Isn’t that something that the people making the offensive analogy don’t get?
I never said you were either.
And again, you don’t know what the Dog-ist believes. Sure, a stronger tradition and a stronger community, but that plays quite firmly into my position that religions as a whole are seen as different than woo because religions have been around longer and serious people have been believers. It’s not a reflection on the beliefs, but a reflection of my exposure to them.
No, I’m not seriously claiming that. I would probably feel very different about them, based on my own experiences. I know where the Catholic guy is coming from and don’t know anything about the Dog-ist. So, I might be more comfortable chatting with the Catholic guy, since I’d be pretty sure what his touchy subjects (religiously) were likely to be. I’d simply act like he was my very rigidly Catholic brother until I learned otherwise.
But my comfort and familiarity shouldn’t be mistaken for any sort of agreement or reverence. I wouldn’t think his beliefs are better, only more familiar.
I ferl no different about that as an atheist than I did when I was a Jewish God believer.
Well, I have better things to do than make up a dog religion (though this isn’t the case for some people 
) but ask yourself where did this stuff come from? Was it made up by prophets and others some thousands of years ago, or did it supposedly come directly from God? If the former, your faith is misplaced. If the latter, what evidence do you have that the communication with God is any realer than communication with the dog. Yes, you have your commendable faith, but then so does Tom Cruise and our dog worshiper. I have no doubt humans can build complex and internally consistent worldviews based on faith, but they are built on a foundation of sand unless tested against the real world. Before science there was a complex and secular view of the universe based on untested axioms, and a lot of it was totally wrong.
Good. All religions are not created equal. How do you test them to see which is more truthful than others? We can count popularity, longevity, number of works of art inspired, but how do we test to see if your religion is more true than the one I used to believe in?
How about that eating a bit of cracker is somehow connected to the body of a guy who lived 2000 years ago? It’s the lord, liar or lunatic argument - the audience is supposed to rebel against the last two options, and thus choose the first.
If I call religion irrational, I’m using that as a purely technical term, with no implication of rubber rooms. We choose our favorite artists and our mates irrationally. But we don’t have fits when people point this out.
I just wonder how those making these comparisons in all seriousness make it through their day, what with the little old churchgoing ladies out there likely to snap and kill them at the drop of a Bible and all. 
My argument doesn’t require that God take corporeal form and come over to watch the Bengals lose. I’ll repeat it:
I believe you are incorrect in your statement that few believers think of God as a person. “Person” doesn’t require a tea service.
I don’t think even the Orthodox are upset at goyim driving cars on the Sabbath.
True. And when their conclusions come out the wrong way, they tend to get booted from their religion. (Or burned in the old days.) There is indeed a sandbox where they can argue without worry (remember 2 Jews have three opinions) but there are places they are not allowed to go. When they fall over the edge, like I did, they become atheists.
See above for more detail on this - but in short the reason we don’t have to worry is that our morality is basically atheistic, and we accept or reject religious morality based not on the Bible or the direct word of God but on their secular upbringing - including influence from religious leaders influenced by their secular upbringing.
There are religious Dopers who are convinced that God and Jesus are fully accepting of unrepressed homosexuality - that is, not just being gay, but being a full person, like we heterosexuals are. Morally I’m 100% with them, but their Biblical justification is a bit shaky. I think they are far more moral than God as reflected by the Bible. if you believe in a God who hands down morality (and what use is a God who doesn’t) will you reject your moral sense for that supposedly of God, or reject God for your moral sense. Most religious people do the latter, of course, and that they do is a very good reason to reject god, and to reject religious morality that goes against what we’ve accepted as right. Some don’t, and they are the kooks who we pit often.
Your rejection of dog really indicates that you reject God also - which was my point.
Even those who believe in anthropomorphic deities (Jesus, Zeus, etc… ) do not believe that they are “persons” in the sense that word is used in for 99.99% of its uses: that of a flesh and blood human being whose hand you could shake. We even use the word “corpse” or the phrase “dead person” to delineate between people and ex-[del]parrots[/del] persons. The one partial exception, as Autolycus pointed out, would be Jesus… and his followers believe he was a divine person but is now a transcendent part of the Godhead.
I think that at the point where we’re talking about entities which are said to exist beyond Reality itself, who cannot properly be said to have physical qualities or limitations, that referring to them (or comparing them to invisible) people is simply inaccurate.
That’s the difference between someone believing that there exists a God or gods “outside of” reality, and someone who believes that there is an invisible person in their living room and someone who believes that invisible person in their living room is talking to them.
I’m using it in the religious sense of person. I grew up RC. We referred to the three persons of the trinity.
God as a person, a being who can hear your prayers, a being who exists, a being who exists everywhere, including my living room.
You keep trying to put bodies in this and they are not required for any aspect of what I’m saying.
My dog is very religious. But his god (me) magically delivers food twice a day, so he gets to test his hypothesis all the time.
The point of the dog analogy was not that anyone was claiming the dog was actually talking, but that people can act as they will using a claim of Inspiration from the unseen. We know this for dogs, but when we claim it for inspiration from gods it becomes a slap at religion.
