My Attitude About Religious People

[Zygote]

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For an example, just look at Brunson's introduction to Super/System.

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Read the Super/System chapter on "Rushes" and start following that advice. See how far you get...

[BZ_Zorro]

The fundamental flaw in your thinking is that you equate religion with morality and moral codes. This is nonsense.

Moral codes were developed by men and written into religious books. Both Roman law and current modern law derive from secular philosophy and principles such as equity. Read some of the history and philosophy of law if you don't believe me.

Unlike you, I prefer to believe (and the evidence seems to suggest) that people are fundamentally moral and decent, and require just a little bit of real world guidance to stay in check. Those that act in self interest are controlled by laws. Combined, the law and the state's ability to use force provide all the societal control you need.

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Threats and fear are two ways in which societies stay societies.

[/ QUOTE ] No. A legal system with prescribed rules and punishments are how societies stay societies. Also, the fact that people are basically not anti-social, basically moral, and can intelligently choose how to best meet their needs, is the reason societies stay intact.

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Human threats are fallible, but supernatural threats are not. Athiestic society loses the threat of the supernatural, and perhaps loses the threat of conscience as well.

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Beware the atheist hordes! Seriously, I'll ask you this question: Which would you prefer:

1. A secular society with laws and a penal system based on secular philosophy & ethics which has consequences in the here and now.
2. A religious society with no rule of law whatever but religious moral codes. People are 'judged by God' and not punished for their actions in this life.

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Do you see why I said 'almost without content'? You're using rational principles to deny the existence of miracles.

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No, I'm attempting to show that most things that were once thought to be miracles or God-given have been explained by science (without the need for God). The old explanations now look utterly foolish. If you're open minded, this should tell you something.

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It wasn't organized religion, but the Enlightenment and Renaissance weren't driven by athiests either.

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They were driven by secular thought and secular principles freeing themselves from religious dogma. Society as it stands now results mostly from science and technology as well as the secular philosophies of the Romans and Enlightenment. Religion has only held that back by deliberately and inadvertently destroying education, knowledge and free thought. I would ask you to think about that before responding.

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What about athiesm? It can be easily argued that Stalin and Hitler perpetuated the worst possible slaughter because they and their society were absent of any religious principles. Any kind of state-induced dogma is bad. It's not religion that's the problem, it's dogma.

[/ QUOTE ] You have a valid point. But these slaughters didn't happen because of the absence of religious principles. There were as many religious people in Germany and the other Axis powers as in England or the U.S. None of them stood up. The church was very silent before and during the rise of the Nazi party, and during WWII. You're equating religion and morality, which is false. Morality = morality.

This is all there is in my opinion. It's not comforting and fluffy like religion is. But it's real, and it gives me a greater respect for life, the state of the world, and the people I share it with.

[Zygote]

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The fundamental flaw in your thinking is that you equate religion with morality and moral codes. This is nonsense.

Moral codes were developed by men and written into religious books. Both Roman law and current modern law derive from secular philosophy and principles such as equity. Read some of the history and philosophy of law if you don't believe me.

Unlike you, I prefer to believe (and the evidence seems to suggest) that people are fundamentally moral and decent, and require just a little bit of real world guidance to stay in check. Those that act in self interest are controlled by laws. Combined, the law and the state's ability to use force provide all the societal control you need.


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Not really true. The first moral codes were developed by the Sumerians and they did appeal to the gods. They were polytheistic, but didn't believe in spiritual worlds like heaven and hell. However, they did develope laws that guided the Sumer-states under their monarch which had mostly secular purposes. When the laws were later codified by Hammurabi (who believed in heaven and hell), he introduced them with a prologue that appeals to the gods. Prayer was a large aspect of laws in those days and they would appeal to the gods to do justice to the sinners they would send them. That is why virtually every punishment was a death sentence.

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Beware the atheist hordes! Seriously, I'll ask you this question: Which would you prefer:

1. A secular society with laws and a penal system based on secular philosophy & ethics which has consequences in the here and now.
2. A religious society with no rule of law whatever but religious moral codes. People are 'judged by God' and not punished for their actions in this life.

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Most theists will say that you can have both.

[BZ_Zorro]

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Moral codes were developed by men and written into religious books. Both Roman law and current modern law derive from secular philosophy and principles such as equity.

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Not really true. The first moral codes were developed by the Sumerians and they did appeal to the gods.

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Yes, all laws started with belief in Gods. Every society until the Romans had religion and legal/societal codes tied closely together.

However, that is not the foundation or the ideas underlying Roman or modern law. The old religious based laws were arbitrary, and still are today to some extent in places like Iran. People were executed for trivial things like adultery. Central American cultures had laws but sacrified thousands of enemies to the gods. Most codes tolerated and even encouraged abhorrent things like rape. All these codes did was frown down upon serious crimes like murder and theft, and even then only under certain circumstances. The rule of law was far from absolute and wasn't blind to personal favor. Many of the things the law prohibited depended on the whims of the particular culture and religion.

The foundation of civilised modern law comes from secular principles. Most of its founding principles and more subtle concepts such as equity and much of what is considered criminal come from secular thought and secular philosophy. To claim civilised laws and the morality contained therein come from religion is absurd.

