Eminently understandable. All I would ask in return is that they accept that not all of my beliefs are based on reason.
Der Trihs, you know why you’re such a dolt? Because you claim to believe in reason, yet you have no idea why people believe unreasonable things. And the most important lesson of science is not how to discover true beliefs, it is how to rid oneself of FALSE beliefs. Everyone has false beliefs, you do, I do, they do. The trouble is, it’s hard to rid yourself of false beliefs, because if you knew they were false you wouldn’t believe them any more.
You hold the majority in contempt because they’re fools who can’t see the obvious truth. Yet you disingenously claim you’re not smarter than them, you’re just not a fool. Except, huh? You can’t have it both ways. Either you see the truth because you’re smarter than most everyone else, or you see the truth for some other reason.
And I’m telling you that the more self-flattering your explanation of why you see the truth when everyone else doesn’t, the more likely it is to be false. And your explanation…that most everyone is an idiot, but you’re not…well, I don’t see how you can claim you’re not flattering yourself there.
So. People of seemingly normal intelligence can believe obviously false things. OJ was innocent. Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. The moon landings were hoaxed. God exists. Astrology can predict human behavior. Pauly Shore is a commedian. And on and on. And the trouble isn’t that they’re fools, the trouble is that they’re normal–or even smart–people who believe obviously false things. The contention that they only believe such nonsense because they’re fools is itself obvious nonsense.
See, you’re not an idiot, you’re not a con-man, and while you may have some personality disorders I wouldn’t call you delusional either. Except you have what to me are obviously false beliefs, and you have no interest in examining those beliefs. Your mind is made up…religious people are religious because they’re stupid. And the irony is, if you had an ounce of honest scientific curiosity about human beings you’d be able to examine this belief you hold and subject it to scrutiny and (in my opinion) change it to a more accurate one. But since you, like most people, don’t have a scientific mindset you’re just as subject to holding obviously false beliefs as most people, and just as incapable of correcting those false beliefs. And so the circle of life continues.
I am confused, why would you say normal people could believe such obvious things. So many of your examples are in the realm of only conspiracy nuts with mental problems, that I would never use the word normal.
You probably, inadvertently just insulted the religious members of the board as badly as **Der Trihs ** ever has. You just equated Belief in God = Belief in the moon landing was a hoax. You placed astrology on the same footing as religion. You have made **Der Trihs’ ** argument for him.
I do not believe belief in God is insanity, I believe it is indoctrination. I also do not put all of your improbables on the same level.
Jim
It’s called comedic effect, son.
Yes, not all obviously false beliefs are equal. My point was that there are all kinds of false beliefs and a whole galaxy of reasons why people believe false things, and Der Trihs’ “Liar, Lunatic, or Idiot” trilemmna is one of those obviously false things. Sure, some people believe false things because they’re lunatics, sometimes they profess to believe false things because they’re lying to you, sometimes they believe false things because they’re incapable of critical thinking.
But most people ARE capable of critical thinking, but they just don’t do it very often. Or they do it for some parts of their lives (business decisions, say) but not others (their love lives, say). Most people are NOT delusional. Most people who profess weird beliefs really do believe them…even the frauds usually believe their own fraud. It’s much easier to convince the marks if you first convince yourself.
And the conspiracy “nuts” aren’t usually crazy or stupid either. They often have explicable reasons for believing what they do. Said belief brings them social status and acceptance by a peer group. Or they make money expounding said belief, and believe their own rap. Or they’re getting back at their parents, or their 8th grade teacher. And on and on. I’m not convinced that the typical OJ denier or whatever has a head full of bad chemicals, although there is probably an overrepresentation of crazy people in that group.
Or take a guy like Fred Phelps. Why does he do what he does? It all comes down to sadism. But is that ‘crazy’? It depends on your definition of crazy. I don’t think he literally hears voices in his head that tell him to hate gays. I think he’s just a guy eaten away by hate who needs an outlet for his hate, and gay people and everyone else in the world outside his church/family provides that outlet.
So of course believing in God is not insanity, even though I believe it is a false belief. It’s indoctrination plus memetics plus group solidarity plus all kinds of other things. Yes, in some cases passing the line into insanity, but in the vast vast majority of cases it isn’t.
