Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Yeah, I know the episode. It's funny. Especially the giant otters eating things on their tummies. 😂But it's not really true to reality. The science community is actually a very collaborative one, even worldwide.
To Prove that isn't really true. 2 Words..."CLIMATE CHANGE"
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
But my question to Emperor, though, is this...Since you clearly welcome open criticism to the Bible and everything that typical fundamental Christianity involves, and you obviously recognize that the Bible has been required to go through some serious reformations and rationalizations to make sense of its narrow-minded outlook (it's stance on slavery and primitive understanding of creation, etc) then what special pedestal does the Bible belong on? Why not just look at it like any other old piece of literature?
A general rule of thumb I have is to not accept contradictions to the core values of Christianity, and to not deny scientific fact which is undeniably the literal direct word of God if he did indeed create the universe.
Christians should treat the Bible as containing divine truth, but shouldn't make the mistake of treating it as a flawless work, or when a contradiction arises make the mistake of choosing the Biblical precept over the core Christian value it contradicts.
I find it interesting that you mentioned the creation story, because the creation story and the fall of man might actually be my favorite part of the Old Testament. Though the details are scientifically accurate, there's something powerful about God forming our physical reality from articulated speech. There's actually a professor named Jordan Peterson in Canada whose given some really good concepts on the Christian concept of the Logos, which is both the articulated speech God used in creation to form order out of chaos, and also one of the titles of Jesus, so Jordan Peterson places emphasis on the idea that humanity's salvation is the same thing that organized order from Chaos, so articulated speech, logical reasoning, systems of meaning, etc. Which is something I think quite a few Christians and Atheists would do better to seize upon. Some Christians ignore logical reasoning, and while I have a lot of respect for plenty of very logical and scientifically minded atheists, some people make the mistake of assuming that atheism is synonymous with logic when I've known quite a few unintelligent atheists, and when some atheists take the conclusion of "there is no God" to reject systems of meaning or ordering, such as those who embrace nihilism, post-modernism, or amorality.
And the other part of Genesis that intrigues me is the fall of man, because taken literally the idea of collective guilt, that we all bear the guilt for something our ancestors did, is stupid and is one of the reasons I find myself in opposition to those termed SJWs, because people trying to implicate me in collective guilt for slavery, or "the patriarchy" just because I'm a white male even though I've never oppressed anyone is dumb. However, viewed allegorically the fall of man is a perfect allegory for why we as humans have the capacity for evil. In the creation story and in the act of disobeying God and eating the fruit is the idea of choice. Then of course what ultimately motivated that original sin was the serpent tempting Eve with essentially a God-complex, which is the most extreme form of arrogance, and from both a Christian theological stance and my own observation of human behavior I believe arrogance to be the root of all evil, (since arrogance motivates people's selfish desires, allows them to justify doing something immoral and unethical for those desires, and prevents them from being willing to admit their own faults), and the original sin, the act of eating the fruit bestowed upon humanity a knowledge of good and evil, which is necessary for moral accountability. So the original sin when viewed allegorically posits that we have a capacity for evil because we can make the choice between good and evil, have a knowledge of good and evil, and within us we contain the part of human nature that motivates all evil.
Whelp, that was a particularly long winded rant, not necessarily as an argument moreso than I felt like going onto a lengthy philosophical diatribe.
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Yeah, I know the episode. It's funny. Especially the giant otters eating things on their tummies. 😂But it's not really true to reality. The science community is actually a very collaborative one, even worldwide. They obviously don't care about petty things like what to name the "Atheist Movement." And the things they do care about, which are scientific discoveries, they're terrified of being wrong, so they're always passing ideas on to more and more specialized fields of study. It's a very anti-dogmatic system. When was the last time we heard a scientist announce that he wants to kill non-scientists? Never. Whereas we've heard it non-stop from Muslims and even some particularly wacky (and non-reformed) Christians. Scientists don't kill people.. lol
And this can be viewed in a modern or historical context even, for example communism. Communism in the twentieth century killed a lot more people than the Nazis, and in modern day (if I'm not mistaken) communist terrorism is currently the second most common form of terrorism after Islamic terrorism. Or for other examples, the prospect of nuclear war in Russia which could lead to mass scale destruction never seen before, at least to my knowledge is completely disconnected from religion, and one of the greatest problems in politics is political corruption and corporatism, which is something getting rid of religion wouldn't have any noticeable impact in actually solving.
