[mikeh]

 nige1, on 2015-January-11, 18:05, said:

We're both entitiled to our views. What made gwnn imagine that he's not allowed criticise Morther Teresa? FWIW, I disapprove of censorship in bridge forums and elsewhere. Je suis Charlie I care about what I copy and paste. I enjoyed doing it. After these efforts, I know much more about Mother Teresa's life.[/size] I've no 1st-hand information. To arrive at my my tentative assessment of Mother Teresa, I applied my judgement to the quoted biographical information from the internet. You might gather from other threads, that I can't aspire to the reassuring certainties and[/size] blind faith of the fanatical atheist

Typical projection by religious believer. Religious people appear to lack the capacity to realize that a lack of irrational superstition is not actually a variant of 'faith', which allows them to think of atheism as a system of belief, when it is a rejection of faith-based belief. The fundamental difference, oddly enough, is that atheists, in general (although there are exceptions) generally embrace the reality that humankind doesn't have the certainties that religion claims to reveal (tho every religion has different certainties, which is amusing to atheists but simply not appreciated by believers, who are certain that their faith is the only true faith)

[Winstonm]

 nige1, on 2015-January-11, 18:15, said:

Supernovae (and neutron-star collisions) resent the aspersions cast by Winstonm on their abilities (although they might prefer other raw-materials to lead).

IMO, belief in the magical, i.e., resurrection of a dead body, changing lead into gold or water into wine, feeding 5000 with 5 small fish, etc., is childish wishful thinking. As for me, when I became a man, I put away childish things.

[nige1]

 Winstonm, on 2015-January-11, 20:28, said:

As for me, when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I'm glad I didn't

[Trinidad]

 nige1, on 2015-January-11, 20:37, said:

I'm glad I didn't

Yet you aren't horribly disappointed each year when your stockings remain empty on Christmas day?

Rik

[barmar]

 Winstonm, on 2015-January-11, 10:25, said:

Doesn't one have to be naïve to believe in magic?

A belief in magic is the basis of most religions. They assume a god or gods with supernatural powers.

So given that a large number of people are Christians, it's perfectly consistent for them to believe in miracles, including transubstantiation. Is that really more naive than believing that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days?

[helene_t]

 barmar, on 2015-January-12, 04:14, said:

So given that a large number of people are Christians, it's perfectly consistent for them to believe in miracles, including transubstantiation. Is that really more naive than believing that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days?

Maybe you are right. Although I know many people who call themselves Christians, it is obviously a biased sample, and I don't often have theological discussions with them.

Having said that, I doubt that most christians tacitly believe in miracles. I think most of them make a distinction between "believing" in something that is irrelevant to your own decision making, such as miracles that happened thousands of years ago, and believing in things of practical importance such as miracles that are likely to happen tomorrow. The former, one can profess to believe in for the purpose of group identification, without tacitly believing in miracles.

[billw55]

 barmar, on 2015-January-12, 04:14, said:

A belief in magic is the basis of most religions. They assume a god or gods with supernatural powers.

So given that a large number of people are Christians, it's perfectly consistent for them to believe in miracles, including transubstantiation. Is that really more naive than believing that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days?

I touched on this subject earlier in the thread. Why is belief in one type of magic or magical event, inherently more or less naive than another? Mikeh responded with an interesting argument about current magic versus past magic - see post 38.

[nige1]

deleted

[Winstonm]

 barmar, on 2015-January-12, 04:14, said:

A belief in magic is the basis of most religions. They assume a god or gods with supernatural powers.

So given that a large number of people are Christians, it's perfectly consistent for them to believe in miracles, including transubstantiation. Is that really more naive than believing that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days?

It is certainly possible to hold an internally consistent logical belief within a larger scope of a magical premise.

I do not distinguish among the varied magical beliefs. Most people to whom I have spoken on the subject end up defending the message within their magical belief systems rather than defending or explaining the system's reliance on a magical occurrence as its premise.

