[billw55]

Cyberyeti, on 2012-December-19, 08:12, said:

Why do Christians eat pork when the other old testament religions don't ? Well officially the answer is something like that Jesus said that no food is unclean, it's what you are not what you eat that matters. In reality, people liked eating pork and it was a good marketing move to remove something that put the pagans off joining. The Leviticus dietary laws were in many ways little more than common sense pre refrigeration food hygiene.

I suppose the dietary rules can be viewed as public health regulations. But the only way to get people to follow them was to make them religious law. Nowadays, big food producers and processors would probably not follow the best practices either, if not for FDA regulations and enforcement. In some ways it is not all that different, rules and consequences imposed externally, for the public good.

[mikeh]

billw55, on 2012-December-19, 07:16, said:

And what about the believers that were not raised in the church? Those who found their beliefs as adults, of their own free will? I know many. Chances are, you do also. How do you explain them away?

You revel in calling out the many shortcomings of religions and the people that follow them. But what about the successes? What about the good done by religion - the charity, the everyday kindness, that is spread by a great many believers? For every idiot minister that blames hurricanes on homosexuality, there are probably 10,000 that offer prayer and compassion and aid. (Those aren't exciting enough for TV or internet news though). For every abusive priest there is a Mother Teresa.

I just don't see it as one-sided as you do. It's not that your facts are wrong. They just aren't the whole story.

Maybe you should reread my posts. I have acknowledged that religion has played a positive role in our history. I have acknowledged that the great majority of people of faith are decent people. I don't accept your 10,000 to 1, and I also note that prayer offers no more than a placebo-type of relief but I do accept that the great majority of people of faith see themselves as doing something positive and are decent people.

As Richard observed, using Mother Teresa as a positive for religion may not have been a good move, if you look beneath the hagiographic b.s., but I take the intended point.

However, I wonder how you would view a purely secular 'charitable' organization that:

1. accumulated great personal wealth for its leaders, who lived lives of luxury
2. employed, as its front-end representatives, a large number of pedophiles
3. actively concealed the crimes of its pedophile employees and refused to cooperate with the police
4. spent a lot of its efforts obstructing proven public health initiatives, causing the death of tens of thousands of people


Now, this is merely a description of the RC church, and I don't claim that all sects are equal. I could turn my attention to some of the Islamic sects, but I suspect that most here already have, on balance, a somewhat negative view of that faith due to the negative images of Islam promoted, ironically, by (amongst others) some Christians. Of course that hostility dates back many centuries and can be viewed, by the cynics amongst us, as akin to power struggles between competing criminal organizations. I mean, each side used to routinely advocate the killing of the other, while claiming that such killing was in the name of their merciful god.

I just don't understand how people of goodwill can repeatedy argue that the good that churches undoubtedly do justifies the bad that they also undoubtedly do.

Besides, don't you think that before devoting all that time and effort (and money) to 'worshipping' a god, you ought to spend some fraction of that time actually weighing the evidence for the existence of that thing to which you pray with such singular lack of objectively verifiable result?

[barmar]

Trinidad, on 2012-December-18, 23:16, said:

Personally, I don't understand how people can be "fanatic atheists". Essentially being an atheist is about not being something. I am not an airline pilot, I am not playing piano and I don't even come close to speaking Swahili. How could anybody say that I am a fanatic non Swahili speaker?

There are no organized groups trying to force public schools to teach flying, piano playing, or Swahili to all our children. And even if there were, there's no harm to society if there are more pilots or piano players. No public policies are predicated on the notions "We are a nation of airline pilots" or "Our nation was founded on piano-playing principles."

Religious indoctrination, on the other hand, DOES harm society. It asks people to avoid critical thinking. I'll bet there's a correlation between religious belief and objection to climate change.

Would you be OK if schools stopped teaching arithmetic? Teaching alternatives to evolution is analogous to that.