All we are saying is that there is no evidence that any sort of God ever spoke to or inspired anybody.
My first example was someone who was not a Son of Sam lunatic (and at least someone got that reference) but a person who was outwardly sane and nice in every way.
That’s very true, but the question is where did the authority for those texts and from those leaders come from? The authority of our government comes from the Constitution and from our elected leaders. But we fully understand that these are imperfect and can be changed. Using the Bible as an authority is like using a Constitution where we have piled on inconsistent amendments and mostly all agree that we’ll just ignore the passages from two centuries ago that make no sense now - and say that the Founding Fathers were perfect while ignoring their imperfect words.
Because there’s a distinct difference between believing that there’s something that exists everywhere but is localized nowhere, and believing that there’s an invisible person in your living room.
The first is a faith-based claim which is not falsifiable. The second is a delusion that is falsifiable.
I will happily admit, however, that I was incorrect and ignorant of the fact that at least RC’s use the term “person” to applies to the three facets of the trinity. But I’d still argue that the usage is significantly different from what most people mean (or even RC’s mean when they talk about any other person) as to not qualify.
Voyager: sorry, missed your posts on preview and I am going to sit down to watch a few episodes of the Sopranos now. I’ll do my best to answer you fully later on this evening. Fair enough?
Of course they are not identical, but the dog analogy gets at the gist of the problem, which is that religions are based on communications from some sort of supreme power, and that these communications are not supposed to be tested, but just believed in. In fact our common sense and general knowledge do test these communications. The standard response is to removed falsified communications from the supposed list of authentic ones, and not to doubt the communications in general. That’s basically like having a hypothesis, doing an experiment, and throwing away all the results that don’t support it. I can (and have) said this until I was blue in my fingers, so sometimes I need something to catch people’s attention.
If you believe in God, and you believe God is a person, and you believe God is invisible, and you believe God is everywhere, you believe in an invisible person in your living room (and your den, and your kitchen, and your car, and your post office).
If you believe that when you talk to God there is a being who hears you and who can respond to you and act on what you’re saying and who cares about what you’re saying, then it’s a very very small additional step to claim that God can answer you. In fact, many religious people feel that God does answer them, some with visions and signs, some with dreams, some with miracles, some with thoughts, some with passages from the Bible, and some with very plain words.
So, this idea that hearing God = lunacy while talking to God = normal religion is false. The definitions for “hearing” God are going to be varied, but receiving communication from God is not an extremist position, at least within Christianity.
I made it, and I get it fine. Nowhere did I say religious people are forced by the Bible or religion to do evil. Clearly the guy who shot up the mall in my analogy didn’t actually get ordered to do it by the dog. The Fred Phelps of the world are fanatics because they are fanatics, and just use the Bible as a handy excuse. But good people are good people, and some may use the Bible as a handy excuse for being good.
People don’t do things because dogs tell them to, they do things and justify it as ordered by the dog. People don’t do things because god tells them to - they do things and find the right part of the bible or theology to justify their actions.
Maybe Bush really thought Jesus told him to invade Iraq - I’m sure you don’t think so.
I started a thread in GD about the personhood of God and communication with him. I’m done in this thread.
Good question. I’m not really sure. Personally, I judge on a few factors. First, how the religion affects that person’s life. Does it make them well-integrated, happy, and successful? Does it make them better people? Second, do the religion’s faith-based principles match most people’s experience with the world. Third, does the religion have internal consistency.
See, I’m a Christian mainly because at its core, it’s a religion that preaches agape. Agape makes me a better person, and despite all the fucked-up shit in the world, I find it matches the universe’s basic essence better than anything else.
PRR asks for a privilege which is already his: to deride, mock and show contempt for Christians. Yet he says he feels oppressed.
Let me check the textbook from Shrink Stuff 101.
And logic will tell you that the word irrational is not a good choice because of its connotations. You may not intend to imply those rubber rooms, but for the sake of clear communication, you don’t want your reader of listener to perceive that meaning. Even non-rational would be better.
I’m wondering how some of our more hostile atheists explain the combination that crops us now and then: the scientist who is a theist.
(I am aware that most atheists by far are not particularly hostile.)
If I went to a Catholic priest and told him God spoke to me, you bet your ass he would test my claim in some form.
Look, I’m done debating. There’s lots more to talk about, and I’m not angry. I’m just tired of what this thread has become.
I put it down to people with a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance - people better able to compartmentalise their beliefs.
I think others might disagree with you. For instance, while Lib’s MOP threads did get quite heated, I never accused him of just making shit up. Because he doesn’t.
We do get the same thing in reverse - have you met lekatt yet? How about kanicbird and his demons? Yet I’ve managed to be in threads with these people and not completely lose it.
Mostly because they don’t make shit up out of whole cloth and then lie about it afterwards, or post incorrect, half-remembered “facts” they then refuse to acknowledge are wrong. They may be deluded, but they’re not Sewer Synergist Guy.