[PassedOut]

 phil_20686, on 2012-February-29, 13:21, said:

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.

But doctrine changes too, albeit more slowly. Surely the Roman church changing the Nicene Creed in a way expressly rejected by the church fathers constitutes a change, for example.

[mikeh]

 phil_20686, on 2012-February-29, 13:12, said:

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.

That's more than a few billion years before the solar system formed

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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.

That depends on what you mean by 'vegetation'. If you mean plant life, then you are wrong. If you mean sheets of algae or other unicellular life then you are right. However, if we are referring to the peesnce of life on land, you are, again, wrong.

By the way, there are 3 kingdoms within the realm of life on earth, and it strikes me that few people ever comment on the complete lack of reference in Genesis to the fungi. Fungi colonized the land long before plant life did...it came ashore along the same time as did algae. Did god overlook the mushroom? Too bad: some of them are very tasty.

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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.

For an expert in the early universe, you are either woefully ignorant, or maybe your expertise is limited to the really early universe. The consensus, tho not unanimous, view of the formation of the moon is that it was created very shortly after the earth was formed, probably while the earth was still molten, and that it formed more than 4 billion years ago from the collision between the earth and one of the many proto-planets careening through the early solar system. This theory is consistent with the isotopic analysis of moonrocks recovered via the Appollo program. It was not created by the acretion of dust over a billion years.

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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).

Consensus thinking is that the vast majority of dust in the inner solar system was expelled within 100 million years of solar ignition, or roughly a billion years before the first unicellular life formed on the planet.

More to the point: didn't we get on this discussion because you recognized that god got it wrong in genesis when he created the stars late in the day?

I suggested that either god got it wrong, when he told the early scripture writers, or they misunderstood him. The first proposition seems irreconcilable with the notion of an omniscient god while the second seems contrary to your assertion of the inerrancy of the genesis story.

So an argument to the effect that maybe the stars and the sun couldn't readily be seen from the earth in the early history of the solar system.....even extending that history up until the explosion of multi-cellular life some 600 million years ago (approx)....doesn't seem to address the problem, does it?

God must surely have known that the stars existed, and when he created them? Do you accept that proposition?

Was he blinded by the dust, which presumably he created?

Was this dust still around, so that the old testament writers didn't even know about the sun? I mean, how old are they? The egyptians, for one, worshipped the sun....they saw the sun as being drawn by a chariot across the sky....so they clearly could see it....your scribes couldn't? Odd.

In closing, you must find the ready availability of reliable information on the internet to be a real bitch....there you are, with your assertions that the bible timelines are supported by archeology, and Richard posts to a readily-available source that shows you are either mistaken or a liar. Then I call you out on your purported expertise on early solar system development and your theory of the creation of the moon. I could also have called you on your suggestion that the sun was much less luminous at relevant times....the sun has been gaining luminosity at the rate of 10% per billionn years, and since homo sapiens is a young species, the perceptable light at the time of the scriptures would have been essentially identical to what we now see, especially since there would have been far less (man-made) pollution in the atmosphere back then.

I'm too bored with you to bother typing in the links, but anyone interested can find a LOT of information by using google....note, however, don't bother with the godbot Discovery Institute unless you have already drunk the Kool-Aid or want to plumb the depths of wilful ignorance.

[mgoetze]

 phil_20686, on 2012-February-29, 13:12, said:

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?

I don't profess to have an informed opinion on Mother Teresa. The Nobel Prize commitee, however... let's just say I consider the subsequent revelations about Mr. Obama quite embarrassing, and I believe that a number of people have won a Nobel Prize for bringing peace to the Middle East when, in hindsight, it seems abundantly clear that peace has not been brought there.

[Codo]

 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?

Religional beliefs did change, this is a proofable fact. Luther surely did not think about democracy, equal rights, feminism, homosexuality etc. He was a kid of the 15. century, these themes had not been popular. But luckily the religion did not stay in the 15. century. Nowadays these are themes which are an integral part of the religion. Unluckily, to be open for new challenges is not the only way to react to the challenges of life. There had been many fundemental believers who try to stay backwards- like Kreatonists, people who take the Bible literally, theists who close schools for girls etc pp. So, no there are different ways to answer the questions religions have to answer today. They had not been forced to be open for new developments.

Abortion is a complete new can of worms. Here in Germany life is stronger protected after the fetus is three month old. Is there any reason to use this time point and not two month, five month, the day of birth or the day of the fertilzation? Sure there are reasons to take this time point. But is this time point better or worse then the definition that life begins with the day of the fertilization? I doubt so. It was defined like we liked it to be defined. Any other definition is as good or bad as ours. And if you define the beginning of life as the moment of insemination, it is logical to call the killing even of a human cell cluster as murder. Just a matter of logic.
Of course, if life does not develop from this cell cluster, this is not murder. So claiming that God murders thes fetus is ridicoulus.

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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.

We disagree. If you tell a pupil that the capital of Brasil is Brasilia, there is no evidence for the pupil that this is right. No evidence besides the trust in the teacher. But still Geography is science. If you teach a pupil about the theory of relativity or about the uncertainity principle, they may believe you or they don't. From the pupils point of view there is no difference to religion lessons. He cannot check the truth in both cases. So, you can educatepupils to openminded or narrowminded pupil with both kind of lessons.

That science is checkable and religion is not is true in a theoretical way. Practical, most of us have no way to check most of our scientific wisdom too.
But of course it is a big difference for us that science is at least theoretically checkable and that religion has its roots in not proofable beliefs.

That knowledge is inerrant is common for all humans. Columbus was sure to be in India. We had been sure that the sun orbits earth for millions of years. An atom is not divisible, Atomic energy is safe, etc pp. A lot of what is today actual science will be proofen wrong within the next century. Such is life. But people tend to hold on their knowledge despite the fact that the world turns faster and faster. This is not typical theistic, it is human.

