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the trouble is being brainwashed renders you incapable of being objective about where your belief is coming from.it obviously must in the vast majority of cases. otherwise religious belief wouldn't be so culturally biased.
you missed my point entirely. everyone has historical and psychological reasons for believing what they do. the reasons have little to no bearing on the authenticity of those beliefs. if i reacted against my parents' agnosticism and became a muslim, would my beliefs hold more or less worth than they do now? it's impossible to judge these things, so we're better off letting people be who they are. you can engage someone critically without directly assaulting their belief system. everyone, religious practitioners and atheists and africans and crackers and russians and poles, are all culturally biased. it doesn't mean that what they believe can't be true. as i'll argue below, objectivity is a myth.
it's not arrogant to value objectivity over culturally forced conformation to primitive superstitious belief.
objectivity doesn't exist. it's the god of science that renders hardcore, atheistic scientists entirely hypocritical in the end. repeatability and objectivity are not the same thing at all--reread your hume. he wins that argument pretty thoroughly. :club:
they say that because (most) organized religion is based in NOT ALLOWING free thinking lol.
some is, some isn't. some forms of atheism don't allow free thinking, some do. i'm not arguing that everything is all happy and full of fairy dust; i'm arguing that there are hypocrites on both sides on this score. it's the hypocrisy that should be condemned--neither religion nor atheism as such.
you seem just as confused as the OP about what atheism actually is.
enlighten me, kiddo.
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I think checky's comment is addressing the kind of atheists who are so adamant in their disbelief in God that they would never be able to admit to God's existence even if there was at some point adequate evidence for his/her/its/their existence. I don't think he was addressing atheists as a whole.I could be wrong though.
actually, not quite. i'm not willing to grant the whole "evidence=truth" epistemological certainty at all. that's not how human beings live their lives. there is a lot more to life than scientific types of certainty, and if we disallow ourselves the capability of ever feeling sure of anything (love, art, religion, whatever) in non-scientific terms, we're killing a lot of what makes us human. my point is that if an atheist is unwilling to grant that human beings approach different sorts of truths in different ways--and dawkins and crow seem to fall into this category--they're being hypocritical and pulling the same BS that overzealous fundamentalists do. on logical grounds, both "only stuff in the bible is true" and "only that which is verifiable through repeatable experimentation is true" are equally wrong.
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there is a lot more to life than scientific types of certainty, and if we disallow ourselves the capability of ever feeling sure of anything (love, art, religion, whatever) in non-scientific terms, we're killing a lot of what makes us human.
except the vast majority of religious people do not hold their belief for aesthetic reasons. they hold their belief becuase they are certain it is empirical truth.
my point is that if an atheist is unwilling to grant that human beings approach different sorts of truths in different ways
in what way is religious truth of a different sort?
they're being hypocritical and pulling the same BS that overzealous fundamentalists do. on logical grounds, both "only stuff in the bible is true" and "only that which is verifiable through repeatable experimentation is true" are equally wrong.
i never specifically claimed that, and i'm certain dawkins hasn't either. in fact he values "religious" emotional experience in his own way as much as any religious person does. read the first chapter of god delusion again.
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I appreciate your willingness to help checky. I really have very little idea where I'm at right now. As I said earlier in the thread, I was raised Traditional Catholic...meaning my parents and those around us adhered to the teachings and dogma of the Church pre-Vatican II, basically I was raised in the '50s. I was also home-schooled. I'm sure all of this shaped my worldview in a very profound way.
when you say homeschooled, do you mean that you were schooled by your parents, and that your tutelage had a lot to do with religious concepts? in what way did your education differ from someone who went to say, public school, or a catholic school, maybe?
When I got out into the world and started seeing all these diverse people, with differing viewpoints I started thinking that they can't all be going to hell just for not being Catholic (or for that matter Traditional Catholic like I was raised). Furthermore, I saw Catholicism as simply a religion of rules and fear. You do this and this and you don't do that or you're going to hell. I felt too constricted by what I saw as trivial rules like no masturbation or sex before marriage, eating fish on Fridays and having to tell your sins to the priest in order for them to be forgiven. I decided that Catholics were sheep and didn't know how to think for themselves. So, I threw the baby out with the bathwater and pretty much quit thinking about it for a few years (aside from a few minor tries like taking a World Religions class in college).
well, i wouldn't consider all catholics sheep out of hand, but i think i get where you're coming from. so you're not a catholic anymore. :D that's fine, and don't let anyone tell you it's not. moving on...
