That’s a very logical and very different defense of superstitious belief from a tu quoque argument.
If someone can witness this tragedy and not wonder whether god was asleep at the wheel (or accept inconsistent “misterious ways” arguments on faith), they paid a very high price for community.
I agree with you, but it’s a quiet Sunday morning & I haven’t taken a shower yet. 
Show me one verse that says you shouldn’t have smoke detectors on every level of the dwelling? If they had smoke detectors, the whole ‘story’ might have been “Fire destroys house in Brooklyn, large family displaced.”
Can you prove this? I can’t; either way.
Wrong pronoun to begin this sentence, it should be “I”.
If you believe in God, that’s something that can be said about every single tragedy. Why did God let that innocent woman be raped? Why did God give cancer to that strong, wonder mother of teens? Why did God let that old guy trip and fall down the stairs, to die a slow miserable death from complications of a broken hip? Honestly, it’s one of the reasons I don’t believe in an omniscient, omnipotent God.
But there’s really nothing religious about this tragedy. A family left a hot plate on, because they didn’t think it was unreasonably dangerous to do so. It happens to have been for the Sabbath, but it could have been to brew chicken stock, or to smoke a pork shoulder. Tragically, the hot plate caught the house on fire. Tragically, there weren’t smoke detectors, and the upstairs residents didn’t awaken in time to get up. Tragically, a bunch of people died. Incidentally, there was a religious motive way back at the start of this and a bunch of people who appear to hate religion have latched onto it and said “Look! Proof that religion is stupid and dangerous!”
Seems unlikely in this case.
And the argument is going in circles. The stupid act was taken in the process of observing a religious ritual, but was not required by the ritual, so no different than doing something stupid in any other circumstance.
As if any were needed, right? I see your argument but it wasn’t only a mundane judgement error. That’s simply the last link in the causal chain. I suppose when you are living with all these arbitrary rules some trial and error is needed.
I could keep throwing analogies your way but I’ll just agree to disagree for now.
Incidentally I was raised Catholic. So my puny atheist mind can comprehend some of the awesomeness and intrincacies of faith based belief systems in mythological creatures.
I think that’s where my fascination for gore and silly hats comes from.
So let’s break this discussion into its components.
The first Pedro is that you believe things like Catholic Mass and Orthodox rituals are parts of “obviously flawed world views”, “brain dead”, and “stupid.” That is your clear analysis and experience of them.
Can you accept the possibility that some of those who participate in those rituals experience them in very different ways?
Can you entertain that some of the religiously observant experience, as a result of their rituals, something that they call The Divine that is as real to them as your experience of the color “blue”? (Yes, real measurable brain activity that correlate with the experience just as brain activity in response to arbitrary wavelengths - varying on context … see the whole what color is this dress thing - is the basis of your experience of color.) And that such an experience is something they consider a strong positive in their lives. Short of that perceived experience of The Divine (whatever it actually represents) others find other benefits to religious observation, a sense of meaning and purpose that for them would otherwise be missing, and as you acknowledge to puzzlegal, a sense of affiliation, of belonging, which has more value to some people than to others.
Not sure if you have always been an atheist or had a bad experience with religion but if the latter recognize that your experience is not necessarily the same as others.
Religious rituals bring increased quality of life to some who choose to observe them. Labelling them as “brainwashed” is silliness. What they experience is the result of their past experiences no more and no less than what you and I do or not experience.
I personally am light on ritual doing some little bits mostly as part of a cultural heritage (yeah that affiliation bit … and I do love me my Seder) but none on the basis of any concern about what a hypothetical God thinks. Still I find some meaning in it, albeit in a very different way than the Haredim do. I personally find the Catholic concept of transubstantiation to be incomprehensible but I appreciate its meaning and value to those with those beliefs.
Many of those who are observant (and certainly many the Jewish Orthodox ones) are not religiously observant out of fear; they are observant because they experience such practices as enhancing their lives. (Okay some may fear loss of community if they did not comply; a different discussion entirely.)
When the religiously observant pass judgement upon me for my different worldview and for my (from their POV) squandering the opportunity to enhance my life by following The Law more completely, I find it jerkish to say the least. A certain fraction of the observant are in that way jerks. I find it no less jerkish when the areligious pass judgment on those who find value in the experience of Catholic Mass or other religious rituals and practices.
Then we have risk benefit analysis regarding how we accomplish the goals we set for ourselves, no matter what the basis of setting those goals is.
