The first one is pretty clearly hyperbolic. I don’t consider it all that relevant to the conversation, but I think there’s no doubt that it’s hyperbole; pointing out that it’s literally untrue is unhelpful.
The second one may be accused of the same thing. Paul may have had doubts, but they were insignificant compared to his certainty.
The third betrays uncareful reading on your part. An incompatible religion isn’t necessarily any religion that’s different: it’s one that’s incompatible. Brainglutton was offering a truism (thus the word “necessarily” in what he wrote). It’s true that he should’ve included some other traditions in what he said (I’ve heard members of Bah’ai and Sufis express a broad acceptance of all religions also), but your objection to what he wrote is, once more, unhelpful.
I don’t think most of the above can apply to a minister. A minister does not have government power, nor the right to “control, command, and determine”, nor anything of the sort. The minister’s only authority is that people look to him or her for advice, but obviously people will only do so as long as he or she gives good advice. In that respect the minister’s position is closer to that of a servant than a boss.
Or consider the minister’s “authority” in comparison to that of secular authorithies. Politicians can promise to do one thing one day and then do the exact opposite a few months later, as when Bush vowed to not invade Iraq or when Obama flip-flopped on closing Guantanamo. Yet when they do, their supporters almost always change positions with them. Academic authorities are famous for upending their worldview all the time, yet that doesn’t stop millions of people from trusting them. Ministers, on the other hand, can’t simply decide to start preaching something completely different. If they did so, their flock would likely abandon them. Hence ministers don’t have any power to make anyone do their will.
In that case the Methodist Church has surely been a major force for the advancement of society. John and Charles Wesley identified the evil of slavery the moment that they saw it and became the leading voices for abolition in the 18th century. The Methodist Church ordained black ministers at a time when blacks were not allowed in most secular institutions. The Church advocated strongly for free public education worldwide and was responsible for setting up the first schools in countless places. I could list a lot more examples of how the Methoidst Church has met your definition of advancement, but there’s a more important point to be made.
You define advancement in a certain way, yet who are you to say that that’s the right way? Certainly your definition is not universal to all people at all times. Certainly it’s not universal to everyone alive in 2009. Certainly it’s not universal to everyone in the United States, or even everyone on this message board. So if there is to be advancement of society, there has to be a fixed standard for what advancement means. The Church offers such a standard. There have been many instances where progressives got very angry at the Church for opposing progress, yet later it became clear that the progress so opposed was actually a bad thing.
I do quite a lot would, because quite a lot do. Every adult in the Catholic Church has access to information about the world and the real chance to choose their beliefs. (I omit “uninfluenced” because such a thing is impossible. Everybody is influenced.)
Zoe and cosmosdan - I’m glad I finally wrote something that connected. I don’t believe in religion because I think it factually incorrect, but I think religion can be dangerous for this very reason. (And some political systems also.) It isn’t that religious people killed others long ago - everyone did. It isn’t the money, or the lies, or the fancy robes. It is purely about telling their followers not to think, because God gave us the answers.
Lots of religious people do consider the ethics of their teachings, and refuse to accept certain passages that go against them. That’s why I say many ethical believers are more moral than their God.
Perhaps an analogy would be helpful. Pizza Hut claims that their pizza is “the ultimate”. Little Ceasar’s says that their pizza is “the supreme”. Clearly if pizza exists, there can only be one pizza that’s better than all other pizzas. Does this mean that at least one pizza chain is committing fraud?
Obviously not. Fraud depends on the intent to deceive. For any claim, there’s a common sense assertion about exactly what the claim is saying. Hence if a pizza places sells you a sausage pizza but conceals the fact that the the sausage is actually colored styrofoam, that’s fraud. If they sell you a pizza advertised as having “great taste” and it actually tastes like styrofoam, that’s not fraud. It was inherent in the advertising that their claim about taste was subjective.
So under those guidelines, is religion fraudulent? Obviously not. Churches (and synagogues, mosues, &c…) are quite open about the nature of the claims they are making. The knowledge about what evidence there is for those claims is well known and widely available.
Of course not–but I don’t see how that analogy addresses Voyager’s original quote, Zoe’s response to it, or my response to her. None of us are claiming that if one religion is right, the rest must be fraudulent. Voyager suggests that if one is right, the incompatible ones must be false (not fraudulent). Zoe suggests that lots of religions are compatible. I respond by saying that Voyager’s statement doesn’t apply to the compatible ones.
I’ll agree that some religions are compatible but only because they are so closely related that they are more like ring species than species which have diverged further. But I’m really saying is that since no religion gives strong evidence as to their correctness, we should think that all are incorrect. The fraud involved often comes from the founders, not the current adherents.
Really? How many churches are open to the possibility that Jesus didn’t really return on the third day? How many, except for the few exceptions I mentioned, are willing to make their belief provisional. Faith in fact is used to encourage belief without or despite the evidence.
Not to mention that when religions have political power, like the church 1,000 years ago and the mosque in some countries today, expressing doubt about the truth of these claims could be hazardous to your health.
Stipulating that fraud comes from the founders (which seems a big stipulation), so what? Unless the founder is currently leading the religion, it’s irrelevant to the question of whether it’s currently a fraud.
Again, fraud is all about intent. If the current leaders of the religion are sincere in their belief, then it’s not a fraud.
Then we come to a slightly weaker version, fraud through willful blindness. Bernie Madoff might have been the only person actively committing fraud, but if he had associates smart enough to know his promised returns are unlikely, how culpable were they in going along and helping run the fraudulent business? How about those preaching creationism? Many of these people are plenty smart enough to read and understand what evolution really says. Are they fraudulent in taking quotes out of context “for a greater good?” I’ll start with this extreme case first.