I guess I've been thinking about religion more lately because I've recently reconnected with an old friend from my church growing up and I have another friend who's getting very close to becoming a priest. In a way, I want what religious people have...a certainty that what they're doing is right.
to echo what SB said, certainty is overrated, and can sometimes be dangerous if you take it to the extent that you think you should be telling everyone else what to think and do. but if you mean just that you want to look for a faith that sits well with you, that helps you feel more secure in how you approach the world, that's entirely different. take someone like kierkegaard, for example. smart guy, wicked philosopher, super christian (whatever those things mean, lol). he was absolutely adamant about the idea that in order for one to be properly christian, one needed to always be in a state of "fear and trembling" (hence the name of his most famous work), or a form of extreme uncertainty and weakness, whenever one thought about god. he held that if someone ever felt overly "safe" or "secure" in terms of their religious faith, they had lost the essence of what god was (he extrapolates this into the idea that "christianity" lies in this state of fear and trembling, whereas "christendom" (with obvious allusions to catholicism) is the state arising from a false sense of security with regard to the religious). he writes a lot about the story in genesis about abraham and isaac, and meditates on the emotions and thoughts abraham must have endured in that story. it's from that section of genesis that he comes to the idea that the realm of the religious is, by kind and order, the realm of the absurd (and that's not to be taken in a bad way). for kierkegaard, religious feelings, if they are the big ones anyway, are the ones that make us call everything else into question, the ones that can make us do outlandish things that we can't rationally defend. if we could defend those things, he says, they wouldn't be acts of faith. i digress a little, obviously, but what i'm getting at is that there's a big contingent even within christianity that would argue that safety and contentment aren't always the things to strive for, and that one's relationship with god is to be found on a personal, rather than institutional, level. you find these ideas appealing or no? (the two answers kinda split christian sects in two, fwiw--you know, that whole "reformation" thing :D)
I guess where I am right now is probably fairly close to agnosticism. Like you said in one of your posts, I think that I should try to be a good person and do the right thing, whether there's a God out there or not. I try to live my life as if it's not about heaven or hell, it's just about doing what's right. That said, for reasons I can't articulate very well, I do feel like it's more likely than not that there is some sort of God or higher power out there. To an extent that's probably largely a product of my upbringing and my background. If I were raised atheist maybe I'd think it more likely that there is no god. Finally, in spite of some of the things I pointed to in the second paragraph above as my reasons or excuses for leaving the Catholic Church, it does seem to make logical sense to me that if there is a God (leap of faith #1) and he does care about what we do here on earth with regards to an afterlife and all that (leap of faith #2), then he probably has ONE true faith, ONE true religion, ONE best/perfect way of reaching heaven. That's not to say that others CAN'T get there (I don't think I could ever think that) but those outside the true religion would be much less likely of reaching heaven. Again, I think this idea is probably colored by my background as a Catholic. I was taught growing up that the Catholic Church is the one true church and I don't really understand why, but the idea of there being a ONE TRUE Church makes the most sense to me. I guess the simplest way to put it would be this way. Either no religion is right, or only ONE is right. It doesn't seem like there can be multiple religions that have it right. That idea makes very little sense to me. Anyway, I guess that's some idea of where I am now. I'm sure some on here will try to rip me apart or explain to me why I'm wrong. I'm not going to try to defend myself. Frankly I'd never sat down and written it out like this and sometimes I think that's the best way to understand the ideas in your head. So, this gives me a greater understanding of where I am at the moment, but I'm not sure I hold anything written here to be canon truths (except of course the facts about my background :club: ).
i would hope that no one tries to rip you apart. your sentiments are altogether common (though not plebean; i don't mean it that way), and are things that most everyone struggles with at some point in their lives. let me ask you some more specific questions about what you believe, and maybe i can help you in more specific ways:1. to what extent does a religious community (like a church, or a reading group, or a prayer circle, etc.) mean something to you? do you think of religion as something that is mostly personal, or does it, for you, come with external instruction and guidance? 2. you said that you believe in god, but when you say "god," what is it that you mean, exactly? is this god similar to the one you learned about in your catholic teachings? if not, how does he/she/it differ? is god real, as in (meta)physically real? is god merely spiritual? do you believe in jesus as part of a triune god? how about the holy spirit? 3. with your discussion of ONE church having it right, etc., it seems as though you're inclined to interpret religious scripture primarily on a literal level. is that a false assumption?4. as #2 would imply, it seems to me that you're coming at this with a christian understanding of religious concepts. that's fine, but i'm curious as to whether you're aware that there are other ways of understanding one's religious life. i'm being intentionally vague, here, and it's not especially worth it to go into much more detail, but i'd strongly recommend that you take a look at some of the other sorts of religious texts out there. take a look at the jewish talmud, the qu'ran (koran), buddhist scriptures, the vedas, upanisads, parts of the mahabharata, etc. and see how people of other backgrounds relate to religion and how religious concepts are differently conceived. at the very least, you'll learn a lot about other cultures in the process. at best, you might learn something about yourself :D
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except the vast majority of religious people do not hold their belief for aesthetic reasons. they hold their belief becuase they are certain it is empirical truth.
