Religion IV: Deus vult!

[Born Yesterday]

dude,

chick :)

agriculture is the connection to stars. calendars, &c.

But that connection isn't reflected in the myths, which is why I contest all this astrotheological business. Agriculture also has a connection with tool use. And yet we don't summarily associate all gods of vegetation with tools, we'd need some evidence first.

Eh, never mind, this is very academic, and probably falls under the "all categories are arbitrary" category. :P

[Gears of the Beast]

(There's also Feser's arguments against homosexuality & reincarnation, which are both embarrassments. But then all teleological arguments against homosexuality are.)

It is no surprise that he is also an intolerant piece of shit. This comment has no substance, I just felt the need to reiterate my hatred for that degenerate prick. (Although I'm happy to grant that reincarnation is nonsense)

[Sci-2]

Hopsin - ILL MIND OF HOPSIN 7

Sums up the threads pretty well...

[Born Yesterday]

Hopsin - ILL MIND OF HOPSIN 7

Sums up the threads pretty well...

Ha! Look what I found:

If you aren't real then all my prayers aren't worth a cent

That would mean that I could just make up what my purpose is

("Ill mind of Hopsin 7")

In the ordinary theological universe, your duty is imposed onto you by God or society or another higher authority, and your responsibility is to do it. But in a radically atheist universe you are not only responsible for doing your duty, you are also responsible for deciding what is your duty.

("The Pervert's Guide to Ideology")

This is lovely.

[Stubby]

This is lovely.

Lovely? The idea that we can't work out for ourselves how to be moral?

[Seli]

BY--

I equate astrotheological with agricultural. pastoralists and hunter-gatherers have different ideas. agriculturalists by contrast need an astrological calendar, &c.

Is there that much of a difference? Agriculturalists probably need a more strict and predictive calendar, but I would assume pastoralists and especially hunter gatherers need a calendar as well. Especially when they depend on seasonally recurring events. Rain, fresh (mountain) pastures, migrating animals.

I would assume it is the same kind of information that is important in all of these societies, even if the necessary level of detail might change.

[Born Yesterday]

Lovely? The idea that we can't work out for ourselves how to be moral?

I meant lovely in the sense of "oh look, pop singer's thoughts coincide with pop philosopher's thoughts". But why do you say that? From where is it inferred that we CAN'T work it out for ourselves?

A lot of people started by rejecting all moral authority (god, society, whatever), but very few ended up believing that "everything's allowed", like Ivan Karamazov. And of those that did (some Nihilists, Max Stirner, Marquis de Sade, arguably? I'm thinking aloud here), even fewer actually practiced it. Albert Camus argued that nihilists who staunchly oppose a moral stance in effect adopt another one in its place, and really shouldn't call themselves "nihilists" at all.

Most of the time, people who start by rejecting all moral authority simply end up with a morality of their own. They refuse to take anything for granted, and examine and re-evaluate every element separately. What they like, they keep. What they don't like, they reject.

And frankly, that's what everyone does up to an extent, even if the huge majority doesn't actively and purposefully start from scratch. The only difference is that, for some people, there is a higher moral authority which can be used as a decisive argument, and needs not to be elaborated further - it just is. ("That's what the Bible says". "Our Church says so." "It's written in the Constitution". "It's in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights". "It's an official decision of the Party Convention.")

While for others, the above may be used as an intellectual shortcut, assuming that other people agree already, but once they encounter someone who doesn't, they happily search for actual arguments. ("It's good because X", not "it's good because Some Guy said so".)

[Sci-2]

Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell

As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is "Why I Am Not a Christian." Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word Christian. It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians -- all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on -- are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions...

[OnionAhaiReborn]

That's more like it, Sci! :P

[Gears of the Beast]

That's more like it, Sci! :P

:agree:

This feels like a good time to mention my favourite Bertand Russel quote. Definitely applicable to the topic:

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt"

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt"

I prefer Yeat's phrasing:

The best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity

[Sci-2]

Psychedelic Tea Brews Unease: Santa Fe Residents Fight Church's Planned Site, Say Drink Endangers Public Safety

Because the UDV is a bona fide church, it can build a house of worship almost anywhere in the county, as long as it complies with requirements for parking, waste disposal and the like, said Jose Larrañaga, a county case manager. UDV members say the lot they have chosen is sacred to them -- and was consecrated by church elders from Brazil -- because they held services there on and off during their five-year legal battle.

Neighbors, however, say the spot is inappropriate for a church of any kind -- and especially for one that builds its services around a psychedelic brew.

She and other residents worry about traffic -- and tea-impaired drivers -- on the winding, narrow road that leads into their neighborhood. They fear the UDV temple, which is designed with a large gate and three flagpoles out front, would commercialize their rural neighborhood and drive down property values.

And they worry about crime once word gets out that the greenhouse shelters hallucinogenic plants.

"What teenage kid wouldn't be tempted?" said neighbor Jacque Dawson.

UDV members don't speak to the media. Their lawyer, Nancy Hollander, said the tea had never been implicated in a traffic accident in the U.S. As for the greenhouse, she said: "I'm sure they will have appropriate security."

"We don't object to them using their tea. It's legal and that's fine," said Linda Spier, who lives within sight of the proposed temple. "But it's not fine if it endangers the health and welfare of the community."

[TerraPrime]

Re: Sci-2

"We don't object to them using their tea. It's legal and that's fine," said Linda Spier, who lives within sight of the proposed temple. "But it's not fine if it endangers the health and welfare of the community."

