BBO Discussion Forums: BBF religious matrix - BBO Discussion Forums

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Yes but a balanced view on all things that may or may not exist is not necessarily 'I think it is exactly 50% that it exists.' I think the probability that tomorrow the world will still exist is at least 99.999999%, while the probability of my grandmother's life as a secret agent for the CIA is less than 0.000001%. If I made a poll on these questions I would expect near-unanimous consensus. 'Strongly disbelieve' would be a balanced view.

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 05:44, said:

Sorry I couldn't be bothered to dig up dozens of independent sources and just took the first few I found. I have seen a lot of evidence in this general direction over the years but feel free to provide sources showing something else. In any case the ARD is not a club which wants people to leave the church.

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Firstly, why do I criticize this state of affairs in general? Because I do not believe the state has any business providing free PR and opportunities for proselytization to the church.

Secondly, why did I bring this up at all? Because you claimed that the church has a positive effect on society. I'm saying that this is a lie - the church is a net loss for our society. The state could just as well spend all this money directly on welfare rather than funneling it through the church, and anything that remains is by far outweighed by the outrageous subsidies coming from the taxpayers. So my question remains - what is the claimed positive effect of the church?

 gwnn, on 2013-January-08, 06:04, said:

Hm, I'm still undecided on your grandmother.

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 05:58, said:

So is the statement 'the theory of evolution may or may not be true' or 'the theory of gravity may or may not be true' or 'creationism may or may not be true' a balanced look at those concepts? Of course not - saying 'the theory may or may not be true' is completely absurd in all three cases. It's not a balanced view in any way. For another example, consider three claims being made by groups of people currently:

A) ~49% of UK residents self identify as religious (encompassing all major religions), with 51% identifying as no religion.

B) ~34% (approx, source CBS news) of Americans and 25% of the British think that 9/11 was an inside job performed by the US government.

C) A cabal of fruity conspiracy theorists think The US government is secretly controlled by a cabal of lizard aliens in human form, and you can tell who are the lizards by the colours of their eyes in flash photography. (These guys tried to take over the Occupy movement in Australia. It was pretty dang funny)

Obviously there is no tangible evidence to support any of these three position, so what separates A, B and C? Is it just sheer numbers? Is the position "Alien Lizards may or may not secretly control the US Government" a balanced way to look at that subject? Down this path lies madness. Just because people believe it doesn't mean it is true.

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Many of them specifically claim they are inerrant. Both the Bible and the Koran (to cite two high profile examples) have large groups of adherents that claim that the word of god as contained therein is inerrant. In the context of both of them it is absurd as it is obvious how they were written within a specific cultural context, but the fact they are the perfect and inerrent word of god is the claim being made by the religious adherents. We think it is so, because that is the claim they have made!

 32519, on 2013-January-08, 02:45, said:

As I recall, the Epistle to the Galatians is part of the New Testament. The churchs that Paul established in Galatia where founded by converting pagans, not Jews.
In a similar vein, Corinthians is addressed to the Church in Corinth which was (largely) drawn from the Greek population, though there were some Jewish Christians present. Thessalonians was addressed to a church in Macedonia.

No one can agree who wrote Revelations, however, it is pretty doubtful that the author ever set foot in Palestine.

I readily grant that the transition from Judaism to Christianity was a long and labored process. The apostles and Paul of Tarsus were certainly Jewish. However, I don't think that it is reasonable to classify Greek and Celtic converts to the Church as "Jewish". They're drawn from a completely different cultural context. The whole reason that Paul had to keep sending letters was that the congregations were straying too far from home...

If anyone has the desire to start looking this stuff up for themselves, the translation I found to be closest to the original text is the New American Standard Bible (Updated Edition). So +1 for these guys. I have been digging into this stuff for some time now, comparing 20 different translations against each other and approximately 15 different Bible commentaries. But just take note: The NASB also contains plenty of the issues that I have been griping about here. I still have some way to go.

This is the website I am getting most of my information from http://bible.cc/ Coupled to this I have something called PC Study Bible distributed by BibleSoft.

 32519, on 2013-January-08, 02:45, said:

It is hard to know if you are joking or are serious as the claim is so far removed from facts as to be easily considered simply a poor attempt at writing historical fiction. To be clear, the populace of the first century, including the Jews, were mostly illiterate. Legend and fable were common.

