Modern Bible Interpretation

[Mr. E]

I feel really freakin' sorry for Eve unless Adam pulled a Craster.

Shouldn't have eaten that fig, eh? ;)

[Sci-2]

I feel really freakin' sorry for Eve unless Adam pulled a Craster.

"The first humans emerged from the

Garden into a world of savagery

and grime. Beasts and birds and

fish hunted, and killed, and ate,

and the ones most often eaten were

the ones who harmed no

others at all. The sky poured water

and stony ice and jagged lightning

down upon them and the thunder

shouted its rage.

The first humans built themselves

a shelter from sticks and leaves;

and a fire from stones and wood;

and they learned to kill what they

wished to kill and protect what

they wished to protect; and as Eve

brought forth a child in suffering

and pain, she said:

“Truly, this is an age of miracles.”

—Nobilis, Unlikely Flowerings by Jenna Moran

[Fragile Bird]

Distinguishing between the traits of an organization and the traits of its followers is not anything like a "semantic game".

Of course it's not - I agree with you there. But taking my statement where I say "You think Christians are" and turning it into "I would never say all Christians are.." four different ways, when I never used the word all, is a semantic game.

No. It's not a sweeping statement. In the quote you bring up I'm discussing Evangelism, a small subset of Christianity, and the subset most directly involved with the political actions you claim to disavow, and that I think in general show characteristics of mental illness that are specifically excluded from most religious people in general by the very fact that I bring it up as a "subset". I didn't say "I think religious people are mentally ill," I said that Evangelicals seem to consist of religious people who also happen to be mentally ill.

I don't know any evangelicals here in Canada. They do exist, some of them are even politicians, but much of what I have learned recently of evangelicals in the United States comes from people who post here, including you, who have made evangelicals out to be a large group in the US that have views and attitudes the posters find disturbing. I happen to agree with much that is said. To now say your statement was not sweeping, it was made about a small subset of Christianity just takes me aback. We all say here on the forum that you can't trust Wikipedia articles, but according to Wikipedia this small subset is estimated to be 25 to 30 per cent of the US population, 70 to 80 million people.

The movement is highly diverse and encompasses a vast number of people. Because the group is diverse, not all of them use the same terminology for beliefs. For instance, several recent studies and surveys by sociologists and political scientists that utilize more complex definitional parameters have estimated the number of evangelicals in the U.S. at about 25–30% of the population, or roughly between 70 and 80 million people.

The leaders of Christianity, not the followers. The followers would be the victims.

That was in response to my saying, oh, so Christians aren't bigots, they're criminals, I understand that you think followers of religions are being conned, because you do not believe in what people call faith. I get it Ser Greguh. But Christian believers do not consider themselves as victims, they consider themselves followers of the teachings of Christ. And when you say that the leaders of the faith they believe are con artists, you deeply insult believers, painting them as foolish or naive, victims of a con game they just can't see. I will accept the fact, however, that you don't comprehend the insult, because you see for yourself so clearly that their beliefs are akin to believing in Santa Claus, something most children understand by the time they are 6 or 7. But between calling 25 to 30 percent of the US population mentally ill and saying the rest of the Christians can't distinguish between the truth and Santa Claus, grant me the fact that I have the impression you think Christians are morons.

Individual Christians, maybe, but certainly not as a demographic. I've never said or implied anything that could even remotely be interpreted as saying that Christians are, as a whole, hateful. This is you lying.

Now, I specifically said my quote was based on my impression of the things you've said. I have not gone into the politics threads, or the abortion threads, looking for quotes. If you have never said Christians are hateful - and again, the semantics game rears it's head, I did not say you said Christians as a whole are hateful - but if you are telling me you have never in the 8 months I've been on this board said Christians are hateful, I will accept that and apologize for saying you said Christians are hateful. My misunderstanding when you talk about hate, then. You go off the deep end, IMO, calling me a liar, and in turn I ask that you apologize for that. I may have mistakenly attributed that statement to you, because certainly it has been made on this board. Perhaps even deleted off this board.

No, not at all. I think that the role of religion and general, and Christianity specifically, is pretty obvious in the context of World History. The fact that religion has been used as a tool of oppression throughout history is pretty inarguable. We can quibble as to the degree to which the people responsible for that oppression have been "Real Christians" but that certainly can't reasonably be construed as a statement of hate toward Christian followers in general.

This is such a vast and sweeping statement (the kind you think you don't make) that it can be an entire thread discussion. And in fact did get discussed, and IIRC, numerous posts were made regarding the positive aspects of religion.

Not at all. The notion that you, or anyone, would dismiss such a fundamental distinction as a "semantic game" is alarming. That's essentially the whole point of describing it as a confidence scam. I think you drastically misinterpret what I mean when I make this accusation.

