EPTCritical Thinking and Skepticism - Page 33
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Canada506 Posts
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MrTortoise
1388 Posts
For someone who thinks critically the essence of religion is a set of beliefs and behaviours (which covers thought patterns) that have no reasonable (that is evidence based) explanation. As such FAITH itself is the very core of religion. If you dont believe me ehy not go read a HUGE chunk of philosophy over the years ... the majority of philosophy is one side trying to say faith gurantees things we cant prove ... the other side says that bullshit and is extremley unhelpful in understanding things To deny faith and religion are the same thing is just plain wrong. If you think you do not haver a religion you are very very wrong. Religion is ermbedded in our culture and language and out baqsic assumptions about the world. You could even say our perception of the world is shaped due to our upbringing in societies assumptions about everything - and that is a religious frameowrk that you CANNOT avoid. The big problem is that the framework is horribly out of date (and always will be) because it suffers from the inertia of people who just accept status quo and refuse to think and reason for themselves. The worst group for this is usually the church because they also have many views that are thousands of years out of date and hold little validity now. A harmlesss example being halal, a much less harmless example that christian societies have is the concept of the 'best' everything converges to 1 point ... rather than accepting that a curved geometric surface can have many minima points. This comes from an egocentric view of the world that is still embedded in our langauge adn 'common sense' views of the mind. Dont get me wrong, using eason is still faith based .... the point is though that it criticises and aims to improive itself. constantly. Wheras religious beliefs do the opposite, through faith they prove themselves and so fly completley in the face of all evidence as a way to validate their existence. By saying 'No, This' in the face of truth they are affirming their existence. | ||
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arbitrageur
Australia1202 Posts
On July 31 2011 13:58 JesusOurSaviour wrote: Don't just say F does not = MA if you haven't done a basic physics experiment showing just that. In the same vein, don't just say "Jesus is a myth" without doing any kind of research. "Seek and you shall find". This applies to any kind of knowledge, knowledge of God included. This is a crap analogy IMO. I'll try to argue why... So for the two scenarios we have two consensus: A huge population of Christians agree that Jesus is the "son" of God, and a huge population of physicists agree that F=MA for classical systems. The problem is, (A) the former group have crap epistemic criteria, whilst the scientific method is used by the latter group. The latter is much better at solving problems. We have all the technology today because of it. The former believes in a book but disbelieves in thousands of other books with no justification. Conclusion: The physicists' consensus is much more reliable than the Christians' consensus. (B) There has been no reason advanced as to why the thousands of other mutually exclusive religions are incorrect and the Christians' claim is correct, yet there is evidence as to why F=MA, and not F=x, where x is thousands of other combinations of variables/equations. I'm sure there's many others that demonstrate the falsity of your analogy, but I'm having a break from trying to think of new ones for now. Interesting factoid: religious people have significantly lower IQ than the irreligious (in the closed system of a developed society). Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence (You can check the primary sources by yourself, I trust). The above is a scientific claim, not an ad hominem attack. So I see no reason why I should be banned for posting this. | ||
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MrTortoise
1388 Posts
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arbitrageur
Australia1202 Posts
On July 31 2011 14:57 MrTortoise wrote: Science adapts and adjusts and verifies and changes. Hey mate, Christianity adapts too! They no longer believe in slavery despite biblical support. Same for the death of homosexuals (at least in the developed nations), genocidal tendencies (hundreds of references of biblical figures killing entire populations with support from God, cutting off their foreskin, killing children, etc), women speaking in church damnit they've adjusted this! “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12) I Cor. 14:33-36 - "Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church." Scientists adjust theories to fit new data. Christians cherry pick their beliefs to fit new cultural attitudes of the time period and country they live in. | ||
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5-s
United States1674 Posts
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Bibdy
United States3481 Posts
On July 31 2011 15:05 arbitrageur wrote: Hey mate, Christianity adapts too! They no longer believe in slavery despite biblical support. Same for the death of homosexuals (at least in the developed nations), genocidal tendencies (hundreds of references of biblical figures killing entire populations with support from God, cutting off their foreskin, killing children, etc), women speaking in church damnit they've adjusted this! “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12) I Cor. 14:33-36 - "Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church." Scientists adjust theories to fit new data. Christians cherry pick their beliefs to fit new cultural attitudes of the time period and country they live in. I think there's a very big difference between an evolution of ideas, and people picking and choosing which parts they like. One minute an anti-gay Christian will quote from Leviticus the passage saying words to the effect of "No man shall lie with another man, as they do a woman. For this is an abomination.", while simultaneously dismissing all of the passages of the Bible that seek to dominate and control women. Last I checked, the Bible itself hasn't changed in a fair number of years. Only the methods and applications in which people apply its teachings to their lives. | ||
