Question for religious folk

[pcstru]

We're all in this world together, and (at the risk of sounding like a complete hippy) we are all different and just need to accept that and be at peace with that. They say the biggest cause of grief in the world stems from religion, no, it stems from the misinterpretation of religion. I'm not sure there is a single religion out there that states "in order to make these people believe, you must kill yourself and take out as many people as you can whilst doing it" - this is where religion is used as a tool to guilt people, and it comes back to the same thing, it's not the way we should live, with or without religion.

 

The problem here is the paradox of being tolerant of intolerance. You might say it's a misinterpretation of religion that X is nasty to/discriminates against Y, but that's just you! I see Christians discriminating against women (no women priests etc - which bars them from the house of lords where they influence the law of the land). I see Christians discriminating against homosexuals - quoting new testament passages to support their position, and 'demanding' that I 'respect' their views. The best claims for Christianity seem to be that it's offers a good guide to leading some kind of 'good'/'ethical' life - but it seems the churches are rather tardy to come out against discrimination or outright evil. Slavery anyone? Genocide? The struggle for individual rights, equality, access to knowledge has seen organised religion at the forefront of repressing 'progress'. How then can it be such a great guide to living a decent life and just why should I 'respect' such a thing?

[sted]

The problem here is the paradox of being tolerant of intolerance. You might say it's a misinterpretation of religion that X is nasty to/discriminates against Y, but that's just you! I see Christians discriminating against women (no women priests etc - which bars them from the house of lords where they influence the law of the land). I see Christians discriminating against homosexuals - quoting new testament passages to support their position, and 'demanding' that I 'respect' their views. The best claims for Christianity seem to be that it's offers a good guide to leading some kind of 'good'/'ethical' life - but it seems the churches are rather tardy to come out against discrimination or outright evil. Slavery anyone? Genocide? The struggle for individual rights, equality, access to knowledge has seen organised religion at the forefront of repressing 'progress'. How then can it be such a great guide to living a decent life and just why should I 'respect' such a thing?

 

there is a difference between the religion and the institution. i suspect most church goers dont give 2 hoots about gay marriage or women priests. the people in charge on the other hand do but i suspect its more enlighten self interest (less competition for high jobs and they dont want a reputation for rocking the boat)

[ozydave]

Can omniscient God who,

Knows the future find,

The omnipotence to,

Change His future mind?

[pcstru]

Personally - I think that agnosticism is the only logical stance to take

That's a curious view of logic.

- there can be no proof (or disproof) of deities in any meaningful way - so it makes sense to take that on the chin and get on with our lives, mostly following the idea of "do as you would be done by" which seems to cover most of the sensible bits of religious direction..

 

Logic doesn't care about which axioms you choose. If your belief was that sinners are evil, can corrupt the innocent or (worse) other believers and be sent to god ASAP for judgement, then it would be logical to kill them. Theologians used pretty much that train of 'logic' to justify burning witches and other heretics. Logic is just a mathematical system of evaluating the truth of something but relies on axiomatic truths - which are the 'belief'.

 

Being 'agnostic' is like pascals wager. The flaw is making assumptions about god/gods. Pascal posits that he might as well believe in god because if god doesn't exist his belief costs nothing and if god does exist, his belief then saves him from eternal damnation. OK, but that assumes he chose the *right* god to believe in. Perhaps believing in god X will make god Y very very angry indeed.

Edited May 22, 2013 by pcstru
spelling (not of the witching kind)

[ozydave]

I believe that science and faith go hand in hand. I think that God is the who, the what, and the why. And science is the how it all fits together.

Science and religion are diametrical opposed. I am confident that Galileo would also have something to say as well. Through the ages religion has stifled advancements in science. As science makes new breakthroughs and discoveries its interesting to watch how the religious twist / turn and interpret their scriptures to fit the now known facts.

[pcstru]

there is a difference between the religion and the institution.

