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Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest
Reservoir Hill writes "Pope Benedict XVI canceled a speech at Rome's La Sapienza university in the face of protests led by scientists opposed to a high-profile visit to a secular setting by the head of the Catholic Church. Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the university's physics department joined in the call for the pope to stay away protesting the planned visit recalled a 1990 speech in which the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seemed to justify the Inquisition's verdict against Galileo in 1633. In the speech, Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher who said the ruling was 'rational and just' and concluded with the remark: 'The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still greater form of reason.' The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini who wrote the rector complaining of an 'incredible violation" of the university's autonomy. Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'"
You don't need dialogue with irrational nutcases. If you could have rational dialogue with them you'd already have shown that their beliefs are irrational. It's sad really...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The only dialog I see coming from The Church these days is [plugs ears] "I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA LA LA LA".
That its only Christians and conservatives who are intolerant... Its not like a rational scientist or tolerant liberal would shout down someone they disagree with... /sarc
Let's see. He asks that the visit be canceled. The visit gets canceled. Then he complains about the visit having been canceled.
This sounds like the guy's ready to complain no matter what happens.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Why the hell should any science department give a rat's ass what any religious leader has to say? Does the Pope have any degrees in any sciences? Does he have any expertise, academic or otherwise that would apply in any way, shape or form, to the sciences?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
OK, I think the previous comments were off-the-hook, and indicated just how conservative this new pope is when compared with the previous. That said, I'm not sure what the physicist in question was trying to accomplish.
Did he want the Pope to visit? Why complain when he cancels? He pretty much admits that any move the Pope made would have been viewed as some sort of ploy or insult. And he complains about the Pope not wanting a dialog? And what dialog? Why does the Pope need a dialog with this University?!
with almost no relevance to Slashdot as there isn't even a specific technology in question here.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
the conundrum here is that by protesting his appearance before he said anything, he was given the opportunity to walk away, and the excuse to call foul later. although i agree that there is frequently nothing to gain in trying to rationally discuss issues with someone relying on a system other than rationality, there was most likely a way to save more face. sadly, it probably including letting him spout off a pile of nonsense.
Since when are religious people prohibited from "entering secular institutions"? This smacks of muslim holy sites. An intelligent scientist welcomes a chance to meet any prominent individual, even if they don't subscribe to each other's theories.
In any case, there is currently no unified theory that explains the connection of the spiritual realm ("soul") and physical world. Certainly there are dependencies (healthy body leads to healthy mind), but this still doesn't explain how we "feel" about the various chemical and electric processes going on in our brains. It only makes sense to study spirituality based on spiritual methods just like we study science scientifically. Perhaps some day we will discover more details about the connection between these two realms, but until then the two groups should just get off each others' backs.
Oh come on - the Pope is a figure of universal acceptance and love.
Banning the Pope today from speaking at a University because of what was done to Galileo 400 years ago is the thinest of all possible excuses for blatant anti-religious prejudice.
It is just mean spirited narrow-minded and wrong.
There are religious people who, as we speak, are cutting off peoples heads for being of the "wrong" faith, and putting women in prison for being the victims of rape. And yet their representatives get to speak at Universities.
This situation is just preposterous.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department? It's perfectly alright for a Holocaust Denier to give a speech at memorial to Nazi genocide victims?
No one is censoring the Pope. Quite the opposite, the man gets far more attention than I think he deserves. That he isn't showing up at a university for some sort of glorified photo op where he gets to pretend he's cozy with science is hardly some vast attempt to silence him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU5ZDk3NGY3OGI4NDY1OTdmNzc2NmEzYjUzZWQxNWE=
The story of Galileo is a tad more complicated than the simplistic version we're used to. I'm no Roman Catholic, but this meme needs to be corrected.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The Catholic Church has declared public that they know they were wrong with Galileo. They can't listen to this man? Having him walk on their grounds stops them from being autonomous? That simple act forces them to bend to his will? I didn't realize the leader of my faith had that kind of power. I'd think we'd have more followers if that was the case.
You don't have to agree with all his points of view. Let him come. Ask him to clarify his statement (made 17 years ago). Debate him. Don't just exclude him. It's not like he's saying the holocaust didn't exist. The church has already admitted they were wrong.
I can't agree with this. Am I the only one who thinks this makes the scientists who signed on look petty?
It's great when institutions of higher learning show opposing viewpoints and respectful debate. Wait...
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Ratzinger was elected for two very specific reasons. First, he is already old so he won't spend 30 years on the throne. That's important to the church hierarchy because they don't want another John Paul II setting policy for that long and progressively going soft on them. The second is that he's essentially a hardcore, old-school catholic. You'll see a lot more of this crap in the next few years, along with a resurgence of the more traditional major and minor orders within the church organization, slowly displacing the more enlightened groups that gained a lot of power during John Paul's tenure.
We'll have to wait about a decade or so to see if this new angle will work for them. Personally I don't think it will. The world has largely moved on. But so much power (most of it very subtle) concentrated in the hands of a group of people who think it wasn't so bad to punish people for claiming that earth is not the center of the universe cannot be good. To paraphrase someone, it's not God I dislike - it's his fan club that scares the crap out of me.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
If protests and letter writing aren't an attempt to silence him, what is?
More than refusing dialogue it looks to many of us as the Pope was forced not to be present under the menace of riots: One of the students stated "THERE IS NO DIALOGUE WITH THAT INDIVIDUAL" and the leader in his speech claimed the presence of many other collective outsiders to participate in the event to make it as much inhospitable as possible to the Pope. Last image is the invasion of the rectorate and a meal served outside the premises.
I am disgusted to be italian in the same university as those.
I'm disgusted as well to be forced to post as AC because they are VIOLENT-RED-FASCISTS supported by squatters in the SanLorenzo suburb next to the university.
I would hope that people see that this University is not representative of the broader intellectual community.
Going out and putting a gag on him, or making it illegal for him to speak. Other than that, it's a group of scientists who find his position on Galileo, and how that speaks to his views on science, troubling, and feeling that he really has no place speaking at an institution. The Pope has plenty of places he can say his spiel.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Putting him under house arrest and threatening him with execution if he doesn't recant would be.
Hmmm, that sounds familiar...
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
FTFA: Cini also recalled a colloquium on Darwin held by Benedict in September 2006 in which the "intelligent design" movement was given precedence over the theory of evolution.
"The Church can no longer use pyres or corporal punishment," [...] Cini said of Benedict on Thursday: "By cancelling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue."
You can't take the sky from me...
aside from justifying the horrors done by others he has plenty of his own.
his signature is all over the documents authorising the cover up of child-raping priests. he would be in jail if not for the diplomatic immunity he has as head of state for Vatican City.
the policy he implemented would be to have another priest hear the child-raping-priest's confession, thereby satisfying the need for justice in god's eyes. the raped child would then be told that since catholic confession is a sacrament, any discussion of what had happened to them with parents, police, councillors etc. would violate the sanctity of confession and the *child* would then burn forever in hell. the catholic church has now spent over $1 billion in America alone in compensation because for all their goodness they couldn't recognise that raping children was not a Good Thing.
this is also the pope that labelled a comedian who publically disagreed with him a "terrorist".
Pope's coming, what a shame !
Pope's not coming, what a shame !
Only God can do a miracle and save Pope in this kind of situation by providing someting and its contrary still having everyone happy.
Well something's rotten in Rome's La Sapienza university.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
John Paul II said the church was wrong about Galileo - because God's wisdom was speaking through Galileo's lips. Now would be a good time to vomit.
You're right, of course. Protests and letter writing will silence the Pope, who has no other forum for airing his views.
If only there was some place he could speak from, that others could hear. Some sort of... what's the word... pulpit or even a balcony above a crowd.
I guess that'll always be the dream for the Pope though, since we all know he can only speak at universities.
Theoretically, since most baptisms are done without the consent of the subject.
You can't take the sky from me...
"In the speech, Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher who said the ruling was "rational and just"."
Funny how, no matter how bizarre your viewpoint is, there has always been a philosopher before you who wrote about it.
They weren't protesting about what he was going to say. They were protesting about what he said in the past. Unless the pope was going to say "sorry, I was wrong", the scientists were absolutely right.
Not only is there no mention of specific technology in slashdot's ethos, but you're effectively arguing that faith and science don't matter.
You can't take the sky from me...
Anyone wanting to have a general sense of how the world is presently seeing the bad side of religion can watch Part 1 of the excellent free movie Zeitgeist. The Zeitgeist Movie is valuable but far from perfect; it needs heavy editing. For example, some of the comparisons of traditional Christian religious belief with belief in ancient pagan gods have been found to be exaggerated by the sources the makers of the Zeitgeist Movie used. Also, it is a preposterous exaggeration to suggest that Jesus Christ did not exist; if he didn't exist, someone originated the ideas; Jesus Christ is simply the name used for the originator. The need for editing is understandable considering the enormous expense of making a movie, which the makers of the Zeitgeist Movie are giving away free.
Another resource is the book, The God Delusion. That book also has theories that could use considerable improvement.
The best point of both is that what people call "religion" has done some harm as well as good. The movie and the book simply express something of the present quality of thinking surrounding that very old idea. Even some officials of the Catholic Church agree that Catholics killing Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, Catholics killing Muslims during the Crusades, and the U.S. government killing Iraqis now are evidence that what people call religion is sometimes not good but mixed with evil.
George W. Bush could not have been elected without support from those U.S. voters who call themselves "Christian Evangelists", who sometimes feel that their ideas are so superior that they should decide who to kill, even if it is people who live in places many of the "Christian" Evangelists could not find on a map of the world. George W. Bush was elected because Karl Rove's research discovered that if Bush claimed he was a Christian, he would get strong support from people who wanted to believe that an alcoholic magically became a loving person because of religion.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
Yes, if he were invited by the college governors, as the Pope was, then shouted down by some intolerant jerks. And he didn't "demand" anything. He backed out gracefully, no pun intended.
It's perfectly alright for a Holocaust Denier to give a speech at memorial to Nazi genocide victims?
No, because it is rude. Nor is it OK for one to be invited to Columbia University. But last time I checked, there were not 6 million scientists killed after which the Pope denied it.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I saw some of how Ahmadinejad was treated like royalty on TV. Of course, you Americans rebelled against royalty some time ago and wouldn't accept their rule again, which fits with the way Ahmadinejad seemed to be treated. Abused, heckled and while given a podium to speak from he wasn't given a great opportunity to talk freely. Many venues simply refused to have him present, let alone speak.
Not that he's got a lot to say once you get past the insane ravings of his delusional view of history. He is, however, leading a country and deserves the same respect due to any foreign leader that you hope to have normal diplomatic relations with (or hope to influence in some way, such as nuclear issues, arming of Iraqi rebels, etc).
And yes, Coulter and other conservatives deserve to be shouted down for defending and reinforcing the status quo. Real conservatives would be pushing for change along their actual values (small government, low taxes, etc) but they seem to have died off some time ago and been replaced by drones who push for big government and big business.
He dissertated in 1953 and habilitated in 1957. Both times in theology. Depending on your disposition you might not call that a science of course, but I guess that's entirely your problem. Every academic career forces you to learn about working scientifically to some extent, even theology.
Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss.
Current Pope aside (who, from what I can tell, isn't even well-liked by most Catholics), the Catholic church has more or less apologized for most of its past crimes, and John Paul II even made a case for evolution. Likewise, the Church has definitely placed a huge emphasis on charitable works, and focused very little on evangelism (which, is effectively very much in line with the text of the New Testament).
Although I could be completely wrong, Catholicism seems to be one of the more progressive mainstream branches of Christianity, whereas the bible-belt Christians seem to be moving in the other direction. (This is rather significant, given the Church's history)
Personally, I'm a bit upset at these scientists for protesting a speech from the Pope, which is -- dare I say -- rather dogmatic of them. No scientist should be afraid of ideas, even if they contradict his own.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
What one would expect from a religious leader? To behave like an scientist? To promote that the truth is only verifiable by scientific methodology?
What if the guy went to the University? Even the fierstest atheist may find interesting what the man has to say, being that either as a filosofical exercise or simply to get the knowledge on how the Catholic Church thinks.
Now this academic hysteria is completely ridiculous, it sounds more like a science-as-religion bigotry to me.
And, quite frankly, the academic world (I'm not talking about Science itself) is not in a good position to point any fingers.
A huge number of academics are simply and only interested in self-promotion, stealing someone else research, professors taking a hike on his/her students' work, busy formalizing bad-science in a flowered paper and... Treating anyone else outside their circle as inferiors.
You want to meet bigotry, power hunger, deceit and elitism? Politics and religion are not the only options, nor Shakespeare, one would find plenty of such crap inside the Universities.
Yeah, (s)he was joking. See the line "The bible really is infalliable and contains nuthin' but true facts that can only be understood it it's native english.(sic)"
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
I know a lot of religious nutters, but not one of them will claim that the bible was originally written in English.
Klingon, yes. But not English.
The story of Galileo is a tad more complicated than the simplistic version we're used to. I'm no Roman Catholic, but this meme needs to be corrected. From your link: "After Galileo went back to Padua, the leading scientific mediocrities started complaining. It was the scientists who said that challenging Aristotle was heresy -- not the Church."
From the Chuch: 1571, Paul IV issues the first formal Index Librorum Prohibitorum, including such works as De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Copernicus.
Galileo was 7 when that happened. Stop listening to people who are arguing that it was ok to censor the man's empirical proof of a heretical scientific theory.
You can't take the sky from me...
The very fact that this made it to Slashdot is a very direct statement in itself. Look, there have been bad Popes, good Popes, short-lived and forgotten Popes. The same can be said for Scientists, Politicians, and Geek websites.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
You do know that the Catholic Church, including Benedict XVI, supports the theory of evolution, with only a few caveats that it's part of God's plan?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
The reality isn't Heliocentrism or Geocentrism, it's arbitrary-centrism. There is no objective "fact" mandating the body you choose as "the center", all the bodies are in motion in a wider context of the universe. It's just simplest (and therefore most conducive to human psychology and conceptualization) to use the system that provides the least-complex description of their respective movements.
Weird that we have scientists actively discarding science that's been clear at least since Einstein's Relativity, for the sole purpose of maintaining a stance that lets them "stick it to religion" over a largely-misrepresented (misrepresented in terms of the sharp "science versus religion" duality that's commonly touted, if you know the actual history--e.g. Galileo had permission to publish, and it only became in issue when he presented his theory in a politically-inflammatory fashion) wrong of history.
Since, I think, many will reject this post out-of-hand in that it fails their criterion of "seems to be being said by a theist", I suggest reading Robert M. Pirsig for a philosophical perspective on this very same question. Good reading there on Euclidian-versus-Riemann geometry, too.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Do we even know what the Pope's speech was going to be about? Who said it was going to have anything to do with either a) faith or b) science?
1)He could have just wanted to talk about being a good scholar.
2)He could have just wanted to assure people that he wouldn't interfere with science...people are allowed to change, he made that comment in the early 1990's, and honestly-weren't some of us wearing ponytails and huge flannel shirts around our waists back then? Also: didn't he recently give a "official pope statement" that tried to re-affirm the Roman Catholic Church's position on evolution...mainly, that it accepts it as true?
3)He could have just given a very general, non political or religious speech, like one we see at university commencements.
It seems to me that the university, particularly this one professor, is the one starting the fire. I don't think that "the pope is being intelligent by cancelling", I think the professor is attempting to be manipulative of public opinion by making that statement, and the pope probably just didn't want a rock or whistle thrown in the direction of his pope-mobile. I mean, that thing costs money.
I'm not religious, I don't go to church every week, and I believe strongly in science. I'm actually really dissapointed with the way in which this Italian professor acted. It doesn't further the goals of science or faith-which are distinct. One deals with facts (science), and the other, belief.
I think Ratzinger wasn't even making a hard point in his speech in the 1990s. He is very much a scholar- his mind wanders this way and that, considering many options. There is no hard conclusion to his speech, which is a mistake on his part-it lets other people interpret it as they wish. Like said professor. In Ratzinger's comment on the citation he made in his speech that this professor seems to take issue with, "it makes his conclusion all the more drastic" , my translation of drastic was "irrational". I don't think that Ratzinger thinks Galileo "caused the atomic bomb". I think he thinks quite the opposite.
Ok, done.
I guess the -beep-beep-beep- of the truck backing up with meaty flamebait wasn't loud enough.
Actually I was refering to this comment: http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=32;t=000448;p=1
Although it can't yet answer a lot of the more interesting questions about life in succinct terms, rational thought and scientific understanding must be ubiquitous and powerful tools to understand the universe with. \Something that is likely to happen on other planets with extra-terrestrials, the concepts seem so self evident. Unlike religious attempts to explain existence where we can't get 50% of the planet to agree.
congrats on the +5 mod up and another proof of Godwin's Law.
Nobody's shouting down Ann Coulter; we're just disagreeing with her.
Opposing someone's speech with volume is "shouting down".
Opposing someone's speech with logic is "debate".
Ann Coulter doesn't have a First Amendment right to be correct; she just has a right to speak. Nobody's violating her rights by proving her wrong.
adj.
1. Having or exercising the ability to reason.
2. Of sound mind; sane.
3. Consistent with or based on reason; logical: rational behavior
4. Mathematics. Capable of being expressed as a quotient of integers.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
okay, I apologize. I didn't expect the inquisition :P and indeed wasn't thinking before posting.
he also gives credit to science by talking to those in the field...
If the Pope believes it worthy to talk to them and discuss with them science then it has his "tacit seal of approval"
The Church is not as ignorant as some of its adherents. I learned evolution in a Catholic school, strictly Darwin, thank you.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
People also study religion, art, music, etc. at university.
Even though my prior post was a stupid, I'd like to reply to this with a question for you....I do understand you are being theoretical, but as a point of debate...
How do you suppose people can believe things like that in the face of fact though? I know some of our nation does, but for what reason would you perceive that someone would consider your statement the end of the logic chain, as opposed to how examples like cheetahs and their problems come into play.
You are obviously aware that the Pope served in the Wehrmacht, his previous employment was as head of the Inquisition (which did in fact kill a few people in its heyday), forbids the use of condoms and family planning resulting in disease and famine, goes around dressed in gold (that's the first vice-boss who dresses better than the boss), that through history the catholic church has in fact persecuted scientists like Galileo, whose trial the current Pope considered "fair", and that exact quotation was the cause for the initial protest, aren't you?
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Mendel was a scientist. His religious affiliations are rather meaningless to his work on heredity and genetics.
And politics is hardly the rigorous field that physics is, so I don't think equating "I know Bush is shitty" is the same as the Pope pontificating (ha ha) to a bunch of trained physicists.
And what exactly is science going to get from religion? Every time I hear the term "open mind", it usually gets followed by "believe a bunch of stuff for which there is no empirical evidence", as if science ever actually could.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sorry but your are wrong: no one has "shout down" the Pope. He owns a newspaper and a radio, and he's the politician that we see more than anyone else in TV here in Italy, even more than Silvio Berlusconi that owns half of the Italians TV stations.
Yes the Pope acts exactly like a politician in Italy: he tell which laws should be passed or not, or changed, for whom to vote and sometimes even tell people not to go voting, like in a recent referendum. And it's far from nice and good: the Vatican opposes (successfully, thanks to corrupt politician) the right of women, gays and lesbians, is opposing right now an anti-racism law (you read it right: they aren't opposing racism, they are trying to shout down an anti-racism law) and they even opposed a donation from Italy to a children hospital (they didn't oppose the use of the same budget money for the war in Iraq a few years ago), because they want to have the exclusive of charity in the minds of the Italians (the stupid ones, at least) so they get more donations.
And we already know exactly what he was going to say: that abortion is murder, even if it's a simple embryo one day from the fertilisation. And abortion must be completely illegal (in Italy we have a very sensible and balanced abortion law, that has reduced to less than half the number of abortions from when it was completely illegal and all abortions were clandestine, and saved countless women). I know this because I see him every day on every television news always saying the same things, and insulting women, gays, scientists and atheists.
Well he's free to says what the hell he wants, but scientists are also free to not invite him to say those things in a university. He can say the same thing but not in my home. This isn't censorship!
And the Earth is not flat. It's approximately spherical! And it goes around the Sun, not vice versa. I don't care what the Pope says about it: Galileo Galilei was right and the Bible is wrong!
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Of course atheism is a religion, it is a system of belief about the supernatural nature (or lack there of) of this universe. It's the null religion. Do you believe that zero is not a number? Or perhaps that a null pointer isn't a pointer at all? Come on now. If it isn't a relgion is it a taco? I think it fits the former definition better. Intellectual honesty does not entail an appeal to ridicule in lieu of an actual argument.
Zero apples is not food.
A null value does not point to a region of memory.
Worshiping no gods is not a religion.
You can't take the sky from me...
