Wow, I can't believe this thread is still going!
You aren't going to solve it, ladies and gentlemen. According to Merriam-Webster, faith is "firm belief in something for which there is no proof." Even discounting brain in a vat, God is inherently untestable, and therefore can never be disproved (or proved).
On the other hand, if you just find this sort of thing entertaining, have at it, though there are plenty of books which do it better. ;-)
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm all for understanding the other's guy's POV, but I think this issue is well past that point.
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Wow, I can't believe this thread is still going!
You aren't going to solve it, ladies and gentlemen. According to Merriam-Webster, faith is "firm belief in something for which there is no proof." Even discounting brain in a vat, God is inherently untestable, and therefore can never be disproved (or proved).
On the other hand, if you just find this sort of thing entertaining, have at it, though there are plenty of books which do it better. ;-)
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I'm all for understanding the other's guy's POV, but I think this issue is well past that point.
I once dreamed I was a butterfly dreaming I was a man.....
The destination is not the purpose of the journey, it is the walking of a thousand miles that matters.
How do you know the Truth is?
How do you know the Truth is?How do you not?
The same way I know there is no Santa Claus.
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O.k. Then everything outside of Gensis is to be taken literally?
I didn't necessarily say that either.
Job is considered to be the oldest book in the Bible. It's really hard to tell how much in there is "factual". But then the vast majority of it is about how his wife is telling him to curse God and what is going on in his mind.
I could go through the entire Old Testament, but don't really feel like it.
I would ask why you feel the need to make the entire Bible 100% literally accurate. But I feel that other Christians are largely the cause for that.
You still haven't answered the question I asked. There are MANY "stories" in the Bible that don't make much sense at all if all we are looking for is a "moral". To you, it seems like it MUST be an all or nothing deal. Either it is 100% false, or it is 100% true. I don't understand that reasoning.
You seem to have a problem trying to determine what "stories" should be taken literally and what stories are to be taken as "fables". In order to answer that, it's probably just as simple as answering what the point of the story is. If the point of the story is to list facts (the Hebrews marched over hill XX and conquered enemy YY) then they were probably trying their best to maintain some historical accuracy through oral tradition as well as they could (but it still escapes me why they would want to remember all the crap that happened to them). At the same time, if the "moral" or point of the story is more along the lines of "God takes care of those who obey" or something similar, then it becomes much more a matter of faith.
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The same way I know there is no Santa Claus.How do you know the Truth is?How do you not?
Please understand my quip was not meant to be offensive. I will refrain from reposting my response the last time you mentioned Santa Claus, as it will be most definitely taken as offensive and I am not as crabby as I was lat week.:)
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To be truthful, there is very little exterior evidence of the state of Isreal prior to 1500BC and even then it is only mentioned on an egyptian text of one of the pharoahs conquests. There is no record of Isrealites being slaves in Egypt, no exterior evidence of an exodus from egypt, no exterior evidence of 40 years in the desert. We do find some old ruins in Isreal that may date back to that time. But the only real evidence of Isreal pre greek conquest, is minimal.
Something to keep in mind with all of this -- at best, "Israel" was not a nation at that time. They were really only a collection of families with a common ancestor. They only started to become a nation (in theory) during the Exodus. And even then, only started...
I guess then, that by your evidence, Israel never existed?
The destination is not the purpose of the journey, it is the walking of a thousand miles that matters.
But supposed you've walked that same thousand miles. Again. And again. And again...And the scenery never changes.
Edit: And all the people walking with you invariable point at each landmark, just sure they're the first person to see it. Never mind all the published guidebooks...
Please understand my quip was not meant to be offensive.
I did not take it offensively. It seems a perfectly reasonable response. My position remains,
"Prove there are fairies. No, you prove there are not fairies."
The lack of evidence does not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it does seem an excellent indicator. Afterall, we discount all manner of things which can not be proven one way or the other. Why does god get special treatment?
Does not make it less true.Are all facts true? Is all truth fact? Did I pull this out of a fortune cookie?
That depends on what one means by true.
I hope not because I'd had to think that a decent question arose from such a source of tawdry aphorisms. :)
My point was, of course, that the word true carries a lot of baggage and some mutually-inconsistent meanings. To me, all facts are truth and no non-fact is truth. The two are completely identical. Facts, and thus truth, are ascertained through reasoned study of the universe and added to, modified, and so forth as that study advances. Or to put it another way, truth is that which maps to reality. A truth, then, is a statement about the universe which it turns out actually maps to the universe. The better something maps to reality, the more true it is.