[mikeh]

 billw55, on 2015-January-12, 07:52, said:

I touched on this subject earlier in the thread. Why is belief in one type of magic or magical event, inherently more or less naive than another? Mikeh responded with an interesting argument about current magic versus past magic - see post 38.

Thanks

Incidentally, while I often ridicule the holding by otherwise intelligent people of belief in the supernatural, imo it made nothing but sense for our ancestors to believe in the supernatural.

Before the discovery and use of the scientific method, that arose hand-in-glove with the development of tools that allowed us to see nature in ways imperceptible to our senses, logic would almost inevitably lead to the notion that unseen forces and entities were at play in the world.

How else would one explain thunder and lightning?

How else would one explain the onset of a tornado out of the clear blue sky?

How could one come up with the notion of bacterial or viral based illnesses if it was literally impossible to ever detect the presence of forms of life at the scale of such entities?

Furthermore, the human experience would tend to lead us to attribute motivation to these acts. I don't know if any ancient philosopher would have even thought about the possibility of pure randomness, but ascribing, instead, supernatural causes to these events would allow for the illusion of being able to influence them, by acts of sacrifice or appeasement to those causes, aka gods.

In addition, to the extent that these matters were susceptible to prediction (annual seasons, phases of the moon, etc), power accrued to those with the insight and knowledge to make such predictions, and it would be a foolish sage who explained that, no, these things are readily predictable by anyone, and I don't have any special powers.

I suspect that if I were alive 5,000 years ago, and someone was claiming that gods did not exist, I would be as vehement in my arguments against them as I am, today, vehement in my arguments that we now have neither need nor reason to invoke the supernatural as an explanatory mechanism. The fact that we now understand natural causes for so much that we used to ascribe to supernatural causes leads me to infer that those matters still not understood will, in the fullness of time, and subject to the cognitive limits imposed by our intellectual capacity as a species, become understood as also having natural causes...iow, I reject the notion of the god of the gaps.

This is quite a bit off topic in terms of MT, but does address some of the other posts relating to belief in miracles or exorcism, still relevant to at least the RC church.

[Winstonm]

 billw55, on 2015-January-12, 07:52, said:

I touched on this subject earlier in the thread. Why is belief in one type of magic or magical event, inherently more or less naive than another? Mikeh responded with an interesting argument about current magic versus past magic - see post 38.

I re-read Mike's statement and I agree to a point but disagree to a point. I do agree that a present-day leader expressing belief in magical events sets a poor example, but at the same time I hold that any type of blind belief that has no supporting or underlying objective evidence is as bad because of the symbiotic relationship between the two. If the vast majority of the world population rejected magical explanations then the Pope would be on an Island with his claims of magic and magical intervention and far fewer Catholics would be around to be influenced by his claims.

Because of these views I still consider MT as neither good nor bad but simply misguided. The worst crime was committed by those who indoctrinated her into their fanciful beliefs.

[barmar]

 helene_t, on 2015-January-12, 05:32, said:

Maybe you are right. Although I know many people who call themselves Christians, it is obviously a biased sample, and I don't often have theological discussions with them.

Having said that, I doubt that most christians tactily believe in miracles. I think most of them make a distinction between "believing" in something that is irrelevant to your own decision making, such as miracles that happened thousands of years ago, and believing in things of practical importance such as miracles that are likely to happen tomorrow. The former, one can profess to believe in for the purpose of group identification, without tacitly believing in miracles.

When someone prays for a loved one to recover from an illness, what are they doing but asking for a miracle? They're asking God to take some action, over and above the physical actions of the doctors. But I understand what you're saying. I think many people who pray in situations like this aren't really expecting a miracle, but just participating in a community ritual that they've become accustomed to.

I consider myself an atheist. But I still participate in the Seder ritual with my family, recounting the story of how God brought us out of slavery in Egypt. It's just part of how I was raised.

