quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: Not the only way to look at it but there's definitely plenty of middle ground between 'The Bible is word-for-word perfect' and 'The whole thing's a fraud', which I believe the idea being addressed.
Hobbes
I would have to agree. I'm definitely not at either extreme. I'm of the opinion that some of the events took place, a lot was based on real events, we have no good reason to believe the supernatural events took place, some of the stories are beautiful, some are strange, some give great moral lessons and some give horrible ones.
All in all, a book that should be read, if nothing else.
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posted
The thing is, religion is more than a list of rules; it's an epistemology. It provides not just a list of things to do and not do, but also a list of reasons why those things should be done -- and, its adherents insist, is most valuable precisely because it provides those reasons.
So consider a religion whose doctrines include things like handwashing before surgery, the avoidance of excessively sugary drinks, forgiveness of wrongdoing, and regular exercise. All of these things are in fact good things and should be promoted.
But is that religion "true?" What if, say, it also has as a doctrine that little dogs under ten pounds of weight should be kicked in the face whenever they are encountered? What if another doctrine is that under no circumstances should someone be permitted to read any single book longer than 100 pages in length?
And, most importantly, consider if the "reason" for all these things, as put forward by the religion, is merely this: "God says these are good things to do."
How can one, using religion, evaluate these recommendations? For that matter, how can one use the outcome of those recommendations to evaluate the religion itself?
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By contrast, when a epistemology of actual value makes a recommendation, it is underlain by a falsifiable prediction. "Wash your hands before surgery," says such an epistemology, "so that the people you cut open do not contract additional and unnecessary illnesses." "Kick small dogs in the face," it says, "because if you do not, they will eat all your bacon when you aren't looking." And you can test these predictions on their own terms without discarding the methods by which you evaluate the individual predictions.
Religion, as an epistemology, offers none of that.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: [qb]Not the only way to look at it but there's definitely plenty of middle ground between 'The Bible is word-for-word perfect' and 'The whole thing's a fraud', which I believe the idea being addressed.
Hobbes
I would have to agree. I'm definitely not at either extreme. I'm of the opinion that some of the events took place, a lot was based on real events, we have no good reason to believe the supernatural events took place[...]
Well, you don't.
Every time this discussion crops up about if the Judeo-Christian God actually exists He's a pretty awful guy not worth following I always feel like the non-thiests keep dragging God into a Godless world. Kind of the same way a Christian might drag Godlessness into a Christian world with comments like: "but if you don't believe in God, who will save you from Hell?"
If we start trying to nail down the morality of a Jewish or Christian God then we've already taken a lot of material in as an assumption. For one goals have changed if you're an atheist, the after-life has changed (in existence and substance) etc... The idea that God allows people to die when He doesn't have to and is thus evil ignores that. It accepts the idea of the God described in the Bible (take your pick how much of it, depending Jewish or Christian) but then edits out parts about the glory of the world to come or the importance this world serves in preparing us for it or the wisdom of God or just about anything else.
quote:It accepts the idea of the God described in the Bible (take your pick how much of it, depending Jewish or Christian) but then edits out parts about the glory of the world to come...
Not always. There are many sects of Christianity (for example) which are internally inconsistent even when you accept their premises.
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posted
Ah. Well, heck, you can simply assert "'good' is defined as whatever God wants, for any reason" and that particular philosophical debate is over. It's also fundamentally uninteresting and useless, though, to do that, not least because it makes any discussion of whether a possible "glory to come" indeed justifies a potential "eternity of torment" on the other hand; after all, no justification is necessary in that scenario: God just becomes a morally neutral force, a monstrous creature of incomprehensible motive.
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posted
Yes, but it's also useless to judge the goodness of a being when you've thrown out the ground rules His very existence brings into play. To indict someone based on a book but ignore the evidence that book gives that exonerates this person is not meaningful. It's true you don't believe the stuff about, say, glorious rewards in Heaven, but you don't believe the stuff about Him commanding His servants to kill anyone either. So if we're going to play the game we have to play by the rules.
quote:In what way are you using the word 'true'? Does it mean factually accurate? Effective? Satisfying?
Factually accurate. (Which in turn makes it effective.)
Here's a few varying examples of what I mean: I'm driving and a car cuts me off. My religion suggests things will turn out better if I respond in a kind way, so I don't honk or do anything aggressive to get back at them. After this and similar things happen a number of times, I notice that the suggestion made my religion turned out true - I ended up happier and things worked out better than they would have had I consistently reacted otherwise. It turned out to be factually accurate.
My religion says Jesus existed in ancient Roman times and was put to death. I later learn in history class that such a figure did exist and was put to death. It turned out to be factually accurate.
My religion says I will find more meaning in my life by serving others than serving only myself. I try it, and once again serving others does in fact make my life more meaningful. It turns out to be factually accurate.
And so on. In contrast there's relatively few instances in actual life where religion has led me to believe something that turned out to be false, and I've concluded most of those instances are as a result of me doing one of three things: Accepting Biblical history as being literally true rather than as stories intended to express important concepts. Looking to specific Biblical passages for guidance, rather than looking at the big picture presented by the Bible and Christianity as a whole. Expecting God to perform miracles on command for me.
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quote:To indict someone based on a book but ignore the evidence that book gives that exonerates this person is not meaningful.
This is not what is being done. As I said, many religions are not internally consistent with this definition of "goodness;" many others require that "goodness" be redefined to align with the will of God, which renders questions about the nature of God moot and tiresome.
There are religions which are more internally consistent re: this question, including your own, but they tend to address the issue by limiting the abilities and freedoms of their gods.
