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QuoteSo you think God does make them? Even though your religion tells you that he only made 3 specific people and has no hand in the rest?
What other things do you disagree with your religion on? Do you think Jesus was a woman even though Bible tells you otherwise?
Why is it OK to ignore one thing your religious text tells you and believe the opposite is the truth, and not ok to ignore another element… such as having wheat in your wafer?
Point is, if some things are nice and flexible so we can each have our own views/beliefs/interpretations of them, then why is Catholic dogma so restrictive as to deny this young girl Communion?
If such a big thing as who actually creates life on this planet is open to such interpretation, why are the ingredients of a simple wafer so important?
LOL!! EXACTLY!!
And I think that the way it works is this: anyone who doesn't chance upon the true knowledge of god and his true rules for living as humans, despite misdirection by all sorts of religious know-it-alls, is fucked for all eternity because they didn't worship the right god the right way. Only those who luck upon the right religion and follow, by chance the one right set of rules lost in all the bullshit ones, only those are going to heaven.
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
QuoteQuoteFor someone who claims to be anti-religion, you certainly show up in a lot of "religion" threads
There is a very big difference between not believing in a religion and being anti religion. I don't believe in them, but I'm not against it at all. Believe in whatever the fuck you want to as long as it doesn't directly harm me or my family, because then I'll kick your ass
Uh, see, that's the problem, and that's why I AM "anti-religion." If I had my preference, NO one would bother believing in religion.
If there are any religions that DO leave everyone the fuck alone and worship privately and quietly, they aren't a large enough proportion of all the religions out there to really make a difference. Instead, MOST religions engender hatred, distrust, strife and killing between them and other religions. They have since the dawn of humanity. They are a problem, and despite the fact that they often claim to preach peace, they achieve the exact opposite, and they prevent peace.
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
QuoteQuoteI didn't fuck up. It's SICK and FUCKED UP to judge ME, and hold eternal punishment over MY head, because some alleged ancestors were the ones who sinned.
You have to beleive in the religion in order to beleive in original sin. If you don't buy into the Catholic religion as defined by the Vatican you don't need to concern yourself with eternal punishment.
But the people who DO believe in that crock of shit actually DO tell me that it actually DOESN'T matter whether I don't believe in it! They say that REGARDLESS of not believing in god and heaven and hell, if I don't accept god's salvation I'm going to hell!
You make it seems as though religion is like a law against speeding, where if I simply tell the cop I don't believe in speed limits, I won't be given a ticket and forced to pay a fine.
The Christians themselves constantly contradict what you said. The constantly maintain that even those who don't believe are still subject to god's law -- because according to them, those who don't believe are incorrect in their non-belief!
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
billvon 3,080
.thumb.jpg.4bb795e2eaf21b8b300039a5e1ec7f92.jpg)
> But certainly not telling them how it ACTUALLY is, and what TRULY awaits
> them at death. Because how could the Hindu vision of it be true if the
> Christrian vision of it is also true, and the Native American vision of it is
> also true?
Say five blind men go into a room to examine an elephant.
The first one finds his ear and says "an elephant is like a great flapping carpet." The second one finds his tail and says "an elephant is like a rope." The third finds his trunk and says "an elephant is like a large snake." The fourth finds his side and says "an elephant is like a great wall." The fifth one wanders a bit and does not find the elephant; he walks until he finds the opposite wall. "There is no elephant," he concludes.
Which one was right? If the first four did indeed find an elephant, how can they possibly all be right if they describe the elephant in different ways? If the fifth one finds no elephant at all, does that mean the elephant does not exist? Should the fifth one claim that there is clearly no elephant, because the others cannot agree on what an elephant is?
We are no better than blind men searching for that elephant, but in a room the size of the universe.
>Shit, if god made himself unquestionably known to me, I -- an avowed
>atheist -- would de facto believe in god right there on the spot.
Well, but again, you're trying to disbelieve the view of god as Zeus, as a guy with white hair who could appear before you and zap some thunderbolts out of his fingers. Let's take another view - let's say someone in the 1100's saw a burning figure fly out of the sky, land gently before him, and then use an amulet to make god's voice and image appear unto them. Did he just see god? Or did he just see someone make a night jump with a flare and a cellphone? If he did see that person as a god, would he be right? If you saw someone that could hurl thunderbolts, would you believe it was god?
But hey, you could probably start a new religion if you did believe it.
>I put to you that religion in all its forms is so jealously and pettily
>guarded that it ends up being responsible for so much hatred, enmity,
> strife and distrust that the harm that arises from it far outweighs the
>comfort we get from it.
Some do cause that. But you could say the same about politics in the US - it surely causes massive amounts of strife, fighting and even death. (How many people died in the civil war?) Does that mean we should give up the US political system? Or are there some benefits to our form of government, even when that system sometimes kills its own?
>It's like how you would enjoy wearing a diamond ruby and sapphire
>crown if every day you wore it you had to fend off threats of robbery
>and death because you chose to wear and display it.
If you were an american and you were in some place (say Greece) where americans were being picked on, would you claim you were from New Zealand? Would it be better to be a New Zealander than to be picked on?
>So if all the religions that claim to have god identified and understood
>(or, at least, have his rules understood) are equally valid even with
>conflicting dogma, I surmise that there really is no god waiting for us
>upon our death.