More true? Less true? Surely something is either true or it is not! I get this objection a lot. To which I paraphrase an old line from one of the more forgotten popularizers of science: Isaac Asimov. Once, many people thought that the Earth was flat. They were wrong, we subsequently discovered through many means. Then people thought that the earth was perfectly round, a Platonic solid hurling through space. They were also wrong. It bulges out a bit more towards the equator and flattens a bit towards the poles, so it's kind of oblate. But these two groups of people were not equally wrong. The perfect sphere people had a more accurate model of reality than the flat earth people did. Even if the oblate spheroid people turn out to be wrong, it is profoundly unlikely that they will be so wrong as the flat earthers or even the perfect sphere people. If perfection and infallibility are unavailable to us, that does not mean that all we conceive is equally and utterly false. Being wrong in the past doesn't mean we will be wrong, or as wrong, in the future. What is required to keep this self-correcting engine of truth detection going is only the acceptance of new information and willingness to modify our opinions based on it.
The other objection I usually hear is that people want to claim that this parable or that myth is somehow true. Maybe it's not true to science or history, but it's true on some "higher" level. (I put quotes around higher because to me there is no possible higher understanding than the truth I'm talking about. It gets no better than this.) Usually these claims begin with the sense that the story is an expression of scientific or historical truth. Then as knowledge advances, their truth gets defined down to metaphor and allegory. What am I talking about? I'll use a neutral example. Here is a true statement:
Leda and the Swan is a beautiful poem.
Wait, what? That's not a statement about reality. That's just my opinion. In fact it's a poem about a rape! What's wrong with me?! At any rate, opinions can't be right or wrong. They just are.
Sort of. I think our language betrays us a bit here. In saying that the poem is beautiful I appear to be making a claim about the poem, declaring its properties just as I would declare that the air is a certain temperature and humidity. But it turns out that these aren't really the properties of the poem. Other people could find it disgusting. Yet we are looking at the same data. How can the poem be both beautiful and ugly?
For a while I thought this was a serious issue and it prompted me to consider if there was some separate category of aesthetic truth distinct from the true to reality truth which, to be blunt about it, actually matters to other people. I floated this concept on my philosophy final and my teacher pounced, commenting that maybe all truth was aesthetic.
I don't think so. If one stops believing in gravity, jumping off a cliff will still have the same outcome. We can declare (Gay man referencing musical ahead, please secure all heterosexality in the overhead compartment and return your wrists to the limp position.}:
Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!
(It is now safe to use heterosexual devices again. Thank you for flying Samnell Air.)
But we still smash into the rocks, break our bones and bodies, have our brains spilled out, land with our limbs in embarrassing positions, and bleed all over the place. We can sing, clap our hands, proclaim that we do believe in fairies, and dream the dream of a thousand cats. But song, belief, dreams, hopes, however passionate, do not rewrite reality. Tinkerbell isn't physics.
What then can we make of aesthetic judgments? One could say that there's some kind of universality about the stimulus itself, but aesthetic preferences are notoriously culturally-laden. What is moving and inspiring to one person (my references above are all to bits of media I've found inspiring and uplifting at one point or another) may be just the opposite for another. Is one or the other of these people just wrong? How would we tell, being bound up in the same cultural baggage they are?
At this point I realized my error. I wasn't talking about Leda and the Swan at all. I was talking about my emotional reaction to it. So "Leda and the Swan is beautiful" is a statement about me, not about the writing. I have this reaction. Others might have a different reaction. Insofar as we can measure emotional responses, those are certainly claims about the universe. Unless we are mistaken about our own reactions, they are both true as well.
So if someone wants to say that the Tower of Babel story is true in that they find it inspiring, approve of the moral it teaches, think it says something about the human condition, or so forth, that's fine. If they have this reaction to it, they have it. If they want to say that it's more than that, that it says something about more than themselves, at that point it becomes fair game for the usual sort of investigations.
To me, all facts are truth and no non-fact is truth. The two are completely identical. Facts, and thus truth, are ascertained through reasoned study of the universe and added to, modified, and so forth as that study advances. Or to put it another way, truth is that which maps to reality. A truth, then, is a statement about the universe which it turns out actually maps to the universe. The better something maps to reality, the more true it is.
So there is only objective truth and no subjective truth? So the "fact" that Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Macadamia ice cream is delicious must, of course, be as obvious to you as it is to me... ;-)
I believe, sir, you are confusing reality with truth.