i don't know what this means. can you put it differently?edit: maybe i do, but in that case, the second part of this response should address it. basically, i see no need for religious people to justify their belief with any specific reason whatsoever. i'm not the boss of them, to put it bluntly, and i don't need them to be able to explain why they think everything they think to me. i'm glad to listen if they want to explain themselves on their own terms, because i find people interesting, but i'm not about to demand that they only do so in one argumentative form or another. if you disagree with this argument, i refer you to kant's third critique where he espouses pretty much the same thing with respect to art. he's smarter than me, too.
in what way is religious truth of a different sort?
truth can mean different things. not all of it has to do with experimentation in the scientific sense. i love my girlfriend. that is true. a flush draw on 4th street in stud with no dead outs is ahead of a pair of nines. that is true. i'm slowly starting to appreciate the artwork of jasper johns more and more, although i used to find it silly. that is also true. but they're not true in the same way. i claim the first with respect to a deep and entirely personal feeling. i claim the second with probability theory and can verify it through iterative experimentation. i claim the third over a period of years of personal experiences and talking to others who can teach me things about johns' history and life story.all three of these are very, very different sorts of truths, approached in very, very different ways. but all are true in their own way. if i privilege one too far above the others, i'm restricting my own existence. that's silly. it doesn't mean that one of these truths is more valuable or requires the top rung in some sort of internal hierarchical ladder. insofar as they're all within me, they're not contradictory in any way, and i don't need to have them quibble with one another. i don't really lay claim to religious truths, but for a lot of people, they'd be another category in this sort of view.
i never specifically claimed that, and i'm certain dawkins hasn't either. in fact he values "religious" emotional experience in his own way as much as any religious person does. read the first chapter of god delusion again.
we've had this argument before, and i've read the first bit of the book multiple times since it bothers me so much, lol. :club: basically, my view is that with respect to the god delusion, dawkins can choose from among two options:1. he actually wants to convince people that atheism is the true (non-)religion, in which case he's going about it in an extremely poor way, and privileging certain types of knowledge over others without providing an epistemological account of why that ought to be the case. if he's doing this, he's entering into a philosophical debate without putting on his philosophical jock strap.2. he's only playing defense here on the religious football field, and in so doing is going up against an extremely small subset of religious practitioners that want to convert everyone they meet. if that's the case, a lot of his book is frivolous and totally useless to his argument. i find this possibility extremely unlikely, and that it's much more likely that he's merely paying lip service to less proselytizing religions and then proceeding to rip into their foundations with a logic they needn't submit to.in either case, he's kind of a poor writer and comes off as altogether angry and reactionary. at the root of his argument, i'm not sure that i disagree with him too much on anything. the problem is that he writes so badly and angrily that he's going to rile up the people who are already on his side to the point of being similarly reactionary, and argues with an entirely counterproductive rhetoric toward those he wishes to convert. if i really wanted to convert people to atheism or agnosticism or whatever (which i don't have any aspirations of doing), i wouldn't write a book like that because it would be utterly useless on all accounts. instead, i'd learn about various peoples' religions and try to offer them resources in their own language in order to change their minds slowly and without the open hostility that dawkins loves to wear on his sleeve.
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you missed my point entirely. everyone has historical and psychological reasons for believing what they do. the reasons have little to no bearing on the authenticity of those beliefs.
but the reasons do have a lot of bearing on the objectivity of those beliefs.
so we're better off letting people be who they are.
in the feel-good foo foo world where religious belief is completely kept out of government policy, religion doesn't undermine science, religion doesn't cause and perpetuate social boundaries, and religious people don't blow themselves up to kill others maybe it would be.
objectivity doesn't exist.
if you want to be the slightest bit practical about it, it absolutely does. if you want to be impractical become a philosopher B)
enlighten me, kiddo.
an atheist is someone who thinks it's unlikely at some level that god(s) exist based on lack of evidence or contrary evidence, and there are many levels (and many gods you can be atheistic about). an atheist is NOT someone who thinks the scientific method is the only thing of value humanity should be doing, only that "god" (in most cases) is an empirical claim and should be for practical purposes subject to science.