*takes notice of all the Catholic and Christian churches around"

:rofl:

[Sci-2]

Re: Sci-2

*takes notice of all the Catholic and Christian churches around"

:rofl:

Admittedly that's where my mind went as well.

I actually am curious about the security measures of ayahuasca churches though. From what I've read it seems like in many places someone could conceivably hurt people around them if they flipped out, but IIRC there was one I read about that did have people on hand to restrain someone who might endanger themselves or others.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TP,

Well, the baptists get off easy as they use grapejuice for communion "wine".

[Gears of the Beast]

Recently listened to Sam Harris on the Joe Rogan podcast. It was pretty interesting, he was talking about his new book about spirituality without religion. I've always scoffed at any kind of spirituality usually saying something along the lines of "pfft I don't believe in spirits", but after hearing him talk about it I can see how that could have been a somewhat ignorant position. I always understood that spirituality was compatible with atheism but I didn't think it was compatible with skepticism, Sam's kinda shifted me away from that position. I shouldn't automatically scoff at people who talk about spirituality, I should ask them what they actually mean by that because he just means something along the lines of 'enlightenment/introspection/state of mind that one realises through meditation/psychedelics etc'. Sam Harris is just incredibly smart, -as are all the four horsemen (I guess it's the three horsemen these days, Hitchens was my favourite :frown5: )- he also talks about free will which is very interesting, I've heard him talk about free will before but this time I found that he was able to articulate his position way better. I've always tended to side with Dennett's compatibilism but Harris is pretty convincing.

[Born Yesterday]

Sam Harris is the main reason I turn around and sprint to the opposite direction whenever I hear "New Atheism".

I once listened to an audiobook by Harris, where he was trying to persuade us that religion is more or less single-handedly responsible for every conflict and bad thing in the world. Suicide bombers? Why, they're all Muslim, aren't they? Therefore, it's entirely appropriate for the US government to preemptively tap the phones of every Muslim in the country (yes, including American citizens). Intelligence services should follow them, watch their every move, and even the term "detention center" came up.

Detention center! At least he had the grace to avoid "concentration camp".

He also blamed religion for crime. In Europe? The Muslim immigrants are to blame. They're so backwards and religious, you see. In America, it's the Christian trigger-happy fundamentalists. If we want to win the war on crime, we must battle religion.

That was truly infuriating. It was very hard for me to keep listening and not throw the damn thing away.

I guess this is what happens when legitimate concerns for the destructive aspects of organized religion aren't guided by some form of humanism (Bertrand Russell would be SO disappointed.) When your haste to condemn religion blinds you to the complexities of a given conflict, to all social and economic factors, and to other not-entirely-rational convictions - such as nationalism. (I wonder, what does Harris think of the Troubles in Northern Ireland? Is it a Catholics Vs Protestants thing? No other concerns?) And when your zeal is so great, that your solution to religion's real or perceived evils is, simply put, fascism through the back door.

[Sci-2]

Admittedly BY's post above is more relevant to the thread, so anyone who cares about the the following can just PM me:

Forgetting about whether or not there's free will*, I just want to focus on the "indeterminism" part of Harris' argument.

If there's randomness - and it seems like there is at the quantum level - how is that possible under mechanistic closure?

To simply say "if it's not determined, then it's random" seems to skip over a rather large problem b/c "random" here means an event that cannot be 100% accounted for by previous events.

So, to some degree at least, we have events that happen (partially or wholly) without causation. Seems to me that suggests the universe is absurd or at the least beyond our ability to understand. I recall Harris also saying there would have to be consistent laws in any reality, but it's not clear to me why this must be the case. (As Wigner noted, there's no definitive reason there has to be natural laws at all. I really should read Hume's critique of causation...)

To keep to the thread topic -> Note this isn't to suggest "God" is an answer - as Tallis notes when discussing our limitations on understanding causation (here's that link again) that'd be like saying "Answer" is the answer. That said it does admittedly leave room for immaterial souls, as noted in Morhroff's Physics of Interactionism and, to an extent, the materialist Lycan in Giving Dualism Its Due.

*In case people ARE interested in that subject, I believe the physicist Lee Smolin gets into consciousness & its relationship to 'real time' in his book Time Reborn though I've not yet read it so can't tell you much more than that.

[Gears of the Beast]

Sam Harris is the main reason I turn around and sprint to the opposite direction whenever I hear "New Atheism".

What book are you even talking about? I read the End of Faith (admittedly a while ago) and this sounds like an absurd caricature of his positions and even beyond that possibly straight up lies. Are you gonna provide a source for any of that?

[Seli]

Admittedly BY's post above is more relevant to the thread, so anyone who cares about the the following can just PM me:

Forgetting about whether or not there's free will*, I just want to focus on the "indeterminism" part of Harris' argument.

If there's randomness - and it seems like there is at the quantum level - how is that possible under mechanistic closure?

To simply say "if it's not determined, then it's random" seems to skip over a rather large problem b/c "random" here means an event that cannot be 100% accounted for by previous events.

So, to some degree at least, we have events that happen (partially or wholly) without causation. Seems to me that suggests the universe is absurd or at the least beyond our ability to understand. I recall Harris also saying there would have to be consistent laws in any reality, but it's not clear to me why this must be the case. (As Wigner noted, there's no definitive reason there has to be natural laws at all. I really should read Hume's critique of causation...)

...

We seem to have a consistent universe, just without absolute causation. Basically one cause can have several effects, and while we cannot predict what effect will happen in any single case we seem to have a reasonable statistical description.

So any event follows 100% from all previous events. But rewinding to that previous state there is no way to predict with 100% accuracy what exactly will be the result.