And you are perfectly free to believe that.
>And if that's the case, the only value of religion is how safe and secure
>and good it makes us feel on earth; and due to all the hatred and
>death that religious conflict brings us here on earth, I believe that is is
>beyond useless, it is harmful, and should be given up.
If religion were like caffeine, and its value were only in how it made us feel when we were using it, then I'd agree. It's a bit more than that.
>Atheists have very little to hate each other about.
Then why are genocidal tyrants and serial killers often atheist? There may be more to someone's outlook on life than what religion they are.
> them at death. Because how could the Hindu vision of it be true if the
> Christrian vision of it is also true, and the Native American vision of it is
> also true?
Say five blind men go into a room to examine an elephant.
The first one finds his ear and says "an elephant is like a great flapping carpet." The second one finds his tail and says "an elephant is like a rope." The third finds his trunk and says "an elephant is like a large snake." The fourth finds his side and says "an elephant is like a great wall." The fifth one wanders a bit and does not find the elephant; he walks until he finds the opposite wall. "There is no elephant," he concludes.
Which one was right? If the first four did indeed find an elephant, how can they possibly all be right if they describe the elephant in different ways? If the fifth one finds no elephant at all, does that mean the elephant does not exist? Should the fifth one claim that there is clearly no elephant, because the others cannot agree on what an elephant is?
We are no better than blind men searching for that elephant, but in a room the size of the universe.
>Shit, if god made himself unquestionably known to me, I -- an avowed
>atheist -- would de facto believe in god right there on the spot.
Well, but again, you're trying to disbelieve the view of god as Zeus, as a guy with white hair who could appear before you and zap some thunderbolts out of his fingers. Let's take another view - let's say someone in the 1100's saw a burning figure fly out of the sky, land gently before him, and then use an amulet to make god's voice and image appear unto them. Did he just see god? Or did he just see someone make a night jump with a flare and a cellphone? If he did see that person as a god, would he be right? If you saw someone that could hurl thunderbolts, would you believe it was god?
But hey, you could probably start a new religion if you did believe it.
>I put to you that religion in all its forms is so jealously and pettily
>guarded that it ends up being responsible for so much hatred, enmity,
> strife and distrust that the harm that arises from it far outweighs the
>comfort we get from it.
Some do cause that. But you could say the same about politics in the US - it surely causes massive amounts of strife, fighting and even death. (How many people died in the civil war?) Does that mean we should give up the US political system? Or are there some benefits to our form of government, even when that system sometimes kills its own?
>It's like how you would enjoy wearing a diamond ruby and sapphire
>crown if every day you wore it you had to fend off threats of robbery
>and death because you chose to wear and display it.
If you were an american and you were in some place (say Greece) where americans were being picked on, would you claim you were from New Zealand? Would it be better to be a New Zealander than to be picked on?
>So if all the religions that claim to have god identified and understood
>(or, at least, have his rules understood) are equally valid even with
>conflicting dogma, I surmise that there really is no god waiting for us
>upon our death.
And you are perfectly free to believe that.
>And if that's the case, the only value of religion is how safe and secure
>and good it makes us feel on earth; and due to all the hatred and
>death that religious conflict brings us here on earth, I believe that is is
>beyond useless, it is harmful, and should be given up.
If religion were like caffeine, and its value were only in how it made us feel when we were using it, then I'd agree. It's a bit more than that.
>Atheists have very little to hate each other about.
Then why are genocidal tyrants and serial killers often atheist? There may be more to someone's outlook on life than what religion they are.
QuoteQuoteBut certainly not telling them how it ACTUALLY is, and what TRULY awaits them at death. Because how could the Hindu vision of it be true if the Christrian vision of it is also true, and the Native American vision of it is also true?
perspective. you can only define an event from a single perception of it. yours.
Then why do religions claim to have the one single perspective that is valid and can tell you how the universe was created and how you should live, and the nature of god?
Regardless of our limited powers of observation and experience, there still is one objective reality, at least in a material and energy sense. If you and I both put our hands on the same stove burner, even though I may have a higher tolerance for the pain than you have, we still will burn the same because we're made of the same stuff and touching an object of the same objective temperature.
So god is really not subjective, and existing only per our own individual perceptions of reality. God, if he is what he is said to be, is an existing entity on his own, and his makeup does not vary depending on what each individual person thinks of him. If god is actually 6'2", 230 lbs, why would that be different for you or me? Why would you "perceive" him as a shriveled old man, at 5'3" and 135 lbs?
If reality is so subjective, why can't I arrive at the airport and get on my flight at 7:45, if the plane left the airport at 7:30 per its actual schedule? Why can't I "perceive" myself flying on that same airliner on the way to L.I.? "Perception is reality," right? I guess there's a limit to the validity of that, huh? Like maybe god can't really be a million different ways just because a million different people want to think of him in a million different ways. Maybe god is ONE way, and lots of people are believing in something false that they made up in their OWN MINDS.
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
kallend 2,112
Ummm - you expect LOGIC in RELIGION?
...
The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.
The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.
Quote> But certainly not telling them how it ACTUALLY is, and what TRULY awaits
> them at death. Because how could the Hindu vision of it be true if the
> Christrian vision of it is also true, and the Native American vision of it is
> also true?
