.
quote:The split you see between reason and religion is a false dichotomy.
I do not see a split, any more than there is a split between science and phlogiston theory. I see a hypothesis which the evidence does not support, and I see people who nonetheless insist on asserting it.
quote:None of that makes me less rigorous when conducting clinical trials for a new drug, or when doing a treatment for a patient who is dying.
The assertion that you are able to compartmentalise your craziness does not invalidate the diagnosis of crazy.
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Where is the rigorous, logical chain of reason that leads from, "Look, a flowering plant" to "there exists a supernatural, anthropomorphic being who plays an active, but invisible role in the world, and who possesses a list of attributes, which we can somehow figure out by looking at sunsets and enjoying a good laugh."
I would love to see someone actually try to establish the logic of that, without including at least one step of hand-waving.
I think you'll find, if you look hard and with intellectual honesty, that it isn't logical or scientific n the slightest.
If you can prove me wrong, I will be quite impressed.
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quote:The assertion that you are able to compartmentalise your craziness does not invalidate the diagnosis of crazy.
Well, compartmentalization of crazy certainly limits the relevance of the diagnosis. Even if we grant the "crazy" part.
I actually think that respect for others' religious beliefs - in practice - boils down to treating the person as if their fundamental wrongness about religion - an inescapable conclusion for those of a different or no religion - doesn't really matter. It's kind of about respecting the compartmentalization.
That's why people get mad at you, KoM, because you insist that it does matter, and in fact talk about it at nearly every opportunity. And I sympathize, because I think that commitment to rationality is a good thing, and you can't be nice to each contradictory belief without relaxing that commitment. Heck, Dawkins wrote a whole book about the exaggerated respect we offer this compartmentalization, and I think he was on to something.
But I do recognize that compartmentalization generally works. Despite being "crazy" in your view, even the most committed irrational religious people generally hold down jobs and function in society, which is only possible because they generally act not-crazy.
This, I think, is why Tresopax encouraged you to think of it as being human. Humanity tends to permit general functionality - general sanity - without total freedom from error.
The sense of gross malfunction implied by the word "crazy" just doesn't fit. The diagnosis is socially irrelevant in most contexts. When you get down to policy debate or philosophical arguments, you probably can't avoid confronting fundamental disagreements, but most of your engagements don't really require it. (Or, to be more generous to you, the conventions of the community you're engaging in really discourage the direct confrontation, to the extent that your flouting of the conventions is probably counter productive, since it tends to generate more resentment and anger than thoughtful discussion.)
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quote:Well, compartmentalization of crazy certainly limits the relevance of the diagnosis. Even if we grant the "crazy" part.
This is reasonable; that is why I said evil rather than socially sub-optimal. I am making a moral point, not a legal one.
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KOM, can you explain the ethical framework you are working with. What is the basis for your claim that rejecting evidence as the means for making a conclusion is evil. Please explain your reasoning because it isn't self evident.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: [QB] KoM, it may not be compelling evidence FOR YOU, but when dealing with issues that are not necessarily tangible, like religion, emotions, and our purpose in the world it may be the only possible evidence we can find.
If the only possible evidence regarding a proposition is lousy, the wise, reasonable thing to do is to not draw any conclusions about that proposition.
Not to hold the conclusion you really, really wish to be true, and then defend it as being reasoanble. People will believe manifestly wrong things, even when the evidence is solidly agasint them. How much more likely is it that someone is believing a manifestly wrong thing when 1) they really, really like their wrong idea and 2) there's no acceptable evidence supporting it?
quote:I see evidence for God every time I look at nature, or hear music.
You can't be serious. You are claiming that if evolution had not equipped your brain to like music, that you would be thinking "since my species is not capable of a deep emotional feeling associated with certain combinations of tones and rhythms, there must not be a God"?
And nature? Really?
Spend a weekend researching all the differnt strategies of parasites. Some are pretty gruesome. Concentrate on the kinds that prey on human children, and then tell us what that research reveals about your God. No fair looking only at the pretty stuff.
quote:I don't claim to know who God really is, or what mechanisms he uses to move the world, but my personal experiences tell me that there is one.
And other people's personal expereince tell them that they should torture and burn heretics. Why should anyone treat your personal expereicnes as more correct than theirs? Doesn't history more than demonstrate that people can come to horribly inaccurate conclusions, yielding senselessly awful consequences based on personal experiences?
Or to put it another way, listening to religious authorities, and giving in to one's natural xenophobia might be the the only possible "evidence" about intangible things like, whether a Protestant's soul is better off going to hell, or being tortured into repentance. So, is it better to obey what those sources tell an inquisitor to do, or would everyone be better off if the inquisitor concluded that since he didn't have any real evidence about people's souls, that he'd better be prudent?