And sciences does not start from evidence. F.E. mathematics starts with definitions. Physics and other sciences quite often develop theories first and hope to find evidence later. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

[mikeh]

 Codo, on 2012-March-01, 10:03, said:

We disagree. If you tell a pupil that the capital of Brasil is Brasilia, there is no evidence for the pupil that this is right. No evidence besides the trust in the teacher. But still Geography is science. If you teach a pupil about the theory of relativity or about the uncertainity principle, they may believe you or they don't. From the pupils point of view there is no difference to religion lessons. He cannot check the truth in both cases. So, you can educatepupils to openminded or narrowminded pupil with both kind of lessons.

Saying to someone that the name of a certain city is Brasilia, or that a city with that name appears at a certain location is not 'science', any more than the contents of a dictionary represents the application of the scientific method. However, the student can, in theory, buy a ticket to Brasilia and check out the statements made. And if, for example, the geography teacher says that there are, say, 3 rivers that meet in the middle of the city, the student can investigate this and determine, by observation, whether it is correct.

You think there is a heaven (at least, that seems fundamental to being christian). There is no way of investigating that....dying isn't a means of investigating it unless one finds a way to communicate the results to the living, and I hope you don't believe in the spirits communicating with the living....you'd really be beyond hope then.

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That science is checkable and religion is not is true in a theoretical way. Practical, most of us have no way to check most of our scientific wisdom too.

Actually, there is a reasonable way to gain some degree of confidence. Science, other than militarized science, is generally transparent....the vast majority of the scientific community adopts the practice of publishing scientific, rather than technological, knowledge in peer-reviewed journals. Unless we subscribe to the global conspiracy theories of the science-deniers, such as Rick Santorum, we can gain a measure of reassurance that the information published is accurate. Yes, fraud exists, but it is rare and, when discovered, is invariably discovered by other scientists who have tried to replicate the published results.

Religion is not, in principle, testable in this way. Indeed, the very opposite is true. The promulagators of faith claim their way is right, and that those who follow other faiths are wrong.....but this is because god told them they are right.....when Moses spoke of the burning bush speaking to him, when he was all alone...... how was that testable? The entire point of his story was that he was privileged....clearly god didn't want to speak to everyone in the tribe....so the fact that no-one else heard the bush, and that the bush couldn't be summonsed could not undo the internal logic of Moses' claim....his claim was in principle untestable. The geography teacher's description of Brasilia is readily testable.

I have previously referenced the CERN result that suggested that a long accepted idea, that no matter can travel faster than light, may have been proven wrong.

Let's do a thought experiment.

Assume that there was incontrovertible proof that the people who wrote the original texts that underly the New Testament were engaged in creating a work of fiction....an early version, if you will, of an historical novel, in which the central character is completely fictitious but is placed into a reasonably accurate historical context....so the references to Pilate, for example, are designed to instil a sense of reality.

What do you think would be the reaction of the Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Elders of the Mormon Church, etc? My guess is that the vast majority of christians would declare the finders of this evidence to be blasphemers, and either tools of satan or fooled by satan.

Compare that to the reaction of the scientific community to CERN. The reaction of physicists, as I read them, was primarily of scepticism, leading immediately to efforts to replicate the findings, with an underlying sense that if the findings were true, this would revolutionize physics.....and give rise to a huge wave of excitement......once the evidence were incontrovertible, science would accept it and move on.

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That knowledge is inerrant is common for all humans. Columbus was sure to be in India. We had been sure that the sun orbits earth for millions of years. An atom is not divisible, Atomic energy is safe, etc pp. A lot of what is today actual science will be proofen wrong within the next century. Such is life. But people tend to hold on their knowledge despite the fact that the world turns faster and faster. This is not typical theistic, it is human.

Here is the nub of our disagreement.....and I am astounded that you do not appear to 'get it'. As I and others have repeatedly posted, this assumption of inerrancy is precisely where religion and science conflict. No scientist, if utilizing the scientific method, thinks that any theory is absolute or inerrant. All understanding is conditional. The degree of confidence invested into an idea is proportional to how well the idea accounts for observable fact, and how well it has withstood efforts to falsify it.

Thus evolution through variation mediated by natural selection is robust to the point that it can be treated as fact.....tho the full details are still subject to debate, investigation and refinement. But if some scientist were to come up with an alternate theory that better matched observable evidence and was at least as testable, then the prevailing view of the validity of darwinian evolution would be revisited. There is NO presumption of inerrancy in the scientific method.

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And sciences does not start from evidence. F.E. mathematics starts with definitions. Physics and other sciences quite often develop theories first and hope to find evidence later. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I may be in error....when I talk about mathematics, I often am, but I see mathematics as a tool, not as science. In other words, scientists use mathematics to test their hypotheses. Explanations of the universe are evidence based....and if a theory has been proposed in the absence of evidence, no one would see that theory as offering any valid explanation until it was tested against the evidence....altho I have to add that I gather than some physicists suspect that string theory may prove to be untestable, and thus inherently problematic even if it is ever developed enough to afford convincing explanations of what we caan observe.

[kenberg]

Mostly this thread is confirming my earlier assertion that nothing much good comes from religious discussion. I don't mean that it has no interest, it has. But no one changes his mind. Four years ago at this time I was thinking of voting for McCain, I ended voting for Obama. Four years ago, and forty years ago, I believed there is no God. I won't be changing my mind tomorrow or four years from tomorrow. Careful examination of the life of Mother Teresa might lead people to revise their opinions about her, one way or the other, but they will not change their mind about God.

As far as mathematics is concerned (if in any way it is concerned), I pretty much agree with Mike. Few if any mathematicians would (or so I think) contest the assertion that mathematics strictly on its own cannot, by its very nature, tell you about the real world. Those of us in the business might bristle a little at calling it a tool, but I certainly believe that if you want to learn something about the real world you have to go examine the real world. Another way of putting it: Mathematics is really good at establishing "If...Then..." statements. If gravity obeys an inverse square law then the planets will move in elliptical orbits. You need input from reality to decide if this mathematically correct statement has relevance to the world we live in, and how close the model is to reality.

[onoway]

 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.

Perhaps the only problem with this is that humans are not rational creatures, but emotional ones..and a good thing too imo or we'd be little more than fleshy robots.