It is simple to organize a fraudulent money-making enterprise as a non-profit corporation, and it has been done fairly often. You form the corporation, making sure that you control the board of directors, and have them hire you as the president of the organization. The board of directors votes to give you a ridiculously high salary. You then raise money for the organization, claiming it is going to a charitable or educational purpose as set out in your charter. However, the majority of the money raised is devoted to “overhead,” i.e., salaries for you and your cronies.
I wanted to dispute ITR Champion’s argument that a non-profit organization is *ipso facto *not a money-making fraud, not to argue that the Methodist Church in particular is such a fraud.
That “the justification is fraudulent” may not be true, as an intent to deceive appears to be part of the common definition of fraud – the Ponzi scheme is fraudulent, religious justifications may be unsupported by fact, but not necessarily intended to deceive.
I’m reminded of Lewis’s trilemma; the “Mad, Bad, or God” or “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord” argument. Even leaving aside logical criticisms of the argument, the Mad / Lunatic option would not equate with fraud.
I do think you’ve hit on a very interesting point: that justifying a good (for good read justified / supported by empirical evidence / testable) “command” by “God says so” opens the door to enforce bad commands with the same weight.
I guess both ethical and empirical / scientific reasoning are relevant here – depending on the situation. I don’t think, for example, that there is any great ethical quandary associated with not making clothes from two fibers, but there is also no testable evidence to suggest that it’s a dangerous textile development. Which would make it an unsupported command, but not a per se bad one.
A command to, on the other hand, kill people who do not conform to certain other “god given” regulations would / should certainly require ethical evaluation.
Start with any case you want, but first determine intent. Are the creationists intending to deceive their audience in any way? If so, is there personal gain to them from this deception? If they meet both these criteria, then they are committing fraud. If not, then they are not. (Note that some definitions of fraud include intentional deceit that causes injury; justify that and I’ll concede they’re committing fraud).
Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be. It’s all about intent.
I believe the claims are true. Religions are really nothing more than a massive con game.
Analyze religions widely separated by time and/or distance from a social and historical perspective. Ask the following questions:
What are the common goals of the religions?
What are the common means employed to achieve those goals?
You’ll find that the common goals are the accumulation of wealth and the gaining of power over the adherents to the religion. The common means are coercion, intimidation and brainwashing.
You also will not be able to find a shred of proof of the truth of any of the claims made by the religions. One example: Christianity has been around for 2000 some-odd years. During that time, I believe that a conservative number for people practicing some form of Christianity would be around 10 billion. Christianity says that when you die, if you have toed the line and jumped through all their hoops, you’ll go to heaven when you die. There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that a single person of those 10 billion has gone to anything that can be called heaven.
Lack of proof, or indeed even proof to the contrary, is not ipso facto evidence of fraud or a con game.
The nice chap from Nigeria who contacted me claiming to be a bank manager is attempting fraud. The loonie who claims, and believes despite any and all evidence to the contrary that he is Napoleon Bonaparte is not a fraudster.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight – personally I identify as Agnostic (or possibly Ignostic) – but for a little context what attracted me to this thread was the early use of the Methodist Church as an example. My father-in-law is a (now retired) Methodist minister. He is well educated, (a theistic evolutionist), warm, charitable, community spirited, strongly supportive of the rights of others, (wrote in support of the repeal of homosexuality laws in NZ in the 1980s) , etc, etc.
I do not share his religious beliefs. I do feel that his beliefs have no scientific support. I can even accept the notion that he is delusional. But what he is not, is a confidence trickster.
Though some of them make money from their preaching, I think lying for God, with the assumption that lying will get them into heaven, counts as personal gain also. If they knowingly distort information, which they do, then they are certainly attempting to deceive their audience. The injury is in causing their audience to believe things that are not true.
Say you have to make a decision about something. One possible choice is to your profit, the other is not. You are going to have to sell one of the choices. You have two stacks of paper - one with evidence for the choice that you’d prefer, one against it. Would deliberately not looking at the evidence against count as intent in your book? You’ll speak for the choice you like, not lying but insulating yourself from anything that might keep you from making it.
I say personal benefit here because almost anyone writing marketing copy distorts information to the benefit of their product. That’s not fraud since it is expected, and competing products do the same. The person in my example is in a position of trust.
This is a good example, (better than mine) so I’ll graft my point on it. Say the people who have taken over the religion know of minutes of meetings of the founders, which might or might not give the motives of the founders. If they deliberately do not read them, or burn them, how close to fraud are they?
This is rather something of a problem when whether a piece of advice is good or bad cannot yet be known. If the advice’s excellence is judged by what happens after death, then the believer not taking advice from that minister anymore isn’t really going to affect anyone.
The power to give advice that is listened to and followed is a very strong power indeed; a power that lets you harness the power of others in turn.
Beyond that, most certainly the minister has authority to control and determine; they control and determine the interpretation of and phrasing of the message. And what you are missing out on is that the advice they give out is meant to be on behalf of the “boss”. It is more analogous to your boss hiring someone to pass on his orders to you; though the authority he wields theoretically is lent, in practical terms it is assumed by him, and granted by the boss deeming him a worthy man for the job.
The definition of fraud also includes being an impostor. Personal gain can be merely maintaining an income and status. If a creationist preacher denies clear evidence and doesn’t question beliefs while teaching myth as divine truth I’d say that qualifies.