It's bizarre to live in a world where millions of people go gaga about guys who wear funny hats, paying attention to what they say as if it were important. If everybody would just ignore this Ratzinger fellow, none of this would be happening.
He dared to look for empirical proof of a scientific theory that had been rejected on theological grounds, and his proof was rejected as heresy.
You can't take the sky from me...
not to mention famous Radio Maria... especially notable for it's high power trasmission sites outside of Rome pumping illegal levels of EM radiation in the neighbourhood and raising health concerns because of certain leukemia incidence statistics of the area. But of course, the station is extraterritorial so there's nothing to be done safe cutting the power lines on italian soil. Oh well, at least the people living there can hear it on their entry phones...
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
IF you really care... The book of Genesis says that Adam and Eve were perfect. They sinned, and lost perfection. When they reproduced, which was after they had sinned, they were still close to perfection. Simply put..
Just because an idea is popular doesn't make it right.
For those of you that don't know, The National Review is a conservative magazine that publishes political opinion pieces. It's not exactly a scholarly journal of well researched historical fact.
AccountKiller
"The Church can no longer use pyres or corporal punishment," Cini said in the communist daily Il Manifesto. "Today it uses the Enlightenment's God of Reason as a Trojan horse to enter the citadel of scientific knowledge." I'll be honest. I'm a maronite catholic and proud of it, but I also believe in evolution. I find it interesting however that Cini , the professor who spearheaded this campaign, is a communist. I don't think has anything to do with Galileo but more with the "opium of the people.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
No it is not OK to demand it but it is fine if the creationist is invited to give a talk by someone with the authority to do so. Some of the other members of the department may well disagree strongly but out of basic decence they should at least let the talk proceed. I understood that the administration had invited the Pope to give a talk.
Thankfully, most of the world subscribes to religion in one way or another, even if it's only an historical artifact of their upbringing.
Every self-professed athiest on this site appears to be completely amoral and intolerent. If there had never been any religion, there would be no civilization, as groups that large would tear each other apart.
And you do know that Pope Benedict supports the verdict in the case of Galileo, who dared to say the earth circles the sun even though this goes against the Bible?
Even all the idiotic Creationist/ID and young earth believers believe in heliocentrism now, but apparently not the new Pope.
Because the negative side of religion is death and persecution, and those are pretty consistently applied by theocracies.
I'm not saying you're just bidding your time to start raping and pillaging, but I think religion is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and you seem really focused on the softness of its hide.
You can't take the sky from me...
You know you have won the argument when your adversaries denigrate you by claiming you are just like them.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Why not? It's the same thing, just slightly different degrees since Creationism/Evolution is about the ancient past and the Holocaust is about an event that happened within many people's lifetimes. Either way, you're trying to argue that lunatics who don't believe in reason should be given an equal voice to other people. It's no different than if you allowed a fundamentalist Muslim to speak at a rape victims meeting, so that he can tell them how "they invited it" by not wearing burquas. It's all a matter of belief and philosophy, whether it's the Holocaust, Sharia Law WRT rape, Creationism/Evolution, heliocentrism, etc. If you believe that all beliefs are valid, then you have to concede that Holocaust deniers have a valid belief that it never happened. It doesn't matter if there's tons of evidence that it did. If you believe that all beliefs are valid, then you have to concede that people who believe it's ok to rape women whenever they please have a valid viewpoint.
If, however, you believe that some opinions are more valid than others, and that we can use reason to determine which viewpoints are worth listening to and which are utter rubbish, then and only then can we ignore the Holocaust deniers, the Creationists, and other such people with beliefs grounded in insanity.
Note, however, that this has nothing to do with government censorship or free speech. People should always be free to utter their opinions, no matter how stupid. But no one has an obligation to give such morons a podium to speak from. This especially applies to the Catholic Church, which has huge amounts of wealth, their own radio and TV stations, etc. The Holocaust deniers should be free to speak their idiotic opinion, but the genocide victims memorial council should be equally free to tell them to go to hell when they ask to speak at the memorial.
You do know that the Catholic Church, including Benedict XVI, supports the theory of evolution, with only a few caveats that it's part of God's plan? As factually correct as you are, I do not think he meant the Church, I think he meant hypothetical "Intelligent Design" pseudoscientists demanding to "teach" their made up controversy.
You can't take the sky from me...
There's a huge difference between studying a subject like religion and preaching it as a fundamental truth.
tic
I enjoy a good debate but I don't get where or why you come up with the rationale that without religion there would be no civilization? What makes you believe that?
Just because someone is baptized Catholic doesn't mean they agree with everything the Pope says. Despite what other Christian denominations would have you believe, not all Catholics are mindless drones to the papacy.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Y'know, it's strange that your self-evident moral and intellectual superiority have somehow failed to make you less of an asshole.
Do you understand that that was a just comparison?
(What passes for Insghtful these days...)
So the Uni people (scholars and students) campaigned against the pope giving the speech. So the pope obliged. And now they say he plays the martyr.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Theoretically, since most baptisms are done without the consent of the subject. Just because someone is baptized Catholic doesn't mean they agree with everything the Pope says. Despite what other Christian denominations would have you believe, not all Catholics are mindless drones to the papacy. Tell me something I don't know.
You can't take the sky from me...
This is why I shouldn't be allowed to post on slashdot before I've had my coffee...
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Normally, I'd say faith is faith and science is science, but theology and science seems to be constantly banging heads. As a result, it's unfortunate that we need these kinds of resources to help educate people on the importance of this ideological conflict. I've found FreeThoughtPedia to be a good place to direct people to who need info to engage in the debate. Whether you're trying to show that the theory of evolution is a fact, showcase how theology constantly invades society or offer hard-hitting questions about the legitimacy of scripture, FTP is a good resource to make superstitious ideologues tuck their tails between their cloven hoofs.
> And the Earth is not flat. It's approximately spherical! And it goes around the Sun, not vice versa. I don't care what the Pope says about it: Galileo Galilei was right and the Bible is wrong!
I don't think that the current Pope, or the Bible, claims that either the Earth is flat or that it doesn't go around the Sun.
Now, long before people could measure stellar parallax, there were reasons to suppose that the Earth wasn't moving. But they were scientific ones, based on the incorrect science of the day. The Bible doesn't say anything of the sort.
One of evolution's central stipulations is that there is no "goal state" or ideal form for life. We're not all evolving toward something. Evolution is a reactive process driven by environmental change, copy errors and mutations. The "few caveats" espoused by the Catholic Church basically say that there is a goal state (since humans are "created in God's image") and that the driver is a supernatural being. That is not evolutionary theory. It's a useless theory that can basically be made to retroactively predict anything. "Humans evolved a digestive system to accommodate high-calorie diets without becoming grossly overweight? That was God's plan all along!"
People study films too. That doesn't mean every film student thinks that Star Wars actually happened.
You're claiming that the pope is a geocentrist. You actually believe that he defended Galileo's sentence because he thinks the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just...wow.
Clearly bigotry isn't caused by religion. You have shown by your own statements that bigotry and general block-headedness is the problem of the person, not necessarily his belief system.
- Francis Ocoma
Please wait while Sig Request is being processed...
Are you sure you should be typing this stuff in a public forum? Remember, they're watching everything you do! : /
I guess the question becomes when does not allowing someone to speak their mind become censorship? I mean, we have BET, should that mean we can now stop all black leaders from writing articles in the newspaper or speaking on issue dear to them in front of the capitol building? After all, they have a venue.
Would it be considered censorship if we denied a Gay rights activist a change to talk about his struggle on TV because most Americans/people world wide think he already gets too much attention?
SO tell me, when does censorship kick in for a world as convenient as yours? There is a very real danger to limiting other speech because you don't agree with it. You should ask yourself how long before it is your speech that someone callously justifies the silencing off? Would you be just as content when they decided you had enough exposure too? I mean, the scientist can always use their free speech to say they don't agree with the popes message and counter any pretending that he's cozy with science.
point=anon.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
what he has to say about Galileo, then I wouldn't recommend you bring up Alan Turing...
Give us this day our garlic bread and lead us not into vegetarianism but deliver us some pizza.
your calm and peaceful dialogue clearly indicates that athiest are much more peaceful then those with religion.
I'd say you've already shown yourself to be significantly inferior to him, simply by virtue of your attitude.
It's worth noting that the Church's position is that most if the Bible is symbolism, including Creationism (and especially Revelations aka. Book of the Apcoalypse). As such, it is not intended to be taken literally (Lutherans, on the hand, do take it literally). If you want to check this yourself, look up fundamentalism some time. Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Catholic, so I may be biased. But it also means that I have the benefit of being educated about our beliefs throughout my primary and secondary education.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
That's a point in itself. Sorry it's lost on you...
The point is, if you really believe you're superior, it has to be depressing that right now, religious people have superior firepower. As in, they control the nukes, they control the government, they control the economy...
If you don't like being controlled by "lobotomized morons", you need to stop calling them that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sure the tone is a little abrasive.. But doesn't this situation warrant some passion? Indoctrination of un-thinking is a very serious issue.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic
is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man
is happier than a sober one"
-George Bernard Shaw
-amen
I wonder how they would feel if a Muslim scholar asked to speak there. I have listened to lectures by quite a few scholars who had PhD's in hard sciences (such as biochemistry), and as a Muslim I'd say our attitude towards science is that science is invaluable and deserves serious attention; all of my peers are graduate students or professionals. Mostly doctors and engineers.
You don't understand. I vehemently defend my position, which is that the religions should be buried under the global scream of "ENOUGH!"... and no religion has any right whatsoever to peaceful dialogue, with THEIR track records!
When did any religion ever turn peaceful?
They're all
1/an excuse for the regime they serve
2/a set of fairytales that explains how the world came to be (not, but it took us a while to find out)
3/a set of answers to the Eternal Questions
4/a social bonding thing
5/an excuse to go kill the neighbours in the name of God, but our real need is to either conquer their place so as to use their resources, or get all killed so that our genes will replicate when their men will have captured our women. (Capture-bonding is a survival trait coming directly from this causal loop btw.)
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
No, because the fundamental church teaching is that humans were in the ideal state even when we were less evolved. In otherwords, Adam and Eve were the ideal human form even if they were Neanderthal. As humans change to specialize for the world around them, this is just adaptation. It isn't us moving toward an ideal state. The teaching isn't that God controls the evolution, but that he created the system of evolution within which humans evolve. To analogize, God is the coder who creates Grand Theft Auto, it isn't his role to control what you do in the game. It is good enough that he created the game. To have him control what you do (or how we evolve) pretty much adds up to a weird form that resembles scientific Calvinism (which is clearly not the Catholic view of things).
THIS IS BULLSHIT! The Italian Minister of the Interior, Giuliano Amato, explicitly said that the decision was NOT forced by any security consideration.
There was no violence, only a strong pacific protest. You cannot mark as fascists people that disagree with you, expecially if they are fighting for freedom, science and equal rights.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
You have part of it.
What problem does religion (and belief in general) solve?
Bonus: Can you formulate an answer that does not make you inherently superior to religions people? See this as a challenge befitting your superior intellect. (Then once seen, unsee.)
Do you really think millions of years of human evolution can be changed by education and resources?
And, before you turn the flames on me, I'm agnostic, so chill.
It's like if I told you that, the faster you go, the shorter (horizontally) you get. Lots of people still have a hard time wrapping their head around that one little side effect of Relativity theory.
If we were in the same space as them, we might just have had the same reaction as them ... and thought ourselves completely sane and rational people in the process.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
And yes, I'm entirely serious.
...you're completely unclear on the concept of enlightened self-interest.
Great! Where's your counter-argument? If it's so thoroughly "disproven", this should be easy...
See, the problem is that there is no one definition of God. There are plenty I can disprove out of hand as internally inconsistent, but most people do not have a clearly defined God that they believe in.
You must be very lonely.
Science absolutely does not solve everything.
Of course, having fun and falling in love don't require religion, or any particular belief.
That's all you've got?
Just look up the Laws, in particular what it says about rape. I'll admit there are a lot of morons out there who claim to believe the entire Bible, yet obviously have not read it.
You know, the Koran goes on for pages and pages about how merciful Allah is. Jesus says "love your neighbor as yourself". At a certain point, it is hard to say whether the Jihadist or the pacifist is a perversion of their religion, but both are founded in Scripture.
There are some religious people who do horrible things because of their religion -- the Crusades, terrorism, etc. And there are some good people who do good things because of their religion -- Martin Luther King, Gandhi, etc. And there are atheists who do horrible things anyway -- Stalin, China, etc.
All of which makes it very hard to argue for or against religion based on what the religious do.
Science can control people just as easily.
You could say that's bad science, sure. And I can say that anyone using God to tell other people what to do is practicing bad religion. The only difference is that science is defined clearly enough that your claim is actually true.
Haven't seen either of those. There's your possibly-accurate description of the origin of war, but no mention of how that's at all relevant to religion.
Now, as to why there should be dialog with religious figures?
Because as long as the scientists don't put an asshat like you up there, we should be able to show, calmly and rationally, why science deserves to be taken seriously, and why the Pope does not (if, indeed, he does not).
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I await your presentation of "disproven".
Take your time, I know it'd be a big task to do formally. I'm pretty booked-up though, could I schedule taking a look at it in 200 years, and see how you're doing then?
Until then, I think I can get the general outlines of your stance from a simpler question:
Your stance would be:
a) "God" is unscientific because it isn't even in the domain of science at all
b) "God" is unscientific because science has demonstrated it false
c) Both
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
You have part of it.
What problem does religion (and belief in general) solve?
Bonus: Can you formulate an answer that does not make you inherently superior to religions people? See this as a challenge befitting your superior intellect. (Then once seen, unsee.)
I can't... I've just used my brain, seen that comparing religion to science rationally makes science stand out as the superior tool, and feel pity and contempt for the myriads of people who live their whole lives believing those delusions and living in accordance to them.
It is an waste of effort of apocalyptic proportions and infinite stupidity; I can't see it any other way. Even if I try to imagine "all the good religions have done", I view it as an oasis in the midst of the pile of all corpses, all the witches and the dead in the religious wars... Religions are only peaceful when the people are. If they need a reason for war, they'll listen to the priest telling them to go die for God.
All those conditions, environmental switches, species-specific behaviors, is a sort of social game that us primates play unconsciously and collectively.
Million of years of evolution can't be changed, but, just suppress the environmental conditions that flip the behavioral switch to "war mode", and the dire consequences of religions will all be avoided : they won't be the xenophobic meme that mediates the dehumanization of the people's perception of their neighbours, if the conditions in which xenophobic memes thrive (impending lack of resources) just never happens anymore.
See? No flames
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
I subscribe to Fortean Times. It questions both. ;)
Are they falsifiable occurrences? Are they repeatable occurrences? How trained were these "skeptics" in the sciences involved & Was that training from accredited institutions? Is there direct, first hand evidence that the occurrences actually happened (other than eye-witness accounts)?
If you have answered "No" to any of the above, your (unreferenced) claims have no meaning when placed in the same sentence as Science.
as far as logic is concerned
What does logic have to do with science? Common sense is logical. That does not make it scientific - or right.
I'll respect any theory or idea enough to examine it. Hell, I may even believe in it. That does not make it scientific or true.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Gallileo was told not to teach his theories as fact until they could be proven
It seems the trick to getting radical ideas tolerated is to present it as "merely a model than can be used to predict and compare observations" rather than selling it as a model of reality.
The guy who first proposed quantum multiverses in the 50's ran into similar roadblocks because the idea of multiverses, one for each potential quantum outcome, was considered way too radical. Thus, if he sold it as merely a prediction technique instead of a reality model, it may have gotten further.
Table-ized A.I.
Good points. You're right, it's all obvious, with anybody who has eyes to see, ears to listen, and a reasonably-developed neocortex. And, they know they're full of shit. Better to mock them than rant at them, although I'm hardly one to talk. It's just ridiculous nonsense, until you and I waste our time, taking it seriously. We shouldn't, though. They don't.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Funny how the other story I cite is that of the guy who fucks all of his three daughters. Whose MMV?
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Why would anybody want to have a "dialog" with the pope? Dialog presupposes that both sides participate honestly and with an open mind, and the Catholic church has demonstrated over two thousand years that it is incapable of doing that, and instead uses intimidation, violence, and murder to get its way. I hope many more institutions will follow and declare the pope and any other high Catholic dignitary "persona non grata".
The Catholic church is an evil institution. It is sad that so many well-meaning Catholic believers, good people at heart, don't realize that.
Well, I guess non believers can believe that if it is what makes them feel better. But I think they are missing a relevant part of the conversation that they tend to want to bring up only when they see a benefit.
In case your wondering, the point is, if it makes them happy, they who are you to stop them?
I'd also like to reiterate my first point: that there is no proof that God doesn't exist. No, I'm not going to ask you for your "disproof", because I know there can't possibly be one. God is above logic. He created logic and he can defy logic for all we know. How can you logically disprove something that logic doesn't apply to? Destroy that!
Usual and tiresome disclaimer: I'm not religious, so don't bother calling me a "lobotomised sheep", or whatever you call those effigies you made in the image of religious people.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
And have a Pope justify it three hundred years from now. How do you like this line of discussion? Or maybe you should be drawn and quartered?
Apparently my original post was not made in its entirety.
The fact is that I myself don't believe in a supreme being, but I'm certainly not so self-assured and self-righteous as you or others like you.
If people on drugs are happy, why should we stop them? Ah yes, because of the behaviours they exhibit besides being happy and that are both anti-social and consequential of their drug use. There's also a public health thing involved, but the day that aspect is relevant to a discussion about theology, things will be bad indeed... :)
Not to say, of course, that all religious people (or a significant amount of them for that matter) are anti-social individuals whose behaviour is derived from their faith, but that would be, as a concept, a good enough reason to give "me" (as in, society at large) the moral authority to "stop them" (which is what you asked).
These two systems aren't all that different in rationality from the user or average person's perspective.
You see, to the average person who isn't convinced either way yet, you have a bunch of people telling you that this is true or that is true. You can say that is it written in this book or these books or somewhere else. You can say that this proves it and that proves it and this explains the magic away all you want. But to the average person, they have to make a choice to just believe someone along the lines. Whether it is a preacher or a science instructor or both is irrelevant to most because they won't have the ability to understand reasoning or proof behind one more then the other and they won't be able to do any experiments to prove or disprove anything on a level need to validate or invalidate any claim.
Somewhere along the lines you and I took a position to reject one and believe the other or to segregate a combination of both. You have had these influences imparted on to you by different people and experiences but in the end, you are just believing what someone tells you. Rarely will the average person have personal or intimate knowledge of the subject at hand whether it is religion or some science that attempts to disprove religion. So from a rational set of arguments, you or I have no more proof of something then the person worshiping goats or a bible. We just tend to believe our side is more true then the others because we have faith in what we are told is true for whatever reasons convinced us.
Further, there is really no reason for science to make a statement about religions at all. It seems that this happens when some self proclaimed atheist wants attention and isn't inherent in a discussion about science. The two aren't incompatible, usually it is only a few people interpretations of each that are. And even to that point, only a small portion of either is directly related to one another so it is pointless on a whole. Especially in this case where they are using an ancient thinker's persecution that was mild compared to many in the day, which happened by people who aren't alive today in which no body alive today has ever met anyone who was alive when they were as a reason to persecute someone today. I sense a little ulterior motive in this but to each their own I guess.
He didn't want the pope to cancel, he wanted the school to rescind the offer. Now the school does not have to face the protesters' challenges.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
With that in mind, I personally have no sympathy for the "but it makes them happy" argument. There is much more at stake here than the happiness of a bunch of hoi polloi... especially when that (delusional) happiness can be more than replaced with (rational) wonder at the mystery and beauty of the natural world.
I'm not interested, as long as he still preaches that Jesus B.S. and refuses to accept the plain facts of His Noodly Magnificence's Saucy imprint on all of creation. I'm sure the scientists would have been much more interested in a visit from a representative of the REAL Holy Church, whose beliefs speak to a much "higher" (not to mention tastier) rationality than anything the catholics could propose. RAmen.
**** You never REALLY learn to swear until you own a computer. ****
I don't know, what is inherent within their faith that makes them a threat to you or society? And please stick to the faith, not some interpreted interpretation of some historic event. I mean what is inherently threatening about about Gods word that you need to stop people from following it?
Q: What is an agnostic dislexic insomniac?
A: Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog.
Haw haw haw ... Ok your turn.
The first second and third commandments.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
And the sanity check is when they refuse to own up to their own hypocrisy.
tic
I'm afraid you didn't quite grasp the difference between "demand" and "request". Demand kind of implies that the "if someone agrees" step out of it.
What? I don't believe this.
What gods do you want to put before the Christian god for Christians to worship? What idles do you want them to worship? and why do you feel it necessary for them to take their lords name in vain?