In fact, while Islamism (the political religious ideology of spreading Islam and Islamic law behind terrorism that a lot of Muslims, but not all support) is clearly the most dangerous and currently destructive ideology in our time, I'd go so far as to argue the next few most destructive ideologies are not religious in nature. For example there's communism, which an atheist could make a case that Christianity is detrimental to nations, however there's hardly nearly as much of a historical precedence for there being nations doing well... then Christianity swoops in and completely ruins them, however with communism there's examples like Russia, or Cuba, or virtually any country it's been tried in, whereas nations with a large Christian presence have been generally successful and advanced (you could argue that's in spite of Christianity rather than because of it, but it doesn't change the fact that Christianity didn't collapse those nations). Or for example there's also post-modernist ideology, which has in modern lead to rather oppressive laws for example in Canada, and has poisoned the ideological sanctity of universities and open discussion and free speech in a way that Christianity despite being such a presence in say the US for example hasn't done in a comparable manner (at least not in the modern day), and also has driven some students to actively obstruct law enforcement. Or for another example you have anarchist groups or groups with anarchist tendencies, such as the anarcho-communist Antifa movment and an Antifa group known as BAMN who actively promote political violence against their ideological opponents and have actually assaulted police officers in some cases, or a certain anarchistic aspect of BLM that calls for dead cops (even if someone is to argue it's a good movement, certainly it could do without calling for violence and murder against law enforcement).
Say what you want about the Western practices of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, New Age shit, Mormonism, or even Scientology, but unlike ideologies disconnected from religion such as communism, post-modernism, and anarchistic ideologies, the western practices of the aforementioned religions do not by necessity stand in direct opposition to and call for the upheaval of western civilization.
And all of this isn't me saying religious ideology shouldn't be challenged when disagreed with, but this is me agreeing with South Park that getting rid of religion wouldn't create utopia, and the idea that if only we got rid of religion we'd live in a society where everyone upholds logical reasoning is woefully optimistic to say the least. I also think sometimes people who want a logical society and progress, even if they should criticize religious ideologies they find detrimental, sometimes overemphasize the western practice of religion when there are more detrimental ideologies that aren't connected to the religion vs atheism debate.
Originally posted by Flyattractor
[b]To Prove that isn't really true. 2 Words..."CLIMATE CHANGE" [/B]
Oh, you mean something that about 97% of scientists agree on? Oh, yeah, that actually proves my point. It's the idiotic media that muddies those actually crystal clear waters.
They've actually taken old samples of air from deep layers of ice from hundreds of years ago and found less carbon dioxide present than current air.
Originally posted by Emperordmb
An excellent question. I believe the a Christian should look at the Bible as containing divine truth, however at the same time as it was written by man it is subject to the flaws of man, and thus, while I still think the Bible is important, it shouldn't be worshipped in the same way that the Holy Trinity is....Christians should treat the Bible as containing divine truth, but shouldn't make the mistake of treating it as a flawless work...
So it's written through men, and that's why it isn't flawless? And forgive me for bringing this up again and again (especially since it isn't relevant to this topic), but that would also be why the Bible advocates slavery and other rather immoral behavior?
Why would an all-powerful God allow his perfect Word to get janked up by men? lol. And the Word still claims to be the perfect Word of God and you say it's not... are you calling God a liar?
Originally posted by Emperordmb
Yeah it's dumb to view that episode as an attack on the scientific community so much as it is an obvious attack on the idea that religion is somehow the root of all or most evil and that by removing religion we could create some utopia, essentially Trey Parker and Matt Stone are pointing out that you could get rid of religion, but humans would still find ideological differences to fight over and shit....And all of this isn't me saying religious ideology shouldn't be challenged when disagreed with, but this is me agreeing with South Park that getting rid of religion wouldn't create utopia, and the idea that if only we got rid of religion we'd live in a society where everyone upholds logical reasoning is woefully optimistic to say the least.