If religious belief were purely a personal issue, atheists wouldn't have much of a problem with it. We might pity believers, in the way that we feel bad for people with disabilities. But religion affects other people significantly, so we can't just ignore it. As I mentioned above, it informs public policy (most who advocate prohibiting abortion or gay marriage use religious arguments), and it has also been used quite a bit to incite violence. I'll bet almost all violence against abortion clinics has been perpetrated due to religious beliefs.

I don't know why we're bothering with this discussion. Nothing has been said that hasn't been said in every previous thread that went into a tangent about religion (I'm pretty sure I've written this very paragraph before). It's the very definition of a "religious debate" that it will never be decided. I promised myself I wouldn't get sucked into the next one, but I forgot until I already wrote this, so I'm going to post it.

[blackshoe]

mikeh, on 2012-December-19, 01:07, said:

Hitler was not what one might today call a mainstream christian, and it does appear that his attachment to the church 'evolved' especially later in life. However, as one example, in 1934 he gave a speech in which he portrayed Christ as a militant anti-semite, and for a long period he seems to have espoused a form of christianity that was stripped of its jewish roots.

He made many positive references to christianity in his pursuit of power. It appears that whether one would define him as a christian depends on how broadly one views that term. I can see and respect a view that excludes him, but my view would see him as a christian for much of his life, including much of his time as a nazi, albeit definitely a non-mainstream christian.

Hitler was apparently raised Catholic, later disliked the Catholic Church and developed an admiration for Martin Luther. I got this from wikipedia, and I don't know how accurate it is, but I have no reason to disbelieve it. It doesn't appear, from the article, that he was any kind of "practicing Christian" - rather he seems to have used references to Christianity in his political life as a tool to manipulate people.

[dwar0123]

nigel_k, on 2012-December-19, 03:55, said:

If you look at the period since atheism became widespread, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot are among the worst mass murderers, even without including Hitler.

Not that this makes atheists like me any less moral than anyone else. But I won't be getting up on my high horse any time soon.

There have been plenty of mass murderers, heck just read the old testament, many of them are recorded with glee as having been done for the glory of God. But really, have you never read history, at all? They might not have called it mass murder back then but when someone comes in and slaughters everyone, that is still what it is.

It really wasn't until the enlightenment that societal norms shifted in such a way that people took offense to mass murderers occurring in general rather than just objecting to others trying to mass murder their people.

As for the sheer numbers obtained by your examples that's purely a result of greatly increased populations and the technology by which to organize and orchestrate the ill deeds.

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2012-December-19, 10:57, said:

Hitler was apparently raised Catholic, later disliked the Catholic Church and developed an admiration for Martin Luther. I got this from wikipedia, and I don't know how accurate it is, but I have no reason to disbelieve it. It doesn't appear, from the article, that he was any kind of "practicing Christian" - rather he seems to have used references to Christianity in his political life as a tool to manipulate people.

And religion's power as such a tool is one of the problems with it.

When human society was in its infancy, this was a very useful way to raise people out of savagery. But we're no longer savages.

[blackshoe]

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius (Kill them all; for the Lord knows them that are his own)." -- Attributed to Arnaud Amalric, a Papal legate assigned to convert the Albigensians, at the siege of Béziers, ca. 1209 AD.

If he gave such an order, he didn't mention it in his report to the Pope; he said it was "persons of low rank" who sacked Béziers and killed "more than 20,000 people" while negotiations were still going on about releasing the Catholics in the city.

[mikeh]

I was going to upvote debrose's post, then noticed something odd: it isn't possible. Some posts still have the upvote possibility but hers doesn't, nor does my last one, nor do several others. Did we offend someone? Or is it merely a weird artefact of my system?

I was planning on ending my involvement in this thread anyway: no need to use such a subtle tool

[dwar0123]

mikeh, on 2012-December-19, 11:24, said:

I was going to upvote debrose's post, then noticed something odd: it isn't possible. Some posts still have the upvote possibility but hers doesn't, nor does my last one, nor do several others. Did we offend someone? Or is it merely a weird artefact of my system?