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i don't know what this means. can you put it differently?
most specific religious belief is based in claims that are directly empirical, not in aesthetic appreciation or any other of what you are referring to as "kinds" of truth.
i love my girlfriend. that is true. a flush draw on 4th street in stud with no dead outs is ahead of a pair of nines. that is true. i'm slowly starting to love the artwork of jasper johns more and more, although i used to find it silly. that is also true. but they're not true in the same way. i claim the first with respect to a deep and entirely personal feeling. i claim the second with probability theory and can verify it through iterative experimentation. i claim the third over a period of years of personal experiences and talking to others who can teach me things about johns' history and life story.all three of these are very, very different sorts of truths, approached in very, very different ways. but all are true in their own way. if i privilege one too far above the others, i'm restricting my own existence. that's silly. it doesn't mean that one of these truths is more valuable or requires the top rung in some sort of internal hierarchical ladder. insofar as they're all within me, they're not contradictory in any way, and i don't need to have them quibble with one another. i don't really lay claim to religious truths, but for a lot of people, they'd be another category in this sort of view.
none of your kinds of truth transcend the physical world like "religious truth" claims to do. there are empirical reasons that can be used to validate everything above that you think and feel, and they can absolutely be reduced to science if you want to bother (although generally there's no point in doing so).
1. he actually wants to convince people that atheism is the true (non-)religion, in which case he's going about it in an extremely poor way, and privileges certain types of knowledge over others without providing an epistemological account of why that ought to be the case.2. he's only playing defense here on the religious football field, and in so doing is going up against an extremely small subset of religious practitioners that want to convert everyone they meet. if that's the case, a lot of his book is frivolous and totally useless to his argument.
actually his self-described goal is to convince fence-sitters that it's ok to not believe, and also to embolden people who are already atheists at heart but are resisting it for cultural or psychological reasons.
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i don't want to sidetrack the thread too far, but all i would really say in response to everything you wrote is that you, or dawkins for that matter, don't really understand what religious people tend to conceive of as truth (i don't know what you mean by "transcend[ing] the physical world," certainly not with respect to religion--with only a few exceptions, religions are profoundly worldly), misuse the term objectivity, and are still committed to this weird privileging of external, repeatable evidence that is either somewhat ignorant or arrogant. you can take your pick on the last one.

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i that you, or dawkins for that matter, don't really understand what religious people tend to conceive of as truth
both dawkins and i have been there. you have the misconception that religious belief is typically just some feel-good world-view derived from personal philosophy and aesthetics and not involving empirical claims.
misuse the term objectivity
objective = mutually verifiable in some manner - existing independantly from individual thought. i have not used it in any other way.
and are still committed to this weird privileging of external, repeatable evidence
yes because privileging the internal tends to get really messy for humanity. imagine what the world would be like if every human delusion had to be respected and placed on equal footing with the findings of science.
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I've always understood christianity to be a belief that Jesus Christ is God, as is God the Father (the Old Testament God).
That's a hotly debated point within Christianity. You can even find some posts in here on that.
I have one very simple problem with your analogy. I think it pre-supposes that people start out as a clean slate. Unfortunately, that's pretty much impossible. Our worldview is necessarily shaped by our childhood and our upbringing. Therefore, we don't start out in the field, we start out in one of the trailers. Well, some people may start out in the field, but it's a small number. And, it would seem to me that even if someone were to make it to your hypothetical field, their worldview is still going to be shaped by their upbringing and their background and that may make them more likely to choose one trailer over another.
You misunderstood. We are all born atheists. We are ignorant of any religion or theistic beliefs. We learn by unbiased observation. It is not until we communicate coherantly with others that we are dragged off to one of the trailers, usually by a family member.
Anyway, I do get what you were trying to say. Let's declare a truce.
There is no war :club: You're confusing assertiveness and me teasing you with aggression. Sorry if I came off poorly
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Meh, I disagree with the bolded statement. I am an atheist and also believe that Buddhism teaches the 'truth.'
Ok, we're splitting hairs over the definition of religion then. Some definitions consider Buddhism a religion others don't.In the analogy I've used the word religion, however if we want to be completely accurate I should have used the term 'theism'. In a discussion on a-theism it is obviously only relative to theism(s) and as Buddhism is non-theistic it is not one of the trailers
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please specifically define in what way you think atheists are being closed-minded.
Very simply, it seems to me that the atheist has closed his mind to the idea of God, just as much as the religious person has closed his mind to the idea of no god. I guess I don't mind either viewpoint, except when people start seeming angry about the other viewpoint and try to impose their worldview on others. It seems to me that most atheists act like all people who aren't atheist are deluded in some way and need to be taught the truth. I dunno, there's something I find offensive about people trying to impose their viewpoint on others. That's not to say that you can't explain the reasons why you think something is the truth to someone who genuinely wants to learn, or that differences can't be discussed in a civilized manner. It's when people start insulting each other that I get annoyed and it seems that atheists tend to insult religious people alot. *disclaimer* I'm not necessarily talking about this thread here, I'm actually thinking specifically of Real Time with Bill Maher this week on HBO, he had Christopher Hitchens on and some of the stuff they talked about (and of course Maher's constant religion is garbage spiel on every show) bothered me in the way it was presented. I don't know if any of that makes sense to you, but I tried.
