[blackshoe]

There are some contradictions in Mike's reply to my many questions. In particular, he says rights are "given" by society's rulers, which implies they can be taken away by those same rulers. And yet he speaks of "surrendering" rights.

In my view, rights can be ignored. That doesn't mean they're not inherent, or not inalienable. It means that society (or whatever part of society is doing the ignoring) is wrong.

On unions: it is an inherent individual right to freely associate with whoever you like. Thus, the "right" of a union to negotiate for its members arises not from State recognition, but from from the individual right of the members to delegate the right to negotiate. The problem arises when unions assert the "right" to bargain for people who chose not to be in the union. That is thuggery.

Frankly, the view Mike (and apparently several others here) espouses says to me "there are no rights, there are only the privileges that the Powers That Be allow us to have". I just don't buy it.

[mikeh]

phil_20686, on 2012-February-15, 08:40, said:

You claimed something was demonstrably false, when it was obviously impossible for it to be demonstrably false, yet I am to be castigated for absurd reasoning.

Extraordinary claims do require extra ordinary evidence, but I would argue that such evidence exists: how about http://en.wikipedia....acle_of_the_Sun . It seems hard to see how evidence can be more compelling than an apparent impossibility seen by 50000 odd people, and apparently arranged by three tiny children. Well documented reports of miraculous healings are almost blase. To reason from the starting point that such things are impossible, and attempt ever more absurd rationalisations to avoid the obvious conclusion that God has been breaking (or bending) physical laws for generations.

"Apparently genocidal, racist, sexist...." etc is a straw man. For lots of reasons - but you are a clever guy I'm sure you knew that. - Not going to blame a man for a bit of hyperbolic rhetoric now and again.

There have been a number of explanations put forward for the so-called miracle of the sun. I like the notion that the people who gathered on that occasion, all presumably primed for observing wondrous things, were then commanded to stare at the sun.

I would advise against replicating that experience. But I suspect that, if you were to do so and then were finally to turn your head away, perhaps quickly due to the mounting pain against which you had been fighting, you might very well 'see' blurry images of the sun careening through the sky, with different colours splashing over the surrounding scenery.....until your eyesight returned to some form of normalcy.

The person who is the easiest to lie to is ourself, which explains so much of the hypocrisy in the world. Continuing to believe in the god of the book requires continuous lying: it has to, since:

1. the book is so full of contradictions (in fairness, most believers have surprisingly little understanding of what is actually written in the book....at least in NA, the typical atheist knows the bible better than does the typical christian (this information is readily available via google....I can't seem to embed the right link)).

2. Very few christians appear to live in accordance with their book. While I have no authenticated source for this, I heard on NPR the other day that 98% of catholic women in NA either use or have used contraception. And, if we want to consider the old testament, Leviticus makes for interesting reading. How many christians observe those rules? And I see nothing elsewhere in the bible that repeals them

As for the god of the book being the monster I described.....please tell me what parts of my description are not based on passages from the bible?

Leaving aside the morality of the very concept of unremitting torture (hell), and the commandments to the Israelites to commit genocide, what about the wilfull murder of all but those few on Noah's Arc? I really don't have time to go into the minor atrocities described in the bible....so I am limiting myself to conduct that would clearly fall within the World Court definition of a crime against humanity.

You can't dodge this by pointing to differences between the new and the old testaments....it is a truism of christianity that the same god is depicted in both. And even the admittedly somewhat less terrifying god of the new testament is a sexist prick (which is not surprising since he was the creation of his times).

The irony is that the judeo-christian mythology is based on the notion that god created man in his image, when the reality is that man created god in his image. Man used to and to some degree still does wage war in horrific fashion. It was for thousands of years customary, on overrunning a city or town, to kill all the men and older boys and to enslave the women and young children....to commit genocide. So creating a god who commands this behaviour is a powerful means of creating justification. In addition, in a battle of cultures, having the stronger god helps with one's own morale and tends to intimidate others.

