faetal on 19/2/2015 at 21:22
Largely, I just enjoy debating. Much the way someone enjoys playing chess. I like how logic works, I like how dialectic works. I also find religion genuinely interesting because from my perspective, there are a bunch of people who not only believe in something which is told to them in exactly the same medium as fictional stories and they believe this so strongly that the change their daily / weekly / monthly habits, moderate their behaviour, adjust their attitudes towards others and in some very rare instances, develop a desire to see other people suffer and / or die because of it.
As I mentioned earlier, if we're debating how interesting the bible is as literature, then surely that's a deep and very interesting topic which I'd be happy to have. Same goes for any historical text. What I'm debating against the backdrop of the rest of this thread is whether or not religion is a neutral, negative or positive force in the world today. Since I have more experience with talking to Christians than people of other religions, I tend to focus on that a bit. Also, I tend to have lived in places where Christians do things like lobby to have abortion banned, which I see as intruding into the lives of other people based on a personal choice. I'd find it just as bad if e.g. an atheist group tried to block the building of a church, though to my knowledge that kind of thing doesn't seem to happen.
The logic of religion just all seems very circular to me. Whenever it comes down to the origins of said religion and the simple question of which is more likely: god creates humans or humans create god; all I hear in response are attempts to broaden the question to something more vague, because unless someone wants to post a link to the contrary, we have no evidence which supports the existence of deities and millennia of precedents for humans worshipping deities which people now assume to be fictional. If the one true god really created the universe and everything in it, then what are all of these other religions past and present which talk of very different origins about? Are those religions wrong? Are they an analogue of the truth whose message has become garbled? I don't get why a person can reject other religions and then assume someone who doesn't believe is somehow being arrogant or excessively sceptical. I know it's trite, but it is the whole "I just believe in one god less than you" thing.
It genuinely puzzles me and in well over a decade of talking about it with people, I've yet to hear any satisfactory answers. It either gets too heated because you're essentially asking questions which press to hard against someone's childhood conditioning (it's an especially tender point with my wife, because she lost her mother who gave her a very strict religious upbringing, so her faith is kind of a vestigial part of their relationship), or it winds up running in logical circles where no one can figure out how the debate is framed. This is why I tend to throw out questions every now and then. I genuinely want to know what happens inside the mind of the believer when they read the questions. Is it s logical processing of the questions, or dissonance and a formulation of something to reject the question's validity or divert from the question. Or some option C which I hadn't considered.
DDL on 19/2/2015 at 21:35
Is it worth pointing out that if you HAVE a set of rules, then you should stick to those rules unless you're specifically saying "for this we're going outside the rules, and the new rules are X".
I mean, chess has a fuckton of variants that use alternative setups, or different endgoals (suicide chess, for example), but these are not decided halfway through a match, they're decided at the outset.
I'm...not sure the analogy really holds up when compared to religion, since most religions are essentially continuous exercises in reinvention: religions are (hilariously, for any young earth creationists listening) demonstrable exercises in evolution. They're constantly splintering off into new species with variations on the existing rules, some of these subspecies are eaten by others (suck it, cathars), some find their own little niches, etc.
What I suspect faetal finds objectionable, and which I certainly do, is the use of a single arbitrary holy book as the exemplar statute of a religion that has moved on and left that holy book behind. The book might be horrendously anachronistic, totally socially inappropriate for today, but nevertheless is still "the word" except when it isn't.
Again using an evolutionary analogy (and you may need to bear with me for a terribly extended biochemistry analogy*) you could view the bible as the plant CO2 fixing enzyme, rubisco: this evolved back when CO2 concentration was very high, and oxygen was very low. It thus never evolved the capacity to distinguish between the two, and if it uses oxygen instead of CO2, it just wastes energy and resources. Instead of reversing and coming up with a better enzyme to cope with modern conditions (as this is something evolution basically cannot do), plants came up with increasingly elaborate and crazy ways of circumventing this defect as oxygen concentration rose. Your present day situation sees rubisco still being crap and having no specificity, but instead being surrounded by a mass of proteins with the sole purpose of making sure oxygen never gets near it, and CO2 gets actively generated in its immediate vicinity.