Say five blind men go into a room to examine an elephant.
The first one finds his ear and says "an elephant is like a great flapping carpet." The second one finds his tail and says "an elephant is like a rope." The third finds his trunk and says "an elephant is like a large snake." The fourth finds his side and says "an elephant is like a great wall." The fifth one wanders a bit and does not find the elephant; he walks until he finds the opposite wall. "There is no elephant," he concludes.
Which one was right?
None of them is right, and I will add that your analogy is absurd and flawed from the start (by design, I suspect, to help you "prove" your point). NONE of them actually experienced the whole elephant. They stopped WAY short of examining everything there that they could feasibly find. It would be nothing for the first guy to have moved from the ear, to the head, to the trunk, back to the tusks, the neck, the body, the feet, the tail -- all contiguously. But per your example, you had him stop short and issue a VERY premature conclusion that all the elephant was was an ear. Specious, Bill, and very transparent.
Quote>So if all the religions that claim to have god identified and understood
>(or, at least, have his rules understood) are equally valid even with
>conflicting dogma, I surmise that there really is no god waiting for us
>upon our death.
And you are perfectly free to believe that.
See, I may be perfectly free to believe that, but what I CANNOT obtain for myself, despite my freedom to believe what I wish, is freedom FROM the harm that religion causes around me. I cannot go to certain parts of the world, to see their beauty and experience their customs, because religious animosity causes them to be WAR ZONES. If I choose not to believe in your baseball bat, that doesn't mean that I won't feel it when you whack me in the head with it. That's the problem with religions. They don't allow those who don't wish to involve themselves the freedom to stay uninvolved. Take a look at the crusades, and the sadistic missionaries of Christianity who offered conversion or death to those that they called "savages." Pretty hard to steer your life clear of all the harm that religion does when it seeks everyone out.
Quote>Atheists have very little to hate each other about.
Then why are genocidal tyrants and serial killers often atheist? There may be more to someone's outlook on life than what religion they are.
Come on, Bill, there's no contradiction there. I DID say that they occasionally have strife about economic control issues. And that's a leadership issue, not a one-on-one atheist-to-atheist thing, anyway. Besides, I have NO data whatsoever to support your claim that these people avow a disbelief in god. But again, I didn't say atheists never have issues of conflict. I said that it's a hell of a lot easier to resolve border disputes and economic disputes when religion is not involved. You can give an atheist some economic concession, or some land concession, and mollify him. But with a religious person, for example the people who are currently fighting to own the "holy land" in the middle east, who is going to yield there, when to them, possessing that sacred land (oh, who cares about being told not to worship idols, anyway?!) is all that matters?
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
Quote
Ummm - you expect LOGIC in RELIGION?
I certainly do.
If someone is going to claim, "This is truly how the universe is set up and run, and this is god and this is what god is," and then I can easily point out logical fallacies in the stuff he tells me, the whole thing falls apart and is not credible. I'd better not bet my immortal soul on it being right, then.
edit: Unless of course he admits to me that it's all just a quaint story, some sort of parable, and is not to be taken literally: in which case it's pretty useless to me if I want to employ it as a means of actually understanding the universe around me.
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
skydyvr 0
QuoteQuoteThat's the point: free will = learning opportunities = why we're here.
You state it like it's authoritative from god that the meaning of life is to learn stuff you didn't know before. I hardly view that as the final word, since as has been pointed out, there are hundreds of different "gods" and hundreds of different belief systems.
I was simply expressing my opinion that we're here specifically to learn and grow (and enjoy). But we can only learn and grow by making right and wrong choices, and by experiencing the consequences of those choices for ourselves. Of course, it's a whole lot deeper than that, since we as individuals are subject to a wide variety of experiences, but I think the basic idea is on track. Again, this is just my opinion.
QuoteWho says that if we were perfect creatures created with perfect knowledge, that there would be no enjoyment or purpose to life? That's a fallacy. Skydiving would not be enjoyable as a sensual experience if you were perfect?
It's the whole good and evil thing.
If you were born a "perfect" creature, you wouldn't ever have had the opprtunity to learn from your mistakes, or by your good choices either. You'd be somewhat of a robot.
Instead, you have been dumped onto Theater Earth, a place of learning all kinds of good stuff -- on the road to perfection.
. . =(_8^(1)
billvon 3,080
>None of them is right . . .
Ah, but most people would disagree. They would say that the blind men each experienced their own small part of the elephant correctly - they just couldn't see the whole picture.
> NONE of them actually experienced the whole elephant. They stopped
>WAY short of examining everything there that they could feasibly find.
> It would be nothing for the first guy to have moved from the ear, to
>the head, to the trunk, back to the tusks, the neck, the body, the feet,
>the tail -- all contiguously. But per your example, you had him stop
>short and issue a VERY premature conclusion that all the elephant was
> was an ear.
Exactly right! We have done the same thing. Is there a Higgs boson? How does gravity work? Why is Planck's constant 6.62x10^-34? Where is all the missing matter? What is dark energy? We don't know. We have not yet learned that much. Instead, we are using our VERY premature conclusions to say that we understand at least parts of the universe. That does not mean we're wrong about everything - we just have a lot more to learn. Incomplete understanding does not mean that everything scientists say is wrong - it just means that there are things they don't understand yet.