This phenonomen persists into modern times. The German army in WWI had an insignia reading, in translation: God is with us. .

A more acute observation, current at the time, was god is on the side of the biggest battalions.

More currently, the US military is rife with aggressive evangelicals forcing service personnel to participate in religious studies

Sorry, phil...if you are a believer in the god of the book, you worship a monster. Does the monster have a good side? Of course. Now ask yourself, is there any similarity between the relatjonship of christians to their god, on the one hand, and that between a battered wife and her husband, when the wife stays in the relationship.....because...'he loves me'?

Returning for the moment to the opening comment about the miracle of the sun. if one were to plot the frequency of miracles against the development of the principles of the Enlightenment and then the rise of the scientific method, one will note not only a decrease in the frequency of miracles but an extremely odd aspect to the miracles that persist. Not one of the miracles has taken place in the presence of a non-believer. Not once has your omnipotent god actually provided any testable evidence of his existence.

Now I know that religious people can fool themselves with words...they have to be able to do so. Consider the highly publicized prayer study of a few years ago....it was touted by the religuous participants as sure to demonstrate the efficiacy of prayer. It was double-blinded.

The only statistically significant result was a suggestion that those prayed for fared worse than those for whom no prayers were said.

Not one religious body conceded that this suggested that prayer didn't work All kinds of rationaliztions were proposed, all after the event, as to why god would ignore this study....god would be offended that people want evidence of his existence, so he (in essence) sulked and refused to play.....even at the cost of harming those who actually believed in him! What a petty, selfish prick!

of course, occam's razor suggests that the reason prayer doesn't work is that there is nothing 'up there' to pray to. Cognitive dissonance....the lifeblood of religion.

Like I said before, all of this would be funny if it weren't tragic.

[PassedOut]

phil_20686, on 2012-February-15, 08:40, said:

Extraordinary claims do require extra ordinary evidence, but I would argue that such evidence exists: how about http://en.wikipedia....acle_of_the_Sun . It seems hard to see how evidence can be more compelling than an apparent impossibility seen by 50000 odd people, and apparently arranged by three tiny children. Well documented reports of miraculous healings are almost blase. To reason from the starting point that such things are impossible, and attempt ever more absurd rationalisations to avoid the obvious conclusion that God has been breaking (or bending) physical laws for generations.

You've mentioned this 1917 "miracle" before:

Quote

According to many witnesses, after a period of rain, the dark clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disc in the sky. It was said to be significantly duller than normal, and to cast multicolored lights across the landscape, the shadows on the landscape, the people, and the surrounding clouds. The sun was then reported to have careened towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, frightening those who thought it a sign of the end of the world.

You seem to put great stock in such eyewitness testimony. But if the sun and earth had really approached each other in 1917, many more than 50,000 would have observed it.

I note that you failed to mention even more credible contemporary "miracles" for other religions such as the Hindu milk miracle, the Muslim Zum Zum water miracle, and the Maitreya Buddha miracle, even though in an earlier thread you argued that these also provide evidence for the existence of god.

I don't accept that an absence of explanation constitutes evidence for anything, let alone the existence of god. But, even if it did, the competing "miracles" would indicate that god did not favor any particular religion.

[Codo]

Hi Phil,

do not try to convince Mike. He won't belive in God if he himself talks to him directly.

As I got to know right now, he may even take the Bible literally word for word if that helps his case. I thought that this mistake is just made by a few (still millions?) creatonists and other outsiders.

And the same is true about the WIkipedia article you quoted. Despite the fact that they wrote that many sceptical people observed the wonder, he still claims that "Not one of the miracles has taken place in the presence of a non-believer".
Who cares about reality if you have a fixed opinion?

Oh wait, this cannot be true for Mike, this is just true for the blind theists like you and me.

[mikeh]

Codo, on 2012-February-15, 12:57, said:

Hi Phil,

do not try to convince Mike. He won't belive in God if he himself talks to him directly.