I was planning on ending my involvement in this thread anyway: no need to use such a subtle tool

I think you are hallucinating

You have never been able to upvote your own, you can't upvote barmar(one of the others you might have noticed) cause he is an admin and I am pretty sure you can't upvote debrose's because you already have

[mikeh]

dwar0123, on 2012-December-19, 11:27, said:

I think you are hallucinating

You have never been able to upvote your own, you can't upvote barmar(one of the others you might have noticed) cause he is an admin and I am pretty sure you can't upvote debrose's because you already have

I was hallucinating! I read a post of barmar and thought it was deb's. Oh well....that was before my morning coffee, so I have an excuse, at least in what passes for my own mind

[WellSpyder]

mikeh, on 2012-December-19, 11:31, said:

I was hallucinating! I read a post of barmar and thought it was deb's. Oh well....that was before my morning coffee, so I have an excuse, at least in what passes for my own mind

Amazing how often there is a rational explanation for a "conspiracy" (or indeed a "miracle") if only one is prepared to look for it....

[phil_20686]

mikeh, on 2012-December-18, 09:24, said:

Actually, he implied that people like me either are prone to mass murder or establish conditions in which mass murder becomes prevalent. Propositions which I find personally insulting, but which, more to the point, are precisely contrary to the evidence. Religious fanaticism, otoh, is known to increase the chances of abhorrent behaviour. Objectively speaking, thee is no doubt whatsoever that religious belief is more dangerous than a lack thereof.

So I am confident that this is wrong. The biggest single relationship between religion and crime that I have puzzled out is less religion -> more divorce -> worse outcomes for children -> more crime. All of the relationships outlined are reasonably well established, although the first one correlates much better with "people who think religion is important in their lives" than with religious self-identity. Also, this type of thing is susceptible to aggregation error. E.g. the people who don't get divorced because they are religious, but otherwise would have, might have such unhappy marriages that the general stats on the effects of marriage on children don't apply. That is to say, knowing that divorce is bad for children does not preclude the ability to reach a situation which is worse than divorce. However, I am sceptical of that particular aggregation error. And I could in theory check it. But this is only a forum post

At the biggest possible level, you can do things like regress the European data for crime vs religiosity Obviously this misses lots of cultural factors, but the idea i that you get enough data points any significant correlation is pretty likely to be true. The wide angle view seems to indicate that very religious cultures have less of certain types of crimes. For example, the fraction of people, who self identify as atheist is completely uncorrelated with burglary, but correlates positively with the incidence of rape with R^2 = 0.22, which isn't bad for correlations of this type. Obviously, it isn't great either, but cultures are noisy things and correlations greater than 0.5 basically don't exist. (I complied this myself earlier out of statistics from european commision).

mikeh, on 2012-December-18, 11:01, said:

1.If by anti-religion, you intend to refer to atheists, the reality is that atheists are not an organized body and do not have any equivalent of a church or a doctrine. A doctrine is received or revealed knowledge, and is the anthesis of atheism. It is a common error, on the part of religious critics of atheism, to claim that atheism is merely another variant of religion, based on belief and faith.

2. I don't know what you mean by anti-religious fanatics doing violence. PZ Myers, a noted atheist blogger, once publicy desecrated a communion wafer. I think that is the most violent act I have seen in the name of atheism But I may well be ignorant of other, more real anti-religious fanaticism.

There have been four distinct idealogies that have been atheist in character (imo) and which have inspired anti religious violence. Facism of the Mussoline/Franco persausion, communism as practised in eastern europe, Nazism, and the not-quite communism as practised in various south american states. Obviously these relationships are complex. Franco in particular sought both to use the Catholic church and to control it, and in some sense to strengthen it, but be was very anti other religious groups.

mikeh, on 2012-December-18, 11:53, said:

One minor reason is that religion maintains its control over people by instilling fear and false beliefs. Thus Fluffy seems to suggest that a lack of belief in a supernatural god can cause people to lack a moral sense and thus be more ready to kill than would be the case otherwise. This is an argument I have read countless times.