So there is only objective truth and no subjective truth? So the "fact" that Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Macadamia ice cream is delicious must, of course, be as obvious to you as it is to me... ;-)
I answered this objection. :)
Please understand my quip was not meant to be offensive.I did not take it offensively. It seems a perfectly reasonable response. My position remains,
"Prove there are fairies. No, you prove there are not fairies."
The lack of evidence does not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it does seem an excellent indicator. Afterall, we discount all manner of things which can not be proven one way or the other. Why does god get special treatment?
Because more people believe in him than do fairies. Fairies are mythology, because it is believed by most of the populace that they are not real. Same for the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods. I’m fairly certain no one referred to the Greek gods as Greek mythology when their gods were worshipped by most of the citizenry. But they are now because few people believe they are real. Few people now call Christianity Christian mythology (and those that do are usually doing so to push Christian’s buttons) because so many people believe it’s true. There may yet come a time when Christianity is referred to as mythology, but I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.
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A truth, then, is a statement about the universe which it turns out actually maps to the universe. The better something maps to reality, the more true it is.
Maybe. Very eloquent ... and largely "true". ;-)
The Bible is still a little different though. We have a Messianic Jewish congregation that meets in our church building. We Westerners do not see things -- especially with regards to the Bible -- the same way they do. We came into the story in the middle and tried to make sense of the beginning without fully understanding what was going on. It was like giving a kid a loaded gun without instruction -- I really think that we shot ourselves in the foot. So now, because we didn't know what we were doing and tried to make sense of something that we didn't understand, we are now doing some back-peddling trying to figure out what "truth" is.
A little anecdote:
So the other day I had my first encounter in quite some time with an evangelizing Christian. I wasn't sure whether to be offended or not...I suppose I'm simply ambiguous about the situation.
I was standing in the bus plaza, waiting for my connecting ride, when an old man on one of those little scooters, sidles up next to me. I was standing at one of the windows, reading to pass the time.
He starts off by telling me I've got my smile on upside down. I chuckle at this, because the corners of my mouth tend to turn downward naturally, especially if I'm concentrating on something, prompting numerous comments about "cheering up" or "what's bothering you?" Then he skips directly to the point: "Where do you think you'll be spending eternity?" I tell him that I honestly don't know.
So he proceeds to tell me that God loves me, and that I have a place in heaven if I'll only accept him, etc. Then he tells me, "You're not a bad person," in a tone of voice that suggests I believe that of myself. I reply: "That seems to be a pretty big judgment to make, considering you and I haven't been properly introduced." He seemed a bit taken aback by that, uttered a couple more platitudes, and then took his leave.
I suppose I could be insulted at the insinuation, but I'm not really. He didn't care about me in the slightest. I gave him the opportunity to introduce himself, get to know me. However, he'd done his "good deed" of reminding me about God, so never mind the social graces, I suppose.
I guess the point of my sharing this is that I've had this sort of thing happen before. Rather than take a proper attitude of approaching someone as a fellow human being, some evangelicals often make basic assumptions of another person's situation and character. They set themselves up as the do-gooder approaching the downtrodden and spiritually destitute. Then they wonder why they have such a hostile reception. They should spend some time at the church I grew up in; they could learn a few things. I may not follow the religion any longer, but there are still plenty of members that I look on as decent people worth listening to.
So there is only objective truth and no subjective truth? So the "fact" that Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Macadamia ice cream is delicious must, of course, be as obvious to you as it is to me... ;-)I answered this objection. :)
I know. I just don't buy it. :)
Is love an opinion? How about good?
So there is only objective truth and no subjective truth? So the "fact" that Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Macadamia ice cream is delicious must, of course, be as obvious to you as it is to me... ;-)I answered this objection. :)I know. I just don't buy it. :)
Is love an opinion? How about good?
I don't know about either of those things, but back to your Ben & Jerry's comment. Yes Ben & Jerry's is delicious. Truth & Fact.
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Does not make it less true.Are all facts true? Is all truth fact? Did I pull this out of a fortune cookie?
That depends on what one means by true.I hope not because I'd had to think that a decent question arose from such a source of tawdry aphorisms. :)
The fortune cookie comment was an, obviously poor, attempt at levity.
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Please understand my quip was not meant to be offensive.I did not take it offensively. It seems a perfectly reasonable response. My position remains,
"Prove there are fairies. No, you prove there are not fairies."
Okay I may be openning a can of worms here but I was listening to NPR today (yes I listen to NPR) and they were interveiwing the head of the University of East Anglia about the current e-mail scandle involving the climate research center there. When he was asked if, in light of the leaked e-mails, they would put all their research data on the tabel. His answer was no, because it was incumbant on the deniers to disprove anthropomorphic climate change, rather than on the scientists to prove it.
