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Review:Virtual Faith
"Trying to keep up with you"
--- REM
When you think about it, and despite the boom in spiritual websites and mailing lists, the Net is organized religion's worst nightmare, a true dogma-killer and heresy-spreader. Before new technologies like the Net, John and Jane's view of the world was pretty much limited to what their parents told them, and what they picked up in the school yard. Religious instruction was rarely voluntary for most kids, and religious institutions usually went to great pains to make sure that dogma and faith was deeply embedded before kids grew up and got out into the world, where they might encounter all alien faiths and points-of-view and make up their own minds.
The Net makes that a lot tougher, one of the reasons blocking software sells so well, and why so much of it is programmed to block out religious discussion.
Still, some people have always seen a strong connection between the Net and spirituality.
Are notoriously irrevent, skeptical and prickly young nerds and geeks pulled towards higher powers? Is their new and raucous liturgy the sometimes vulgar and provocative language, symbolism, imagery of computer language, programming and popular culture? Can institutionalized religion get off its high and preachy horses, embrace interactivity and minister to the cyber-young on completely different, new terms?
In "Virtual Faith", Tom Beaudoin makes a thoughtful case that Americans, especially those younger ones online -- unfortunately, he calls them Generation X, but he was a divinity student -- are up to their servers, TV shows, movies, keyboards, and Mp3's in spiritual quests. And that stuffy, top-down Churches will have to change radically to reach them. Beaudoin is a former altar boy, raised on television and video games, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School two years ago, is a bass player in a Boston area rock band, and survived Woodstock '94. His book "Virtual Faith" (Jossey-Bass Publishers, $US 22) is just the sort of book about religion we never get to see in the age of the sound-bite spouting, scolding and pious Moral Guardian, a time when people like William Bennett, ex-Education and Drug Czar, are labeled "Morals Czars" by the media and get to go on CNN twice a week to tell us how vulgar and faithless we all are.
"Virtual Faith" argues that the popular culture so celebrated by the young -- from movies and music to TV shows and the Net -- is actually suffused with spirituality and religious iconography.
Writing about REM's "Losing My Religion," for example, a hit song and video from the group's blockbuster l991 album, Beaudoin sees clear intimations of Jesus in the old man resting against an angel, both of them seated on a tree limb. Grey-haired and bearded, the old man is fitted with a pair of angelic wings and clothed in orange robes; then he is stoned to death.
"The ambiguity of the final Jesus scene is disturbing," writes Beaudoin, "in a brief shot, his associates work with rope that is wrapped around Jesus' body. Are they releasing him, or are they binding him to the beam, hoping to get him up on the cross so that he might really be the messiah they are hoping for in the end?"
Beaudoin further cites Madonna, Soundgarden, various TV shows and movies as pop culture sources brimming with spirituality, even as the citizens of cyberspace are participants in a subtle attack on rigid institutions.
"The environment of cyberspace provides resources that are ripe for upsetting hierarchies," he says. The Net and the Web is a natural leveler of powerful institutions as so many individuals get their hands on the machinery of communications, and get to make and disseminate their own personal theologies.
In the digital world, individuals don't have to accept official dogma, but are free to seek and find their own, to join virtual communities with fresh ideas about spirituality.
Cyberspace and institutional churches thus exist in constant conflict, Beaudoin writes.
This is a pretty sharp observation, obvious but rarely spoken, especially from religious quarters. Organized religions resent popular culture in general and the Net in particular, sounding alarms about addiction, the exposure of the young to so much unfiltered, uncensored information, and to pornography and violence, while the ascending geek culture is viscerally hostile to powerful institutions that tell its members what to believe.
In the same way many journalists have been almost bitterly reluctant to relinquish any part of their role as the sole purveyor of news and opinion to the raucous and individualistic voices on the Net, it's difficult to imagine religious organizations like Judaism, Islam, Christianity becoming more interactivity when their mission is to spread the word of God as revealed in sacred text.
But this doesn't mean netizens aren't spiritual, Beaudoin claims.
This isn't all that surprising an argument to anybody who's been on the Net and the Web: religion and so-called spirituality thrive here. There are tens of thousands of mailing lists, websites and newsgroups devoted to religious expression.
Moreover, Beaudoin argues in "Virtual Faith"that the provocative, irrevent, even heretical images of the age group he calls Generation X -- tattoos, body piercing, grunge, crucifixes as fashion accessories, music lyrics and videos with religious and sexual imagery -- are not rejections of religion but serious expressions of a new generation's need for a faith they can believe in, rather than one thrust upon them. He might also have included various computer language and Web imagery, from terms like Daemon to the whole idea of messaging across space and time.
Beaudoin argues that four themes underlie the new theology of his young digital contemporaries: * All institutions -- religious, political, media -- are suspect. * Personal experience is critical. Religious belief must thus also be experienced, not taught or mandated. *Suffering is spiritual. * Ambiguity and doubt aren't retreats from faith, but a new kind of faith.
In the l980's, writes Beaudoin, he began to notice the way popular culture was filled with religious references. In popular songs, music videos and movies, references to sin, salvation and redemption abounded.
"I started to suspect that popular culture increasingly trumped institutional religion in attracting Xers; we dedicated much more time to pop culture, and it had vastly more religious content that was relevant to our generation. Could it be that popular culture was our religious arena?"
Beaudoin is onto something important. Popular culture is the faith and ideology of the young (that popular culture's embrace and experience of pop culture borders on the spiritual and comprises a common language and a faith.) The failure of journalism and politics to grasp this central tenet of the young has marginalized both institutions for people under 50, along with organized religion.