As an example, you can tell a very small child he cannot have that treat because it's too close to dinner and he will accept the edict because he can't do anything about it, but he won't be happy. And if he gets the chance, he will likely snag it anyway. Reasons mean nothing ..unless they are backed up by other reasons such as he will get smacked if he gets caught or some such, and not wanting to gets smacked has a bigger impact than wanting the treat. So it isn't reason at all that affects his behaviour but his reaction TO the reasons..the not wanting overrides the wanting. That small child within us doesn't go away just because we get older. Our wanting X while wanting to avoid Y becomes more sophisticated and complicated is all.

I think that in the best religious teachings that I'm aware of, and I'm certainly not claiming any expertise, there is a basic degree of social responsibility held in high regard. Do Unto Others and all that. There is nothing whatever in science to promote anything but pure knowledge for its own sake. Thus in the Holocaust aside from the gas chambers themselves you find horrific things being done to people in concentration camps in the name of science.

More recently and less directly we have companies now promoting all sorts of technology such as rampant use of genetically engineered plant material without regard to the possible long term effects simply because it makes money for the companies and scientists. This has been labelled as one of the ten things which may bring about the destruction of human society and is strictly a scientific and commercial endeavor without regard for the repercussions. This is another example of where I see science as failing to provide a framework needed if society is to survive at all, and it's interesting that several scientists reportedly have left their involvement in such jobs because they weren't comfortable with the potential results. So what was reasonable for them and reasonable for other scientists in precisely the same endeavor is entirely different.

I suspect that many people feel overwhelmed about understanding some of life's more complex questions. Humans want to be part of a group, we are social creatures, a herd animal as it were. So as humans, they look to see if they can find a group they can relate to and be comfortable in. They are looking for a group which has come to similar conclusions they have for many of the questions they feel a need to have answers for. When they find such a group then they are at peace, relatively speaking, about where they stand on those issues at least, and can get on with other things. Most people are not comfortable feeling entirely alone in the world. It has nothing to do with the rational understanding that in the end we all are entirely alone in the world. It has to do with a powerful innate need most people have to connect with other people on the basis of shared values, experiences and beliefs.

"Social Proof" is a byword of successful marketting; and especially now with facebook and twitter and so forth, people are looking more and more to find out what others are choosing and how happy they are with the results of their choices, because otherwise the choices are too many and varied and they feel overwhelmed. There has been some suggestion that the incidence of depression (now reportedly regarded by WHO as epidemic in scope) and suicide is often at least partly the result of a feeling of isolation - of people being unable to find a group or even person they can connect with and get support from. Typically, religion historically has provided an opportunity for such connection.

Such a connection certainly can't prevent people from having questions, thus you often get people in what is termed a crisis in faith; when they have to to come to terms with how to balance possibly conflicting information. There's a sort of spectrum, I suppose, in how each person might resolve such questions. Not counting the people who don't think about such things at all.. At one extreme they might become nihilists,(about which I know almost nothing) working across through atheists to agnostics, some switch to another belief system such as Christian to Buddhist, some agree to accept a degree of dissonance because on the whole, the fit works better for them than any other alternative, and I suppose on the other extreme you have the fanatics who cannot tolerate any questions at all about their belief. But most people seek to find some sort of group that shares their core belief, whether that be that God is personally involved with their wellbeing or there is no god of any sort or anything in between.

Many, especially on either end of the spectrum are mightilly upset at anyone who doesn't share their vision of how things are; but I imagine it to be something like someone with one sort of colourblindness trying to argue about colour with someone else who has a different sort of colourblindness. The reality is that the world is simply not the same for them as it is for others who don't share their perception and it never can be. There is no basis for communication, other than through an acceptance that different people experience the world in different ways. None of us can ever KNOW what if anything lies beyond death.

I think that in its best forms, religion teaches social responsibility and empathy and gives a focus for it. In its worst, some religions can be used to teach that only your group deserves to be treated with responsibility and empathy. At its best, science teaches that questions are interesting and should be investigated. At its worst, it has no sense of accountability.

[mikeh]

Onoway

I read your last post with considerable interest.

As I see it, you view both religion and science as ways to live in the world....thus you point to the commendable advice, found in (as far as I know) all religions, to the effect that one should act in a moral fashion. You quite accurately observe that the scientific method affords no such moral guide.

However, from my p.ov. you are comparing apples and oranges.

Religon does several things. One is to uphold and enforce a power structure in society...whether it be a power structure within the religious organization or a parallel political/monarchical one is irrelevant. Religion teaches unquestioning acceptance of at least some forms of authority and this is essential to the retention of temporal power over others, which lies at the heart of most human social constructs, at least in historical terms.

Religion also purports to explain how the universe came to be as it is.

And religion claims to tell people how to act in a moral fashion.

The scientific method addresses only the second of these points, and to a degree, this limitation underlies the accommodationist approach of Gould: different magisteria.


Atheism is not the same as a belief in the scientific method. True, most atheists endorse the use of the scientific method as a means of understanding the universe, but atheism is not, in the religious sense, a belief system at all. It is the rejection of belief in a non-evidence based fantasy.

Once we reject a god as the explanation for our existence, we, as humans, still have that question: how did we get to be us? And what is the universe?

The scientific method affords many of us a means towards answering these questions.

As for a moral sense: this is more difficult to address, not because I lack an inner sense of morality but because this is a complex question.

Psychology has demonstrated that humans have innate moral tendencies, which are remarkably similar across linguistic, ethnic, religious and geographical divides. The evidence is clear: we do not need religious faith in order to recognize and abide by basic moral concepts.

This should be unsurprising: we are social animals, descended from a long lineage of social animals. Some basic concepts of morality would presumably have bestowed reproductive success on those of our ancestors whose brain wiring made them 'feel' such concepts, and whose social behaviour was modified by them.

I don't need the 10 Commandments in order not to kill someone who annoys me, or to steal his ass, and so on. Religious leaders have, in a real sense, hijacked the credit for that which occurs naturally.....just as ancient seers presumably claimed credit for a lunar eclipse, or the coming of the rainy season.

On virtually all measures of harmonious human interaction, the countries of western and northern europe score far higher than any islamic country, and far higher than the US, the largest and most religious industrialized or post-industrial country.

Take a look at income and wealth distributions. Infant mortality. Life expectancy. Availability of health care. Imprisonment rates. Murder rates.

