Do you hate being preached to?
hostile to being preached to? It seems there are more athiests on ILP than thiests,which also raises the question: are philosophically minded people more athiestic on average?
The point is establishing a generalization of people who are drawn to these kinds of forums;in whether they hate being preached to or not.
I’d say so… but you have to remember Religion is used in many cases as a controlling tool for the ignorant so… it sort of comes with the territory.
I don’t mind being preached to… I dish it out enough, I can take the heat.
There’s nothing wrong with presenting your argument or your ideas to other people. But when one is so close minded on the subject that they are flat out telling the other person how to think (ie ‘preaching’) then they cross the line. One should always be open minded regardless of what the subject is (unless there’s enough evidence to disprove every other possiblity). I’m all for speaking your mind but just don’t tell me how to live me life, that’s my decision, not yours!
Good posts so far. spw317,i like (your) quotes by albert.I collect quotes i find that have any value and store them in a text document.
Not that this is important to the topic at hand…
I don’t see why people get upset at being preached to. Or people telling you how to live your life. I see this on campus all the time.
Haha, I find it halarious. 50 kids all sitting around yelling at a evangelist who is preaching hellfire and damnation, and that they’re going to hell. I’d say there all a bunch of mindless idiots, and the evangelist being one if it isn’t a tactic. But it’s fun to watch.
I personally don’t care if people tell me how to live my life. I take it all as advice, and I’ll gladly question them, if there just yelling crap out of anger or something I’ll ignore them, it’s my fault for gettin upset.
But don’t you see the difference? Preaching is not advice or a reccomendation. In layman’s terms their saying my lifestyle is the right one and your’s isn’t. Club, I’d expect you to be very against preaching. Do you like it when people tell you that your religion is the incorrect one and you should become atheist?
If they have a good argument to back it up I don’t care. If it’s just a statement, I’ll listen a little longer. If I see the mistakes, I may argue it. If they are hard-headed, I will ignore.
What I hate more than anything is when people stop thinking critically. Like the thousands of teenagers who think the bible is a contradiction, stupid, make believe, and that theist are morons. They haven’t even looked for themselves to see that’s not the truth, but yet they feel they’re right.
That’s what I don’t like.
I’ve aways bristled at the term “preachy,” because if you pick it apart, it really has an embedded insults list, including one or more:
The problem is that what often passes for preaching is not. Sometimes preaching is merely a passive observation that the speaker deems relevant to a topic. Such as, “if you keep smoking weed, Gobbo, you might never reach your potential.”
In any case, I feel strongly that religion and philosophy are poor bedfellows. I read a recent debate between Sam Harris and Dennis Praeger, and my stomach turned at how impossible it is for them to have a fruitful dialogue, no matter how hard they try. Praeger was continually guilty of fallacies and avoidance, and what I’m tempted to call stupidity (but it’s really just an untrained critical capacity) while Harris would play into his hand by being sucked into splitting hairs on ancilliary examples of teleology. Neither were preachy, though.
My point is rather less complicated than most, especially Gamer’s:
Why should you be given a chance to make up my mind, when it’s still my turn, and I’m not nearly done?
What do you mean?
Exactly what I meant to say: I haven’t made up my mind “permanently” regarding anything. It would be apparent if you looked at what is stated beneath my avatar.
Work in process, is the short of it, and no room for other sculptors.
But if the bible is a contradiction then it is you who lack critical thinking skills. (interesting note: What decides which one of us lacks critical thinking skills? Critical thinking skills.)
Yes but it hasn’t been shown that way, so thus far we don’t. Many people don’t understand how rational the Bible actually is. They’ve never really read it, but they’ve heard people talk about it, and they may have skimmed a few pages, but they’ve never truly read it and tried to comprehend. It’s all about context, a word that seems to be lost now days.
http://www.watchtower.org/library/t13/why_trust.htm
This is an article that deals with whether he bible is trustworthy and if it is contradictory.
I know this is not exactly on topic of the thread BUT someone did bring it up.(inevitably)
If your just interested in the purpose of the thread itself you can skip this.
To me, preaching can entail more than just religious preaching. I actually enjoy listening to a good sermon (although I am agnostic) because it really gives me a chance to think about stuff. I very much agree with Gamers well-thought out list of what preaching is (took the thoughts right out of my head and said them better than I would have). I can see ‘preaching’ in this sense happening in a variety of different contexts, not only religious but also political, economic; even and perhaps especially (gasp!) philosophical contexts. I guess what most bothers me about preaching in all of these contexts is a) the speakers assumed position as higher somehow than the listener and b) the lack of reasonable doubt about their assertions.
I do, however, disagree very much with Gamer’s assertion that religion and philosophy are poor bedfellows. I would go so far as to say that they are so tightly woven together, so essentially interconnected, that it is impossible to truly have one without the other. Probably as recently as last year I would have said that religion is for sheep and there is really nothing to it but a need for comfort, etc, etc. I was naive and uneducated and extremely arrogant (and still am in many ways I am sure). But I have come to believe that behind each religion is a powerful philosophy regarding the way things work (each religion comes with it’s own metaphysics and epistemology and ethics and all that other philosophical stuff).
Now to the Bible. I was definitely (and partially still am) one of those teenagers that had only a cursory understanding of the Bible and condemned it. I think there are real arguments there. I can also see how the message itself (minus the troubling contradictory passages) is extremely powerful and philosophically important and valid. It is the ‘leap of faith’ that I think Kierkegaard talked about (I am so bad with remembering who said what, which is probably not the best quality for a philosopher) that I have the biggest problem with.
Philosophers like philosophy. A sermon is not philosophy; it is generally a doctrine. Most people who like philosophy do not like to feel as if they are being indoctrinated. I know I don’t.
I am a theist,so I don’t know where you get the idea that philosophically minded people are inclined to athieism. I don’t think they are more inclined to atheism than they are to any other belief system.
Well the loud tone of the athiests on the religion section on ILP(and other areas) had a big impression on me,but i never DID tally the exact number of athiests to thiests here…