Religious leaders have for years joined with newspaper editorial writers and block-headed politicians to portray the young as dumb and de-sensitized by pop culture, too wanton and weak-minded to resist its sometimes vulgar and violent imagery. Technologies like the Net are seen as gateways to Hell, doorways through which all sorts of vile and vulgar, even heretic imagery can flow.
That there is virtually no evidence to support this pervasive and oft-repeated belief suggests that these continuing alarms have much more to do with preserving the power of the institutions spreading them than they do with any heartfelt concern for the young.
Since so many younger people watch TV, go to the movies and surf the Web without becoming stupid or murdering their neighbors, many have come to view these institutions appeared dishonest as well as clueless.
"During our lifetimes, especially during the critical period of the l980's, pop culture was the amniotic fluid that sustained us," Beaudoin says. "For a generation of kids who had a fragmented or completely broken relationship to 'formal' or 'institutional' religion, pop culture filled the spiritual gaps." It was the young's surrogate clergy, usurping the role institutional clergy played for previous generations.
In fact, this embrace has gone even farther than Beaudoin suggests. Popular culture is the universal reference point of the young, a new measure of community. People understand one another by the music they like or loathe, by the movies they embrace and the TV shows that mirror or reflect their lives. "X-Files" fans share one set of values, while "Allie McBeal" lovers treasure another. "Dawson's Creek," "Felicity," "South Park," "The Simpsons" all take themes, values and attitudes of kids and mirror, re-cycle and re-work them.
It's dangerous to generalize about TV shows or their viewers, but anyone who works around younger people understands that on Monday mornings, what nearly everyone is talking about the second he or she gets to work isn't the latest news from Washington or a sermon they heard at Church but the weirdest indie film of the weekend or the gruesome battle scenes in "Private Ryan," or, in a couple of months, "Star Wars." Younger Americans might not really care to watch the impeachment proceedings, but almost all of them will know who won the Oscar for Best Picture the day after its awarded.
This passion is often cited as a prime example of how apathetic and de-civilized the young are. Look how much they care about stupid music, TV movies when there are so many serious issues, books and other things to consider?
Mostly, what's clear is that the young are creating a different kind of culture. Narrative and creativity thrive in programming, Web design and develop, online gaming, and the language and stories in chat rooms. Whether it's better or worse is for historians to sort out. Beaudoin seems to understand that institutions like journalism and religion have a fairly narrow range of choices. They can change or they can die.
"Far from residing in a cultural wasteland devoid of spiritual symbols, Generation X matured in a culture of complex and contradictory signs, some of them religious," Beaudoin claims. "Some currents within that GenX pop cultural stream carry more than mere microboes of an inchaote GenX spirituality. They are sufficient to begin funding a new theology by, for, and about a generation."
But the ferociously independent culture of the geeks challenges churches to preach and practice not from a position of power and righteousness, but from a sense of humility and weakness in the world -- a radical departure from the pious and hectoring stance taken by most religious leaders. When religious or political elders reach out to "young people," it is often in the most unbearably patronizing and ineffective of ways. Beaudoin is suggesting something much more radical and difficult.
His charge:
"By shunning the trappings or privileged social status and seeking to serve, not be served, churches will respond faithfully not only to the prophetic change brought by GenX but,more important, to the example of Jesus."
Although Beaudoin rarely uses the term, he seems in "Virtual Faith" to be advancing a new kind of spiritual interactivity.
Interactivity is very spiritual, and it's both leveling and humbling, for the columnist, the politician, the pundit or the priest. It alters the relationship between dispensers and receivers of information. It does, as Beaudoin suggests, demand a different way of thinking, a rejection of the unbalanced power relationships between so many institutions and individual human beings. If journalism considers interactivity a bitter pill, and resists it nearly to its own extinction, imagine how churches will respond.
"Being willing to sacrifice power and status for the sake of service to the gospel will do more for the Church's message about Jesus than any amount of rhetoric from pulpits," Beaudoin says. "It will also go far in addresing Xers' suspicion of religious institutions."
He's right. He understands the culture he grew up in, and its many problems with dogma and elitist institutions. It will take a lot more than humility to spread the Word in cyberspace. Even younger netizens have experienced unprecedented freedom of expression and access to diverse points of view. Why should they give that up to embrace dogma and somebody else's revealed words?
Still, real interactivity -- a realignment of the relationship between the dispensers and receivers of dogma -- would offer Christian churches (and other faiths) a radical opportunity to re-invigorate themselves and minister to netizens rather than simply wag their fingers at their naughty and irreverent ways.
The Web is, at its heart, a rationalist culture. The people in it reject fixed dogmas like conservatism or liberalism, and labels like Republican or Democrat. They have access to too much of the information in the world to take religious or political faith at its word, without question or discussiion. It's hard to imagine how fixed theologies like those of most organized religions could survive intact the online scrutiny given to ideas, opinions and proclamations online.
Religious interactivity would alter the Church, just as it would probably alter the attitudes of many netizens. And Beaudoin seems to grasp that while the young resist the proclamations, they do instinctively embrace spiritual imagery all the time, from the "the X-Files" to the poverty invoked by grunge. Spirituality seems to thrive and grow even when dogma fades. E-mail, the idea of human beings connecting powerfully to one another out in the ether, is inherently spiritual.