Der Trihs insistance that religious people are idiots is an example of a true scotsman fallacy…because his definition of an idiot is being religious. I could point to the dozens of smart religious people I know, but he’d counter that they can’t really be smart, because if they were really smart they’d reject religion. But someone’s IQ score is not a good predictor of their religiousity except in a very indirect way. It’s not like everyone who has an IQ score above 120 and who isn’t in a mental institution or in jail turns out to be an atheist.
You lose me on Fred Phelps, to me he is a crazy and evil person. He might be cunning to some degree, but he is an idiot. I agreed with you already that religious does not equal stupid. I do believe they have been indoctrinate to believe in most cases.
My sister use to miss the church because she grew up with it. She was tossed out of the RCC for marrying a divorced man. I could not comprehend how she could respect such an institution and miss it as I had already left the RCC as a child. As I got older, I realized she missed it because from birth through marriage at 23 she had been thoroughly doctrinated and now had a part of her life missing.
My sister is very bright. Smarter than I am in all ways except the useless IQ test you were mentioning. She is a super mom and great nurse. She has gotten over being separated from the church but it took her a little while. Of course back when I was only 17 and bashed the church for its hideously corrupt history and contradictory beliefs, she ignored me. Later when I would talk calmly about it and all the political machinations that it has been involved in, she did listen. I think it even helped her.
She still believes in God and I do not think her crazy. I believe she still believes in the Christian God, and I still do not think she is crazy. She no longer believes in the church and I think this proves she has a much more mature rationally then she did at 23. YMMV.
Jim
In one of those crazy coincidences in life, who do you think visited me this evening? Yep, two clean-cut young men in suits with nametags. Mormon missionaries.
Thing is, they didn’t seem retarded to me. They didn’t have crazy glints in their eyes. They seemed nice and sincere. So what in heck were they doing wasting their time going door to door recruiting people?
Of course what they’re doing is a waste of time. But they weren’t doing it because they were stupid, crazy, or con-men. They had other reasons. Maybe not (in my opinion) good reasons, but reasons. And the truth is, usually those reasons–like fitting in with their family and extended social group–are more important to people in their church than whether Joseph Smith did or did not really dig up a couple of gold plates and translated them with a magic rock.
Certainly there’s every reason to believe that there were no such gold plates and no such magic rock. Except that doesn’t matter to Mormons, because they aren’t Mormons because they were shown archaeological evidence that Joseph Smith’s vision was correct. They’re Mormons for other reasons.
Aaaaaand as usual, South Park explains Mormonism perfectly:
You do yourself, and indeed the world at large a disservice to think that Phelps is stupid. He is not stupid; he is dedicated to his own agenda, which is secular power by feeding on the fears of ordinary people. He isn’t an idiot, he is a willful charlatan. Christianity is only a tool for him.
Tris
I actually think he believes his crap. I do not believe either of us could provide any proof that their position is correct.
I respect your thoughts and if you are correct, he is even more evil than I believe. Then he is a smart calculating Hitler like evil instead of a crazy evil. A truly chilling thought.
Jim
I read this a couple of times. I think I get it but would you mind simplifying a little so I can be sure, or maybe understand more clearly.
For me the growing issue has been that I see the spiritual journey as a very personal and internal thing. More and more the popular concept of a God, supreme being who is out there somewhere, and interjects his actions when he sees fit seems alien to me and worse. It seems counter productive to our growth as individuals and as a people. I see my own spiritual experiences as real and it is because of them that I believe there is more to understand about our nature and our connection to each other. Still, believing that , I suspect that the term God may no longer be appropriate for me in describing that connection and its source.
Eh, Fred Phelps “church” consists only of his children and grandchildren. He isn’t a power-hungry demagogue, he’s a simple sadist who enjoys inflicting pain on others. He used to beat and torture his children until he transfered his sadism first to gays then to the fag-loving United States.
And Phelps certainly isn’t stupid, he used to be a lawyer until he was disbarred. Of course he’s evil, but crazy? Sure, he’s crazy under some definitions of crazy. But he’s not schizophrenic, he doesn’t hallucinate, he doesn’t hear voices that tell him to hate gays. He’s a classic sadist, sure, and definately evil and certainly a twisted hate-filled freak but I don’t know if that exactly makes him crazy. I guess if you want to call him crazy I wouldn’t argue with you, so I guess my assertion that he isn’t exactly crazy isn’t so well founded. But I suppose I think he does what he does out of evil and hatefullness rather than delusional craziness. Calling him crazy lets him off the hook too much for me.