As I got to know right now, he may even take the Bible literally word for word if that helps his case. I thought that this mistake is just made by a few (still millions?) creatonists and other outsiders.

And the same is true about the WIkipedia article you quoted. Despite the fact that they wrote that many sceptical people observed the wonder, he still claims that "Not one of the miracles has taken place in the presence of a non-believer".
Who cares about reality if you have a fixed opinion?

Oh wait, this cannot be true for Mike, this is just true for the blind theists like you and me.

I would hope that if I developed a belief that I was hearing the voice of god, I would seek immediate psychiatric help.

No, I don't take the bible literally. It seems that the majority of religious believers don't either, which is an interesting phenonomen in itself.

Those who do are apparently seen by those who don't as misguided....yes, the bible is the source of our belief structure, but please....don't believe what it says.

They reconcile this contradiction by 'wording it away', to coin a phrase.

They argue that passages are metaphorical or allegorical. They take passages with which they cannot live and restate them in terms that they find more palatable.

They also claim that the wisdom of the bible is ageless.....

Hmmm....the particulars vary from sect to sect, and so it is impossible to give, in a short post, examples from all of the main variants of even christianity, and I know little of the belief structure of other major religions and their historical development.

What I do know is that the currently prevailing views of at least some of the major sects, all claiming scriptual justification, seem somewhat different than views held historically.

All of this is perfectly understandable if you view religion as a man-made construct, and (in particular) a means of acquiring and preserving/expanding the power that the leaders of the religion hold over others. Viewed in that light, it is necessary for religions to adapt their teachings as real, provable knowledge continues to narrow the legitimacy and plausibility of the earlier teachings or glosses on the scripture.

Now I know that all current religionists dismiss these arguments by, in essence, asserting that 'their' sect's current interpretation is the correct one (subject to further modification as more wisdom is revealed) and that all former errors arose from human frailty. These revisions have become more frequent in recent years because secular explanations of matters previously thought to reflect the work of god have also arise more frequently.

Thus now the RC church has changed its view on evolution. Strangely, while the bible is utterly silent on the concept and indeed contains explicit passages that appear irreoncilable with evolutionary theory, the church, once vehemently opposed, now says that it's true but that humans are still 'special' because, in some unexplained way, a fetus become 'ensouled' on fertilization.

Thus a RC believer, 150 years ago, just after the publication of Darwin's seminal work, would reject evolution out of hand and be outraged at those who argued that it was true in any sense.

150 years later, presumably in an effort to retain plausibility, and still clinging to the god of the gaps, the same believer (well, his or her descendant) has to hold that evolution is true but inadequate in itself....we need still to invoke an implausible and (as yet) untestable hypothesis to explain a conclusion we have pre-determined to be true....the notion of a soul and, moreover, the notion of a uninquely human soul.

The mormons only recently accepted that blacks could be full members of the church. They had to, because they were in real danger of federal action, including the loss of their beloved tax free status if they didn't. So what happened? The elders had a revelation! What timing! How wondrous that their god changed its mind........and that could never have had anything to do with US governmental and societal attitudes

While I am not a student of cults who worship imaginary skyfairies, I suspect that it would be easy to identify similar changes in the belief structure of virtually all christian sects, provided they have been around long enough. The amish might be an exception, but give them time...they are a relatively young cult.

I know that these ideas will bounce off of the impervious mental shield of the religiously indoctrinated. Religion is an amazing successful meme, and it appears, ironically, that the teachings of organized religions have evolved through competition with each other over the millenia. It is thus no wonder that religious belief, once inculcated, is so resistant to being evicted. In fact, it is amazing that secularism, which has really only been around as an even marginally acceptable worldview for a few hundred years has advanced as far as it has.

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2012-February-15, 08:41, said:

Frankly, the view Mike (and apparently several others here) espouses says to me "there are no rights, there are only the privileges that the Powers That Be allow us to have". I just don't buy it.

If you have a right, but aren't permitted to exercise it, you effectively don't have that right.