The Bible is still a little different though. We have a Messianic Jewish congregation that meets in our church building. We Westerners do not see things -- especially with regards to the Bible -- the same way they do. We came into the story in the middle and tried to make sense of the beginning without fully understanding what was going on. It was like giving a kid a loaded gun without instruction -- I really think that we shot ourselves in the foot. So now, because we didn't know what we were doing and tried to make sense of something that we didn't understand, we are now doing some back-peddling trying to figure out what "truth" is.
I sort of feel like the same thing has gone on for Protestant denominations who are very hardcore about sola scriptura. They ended up with a Bible that suddenly has lots of difficult parts for their theology and had denied themselves the recourse Catholic theology had in reference to the traditions of the church. (The Maigsterium of the Church says it means this where it says that and thus our difficulties are resolved. By the way, we wrote the thing so we know what we meant.) So they've spent the past few centuries building up their own set of traditions and the like. Of course the Jews had the same thing develop even earlier.
The book doesn't interpret itself, even if it's the agreed upon starting point. No book does. Literal plain reading is an interpretive choice (although to be fair, it seems like a good canidate for the null hypothesis). I have a handbook on the Bible which I was required to buy for a theology class a few years ago (It wasn't my idea, terrible class all around.) which tried to put together a flowchart of how book X or Y should be interpreted. It wasn't much more convincing than looking at the text and making one's own judgments.
But separately, and not necessarily just with Messianic Jews, there are at least two very different conceptions of religion that both plug into the Bible as their holy text. One is a sort of ethnic religiosity concerned mostly with maintaining connections to one's ancestors and certain acts of ritual purity. Doctrines aren't important, affirmative belief isn't really a big deal, and so forth. One could be an atheist or agnostic and still a member in perfectly good standing. This is the format that ethnic religions take worldwide. Converts are not really sought and the practices are often tied to particular geographic places. (Mount Fuji, Hebron, Sinai, the Temple Mount, Uluru, etc).
Then there's a creedal, universalistic, evangelizing kind of religion with which we're more familiar. For much of its history, most of Christianity has been one of these. So also Islam. I'm aware of some forms of Buddhism that may qualify, but my knowledge of them is tied up in their involvement with the Japanese state and I don't know enough to speak confidently on the particulars. Since these religions are interested in gaining followers, doctrines matter a lot more. So do the words of holy texts. Cultural practices that converts might find objectionable become optional in favor of gaining believers.
Both sorts of religion can find ample support for themselves in the text, and the boundary between them is a bit fuzzy. Every religion I've ever observed has elements of both types and one or the other may be locally prevalent but with the proportions flipped elsewhere. Any religion that's going to be successful in expanding its market share will have a universalistic, evangelizing side. Any religion which has become somewhat old, established, and secure among its followers will have elements of ethnic religion.
In the West, both brands of Christianity were settling down in ethnic lines from about the end of the Wars of Religion. The Protestant critique of Catholicism was in part that it had become too much an ethnic religion, which was also a complaint that Counter-Reformation Catholics had about it. Then the Calvinists came along and pointed out that the Lutherans were pretty ethnically religious too. And then the Baptists said the same thing about all of the above. About the time things were really settling down again, the antecedents of the modern fundamentalist movement arose.
The story plays out inside individual denominations too, often starting out evangelistic and then mellowing or being mellow and then responding to challenges with evangelism.
I know. I just don't buy it. :)
Is love an opinion? How about good?
To say that one is in love or loves something is making a statement about one's emotional state. It's no different than taking the temperature of some substance. (Well maybe it's more fun, but that too is an emotional state.) So also good.
Do you disagree? Why?
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Because more people believe in him than do fairies. Fairies are mythology, because it is believed by most of the populace that they are not real. Same for the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods. I’m fairly certain no one referred to the Greek gods as Greek mythology when their gods were worshipped by most of the citizenry. But they are now because few people believe they are real. Few people now call Christianity Christian mythology (and those that do are usually doing so to push Christian’s buttons) because so many people believe it’s true. There may yet come a time when Christianity is referred to as mythology, but I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.
So, if more people believed in fairies or the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, they would be real? How many people need to believe before something which is otherwise deemed mythological becomes true? The majority of the human population is not Christian and does not believe in Christianity, shouldn't that make it mythology too? I assume they refer to Christianity as mythology (or regard it as such), so hasn't that foreseeable future already come to pass?
