[SPasse]

Hi All,

An interesting book that I am reading:

http://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-Future/dp/0393327655/sr=8-1/qid=1166798637/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-6098246-5275860?ie=UTF8&s=books

Reading this book kind of pulls me back to the point in my life where I was an agnostic.

I had thought about most of the concepts presented in this book at one time or another, still this is very concise kind of “to the point” discussion of the role of religion in “This era of Science and Reason”

The proposition that tolerance of any religion, seeds the ground for all of the religious extremism that we have/are dealing with is interesting food for thought.

Regards,

Scott

[mistermikev]

It's nice to hear someone else thinking about this. I think about it constantly. Not sure what religion I am anymore, but I personally think there is truth and lie in all religion. All religions are a paradox... I think that serves a purpose. They are true, but they are not true. You must follow to the letter, but if you follow too close you are likely to break other "rules". My fav is "the bible is written on the harts of men". Suggests to me that you must believe in what you know in your heart is right above all else. I see the good in all religions. The part that is a man/woman reaching out for something beyond their petty exhistance. there is no right in killing for religion, and there is no wrong in trying to be a better person through any means. I'll just keep listening to my heart and try my best to do what I know is right.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by SPasse

The proposition that tolerance of any religion, seeds the ground for all of the religious extremism that we have/are dealing with is interesting food for thought.

Is that the argument the author is making? If so, it would be unconstitutional in this country and impractical even if it were constitutional. Suppression of free thought is obviously a flawed idea on so many different levels.

Or are you talking about religion as it affects government? If so, I think we are fortunate to have a very good Constitution just the way it is right now. All we have to do is prevent the Christianist extremists from trying to subvert it.

I don't see any harm done in allowing people to believe whatever they choose to believe if it gives them comfort and makes them happy. I draw the line at allowing them to force their irrational notions on the rest of us. We are facing that right now with a president whose policies are in large part based on his particular religious beliefs. His ignorance is overwhelming in its scope, although not any more so than some other leading figures in the Republican Party.

Just the other day I heard President Bush make the idiotic statement that none of the terrorists could possibly be God-believing people. This is about as stupid a comment as his father's pronouncement that atheists could not be good citizens. Both of them are as dumb as dirt. Bush refuses to accept the idea that the people who flew the planes into the World Trade Center really and truly believed that they were doing God's work and would be rewarded with eternal paradise, including 72 virgins. He is so stupid that he thinks that 19-yr-old kids who agree to turn themselves into human bombs don't believe in God. The problem is not that they don't believe in God, the problem is that they do! In fact, their belief is so extreme that they are willing to blow themselves up in the sincere belief that they will become instant saints. They are terrorists! They believe in God! Saying they don't is about the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Right now we have that religious nutjob in Iran calling our president the devil while our president is calling him the devil. Both profess a belief in God and both accuse the other of being Satan! Both fervently believe that God is on their side. What's the old saying about history repeating itself? Which brings me back to my basic belief that we are nowhere near mature enough as a species to be able to do away with warfare in the near future. Maybe in another 500 years, if we're still around, but not in our lifetimes. Maybe in another 5,000 years?

Have you ever wondered why some of the most intolerant people on the planet also claim to be the most religious?

P.S. -- I guess I have to clarify that last comment by saying that there are very few people who claim to be Christians who actually practice Christianity, except for maybe a few Trappist monks.


__________________________________________________ ________

"One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural."
— James D. Watson, Nobel laureate, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA

[SPasse]

Ninong,

The author believes that religion:

1 Focuses the individual on a non existent afterlife as opposed to the hear and now. This allows for all sorts of "concessions" about your conduct in this one. Think Spanish inquisition to Suside bombers…

2 Religious moderates often tolerate religious extremists. For example a moderate Muslim, although he would not participate in a terrorist act, would not actively "prosecute" drive out etc. an extremist of the Muslim faith. Same sort of thing happened in a Christian context, in earlier times.

3 That we should treat religion as a kind of prejudice. Just as we have been working at rooting out racial discrimination. We should look to science to slowly displace systems of belief that can not stand up too scientific scrutiny. This gets to the argument as to whether religion is reflection of tribalism or a/the major contributing cause of it.

4 He echoes your point about the president of Iran and the president of the USA. He also adds that in the age of Weapons of Mass Destruction, we may run out of chances to avoid a mushroom cloud scenario. The difference between our Cold War era adversaries and the Islamic terrorists is that the Soviets were basically people that wanted to live, and had no comforting belief systems promising them paradise if they killed large numbers of infidels.

