Christian fundamentalists in Britain

[DLPB_]

you falsely present yourself as a rational middle ground.

I don't think in this instance that taking a neutral stance is inferior.  If anything, it is the only correct choice because we lack so much information and always will.

If you saw an edge of a rocky surface and couldn't see over it, you could assume there was a huge drop but there might not be (in fact it might not even be a rocky surface, that could be illusion).  Your position seems to be one of thinking that 1 position is the be all and end all and that you know.

I'd say your position of thinking you know it all or will do, is 100X worse, and a silly comic isn't clever...

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

you falsely present yourself as a rational middle ground.

I don't think in this instance that taking a neutral stance is inferior.  If anything, it is the only correct choice because we lack so much information and always will.

The sun might rise tomorrow. It might not. We can't be absolutely certain. Not 100%. So I'm adopting an agnostic stance as to whether the sun will rise tomorrow. I don't think in this instance that taking a neutral stance is inferior. If anything, it is the only correct choice because we lack so much information and always will. seewhatididthere?

If you saw an edge of a rocky surface and couldn't see over it, you could assume there was a huge drop but there might not be (in fact it might not even be a rocky surface, that could be illusion).  Your position seems to be one of thinking that 1 position is the be all and end all and that you know.

If I had seen many edges rocky surfaces before and had noticed that every single other one had a huge drop on the other side, I'd be justified in believing that this one had a drop on the other side too. Naturally, I couldn't assert anything with certainty, but I could make a pretty safe guess. I'd certainly take issue with anyone who said there definitely wasn't a drop on the other side.

You're making the typical agnostic mistake of assuming that if conclusive evidence doesn't exist, then no evidence exists and both positions are equal. That's a bad mistake to make.

And somehow, you're also managing to make the bold assertion that we definitely will never know the cause of the big bang and refusing to give any quarter to the suggestion that we will. The one assuming that one position is the be-all and end-all is you.

I'd say your position of thinking you know it all or will do, is 100X worse, and a silly comic isn't clever...

No. You're the person who's refusing to admit that you don't know everything that it's possible to know. I have a big ego, but I'm man enough to admit that people in the future will be able to understand things that are beyond my comprehension. I will be an uneducated moron by the standards of people in 1000 years time, provided that fucktards like the people in the videos I posted, or their counterparts in other religions, don't get their way.

By denying that we can know much more than we already know, you're comforting yourself with a "crab in a barrel" mentality. I think you derive comfort from the belief that, if you can't understand the mysteries of the universe, no-one ever will. That way, you can convince yourself that no-one can be smarter than you.

 

[DLPB_]

My position is one of not knowing.  You can wrap that up however you like.  Your position is thinking your position is cleverer.  Who is more smug in thinking they know it all?  You seem to be attacking me for not taking either position, and then accusing me of thinking I know everything.  The 2 don't go together and attacking someone for being neutral comes across as foolish in this debate.  I of course consider some things more likely than others, but I certainly don't have the evidence to start choosing either position.

You have chosen a position based on a gross absence of evidence.

 :mrgreen:

 

[Bosola]

Come on. Let's stick to attacking our opponent's opinions and mistakes rather than attacking our opponents themselves. We're all friends here, after all.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

My position is one of not knowing.  You can wrap that up however you like.  Your position is thinking your position is cleverer.  Who is more smug in thinking they know it all?

There's one person here who seems to want to claim that he knows everything humans will ever know. I'm the one saying that humans in the future will know far more than me. How you came to the conclusion that I'm claiming to know everything is beyond me.

You seem to be attacking me for not taking either position, and then accusing me of thinking I know everything.  The 2 don't go together

Yes they do, when the person is doing both things at the same time. Militant agnostics are at the same time fence-sitters and faith heads, because they assert the superiority of their fence-sitting to the point of dogma

and attacking someone for being neutral comes across as foolish in this debate.