Again, a thread on this topic would be interesting. Is religion a massive conspiracy of a few leaders and all the followers are just sheep, so we can paint religion in the ugliest way but say I would never say all Christians are like that, it's just their religion.

You said that I believed, and I quote, "Christians are bigoted, hateful, fairy tale believing morons who aren't worth respecting." I have never said anything of the sort and I consider this statement to be multiple personal attacks rolled into one. To believe those things, one would have to be an unbelievable hateful person, and an idiot. I do not take such accusations lightly and do not see any way to interpret this statement other than as an attack on my character.

Well, no it's one statement, one summary of what I think you convey to the Christians on the forum. You think you haven't said anything of the sort, except for the fairy tale and mentally retarded mental illness part, and we've discussed the bigoted and hateful part, and when you repeatedly make statements like, how badly calibrated are people's bullshit detectors that they can't tell that both a talking snake and someone rising from the dead are unbelievable, I don't detect a whole lot of respect to the individual Christian, not just the organized religion. To take this as an attack on your character is incorrect - it's an attack on your beliefs as I interpret them from what you write. As you have pointed out to me, I don't know you, but I assume you are a swell guy when the topic of religion is not being discussed, just like millions and millions of other people on this continent. I like what you write in the politics threads. I'm impressed with your poker playing skills. But many people do have a rule about not discussing religion (and politics) at the dinner table :lol: because the issues are so very contentious. There ain't a whole lot of middle ground for compromise between I believe in God and so you still believe in Santa Claus, huh.

While you may find the comparison between belief in a deity and belief in a unicorn to be ipsa facto offensive,

Oh, please learn to read - I was talking about what you said in a series of insults to Sci, and you did insult his analytical skills in that post, you can talk about unicorns and Santa Claus all you want.

It may be obvious to you what the difference is between belief in God and belief in a unicorn, but it is most certainly not obvious to me. As to my interaction with sciborg, I generally respect him as a poster and hope the feeling is mutual (he seems to "Like" a not infrequent number of my posts), I simply felt that his handling of that particular argument was exceptionally poor.

Oh, you do know how to read, you just had to throw a gratuitous insult my way?

The statement you quote was a somewhat frustrated response to what I felt was a continual misrepresentation of what my atheism does and does not mean. As I said in the excerpt that you quote (and consider probably the most important words in that statement to be), I begrudge nobody their personal faith. In that statement I go out of my way to deny that my feelings as to the factual merits of specific religious stories, or of the effects of religious organizations as political historic entities, should stand as an indictment of anybody's personal faith, and yet you interpret them as such anyway. I don't know how to react to such an interpretation if not as a personal attack. You accuse me of things that I have not only not said, but that I have gone out of my way to exclude when discussing religion.

Are you familiar with the saying, he can't see the forest for the trees? You begrudge nobody their personal faith, and go out of your way to say none of your beliefs are an indictment of anybody's personal faith.

Hey, you know what - I just deleted everything I wrote after that sentence. I believe you - you can rail against organized religion and call some followers mentally retarded, but you don't begrudge anyone their faith. I know lots of atheists exactly like you. They think believers are idiots for believing, but hey, live and let live. No water offa my back if they believe. I'll still insult their religion 50 ways up and down, but don't take it personally. So don't take it personally when I say you won't accept any answer a Christian makes about their faith, because you aren't making a personal attack when you call them fairy tale believers. And of course, in the same spirit (can I use that word?) don't take my attempt at summarizing your beliefs about Christians as a personal attack either. :)

Well, from an anthropological perspective, the notion that the Hebrews that were presented with the 10 Commandments "invented" all of those moral codes is flatly absurd. . . . . I would hope that one could point out these things without being accused of "mockery." It's very basic historical fact.

No kidding. I think once you make it to college and get exposed to other faiths and cultures and realize similar ideas sprang up at various times around the world, you understand this fact. But making the statement that the writers of the Bible claimed to invent the ten commandments is as close minded as anything an evangelical would say about your beliefs. How did the writers of the story of the ten commandments know what beliefs were in India or any other place where people were codifying laws? If you were fair, you would then say all those cultures to "claimed to have invented" the ideas as well.

Very easily. I don't see Christianity as any one single monolithic entity, and I think that the vast majority of Christians pick and choose what they want to believe from the canon and what they want to ignore, as other Christians have acknowledged is their process in this very thread. I think this is a much better recipe for individual moral behavior than following the teachings of some religious leader, religious organization, or religious text blindly. However, insofar as the teachings religious leaders and religious organizations do influence individual faith, I often find those teachings laced with toxicity and politically self-serving motives. This is a big part of why I judge evangelicals more harshly than most everyday religious folk: a defining characteristic of evangelical belief is the blind adherence to a rigid dogmatic worldview that makes a mockery of even basic notions of critical thought (such as believing that the world is only some 6,000 years old) and an extremely harsh, almost screeching hatred professed toward not just unbelievers, but anyone else less overt in their faith.