Beaudoin's issuing a challenge to ecclesiastical authority by asking religious institutions, moral guardians and political elders to stop fearing the irreverence of pop culture. And to listen, rather than lecture.
"The more popular culture is explored," he writes, "and the more irreverence is viewed as a legitimate mode of religiousity (in all its illegitimacy), the more Generation X will be shown as having a real religious contribution to make. GenX can also make great strides not only toward fostering its own spirituality but also toward reinvigorating religious institutions and challenging the faith of older generations."
If there is a weakness in many of Beaudoin's arguments, it is the presumption that, approached in a different, humbler and more modern way, the younger builders of the Internet will choose to make a conventional religious contribution at all. This is far from clear. If anything, this is a generation that makes up its own mind on its own terms at its own pace. Armed with new information, with the new power to communicate with one another at will all over the world, and to see and hear every imaginable point of view, Beaudoin may not grasp just how independent and different the group of people he calls Generation X really is.
But then, as a graduate of the Harvard University School of Divinity, he's supposed to have faith.
Still, he sounds like a natural heretic to me, a geek waiting to be sucked in by the lures of Half Life or Lego's Mindstsorm. If he isn't already, he'll soon be sniffing around Linux. The history of religious leaders is grim, openness wise. It's hard to imagine too many religious figures getting off their duffs and coming online to minister to the digital young. Still, Beaudoin has written a smart, provocative and compelling book. He makes much sense, and writes about his generation's culture knowingly.
At the same time, it's hard to read his very rational views and feel too optimistic about any urgent convergence of religion and the people patching together the Net and the Web. It's almost inconceivable that religion will respond to this vibrant new culture any more thoughtfully than politics or media have.
The Digital Age suggests powerful institutions would rather die than change, or voluntarily loosen their iron grip on ideas and influence. And that the young people Beaudoin is so eager for religion to reach will end up shaping new kinds of institutions rather than accepting or embracing the ones we already have, most of which have served them so poorly.
You can buy ths book here.
Whether or not Atheism is a religion in a question that probably cannot be answered in the abstract. Rather, it depends upon the characteristics of the atheism meme-complex in the mind of the person who holds those views.
When you say that "there is no dogma of atheism", you are incorrect. It is possible for atheism to be held and propagated based upon shallow dogma. I know this to be true because I've met dogmatic atheists before.
On the other hand, there are atheists who, rather than being dogmatic, have a policy of not entertaining nondisprovable hypotheses, which means that the god-question doesn't pass muster for consideration. The link in the above paragraph asks, at the end, whether or not science is a virus of the mind. I think that's the real question one needs to ask about atheism: while it's possible to be an atheist based upon the policy of the selective-system of the scientific method, it's also possible to blindly propagate atheism as a mental virus. And that, to me, is the real defining characteristic of "religion".
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Hey buddy of God where are you? I assume you never thought that your position on religion was the most arrogant one you can possibly take. All religious people make this mistake. Atheists don't. We have a pretty good idea of what our function and importance is. We have no function and we have no importance. We just recognize it and don't run screaming when we do.
You know what humility is? Recognizing that you are essentially the same as a dog, cow, rat, or protozoa on the galactic scale. I can't even eat meat anymore. So from one germ to another, hey, what's up?
Poor John and Jane! Before the 'net they had no exposure to radio, television, comic books, or movies. Yeah, right.
Actually there's precious little new here. Teens and twenty-somethings have been preoccupied with the latest in pop culture since at least the days of Glenn Miller, the Dorsey brothers, et cetera, and probably a lot further back than that.
As for the spirituality angle, change the names and the references ("Godspell", "Jesus Christ, Superstar", and just to be obscure, "Mass in F Minor" by The Electric Prune )and this could have been written about the baby boomers back in the sixties. And probably was.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There's a difference between "refusing to acknowledge" like you've claimed, and "not acknowledging without sufficient evidence" which is my position.
Your claim implies that the evidence is there and that there is an element of denial going on. This isn't the case for myself. I don't discount the idea, but I don't believe it either.
And I wouldn't consider my position unusual. I rather think you just don't understand the other position as well as you might think you do.
I'm amazed that we take religion so seriously.
What other *irrational* idea do we spend more than 5 minutes on.
What a waste of time and energy.
One nation under God ->>>> Iran
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Actually, the onus of proof is on you, since you inferred that atheists were much more likely to apply Occam's Razor than religious people were. I only stated that you were wrong.
Again, I think your focus on the birthrate-effect of memes is dubious. Memes can be virulent without having any influence on birthtrate. Toodles.
Certainly they can, but children are much more gullible than adults. You can spread a meme among the young much faster than among the old. This is why children typically hold their parents views when they become adults. There are numerous examples to support this. Most Christians are Christians because their parents were Christians. I'm an exception, one of the few. There is no evidence at all to support Christianity, the concept that God Himself would send down his son to be tortured to death even though God is omnipotent and therefore would not have to do this indicates that God must be evil or that Jesus wasn't the messiah. This is a logical conclusion, but I was an agnostic excising my former faith for 10 years before I finally became an atheist. It took work - all because my parents dragged me to church every weekend for 10 years.
Many people wouldn't have the persistence to go through what I did, researching the Inquisition, reading about the Crusades, the Taipeng Rebellion, studying psychology, reading about meme's, understanding logic, applying Occam's Razor, learning science, etc. etc. etc. This is what I had to personally do to become sane, and it was fucking work, a lot of work. I had to discount Creation Science, I had to learn enough about genetics to understand the mechanism, I read about Watson and Crick, and read Darwin. All this to get rid of a meme installed in childhood. BTW, don't think I'm NOT pissed off about having to go through this. I am. Religion is destructive to the individual and useful to the organization and to the group which serves to further the organization. Religion is intellectual slavery, nothing less.