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Any religion that's going to be successful in expanding its market share will have a universalistic, evangelizing side.
From a psychological point of view, this is interesting to me. Why is it that so many people who feel that they are "right" feel the need to force it on others? I guess the question is -- Why do we (larger "we" than just Christians) feel the general need to evangelize?
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So, if more people believed in fairies or the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, they would be real?
You still around?
Yeah, popular vote really doesn't mean anything. If God does exist and yet no one believes in him does he simply disappear? Whether or not God exists is a matter of faith and not majority rule.
But I think that what he's getting at is how accepting many of us are of potential mythological stories or ones that would be considered myth given a different context.
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I know. I just don't buy it. :)
Is love an opinion? How about good?
To say that one is in love or loves something is making a statement about one's emotional state. It's no different than taking the temperature of some substance. (Well maybe it's more fun, but that too is an emotional state.) So also good.
Do you disagree? Why?
You do not feel that there is more then one type of love?
So, if more people believed in fairies or the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, they would be real? How many people need to believe before something which is otherwise deemed mythological becomes true? The majority of the human population is not Christian and does not believe in Christianity, shouldn't that make it mythology too? I assume they refer to Christianity as mythology (or regard it as such), so hasn't that foreseeable future already come to pass?
Because more people believe in him than do fairies. Fairies are mythology, because it is believed by most of the populace that they are not real. Same for the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods. I’m fairly certain no one referred to the Greek gods as Greek mythology when their gods were worshipped by most of the citizenry. But they are now because few people believe they are real. Few people now call Christianity Christian mythology (and those that do are usually doing so to push Christian’s buttons) because so many people believe it’s true. There may yet come a time when Christianity is referred to as mythology, but I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.
I didn't say they'd be real if more people believed in it. Just that people wouldn't be calling it mythology if they did believe it's real. People not believing in it doesn’t make it any less real. Or hell, maybe it does, I’m not nearly arrogant enough to claim I know how the universe works. And while Christianity doesn't encompass the majority of the world Monotheism does. All the Monotheisms might disagree on some facts the basics are the same. There is one god, he is in heaven, He makes the rules. So I doubt they’re going to go around calling each other mythology.
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So, if more people believed in fairies or the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, they would be real?You still around?
Yeah, popular vote really doesn't mean anything. If God does exist and yet no one believes in him does he simply disappear? Whether or not God exists is a matter of faith and not majority rule.
But I think that what he's getting at is how accepting many of us are of potential mythological stories or ones that would be considered myth given a different context.
If that is the case, and many make it, why should we not all be agnostic and be done with it? I think it is a part of the human condition that wants to know more. Wants to know why and how. Which is why we have religion, the why and science, the how. I guess I just don't see them as mutually exclusive. Just as I see politics and religion as mutually exclusive, but once again this falls back to how each of us views reality and at what time do we just say enough is enough. Sure we should be accepting of others views, we may well be wrong in ours and how do we learn if by not asking questions and observing the answers.The hardest part of the human experience is knowing the right questions to ask.
Okay I may be openning a can of worms here but I was listening to NPR today (yes I listen to NPR) and they were interveiwing the head of the University of East Anglia about the current e-mail scandle involving the climate research center there. When he was asked if, in light of the leaked e-mails, they would put all their research data on the tab[le]. His answer was no, because it was incumbant on the deniers to disprove anthropomorphic climate change, rather than on the scientists to prove it.
East Anglia is a particular case of people reacting exactly the wrong way to constant attacks. These people had a history of death-threats from deniers, and instead of carrying on above-board, they foolishly adopted a siege mentality and started playing cops and robbers. As soon as you start trying to hide your public reasearch and scientific communication, you're in essence begging someone to take snippets out of context and use them against you -- which is exactly what happened. Then they compound the problem by acting like pompous idiots and uttering too-easily misconstrued statements like the one quoted. It's a continuation of Al "I Don't Understand My Own Movie" Gore's attempt to dumb the topic down for general audiences, which resulted in him mangling certain topics badly enough that people legitimitaly began to question the whole shooting match.
From a geological standpoint, the climate should be warming right now, with or without human help. To the best of my knowledge, the balance of the serious research supports the hypothesis that human activities are probably helping it along a bit -- although the extent to which that is true is certainly still not settled.
Unbelievably lousy PR and other assorted bonehead moves by people like Al Gore and the guys at East Anglia has led to a situation in which not only is the bulk of the science happily ignored, but the basic geological reality of non-human warming is also being ignored, as if any warming is part of the "carbon tax conspiracy."