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany.....and even that former bastion of catholicism, France....they all have large numbers of people who, if not atheist, are token christians, in that they pay no more than lip service to the notion of god. They don't need religious morality to live good lives.

You see, when you claim that science affords no morality, and doesn't have or give rise to a conscience, you are making a fundamental error.....that's neither what science is intended to do nor necessary.

Those who herded jews and others onto the cattle cars or into the concentration camps were no more or less religious than the average German of the 1940s. Those conquistadors who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of abroginals in South and central America and who then systemically obliterated all evidence of the native culture did so secure in the knowledge that they did god's work.

You and others like you argue that one shouldn't blame religion for these immoral acts, even tho in many cases the protagonists openly asserted that their conduct was driven by religious belief. Fair enough....human motivation is often multi-factoral....but you don't get to beg off from responsibility for those acts and then criticize the scientific method for the fact that a devout christian (Truman) decided to drop the atom bomb on Japan.

The scientific method is a tool for the answering of questions, not a guide to what we do with the answers. Religion does purport to provide that guide, along with the other things it does, but the fact that it has some utilitarian value doesn't make it 'right'...especially when there is considerable evidence that we would instinctively act in an equally moral fashion without religious input of any kind.

[Winstonm]

 onoway, on 2012-March-01, 14:49, said:

Perhaps the only problem with this is that humans are not rational creatures, but emotional ones..and a good thing too imo or we'd be little more than fleshy robots.

I would not say we are "emotional creatures", but rather creatures that have emotions. It would be ludicrous to suggest that all humans do and should rely strictly on emotions for all decisions and actions. Emotions are often false or based on bad information - GIGO.

As we age, we learn to control or even ignore our emotions, and one of the most valuable lessons to learn is that actions rule emotions, not the other way round. We are not required to act based on how we feel, and our actions will alter our emotions.
Act enthusiastic and you'll be enthusiastic is not only a slogan, but a fact.

As for the other points in your post, you seem confused by science versus emotions - the underlying provocations for the actions you suggest - horrendous experiments in concentration camps and genetic engineering - these are examples of unbridled emotion, not of crisp reasoning.

However, I realize a recent PEW survey found that the authoritarian/individualistic personality will not abandon his narrative beliefs with a higher degree of education; he will, in fact, become more entrenched.

That is why arguments, logical or not, are ultimately fruitless.

[onoway]

 Winstonm, on 2012-March-01, 18:40, said:

I would not say we are "emotional creatures", but rather creatures that have emotions. It would be ludicrous to suggest that all humans do and should rely strictly on emotions for all decisions and actions. Emotions are often false or based on bad information - GIGO.

As we age, we learn to control or even ignore our emotions, and one of the most valuable lessons to learn is that actions rule emotions, not the other way round. We are not required to act based on how we feel, and our actions will alter our emotions.
Act enthusiastic and you'll be enthusiastic is not only a slogan, but a fact.

b)As for the other points in your post, you seem confused by science versus emotions - the underlying provocations for the actions you suggest - horrendous experiments in concentration camps and genetic engineering - these are examples of unbridled emotion, not of crisp reasoning.

c) However, I realize a recent PEW survey found that the authoritarian/individualistic personality will not abandon his narrative beliefs with a higher degree of education; he will, in fact, become more entrenched.

That is why arguments, logical or not, are ultimately fruitless.

Well, a couple of things about that....tell someone who is extremely depressed to "act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic" and he will likely impolitely tell you to take a hike, if he can find the energy. It's certainly not always that simple. Severe depression is a terrible thing and telling people they can talk themselves out of it is like telling someone they can talk themselves out of a broken arm.

To be sure, people who are in a relatively stable frame of mind CAN affect their behaviour and emotions by practicing more productive thought and fostering positive emotions; one study found that deliberately considering the things they have to be grateful for for 15 minutes each day, helped heal people who were moderately depressed. But then, so does prayer help to heal, according to other studies (that's an aside I couldn't resist:))

I'm not at all sure you would find many competent mental health professionals agreeing with you that emotions can be "false" though they most certainly can be based on false information. I am assuming we are discussing truly felt emotion, not the crocodile tears sort which are deliberately presented but have no emotion whatever behind them. Emotions are what they are, and you suppress and deny strong ones at a risk of developing all sorts of other little or not so little problems. Here is a quote about just one of several recognized medical conditions relating to this question.

Quote:
The Harvard psychiatrist Peter Sifneos originally coined the term in 1972 to describe people who had extreme difficulty in emotional cognition. The word “alexithymia” literally means “no words for mood.” People with this problem lacked the ability to understanding, processing or describing their feelings verbally. As a result, most people who have the problem are largely unaware of their own feelings or what they signify. As a result they only rarely talk about their emotions or their emotional preferences, and they are largely unable to use their feelings or imagination to focus and fuel their drives and motivations.

People with alexithymia seem unable to fantasize and many report multiple somatic symptoms. However, alexithymia is also associated with a number of other complaints, such as hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, substance use disorders, and some anxiety disorders. Their speech is often concrete, mundane and closely tied to external events. So they will describe physical symptoms rather than emotions, and don’t understand that their bodily sensations are signals of emotional distress. (my emphasis)

Alexithymia lies on spectrum... For some people it is little more than an inability to get in touch with their emotions. But at the other end of the spectrum are a number of illnesses in which alexithymia may occur, including schizoid personality disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, anorexia nervosa or Asperger's syndrome. It is also much more common in victims of trauma.
End Quote

I am not suggesting that people should ACT on their rage, for example, maybe by going out and popping that annoying neighbor in the nose, but they do need to recognise what they feel .and more importantly, often, what is causing the emotion in the first place, and find ways to deal with it. Sometimes it isn't even the neighbor that is the root of the problem, but only the final straw on a load of undealt with other problems.

One thing I ran across the other day was an interview with a Dr Amen who had some fairly compelling things to say about how the health of the brain affects behaviour (and, incidentally, the concept of free will!) People who have damaged their brains inadvertently or otherwise can undergo quite remarkable changes in their interaction with the world. And these changes can sometimes be reversed if the brain is restored to a healthy condition. This makes me wonder about some of the historical monsters and how much misery may have been caused by literally!! an unhealthy brain. I also wondered what the brains of some of today's politicos might look like ...full of holes, some of them, I'm guessing. Anyway.

