[mycroft]

Mike, my religion promotes societal cooperation and tolerance, and explicitly so for non-Christians (never mind Christians not in my denomination) and in the case of individual rights. We read from the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, several Taoist works, and use Native American stories when they are appropriate (obviously, all of this in conjunction with the Bible readings - we are a Christian denomination after all).

Frequently *we* get in trouble with society and government, because we do it too well - we're told to stick to the God-bothering, and let society deal with things like who should be allowed to get along with whom, what to do about the less-advantaged in society, who we're killing and why.

Yes, there are many who *still* use religion as a tool for power, and currently (especially in the U.S.) they are the vocal ones (or the vocal ones are quoting them, if they're Muslim or Jewish, in the vocal ones' pursuit of power); and there are many whose religion is insular and intolerant far beyond where it "should" be. But Not All.

[mikeh]

mycroft, on 2012-February-28, 12:11, said:

Mike, my religion promotes societal cooperation and tolerance, and explicitly so for non-Christians (never mind Christians not in my denomination) and in the case of individual rights. We read from the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, several Taoist works, and use Native American stories when they are appropriate (obviously, all of this in conjunction with the Bible readings - we are a Christian denomination after all).

Frequently *we* get in trouble with society and government, because we do it too well - we're told to stick to the God-bothering, and let society deal with things like who should be allowed to get along with whom, what to do about the less-advantaged in society, who we're killing and why.

Yes, there are many who *still* use religion as a tool for power, and currently (especially in the U.S.) they are the vocal ones (or the vocal ones are quoting them, if they're Muslim or Jewish, in the vocal ones' pursuit of power); and there are many whose religion is insular and intolerant far beyond where it "should" be. But Not All.

I fully accept that. Whenever one tries to address complex issues by way of posts to a forum such as this, one inevitably over-simplifies the issues..even if I possessed the knowledge to speak about all religious groups, which I don't, I suspect that a fair and comprehensive treatment would require a multi-volume book.

I know a number of people who profess to be christian in a way that really doesn't seem to impact on their lives. They go, on occasion, to church....more often for weddings and funerals than for sunday observance, but they are 'clear' that they believe in Jesus, etc. i say 'clear', because on the few occasions I have tried to discuss this with them, it soon becomes apparent that their belief is a habit rather than a considered opinion. They were raised in a certain belief and have never really examined what it is that they claim to believe...and, indeed, it is far from clear that they know what it is that they believe, beyond the big picture outlines.

These people are what one might (without condescension) call 'well-meaning'. Their attitude towards others is similar to mine (which may colour my view of them as well-meaning, because I consider myself to be that way as well, albeit from a different philosophical starting point).

I have no doubt but that you and your fellow congregationalists are similar in that regard, and that you see your approach to life as being inclusive rather than exclusive, and I respect you for that.

I am puzzled, however, in how you can reconcile the teachings of the bible with that view. Now, I know that the bible is all things to all men....if one wants to, one can justify just about any attitde by reference to scripture. I also know that it is fashionable, and I use that word advisedly, for many of the 'softer' forms of christianity, including the RC church (only in NA would one ever suggest the RC church is a 'soft' form of christianity!) to say that the old testament should not be read literally. The arguments for that proposition seem to me to be illogical, and it seems to me that the real reason for this approach is that the level of education in the western world has advanced to the point that it is no longer possible, outside of the woeful USA, to overlook the psychopathic nature of the old testament god, and the impossibility of the creation myth set forth in the book of genesis.

Whereas for many centuries, the christian churches all spoke of the old testament being infallible, despite the logical impossibility of some parts of it, that won't wash with intelligent, edcated people, so the churches have had to change their story. And since many christians are relatively unaware of what the bible actually contains or the history of their church, the leaders get away with it.

And others who are aware of this history find it easier to write off earlier generations as mistaken rather than accept that their entire belief structure is built on fantasy.

What puzzles me about the really inclusive, tolerant christians, such as you, is that I assume that while you are tolerant and accepting to those of different beliefs, you still think that they are mistaken and that only you (your congregation) know the truth and only you will know salvation. If you think that salvation is open to all who act kindly or compassionately, even if they disavow your god.....what's the point? I mean, if I, who believes in no god but who, I like to think, act morally towards my fellow humans, am going to do well in the afterlife.....why waste all this time praying to or worshipping your version of god?

I know it is presumptuous of me, and perhaps betrays arrogance, but I always have this urge, even when in dialogue with someone whose views and integrity I respect, to press the mental 'reset' button.....to return my correspondent to a state of mind that has NO religious programming imposed upon it. Babies are not born with a belief in god. Adults have such beliefs because they were programmed with it while to young to possess the ability to think critically. Ironically, given that many religions are still opposed to evolutionary theory, the success of religion appears to reflect the very processes that underly darwinian evolutionary theory, expanded to the concept of memes, rather than genes.

The more possessory the religion, the more resistant it will be to competition from others. The old testament god was rightly called a jealous god. The new testament may have softened his image a bit, but it is no surprise that preachers of various kinds resort to the fire an brimstone, and the threat of hell, to keep the populace under control....Islam, being younger and thus a product of even more refinement in mind control, embodied explicit commands to kill blasphemers, and apostates. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all incorporate the notion of taking young children and forcing them to learn, by repetition, the basics of the faith....and they become part of the unconscious worldview......so buried that they cannot be readily overcome even by very intelligent people.

This wouldn't matter is all believers were like you. But they aren't. Look at Santorum....one poll released to day has him ahead of Obama in the US popular opinion.....can you imagine the damage that looney would wreak if he were President?

People like you are the acceptable face...the polite face of religion....you make it hard to be strongly anti-religion without seeming strident precisely because you and those like you are what religion could and maybe ought to be. But you don't represent what religion really is in so much of the world, where it is a force for harm, not good.

[phil_20686]

I am incredibly impressed with the volume of posts mikeh has produced.

I am somewhat less impressed by the content

I'm just going to pick up a few points, as I have been busy and mostly only skimmed.

