If this guy spent all his money to outfit an expedition to a black hole in order to go back in time, what would you call him?
If all religious beliefs are as tentative as this kind of scientific belief, we’d have a much better world, wouldn’t we? The irrationality does not come from holding a belief, but from assigning it more weight than is warranted based on the evidence.
Fred Farfel is not irrational to believe his wife is faithful - that is, unless all the kids look like the milkman. 
Gutsy.
Well, your ignoring the debates that even the officials within the religions have about the various dogma and ceremonies.
Ask a Priest if his knowledge of the meanings of “xyz”, and, more importantly, if how he lives his life guided by that knowledge is exactly the same today as it was 20 years ago. I bet he’ll say he has “explored and grown”.
Urm, is Contrapuntal misposting?
Not exactly. RaftPeople borrowed from an ongoing discussion on spider web building to reply to the OP and Contrapuntal is challenging that observation (while some of the discussion reverts back to the other thread).
Is there such a thing as a good Jack Chick tract?
Firstly, stop making shit up and trying to shove it in my mouth. If you can’t understand what I’m saying that’s fine (I doubt it; you’re simply ignoring my posts now since you can’t possibly counter them, as they prove you WRONG) but trying to twist and misrepresent my arguments is a big fat NO NO so stop doing it. When Ad Hominem and Lying at the only weapons in your arsenal, it’s time to leave the field.
You seem to hold the silly nonscientific and obviously false beliefs that “religion” is the root of all evils, that all good comes from science, and that Communism is a religion because “The beliefs are not rationally based on evidence” (by which brilliant reasoning we can conclude that an incorrect answer on a test paper is also a religion based on the sheer fact that it’s not correctly derived from evidence).
Because these opinions you seem to espouse are not based on evidence and, additionally, wrong, then, based on your own flawed reasoning, these opinions of your are, in fact, a religion! Congratulations, you are declaring yourself to be insane.
Of course, you’re (probably) not actually insane, but you’re certainly swept up in this dogma of hatred of yours, to the point where you (demonstrably) selectively cherry-pick and misinterpret facts to support your preconcieved opinion, in exactly the way the worst kind of fundamentalist does (right down to wanting to eliminate all religions but your own skewed perspective).
To your credit, you’re in the right form at least: the forum for religious witnessing. Don’t be surprised if nobody converts, though; that doesn’t seem to happen much around here.
Come to think of it, no!
Even if he never bothers considering what the gravitational gradient will do to him. Not the word I’d use.
If they were doing it in the same spirit that Sherlockians debate the details of the canon, fine. I somehow suspect most of these people think their debate is a bit more significant, though.
**RaftPeople **is suggesting that faith might actually be a higher form of knowledge that humans currently cannot access as knowledge, and uses as an analogy a spider’s knowledge of how to build a web. I contend that the analogy fails because spiders do not know how to build a web. Neither are they acting on faith. They build webs by instinct.
I suppose that someone could “know” something by faith that later is verified by experience, but this says nothing about the nature of faith. Faith is, by definition, a belief in something that is unsupported by the facts.
None of this has anything to do with whether a religious experience is relevant or valid to the individual.
Well, are you going to keep adding qualifiers? How do I know he hasn’t, without asking?
If someone came up to me and said “I’m gonna go fly into a black hole tomorrow!” My reply is “Good luck…” while yours would be “Your stoopid!”? Ok.
This makes their debates less valid?
Well, I am gonna guess that considering they are debating things like the nature of existance, humanity’s purpose on Earth, their immortal souls (if any), and the afterlife (if any), then:
Yes, they would feel it is slightly more significant than discussing the methods of a fictional (private) detective that solved crimes 110 years ago.
So what if they feel it’s important? Do you think that the are hurling threats of excommunication at each other? Blackmailing each other with photos of nude strippers?
Do you think that because your not privy to exactly which Cardinal may be in favor of passing out condoms to prevent (or slow) the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa means that they are all opposed?
I do not. I suspect that they keep their debates private, so that when the final decision is made, they can present a (reassuringly) unified “front” to the faithfull who look to them for leadership and strength.
I also suspect that if the Vatican ever reverses that decision, the Cardinals would all politely clap, nod in agreement, and again present a united front & effort.
Ah. Thanks, Contrapuntal.
I asked because I thought I saw a “How do spiders know how to build a web?” thread around here somewhere, and I thought you might have been intending to answer that, but misclicked a thread and used the quickreply box.
I agree with your analysis, btw.
Well, I might ask how he was going to handle it, and if he either never bothered researching it, or figured out that since they flew into a wormhole on DS9 it must be okay, I think “you’re stupid” is quite an appropriate response. Actually I’d try to convince him to do a bit more work, but we evangelical atheists are awful that way.
Their feelings have nothing to do with it. Now, it is intellectually stimulating to assume, say, the God exists and some of the Bible is true, and given that figure out how much wine should go into the communion cup. My great-grandfather was a Talmudic scholar, so I get this urge honestly. But if you are going to consider this important in the real world (as opposed to stimulating or amusing) it might be worth trying to decide if there is good evidence for God’s existence first.