Its not clear that they are false . Isn't that the point of these arguments.

hrothgar, on 2012-December-18, 12:12, said:

Only if you insist on objective notions of morality. Most people I know are moral relativists and don't require a "sound philosophical justification" for their morality.


I spent a lot of time studying Edgeworth and working with indifference curves. I don't recall religion factoring into those discussion.


The most obvious counter is to note that many individuals would be fearful to live in a society in which they can be gang raped.

It seems that an inability to provide a justification is essentially conceding the point. You and mikeh are of course correct that such thought experiments are only the starting point for such discussions. If you have read widely in utilitarianism you will already know about its various problems, and the constructions that have been created which caused most philosophers to abandon it as an, if you will allow the expression, epistimological theory of morality. But of course its still widely used in fields like economics where the pay-offs can be, in at least some sense, measured. You might like Iris Murdoch's book, "The sovreignity of Good" which discusses some of these problems from a slightly oblique angle.

mikeh, on 2012-December-18, 12:17, said:

'These are not the claims'.

What you mean is that these are not 'your claims'.

As for your views, you have opened up an area in which any meaningful discussion would require far more than even my propensities to long posts could suffice. I will say this: your invocation of utilitarism is very much a strawman argument, and I am surprised that you would resort to such cheap misdirection. I am not an acolyte of Bentham, at least not in the classic sense. Any nuanced sense of morality has (in my view) to recognize the rights of minorities, down to the scale of individuals, and any practical application must strike a balance between the pure greatest benefit to the greatest number and the protection of the minorities.

It is my perhaps naive and unspohisticated opinion that what we see as moral arises in part from hard-wiring of the brain. I find support for this from experiments conducted around the world, across diverse ethnic, cultural and religious peoples, which show a remarkably uniform set of responses to certain moral dilemmas posed in question form.

Sure, but taking the worst claims made by the opposition is no way to debate. Smart theists don't make the claims you suggested, just as smart atheists don;t claim that evolution `proves there is no God' which is something that is also often written by less educated atheists.

dwar0123, on 2012-December-18, 13:35, said:

The way I read Christian theology, if you really believe the texts, truly believe, which when it comes to religion, is the only way to believe. Then you will act in a way that the rest of the world would call fanatical.

Its a feature of the american brand of protestantism to believe that the texts are the most important aspect, or that they are complete guide to Christianity. Neither the Catholic Church, nor the Orthodox church, believes that personal interpretation of the bible has the final word on christian doctrine, and they make up together way more people than the whole of protestantism.

helene_t, on 2012-December-18, 13:55, said:

I find it hard to imagine how a gathering in an atheist club would be. Talking about all the things we don't believe in? Smalltalk such as "What are your non-plans for the non-holidays?"

Look up utube videos of the Reason Rally.

[billw55]

mikeh, on 2012-December-19, 10:46, said:

Maybe you should reread my posts. I have acknowledged that religion has played a positive role in our history. I have acknowledged that the great majority of people of faith are decent people. I don't accept your 10,000 to 1, and I also note that prayer offers no more than a placebo-type of relief but I do accept that the great majority of people of faith see themselves as doing something positive and are decent people.

I actually did some figures to get 10,000. In my own community of about 150,000, there are over 200 churches listed in the directory. Some surely have more than one minister, but I conservatively adopt one minister per 1,000 population. The US has about 300m people, so probably at least 300k ministers. We hear of only a few making idiot statements, but I suppose a fair share don't make the news. Is 10k:1 an exagerration? Maybe. 1k:1? Even at 100:1, the idiots are still a trivial minority.

mikeh, on 2012-December-19, 10:46, said:

I just don't understand how people of goodwill can repeatedy argue that the good that churches undoubtedly do justifies the bad that they also undoubtedly do.