You're doubtfulness over parental meme duplication is misplaced and wrong.
What's so pointless about trying to understand one another? Duh.
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I should add that yes, you can deal with questions like this "this glibly". In the end, it all comes down to doing what you think is right.
I am also an atheist, and nobody ever handed me a ratified RFC that defines exactly what "atheism" is and what it is not. The truth is that there is no one, single entity known as "atheism", and it would be a shame for atheists to fall into the same One True(tm) mentality that has become so common within Christianity.
...which is precisely why atheism isn't a religion. Every religion in the world has the "One True(TM)" theme, except atheism. Atheism doesn't fit the model of religion, at all - in absolutely no way whatsoever. You're jamming a square peg into a round hole.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
How can people watch this drivel? It is almost as bad as party of 5. Every week, another tearful and shallow crisis always ended by either a comforting speech by a friend to the tune of easy listening music, or a commercial break.
My feeling is that religion has been mostly a "do-it-yourself" proposition ever since the late 50's. At that time, most organized religions, even everyone's favorite whipping boy, the Catholics, were trying valiantly to deal with the modern age.
(Anyone remember Vatican II? Come on, someone's grandparents could tell you...) Folk-rock services, the reintroduction of sacred dance, updated sermons, all of these were tried. And failed.
Real religion was to be found in a pill.
LSD, mushrooms, or even just plain old grass was more "meaningful" than any number of Sundays spent in the newly remodeled burnt-orange and walnut pew of the local Reformed Congregational Lutheran Episcopalian Universalist House of Worship, so most contemporary thinkers decreed. Drop some acid, meditate, eat only organic food for a year or two and you'll find a faith many times more in tune with your life than anything taught at a stuffy seminary.
Unfortunately, DYI religion lacks rootedness. It's one thing to claim that your personal rituals are rooted in ancient practices (as almost anything is, or could be) and yet another thing to be practising something that you knew from childhood, that binds you to your parents and your parents' parents, and is relevant to the reason why you live where you do. Evangelical Christianity is as au courant as it is mostly because everyone who lives in America has heard of the Bible, everyone knows about Jesus (right or wrong), and everyone "knows" that they have done "wrong" at one time or another.
Madonna is irrelevant: all she's ever been able to do is to act "naughty", meaning that she understands that there is a *borderline* to be crossed, and in doing so, she's somehow putting herself above people who don't dare (or care) to do so. Modern tribalism is a joke: take a little from one tribe, a little from another, mix with a bit of fashionable cynicism, and you're communing with Nature. Right. Most parents these days never had anything more binding on their belief system than a vague idea that there is right and wrong: most kids never spent enough time off from soccer practise to learn that there's anything more to mainstream liberal Christianity than a set of rules that keep them from wanking off to porno magazines and fucking their girlfriends.
Naturally their own efforts towards faith are going to be mix and match -- a little Goddess worship, so they can wear starshaped silver rings, a little shamanism, so they can whine to their parents that they really *need* $200 so they can get tattooed, pierced or whatever, some Hinduism, so that they can sit and sing to themselves while attempting to pretzel, and a good deal of Christianity, because, right or wrong, they *know* that Armeggedon is gonna kill all the uncool people.
Someone ask Donald E. Knuth?
The web is irrelevant. People will believe what they want for awhile. Then it will all settle down to two sects, which will each consider each other puritanical. Then maybe, someone will come up with a *really* relevant faith.
teleny, friend of cats.
I don't think that there is any absolute morality.
Is religion your crutch to let you have one?
In other words, something isn't true just b/c
it has useful results.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Hmm, would you kill someone if it was in the defense of others? (You should note that "thou shalt not kill" is, if you go to the original text and language, better interpreted as "thou shalt not murder".) If the answer is "yes", then for some people it isn't much of a stretch to kill in the defense of innocent unborn children, or to eliminate unbelievers who may eventually corrupt their children and imperil their immortal souls (the worst possible crime possible, to some people, far worse than merely killing someone as that only has finite consequences).
... As the quality of our lives increase it makes perfect sense to me that God places more obstacles in our path to belief. Those who don't belive in god usually justify their response by saying it can't be scientifically proven. However, these same people don't seem to realize that some of the greatest scientists and mathematicians ever were very religiously devout and have no problem carrying on their work. Even many scientists today are religously devout. Science to me is the study of how the world that God created works. As our lives 'get better' it seems fair that god should place more questions in our head of his existance.
This is very evident in the world today too. You will find that the belief in god is much more prevelant and stronger in third-world countries (where conditions are bad) than in developed countries (were conditions are better).
I realize that is the traditional definition of dogma, and I have been using the word in a sense that differs slightly. While I do view dogma as a set of rules of a faith, I think that the set can (and usually does) include rules that are tacit: not explicitly codified. As a biologist, one gets nowhere by prescribing a definition of a species. The science works much better on a descriptive level, through observation of instances. It would be foolish to claim first that all frogs are spotless, because one must then try to eschew the new discovery of a spotted frog by saying "ah, it's not a frog. It has spots."
Meme-complexes should be studied in the same way.
I also think that your focus of a meme's effect on birthrate is dubious. A meme can be virulent without having any such effect.
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how about re regroup later?