Here, after the briefest of Google searches, is a quick list of first century Jewish miracle workers:

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What is truly laughable is to attribute 21st century knowledge and information sources to first century denizens of the middle east.

 Cthulhu D, on 2013-January-08, 06:32, said:

And I have been accused of mixing religions with science.

I honestly did not know that gravity or evolution are still just theories, but if you say so...

Anyway there is a big difference: We may or may not verify scientific theories.
Some real theories will stay theories forever, some will be approved. But at least we are hopeful that later generations will verify/falsify them. Same is true about conspiracy theories. It is in mans hand to get to know the truth. We do need no aliens to solve these problems.

Whether or not God (if he exists...) decides to show up and end the discussion is not in our hand. So we may believe what we want- we may call him Allah, Jehova, or the big spaghetti Monster...

And the Brits seem to share the "balanced" view as a group: About half of them identify as religious, the other half does not. Sounds quite balanced to me. (In Germany we have around 60 % christians and 33 % without a confession- but by far the fewest of this number seem to be real atheists...)

About the holy books: I know that there are much too many people who obviously cannot read the whole text and try to take the textes as literally as possible. I know otherwise really intelligent people who think this way. They are not open to any discussion about this theme. I have my problems with their point of view as much as you have it. However, here in Germany they are in a very small minority- I would guess less then 1 % of the christians.
Unluckily one of them is my sister...

 mikeh, on 2013-January-07, 21:30, said:

I have a hard time understanding that when I point out that I personally know 5 rabbis in one synagogue in Boston who are agnostic or atheist you counter by saying that they are not believers in Judaism. It's true I conflated the issue at the start of the post, but I addressed it in the next two sentences. It's also true that the modern "black hat Jews" are a new phenomena in Judaism--they are not "traditional Jews". The tradition is one where one of the most quoted ones in the Talmud is God telling the world, "I've created the world, here are some laws, I'm outta here...interpret the laws as you wish." Which is not completely unlike the definition of "Deist" discussed earlier in this thread.

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 07:51, said:

While the word "theory", in coloquial usage, may refer to ideas in need of validation, in scientific jargon it is used differently.

You probably never hear about the "theory" that 2+2=4. But that is not because we know that 2+2=4. It is just because it is too narrow to deserve the somewhat pompous label "theory". It would be more appropriate to talk about the "theory" that (A+B)(A-B)= A^2-B^2.

You can talk about Newton's theory of gravity or Newton's law of gravity. There is a subtle different between the two terms. I would say that the "Law" is the quantification of the phenomena while the "Theory" is more about what causes the phenomena, but probably one of the physicists here can explain it better. In any case, it is not necesarily so that a "Law" is less controversial than a "theory". "Operator theory" is 100% non-controversial while Hubble's Law and Moore's Law are probably seen as gross oversimplifications by many experts.

 BunnyGo, on 2013-January-08, 08:02, said:

I suspect that I am acquainted with the synagogue of which you speak...

I don't doubt that there are five agnostic rabbi's in it.
I also don't doubt that this synagogue is something of an outlier, even for Boston...

 Vampyr, on 2013-January-08, 03:37, said:

The one that triumps over the others when I need to apply one and they are in contradiction.

 mgoetze, on 2013-January-08, 06:12, said:

Lets agree to disagree - not just about the about the "facts" you stated. I still don't see your first source as more relaiable as the twitter account of the pope.
You claim that the churches have no positive effect, because you think that the money will be spend better in another way. Now this is hardly debatable. Is there any part of the german household where you may NOT discuss that at least a big amount of the money should be used different? I bet that there is non effective use and even waste of resources in any church. But again, what does this prove? That they are not perfect? Yes I agree.

You claim that you dislike PR and money for the churches. I do understand this. You are in a minority which does not benefit from the money which is spend for the main churches here. But who cares about your lonely voice in the dark? As long as you are in a minority, you are not able to change it, this is called democracy.

And btw do you have any evidence that great atheistic organizations work any better, more efficent then religious ones? I cannot find it.

 helene_t, on 2013-January-08, 08:05, said:

Huh? These are not theories, they are tautologies.