[mikeh]

 barmar, on 2015-January-12, 15:29, said:

I consider myself an atheist. But I still participate in the Seder ritual with my family, recounting the story of how God brought us out of slavery in Egypt. It's just part of how I was raised.

Did you know that there is, it seems, no evidence, beyond the biblical stories, that the Egyptians ever enslaved significant numbers of jews, and that there was never a significant number of them resident in Egypt such that any exodus occurred, let alone one led by a Moses?

I gather that it is generally accepted amongst historians of the period that the presence of substantial numbers of a foreign tribe, with a different language and a very different religion (to that of the Egyptians of that time) would be expected to result in some traces, be that in the form of inscriptions, temples, monuments, etc. A great deal seems to be known of the various dynasties, and it seems at least plausible that the utter lack of reference to the various plagues said to have forced the granting of leave to depart would have been noted somewhere.

A quick visit to wikpedia, which I grant is hardly authoritative, leads to the understanding that few historians even bother looking for such evidence now: the topic has been explored for so long and with such uniform lack of even the scantiest of evidence that it isn't seen as worth anyone's time. This coincides with other reading I have done on the subject, years ago, from somewhat more authoritative sources.

It is funny, tho not at all humorous, that this story, so central to Judaism, is completely ignored, it seems, by most practicing Jews. If only the Israelis realized that their God-given status is based on fiction, maybe they wouldn't be quite so self-righteous in their treatment of the Palestinians? Oh well, probably not...they would find another rationalization. Please note that in saying that, I am simply saying that they are human....no better and no worse than the rest of us. Historically, peoples of all varieties seem to have no problem coming up with justifications for treating others as inferiors.

[gwnn]

 nige1, on 2015-January-11, 18:05, said:

We're both entitiled to our views. What made gwnn imagine that he's not allowed criticise Morther Teresa? FWIW, I disapprove of censorship in this bridge forum and elsewhere. Je suis Charlie I care about what I copy and paste. I enjoyed doing it. After these efforts, I know much more about Mother Teresa's life.[/size] I've no 1st-hand information. To arrive at my my tentative assessment of Mother Teresa, I applied my judgement to the quoted biographical information from the internet. You might gather, from other threads, that I can't aspire to the reassuring certainties and[/size] blind faith of the fanatical atheist

Maybe "not allowed to" was a poor choice of words, I thought it was obvious what I meant, but I guess not.

You gave the impression that you copied and pasted the stuff by way of a counterargument to what mikeh, Vampyr, et al (including I) have posted against MT. You then went on to compare us to the Nobel committee, no doubt to imply that our criticism is worthless since they are smarter than us. That is certainly a very easy way to dismiss any argument, and one that you have been pursuing before (when you compared us to Blaise Pascal). It's neither an honourable nor a logical way of arguing. Mikeh could have written 100 pages of airtight arguments against her but well many people thought she was good, including the group who awarded Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, etc their highest esteem, so she must be perfect!

You should also knock it off with the blind faith of the fanatical atheists. Who are you talking about? Stop making your innocuous-looking little jokes and call a spade a spade. Have you met any fanatical atheists here? If so, name them. (Hint: as far as I know, no one has ever said that they actively believe there is no god. Atheism is a term that is defined in either of two ways ("I do not believe there is a god" or "I believe there is no god") and each poster who has defined themselves has chosen the second one -- but you repeatedly ignored this the last time). Reply directly to posts and questions, without your melodramatic smileys. Please, please, please.

[mikeh]

 gwnn, on 2015-January-12, 16:58, said:

Atheism is a term that is defined in either of two ways ("I do not believe there is a god" or "I believe there is no god") and each poster who has defined themselves has chosen the second one -- but you repeatedly ignored this the last time). Reply directly to posts and questions, without your melodramatic smileys. Please, please, please.

I think and hope you meant we had all chosen the first one

This is a point that religious believers get wrong in virtually everything I have ever seen in print, despite the best efforts of the more well-known proponents of atheism to make it clear that the main difference between a believer and an atheist is precisely the lack of certainty held by the atheist.