I'm open to further discussion, but by all means let's start a new thread for it.
If that is the case, and many make it, why should we not all be agnostic and be done with it? I think it is a part of the human condition that wants to know more. Wants to know why and how. Which is why we have religion, the why and science, the how. I guess I just don't see them as mutually exclusive. Just as I see politics and religion as mutually exclusive, but once again this falls back to how each of us views reality and at what time do we just say enough is enough. Sure we should be accepting of others views, we may well be wrong in ours and how do we learn if by not asking questions and observing the answers.The hardest part of the human experience is knowing the right questions to ask.So, if more people believed in fairies or the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, they would be real?You still around?
Yeah, popular vote really doesn't mean anything. If God does exist and yet no one believes in him does he simply disappear? Whether or not God exists is a matter of faith and not majority rule.
But I think that what he's getting at is how accepting many of us are of potential mythological stories or ones that would be considered myth given a different context.
Personally I think the reason is that everyone is not an agnostic is because people need an answer to the big questions in life. It doesn’t even really matter if it’s true or not. They just need to know, or at least believe that they know how the world works, and they don’t want to wait however many thousands of years (or more) it might take to find the true answer, if it’s even obtainable at all. This isn’t meant as an insult to any religion, it’s just my view on the matter.
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Personally I think the reason is that everyone is not an agnostic is because people need an answer to the big questions in life.
Why do you think it is that people need "an answer to the big questions in life"? Sometimes it feels like we are hard-coded to believe in something we can't see or understand.
Sometimes it feels like we are hard-coded to believe in something we can't see or understand.
Dawkins argues that that is exactly the case. An example: if you assume that no unseen danger lurks unseen, watching you, you're OK if there is no leopard or other threat hidden nearby... but you quickly become dinner if there is one! If you always assume there's an invisible, watching presence, it's no great loss if there's no leopard, and when there is a leopard, you're already anticipating it. So people with a greater knack for imagining invisible, watching presences of unknown sort were more likely to survive, and hence more likely to pass down those tendencies to their offspring.
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Sometimes it feels like we are hard-coded to believe in something we can't see or understand.Dawkins argues that that is exactly the case. An example: if you assume that no unseen danger lurks unseen, watching you, you're OK if there is no leopard nearby... but you quickly become dinner if there is one! If you always assume there's an invisible, watching presence, it's no great loss if there's no leopard, and when there is a leopard, you're already anticipating it. So people with a greater knack for imagining invisible, watching presences of unknown sort were actively selected for.
Hey! Someone answered a question of mine. I was feeling ignored there...
I think that C.S. Lewis said something about this as well.
A thought: The moral of the story of Babel in Genesis is that God doesn't want people to live in a conformist culture. He actually wants people to disagree. And not just a little, but to such a level that it is sometimes difficult for them to communicate.The moral of that story is that man should keep his place and not aspire to God-like creativity.
The complete opposite of what you said.
That's what you go out of it? I'm more inclined to like a God who would promote creativity (through diversity) than one who would stifle creativity (because it threatens him). But thanks for making my point that God wants people to have differing opinions. :-)
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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So, if more people believed in fairies or the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, they would be real?You still around?
Yeah, popular vote really doesn't mean anything. If God does exist and yet no one believes in him does he simply disappear? Whether or not God exists is a matter of faith and not majority rule.
But I think that what he's getting at is how accepting many of us are of potential mythological stories or ones that would be considered myth given a different context.
I still snoop in from time to time, but Samnell and CourtFool do a better job representing the atheist side of the debate, so I don't participate much.
Personally I think the reason is that everyone is not an agnostic is because people need an answer to the big questions in life.Why do you think it is that people need "an answer to the big questions in life"? Sometimes it feels like we are hard-coded to believe in something we can't see or understand.
I think it mainly comes from mankind’s innate fear of the unknown. If you don’t know how the world works it’s a very scary place. A big ball of fire hanging in the sky is a pretty scary thing, until you find out from someone who ‘knows’ it’s a god. But beyond that the central point of most religions is the biggest unknown of them all, what happens after you die. Death is scary enough as is without not knowing what happens to you after you die, and being told that there’s nothing isn’t very comforting.
But in the end I think religion for the most part is just a method of control. If a priest (or what have you) tells you that the only way to get into the good afterlife, or reincarnate as something better than a gnat is to follow the rules he presents to you, you’re going to pay more attention to what he says than if he simply asked nicely.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying control is a bad thing. Sometimes it’s necessary to lay down some ground rules for the masses (“Hey guys, let’s not murder each other, okay?”), and telling the people that if they do that bad thing they’ll be punished no matter how careful they are to hide it by an all knowing being in the sky is more effective (if believed) than the threat of violence if caught.