I guess my confusion stems from your forceful putting forward in the past of a logical proof for the existence of God. If God is merely a mental filter you apply to your interpretation of the Universe, as seems the thrust of the quoted statements, and you say it’s valid to have a perspective where God DOESN’T exist then how is it that He “exists necessarily”?
To be clear that we are clear of semantics, let me re-phrase my point about us sharing a God: I mean we disagree if you think there is an autonomous entity, with an intelligence and a force of will, that can exert ultimate power guided by ultimate knowledge.
Nonsemantic capsule version of my beliefs: There is an entity that loves perfectly, where goodness is that which edifies and love is that which facilitates goodness. That’s what I believe. With respect to the MOP, the entity cannot not exist. Because the frame of that proof is Euclidean (S5), the perspective of the entity is objective; our perspective, however, is subjective. Let’s say you are A and I am B. The entity is E. A does not experience E. B experiences E. E experiences A and E experiences B. A cannot experience B and B cannot experience A, where experience is revealed knowledge. Objectivity implies necesssity. Necessity implies eternity. Finally, goodness compels the entity to exist. The entity is therefore essential.
Direct to your remarks: a perspective is just a frame of reference — Euclidean, unique, transitive, convergent, etc. The entity’s perspective is that if a thing is possible, then it is necessarily possible (Euclidean). Your perception that God does not exist is valid because in a Euclidean world where X has a relation to E and Y has a relation to E, X has a relation to Y. You and I therefore may hold separate but equal perspectives.
Well, if you believe in a perfectly loving God as a distinct entity then we disagree and I guess there was no “misunderstanding” at all.
The main difference is the existence of the entity. Many implications follow.
Agreed.
Can you supply a reason why religion should not be placed on the same footing as astrology, or belief in god not thought equal to believing the moon landing was a hoax?
And I think that no matter what you call it, it’s still no more inherently respectable than belief in the tabloid horoscopes, tarot cards, magic crystals, or the idea that it’s possible to move the interlocking bones of the skull with your bare hands.
I wouldn’t call your sister herself crazy, but I see no reason to respect her belief in ‘god’ any more than I would respect her belief in, say, the tooth fairy.
The flaw in that argument is that some of the most batshit crazy people out there are true believers. The fact that someone is nice or that they sincerely believe whatever it is they are telling you does not preclude the possibility that they are also crazy as a shit house rat. Apparently David Berkowitz sincerely believed that his neighbor’s dog was possessed by a demon.
I have never seen a compelling argument for treating religion differently than any other irrational, illogical belief in myths and fairy tales.
I believe you. I believe that you have never seen a compelling argument or heard a good reason. But that raises two related questions. Are you an objective arbiter of which reasons and arguments are good? And do you measure the reasonableness of all other things the same way?
I daresay that you cannot supply a compelling argument that your take on the rationality of religion is the take we all should take. Certainly not just because it’s you as opposed to us. And clearly not because you possess any powers of acumen or comprehension above the rest of us. And there’s no reason for me, at least, to believe that your contradiction of my own life experience carries any authority whatsoever.
And if you measure all other things by the same criterion — your personal approval of the rationale and evidence — then you must be hell to live with. No one can appreciate a work of art without having to convince you that it is as worthy of your appreciation as it is of theirs. No one can experience happiness without your measuring stick determining that they are indeed by your calculations happy.
This whole business of “show me the evidence for the object of your faith” is intellectually infantile. We have evidence that suits us. Whether it suits you is relevant only to your own decisions, and your holding against us that we decided differently is almost, I don’t know, sociopathic or something.
If it simplified really really well, I would do so and would have done so often and would find it a lot easier to make myself understood. The whole “God” thing is not a part of the blindingly obvious; it is occult, in the literal sense of “hidden”.
But a lot of it becomes more accessible when you examine and explore “purpose” and “volition”, as well as “meaning”: whether “overall”, as in “What is the meaning of life” or local and immediate, as in “Do I, or anyone else, ever, act with volition, and if so what is volition?”, these are all questions that are wrapped up in each other.
Not going to bother cleaning things up too much because it’s a bitch on my PDA…
Fine, so you accept my faith and give it the respect it deserves so long as I dont make the claim that it is the only religion.