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it seems to me that the atheist has closed his mind to the idea of God
it seems to me you've closed your mind to the idea of santa claus.
I guess I don't mind either viewpoint, except when people start seeming angry about the other viewpoint and try to impose their worldview on others. It seems to me that most atheists act like all people who aren't atheist are deluded in some way and need to be taught the truth. I dunno, there's something I find offensive about people trying to impose their viewpoint on others.
atheists are not generally concerned about imposing their lack of belief on others. typically their goals are 1.) educating the public about what atheism actually is (atheists suffer by far the highest level of prejudice of any minority in this country), and 2.) educating the public about the damaging/detrimental aspects of fundamentalism. the latter is what hitchens is doing, and he is so strident about it because of its critical nature. maher is a comedian preaching to a specific audience so he's sort of irrelevant. religious fundamentalists that watch his show deserve what they get lol.
It's when people start insulting each other that I get annoyed and it seems that atheists tend to insult religious people alot.
if an intelligent adult came up to you and said they believe the reality of santa claus is absolute truth and evidence is irrelevant because they have "faith", would you tend to respect or disrespect them?
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when you say homeschooled, do you mean that you were schooled by your parents, and that your tutelage had a lot to do with religious concepts? in what way did your education differ from someone who went to say, public school, or a catholic school, maybe?
Heh, I guess I'm not sure exactly how my education differed from that of a regular school b/c I never had experience with one. I was taught at home by my parents until college (when I was older I basically taught myself out of textbooks, but I digress). I learned how to read and write just fine...better than many who went to school I'd venture to guess...I learned basic math and my Dad who was a math major in college even tried to teach my Algebra and Geometry and I passed though, but I'm not sure how much I retained. I was taught science out of christian science textbooks that dismissed the very possibility of evolution, so I have very little idea how much real science I learned. History was also very much taught with a Catholic slant on things. I'd guess that most of what my parents used would have been taught in Catholic schools in the 1950's. So, in most ways I'm still very well educated, but it certainly had something of an extreme slant on things, more so than even a Catholic school.
well, i wouldn't consider all catholics sheep out of hand, but i think i get where you're coming from. so you're not a catholic anymore. :club: that's fine, and don't let anyone tell you it's not. moving on...
I don't either anymore. But, I do think that a large portion of the people who adhere to one religion or another refuse to actually think for themselves.
to echo what SB said, certainty is overrated, and can sometimes be dangerous if you take it to the extent that you think you should be telling everyone else what to think and do. but if you mean just that you want to look for a faith that sits well with you, that helps you feel more secure in how you approach the world, that's entirely different. take someone like kierkegaard, for example. smart guy, wicked philosopher, super christian (whatever those things mean, lol). he was absolutely adamant about the idea that in order for one to be properly christian, one needed to always be in a state of "fear and trembling" (hence the name of his most famous work), or a form of extreme uncertainty and weakness, whenever one thought about god. he held that if someone ever felt overly "safe" or "secure" in terms of their religious faith, they had lost the essence of what god was (he extrapolates this into the idea that "christianity" lies in this state of fear and trembling, whereas "christendom" (with obvious allusions to catholicism) is the state arising from a false sense of security with regard to the religious). he writes a lot about the story in genesis about abraham and isaac, and meditates on the emotions and thoughts abraham must have endured in that story. it's from that section of genesis that he comes to the idea that the realm of the religious is, by kind and order, the realm of the absurd (and that's not to be taken in a bad way). for kierkegaard, religious feelings, if they are the big ones anyway, are the ones that make us call everything else into question, the ones that can make us do outlandish things that we can't rationally defend. if we could defend those things, he says, they wouldn't be acts of faith. i digress a little, obviously, but what i'm getting at is that there's a big contingent even within christianity that would argue that safety and contentment aren't always the things to strive for, and that one's relationship with god is to be found on a personal, rather than institutional, level. you find these ideas appealing or no? (the two answers kinda split christian sects in two, fwiw--you know, that whole "reformation" thing :D)