I don't know if there is a god. I don't know of any way of proving or, more importantly, disproving the hypothesis that there is a god. I happen to think that the evidence is quite heavily to the effect that there is no 'god' in the sense of the various ideas of god which underpin any religion of which I am aware.

Here, somewhat distilled, are the arguments I have read in favour of 'god', at least the Xian god.

1. Without god to keep us in line, we'd all be immoral, depraved individuals. Since I don't believe in god and try my best to be a good person anyway (tho I am sure I fail in many ways), that seems to me to be a very unhappy way to see people

2. I am afraid of death....if not for me, then for my loved ones....I want to see them again and I want to believe that they and I will live after death. Pure wish fulfilment. Wanting something, unfortunately, doesn't make it so

3.Look at the world/universe! Can you explain EVERYTHING? If not, why there must be GOD! After all, if you can't explain it otherwise, then it MUST be god. This is known as the god of the gaps notion.....wherever there is a gap in human understanding, the gap is filled by the notion of god. Interestingly, few of these people will acknowledge that 400 years ago the gaps were much smaller than they were 4000 years ago, and the room available for their god continues to shrink at an astounding pace....we've pushed it back by more than 13.7 billion years since the venerable bede

4. It's in the holy book....it is the literal word of god!!! (this is a common theme in most religions, and they are often willing to kill those who ascribe to a slightly different book or even the same book, but read differently. Xians, not so much anymore, but some muslims for sure, and Xians aren't that different)

5. It brings me and others like me some comfort and does no harm, while engendering a spirit of community and charity



This last reminds me of some of the posters here, and is in itself pretty innocuous. We had a long, acrimonious thread here about whether religious moderates in essence sheltered or encouraged fanatics, and I have no intention of revisiting that topic. Suffice it to say that if every religious believer were motivated only by that last notion, then the world would be a far happier, kinder place than it is. That is so even tho recent studies have shown that on average atheists are more compassionate, and more socially liberal than are religious believers. I suspect that the studies would be reversed if all believers were, for example, clones of Mycroft.

[Vampyr]

My 8yo nephew was recently involved in a discussion at the lunch table at school. The children were discussing whether the Tooth Fairy, God or Santa Claus existed. "Of course they don't exist!" scoffed my nephew.

What is interesting about this is that the school is in name a Christian school, so many of the children will not have, like my nephew, come from non-believing households but from homes where the idea of God was actively promoted. Still the children put the three people under discussion in the same category.

[kenberg]

I would separate the two statements as follows:


a. I don't believe there is a god. I subscribe to this. I definitely do not believe there is a god.

b. I believe there is not god. Let's look at how this differs from a.
We have to make choices as to how to lead our lives. I do not in the least try to hedge my bets. I don't believe there is a god, and I live my life on the assumption that there is not. Abut the only way I see this as really differing from a. is that I have no plans or desires to convince theists that I am right.


In college I took a course in the origins of Christianity from the now long dead John Berryman. Speaking of miracles, he said "I don't believe in miracles because I have never seen one, but I have more sympathy with those who are sure they exist than with those who are sure that they cannot". That made sense to me. College was a time for me to sort this out. I also took a course in the philosophy of religion from the theologian Paul Holmer. He spoke of a group within the early church known as the Society of Free Thinkers. The idea was to use intelligence to come to the truth. According to Holmer, there was a sub-sub-group of tis sub-group who, after careful consideration, decided that god exists as revealed in the Bible and we should all follow his teachings. They were, Holmer said, kicked out of the Society of Free Thinkers. Some Free Thinking was simply beyond the pale, even of the Society.

But ttat was college. I had first left the church (Presbyterian) when I was about 14. By the time I finished college I had pertty much chosen my path. I believe there is not a god in the sense that I don't believe there is a god and it seems to me that sooner or later you choose your way and that's that. I enjoy hearing how other people think, I can often appreciate their views or at least I like to think that I can, but at 76 there is no chance I will be changing my mind.Well if, as in an old Bill Cosby comedy album, we get ongoing torrential rain and a voice comes from the sky telling me to build an ark, I will re-consider.