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 09:15, said:

You made the claim that

 Codo, on 2013-January-07, 16:59, said:

and cited

 Codo, on 2013-January-07, 16:59, said:

I am supporting the counterclaim that these "efforts" are not a positive effect of religion, rather they are actually projects run on state money, and furthermore, the church costs the state (and thus society) money above and beyond this purpose.

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 09:15, said:

Yes, I am in a minority of 37.2% (as of 2010, trend strongly upwards). A lot of things are called democracy. In the USA, they will even let you vote for either party! Some people also include such subconcepts as "protection of the rights of minorities" in the concept of "democracy". Some people, even some theists, consider the separation of church and state a great accomplishment of the 19th and 20th century. Who knows, maybe we will get it in Germany as well, in the 21st or 22nd century...

But anyway, apparently you are not interested in backing up your statement that

 Codo, on 2013-January-07, 16:59, said:

That's fine, you don't have to back it up, but I will continue to disbelieve it then.

Michael,

even your source states, that the churches here do something positive. They spend money, time and manpower for welfare. You critze that they should spend more of the money they get for this part of their work. Well I tried to show you that they do, but you seems to be unimpressed and not willing to ask some people who work there yourself. You seem to believe that priets do nothing then indoctrionation all day long. I bet that you did not attend religion at school, else you would know that this classes are not about christian religion but about tolerance and ethics. At least this it was was taught to my kids, maybe this is different in other school or other states. Shall I look for the curriculum?

Okay, fine to me, you can disbelieve whatever you want. But here you may even could have found facts if you had wanted to.

We do agree that the churches costs more money then they spend on welfare. But they spend much more then the 8 % your source statet and they have other duties too. You surely know that.

And no, you are NOT in a minority of 37,2 %. These are the numbers of non confessionals. By far the smallest part of these are real atheists. Maybe it is a minority of 5%? The latest number I got from Wikipedia had been 2 % world wide, but I bet that the number in Germany is significant higher- espacially in the new states. Maybe in the eastern part we have around 10 %? But I did not find any actual numbers- did you?

And I am quite fine with the way they handle democracy here. Far from perfect- like the churches- but much better then in any other place. Okay, that they stopped burning atheists two years ago, was a step in the wrong direction, but you cannot have it all...

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 03:16, said:

It hasn't happened yet. But we can hope. As I have said many times, and as with just about everything I write this isn't original to me, religious belief made sense in the 99.99% of human experience when we had no effective understanding of the physical world. Give us time.

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Do you actually read what others have said, and try to understand the arguments, or do you simply look for isolated passages to which you can object, provided you ignore the context? Try re-reading what I have said. Obviously human conflict is multi-factorial and obviously many wars have been fought for purposes other than religion. Does that mean that religion is not sometimes a major factor, or that it is not frequently enlisted by the warring states/nations/tribes to motivate their forces? Didn't most armies historically seek the blessing of religious figures before battle, or consecrate themselves to their god(s)?

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Now you are betraying yourself. Who ever claimed that all killing was religiously motivated? Not only are you a proponent of the no true scotsman fallacy but now you resort to the cheapest, most despicable strawman argument as well. Do you REALLY think that I said that the school killer(s) around the world are motivated by religion???? REALLY???? If not, wtf are you trying to do by suggesting that I am?

As for the death penalty not being part of religion, you must be profoundly ignorant of aspects of religion that many atheists know without the need to even resort to google. I can't quote the verses without research but the OT contains very clear commandments to the effect that practicing homosexuals should be put to death, and that if a man sleeps with a woman and her mother, they all should be burned to death and so on.

Yes, I know: very few would follow Leviticus today, but that's one of my points. Many religious people are hypocrites because they pick and choose which parts of their holy texts to follow. Yes, there are all kinds of mental gymnastics that people like you go through to justify this to yourselves, but I suspect you have no idea how silly it all seems to an objective observer. It even gets people like you to deny that your religion contains any commands to kill!

Islam has its own commandments, and I have only a tiny knowledge of specifics from the Koran, so the only one I know of with some certainty is the requirement to kill apostates. Of course, we all know about fatwahs these days thanks to Rushdie....the fatwah against him was specifically issued by a very prominent and highly regarded religious figure. I'm sure you'll revert to the no true scotsman argument to say that such pronouncements don't reflect religious teachings either.