I get what you're saying here. I guess certainty is going to be almost impossible to find for someone as inquisitive and open-minded as myself. I do kinda wish it were available, but alas. You're also right that certainty is what often leads people to extremes, though I think it's possible to be certain that you're right and not going around blowing up abortion clinics or flying planes into buildings. But I digress, I would like to find a belief system or worldview that would allow me to feel more secure in how I approach things, not just going around hoping that what I'm doing is right. As far as the split between a personal and institutional religion is concerned, here I think my viewpoint is very much colored by my upbringing and background, but I have a major problem with the "reformation" and protestantism as a whole. It seems to me that if we make a few core assumptions (the ones that I assume all christians make); Jesus is the son of God, Jesus is God, Jesus wants us to worship him, Jesus wants us to do that through an established religion and in a somewhat organized way. Then, I don't see how you can justify being anything but Catholic. The Catholic Church was around for almost 1600 years before the "reformation" began. There are verses in the New Testament that point to Jesus establishing a Church, and it would seem to me that he'd then want only 1 church, not 10,000 different ones. Granted, I think that most Protestants have one thing right, religion should be more personal than I felt that Catholicism was growing up. But, that's partially my fault. There are plenty of Catholics for whom religion and their "relationship with God" is a very personal thing, but they still believe that the Church is the one true religion and try to follow it's rules. At any rate, I guess I think a balance should probably be struck between the personal and the institutional. And btw, I have no intention of sitting here and arguing protestant versus catholic with anyone. What I stated above is kind of where I sit based on my background and worldview. But, I have no desire to try to prove to anyone that I'm right or that they're wrong.
i would hope that no one tries to rip you apart. your sentiments are altogether common (though not plebean; i don't mean it that way), and are things that most everyone struggles with at some point in their lives. let me ask you some more specific questions about what you believe, and maybe i can help you in more specific ways:1. to what extent does a religious community (like a church, or a reading group, or a prayer circle, etc.) mean something to you? do you think of religion as something that is mostly personal, or does it, for you, come with external instruction and guidance?
My first reaction to this question when I read it was, "I don't know." But, based on what I've written above, I guess I think some sort of balance should be struck. I think that if we're going to assume that there is a God and he wants us to worship him through religion, then it would be incredibly arrogant to assume that I can figure out the best way to do that all on my own. Hence, the need for some external instruction and guidance. That said, other than receiving some instruction and guidance I think it should be probably be mostly personal. I'm not a big fan of the idea of a reading group or prayer circle. Frankly the idea of everyone sitting around holding hands and praying is repulsive to me.
2. you said that you believe in god, but when you say "god," what is it that you mean, exactly? is this god similar to the one you learned about in your catholic teachings? if not, how does he/she/it differ? is god real, as in (meta)physically real? is god merely spiritual? do you believe in jesus as part of a triune god? how about the holy spirit?
I actually don't really know. At one point I thought of God as kind of like the Star Wars idea of the force. At another I've thought of God as more like a clockmaker. At the moment I guess I'd think about God as more along the lines of God the Father of the Catholic Church. A supreme being who's always existed, and created everything. From there I'm not really sure. I dunno about Jesus or the Holy Ghost. Those are concepts that are so far from being able to truly understand I find them hard to believe in. To put it another way. It doesn't seem illogical to me (though I understand it could to some others) that there could be a supreme being who created everything, even though I can't understand that on a metaphysical level, it seems possible. The idea of Jesus being both human and god and there being three persons in god and that sort of thing is much harder for me to wrap my head around and hence much harder for me to believe. The upshot of all that is that I don't really know what I think God is.
3. with your discussion of ONE church having it right, etc., it seems as though you're inclined to interpret religious scripture primarily on a literal level. is that a false assumption?
I haven't read much scripture, so I don't know how exactly I'd interpret it. I think I'd say yes and no. I think that if we accept the Bible as the truth, then most of it should be interpreted on a more literal level. Especially the New Testament. I'd say that the Old Testament is probably likely to be much more metaphorical though. For instance, it seems entirely possible to me that we could accept the story of the Great Flood as real, and yet interpret it as God flooding the parts of the world that were known to Noah and not the entire globe. But overall, I guess I'd say that if we'e accepting scripture as being from God, then we have to take it more or less at face value instead of trying to make interpretations for ourselves. That said, I'm not ready at the moment to accept scripture as being "the Divine word of God," as I was taught growing up that it was.
