Fred Phelps is only the tip of the religion iceberg!

Great Debates
141

Yes yes I know. I was merely pointing out that your previous statement was a non sequitur.

No it isn’t. I don’t give a crap about religion. Kindness and compassion are the same whether it comes from an atheist or theist.

Der trihs I can tell from your posts that you are a pretty smart well educated guy. It’s posts like this one that make me draw the comparison to fundamentalist dogma. You just made a statement {twice} that is so glaringly wrong, and yet you will insist it is correct because of your own belief system. That’s exactly what you critisize about religion.

please see above response.

142

That is yet another example of standard religious behavior ( and if you think in terms of “spiritual journeys” you are religious ); the attempt to create a false equivalence between religion and atheism. Or between religion and anything based on facts, or anything remotely skeptical.

I simply cannot make myself take the religious side of the pro/con religion debate seriously; it’s all so utterly stupid, not to mention vile and destructive. I am not going to pretend that belief in gods and spirits and magic is anything other than foolish, no matter how bad most people want to believe in them.

If I firmly and absolutely believe that rock is harder than air, that doesn’t make me a rock versus air fundamentalist.

143

He made no such comparison.

His comparison (which echoes similar comparisons that others (incuding other atheists) have made) was regarding your behavior. Your absolutism and vehemence is identical to that of many religious fundamentalists.

144

I think most of your criticisms is that you misunderstand me when I say I am not an absolutist. While I certainly can accept that I may be wrong and that not everyone has to agree with me or even should agree with me (which, by my definition, is the opposite of being an absolutist), I am not a relativist either. I believe that you are wrong when you say God does not exist, just like how you believe I am wrong when I say God does. I don’t think you’re any lesser a person for being wrong, and I can easily see why you think I am wrong (in fact, I think it makes perfect sense for you NOT to believe in God). But I believe that God does exist, and that he exists for you as much as he exists for me. Atheists and agnostics, despite not believing in God, have God in their lives just as much as I do. Morality is rooted in God, that is where morality comes from. I have a feeling this might offend you or irritate you further, but I think I’ll be okay with that.

Regarding on my statement that God is love, I figured you would’ve recognized the allusion to First John, but I suppose it’s something of a metaphor more than anything else. I didn’t mean for you to take it literally that God and love-as-an-emotion are completely equal. I brought it up mostly to lead into an explanation of how I read the Bible.

145

Correct; not at all.

That is an insult to me and the entire human race. We are perfectly capable of coming up with morality and behaving morally without a supernatural thug dictating it to us.

146

That’s not 100% true. Some agnostics believe in God.

I’d like to see you admit the possibility that you might be wrong; that you don’t know you’re right about God. Then maybe we can get somewhere.

I’ll admit as much right now: I don’t know that I’m right. I don’t know for a fact, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God exists. I’m not anywhere near certain, and I don’t think I could be, short of divine revelation.

Somehow, though, I don’t see you making such a concession. And if that’s the case, I refuse to respect your opinion.

147

I don’t need to agree with you on the source; I can physically walk upstream until I find it. I don’t need to rely on your tale of how the stream came from a comet in outerspace when I can see that it came from the glacier on the mountain.

When I say believers aren’t smart, I’m referring to this issue specifically. It has always boggled my mind to see otherwise reasonable people dig their heels into the ground regarding the existence of god or the hocus pocus that revolves around belief in a higher power.

Subjective things…things that happen in your mind…are not evidence. It may be a thought or experience, it may be an idea, but it’s not evidence. You are using the word incorrectly.

No…we don’t. Evidence is never subjective.

I was trying to illustrate your misuse of the word “validate.” And I apologize for being something of a smartass. I was frustrated with your choice of words. It’s right up there with using “Occam’s Razor” as a reason to believe there is a god when everyone knows “Occam’s Razor” is the premise on which people don’t believe.

148

As** tom** pointed out. No I didn’t. I readily acknowledge that there is no objective evidence I know of indicating the existence of God or gods. I acknowledge that there are beliefs held that much available evidence points against. What I’ve tried to point out to you several times is that much of the beliefs that make up religion are within the individual and completely subjective and not subject to being judged by objective evidence. You avoid even addressing this issue by repeatedly making references to the objective that don’t apply.

You have said religion deserves no special status and I agree. What I’m talking about is how a belief system forms in any person regardless of whether they are “religious” beliefs or not. That IMO is treating all beliefs equally and giving no special status to any. You are the one who continues to give religion a special status that is merely the opposite {and just as unfair} of what some religions give themselves.