Science has done a remarkable job in learning what triggers behaviour and it isn't logic or reason. Successful marketters don't give much weight on promoting rational reasons for why you should buy their widget, they give you social proof "everyone else has one and they LOVE it..here's Bob to tell you how his life has become WONDERFUL since he got it!!" _ or the reverse - "be the only one in your neighborhood to grown these unique and fabulous roses that all your neighbors will envy" or they give the potential customer something to make them feel gratitude and the need to reciprocate, or they provide some authority figure to lead them to the right path of buying their widget and so forth.

They have tracked eye movements so they know where to place different bits of copy or a graphic and which colors to use where for optimum effectiveness....and they test constantly to check and compare results. By manipulating the environment in sometimes virtually unnoticeable ways, they can alter behaviour and make people more likely to buy. The product is the same, it's only that when it's presented in one way people are much more likely to buy than if it's presented a different way. Logic would suggest that somehow the changes make the product more attractive..an emotional response.

Of course, some people are more susceptible to some sorts of techniques than others. Some people have or develop a sort of immunity through overexposure, sort of the boy who cried wolf too many times sort of thing. That said, highly successful marketters likely know a whole lot more about human psychology and what makes people do things than some psychologists and psychiatrists as far as I can tell.

Of course it would be ludicrous to suggest that people operate ONLY on emotion. But people ignore the emotional responses they have to the world around them at their peril.And this aspect of humanity is valued..to describe someone as "a cold fish" is instantly recognized as denigrating. The forums for people suffering from PTSD discuss their frustration with "being numb" and wondering what others have tried or done in order to "feel" again and will they ever be able to. Apparently a totally nonemotional life is a fairly bleak one. But they undoubtedly do make decisions and they do manage from day to day.

It's emotion, not reason, that makes people buy houses that they can't possibly afford, emotion that makes people shoulder rifles and go off to war and do other such things that are at the very least a hazard to their well being and even their lives.


Rats. I can't figure out how you break the quote up into pieces. So just left the quote intact and refer to it. sort of.

b)I don't think you can blame religion for such things as the crusades and then absolve science for the human experiments done in concentration camps. That's a double standard if ever I saw one. The crusades went forward under the banner of Christianity and the experiments went forward under the banner of science.

As far as the GMO experiments go, the only emotion I see in those particular corporate offices is greed.

c) Are you referring to me as an authoritarian sort of person? really?

[kenberg]

 onoway, on 2012-March-02, 05:15, said:

b)I don't think you can blame religion for such things as the crusades and then absolve science for the human experiments done in concentration camps. That's a double standard if ever I saw one. The crusades went forward under the banner of Christianity and the experiments went forward under the banner of science.

There is, however, a difference. The actions in the concentration camps are universally condemned, by scientists and everyone else. A perversion is recognized as a perversion. I am not so sure that is true about the Crusades. My own favorite quote in that area comes from the Bergman film The Seventh Seal. The knight, returning home, describes the Crusades as "So stupid only an idealist could have thought of it".

[helene_t]

Another difference is that religion is actually supposed to provide moral guidance.

There are some philosoffers (Sam Harris?) who believe that there is such a thing as science-based morality. But I think that is a minority position.

[onoway]

 mikeh, on 2012-March-01, 15:49, said:

Onoway

However, from my p.ov. you are comparing apples and oranges.

that's pretty close to what I was trying to do; only perhaps oranges and carrots might be closer to the mark; very different ways to nourish, but either one insufficient; both important for health. And..although they ARE entirely different, they can work together to make something more complex and enriching.

Quote

Psychology has demonstrated that humans have innate moral tendencies, which are remarkably similar across linguistic, ethnic, religious and geographical divides. The evidence is clear: we do not need religious faith in order to recognize and abide by basic moral concepts.

Yippee I figured out how to do the quote thing..time and a little poking at things to see what they do can do wonders:)

well the thing is that seemingly all societies have some sort of spiritual leader, whether it be shaman, druid, witchdoctor, priest lama or whatever. I would call that a religious leader as often they were not the same as the nominal leader of the group. So I would suggest that rather than showing we as a species DON"T need any such figure in our lives, most if not all previous societies have come to the conclusion that they DID.

I suspect that it is fairly commonplace to assume that people take a sense of security?identity? comfort? in ritual, and these people were, as I understand it, generally in charge of such things as well as often being the one with whatever medical knowledge the group had. Unlike much modern thinking, older societies often saw a direct connection between the mind and the body, or so it seems. Many if not most had rituals which involved "the spirit world" in some way, whether it be through visions introducing them to their totems or whatever. If you know herbal plants, you will find that hallucinagens of one sort or another are to be found and were both known and used in all parts of the world, and not often used entirely casually, as some of them could be fatal if not handled and prepared correctly. This suggests needing a serious reason for using such a thing.

Only two such reasons come readilly to mind. One is some sort of trial or punishment. I have heard of no evidence or anyone suggesting this was so, except perhaps in Jamaica. There witch doctors apparently actually could create concoctions that could put people into a sort of zombie state of suspended animation where they became totally immobilised and their body processes slowed down to the point of being indiscernable BUT they were still conscious. People were sometimes actually buried and then dug up again a week or so later, still alive but considerably changed. However, this seemed as though this was sometimes even just a vendetta type of thing rather than used as a "correction device" so to speak. My understanding is based on a fascinating book written by an American anaesthesiologist (sp?) who investigated this and others maybe 30 years ago. He suspected there was also an emotional aspect to this, in that people believed it would work so it did, but the physiological effects were unquestionable, and the psychological effects of having this happen to them were marked and long lasting. He was unable to learn what all of the ingredients were, but the ones that he did learn about were basically poisons.

The other option is the intent to have some sort of out of body experience, and the meaning of what the person experienced was considered to be important. I would call this a religious practice as it was an attempt to establish communication between the known physical world and the unknowable spiritual world.