4. as #2 would imply, it seems to me that you're coming at this with a christian understanding of religious concepts. that's fine, but i'm curious as to whether you're aware that there are other ways of understanding one's religious life. i'm being intentionally vague, here, and it's not especially worth it to go into much more detail, but i'd strongly recommend that you take a look at some of the other sorts of religious texts out there. take a look at the jewish talmud, the qu'ran (koran), buddhist scriptures, the vedas, upanisads, parts of the mahabharata, etc. and see how people of other backgrounds relate to religion and how religious concepts are differently conceived. at the very least, you'll learn a lot about other cultures in the process. at best, you might learn something about yourself :D
Unfortunately no, I haven't spent a lot of time looking at other religions and viewpoints. I took one class on world religions in college, IIRC it covered Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Islam, but spent very little time on Judaism or Christianity. For that matter, I think Buddhism was what I learned the most about from that course, but then I guess that was what appealed to me the most at the time so that may just be what I'm remembering the most or the best. I do like to read, so if you have any book recommendations I'd definitely like to read more about other religions and belief systems.
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it seems to me you've closed your mind to the idea of santa claus.
Fair enough.
atheists are not generally concerned about imposing their lack of belief on others. typically their goals are 1.) educating the public about what atheism actually is (atheists suffer by far the highlest level of prejudice of any minority in this country), and 2.) educating the public about the damaging/detrimental aspects of fundamentalism. the latter is what hitchens is doing, and he is so strident about it because of its critical nature. maher is a comedian preaching to a specific audience so he's sort of irrelevant. religious fundamentalists that watch his show deserve what they get lol.
OK.
if an intelligent adult came up to you and said they believe the reality of santa claus is absolute truth and evidence is irrelevant because they have "faith", would you tend to respect or disrespect them?
Again, fair enough. I guess I sorta see the two as different, but you don't and I respect that. At least atheists never seem to get violent about their beliefs and for that I respect them more than many fundamentals.
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I do like to read, so if you have any book recommendations I'd definitely like to read more about other religions and belief systems.
Over in the Buddhism thread, there's a good list of several books on Buddhism. To recap, anything by Pema Chodron, One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein, some Lama Surya Das, and Steve Hagen.An incredibly interesting book on Christianity is Bart D. Ehrman's textbook The New Testament. His books written for the general public, Lost Scriptures, Lost Christianities, Misquoting Jesus, and his newest, God's Problem, which is about the issue of suffering in the world and how religion has dealt with it, are all very, very good.One that I would highly recommend is The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. I don't know the author offhand, but it would be on Amazon. What I'm most interested in is historical Christianity (although of course I don't practice it or believe in it, merely intellectual curiosity) -- how the faith got from Jesus to what it is today. This book is about how Roman philosophers reacted to this new faith in their midst and how they tried to engage it philosophically. Excellent book.
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Over in the Buddhism thread, there's a good list of several books on Buddhism. To recap, anything by Pema Chodron, One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein, some Lama Surya Das, and Steve Hagen.An incredibly interesting book on Christianity is Bart D. Ehrman's textbook The New Testament. His books written for the general public, Lost Scriptures, Lost Christianities, Misquoting Jesus, and his newest, God's Problem, which is about the issue of suffering in the world and how religion has dealt with it, are all very, very good.One that I would highly recommend is The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. I don't know the author offhand, but it would be on Amazon. What I'm most interested in is historical Christianity (although of course I don't practice it or believe in it, merely intellectual curiosity) -- how the faith got from Jesus to what it is today. This book is about how Roman philosophers reacted to this new faith in their midst and how they tried to engage it philosophically. Excellent book.
TY for the recommendations. I've seen that book God' Problem and thought it looked interesting. I'll have to check it out along with some of the others.
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In the analogy I've used the word religion, however if we want to be completely accurate I should have used the term 'theism'. In a discussion on a-theism it is obviously only relative to theism(s) and as Buddhism is non-theistic it is not one of the trailers
Well I do think it is an important distinction mostly because, since Buddhism is generally considered a religion, it is widely misunderstood by people who have really no knowledge of it. It is a perfectly respectable, a-theistic religion.
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Well I do think it is an important distinction mostly because, since Buddhism is generally considered a religion, it is widely misunderstood by people who have really no knowledge of it. It is a perfectly respectable, a-theistic religion.
The point I'm making though is that if we are talking about atheism, Buddhism is irrelevant as it is not a theism. An atheist rejects theisms.