I agree with everything you said there. But again, I did not say you said "all" Christians are hateful. And as I said above, there's a whole topic of discussion in claiming it's just the religion that's hateful, not the followers.

No, you grotesquely misrepresented my espoused positions, crudely characterizing them in such a way that one could only support such positions if one was an enormous asshole.

No, I don't think I grotesquely misrepresented your espoused positions. For all the reasons set out above. And as I also said above, arguments on religion are highly contentious. If I thought you were an asshole, I would say it straight up.

You have not demonstrated that you understand my position at all. Even your characterization that I "utterly despise" religion is never, ever anything I would say. I have very strong critiques of Christianity from both a philosophical and political standpoint, but to "utterly despise" something is simply not in my lexicon. That is the language of a fanatic.

Well, forgive me for thinking you utterly despise religion. Your comments about existential blackmail, undermining science and human progress , being a tool for oppression and a justification for violence, really, really led me to believe you despise religion. :dunno:

I am not saying that. Not even remotely. Not by implication, inference, not with a wink and not with a nudge. The notion that I am doing so is so egregious that I find the accusation offensive. I don't know how many different ways I can make that point. I believe that there is much more to a person than their religion. As I have stated repeatedly, if asked to describe myself in simple adjectives in order of priority, "atheist" would be very low on the list. If I'm judging whether someone is worthy of my respect or not, the sort of questions I ask of their character have nothing to do with religion. I don't particularly judge people for believing in other things I think are pretty silly and not particularly factual, like astrology, holistic medicine, or faulty probabilistic concepts like a particular result being "due", even though I have the same epistemological criticisms of those beliefs that I have with the specific stories of Christianity. If I'm judging whether or not someone is worthy of my respect, the sort of things I look at are, do they treat others well? Do they treat their family well? Do they take advantage of others? Are they generally kind, or are they venomous? Ultimately it comes down, I think, to whether or not they are a positive force in society at large. Would you not agree that these are more reasonable metrics with which to judge a person than their religion? Because I certainly do.

Agreed 100%.

I'm sorry for polluting the thread with a topic that's gotten specific, but I can't let these charges go unanswered, emphatically and publicly. I'll make this whole post my sig if I have to.

Go right ahead. With my responses in this post included if you do. That's only fair.

Edited to correct error, noted and stricken out

[emberling]

I get that. Unless there's some sort of scientific evidence that people are genetically destined to become intolerant in one way or another in the manner we're talking about, it's a bit weird to claim that people will always be odious. For a lot of people it was their upbringing that made them that sort of person. That's the weirder part imo;pretending that those people were not made intolerant and that they always had a problem.

It's a pretty big leap from "if you removed any one religion from the world, it would do essentially nothing to help tolerance" to "people will always be intolerant no matter how culture shifts". It's blindingly obvious that culture has, in fact, shifted towards tolerance.

My thesis, essentially, is that religion-based intolerance is a symptom. That it is not religions that create intolerance, but intolerance* that creates and reinforces intolerant religion.

The idea of genetic predestination to intolerance is clearly absurd, but so is the idea that intolerance is some unnatural thing that only exists because it is institutional. Fundamental attribution error, othering, rationalization, the need to be 'right' - these are part of how the mind works. It's not 'genetic', it's fundamental. They are, essentially, a scientific equivalent of original sin. A tolerant culture has to - and absolutely can - recognize and minimize those. A (sufficiently large) cultural vacuum, however, will inevitably manifest them in some way.

*ETA: The intolerance of the believers of that religion. I'm not making some kind of retaliation to persecution argument.

[Ser Greguh]

That was in response to my saying, oh, so Christians aren't bigots, they're criminals, I understand that you think followers of religions are being conned, because you do not believe in what people call faith. I get it Ser Greguh. But Christian believers do not consider themselves as victims, they consider themselves followers of the teachings of Christ. And when you say that the leaders of the faith they believe are con artists, you deeply insult believers, painting them as foolish or naive, victims of a con game they just can't see. I will accept the fact, however, that you don't comprehend the insult, because you see for yourself so clearly that their beliefs are akin to believing in Santa Claus, something most children understand by the time they are 6 or 7. But between calling 25 to 30 percent of the US population mentally ill and saying the rest of the Christians can't distinguish between the truth and Santa Claus, grant me the fact that I have the impression you think Christians are morons.

It is not my words you are interpreting as an insult here, it is my very existence. I can't do much about that.