I do think however that it leads to problems when people look at a set of rules meant to help a group of people survive 40 years of wandering through the desert thousands of years ago as how they should live their lives today.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Just that people wouldn't be calling it mythology if they did believe it's real. People not believing in it doesn’t make it any less real. Or hell, maybe it does, I’m not nearly arrogant enough to claim I know how the universe works.
Well played. You managed to stimulate the ever elusive wry grin. You're right; I missed your point entirely in my response. That's what I get for paying only half attention to the thread.
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But in the end I think religion for the most part is just a method of control.
Maybe, but toward what end? This goes back to my "evangelism" question. While "control" can be used to explain some decisions higher up the "ladder", what does that really get them in the end? And more to the point, why are the masses so interested in getting everyone under "control"? For that matter, what are people trying to "control"?
I guess that I question that I am actually being "controlled". If I am, I'd like to know towards what end.
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Meh....there's control freaks everywhere.
True, but being a bit of a control freak myself, I'd be pretty pissed at myself if I found out I was being controlled by someone/something else.
EDIT: I guess that what I'm saying is that while there are certainly examples of individuals who use religion for control, I don't feel that the purpose of religion is control.
To say that one is in love or loves something is making a statement about one's emotional state. It's no different than taking the temperature of some substance. (Well maybe it's more fun, but that too is an emotional state.) So also good.Do you disagree? Why?
Good is not an emotional state; rather, it is a classification of something. Something is either good or it is not.
As for love, ever had someone tell you that they love someone, only to think in your head "No, that's not love." Love is not objective. What may qualify as love for one person may not do so for another. In this case, love is a subjective truth, rather than an observable, measurable fact.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Meh....there's control freaks everywhere.
True, but being a bit of a control freak myself, I'd be pretty pissed at myself if I found out I was being controlled by someone/something else.
EDIT: I guess that what I'm saying is that while there are certainly examples of individuals who use religion for control, I don't feel that the purpose of religion is control.
I think control is one of religion's primary function. It replaces the idea of an earthbound ruler with an ideal one that is immortal, perfectly good, and supremely powerful. This gives those who speak on behalf of the being a great deal of power. Religion also serves as a means of obtaining cooperating across racial/tribal lines. Christianity is particularly potent in this regard because it effectively allows anyone to join what had previously been a tribe based on ancestral lineage. The formation of an uber-tribe that exists beyond human relations allows for larger numbers of humans to both cooperate and be controlled by those who are accepted as the legitimate representatives of the divine being.
Control isn't always about obtaining a specific end, it can just be about the ability to mobilize and influence people. In that regard, religion is a very powerful tool of control.
(I'd probably also note though that it's a very powerful tool of cooperation insofar as it helped humans align with each other based on something other than familial relationships/fealty).
I didn't say they'd be real if more people believed in it. Just that people wouldn't be calling it mythology if they did believe it's real. People not believing in it doesn’t make it any less real. Or hell, maybe it does, I’m not nearly arrogant enough to claim I know how the universe works. And while Christianity doesn't encompass the majority of the world Monotheism does. All the Monotheisms might disagree on some facts the basics are the same. There is one god, he is in heaven, He makes the rules. So I doubt they’re going to go around calling each other mythology.So, if more people believed in fairies or the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, they would be real? How many people need to believe before something which is otherwise deemed mythological becomes true? The majority of the human population is not Christian and does not believe in Christianity, shouldn't that make it mythology too? I assume they refer to Christianity as mythology (or regard it as such), so hasn't that foreseeable future already come to pass?
Because more people believe in him than do fairies. Fairies are mythology, because it is believed by most of the populace that they are not real. Same for the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods. I’m fairly certain no one referred to the Greek gods as Greek mythology when their gods were worshipped by most of the citizenry. But they are now because few people believe they are real. Few people now call Christianity Christian mythology (and those that do are usually doing so to push Christian’s buttons) because so many people believe it’s true. There may yet come a time when Christianity is referred to as mythology, but I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.
Seems someone has brought Joseph Campbell into the mix before I did. But anyway, there is a common fundamental misunderstanding concerning exactly what mythology is. When people say "Oh, that's just a myth," they're essentially saying "That's fake" or "That isn't real." On one level, that's true.