Two questions then.
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Why do the big religions get away with it? Technically the Torah doesn’t say Only God, but that’s much more a legal split hair than accepted dogma. Are the big religions less acceptable to you since they claim exclusivity?
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Is Thordom (now that it has been revised to allow other religions to exist) more acceptable to you? Will you give it the same respect you give Christianity? If others denigrate it in a thread, do you think that others should chide those doing so?
-Joe
As in “capable of violent acts without feelings of guilt?” If you like, I could make a long list of violent acts committed *in the name of God * to prove that sociopathic behavior is not derived from atheism. If catsix is bordering on sociopathic because she does not believe in a supreme being who possesses supernatural powers then I suspect that a diagnosis of delusional fits your belief system.
The reason for treating it differently than you’d treat someone who claimed their dog was telling them to go out and murder prostitutes is because religious belief is simply such a ubiquitous phenomenon that treating religious believers as insane is just impossible.
Sure, they’re wrong. But they don’t believe in God because they hear voices in their heads, they don’t believe in God because of psychiatric problems. They don’t believe in God because they’re really really stupid, it’s not just the dumb people who believe in God, although it’s rare to find an a-religious dumb person.
And it’s not just “indoctrination” either, because plenty of people have religious or quasi-religious beliefs that are very different than their parents…look at all the Wiccans, pagans, and new-agers whose parents were Christians/apathists.
Christianity certainly deserves no more respect than the religious beliefs of a stone age New Guinea headhunter…but no less either. I don’t read the Icelandic Sagas thinking to myself what dolts those Vikings were, for believing in nonsense like Odin and Valhalla. Neither do I go around today thinking about what dolts Christians are for believing nonsense like the Trinity or that Jesus walked on the water, because Christians today believe in Christianity for pretty much the same sorts of reasons that the Icelandic Norse belived in the Aesir and the Valar, for the same sorts of reasons that New Guinea headhunter believes whatever he believes.
You could argue that those other guys had an excuse, but people today should know better. But since they obviously DON’T know better, the question becomes, why not? Why does the obvious nonsense seem so clearly obvious nonsense to me and you, yet most people in the world don’t agree? They aren’t stupid, unless you define religious belief as stupidity.
The most important quality to a scientific world view is intellectual humility, and this is what’s missing in the rabid atheist. They seem to think intellectual humility is cowardice, or giving in to the marching morons, or standing aside while the mob burns the Reichstag. But that’s fatuous.
The heroic image of the solitary scientist calmly making observations and percieving the truth directly, and handing his findings down to the grateful or ungrateful peasantry is a fairy tale. Science is a cooperative exercise. The solitary scientist is an impossibility. And a fundamental part of the scientific method is that a single person can make obvious mistakes. And that people support of oppose theories for illogical reasons. The cliche of the scientist who scornfully disregards criticism of his own work, while blasting the work of his rivals as incompetent is a cliche because it happens so often. Or the scientist who works for the tobacco companies who’s convinced smoking is harmless, while the scientist who works for the non-profit who’s convinced second-hand smoke is just as bad as smoking.
But while it’s easy for one person to make a mistake, or for a group with shared politcal/social interests to make a mistake, it’s harder for people without such shared interests to make the same sorts of mistakes at the same time about the same things. And so, science requires peer review, it requires repeatability, it requires publication, it requires references to previous literature, it requires accountability.
And science is never served by people who say, “We’re right, and therefore what the rest of you think doesn’t matter. You see? You see? You’re stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” That’s not how scientific theories become the consensus. They become the consensus when pretty much everyone becomes convinced the theory is correct. And sometimes this doesn’t happen because people change their minds, sometimes it happens because all the old fogeys with an intellectual investment in the old theory eventually retire, and all the new students believe the new theory.
But as the old saw goes, you can’t use logic to argue a person out of a position they didn’t reach logically. You’ve got to get them to accept that they should be using logic in the first place. But if logical arguments won’t work, abusing people who disagree with you and calling them idiots, insane, or liars certainly won’t work either.
People WILL disagree with you, even though you’re convinced you’re right. And the felt strength of your conviction is not evidence of your rightness or wrongness. And the scientific method requires intellectual humility, the ability to consider that you might be wrong, and the other guy might be right. Even when the other guy doesn’t share your intellectual humility.