For instance, during the time of slavery, did African Americans have the rights enumerated in the First Amendment? They should have, but they didn't.

[blackshoe]

If you have a right, but aren't allowed to exercise it, then someone else is exceeding his rights. Might does not make right.

[barmar]

But since there's no universal agreement about inherent rights, that implies that it's not obvious whose rights are being infringed and who is exceeding their rights.

Might may not make right, but that doesn't help the infringed very much. If the mighty don't voluntarily let them exercise their rights, wars are often the result (although occasionally peaceful civil disobediance has worked).

[Codo]

Dear Mike,

I must have misunderstood what you wrote, because I totally agree with you on a religious theme,

But I still do not understand one point in your logic: If anything flows, why shouldn't this be true for religions?
If we forget religion for a while and talk about philosophy f.e.
Many of the wise words of Aristoteles (f.e) are still true. But some are quite silly in the light of the wisdom we gained in the last thousand years.
OF course, this is quite obvious. Knowledge increases and you have to change your point of view.

If this is right, why should it be wrong for communities like religions?

150 years ago no scientist had beliefed in wormholes, had heard about cars, planes etc. There had been so many changes, why should the rules of the church stay the same over thousand of years?

And there is a second question left: . In fact, it is amazing that secularism, which has really only been around as an even marginally acceptable worldview for a few hundred years has advanced as far as it has. "

Do you have any prove for this thesis? In many societies it is just backwards. Many formerly securalistic states do involve religious groups into their governement. So, I would guess that in the moment, it is the other way round. (which is a horrible scenario for me).

[Vampyr]

Codo, on 2012-February-15, 16:01, said:

In many societies it is just backwards. Many formerly securalistic states do involve religious groups into their governement. So, I would guess that in the moment, it is the other way round. (which is a horrible scenario for me).

You think so? What if the state religion happened to be one whose views and practices you found abhorrent?

[mikeh]

Codo, on 2012-February-15, 16:01, said:

Dear Mike,

I must have misunderstood what you wrote, because I totally agree with you on a religious theme,

But I still do not understand one point in your logic: If anything flows, why shouldn't this be true for religions?
If we forget religion for a while and talk about philosophy f.e.
Many of the wise words of Aristoteles (f.e) are still true. But some are quite silly in the light of the wisdom we gained in the last thousand years.
OF course, this is quite obvious. Knowledge increases and you have to change your point of view.

If this is right, why should it be wrong for communities like religions?

150 years ago no scientist had beliefed in wormholes, had heard about cars, planes etc. There had been so many changes, why should the rules of the church stay the same over thousand of years?

And there is a second question left: . In fact, it is amazing that secularism, which has really only been around as an even marginally acceptable worldview for a few hundred years has advanced as far as it has. "

Do you have any prove for this thesis? In many societies it is just backwards. Many formerly securalistic states do involve religious groups into their governement. So, I would guess that in the moment, it is the other way round. (which is a horrible scenario for me).

maybe we have different understandings of religion and religious belief.

I have always understood that religion, of whatever variant you choose, operates as a means of explaining the universe in which we find ourselves.

For much of the existence of humanity, going back to the evolution of the first humans (or ancestral or related species) capable of formulating the basic 'why' question, the ability of the asker to investigate the answer was constrained by the very narrow range of perception afforded by our bodies.

Not only do we sense only a very narrow portion of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, but the range of sensitivity is very narrow.

We don't perceive radio waves. We can't see a single cell creature let alone a molecule.

We had no understanding of the germ theory of disease until the microscope. While the Greeks described theoretical tiny constituents of matter and we derive the term atom from that description, there is no functional equivalence between what they described and the atoms now analyzed with the benefit of quantum theory and high energy particle physics.