5 He is no particular fan of the Judeo-Christian belief systems, but that coexistence with "western" science and technology has "de-fanged" it to the point where it is not quite as dangerous.

Quite an interesting book; he goes after George Bush and Noam Chomsky with almost equal vigor.

Regards,

Scott

[Ninong]

Virtually all of the polls released by Christian denominations in the U.S. grossly overstate church attendance figures. A study was released several months back that showed that actual weekly attendance at church services was half the rate claimed in the polls. The most obvious conclusion is that people have a tendency to lie when asked how often they attend church services. They also have a tendency to lie when asked if they believe in God but that question is not one that can be as easily disproven as the church attendance question.

According to the study that disputed the conventional wisdom propagated by the churches themselves, only about 21% of Americans attend religious worship services on a regular basis. This study was not based on asking people if they attended services, it was an actual physical count of the people in attendance. Attendance figures varied dramatically by region. Highest attendance was in some parts of the South where some 40% attended religious services, followed by the Midwest and then the Northeast and the West Coast. Attendance in the Northeast and on the West Coast was approximately 12-14%, if I remember correctly. The numbers also proved that attendance is falling and not rising as claimed by many Christian denominations.

I am reminded of this because of a poll released in the U.K. today that shows that only 13% of the people surveyed there claim to visit a place of worship once a week, with 43% saying they never attended religious services. The 13% figure is as high as it is not because of the Christians surveyed, but because of the non-Christians, 29% of whom claimed to attend services once a week. Also, 82% of the people surveyed said religion does more harm than good.

Response by a spokesman for the Church of England:

"You also have to bear in mind how society has changed. It is more difficult to go to church now than it was. Communities are displaced, people work longer hours - it's harder to fit it in. It doesn't alter the fact that the Church of England will get 1 million people in church every Sunday, which is larger than any other gathering in the country."

Even if they do get 1 million people in church every Sunday, that's out of a total population in excess of 60 million.

Regular church attendance in predominately Catholic Italy and Spain is less than 15%. I don't remember the figures for the other European Christian countries but I remember Italy and Spain because both countries are nominally more than 90% Catholic. I don't know if I have ever seen worship service attendance figures for Israel but that would be something we could probably find online. I doubt there are any reliable numbers online for the Muslim countries and even if there are, they would not be comparable for the simple reason that in some Muslim countries the state is very much involved in pressuring the population to perform mandated prayers and attend mandated services.

P.S. -- I suspect that weekly mosque attendance in a secular Muslim country like Turkey is not much different than weekly church attendance in the United States. From Wikipedia: "Religious observance in comparison to other predominantly Muslim-populated countries is low and Muslim identity tends to be based more on tradition and cultural heritage rather than actual belief in religious dogma."


__________________________________________________ _______

“Although it is said that faith can move mountains, experience shows that dynamite works better.”

[sihaya]

The problem I see is this: how and when can we draw the line? When do the merely devout become dangerously extreme? In my opinion, excusing people for their actions because they are acting out of religious conviction is a very dangerous practice... in any circumstances.

[Fish R.Ph.]

I haven't read Sam's book, but I'm sure he spent much time and effort in his research. At any rate, he has a right to his opinion.

Here is a thoughtful (in my opinion) response to another book written by Mr. Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation). It is by a Christian Pastor named Doug Wilson, and the response was on his blog at this site:

BLOG and MABLOG

-Jason

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Fish R.Ph.

Here is a thoughtful (in my opinion) response to another book written by Mr. Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation). It is by a Christian Pastor named Doug Wilson, and the response was on his blog at this site:

BLOG and MABLOG

-Jason

I haven't read Sam Harris' book either but I did just read the "thoughtful" response from Pastor Doug Wilson.

Speaking of Harris, Pastor Doug writes, "...you want [Christians] to stop turning America into a big, dumb theocracy. But why? If there is no God, what could possibly be wrong with theocracies?"

Perhaps Pastor Doug slept through all of his history classes, assuming history is included in the curricula at places such as Oral Roberts, Bob Jones or Liberty.

In this next paragraph, Pastor Doug displays an astounding ignorance of the most fundamental concept in biology. It reminds me of the hilarious exchange Pastor Ted Haggard had with Dr. Richard Dawkins.

"I believe God created the world... But, given the current climate, this conviction is certainly easy to mock -- 'This means that despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue' (pp. x-xi) -- but notice what you are doing here. The Sumerians invented glue? Glue didn't just happen? Why couldn't it just appear, the same way the sexuality of moss did, and the eyeballs that see in color, and the superbly engineered ankle, and the majesty of the great white sharks all did? Glue is so complicated that it needs to be invented?"