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Leporello
United States2845 Posts
Allowing doubt over your own thoughts will lead to more sympathetic reactions. Forgiveness is a great example of this. Anger is a very strong emotion, one that people can often never even get over. It's easy to stay mad at someone. It takes a rational mind to turn that around into genuine forgiveness. And yet, the act of practicing religion is an act of settling in your convictions, of trusting your own judgment and beliefs. It's just very contradictory to me. | ||
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strills_
Australia39 Posts
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JesusOurSaviour
United Arab Emirates1141 Posts
On July 31 2011 15:45 Bibdy wrote: Sigh, @Arbitrageur, If you really want to know what CHristians think on the passages which you have just quoted, shoot me a message. Trolling is fun and I guess it makes you feel very smart when you troll the bible. I think there's a very big difference between an evolution of ideas, and people picking and choosing which parts they like. One minute an anti-gay Christian will quote from Leviticus the passage saying words to the effect of "No man shall lie with another man, as they do a woman. For this is an abomination.", while simultaneously dismissing all of the passages of the Bible that seek to dominate and control women. Last I checked, the Bible itself hasn't changed in a fair number of years. Only the methods and applications in which people apply its teachings to their lives. @bibdy - we have never claimed or never will claim to "Dominate and control" woman. Women who are believers will understand their role as helpers within a Godly household. Female Christians who believe in feminism and not the bible will not agree with what 1 Tim / Eph / 1 Cor says about the Godly household. But we must ask: what is the role of the man? Le'ts have a look... "21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body." Now when you read any part of the bible in context, you will see what we REALLY believe instead of twisting our words. If you claim to be an intelligent person, then you need to find out how Christians respond to these "seemingly trashy" passages from the bible. No we don't respond by cherry-picking. | ||
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arbitrageur
Australia1202 Posts
On July 31 2011 19:22 JesusOurSaviour wrote: Sigh, @Arbitrageur, If you really want to know what CHristians think on the passages which you have just quoted, shoot me a message. Trolling is fun and I guess it makes you feel very smart when you troll the bible. What's the trolling? I provided one case of cherry picking that proves the claim that at least some cherry picking occurs. 1 - Bible says women can't speak in church. 2 - Women speak in all churches I know of. Conclusion: Modern Christians engage in cherry picking, where they ignore at least some parts of the Bible and in fact go against what it says. Side note: Do not think that I'm implying a magnitude of cherry picking/ignoring in my conclusion. My only claim is that it exists as proven by the above example. Q.E.D. I'll spell it out clearly for you, as you've clearly ignored the quotations I've listed. I Cor. 14:33-36 - "Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church." And yet they speak in church. N.B.: I'm not disputing that the bible has some marvelous things to say that counter many of the barbaric things about the bible. My claim does not extend to the denial of this. My claim is that there's barbaric things that modern Christians ignore // i.e. there's cherry picking, as proven conclusively in this post. Now my question to you: why is it that your church allows women to speak in church despite the bible saying they cannot do so? (Assuming that they do allow them to speak in your church, and assuming that you attend church.). Do you think God would be very happy about your church ignoring "His" word, and in fact doing the exact opposite thing that "He" commands? | ||
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JesusOurSaviour
United Arab Emirates1141 Posts
On July 31 2011 14:55 arbitrageur wrote: hmmm I'm surrounded by Christian doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers. Dunno if those dudes are dumb or not, you be the judge. This is a crap analogy IMO. I'll try to argue why... So for the two scenarios we have two consensus: A huge population of Christians agree that Jesus is the "son" of God, and a huge population of physicists agree that F=MA for classical systems. The problem is, (A) the former group have crap epistemic criteria, whilst the scientific method is used by the latter group. The latter is much better at solving problems. We have all the technology today because of it. The former believes in a book but disbelieves in thousands of other books with no justification. Conclusion: The physicists' consensus is much more reliable than the Christians' consensus. (B) There has been no reason advanced as to why the thousands of other mutually exclusive religions are incorrect and the Christians' claim is correct, yet there is evidence as to why F=MA, and not F=x, where x is thousands of other combinations of variables/equations. I'm sure there's many others that demonstrate the falsity of your analogy, but I'm having a break from trying to think of new ones for now. Interesting factoid: religious people have significantly lower IQ than the irreligious (in the closed system of a developed society). Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence (You can check the primary sources by yourself, I trust). The above is a scientific claim, not an ad hominem attack. So I see no reason why I should be banned for posting this. That said, even with all this "education" and being in the "top end" of society, we (educated Christians) all have doubts and weakness in our faith at times. We are only human, plus we worship an invisible God. Sounds foolish? You bet. The bible itself says that we should be recognised as foolish by the rest of the world. Here's a small excerpt out of 1 Corinthians ch 1. I recommend you to read the whole chapter, it's good stuff. 18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” and ... 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. You may call me foolish / dumb / illogical / irrational. Because we are deservedly so. To deny that I am "foolish" is to deny my faith. | ||
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JesusOurSaviour
United Arab Emirates1141 Posts
On July 31 2011 19:25 arbitrageur wrote: Well cited and a very logical progression of thought in your post.What's the trolling? I provided one case of cherry picking that proves the claim that at least some cherry picking occurs. 1 - Bible says women can't speak in church. 2 - Women speak in all churches I know of. Conclusion: Modern Christians engage in cherry picking, where they ignore at least some parts of the Bible and in fact go against what it says. Side note: Do not think that I'm implying a magnitude of cherry picking/ignoring in my conclusion. My only claim is that it exists as proven by the above example. Q.E.D. I'll spell it out clearly for you, as you've clearly ignored the quotations I've listed. I Cor. 14:33-36 - "Let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the Law says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church." And yet they speak in church. N.B.: I'm not disputing that the bible has some marvelous things to say that counter many of the barbaric things about the bible. My claim does not extend to the denial of this. My claim is that there's barbaric things that modern Christians ignore // i.e. there's cherry picking, as proven conclusively in this post. Now my question to you: why is it that your church allows women to speak in church despite the bible saying they cannot do so? (Assuming that they do allow them to speak in your church, and assuming that you attend church.). Do you think God would be very happy about your church ignoring "His" word, and in fact doing the exact opposite thing that "He" commands? My response is spoilered as to not clog up TL forum space + Show Spoiler + Now I will present you two general ways Christians interpret this. 1. "It's old / let's just ignore it because it's too much hassle / we won't follow it / let's be politically correct / the bible is written by men" 2. Let's find out why Paul wrote this, what is the cultural context, what reasons does he give and let's apply it to our church. Bible-believing Christians will follow number 2. In this case, theologians will tell you that Paul is replying to a previous letter from the Corinthian church regarding a whole host of issues that is destroying the church (A son having sex with stepmother + the church praises him for doing it?!?!?! + people getting drunk and discriminating the poor at the Lords Supper!?!?!! Hectic.) So one of the issues presented were Women who seemed to be standing up, speaking out of turn, exposing their hair (against greek cultural norms) etc. Paul in turn, answers all of their questions and gives reasons every time. In the case of women speaking out of turn, please read all of ch 14. There has obviously been a problem with woman speaking out of turn to disrupt worship, which should be orderly. Disrupting worship meaning causing arguments, causing strife and leading to a disorderly gathering. After all, believers need to be of one body and one accord when coming together to worship God in an assembly. I have to admit - Paul seems a little drastic in his response. But then he repeats it in another letter to Timothy re: church conduct - with the same message again. He cites genesis in that case I believe (1 Timothy 2). Do I agree with Paul's explanation of why he gives this instruction (1 Timothy 2)? Yes. Is it applicable to our churches? Maybe. In the current political climate, to tell women to be 100% quiet during the worship part of church is suicide for any pastor / group of elders. But to teach the women of the church to submit to their husbands in quietness and humility as is accorded of them, is a very strong biblical concept. So that is how most churches go about applying this passage. So are we cherry picking? You could argue we are. But we understood the background to Paul's instructions (women were standing up, speaking out of turn and causing strife) and we know Paul's reasons for his instructions (cites Genesis). So our response is that women need to know that they are helpers and as helpers - not cause disorder during the formal part of a gathering. They can talk, but it must not cause disorder. If they have a question which they want to ask, they can ask their husbands after the formal part of the gathering finishes. This is a highly fired up topic and what I've given is mostly my point of view. I have met many Christian girls who agree with this point of view, and many who would L- O - L at me for being crazy. | ||