There is a difference between a dedicated Sherlockian and one who really believes Holmes existed. Religion seems to be full of the latter type of person.
Criticizing religions for not openly presenting the evidence for their beliefs is absurd; juxtaposing those religions against science only doubles the absurdity. Let’s take Catholicism, since that seems to be a favorite of yours. Catholic clergy, officials, academics, and theologians have written literally millions of volumes aobut their beliefs and the evidence for those beliefs. Bashing them for not doing so is like bashing Agatha Christie for not writing mystery novels. The total amount of Catholic theology, dogmatics, and apologetics probably exceeds the total amount of published science in the world by several orders of magnitude.
As for openness, don’t make me laugh. Science is not an open process. The vast majority of scientific papers are published in obscure journals that languish in locked archives in the back rooms of a handful of libraries. They are not available on the internet, and there’s no way that an ordinary person could read them. On the other hand, if you walked into your local Catholic church and asked politely, you could soon be reading their latest publications in theology.
Similarly, the Catholic church has peer review; probably more of it than any other institution. It may not be an official process as with scientific journals, but certainly priests look over the publications of other priests.
Presume for the moment that they are dead certain that God exists, due to various personal reasons that may vary from indoctrination to hallucination to having actually spoken to the guy. The specific reasons don’t matter. If they are dead certain of God’s existince, then are they not permitted to move the discussion on to other things? Even if you are not similarly convinced?
Contrapuntal, because we’re off-topic at this point, I created a new thread so we could continue (Spider Brains and Knowledge).
But, we may not have all of the facts. So it could be a belief unsupported by the facts we have today, but we may have the facts to support it tomorrow.
Important note: The definition of faith is not “a belief that is impossible to support with facts”.
I’m sorry Raftpeople.
I didn’t mean to make you feel you needed to start a new thread. I am just so easily confused.
I think it made sense, I felt a little funny going off on a tangent in this thread, but it’s a topic I really enjoy, so not a problem.
So religious people have written a lot about religion, so what? How much of it is more than just ‘I believe, you should too’ or ‘Heres some logic that proves my predetermined conclusion’? How much of what has been written in the name of religion is even taken seriously today? The bible isnt everything written on the subject, its just the cherry picked books that the theologians of the time thought fit their idea of what people should believe.
You could read then could you? Could you point out where they were wrong and have then recant their statement? Publish a proof that X is wrong for others to view? No of course not, the church doesnt operate that way. You obviously dont understand what peer review means. Just because a journal is obscure to you doesnt mean it is to the scientists whos specialty it covers. Real peer reviewed publications are never locked up where no one can see them. That would preclude them being peer reviewed.
Yeah, you really dont understand what peer review means.
Who said they can’t move the discussion on? My point was the existence of a robust debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, based on Biblical passages, in no way answers the criticism that angels don’t exist. I was responding to this comment by mlees
Such debates are irrelevant to the OPs point - though certainly valid as debates, and great fun too.
I think this a an important and succinctly put point on this issue.
If someone believes Jesus is the only begotten son of God and/or the physical incarnation of God while another believes he was a prophet or philosopher it doesn’t really matter until the weight of that belief prompts a choice that effects that persons life and then the lives of those around that person.
IMHO when religions put the trappings and traditions of their belief before the essence of the teachings they do themselves and all they encounter a disservice. It is however part of the human condition and experience.
If a person is a highly intelligent and rational atheist but also a selfish dishonest prick how does his rational beliefs benefit society? Can you argue that Martin Luther King, Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, should not have been taken seriously?
We’ve had the argument that Ammonius Saccus presents before. I think he is distributing the weight of the issue incorrectly.
Certainly beliefs should be challenged and questioned. That’s a necessary part of the process of human growth but I think we do that by focusing on the application of that belief first and the details second. I don’t care what the person next to me believes be they pagan, atheist, Jew Christian, etc. What counts IMHO is how that belief effects our relationship.
What Ammonius Saccus is missing and what is often missed by those who like to trash and ridicule religious beliefs is the necessity to separate the subjective from objective. Our moral judgements are not usually made based on scientific evidence. If you want to level the playing field and take away any “special” status that religious beliefs hold then you must consider the subjective beliefs of the believer and non believer equally. When you do that you usually find that both sets use a kind of faith and share having some rational and irrational beliefs.
If you are suggesting that we should disregard the honesty, love, courage, and compassion of an individual simply because they believe Jesus physically rose from the dead then I’d say you were dead wrong. Now if you’re suggesting that it’s hard to take someone seriously on a specific issues when they cloak their opinion with “the bible says” then I might agree.
In the same way evangelicals sometimes can’t look beyond “belief in Jesus as saviour” as the only thing that matters I think its a huge mistake to simply dismiss the part of the human condition that religion reflects as superstitious nonsense and irrational.