Thus to the vast majority of our ancestral generations, supernatural explanations were entirely plausible.....any suggestion that matter was made of quarks, bosons, and so on would have been rightly dismissed as untestable nonsense.....pure speculation with no factual underpinnings....of course, in reality it wouldn't have been since that is a rational argument arising from the scientific method. In reality, the person proposing such an idea would have been punished (usually fatally so) for blasphemy

While what we now take as a scientific approach to understanding nature didn't arise overnight, and didn't arise full-blown in its current forms, it does appear that, gradually, observation and deduction from observation began to erode some hitherto scriptually based explanations (I am writing from a western european perspective and apologize for being so parochial, but it is the area where I feel at least some qualifications to speak, based on extensive reading on the history of western european natural science).

Science, as it is now known, gradually filled in gaps in our knowledge and, in so doing, rendered previously held beliefs transparently false. There are still young earth creationists who argue that, given a conflict betwee scripture and science, science MUST be wrong.

Most christians, especially outside of the US, see that as a silly, unsustainable approach.

So those christians generally retreat. They acknowledge, where inevitable, the explanations of science and, in those areas, abandon or modify the former tenets of their faith, while always pointing to the areas of the 'unknown' to which science hasn't afforded an explanation.

This approach is commonly referred to, by its critics, as the god of the gaps theory.

It is transparently an inadequate and probably doomed approach. No secular thinker would argue that science has yet explained everything, but it has come very, very close. There is now, for example, powerful mathematical proof not only that something can arise from nothing but that in fact 'nothing' is an inherently unstable situation....that something will almost inevitably arise from nothing.

The fact that our verbal languages are inadequate to the task of describing this as anything other than a paradox is a reflection on the limits of evolved languages rather than a reflection of the underlying reality. A Universe from Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss, contains an excellent description of current thinking in a manner accessible to the layperson (such as me).

As science advances, then, the gaps that religion claims to be the province of god shrink...with each advance the claim that the formerly inexplicable called for a supernatural explanation was found to be wrong. How many times does this have to happen before it becomes appropriate to infer that perhaps NONE of the gaps contains or requires a god?

Indeed, it may be that we, as creatures who evolved on this planet, will never have the mental ability to understand the last gap or gaps....it may be that while we are trapped by evolution into thinking that there must be a 'before' the universe or an 'outside' the universe, that there really isn't. The universe exists as it does, and its existence is independent of whether we understand it.

Reverting back to religion: religion pretends to explain how and why we are here. It bases it claims on revealed knowledge, not knowledge arising from experiment and observation.

The revealed word of god is always, in the early years of a religion, taken as (literally for christians) gospel.

Since it really isn't the word of an omnipotent god but is, instead, the product of ignorant men, it inevitably turns out to be wrong in a number of ways. Before we were, as a species, capable of experiment and analysis of observational findings, it was rare that a religious tenet could be 'shown' to be mistaken, so religions may have had schisms over doctrine and practice but rarely over the essential elements of the creation myth.

As science progressed, religions evolved responses to it...the god of the gaps being a major one. Of course, in the interim they burned heretics, banished or imprisoned them, and set up lists of books that no believer was allowed to read.

This happens today, tho less with christians now than with some sects in Islam, for example.

Science changes according to the evidence....it is all about the evidence.

Religion changes only because its leaders want to cling to and expand power....and they change the tenets of the faith only reluctantly and slowly...and then, in an orwellian way, seek to rewrite history such that the formerly held 'truths' weren't actually part of the doctrine, really....you know....not 'really'....because 'really' the truth is whatever seems most likely to allow the leaders to maintain their control.

Ask yourself this: what technological development has arisen in the last 300 years from anything any priest or minister or bishop or pope, or iman, did as part of his religious duties? What teachings have any of the major religions promulgated in order to expand the human experience? My view is that every single religion with which I have any familiarity operates to limit the intellectual freedom of its believers....often by so training them at a young age as to be unaware of the bars that make up their intellectual cage. They mistake those imprisoning bars for certainty.