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Cel.erity
United States4890 Posts
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Thorakh
Netherlands1788 Posts
On July 31 2011 13:58 JesusOurSaviour wrote: My decision to reject any current mainstream religion was based on:apologies to you thorakh for sparking some tempers. I will rephrase myself. So the premise here is that kids should not be "indoctrinated" with anything, but given the ability to decide for themselves what to believe, how to think and how to reason. So given that you have made your choice to reject Jesus, I was just wondering what kind of answers your "critical thinking" has since provided, to the biggest questions which we face in our lives. Namely why we are here, what is death, what happens after death etc. I totally agree with you - every kid needs to be taught: Think before you believe. Investigate, test the evidence and try things out before you judge it. Don't just say F does not = MA if you haven't done a basic physics experiment showing just that. In the same vein, don't just say "Jesus is a myth" without doing any kind of research. "Seek and you shall find". This applies to any kind of knowledge, knowledge of God included. 1) The fact that there are contradictions everywhere in the teachings of a religion, which are not supposed to be there if we are to take those teachings for the divine word of a god. Cherry picking is not acceptable with the word of a divine being, so you either practice everything, or you're not practicing the religion at all, but instead the view on life you find most acceptable and at that point you're not following the divine word of a god anymore, but your own reasoning. If you do not view the Bible as the word of god and use that as an argument in favor of cherry picking, you are in fact not following a divine being anymore, but just some dudes who long ago wrote something in a book. 2) The lack of any real evidence for any religion and the fact that there is an infinite amount of imaginable gods (and that's only the 'god' explanation for the universe, there are an infinite amount of other imaginable and unimaginable explanations too). Why should religion X be the correct one while there is an infinite amount of other religions out there? For every religion you follow, there is an infinite amount of other imaginable religions that will condemn you to eternal suffering for following religion X. So if religion X happened to be true (a miniscule, almost nonexistent chance) and I did not follow it, the odds were stacked against me so heavily, I already lost the moment I was born. 3) I find lots of things in mainstream religions that I feel do not match with my morals and values. How I got to my morals and values was simple reasoning: the natural purpose of life is to produce succesful offspring and further the species. Therefore we should promote peaceful coexistence with other humans to accelerate progress. We should also take care of the earth we live on to make sure other species don't die out due to our actions because biodiversity is important. Taking care of the earth directly helps us survive. From this line of reasoning follows that something that does not harm anything or anyone is not immoral (example: homosexuality, working on sundays) and this is the main part that doesn't match with many religious teachings. If I get presented with a real argument against any kind of opinion I have, I change my opinion and that is intellectual honesty. | ||
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mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On July 31 2011 13:58 JesusOurSaviour wrote: apologies to you thorakh for sparking some tempers. I will rephrase myself. So the premise here is that kids should not be "indoctrinated" with anything, but given the ability to decide for themselves what to believe, how to think and how to reason. So given that you have made your choice to reject Jesus, I was just wondering what kind of answers your "critical thinking" has since provided, to the biggest questions which we face in our lives. Namely why we are here, what is death, what happens after death etc. I totally agree with you - every kid needs to be taught: Think before you believe. Investigate, test the evidence and try things out before you judge it. Don't just say F does not = MA if you haven't done a basic physics experiment showing just that. In the same vein, don't just say "Jesus is a myth" without doing any kind of research. "Seek and you shall find". This applies to any kind of knowledge, knowledge of God included. I find the questions you name "biggest" as pretty irrelevant and useless or pretty easy to answer. Why are we here ? Because we were born would be answer, but you probably did not mean it so literally (although I will point out that this is the only answer that is worth mentioning). If you meant it as what is our purpose then answers to that are plentiful. The reasonable one, because of absence of evidence is to assume no special purpose other than biological ones. But there could be others (whatever purpose the creator of Matrix, god(s), aliens, ... had when creating world/us), but so far they are improbable and have no evidence. But if you meant the question in the philosophical "meaning of life" sense my answer is : that is meaningless question. Not every question that is gramatically correct has meaning. And not even every question that seems to have meaning has it. The second kind is basically the same as first. Your question is in that case similar to the question : How colors smell ?. The reason it does not seem so nonsensical on the first glance is that it, unlike the "smell" question, uses vague words on a very abstract level that people feel have meaning. But in reality they just extended the area of use of the word "meaning" to abstract concepts that we have no practical experience with thus preventing us to see that the question is as nonsensical as "How colors smell ?". As for death it is the body stopping working as per dictionary definition ? And after this the body rots unless prevented from (freezing/..). | ||