>See, I may be perfectly free to believe that, but what I CANNOT obtain
>for myself, despite my freedom to believe what I wish, is freedom
>FROM the harm that religion causes around me.
And I cannot escape the harm that power plants do to me. I'll probably die about four months early due to health problems brought about by power plants (national average.) Doesn't mean they should all be shut down; they do a lot of people a lot of good. It does mean we should constantly improve them though so they don't kill as many people.
>I cannot go to certain parts of the world, to see their beauty and
> experience their customs, because religious animosity causes them to
> be WAR ZONES.
Where have you been prohibited from traveling to? I agree that some places are dangerous, but then so is K2.
>Come on, Bill, there's no contradiction there. I DID say that they
> occasionally have strife about economic control issues.
Economic control issues cause atheists to commit mass genocide and go on serial killing rampages?
>I said that it's a hell of a lot easier to resolve border disputes and
>economic disputes when religion is not involved.
We have about as secular government as there is. Yet people still get killed by US bombs; if we are not #1 in killing people we're close. Now, for the sake of this argument I will grant you that those killings may have been justified (they improved our security or whatever) but the fact remains that we are NOT resolving our disputes any more peacefully than a fundamentalist country might, if sheer numbers killed are any indication.
>You can give an atheist some economic concession, or some land
>concession, and mollify him.
Would you have tried to mollify the atheist axis powers during WWII? Perhaps given them everything west of the Mississippi?
Ah, but most people would disagree. They would say that the blind men each experienced their own small part of the elephant correctly - they just couldn't see the whole picture.
> NONE of them actually experienced the whole elephant. They stopped
>WAY short of examining everything there that they could feasibly find.
> It would be nothing for the first guy to have moved from the ear, to
>the head, to the trunk, back to the tusks, the neck, the body, the feet,
>the tail -- all contiguously. But per your example, you had him stop
>short and issue a VERY premature conclusion that all the elephant was
> was an ear.
Exactly right! We have done the same thing. Is there a Higgs boson? How does gravity work? Why is Planck's constant 6.62x10^-34? Where is all the missing matter? What is dark energy? We don't know. We have not yet learned that much. Instead, we are using our VERY premature conclusions to say that we understand at least parts of the universe. That does not mean we're wrong about everything - we just have a lot more to learn. Incomplete understanding does not mean that everything scientists say is wrong - it just means that there are things they don't understand yet.
>See, I may be perfectly free to believe that, but what I CANNOT obtain
>for myself, despite my freedom to believe what I wish, is freedom
>FROM the harm that religion causes around me.
And I cannot escape the harm that power plants do to me. I'll probably die about four months early due to health problems brought about by power plants (national average.) Doesn't mean they should all be shut down; they do a lot of people a lot of good. It does mean we should constantly improve them though so they don't kill as many people.
>I cannot go to certain parts of the world, to see their beauty and
> experience their customs, because religious animosity causes them to
> be WAR ZONES.
Where have you been prohibited from traveling to? I agree that some places are dangerous, but then so is K2.
>Come on, Bill, there's no contradiction there. I DID say that they
> occasionally have strife about economic control issues.
Economic control issues cause atheists to commit mass genocide and go on serial killing rampages?
>I said that it's a hell of a lot easier to resolve border disputes and
>economic disputes when religion is not involved.
We have about as secular government as there is. Yet people still get killed by US bombs; if we are not #1 in killing people we're close. Now, for the sake of this argument I will grant you that those killings may have been justified (they improved our security or whatever) but the fact remains that we are NOT resolving our disputes any more peacefully than a fundamentalist country might, if sheer numbers killed are any indication.
>You can give an atheist some economic concession, or some land
>concession, and mollify him.
Would you have tried to mollify the atheist axis powers during WWII? Perhaps given them everything west of the Mississippi?
Zenister 0
QuoteQuoteQuoteBut certainly not telling them how it ACTUALLY is, and what TRULY awaits them at death. Because how could the Hindu vision of it be true if the Christrian vision of it is also true, and the Native American vision of it is also true?
perspective. you can only define an event from a single perception of it. yours.
Then why do religions claim to have the one single perspective that is valid and can tell you how the universe was created and how you should live, and the nature of god?
Regardless of our limited powers of observation and experience, there still is one objective reality, at least in a material and energy sense. If/reply]
really? prove it.
5 observations of a portion of reality do not make 5 sole truth, the problem lies within man and his limited means to experience and describe God. Take the sum of that experience and seperate the nature of man to exclude that which does not agree with individual belief and you'll be much closer to the nature of divinity.____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.
Deuce 1
Quote
Ummm - you expect LOGIC in RELIGION?
Bravo! I expect it may be for completely different reasons, but well put! Religion is about faith, not logic.
Logic does not require faith. Electronic ignition systems don't work on faith.
But relationships do. Between people, and between people and thier G(g)od(s).
Quote>None of them is right . . .
Ah, but most people would disagree. They would say that the blind men each experienced their own small part of the elephant correctly - they just couldn't see the whole picture.
Then they should not make grandiose, sweeping claims to understand the whole elephant -- most especially not to the point of telling other people what the elephant wants them to do!
(I know, your next excuse is going to be that they didn't know they were not experiencing the whole elephant. BTW, don't use "seeing the whole picture" when discussing a "blind men" analogy.)