I have not argued that the bad done by religion is justified (it certainly is not). I have only said that good is also done.

mikeh, on 2012-December-19, 10:46, said:

Besides, don't you think that before devoting all that time and effort (and money) to 'worshipping' a god, you ought to spend some fraction of that time actually weighing the evidence for the existence of that thing to which you pray with such singular lack of objectively verifiable result?

Ah, this is very interesting. If we consider that all religions are mutually exclusive as far as truth value of their belief set, then at most one out of thousands can be actually true. Maybe zero. I admit, I do want reasonable confidence that a belief is actually true, in order to invest so much in that belief.

So how can one tell which religion (if any) is true? This discussion is much more interesting with theists, who will actually try to answer this question. Any takers?

(Of course this does not consider that some religions are close enough that the differences may not matter in this context. For example, whether or not we eat crackers and wine at church, or dunk our babies in water, doesn't matter much if we all agree that Christ is our savior. Or does it? Anyway, this can only reduce the number of core religions down to a few dozen or so at best. The problem remains - at most one is true.)

[PassedOut]

phil_20686, on 2012-December-19, 11:54, said:

Sure, but taking the worst claims made by the opposition is no way to debate. Smart theists don't make the claims you suggested, just as smart atheists don't claim that evolution 'proves there is no God' which is something that is also often written by less educated atheists.

This caught me by surprise as I've never seen such a claim by an atheist. Have you some links?

I have, however, heard a couple of religious people say that they reject evolution on those grounds.

[dwar0123]

phil_20686, on 2012-December-19, 11:54, said:

Its a feature of the american brand of protestantism to believe that the texts are the most important aspect, or that they are complete guide to Christianity. Neither the Catholic Church, nor the Orthodox church, believes that personal interpretation of the bible has the final word on christian doctrine, and they make up together way more people than the whole of protestantism.

Of course most organized Christian religions have abandoned a strict interpretation of the bible, with all that we have learned and morally advanced as a society sense they were written, doing otherwise would be the downfall of their organization. That is entirely my point. When the only people who are actually following the religious texts are called fanatics, then what does that say about the religion? Religions by their nature are absolute and any divinely revealed truth would also be absolute. If the churches teachings are evolving along side the ever increasing understanding of man, then it is the work of man not the work of God. In fact, it is pretty easy to argue that for much of history, the churches teachings have been a drag on the ever increasing understanding of man.

[mikeh]

billw55, on 2012-December-19, 11:54, said:

(Of course this does not consider that some religions are close enough that the differences may not matter in this context. For example, whether or not we eat crackers and wine at church, or dunk our babies in water, doesn't matter much if we all agree that Christ is our savior. Or does it? Anyway, this can only reduce the number of core religions down to a few dozen or so at best. The problem remains - at most one is true.)

Why are you assuming that the 'true' religion is one of the 'core' religions?

Would you include the Norse or ancient Greek or ancient Samarian religions as 'core' religions? If not, why not? What evidence is there that rules them out while also leaving, say, Christianity as a viable proposition?

And why are you assuming that the one true religion, if such a thing exists, as yet been discovered? I mean, were we having this discussion 1500 years ago, Islam wouldn't be in the mix. 2500 years ago, christianity wouldn't be in the mix. If there is in fact a god, and a god that is relevant in terms of it being appropriate to have a religion organized around it, maybe it will be discovered 1000 years from now.

I think, in any event, you are making a very common mistake. The starting point ought not to be: which religion is true. The starting point ought to be: on the available evidence, does it appear that there is such a thing as a god, in the sense of some sort of force, or entity which ought to be the subject of human worship?

Indeed, I'd go further.

1. define what you mean by god

2. does the entity that you now call god seem like an entity that requires or pays any attention to human worship? If not, then what's the point?

3.What evidence is there in support of the proposition that your god-entity exists? Please, don't do what virtually every other religious person does, and fall into the error of the god of the gaps fallacy. Look not for areas of ignorance and say: ah, we don't understand this, therefore it is evidence of god. We are not at the theoretical height of our potential, as a species, to understand the universe. The gaps are narrowing each and every year. We do not need to invoke ignorance as evidence of supernatural entities.