It is truly amazing that anyone in the 21st century would have such little understanding of the evolutionary process. There is no way to carry on an intelligent discourse with anyone who would make a statement like that. It is frightening to think that this man is passing on his superstitions and ignorance to innocent children.

P.S. -- While on Pastor Doug's website, I couldn't help but notice the company he keeps. Besides the bogus Discovery Institute, one of his fundy buddies is Pastor Mark Driscoll. We talked about Pastor Mark in this post. He's the clown who said that the reason so many fundamentalist preachers like Pastor Ted were "turning" gay was because their wives had let themselves go and weren't meeting their wifely obligations.

How can we take anything these guys say seriously?


__________________________________________________ _________

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church." --Ferdinand Magellan

[Ninong]

YouTube has a 10-minute clip that includes the exchange between Pastor Ted Haggard and Dr. Richard Dawkins. The sound track is slightly out of synch with the video but I have seen this before when it was in synch. Anyway, be sure to catch Pastor Ted insisting that the Bible does not contradict itself. The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is full of contradictions. And that's after they rewrote in beaucoup times and selected only the gospels they liked for the New Testament. Yet still there are contradictions and historical inaccuracies.

[Fish R.Ph.]

Originally Posted by Ninong

I haven't read Sam Harris' book either but I did just read the "thoughtful" response from Pastor Doug Wilson.

Speaking of Harris, Pastor Doug writes, "...you want [Christians] to stop turning America into a big, dumb theocracy. But why? If there is no God, what could possibly be wrong with theocracies?"

He is, of course, being sarcastic. I simply think Pastor Doug was trying to point out the logical difficulty one encounters while trying to establish a theoretical system of "value" in an environment of humanistic relativism. In other words, the presence of a moral law of any sort suggests the need of a moral law giver.

But I respect your right to disagree.

-Jason

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Fish R.Ph.

In other words, the presence of a moral law of any sort suggests the need of a moral law giver.

Why would this moral law giver have to be supernatural? Are we not capable of recognizing what is right from what is wrong?

[SPasse]

Jason,

"I simply think Pastor Doug was trying to point out the logical difficulty one encounters while trying to establish a theoretical system of "value" in an environment of humanistic relativism. In other words, the presence of a moral law of any sort suggests the need of a moral law giver."

That is the crux of the matter.

But then you quickly get into a discussion about "who's Lawgiver"

Consider the Golden Rule "Do onto to others as you would have done unto you"

Considered to be one of the cornerstone of the Christian faith (at least as a benchmark ) (Leviticus 19: 17-18, Matthew 22:37-40. This passage ends with "Keep only these and you will find that you are obeying all the other laws"

The Golden Rule can be found in the writings of Confucius, the Bhagavata, etc.

Are we going to play the forcible conversion game because "my version of the Golden Rule is better that yours" I.E. it can only be "moral" if it "came" from "my" God?

Sam Harris proposes that the "Golden Rule" is the only real "moral imperative" and this is a concept that can serve as the basis for a just society without getting into tribalistic/religious confrontations. The "moral imperative" is to spend our time working on the real issues of human suffering experienced by sentient human beings. All of the rest is superstitious tribalism.

Regards,

Scott

[Fish R.Ph.]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Why would this moral law giver have to be supernatural? Are we not capable of recognizing what is right from what is wrong?

I think that is an excellent and important question. Most of us seem to recognize the existance of good and evil, right and wrong.

I guess the question is this: What is it that makes what is right....right? What makes something we determine to be wrong...wrong?

What is the objective basis for our conclusion on moral issues?

I'm sure there is a better way to say what I am saying. Does this make sense? If the ultimate standard is just what we "know" or "recognize", then right and wrong become no more than "right for me" or "wrong for you". Moral judgments become entirely subjective.

-Jason

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Fish R.Ph.

I think that is an excellent and important question. Most of us seem to recognize the existance of good and evil, right and wrong.

And to assist those who are slow or ethically challenged, we have laws. Don't drive 100 mph through a school zone. You might end up killing somebody's kid and that's obviously not good. Don't steal someone else's property. Don't torture people.

I guess the question is this: What is it that makes what is right....right? What makes something we determine to be wrong...wrong?

What is the objective basis for our conclusion on moral issues?

We are supposedly rational human beings. It should be possible for a group of rational human beings to get together and draft rules of behavior for the common good, otherwise known as laws. You could start with the basic principle mentioned by SPasse: Treat others as you would like to be treated. You might call that the ethic of reciprocity.