My email is
wicksz@my-dejanews.com
I may or may not be in the mood to discuss it. I have simply been avoiding work today.
Anyhow, the disconnect from the physical brain and the meme is entirely artifical. We know that as we learn our brain structure itself changes. This is a well documented fact. We also know that if we alter brain chemistry that we effect behavior, this is also well documented.
Still, I cannot think of an instance where the concept of the meme doesn't apply. That's why I find it fascinating. Can you find one? I can think of tons of examples that Lynch didn't. I was even thinking about how to design a meme for a bit, but decided this was a "evil"? thing to do.
Come up with a counter example. Write me later. I'll check back here in a day or two.
You seem to have missed my acknowledgement that the atheism meme, by itself, is not particularly effective in terms of raw survival-value. But the loosely-aggregated complex of memes that form the meme-colony in the mind of actual atheists, does have a collective structure that aids in the propagation of said meme. This is nothing new: the belief that jesus is the son of god, by itself, has no particular survival-value either. But bundled with the threat of hellfire, and the promise of eternal life it sure spreads like wildfire!
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I think Jon has institutional leaders confused with true and revolutionary spiritual leaders. ...
Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Muhammed, Ghandi, ML King. All of these were humble men who interacted actively with the people they were trying to impart a message to. They were revolutionary spiritual leaders who talked about tolerance, kindness, love, and understanding. They spoke to the concerns and lives of the people of their time, which is why people bothered to remembmer them. They did not start institutions to concretize their views but encouraged individuals to do just as Jon says the author said to do - experience faith yourself! Later, institutions sprouted about them after their death (well, not for Ghandi or MLK but you get my point...) which leads us to
Pat Robertson, the Pope, your average priest or minister, William Bennett. These are institutional leaders. They are people hell bent on preserving the notion of a legacy or institution. To them, the institution IS the faith and IS the message. Hence the intolerance and lack of humble understanding of their fellow men and women and their activities. Just a comment...
I'm well aware of what Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says. However, even if it were possible to measure everything perfectly in principle, that's still irrelevant to whether "science admits that nothing can be proved". The uncertainty principle offers no new contribution to that issue.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
Heisenbergs uncertainty principle does not imply things can't be proven. It itself can be proven based on the axioms of quantum mechanics. Speaking of bad science, this post is one of the worst collections of crap disguised as science I've seen yet. What exactly the fuck is the quantum wave potential of space supposed to be?
Why don't you actually try to understand the quantum mechanics if you want to make arguments based on them, rather than just fabricating an argument around something you obviously have no clue about.
I agree that science admits nothing can
be proved, but a rational outlook is not
to accept things into your worldview until
you have strong evidence, and then if you
come across evidence that points the other
way, either correct or toss out your idea.
I must admit to not understanding how statistics
point to very little science going on --
while that may be collection of data, and
indeed faulty at that, I don't quite understand
how most surveys are at all related to science.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Well, now you know. :)
Welcome to having an international perspective!
Actually a few western countries still have treason in time of war as a crime punishable by death but that's pretty much it outside of the USA in the western world.
My claim was for routinely executing its own citizens. Which is obvously true.
Last time execution occured in the USA: this week.
Last time execution occured in another western country: 1960s 197* ??? (not within my living memory)
Nerds/geeks/hackers in general show a fair amount of tolerance towards different religions; I've run into athiests, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims (rare), and Christians. I personally am a Christian (but please don't let your personal bias against Christianity color your view of what I am saying). Why is it people constantly feel a need to denigrate organised religion? Yes, it has committed some abuses; that doesn't mean those of us who believe in God (or whatever) want to support that organisation.
Rather, we have learned to meet God personally rather than as a facet of some large organisation (such as church). I do not attend a traditional church, but I consider myself a strong, fundamental Christian.
Many who call themselves hackers are not. Many who call themselves ``Christians'' are not. Let us not confuse the real with the false; a Christian does not commit violent acts, and a hacker does not destroy other people's filesystems. /*&*. Let's not do the same towards religion.
I do not like it when the media misrepresent the hacker as a person who likes to % rm -rf
We can all get along!
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
On USENET, there's a rule that as soon as someone mentions Hitler or calls someone a Nazi, the thread is dead. In discussions like this one, the equivalent is bringing up the subject of slavery. So here goes:
Assume it's 1859 and I'm a slaveholder. I presume you disapprove of my enslaving my fellow man. Why? What gives you the right to object? By your lights, we all get to form our own opinions about morality without any reference to quaint notions of absolute right and wrong. It is all merely a matter of opinion, so my opinion in favor of slavery is just as good as your opinion against it.
And so it goes on issue after issue. Theft? What is property but a social convention anyway? Rape? Why not, you might enjoy it! Lying? If there is no Truth, how can you call anything a lie? And so on. If morality is just a matter of opinion, than anything I can get away with is OK.
It is one thing to say that we are not always sure that we know what is right in a given situation. It is another thing entirely to say that nothing is really right or wrong. The first is consistent with the Platonic idealism, i.e., the belief that ideas are real things that we can discover. The second leads to nilhilism.
So.. you believe in a god because the idea of
morality being subjective repulses you?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Posted by Ice_Spirit:
:)
Karl Marx put it the way it is: Religion is the opium for the people.
While this is true, science and a whole lot of other things stand as the opium for others, who have looked away from religion, usually because it does not yield any answers to them.
Free thinking is what the net is about, if you don't like it, look away from it
Books on this theme is futile to read if you ask me, if you do not read a lot of them to compare, and you better have your own strong opinions to compare against if you should have any value from this at all.
