♪alt13
Well-Known Member
Not all of the sudden. It was insidious. One generation gave way for a more pious less rational one to follow until eventually the society brought itself to its knees.
What happened to the Romans?
.
Religion and intelligence
- Thread starter Siro
- Start date
Not all of the sudden. It was insidious. One generation gave way for a more pious less rational one to follow until eventually the society brought itself to its knees.
What happened to the Romans?
.
The Blue Elephant
Well-Known Member
If religion didn't exist this is what the present would look like.
Jazz Insider
Banned
what ever happened to dat blackswrdsman bruh
The Blue Elephant
Well-Known Member
That guy was a well endowed bad ***.
If religion didn't exist this is what the present would look like.
Damn, **** you religion. We were "this" close.
What struck me about the article is how it confirmed one of my biases. I'll explain:
I hear a lot from people who say religion/faith is good, too bad it just isn't true. This often comes from people who are pretty much religious, but just don't intellectually agree with their faith. They think that community and the good that comes from their faith is more important than the truth.
I've long felt that it wasn't just that it wasn't true, but that it isn't good for us, on top of being false, that was so bad about faith. This article addresses that and shows that less secular societies are generally worse off. So, as I have felt for most of my life, it isn't just that it is not true, but that it is actually bad, is why I do not like religion.
I hear a lot from people who say religion/faith is good, too bad it just isn't true. This often comes from people who are pretty much religious, but just don't intellectually agree with their faith. They think that community and the good that comes from their faith is more important than the truth.
I've long felt that it wasn't just that it wasn't true, but that it isn't good for us, on top of being false, that was so bad about faith. This article addresses that and shows that less secular societies are generally worse off. So, as I have felt for most of my life, it isn't just that it is not true, but that it is actually bad, is why I do not like religion.
I'd just like to add that Blind Faith was a phenomenal band.
As a philosophy of life, however, it's not so great.
So, Siro. . . . .
we humans all fail when we resort to circularly logical arguments. . . .
Of course, when people get educated in nonreligious doctrines or disciplines they will get less religious. Well, except for the minority of rebels in the classes. . .
So who gets to define Science? Who gets to define Religion?
I think the pomposity of the Salon article is so laughable it can only be compared to the rankest most ignorant "religious" ignoramuses on the planet.
Seriously, do you think "we" humans know that much about the universe already? scientifically, or religiously?
You might consider someone like Henry E. Eyring an "anomaly", maybe even Albert Einstein or a lot of others for that matter. Henry E. Eyring would entertain the data supporting an evolutionary process in nature and simply say "I don't know how God did it, but I believe He did do it".
I find even that kind of faith inadequate, for a Mormon, considering the teachings of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, which go away entirely from the mainstream Christian notion of an almighty God who could create the Universe with a mere "word". Mormons who understand the old ideas, practically none today though it may be, look at the Universe as something that has always been, in one form or another. . . . Joseph Smith taught that matter and energy can't be created or destroyed. . . .. and that we are "eternal" as well, and that God is God only because He follows the laws and principles that also are eternal, and true.
Further, that we are nowhere near understanding it, and will need to seek knowledge and understanding in every possible way if we ever could approach understanding and living by those eternal principles. The religion of Mormons was simply that we have an interested, and caring teacher, who could help us find the way.
So any view of "religion" that is essentially frozen at some point in time as fixed dogma, is an insufficient view of religion, just as it is of science.
Jazz Insider
Banned
moe has spoken.
Jazz Insider
Banned
/thread
Jazz Insider
Banned
Rep Adjustment Power 69
heh
heh
MVP
Well-Known Member
7%... 14%....I like numbers. Difficult to argue with them.
By the way found this on the same website, loved it!
https://www.salon.com/2014/05/19/cr...se_neil_degrasse_tyson_explained_electricity/
By the way found this on the same website, loved it!
https://www.salon.com/2014/05/19/cr...se_neil_degrasse_tyson_explained_electricity/
AtheistPreacher
Well-Known Member
Interesting. Some comments:
1. I have difficulty believing that in 2003, 83% of Americans believed in the virgin birth of Jesus and only 28% believed in evolution. I suspect both numbers were much closer to 50%. I'd like to see the actual data and actual questions asked for that one.
2. I had to laugh at this paragraph:
3. But then there's this:
1. I have difficulty believing that in 2003, 83% of Americans believed in the virgin birth of Jesus and only 28% believed in evolution. I suspect both numbers were much closer to 50%. I'd like to see the actual data and actual questions asked for that one.