You're not taking a neutral position. You're taking a very extreme position; namely that there are certain things that are necessarily unknowable. The statement "humans will never know x" is as far from neutral as we can get. It implies that you know something with absolute certainty.

Can you explain to me why "we can't know" is any less of a knowledge claim than any other statement? A lot of people seem to imply that statements like these are not knowledge claims, when it is obvious that they are. They are claims to knowledge of what can be known. What makes these types of assertions epistemically unique?

I of course consider some things more likely than others, but I certainly don't have the evidence to start choosing either position.

If you have enough evidence to consider some things more likely than others, you have enough evidence to choose a position. In fact, you have chosen a position, and without any evidence at all.

You have chosen a position based on a gross absence of evidence.

No, it's the other way around. My position that humans will continue to discover things that previous generations possible is based on the fact that they've been doing this for thousands of years, and they are now starting to develop tools to speed up this process in ways never thought imaginable.

Your belief that what is unanswerable now will never be answerable is based on blind faith.

It is as if we were arguing about whether the sun will rise tomorrow. The sun has risen every other day, so I'd say that it will probably rise tomorrow. Your position seems to be an assertion that it will never rise again, that we have had the last sunrise ever. Neither of us can conclusively prove our position, but one is more likely than the other.

We're all friends here, after all.

 

[DLPB_]

It is pointless conversing with you.  You manage to twist and spin everything people say into what you want them to say.  You have definitions for words, you tell dictionaries what they mean, you redefine the word "good" and you spin like a politician.  A bad one.  We have had this conversation haven't we... and it has come to an end.  I have said what I feel, and if you don't like it, I couldn't care less. 


Good day 

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

It is pointless conversing with you.

And yet you insist on doing it.

You manage to twist and spin everything people say into what you want them to say.

No, I don't need to do that. The people I argue with are fully capable of saying silly things without my help.

You have definitions for words

OH NOES!

you tell dictionaries what they mean

No, I tell you what words in the dictionary mean. Words like "dated".

you redefine the word "good" and you spin like a politician

A bad one.

That's a personal attack! :'(

We have had this conversation haven't we

No, this is definitely the first time we've had this conversation

and it has come to an end.

So you insist on having the last word.

I have said what I feel, and if you don't like it, I couldn't care less.

If you couldn't care less, why are you posting this?

-----------------------------------------------------

EDIT

>MFW TEXAS

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.

 

[yoshi314]

Seeing as this topic was originally about religion...

I'm religious myself, and I believe that there's nothing wrong with religion on its own.  However, what people need to understand about religion is that it is strictly a belief, and must not be treated as anything more.  You can believe whatever you like, and you can let it affect your life however you like, but it's never acceptable to cause trouble to other people because what you believe has nothing to do with them.

Even if you're a raging fundamentalist who believes that your religion is correct and everyone else's is wrong and everyone else should die and burn in hell for it, that has nothing to do with them because that's just what you believe.  The only person that has anything to do with is you.

not one to nitpick, but you just proposed to send people you consider unworthy or otherwise unfit to hell. does that mean you're trying to make people believe in hell, and enforce your beliefs on others?

that aside, the longer i live the more i believe religion is just another way of exercising control over people. we would be good enough with just a moral code of conduct, and no gods.

 

[m35]

Watching that this thread at least started out quite calm and respectful, I was interested in posing a bit of rhetoric to improve my understanding. I'm sure these ideas are not new by any means, so I'm curious what some of the standard counter-points are.

1) From my limited understand, the scientific approach relies on repeatable, observable experiments. There are many things we can't observe directly, so the best we can do is observe the things around them (e.g. fundamental elements of matter, or black holes). Where is the flaw in trying to draw a parallel between this and a "higher power"? 

2) Now to side-step the actual question of if religion is real. It has been accepted by many people that homosexuality is not a choice--it's just the way some people are. It's natural and, so long as it's not hurting anyone, there's nothing wrong with it. Of course this sort of "live and let live" idea can extend to most any inclination people have. What could be said, then, to someone who tried to draw a parallel to that and religious belief? It has been reported by psychological studies that we are hard-wired to have religious belief (e.g. applying meaning to random events). So, if following the natural tendency to believe in religion doesn't hurt anyone, is it any different from following a tendency to be (fill in the blank)?