We are responsible for our own behavior and we must measure and judge ourselves. It's our job. Just because we have been doing a lousy job of it for a very long time doesn't mean we should give up. One of these days we may grow up.

I'm sure there is a better way to say what I am saying. Does this make sense? If the ultimate standard is just what we "know" or "recognize", then right and wrong become no more than "right for me" or "wrong for you". Moral judgments become entirely subjective.

We have a legal framework to help us with these subjective moral judgments. It may be imperfect but it seems to work better than the alternative. The Bible condones slavery. Our laws condoned slavery, too. We finally got it right and changed our laws. The Bible still condones slavery.

It was once illegal for African slaves in this country to marry. Period! They couldn't even marry each other. Then, after we made it legal for them to marry, we decided they couldn't marry white people. Finally the Supreme Court decided that they could marry anybody they chose regardless of the color of their skin. Fully 90% of the white people in this country disagreed with that decision at the time. They were morally wrong! The Supreme Court got it right! Christian churches in this country supported slavery and they supported segregation. They were morally wrong!

Women finally have the right to vote in this country. This is not something you will find support for in the Bible. In fact, the Bible is quite clear on the inferior role of women in society. On that point, the Bible is morally wrong! God has been very slow to approve of equal rights. We're just getting Him to accept the abolition of slavery. These things take time. The Catholic Church didn't get around to "forgiving" Galileo for his "sin" of teaching a heliocentric solar system until late in the 20th century. I guess they wanted to be sure the Earth really does orbit the Sun and not the other way around.

Democracy seems to be a halfway decent way to govern. You won't find support for democracy in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible will you find a kind word about democracy. The Bible is big on monarchies and the divine right of kings but doesn't think much of democracies. A democracy is superior to a monarchy and more moral. That's a subjective judgment.

And, as SPasse pointed out, whose holy book should we use as our objective guide to what is moral and what is not? The evil that has been perpetrated in the name of God is legendary. The hatred and bigotry that has been perpetuated in the name of God plagues us to this day. I think it's high time we stopped blaming God for our hatred and bigotry and took responsibility for our own behavior.

[Fish R.Ph.]

You make some very good points.

In fact, they remind me of some words by a brilliant thinker (in my opinion), C.S. Lewis. He once wrote:

“These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in”

The very fact that we can discern moral progress presupposes the existence of a standard that is outside ourselves. Laws and practice, even human behavior, can be measured as better or worse on the basis of their conformity to this standard that we know to exist, and which, as Lewis suggests, we don’t even live up to ourselves.

In my opinion, all the classical arguments for the existence of God fall far short of the persuasive power of this argument: the sense of moral law, right and wrong, good and evil. It is a sort of evidence for God's existence we all carry around inside us.

These things have persuaded me. I make no demand or insist that they persuade others.

Jason

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Fish R.Ph.

In my opinion, all the classical arguments for the existence of God fall far short of the persuasive power of this argument: the sense of moral law, right and wrong, good and evil. It is a sort of evidence for God's existence we all carry around inside us.

Actually that is one of the classical arguments for the existence of God -- the degrees of perfection argument. I don't think it resolves anything because you can always do as Einstein did and redefine "God" in such a way that the concept would not be familiar to any Christian. The most commonly proposed argument is the prime mover. However, that doesn't resolve anything either because one can always ask the follow-up question, "Who created God?" Einstein's follow-up question was, assuming "God" created the world, did He have any choice in the matter?

My point on morality is that the various religions of the world do not have a very good track record in this department.

[Fish R.Ph.]

Originally Posted by Ninong

My point on morality is that the various religions of the world do not have a very good track record in this department.

This is true. Shamefully true. Biblical Christianity has an explanation (not an excuse) for such moral failures. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desparately wicked, who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). "For the good that I want to do, I do not; but the evil I do not want to do, that I practice" (Romans 7:19). Commenting on mankind's natural draw toward that which he instinctively knows is wrong Jesus said "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness, rather than the light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).

Chritianity has a track record to be ashamed of. And it needs to muster up the courage and honesty to condemn its own followers who use religion as an excuse for all sorts of corruption. We have no shortage of that going on around evangelical circles today. In fact, there are very few "public" examples of consistent Christianity left to point to any more. However, even this seems to be accounted for in the Bible. "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 7:13).