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You and others like you argue that one shouldn't blame religion for these immoral acts, even tho in many cases the protagonists openly asserted that their conduct was driven by religious belief. Fair enough....human motivation is often multi-factoral....but you don't get to beg off from responsibility for those acts and then criticize the scientific method for the fact that a devout christian (Truman) decided to drop the atom bomb on Japan.

I'm not sure why you think I argue that religion shouldn't be blamed for the Crusades and the Inquisition. I'd maintain that it does have to take responsibility not because religion promoted such behaviour but that it allowed such a perversion of what it should be, to occur. As far as the invasion and destruction of Central and SouthAmerican societies by Columbus and his cohorts..consider who was on those ships..the misfits and malcontents, mostly pressganged or released from jail for the trip, from what I gather, as nobody else wanted to go on what was considered a mad trip which would end by falling off the edge of the world.

The missionaries who followed were indeed convinced they were doing the right thing, just as in later times Canada took children from native populations and put them into institutions, supposedly so they would be better able to assimmilate into white culture. Or the Americans took the land of the Cherokee and forced them to march on foot to Oklahoma without allowing them time to provision themselves for the trip,which killed so many of them that the trip was renamed the Trail of Tears. The missionaries and the Canadian government of the day had at least a modicum of good intentions in that they believed they were doing the right thing as well as the convenient thing; the American government of the day wasn't so worried about that, they just wanted the land so kicked them out.

It's always been considered a bit crass to say "I want loot!" as that's the sort of thing a common thief might say, so to say "I am killing you and taking your gold for God", is much more acceptable. It's like it wasn't ok for Bush to say, I am annoyed with Saddam and I want him dead, he had to make up nonsense about weapons of mass destruction, and then it was ok, in fact, encouraged. Different triggers for different times. The result is the same of course, as God has no particular need for gold and possibly no particular wish for Saddam but both guys are just as dead and everyone can feel better about it.

When religion and politics get mixed up there tends to be a disaster in the making, and that's one thing I feel is a problem which has led to much of the nastiness done in the name of religion. Who exerts influence, who is owed a favour etc. Nothing whatsoever to do with religion, that's just business and politics. But it's all wrapped in a religious flag, as a sort of camoflage. The Inquisition is very hard to understand. It's like some sort of mass hysteria overtook Europe (and parts of the US) and allowed all the psychopaths not only to represent the church but to do so in any horrendously cruel way they could devise. I don't understand how that could have been allowed to happen. Certainly the church of the day was entirely responsible for that. But to take another example, we don't hold the government of today responsible for the governments/philosphies which led to world wars 1 and two. That's pretty feeble but it's the best I can do with no sleep

The point was is that Truman wouldn't have had a bomb TO drop without Einstein and others who developed it. That doesn't absolve him of responsibility at all, but my point is that it is a shared responsibility and in this example, perhaps another where religion failed.
Scientists keep coming up with more and more horrendous ways to kill people from further and further away so as to minimize the number of traumatised soldiers returning home.

As far as that goes, science has now figured out how to desensitize soldiers fairly effectively; the only problem is once you've got them conditioned to be unconcerned about killing you need to keep them busy somewhere as you don't want then wandering the streets at home with rifles and an attitude..you might get more of the sort of thing that happened at the Maryland gas stations. Did you know that they think as many as one in ten soldiers in world wars 1 & 2 either never actually fired their rifles at all, or if they did, they tried NOT to hit anybody. And didn't the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima commit suicide?

But now we have videos of soldiers laughing as they use civilians for target practice.

I feel quite sure we need something more than science.

[kenberg]

Some agreement: We need more than science. Yep. All we need is love, tum-de-dum-te-dum, all we need is love... Well, that's probably not enough either. Most all of us who are non-religious recognize the need for something in our lives besides science. Even beyond mathematics. The fact, we see it as a fact, that there is no God complicates matters. Whatever the solution, we must base it on the condition of life as we see it. Pretending we believe that there is a God when we are quite sure that there is not does not seem a viable choice.

[mikeh]

 onoway, on 2012-March-02, 09:08, said:

that's pretty close to what I was trying to do; only perhaps oranges and carrots might be closer to the mark; very different ways to nourish, but either one insufficient; both important for health. And..although they ARE entirely different, they can work together to make something more complex and enriching.

It is one thing to observe that religion in general can give rise to some useful results, such as engendering a sense of community...it is an entirely different thing to argue that since belief in god makes us do good things, god exists. We can argue whether religion, in today's society, is a net good or bad...I vote for the latter, but I don't srgue that there is no evidence for the former.....but that is not at all the same as arguing about whether the god underlying any particular religion....or all the gods of all of the religions....actually exist. An atheist can, in principle, accept that it would be possible to create an entirely beneficent religion (none currently exists, tho bhuddism may be the closest we have) while still maintaining that the religion is fantasy.

I have never taken heroin....I understand that the addict, on a high, feels wonderful....that is an inadequate reason, to me, to take heroin. Joining a church and worshipping your god might make me feel comfortably numb, or even better than that, but that is not a valid reason, to me, to surrender my power to think critically.

Quote

Yippee I figured out how to do the quote thing..time and a little poking at things to see what they do can do wonders:)

I only recently worked this out myself, so I share your sense of accomplishment!
well done

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I suspect that it is fairly commonplace to assume that people take a sense of security?identity? comfort? in ritual, and these people were, as I understand it, generally in charge of such things as well as often being the one with whatever medical knowledge the group had. Unlike much modern thinking, older societies often saw a direct connection between the mind and the body, or so it seems. Many if not most had rituals which involved "the spirit world" in some way, whether it be through visions introducing them to their totems or whatever. If you know herbal plants, you will find that hallucinagens of one sort or another are to be found and were both known and used in all parts of the world, and not often used entirely casually, as some of them could be fatal if not handled and prepared correctly. This suggests needing a serious reason for using such a thing.