This is such a vast and sweeping statement (the kind you think you don't make) that it can be an entire thread discussion. And in fact did get discussed, and IIRC, numerous posts were made regarding the positive aspects of religion.

I do not make vast and sweeping statements about demographics of people. This is a statement about an organization. The notion that religion has historically been used as a tool of oppression is hardly controversial. The net effect of religion is more debatable, but that's not what I was addressing.

Well, no it's one statement, one summary of what I think you convey to the Christians on the forum. You think you haven't said anything of the sort, except for the fairy tale and mentally retarded part

I've never used the phrase "mentally retarded" to describe people on this board. I have far too much respect for the mentally handicapped to do so. I've dedicated a not-insignificant portion of my life to helping the mentally handicapped. I don't know what to call this accusation other than a simple, hateful, bald-faced lie. Note that when I use the word hateful here I'm directing at you, not Christians in general, because this accusation is fucking hateful.

, and we've discussed the bigoted and hateful part, and when you repeatedly make statements like, how badly calibrated are people's bullshit detectors that they can't tell that both a talking snake and someone rising from the dead are unbelievable, I don't detect a whole lot of respect to the individual Christian, not just the organized religion.

These are not criticisms of people, these are criticisms of the epistemology, the methodology, behind a person's beliefs. The specific statement that you are mangling here was a criticism of how certain aspects of the stories of Christianity seem, to the nonbeliever, to be processed using wildly different metrics. The talking snake described in Genesis is written off as allegory by many religious people, for no reason beyond rationalizing that a literal talking snake is ridiculous. And yet the story of Jesus's resurrection from the dead - absolutely no less ridiculous to me or to most nonbelievers - is treated as absolutely literal. The adverb I used was "bizarrely". Bizarrely calibrated bullshit detectors. I understand when someone's bullshit detector is not present, and I understand when it rejects both stories, but I do not understand a bullshit detector that allows one to pass but blocks the other.

To take this as an attack on your character is incorrect - it's an attack on your beliefs as I interpret them from what you write. As you have pointed out to me, I don't know you, but I assume you are a swell guy when the topic of religion is not being discussed, just like millions and millions of other people on this continent. I like what you write in the politics threads. I'm impressed with your poker playing skills. But many people do have a rule about not discussing religion (and politics) at the dinner table :lol: because the issues are so very contentious. There ain't a whole lot of middle ground for compromise between I believe in God and so you still believe in Santa Claus, huh.

Religion fascinates me, and so I talk about it. Since long before I'd ever heard the word "atheist", I've always been fascinated by the fact that so many people see as obviously true what I've seen as obviously false ever since I heard the stories. I'm fascinated by the motivations of the crowd that saw fit to torment me in high school. I'm fascinated by the motivations of people that relentlessly and perniciously twist my stance, as you have done in this back and forth (for example: I'm not saying that religious people must necessarily believe in Santa Claus; I'm marveling how the skepticism and rationality that causes you not to believe in Santa Claus doesn't also apply to your religious faith). I reject the notion that civil discourse is impossible even when hard questions are being asked.

However, when you do things such as insist, not once but twice, that I'm calling believers "mentally retarded", I see that you have no interest whatsoever in civil discourse. You are being spiteful and false.

I know lots of atheists exactly like you. They think believers are idiots for believing, but hey, live and let live. No water offa my back if they believe. I'll still insult their religion 50 ways up and down, but don't take it personally. So don't take it personally when I say you won't accept any answer a Christian makes about their faith, because you aren't making a personal attack when you call them fairy tale believers. And of course, in the same spirit (can I use that word?) don't take my attempt at summarizing your beliefs about Christians as a personal attack either. :)

This characterization of me could not be more false. I have never said that believers are idiots for believing. I would never say that because I do not believe it. The vast majority of atheists do not believe this. I have specifically repudiated this statement multiple times in this very conversation. I have no idea how to interpret your continued insistence that I believe this, despite the repeated insistence that I do not, as anything but you going out of your way here to insult me personally.

No kidding. I think once you make it to college and get exposed to other faiths and cultures and realize similar ideas sprang up at various times around the world, you understand this fact. But making the statement that the writers of the Bible claimed to invent the ten commandments is as close minded as anything an evangelical would say about your beliefs. How did the writers of the story of the ten commandments know what beliefs were in India or any other place where people were codifying laws? If you were fair, you would then say all those cultures to "claimed to have invented" the ideas as well.

The criticism that the Christians and Hebrews plagiarized many of the beliefs and traditions of the cultures around them and passed them off as their own is commonplace in academia. I see that you're not interested in parsing this criticism as anything but an insult, though, so I'll just let it pass. It's not terribly important here.

No, I don't think I grotesquely misrepresented your espoused positions.