Sure, no one is arguing that religion is the sole reason for violence and hatred in the world, but it is a big reason for tribal us-versus-them violence and in the case of Islam it's a big reason for religious conquest. But there's also this...
us-vs-them mentality exists in any kind of society, not just those in which religion plays a big part.
Unless your argument is that war between classes has been delayed because of religion being used as an argument for the poor vs rich ultimate conflict. I could come back saying that nations already played that role as "placebo" wars.
Originally posted by Bentley
us-vs-them mentality exists in any kind of society, not just those in which religion plays a big part.
Sure. No one is saying otherwise.
But I really can't recommend Sam Harris' book The End of Faith highly enough. He lays out an undeniable argument for how dangerous our incompatible religions are, the ones that are particularly faith-based, i.e. based on fantastic assertions about the universe but without sufficient evidence...
"It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil. Wherever conviction grows in inverse proportion to its justification, we have lost the very basis of human cooperation . . . People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in the halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person's faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next."~ Sam Harris
The End Of Faith (from the Epilogue)
And to get a little bit more on topic here, I'm going to be reading this book by Richard Dawkins (speaking of the South Park episode, haha). So I might share some interesting tidbits as I go along...
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
So it's written through men, and that's why it isn't flawless? And forgive me for bringing this up again and again (especially since it isn't relevant to this topic), but that would also be why the Bible advocates slavery and other rather immoral behavior?
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Why would an all-powerful God allow his perfect Word to get janked up by men? lol.
Something of a Christian Universalist/Irenaean Theodicy approach
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
And the Word still claims to be the perfect Word of God and you say it's not... are you calling God a liar?
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Sure, no one is arguing that religion is the sole reason for violence and hatred in the world, but it is a big reason for tribal us-versus-them violence and in the case of Islam it's a big reason for religious conquest. But there's also this...
Sam Harris is an exception to both of these statements since he clearly is more critical of the threat of Islam than the threat of Christianity in a modern day context, and since he also comments on politics and thus doesn't focus ideological criticism exclusively around religious ideologies, and this is one of the reasons I have quite a bit of respect for Sam Harris despite my obvious disagreements with him, as well as the fact that in his criticism of religion while he's pretty blunt about his stances he's not a deliberately provocative ******* about them, and he's pragmatic enough to recognize that it's more realistic to work with moderate Muslims for ideological reform than to think removing the presence of Islam from the world is a practical notion.
This is also a reason I'm rather fond of Sargon of Akkad on YouTube, since he's obviously very critical of religion, but he places more emphasis on criticizing detrimental political ideologies than say western Christianity for example.
Basically I don't take an issue with ideological criticism as much as I take issue with the priorities of some New Atheists when it comes to ideological criticism.
Re: Evolution vs Creation
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Let's pretend this is still a debate...
Sadly, there is and there will be in the foreseeable future as huge numbers of people believe in some variation of the Creation story.
If you want to say evolution* isn't real, sure, that's your right, it has gaps. But believing in magical gardens, talking snakes, mythical creatures like angels, fire/smoke breathing sea monsters, flying horses, god-men is the stuff of lunacy; no sane adult should.
*I accept it as is and accept it could change as technology progresses
Originally posted by Emperordmb
My answer to this is similar to that of my answer to the problem of evil in that I don't believe God is interventionist to the extent of doing all of our work for us.
Exactly. So why would a loving creator give humans answers at all? It is not a loving thing to do, for to give humans answers rots our brains. Our brains evolved to think and reason and come up with solutions on our own. At no point have we ever been given answers from a supernatural entity. So believing in magic books and actual magic events is quite an archaic and superstitious worldview. It's... unnatural.