Like I said, I'm sure these points have been raised countless times by others before me. But I hope some thoughtful feedback can help me grow in understanding.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

Watching that this thread at least started out quite calm and respectful, I was interested in posing a bit of rhetoric to improve my understanding. I'm sure these ideas are not new by any means, so I'm curious what some of the standard counter-points are.

1) From my limited understand, the scientific approach relies on repeatable, observable experiments. There are many things we can't observe directly, so the best we can do is observe the things around them (e.g. fundamental elements of matter, or black holes). Where is the flaw in trying to draw a parallel between this and a "higher power"? 

2) Now to side-step the actual question of if religion is real. It has been accepted by many people that homosexuality is not a choice--it's just the way some people are. It's natural and, so long as it's not hurting anyone, there's nothing wrong with it. Of course this sort of "live and let live" idea can extend to most any inclination people have. What could be said, then, to someone who tried to draw a parallel to that and religious belief? It has been reported by psychological studies that we are hard-wired to have religious belief (e.g. applying meaning to random events). So, if following the natural tendency to believe in religion doesn't hurt anyone, is it any different from following a tendency to be (fill in the blank)?

Like I said, I'm sure these points have been raised countless times by others before me. But I hope some thoughtful feedback can help me grow in understanding.

I've found a flaw in your argument.

 

[The Seer of Shadows]

In all fairness, there is a difference between believing in a religion and butchering everything it stands for...

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

In all fairness, there is a difference between believing in a religion and butchering everything it stands for...

Yes there is, and we should be thankful that, in the West, most people completely ignore what the religions they claim to believe in actually stand for and instead adopt a largely secular moral system.

My last post illustrates what happens when people take their holy books seriously instead of just picking out the bits they like and saying that the bits they don't like are metaphors.

 

[obesebear]

Any point in which a person or people become obsessed with something is always bad.  If you're obsessed with your religion you will go on crusades to murder those who are "unbelievers".  You will have protests at the funerals of Soldiers.  You will strap yourselves with bombs, because your religion is the one and only way and you're retarded.

The exact same can't be said about the other side though.  There are no stories of devout atheists killing mass amounts of people.  They are, however, just as insanely annoying as the devout religious types.

We should all just be Hindu

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

We should all just be Hindu

There are plenty of ultra-violent, ultra-racist Hindus.

Granted, Hindu extremism and nationalism is usually a little more complicated than simply hating someone because they're of a different religion (as with the Protestant/Catholic situation in Northern Ireland, there are ethnic and social elements to it), and it hasn't been quite as much of a problem historically as Christian and Islamic extremism, for various reasons, but Hinduism isn't the peaceful religion that a lot of Westerners think it is.

Hell, even Buddhists sometimes do violence in the name of their religion. Just look at the mess in Sri Lanka.

 

[xLostWingx]

Watching that this thread at least started out quite calm and respectful, I was interested in posing a bit of rhetoric to improve my understanding. I'm sure these ideas are not new by any means, so I'm curious what some of the standard counter-points are.

1) From my limited understand, the scientific approach relies on repeatable, observable experiments. There are many things we can't observe directly, so the best we can do is observe the things around them (e.g. fundamental elements of matter, or black holes). Where is the flaw in trying to draw a parallel between this and a "higher power"? 

2) Now to side-step the actual question of if religion is real. It has been accepted by many people that homosexuality is not a choice--it's just the way some people are. It's natural and, so long as it's not hurting anyone, there's nothing wrong with it. Of course this sort of "live and let live" idea can extend to most any inclination people have. What could be said, then, to someone who tried to draw a parallel to that and religious belief? It has been reported by psychological studies that we are hard-wired to have religious belief (e.g. applying meaning to random events). So, if following the natural tendency to believe in religion doesn't hurt anyone, is it any different from following a tendency to be (fill in the blank)?