You did, and you continue to do so. You say in this post that I think that Christians are "idiots" for believing. I do not. You say twice that I think that Christians are "mentally retarded. I do not and would never fucking use those words.

Well, forgive me for thinking you utterly despise religion. Your comments about existential blackmail, undermining science and human progress , being a tool for oppression and a justification for violence, really, really led me to believe you despise religion. :dunno:

The speed with which you leap from acknowledging that I have criticisms of religion to assuming what my feelings toward religion must be is unwarranted and concerning. I have criticism of lots of things. If I "utterly despised" them all I'd probably be an extremely unpleasant person. From an emotional perspective, my criticisms of religion are not terribly different from my criticisms of Major League Baseball adding a second Wild Card spot (in fact, the latter has been known to get me quite a bit more worked up).

[K.C.]

:stunned:

[Eponine]

Can't you two take this to PM?

Although I do think there's an interesting discussion hidden here, which is, how much are people an extension of their beliefs? If I refuse to respect a belief system, does that by definition mean that I'm refusing to respect everyone that holds those beliefs? I despise Evangelism. I think that the 70 - 80 million Americans who hold to Evangelistic tenets are believing something wrong, untrue, false. I think that the extension of these beliefs has directly led to support of bigotry, homophobia, sexism, and racism. It has also led to charity and a supportive community. And I know a fuckton of Evangelicals. Many of them in their daily lives show kindness, compassion, and goodness, as well as supporting positions and institutions that are anti-choice, anti-gay rights, and patriarchal. Look at how many people in America are against gay marriage, just for one example. Is every one of those people entirely an extension of that one belief, completely undeserving of respect as a person? If that were so, almost everyone in history would be undeserving of respect because of beliefs they held, either consciously or unconsciously, according to our ideas of civil rights. I have no problem denouncing a belief as false, harmful, or oppressive without saying that every person holding that belief is an idiot, a bigot or undeserving of respect on the whole. I think that most people hold beliefs about politics, economics, Science! and other fields that are false and potentially harmful by extension, and that doesn't make them all idiots in other areas besides the wrongly held belief.

I do find it extremely troubling when a Christian associates themselves with the label and beliefs of Christianity so deeply that any criticism of Christianity is taken as a personal attack on the individual Christian.

Do Christians who are offended by insults toward the Christian religion dismiss the verse "the fool says in his heart 'there is no god'" as just some guy's opinion rather than something that belongs in their holy text? Now that is a good example of attack on the person instead of the belief.

I also find it interesting that in these threads there are usually many people critical of Christianity in society, many critical of the Bible, some people critical of a particular subset of atheists who are angry and/or vocal, and some people whining about how the thread turns into an atheist pile-on. Sometimes a very few people straight up evangelizing. What I don't see is a criticism of atheism. When I say criticism, I don't mean personal attack, I have seen a few of those, but an analysis of why atheism is not a true or rational belief. I am interested in talking about why theism is baseless and why atheism is a rational belief, without any personal attacks on boarders. I would be equally interested in seeing why someone thinks that theism is the best choice based on the rational evidence.

[Balefont]

A good point, Great Unwashed.

Okay, my first question from Matthew (barring the whole genealogy thing; if Jesus was the son of God, why go through all that stuff to talk about Joseph when Joseph was not Jesus' father?) comes from Matthew 4:1.

But if Jesus is God... and God cannot be tempted by the devil... I'm confused, someone explain this please.

It's like Meet Joe Black. ;)

You're welcome!

First of all marriage is partly a religious sacrament,

Mine isn't. Neither is my sister's. No church. No gods. No religion. Yet we get to enjoy the benefits afforded to us under law.

[emberling]

Rationality is vastly overrated, or at least overstated. People just aren't. To be rational is much like to be without sin. The myth of the rational person (rational actor) is responsible for the same kind of dogmatic, regressive belief as religions are. (Both of those things are also responsible for much good, of course.)

As I understand it, a very large proportion of people have had explicitly religious experiences - a feeling of the presence of God, or something much like. Whether this is actually some ineffable divinity or some kind of strange psychological effect, I certainly can't say. I have not had this experience, and I presume that 99%+ of atheists and most other nonreligious persons also have not. But many, many people have. The best atheism can do to explain this is 'maybe it's some weird brain thing'. To accept that their brain could fool them on that level would be a rejection of their own rationality (or illusions thereof). So they cannot rationally justify atheism, because it contradicts their experience.

[Minaku]

Who was it that said magic is science that just hasn't been explained yet?