Incidentally: Althoug I believe I can, if absolutely forced to, justfy my views by cogent argument, I am far less certain that logic was the dominant motivatin for my pulling away from religion. Logic played a role, but I don't really believe that I, or for that matter humans in general, are fundamentally logical beings. Many people who know me woould agree with my assessment of myself in this matter but perhaps they would feel they are different. Perhaps they are.

[diana_eva]

 Vampyr, on 2015-January-12, 17:38, said:

My 8yo nephew was recently involved in a discussion at the lunch table at school. The children were discussing whether the Tooth Fairy, God or Santa Claus existed. "Of course they don't exist!" scoffed my nephew.

What is interesting about this is that the school is in name a Christian school, so many of the children will not have, like my nephew, come from non-believing households but from homes where the idea of God was actively promoted. Still the children put the three people under discussion in the same category.

Along the same line, I found it amusing that one of my daughters (7-yo at that time) told me that big bang and god are the same thing, it's just that people look at it from a different perspective. This came in the context of me asking how her religion class and natural science class mesh together in school. At her school, kids study religion (which is illegal BTW, but the school management are pressured into it by parents who fear that their kids would grow into people with no moral sense otherwise).

[nige1]

 gwnn, on 2015-January-12, 16:58, said:

Maybe "not allowed to" was a poor choice of words, I thought it was obvious what I meant, but I guess not.

What did you mean Gwnn?

 gwnn, on 2015-January-12, 16:58, said:

You gave the impression that you copied and pasted the stuff by way of a counterargument to what mikeh, Vampyr, et al (including I) have posted against MT.

You might have received that impression but the intention was was to explain why I thought Mother Teresa was a good person. I agree it's possible that we differ on relevant views. For example, I'm no great advocate of abortion.

 gwnn, on 2015-January-12, 16:58, said:

You then went on to compare us to the Nobel committee, no doubt to imply that our criticism is worthless since they are smarter than us. That is certainly a very easy way to dismiss any argument, and one that you have been pursuing before (when you compared us to Blaise Pascal). It's neither an honourable nor a logical way of arguing.

What is the argument to which you refer? Anyway, I didn't compare anybody to the Nobel Prize Committee. Personally, I have no 1st hand knowledge of Mother Teresa's life. I quoted biographies that cited contemporary sources.

 gwnn, on 2015-January-12, 16:58, said:

Mikeh could have written 100 pages of airtight arguments against her but well many people thought she was good, including the group who awarded Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, etc their highest esteem, so she must be perfect!

From the ridiculous to the sublime Are you aware of any "airtight" argument, either way?

 gwnn, on 2015-January-12, 16:58, said:

You should also knock it off with the blind faith of the fanatical atheists. Who are you talking about? Stop making your innocuous-looking little jokes and call a spade a spade. Have you met any fanatical atheists here? If so, name them.

We should try to avoid ad hominem attacks. Suffice to say, that in another thread, those who expressed moderate views were vilified and persecuted.

 gwnn, on 2015-January-12, 16:58, said:

(Hint: as far as I know, no one has ever said that they actively believe there is no god. Atheism is a term that is defined in either of two ways ("I do not believe there is a god" or "I believe there is no god") and each poster who has defined themselves has chosen the second one -- but you repeatedly ignored this the last time). Reply directly to posts and questions, without your melodramatic smileys. Please, please, please.

Why should I lower the standards by which I reply to arguments? For example, emoticons are succinct and expressive. It might be sensible to agree on the meaning of key words (not just "Atheist") but such suggestions were earlier ridiculed.

[gwnn]

 mikeh, on 2015-January-12, 17:26, said:

I think and hope you meant we had all chosen the first one

Correct, sorry about that. I was going to put them in the reversed order.