But fun to read if you enjoy this stuff I suppose
I wonder whether a lot of the people posting about this book have actually read it (or the review). I got this book as a christmas present from my pastor, and as a bass-player/geek/christian, i think i fit right into this guy's description. admittedly, some of this book was just plain over my head, but the author makes a great point about the institutionalism of modern christianity in society, and it's definitely worth reading. I prefer the bible, tho. =)
Posted by Taverner:
:-)
The denial of the existance of deity (singular or plural) is as much an article of faith as the worship of such entities or forces.
There is no proof either way, yet I have had atheists hound me for ages trying to make me see that they are "right" and I am "wrong". The way I see it, if you can have "Fundy atheists" pushing their kind of religious dogma and philosophy, they might as well have their own church!
Let's face it; some people NEED to believe in something greater, and some people NEED to believe that it is all random.
Taverner
(If you take this too seriously, you need a long walk and a visit to the "Atheists Church of Nobody"!)
Oh yes,
Yes, I still think it's dubious
Well too bad for you. There is plenty of evidence that shows demonstrably that parental transmission is vtially important. I really couldn't care less about your personal unsubstantiated opinions. Believe what you want, it won't make it true.
Name one prevelent meme that isn't passed on parentally. Here's some meme groupings that are passed on often by parents:
1) Morals
2) Religion
3) Politics
4) Education
5) Culture
Now, name just 1 PREVELENT meme not passed on by by parents. I can think of any.
When you say thta "there is no dogma of atheism", you are incorrect. It is possible for atheism to be held
and propagated based upon shallow dogma. I know this to be true because I've met dogmatic atheists
before.
Yeah, there are atheists who are quite religious; but that does'nt make atheism any more of a religion. Like, there are atheists who have a job, but that does not make atheism a job description either.
Me too. Those annoy me enough that I usually complain to the ISP.
How did you come to the conclusion that God doesn't exist?
TedC
If the internet attracts so many intelligent people, what are you doing here? Your own biblical knowledge is severely lacking perhaps you failed to read the bible with an open mind, hardly the actions of the "thinking, intelligent" person you claim to be. Clearly you are no different then those you choose to attack.
That's part of the point. The Bible has things that are, on the surface, contradictions. You can either accept them as contradictions, or try to reconcile them with each other. The latter requires a great deal of interpretation, and is what leads some sects or individuals to do things that horrify others as different people make different interpretation (usually all the while thinking that their interpretation is the One True Interpretation, of course).
How does a way of thought get to be old, i.e., traditional, in the first place? Usually it is because it seems valid to a lot of people over a long period of time. This is not something to be dismissed lightly. It's a lot like music. Sure, there was a lot of bad popular music made decades ago, but the old music that still gets played is likely to be pretty good stuff.
I always thought I was a Cabalist . . .
I'm glad. I don't have any hard feelings. I found this discussion to be fascinating. As for the validity of what you said: When you said that I am my own "god", were you using the dictionary definition? 8^)
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So I'll bring my copy of Thought Contagion with me and brush up on the details..
I agree with most of what he said... one thing that particularly hit me was HOW the religious community presents their views to the people -- by preaching and holding church on Sundays (for the Christians and Catholics, etc) and the fact that they are expecting us to believe what they are saying on blind faith.
The internet is about information and information tends to make all things equal, level things out, and with this in mind it is only logical to consider that there will be opposing and supporting voices for any issue, and religion does not like being opposed.
Therefore, they must change or die out.
I know of at least one person who does "channelling" onto ICQ chats...
That's an interesting claim, and is worthy of research. While I can agree that one need not be an atheist to hold the Occam's Razor meme, I would guess that the likelihood is not equal for those two populations. So, how do we get data to answer that question?
Research it then. Do you deny that the average person doesn't use Occam's Razor (for trivial tasks)? I would agree that few use it to really think about origins of the species and of science at all, less than 5% of the population in fact.
Here's a thought or two: there is compelling evidence that there is global warming going on right now, and anybody that knows jack about science knows that 2 billion people is the maximum number of people that can live on Earth with 1900's farming technology. Also, there is compelling evidence that viruses and bacteria are becoming more resistant to anti-bodies, not to mention that the Earth's atmosphere O2 content has gone down 25% since 1900.
So, want to have 12 kids if you know all this to be true? Hey, if you are a conservative bible believing right wing Christian you know this is all a liberal lie - so have 12 kids, God will start the rapture soon anyhow, so who cares? Right? Using Occam's Razor for non trivial thinking may actually be detrimental to reproduction. "Creation theory" is actually spreading faster as a belief than evolution theory, although one has a fuckload of evidence in favor of it and the other has 0.
Why do you suppose that educated people have so few children in comparison to uneducated people? If the educated population dies off, how are we going to support 6 billion people on the planet? The Amish have a birthrate triple the average American's. Why happens if they out populate us in 300 years? For short term survival success the Amish kill us, for long term, education beats anything. I'm expecting a religious holocaust ala Hitler in less than 1000 years and a revival of fascism and authoritarianism (can't wait to have kids!) I'll be dead though before it happens.
Still, there is absolutely no better time to be alive than today! I can listen to music that only KINGS could listen to today. I can travel the world. I can sky dive. I can ski. I can hang glide. I can do more than the most powerful king could just 2 centuries ago. But the golden age has a price.