The rationality and irrationality of taking some certain amount of risk for the sake of convenience is no different if the decision is in service of having warm food within the confines of religious observation or in service of someone who works during the day getting a good nights sleep while still having a stock that simmered for 12 to 18 hours. People take certain, they believe small, risks for the sake of convenience. We put the dryer on before we go to bed (do you have any idea how many fires each year start in the clothes dryer?); and on and on. Sometimes we make poor judgments, and sometimes the judgment was not necessarily poor but something rare still happens to someone. I could only make stock when I can be home and awake for the whole time it needs to simmer or use multiple crockpots or not bother with homemade stock ever. The Orthodox could use timers or crockpots or not have warm food on Shabbat. I do not however perceive (correctly or incorrectly) the risk of simmering overnight to be significant, and before this tragedy few of this community perceived using hot plates in that manner was a significant risk. Some still do not. Right or wrong in each case our risk assessments are independent items from the goals we each have. Nothing about my desire for good eating commands me to take the risk of leaving a burner on overnight and nothing about Judaism commands the Orthodox to use a hot plate, or not use a timer, or to have warm food at all.
I know of no religious group, Jewish, Christian, or otherwise, that teaches that their god will always personally intervene to protect the lives of its followers.
Dude. You clearly haven’t been reading my posts or links. I mentioned long ago that this fire wasn’t an outlier, that the exact same thing happened in the same community in 2010: that is, a fire caused by an unattended hot-plate.
What you and your like-minded fellows continually fail to appreciate, for the upteenth time, is that cooking unsafely has nothing specifically to do with religion; it is no different from driving unsafely or doing any other activity unsafely.
That isn’t a “pattern of apologetics” for the religion, that’s just a basic feature of logic, causation and rationality. Personally I have no time for Orthodox Judaism, but this attack on the religion is just - plain - dumb, which ought to be evident to the religious and non-religious alike. There are far better and more convincing attacks on Orthodox Judaism.
The basic mistake you guys are making is that you are mixing up notions of causation with motivation. Sure, the activity was “motivated” by a religious motive, but it was not “caused” by a religious cause, any more than an accident suffered driving unsafely to church was “caused” by religion - as the religion does not mandate doing the activity in an unsafe manner that, in the sense of legal negligence, was the “cause” of the accident.
Put it this way: assume the Orthodox family had been heating their food unattended in a proper crock-pot, a utensil specifically designed and sold for the purpose of heating food unsupervised - and, due to a manufacturer’s error, the crock pot shorted out and burned the house to the ground. Was that tragedy still, in your opinion, “caused” by religion? Yes or no?
Yeah, that would be a hard sell. I’m vaguely aware of most of the loopholes in the ideologies concerned. I have no desire to be dragged into a theological debate. I think they are a pointless waste of time and I’d rather use the little time I dedicate to religion to ridiculing these beliefs.
If you’re ridiculing beliefs that the people you’re attempting to ridicule do not subscribe to, then you’re not going to accomplish much.
Heh. What I said was perfectly understandable and perfectly reasonable. If you want to educate me on divine intervention and what those songs I heard about god looking out for his flock meant, I’ll probably be dragged anyway into that debate.
DSeid, I will respond.
Okay, one cup of tea, one ginger biscuit - but if I see you start dunking, I’m outta there.
I tried to put myself in atheists’ shoes this morning. I said to myself, “Self, suppose it weren’t God. Suppose it were elves. Suppose someone lit a candle every night for the house elves to see by, one night they put the candle to close to the curtain, the curtain caught fire, and the house burned down.” I admit, my first reaction was, “For elves? What a waste; what a tragic waste.” But then I thought, suppose a millennia-old culture had grown up around belief in the elves, suppose the elves had inspired works of literature and art and music, suppose a widow said, “My husband’s gone and the kids never call; I don’t know what I’d do without the elves’ company”—I’d say, “Fuck it, let them have their elves” and view that incident as an accidental tragedy. I think I’d devote my attention to real disasters, like people killing each other over whether the elves like chocolate chip cookies better than oatmeal: “Dude, as you know, I disagree with you about the existence of elves, but if they do exist, don’t you think Galadriel would rather you planted a garden? The elfish rings weren’t for making war, you know.”
I read this earlier about the destruction of ancient sites in Northern Iraq by those affiliated with ISIL
and couldn’t help but think of the parallel with some of the folk here: Idol worshipping is wrong, it is not what I believe, it is a flawed world view. Therefore I must do my best to destroy things.