QuoteExactly right! We have done the same thing. Is there a Higgs boson? How does gravity work? Why is Planck's constant 6.62x10^-34? Where is all the missing matter? What is dark energy? We don't know. We have not yet learned that much. Instead, we are using our VERY premature conclusions to say that we understand at least parts of the universe.
There is a huge difference between claiming an understanding, based on "what little we know," of how light will behave if we do certain things -- this is predictable and provable because it is demonstrable -- and claiming that based on "what little we know" of god that we can say what the nature of life and the afterlife are.
People have seen NOTHING of god and are claiming to be able to tell us how he wants us to live. That is not NEARLY the same as people observing natural constants and at least understanding the little bit they can experience and experiment with firsthand. You need to keep your analogies more apropos. This one is out there in left field.
Summarizing: it is fair to scientifically observe thunderstorm activity and use that knowledge to predict future thunderstorm activity. You are not trying to use your thunderstorm knowledge to predict earthquake activity!
It is NOT fair to claim knowledge of god just because you have a book that's been twisted and distorted for numerous thousands of years by corrupt officials of the church, which book was never written by god's own hand in the first place, and then also, to top it all off, claim that you can use that book's "wisdom" to deal with issues the book never dealt with, like nuclear power, stem cell research, cloning...
QuoteThat does not mean we're wrong about everything - we just have a lot more to learn. Incomplete understanding does not mean that everything scientists say is wrong - it just means that there are things they don't understand yet.
The "incomplete understandings" you talk about in the scientific community are not at all analogous to the incomplete understanding of a god or a universe we can't begin to see.
Just because we don't know how all genes work does not mean we can't make square tomatoes that won't roll off a shelf, or produce artificial insulin to help diabetics. Should we act as though we understand nothing until we understand all things? Of course not. But at the same time we should not pretend to understand all things just because we understand some.
Quote>I cannot go to certain parts of the world, to see their beauty and
> experience their customs, because religious animosity causes them to
> be WAR ZONES.
Where have you been prohibited from traveling to? I agree that some places are dangerous, but then so is K2.
I am not talking about being prohibited. I'm talking about the risks presented by the human/social realities. I would not go to Israel, Iraq, Northern Ireland, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, right now, because of what dangers there are there. (I left out places like Colombia, Jamaica, Philippines, and Brazil because while dangerous, those places are dangerous for reasons other than religion. You can blame leftist maniacs, and criminals, for that, instead.)
K2 may be dangerous, but it is not VOLATILE. Things don't just ERUPT on K2 the way suicide bombers do. If you prepare yourself for what to expect on K2, you have a good chance of surviving it intact. How do you protect against suicide bombers except for giving them a wide berth by staying out of the area where they are known to frequent?
Quote>Come on, Bill, there's no contradiction there. I DID say that they
> occasionally have strife about economic control issues.
Economic control issues cause atheists to commit mass genocide and go on serial killing rampages?
You pointed out that even atheists are responsible for this sort of thing, and I admit that sometimes they are. Far less than relgious zealots, though. And I'm saying that when Mao Tse Tung or a Josef Stalin murder millions, it is often not to do with their being atheists, but with the fact that they want to exercise their brand of control, and force people to live by their philosophies, and they want the riches and power that come with that kind of control.
Quote>I said that it's a hell of a lot easier to resolve border disputes and
>economic disputes when religion is not involved.
We have about as secular government as there is. Yet people still get killed by US bombs; if we are not #1 in killing people we're close.
That's bullshit hyperbole. We are nowhere near close, unless for your example you wish to rule out loads of countries worse than us simply because they're not FIRST-world countries. I can prove ANY rule if I am allowed to rule out everything that disproves my rule, Bill.
QuoteNow, for the sake of this argument I will grant you that those killings may have been justified (they improved our security or whatever) but the fact remains that we are NOT resolving our disputes any more peacefully than a fundamentalist country might, if sheer numbers killed are any indication.
We are not a conqueror state, no matter how you try to dress it up like we are. If we really were trying to conquer and force other countries to live in our image, you'd know it. For one thing, we wouldn't keep replacing our leadership at regular intervals. We'd let one sovereign rule for decades to get the job done.
Your claim that we are not resolving our disputes any more peacefully than a fundamentalist country might is SO absurdly false that it's laughable. How many treaties of various types have we signed with various countries? Why are the U.S. and Russia still on the map?: that was the biggest, longest conflict at all, and we resolved it "cold" -- no war, no bloodshed, no radiation, no flames. We are CONSTANTLY in diplomatic dances with other nations specifically to NOT have to resort to war and violence to resolve disputes. How can you be so out of touch with this fact that you can mischaracterize us as unpeaceful? Your statement appears to have been made in a vacuum, with no acknowledgement of how things really are resolved from day to day by our diplomats. If we conducted ourselves as recklessly violent as you imply, the earth would be a smoking ruin at this very moment. We are FAR more peaceful than the fundamentalist nations. And like I said, fundamentalists, by their nature, cannot and will not be satisfied until they get EXACTLY what they have demanded from the beginning. There is no compromise, unlike with atheists.
Quote>You can give an atheist some economic concession, or some land
>concession, and mollify him.
Would you have tried to mollify the atheist axis powers during WWII? Perhaps given them everything west of the Mississippi?