I dunno. It's Friday. My mind's elsewhere. Thanks again, Katz - I guess this goes on the "to read" list :)
--
--
=8^
The thing I noticed the most about the review was that the author seemed to think that the (Christian) church needed to change, or it would die. While I agree with this premise, I say it's already happening. The church has been changing from the traditional institution it has been for hundreds of years into a church similar to the original church of believers in the first century AD. And if those that don't change die, that will be just as well, because it will weed out those who take church to be some traditional social club and leave those with a passion for God.
--
But if I say, "I will not mention Him or speak any more in His name," His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot. Jeremiah 20:9
Any human (and all humans are rational) would only subscribe to religious beliefs in the way of Pascal's wager.
why don't you just calm down and have a cup of tea. Why do you have to be so angry at the world
Actually, I thought I saw Michael S. talking about the song in an interview, and it actually was about "having a crush". It *does* make sense.
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
I refer not to your spiritual beliefs, but to your attitude. To Joe Six-Pack, the difference between you and them, based on your hateful response, is negilgible.
BTW, doesn't tolerance mean being tolerant of people who aren't tolerant?
:-) Lighten Up!
flames > dev/null
Furthermore, I honestly know Christians who have said that if God declared torturing and murdering little children to be morally good, then it would be. Sorry, I don't buy the "it's right because my god said so" argument.
Personally, I live by Heinlein's moral rule, which (paraphrased) is something like "The only true sin is hurting someone without good reason. Everything else is invented nonsense." I'm more inclined to believe Heinlein than the Christian God.
The "absolute morality" of religion is ironically just as relative as any other morality; it's just a matter of who's doing the declaring.
Im sorry i just don't see how "Thou shalt not kill" and "Love thy nieghbor" can be misinterpreted unless you are insane. Call me dumb, I just don't see it.
Bub, I don't know where you get your ideas, but anybody with that much piss, vinegar, bile and stink for a single subject needs counselling, bad.
Lighten up a little, lest you become what you despite.
webwalker
flames > dev/null
If you're referring to the Heisenburg uncertainty principle, that has nothing to do with whether science can or can't prove anything; even if the uncertainty principle were false, scientific theories could still never be proven.
Agreed. Moral relativity is fine if you're consistent about it. When I say that "morals are not absolute", people respond with "So then you can't say it's wrong to do X". That misses the point. I can say that I think it is wrong to do X, and to feel quite strongly about it, and even try to prevent people from doing X. I do this in the full recognition that other people feel differently. I don't think that I possess an "absolute truth", I simply hold an opinion that I think is important enough to do something about.
Posted by mnowak65:
Ah, didn't Jesus say that not one of the iota of the law is to be changed? Jesus was a jew and for him, the law still held true. Christians theoretically would be following the Old Testament as well, except that Paul came along and threw it all out.
Well DAMN. Some jerk deleted the thought contagen discussion along with email addresses. Anyhow, if the people that were discussing this still want to discuss this, drop me a line at:
wicksz@my-dejanews.com
Censorship bites.
While I agree with what you say and your cite of Sagan's book, I must object to your tone. Mocking the arrogance of religious folks who think they're the chosen ones while pushing your own beliefs as the "correct" way to think smacks of hypocrisy.
"Because if they are invented by by man, there's no reason anyone
should feel bound by them." Why should I feel bound more by your
God's morals than any man's? Futhermore, I don't feel bound by
anyone else's morals, just my own. I know that I might be punished
if I do something that others think is wrong even if I think it's
right. So what? There are plenty of things that the Christian
God has declared is wrong, and I don't agree with. He might punish
me for disobeying them, but that doesn't make them right. Is that
all morality is about with you? Who's got the bigger stick and can
compel others to do things? You still don't understand subjective
morality. I think that anything that anyone says is "right" or
"wrong". I have my own set of values. I don't think there's any
meta-morality that defines which one of us is right, but there are
things that think are right and will live my life accordingly.
couldn't agree more. I won't point out specific instances because I might offend some, but those religions that have changed the least seem do be doing the best.
I just gotta' say for the record, I for one don't know who the hell John Katz is. I've seen that he's posted a few stories here on slashdot, but other than that, I'm clueless.
-Randy
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
It doesn't have to effect the survival of the population in order to propagate. Take, for example, the meme of wearing your baseball cap backwards. It doesn't help the survival rate of the infected. It's just a matter of "monkey see, monkey do", and the meme propagates ruthlessly without aiding in the monkey's survival.
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I disagree with rightness/wrongness of definitions. I am using a definition with which you disagree, but am capable of entertaining any that you wish to propose. (In the interest of not falling prey to the One True(tm) mentality.) Let me entertain yours.
By your definition, a person who holds the statement "there is no god" to be true is not an atheist. Conversely, a person who refuses to believe the statement "god exists" is an atheist. I'm one of this latter category, so obviously I would agree that it is possible to adopt atheism areligiously.
My claim is that both of the following statements are untrue: 1) Atheism is a religion. 2) Atheism is not a religion.
To elaborate, my claim is that the mechanism by which one comes to hold statements to be true is what defines the nature of religion. Religion is a property of how memes are adopted, not a property of the memes themselves.
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Quite the opposite. You have to take what works and trash what doesn't work. That's how Darwinian Evolution functions, and Religion has been out of that dynamic for too long.
"The dust of exploded beliefs would make a fine sunset" - Charles Fort.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Katz knows his audience. Everyone loves to hear about how "right" his views are, no matter how twisted or just plain wrong they actually are.