I mean the ten commandments only apply to people of that faith. So if ti bothers you to the point you think they are a danger to you, then I have to wonder what the fuck your thinking?
Atheism is not believing there is no deity, rather it is the *absence* of belief in any deity.
There is a big difference between the former and the latter. Try to understand it and you will understand why Atheism is not - and can never be - a religion.
Also, 200 years ago probably more scientists were actually Atheists than you might think; it simply wasn't socially accepted not to be religious and instead of suffering the consequences they simply followed the other sheep. Similarly, there probably were as many homosexuals in those days as there are now - though you would not know it from the history books.
Religion mocks non-believers constantly. Religious leaders constantly call Atheists the worst kind of scum - and worse things.
Compared to that, calling someone stupid, brainwashed or delusional because they are religious is pretty tame.
Add to that I don't know any atheist people who would shy away from social interaction with someone just because that person is religious. The same can certainly not be said for quite a few religious people.
So who really are the ignorant bigots?
Any self respecting geek would want to get at least some of the facts straight before passing judgement on an ODF vs OOXML discussion, so why not this one? I guess it's easier to hold a bias.
You see the whole Science vs Religion argument in my opinion is fundamentally flawed, and frankly it's a bit deceptive to expect as default the notion that they are mutually exclusive.
Yes the Catholic Church has made some big mistakes, Specifically in the Galileo affair but also regarding Copernicus too. Over 2000 years or so the Catholic Church has accumulated quite a bit of experience and has had to learn lots from the mistakes of people who call themselves Catholic. That separation of Church & State is a good thing, that Faith can never conflict with reason and that the sacraments the Church offers for the benefit of the faithful should never ever be sold.
Specifically in the case of Galileo, several Popes offered tribute to him and Pope John Paul II in 1992, essentially apologised on behalf of the Inquisition that had wrongly admonished him.
"Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the centre of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture...."
- Pope John Paul II, L'Osservatore Romano N. 44 (1264) - 4th November,1992
Over time it has been a humbling but healthy experience for the Catholic Church, and it grows wiser from it. It seems exceptionally unlikely to me that the current Pope was going to Rome's La Sapienza university to tell them that Science sux and that Galileo was wrong, so there!
Why?
Because Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive. The very rigour of Science itself came from monks in monasteries attempting to understand and describe the observable world in objective ways. The first Universities were monasteries. Galileo himself quotes a Catholic cleric saying "The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach how to go to heaven and not how go the heavens".
A person can choose to be an honest Scientist. A person can choose to have an honest belief in God. A Person can choose to be an honest Scientist with and honest belief in God.
A 6000 year old Earth which is an evolution free zone with dinosaur bones pre-baked is not honest. An honest Christian should not believe such things, they are not consistent with reason. With this in mind, one who doesn't lie about science can also honestly have faith in God. Faith in God does should not require taking the Bible as being a literal, scientifically prescriptive document. Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him. "If Scripture cannot err", he wrote to Benedetto Castelli, "certain of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways".
Faith and Reason are actually quite compatible, and from a Catholic perspective are interdependent. On the relationship between Faith and Reason
Of course, It's always just a lot easier to criticize the Catholic Church and those that represent it as backward, anti-Science and probably involved in some kind of conspiracy. Trouble is, the truth just wants to be free.
Well gee, maybe it would be the part where a man who has a serious chance to win the presidency wants to change the constitution to reflect them.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
You actually believe that he defended Galileo's sentence because he thinks the Sun revolved around the Earth. Just...wow.
Clearly bigotry isn't caused by religion.
Are you saying that the pope supporting imprisoning a scientist for the rest of their life, banning their published work, and threatening them with death, torture and excommunication might be okay depending on his reasons for doing so???
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
What? Do you actually think that in America the first amendment could be tossed out and the 10 commandments inserted? But one person, the president?
I'm afraid you are naive and ignorant. You can't change the constitution that easily, it would take the majority (2/3rds of both houses) of congress or the states to do this. Or a majority of the states to call a constitutional convention but then it would still need ratification by the 3/4ths the states after the fact.
I think your scared of nothing here.
I think this is weak.
The description of the brothers turning their faces so as not to see Noah in his condition strongly implies that seeing or not seeing was the essence of the situation....
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Yep. He uses this as a fork: His other argument is that extreme religion is bad because it kills people.
Trace this with me. He starts out by saying religious extremists are bad because they kill people. Then he says that the moderate religious--the monastics, the ones doing charity work, the ones arguing against the killing, the ones who are inspired by their faith to do good things--are also bad because they are somehow "enablers."
Sorry, the argument just doesn't fly. Dawkins, like legions of secularists before him, simply cannot tolerate ANY competition. He cannot stop at setting up a wall of separation between Church and State, since plenty of religious people agree that it's a good idea. He can't stop at specifying limits on education like "Teach religion in religion class and science in science class." He has to exterminate every idea that competes with his own.
In my opinion he has completely gone off the deep end here. We had the same issues with the eugenecists: yeah, if everyone likes blonde hair, eventually, everyone will be blonde. There will be a selection pressure and it'll happen. This doesn't justify killing everyone without blonde hair. Likewise, since he is obviously operating from his "meme" perspective, he thinks he can justify attacking ideas he doesn't like. Sorry, if the ideas are good, they will win out. Unless of course he's wrong.
The Pope's support for evolution is the same as Microsoft's support for open standars - with few caveats.
Whence this idea that life is about "problem-solving?"
Literary critics "solve" works of literature with depressingly robotic methods of analysis. All my engineer friends sit around and smugly congratulate themselves about how good they are at "solving problems" or "designing solutions."
So everyone's stake is in "solving" phenomena and acting as if they suddenly have plucked some kind of new jewel of meaning that nobody ever saw before. You spend 8 years in the academy just to conclude that Shylock was a transsexual or to make some snippet of code run a little faster, and then you and your friends sit there back-patting and agreeing about how deluded the religious people are for being into something that is "meaningless."
This tack is, to me, completely boring and a sign of intellectual sloth. It's just that our culture for some reason glorifies "analysts" more than...synthetists? People who help us assemble the big picture instead of parsing our beliefs into their components, as if the whole is understandable from the parts, as if this somehow helps us come to grips with life.
I don't like the word agnostic, because I consider it an evasion. I'm agnostic about God to the extent I'm agnostic about Mithra, or for that matter Mothra. Are you agnostic about Bigfoot and ESP? I don't believe in them, but I'd hardly call myself agnostic about them--I'd just say that I see no reason to believe in them, which is my approach to religion. What word do we use for people who just don't believe in religion? If only we had a word already that meant "lacks religion." Hmm.
"Religion was no more inherent to the Crusades than Nationalism was to the Holocaust." Here speaks someone who has never been to the Langue d'Oc in France. Have a look around for details of the Albigensian crusade and in particular the statement of Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury when the town of Beziers was sacked - "Kill them all, God will know his own!"
You are quick to take some of the goods that have come out of science but just as quick to reject the appalling things that have come out of religion.
When judging an event like this you need to contextualize it.
Italy is a very weird place, different from the other European countries. In Italy the bishops actually can veto or modify a law, actively lobbying the political power.
There has been a long string of attacks against science, the last was against the possibility to safely use assisted reproductive technology (you are forced to be implanted with all the embryos, no way to control the healthiness of each single embryo or their number!)
When the pope speaks, it's not a mere matter of religion. It's a political issue.
"primitive primate"
Isn't that an oxymoron?
Interestingly, most people who say that most Catholics are stupid and weird happen to be Catholics. Seeing as how much they like to badmouth themselves, their mass (is that capitalized?) must invove some kind of groin-kicking ritual or something...
(*the chalice is passed around* "This is the blood of Christ. And because Christ was quite pissed for being nailed to a piece of wood, it's vinegar. That's what you assholes get for not helping him." - "But priest, we weren't born back then!" - "Well, that's hardly my fault now, is it?")
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
The point is that the world does not need religion, it is evil and serves no purpose but to perpetuate its self and get in the way of rational, proper thinking.
However much you or anyone else think you believe in some sort of god doesn't change the fact that there is no god and that you have simply been deluded either by yourself or by your parents or elders into believing that nonsense. Imagine a family of dole bludging crack addicts, assuming any children survived they would be convinced that leeching of the state and undertaking petty crime to pay for their crack is perfectly normal behaviour and something to be applauded. The fact is no matter how much they might believe in that it still doesn't make it right and society has a duty to get involved when things go wrong like this and put an end to the problem.
Unfortunately it doesn't matter that most peoples actual belief is more or less half hearted and innocuous in order to target the real criminals, priests, nuns, monks and evangalists etc they must be brought to understand that supporting religious activity is no longer an acceptable behaviour. Without their 'flock' the real work can begin; taking down the organisation and infrastructure of relgion. There is no real need to imprison any but the most hardline extremists ( who will undoubtedly turn to terrorism to maintain a grasp on their power ) it will be enough to make sure that no religious nonsense can ever be taught to children and no religious organisation can be allowed to operate, eventually with a lack of support and aggressive teaching about the fallacy of religion it will wither and die a natural, but long overdue death.
Because religious persecution is completely justifiable when it promotes your set of beliefs over those of others, especially when your beliefs are right, while theirs are so obviously wrong. The fact that this was (and in some parts of the world still is) precisely the same line of reasoning used by the followers of various religions to justify persecuting people who think differently does not of course apply, because they persecute for all the the wrong reasons, while you would of course be persecuting for all the _right_ reasons.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
He was threatened with torture and being burned alive if he did not publicly state that he was wrong, which wasn't an empty threat since natural philosopher Giordano Bruno had been burned in 1600 (a nice round 2000 years after Socrates' death). The church didn't consider that his theories could ever be proven, as they contradicted the bible (and aristoteles) in such theological matters as the sun rotating around the earth (and the earth being the center of the universe) and celestial bodies being perfect spheres attached to the 7 or so rotating crystal spheres that make up the heaven. Now why would a scientist want to stick his nose in this kind of theological stuff?? Also, he was kept a prisoner in his house in arcetri until his death (and he was in luck, since he had actually been sentenced to prison).
If you want to get a modern interpretation of why this pissed off the church so much, read Bertold Brecht's life of galileo. Great book.
Science as we know it today was brought into existence by religious people who
Contrary to what your statement could be interpreted, it is not BECAUSE they were religious that they were great scientist, and searched for more than "god did it". Science (or at least the premise of science, one could argue that only with popper and scientific method real science came to) was done IN SPITE of them being religious. Actually you would be hard pressed to find openly non-religious people in such period of time, so naturally anybody doing anything at that time would have to be from a religion. So IMHO it is a non-info to say they were religious.
Justice. It is from religion that we get the idea that all men are created equal, that equality before the law, equality of rights, equality of worth are good and right and true.
WHAT ???? That coming from a culture which ENSLAVED black african people and said they were NOT people and had no soul ? Sorry ? Show me where in history for example have religion said that those NOT belonging to their religion had equal rights. I can't see that from christianty, or islam. I dunno for any other religion but we already cut down the 2 bigggest middle age culture source of science with that.
And for your information most of the US founding father (which cited something similar) were either DEIST or atheist.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Oh, and let me touch lightly on the last bit while I'm here -- even though, I probably shouldn't. many atheists [...] attempt to convert others to that view (evangelize), and label as an idiot anyone who disagrees (condemn). In that case, the analogy to religion isn't totally off the wall. I don't know much about this "evangelism", so "many" must not be the right word. That said... Ridiculing unscientific belief is not the same as 'condemning'. I'll admit that atheists often ridicule (even mock) unscientific beliefs because the basis of their atheism is often scientific. They are free to do so, but it's almost the exact opposite of evangelism (or is it like a Christian saying, "what you believe will send you to Hell," some form of evangelism? Maybe I'm confused). But, I guess if irreligion can be religion then criticism can be condemnation. Why do we even have all these extraneous words anyway?!
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Current Pope aside (who, from what I can tell, isn't even well-liked by most Catholics), the Catholic church has more or less apologized for most of its past crimes, and John Paul II even made a case for evolution. Likewise, the Church has definitely placed a huge emphasis on charitable works, and focused very little on evangelism (which, is effectively very much in line with the text of the New Testament). If you're talking of the catholic church you can't exactly put aside the pope. The catholic church has absolved galileo in 1992 (that's timely justice!), but judging by Ratzinger's declaration on the issue (which was the main reason of this protest) that might not have happened if he was already pope. He also caused a setbak in dialogue with other christion churches by claiming that they are the only church (the other ones are "sects")
In my view the church is one of the few institutions on earth which thinks in centuries, rather than quarterly reports. So evangelism and demographics are it's main concerns in winning the war for the souls of men (which probably has something to do with the no-condoms-even-in-places-where-one-third-of-the-population-has-aids policy). Personally, I'm a bit upset at these scientists for protesting a speech from the Pope, which is -- dare I say -- rather dogmatic of them. No scientist should be afraid of ideas, even if they contradict his own. They were not protesting a speech by the pope. The pope does speeches all the time and they are all over the media here in italy already. They were protesting that he was invited to give a lecture at their university in the ceremony for the beginning of the academic year (with no debate to follow of course).
Does "a few caveats" include "The Church's stance is that any such gradual appearance must have been guided in some way by God, but the Church has thus far declined to define in what way that may be. Commentators tend to interpret the Church's position in the way most favorable to their own arguments"?
Come on, let's be honest for a while. No Church supports evolution.
And for exactly those reasons, him using such a strong tone does more harm than good. Doesn't help that he's blatantly wrong on a few points, either.
Go watch this video. Listen especially to the comments on language.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Of course, by this same logic, holding any position in any issue is neccessarily evil, because it fosters a culture in which it is acceptable to hold that position, and someone - an extremist - might decide to use force to force to defend that position. As a specific example, this makes Dawkins own position evil, because claiming that religion is evil fosters a culture in which extremists can justify killing religous people by claiming that they were evil - such as happened in Soviet Union.
In other words, Dawkins might be a decent scientist, but he sure is a lousy philosopher, and his constant using of his reputation as a scientist to lend credence to his crusade against religion is deceptive at the very least. He's more and more starting to resemble an atheist version of Jack Chick.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
And please stick to the faith, not some interpreted interpretation of some historic event.
Why do you believe these are different things ?
amending the bill of rights actually takes more than a 2/3rd majority. since you can't delete text I don't see how you can just take away the first amendment. it seems like anything added that would interfere with it, would be considered unconstitutional and tossed out by the supreme court.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone claiming to have a science degree is considered infallible by the media doesn't make Galileo's imprisonment unforgivable. He wasn't imprisoned because of his scientific findings, but because of his behavior that implied an unacceptably belligerent stance against his intellectual opponents. He not only insulted his scholarly peers, but also certain religious authorities (e.g. the pope) who were the very people trying to defend him. Which leads us to...
First of all, I doubt that the pope at the time ever threatened to order bodily harm against Galileo, but you're welcome to enlighten me on that point. Now, I wonder whether it's even worth while arguing about excommunication with you, given that apparently you do not accept it as anything other than a cruel expulsion. I wonder if you could at least accept that the a person whose actual beliefs do not jive with his professed belief system would be foolish to remain within that system, or that said belief-system would be quite self-destructive if it allowed dissenting members to continue on acting as members.
Yet we haven't addressed the central issue: was the former Cardinal defending the debilitating life-long house arrest of Galileo, or was he merely saying that the trial itself was a rational response (if harsh for our standards) against one accused of heresy under the authority of the Church, and that it wasn't an attack on Science at all? I'm saying that your answer to that might reveal a real bigotry against the Church, a bigotry that is willing to contradict scientific principles. Science isn't concerned with "geniuses" but with the proper presentation of evidence, which Galileo utterly failed due to his arrogance. It is the bigoted blindness that leads to such conclusions as that the current pope is a geocentric dunce, or that he wants to bring us back to the political environment of Galileo's time.
- Francis Ocoma
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"all religion is necessarily evil because it fosters a culture in which a faith-based life is an acceptable lifestyle, which in turn leaves a society with no means of resaonably extirpating the extremists, who are truly dangerous. In other words, if moderate faith is acceptable, it is implicit that extreme faith must also be acceptable."
I think that preventing anti-social behaviour, whether or not it is religious in nature, is what laws are for. And, for the case where religions aspire to create laws, that's what the separation of state and religion is for.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Wouldn't this be similar to the the city of Redmond banning MS software in their offices? Is this just one of several parallels between two cultural artifacts? Who has more money and a larger monopoly I wonder?
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone claiming to have a science degree is considered infallible by the media doesn't make Galileo's imprisonment unforgivable.
...and so on...
Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
Man, just because you were born in a world where practically anyone can claim freedom from slavery doesn't make slavery unforgivable.
Man, just because you live in a world where rape and murder are illegal, doesn't make rape and murder unforgivable.
See I can justify any action with handwaving.
He wasn't imprisoned because of his scientific findings, but because of his behavior that implied an unacceptably belligerent stance against his intellectual opponents. He not only insulted his scholarly peers, but also certain religious authorities (e.g. the pope) who were the very people trying to defend him.
In some ways that is much WORSE. It means the very people who claim to be the protectors of mankind from all things evil were quite happy to trash scientific truth just to put down anyone that would question their authority.
I also hear this argument a lot and it simply doesn't hold true. You do realize that Copernicus held off publishing his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) until he was old and close to dying for fear of retribution from the church? He didn't go around insulting the pope now did he? His works were still banned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
First of all, I doubt that the pope at the time ever threatened to order bodily harm against Galileo, but you're welcome to enlighten me on that point.
You DOUBT? You mean I'm having this argument with someone who doesn't even KNOW the history, but is happy to rabbit on about things he knows nothing about? If you're actually interested in what really happened I can recommend a couple of good books I studied as part of my History of Astronomy subject when I did my Astronomy Masters. Never mind...I'm wasting my breath, aren't I? You're prepared to repeat whatever you've heard without examining it at all.
I didn't say the pope threatened Galileo with anything. I said the current pope condoned the actions of the inquisition that did threaten. Go look up a biography some time.
Now, I wonder whether it's even worth while arguing about excommunication with you, given that apparently you do not accept it as anything other than a cruel expulsion.
Again you show your ignorance. It's more than just a "cruel expulsion". A man who is excommunicated became a pariah, often had his belongings stripped from him, and was threatened with the fires of hell for eternity. This was no mere slap on the wrist.
I wonder if you could at least accept that the a person whose actual beliefs do not jive with his professed belief system would be foolish to remain within that system, or that said belief-system would be quite self-destructive if it allowed dissenting members to continue on acting as members.
Ahhh so it's a form of control. A man's life, livelihood, and beliefs mean nothing because he dared to make fun of the holy church. This is no defence. You clearly have no conception whatsoever of what excommunication meant in the 1600s!
Yet we haven't addressed the central issue: was the former Cardinal defending the debilitating life-long house arrest of Galileo, or was he merely saying that the trial itself was a rational response (if harsh for our standards) against one accused of heresy under the authority of the Church, and that it wasn't an attack on Science at all?
The pope was condoning torture, forcing a person to recant deeply held beliefs, interference of the church with scientific freedom and publication.
But yes strictly speaking you're right. If you're running an evil and descructive totalitarian organisation it is rational to cond
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I haven't read the book, so he may have better arguments, but that one is a dead end. If we are to have freedom, we can't have intolerance of that kind. Of course, it's coming from the same guy that suggested that life on Earth may have come from intelligent beings from another planet that happened to be stopping by here billions of years ago.
I'm sure it sounds stupid, but my 'beliefs' make a very coherent picture, I'll just sum it up:
- The world follows logical rules
In fact illogical things can not exist.
- No god
It's impossible for anything "supernatural" to exist in this world, it would simply be natural.
- There is no special reason for our existance
We are here because we are a succesful self-replicating system, it's quite obvious.
- All 'things' including humans are purely conceptual
We are all swirling vortexes of particles interacting with other particals. We only have the perception of consciousness. And 'things' only exist in purely subjective standpoints.
I think the will to believe in things we don't see purely comes from wishful thinking. My standpoint is quite nihilistic and not satisfying at all. It doesn't take a long line of reasoning to see the thruth in these points, it takes guts to except your own insignificance and the pointlessness of your existance. Morals don't come from universal truths, they come from social structures.
Incoherent pictures follow from the clash between rationalisation and wishful thinking.
Hilarious, a pretty good piece of writing that is maybe uncomfortable for some and posted by a logged in user gets a -1 troll and his anonymous 1 line answer that attacks him personally gets +5 insightful.
Remember not to use your mod points to show disagreement / agreement.
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storm in a teacup: age old italian games
Yes.
It's not necessarily morally better, though.
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Really? That's a rather extreme, and in fact logically unsupportable hypothesis.
It would be better to say that any concept of a "goal state" is extraneous and unnecessary to either fitting existing facts to the theory or predicting new ones from it.