Originally posted by Emperordmb
And I'm not so much critical of criticizing religion as much as I am against the disproportionate emphasis quite a few New Atheists place on religion in their quest for intellectualism and a reason based society when with the exception of Islamism there are numerous ideologies more detrimental than the practice of religion in western societies that rear their head in politics, violence, educational indoctrination for political means, and a desire for the upheaval of western society. Criticize religion, but I think quite a few New Atheists place a disproportionate emphasis on western religion when there are bigger fish to fry, and in particular those who place an extreme emphasis on Christianity such as TheYoungTurks for example who in every topic they discuss even vaguely connected to Christianity they take the opportunity to mock and place blame on it, yet for every video involving Islam it's all apologetics.Sam Harris is an exception to both of these statements since he clearly is more critical of the threat of Islam than the threat of Christianity in a modern day context, and since he also comments on politics and thus doesn't focus ideological criticism exclusively around religious ideologies, and this is one of the reasons I have quite a bit of respect for Sam Harris despite my obvious disagreements with him, as well as the fact that in his criticism of religion while he's pretty blunt about his stances he's not a deliberately provocative ******* about them, and he's pragmatic enough to recognize that it's more realistic to work with moderate Muslims for ideological reform than to think removing the presence of Islam from the world is a practical notion.
This is also a reason I'm rather fond of Sargon of Akkad on YouTube, since he's obviously very critical of religion, but he places more emphasis on criticizing detrimental political ideologies than say western Christianity for example.
Basically I don't take an issue with ideological criticism as much as I take issue with the priorities of some New Atheists when it comes to ideological criticism.
Yes, Sam Harris is reasonable enough to recognize that not all religions teach the same thing and where they do teach the same thing (as he points out: ) they don't teach it equally well. He definitely recognizes Islam as a particularly virulent strand of irrationality.
But Christianity is also quite a problem. Here in the United States it is simply accepted by many people as "the right way to be," and that's a very dangerous mode of thinking (or should i say 'non-thinking'?). Half of the country (give or take) thinks Jesus is coming back soon (Think about that for a second). That has some terrifying consequences. So of course many reasonably thinking atheists are going to speak out against it. Whether or not they see Islam as more dangerous than other religions I'm not sure. But I think they would realize quite obviously that Christianity has been reformed and that it used to be actually if not just as bad as Islam, certainly quite close to being just as bad. And unfortunately I think many Christian believers have a false sense of superiority to Islam because Christianity isn't still burning heretics and witches alive and requiring indulgences, etc. Because it's been reformed many people (including some that I work with) think we're (as Christians) at war with Islam. No, we're at war with Islam as rational human beings!
That was actually a Facebook post recently from someone I work with, here it is verbatim:
[Typical Right-wing Trump Supporter Guy]: So how many times do we have to say "and it's Islam" before we understand that we as christians are at war with Islam? They understand how about you?
I suspect this opinion is pretty typical. That's a problem going up against Islam. It's not one form of irrationality against another, it's rationality against irrationality.
Originally posted by Patient_Leech
He lays out an undeniable argument for how dangerous our incompatible religions are, the ones that are particularly faith-based, i.e. based on fantastic assertions about the universe but without sufficient evidence...
Fair point. Thanks to fantastic assertions being the base of primitive political/religious agendas modern thinkers have easily dismissed them. If divisions were to be based in more elaborate and fact oriented lies they'd be much harder to combat even with modern age understanding and information networks. The painful cost of leaving faith based societal links behind as the cohesion of the State became an excellent learning process.
We can see a similar danger in the light the whole novelty of the fake news propaganda, which is the kind of development I'd expect to happen in a world ruled by less "religious thinking" 👆
Originally posted by Adam Grimes
He's talking about more complex and elaborated 'beliefs' that would be harder to debunk by the GA, ie: us.
Oh, okay, well Creation Myths have been pretty well 'debunked' by scientific explanations, and where they try to become more sophisticated (like God using evolution along the way), that's just people clinging to old beliefs and trying to make them fit with new information instead of fully adopting new information.
...it's better to try to stick with natural explanations for things, not supernatural explanations because they can't really be proven and lend themselves more to our superstitious tendencies.
So we all know (at least many of us) that dogs have a sort of co-evolution with humans which explains whey they are 'man's best friend' and how they have come to be domesticated. Well, here is a very interesting modern experiment explained in the book I'm reading by Richard Dawkins that shows something very similar is possible with foxes. I typed out a few pages...