The bible does something ostensibly useful, but it evolved at a time where conditions were different, and since you can't change it, you have to come up with increasingly elaborate and crazy ways to make it still relevant.
*this is the best kind of analogy. Screw chess analogies.
demagogue on 20/2/2015 at 00:00
Hmm, how do you practice a plant enzyme though?
Meh, usually when you can't get an answer you like, it means you're asking the wrong or a non sensical question. Canon knowledge like the rules of a game or laws of a nation or status of a title (like who is king) or religion just work differently than defeasible knowledge like how does a plant work, or how do species evolve. The knowledge is already given up front. What's the point of asking the logic of canon knowledge when you already know the answer? It was given that way in whole cloth from the start. You already know the answer of how it got there.
If you're really concerned about what religious folk think, you should remind them that the knowledge-base of their religion is a fixed canon that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with authority. It sounds like you are insisting on the exact opposite, and that line of questioning is just a glorified category mistake. Why do bishops move diagonally? Why is price fixing a crime, except in a communist country where prices can only be fixed? Why was Edward vi the successor to Henry the viii? Because any of this is logical? It's canon you take or leave. The only thing that matters, the only ones able to change the rules, is authority. (A work of literature is also an example, but a poor one because the author usually doesn't have any particular authority to make their work mean squat. Who cares why Pip did X. Because Dickens wanted to sell his book. Entertaining maybe, but no special meaning to why X not Y beyond Dickens said so. He has no greater authority. If you read a holy work under the rules of literature criticism, it's not so enlightning, and definitely not how you do theology. How a plant enzyme works is not canon knowledge because it blindly follows forces of biochemistry or ultimately QM, not authority.)
I have a feeling if you ask any religious person what their religion is (or any other canon based practice) you always get the same answer. Of course its logic is circular. It's by definition circular! That's what canon is. Not sure why someone would think they could get a different answer if they keep asking. The only valid question is, do you pledge alliegence to the authority the canon represents. Are you a member under its rules or not.
E.g. if someone thinks the universe was made in 7 days because their canon describes General Relativity, you need to tell them that's a category mistake. Creationists apparently have the same problem understanding how canon works as rationalists. Both are doing it wrong. It's not refering to how nature works by process, but how nature is received by definition.
Now someone could legitimately ask how should we best interpret the canon in the context of the larger framework. Then great, you're doing proper theology now. Anything else and it's not religion any more. Now you're debating genetics or logic in the guise of religion. Fine to debate those things, but bizaare to bring religion into it. The starting point of the debate should be religion has nothing to do with genetics or logic. If a religious or rationalist person thinks it does, that's their confusion. And if they "debate" it, it's pointless from the start. You can't debate a category mistake.
DDL on 20/2/2015 at 06:44
Which would be great, if, for instance, we didn't have people in the US insisting that creationism be given equal weighting to actual science.
But we do.:(
DDL on 20/2/2015 at 08:01
More longwindedly, I think part of the problem I may be having is that the process you're describing, dema, seems like something even a passably rational mind should be able to look at and say "hang on a minute..."
All these hermeneutics and interpretations and stuff trying to generate meaning that is relevant today, from a holy book that was relevant over a thousand years ago, and that has been re-translated/re-transcribed hundreds of times. It's as if the rational part of the brain gets entirely disengaged, allowing "blind faith just because" to take hold. In fact, that's basically what HAS to happen, because subjecting any religion to even cursory critical scrutiny exposes a host of flaws and inconsistencies. Inquiring as to why a divine creator would allow such a ridiculous state to arise is apparently the wrong question to ask, when I'd say it should surely be one of the first questions you'd ask. These are supposed to be the diktats and musings of a divine being: they should be held to a higher standard than the fiction of Dickens, surely? He was just a dude trying to shift copy.
If you need to spend endless hours debating the interpretations of particular passages of a holy book, that is a badly written holy book.
It makes me wonder what would happen if you invented a religion that WAS internally and externally consistent with the observable world.