The origin stories of religions often revolve around a mythical explanation for something that could not be physically explained. The Greeks couldn't pinpoint why the sun arced across the sky from east to west, so they invented Helios driving his chariot across the sky. They couldn't explain the seasons, so they invented the story of Persephone and the pomegranate seeds. The Japanese thought that tides were controlled by the god of the sea wielding two jewels, one for ebbing, the other for flowing. Back then, this was accepted.

As history went on we made significant scientific discoveries. The earth revolves around the sun, and the earth rotates on an axis as it revolves around the sun, thus creating days, nights, and seasons. The theory of gravity was posited, and we understood that the moon stays in Earth's orbit because of Earth's gravity, but the gravity of the moon pulls upon the water of Earth, creating tides. More and more, mysteries that had previously been explained through myth were being proved incorrect and explainable through science, reason, empirical studies, and repeatable results.

Humans, as demonstrated over and over through the course of time, want to believe things. They want to believe there are powers higher than themselves, that they aren't just beings scurrying about and then dying for no greater purpose. No matter how much science we have in modern times, no matter how much we can prove things to be true over and over through experimentation, people will always want to believe the fantastical (take, for instance, the Internet meme involving Insane Clown Posse - magnets, how do they work?). We are now in a state where there have been so many things explained through science that we can choose to believe one of two things:

1. There are no mystical, powerful beings; anything we do not understand can be explained eventually through science; we wonder and marvel at how well science explains things.

2. There are mystical, powerful beings; we have explained many things through science, but that science works so well that it must be the result of the divine; we wonder and marvel at how perfectly the divine has put everything together for us to discover.

I have been in that population who wishes desperately that there is something better out there, something better to offer me in this life outside my circumstances. There have been times in my life when I was younger when I didn't understand why terrible things were happening to me, and I turned to the idea that there was something out there watching over me, keeping track of me, and holding me safe, all the while with the understanding that the bad things were happening to me for a reason. And then later in life I understood that the things happening to me were a result of people's wills and actions, and not a result of some divine trial I had to go through in order to be better.

So, no matter how tempting I think option 2 is, as a rational thinker, I go with option 1. I go with option 1 DESPITE my experience to the contrary, because I believe what I experienced can be explained through psychology. I have had visions; those could be a result of me wishing so hard for someone to protect me that I created a hallucination. I have experienced group euphoria while singing classical music; that's explained by something called group flow, and when it happens it causes all the pleasure centers of the brain to fire, making it so that you are addicted and want to experience it again (also called musician's or artist's high). I have experienced things dropping or moving in response to a prayer; that was all coincidence. So far, I have not been presented with concrete, solid proof that a divine being exists, no matter how badly I wish it to be true sometimes.

And that's why I'm agnostic, trending atheist.

I suppose I should add what I'd consider proof of the divine. And that's pretty difficult, really. A trip to Heaven? Being abducted by an alien and shown the master lightboard for the universe? I don't know.

[Inigima]

kuro: I think that is a hard sell for theists. It requires saying "I felt god and I know it was god because ?????." How would you know? How would anyone know what god feels like?

[MisterOJ]

kuro: I think that is a hard sell for theists. It requires saying "I felt god and I know it was god because ?????." How would you know? How would anyone know what god feels like?

It's just one of those things.

How do you know what love feels like until you experience it? Feeling God's presence is sorta like that.

[Inigima]

I'm effectively agnostic as well. It's somewhere between very hard and impossible to prove it either way. All of the major organized religions are mutually exclusive -- that is, they deny that the others are right -- but mostly they all just want you to not be too big a dick anyway. So I try to do that.

It's just one of those things.

How do you know what love feels like until you experience it? Feeling God's presence is sorta like that.

I can accept that as personal belief. Doesn't hurt anyone, believe what you want. Where I run into unacceptable territory is when people want to legislate what I and others can do on the basis of something like that.

[Castel]

As I understand it, a very large proportion of people have had explicitly religious experiences - a feeling of the presence of God, or something much like. Whether this is actually some ineffable divinity or some kind of strange psychological effect, I certainly can't say. I have not had this experience, and I presume that 99%+ of atheists and most other nonreligious persons also have not. But many, many people have. The best atheism can do to explain this is 'maybe it's some weird brain thing'. To accept that their brain could fool them on that level would be a rejection of their own rationality (or illusions thereof). So they cannot rationally justify atheism, because it contradicts their experience.

I guess I'm one of the 1% then :)

Your argument is confusing. The brain plays tricks on you so you're not rational? What ever gave you the impression that rationality was a trait you were born with not earned? And if the overwhelming majority of atheists haven't felt it, how are they irrational?

Rationality is vastly overrated, or at least overstated. People just aren't. To be rational is much like to be without sin. The myth of the rational person (rational actor) is responsible for the same kind of dogmatic, regressive belief as religions are. (Both of those things are also responsible for much good, of course.)