Now you're arguing in FAVOR of war? I don't get it.
Of course I would not have appeased the Axis. But there is a difference between appeasement and negotiating a compromise that you maintain the ability to enforce by military might. And if, as was evident in WWII, your enemy won't honor anything less than total victory, then you fight, as we did.
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-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
QuoteQuoteRegardless of our limited powers of observation and experience, there still is one objective reality, at least in a material and energy sense.
really? prove it.
So if I took six beers from your fridge and left you three bucks on the table with a note thanking you for the two beers I took, you wouldn't come to me and say, "There were SIX beers you took, Jeff! I want the rest of my money!"?
I mean, reality is subjective. How do we know -- how can we PROVE -- that the number of beers I perceive I took is the same as the number of beers you perceive I took?
I guess we have to agree that indeed, as I first asserted, there are certain things in reality that HAVE to be objectively agreed upon. To insist otherwise is ridiculous.
-
-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
billvon 3,080
>Then they should not make grandiose, sweeping claims to understand the whole elephant
Agreed - but if they say "this is, to me, what an elephant is" is perfectly valid, even if it's incomplete.
>BTW, don't use "seeing the whole picture" when discussing a "blind men" analogy.
Why? It's exactly what I meant. They CAN'T see the whole picture. Even if they walked around, they couldn't see what color it was. That doesn't mean they can't understand an elephant.
>it is fair to scientifically observe thunderstorm activity and use that
> knowledge to predict future thunderstorm activity. You are not trying
> to use your thunderstorm knowledge to predict earthquake activity!
No, but some people have tried (and succeeded!) in predicting stuff about electricity while observing thunderstorm activity.
>It is NOT fair to claim knowledge of god just because you have a
> book that's been twisted and distorted for numerous thousands of
> years by corrupt officials of the church, which book was never written
> by god's own hand in the first place . . .
If god had hands and he wrote the bible, he'd be more like Shakespeare than god. And we're not just talking about the bible here. The bible, BTW, was written by a bunch of people trying to define a religion as best they could. Thus at best it serves as a good guide to people of that religion.
>and then also, to top it all off, claim that you can use that
> book's "wisdom" to deal with issues the book never dealt with, like
> nuclear power, stem cell research, cloning...
I agree there. The bible is not a science book; a chemistry text is not a guide to morality.
>Just because we don't know how all genes work does not mean we
> can't make square tomatoes that won't roll off a shelf, or produce
> artificial insulin to help diabetics. Should we act as though we
> understand nothing until we understand all things? Of course not.
> But at the same time we should not pretend to understand all things
> just because we understand some.
That is exactly right! And I very much doubt you will find anyone here who claims they understand all things about god. Some people understand some things. In your own words, they should not act as if they understand nothing until they understand everything about god.
>I am not talking about being prohibited. I'm talking about the risks
> presented by the human/social realities. I would not go to Israel,
> Iraq, Northern Ireland, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, right now, because
> of what dangers there are there.
You wouldn't go to Northern Ireland? It's a great country. I met a woman there who wanted to go to LA, but was worried because of all the freeway shootings. I work with people in Israel regularly; they think skydiving is insanely dangerous, while their cities are safer than NYC. Danger is all in your perspective.
>(I left out places like Colombia, Jamaica, Philippines, and Brazil
> because while dangerous, those places are dangerous for reasons
> other than religion. You can blame leftist maniacs, and criminals, for
> that, instead.)
Hmm. It's almost like PEOPLE, rather than religions, make places dangerous! I see a similarity to a recently locked thread here . . .
>K2 may be dangerous, but it is not VOLATILE. Things don't just
> ERUPT on K2 the way suicide bombers do.
An old girlfriend of mine was nearly killed on K2 when an avalanche buried her. Conditions were not favorable for an avalanche; they had chosen their route and timing carefully. But on K2 that stuff just happens.
>If you prepare yourself for what to expect on K2, you have a good
> chance of surviving it intact.
All the women who have summited K2 have died. ALL of them. Some of them were amazingly good climbers. Mountains like that are unforgiving.
>How do you protect against suicide bombers except for giving them a
> wide berth by staying out of the area where they are known to
> frequent?
Sounds like you deal with them exactly the same way you deal with avalanche dangers on 8000 meter peaks.
Agreed - but if they say "this is, to me, what an elephant is" is perfectly valid, even if it's incomplete.
>BTW, don't use "seeing the whole picture" when discussing a "blind men" analogy.
Why? It's exactly what I meant. They CAN'T see the whole picture. Even if they walked around, they couldn't see what color it was. That doesn't mean they can't understand an elephant.
>it is fair to scientifically observe thunderstorm activity and use that
> knowledge to predict future thunderstorm activity. You are not trying
> to use your thunderstorm knowledge to predict earthquake activity!
No, but some people have tried (and succeeded!) in predicting stuff about electricity while observing thunderstorm activity.
>It is NOT fair to claim knowledge of god just because you have a
> book that's been twisted and distorted for numerous thousands of
> years by corrupt officials of the church, which book was never written
> by god's own hand in the first place . . .
If god had hands and he wrote the bible, he'd be more like Shakespeare than god. And we're not just talking about the bible here. The bible, BTW, was written by a bunch of people trying to define a religion as best they could. Thus at best it serves as a good guide to people of that religion.