I guess, from what I observe, that most ostensibly normal religious people are able to compartmentalise it to an extent, and as noted: if you're reinterpreting it to just be 'the nice bits, by current social norms', this is probably even easier. It just seems odd. Like creating some sort of magical bubble in the brain that provides warm waves of endorphins but bursts if you look at it too closely. Dumbo's magic feather.
In essence, I'm not sure I'm capable of understanding the compartmentalising process (if indeed that's what is happening). Ok, I've got a bucketload of science education under my belt by this point, but I'm pretty sure I remember even as a child thinking god was a pretty ludicrous idea.
I am trying to get my head around it, though. And I'm enjoying this thread.
faetal on 20/2/2015 at 12:50
A point I'd like to make is that the fact that the bible (including the new testament, thought to a lesser extent) is filled with quite horrific stuff about murder, rape, racism, slavery, xenophobia, bigotry etc... and over time, people who consider it a holy book have largely started to gloss over, reject or rationalise away with talk of context and supersession, the parts which are abominable; kind of shows that humanity has become more morally mature without any need for religion. It's happened in secular areas of society too. Everyone is getting nicer. Fuck, less than a century ago in the US, it was considered OK to make black people go to different schools and lynching was still common. Now those kinds of views are held by people who've been pushed to the fringes of society.
My point of interest is mostly that people aren't robots, so why do people follow a religion without some kind of check to be sure that it's the right decision? There are so many religions past and present, how to be sure that the one you have is correct? Or does that not matter? Is it just a case of liking what you are brought up into and staying for the feeling of comfort? Why does so much judgement, intolerance and violence end up getting tagged on to it? Why are people standing with placards outside abortion clinics harassing people who are already having a hard time, for doing something which has no effect of them?
I don't take issue with people's personal religious choices per se, but I wonder why it tries to leak itself into the lives of other so consistently. Why proselytise? Why preach? Why get in everyone's face about it? Because I'm a rational person, I have to consider that I might be wrong about religion, but whenever I talk about it with religious people, the conversation gets terminated either when they get too emotionally fraught from having their beliefs challenged (which I don't understand, if their beliefs are solid and not prone to unravelling), or I get told that I'm doing the debate wrong, or worse, get waylaid with a load of lazy comparisons to famous atheists and the usual nonsense claims of atheism being "just another religion". If my stance is a belief system, then why am I happy to discuss it completely? I think for one, I know that there is heaps of evidence and logical calculus to call on as rational justification. With religion, there are generally just a few arguments, no real evidence to call on (still waiting for Tony's quantum physics proof of a creator, which you'd think might be a big enough deal to find the links for) and no logic beyond "I just believe", "I have faith", "science doesn't know everything (god of the gaps)", etc...
I'm constantly told that I have to respect the beliefs of others, which I do to a point, but if someone wants to debate, I don't feel like holding back just so their beliefs are safe from proper scrutiny. By proper scrutiny, I do just mean - how does one justify X, when Y. This isn't so disrespectful since I apply to it pretty much anything and everything I believe about the universe myself.
(DDL, that rubisco analogy is great, I'm stealing it)
Chimpy Chompy on 20/2/2015 at 13:19
Quote Posted by faetal
My point of interest is mostly that people aren't robots, so why do people follow a religion without some kind of check to be sure that it's the right decision?
It's not just a matter of how satisfactory a job religion does providing evidence or proofs for itself being the objective truth. For some it fulfills other needs - to explain their purpose or place in the universe, for defining relationships with other people, for a sense of being a part of something larger than oneself. Or just simple comfort I guess.
faetal on 20/2/2015 at 13:40
I totally get that. I went to a multi-cultural catholic church thing with my wife recently. It happens every January and people living in the parish from all over the world sing their particular songs of worship in their own languages and then they all trade food afterwards. I was fairly bored, I'll admit, but it was nice to see so many people all just hanging out and being a community. So yeah, I totally understand being religious because it brings people together, makes them feel comforted and maybe feels like it adds a layer of additional meaning on top of everything. What I don't get is that additional existential requirement that you believe that the universe was created by a supernatural entity and that if you follow a certain lifestyle, you get rewarded by spending an eternity in bliss after you die. Everything bar those last 2 points seem completely rational and normal to me. The supernatural element, I find genuinely unsettling. Also, the sanctification of a collection of old scrolls baked into a compendium which is arbitrarily now immutable (despite having changed a load of times over the years and become a variety of versions), is just bizarre to me.