I struggle to get what you might mean by that. It is either so trivially tautologous as to be meaningless or it is just plain wrong. Obviously they are different words so there is a difference (trivial, tautology), but if I think of the institution that is (say) the Catholic Church, it is so closely identified with Catholicism as a religion that it becomes fairly meaningless to draw a distinction - there is no difference.

i suspect most church goers dont give 2 hoots about gay marriage or women priests. the people in charge on the other hand do but i suspect its more enlighten self interest (less competition for high jobs and they dont want a reputation for rocking the boat)

 

Perhaps you are saying most church goers don't give a hoot about god, the bible and aren't really religious in any meaningful sense? Injustice and discrimination are things done by people not institutions or religion - I get that. But it is people as individuals that have strong 'opinions' that their religion says women should be silent in church. Turns out that 'opinion' is not drawn from some old testament nonsense where bears kill children for making fun of ugly old men (like children do) or the favoured are told to submit their daughters to rape by a stranger, it's new testament stuff written by Paul. So these are people who go to church but don't give a hoot about the Bible! Yet apparently the best selling point so far of religion is that it offers a good guide as to how to live your life. Where is that guide if it is not the sacred texts?

[ozydave]

This thread has been very interesting.

 

I do often wonder to what extent church leaders really believe what they say they believe. If the bible is the word of God surly it cannot be open for interpretation.

Osama bin Laden is the only religious leader that truly truly believed what he said he believes.

Edited May 22, 2013 by ozydave

[Garacesh]

As much as this is a serious discussion, and I don't want to resort to something often used in situations of ridicule or trolling..

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18347[/ATTACH]

[jinnantonnixx]

As much as this is a serious discussion, and I don't want to resort to something often used in situations of ridicule or trolling..

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18347[/ATTACH]

 

No trolling at all - people of a particular religion have dismissed all other religions with as much ease as a believer of another religion, or indeed an atheist, dismisses theirs.

 

Sam Harris makes this point far more eloquently that I can.

 

Edited May 22, 2013 by jinnantonnixx

[jinnantonnixx]

I've listened to and watched a lot of debates on religion as it's something I was very interested in a while ago. I have less interest in the debates these days as the matter is fairly settled for me.

 

If you're interested, may I suggest watching the debates involving William Lane Craig, Sam Harris, Arif Ahmed, Peter Millican, Christopher Hitchens.

 

William Lane Craig is a master debater and one of the strongest debaters amongst the Christian apologists. If you're not familiar with the Lincoln-Douglass (LD) debating style, he's poetry in motion. I've heard his arguments many times, and in my opinion they are all dismantled by John Allen Paulos. He does blow a lot of smoke about the problems of infinities in several of his debates, which instead of illustrating his points, wastes a lot of his debating time on something that Cantor figured out centuries ago.

 

Watch William L Craig, he doesn't forgive any 'drops' in the LD debating style.

 

All of these debates are available on Youtube or Reasonable Faith site.

Edited May 22, 2013 by jinnantonnixx

[teejay]

Perhaps you are saying most church goers don't give a hoot about god, the bible and aren't really religious in any meaningful sense? Injustice and discrimination are things done by people not institutions or religion - I get that. But it is people as individuals that have strong 'opinions' that their religion says women should be silent in church. Turns out that 'opinion' is not drawn from some old testament nonsense where bears kill children for making fun of ugly old men (like children do) or the favoured are told to submit their daughters to rape by a stranger, it's new testament stuff written by Paul. So these are people who go to church but don't give a hoot about the Bible! Yet apparently the best selling point so far of religion is that it offers a good guide as to how to live your life. Where is that guide if it is not the sacred texts?

 

Ah yes, the 'women should be silent' passage, this again shows the error of quoting small passages without reading around it. He is actually rebuking the church for not allowing women to speak or use their gifts in church, it should actually have quotation marks around it as it is now understood to be a quote from Jewish oral law. There is a similar problem with the use of sections of Paul's letters to denounce homosexuality as there is a problem of translation of a specific word in the original text, which some Bible translations use the word sodomy, others use different words putting a completely different meaning to the verses.

It is always difficult when people cherry pick parts of the bible, usually to condem and judge the actions of others, when especially with the New Testament the overall message is of love and tolerance of each other.

[SpuffMonkey]

That's a curious view of logic.

 

 

Logic doesn't care about which axioms you choose. If your belief was that sinners are evil, can corrupt the innocent or (worse) other believers and be sent to god ASAP for judgement, then it would be logical to kill them. Theologians used pretty much that train of 'logic' to justify burning witches and other heretics. Logic is just a mathematical system of evaluating the truth of something but relies on axiomatic truths - which are the 'belief'.

 

Being 'agnostic' is like pascals wager. The flaw is making assumptions about god/gods. Pascal posits that he might as well believe in god because if god doesn't exist his belief costs nothing and if god does exist, his belief then saves him from eternal damnation. OK, but that assumes he chose the *right* god to believe in. Perhaps believing in god X will make god Y very very angry indeed.