2. I had to laugh at this paragraph:
...because, of course, this is me to a "T." As someone primarily interested in process theology, I'm delighted that among all the more liberal schools of thought the article could have named, process theology was mentioned first. And I notice he doesn't actually take any shots at these schools of thought. Although I'd be inclined to argue a bit about how much some of them actually "deviate from their theism," but that's another discussion.
3. But then there's this:
Oh, bull****. Sure, a person holding false beliefs can do harm to other people (or himself). But Clifford's maxim is insane on the face of it, and William James was right to tear him apart for saying it. Without the capacity to believe on insufficient evidence, we'd never make any progress. James put it best: "science would be far less advanced than she is if the passionate desires of individuals to get their own faiths confirmed had been kept out of the game." As it is indeed a psychological fact that we cling more tenaciously to propositions to which we have a passional attachment, investigation of such passionately held hypotheses should be encouraged insofar as it adds to the knowledge of the world by allowing diverse persons to separately build up evidence for their pet theories in the face of doubt. Sure, there are drawbacks, but you can't have the guy who discovered bacteria without also have the guy defending the existence of angels. Our capacity to believe in the face of doubt leads both to our greatest scientific discoveries as well as our most backward and regressive tendencies.
AtheistPreacher
Well-Known Member
But the thing is, I haven't seen a lot of evidence showing that religiosity is a cause of problems rather than an effect. Certainly both are true to a degree; it's an extremely complex issue. But I think there's a lot to the "security thesis" of Norris and Inglehart, which basically says that a society that is more secure -- in the sense that its citizens have fewer worries about crime, access to food, water, medical services, etc. -- tends to be less religious. "Security" maps pretty neatly onto "wealth." Either way, the emphasis here is more on religion as an effect of insecurity or poverty rather than the cause of it.
AtheistPreacher
Well-Known Member
This reminded me of something. In my last semester of PhD coursework, I took a class from atheist sociologist Phil Zuckerman on "Atheism and Secularity" (Zuckerman is a pretty big/famous voice in this field). I enjoyed the class, but the thing that really stuck with me the most was that God was never well-defined. There were about twenty people in the class, with about fifteen going for sociological degrees and about five (myself included) going for more theological degrees. And those five of us never stopped trying to get Zuckerman and the rest of class to slow down and talk about what they actually meant by "God." They were way more interested in assuming that they knew what the word meant, and jumping straight to refuting it.
Interestingly, Zuckerman had us read a book he liked called The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville, and I wrote a short review on it claiming that Comte-Sponville actually sounded a lot like Paul Tillich (famous theologian) in a lot of ways (both regarded "being itself" with reverence). The two are close enough, in fact, that I would argue that the supposed theist/atheist dichotomy is a distinction that is not only unhelpful, but damaging in conversations between really thoughtful individuals. We would be better-served by moving beyond such distinctions, and instead simply discussing our beliefs about the universe and the nature of things without first identifying ourselves under labels. Sometimes they just get in the way.
In making a statement like this, you jump into the lake of fools without a lifebuoy, or a fireproof cocoon for that matter, and make yourself no different from, say, a medieval statist who simply saw the innumerable clerics invoking God's hand in the affairs of men. How could everybody just be wrong.
Throughout all of the history of mankind, when it comes to "theories of everything" to explain the Cosmos, the Universe, or even the weather, the "life span" of those theories has consistently declined. Which is to say, people are finding it necessary to move on to some better understanding more and more rapidly. . . .
Organized religions don't deal with those changes in information the same way, say, a university faculty might. Sometimes university faculties take a generation to make the transitions needed. Organized religions sometimes just ignore, or seem to ignore, changes in technical or scientific information. .. . but mostly they just accept it without changing their focus. . . . which that information really doesn't impact. . . . like the life of Jesus, or Mohammad for that matter. Most of the appeal of religion is not going to be affected by scientific progress.
Mormonism will survive the entire deconstruction of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its two first decades because none of that is actually relevant to the belief set that has come as the result of some original thinking almost two hundred years ago. Original thinking that might have come from Sydney Rigdon, a devout socialist par excellance, about how we humans can put some notions in the centerplace of our lives, about helping one another and functioning as a community. Original thinking that might have come from Joseph Smith about how a common reading of Bible texts can show God as the father of mankind, and Jesus our brother, as both an example of the way to live and a bridge back to the goodness of God.
As is always the case, the chaff of error will ultimately be lost in the dustbins of history, and the serendipity of hope will shine on through the ages. . . .
We didn't give up on science because of alchemists, wizards, or witches. . . . or because of the abuses of it by dictators like Hitler, either, for that matter. and why should we.