>and then also, to top it all off, claim that you can use that
> book's "wisdom" to deal with issues the book never dealt with, like
> nuclear power, stem cell research, cloning...
I agree there. The bible is not a science book; a chemistry text is not a guide to morality.
>Just because we don't know how all genes work does not mean we
> can't make square tomatoes that won't roll off a shelf, or produce
> artificial insulin to help diabetics. Should we act as though we
> understand nothing until we understand all things? Of course not.
> But at the same time we should not pretend to understand all things
> just because we understand some.
That is exactly right! And I very much doubt you will find anyone here who claims they understand all things about god. Some people understand some things. In your own words, they should not act as if they understand nothing until they understand everything about god.
>I am not talking about being prohibited. I'm talking about the risks
> presented by the human/social realities. I would not go to Israel,
> Iraq, Northern Ireland, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, right now, because
> of what dangers there are there.
You wouldn't go to Northern Ireland? It's a great country. I met a woman there who wanted to go to LA, but was worried because of all the freeway shootings. I work with people in Israel regularly; they think skydiving is insanely dangerous, while their cities are safer than NYC. Danger is all in your perspective.
>(I left out places like Colombia, Jamaica, Philippines, and Brazil
> because while dangerous, those places are dangerous for reasons
> other than religion. You can blame leftist maniacs, and criminals, for
> that, instead.)
Hmm. It's almost like PEOPLE, rather than religions, make places dangerous! I see a similarity to a recently locked thread here . . .
>K2 may be dangerous, but it is not VOLATILE. Things don't just
> ERUPT on K2 the way suicide bombers do.
An old girlfriend of mine was nearly killed on K2 when an avalanche buried her. Conditions were not favorable for an avalanche; they had chosen their route and timing carefully. But on K2 that stuff just happens.
>If you prepare yourself for what to expect on K2, you have a good
> chance of surviving it intact.
All the women who have summited K2 have died. ALL of them. Some of them were amazingly good climbers. Mountains like that are unforgiving.
>How do you protect against suicide bombers except for giving them a
> wide berth by staying out of the area where they are known to
> frequent?
Sounds like you deal with them exactly the same way you deal with avalanche dangers on 8000 meter peaks.
Zenister 0
QuoteQuoteQuoteRegardless of our limited powers of observation and experience, there still is one objective reality, at least in a material and energy sense.
really? prove it.
So if I took six beers from your fridge and left you three bucks on the table with a note thanking you for the two beers I took, you wouldn't come to me and say, "There were SIX beers you took, Jeff! I want the rest of my money!"?
I mean, reality is subjective. How do we know -- how can we PROVE -- that the number of beers I perceive I took is the same as the number of beers you perceive I took?
I guess we have to agree that indeed, as I first asserted, there are certain things in reality that HAVE to be objectively agreed upon. To insist otherwise is ridiculous.
-
the number of concepts about reality we would have already ‘agreed’ apon in your example in order for it to be relevant is staggering.
as proven recently (and discussed here ) if my culture does not incorporate concepts greater than 2 i may perceive there to be no difference at all. We have to have agreed money is a fair exchange and that it represents a given amount etc…. American Indian cultures did not incorporate the western concept of 'owning' land such trades can be meaningless depending on how value is assigned. The differences are matters of belief and ‘shared reality’. There is no ‘objective reality’ we can discuss, we would not have words for it. The nature of language means all 'reality' must be 'shared'.
Since when has religious, spiritual beliefs had anything to do with 'agreed reality’ at all? No, we do not have to agree on the fundamental nature of life, existence or afterlife, or on the relative value of green pieces of paper in exchange for beer that may or may not exist (I haven’t opened the fridge yet remember?) or any belief for that matter. There is no such thing as an ‘objective observer’. All observations are subjective relative to the observer and their cultural filter; anything that is not directly observed is interpreted through the observer’s frame of reference
if you really want to get down to it, how can you 'prove' to me there are 6 beers in the fridge at all until you open it and we both look? Separate observations with a different frame of reference will have different results. Only by looking with agreed definitions (what is 6?) will we come to an ‘agreed reality’ as to the number of beers in the fridge.
Bill's elephant example is apt in that having felt the elephant once, each individual will expect similar results again, results that differ from previous observations will be interpreted through their cultural frame of reference.. How exactly is one supposed to accept and rationalize any experience of divinity without resorting to their engrained frame of reference (religious, scientific etc)?
How do you decide where to you put any piece of the puzzle when you don’t know how big the puzzle is? why would you expect that different cultures would always come to the same conclusions?
____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.
QuoteQuoteQuoteQuoteRegardless of our limited powers of observation and experience, there still is one objective reality, at least in a material and energy sense.
really? prove it.
So if I took six beers from your fridge and left you three bucks on the table with a note thanking you for the two beers I took, you wouldn't come to me and say, "There were SIX beers you took, Jeff! I want the rest of my money!"?
I mean, reality is subjective. How do we know -- how can we PROVE -- that the number of beers I perceive I took is the same as the number of beers you perceive I took?
I guess we have to agree that indeed, as I first asserted, there are certain things in reality that HAVE to be objectively agreed upon. To insist otherwise is ridiculous.