Like I said, I'm sure these points have been raised countless times by others before me. But I hope some thoughtful feedback can help me grow in understanding.

Observing the observable when talking about a higher power is like trying to learn about the Sun by studying the Moon.  You can learn about the sun this way, but it is not the same as studying the sun itself.

While official psychological organizations have declassified Homosexuality as a mental disorder, the exact process by which an individual becomes (is) a homosexual is more complicated, not completely known, and IS influenced by the environment (the psychological definition of environment).  I mean no disrespect/intolerance, I’m speaking in science – Homosexuality is like a combination of Alcoholism and Sickle Cell anemia in terms of genotypes/phenotypes.  Basically there is a genetic explanation involving alleles, carriers, and expressed traits for homosexuality, however, there is not a 1.0 correlation between identical twins and homosexuality.  For fraternal twins, the correlation coefficient is like .27 and for identical twins it is like .63.  Of course, this is not very PC, so most people never hear about these things.

Religious belief operated independently of genetics (although people with certain genetic profiles are more or less likely to be believers or nonbelievers just as some are more likely to be gamblers).  The very nature of religion and spirituality, is something I believe is influenced by genetics and environment, but not dependent on genes or upbringing.  I’d be interested in knowing specifically what studied you are referring to (are these articles peer-reviewed? Are there any potentially confounding variables?).  Many natural tendencies for behavior DO hurt people.  If everyone followed their natural tendencies, I imagine the world would be a very dangerous and dreadful place. 

Secular Moral System…no better than a Religious moral system (given the fact there are hundreds of each type, each responsible for many horrible and wonderful things).  A person needs to develop their own system of morals, but then again, who the hell trusts people with such a task.

 

[The Seer of Shadows]

My last post illustrates what happens when people take their holy books seriously instead of just picking out the bits they like and saying that the bits they don't like are metaphors.

As far as Christianity goes (I don't want to run the risk of speaking for other religions as well), that's not 100% true.  Extremists take certain fragments of the bible extremely seriously (hence becoming extremists ) and seem to be completely oblivious to the rest.

In the example of Christian fundamentalists condemning gay people: Yes, the bible does condemn homosexuality.  I don't know why.  But the bible also tells you very clearly (and it emphasizes this far more than the homosexuality thing) not to judge other people and to "love your neighbor".  The "neighbor" bit, according to what I was taught, actually is a metaphor in this context, and supposedly refers to every person you ever encounter.

If I were God, and I was talking to the guy holding the "God hates fags" sign in your second picture, I would probably say some variation of "Go to Hell and mind your own business."

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

As far as Christianity goes (I don't want to run the risk of speaking for other religions as well), that's not 100% true.  Extremists take certain fragments of the bible extremely seriously (hence becoming extremists ) and seem to be completely oblivious to the rest.

But don't "liberal" Christians do exactly the same thing? The only difference is that they pick different bits to take seriously and different bits to ignore.

And as a rule, the "fundamentalist" types take a bigger proportion of it seriously.

In the example of Christian fundamentalists condemning gay people: Yes, the bible does condemn homosexuality.  I don't know why.  But the bible also tells you very clearly (and it emphasizes this far more than the homosexuality thing) not to judge other people and to "love your neighbor".  The "neighbor" bit, according to what I was taught, actually is a metaphor in this context, and supposedly refers to every person you ever encounter.

And here's the problem. The Bible was written by lots of different people and some parts of it are very vague. As a result, someone can find a Bible passage to justify just about anything.