Only two such reasons come readilly to mind. One is some sort of trial or punishment. I have heard of no evidence or anyone suggesting this was so, except perhaps in Jamaica. There witch doctors apparently actually could create concoctions that could put people into a sort of zombie state of suspended animation where they became totally immobilised and their body processes slowed down to the point of being indiscernable BUT they were still conscious. People were sometimes actually buried and then dug up again a week or so later, still alive but considerably changed. However, this seemed as though this was sometimes even just a vendetta type of thing rather than used as a "correction device" so to speak. My understanding is based on a fascinating book written by an American anaesthesiologist (sp?) who investigated this and others maybe 30 years ago. He suspected there was also an emotional aspect to this, in that people believed it would work so it did, but the physiological effects were unquestionable, and the psychological effects of having this happen to them were marked and long lasting. He was unable to learn what all of the ingredients were, but the ones that he did learn about were basically poisons.

The other option is the intent to have some sort of out of body experience, and the meaning of what the person experienced was considered to be important. I would call this a religious practice as it was an attempt to establish communication between the known physical world and the unknowable spiritual world.

what has any of that to do with whether it is rational to believe in the creation myths, or jesus myths, or other myths about modern religions? In fact, the reality that other societies have formed what you now see as mistaken religious beliefs ought to inform you as to why you should be sceptical about yours. There is an approach commended to atheists engaged in discussion with members of a religion: I suspect that you would dismiss anyone who these days truly professed to worship the Norse gods as being misguided...you don't believe in the divinity of Odin, for example. When you fully understand why that is, you will begin to understand why we don't believe in your god.

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I'm not sure why you think I argue that religion shouldn't be blamed for the Crusades and the Inquisition. I'd maintain that it does have to take responsibility not because religion promoted such behaviour but that it allowed such a perversion of what it should be, to occur. As far as the invasion and destruction of Central and SouthAmerican societies by Columbus and his cohorts..consider who was on those ships..the misfits and malcontents, mostly pressganged or released from jail for the trip, from what I gather, as nobody else wanted to go on what was considered a mad trip which would end by falling off the edge of the world.

No....the conquistadors did not think they were going to fall off the edge of the world. It is commonly but mistakenly understood that Columbus and this contemporaries believed the earth was flat....it is a myth. They well knew the earth was round....indeed, Columbus was looking for India when he sailed West......and Europeans already knew more or less where India was....it lay far, far to the East. But by the times of Columbus, the Spanish could see that the trade routes to India were difficult, unreliable, and not under their political and military control. So Columbus was able to obtain financing for his voyage precisely because it was understood that the earth was a sphere and that by sailing west, he'd ultimately end up in the east.

So your understanding is flat out wrong.

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When religion and politics get mixed up there tends to be a disaster in the making, and that's one thing I feel is a problem which has led to much of the nastiness done in the name of religion. Who exerts influence, who is owed a favour etc. Nothing whatsoever to do with religion, that's just business and politics. But it's all wrapped in a religious flag, as a sort of camoflage. The Inquisition is very hard to understand. It's like some sort of mass hysteria overtook Europe (and parts of the US) and allowed all the psychopaths not only to represent the church but to do so in any horrendously cruel way they could devise. I don't understand how that could have been allowed to happen. Certainly the church of the day was entirely responsible for that. But to take another example, we don't hold the government of today responsible for the governments/philosphies which led to world wars 1 and two. That's pretty feeble but it's the best I can do with no sleep

You don't get it. Religion is not now nor has it likely ever been separate from politics. Religion is and probably always has been about control of the populace, just as politics is.

Name me a religion and a quick review of history will show that it was either used by secular rulers to buttress their control or by religious rulers to attempt to wrest control away from their opponents. This may not have been the goal of the original cult founders, but in every case became integral to the success of the religion.

Quote

As far as that goes, science has now figured out how to desensitize soldiers fairly effectively; the only problem is once you've got them conditioned to be unconcerned about killing you need to keep them busy somewhere as you don't want then wandering the streets at home with rifles and an attitude..you might get more of the sort of thing that happened at the Maryland gas stations. Did you know that they think as many as one in ten soldiers in world wars 1 & 2 either never actually fired their rifles at all, or if they did, they tried NOT to hit anybody. And didn't the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima commit suicide?

But now we have videos of soldiers laughing as they use civilians for target practice.

Your ignorance is showing. Note that calling someone ignorant is not the same as calling someone stupid. There are more areas of knowledge about which I am ignorant than there are areas where I consider myself knowledgable. However, the history of warfare is an area where I possess a good layman's knowledge.

I recently read two histories of Carthage. I have read translations of early Greek texts on warfare between the early greek city states. I have read histories of Rome. I have read histories of japan, and western european civilization, and more. I have read Keegan's History of Warfare (I may be misremembering the title).

You think our soldiers of today are dehumanized????? You have no idea what you are talking about. Read your own bible.....read about the destruction wreaked by the israelites at the direct behest of their god. Read Pinker's latest book, wherein his thesis is that humanity is demonstrably becoming less violent now than in historical times.

You argue like a typical godbot (sorry, but the term sees apposite....and please note that I am describing your manner of argument, not you), because you assert 'facts' in support of your position, but your 'facts' are demonstrably incorrect.....you no doubt believe what you say, but as with all religion, you confuse belief with knowledge. You believe something to be true, so you state it as fact.

I can demonstrate that you are wrong in your views of flat-earth as of Columbus, and dehumanizing soldiers by science....I can't demonstrate that your god doesn't exist, because it is impossible to prove a negative...and I know you won't....probably can't.....recognize the parallels.

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I feel quite sure we need something more than science.

Maybe we do...but does that fact make your imaginary god any more real? Why? How?

[blackshoe]

Mike has pointed out several errors in your post, Onoway. Here's another: Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, died at home of natural causes on November 1, 2007. He was 92.

[onoway]

 mikeh, on 2012-March-02, 11:31, said:

It is one thing to observe that religion in general can give rise to some useful results, such as engendering a sense of community...it is an entirely different thing to argue that since belief in god makes us do good things, god exists. We can argue whether religion, in today's society, is a net good or bad...I vote for the latter, but I don't srgue that there is no evidence for the former.....but that is not at all the same as arguing about whether the god underlying any particular religion....or all the gods of all of the religions....actually exist. An atheist can, in principle, accept that it would be possible to create an entirely beneficent religion (none currently exists, tho bhuddism may be the closest we have) while still maintaining that the religion is fantasy.

