Patient_Leech
Perfect Organism
Originally posted by Surtur
You still haven't quite explained how it's hypocritical to say you don't believe physical death is the end, but it's not hypocritical if you don't believe God is real. There is no evidence on Gods existence either way, so that is a problem we run into.
You've used way too many double-negatives, so I'm not even quite sure what you're trying to say, but if I do understand you right: Believing that one's soul rises out of your skull after death with similar capacities that we have in this world requires a similar jump in faith to the existence of God, for which there is also little to no evidence. That's why it's hypocritical for you to be adamant that there is no God, but that our souls carry on after death.
Unless of course some new and fascinating scientific facts come in...
Originally posted by Surtur
On top of that, you've still left us all in the dark about how believing something without empirical evidence is hypocrisy... A persons lack of scientific evidence for their beliefs is irrelevant to me. It's the harm their beliefs cause.
Even seemingly harmless irrational beliefs (i.e. beliefs that contradict science) like crackers turning into the body of some religious figure can have significant consequences. Surt, you don't like Muslims harming Jews in the name of their religion, do you? Well here you go, Sam Harris lays out a very curious example of established Christianity doing it with some seemingly harmless irrational dogma...
But for sheer gothic absurdity nothing surpasses the medieval concern over host desecration, the punishment of which preoccupied pious Christians for centuries. The doctrine of transubstantiation was formally established in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council (the same one that sanctioned the use of torture by inquisitors and prohibited Jews from owning land or embarking upon civil or military careers), and thereafter became the centerpiece of the Christian (now Catholic) faith. (The relevant passages from The Profession of Faith of the Roman Catholic was cited in chapter 2.) Henceforth, it was an indisputable fact of this world that communion host is actually transformed at the Mass into the living body of Jesus Christ. After this incredible dogma had been established, by mere reiteration, to the satisfaction of everyone, Christians began to worry that these living wafers might be subjected to all manner of mistreatment, and even physical torture, at the hands of heretics and Jews. (One might wonder why eating the body of Jesus would be any less of a torment to him.) Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers? Historical accounts suggest that as many as three thousand Jews were murdered in response to a single allegation of this imaginary crime. The crime of host desecration was punished through Europe for centuries.It is out of this history of theologically mandated persecution that secular anti-Semitism emerged. Even explicitly anti-Christian movements, as in the cases of German Nazism and Russian socialism, managed to inherit and enact the doctrinal intolerance of the church. Astonishingly, ideas as spurious as the blood libel are still very much with us, having found a large cult of believers in the Muslim world (*42).
[quote]*42 footnote:
The Egyptian paper Al Akhbar and the Saudi paper Al Riyadh have both published articles purporting to verify the blood libel. The Syrian defense ministry Mustafa Tlas has written a book, The Matzoh of Zion, charging the Jews with ritual murder. Nazi propaganda on the subject dating from the 1930s, now appears on Islamist websites. See Kertzer, "Modern Use."
~ Sam Harris
The End of Faith (p.99-100)[/quote]
Your belief that our souls rise out of us after we die would be perfectly good irrational evidence to ban the extremely promising medical treatment of stem cells. And indeed that very reasoning was used to stop it at the federal level.
So what do you say we keep the discourse rational and firmly planted in this world, eh?