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Well said, and I think it's because at the lowest level of existence everything has it's foundations in faith. Religions people put thier faith in gods, signs and mircales, secular people put their faith in observations, logic and repeatability. No human is fully one way or the other, we are all somewhere in between (yes, even the Pope and R.Dawkins).
IMHO, mysticisim, religion, science and personal rituals (how one showers, shaves, applies make-up, wipes their arse, ect) are not that far apart. The pragmatic difference is that science has a methodology and philosophy that has transformed the planet in the last 150yrs or so (science & math started to spread rapidly through the advent of public education and cheap books in Victorian times). Religion has lost a great deal of it's power over everyday life, and people rarely notice (let alone question) the usefulness or otherwise of thier personal rituals.
The Pigeon dance: ( a derogatory term used to describe conclusions drawn from random/insufficient data )
Also it's said to be an experiment in animal behaviour that goes something like this...
Scientists trained a pigeon to peck at a lever to dispense seeds. Once the pigeon had learned the trick the changed the machine so that the lever did not work anymore, instead the same size meal of seeds were dropped randomly over the entire length of the birds feeding time.
At first the pigeon started getting frustrated as it pecked away at the lever and nothing happened, it started performing random movements such as pecking the wall, spining around in frustration, standing on the lever, ect. When a seed happened to drop the pigeon would eat it and repeat whatever movements it had just performed.
After some time the pigeon would build up a whole routine of spins, bobs, flutters, pecks, ect. If no seed dropped after the pigeon performed it's intricate dance the bird would repeat it with slight adjustments, if an adjustment "worked" it was kept. After a while the time taken to execute the dance remained roughly steady even though the dance was slowly but continually changing as the pigeon tried to adjust it's "theory" to compensate for luck.
Some might think that individual humans would behave differently in similar experiments and soon work out via logic alone that the reward was random, however they would be wrong.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How have people been killed and tortured in the name of rationality, science, skeptic inquiry?
I won't mention that you can't really compare the numbers: We are much more efficient in killing people now than at the times of the holy crusade or the spanish inquisition.
The point is: Name one bad deed specifically done in the name of unbelieve in a higher being?
Now name one bad deed done in the name of any higher being?
Note that I am merely summarizing what is in the Zeitgeist Movie, and several other movies.
Beware you Dawkins types, South Park did a great job of taking up Nietzsche's reins and showing just how evil anti-religious types are and their satire of the future involving war is not far off at all, evil has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with being human (regardless of whether you take it as a metaphysical entity or not; Nietzsche did not, but knew evil couldn't be blamed on religion). Nietzsche warned of an all pervading trust in science by pale atheists. Why, because essentially he realized, science is based on faith just as much any religion. To claim that science is the sole purveyor of truth would, by scientific standards, require some kind of empirical confirmation/experiment of just that claim, but 1) no such experiment exists because 2) it'd be arguing in a vicious circle because it'd be claiming something epistemic that cannot be verified empirically. Science is treated as a holy grail just as much as religion, and it takes just as much faith to make an epistemic exclusivity claim for science just as much religion.
Contraception policies of the catholic church (instigated by JP II) are killing people today.
But there are people still defending these bozos. Amazing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You need to stop providing a straw man argument. You're assumption is false, that crack-addicts are the same as religious folks. You may believe that, but its far from being objective. Unfortunately, you provide no real basis of reasoning that you're belief is somehow better and that somehow entitles you to forcefully remove any competing argument and then have the audacity to say that if anyone else forcefully tries to keep their belief alive, that they much be terrorists. If you remove all the subjective statements from your post, you sound EXACTLY like a terrorist. You are zealous of your belief and you have no problem forcefully imposing it upon others. I have no problem with religion as long as it doesn't impose itself upon me. But it'd be hypocritical of me to than go do the exact same thing. Science zealots are nutcases just as much as religious zealots are.
Ok, I'll answer and go for the bonus.
You see, not everybody in the world has the blazing logical clarity that Slashdotters typically have which enables them to see that mass murder is inherently illogical. When this happens, it is the function of the religious people to assert that there is a powerful (almighty) deity who does not approve of mass murder. If the illogical would-be mass murderers pay attention to the religious people, then they refrain from commiting mass-murder.
That's the way it's supposed to work. The system isn't perfect. Sometimes religious people forget that the deity is against mass-murder and when that happens you get abberations such as crusades, jihads, the Spanish Inquisition, and so forth. Sometimes the illogical would-be mass murderers reject the religious people and then you have mass-murdering athiests such as Stalin and Pol Pot.
As I said, the system isn't perfect, but it is one layer of protection for society. Think of computer security: your system is more secure with multiple layers (anti-virus plus firewall) because each layer is itself somewhat permeable. In this case, religion serves as a kind of firewall.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
Exactly, visit any police station late at night and hear the cries of prisoners decrying the foul persecution they are suffering because they did not do it guv' and it wos my mate wot hit him.
Society has always stepped in to discourage activies which it deems antisocial, in many countries society even goes so far as to kill people who break its laws. As I said I'm not advocating putting anyone to death just taking reasonable steps to break addicts dependance on religous props which are as a whole counterproductive.
I realise this will involve intervention in peoples lives and this is a regrettable but not by any means an unusual activity for a society to engage in to ensure it can run smoothly.
"He holds no legal authority outside a few blocks in Rome.He is the head of a faith that teaches chastity outside of marriage"
What about his moral authority then? There are governments that set policies in place that are agreeable to the catholic church and many millions of people that follow literally whatever they are told is good for them.
You must also know that a woman having sex with her husband is not permitted to used condoms.
The stance of the Catholic church has nothing to do with celibacy and lots to do with puritanical rules of an elite that does not even have practical experience about the issue they are dictating.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
When did any religion ever turn peaceful?
They're all
1/an excuse for the regime they serve
2/a set of fairytales that explains how the world came to be (not, but it took us a while to find out)
3/a set of answers to the Eternal Questions
4/a social bonding thing
5/an excuse to go kill the neighbours in the name of God, but our real need is to either conquer their place so as to use their resources, or get all killed so that our genes will replicate when their men will have captured our women. (Capture-bonding is a survival trait coming directly from this causal loop btw.) Those are all ways in which religion was abused and those who did so were hiding behind it, but they did not always believe it. And if they did, it was usually misinterpreted. When did religion ever turn peaceful? when it is responsible for a huge amount of charity and sacrifice the well-being of the rest of the world. Science is a double-edged sword as well. Was it peaceful when it was used to create atomic and nuclear weapons? Was it peaceful when it created the worst weapons(chemical, biological, and others) known in the history of mankind?
1) Your point is a non-sequitur, it is a practical point that fails to meet the epistemic critique; it addresses nothing of what I've claimed. 2) I'm not saying that science is wrong default, my point is simply in line with Nietzsche; all this bashing of religion in the name of science is just as foolish as all of religions' previous bashings of science. To point fingers and claim that the world would be better without religion/science is just foolishness. Both sides, if they're taken as mutually exclusive (which is of course not the only option, this issue need not be like our media makes politics-blue/red only) take a faith the other claims they cannot have. Again, to make a claim of epistemic exclusivity is foolish, because there is just no proof for this exclusivity on either side.
If you would like to read excerpts from his prepared speach , you can get it here (and links to the full thing):
http://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/what-can-a-pope-say/
I think you might be pleasantly surprised by what you find there.
Zapman
Is the Bible universal truth, yes or not?
For bunnies sakes, if god can't come up with some good ass general moral rules, then who can?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Comparing religion to science is a mistake. Science is a tool for building other tools. Religion is a tool for building social structures. There is some overlap, but you can not replace one with the other. Laws go some way towards replacing religion, but they don't work very well. Very few people obey laws simply because they exist, most obey them because they agree with them. They either agree with them because they have reasoned that they are beneficial to society in general (and society's existence is beneficial to them in particular) or because they agree with some external morality imposed by a religion. If you have a society composed entirely of people capable of reasoning that the social structures that are in place benefit them individually in the long term then you do not need religion. You do, however, need to tell me where this mythical land is so I can move there.
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The point is that the world does not need religion, it is evil and serves no purpose but to perpetuate its self and get in the way of rational, proper thinking.
Evil and with no purpose? In essence, it's purist form, religion is there to provide a spiritual path such that one can solve their problems. It is an act of utter sanity and proper thinking to attempt to solve ones problems and give away anything that causes hardship. That is the purpose and rationality of religion.
It's natural to object to the dogmatic and prescriptive aspects. Thats fine. Some people need that, some don't. We're all different in that regard. There *are* religious congregations that are not dogmatic *at all*. And their are dogmatic and prescriptive "rationalists" as well. The point is that dogma is not religion.
However much you or anyone else think you believe in some sort of god doesn't change the fact that there is no god and that you have simply been deluded either by yourself or by your parents or elders into believing that nonsense.
Really? I'd say it's impossible to prove either way, although I'm leaning towards the idea that there is no god, I couldn't say for sure. If somebody finds a belief useful in getting through that day, and it causes them to act with more kindness and genuiness, then I'm all for it. If a belief in god or otherwise does not have this effect, then I'd privately question the sanity - but alas, there is no way to help such a person, but try to support them in finding happiness for themselves.
Imagine a family of dole bludging crack addicts, assuming any children survived they would be convinced that leeching of the state and undertaking petty crime to pay for their crack is perfectly normal behaviour and something to be applauded. The fact is no matter how much they might believe in that it still doesn't make it right and society has a duty to get involved when things go wrong like this and put an end to the problem.
I think this "bite" highlights a difference in how we think. Deep down we are all aware of when something is unhealthy and when something is not. Belief won't change that. It's basic intelligence, and works at the level of "hand on stove equals burnt hand". Thus, it would be impossible for these crack addicts to be happy. Deep down, they'd be painfully aware of what they are creating. The easy road is denial. The hard road is dealing with the whole problem.
Societies traditional way of dealing with "the whole problem" is spirituality. Sure it's confused, sure lots of bad stuff happens, but that's because spirituality is practised by human beings. If human beings weren't confused, then they wouldn't need spirituality in the first place. So pat yourself on the back if you think that you're perfectly wise, sane, and live life with absolutely no regret and never cause harm to yourself or anybody else. You'd be the one in a trillion who would derive no benefit from genuine spirituality.
Unfortunately it doesn't matter that most peoples actual belief is more or less half hearted and innocuous in order to target the real criminals, priests, nuns, monks and evangalists etc they must be brought to understand that supporting religious activity is no longer an acceptable behaviour. Without their 'flock' the real work can begin; taking down the organisation and infrastructure of relgion. There is no real need to imprison any but the most hardline extremists ( who will undoubtedly turn to terrorism to maintain a grasp on their power ) it will be enough to make sure that no religious nonsense can ever be taught to children and no religious organisation can be allowed to operate, eventually with a lack of support and aggressive teaching about the fallacy of religion it will wither and die a natural, but long overdue death.
While I respect that you truely believe that, I find it difficult to think that any but a very small portion of religious leaders would resort to terrorism. Those that woul
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It's not that it's not paraphrased well, it's a more that it's a more complicated position than one can summarize easily in a paragraph or two - it took both Dawkins and Sam Harris a coupla books each to really nail down. Of course, Harris goes off on some crazy tangent about ESP and Dawkins brings up the old who-killed-more numbers game (which I don't buy, because no historical atrocity is ever as simple as "it's religion/athieism/etc's" fault) but for the most part, they're pretty coherent on the point.
One of the points that leads up to this is that, in a culture with a heavy faith component, it is a requirement of that culture that one must be "respectful" of religion. Even if that religion is saying something completely out-of-the-box, we still have to respect it - there's no place for someone to say "hey, wait a minute, if you think about that for a minute, that's completely insane!" because we need to de facto be "respectful" of deeply-held beliefs, regardless of what they are. It fosters environments where it's okay to not think critically about certain issues, and that can in turn incubate extremisms.
That's not such a great summary either, I realize. Uh, go read Ophelia Benson's "Why Truth Matters" or Julian Baggini's "Athiesm: A Short Introduction." They're better, and less incendiary introductions to the topic than Dawkins or Harris or Hitchens, as they deal with more philosphical/epistemological matters and make fewer angry statements.
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
While that is sometimes the case, one would be hard pressed to prove it. Not because it's unprovable, but because it's not true.
Rather, I would suggest that humans perpetrate evil, moral corruption, and crimes against humanity. While religion is sometimes a convenient cloak of justification, it is not the ultimate causal factor. Humans ourselves are. Absent religion, we are quite adept coming up with other reasons to justify our behavior. While some of the most evil, destructive regimes in history have been religious, many have been and continue to be thoroughly atheistic in nature.
To sum up, correlation is not causality.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
on your first point, "These two systems aren't all that different in rationality from the user or average person's perspective." i disagree. i agree, sure, that your average person does not understand the logistics behind most scientific discoveries. but the fact of the matter is that science deals with evidence and data. *YOU* may never have read the first published research into bacterial infection, or be able to fully grasp the organic structure of an antibiotic, but you would give them to your child if they were sick. you may be just taking their word for it, but with good reason. just because Average Joe doesn't look up the human trial results for a prescription, he COULD. and the entire system is set up so that you shouldn't have to. trusting science when it is done right is usually a good move. religion on the other hand, deals with comepletely different subject matter, and therefore cannot be dealtwith in the same manner as science. you can try to rationalize it if you wish, but in the end you are only trying to use logic to prove a bunch of assumptions and non-observable, non-objective things. i have no problem with religion. it just isn't a rational and evidence based subject. nor should it be. and when people try to treat it as such, they swiftly look clueless. it's like trying to describe the texture of your food using colors.
secondly, there is NO DOUBT in my mind that there was some other motive at work here. on both sides. in my mind, i suspect the pope wanted a platform to spout a lot of the non-scientific nonsense he's been known to spout. i highly doubt that this professor was simply worked up about the "wrongs" done to Galileo. most likely, that is a jumping off place to talk about the broader subject of the subjugation of science to religion, which is a big important thing that should not be ignored. it makes a good stepping stone since, as i understand it, this pope has refuted the claims made previously that the church handled it incorrectly. now i doubt the pope is dumb, and he realizes that many people will be able to see that the church is grasping at straws to take away speed from this scary intellect based movement called science. so he uses this protest, that has now gotten large enough to gain his attention, as an excuse to cancel. now science is the big bad guy, trying to do away with religion, disprove it.
in reality, this was a shot for attention by both sides. religion is run like any other business. they want more customers, and they are playing the victim card to get some. some people made a bad call, and now the field of science is "taking the hit" so to speak. but science has little to say about spirituality, outside of measuring its effects. no one said it did. my point was that people should take the upper hand, let them scream, and explain calmly why they are incorrect. don't get sucked into this stupid game of he said she said. science will "win" on it's own merits if you allow the evidence to speak for itself on this playing field.
Stop personifying things! =)
Of course religious tradition has its benefits. I think most such benefits do not depend on belief, and can live and prosper without it. These of course are valuable and in no way bad - I'm personally not against religious tradition, only belief.
And when option A has a benefit AND a disadvantage, while option B has a similar benefit with a smaller disadvantage, option A must be thrown out with or without bathwater.
But tell me, you have sparked my interest, what is so bad about religious faith that you seem to be so disgruntled over. Why must you act like the religious and impose your beliefs over theirs? For what reason do you justify your actions over their similar actions?I don't think GP was saying anything about his beliefs. He was talking about a claim that faith is dangerous, something which is based on evidence. He even said why. Of course not all faith is equally dangerous, and modern christianity is already quite peaceful. No dogmatic system can be perfect though, and religious thought can not control which religion people end up adopting.
Physicist and Nobel prizewinner Stephen Weinberg describes religion as an insult to human dignity. 'Without it,' he says, 'you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.'
In my view, it is fundamentally irresponsible behavior to let anyone else tell you what things are right and what things are wrong. Religion is a method of doing just that, globally and systematically. You will most probably agree with me that this indeed is dangerous.
I've nothing against religious people trying to convince me their religion is right, as long as they respect the discussion with logical arguments. I always find out religious arguments are very bad, and scientific ones superior. Nor religious nor scientific ideas should be respected just because they are ideas.
No, it's quite easy to argue against religions. You just did so. As you've explained, you don't need religion to do good or bad. It works perfectly without religion. So religion is nothing more than an additional, unneeded layer. Get rid off it, and the world would just be fine.
I realize that your chosen religion of atheism gives you great comfort (or at least anger, from the tone of your post); and I can't say that I'm anything more than agnostic myself. But to answer you challenge: under the scientific method, all models that state that God can't exist must be falsifiable in order to be valid. Similarly, you can state that "in all probability God does not exist", but you cannot - if you are of scientific and rational mind - state unequivocally that "...Yeah, disproven. There is no God."
"The point is that the world does not need religion, it is evil and serves no purpose but to perpetuate its self and get in the way of rational, proper thinking."
If that's your point of view... as far as I see it, I would not exist if not for the hope that religion gave my parents and grandparents during WW2, when they escaped persecution in Poland. If you were in a similar situation, how would your "rational, proper" thinking help you, when you know you are bound to either get shot, or shipped out to a concentration camp to be tested on and eventually burn in a furnace? You'd probably off yourself at the earliest convenience.
"Unfortunately it doesn't matter that most peoples actual belief is more or less half hearted and innocuous in order to target the real criminals, priests, nuns, monks and evangalists etc they must be brought to understand that supporting religious activity is no longer an acceptable behaviour. Without their 'flock' the real work can begin; taking down the organisation and infrastructure of relgion. There is no real need to imprison any but the most hardline extremists ( who will undoubtedly turn to terrorism to maintain a grasp on their power ) it will be enough to make sure that no religious nonsense can ever be taught to children and no religious organisation can be allowed to operate, eventually with a lack of support and aggressive teaching about the fallacy of religion it will wither and die a natural, but long overdue death."
Hrmmm sounds exactly like someone I've heard of before, namely Hitler. Hope you're not running for a government position.
It's everyone choice to believe (or not) in something or someone and that includes both you and me.
If you remove all the subjective statements from your post, you sound EXACTLY like a terrorist.
Wake me up when he's using violence against those he disagrees with.
Whilst I agree with you in that I wouldn't support outlawing religious organisations, I don't think the OP is quite what you describe.
Yea its ok to study that crap for the perspective of how they screw everything up for up nice tolerant reasonable non religious folk /sarcasm
In contrast, religious theories are pulled out of someones ass to support some preconceived notion, contradictory evidence is ignored, and criticism is discouraged. Religous types like to point to disagreement among scientists as a weakness of science when in reality it is its greatest strength. Science is constantly examining alternatives to ensure it has the correct answer, while religion shuns alternatives and simply *asserts* that it has the correct answer.
There's a big difference between ignoring that last 1% uncertainty of science to treat something as fact, and accepting some religious bozo's 100% unfounded claim as fact. Any attempt to equate the two is woefully misguided. Some 'assumptions' are in fact better than others.
You make a good point but if you follow that logic you can end up saying that nothing can be disproved because you don't have an infinitely large set of experimental data. To go further, if take the stance that God exists because God can't be proven to not exist then, well, you can justify anything.
I wonder ... do you believe in "free will"?
If so, what is the mass and energy of the "free will"? What particle(s) does it use to affect (other) baryonic matter?
If not, then you should abhor punishment from crime: people clearly have no choice so they are not to blame.
Are you now a believer of "free will" without a proof or god? (I am)
Note: Trying to prove you have free will by showing you can select full glass instead empty proves nothing: I can trivially program a robot to do the same and neither of us thinks it has "free will". And it completely sidesteps the quantum mechanical problems.
P.S. I myself am atheist but cannot say "all religion is evil" with good conscience.
That's the nature of science. Nothing can be 100% proven -- you can only have a 'best theory' or even an accepted 'law'; but it's valid only insofar as there's not yet sufficient evidence to the contrary.
In other words, if moderate faith is acceptable, it is implicit that extreme faith must also be acceptable.
Yeah, sure. And if speaking out against abortions is acceptable, it is implicit that blowing up abortion clinics is acceptable.
I don't think that most of the religious community today is intolerant of science or scientists, although there are certainly disagreements. However, this displays the vitriolic hatred scientists have for religion, which is just as irrational. I think the majority of scientists are just as intolerant of religion as the catholic church was of them in centuries past. If scientists such as these were in charge, they would wipe out religion for secularism. Those of religious beliefs would not be burned at the stake, but simply medicated and warehoused away as mentally deficient.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Right... Nobody is doing that...
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8EBR6D00&show_article=1, http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/1999/march_1999_2.html, http://www.incorrectu.com/2007/10/24/liveblogging-ifaw-at-emory-university-with-david-horowitz/
If people on drugs are happy, why should we stop them? Ah yes, because of the behaviours they exhibit besides being happy and that are both anti-social and consequential of their drug use. There's also a public health thing involved, but the day that aspect is relevant to a discussion about theology, things will be bad indeed... :)
Then let the people on drugs be happy! And, WHAT behaviours? Drugs make people feel GOOD. People who feel good are peaceful. People who are oppressed, ostracized from Good Society, e.g. for inflicting feelgood to themselves, THEN exhibit anti-social behaviors. Public health? Drugs are pretty safe, as long as they're pure.