I have never taken heroin....I understand that the addict, on a high, feels wonderful....that is an inadequate reason, to me, to take heroin. Joining a church and worshipping your god might make me feel comfortably numb, or even better than that, but that is not a valid reason, to me, to surrender my power to think critically.

My point would be that there should be no need to do that.And as far as I can tell "comfortably numb" is not at all the way to describe the experience believers have, although like anything else I feel fairly sure that such things are experienced by different people in different ways.

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[So your understanding is flat out wrong

Damn that social studies teacher anyway!!

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You don't get it. Religion is not now nor has it likely ever been separate from politics. Religion is and probably always has been about control of the populace, just as politics is.

I wasn't even speaking of the interaction between religion and outside politics, I was speaking of the politics within the religious structure itself. This seems to me to be an achilles heel of organized religions..it has nothing whatever to do with the religion itself but in the very human activity of trying to gain personal power, prestige, whatever. Through some period of time, the easiest and fastest way to achieve these things was through church..and somewhat less dangerous perhaps than other avenues open...so an ardent belief was perhaps less important than the ability to fake something of the sort to the degree necessary while being very capable in other areas of administration, so to speak.

Seems to me, although I could well be wrong, that the priests and nuns who actually lived the sort of lives supposedly honored by the church seldom if ever got to be the chosen to lead the church. This might be (in the case of christian churches), not so much for the Society of Friends for example but otherwise a vow of service and a life of relative simplicity if not actual poverty has seemingly been found by most of the various religious hierarchies to be more admirable in theory than practice.

Of course you also find the people for whom religion is ONLY a good business to be in. The fact that many of those live(d) very comfortable lives suggests that they were meeting some sort of need felt by a whole lot of people. To suggest that people shouldn't feel that need or try to meet it is offers to me the image of someone who doesn't have scurvy scoffing at the need others might have for vitaminC.

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Name me a religion and a quick review of history will show that it was either used by secular rulers to buttress their control or by religious rulers to attempt to wrest control away from their opponents. This may not have been the goal of the original cult founders, but in every case became integral to the success of the religion.

I don't know how Buddhism fits into this criteria..can you enlighten me?

I certainly don't know enough about a whole lot of religions to have much to offer here.

Throughout this whole thread, the discussion has been off center..I am trying to dissassociate the messengers from the message, to a large degree, because imo most of the messengers have messed it up. Otoh, you and others are maintaining that the message and messenger are NOT separable, a sort of Marshal McLuhan view of things. I am holding to the idea that the better bits of the original message as being what's important.

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Maybe we do...but does that fact make your imaginary god any more real? Why? How?

Because it makes sense to me as the best basis we have to find a way to meet an obvious need most people have. After a couple of thousand or more years, it may still be a rough draft which needs to be updated, and it will never appeal to people who look to some form of organized "religion" to justify their hates and prejudices and pettiness, but holds the seeds through which man can be grow to be as much as he can be. I don't think science alone can offer that.

And as you seem to be convinced that I am some sort of personal god believer,perhaps I should tell you that no I'm not. I lost whatever faith I might have had when my mother died in terror and anguish truly believing she was going to hell because she married a divorced man. I still have a very hard time forgiving the Catholic church for that, although I was too naive to understand she needed to hear a priest tell her either that wasn't so or at least that she had been forgiven. I had not known until then that she held any strong beliefs one way or the other about religion..my father was the son of an anglican minister and I don't remember either of them ever particularly discussing anything of a religious nature.

I'm not sure I want to get into what I have settled into, except that in some ways I feel wistful about people being able to believe in a personal God and wish at times that that was possible for me. I have known some people quite well who are such believers and they take a great deal of comfort from both their religion and the support of other church members in times of trial. Some of them have been involved in a number of charitable enterprises such as helping small farmers in Africa, building hospitals, and roofing or upgrading houses for the poor.

The fact that they belong to a group makes such enterprises possible, that it's a church group means (in their cases) that they regard doing such such things as a social responsibility. This is not to suggest that other non church groups aren't also doing good things, Habitat for Humanity being one of them, but it's much HARDER to organise when you don't have a ready made group who are already committed to the idea of a responsibility for people beyond those in their immediate circle. These are the sorts of things I mean when I think we need to find a way to keep the good bits. OTOH I am silent with dismay when I hear some of their fellow church members snorting with derision at the idea of evolution. Sometimes there has been a degree of pressure to participate in this or that church by such friends, I have sung at funerals and so forth in Catholic services and attended Christmas concert services in other churches because why not? I enjoy those things and everyone feels good about it. What's to be gained by harrassing them in what would unquestionably be a futile effort to change anyone's mind? Besides, what works for me clearly wouldn't work for them so I have nothing to offer to replace what they now have and that's always a bad bargain to offer anyone.

I feel no need to tell them they are wrong, nor to defend my position. They have shaped their lives around their belief system, and by and large, those lives are good lives, often offering somewhat more of themselves than most people do to the larger world. So I DO feel the need to respect them for that and to see them treated with respect as well.

[Winstonm]

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c) Are you referring to me as an authoritarian sort of person? really?

Not you unless the tag fits. The authoritarian/individualist believes in a hierarchal structure of knowledge and granting power to more knowledgable persons and he believes in individual rather than collective accomplishments.

If the shoe fits...

[kenberg]

Reading the morning paper I see that Rush Limbaugh has called a Georgetown University student a slut for speaking in support of the President's policy. I have heard Republicans theorize that this policy is really a plot by Obama to lure them into making statements that will antagonize potential supporters. If so, it seems to be working. But then they seem pretty able to do this without assistance from anyone.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2012-March-03, 07:01, said:

Reading the morning paper I see that Rush Limbaugh has called a Georgetown University student a slut for speaking in support of the President's policy. I have heard Republicans theorize that this policy is really a plot by Obama to lure them into making statements that will antagonize potential supporters. If so, it seems to be working. But then they seem pretty able to do this without assistance from anyone.

Yes, and when 1/3 of your constituency comes from inbreeding you have to make up idiotic dance steps like this in order to appease them:

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Rick Santorum, one of the Republican presidential contenders seeking to oppose Obama, commented to CNN about Limbaugh's remarks.

"He's being absurd," Santorum said. "But that's, you know, an entertainer can be absurd."