The reason why that's very bad is because people who are already that way inclined will read the Bible (or the Koran, or whatever) and their prejudice will turn into a crusade, because they see "God" as commanding them to wipe out whichever people or behaviour that they don't like. Taking religion can seriously massively multiply any hatreds a person already has. Homophobes will cease to find homosexuality as merely repulsive and will start to see it as a great evil that will cause the downfall of mankind like it caused the downfall of Sodom and Gomorrah. Antisemites will cease to be merely paranoid and will see the Jews as Christ-killers who are forever cursed and are forever the enemies of Christendom. Muslims who are inclined towards antisemitism will read this:

The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews

This is also in the Hamas charter (note how it says "Jews" rather than "Israelis" or "Zionists"). Apparently, the majority of the Palestinian population sees fit to vote for a party that believes this.

 

[The Seer of Shadows]

But don't "liberal" Christians do exactly the same thing? The only difference is that they pick different bits to take seriously and different bits to ignore.

That's quite a sweeping statement you make there.  At least give the benefit of a doubt to these poor people.  There must be plenty of Christians out there who don't knowingly ignore parts of the bible.  (Accidentally overlooking minor details is something else.)

But as a liberal Christian myself, you kinda got me there.  The beginning of Genesis can be loosely paraphrased as "God created the earth in seven days.  Man was created on the sixth day."  Not possible.  Either those "days" are a metaphor lost in translation, or God created the Earth in such a way that it sure damn looks like it took millions upon millions of years to develop (fossils and everything).  Or maybe vast amounts of DMT were involved.  I don't know.

I always excuse this by saying, "... Whatever.  The bible isn't supposed to be a science textbook."  So I guess you could say, on some level, I do ignore some parts of the bible.  Or perhaps I just have such strong faith that I believe in a religion even where it doesn't appear to make sense.  You decide.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

That's quite a sweeping statement you make there.  At least give the benefit of a doubt to these poor people.  There must be plenty of Christians out there who don't knowingly ignore parts of the bible.  (Accidentally overlooking minor details is something else.)

Then one wonders why they bother to call themselves Christians, or why they bother to take anything in the Bible seriously at all. If they profess a religion, they should know more about it.

But as a liberal Christian myself, you kinda got me there.  The beginning of Genesis can be loosely paraphrased as "God created the earth in seven days.  Man was created on the sixth day."  Not possible.  Either those "days" are a metaphor lost in translation, or God created the Earth in such a way that it sure damn looks like it took millions upon millions of years to develop (fossils and everything).  Or maybe vast amounts of DMT were involved.  I don't know.

I always excuse this by saying, "... Whatever.  The bible isn't supposed to be a science textbook."  So I guess you could say, on some level, I do ignore some parts of the bible.  Or perhaps I just have such strong faith that I believe in a religion even where it doesn't appear to make sense.  You decide.

I think it might be both.

But why, if people accept that there are obvious flaws in it, do some of them still see it as a good moral guide? Exactly what authority does it have if you accept that it was written by fallible humans and is not actually the work of any God? Why bother with it at all? Why not look elsewhere for a moral guide, to literature that isn't so full of vagueness or contradictions?

 

[nfitc1]

I'm going to chime in here not having read what all's come before so forgive me if this has been brought up. I tend to stay away from religious debates because of the close-mindedness of many atheists. I've run into many people whose greatest argument is "There can't possibly be a God and you can't prove that there is" then just ignore everything I have to say about the subject.

That's quite a sweeping statement you make there.  At least give the benefit of a doubt to these poor people.  There must be plenty of Christians out there who don't knowingly ignore parts of the bible.  (Accidentally overlooking minor details is something else.)

But as a liberal Christian myself, you kinda got me there.  The beginning of Genesis can be loosely paraphrased as "God created the earth in seven days.  Man was created on the sixth day."  Not possible.  Either those "days" are a metaphor lost in translation, or God created the Earth in such a way that it sure damn looks like it took millions upon millions of years to develop (fossils and everything).  Or maybe vast amounts of DMT were involved.  I don't know.

I always excuse this by saying, "... Whatever.  The bible isn't supposed to be a science textbook."  So I guess you could say, on some level, I do ignore some parts of the bible.  Or perhaps I just have such strong faith that I believe in a religion even where it doesn't appear to make sense.  You decide.