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posted
I contest that it is what's being done. Or at least is quite frequently. I have no doubt that there are religions that are internal inconsistent to such a degree that would make it very difficult to argue good and evil when taking their founding assumptions as givens. However I'm always less interested in that question since I normally either have to repudiate another religion or defend something I don't believe in. ::shrug:: I agree the solution in such cases, when arguing from your side (there are sides, right?) is to point to the inconsistencies so as to show that this God can't really be shown to be either Good or Evil. However, in no case do I find it appropriate (in reference to intellectual rigor) to merely discard the rules that religion has and try God in an Atheist world. Of course He loses, even Paul said He would lose!
quote:There are religions which are more internally consistent re: this question, including your own, but they tend to address the issue by limiting the abilities and freedoms of their gods.
I appreciate the compliment (that's what I think that was), but I don't understand why that's an issue here. Or are you saying you agree that within LDS theology, God is Good?
posted
An important point I want to make regarding autonomy - we can choose to "give it up" I suppose, but we really don't. We still choose. We are not absolved from responsibility. "Following orders" is not a free pass even if we imagine the orders are from God. If we do something terrible because we think God wants us to, that something is still our crime, our action.
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quote:I appreciate the compliment (that's what I think that was), but I don't understand why that's an issue here. Or are you saying you agree that within LDS theology, God is Good?
My impression is that the Mormon God is morally good but not a "perfect being" in the sense of traditional theism, since he seems to lack omnipotence.
For most Christian sects, there's no reason God couldn't have just created people in Heaven in the first place rather than testing them on Earth first. As I understand it, such a thing would be beyond the power of the Mormon God.
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quote:For most Christian sects, there's no reason God couldn't have just created people in Heaven in the first place rather than testing them on Earth first. As I understand it, such a thing would be beyond the power of the Mormon God.
It's my understanding that in Mormon theology, the souls of people have always existed, and were not created by God at all.
I'd be interested to know if I am correct in that understanding.
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quote:My impression is that the Mormon God is morally good but not a "perfect being" in the sense of traditional theism, since he seems to lack omnipotence.
I suppose. I guess I'm not familiar with the use of the word 'perfect' in quite that manner but it's not unreasonable. Again I don't see why that's really an issue, but also again I can't tell if this is an argument or just the reason given for allowing the LDS God a pass.
quote:It's my understanding that in Mormon theology, the souls of people have always existed, and were not created by God at all.
I'd be interested to know if I am correct in that understanding.
Close enough I suppose. LDS doctrine teaches that God created each spirit individually and is thus our literal Father. However, it adds that the Spirit is based on 'intelligence', a rather vague term that we know little about except that is has always existed. Thus the substance of what makes us up was not created by God, though our Spirits and bodies (indirectly for the latter) were. There is some confusion about the whole before we were spirits thing particularly since there's just a few snippets of scripture that refer to it. The common belief is that there was a ton of individual intelligences floating around that God converted into spirits. This isn't necessarily untrue, but is not actually supported by scripture the way most people (I've talked to) seem to think it is. There's only one reference to this pre-spirit material and it refers to the whole thing as 'intelligence' singular. The main point of confusion comes from the use of the word 'intelligences' in another, LDS-specific book (Abraham, chapter 3 specifically) but that is clearly being used as a synonym for Spirit there, as the events its referring to took place after all the Spirits were created/born/whatever.
Which is probably more than you wanted to know but... there it is.
quote: Again I don't see why that's really an issue, but also again I can't tell if this is an argument or just the reason given for allowing the LDS God a pass.
More like the latter, although a theologian like Aquinas would have found it bizarre to worship a being who lacked any of the "perfections." But I don't think he justifies that position in a convincing way.
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posted
But yeah, I think the LDS church makes the right move regarding the problem of evil. The only other way I can see to solve it is to be a universalist (that is, hold that everyone who ever lives will eventually end up in heaven) and then tell some convincing story about how the mortal world is needed as an educational experience prior to our ascent to heaven.
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quote:I would point out that by that type of reasoning, I believe you'd find most religions on earth "often correct".
I do find most major religions on earth often correct - and I do consider those religions to also have a degree of expert authority on what is factually true.
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posted
So why do you believe in an afterlife with God in heaven as opposed to, say, reincarnation?
With that question it seems we're probably entering territory we've already covered before. I'm not 100% sure I can predict your answer though, so I'm leaving the question.
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posted
This is familiar territory.... It be sort of like if two teachers taught me two mutually exclusive things - I end up going with the one that seems to me most likely to be true and/or favor the teacher I find most trustworthy. Other religions (such as Buddhism) tend to have some significant tenets I simply haven't found to be true (in the case of Buddhism, a major conclusion entailed by the Four Noble Truths seems factually untrue to me). I'm also simply less familiar with other religions, which also definitely plays some role.
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posted
I don't mean to be rude, but that strikes me as incredibly wishy-washy. I have trouble following your reasoning beyond "ah, it's what I was taught and what I like."
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:I don't mean to be rude, but that strikes me as incredibly wishy-washy. I have trouble following your reasoning beyond "ah, it's what I was taught and what I like."
I'll accept that complaint. I don't like it either, but reality is often wishy-washy. Particularly the parts of reality that religion relates to. It'd be nice if I could have solid black-and-white proof for all the decisions I make and for everything I believe. But in real life half the questions I have to answer are things where countless different people would give me countless different pieces of advice, where I don't have access to the sort of evidence I'd need to see things in black-or-white, where people might judge me poorly regardless of what decision I make, and where the best I can do is make a snap judgement call along whatever lines of reasoning seem right at the time. I think you and everyone else are in a similar situation. And so I think I'd be lying if I said I tried to claim I have some absolute proof or method which makes religious decision-making simple and clear.
quote:Do you think it's rational for familiarity to play a role when settling on a belief?
Yeah. I think its rational to be more trusting of the conclusions of something you understand than something you don't.
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