It is too bad.....when I look at the sky on a clear night, I am filled with an incredible sense of awe...I expect many believers are familiar with the sensations I experience.....but whereas a believer sees himself or herself as a product of an imaginary entity, I see the sheer wonder of just being capable, by an accident of the universe, of having the opportunity to be here. It is, in a colloquial and non-religious sense, a miracle....the odds against a 'me' being here, if we go back to the big bang, are far higher than the odds against my winning the lottery. I almost deleted that last sentence since it may attract posts about how there must be design or supernatural intervention because the odds of our existence are too remote to be explained otherwise. That is an idiotic, easily refutable (but often repeated especially by creationists) argument to which I hope I don't have to respond.....surely those who post here (with the probable exception of lukewarm) are too sensible to fall into that flawed reasoning?

[hrothgar]

mikeh, on 2012-February-15, 17:13, said:

Ask yourself this: what technological development has arisen in the last 300 years from anything any priest or minister or bishop or pope, or iman, did as part of his religious duties? What teachings have any of the major religions promulgated in order to expand the human experience? My view is that every single religion with which I have any familiarity operates to limit the intellectual freedom of its believers....often by so training them at a young age as to be unaware of the bars that make up their intellectual cage. They mistake those imprisoning bars for certainty.

The Jesuits actually have produced some fairly impressive astronomers and the like...
Hard to say (definitively) whether these pursuits count as religious duties, however, I lean towards yes...

[mikeh]

hrothgar, on 2012-February-15, 17:17, said:

The Jesuits actually have produced some fairly impressive astronomers and the like...
Hard to say (definitively) whether these pursuits count as religious duties, however, I lean towards yes...

I was aware of this, and a number of clergymen played important roles in the investigation of geology, identification and naming of flora and fauna, and so on.

None of this was surprising, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, when 'natural philosopy' was largely a gentleman's pursuit and thus readily open to lightly-employed ministers, pastors, priests and the like. Few others had the requisite combination of spare time and education.

However, I don't equate the use of, say, telescopes and the consideration of the significance of the observations so made, as falling within the strictly religious aspect of their behaviours. Having said that, I am quite willing to believe that many of them would have seen it otherwise. I think it boils down to semantics...what I was really trying to assert was that no amount of deductive reasoning from revealed wisdom has ever produced any technological advance, while deductive reasoning from objective observation has....I see the latter as being outside the religious sphere even if conducted by people employed for that purpose by a religious organization.

[mgoetze]

Codo, on 2012-February-15, 16:01, said:

But I still do not understand one point in your logic: If anything flows, why shouldn't this be true for religions?
If we forget religion for a while and talk about philosophy f.e.
Many of the wise words of Aristoteles (f.e) are still true. But some are quite silly in the light of the wisdom we gained in the last thousand years.
OF course, this is quite obvious. Knowledge increases and you have to change your point of view.

If this is right, why should it be wrong for communities like religions?

mikeh, on 2012-February-15, 17:13, said:

[...]

tl;dr: The difference is that religions claim, at any given time, to possess the absolute, eternal truth. The fact that they have changed it, and will change it again, proves that they are lying.

To put it another way:
Philosophy is like looking blindfolded in a dark room for a black cat which isn't there.
Theology is like looking blindfolded in a dark room for a black cat which isn't there and yelling "I've found it, I've found it!"

[barmar]

mgoetze, on 2012-February-15, 19:22, said:

tl;dr: The difference is that religions claim, at any given time, to possess the absolute, eternal truth. The fact that they have changed it, and will change it again, proves that they are lying.

Religious people often make the same complaint about scientists. What they don't understand is that science treats everything as provisional, subject to revision as we learn new things. We call some things "laws" for convenience, because we've gotten so much evidence that they're pretty reliable, but we don't actually consider them absolute. E.g. we still refer to Newton's Law of Gravity, even though it's actually been refined by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

I'm not sure what this has to do with church-related hospitals and colleges providing contraception in their medical plans, though. Do we really have to restart this whole debate about the truth of religion? We've had it many times before, and no new light is going to be shed. There's a reason that unresolvable disagreements are often called "religious arguments". Religious institutions aren't going away any time soon, and we're not going to get rid of freedom of religion. So we should assume these as given, and figure out how best to get along with them.