No health/safety control, high prices, antisocial behaviour : all the problems of drugs are due to the prohibition. But yes, that's a whole other debate... (Solved, too : put the demanded products on the Free Market. Counter-argument : "Making yourself feel good by consuming a substance, that's a Bad Thing, immmoral like all that makes feel good." It really boils down to that.)
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
That's exactly the view I take, as well. In fact even Dawkins takes that view, as stated in The God Delusion but that there's so little evidence for the existence of any gods that you can pretty much ignore the idea. If you don't you might as well believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden or The Emperor's New Clothes.
Ob Simpsons reference:
"Why can't we make a law against flag burning?"
"Because that law would be unconstitutional. But if we change the Constitution..."
"We can make all sorts of crazy laws!"
They made an amendment prohibiting alcohol, and then added another amendment saying it was void.
Theoretically, they could insert another amendment saying the 1st amendment was void too.
It might be pretty difficult to do, but it's possible. Why not?
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Yeah. We (atheists) are right. And they (religions) are wrong.
If they had to respond to the sword with their prayers, who'd have the survival advantage? Religion is a bad tool.
I'm NOT advocating a religious war. I don't want anyone killed over that AGAIN. I want religions to disappear, displaced by science. Teach all children the self-evident scientific method, the origins of the world, give them answers to the Eternal Questions, and all religions will disappear in under a century.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
WTF do your links have to do with science? Maybe you've confused 'science' with 'marketing'. The last two, at least, are just gimmicks that take advantage of unquestioning gullability of the same type that religion likes to cultivate. For that matter, what the heck was your point?
Sorry, I don't buy it. You *honestly* believe that most people don't kill simply because their deity says it's wrong?
Frankly, I think you significantly underestimate the effect of social pressures in order to enforce cultural norms. Why do most people not:
1) Speak loudly during movies, or
2) Throw their garbage on the street, or
3) Avoid staring at other people, or, or, or...
All these things are social norms enforced by simple social conditioning. What on earth makes you believe that prohibition against murder, rape, torture, etc, are any different?
The fact is, people don't commit crimes because they either a) understand it's wrong, as they wish to treat others as they are treated (and yes, this is a belief that can exist outside of the framework of religion), b) fear reprisal from their peers, or c) fear punishment from authority figures. The fact that religion adds a fourth option to that list doesn't change the fact that social order would continue to exist in it's absence.
I'm a casual drug user. I don't want Society to tell me that there are things I can't put in my body. Thus, following my Law, the only law I follow and respect : do unto others as you would have them do to you, I'd say NOT to prevent them and stop them believing. Not gonna work anyway./
No, no, let believe the ones who won't change their minds, they're unimportant after all, they're only individuals. But educate their kids, teach them the TRUE models of how the world works, show them it's simple to test for one varying condition, show them that the world is simple! Just has many, many systems and conditions and causal loops and historical accidents. They'll NEVER think there's a Spook In The Sky, "ready to cut off the power supply of the cluster part we exist in, so let's pray he does not".
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Let me offer one: No one's proven God. Therefore the need to disprove God does not exist, because there's no conclusive proof that God does exist.
Is there conclusive proof of the claims such products make? If not, then by definition it isn't science. Science isn't the product -- it's the methodology. It's making observations, forming an opinion based on those observations, and then making more observations to assert one's opinion. At some point, it meets a requisite amount of proof and gets accepted as part of the way that the Universe works. Contrast that to the holy books of the major religions, which don't have (and arguably don't need) any sort of substantiation by fact. They don't have it because it's myth ... and they don't need it because, again, it's myth.
The danger is that, in the case of the Bible and the Qu'ran, far too many people accept mythology as literal truth. It'd be a bit like taking Aesop's fables as literal truth and then having to explain why crows and foxes don't talk today when they did 3,000 years ago. No worldview built with such a shaky foundation can hold, so people who hold such a worldview get increasingly irrational when the flaws in that foundation are presented to them.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I'll admit it was a little overzealous, but still not far from the point. Wanting to enforce some strict way of thinking and to outlaw and disallow free thought is very close to being terroristic. While it may not be as explosive as a suicide bomber, its just as destructive.
I agree with your initial reply in a general sense. But it has nothing to do with the Pope. He does not belong in a list of great thinkers. He doesn't ask questions. His answers come from a book that requires a resupposed belief in it to have merit.
wait what? I actually had not heard of that term, but I had never said that atheists are intolerant. If anything they simply want to do their own thing and not be discriminated. People can claim no religion (be it atheism or agnostic, secular humanism) and not be an anarchist.
Religion is only one form of social control, not the only form.
I mean religious doctrines have guided human behavior for all of collective memory, but government laws and regulations are essentially the same thing, but secular. They are both codes of conduct, they just cite different authorities. Are you implying that there can be no government without church?
Ah, the magic of analogy.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Wrong. They appeared because of the way our brains are organized.
Thanks to Keith Henson. I'd never have expressed it so well.
No. A Spook In The Sky that Wills the World? That's as illogical as it gets! It's a delusion of the "imaginary friend" type. Why don't we consider it a disease?
What ... no. Science explores and explains the world by the scientific method. Religion is a delusion-inducing disease. They're "competing ideas" in the memetic sense, but one systematically explores reality, and the other is a dangerous delusion about an imaginary friend that really hates you unless you worship it.
Yes.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Let's pool our money and found that land on some island-for-sale.
I like your points, though. Religion a social hack... I don't think it's that important. I see worship and social constructs are orthogonal, not entangled.
Laws? Who needs laws? "Do unto other as you want them to do unto you" I don't need one more word. It's not even "game theory", it's self-evidently beneficial. ANYone not agreeing with that principle is simply _not a social animal_, let alone an human.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
The fundamental problem with these arguments is that secularism and prosecution of people you disagree with are diametrically opposed.
The secularist is perfectly free to say that religion is dangerous, and no one should be religious. The second he adds, "and we should do something about it," he ceases being a secularist and becomes an extremist himself.
If religious extremists are threating violence you have cause for action. If you act against religious people because you don't like what they believe you are a hypocrite.
It should also be noted that you simply cannot move against religion without simultaneously moving against freedom of speech and assembly. It seems to me that your idea of a secular society is pragmatically similar to Islamic sharia, in the same way that fascist Germany was pragmatically similar to communist Russia.
You know, I think that's the worst way to do an empirical science, but that's just me. At least Ayn Rand got away with it for claiming she was doing philosophy.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
It's in line with survival of the fittest under given conditions. Nothing immoral here, then.
Okay, bad examples. How about this one
Thank you in advance for the backstory, the "matter of Pe'or"... What was that to justify a mass murder of women and children? And "because of $UNHOLY we were punished with the plague"... Come tell me again that religion and science are not mutually exclusive.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
...your chosen religion of atheism... I feel the need to correct this any time I see it. Atheism is not a religion. Neither are monotheism or polytheism. They are beliefs about how many gods are out there. Multiple religions exist that hold each of those beliefs.He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
God does not exist. There is no evidence whatsoever to the contrary.
Done.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Because you can't prove that god does not exist. Therefore you accept something without proof. Therefore, by definition, atheism is a faith. One might call it religion even.
So I choose the point of view that pisses off both camps. Since I have no proof either way, I choose to ignore the issue altogether. This pisses off religious people because I don't believe in god, and atheists - because I don't believe god doesn't exist.
I've never read Dawkins' books, but from the interviews I've seen, he seems like a guy that's just angry at religion and looking to beat it with a stick. You seem to somewhat confirm this. I might go pick up one of the other two books. It's nice to read thoughtful things that aren't just blatant attacks. Maybe someone could introduce that concept into politics as well.
"And you've provided absolutely nothing in the way of doing that, other than some rant by Jonah Goldberg that makes a bunch of claims without citing sources"
Uhhh, Goldberg does give sources in his article, namely author Roger Nisbet's book, and quotes from Sheahan and other named sources from the newspaper article he cites. You're insinuating that he pulled a Stephen Glass and just made shit up. He writes for National Review, not The New Republic, thanks.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Goldberg cites sources and names interview subjects in his article. His article can be fact checked. So are you saying that the content should be ignored because it came from National Review? Would you have the similar objections to same subject in The Nation or Mother Jones or Rolling Stone?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Science absolutely does not solve everything.
Yes, and that is exactly why it is so valuable. Philosophies that "solve everything," (such as GodDidIt) in fact produce empty solutions to anything. Drop an apple, it falls down, GodDidIt. Drop an apple, it falls up, GodDidIt. The answer explains anything, and thereby nothing. The fact that it's possible to find a mistake in a scientific solution provides at least some chance of improvement, even if there are countless things that it can't address at all. Religion on the other hand, has no reliable means of improvement-- it is not possible to identify a "mistake" in a religious "solution," as belief overrides reality via apologetics when the "solution" produces otherwise contradictory results."Has anybody else noticed that Catholicism is quickly becoming the more "accepting/open-minded" branch of Christianity, especially compared to "mainstream Christianity" in the US? Discuss."
If by "open minded" you really mean "willing to chuck aside their convictions", then no, I wouldn't agree with you. Catholicism is actually in the process of stepping back from Vatican II and reaffirming some older traditions. JPII also put his foot down on the subject of Liberation Theology and heresies, and Benedict has followed in his stead.
Your more "open minded" churches...the ones willing to bend or toss aside teachings from the Bible and older theologians in the interest of "adapting to the times" are actually losing bodies. I don't think its a coincidence that the theologically conservative and evangelical churches are growing (and Catholicism is included here), while the mainstream denominations that embraced liberalization and a turning away from Biblical principals are losing members every year. The Episcopal Church is a hollow shell of its former self, and is splitting up in a schizm between conservatives and liberals. The same is happening to other "liberal" denominations. Even the Jesuits, considered a liberal order this past century, are starting to do an about face theologically. And its the younger generation of priests that are actually embracing the return to Catholic tradition, such as the Tridentine Mass. Its the 60's/Vatican II generation that is horrified by this. That generation is the one that fought the hardest for liberalization, but that battle was lost with the coming of JPII.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It's absolutely offensive and astonishing that people keep trying to cast scientists as intolerant. You're really comparing science's rejection of bull with religion's rejection of facts? Scientists reject ideas that don't pass scientific muster -- not because they're intolerant, but because that's how being logical and rational works. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; if you can't back up your crazy new claim with some sort of evidence, they're not interested. Unfortunately, the religious crowd has tricked a number of people (such as yourself) into talking about their bullshit as if it's on par with any other scientific theory. They take advantage of the way many people equate 'theory' with 'total speculation'. Gravity is a theory, even though it's tested trillions of times a day on our planet. Evolution is a theory based on a vast body of evidence, and predictions based on that theory have been proven correct (fish with limbs, dinosaurs with feathers). Discussing creationism in church is fine, but scientists *must* object when religious beliefs are passed off as facts, or even as being of equal merit; especially in educational settings.
Creationism is simply what some religious people *want* to believe is true. It has no body of evidence, and is not a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable and has no predictive power. Counter-evidence is simply dismissed as 'a test of faith'. It has no business being discussed in the same context as science. Creationism also doesn't answer anything; if you believe god did it, then you're left to answer 'where did god come from?" which is really the same question with an extra, unnecessary step. Similarly, if you believe god has always existed, why not believe the universe has always existed?
I don't think he was saying that most people don't kill simply because some deity says it's wrong, he was saying that some people don't. To continue his firewall example, the act of putting up a firewall does not imply that I believe most people will try to infiltrate my network, but it does imply that I believe some people will (or might) do so.
Yes. Literary analysts are about as necessary as religion, but engineers are the people who designed and built the countless devices that have evolved in the labs, under the pressures of the market, to end up right in front of you, in the computer you're using. What have literary analysts ever done that was useful in the slightest? Not as persons, as literary analysts. There is no reason to analyze what anyone has written! Why do that? Read the book, understand, or not, but analysis... of literature... now THAT's useless wanking. At least, compared to religion, literary analysis is harmless.
Yes. Analysts have built the technological civilization. Synthetists have done
You can't understand the whole as a whole. You just learn parts. When enough parts are interacting that you can't even think of what hasn't been explained, you see the whole from your perspective. And you can solve the problems in your life by "a sequence of actions that reduce the difference between the initial situation and the goal", the actions and their order defined by what? Analysis.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
I wonder what you think of teaching evolution as a 100% true and proven fact(when it is only an explanation of facts) to 1st graders is.
Or how about "global warming"?
The whole world, including "science" is filled with indoctrinations designed for conformity. Watch how this post is modded as evidence of this.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Science isn't true because it says so. It lays out a set of principles designed for making objective, logical assessments of the observable world. If you disagree with any of those basic tenets, feel free to enlighten us; but we can all see what they are and judge whether or not they achieve their goal of objectivity. On top of this foundation is a mountain of research. You're free to read reports, examine evidence, and conduct experiments yourself if there's anything you're skeptical of. If you *do* manage to find counter-evidence or come up with a better explanation for something, other scientists will be eager to verify and learn from your findings.
With religion, you're expected to believe what they say simply because they said it, which is exactly the opposite of science. By definition there isn't any evidence to examine, because it's all about faith. Preachers just grab whatever parts of the bible support their preconceived notions. A lot of the time those are good notions, but it's still based on fiction. That doesn't mean everyone has to stop going to church, but I think all the worthwhile parts of religion can be had without the superstition and dogma.
Are you talking about the same things as the rest of us? From reading this I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.
Pope Benedict XVI never said Galileo was wrong. He didn't even endorse the sentence against him. What he did, while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, was quote some (agnostic, by the way) philosopher's opinion of the matter in relation to the revisionism that was occuring in the 18th century: "The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Gaileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism."
You can not read this fairly without noting that Cardinal Ratzinger himself refers to this opinion as drastic. He favors the quote by Bloch saying, "Christianity has the right to remain faithful to its method of preserving the earth in relation to human dignity, and to order the world with regard to what will happen and what has happened in the world." Meaning basically that although physically the earth revolves around the sun, it's still the center of human activity.
This speech was two years before Pope John Paul II publicly apoligized for the way the church responded to Galileo. Cardinal Ratzinger never himself said the church was right in handling the Galileo affair, and he most certainly never supported geocentrism. However, it seems there's plenty of people who are happy to falaciously believe that claim, sadly including this supposedly well-educated Professor Cini.
You also don't appear to know what historically happened. The board of Inquisitors told Galileo and others not to publicly advocate heliocentrism. He was still permitted to discuss it hypothetically. Galileo had been vocally advocating it and creating quite a stir at the time, because a lot of sticks in the mud flat-out rejected it because they were ignorant, knee-jerk reactionists. He graciously agreed.
When Galileo's friend, Pope Urban VIII succeeded to the papacy, he returned to the subject. Urban actually requested he write a book on it, but again, not to press the arguments directly. However, he didn't hold very well to that condition, and actually used quotes from Urban in presenting Artitotelian viewpoint that ended up sounding rather mocking, although probably inadvertantly.
This public embarrassment unfortunately alienated the Pope, and the sticks-in-the-mud won out, forcing him to publicly recant the theory of heliocentrism, banning the book, and placing him under house arrest for several years.
Ironically, Copernicus had been teaching about heliocentrism 100 years earlier, and his theories were well-received at the time by several popes and innumerable academics. It took that long for the knee jerkers to gain support higher up and find a fittingly controversial victim.
...your chosen religion of atheism... I feel the need to correct this any time I see it. Atheism is not a religion. Neither are monotheism or polytheism. They are beliefs about how many gods are out there. Multiple religions exist that hold each of those beliefs. I do agree with you, but I used it deliberately for the negative connotations, in particular the most commonly derided aspect of religious faith: continued fervent belief in the absence of any proof. I suspect you can see how that fits.Done.
Right then. This has been an interesting discussion, if a discussion can be defined as "one person stating their one-sided beliefs without considering the possibility that they may be in error". You make a statement of fact out of something that can be at /best/ a theory, and the only thing that this 'proves' is that like so many religious zealots, you have no interest in logical discourse when that discourse challenges your belief system.
My turn, since I successfully met your own challenge if your response is any indication: find me compelling evidence to support your theory that there are no gods/is no God. Suggestion: natural disasters can't be used as they could be argued in either direction.
So it's perfectly okay for a Creationist to demand that he be allowed to give a speech at a biology department?
This has cropped up several times and is a fallacy. The pope, and the catholic church's official position is that god created everything through evolution. Pope John Paul stated it in 1996 and Benedict just re-iterated it again in 2007 as evidenced here. Please, get your facts straight before making emotional arguments.
And by "higher rationality" we mean wishful thinking.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
It is impossible to honestly take those action into account and come to the conclusion that the church did not oppose science.
The church would let them build their proof, and then reject it our of hand for unscientific reasons.
The fact that they would pretend to be willing to listen is NOT a good thing: It's hypocrisy.
You can't take the sky from me...
If the inquisition had machine guns and a population of similar size to shoot at, they'd have had the same kind of scorecard.
You can't take the sky from me...
Okay. God is outside the Universe, having created it. The definition of Universe is "all that exists". Therefore, God does not exist.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
You're not making any cogent arguments here. Your conclusions are built into your assumptions, capisce?
You're starting out assuming that "analysis" is the end-all and be-all of thought, and this is self-evident because of the usefulness of analytical products, which are themselves good because other products are not. What you have failed to do is "close the loop" and bring this into the bigger picture.
I seriously have questions with the usefulness of, say, the "countless" devices that were built in "the labs." Ever read up on bioinformatics? It's the study of information flow in complex (biological) systems. We get absolutely NOTHING without the synthetic steps of the discovery cycle. Zero. Zilch. Nada. "Analysts" are useful, but they are not the cum of Christ as you make them out to be.
My last roommate was like this. I loaned him a book on the emergent properties of ant colony behavior to try to get him to understand that you can't model a colony as an aggregate of 1000 ants, you have to modify it as a colony. It's the same issue as when you try to model the behavior of, say, a platoon of soldiers, modeling the behavior of one infantryman is sometimes useful, but when you want to grok "What a platoon does," it's not the final step, any more than modeling "half an infantryman" makes sense (outside of certain gory first-person shooters, anyway) when you want to describe one soldier's behavior.
I think if you study a little bit of history then you will discover that most of our most robust theories come from the synthetic steps. Darwin's theory, for example, is the result of synthesis, not only analysis.
Y'know, I do have to say it's a little funny and a little sad that I, the big bad religionist, know more about the underpinnings of science than a lot of people who "do" science day-in, day-out. But then, Hitchens is way better in his Bible knowledge than me, so, six of one, I suppose.
but it is wrong. Science has stopped answering the type of how or why questions and has been relegated to making models that give good predictions. There are no absolute claims from science about objective reality of any kind. The word as we know it is made up of (always evolving) stories. And that's about as good as it will ever get with science (and I'm a mathematician by the way).
Some of the questions asked can't even be studied using scientific methods (not testable), and others could perhaps be modeled by artificial life left to evolve sufficiently long.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
if there is good evidence supporting something, then there is no need for belief.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Fair enough to protest this planned speech, but it seems a little tacky for Cini to go ahead and attack the Pope for complying with his original request, which was basically to cancel his speech.
Synthetic steps, yes, it's a tool for analysis. If all you can measure is tiny current flows, then of course you have to model the bigger picture they make by synthesis. Analysis in the sense of "analyzing the whole system", is synthesis of the interacting agents that make it up, right? In that sense, they're not opposed.
I'm agreeing here, analysis of idividuals is not analysis of the whole. An analysis of a complex system made up of lots of agents defines all the common behaviors of subsets of agents, but you don't have to go the the individual for that.
Depends how you define synthesis vs. analysis. What I said was "at least engineers do useful things, whereas literary analysts do not". That was YOUR example of a synthetist, wasn't it?
You win on that one. But, is science not a tool to analyze how Everything works?
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
All through this thread you keep saying religious ideas are just as valid as scientific ones, but that's simply not the case.
As much as I'd accept that religious ideas might not be as scientifically valid as scienctific ideas, universally less valid is a pretty big claim to make without first proving something about religion.
Ideas based on facts are superior to fiction and superstition.
I'd totally agree with that. Unfortunately, way too many "facts" aren't facts.
Science isn't true because it says so.
I'd accept that. To me saying "science is true" is about as helpful as saying "swimming is true."
It lays out a set of principles designed for making objective, logical assessments of the observable world.
I'd also agree with that.