However, mythology isn't just a bunch of stories that people once upon a time thought were real until it was proven otherwise. Is mythology fiction? Yes. Is it unreal? Much of it is, yes, on purpose. Is it untrue? No. Mythology is all about the search for and understanding of truth.
The events that are told in the Bible are mythology. I'm not saying they are fake or that there is no inherent value to them. That would be like saying that there is no value in fiction books or in movies because they aren't real. They are tales that deal with fundamental human issues. This is why they survive and why we know the tales of the Greek gods, goddesses, heroes and heroines. They matter. If it were just a case of disproven theories and false gods, they would have long since vanished with time.
Re: meaning of life/search for answers;....
Joseph Campbell said that people aren't necessarily searching for the meaning of life, but for meaning in life.
+1
From a psychological point of view, this is interesting to me. Why is it that so many people who feel that they are "right" feel the need to force it on others? I guess the question is -- Why do we (larger "we" than just Christians) feel the general need to evangelize?
People want to avoid cognitive dissonance. It's uncomfortable and raises the notion that one might be wrong about something. Especially when one is confronted with a living refutation of one of one's doctrines, such as the notion that non-believers or homosexuals are truly, deeply miserable in side and fated to failure. A friend of mine often tells homophobes about his neighbors, a gay couple that runs a successful catering business and is raising a son. This sets them off like nothing else. Or witness the similar freakout over a kiss during an awards show. Or even when a pair of straight actors pretend to be in love and kiss on the TV or in a movie.
One of the ways to do that is to isolate oneself from those who disagree. What better way than eliminating them? That could be through persuasion, force, or some mix. Especially given how untenable isolation is in an age of mass media. If one is trained to believe that homosexuality is some kind of monstrous evil, then seeing two guys kiss on TV and realizing it looks just like a guy and girl kissing could be quite injurious to that opinion. There have been studies on it and it transpires that one of the single most effective ways to change someone's mind on homosexuality is for them to find out someone they know is a Friend of Dorothy. I suspect the same is generally true when it comes to people of other religions, no religion, and the like as well.
Then there's the fact that people who think they're right think they're right. It's what it says on the tin. :) Conversely others are thus wrong. One doesn't like to see others persist in error (especially if that error is causing them to be quite unpleasant to those not in their tribe) and thus might attempt persuasion. Maybe with force.
Personally I deplore force and have already described my preferred political settlement with regards to religion. Also personally and not calling upon the powers of the state to achieve this, I'd rather religion slide gently into the past. This would have some personal benefits for me, but I think in general religion's more bad than good (I'm sure you can infer my reasons.) so it would be a win for everyone in utilitarian terms.
I'm a pretty bad evangelist, though. Mostly I just point out failings in the arguments of the other side's evangelists and raise objection to bad behavior wherever I see it. And contribute facts of which others may be unaware, but that's my being an aggravating know-it-all. I think that's fairly close to not evangelizing at all. I don't even display secular pride symbols or anything like that. I don't do that for gay pride symbols either, but I know the town where I live and that would be a poor choice here.
I suppose since I don't believe in free will you could say that I'm trying to force people away from religion. But no more so than ordinary persuasion would entail. There's no violence, oppression, or any of that. Even failing the ultimate goal I consider it a win if anybody learns something. I managed to get one out of a real fundamentalist once and it was quite gratifying. He proved very resistant to further progress, though. Shame, that.
Good is not an emotional state; rather, it is a classification of something. Something is either good or it is not.
Classification is a response to stimulus. My response to Leda and the Swan is to appreciate it and consider it beautiful, at least as a use of language. My response to accounts of the Holocaust is to classify it as bad, as it engenders horror, loathing, and outrage in me. If Bad works that way, why would Good be any different?
I do disagree that something is either good or it is not, by the way. Many things are morally neutral, or have good and bad aspects.
As for love, ever had someone tell you that they love someone, only to think in your head "No, that's not love." Love is not objective. What may qualify as love for one person may not do so for another. In this case, love is a subjective truth, rather than an observable, measurable fact.
Love is a descriptor that a person applies to a particular emotional state which they experience. It's no more subjective than taking someone's temperature is. Individual temperatures may differ, but that doesn't make them subjective.
good stuff
The post monster seems to have devoured my first response. Dammit.
Anyway, thank you for sharing the story. I liked it.
So far as the group of people who consider themselves family goes, I don't have to imagine. I'm one of those weird dudes. :) I disowned most of my blood relations years ago and have adopted two non-relatives as family members. My mother calls one Son Number Two. Family is too precious to be left to chance.