Science and religion are two names we give to the same thing. . . . . our effort to understand life and the world around us. . . . sometimes coming from different approaches, but both loved within our souls for the same hope.
Can you elaborate on how religion illuminates the truth? Given that religions across the world are very different from one another, without much rhyme or reason for their proclamations (that includes your religion), I don't see how they're a search for understanding at all. If anything, it is the opposite. A story that people make up because it offers them comfort at the EXPENSE of understanding. Science makes no proclamations of truth. It is just our best attempt to account for what we currently are able to observe. As our ability to observe improves, so do our explanations.
We know how the scientific method works to enhance our understanding. And we know how far it can take us because of how far it has taken us. How does the religious pursuit of knowledge work exactly?
I was going to comment at length on the how Hitler or witchcraft are examples of things made possible because of the cognitive aberration that allows for religious beliefs, but I don't feel like spending time on a long response, specially when it is difficult to evaluate specific statements when debating with you due to your ideas of the ultimate futility of human logic.
♪alt13
Well-Known Member
I think there is a substantive difference between having a belief in God and being religious. Religions hold a whole host of beliefs that go beyond any philosophical idea of a God. I personally do not believe in a God because I simply have no evidence or reason to. I can accept, though I honestly think it is silly, that someone else may hold a belief in a god but religious views that go beyond that is when I begin to have more serious concerns.
Asking the question what is God is one thing. Answering that question is another. For me that is how I differentiate a religious person from a believer in God.
You say that we should drop the labels and for a very small minority of people that makes sense, but a vast majority of people are religious. I could for instance ask someone if they: believed in a God? :what religion they believed in? A small minority would answer yes to the first and none to the second but most would have an answer for the second. For the latter group the label is very relevant. Though people that belong to any religious group will vary to some degree in their beliefs they will share enough for the label to still have value in communicating what their beliefs are.
AtheistPreacher
Well-Known Member
Sure, but you'll notice that my statement is pretty heavily qualified:
Labels are relevant most of the time, otherwise they wouldn't exist as labels very long. But I don't think it's helpful to call Tillich a theist and Comte-Sponville an atheist, because when you get down to brass tacks, they're more similar than different. And I would argue that, in general, atheists (as long as they're not firebrands like David Silverman) and the more liberal theists might discover they have a lot more in common than they think if they dropped the diametrically opposed labels for a moment.
FWIW, I believe in the existence of multi-dimensional phenomena that are beyond the reach of the normal human senses and are beyond even the most modern and advanced tools of scientific observation. You can call this having 'spiritual' or 'meta-physical' belief if you'd like. I would tend to think of a "religion" as employing religious forms and behaviors--e.g., churches, rituals, chants or mantras, etc., which might be considered logistical means to focus on the mind on the inner self or potentially invoke a profound experience.
I think that as a scientist, it would be reductionistic and scientifically irresponsible to categorically dismiss the human religious/spiritual experience on account of not being able to document it, measure it or account for it in a standardized way. Such spiritual knowledge and experience cannot be disproved due to the limits of our methods of scientific observation, while some phenomena can be readily observed, if not fully understood. There are a number of phenomena that cannot be readily grasped by modern science--for example the "dark energy" that comprises the vast majority of the observable universe, the structure of the human body at the sub-atomic level, the characteristics of time fields beyond our grasp, and so on. In fact, it is even often difficult to scientifically understand a number of more mundane phenomena, such as the human mind, memory, art, culture, humor, the origin of intelligence, etc.
Hence, the scientist who categorically dismisses spiritual knowledge and experience cannot do so definitively and might actually be the one who turns out to be narrow-minded and taking comfort in widely preached dogma.
I think that as a scientist, it would be reductionistic and scientifically irresponsible to categorically dismiss the human religious/spiritual experience on account of not being able to document it, measure it or account for it in a standardized way. Such spiritual knowledge and experience cannot be disproved due to the limits of our methods of scientific observation, while some phenomena can be readily observed, if not fully understood. There are a number of phenomena that cannot be readily grasped by modern science--for example the "dark energy" that comprises the vast majority of the observable universe, the structure of the human body at the sub-atomic level, the characteristics of time fields beyond our grasp, and so on. In fact, it is even often difficult to scientifically understand a number of more mundane phenomena, such as the human mind, memory, art, culture, humor, the origin of intelligence, etc.
Hence, the scientist who categorically dismisses spiritual knowledge and experience cannot do so definitively and might actually be the one who turns out to be narrow-minded and taking comfort in widely preached dogma.