-
the number of concepts about reality we would have already ‘agreed’ apon in your example in order for it to be relevant is staggering.
as proven recently (and discussed here ) if my culture does not incorporate concepts greater than 2 i may perceive there to be no difference at all.
If a culture does not have the ability to conceptualize values greater than 2, that culture is has objectively failed to discern a matter of objective reality. There ARE values greater than 2! This is not open to debate in which someone can say, legitimately, "Who are you to judge my culture according to the standards of your own?" That's bogus argument.
QuoteSince when has religious, spiritual beliefs had anything to do with 'agreed reality’ at all? No, we do not have to agree on the fundamental nature of life, existence or afterlife, or on the relative value of green pieces of paper in exchange for beer that may or may not exist (I haven’t opened the fridge yet remember?) or any belief for that matter. There is no such thing as an ‘objective observer’. All observations are subjective relative to the observer and their cultural filter; anything that is not directly observed is interpreted through the observer’s frame of reference.
I can grant only limited agreement and validity to this claim. I mean, unless you're talking about an outside observer trying to establish how many beers I took, and he happens to be from this culture that can't recognize a value greater than 2, then this person would have to grant that it was 6 beers, not 2, not 7, not 100, that I took. It's not enough to say that his "subjective perception" caused him to simply see that I took "heap big lot of beer."
Since you agreed already that we had to have arrived at a whole lot of common "objective" ground even just to start the discussion, I need to ask you where you think the border of the subjective parts of reality meets the border of the objective parts. Who decides what is open to subjective interpretation?
Quoteif you really want to get down to it, how can you 'prove' to me there are 6 beers in the fridge at all until you open it and we both look?
This begins to get argumentative and tangential. We are dealing with what I thought we understood to be an example inwhich you knew you had 6 beers and went to find that I had taken them all but claimed "subjectively" that there were only TWO that I needed to pay you for. Maybe in my "subjective reality," I'm so used to drinking 36 oz. beers that I perceived every three 12 oz. bottles of your beer as "one." Who knows? I just think that we'd never get anywhere if we continually parsed the "subjectivity" of our realities that way. A cop pulls you over and says you were going 75, the judge is not going to accept the idea that you thought you could go "55 gallons of gas per hour" and you were nowhere near that limit. "Oh, but judge, it's my subjective belief that that's how we judge speed." Sorry. Bzzzzt! Wrong.
QuoteBill's elephant example is apt in that having felt the elephant once, each individual will expect similar results again, results that differ from previous observations will be interpreted through their cultural frame of reference.. How exactly is one supposed to accept and rationalize any experience of divinity without resorting to their engrained frame of reference (religious, scientific etc)?
Bill's analogy fails in that it is not reasonable for a person to feel one part of an elephant, FAIL to continue feeling until there is no more to the elephant to be felt, and then declare the elephant fully known. If I were blindfolded and handed a rope, and told to estimate how long it was, and I pulled handful after handful of rope through my hands, estimating the length of each handful (let's say this was a reasonably accurate estimation technique) and gave a final estimation before I had reached the opposite end of the rope, how could you possibly grant that there's validity to my estimate?! I had every reason to believe I was stopping short, because I never did feel the end before I claimed the length.
QuoteHow do you decide where to you put any piece of the puzzle when you don’t know how big the puzzle is? why would you expect that different cultures would always come to the same conclusions?
Because I'm an arrogant American, and everybody should reach the same conclusions that Americans reach.
-
-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
billvon 3,080
>If I were blindfolded and handed a rope, and told to estimate how
> long it was, and I pulled handful after handful of rope through my
> hands, estimating the length of each handful (let's say this was a
> reasonably accurate estimation technique) and gave a final
> estimation before I had reached the opposite end of the rope, how
> could you possibly grant that there's validity to my estimate?!
Let's say they blindfolded you, handed you the rope, and let you do whatever you wanted to with it. After an hour they asked you what color it was. If you didn't know, would that mean that you knew absolutely nothing about the rope? Should you admit it may well not exist since you don't know what color it is?
> long it was, and I pulled handful after handful of rope through my
> hands, estimating the length of each handful (let's say this was a
> reasonably accurate estimation technique) and gave a final
> estimation before I had reached the opposite end of the rope, how
> could you possibly grant that there's validity to my estimate?!
Let's say they blindfolded you, handed you the rope, and let you do whatever you wanted to with it. After an hour they asked you what color it was. If you didn't know, would that mean that you knew absolutely nothing about the rope? Should you admit it may well not exist since you don't know what color it is?
That's a cop-out so that religious people can prevent god from taking blame for making us imperfect. I thought the bible said that god "created man in his own image." It's hedging, to say that, "Oh, yeah, well, he created the first two in his image... but all the mutations and stuff are the fault of those two." And the idea that all the descendents of Adam and Eve are held to pay for their sins in the garden of eden is just SICK! If my dad robbed a bank and then died of a heart attack two years later and had never been caught, and then the authorities find the evidence of it, should I have to do 10 years in federal prison because of what he did that I had no part in choosing? God holding us to pay for A &E's sins is probably the most FUCKED UP thing about Christianity.
Hey, I have a question. If, as the Led Zeppelin song says, Saint Peter is at the gates of heaven (see: "In My Time of Dying"), um, what was there watching the gates of heaven before Saint Peter had his life on earth and became a saint and the gate keeper of heaven?
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"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"
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