No one is talking about complete rationality. Society couldn't function with that. To be totally honest we simply draw lines in what we need to be rational. Some fields require more rational thinking that others.

[Eponine]

Rationality is vastly overrated, or at least overstated. People just aren't. To be rational is much like to be without sin. The myth of the rational person (rational actor) is responsible for the same kind of dogmatic, regressive belief as religions are. (Both of those things are also responsible for much good, of course.)

I have not had this experience, and I presume that 99%+ of atheists and most other nonreligious persons also have not.

Ok, if we're going to be pedantic, then replace "rational" with "reasonable". But even if people aren't rational actors in the way you mean, people have the ability to evaluate two conflicting claims and discuss whether they are reasonable or not.

Something I find interesting is the testimony of former Christians who previously had religious experiences, particularly the ex-Pentecostals who had spoken in tongues.

An influential experience in my own life was when my mother, who reads the Bible and prays every single day and is a true believer, told me that she knew that I was making the right decision in getting engaged because she felt peace and the presence of the Holy Spirit. This was when I was very young and believed myself to be a Christian, albeit a conflicted one. That was the guy who raped me (something I have never told my mother about). After I broke off the engagement, she said that a family friend had told her that she had confused the Holy Spirit with her own feelings.

Even if it were the case that some people were having true religious experiences that atheism could not explain, it's not exactly a +1 for god that either religious experiences were indistinguishable from totally stupid and unfounded feelings or that he'd lead a Christian to encourage her daughter to have a relationship with a rapist. (Well, maybe I'm like the anti-Job, hope god is paying for that one through the ass. Totally kidding about that.)

Also, I am not "angry at god" or blaming religion for what happened. It's just a really clear example to me that it wasn't something unexplainable by atheism, not just "some weird brain thing", but something very easily explained in terms of human bias and self-delusion.

[Ser Greguh]

As I understand it, a very large proportion of people have had explicitly religious experiences - a feeling of the presence of God, or something much like. Whether this is actually some ineffable divinity or some kind of strange psychological effect, I certainly can't say. I have not had this experience, and I presume that 99%+ of atheists and most other nonreligious persons also have not. But many, many people have. The best atheism can do to explain this is 'maybe it's some weird brain thing'. To accept that their brain could fool them on that level would be a rejection of their own rationality (or illusions thereof). So they cannot rationally justify atheism, because it contradicts their experience.

"Some weird brain thing" encompasses a vast ocean of phenomena internal to the human body, and when parsed in any way that can categorize such experiences, what one finds about how people describe their "Religious experiences" is varied, from an actual literal voice in their head (often described by evangelicals to me, which is why I am fast and loose with stating that there is probably a link between strong evangelism and mental illness), all the way down to some imperceptible feeling that they can't describe but that "You'll know it when you feel it too."

What's curious to me is that when people do experience these "moments of faith", they almost always translate them as moments of faith that draw them to the religion that is prevalent in their specific geographical area and that is most prevalent in their specific upbringing. Someone in Saudi Arabia that experiences such a moment will be almost inevitably be drawn to the teachings of Muhammed, while someone in the United States that experiences such a moment will inevitably be drawn to the teachings of Jesus. No doubt someone in ancient Rome would have been drawn by such a feeling toward their own pantheon, just as someone in the appropriate phase of Egypt's empire would be drawn toward Amon-Ra. No doubt each of these people would explain such an interpretation as their good fortune to be born in the geographical area and historical epoch that just happened to have the True Faith nailed, but a larger overview of these interpretations invites skepticism.

I don't question that people experience such "moments of faith", I question the validity of their interpretations. Humans have always looked to supernatural explanations for things that they did not understand. What makes me an atheist may not be that I haven't experienced the exact same "weird brain thing" that another person interprets as their "moment of faith". For all I know I have. What makes me an atheist is that when I encounter something I do not understand, I believe that an admission of I don't know the cause of this is far more palatable than an explanation that requires an unverifiable faith in something that almost always just so happens to coincide with the popular beliefs of the religion that dominates my tiny scrap of earth in the brief nanoseconds of my existence in the vast scope of time.

[emberling]

kuro: I think that is a hard sell for theists. It requires saying "I felt god and I know it was god because ?????." How would you know? How would anyone know what god feels like?

Oh, I think there is a leap of irrationality there, very much akin to what Minaku mentioned about the origins of religion. But it's not irrational from within...or it's, perhaps, the path of least irrationality. Basically: I experience this thing; my experience specifically contradicts scientific/skeptical/atheist consensus; then I seek to explain it in the best way I can - at which point they encounter established religion.