If you disagree with any of those basic tenets, feel free to enlighten us;
As much as I basically agree with your definition of science, I don't know which list of tenets (doctrines, beliefs, dogmas) you're referring to.
but we can all see what they are
When you're advocating scientific methods, you shouldn't try to prove things by saying "we can all see." I think that attempting to find/create such a list that would be (fairly) universally accepted (and proving that acceptance, of course) might help you see how non-monolithic science is.
and judge whether or not they achieve their goal of objectivity.
Make a list of hot moral/political topics (I'll start you off):
Divorce, Slavery, Racism, Global Warming, Environmentalism, Communism, Democracy, Homosexuality, Divine Right of Kings, Class Structures, etc.
For any of these topics, was (is) science (or scientific concensus) coherent about them BEFORE societal opinions changed? No.
The scientific method IS objective. Unfortunately for the objectivity of science, the method is applied by inherently non-objective beings.
On top of this foundation is a mountain of research. You're free to read reports, examine evidence, and conduct experiments yourself if there's anything you're skeptical of.
Sure, but for most of it, I don't do studying and experimenting. I just take most scientific conclusions on "faith." For example: Does oxygen (that lifegiving gas that sustains regular combustion) exist in the way that modern science claims? I believe so, but I'll never do an experiment to prove it. I just accept it.
If you *do* manage to find counter-evidence or come up with a better explanation for something, other scientists will be eager to verify and learn from your findings.
That's not borne out by the history of science. Scientists, because they're human, have the ability to form pet ideas and believe them after evidence should compel them to give them up. For example, England's mathematics fell WAY behind that of Europe because too many mathematicians got too wound up about the Newton/Leibniz calculus controversy.
With religion, you're expected to believe what they say simply because they said it,
Either you're taking this on faith, or you haven't done enough research, because my religion, as one example, teaches pretty much the opposite of that.
which is exactly the opposite of science.
I'll agree that believing just because you're told to is unscientific. It's just not true that all religions teach that.
By definition there isn't any evidence to examine,
Not strictly true. There may not be any legal evidence or scientific evidence, but that doesn't mean there's no evidence.
because it's all about faith.
See, I think all is an exaggeration.
Preachers just grab whatever parts of the bible support their preconceived notions.
Look around. A lot of "scientists" do that same kind of thing. It would be unscientific to
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Gadzooks, you have totally disproved what I said! You obviously take the contrary position seriously ... enough to post as AC. Hmm.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
... given that Italian Fascism was founded on *opposing* Marxism?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The church is a keeper and defender of faith. So, any wrong teaching should be corrected which is the duty of the institution to guard the deposit of faith left to it by its founder Jesus Christ.
You can choose to accept that or not. It doesn't matter either way. For those who believe in Jesus, they are convinced that gates of hell will not prevail against it because Jesus said so:). For those who don't, it's completely irrelevant (in their mind at least) and will usually have some cynical remark against the church or faith.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
You know what was the first reaction when the pictures came out? Ban soldiers from having cameras.
Scientists don't get to arrest, torture and kill people (but when given a position of power by Nazis, many did), the pope lost that power long ago, and the people who have that power today do the same with it as people have done throughout history with power: They abuse it.
The important thing is not who you give that power to, but that you don't.
Peace.
You can't take the sky from me...
I want five different atheists (not just random net trolls) who have called for the extermination of people who believe in gods, with supporting quotes. Otherwise, I call bullshit.
You can't take the sky from me...
I'm glad you have that "reportedly" disclaimer in there, because otherwise you would be wrong.
Pope Benedict said or implied nothing of the sort. First of all, there was no threat to Galileo's life. He was placed under house arrest and ordered to recant his arguments for heliocentrism. Galileo's enemies were only able to accomplish this much after he inadvertantly but publicly embarrassed Pope Urban VIII, who had previously been very supportive of his work.
Second, if you will read the second link in the submission, you will see that the speech referred to did not defend the Church's treatment of Galileo. Rather, in a paper discussing the relationship between faith and science he turned to the obvious example of Galileo, particularly how it was distorted in the 19th century to make it look like a simple case of good Galileo vs the oppressive church (There really was much more going on and Galileo had many friends in the Church who defended him). During this passage, he quotes several opinions on the matter. One of them defends the decision of the Inquisition. He quoted it. He didn't accept it. In fact, he appears critical of that opinion and calls it "drastic."
Third, this speech was made just two years before Pope John Paul II's public apology for the Church's treatment of Galileo. If we're going to consider implied viewpoints, note that he was a close friend of John Paul II. Similarly, Benedict has said something to the effect of "ideologies of power can never erase truth." That sort of philosphy rather contradicts a justification of suppression.
As another poster stated, it's perplexing that this faculty member complained when Benedict arranged to come speak (on invitation), seemingly ignorant of the above, and then complained again when he cancelled. Professor Cini's position, in fact, was not merely that he didn't want him preaching religion on campus, but the ridiculous argument that allowing a religious leader on the campus was "an incredible violation of the university's autonomy."
Right. Now compare that pile to the pile of corpses killed as a result of completely a-religious wars. Or the pile of people killed because religion was explicitly not consulted or considered. Or the pile of people killed based on different creeds entirely. I think you'll find the two piles I mention here just as large.
If your point is that war sucks, then I'm behind you all the way. If your point is that human beings are panicky, easily aroused, and fallible, then you and I pretty much agree. Heck, if your point is even that the human ego is often quite damning, you've got points from me for being so insightful. If, however, your point is that religion has killed more people than other cognitive systems (a lot of which are not mutually exclusive and can exist within the same mind), then I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.
Ne Cede Malis.
Why is it I never see these posts I want to mod up when I actually have mod points?
See, the problem with this propaganda is that it's just attempting to sugarcoat what the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) did to Galileo and explain it all away. Pope Benny sounds like a lawyer, trying to convince everyone that black is really white after all, and many others are attempting to trivialize the damage that was done by trying to paint Galileo as being in the wrong.
The reality of the situation is that no, the RCC's dogmatic stance that the Earth is the center of the universe was not explicitly mentioned in the Holy Bible, but it was an extension that was "reasoned" through Christian philosophy. You know, the same, old, tired crap about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, trying to reconcile "God's Law (including the bits about persecuting homosexuals et al.)" with so-called "Natural Law", and it fit the purpose of the dogma at the time to reason that the Earth is the center of the universe and mankind was the center of the Earth's existence, for that humankind-centric view was the basis of much of the philosophy. It used "logic" to discover man's place in the grand scheme of things, and that place was front-and-center.
The RCC set a ludicrously high bar of "proof" to anything that would challenge their dogma. In the end, ALL of science is pretty much a collection of theories, and no real scientist will ever claim differently. Everything we know is subject to being rewritten if an Earth-shattering discovery takes place. Even well-respected theories that have stood the test of time are sometimes prone to receiving minor modifications as underlying principles are understood better. What science really is, is making observations, devising a method to further test them, and then discussing them. Which is exactly what Galileo did. No, he didn't prove anything at all. He made an observation, built a theory around it, and put forth his theory for public scrutiny.
Of course, the RCC has plenty of circular arguments at its disposal to declare itself "truth" and "absolutely proven". Science can NEVER measure-up, from a theological perspective, to that degree of delusional logic. Science will always be uncertain relative to the unwavering belief in mythological truths that have no objective basis or means to prove or disprove. In the eyes of a RCC theologian, no scientist will every prove anything. Pope Benny established that in that speech, as he attempted to reason how the RCC was correct to persecute Galileo. The rational seems to be that attempts to think freely, or to encourage others to think and reason, MUST be punished for the public good. The RCC apparently feels that ignorance of anything they don't explicitly approve on theological and scientific grounds is in the public's best interest.
On another of the comments posted above, of course Galileo worked for the Church. Almost nobody at that time wasn't a slave to church-dominated society in one way or another. The Pope headed governments, kings answered to him and were bound to do his bidding. There was no education except through the church. There were no jobs in higher education except for the church. The church was the be-all, end-all of everything, they had perfect monopolistic lock-in. It took brave heroes, the ramifications of whose deeds transcended their goals, such as Martin Luther and Galileo to stand up against this tyranny and thought-policing, and open the door for independent research and more objective scientific and theological orders. The RCC was, of course, the police too, and placed Galileo under house arrest. This is far more serious than the trivialization that Galileo was rightly censored for speaking out against his employer's viewpoints. If it was so trivial, fire the guy. They were able to arrest and confine him because they controlled nearly every aspect of everyone's lives. Those people who stood-up against the church's attempts to suppress and censor opened the door for secular thought and secular governments. Martin Luther and Galileo helped to make science and philosophy things th
This is called a reductio ad absurdum. It's not a logical fallacy in the mechanism; the logical fallacy here is "God". I begin the reasoning with the false premise of "God created the Universe" so as to DISPROVE it.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Bitter, are we?
:)
Actually, studying religion/mythology is an excellent way to learn about human society and culture; just won't tell you anything about the structure of reality
tic
No. Correlation not causation. What makes people generous and charitable is, when they have enough resources, then, their basic urge to cooperate with other human beings overrides their aversion to loss and so they share their resources. (Those are evolved species-specific behaviours. Without them we wouldn't be the species that influences their environment the most, we'd be solitary primates in a world ruled by scaled things.)
Yes. The research on the atomic bomb has brought us nuclear power, ending our dependence on those fanatics who have all the oil.
Oh, wait...
Chemical weapons, noone uses them anymore. (Or where?) Biological weapons are a by-product of the advances in medicine. You'd want to live in a world with no chemical industry? That means no computers too, you know. And with a 50% chance to live long enough to eat solid food?
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Primitive primates hear the tone.
Intelligent life-forms listen to the content.
But that might be just my Asperger's acting up.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
The problem is also about who came to the house before, with invitation and all. AFAIK, among other more fitting people, there were nice guys like Oreste Scalzone, criminal charges dropped because of prescription, now in politics.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
You can't take the sky from me...
That's a good point. Wish I had an expert in constitutional law handy. Now I'm curious.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Not precisely, but thanks :-) A point I've been trying to make is more exactly that, now that Science has explained the origin of wars, we can simply apply the conditions (forever rising income per capita) to the whole world to prevent wars. Forever.
... then "global, direct, fully-transparent open democracy" might be a solution.
If that means suppressing all (at least, most) State(s) (not specifically US) (in the senses of "governments" and "frontiers"), then
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreste_Scalzone
So without doing more research into Scalzone to learn about any specific point you're trying to make, all I can say is that, assuming that if I did know anything about Scalzone I would then agree that he should not be invited to any university ever, I would say that a previous invitation, even to a convicted criminal, should not imply that everybody else who ever wants to visit ought to necessarily be welcomed. If members of the physics department were not allowed to state their disapproval of their university's invitation to somebody who represents and supports a history of theocratic dictatorship, or who says rude & untrue things about Mr. Marconi, or who wears shirts that say E != mc^2, those would be examples of censorship. The closest thing to censorship I detect in the original article, is what the Italian Prime Minister said:
Mr. Prodi, any of "Italy's traditions of civility and tolerance" which really exist, are no thanks to the Catholic Church.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
translated into English
- Francis Ocoma
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Agreed. I'm not the one who wants to jail priests...
My approach is that you should let the goddamn fools believe whatever it is they want to believe. Don't force anything, just dare to speak up and ridicule every public religious speech. It doesn't matter that the speakers won't change their ideas, what counts is that other people become aware that the opinion that it's all bullshit exists, too. And that some people are at least prepared to speak it up.
What I want to achieve is that people begin publicly expressing discontent at the mention of religion. "Enough bullshit, down with religion". Good motto, that. -"How can you laugh at my beliefs, whine whine whine" -"Because they're ridiculous! Go kill someone and defend yourself by saying your Spook In The Sky told you to and you'll see the real worth your beliefs have in our scientific, technological society. Thus, STFU and believe all you want In The Privacy Of Your Own Home And Church."
But PLEASE let them believe, in peace. As long as it's not in public.
Another way is to simply censor religious speech for being just as dangerous as racist speech. But I think it's not worth the human, social, monetary, etc. costs. (How many people will have read the second sentence here?)
Laughing them out of public appearance will force them to spend their own resources to publish their ideas, and there are only so many idiots who spend money on their religion... It might be a lot, but atheists could well do the same... That's one of very few projects I would happily volunteer on.
As for the threat level of religious/hate speech, there are examples enough
I challenge you to go read any Holy Book along with a key to mental diseases and not notice that the prophets were all just crazy people that were taken seriously, before our species found out what mental illnesses are. (I've got a personal anecdote about a guy that went crazy from heavy drug use and went back from the asylum talking just like Muhammad writes.)
The craziness of prophets explains several features of religions, too. Like the fact that their peaceful and merciful God is always an obvious sociopathic mass murderer. From this, also follows that people with completely opposite views (the respectful Muslim vs. Osama's gang) can find justification in their speech and writings... they're just not consistent, simply because they were written by madmen.
Look, go read up VALIS by Philip K. Dick sometime. The guy is schizophrenic, obviously so - and I've known schizophrenia enough to recognize it. Then read any book by Roger Zelazny, preferably one that he's written (parts of) while on LSD or recalling what it was like. Then open a Bible or Koran at any one page, it says something that it refutes somewhere else, and you'll see that the author was crazy. I'm not talking about the language, but the content. Why else do you think religions have always been so charitable and good, and at the same time sociopathic mass-murdering institutions where mental illnesses thrive?
Remember, all religions are fairytales about your imaginary friend that really hates you unless you worship him.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Look, suppose we found a way to stop the spread of AIDS by sex, but you could still get it by the blood. Would you dismiss it as useless? No? So, let's go dismantle all organized religions and see what it does to the violence level in the world. I'd happily bet my life that, by then, it will be lower than it would be with religions.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
It's still not a great article (Jonah Goldberg doesn't do a good job of distinguishing what he's quoting and what's his own commentary), but I was wrong; He does cite his sources.
http://outcampaign.org/
Okay, One more time...
1. Take a culture of bacteria in a Petri dish
2. Put an antibiotic in the middle
3. Watch them die and wither off the center of the dish
4. See them evolve to become resistant to the poison
Voilà, evolution proven.
Care to gimme another argument to destroy? Hungry troll here.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Humans can survive in a wide range of climates and environments due to our ability to use tools, but we can't survive anywhere, and without our tools, we are severely handicapped in terms of raw strength, speed and reproducibility. (Humans females have a pregnancy period of 9 months, which severely inhibits reproductive capacity.)
And why is the default position "get rid of it"?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So your proof of God's non existence hinges on a false premise that you set up for the purpose of disproving the existence of God, and upon a play on the semantics of the word 'universe'?
They have just as much to do with science as suicide bombings have to do with religion.
Maybe you've confused 'religion' with 'insanity'.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That's another debate altogether. I was replying to someone who claims that God has been disproven, which is nonsensical -- partly because religion is extremely talented at rewriting itself to be kinda-maybe-sorta possible.
You're absolutely right.
But here's a question: Can you call it Christianity if people aren't reading the Bible? Am I still a Jew if I work on Saturday?
If we were to put organized religion toe to toe against organized science, I kind of hope the science would stand on its own merits. Instead we've got asshats like the troll I was replying to, who would rather reduce it to an attempt to find the worst examples of each -- including things which are arguably outside the formal definition of whatever you are arguing against.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Wow, I'm as good as a theologian now! And I only invoke logic here, not "it's a Mystery that Man can Not Comprehend".
Go me.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Now there's a graceful exit...
Blech, didn't quite finished that. Meant to finish the "Can you call it Christianity" with "Can you call it Islam, or ANY of the major religions, if it asks people to kill themselves for it?"
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You obviously didn't read the entire second paragraph of my post. I'm not saying they are a threat (barring radicals, of course). I'm saying that they can conceivably be (Scientology as a whole seems pretty darned dangerous at times), and that if they were, then society as a whole would be justified in not letting them "be happy" with their beliefs. You asked "In case your wondering, the point is, if it makes them happy, they who are you to stop them?", which is a pretty absolute question that throws all notions of context out the window. Only thing I answered was a credible scenario under which I would be justified to stop them, I didn't say it was real or even likely.
Intelligent life-forms don't like their intelligence insulted.
And intelligent life-forms know how to use that tone, so that other life-forms, no matter how intelligent or not, have no excuse not to listen to the content.
Asperger's or not, you do have a goal here, right? I mean, beyond just ranting about how much you hate "primitive primates", you actually do want to change things, right?
Oh, and by the way: You didn't have much intelligent content, either.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That's one definition of God.
Another definition of God is the Universe, and the patterns that make up the Universe. Both of these exist and are observable. Therefore, God is a scientific fact.
Another definition of God is an omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent entity. Only two of these can be logically true. Therefore, God cannot exist.
Another definition of God is "that which created Man". Therefore, God exists as the physical laws and the pattern of natural selection.
Another definition of God is "what did all those miracles in the Bible." Therefore, God is a myth, and were he real, he'd be a bastard.
You cannot disprove God, because there is no consistent definition of God. Therefore, any such definition you adopt can be refuted simply by your target claiming not to believe in that definition, and instead, to believe in another -- very likely one that you can't refute.
In short, you, and everyone else, need to stop attacking the God issue as if it can be resolved logically, one way or another. Everyone has some arbitrary axioms, many of which they're not aware. This process will not convince anyone of anything they didn't already believe, except that you are an asshat.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Facts? Truth?! What is the truth that Galileo defended? What is the truth that this evil organization called the Catholic Church tried to hide from the world, the truth that poor, lonely Galileo had to stand for by himself, risking his career and his reputation? Well, let's see!
Is the sun truly stationary?
Is the Earth's orbit circular?
Is the moon NOT a cause of the tides?
Since these are wrong, can we now say that Galileo was a bad scientist, since the goal of "truth" wasn't achieved? Can we say that Galileo was willing to "trash scientific truth" in favor of his own scientific interpretation of evidence?
No, because Science is about evidence, not about "Truth". Truth is (in part) for philosophy, something that Galileo and many other scholars of his time weren't really good at, and something that they often confused with Science.
But the Earth DOES revolve around the sun, doesn't it? Yes, how heroic of this one man, what GUTS he had, to face the bad, tyrannical pope who would dare threaten to torture him, the best scientist in the world, the Father of Modern Science, just to cruelly abolish the obvious *glaring* TRUTH that the Earth revolved around the sun! How dare the pope put his horrid religion and his stupid assumptions above Galileo's clear-as-the-sun truth. How dare he!
...Except, Galileo wasn't the only one. You're so happy to point out that Copernicus never published his works until shortly before he died, apparently because he was afraid that Evil Church will get him (instead of, say, because he was afrad that his scholarly peers might reject such a revolutionary idea). But he DID publish it! And years later, a non-insignificant number of scholars were already heliocentrists, some of them part of the clergy. And the pope never persecuted them, though a few theologians wanted to. Hey, the Church isn't so anti-Science after all, huh?
Let me borrow a favorite phrase by atheists: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." For generations the most brilliant scholars of Europe were under the spell of Aristotle, and thought that the Earth was the center of the universe (among other incorrect things). Now, when the theory of heliocentrism was thought up, the only evidence for it was the clever mathematical interpretation of strange astronimical data. It was a solid theory, and explained the data beautifully, but it was not enough, because geocentrism was too ingrained in the scholars' minds. A good scientist would have waited for further evidence to convince geocentrists that they were wrong (e.g. the eventual discovery of other planets, the development of optics, astronomy, etc.), but Galileo wanted to brag about his perceived superiority. He was so fanatical about his belief that he was willing to challenge his religion on the basis of a clever (and, as we know, not completely correct) mathematical model. That is not good Science. That is just heresy.
Now, your claim that the Church was willing to "trash scientific truth" is misleading because, as I said, there is no such thing as a scientific truth. We only have what the scientists of the present have agreed upon, based on evidence, to be the most believable theory. Science is Occam's Razor applied to present data. Evidence will always accumulate, and it will sometimes be discredited, and it will sometimes change. But all in all, evidence is not "truth". What the Church was willing to do was to punish the irrational fanaticism bordering on heresy towards a strange (to them at the time) theory, which has been presented in such a disrespecful manner.
You call it an atrocity, yet any defensive act by an enemy will always be considered offensive. I'm not saying that there weren't harsh punishments done by corrupt authority figures during that time, or that the harsher punishments weren't atrocities, but what the heck wouldn't you call an atrocity, when you consider "house-arrest for fighting religion" to be an atrocity? You are unden
- Francis Ocoma
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"visit any police station late at night and hear the cries of prisoners decrying the foul persecution they are suffering because they did not do it guv' and it wos my mate wot hit him."
This comment is obviously written by somebody who lives in a country where they can think, say, and write pretty much anything. A Chinese or Iranian on the other hand (i.e. people living in precisely the sort of "saying the wrong thing is a crime" society you are advocating) might have a very different opinion of how justified some of those in police cells are of claiming they're being persecuted.
