My Attitude About Religious People

[fritzwar]

Hi David,
in your first post you say your problem is with religious people who think others should find their views "highly reasonable". But in some of the later discussion you shift focus to the point that (paraphrasing, though perhaps I misunderstand) at least half of the reasonable people will find that, eg, Jesus was just a man, etc...
These are, as you know, very different issues -- I can find your view reasonable, even "highly" reasonable while still thinking it is false.

I'm also a bit surprised that you don't find a need to be informed by professional level work on this issue before reaching your firm conclusion. Some of us (professional philosophers with graduate level training in logic and decision theory) have discussed this broad range of issues with a much greater focus on argumentative rigor and clarity than you'll find on a discussion board. If you think a few simple observations here at this discussion board are sharper than what is going no in our field (I doubt you think that, but I'm not sure) then you're mistaken and could certainly benefit intellectually from engaging the field through some serious reading.

And for what it's worth, most everyone I know who thinks that a lack of belief in their religion will lead to bad consequences for those who don't believe has no problem simultaneously defending the view that their position should be judged "highly reasonable" by an objective observer. Not all standard monotheistic religious people get into this position (many are Universalists about salvation) but those who accept that lack of belief will lead to punishment or damnation or whatever don't shy away from this belief and they don't shy away from conjoining this belief with the belief that objective observers should view their position as "reasonable". Don't believe me? If not, again, I suggest you look to serious work on these issues rather than guessing about what informed well trained people think about them.

[fritzwar]

PS - here's a link to one well done encyclopedia entry on Bayes Theorem by a friend and colleague (and well respected philosopher at U of Michigan). It outlines the basic details plus sketches some central issues in the contemporary philosophical / logical discussion of BT. Perhaps you and others will find it and some of the references contained in it of interest.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayes-theorem/

[FredBoots]

BZ_Zorro,
Your post reminds me of one of my favorite quotes (obviously to be said to a religious person):
"I contend you and I are both atheists. I just believe in one less god than you. When you understand why you reject all other religions, you will understand why I reject yours."

[NotReady]

I gotta read more GK.

[NotReady]

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them to admit that objective observers


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As your posts have proved several times, there's no such animal.

[vulturesrow]

First off, why throw a ridiculous challenge such as "study and learn every facet of every possible religion out there." I have a day job you know [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] That said, some religions I am more familiar with than others. What I do know is that most religions carry some "truths" within them yet havent captured the totality of the message of God. They simply are incomplete, some more grossly than others.

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(have you even done that yet?)

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You caught me, I've never read the Bible. Guess I need to go do that. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Then take a look at claims such as :
A man born of virgin(now where have I heard that before),
A man walking on water(hmmm)
A man dying and getting resurrected.

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Not sure what you are getting at here? Is it the tired old claim that Christianity is just a recycling of various pagan myths? Or something else?

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And when you discover there is not single shred of independent historical evidence for even the existence of said character (apart from said religious book), tell yourself it is reasonable and rational thing to believe. Tell yourself it is even more rational and reasonable to believe in these miracles. No contemporary writers spoke of Jesus or a man similar. No Roman records mention him. There are no artifacts. Go figure. As a historical figure, apart from the religious texts, Jesus never existed at all in any way that historians would demand for any other historical figure.

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Most scholars dont doubt the existence of Jesus as a historical figure. And to toss of the Bible as just some "religious" book with no claim to credibility is ridiculous.

[PITTM]

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Most scholars dont doubt the existence of Jesus as a historical figure. And to toss of the Bible as just some "religious" book with no claim to credibility is ridiculous.

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please explain why...

rj

[David Sklansky]

"And for what it's worth, most everyone I know who thinks that a lack of belief in their religion will lead to bad consequences for those who don't believe has no problem simultaneously defending the view that their position should be judged "highly reasonable" by an objective observer. Not all standard monotheistic religious people get into this position (many are Universalists about salvation) but those who accept that lack of belief will lead to punishment or damnation or whatever don't shy away from this belief and they don't shy away from conjoining this belief with the belief that objective observers should view their position as "reasonable". Don't believe me?"

But I do believe you. Did you miss the meaning of my original post? It was to point out that only a certain subset of religious people do I "have a problem" with. By which I mean I think they are morons or lunatics (in the same way as I think astrologers are). And it is the subset you and I have just defined. (a subset that appears to not include either Catholics or Jews)

[David Sklansky]

"As your posts have proved several times, there's no such animal." Objective observers)

What's that got to do with anything. You define expert objective observer to be someonone who has had to put a price on a billion things, some of which can be checked out later. None are slam dunks. Later on you see how many of the things he called 70% shots turned out to be true. Same with all other percent shots. His results were several standard deviations better than what chance would predict.

An entity like that doesn't exist except in principle. But there probably are people who come close to it. In any case it is my position that anyone who thinks that this theoretical expert objective observer would find the precepts of ANY religion to be more than a 1% chance has a big problem.

[fritzwar]

Perhaps I misunderstood - I thought you asserted that those who accept both:
(1) those who don't accept my religion will be punished by my God
and
(2) objective 3rd parties should accept that my religious beliefs are rational

are in some kind of difficulty.
We agree that many typical monotheists won't endorse (1). But we also know that many do endorse (1): examples, many non-Univeralist Protestants and Catholics will do so. Your claim was about this class of people (those accepting both (1) and (2) wasn't it?) But I don't see any special difficulty for these people - what's the problem? or was something else part of the stipulated belief set and helping to generate whatever the problem is supposed to be?

Of course everyone will agree that some religious people are as bad off intellectually / rationality as astrologers etc... but I don't think all people accepting (1) and (2) have been shown to be in that class. Should I got back and read some earlier post to see what I missed?

Fritz

PS - the "dice system" example was an amusing choice of something we can dismiss a priori given Wong's fairly recent conversion to "dice steering" - I haven't seen his material on this yet, but with Wong endorsing it we at least have to take a peek don't we? (of course I realize you're likely at least somewhat familiar with Wong's material on this and his claims about it)