Nobody is asking you to be false to what you believe. You do have some control over how you express them. When I preface something with “IF” God is the well, etc. then I’m asking non believers to imagine that God is and discuss the logic of the argument from that perspective. If you can’t or prefer not to that’s fine. It doesn’t promote debate to jump in and say “That’s just ridiculous religious delusion” at every turn. It’s no more of a contribution to the discussion than if someone were saying “Praise be to God from whom all blessings flow” at every turn.

Here again you resort to objective references which are not relevant. You defended your beliefs in this way

Religious fundamentalist believe they are based in reality just as much.
Look at the statement in your previous post I bolded. You make this type of statement fairly frequently. I described it a glaringly wrong. Do you still stand by it or are you willing to admit it is a generalization that is so exaggerated that it is nonfactual?

149

I wasn’t asking anyone to agree. That’s why I used the “if” knowing that you don’t. I was asking readers to suppose, or imagine.

BTW, if we’re still within the analogy your above statements don’t apply. You certainly don’t have to accept my story of the source but you are unable to disprove mine or prove your own.

I accept this as your honest opinion. That all it is though. Many believers feel the same way about atheists.

I don’t believe I am. I see a clear difference between subjective and objective evidence but both are evidence. Can you provide a cite for your claim ?
Anyone readers have any contributions on this subject.

Again I disagree. Every person has a belief system they form which is a product of their environment, their experience, their intellect, their emotions, …am I leaving anything else. We translate our experiences and our environment and make judgement calls about what we value and what the experience means. Every person does this. That’s what I’m talking about. As humans we can exist no other way.
Seriously, if I am using the term evidence incorrectly I’d like to know. You seem to be saying that evidence and valid is only that which can be verified by others. I see that as one correct definition but not the only one.

I see it has become that. It is a premise, not proof.

If you have anything to show me that I am using those words incorrectly I am willing to look at it and admit my mistake.

150

Seeing as you said you don’t have proof, what you have experienced isn’t “evidence.” particularly when used with the word “subjective.”

151

I’d also like to add:

Your personal reasons for believing in god may *seem * very real to you; however, they are not valid.

152

does not preclude

The internalized perceptions that a person experiences are quite subjective and very much helpful in forming a conclusion or judgement.

There is no requirement that the event or perception be an objective reality to an external observer. There is no requirement that the decisions reached conform to a logical progression from an objective observation of events.

For example, most people operate on an assumption that other people are “basically good” or that other people are “basically evil.” For each person, their outlook will have been shaped by myriad experiences (most prior to their first birthday), that were very much based in their subjective experiences (as an adult might have a totally different view of what objectively happened to them).

153

I see the problem. The default belief is the belief before there is evidence one way or another. The next stage of a child’s development is to take on the beliefs of his parents and society in general. This would include belief in Paris, God, and Santa Claus. (NOTE: I am not equating God to Santa Claus. Initial belief in all these things comes about the same way - unless parents drag the kid to Paris.)

So, the next stage of belief is whatever the parents believe. Then the kid starts to question, and look for evidence. He sees that Paris gets mentioned all the time, and no one disputes it. He begins to see the logical absurdities in the Santa story, and at some point asks the parents, who tell him he’s right, there is no such things, and keep quiet to his friends. Now, in some cases he’ll question god too, and be told there is certainly a god, and get sent off to Sunday School for indoctrination.

I’m guilty of participating in this conspiracy of silence. Once, I took my daughter and her friend Trick or Treating. Her friend’s mother was quite a devout Christian. My daughter’s friend, nervous about something, was talking about the devil, and I said that there was no devil, and thought to myself, oh shit, I don’t want to contradict her mother’s teaching. She then asked if there was a God, and I said, yeah, sure. In this society it is perfectly okay for people to push god to those of other beliefs, but not to push non-god. Doubters have to figure it out for themselves, or stumble across skeptical literature. I’m sure it’s a lot easier than coming out of the closet, since it mostly consists of not doing things, but it’s not something I would have wanted to yell from the rooftops.

I might not have been clear, but I was saying that your choice of words was better than mine!

154

Let’s consider this statement. (I’m not offended - it is pretty common and you seem ready and able to defend it.)

Let’s look at it historically, then logically. Historically, unless you are a literalist who believes in Adam and Eve and the Garden, you have to admit that morality existed long before the concept of a Western God did. They Egyptians had moral rules, as did the Babylonians. Indians, Chinese, all had moral rules without ever hearing about our God. Now, if these rules were revealed by our God, how come he didn’t reveal himself in the same manner he did to Israel? If not, where did their morals come from? Further, we could go back to prehistory and expect that a lot of morality existed then also. And, did the Aztecs get just a bit of morality, and the part about not ripping out your enemies hearts get left out?