"Society has always stepped in to discourage activies which it deems antisocial"
I completely agree, because history has countless examples of just this sort of thing: Rome and the 18th century American South (to name but two of many) discouraged the antisocial act of not wanting to be a slave; mediaeval and renaissance Europe discouraged the antisocial act of not being a Catholic; Stalin's Russia discouraged the antisocial act of being someone Stalin had taken a dislike to, was suspicious of, or said the wrong thing where one of spies heard it; Pohl Pot discouraged the antisocial act of being able to read and write; etc., etc., etc.
"in many countries society even goes so far as to kill people who break its laws"
And this is OK, because we all know that every law in every country at every time must by definition be just (otherwise it wouldn't be a law), so anyone who breaks one deserves whatever punishment they get.
"As I said I'm not advocating putting anyone to death"
You're a really nice guy who only wants to imprison people for not agreeing with your definition of "the truth".
"I realise this will involve intervention in peoples lives and this is a regrettable but not by any means an unusual activity for a society to engage in to ensure it can run smoothly."
A sentiment that has been expressed in uncannily similar terms by Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and many other influential historical figures.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
What you haven't done is presented any argument as to what is wrong with beginning to phase out religous institutions. I've said they serve no purpose and on balance get in the way of rational society and nothing you've said has convinced me otherwise.
Personally I don't think religion is dangerous. Far from it. However, some religious people are undoubtedly dangerous. Plenty of non-religious people are equally dangerous.
I think condemnation of religion is prosecuting a perceived cause, and wholly failing to get to the actual root problem. In my opinion, the root cause of violence is always socio-economic. Sometimes religion is a convenient pretext to move the masses in your direction. Sometimes race or tribal groups proves more advantageous. Look at Kenya, Sudan, and Rwanda.
I also think that heckling (what you seem to propose) is a dangerous way of discrediting others. It's disrespectful and intolerant, and therefore prone to backfire. Virulent speeches might have good recruiting power, but public condemnation of others is only effective when it is reinforced daily by friends, not some when applied sporadically by some anonymous nut job in a crowd. The only way anyone's mind really gets changed is through civil discourse.
Yes, there is danger in religious literalism, but the answer isn't banning religion, it's recognizing the social and historical framework in which religious works were written. Look, I can quote Shakespeare and Dostoevsky to fuel anti-Zionist sentiment just as easily as the Koran. If someone chooses to believe that their book is inspired by god, who am I to disagree? It's when people claim that their (translated) book is the absolute, unalterable, and uninterpreted word of god that I get a little uneasy. Literature, any literature, contains nuance and if taken in a vacuum it will lead to conclusions not intended by the author.
Muhammad condemned the infidels, and on its face that may seem damning. However, taken in context, he was actually condemning a very specific group of tribal Arab polytheists who had waged war specifically against him. The Old Testament is full of fire and brimstone. The Hebrews were a conquering band, and their religious writings reflect that reality. The danger arises when one separates a verse from context and history and applies it generally.
Fundamentally, religion is a mystical experience. The mystics of any tradition almost universally tend to be non-violent. The people we need to watch out for are not the people who attempt to bring themselves closer to god, but rather the proselytizers who believe that their own world view should be thrust upon their neighbors. It matters not whether these proselytizers are Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or Atheist. When someone tells me that their beliefs are the only right ones, I take pause.
My point was not that Scalzone oughtn't be allowed to visit universities, quite the opposite. Invite both and ask the Pope about Galileo if that is an issue for you. It's not the first time the Pope had to clarify his position (backpedal?), it happened with phrases about Islam.
As for Prodi, the university is public. He or the minister of instruction are entitled to take the matter into their own hands and override the professors. He deplores, not censors. Of course he does NOT do it because he feels responsibility towards the guys who elected him and whose taxes pay professors, students - and the Pope's organization too (in a kind of an opt-out scheme). He did it because this is the perfect topic for pointless debate that takes up valuable space in the media. Better discuss this than the situation of Naples, or the rising debt at family level, or the reason why Prodi and Berlusconi are enemies that do not fight each other, simply milking different sectors of society when they get to power.
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Actually, his books are pretty thoughtful and well-reasoned - TGD spends a lot of time on the subject of reason and rationality and I only really think it slips when he gets into the religion body-count game. He does have a rep for saying inflammatory things in interviews, but a lot of the time it looks to me like he's just sick of being asked the same questions over and over. He also has the problem that so many scientists do - he can't give a short answer, and his long, detailed answers don't make good soundbites.
A few of the other New Athiests (which are actually the same athiests as always, they're just speaking aloud now) also have reputations for inflammation, simply because they disagree with the "well, you can be an athiest, as long as you don't talk about it" attitude that's pervaded the culture for a while. And when you have ex-presidents telling you that you're not a real citizen, or others accusing you of being by default amoral and hedonistic, well...it's easy to see why they're angry.
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"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
IT takes a 2/3rds majority of the senate or states to open an amendment to be considered. It then takes 3/4ths to make is part of the constitution. That is what is mean by 3/4 after that to ratify it.
Changes can be made to the constitution. IT is the amendment process. We have changed how senators get selected in the past so it is something we have tried and tested. But your point is along the same lines as my point, it is ridiculous to fear one president or politician because of the first few commandments they might believe in because it doesn't work that way. They (any minority) cannot change the constitution on a whim. That is why congress makes and changes laws.
"Yeah. We (atheists) are right. And they (religions) are wrong."
I hope you realise that this is exactly the same thing members of one religion have said about other religions for millennia. All religions claim that their world view is the one and only real truth, so everyone else must by definition be wrong.
"If they had to respond to the sword with their prayers, who'd have the survival advantage? Religion is a bad tool."
I suggest you read about the religions of the Norse, Incas and Aztecs, Greco-Romans, Celts, ancient Jews in the Old Testament, Shintoists, Sikhs, and the life of Mohammed before claiming that followers of "religion" meet swords with prayers.
"I'm NOT advocating a religious war. I don't want anyone killed over that AGAIN."
How could there be such a thing if followers of "religion" are a bunch of pacifists whose response to being attacked is prayer?
"I want religions to disappear, displaced by science."
Most religions want theirs to be the only one, because they know all the others are wrong. What this says about some atheists is left as an exercise for any who haven't become too bored by this thread to have stopped reading long ago.
"Teach all children the self-evident scientific method, the origins of the world, give them answers to the Eternal Questions, and all religions will disappear in under a century."
Because as any fool knows, everybody always thinks and acts in exactly the way their teachers tell them to while at school, and thereafter.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Maybe I should ask why you think they are the same.
I think they are different because I have actually read the bible. A lot of the stuff used to justify those historic actions simple weren't in there. And this leads me to believe that it is more of a use of religion then anything inherent in it. Imagine that you have 2000 troops at your side, they are beaten and broken from a battle and you have to convince them to fit again tomorrow. Do you tell them how greatly they fought and died for you or how great their actions where and how they pleased GOD. You would be a pretty popular figure if your troops were happy to die for you. But in case you aren't that tall, just tell them they are dieing for GOD and convince them that their death will be rewarded in the afterlife because you are right in your cause.
Now years later, we have some historian telling us that the Crusades were about pushing religion more then capturing trade routes and punishing those that tamper with them. Year later, we have historians telling us that the inquisition which was more about exerting power and making people to afraid not to listen to authority, was actually about purifying religion. Years later, we have people telling us that lots of things are done in the name of god as if god willed it when the association is merely coincidental or a tool for support.
But you see, religion isn't the exect opposite, you have a set of things that happened that makes sense and it is explained to. Not on the level of science but to a logical conclusion, "the glass fell off the table because pulled the paper out from under it." Seems logical to me. Now when you get into specifics, it doesn't matter if you tell me it was because the friction pulled the glass to the point a mystical force called gravity took over and cause the glass to plummet to the floor, it still happened because I did something. IT isn't all that wild to think a God couldn't do something either.
Similarly, we goto doctors because we have faith that they know more about the illnesses then we do. You don't goto the doctor and quiz him over first year medical questions to see if he is competent, we have a process that says they should be but in all, we are taking their word at it. They could be very well killing us or our children with that pill and we just believe by faith that the science behind it and everything else in place wouldn't allow that to happen.
But you see, It is all the same to the laymen. You don't believe the bible says Hate all black people, look it up. Surprise, it doesn't say that in any ways that a rational person could find. So it is the same to some regard, you say I should be able to look up science and validate it, And I say anyone can look up scripture to validate it. On the level of comprehension and understanding with the average person, they are about equal in the idea that one is better then the other.
I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the individual who has to take faith in order to believe in either. This is inherently different then religion in and of itself. The person who believes one way or another has faith that what they are believing in is correct. To that person, if they are like the majority of people, it is the same with science.
A Spook In The Sky that Wills the World? That's as illogical as it gets!
I never said existence had to be logical. You can't know the world beyond your own senses (no one can). Who are you to say what's really going on in it? We logically interpret inputs, yes. Logically, since I have no goddamn clue what's happening beyond my senses, I do *not* claim to know for certain what's going on (which you seem to find it really easy to do). Science interprets that which we can observe... and only that. What is to say there isn't something else that cannot be observed through scientific means? Logically, if one thing exists, that which can be observed through scientific means, its only logical to assume the possibility of that which cannot be observed through scientific means. Logically, one must assume that if in existence, there exists that which obeys logic, one must assume the possibility of that which does not obey logic.
Wrong. They appeared because of the way our brains are organized. Marvin Minsky (a principal founder of Al) and Michael Gazzaniga (one of the major workers in split-brain research) have independently come to a virtually identical model of the mind. Both view minds as vast collections of interacting, largely parallel (co-conscious) modules, or "agents." The lowest level of such a society of agents consists of a small number of nerve cells that innervate a section of muscle. A few of the higher level modules have been isolated in clever experiments by Gazzaniga, some of them on split-brain patients. One surprise from this work is that we seem to have our mental modules arranged in a way that guarantees we will form beliefs. What we believe in depends, at least in part, on what we are exposed to and the order in which we are exposed. Gazzaniga argues that we slowly evolved the ability to form beliefs because the ability provides a major advantage in surviving. Being able to infer, that is to form new beliefs, and to learn, in the sense of acquiring such beliefs from others, was a major advance over learning by trial and error. Being able to pass the rare new ways our ancestors found for chipping rock or making pots from person to person and generation to generation was vital in allowing humans to spread over the earth. But as this ability became the norm, communicating human minds formed a new "primal soup" in which a new kind of non-biological evolution, that of replicating information patterns or memes, could get started. A wide variety of competing memes has evolved in the intervening seventy thousand years or so. It should not be surprising that the survivors of this process, like astrology or religions, are so effective at inducing their hosts to spread and defend them.
I did not read one thing in there to support the last sentence. Sorry. At least assuming no extra text was left out, they're referring to 'beliefs' in the most general form possible (ie, the belief that chipping rocks and using the sharper pieces to kill animals is more efficient than using dull rocks). Nothing there gives the advantage of 'making up' religion. its only in things experienced that beliefs are created. did someone experience god? i dunno. i wasn't there. neither were you.
What ... no. Science explores and explains the world by the scientific method. Religion is a delusion-inducing disease. They're "competing ideas" in the memetic sense, but one systematically explores reality, and the other is a dangerous delusion about an imaginary friend that really hates you unless you worship it.
Stop comparing apples and oranges. I'm not trying to justify one specific religion. Until you target your arguments away from a specific religion, i do not see any intellectual result coming from this exchange. If you actually focus on only the notion of religion,
As for Prodi, the university is public. He or the minister of instruction are entitled to take the matter into their own hands and override the professors. Indubitably! That is the reason that I said the professor's comments, even coupled with any number of shirtless radicals, cannot be called "censorship" -- they have no power to enforce their wishes, or impose their opinions in any way on anybody who chooses not to do what they request. The message by Stephen Samuels called Cini's actions "suppression," and called them "censorship" three times. My argument is with that "drama queen" description of a statement of protest. Of course, you're right, too, from what I can see here, across the pond. Of course he does NOT do it because he feels responsibility towards the guys who elected him and whose taxes pay professors, students - and the Pope's organization too (in a kind of an opt-out scheme). He did it because this is the perfect topic for pointless debate that takes up valuable space in the media. Better discuss this than the situation of Naples, or the rising debt at family level, or the reason why Prodi and Berlusconi are enemies that do not fight each other, simply milking different sectors of society when they get to power. Yes, playing the martyr gets these clowns much more mileage with their supporters than bothering to take any real risk for anything they claim to believe. I read Cini's statement on the Pope's cancellation to mean essentially the same thing you just said, albeit less clearly, cluttered by a prediction of the future and sarcastic use of a phrase that IMO should only be used when giving a genuine compliment -- especially from a college professor! Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.' If the Pope does turn around and use this as "a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue," I wouldn't consider that evidence that he is "very intelligent." Playing the martyr is such a crude gimmick, a chimpanzee could do it in sign language. They are more intelligent than many other animals, but for a human to call that "very intelligent" is sorta stoopid.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Imagine the world, where anyone, talking about God, is treated just as if talking about their imaginary, bright, blue, fuzzy friend, that's invisible, to those who don't believe.
Happy sunny future.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
You're absolutely right. But religions are a threat to rational thought all by themselves, and some actually insist on poverty. Or the religious leaders blind the people so much that they become dirt-poor without even comprehending what happened.
I'm not qualified for civil public discourse. What I can do is attract attention on points I think important. (There are almost 140 replies to my first comment on this story, I think that's successsful by /. standards.) My point here was that it's not important if the religious speakers are not convinced - if they talk in public about their religion or religiousness, let's laugh them out of view. It will teach all watchers that, there exists the opinion, that religion is all bullshit, and, that some people hold it, and speak it up. It's not to convince the speaker, he's lost already. But as you judiciously point out, that tactic has good recruiting power. Is recruiting several active atheists worth to ridicule a religious person? Your answer to this question determines your answer to the existence of religious memes. You think doing nothing, or at least not ridiculing the religious, is better than doing so. I understand your point of view. And I think you can understand mine, that it's too important an issue to let the comfort of the proselytizing delusional infect more people. I'd rather have them active atheists then, so they're better equipped to live long and prosper, and, optionally, spread atheist memes.
If there really is a "religion zone" in the brain (gross oversimplification, yeah, blah), then it's better filled by atheism. That's the idea. And I really think that laughing religion out of sight is a very, very gentle way to do away with it. After all they did to the "witches"? Do you know how many little girls are still excised every year in the name of tradition or religion or "the spirit wills it so"? (I've used a Think Of The Children? Oh My Gawd.)
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
let me be more clear. i am not saying that Average Joe doesn't just take waht people tell him on faith, be it science or religion. what i am saying is that religion is not rational. it does not follow an observable pattern. your faith in religion is pure faith. your faith in science is statistical in nature. i do not simply "believe" that vaccine will keep my from getting sick. sure that's what i do on the surface, but there is a huge amount of evidence to SHOW that. i don't even have to see the evidence. i just have to understand the vigorous methodology used to produce it to know that the vaccine will work. you don't belive in god because you have been shown. you believe in god because it feels right, brings meaning to your life, or any other reasons that are completely internal. and there is nothing inherantly BAD or wrong. love fits into the same category. it's a comepletly different animal. so why on earth would you try to treat them the same? it does a disservice to both.
now don't get me wrong, i AM a scientist to the core. but i don't think for a minute that the people in question cared much about science OR religion as evidenced by these actions. i think they both have an agenda. the pope doesn't think science is crap and god put fossils there to test your faith. the professors don't think that the pope is out to get them. well, they probably don't. but you better believe that science and religion are at odds. they have the same customer base. science takes money. so does religion. to get money you have to have public support. science has produced data that education makes people more likely to turn away from religion. if you can muster up the faith to accept that the idea may have some validity, you have to understand that it would be in the church's best interests to portray science as anti-religion.
although i agree with your statement that science really has nothing to say about religion, nor should it, science as a system it is based on some critical thinking and rational thought processes that can be gained only through education. since statistically, education DOES keep people away from the church, it is natural for the church to think of science as an enemy.
of COURSE it's about power. thats the idea. it ISN'T about the validity of the statements, or the truth behind them. and THAT is where i think the folly lies. it should be.
"You've certainly managed to pick some negative examples of what can happen"
My examples were of things that _have_ happened, not what might happen.
"Yes some laws are bad laws but there are also an awful lot of laws which aren't."
This does not alter the fact that there have been (and still are in many countries) large numbers of laws which we would describe as instruments of oppression, while those who made and enforced them regarded them as being necessary for (to use your term) "the smooth running" of their society. Spartacus (who was a real historical person) for example is always a hero in modern Western versions of the story, but Romans saw things very differently indeed, so they regarded crucifying him and thousands of followers along the Appian Way as a perfectly reasonable punishment for people who had committed the worst possible crime, i.e. a form of treason that threatened to completely destroy the economic and social model that not only Rome, but just about every ancient civilisation was based on.
"What you haven't done is presented any argument as to what is wrong with beginning to phase out religous institutions."
That's because I'd be extremely happy indeed to see them and other superstitions (e.g. astrology) disappear entirely. I'm not arguing in favour of religion, but against totalitarians like yourself who think that their definition of "the truth" should be forced on everyone because it's "obviously" the correct one. This is exactly the same line of thought that led to things like the Spanish Inquisition (which of course nobody ever expects...), regular pogroms against Jews (who everyone in mediaeval Europe knew were baby-eating Jesus-killing diabolists who'd caused the Black Death by deliberately poisoning wells), witches, Cathars, Protestants, Catholics, anyone who wasn't a Calvanist, communists, socialists, homosexuals, pagans, Sikhs, and a vast list of others whose "crime" was having "the wrong" ideas (or in many cases, simply being accused of it, or knowing somebody who'd been accused of it).
"I've said they serve no purpose and on balance get in the way of rational society and nothing you've said has convinced me otherwise."
Because you're a dogmatist who automatically assumes that everyone with a contrary position to one or more of your ideas must by definition be a representative of "the other side", because all your ideas are so obviously correct that only a complete infidel could possibly find anything wrong with any of them. One excellent example of this dogmatism in action is your definition of "rational society", which is one that somehow manages to have laws against not agreeing with official definitions of the truth, but is supposedly different from various repressive theocracies, who also have the notable characteristic of making it illegal to disagree with their official definition of "the truth".
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
As a poster on /. you should know that any additional unneeded overhead is a waste of time and resources. Cleaning up the old messy legacy code is always a good idea and makes it mauch easier to implement future enhancements.
"Imagine the world, where anyone, talking about God, is treated just as if talking about their imaginary, bright, blue, fuzzy friend, that's invisible, to those who don't believe.
Happy sunny future."
People who believe one thing have been treating those who believe something different like that for millennia.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
"You cannot disprove God, because there is no consistent definition of God. Therefore, God does not exist."
Will you redefine "existence" now? You can't call all those definitions of God by the same name. Something that can't even be defined can't be existing -or else, it's a "Mystery That Man Can Not Comprehend", and those have no influence whatsoever on the Universe we exist in, the one that we're explaining using Science.
And, please. Smartasshat.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
I had thought about the issue of scientific validity vs just validity, but then I couldn't think of any other framework for evaluating the validity of an idea. I'd be genuinely interested in hearing about alternative methods for making objective and/or reasoned assessments, or an argument in favor of a non-objective method. Also, religions are typically the ones making the extraordinary claims, which leaves them with the burden of proof. This is part of why I referred to it as fiction, though 'inspired by actual events' may be a slightly fairer characterization.
Fair enough. I guess my point was simply that science reveals its inner workings (not the usual "everyone knows that's true"), as opposed to religion which I see as very intolerant of inspection and criticism. But, for your review, here are the principles I was thinking of
These points seem so simple and straightforward that I'm unable to imagine a rational thought process that *isn't* based on them. The closest thing religions have to an equivalent tenet that I'm aware of is 'it says so here in this book'.
Re: science not being monolithic -- I'll certainly grant you that; however I think this is a major strength of science. Virtually every idea as at least one detractor. Everything from the wildest new theory the fundamental tenets are constantly being reassessed. This ensures that nothing is being overlooked or taken for granted. Incidentally, it really irritates me when I see people such as the creationists claiming that the handful of dissenting scientists either proves their side (while ignoring the opinion of the other 95%) or shows that science doesn't know what it's talking about and should be summarily dismissed. Certainly no idea can be proven as absolute fact, because the number of test cases is infinite. However, this doesn't make it any less irrational to treat well-researched science as if it were random speculation.
Clearly we don't all go out and independently verify every finding we're told. However, I don't think this is the same as taking it on faith. I think we come to trust science because we're surrounded by results which match the predictions of scientific theories. I can't see how something similar could happen with religion because I'm not aware of any religions making testable predictions. Also, maybe you could elaborate on your reference to non-scientific evidence. Maybe this ties into your statement that your religion doesn't expect you to believe
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
There is evidence that the god of the ancient jewish people was at first only the husband of the dominant deity, which was later displaced and eventually banned.