One 'jump' is that new data doesn't actually 'disprove science', it is incorporated into further science. Science changes. But to a lay person, that's not the reality of it. One guy without scientific training does not have the inclination or the credibility to change the scientific consensus, and most of said guys won't know where to look to join with others with the same data. On an individual level, it's least irrational to turn to spirituality here - spirituality can be and is approached with skepticism and rationality.

The other 'jump' is from 'God exists' to 'this specific God exists' and that one I don't know how to explain. But to, for instance, a non-religious person brought up in a Catholic tradition who then experiences God, I'd think accepting their childhood teachings would resolve a lot of cognitive dissonance. Is it more reasonable to accept that the environment of their upbringing was not a lie, or to withhold judgment and have this...mystery hanging above one's head? I could go either way.

Your argument is confusing. The brain plays tricks on you so you're not rational? What ever gave you the impression that rationality was a trait you were born with not earned?

Why do you keep trying to turn this into some kind of ridiculous nature vs. nurture thing? Nobody is talking about that but you. I said that rationality is something that we aspire to, but do not reach, much like non-sinfulness in Christianity.

And if the overwhelming majority of atheists haven't felt it, how are they irrational?

In ways other than choice of religion.

One of the traps of fetishizing rationality is an insistence on judging based on an objective world. Individuals' decisions are not based on that objective world - they are based on their subjective interpretation of it. I can't tell you whether Bob's religious experience can be explained by group euphoria or not, but Bob insists it's more than that. Maybe it's irrational of Bob to say so, but it's also irrational of me to say it's not. It seems to me that anyone interested in exploring their religious experience should obviously go to Unitarian Universalists or some other inclusive group where all-encompassing dogma is rejected in favor of a sharing of various personal spiritualities. But that's how I grew up, and why, if I grew up being told that Catholicism was the right way to go, wouldn't I feel the same way about that? It's not really a rational decision, but it is an eminently understandable one.

[Castel]

This:

To accept that their brain could fool them on that level would be a rejection of their own rationality (or illusions thereof). So they cannot rationally justify atheism, because it contradicts their experience.

I said that rationality is something that we aspire to, but do not reach, much like non-sinfulness in Christianity.

Is not ^^that. You said rationality was unattainable in your first paragraph. Then you went off the deep end with the above. That was what I was talking about.

In ways other than choice of religion.

One of the traps of fetishizing rationality is an insistence on judging based on an objective world. Individuals' decisions are not based on that objective world - they are based on their subjective interpretation of it. I can't tell you whether Bob's religious experience can be explained by group euphoria or not, but Bob insists it's more than that. Maybe it's irrational of Bob to say so, but it's also irrational of me to say it's not. It seems to me that anyone interested in exploring their religious experience should obviously go to Unitarian Universalists or some other inclusive group where all-encompassing dogma is rejected in favor of a sharing of various personal spiritualities. But that's how I grew up, and why, if I grew up being told that Catholicism was the right way to go, wouldn't I feel the same way about that? It's not really a rational decision, but it is an eminently understandable one.

Yes. But it's not irrational to say that it's far, far, far more likely (edit: really, you might as well say that it's certain, it's acceptable shorthand) that Bob has a mental defect or is being fooled by a common human reaction.

This is all well and good, but your point was that atheists reject their rationality by making the claim that the brain can fool a person. I still don't get how Occam's Razor is a rejection of rationality. Atheism can only be injustifiable rationally if you believe that your subjective feelings are an accurate representation of the world. They are not. So I don't see the issue

[MisterOJ]

I can accept that as personal belief. Doesn't hurt anyone, believe what you want. Where I run into unacceptable territory is when people want to legislate what I and others can do on the basis of something like that.

I feel the same. "Live and let live," is a great way to describe how I feel about most things.

I think Evangelical Christians serve a purpose, but often-times the good things they do is counter-acted by some bad choices on their part.

[Ser Greguh]

I am curious as to exactly what you mean, kurokaze, when you describe the concept of one's brain fooling oneself.

When I view a 3D movie, my brain is "fooling me" into thinking I'm viewing a 3D image when I am in fact viewing a 2D screen. The fact that my brain can do this to me is not some sort of impeachment of my own rationality, merely a statement of the reality that the translation process between sensory input and cognitive perception is imperfect. Your justification of a supernatural explanation for a "religious experience" over the potential for a rational one is, to me, not unlike someone whose experience of a 3D movie leads them to believe that they were actually viewing a true hologram. I can do my best to dispel that notion by explaining how our brains process depth perception and how the 3D projection and glasses fool that process, but cannot be guaranteed success because 1) I don't fully understand it myself, and 2) as per your assertion, such an explanation is likely to be highly technical anyway and hand-waved away as "weird brain stuff". This failure can't, however, be interpreted as evidence that what was viewed was actually a 3D hologram.