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I proceed from a point which a Christian might recognise: That life is a good thing, a gift as the theist might say, and that we are therefore obliged to make the most of it. It follows that we have a duty to think as deeply as we can, to explore as much truth as we are capable of, and to learn whatever we can learn; in short, to be the finest thinking apes imaginable given the constraint of having only a few pounds of highly-connected matter to do it with. To cloud one's mind, to accept less than the sharpest edge the brain can be honed to, is a breach of this duty. (As an aside, I'm also against the use of drugs that damage or temporarily dull the brain, to include alcohol. Which is not to say that I want a prohibition written into law, merely that I disapprove.) Faith, understood as deliberately disregarding evidence, is such a clouding of the mind; it abandons the search for truth in favour of a search for comforting platitudes, emotional popcorn. Perhaps 'sin' would be a better word than 'evil'.
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quote:Spend a weekend researching all the differnt strategies of parasites. Some are pretty gruesome. Concentrate on the kinds that prey on human children, and then tell us what that research reveals about your God. No fair looking only at the pretty stuff.
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When I said 'gift, as a theist might say', I was trying to communicate by using a theistic analogy, not saying that I would myself use this term.
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What term would you use to express that concept?
Explain "duty to oneself", please. Who are you that such a duty is owed? What have you given yourself that you haven't already received?
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I might say that life is a wonder and a joy, full of passion, incident, and interest; I might say that we are all absurdly lucky to be here; I might say that in the description "Life is a mere dance of atoms", I object to the adjective. Or I could stop messing about and point out that the concept needs no justification, since my interlocutors agree with it already.
quote:Who are you that such a duty is owed?
Who is your god, that anything is owed it? At some point you must judge; there is no exterior source of duty, even in a theistic universe. If the god of Abraham were tomorrow to appears in the clouds and shout that your duty is to be a submissive housewife, you might obey to avoid hellfire, but in your heart of hearts you would judge, and find the duty real or imposed; you cannot take the word of a mere god for such a thing. Thus, to answer your question, I am the one who judges what duties are owed; and so are you, however you might protest otherwise.
quote:What have you given yourself that you haven't already received?
I do not understand the question.
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quote: That life is a good thing, a gift as the theist might say, and that we are therefore obliged to make the most of it. It follows that we have a duty to think as deeply as we can, to explore as much truth as we are capable of, and to learn whatever we can learn; in short, to be the finest thinking apes imaginable given the constraint of having only a few pounds of highly-connected matter to do it with.
There is a gaping whole in your logic which must be addressed. There is no clear reason why a belief that life is good natural implies that the pursuit of truth is moral imperative. Your conclusion doesn't follow from your assumption. There is far more to life than rational intellectual exploration of the Universe. At least there is far more than that to my life.
As best I can tell, your underlying assumption is that the rational exploration of the Universe is the ultimate "morality". That assumption is not only not self evident, its not a definition of morality I've seen used in any major branch of ethics. What you've done is to define morality in such a way that it is the opposite of religion.
As Jonathan Haidt put it
quote: If we want to stage a fair fight between religious and secular moralities, we can't eliminate one by definition before the match begins.
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Well, who said anything about a fair fight? In a clash of morals, there's no fair fight between good and evil; good wins. Naturally the evil side is going to complain that this is unfair; I feel no obligation to pay attention to their wiles. If you want to see a fair fight, go watch a soccer game. In morality as in mathematics, there is a correct answer, to which all others are infinitely inferior; there's no fairness about this, and no need for it.
quote:There is no clear reason why a belief that life is good implies that the pursuit of truth is a moral imperative.
Not the pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of perfection as a human, which includes holding true beliefs.
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Fair fight is Jonathan Haidt's terminology not mine. If you sincerely want to determine whether secular ethics or religious ethics are superior, you can't start off with defining good to be secular and evil to be religious. When you do that, you are no different than those who define good to be "things that lead you to believe in God" and then conclude that atheist/secular/scientific think is evil.
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quote:There is no clear reason why a belief that life is good implies that the pursuit of truth is a moral imperative.
Not the pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of perfection as a human, which includes holding true beliefs.
You are still begging the question. What constitutes perfection? You can't answer that question without an assumption about what is good.
How do we determine what constitutes a "true belief"? Isn't that the crux of the argument and you just wiped it out as though it didn't even exist? You start from the assumption that material truth is the only truth. If that assumption is wrong, then you are violating your own stated ultimate moral good by insisting that exploring spiritual questions is evil.
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quote: If you sincerely want to determine whether secular ethics or religious ethics are superior, you can't start off with defining good to be secular and evil to be religious.
I didn't. I defined perfection to include true beliefs; I observed that one cannot form such beliefs without evidence; I therefore discarded faith, to be understood as the rejection of evidence. This does not of itself reject religion. Lisa, to take but one example, is religious without faith (in the narrow sense I'm using it here.) Kmb isn't. That religion is not supported by evidence is a further fact about the universe, not derivable from my first principles; if I had my current ethics but no information about the origin of the universe, I would be obliged to test the various religious hypotheses floating about.
On further thought, though, your phrase "determine [which ethics] is superior" seems a bit at cross-purposes with my post. I'm not comparing systems of ethics, I'm explaining mine, and how certain actions are sins within that framework.
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quote:How do we determine what constitutes a "true belief"? Isn't that the crux of the argument and you just wiped it out as though it didn't even exist? You start from the assumption that material truth is the only truth. If that assumption is wrong, then you are violating your own stated ultimate moral good by insisting that exploring spiritual questions is evil.