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Best way to convert to atheism;1st: Define God in a shallow way, making Him nothing more than a big one of you. It works really well to consider Him to be unwilling to fix things, this allows you to further define Him down to a level you feel comfortable judging Him.2nd: While you are judging God, make sure you add in how you would do it different if you were God. This will further the feeling that you are 'in the know' about the whole universe and allow you to further deflate god to a small g.3rd: Find bad examples of some of God's followers. Place a broad brush stroke on them as being indicitive of all of God's children. Extra credit here if you include a child molester, or a person that stole money.4th Trust in your desire to go against the flow and rebel against the establishment. This feeling is obviously right since every guy goes through it.5th: Take courses from people that do not believe in God, and have found examples that allow them to keep this belief. Ignore any doubts about holes in these theories. In fact no longer call them theories, uinstead talk about them as if they are 'known facts'. Look smugly at people that believe different.6th: Get used to using phrases like: "If you knew anything about science", " Some guy selling books to gullible Christians", "It's really sad how little you know about science". Use these phrases liberally.7th: Ignore that tugging at your mind that tells you there is more to life than the tangible. Try to group all metaphysical subjects in with UFOs and cattle mutalations.8th: Hope you are right when you die, cause if you're wrong, you will be sorry.there is more, but this should get you started on the long and lonely road towards nihlism

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Best way to convert to atheism;1st: Define God in a shallow way, making Him nothing more than a big one of you. It works really well to consider Him to be unwilling to fix things, this allows you to further define Him down to a level you feel comfortable judging Him.2nd: While you are judging God, make sure you add in how you would do it different if you were God. This will further the feeling that you are 'in the know' about the whole universe and allow you to further deflate god to a small g.3rd: Find bad examples of some of God's followers. Place a broad brush stroke on them as being indicitive of all of God's children. Extra credit here if you include a child molester, or a person that stole money.4th Trust in your desire to go against the flow and rebel against the establishment. This feeling is obviously right since every guy goes through it.5th: Take courses from people that do not believe in God, and have found examples that allow them to keep this belief. Ignore any doubts about holes in these theories. In fact no longer call them theories, uinstead talk about them as if they are 'known facts'. Look smugly at people that believe different.6th: Get used to using phrases like: "If you knew anything about science", " Some guy selling books to gullible Christians", "It's really sad how little you know about science". Use these phrases liberally.7th: Ignore that tugging at your mind that tells you there is more to life than the tangible. Try to group all metaphysical subjects in with UFOs and cattle mutalations.8th: Hope you are right when you die, cause if you're wrong, you will be sorry.there is more, but this should get you started on the long and lonely road towards nihlism
:club: Boy, are you gonna get flamed. I dunno if you've read the rest of this thread, but apparently atheism isn't something that you convert to. You kind of spontaneously get there once you learn how to think objectively.
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:club: Boy, are you gonna get flamed. I dunno if you've read the rest of this thread, but apparently atheism isn't something that you convert to. You kind of spontaneously get there once you learn how to think objectively.
1st; The flames here will never be as hot as the flames later.2nd; You can pretend it isn't a religion, that it is the natural conclusion after getting all the facts etc. but the IRS gave them tax exampt status as a religious organization. The IRS knows.And until every person that has a PHD says that they are athiest, it has no more inherent truth than prefering strawberry ice cream over rocky road, which we all know is an abomination.
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Best way to convert to atheism;1st: Define God in a shallow way, making Him nothing more than a big one of you. It works really well to consider Him to be unwilling to fix things, this allows you to further define Him down to a level you feel comfortable judging Him.2nd: While you are judging God, make sure you add in how you would do it different if you were God. This will further the feeling that you are 'in the know' about the whole universe and allow you to further deflate god to a small g.
1. Define God as non-existent in a literal sense, and realize that He only exists in the minds of his believers. An atheist neither "considers him unwilling to fix things" nor "judges him," since doing either is to assume his existence.2. The only time an atheist would "suggest he could do things better," would be in an attempt to show the ridiculousness of belief in a creator God. An atheist DOES NOT BELIEVE THAT A GOD EXISTS OR EVER HAS, SO HE DOES NOT TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION WHAT ANY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THAT NON-EXISTENT ENTITY MIGHT BE.Seriously, you are assuming that atheists accept the notion of God. Can you not see why that is entirely wrong?As an atheist my arguments are not: OMG God is such an idiot, he screws everything up and what are his motivations and why would he do such a half-assed job? My arguments are: God who?
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1. Define God as non-existent in a literal sense, and realize that He only exists in the minds of his believers. An atheist neither "considers him unwilling to fix things" nor "judges him," since doing either is to assume his existence.2. The only time an atheist would "suggest he could do things better," would be in an attempt to show the ridiculousness of belief in a creator God. An atheist DOES NOT BELIEVE THAT A GOD EXISTS OR EVER HAS, SO HE DOES NOT TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION WHAT ANY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THAT NON-EXISTENT ENTITY MIGHT BE.
Good use of number 6 so far
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BG, at some point you really need to admit that you're the prime example of someone who really doesn't understand most science and therefore has no leg to stand on when arguing that people shouldn't tell you that you don't understand the science behind why a lot of your beliefs are near-impossibilities.Wrap your head around that sentence...it's a doozy.<3

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