(1) You seem to be constantly conflating what religious people say with what their religion actually teaches. Now I admit, for most religions, its hard to tell the difference, but the Catholic Church is the exception, with a well defined hierarchy. Quoting bishops on this or that is irrelevant, church teaching is decided in conclaves, or very rarely, by the Pope acting alone. You said, for example, that the RCC opposed evolution. This is entirely incorrect, some bishops thought evolution was bogus, some like it, the first binding statement on evolution by the catholic church was 1959, when Pious issued a statement saying it was ok to study evolution, in response to the RCC's own brand of fundamentalists, but they never gained much traction compared to in the evangelical churches. The benefits of hierarchy.

(2) The RCC has never advocated literalism, but we have advocated inerrancy, in the old sense. Essentially that God directly inspired the writers, and protected them from error, but it has always been appreciated that they still wrote in the style and mannerisms of their time. It would have been preposterous for God to teach his prophets tensor calculus so they could get a full understanding of creation, and completely pointless. God had certain things he wanted to say, and he said them. The bible itself is partly a story of evolution of Man's understanding of God. Its interesting that early prophets believed they could translate gods commandments into a precise and binding legal code, hence Leviticus. Isaiah later rails against this saying "You have perverted the Law, keeping the letter and ignoring the purpose", and overall the old testament reflects strongly that legal norms must change to reflect the changing nature of society. However, the change is about better reflecting the original purpose in a new society. Never do we get to overwrite one of the principles of the OT. Moreover, its not clear that the Bible has a single statement that is provably false. One of my fun exercises is the "order of creation" in the genesis narrative: formless void-> light ->planets -> vegetation-> stars->fish->land animals -> man. Now science has so far told us that this is exactly right except for stars. However, its perfectly plausible that there were no stars visible from earth until quite late. We don't know a lot about late stage formation in terms of the quantity of interstellar dust you might expect, and we know even less about the atmosphere in the early days. If it was as humid as Venus there would never be able to see the stars. If we ignore stars, the Bible has every other one in the order given by science. Infact, other than the possible example of stars here, I know of no other examples where the bible has an obvious factual error, in the sense of a date or event that history has placed definitively out of reach. Obviously, its very difficult to check historical details pre 500bc, as there were few written records. But comparisons like like the bibles account of exodus and old stone tablets in Egypt match up pretty well.


(3) Your claims about what the bible say have been largely inaccurate. For but one example, your claims about leviticus, you said "and im not aware it has ever been repealed". Let me help you, its acts 15. "The gentiles must keep the law of Moses.....It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: ²⁹ You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things." where I have paraphrased heavily. In short, your claim was completely false.

(4) Your accusations that the God of the bible is immoral are old hat, and have been discussed ad infinitum. I will not rehash old arguments too much but this is a pretty good link that I read sometimes:http://www.thinkingc...e-in-the-bible/ . In short the argument is that morality is not the same for an omniscient being as it is for a limited being. God is allowed to be a utilitarian, as he knows the consequences of his actions. Secondly, if God is the creator, he is directly responsible for the death of everyone and everything that has ever lived, as he gave us morality. God doesn't seem to think that death is such a bad thing. An attitude shared by a great many martyrs. You are attempting to judge God on the twin grounds that (1) his behaviour should be bound by the same rules as our behaviour, which is unclear, and (2) That death is necessarily a bad thing. Christians reject both of these (well, (1) is still disputed). Question: If God is the judge and juror of the Human race, he ultimately decides which civilisations rise and fall, so the end of every civilisation is Gods responsibility.

(5) Now onto more interesting stuff. All evidence is ultimately mediated by humans. Very few people will every directly experience or measure anything, and even if they do, they are fallible. Moreover, it is curiously blinkered to presume that science only rules stuff in. It also rules stuff out. Like this. This one even had a World Health organisation report, although the wikipedia page is poorly referenced. Might try to track that down but am fairly busy. The miracle of the sun is my favourite example, as it was witness by a huge number of people over a very large area, and it is completely impossible that it was caused by any human agency. Given that, even should it have a meteorological explanation, it remains miraculous, as it is completely impossible that three small children could have predicted an (evidently extremely rare) meteorological condition down to an interval of a few minutes. Explanations based on mass hallucination or staring at the sun are frankly silly. To put it in perspective, there has never been a case of a spontaneous mass hallucination. Mass hysteria, involving people imagining they have symptoms of a disease are somewhat more common, but it is well established that scepticism can inoculate against mass hysteria.

I like the miracle of the sun, as it makes it clear that persons such as yourself are essentially making a statement of faith: There is no number of people who could claim to see a miracle that you would believe. Now I don't particularly mind that, people form strong opinions based on lots of things that are not evidence based, but your claim to be more scientific is very questionable: you claim that we are making a positive statement about these occurrences, but my claim is much weaker than yours: My claim is, "at least one person who claims to have witnessed a real and `impossible' miracle, was telling the truth". Your claim is that "Every single person who claims to have witnessed a miracle lied or was misled". That is really a very strong claim. If you imagine that every miraculous/impossible cure/event that you admit actually happened will one day be explained by science, like the JP2 miracle here, then I think you are deluded. We might one day conquer such diseases through science, but I think there will never be `an explanation' for why a late stage progressive disease can be completely cured in one night. Stuff like the laciano pellets, where if you weight them one at a time or two at a time or three vs two they always balance the scales, is just literally off the scale impossible. Of course, you will doubtless argue it was lies/misled/untrue blah blah blah.

You require every single report to be false, I only require one to be true.

[phil_20686]

mikeh, on 2012-February-28, 13:06, said:

you make it hard to be strongly anti-religion without seeming strident precisely because you and those like you are what religion could and maybe ought to be. But you don't represent what religion really is in so much of the world, where it is a force for harm, not good.

It was ever thus. Sadly. We call them CINOs: Catholic In Name Only.

I would say that meeting really holy people is the antidote to everything that people think they know about the religion. They are the living embodiment of what one strives to be. Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, Mother Theresa. Sadly, there is a huge gulf between the people we wish to be and the people that we are. . With a great deal of work one can narrow that gap.