 

Not at all - if you think that - you really don't know what being agnostic means - have a read of Agnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia if you think Russell, Kierkegaard etc are woolly thinkers and not able to take logic to its limits, I feel you might be erring to the conceited side.

 

Being agnostic makes no assumptions about god/gods - it just says that there is no evidence either for or against that isn't completely subjective.

 

Dogmatic beliefs either for or against are just that - beliefs - neither side can provide any evidence.

[sted]

I struggle to get what you might mean by that. It is either so trivially tautologous as to be meaningless or it is just plain wrong. Obviously they are different words so there is a difference (trivial, tautology), but if I think of the institution that is (say) the Catholic Church, it is so closely identified with Catholicism as a religion that it becomes fairly meaningless to draw a distinction - there is no difference.

ok then as simply as I can think of. Where the institutions leaders think the religion should go/do is not necessarily the same as what the "believers" think as the "top brass" are removed from the grassroots and we can all think of examples when people in a position of power do things their member s wouldn't approve of

[pcstru]

Not at all - if you think that - you really don't know what being agnostic means - have a read of Agnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia if you think Russell, Kierkegaard etc are woolly thinkers and not able to take logic to its limits, I feel you might be erring to the conceited side.

Conceit, perhaps! I feel as Russell does that Agnostic has a rather specialist philosophical meaning, which is not the common understanding. In the 70 years since Russel said :

 

"As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods."

 

the common understanding of the word agnostic has moved further away from the pure sceptic root that Russell was grappling with.

 

Being agnostic makes no assumptions about god/gods - it just says that there is no evidence either for or against that isn't completely subjective.

 

Dogmatic beliefs either for or against are just that - beliefs - neither side can provide any evidence.

 

No. Disbelieving when there is no evidence at all for a claim, is a rational sceptical view. There is nothing dogmatic about it. The onus for evidence is on those who are making fantastical claims for the existence of something, whether it is mystical super beings, aliens making crop circles, perpetual motion devices or magic wavy sticks that supposedly sniff out bombs.

Edited May 23, 2013 by pcstru

[pcstru]

Ah yes, the 'women should be silent' passage, this again shows the error of quoting small passages without reading around it. He is actually rebuking the church for not allowing women to speak or use their gifts in church, it should actually have quotation marks around it as it is now understood to be a quote from Jewish oral law. There is a similar problem with the use of sections of Paul's letters to denounce homosexuality as there is a problem of translation of a specific word in the original text, which some Bible translations use the word sodomy, others use different words putting a completely different meaning to the verses.

It is always difficult when people cherry pick parts of the bible, usually to condem and judge the actions of others, when especially with the New Testament the overall message is of love and tolerance of each other.

 

And yet there are people - people who have spent years at university studying theology, who cite exactly those passages to support their view that women should not be priests. Who am I to believe?

[X-13]

Who am I to believe?

 

Nobody. Make up your own mind.

[sted]

And yet there are people - people who have spent years at university studying theology, who cite exactly those passages to support their view that women should not be priests. Who am I to believe?

 

but the problem is the arnt coming at it from a blank slate. Pretty much by definition anyone capable of doing theology has preconceived ideas coming in and being an emotive subject will probably go with what they were taught when re-evaluating rather than from a neutral perspective. Also if you too heavily concentrate on a few verses and don't give equal weight to context then you again can define an answer by the question

[pcstru]

@sted - the problem seems to be that people can use the Bible to support pretty much any position they like. Your have one view, others have another view. Some of those views are ones that I'm sure you would find quite repugnant (I'll can dig out some musings from an extreme right wing southern baptist preacher that will have most moderate Christians reaching for the sick bag), but the call is that we respect others views. The reason I took this digression is to examine that. You and teejay are simply saying those views are wrong interpretations. Well, of course, that is YOUR opinion. You don't seem to be according other views much 'respect' if you just dismiss them as 'wrong'. So what exactly does respecting other views entail?

[sted]

@sted - the problem seems to be that people can use the Bible to support pretty much any position they like. Your have one view, others have another view. Some of those views are ones that I'm sure you would find quite repugnant (I'll can dig out some musings from an extreme right wing southern baptist preacher that will have most moderate Christians reaching for the sick bag), but the call is that we respect others views. The reason I took this digression is to examine that. You and teejay are simply saying those views are wrong interpretations. Well, of course, that is YOUR opinion. You don't seem to be according other views much 'respect' if you just dismiss them as 'wrong'. So what exactly does respecting other views entail?