I have no objection to exploring spiritual questions. What I object to is 'choosing to believe' particular answers, taking them on faith. I have now explained this several times. Since you show no sign of understanding what I'm saying, perhaps you should take a moment to go back and re-read.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
What information about the origin of the universe do you have that releases you from whatever "obligation" to test various religious hypothese that you would have if you didn't possess that information? And how would you test the hypotheses of my religion?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: How do we determine what constitutes a "true belief"?
Reality testing.
What did you have in mind? Judging beliefs by the sincerity of believers, or how strongly believers like their beliefs?
quote:You start from the assumption that material truth is the only truth.
No, it's the only kind of claim that we can possibly verify or falsify. How can anyone know truth without a reliable way of detecting false?
Posts: 575 | Registered: Feb 2007
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: What information about the origin of the universe do you have that releases you from whatever "obligation" to test various religious hypotheses that you would have if you didn't possess that information?
Since there is clear evidence that the Universe is more than 6000 years old, the world cannot be as described in Genesis; this rules out a whole class of religions right there. However, my phrase 'origin of the universe' was intended as shorthand. Other religions assert facts, such as the efficacy of intercessory prayer, which are refuted by knowledge that has nothing to do with the origin of the universe. Wherever a religion has made some prediction and there is no evidence in its favour, I can use that knowledge to discard that religion. If the test had not been done, or if I were ignorant of the lack of evidence, then I'd have to check it myself.
Now, lest anyone point out that I haven't personally tested the religious beliefs of the animist shamans of Congo and that there's also little said about it in the literature, I do feel it's legitimate after a while to say "this falls into a class of assertions which it has never been fruitful to test", and discard it without further checking, until such time as its proponents come up with a convincing reason to take another look.
quote:And how would you test the hypotheses of my religion?
Well, there you go: You don't have any. Your religion makes no predictions or assertions about the universe, it just preaches a sort of wishy-washy general niceness. Tea and biscuits do not a cosmology make.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:You are evaluating this evidence wrongly. It is not as strong as you believe it to be. It is not a question of "what evidence can we find for this position". By that standard I could claim leprechauns on my garden on the basis of a Hatrack post, and when someone pointed out that this wasn't very compelling, I'd say "Not for you, but it's the only evidence we have." That would be silly, and so is your assertion.
How is it you are in a position to evaluate someone else's experience and judge whether it is weighty evidence or not? I'm not talking about specific cases which can be reasonably evaluated, I'm talking about the sweeping generalizations you routinely engage in on this topic. Kwea or Scott or myself are not just evaluating the evidence incorrectly, all religious people are.
Your comparison to a Hatrack post serving as evidence for leprechauns is also pretty cheesy, for a variety of reasons you're already familiar with. One of them being that if someone claimed to have seen leprechauns in their garden in a Hatrack post, you would have a much higher reasonable standard of believing they were simply lying for laughs than you would if they claimed to have prayed and through prayer communicated with God, for example.
quote:And there it is, the crazy, hidden just under the surface. You cannot 'choose' to believe. Either you have evidence or you don't. If you must make a conscious choice to interpret the evidence in accordance with what you want to believe, then you have departed the way of sanity and gone into the outer dark where the ape-men howl and beat hollow logs with the thigh-bones of their enemies. Repent, and come into the light.
This supposes, wrongly, that a given piece of evidence can reasonably only point towards one conclusion. That it cannot possibly point to more than one thing at a time.
quote:I do not see a split, any more than there is a split between science and phlogiston theory. I see a hypothesis which the evidence does not support, and I see people who nonetheless insist on asserting it.
'The evidence', by any fair standard you could possibly be using, neither supports nor does not support the existence of God, KoM. It simply doesn't. If you were agnostic as opposed to a militant atheist, though, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
quote:What I object to is 'choosing to believe' particular answers, taking them on faith. I have now explained this several times.
Perhaps the problem lies in that while you have explained what you object to, you appear to see that practice literally everywhere in all religious people as the fundamental foundation of their religious beliefs.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: How do we determine what constitutes a "true belief"?
Reality testing.
What did you have in mind? Judging beliefs by the sincerity of believers, or how strongly believers like their beliefs?
quote:You start from the assumption that material truth is the only truth.
No, it's the only kind of claim that we can possibly verify or falsify. How can anyone know truth without a reliable way of detecting false?
You are still begging the question. You can't detect hydrogen with x-ray photo electron spectroscopy. That isn't evidence that hydrogen doesn't exit or isn't important or interesting. Its evidence that x-ray photo electron spectroscopy isn't an adequate tool to answer all questions of interest.
I postulate that there are truths which can not be discovered by the scientific method. You are arguing that this postulate is false (or even evil) because it can't be explored scientifically. That's circular reasoning. The fact that your tool doesn't allow you to measure something, is not evidence its non-existence or its morality. Its evidence of inadequacy of the tool.
If you accept KOM's premise that pursuit of truth is a moral imperative, you can't eliminate an area of intense human interest on the basis that your tool can't measure it.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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