The creation story in the Bible is honestly like any other creation story. It attempts to give an explanation of why things are the way they are. It might be largely fictional, especially in the time it took to do certain things. Biblical scholars agree with a large degree of certainty that Moses commissioned Genesis to be written along with the remainder of the Pentateuch. It was all oral tradition passed down in a father-to-son manner. I'm not sure anything can be taken as 100% fact until the story of Abraham. This includes Eden, the Great Flood, and the Tower of Babel. These stories were either made up to fill in a gap of history or composed of some half-truths of what really happened as a way to explain how it all went down.

How could you explain to a bunch of mentally underdeveloped proto-humans that their planets took billions of years to form and for them to evolve into what they are today. They have no concept of "billions" of anything nor evolution. The story of creation basically glosses over all that and just says "God made it in six days". Seven was also a "complete" number to the Israelites so it might mean "God created the Earth [in the fullness of time]" or some such thing. Adam may very well have been the first human that God made contact with. I completely believe that God directed evolution, at whatever speed he chose to do it, to create man and all the other life. Life's mechanics are too intricate and too varied to have developed at random. Evolution without a guiding force has some HUGE problems with it.

The Great Flood likely did occur. There are lots of cultures that developed a story involving a flood that demolished the land. This may have been what happened to Atlantis. Genesis leads us to believe that only one family survived this flood. This might be the case, but if this were so then the entire Earth was not flooded. Just a portion of it was. A problem arose with what happened after the flood to create all the different languages. The Tower of Babel story was written to give an explanation of that too. It was possibly influenced by the tower of Etemenanki and added in to Genesis after the Babylonian captivity. It's never referenced anywhere else in the Bible other than those few verses that tell the story. All the various sources also have inconsistencies in its height too. The story doesn't make much sense later either. If God's purpose was to stop man from being able to all communicate with each other then just giving new languages wasn't the best way to do it. Practically any language can be translated into another language and allow people of different languages to communicate. This happens later in Genesis when Joseph calls for a Egyptian<->Hebrew interpreter.

So why are there different languages? It may have been possible that there once was one language that all men spoke and they've deviated over time. It's more likely that men developed over a wide area of the Earth and just began creating their own languages isolated from each other. But then this view contradicts the Eden story so an explanation needed to be given. Bottom line was it wasn't part of the original writings of Genesis.

Then one wonders why they bother to call themselves Christians, or why they bother to take anything in the Bible seriously at all. If they profess a religion, they should know more about it.

Can you honestly say you know EVERYTHING about science and evolution? Can you explain how gravity works? Maybe you can, many cannot. There are plenty of atheists that know next to nothing about their world-view as well.

But why, if people accept that there are obvious flaws in it, do some of them still see it as a good moral guide? Exactly what authority does it have if you accept that it was written by fallible humans and is not actually the work of any God? Why bother with it at all? Why not look elsewhere for a moral guide, to literature that isn't so full of vagueness or contradictions?

I see this statement as a contradiction. If you think the Bible was written by "fallible humans" (some of it is), then why advocate looking at other literature, written by a different set of fallible humans, as a different moral guide? You'd have to ask the Council of Trent why they included what they did. The Old Testament was compiled as a set of laws and history of the Chosen people before Christ came. After that it requires faith to believe that the New Testament is a faithful account of the teachings of Jesus and what the first century of Christianity looked like. There is a large amount of evidence to prove that there WAS a rabbi named Jesus (other than the shroud of Turin). That's as far as fact can take you. The rest is faith almost in the way that you have faith that the Earth will continue to revolve around the sun. You have no control over that and you just accept that it will continue happening.

If any of these statements didn't make a lot of sense, acknowledge the fact that I'm not a trained scholar or teacher nor do I have the greatest grasp on the English language. I also tend to write things out of order so I may have missed a point that I meant to make and forgot I didn't add it. I know what I believe, but I'm still working on how to explain it to others.