It seems almost established now that this is most likely a glitch in the human brain, and something we are predisposed to. Hell, I used to be willing to believe all kinds of stuff when I was younger, but somehow educated myself out of it, largely by learning to not trust my predispositions, realise my baseline perception of things is potentially flawed (we evolved to best survive, not to be logical) and try to reinforce only things which can be rationally explained somehow. Over time, as I stopped flexing the parts of my brain which believed certain things speciously, they atrophied. I am pretty sure that when I die, that's it. The period after my life has ended will feel the same way as the period before I was born. Doesn't stop me trying to live meaningfully, be good to others, reduce my negative impact on the world etc... I get a great deal of what some might call spiritual satisfaction from studying science. It's less vague in its focus - by spiritual, I mean that when I find something fascinating in nature, I get the goosebumps, I feel my perspective of life change and I see the giant mechanism we all inhabit as being something so much bigger than me. It washes away petty concerns etc. and best of all, it's supported by heaps of evidence so I can directly interact with it and through my career, even improve our overall knowledge of it.
Sure I'd love to have something like the community spirit of a church to get into, but I just couldn't stomach the supernatural / spiritual side of things. It feels like grown ups playing make-believe. I guess I just find ritualistic behaviour creepy. I'd think the same of someone who started their day in the lab with some spoken homage to a great scientist or ritualistic arrangement of their pipettes or whatever. Also, I like working with a framework which is egalitarian. The writings of science are inmproved over time based on anyone's findings. I find religion too didactic and the tenets are too controlled by a select few.
I don't think that my stance is right or anything by any kind of default - I'm simply expressing why I have this view of religion. I'm sure many disagree (I know my wife does).
Tony_Tarantula on 20/2/2015 at 17:26
Quote Posted by faetal
A point I'd like to make is that the fact that the bible (including the new testament, thought to a lesser extent) is filled with quite horrific stuff about murder, rape, racism, slavery, xenophobia, bigotry etc... and over time, people who consider it a holy book have largely started to gloss over, reject or rationalise away with talk of context and supersession, the parts which are abominable; kind of shows that humanity has become more morally mature
without any need for religion. It's happened in secular areas of society too. Everyone is getting nicer. Fuck, less than a century ago in the US, it was considered OK to make black people go to different schools and lynching was still common. Now those kinds of views are held by people who've been pushed to the fringes of society.
Well said, but the problem with that view is that you're using only the past 100 years for judgement and dismissing the rest of history as a barbaric "dark ages".
In reality these trends are cyclical and correlate closely with economic shifts. When everyone is pretty well for a baseline people tend to behave well and treat each other well. When things get touch then all the old group divisions start to resurface. A recent examples is the resurgence of anti-semitical views in Europe that coincides with a 60% youth unemployment rate in Europe.
It's also.....just not true that humanity is much more free than it ever was.
(
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/quora/how-the-middle-ages-reall_b_5767240.html) Even the HuffPo acknowledges that a lot of the things you guys take for granted about the medieval history and the role of religion in it are completely false
faetal on 20/2/2015 at 18:51
Some things are cyclical, sure, but due to our increasing ability to record history, not just in the form of books, but now in the form of gigantic swatches of metadata, I think we're less likely to slide backwards without come kind of punctuation event along the lines of global nuclear war or a huge resource deficit. Both of those may yet be coming at some point, but I don't think that people will gradually become more racist and homophobic and start getting to itch to enslave people again just as a natural swell of cultural shift. This may have been true back when only the privileged few could read and history consisted of some dusty tomes and scrolls, whose content was not necessarily linked to either fact or consensus.
As a fun thought experiment, let's imagine a post-apocalyptic future where the only thing to survive is TTLG comm chat. This is all humanity has to learn the past from.