They do not lurk on internet posting boards posting essays , they are too busy working the soup kitchen. I imagine that all of us live rather more comfortable lives than is good for us, in a spiritual sense, as the length of this thread indicates quite how much time we could spend helping other people instead....

[mikeh]

phil_20686, on 2012-February-28, 15:30, said:

It was ever thus. Sadly. We call them CINOs: Catholic In Name Only.

I would say that meeting really holy people is the antidote to everything that people think they know about the religion. They are the living embodiment of what one strives to be. Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, Mother Theresa. Sadly, there is a huge gulf between the people we wish to be and the people that we are. . With a great deal of work one can narrow that gap.

They do not lurk on internet posting boards posting essays , they are too busy working the soup kitchen. I imagine that all of us live rather more comfortable lives than is good for us, in a spiritual sense, as the length of this thread indicates quite how much time we could spend helping other people instead....

I don't know much about the first two, but a modicum of research would reveal that Mother Theresa was a monster.

While she raised a lot of money, that money was not used to improve the health of those her homes took in from the streets in India, nor to provide real health care. She had no interest in seeing these people recover from their illnesses...she wanted them to die. It was important to her that they die in a christian environment: that was far more important that assisting them in recovery.

She praised the rich, presumably to assist her in raising money, and suggested that they would have an easy time going to heaven. My views on her are only partly a result of reading Hitchens, who might not be seen as a neutral observer. I also watched, some years ago, a documentary on television that included scenes within one of her facilities and interviews with a number of North Americans who had gone to India to volunteer and who became disenchanted as a result of their experiences.

There is a real danger in believing in saints...the people who popularize their saintly behaviour almost always have another agenda in mind. Mother Teresa was and is a nice way for the RC Church to avoid dealing with the reality of the Church's obscene wealth, its infliction of systemic torture and abuse on the forgotten of society, and its sheltering of the criminal perverts within its midst. But her image is only of use so long as the image is manipulated to appear saintly.

I don't expect anyone to change their minds on her because of what I write, and I doubt that the phil_20686's of the world would go to the source material or accept the validity of that material even if they did...but some statements should not go unchallenged even if the RC media department has been able to fool most of the world.

Twisted people like Mother Teresa, who took pleasure from the notion of helpless poor people dying in her charge.....because they'd go to heaven......may be the real face of religion.....but what does that say about religion?

I'd rather sing the praises of someone who fought to improve the living conditions of the poor....which she did not, in any way, attempt to do. She just wanted as many as possible to die in her approved fashion.....without medical care, but with prayers for their souls.

Please, please don't try to emulate her.

[mikeh]

Quote

One of my fun exercises is the "order of creation" in the genesis narrative: formless void-> light ->planets -> vegetation-> stars->fish->land animals -> man. Now science has so far told us that this is exactly right except for stars. However, its perfectly plausible that there were no stars visible from earth until quite late. We don't know a lot about late stage formation in terms of the quantity of interstellar dust you might expect, and we know even less about the atmosphere in the early days. If it was as humid as Venus there would never be able to see the stars. If we ignore stars, the Bible has every other one in the order given by science. Infact, other than the possible example of stars here, I know of no other examples where the bible has an obvious factual error, in the sense of a date or event that history has placed definitively out of reach. Obviously, its very difficult to check historical details pre 500bc, as there were few written records. But comparisons like like the bibles account of exodus and old stone tablets in Egypt match up pretty well.

Most of your post is simply a typical response by a religious person: misstate the criticisms, or over-simplify them, and then pretend to demolish the straw man.

But this one takes the cake. You begin by stating that the bible contains NO statement that is demonstrably false, then you reference the sequence of creation, which you admit is demonstrably false....and then you argue that it isn't really because we, as a species, couldn't see the stars until recently.....roflmao!

Because....I love this....the atmosphere might have been as 'humid' as that of Venus!!!!!

Let me give you a little reality check, tho I am sure you will find a biblical way to explain this away.

1. God apparently told the original writers of the early scriptures about the order of creation....he had to, since, as you admit, no man was around to observe the first bits. I suspect that god knew the order in which he created things, including the stars. I tend to doubt that a cloudy day prevented him from remembering that minor bit involving the creation of some 200 billion galaxies, each containing on average maybe 200 billion stars.

Of course, maybe the writers got confused and mistranscribed the order of things, but that sort of puts a dent in the inerrancy argument, doesn't it?

Let's leave god's apparent short term memory issues to one side......Venus is humid????

There isn't a lot of free, liquid water on Venus as far as we know. Not too surprising given its average temperature (400 degrees)and the atmospheric pressure at ground level (100 times earth's).

Of course, maybe it was the interstellar dust that caused ancient man to not see the stars!!!! After all, I'm sure that if we go back 100,000 years, the space between the solar system and the rest of the Milky Way must have been cloaked in an impenetrable layer of dust.

Do you have ANY idea of the size of interstellar space (hint, get hold of a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...from which you will learn that it is mind-bogglingly big) and the time scale of cosmology??

Lastly, did your god forget to tell man when he created the sun? I know, the fact that the sun is a star was a bit of a shocker a few years ago.....you had to burn a few impertinent people who had unorthodox ideas about the sun, the earth and the rest of the heavens, but in the fullness of time, the leading godbots of the day were able to rationalize that as well. So when, exactly, did he create the sun? After the plants, that depended on photosynthesis? maybe he provided the plants with a grow-lamp in the interim?

I have to thank you for one of the funniest bits of writing I have ever seen...truly.....the degree to which you godbots will try to rationalize all failings in your holy books is tremendously funny.

[PassedOut]

phil_20686, on 2012-February-28, 15:30, said:

Sadly, there is a huge gulf between the people we wish to be and the people that we are. . With a great deal of work one can narrow that gap.

They do not lurk on internet posting boards posting essays , they are too busy working the soup kitchen. I imagine that all of us live rather more comfortable lives than is good for us, in a spiritual sense, as the length of this thread indicates quite how much time we could spend helping other people instead....