[Codo]

Vampyr, on 2012-February-15, 16:16, said:

You think so? What if the state religion happened to be one whose views and practices you found abhorrent?

I hope I understood you right.
But in reality it seems that in many countrys (Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Eritrea) some religious fundementalists gain influence. And as far as my limited knowledge allows me to have an opinion, I dislkie most of their goals as far as they had been published here in Germany. So, I dislike the idea that they will gain even more influence.

And as a general rule, I would like a governement which is free of influence of smaller groups with big lobbying. Of course this wish does not fit to the current reality.

[Codo]

mgoetze, on 2012-February-15, 19:22, said:

tl;dr: The difference is that religions claim, at any given time, to possess the absolute, eternal truth. The fact that they have changed it, and will change it again, proves that they are lying.

To put it another way:
Philosophy is like looking blindfolded in a dark room for a black cat which isn't there.
Theology is like looking blindfolded in a dark room for a black cat which isn't there and yelling "I've found it, I've found it!"

1. Whether churches are an invention of man or God given: One of their main goals had always been to give answers to unanswered question in a difficult life. That these answers change during some milennia is not too my surprise.

2. Do you know ANY community which does not claim to hold the truth? May you tell me where big philosophers claimed that their truth is not unlimited and will be true forever? It is the unlucky truth that most people tend to claim that they know the truth despite the fact that they know "nothing". This happens to politicians and economists all day, to soccer trainers, simply to nearly anybody in our life. Have you ever wittnessed a discussion about anything anywhere? Opinions are quite strong, knowledge is not. This is human nature- at least as far as I know.

3. We live in the same country, but my experience is quite different. May you tell me just one example, where the ev-lut. church behaved the way you described it?

[gordontd]

Codo, on 2012-February-16, 02:35, said:

But in reality it seems that in many countrys (Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Eritrea) some religious fundementalists gain influence.

Odd that you limit your list to these countries. One might easily have included USA, Israel, India, which would have brought in three other religions without affecting the accuracy of your statement.

[mgoetze]

Dear Roland,

Codo, on 2012-February-16, 02:46, said:

1. Whether churches are an invention of man or God given: One of their main goals had always been to give answers to unanswered question in a difficult life. That these answers change during some milennia is not too my surprise.

[...] It is the unlucky truth that most people tend to claim that they know the truth despite the fact that they know "nothing". [...]

it seems we agree that churches are useless at best.

Quote

2. Do you know ANY community which does not claim to hold the truth? May you tell me where big philosophers claimed that their truth is not unlimited and will be true forever? It is the unlucky truth that most people tend to claim that they know the truth despite the fact that they know "nothing". This happens to politicians and economists all day, to soccer trainers, simply to nearly anybody in our life. Have you ever wittnessed a discussion about anything anywhere? Opinions are quite strong, knowledge is not. This is human nature- at least as far as I know.

Oh sure... "Bayern Munich will dominate the league this year," "No way, HSV will kick their ass"... I hear this sort of thing everyday. But the thing is, mosts theists will not accept that their dogma is "merely an opinion". If I say, "I am convinced that 4♠ is the right bid on this hand", our languages blurs over the fact that this is a different type of conviction than when a crusader or Al Qaeda member says "I am convinced god has ordered me to kill you." For me this is one of the defining aspects of religion... are you religious, or is it merely your opinion that some kind of "god" exists (whatever that is supposed to mean)?

Quote

3. We live in the same country, but my experience is quite different. May you tell me just one example, where the ev-lut. church behaved the way you described it?

I wasn't talking about the behaviour of any religious organisation or indeed person, but about the theoretical foundation. Mike H. has already expounded the fact that many Christians like to talk the talk, but not walk the walk. Sure, the Lutheran church is very moderate, but even they lobby for some things I disagree with, and I think we would be better off without them. I am definitely enraged about how much of my tax money goes towards paying for Bishops etc.

[y66]