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thehitman
1105 Posts
I mean if you already received a lot of hate for this thread the first time, maybe you should stop bumping it and trying to get viewership for that guy. | ||
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mcc
Czech Republic4646 Posts
On July 31 2011 20:26 Thorakh wrote: My decision to reject any current mainstream religion was based on: 1) The fact that there are contradictions everywhere in the teachings of a religion, which are not supposed to be there if we are to take those teachings for the divine word of a god. Cherry picking is not acceptable with the word of a divine being, so you either practice everything, or you're not practicing the religion at all, but instead the view on life you find most acceptable and at that point you're not following the divine word of a god anymore, but your own reasoning. If you do not view the Bible as the word of god and use that as an argument in favor of cherry picking, you are in fact not following a divine being anymore, but just some dudes who long ago wrote something in a book. 2) The lack of any real evidence for any religion and the fact that there is an infinite amount of imaginable gods (and that's only the 'god' explanation for the universe, there are an infinite amount of other imaginable and unimaginable explanations too). Why should religion X be the correct one while there is an infinite amount of other religions out there? For every religion you follow, there is an infinite amount of other imaginable religions that will condemn you to eternal suffering for following religion X. So if religion X happened to be true (a miniscule, almost nonexistent chance) and I did not follow it, the odds were stacked against me so heavily, I already lost the moment I was born. 3) I find lots of things in mainstream religions that I feel do not match with my morals and values. How I got to my morals and values was simple reasoning: the natural purpose of life is to produce succesful offspring and further the species. Therefore we should promote peaceful coexistence with other humans to accelerate progress. We should also take care of the earth we live on to make sure other species don't die out due to our actions because biodiversity is important. Taking care of the earth directly helps us survive. From this line of reasoning follows that something that does not harm anything or anyone is not immoral (example: homosexuality, working on sundays) and this is the main part that doesn't match with many religious teachings. If I get presented with a real argument against any kind of opinion I have, I change my opinion and that is intellectual honesty. I would heavily suggest not basing your morality on evolution as directly as you do. From evolutionary perspective furthering the species is pretty secondary goal that is subservient to the primary goal of spreading your own genes/having biggest reproductive success yourself mostly at the cost of other members of your species. There is no reason to try and base your morality so deeply in evolution. Why not base your morality in ... morality. We as a social species are born with a core moral principles, if you take it as a base and extend them as far as possible you will find that it matches pretty well your current one. That is no accident, because nearly every human has his moral code from biological roots. The difference is how far they extended the core principles and how few exceptions they do. To illustrate what I mean. In prehistorical past those principles were mostly limited to your own little group, thus killing memebrs of others groups was pretty ok. As civilization goes on the group necessarily gets bigger and bigger and today it seems in that regard we are close to going from nations to whole of humanity ( I am talking about what is considered moral norm, not individual exception as there will always be people who kill,....). That is about extending the rules, now about exceptions. Some time ago there was exception made for black people allowing slavery, then it was removed. Now homosexuals are in many countries still an exception, but it is changing. In the end if you extend the rules that you apply to people close to you to all people and remove all exceptions you get reasonable moral system. But to make it more formal so you can analyze complex situations logically you can use utilitarianism with utility based on minimalization of suffering to get similar moral code. Note that the base of that system, minimalization of suffering, is based on one core biological moral value and that is the reason why you get so similar results to our innate moral code. | ||
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zeehar
Korea (South)3804 Posts
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Aelfric
Turkey1496 Posts
On July 31 2011 21:32 thehitman wrote: Why are you posting why some random person on youtube says about god or things he thinks are true/false. I mean if you already received a lot of hate for this thread the first time, maybe you should stop bumping it and trying to get viewership for that guy. I didn't recieve any hate, it's just people like the videos and people who don't. Can't expect everyone to love or hate. It is what it is and i think this is good enough subject to discuss and the videos are educational. | ||
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