I like the quote from G.K. Chesterton "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

Anyway, I am not preaching or trying to change anyones view. I respect the right of every person to make their own decision about matters as important as these. I believe the question of moral absolutes to be one of the most important issues of our day. People I speak to are looking for meaning and purpose in life. I sympathize with their plight. For myself, I have found the most effective way to begin to help such people is to begin with their innate sense of right and wrong, good and evil. Move from this to the existance of God. And then to provide the case, IF they are interested in hearing it, for my own faith and how my own life has been changed by it. I think the most important thing for us all is to just not give up searching for the truth.

Again, I respect those who wish to disagree.

-Jason

[mistermikev]

fish r ph/jason - wise words. very few have the patience to deliver them so thoughfully.
Can god and science co-exist:
go back to the begining of existence... the first atom, the first sub-atomic particle... call whatever force made that god.
"God created man in his image"... can that image evolve? I don't see why not.

[sihaya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Why would this moral law giver have to be supernatural? Are we not capable of recognizing what is right from what is wrong?

Actually, I would say "no" for two reasons 1) there is no absolute right and wrong and 2) even if there was, we'd all disagree over what it was.

Just look at the abortion issue. Can you honestly say with absolute certainty that abortion is wrong or not wrong? Even though I'm as pro-choice as they come, I'm not going to say that my opinion is an absolute truth. There are many moral dilemas where reasonable, intelligent minds can disagree. Who has ultimate say who's right or wrong ? In my opinion, this is exactly why people created god in the first place.

I'm pretty anti strictly organized religion for a variety of reasons. But seriously, with all due respect to my fellow athiests, secular morality is dangerously mercurial and often self-serving. I know this from education if not from personal experience.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by sihaya

Actually, I would say "no" for two reasons 1) there is no absolute right and wrong and 2) even if there was, we'd all disagree over what it was.

Which I already addressed in my post #14 above: Laws.

Just look at the abortion issue. Can you honestly say with absolute certainty that abortion is wrong or not wrong?

We cannot say anything with absolute certainty, so why should that be a problem in this issue when it's not a problem in so many other issues?

We have an established legal framework to regulate our actions in this area just as in any other area involving social interaction. The current laws are acceptable to the majority of Americans. The majority of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned. By a 6-3 majority, the Supreme Court agrees. If they ever take it up again, the outcome could be different. Maybe. Maybe not.

However, rather than get into a discussion of whether it is moral to abort a second or third trimester fetus, let's address the question of whether it is moral to use a blastocyst that is less than a week old for stem-cell research -- a blastocyst that would have been destroyed anyway because it was not wanted by the owners who did not need it for IVF. In my mind, it is more moral to use these blastocysts for stem-cell research (provided they are utilized before the 14th day, which is the law in the U.K.) than to destroy them. Fundamentalist Christians and the Catholic Church disagree. The Mormons, on the other hand, agree with my position because they do not believe that the blastocyst has a soul at that point. It's sort of a technicality that lets them be pro-life and pro-stem-cell research at the same time.

The Catholic Church and most fundamentalist Christians believe that a pill that prevents ovulation amounts to abortion. I don't see it that way and neither does the vast majority of Americans. The Catholic Church believes that every act of sexual intercourse must be open to reproduction. The vast majority of Catholics do not agree with that position. It is, in fact, still the official position of the Catholic Church. This is why the Pope(s) have refused to permit condoms even in countries like Africa where millions of people are becoming infected with HIV. In my mind, this decision by the Pope is immoral. He knows it is but he's extremely hard-headed. Right now the curia is working on figuring out a way to permit the use of condoms but only for married couples under certain circumstances. I believe they have come around to permitting condoms for married couples where one of the partners is already HIV positive. Of course, they haven't announced that yet but that's as far as they have gotten the last time I checked. That's not much and won't really solve the problem in Africa or elsewhere. Whatever their new policy is, it's supposed to be announced within the next few months.

There are many moral dilemas where reasonable, intelligent minds can disagree. Who has ultimate say who's right or wrong ? In my opinion, this is exactly why people created god in the first place.

I think they created God in response to the question "how did I get here?" They created an afterlife in response to the fear of death. The church created hell to keep the "faithful" in line.

I'm pretty anti strictly organized religion for a variety of reasons. But seriously, with all due respect to my fellow athiests, secular morality is dangerously mercurial and often self-serving. I know this from education if not from personal experience.

Nothing is perfect. Democracy is not perfect but it's better than the alternatives. Morality as handed down by the Church over the years is certainly not something to be admired. Even today, there are things that are condoned by the Church (speaking of the Catholic Church) that are absolutely immoral and they know it. And the Church has never believed in freedom of religion but that can be said about Islam, too.


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"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -- Albert Einstein