 

im not saying they are wrong Christian values are on the whole a good way to live your life BUT anyththing that is believed with such force and without "thought" is a very dangerous thing indeed

[pcstru]

Nobody. Make up your own mind.

 

The problem isn't my mind. If I respect others views, my own views don't really come into it. If I respect my own views, then those views say the views of (arbitary) others are mad, bizzare, nonsense at best and discriminatory, unjust and possibly dangerous at worst.

 

I gave some examples of what Christians profess to believe. Other (I presume) Christians then tell me those views are wrong / misinterpretations. My point in bringing them up wasn't to discuss the minutia of the belief itself, but what 'respecting' such a belief actually means.

[X-13]

I gave some examples of what Christians profess to believe. Other (I presume) Christians then tell me those views are wrong / misinterpretations. My point in bringing them up wasn't to discuss the minutia of the belief itself, but what 'respecting' such a belief actually means.

 

It means agreeing to disagree.

 

You can question each others beliefs and present your reasoning for what you believe and/or why you think they're wrong, but at the heart of it you accept that however wrong they may be, they're still allowed to believe the things do.

[Willott]

It means agreeing to disagree.

 

You can question each others beliefs and present your reasoning for what you believe and/or why you think they're wrong, but at the heart of it you accept that however wrong they may be, they're still allowed to believe the things do.

 

Only thing I would add to that sentence is "accept that however wrong you think/believe they may be".

 

Considering the OP, I think that this has gone significantly OT and also, moved away from that simple sentence - with suggestions that people who are religious are illogical, without thought, unintelligent fantacists. To be honest, I find that downright insulting - to call anyone on a forum which is for those who work in IT illogical is an insult to our trade, and don't get me started on unintelligent. And fantacists - I would have thought the majority of us have also spent time on MMORPGs, pretending to others we're something we're not, creating characters in the likeness we would wish.

[pcstru]

It means agreeing to disagree.

 

You can question each others beliefs and present your reasoning for what you believe and/or why you think they're wrong, but at the heart of it you accept that however wrong they may be, they're still allowed to believe the things do.

 

I'm a little uncomfortable with that. I think you need to look at the implications of the meaning of a belief. If I say I believe X but I consistently act in a way that shows I don't believe X, then in what way can I be said to believe X. The issue is that a professed belief is rather meaningless without action. A true belief influences action, you base your actions on your core belief.

 

So should I 'respect' someone's 'right' to believe that Women are inferior and should be kept out of certain jobs. That belief, if it is a belief of any consequence will see them discriminate against women. Should I 'respect' someone who believes that black people are inferior and should be sent back to their own country. What if they are a policeman or teacher - should I respect their belief then?

 

Agreeing to disagree is OK up to a point. The problem is that religion is not a passive player in the society in which I live, it is an active, coercive force that actively tries to mould social values to it's own ends. Some of those ends I might agree with "thou shalt not kill" seems like a good rule to live by, but when I don't agree with the values they seek to impose (or continue), I don't think just sitting back and "agreeing to disagree" is necessarily the way to go. The opposite end of the spectrum from that is "fighting for my rights" and "taking up arms to defend my freedoms". I don't think either of those are compatible with "respecting" others views.

[pcstru]

Considering the OP, I think that this has gone significantly OT and also, moved away from that simple sentence - with suggestions that people who are religious are illogical, without thought, unintelligent fantacists.

 

Willott and anyone else. I apologise unreservedly if you take my opinions in that light. However an honest and frank discussion/exploration of views necessarily means exploring those opinions. My feeling is the discussion is being conducted quite politely without malice but that the range of opinions will necessarily involve views you do not agree with and actually cannot agree with - which is part of my point.

[Willott]

So should I 'respect' someone's 'right' to believe that Women are inferior and should be kept out of certain jobs. That belief, if it is a belief of any consequence will see them discriminate against women. Should I 'respect' someone who believes that black people are inferior and should be sent back to their own country. What if they are a policeman or teacher - should I respect their belief then?

 

As long as their belief doesn't impact on the job they do, then yes - they may believe that, for arguments sake, women shouldn't be allowed out unaccompanied in the street (random obscure example I know, but illustration), but if they were a policeman, they should also respect the law as it is and not arrest an unaccompanied woman in the street - they may campaign for a change in law in their own time, but it should not affect the way they abide by the laws they are set.