I know some wonderful people -- religious people -- who do indeed spend considerable time in soup kitchens, women's shelter's, and homeless shelters. Most all of them are tolerant of my disbelief in the mythologies of religion. It doesn't seem that any religion has a corner on folks who do good works, but I appreciate the fact that catholicism doesn't deemphasize personal responsibility to the extent that many evangelical protestants do. In my younger days I got to know and work with some exceptionally good folks in Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement.

[hrothgar]

phil_20686, on 2012-February-28, 15:23, said:

I know of no other examples where the bible has an obvious factual error, in the sense of a date or event that history has placed definitively out of reach. Obviously, its very difficult to check historical details pre 500bc, as there were few written records. But comparisons like like the bibles account of exodus and old stone tablets in Egypt match up pretty well.

Here's a reasonable starting point: http://en.wikipedia....ble_and_history

Quote

The scholarly history of the Deuteronomic history parallels that of the Pentateuch: the European tradition history school argued that the narrative was untrustworthy and could not be used to construct a narrative history; the American Albright school asserted that it could when tested against the archaeological record; and modern archaeological techniques proved crucial in deciding the issue. The test case was the book of Joshua and its account of a rapid, destructive conquest of the Canaanite cities: but by the 1960s it had become clear that the archaeological record did not, in fact, support the account of the conquest given in Joshua: the cities which the bible records as having been destroyed by the Israelites were either uninhabited at the time, or, if destroyed, were destroyed at widely different times, not in one brief period. The most high-profile example was the "fall of Jericho", when new excavations in the 1950s by Kathleen Kenyon revealed that the city had already been abandoned by the time of Joshua.[32]
Thomas L. Thompson, a leading minimalist scholar for example has written
"There is no evidence of a United Monarchy, no evidence of a capital in Jerusalem or of any coherent, unified political force that dominated western Palestine, let alone an empire of the size the legends describe. We do not have evidence for the existence of kings named Saul, David or Solomon; nor do we have evidence for any temple at Jerusalem in this early period. What we do know of Israel and Judah of the tenth century does not allow us to interpret this lack of evidence as a gap in our knowledge and information about the past, a result merely of the accidental nature of archeology. There is neither room nor context, no artifact or archive that points to such historical realities in Palestine's tenth century. One cannot speak historically of a state without a population. Nor can one speak of a capital without a town. Stories are not enough."
Proponents of this theory also point to the fact that the division of the land into two entities, centered at Jerusalem and Shechem, goes back to the Egyptian rule of Israel in the New Kingdom. Solomon's empire is said to have stretched from the Euphrates in the north to the Red Sea in the south; it would have required a large commitment of men and arms and a high level of organization to conquer, subdue, and govern this area. But there is little archaeological evidence of Jerusalem being a sufficiently large city in the 10th century BCE, and Judah seems to be sparsely settled in that time period. Since Jerusalem has been destroyed and then subsequently rebuilt approximately 15 to 20 times since the time of David and Solomon, some argue much of the evidence could easily have been eliminated.
The conquests of David and Solomon are also not mentioned in contemporary histories. Culturally, the Bronze Age collapse is otherwise a period of general cultural impoverishment of the whole Levantine region, making it difficult to consider the existence of any large territorial unit such as the Davidic kingdom, whose cultural features rather seem to resemble the later kingdom of Hezekiah or Josiah than the political and economic conditions of the 11th century. Moreover the biblical account makes no claim that they directly governed the areas included in their empires which are portrayed instead as tributaries[citation needed]. However, since the discovery of an inscription dating to the 9th or 8th century BCE on the Tel Dan Stele unearthed in the north of Israel, which may refer to the "house of David" as a monarchic dynast,[33] the debate has continued.[34] This is still hotly disputed, as well as a heated debate extends as to whether the united monarchy, the vast empire of King Solomon, and the rebellion of Jeroboam ever existed, or whether they are a late fabrication. The Mesha Stele, dated to circa 840 BCE, may reference the House of David, and mentions events and names found in Kings.[35]
Once again there is a problem here with the sources for this period of history. There are no contemporary independent documents other than the claimed accounts of the Books of Samuel, which clearly shows too many anachronisms to have been a contemporary account. For example there is mention of late armor (1 Samuel 17:4–7, 38–39; 25:13), use of camels (1 Samuel 30:17) and cavalry (as distinct from chariotry) (1 Samuel 13:5, 2 Samuel 1:6), iron picks and axes (as though they were common, 2 Samuel 12:31), sophisticated siege techniques (2 Samuel 20:15), there is a gargantuan troop (2 Samuel 17:1), a battle with 20,000 casualties (2 Samuel 18:7), and refer to Kushite paramilitary and servants, clearly giving evidence of a date in which Kushites were common, after the 26th Dynasty of Egypt, the period of the last quarter of the 8th century BCE.[36]

[barmar]

PassedOut, on 2012-February-28, 16:23, said:

I know some wonderful people -- religious people -- who do indeed spend considerable time in soup kitchens, women's shelter's, and homeless shelters. Most all of them are tolerant of my disbelief in the mythologies of religion. It doesn't seem that any religion has a corner on folks who do good works, but I appreciate the fact that catholicism doesn't deemphasize personal responsibility to the extent that many evangelical protestants do. In my younger days I got to know and work with some exceptionally good folks in Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement.

I'll wager the proportion of religious people helping in soup kitchens, etc. is not very different from the proportion of atheists.

I think I've read that the proportion of religious people in prisons is higher than that of the general population. However, that may be because of the high African American prison population, as I think African Americans are also more likely to be religious. I'm not sure if the statistics have been adjusted to account for this.

[onoway]

mikeh, on 2012-February-28, 15:49, said:

I don't know much about the first two, but a modicum of research would reveal that Mother Theresa was a monster.

While she raised a lot of money, that money was not used to improve the health of those her homes took in from the streets in India, nor to provide real health care. She had no interest in seeing these people recover from their illnesses...she wanted them to die. It was important to her that they die in a christian environment: that was far more important that assisting them in recovery.