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I'm sorry that religious mayhem is down recently, so I have only a limited number of current examples. But I have to laugh. You admit that some killers assert they are acting in furtherance of their religious belief, but you deny that religion plays a role in their actions. Clearly you know far more than they do about their motivations! No, the truth is that you have a fixed belief that religion is anti-killing and therefore anyone who claims to have killed for religious reasoning isn't really religious. You're a profound fool if you truly can't see where that logic is flawed.

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Another recourse to straw man? Where did you learn to reason? If 10% of killings are caused by, say, beer ads on television, and 90% by other factors, does that mean that we should allow unrestricted beer ads? If religion is a tool used by leaders to get people to commit awful acts, and you seem to accept that it is, then surely the loss of religion as a force in society is a good thing, at least as far as reducing killings is concerned. Nobody....do I need to repeat this for you?...nobody suggests that religion is the only or even the single biggest factor in human conflict, especially on the personal scale.

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You make a very common category error here. Atheism is not a movement, in the sense that it has a doctrine or a political or moral philosophy. Atheists don't form a cohesive whole. Surveys seem to suggest that most atheists are somewhat liberal in their social thinking, but that isn't, as far as I know, a result of any 'teachings' or 'party platforms'.

Atheism isn't really a positive position: we don't generally go around asserting that such and such should happen in the name of atheism.

We don't believe in a god. Few of us state positively that there is no god. Virtually all of us say that the evidence suggests that there is no god, but that we cannot prove a negative. If others want to believe in a god, good for them. Just don't let that impact public life...keep it private. No religious indoctrination in schools. Not tax exempt status or state subsidy, and so on.

As for how we live our lives, and how society should be structured: these are matters for debate based on views of morality and so on. As mentioned, most atheists happen, it seems, to be somewhat liberal, but not all. And this seems to be a correlation rather than a cause and effect relationship.

It is perfectly possible to be an atheist and a believer in libertarianism, or communism...these being two diametrically opposed political and economic philosophies. That is because a lack of belief in a supernatural being has no discernable role to play in how we think a society ought to function, other than rejecting a theocracy. Personally, there was a very short period of time when I think I was a socialist, but never a communist. Now I think I am a left of centre proponent of regulated free enterprise, with a significant role for government with respect to fundamental 'rights' that I would like to see granted to the people of any particular state. But I don't think that philosophy is a result of my atheism, since I don't see the relationship.

My little contact with day-to-day priests resulted on realicing they don't even have a television, few have cars, none of them has silly things like ipads or such, just some books. I really trust that money spent by this guys is better spent than money spent by politicians, at least spannish ones. Or maybe I just contacted the most humble.

 Fluffy, on 2013-January-08, 11:02, said:

I am sure many and perhaps most priests/ministers live like that. I knew one, now deceased RC priest who owned an Italian villa and a nice house here in Canada and who died with a significant amount of investments. Now, he may have inherited this: I have no reason to think he got rich as a priest.

I know of an evangelical preacher who listed his home, near where I live, for about 6 million dollars...I should say that while this was 'near' where I live, it was in an entirely different class of homes He made his money from a religious television show milking his audience for contributions, all to do the Lord's work (which apparently required he live in luxury).

The fact that many religious people try to live by the tenets of their faith, while others don't, says little, if anything, about the intrinsic validity of the assumptions underlying that faith.

Roland, I have seen quite enough facts on the budget of the German churches and also on how much money the state spends on subsidising them. I just can't be bothered to research the best sources for this forum, especially as most members don't read German anyway. But why you would think that talking to a random priest is the best way to get information about the budget of the national church eludes me.

Also, I did attend religion classes in Lower Saxony for 2 years. They were definitely all about the Christian religion.

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 10:49, said:

Yes, so, how are the non-church-members who are not atheists benefitting from the money the state is giving to the church?

Oh, BTW, I'm glad you are content with our so-called democracy. Personally I think it's not very democratic when parliament passes a law which is rejected by 70% of the population and which leading law experts consider unconstitutional just because two religious groups threatened to throw a temper tantrum if the laws were not changed for them.