Also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Why should you believe in that god and not in another? There is as much faith in their believers as there is in your peers and as much proof of the existence of any of them (none).
You can't take the sky from me...
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Well, I think limiting "science" to "analysis" is both A) part of a larger cultural trend and B) a philosophical and cognitive dead end.
For the past who-knows-how-long, literary study has been dominated by "analysis" via deconstruction. Deconstructing literature (or sculpture, or Allman Brothers lyrics, or published military doctrine) is a phenomenally valuable tool. But it's a tool. It's not the desired end state. It's funny because as part of a larger cultural trend deconstruction is not too different from the current views in science and engineering fields, yet scientists and engineers still talk down to literary critics.
I think where it's most obvious is in a lack of imagination in our scientific and political discourse...I think it's led to some seriously bad juju in the past, oh, 6 years, notably the failure of the American intelligence community to react against the demands of the executive branch in preparing to go to war. Check out this talk on the subject. The author points out how the way we discuss, think about, and model groups is inadequate, and draws heavily upon bioinformatics--wherein synthesis is at least as important as analysis, if not more.
Bodnar says to his students, "What do you call half a fruit fly? Dead!" I think the same applies to the way people try to analyze the world today. Synthesis is not a "tool for analysis," it's half of a loop (with analysis comprising the other half) that we use to build knowledge.
What I was referring to is the fact that most everyone -- including you -- is "indoctrinated" into the idea that if they harm others, they will be punished. That is not remotely the same as saying that the only reason to not harm others is to avoid punishment. Though since people like that do exist, I can see why someone made up an invisible watcher You have absoultely no evidence he was "made up." There is plenty of evidence of the progression of the myth, from polytheistic origins towards simplification of the pantheon on to assimilation of competing gods and their attributes and eventually leading to monotheism. Actually, no, there's not. People have tried to make that case, but it is extremely weak, especially since the records of the monotheistic Jewish God go back as far as our records of polytheism. It's only by begging the question, ignoring and re-interpreting evidence that doesn't fit the hypothesis, that you can arrive at this conclusion. There is evidence that the god of the ancient jewish people was at first only the husband of the dominant deity, which was later displaced and eventually banned. No, in fact, there is no evidence of this at all. It's a common view among anti-religious folks, but it's a made-up theory with no serious evidence behind it whatsoever. Also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. First, you are using the wrong word. You mean "evidence," not "proof."
Second, your use of the word "require" implies something that is literally impossible: that there is some objective standard by which my claims must be measured in order for them to be valid. That is logically not possible, because no such objective standards can possibly exist.
Perhaps what you meant to say is, that you won't believe my claims without providing strong evidence to convince you. That's a given. But as I am not trying to convince anyone that my religious beliefs are true, it is irrelevant. For example, I am not saying "the Bible is true and you have to accept it." I am merely saying "the Bible is true, in my opinion." That is perfectly legitimate, period.
On the other hand, you seem to be saying "it is invalid for you to believe something that isn't proven," which is utter nonsense. Why should you believe in that god and not in another? Another poorly worded question. Perhaps you mean, why I do I believe in this theology, and not another?
Simply, because I am convinced this is correct theology. I could explain the many reasons why, but I don't think you'd care, and I don't have the time. There is as much faith in their believers as there is in your peers and as much proof of the existence of any of them (none). Again, you are misusing the word "proof." Strictly speaking, yes, there's no proof. But evidence? There's quite a bit. None of it amounts to proof, of course, but then, there's no evidence that comes close to disproving any of it, either.
Similarly, there is no "proof" that you are more than a brain in a jar imagining this entire universe. Literally, none.
I haven't forgotten the original point, the one you obviously missed. The OP claimed that "religion is generally useful to control people". Bearing in mind that he had a lot of trouble separating Religion and Christianity, I felt that I should point out that Christianity was created by a dissident. Whatever ruthless rulers decided to adopt it, pervert it, and use it to their own ends, it doesn't change the fact that Christianity and its creator shook up established principles. Your point seems to be that because some rouge ruler was Christian (as if Christianity is the only potential tool for taking and maintaining power), Christianity is bad. You're worse than the RIAA trying to shut down P2P networks. At least the P2P are currently being used to break the law on a large scale.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The "soft" sciences (psychology, economics, etc.) have a hard time with your first principle. (We don't like to test things that, if true, make people suffer.) Which may be why they aren't nearly as predictive as we'd like them to be.
Mathematics doesn't really seem to work that way at all. (I have an M.S. in math.) A theorem in math isn't anything like a theory in physics, as far as "proof" goes. Testing something in math isn't the same, either. Clearly we don't all go out and independently verify every finding we're told. However, I don't think this is the same as taking it on faith. I think we come to trust science because we're surrounded by results which match the predictions of scientific theories. I can't see how something similar could happen with religion because I'm not aware of any religions making testable predictions. Also, maybe you could elaborate on your reference to non-scientific evidence. Maybe this ties into your statement that your religion doesn't expect you to believe simply because they said so. I think the biggest reason why the evidence I have can't be considered scientific or legal evidence, is that it's pretty non-transferable. Unmistakable feelings, "coincidences" beyond coincidence, lifestyle direction that really does make me happier, predictions that are always accurate but too personal to share, things like that. So, the evidence is real, just not very shareable.
Now, you don't know me, so I'm not really a very credible source. Even if you DID know me, it still wouldn't matter, you'd still have to find out for yourself, doing your own "experiments."
How do you find out? Some examples: (the second one relates to your concern that not all religions can be right.)
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/alma/32 (starting with verse 26)
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/js_h/1 (how Joseph Smith "experimented")
Do You Know?
Ye May Know.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
What is painfully ironic here is that you reject this history on the basis of a supposed (but erroneous) complete lack of evidence, but you reject the idea of questioning your theology for lack of evidence.
You've begun to contradict yourself quite a bit
You can't take the sky from me...
Your other point, that what he might say presently or in the future might be independent of what he has said in the past, allows for a "change of heart" [or of mind, assuming existence of such] and, aside from falsely portraying him as underdog, is well said.
I support the right of Cini and his cohorts to say that they dislike the invitation to the Pope. Beyond that, matters of State vs. Individual & University Ownership of Property become involved and add too uninteresting complexity for me, a United States citizen, to comment more.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Cini expressed dislike of his university's choice to invite somebody to be their guest, which means, to receive their money, for nothing but speaking. What is "intolerant" about saying "I dislike the Pope, and do not like that my employer invited him"? If he had said the same thing about expenditure of university $ on a particular flavor of Gelato [essentially, "ice cream" to the North Americans], we would be discussing only the absurdity of wasting university $ on Gelato, not on Cini's dislike of a particular flavor.
All categorization of Cini's comments as "censorship" relies on application of a double standard to The Pope. If he were anybody else, any faculty member would be welcome to declare that, for professional reasons, they disagree with the invitation.
Expressing disapproval is not the same as censorship. Censorship is prohibition of unapproved speech, by force. To classify unenforced disagreement of any statement, or of any speaker [and/or their previous statements] as censorship is an error, and ominously close to censorship of all disagreeement with that statement or entity. That is double-plus-ungood.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
As a poster on Slashdot, I can understand your instinct to see the human mind as a machine, and treat it as such.
Alright, if religion is messy and legacy, what about love? Jealousy? Is there a logical reason to, for example, insist that a life partner not sleep with anyone else? Wouldn't you be happier if that, say, wasn't a concern for you at all?
These are not all rhetorical questions -- different people will have different answers. But that is the real point here -- you're going to have to make a better case than that it's old and useless, by your own arbitrary measure of usefulness.
(And yes, you could get rid of both love and jealousy, and the world would be just fine. It would look very different, though, and somewhat more depressing -- to me. But I'm a romantic.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It's not that it can't be defined, it's that there are multiple definitions.
Try Love, for a start. Or Pornography. Do they exist?
You're assuming that things which cannot be explained using Science, or cannot be comprehended by Man, have no influence on the Universe we exist in.
Actually, there are a few things which cannot yet be comprehended by Man -- for instance, how to predict where an electron will be and how fast it is moving. Yet these things do influence the Universe we exist in -- obviously, that electron is somewhere, right?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Pornography, dead easy to define : depictions of sex acts in close-up. Did anyone ever have a problem defining that? Oh, yes, I know where that question comes from. And "many definitions" - bullshit. Pr0n is "people fucking". But then, I don't see the problem with pr0n in the first place, since people offended by depictions of sex acts are the sick ones; puritanism is a clinical symptom of neurosis.
If something can't be measured, it does not exist. Yes, we can measure electrons. We know they exist. Our science predicts they exist, and measured results are consistent with electrons existing. Thus, they exist. The measurements say so. Else, the theory would be inconsistent. Right?
So, the electron exists. Somewhere between there and there, between this and that speed. The precise place and speed of that one electron are unimportant for the Universe, though. And it matters not much for us, until we try to measure it...
What importance does that have? My point was and is : 1/ "It's A Mystery That Man Can Not Comprehend" is an fallacious argument that religious people use when they're out of ideas for explaining away their inconsistencies and 2/ We measure things by the influence they have on our world, when we can't measure them directly. If they have no influence whatsoever, they don't exist, otherwise they'd skew the results of our experiences and we'd have to account for them in our theories.
Now get that through your head. I suppose I'll have to explain again that "If it can't be measured by its effects, it does not exist".
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
You may be right, but religions certainly don't have a monopoly on that particular threat. I think it is a basic survival skill. Since humans are social animals it occasionally behooves us to not question authority. In prehistory, and still today in many parts of the world having too rational a mind can get you killed. Now, that's certainly not something we should try to exploit when building future civilizations, but it is a fundamental and unalterable portion of human nature.
My point is that even the staunchest atheist yelling about how reason trumps all else can still get swept up in ultra-nationalistic fervor - against all reason. We are simply not programmed to examine every choice with a critical mind, and even if a few individuals are able to rise to that standard the vast majority of humanity never will. Even if all religion is eliminated, people will still be swayed by irrational rhetoric that seeks to group and separate people. The goal of a secularist shouldn't be to eliminate religion, it should be to eliminate the us vs. them attitude that all large scale violence is contingent upon. Here's why your views make me uneasy, they promote that mentality. In my opinion your views, carried to their logical conclusion wouldn't do anything to quell violence in the long term, they would simply substitute groups of atheists chanting anti-religious slogans for Islamists chanting anti-western slogans.
On the subject of heckling, I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, at least in part. The reason that any movement is successful is that, at least in its founding stages, it gathers in private where the members participation reinforces the speakers message. If a heckler disrupts a private gathering he will be asked (or forced) to leave. During these private gatherings the virulent speeches and the congregation's tacit acceptance has phenomenal recruiting power. It goes back to what I said earlier about how humans, as social animals, have a great ability to turn off all reason. A successful group will not endanger itself by staging poorly planned public events where hecklers can disrupt the message. These groups gain members not by massive public demonstrations, but rather by individual private recruiting. Even if a group does hold public gathering, hecklers will tend to increase the us vs. them mentality, and thus the groups solidarity, and may even win the group more recruits.
As an aside, heckling may be successful against poorly planned or executed gatherings like the KKK's of late, but it could never be successful against a better organized group. Heckling isn't what caused the KKK's membership to plummet from it's heyday, it was changing social views. That is precisely why secularists shouldn't seek to create their own group to do battle with the religious groups. Secularists should seek to change the game, reject us vs. themism, and soften the borders. To the extent that secularism has been successful it has been because it is a movement, not a group. There is no reason someone can't be both a secularist and religious. In fact, those people are secularisms greatest strength. Their creed is tolerance, not some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo like Christianity or Atheism.
Science will never "defeat" religion, and it shouldn't seek to. Science is fundamentally unable to answer the metaphysical questions that religion seeks to address. It shouldn't matter what conclusions your metaphysical views cause you to draw, whether nihilistic or messianic, so long as you are tolerant of others.
Basic affection? Really?
So we love cute kids, even kids who aren't our own, because we want to have sex with them? What about our parents? Grandparents?
Except when it's not close-up, or does not involve actual sex acts. What's softcore pornography? Is a simple striptease pornography?
Or, except when it's somehow considered art, or of historical importance. Is the Kama Sutra pornography? What about those little Taoist books?
It gets worse when we start talking about literature. At what point is a sex scene considered pornographic or obscene? Even movies can make this difficult -- if no body parts are shown, but the camera is kept close to their faces, or to one of their backs, is this pornography?
I happen to think obscenity is something we humans invented, but that does not make it less real -- it absolutely does have a measurable effect on the world.
I didn't say there was. Just that it's not as easy to define.
In that context, it's not valid, certainly. This is used to explain away sticky problems like how free will and most definitions of Heaven (and God) are incompatible. "How can you hope to know the mind of God" is not a valid response to someone who is attempting to disprove that there IS a mind of God.
But you have not provided a valid rebuttal to the concept in general. And you've certainly proven my point about multiple definitions.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
No indication that the other gods are false, in fact, he wouldn't be jealous if they there was no competition.
Deuteronomy 7:4
for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
Exodus 34:14
Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
You were seeing clear implications?
Judges 3:5-8
The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 6 They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.
7 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD; they forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. 8 The anger of the LORD burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, [b] to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.
Judges 6:7-10
When the Israelites cried to the LORD because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, 'I am the LORD your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not listened to me."
still talking about them as other gods, not false gods. In fact, if you jump to the new testament, there's even toned-down language to show that there are other beings at the level of that god...
2 Peter 2
Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings; 11yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord.
Calling these celestial beings "nonexistent" is slander in the eyes of your lord, you know.
You can't take the sky from me...
First, there are many mentions that there is only one God, and that others are false. I already gave you some (despite your incorrect claim that none exist). And all other statements must be taken in that context.
Second, your claim that God would not be jealous if they did not exist is nonsense. God is jealous of the time and attention that people give to these false gods, whether they exist or not. Almost your entire post is based on that one illogical assumption, that God can only be jealous if those other gods exist.
Finally, as to 2 Peter 2:10-11, why do you assume "celestial beings" refers to "other gods"? The word "doxas" can refer to any of a number of things, including angels, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God the Father, and even of Christians who have died. I don't know which it is referring to here, but to assume it means "other gods" is clearly unwarranted by the text or by other existing usage (indeed, looking through the majority of uses in ancient Greek literature via the Bauer's lexicon on my shelf, I cannot find a single example that refers specifically or contextually to "other gods").
What's clear is that you are not very knowledgable about this topic, and that you are cherry-picking examples, and reading into them, to fit your preconceptions.
There is no way this refers to mortals or angels. Angels are ranked between men and celestials in this hierarchy. you are cherry-picking examples, and reading into them, to fit your preconceptions. "And all other statements must be taken in that context."
Take the fucking beam out of your eye before telling me there's a speck in mine, hypocrite.
You're the one with the preconception, I'm just reading the bible for what it is. You told me that when other gods are mentioned, there are clear indications that they are false gods. I quoted you a whole bunch of examples right from the source where that simply isn't the case. You gave me deuteronomy 4, where there are sporadic indications that the other gods aren't real, but the examples given as reasons to believe in that other god are laughable: Pyrotechnics, assassinations and acoustics. "Ohhhh, a voice came out of the fire, it must be the creator of the entire universe and all life!!!"
"Ohhh, all the people who didn't obey Moses died, it must be an act of god! Not poison, nah, couldn't be poison, gotta be a god what gone an' done it."
You're taking a retcon (retroactive monotheism) and making it apply indiscriminately to all inconsistent statements by warping the meaning of "other gods" to "false gods".
Seriously, it says "other", you tell me it says "false". WTF is wrong with you? No wait, I know very precisely what is wrong with you: You're acting out of bad faith.
You can't take the sky from me...
You're playing the idiot. It's not the same feeling at all. We love cute kids because it's a survival trait of our species, caring for them so that they can replicate when our time is past. We love our parents... Not all of us do, to play stupid like you do. (I love my parents, but I know enough people who really, deeply hate them.)
No close-up insertions = not pr0n, definition over. (Close-up means "you're clearly seeing stick A in slot B for a while") Softcore porn is porn that does not dare to be hardcore, it's an oxymoron. Striptease is not porn at all, unless followed by clear views of sex.
:-)
When it's considered art? Why, they're exclusive of each other? Marc Docel does "unusual" things with his use of lighting, and directs porn movies that have stories and background -not that much, as sex scenes still take 75% of running time- however, it is porn.
Historical facts? I won't complain if I get to see Messaline getting shagged in a movie, if that one ever gets made, but it's not as if it's necessary to show the actress's cunt getting fucked a hundred times just to prove a point. Is Caligula porn? Some parts are bolted-on sex scenes, but they're part of the story...
The Kama Sutra? There is only one chapter that's about sex technique. *I* have read it cover to cover; it's a book about how to live your life in the time between Studies and Spirituality, in the way that a given society was expecting at a time (and numerous parts are valid for anyone and anywhere). It has evolved over the centuries. It's an historical documentary, in that sense. Of course they talk about the lingam going in-and-out of the yoni! But... I can't remember one sex *scene* in the whole book. It's "when you kiss, do this and that with your tongue", not "I see her lips parting to meet mine, her breath quickens, then with my hands on her ass I" --you get the point.
As for the Taoist books, I recall those old japanese artbooks with paintings of people clearly having sex. So that is porn, and art. They're so not exclusive. (Btw, I find those paintings esthetically ugly. I can see the harmony and understand the art, but it's not pleasing to my taste.)
About literature, it depends, again. There can be porn parts in a non-porn book... Okay, I have it : when the focus of the book is directly related to sex, it's pr0n. (This calls for further argumentation, but let's leave the rule-of-thumb at that.) To finish with your last point about movies, if all you see in the movie is faces and backs of people having or faking sex, I don't call it porn, but highly boring
Obscenity? What's that? Obscenity is not in sex. Maybe in the acessories, but "a dick in a cunt" is not obscene. It may be ugly (picture a few really obese people over 80 having sex all together... now go watch close-up, and try not to barf). But then, I'm really curious here : what effect does obscenity have on the world?
Last thing about obscenity : I'm talking of sex here, not perversions such as bestiality and paedophilia. And even then, I don't see the problem with having sex with animals. I wouldn't do that, but I wouldn't
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
I get your point here, but I'm not agreeing 100%
No, no, no. Not MY ideas. MY ideas are to educate people to the point that religion is an historical curiosity, ridiculous in its obsolete phrases that say things that are WRONG. Even S. Freud, who only ever thought with, through, by, about, his penis, predicted that religion will ome day eventually collapse under its own inconsistence and how obvious it is that it's wrong. How can you believe in Flat Earth when you've got a device in your hand that talks to satellites? Some day, we will know so much, and use so many things that directly contradict everything that religion says, it will collapse. We are a species inteligent enough for that.
Oh, yes, the goose and the farmer, and geese never learned... (that the farmer means food until he means axe), but WE can.
About Us Vs Them : it's what we are, yes. Suppressing that means transforming humans into solitary feral animals. Go read this, it will explain better than I can.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Oddly enough, it's not only our species. Every species loves cute kids, no matter whose species they are, which makes you wonder -- it may be better for the species to care for someone else's child, but is it better for me? Why wasn't this trait selected out a long time ago, in favor of people who only care about their own kids?
But actually, I was just trying to get you to be clear with your language. You actually did say that Love is what we call fixating a sexual urge on another. Obviously, it's more than that, even if it's still only biological.
Cool, so nothing lesbian is pr0n.
So, it's not pr0n if it's technical. What, it's got to be romantic now? Or passionate?
Whoops, there goes most of the pr0n industry that calls itself such. Much of it is actually pretty technical and boring.So, doesn't count as a definition. "Rule of thumb" doesn't work to actually resolve a difference of opinion.
So now you've got a hidden definition of sex. What qualifies as a "perversion"? I can't think of a good way to measure it, yet you seem to be convinced it exists.
Nope. Plenty of people enjoy porn, and would call it porn, and are not offended by it. So even that definition doesn't fit.
Wow, you're an arrogant prick. Go read some Godel. I think I just disproved your faith.
How so?
I actually think the spook in the sky is more provable, if that's your definition. Because then all it takes is a big, white, bearded man coming down out of the sky.
Well, you assert that God does not exist. My point was that your assertion is based on a particular definition, so it cannot be absolutely true.
You've only proven my point further with this discussion of pornography and obscenity -- you've provided several very interesting definitions of pornography. Now, suppose I said, "All pornography is visual." For some of your definitions of pornography, that statement is true. For other definitions, that statement is false.
My point is that to make such a blanket assertion, you have to define your terms. And you're not going to convince anyone when their terms differ from yours.
And my advice is this: Don't make those assertions. Don't waste your time trying to "disprove" something which people can't even define consistently. You just make yourself look as ridiculous as they do.
I don't know about you, but I have better things to do than piss off religious people. What's the point? It's not like anything you've said is going to convince a single believer.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!