She praised the rich, presumably to assist her in raising money, and suggested that they would have an easy time going to heaven. My views on her are only partly a result of reading Hitchens, who might not be seen as a neutral observer. I also watched, some years ago, a documentary on television that included scenes within one of her facilities and interviews with a number of North Americans who had gone to India to volunteer and who became disenchanted as a result of their experiences.

There is a real danger in believing in saints...the people who popularize their saintly behaviour almost always have another agenda in mind. Mother Teresa was and is a nice way for the RC Church to avoid dealing with the reality of the Church's obscene wealth, its infliction of systemic torture and abuse on the forgotten of society, and its sheltering of the criminal perverts within its midst. But her image is only of use so long as the image is manipulated to appear saintly.

I don't expect anyone to change their minds on her because of what I write, and I doubt that the phil_20686's of the world would go to the source material or accept the validity of that material even if they did...but some statements should not go unchallenged even if the RC media department has been able to fool most of the world.

Twisted people like Mother Teresa, who took pleasure from the notion of helpless poor people dying in her charge.....because they'd go to heaven......may be the real face of religion.....but what does that say about religion?

I'd rather sing the praises of someone who fought to improve the living conditions of the poor....which she did not, in any way, attempt to do. She just wanted as many as possible to die in her approved fashion.....without medical care, but with prayers for their souls.

Please, please don't try to emulate her.

Your bias against any sort of information which might threaten your belief system is showing. There never has been anywhere, anyone who has done anything of note who hasn't had their detractors..it's so much easier to criticize and be anti something than to live up to a positive goal or to do something of note themselves. Reality check.......
http://en.wikipedia....i/Mother_Teresa though I suppose you would suggest that wikipedia writers and readers are also all just dupes and none of what she is credited with accomplishing really happened as a result of her efforts.
Mother Teresa had a profound affect on the lives of a huge number of people and it seems you are one of a very elite few who knows they were ALL buffaloed by her. Such a lot of nonsense.

Reading over the discussion about morality, it's interesting that wars have frequently been brought forward as an example of how religious people do horrendous damage in the name of religion. It struck me that the capacity to do damage has been fueled by...wait for it...science. Science has given us bombs both physical and biological which could wipe humanity off the face of the earth. Humanity is likely to use any toy it gets, just to see if it really works. So who, in the end result, is actually more responsible for the perilous times we live in? The people who might use these things in the name of whatever religion, or the scientists who invented/developed them TO be used?

Seems to me pointing fingers about who is to blame is not very helpful either though. It might be more useful in the long run to see how the positive from each, religion and science, can be brought to bear on today's problems. At the very least, the idea of having some sort of positive involvement in something outside your own existence and concerns surely has to be a good thing. For one thing, rumor has it you'll live longer( unless, of course, you're a suicide bomber, but then that's not generally regarded as a positive thing except by a relative few)

[Winstonm]

Quote

Seems to me pointing fingers about who is to blame is not very helpful either though. It might be more useful in the long run to see how the positive from each, religion and science, can be brought to bear on today's problems

Personally, I think it is quite dangerous to support in any fashion the notion that humans need no rational reasons for their beliefs. That the Holocaust occurred is not a matter of faith, but of historical fact, based on evidence - that we give the religious a get-out-of-jail free card, though, for promoting without a shred of evidence their own versions of faith-based "facts" is unexplainable.

During a period of history when it is possible to have the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon, the money to do so, and still believe that a martyr's death will end with 72 virgins in paradise is an embarrassing legacy we all share.

I don't think we need to look to religion for what it has done for us - we need to learn to do it for ourselves.

[WellSpyder]

phil_20686, on 2012-February-28, 15:23, said:

I am incredibly impressed with the volume of posts mikeh has produced.

I am somewhat less impressed by the content

I'm also incredibly impressed that mikeh goes to the trouble of writing at some length and in such a reasonable well-considered way to point out the risks and confusions associated with (at least some) religion. Thanks, mikeh!

[mgoetze]

onoway, on 2012-February-28, 20:29, said:

YourMy bias against any sort of information which might threaten yourmy belief system is showing.

FYP. Here's just one paragraph from the Wikipedia article you cited:

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She has also been criticized for her view on suffering. She felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus.[78] Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International, criticised the failure to give painkillers, writing that in her Homes for the Dying, one could "hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother Teresa's philosophy, it is 'the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ'."[79]

It seems you have consciously ignored this and several other parts of the article.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2012-February-28, 21:55, said:

Personally, I think it is quite dangerous to support in any fashion the notion that humans need no rational reasons for their beliefs. That the Holocaust occurred is not a matter of faith, but of historical fact, based on evidence - that we give the religious a get-out-of-jail free card, though, for promoting without a shred of evidence their own versions of faith-based "facts" is unexplainable.

During a period of history when it is possible to have the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon, the money to do so, and still believe that a martyr's death will end with 72 virgins in paradise is an embarrassing legacy we all share.

I don't think we need to look to religion for what it has done for us - we need to learn to do it for ourselves.

At its most fundamental level, I regard life as irrational. I cannot even explain exactly what I mean by that, but Sarte's axiom that existence precedes essence sounds right to me (I did grow up in that era). Rational analysis is very useful in judging the likely consequences of our actions, or in assessing the danger of an environment, although even in these matters I often trust my experience based instincts first.

For choosing something of value, I don't much look to religion. But rationality doesn't cut it either. I have come to be largely comfortable with this lack of clarity. We choose. It's the essence of choice that other choices are possible. Comfortable or not, I believe this to be the inevitable fact of life.

[Codo]

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mikeh, on 2012-February-28, 13:06, said:

I am puzzled, however, in how you can reconcile the teachings of the bible with that view. Now, I know that the bible is all things to all men....if one wants to, one can justify just about any attitde by reference to scripture. I also know that it is fashionable, and I use that word advisedly, for many of the 'softer' forms of christianity, including the RC church (only in NA would one ever suggest the RC church is a 'soft' form of christianity!) to say that the old testament should not be read literally. The arguments for that proposition seem to me to be illogical, and it seems to me that the real reason for this approach is that the level of education in the western world has advanced to the point that it is no longer possible, outside of the woeful USA, to overlook the psychopathic nature of the old testament god, and the impossibility of the creation myth set forth in the book of genesis.