Isn’t it more likely that morality evolved along with us, since a group without any morality would not last long? If morality is in our genes, we could expect natural genetic variance to produce immoral and amoral people, and that is exactly what we see.

Now, the logical part. If morality comes from God, then there are two choices. First, whatever God says is moral by definition. Second, God transmits to us a natural morality which he might be able to see directly but we can’t. In the second case, morality doesn’t really come from god at all. In the first, how can we tell if a command to do what seems to be evil comes from god or not? Consider God’s command to Moses to slaughter the tribe in their way. Was that a moral thing to do? Today we’d say know, but you’d have to call it moral coming from God. As our morals evolve past such things, we have to call ourselves more moral than God. It doesn’t matter if the story is true or not - the principle remains.

Another logical issue is this: anyone taking an ethics class runs across many cases where simplistic morals don’t work. Stealing bread for a starving child is an example. If morals incompass these cases, then God’s moral code must consist of not 10 or 100 commandments, but specific answers to every situation. Without direct access to God for advice, it is hard to determine what is moral in a situation. Gay rights is an example here, and many religious gay people can’t accept that God considers the core of their being immoral. They say that true morality contradicts what the Bible says directly (and they find indirect justification) and no doubt believe that if God spoke he’d agree with them. I think any God worthy of worship would myself. I’m hard pressed to find any moral arguments against their position (except god says its wrong, so there!) and I wonder how you justify it - one way or another.

I know someone who says that morals are religion based, and there is no such thing - only ethics, which is derived by reason. I’m partial to this view.

155

Kalhoun

Tom has already expressed it pretty well.

Before I asked you for cites I looked at the definitions for evidence and valid.
It’s as I said. Some of the definitions are about the objective world but some also apply to the subjective.

We all have to use subjective experiences along with the objective to make judgement calls and reach conclusions. Especially in cases where the evidence doesn’t not clearly point to just one possible conclusion. If I have an experience which I claim is a spiritual vision and you claim it’s just a halucination there is no objective way to judge who is correct. According to the available evidence either conclusion might be true so both conclusions are valid

I’ll tell you what isn’t evidence. The strength of either person’s conviction that they are right and the other is wrong.

156

I’ve been surprised by some of the stories from atheists on the board and how believers react to them. Pretty silly IMO but also a bit tragic.
But back to the original discussion. Does that make the default position non belief or are we past any chance for default belief before we are old enough to really think for ourselves? I liked your term, default belief of our environment. In that case the default belief would vary from person to person, environment to environment yes?

Ahhhh I see. It makes sense now.

157

My all-time top favorite quote from a holy book is:

“Reality is the original Rorschach.”

158

Yes, the default before we can consider things for ourselves is set by the environment - which is of course why Saudis are Muslims, Indians Hindu, and most Americans Christian.

We might be overloading the term default. The default upon birth is no belief or knowledge of any god. A child who is never informed of god might well invent some sort of super parent or animal, but almost certainly would not reinvent any known religion. So that is one default.

The other is from design of experiments. The default outcome of any experiment is the null hypothesis. I think the the only reasonable null hypothesis in this case is no god, since otherwise you must choose which of the many, many gods to pick as the default. Many religious people, especially those untrained in these things, think the null hypothesis is the default belief of their environment. A classic case is the creationist who assumes proving evolution wrong makes creation correct.

The first default makes sense for development, but the second makes sense for someone trying to choose a religion.

159

It may be acceptable to a lot of people, which may make it acceptable in general, but there are plenty of people who would object to “pushing” of any kind. And I think obviously there’s a fine line there, and probably a slippery slope as well.

Personally, any kind of ‘discussion’ is okay with me. If one is curious and others want to share their beliefs, or proselytize, or whatever, that’s okay too. But, regardless of your beliefs, when you try to convince other people of something that they don’t wish to call their own, that’s when you cross the line, in my opinion. You might be right, of course, but you probably can’t prove it to the whole world.

Quite a conundrum is theology, says I. :smack:

160

Agreed

Interesting. It has intrigued me that Buddha and Christ living 600 years apart in much less informed societies, wound up reaching so many of the same conclusions about our relationship to each other and the world we live in.
A child or person with no knowledge of religion would probably still come to the essential questions that religion tries to answer. That person might have some profound experience and then have to ask “What was that all about?”

I can see that. I see the many god’s as part of the process as we try to approach questions that science cannot yet address. So the choice of God or no God becomes an expression of an individuals experience and intellectual and emotional tendencies.

You lost me here. The first default makes sense for both until your personal experience makes a traditional religion unsatisfying.