We can get an idea of how tameness, or anything else, can be sculpted – naturally or artificially – by looking at a fascinating experiment of modern times, on the domestication of Russian silver foxes for use in the fur trade. It is doubly interesting because of the lessons it teaches us, over and above what Darwin knew, about the domestication process, about the ‘side-effects’ of selective breeding, and about the resemblance, which Darwin well understood, between artificial and natural selection.The silver fox is just a colour variant, valued for its beautiful fur, of the familiar red fox, Vulpes vulpes. The Russian geneticist Dimitri Belyaev was employed to run a fox fur farm in the 1950s. He was later sacked because his scientific genetics conflicted with the anti-scientific ideology of the Lysenko, the charlatan biologist who managed to capture the ear of Stalin and so take over, and largely ruin, all of Soviet genetics and agriculture for some twenty years. Belyaev retains his love of foxes, and of true Lysenko-free genetics, and he was later able to resume his studies of both, as director of an Institute of Genetics in Siberia.
Wild foxes are tricky to handle, and Belyaev set out deliberately to breed for tameness. Like any other animal or plant breeder of his time, his method was to exploit natural variation (no genetic engineering in those days) and choose, for breeding, those males and females that came closest to the ideal he was seeking. In selecting for tameness, Belyaev could have chosen, for breeding, those dogs and bitches that most appealed to him, or looked at him with the cutest facial expression. That might well have had the desired effect on the tameness of future generations. More systematically that that, however, he used a measure that was pretty close to the ‘flight distance’ I just mentioned in connection with wild wolves, but adapted for cubs. Belyaev and his colleagues (and successors, for the experimental program continued after his death) subjected fox cubs to standardized tests in which and experimenter would offer a cub food by hand, while trying to stroke or fondle it. The cubs were classified into three classes. Class III cubs were those that fled from or bit the person. Class II cubs would allow themselves to be handled, but showed no positive responsiveness to the experimenters. Class I cubs, the tamest of all, positively approached the handlers, wagging their tails and whining. When the cubs grew up the experimenters systematically bred only for this tamest class.
After a mere six generations of this selective breeding for tameness, the foxes had changed so much that the experimenters felt obliged to name a new category, the ‘domesticated elite’ class, which were ‘eager to establish human contact, whimper to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs’. At the beginning of the experiment, none of the foxes were in the elite class. After ten generations of breeding for tameness, 18 per cent were ‘elite’; after twenty generations, 35 per cent; and after thirty to thirty-five generations, ‘domesticated elite’ individuals constituted between 70 to 80 per cent of the experimental population.
Such results are perhaps not too surprising, except for the astonishing magnitude and speed of the effect. Thirty-five generations would pass unnoticed on the geological timescale. Even more interesting, however, were the unexpected side-effects of selective breeding for tameness. These were truly fascinating and genuinely unforeseen. Darwin, the dog-lover, would have been entranced.
The tame foxes not only behaved like domestic dogs, they looked like them. They lost their foxy pelage and became piebald black and white, like Welsh collies. Their foxy prick ears were replaced by doggy floppy ears. Their tails turned up at the end like a dog’s, rather than down like a fox’s brush. The females came on heat every six months like a bitch, instead of every year like a vixen. According to Belyaev, they even sounded like dogs.
These dog-like features were side-effects. Belyaev and his team did not deliberately breed for them, only for tameness. Those other dog-like characteristics seemingly rode on the evolutionary coattails of the genes for tameness. To geneticists, this is not surprising. They recognize a widespread phenomenon called ‘pleiotropy’, whereby genes have more than one effect, seemingly unconnected. The stress is on the word ‘seemingly’. Embryonic development is a complicated business. As we learn more about the details, that ‘seemingly unconnected’ turns into ‘connected by a route that we now understand, but didn’t before’. Presumably genes for floppy ears and piebald coats are pleiotropically linked to genes for tameness, in foxes as well as in dogs. This illustrates a generally important point about evolution. When you notice a characteristic of an animal and ask what its Darwinian survival value is, you may be asking the wrong question. It could be that the characteristic you have picked out is not the one that matters. It may have ‘come along for the ride’, dragged along in evolution by some other characteristic to which it is pleiotropically linked.
Richard Dawkins
The Greatest Show on Earth, p. 73-76
shock That's really cool.