Whereas for many centuries, the christian churches all spoke of the old testament being infallible, despite the logical impossibility of some parts of it, that won't wash with intelligent, edcated people, so the churches have had to change their story. And since many christians are relatively unaware of what the bible actually contains or the history of their church, the leaders get away with it.

So, you claim that the christian religion involved during the last thousand years? That the understanding of the Bible had changed? Wow what a surprise. But of course, if religion involves, this is because they had been wrong from the beginning, illogical.

Now, try an exercise: Read what you have written and replace "religion" with science. You will see the same development: Science has changed during the last thousand years. The speed gets faster and faster. Science and knowledge changes and involves. Just like our religion. This is no real surprise to anybody. Why should it be different? Never heard about evolution?
And of course nobody would claim that science must be bad because scientists erred so often and their knowledge lead to the death of billions of people. But you and others claim this about religions. This is illogical.

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What puzzles me about the really inclusive, tolerant christians, such as you, is that I assume that while you are tolerant and accepting to those of different beliefs, you still think that they are mistaken and that only you (your congregation) know the truth and only you will know salvation. If you think that salvation is open to all who act kindly or compassionately, even if they disavow your god.....what's the point? I mean, if I, who believes in no god but who, I like to think, act morally towards my fellow humans, am going to do well in the afterlife.....why waste all this time praying to or worshipping your version of god?

You may or may not believe that other ways to worship this or other Gods is a way to heaven. Most people believe that their way is the only way to salvation. This would be logical whether religions are manmade or really from God. Who knows, maybe there is even a paradise for ethical atheists somewhere in the afterlife? Not too much sense to argue here, it is a matter of believe, none of us has afterlife excperience.

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Babies are not born with a belief in god. Adults have such beliefs because they were programmed with it while to young to possess the ability to think critically. Ironically, given that many religions are still opposed to evolutionary theory, the success of religion appears to reflect the very processes that underly darwinian evolutionary theory, expanded to the concept of memes, rather than genes.

So, if we teach them religion, we are programming them. If we teach them just science, we develop free and open minded adults? SIlly statement. First of all there is no either or. Second, their are milions of openminded theists, so obviously even from a scientifical point of view, your claim is simply wrong.
If you had claimed that narrowminded people are more likely to search and find their truth and their way of life in religion, however, I would agree. But I have seen more then one narrowminded atheist too...

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The more possessory the religion, the more resistant it will be to competition from others. The old testament god was rightly called a jealous god. The new testament may have softened his image a bit

,
A bit? Did you read the New Testament?
If you would argue, that Christians are not less aggressive then the Jews, you are right (During the centuries, it weas much more the other way round). But the new testament itself shows a very different God then the old testament. No more jealousy, no more wars etc.

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But you don't represent what religion really is in so much of the world, where it is a force for harm, not good

Sadly, this is true and had always been. The still open question is, whether our societies had been better with or without religions. I know your answer and disagree.

[Winstonm]

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For choosing something of value, I don't much look to religion. But rationality doesn't cut it either

For clarity, I am suggesting that mankind would be better served if we asked for at least as much objective, testable evidence of supernatural claims as we do that our water supply is safe.

When the supporting facts for any position are simply narrative claims of authority, we should run for the exits as fast as our legs can carry us.

[onoway]

mgoetze, on 2012-February-29, 03:06, said:

FYP. Here's just one paragraph from the Wikipedia article you cited:



It seems you have consciously ignored this and several other parts of the article.

Not at all. There isn't any question that she was human and had her own biases and convictions which led her to make some decisions which weren't the best by a long shot. Nevertheless, would the people in her care have been better off dying alone in at least as much agony..the only differences being that a)nobody was there to see them and b) nobody was there to at least try to give some sort of human support for their final days?

Aside from numerous stories about western hospitals ALSO refusing to give enough medication to dying patients "it's addictive" being one asinine comment made to a woman pleading with the doctor to allow her dying mother medication on demand..it seems a bit unfair to criticise her for not providing the same level of care you and I might expect and hope for, for people who otherwise had no hope of having anything but a lonely and at least equally anguished death.

In the wikipedia article " Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International, criticised the failure to give painkillers, writing that in her Homes for the Dying, one could "hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. " So they should have been left in the streets with the maggots eating their flesh, rather than have them removed without painkillers?

Would the children have been better off living (or dying) in the streets?There used to be reports of desperate parents sometimes deliberately maiming their children in order for them to be better beggars. This is preferable to what her orphanages provided?

She didn't take the money and buy alpha romeos and mansions in Greece with it; she didn't live a sybaritic life feeding on the misery of the poor, as many of the founders of so called charitable organizations do. As far as I know, she also didn't do what is apparently becoming increasingly common nowadays, which is to sell tours of orphanages so tourists can come gawk at the children, like a sideshow freak tent in an old time circus.

What have the people or organizations such as the news magazines criticizing her done to help anyone? When and where have they provided medication and human comfort for the poverty stricken dying or orphanages for the orphaned or abandoned? All they have done is scream about how what she was doing didn't live up to THEIR standards. Which they themselves only demonstrate in theory, since they generally never actually do anything themselves except complain how unsatisfactory other people's efforts are.

She was starting with people who had nothing, she wasn't stripping away everything people had because they were sick and then refusing them adequate care because they couldn't pay for it. She took in people who had nothing at all to start out with, no access to medical care at all, and very likely no emotional support either. She may not have done it in optimum fashion or for reasons you like, but neither of those is the point.

By your logic,it's better to do nothing at all than to do something that doesn't meet every sort of outside expectation. That's not a logic I subscribe to.

[mikeh]

Codo, on 2012-February-29, 07:58, said:

So, you claim that the christian religion involved during the last thousand years? That the understanding of the Bible had changed? Wow what a surprise. But of course, if religion involves, this is because they had been wrong from the beginning, illogical.