You think intolerance and contempt motivated by an atheist perspective is much better than that motivated by religious fundamentalism? It is not. The temples, mosques and churches destroyed under the Soviet campaign against religion were no less destroyed because they were destroyed by intolerant atheists as opposed to intolerant religious fundamentalists. The mindset, also on display by some in this thread, is the same.
If you’re wondering about my upbringing, I was brought up Catholic, in a very lax environment. I did go to Catholic school and went through that brainwashing process. Most of my childhood friends bought that bible crap or at least they said they did. I made it out relatively sane.
I get that believers get something out of the experience. Maybe they are even happier in general with their rituals and rulebooks and faith in an invisible force. I just can’t keep up with that charade and maintain my self respect intact.
To pick the example I’m most familiar with when you take stock of the whole RCC ideology the thing is so fucking stupid that I really have a hard time respecting someone who buys into it. Not that anyone should care. Obviously not everyone who believes is a drooling idiot, not even the majority, so there must be other factors at play.
The same goes for a miriad other mystical cults. It’s just a spectrum of idiocy. I know some choose to shed the bits that most offend sane people or clash with reality too hard.
If you want to strip away everything pernicious and illogical and inane and distasteful and sometimes downright cruel about religion until all there is left is a shared spirit of community and bonding over friendly camaraderie, then it sounds like something I’d be interested in joining. It’s probably similar to my tuesday nights playing poker. I might suggest a name change though, just to avoid all the nasty historical baggage.
I still don’t want the Divine touching me.
I might keep my mouth shut when social mores and graces require it. I’m nowhere near as brave as the Charlie Hebdo people to risk my life against religious nutjob fanatics. But other than that I don’t have any problems speaking my mind on a wide range of subjects, including woo beliefs. Simple as that, really.
Yes, I have a HUGE hate for religion in general. (send a Kewpie doll to puzlegal, please). I don’t think the sabbath is stupid due to uneducated participants burning the house down, it’s stupid to believe it should be done at all because your storybook said so.
Oh, they’re sleeping! So this woman plugged it in after they were out of the kitchen without their knowledge? I highly doubt this. This kind of hot plate cheat is only heard about through gossip it seems, as some have pointed out that this woman/sdmb posters are unaware of. I’m betting they’ve done this before without accident, or they heard someone has, so let’s do what those people did.
What I’m saying is the woman who plugged it in and turned it on was probably not the only person in the house who knew about it. Or the only person in the congregation who heard about doing it.
And no one really gives a shit if you do or don’t. Or shouldn’t anyway. It is none of their business … so long as you are not imposing your beliefs upon others. You are happier without a God concept and without religious ritual in your life. Great! I am happy with my soft Spinoza inspired pantheism (closer to atheism than to deism) and the few rituals I do because I like doing them. Great for me too!
None of us care that you don’t want to join a religion. None of us care if you choose to not associate with people of faith socially. None of us care that you lack curiosity about the beliefs of others.
It’s the arrogant bug up your ass about wanting to impose your beliefs upon others who you understand are getting something out of their beliefs, beliefs which you do not understand and have no interest in understanding, that irks the shit out of the rest of us. It’s Locrian’s “HUGE hate for religion in general” that strikes the rest of us, as well … hateful.
It’s in particular in this thread the public (but anonymous) exploitation of tragedy to the end of that hate and intolerance that is so incredibly fucked up.
Oh jerkwad, I mean Locrian, no one turns off my simmering stockpot either. Not my kids and not my wife. And? Indeed no one in that household had felt that leaving the hot plate on represented a significant risk. Certainly in light of what happened it is easy to claim they, and others of the community who have also made that assessment, were “stupid” or “ignorant” to have thought that. Again people do things with risks - like leave a clothes dryer on when they are not at home - all the time - and no one in the house stops them. So fucking what?
First, this idea of "this isn’t what I believe, therefore it’s wrong is a childish and deceptive simplification. You act as though we were having a discussion of Pepsi vs Coke, or whether your favorite color is red or blue, and I’m merely mindlessly bashing all of the red people because I’m on the blue team.
But it is not red vs blue. It is reason and critical thinking against a deliberate effort to not reason and not think critically. Religious people have to prop up the idea that having faith is some inherently virtuous thing because if you ever called it what it is - a deliberate effort to silence that nagging doubt in your head that seeks truth, reason, and a desire to critically analyze your worldview, you would understand it for what it is. So instead they try to turn faith from the mental weakness it is into something laudable. Just how much you can deny the truth, to suppress any critical analysis into your own world view shows just how godly and how great a person you are. One of the most fundamental cognitive flaws a person can have is turned into the pinnacle of virtue.
