A very intelligent man, somewhat overshadowed by Dawkins I feel:
youtube.com/watch?v=yyPdQ-VRjA0
youtube.com/watch?v=I2RlmiF_ … ed&search=
youtube.com/watch?v=s8dv7OUK … ed&search=
youtube.com/watch?v=w0EEjn8V … ed&search=
youtube.com/watch?v=NXe-szRx … ed&search=
youtube.com/watch?v=Cn3CzIl4 … ed&search=
He was wrong when he said that believing that a cracker becomes Jesus is equivalent to believing your cereal will become Elvis, because while believing your cracker will become Elvis has no effect, believing in the cracker ties in to a set of commandments that are beneficial.
Or perhaps you are wrong in your assumption that believing your cracker becomes Elvis has no effect.
Woops. Lemme correct that.
He was wrong when he said that believing that a cracker becomes Jesus is equivalent to believing your cereal will become Elvis, because while believing your cereal will become Elvis has no effect, believing in the cracker ties in to a set of commandments that are beneficial.
Make more sense now?
I was kidding, I gotcha the first time.
But you and he are talking about two different things. You’re speaking of how holding invalid beliefs affect people. He’s speaking on the validity of beliefs.
No, what I am saying is that the validity of the belief is related to its affect on survival. “The truth is what works”. Read up on pragmatism.
I don’t understand what you mean. Would you mind elaborating?
Sure. Pragmatism is the school of thought (I have no idea what a “school of thought” is or whether I am using it correctly, but it sounds awful scholarly, yuk yuk,) that states that truth is defined as what it is beneficial to believe (they don’t define beneficial how, I don’t think, but in my system beneficial means increasing the chances of survival). It is beneficial to believe what corresponds to the facts, which is why truth is so often interpreted as “corresponding to the facts” instead of as “what it is beneficial to believe”. So, you believe that the ball is round, not because it is round, for you have no way of knowing that for sure, but because acting towards it as though it is round will benefit you. Basically, things aren’t called blue because they’re blue, but because if you act towards them as though they’re blue, it has more benefit for you than acting towards them as though they are red.
I’m not any good at explaining this. Look it up on wikipedia, as it ties in to evolution and naturalism and provides a substitute for the metaphysical (if I understand the meaning of that word correctly).
I don’t mean to sound demoting, but you don’t have to be very smart before you can show how stupid Christendom & Islam are.
Now they are, but back then they may have been less stupid, as a way of enforcing and propagating morality when we didn’t know why we had to.
Dorky, did you notice this?
Yes, I think you’ve got a good point.
Yessssss!
Hum, I, although outright agnostic, rather think that the result of 2000 years of christian civilization (education, social services, etc.) rather speaks for itself. I also tend to think that the implications of the redefinition of the human person that seems to be gaining credence (otonomy and conscience) versus the christian definition (man image of God, thus sacred, and immortality of soul) are potentially horrific.
First comment:
Belief that saying Latin over one’s breakfast cereal will turn it into the corpse of Julius Caesar, equates to the Catholic belief in transsubstantiation, if and only if one interprets the latter literally, which would require that the bread turn into raw meat, probably bleeding, and be utterly gross and disgusting.
Whatever the Church says, obviously nobody within it believes that the wafer literally turns into human flesh, and the “Body of Christ” stuff is a metaphor. The dispute between Catholics and Protestants over “transsubstantiation” versus “consubstantiation” represents the greater reluctance of Catholics to pull the curtain away from the guy behind the machine; they want to retain the metaphor in full force by refusing to state openly its metaphorical character, while the Protestants are usually more willing to acknowledge up front what it is that they’re doing. The Church is in fact following a long European tradition of theophagy – consuming the symbolic flesh of the god to acquire his essence or power. See Dionysus, and I think perhaps Osiris as well. This is a perfectly valid magical ritual, and in no sense insane.
Second comment:
This Scott guy was right. It’s as I’ve said several times on this forum in various threads. If you really want to come to grips with the irrationality and the danger represented by a lot of religious beliefs, if you really want to wean people away from these ancient, unexamined, and frequently problematical beliefs, you have to try to understand why people believe them.
And in all honesty, the gentleman in these film clips, like just about every atheist I’ve ever encountered, has not one clue.
You have to understand the nature of religious experience.
You don’t have to respect people’s beliefs, but you DO have to respect the validity of the religious experiences that are the reasons people believe them.
If you don’t, you can carp and criticize and point out irrationality and argue until the sun goes nova, and you will consistently be ignored.
People believe in an idea of God. But people FEEL a cosmic love and a support for their own existence, which they associate with that belief. And as long as their belief provides a framework in which they can understand (however poorly) that feeling, and be encouraged to go on feeling it and trusting in it, and you do not, then the uncomfortable fact is that they know something you don’t. So why should they listen to you?
The basic point of his argument, which is that religious belief ought to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as scientific beliefs, I agree with. But in the end, that scrutiny has to be done from a religious perspective, not an atheistic one. What we need is (as Crowley put it) the methods of science applied to the aims of religion. And no atheist is equipped to provide that.
Atheism is a most untenable position. The atheist believes that there is no “God” on the basis that said “God” has not been “found” (by their standards) and exposed empirically as if he were a magic dwarf hiding up a tree.
One might ask if it were not possible that we might be “within” “God”, and if so, how “God” might be “found”. It seems a bit like looking for our car within our car or our selves within our selves.
Beyond that, the empirical sciences that have become the de facto religious havens of so many atheists have themselves demonstrated that there are any number of existent “things” all about us that we cannot see, taste, touch, smell, or hear. How then does this square with the idea that no “God” exists because we have not seen, spoken to, touched, measured, or weighed such a “God”? Is it not far more reasonable to say that “God” may or may not exist (agnosticism), than to say with certitude that there is no “God”.
When you’re in a car, do you not see the inside of the car doors and the leather seating?
No they haven’t.
Thezeus:
There are two things, for certain, that you believe in and not only cannot demonstrate, but cannot even find.
One is the universe in its entirety.
The other is your own consciousness.
You cannot find the universe in its entirety because there is no point outside the universe from which to observe it. And you cannot find your own consciousness because in all experiences you undergo, your consciousness is the experiencer and never the thing being experienced.
I most certainly agree that there are things that exist all about us that we cannot sense with our five human senses, but the equipment that we use to produce and test those things clearly demonostrate those things exist, and how they interact in our reality.
No such thing can be said for God, and while I would agree that God could potentially be a force undiscovered and undetectable, there is no reason to conclude that he exists when there is no evidence for him. Science doesn’t reach conclusions or certainties without thorough testing, empirical evidence, checks and double checks, etc. etc. In addition, science can be reproduced the world over by anybody: it doesn’t vary from individual to individual, and doesn’t depend on where one is born.
I’ve “read up” on pragmatism ( Pierce, James, Dewey) and still find its use an an argument for the most destructive force on the planet (religion) spurious, untenable, card-stacking argumentation!