Why and how has religion evolved? We can see that islam, for example, has implemented more powerful memes for indoctrinating the young, and for minimizing the chance that any believer will leave the faith, and that is a form of evolution. If you mean that a particular religion, such as Christianity, has evolved, well a history of the church suggests that there are a number of factors at play.....look at the reformation....read Luther....I thik you'd find that he was a hatefilled obsessive who would fit in well with the more rabid wingnuts of fundamentalism today....but the notion that the church needed reforming resonated even if some of his particular obsessions did not....and, of course, the politics of the day were a major factor. If you mean the belated recognition by such religious institutions of the validity of some facts proven by science, well...ask yourself what alternatives the institutions had, if they wanted to preserve their privileged position in society. Also note the somewhat tepid endorsement that has been given to these matters. Thus the RC church recognized the possibility that darwinian evolutionary theory provides an explanation of the development of species, provided that one accepts that god was the entity that put that mechanism in place, and provided that you accept that in some magical and carefully unexplained fashion god 'ensouls' each human fetus at the moment of conception.....altho, strangely enough, the ensoulment presumably doesn't really attach until the fertilized egg attaches to the uterus wall...since many fertilized eggs don't actually develop into fetuses, and we surely can't accuse god of wholesale abortion, can we? Isn't that murder?

Quote

So, if we teach them religion, we are programming them. If we teach them just science, we develop free and open minded adults? SIlly statement. First of all there is no either or. Second, their are milions of openminded theists, so obviously even from a scientifical point of view, your claim is simply wrong.

The difference is not one of degree...it is far more basic than that. Science would teach children that we need to look to the evidence of reality in order to formulate tentative explanations, and that we need to test those explanations against reality in order to determine whether those explanations can be accepted, if only tentatively, as true. We should be prepared to revisit EVERY explanation if new evidence appears or if we develop better means of testing our explanations. So science teaches that we start with observation, then formulation, then testing and, if needed, repeat ad infinitum. Once we have tested an theory as best as we can, and it accounts for all relevant observable facts, we treat the matter as 'closed for now' and move on....always, always ready to revisit if needed.

Humans being what we are, this process rarely works as smoothly as this model suggests....we tend to cling to now-invalidated ideas even in the face of new evidence, but this isn't all bad, since it prevents too rapid a adoption of ideas that turn out to be wrong (cold fusion, anybody?).

Religion, however, starts from the notion that someone was 'told' something by god. It is 'revealed knowledge'. And as this thread reveals, many religious believers take as a given that this knowledge was inerrant. Refinements in this knowledge generally appear to be reactive, as the leaders of the church modify doctrine in an effort to maintain power and control. This is the anthesis of the scientific method.

Far too many religionists seem to have a blind spot with respect to this difference...they argue (actually, there is usually little argument....more assertion) that 'belief' in science is exactly the same as belief in religion. It would be refreshing to hear from any theist or deist that he or she recognizes that science starts from evidence and moves forward from there, while religion starts from dogma and moves only in response to threat. Of course, such a person is probably more than halfway to atheism.

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The still open question is, whether our societies had been better with or without religions. I know your answer and disagree.

My answer may surprise you.

I frankly don't know whether our societies would, historically and prehistorically, have been better off without religion.

It seems that our species evolved in such a way that we are curious.....we want to understand our environment. When the only means we had of examining our environment were the basic senses, we literally could not know very much. Just about everything in our environment was operating on levels we could not perceive. Religion, in the sense of creating explanations for the inexplicable, made sense. Organized religion would then naturally evolve, and seems to have developed along with various hierarchical forms of governance.

Such governance in turn allowed for the rise of nations, and the rise of nations (I am simplifying here partly out of ignorance and partly to conserve space) seems likely to have given rise to the level of affluence that permitted the rise of 'natural philosophy' and mathematics.....there were people able to avoid the need to raise their own food, or make cloth, or harvest timber, etc...they could think for a living.

So that gave rise, eventually, to much better knowledge of our environment and, especially in the last 150 years, much better means of exploring/examining that environment.

And as science advanced, the need for any relevancy of religious explanations dwindled.

I therefore doubt that it is realistic to even posit a world without religion at the moment: the overall state of access to knowledge in the world is far short of what would be needed. But I do think that religion is now, and has for some time been, a net impediment to human happiness, and that it's baleful effects, in comparison to the good it can do, will dominate ever more as we move forward....we don't need religion for its positive effects as we did in earlier times, but it's negative impact will get ever more problematic as our population grows and our resources start to shrink and our environment becomes less capable of supporting our population. Pressures will increase, and religious differences can be used by the leaders to justify war. Or what do you think will happen when, not if, global warming really takes hold?

[phil_20686]

mikeh, on 2012-February-28, 16:13, said:

But this one takes the cake. You begin by stating that the bible contains NO statement that is demonstrably false, then you reference the sequence of creation, which you admit is demonstrably false....and then you argue that it isn't really because we, as a species, couldn't see the stars until recently.....roflmao!

There isn't a lot of free, liquid water on Venus as far as we know. Not too surprising given its average temperature (400 degrees)and the atmospheric pressure at ground level (100 times earth's).
Do you have ANY idea of the size of interstellar space (hint, get hold of a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...from which you will learn that it is mind-bogglingly big) and the time scale of cosmology??

Lastly, did your god forget to tell man when he created the sun? I know, the fact that the sun is a star was a bit of a shocker a few years ago.....you had to burn a few impertinent people who had unorthodox ideas about the sun, the earth and the rest of the heavens, but in the fullness of time, the leading godbots of the day were able to rationalize that as well. So when, exactly, did he create the sun? After the plants, that depended on photosynthesis? maybe he provided the plants with a grow-lamp in the interim?

I have to thank you for one of the funniest bits of writing I have ever seen...truly.....the degree to which you godbots will try to rationalize all failings in your holy books is tremendously funny.

Lol Mikeh. I realise you might not know this, but I am a specialist in Early Universe physics, and structure formation. Light was created with the breaking of the Electro weak symmetrical group about 10^-16 seconds after the big bang, well before structure formation.