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Most theists will say that you can have both.

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Obviously, but I am attempting to show the relative strength of each.

[[censored]]

You use the term objecive person frequently. It would help in understanding your posts if you defined this more clearly? Is it similar to the "reasonable man" that is found in law? Is an objective person absolutely without the notion of faith in your opinion? Thus if I were to present you someone with a "faith" in god is this person, under your definition, not objective?

Also do you consider "punishment" by God to simply be not recieving the same benefits as someone who has fulfilled whatever requirements are necessary under god to recieve the highest possible rewards. Put simply is not being as well off considered a punishment or does it requirement suffering?

I ask because I recall from my youth (when I went to church) the notion that those people who led what we would consider a good life but not within the followings of the church (generally defined as not causing undo suffering to others) were upon death given the opportunity to learn about god and "convert" in what I believe was referred to as a "paradise." I would not consider this punishment as thus I would not agree with this particular point of your opinion.

[vulturesrow]

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I don't have to be well informed. Your religion says that Jesus was not simply a mortal man like George Washington and Moses were. My contention is that more than half of all reasonable objective people (or machines or aliens) will come to the conclusion that he probably was just a man. (I could substitute precise tenets of any religion here by the way.) Same goes for the existence of miracles.

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You just proved my point David. First off, it took you two sentences to make two major contentions. Jesus was a mortal man and miracles dont happen. It would take me a good deal of time to address either one of these assertions properly. And since there is no way I will hit every major point, then you will say what about x y or z, and then the process repeats. And you are completely wrong about not having to be informed. Frankly that someone like you would make such a claim is somewhat shocking. Im not saying the material out there is going to make you completely accept the tenets of Christianity. But it may help you see that is is a reasonable position to hold. At the very least, you would be better able to support your criticisms by being more informed.

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Now you are just being careless. Not Ready certainly doesn't believe this to be true. Nor does ANYONE I have ever heard of. He says that he can't PROVE his points. He doesn't say that he agrees that an objective observer should find his beliefs farfetched.

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Im pretty sure I remember NotReady essentially saying different, but I will go back and look. I do know what BluffTHIS said but you basically brushed him off when he said that the humans dont allow wiggle room but God does. Here is another situation where being uninformed works to your detriment. You are trying to set up some sort of conflict or dichotomy which just doesnt exist. If you had read material on this subject, you might know that.

I'll leave with this passage from G.K. Chesterton:

"The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their own lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heavenm, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, the represent it by a serpent with a tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself."

[BZ_Zorro]

Apologies for butting in here.
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Jesus was[n't just] a mortal man

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You ideas work just fine until you apply them to the claims of other religions [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]. Then you run face first into what's known as a contradiction.

Hinduism
Buddhism
Paganism
American Indian
Australian Aboriginal
Aztecs and Mayans
Scientology
Chinese Traditional
Spritism
Jinto
Rastafarianism
etc etc

Open your eyes and read other religions. Learn every aspect. Once you understand every religion and all of their bizarre claims, and reject every one as being truth, then come back to Christianity and read the bible all over again (have you even done that yet?)

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.

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.

[David Sklansky]

"I also would point out, that since you cannot in fact demonstrate that the probability of religious belief being true is 0, that you also can't demonstrate it to be -EV."

I don't claim it is - EV. As long as the belief comes with the acknowledgewment that what you believe would be deemed an underdog to be true, by an expert evidence evaluator, be it human or non human.

[David Sklansky]

You sound like the guy who rejects my dismissal of his dice betting system though I am "uninformed" of the details. Do you really think that the books you recommend actually have arguments that meet the necessary standards to persuade people that are knowledgeble and can evaluate evidence (Baye's Theorum wise) properly?

[Triumph36]

Why would morality and moral codes come along with religion then?

I have no idea who claimed that it would be a rational and reasonable thing to believe in Jesus Christ's divinity. Don't you understand that you are coming at this problem from precisely the wrong angle, that of rationality and reasonability? It is precisely irrational and precisely human to believe such a thing. Man is not a rational animal, he is an animal with reason.

'People are fundamentally moral and decent.' What? If you're starting from there, we have no discussion. Evidence suggests that? What evidence? I mean, really, you can argue that religion is a negative force, but you've really gone overboard here if you are claiming that man is fundamentally decent and that religion, that by which morality and ethics is prescribed, drives him into evil is ridiculous. Give man the environment to be moral and decent and he will be, most of the time. Most societies have had far too much discord to provide this.

It amazes me how you can claim that all of this is derived from secular principles when John Locke's fundamental first principle rested on the existence of the Christian God. The Framers of the Constitution were religious as well, and founded the nation on ideals rooted in Christianity. There is a definite place for religion in society. Your denial of the necessity of the irrational is in itself irrational - a desire to tear out what is most basic and primary to this society, and what is most basic and primary to most men.

For the record, I'm an agnostic, and on bad days an athiest. I just don't see the necessity of going around and telling people what they should believe, or going around telling them that rational self-interest should be their governing principle.

Also for the record, Jesus's existence is mentioned in Tacitus, though if I recall, Tacitus is seriously skeptical of his divinity.