Religion is wrong. The very fact that religions with millions and billions of adherents are all mutually contradictory proves that at least some religion is wrong, right off the bat. Even if somehow one is correct, that still leaves billions of other people, who believed just as devoutly, following a totally made up religion. We can see how religion works - how it preys on fear, and deliberately attempts to suppress critical thinking, how it’s passed on from parent to child and through the social pressure of a society to brainwash people. Even if you think your religion is correct, and the rest are wrong, you must acknowledge that those people are just as devout towards their religion as you are.
So any religious person has the tools themselves to say "Huh, that religion’s god isn’t real, and yet they fervently believe that he is, and they believe in their mythical origin stories, and they believe their god influences their lives. But since I know their religion to be false, and yet they still sincerely hold these beliefs, then I know that people can create religion and swear to its truth and feel its effects even when I acknowledge that everything they believe in doesn’t exist. And so I know that people are able to adhere to a religion devoutly even where there is no substance there whatsoever. It’s within the human psyche to do such a thing.
This is a cursory thing that any 12 year old kid, no matter how religious, should be able to think up on their own. There’s no subtlety or advanced knowledge to it. There’s merely necessary a willingness to look at your mind and say “does my worldview make sense?” - and yet I very sincerely doubt a significant minority of religious people have bothered to ponder this.
But if they do - then if they realize that people can act as though their god exists, and their religion is the one true religion, even if you think that it isn’t because it’s mutually exclusive to your religion - then isn’t it a more consistent explanation to think that you, yourself, were fooled by the same cognitive errors, bias, and societal programming that you can already see affects other people who you know are wrong? Wouldn’t it, in fact, have to be an amazing coincidence if you just happened to stumble onto the One True Religion based on when and where you were born? Wouldn’t a much more grounded and likely explanation be that you are falling to the same mental traps that you see in other people? Especially given that your religion has no more basis in plausibility or evidence than theirs does, and seems to have been designed for the same reasons theirs was?
You want to paint this debate as “you root for this football team, and you hate anyone ho roots for this other football team, and yet you feel so smug and superior” or some other such nonsense. I’m not merely rooting for my team and disparaging yours in the process. I am using what influence I hold by my ability to communicate and reason out of a desire to help humanity become better and transcend magical thinking. I use these same faculties and motivations when I attack other forms of magical thinking. It’s just that you get your panties in a bunch if I attack magical religious thinking and you wouldn’t if I attacked magical thinking about biology or medicine. This is because you think that religion is privileged above other magical belief systems, that you can’t hold religion to the same scrutiny that you can for the four humors model of health, or the existance of leprechauns, or other similar magical belief systems.
Furthermore, you insult me by implying that I am more like the violent, militant religious people trying to suppress your religion. This is not only obviously false, but it’s insulting. This is part of the whole “militant atheist” nonsense that I’ve been attacking during the thread. Do you know what a militant Muslim is? Osama Bin Laden. Do you know what a militant atheist is? Richard Dawkins. Do you see a certain pattern, or perhaps a lack of pattern, with such things?
I am not knocking down religious shrines or murdering religious people. I am attempting to influence people to have the strength to use their own critical faculties to analyze their ideas and ultimately reject them. My weapons are words on a message board, not a bomb strapped to my chest or a bulldozer knocking down a temple. You are disgusting for implying that my motivations and methods closely match those who would do so.
The people who are doing that are actually following their beliefs are sincerely as those who are leaving on hotplates on the Sabbath. The fact that Jews have focused more on the minutia of maintaining god’s laws rather than killing unbelievers is certainly to the benefit of the world, as not all religious thought, motivation, and action is equally harmful, and that is to their credit. But the people who are bulldozing shrines and killing non-believers have much more in common with other believers - they feel like they’re following some ancient magic commandment - than they do a person like me, who wants to see humanity better itself by removing the shackles of ancient superstitions so that the world can become a more enlightened, more humane place.
You come closest to making a point about the Soviet Union, but the primary motivation of the Soviets was to have complete control over the ideology of their citizenry. Religion and the social/cultural institution of the church was an obvious threat to their total control, and was eliminated in the same way that an opposing political faction or any other competing ideologies or sources of control. If the Soviets could’ve controlled the church entirely to reinforce their hold on society, they would’ve.
Anyway, tell me how this post is the raving of a madman, how it’s filled with spittle, and militant. I know it’s coming. Do anything but truly consider what I have to say.