4, If you are of the view that the evidence suggests the existence of a god-entity and that god entity needs, requires, or will respond to human worship, then try to figure out what sort of societal organization would accurately portray the characteristics of your god, and form a church. You could look to see if any existing or former religion got it right, but since none of them were founded on what we'd now recognize as evidence-based principles, using modern means of gathering evidence, it seems vanishingly improbable that you'd find your god entity in any of them.

Most Xians, other than the fundies, seem to accept the legitimacy of an evidence-based approach to such things as looking for medical cures, or exploring for life on other planets. Even fundies seem to accept the value of evidence-based concepts in electronics and other technologies. Modern televisions or computers were not invented based on revealed truths from ancient texts cobbled together over the centuries.

But modern religions have evolved a defence mechanism that operates to make an evidence-based approach to evaluation off limits to the mind of a believer.

Add to this the undoubted reality that the universe, with no god and no apparent externally-imposed purpose, can be a scary thing for people aware of their own mortality and that of their loved ones, and it is no surprise that so many would prefer the mental anesthetic of religious belief over the acceptance of evidence-based reality.

I'd love to be able to believe, based on logic and/or real evidence, that I'll live forever (provided I wasn't going to hell, of course), but I can't fool myself, and the efforts of various priests, nuns, divinity teachers and Sunday School teachers to indoctrinate me as a child seem to have fallen flat. As it happens, I personally feel awe when looking at the night sky on those few occasions when I am away from city lights and the sky is clear. I can't grasp infinity, of course, but the sheer scale of what I can grasp, and what I know intellectually, always astounds me and I feel joy at being a part of this reality, even as I know that my perception of it is fragmentary and woefully short of complete, and ever will be until I become unable to have any at all.

And as of yet, I have seen no evidence that suggests that some sort of worship-requiring god entity has ever played a role in the universe

[blackshoe]

Perhaps gods exist because people believe in them. If so, the Norse and Greek (and other ancient) gods would have existed in the past, but because few believe in them today, they no longer exist.

[hrothgar]

phil_20686, on 2012-December-19, 11:54, said:

At the biggest possible level, you can do things like regress the European data for crime vs religiosity Obviously this misses lots of cultural factors, but the idea i that you get enough data points any significant correlation is pretty likely to be true. The wide angle view seems to indicate that very religious cultures have less of certain types of crimes. For example, the fraction of people, who self identify as atheist is completely uncorrelated with burglary, but correlates positively with the incidence of rape with R^2 = 0.22, which isn't bad for correlations of this type. Obviously, it isn't great either, but cultures are noisy things and correlations greater than 0.5 basically don't exist. (I complied this myself earlier out of statistics from european commision).

Throw a enough shite up against a wall and some of it is going to stick...
In a similar vein, run enough statistical tests and you're going to start seeing false positives.

In contrast, if you an a priori explanation which religiosity should effect willingness to rape differently than willingness to steal and the data confirmed this hypothesis you might have something interesting...

[hrothgar]

phil_20686, on 2012-December-19, 11:54, said:

It seems that an inability to provide a justification is essentially conceding the point.

I insist that you resolve the Riemann hypothesis.
If not, you are conceding my point that morality is inherently subjective.

[Phil]

mikeh, on 2012-December-19, 12:47, said:

I'd love to be able to believe, based on logic and/or real evidence, that I'll live forever (provided I wasn't going to hell, of course)

And yet, consciousness / sentience has been impossible to replicate.

Quote

As it happens, I personally feel awe when looking at the night sky on those few occasions when I am away from city lights and the sky is clear. I can't grasp infinity, of course, but the sheer scale of what I can grasp, and what I know intellectually, always astounds me and I feel joy at being a part of this reality, even as I know that my perception of it is fragmentary and woefully short of complete, and ever will be until I become unable to have any at all.

This is exactly why the jury is out for me. There's simply too much beauty in the world for all of this to be something random.