I know all about interstellar densities, and when stars would become visible is a very different question from when stars were created, and has more to do with local conditions than anything else. But vegetation existed for over a billion years before there was any animal life to speak of. If the moon was formed in an ordinary way by the condensing of dust over billions of years, then the earth (and indeed the solar system) must have been filled with dust up until moon formation at the earliest, and that is only a billion years or so prior to earth formation.

Humidity is not restricted to water. It is also, applies to pretty much everything else that can evaporate. It specifically applies to having an (immiscible) mixture of differing types. Venus is certainly "Humid" by the normal definitions - hence its eternal cloud cover (of sulphuric acid, mostly). It is hot because it is humid, not the other way around.



Finally, the first vegetation on the earth did not photo synthesise, and the earth was likely evenly lit by back scattering of the proto-dust cloud. Similar to how its light in heavy mist despite being unable to to pinpoint the sun, the light just comes from everywhere. I don't think anyone knows for sure when this state of affairs gave way to the present state of affairs. The dust cloud may well not have fully dispersed until the sun's output ramped up fairly 'late' in the main sequence evolution, at least on planetary formation time scales. 4bn years ago the sun would only have had about 30% of its current brightness, and in many models it is only when the photon pressure becomes larger than the gravitation holding back the dust that it fully disperses (PS: if you ever wondered why stars in stellar nurseries didn't just keep accreted into black holes, photon pressure is the answer).

Planetary formation in the solar system remains a huge mystery, particularly the late stage. No realistic models predict the masses of the planets or their near perfectly circular orbits.

Re Mother Theresa: The criticisms levelled are fairly absurd. She did not run hospices, she ran missionaries. People came there because they had nowhere else to go. You act as if she were a hospital administrator. She was not, and did not claim to be. I think perhaps you do not appreciate how poor Mumbai is. She did what she could to help people, with very little money. The argument that she opened new missionaries when she could have improved care levels is absurd: whether to help more people, or help fewer people better, is a mugs game. You do what you think best. Lets be honest, the Nobel Prize commitee looks into these things with a reasonably thoroughness, certainly more than you or I would be prepared to do - they do not want to be embarrassed by subsequent revelations- and they did not find any substance to these claims. Perhaps it is you who are guilty of believing what you want to hear?

Re Joshua - archealogy is always suspect, and tentative, and subject to revision. Archealogy is replete with dates that have moved. There is also a fascinating comparison with the archealogical history of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britian, which points out that many of the looked for signs do not exist for that campaign either, despite the complete certainty that it happened as recorded. A `lack of evidence` of habitation, is not evidence for a `lack of habitation`. An archealogical study, which excavates a 25 metre trench in a large city, cannot conclude more than that they found no evidence of habitation in a 25 metre trench. You cannot argue from a lack of evidence. Further, radio carbon dating is not generally considered accurate beyond 5%, ever, due to the fact that it is based partly on a calibration from tree rings, and the calibration is only that accurate. So a date 3500 years ago based on RC dating, is +-175 years or so, at best.
From wikipedia:

Quote

Over the historical period from 0 to 10,000 years BP, the average width of the uncertainty of calibrated dates was found to be 335 years, although in well-behaved regions of the calibration curve the width decreased to about 113 years while in ill-behaved regions it increased to a maximum of 801 years. Significantly, in the ill-behaved regions of the calibration curve, increasing the precision of the measurements does not have a significant effect on increasing the accuracy of the dates.

Now supposedly there is a new calibration curve from 2004 that is better than this one, but presumably the measurements were performed under the old curve. Moreover, the new curve claims to be +-16 years, despite the fact that that degree of accuracy puts some objects in serious conflict with their well recorded history. It would be shocking to me if the real uncertainty is better than +- 3% for real measurements, given the inherent randomness of these things, and the fact that is roughly how much different the individual calibration data sets are. If I average them to get a more statistically significant calibration set, it is not clear I have improved the noise better than the difference between different sets, no matter what my unbiased estimate of the sd says...

[phil_20686]

mikeh, on 2012-February-29, 11:14, said:

Why and how has religion evolved? We can see that islam, for example, has implemented more powerful memes for indoctrinating the young, and for minimizing the chance that any believer will leave the faith, and that is a form of evolution. If you mean that a particular religion, such as Christianity, has evolved, well a history of the church suggests that there are a number of factors at play.....look at the reformation....read Luther....I thik you'd find that he was a hatefilled obsessive who would fit in well with the more rabid wingnuts of fundamentalism today....but the notion that the church needed reforming resonated even if some of his particular obsessions did not....and, of course, the politics of the day were a major factor. If you mean the belated recognition by such religious institutions of the validity of some facts proven by science, well...ask yourself what alternatives the institutions had, if they wanted to preserve their privileged position in society. Also note the somewhat tepid endorsement that has been given to these matters. Thus the RC church recognized the possibility that darwinian evolutionary theory provides an explanation of the development of species, provided that one accepts that god was the entity that put that mechanism in place, and provided that you accept that in some magical and carefully unexplained fashion god 'ensouls' each human fetus at the moment of conception.....altho, strangely enough, the ensoulment presumably doesn't really attach until the fertilized egg attaches to the uterus wall...since many fertilized eggs don't actually develop into fetuses, and we surely can't accuse god of wholesale abortion, can we? Isn't that murder?

There is a large and important difference between evolution of practice and evolution of doctrine. The way in which one practices ones religion is in constant flux, because the world we live in is changing. For example, systems of punishment are heavily dependent on social conditions. Humane incarceration is extremely expensive, and not without risk. It may be moral to expect that in a western world now while execution was better in the past.

To answer your question. Every human being dies, whether it dies in utereo or after a long and healthy live. Murder is wrong because it is usurping God's place, it is for him to decide who lives and who dies, and no, when someone dies, it is not murder attributable to God, it is the natural order of things. The RCC, and most evangelical churches, teach that life begins at conception. Yes many people die by lack of implantation, as many as one third I believe, but that is God's concern.