Without question there is a cultural war going on, but it is ludicrous and arrogant to declare that the "old" ways of thinking have to somehow change before they'll become acceptable to today's more "enlightened" young people. What a load of nonsense. On what BASIS do you conclude that the "young" have got it right? What sort of pathetic drivel is that?
This century is guilty of more cultural arrogance than almost any other in history. We in the West have become so full of our little selves that we cannot imagine it possible that prior ages might have anything worthwhile to say to us (UNLESS we can pervert and misinterpret their meaning to agree with US, of course). We have young people who can't even do simple math without a calculator, pontificating (in their auspicious wisdom) on how the world ought to be. We have young adults who couldn't present an accurate account of this nation's history -- and they think their opinions on public matters have equal (or more) weight with their elders.
RUBBISH.
This book review was garbage, pure and simple. It is a screed, and if the book is anything like it, I'll keep it in mind the next time I have to line a bird cage.
A simpler explanation:
What is the moral code of science? What other religions can you think of with no moral code at all?
Lesse:
Christianity? No..
Judiasm? No..
Buddhism? No..
Hinduism? Nope..
How about Islam? Wait, no...
Gee, I guess science is the only "religion" with not moral code at all. It's the only one. How about that. But it's still a religion right?
Religion - a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe; a body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices.
According to Webster scienc sounds like a religion to me. How exactly do you propose then to prove that science is not a religion? Are you going to say that science deals in facts which can be proven? Simply because it has not been proven does not me that it does not exist. And to say that science deals in facts is incredibly foolish. Men landing on the moon was a scientific and historical acheivement but can you prove beyond any doubt that the event really happened? No you can't There are scientists who swear that greenhouse gases will cause global warming based on their facts and other scientists who will swear the opposite based on their facts. Science is a religion to say it isn't is foolish
What you fail to understand is that a meme without positive/negative feedback to the survival of the monkey can still have shitloads of positive/negative feedback towards the survival of the meme itself. You really should read some of Dawkins original stuff. Start with "The Selfish Gene".
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*Sob* Now I'll never understand the great humility of having a personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe! Oh boo hoo. boo hoo. What horrible arrogance I have displayed in thinking that a superbeing capable of creating every single atom in all of Creation wouldn't give a rat's ass about me! *Sob*
Oh dear superbeing that created every quark (with strings I hope - I want the final equation found before I'm dead) in the Universe, please forgive me! How horrendous of me to ever think that (0.000000000000001 / 1^400000000000 ) ^ 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 * a google to the google power + 1 % of your creation wouldn't be all important to You. (well actually it's much less than that but I didn't want to be here for a century).
Oh boo hoo. *Sob*. *Sniff* *Sniff*.
Face it dude. In the scope of things, you're no more important than a rock.
I don't know if religion is hurt or helped by the
internet, but it seems more likely that it would
be helped, as the internet is a place where people
can easily get together and share information, and
presumably encourages science. Religion and
Science are incompatible. Why? Well, for starters,
the existance of a deity or set thereof hasn't
been proved, and it's irrational to accept things
into your worldview that are both unproven and
make big changes. In other words, the onus of
proof is on the proponent of a suggested model,
and I claim that they don't have any proof at all.
Why must the onus of proof be there? Consider the
alternative:
People can propose as many things as they like,
and you need to either believe them on every
proposal or prove them wrong. This poses problems
if they propose something not falsifiable, such
as the proposal "everyone has an indetectable
cat that follows them around for their whole life"
. It also poses problems if you arn't keen on
spending your whole life trying to falsify things.
Thus, it's rational to insist on evidence for
an assertion, and at least so far, I haven't seen
a convincing case for god, allah, zeus, or any
other deities' existance.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
What's next, prosylitic spam messages spreading the dogma? I wonder how the ACLU would view that. Like any 'new' medium, the net has been used to distribute everything from pornography to anti-government propaganda. The same was true of paper in the beginning, but they usually just teach us about the printing of bibles on Guttenberg's press. This book sounds like an attempt to rewrite history so that religious institutions have an excuse for embracing the net -- because they know that no reasonable person would want to learn about religion when there is such large amount of wonderful, free, and secular information to be experienced.
In other words, I don't think that there's such thing as absolute morality, religion notwithstanding. Everyone forms an opinion on morality and what is "good" and "evil" -- and it is just that, an opinion. Heinlein's is the closest to mine. Sometimes people's opinions disagree and people try to enforce one over the other. This is inevitable. I think the best one can do is to try to be as minimal as possible in doing that, consistent with one's own conscience.
All definitions are made up by someone at some time. It is no crime to introduce new useage, although it obviously can be a source of irritation for some.
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Have you seen that IBM commercial featuring the song they covered called "Superman"? They only use the first two lines, taking it completely out of context. I think the commercial would be much cooler if used the second stanza: "You don't really love that guy you make it with now do you, you don't really love that guy cause I can see right through you."
And just to clarify ... I'm criticizing religious
arrogance because it is based on NOTHING. No
facts of any kind. Fairy tales handed down from
generation to generation.
I've got viewpoints based on facts... you say
arrogance, I say simple truth.
What would be arrogant is if I was a Christian
arguing with a Muslim over my religion being the
"right one" because "god told me so in the bible."
Neither religion is based on anything but faith.
In that case, Heisenberg was far from the first person to point that out. But it is true. Or rather, a theory can be "valid" in the sense of correctly describing reality without being falsifiable, but it's not scientific and in any case we have no way of knowing its validity.
I disagree with this because, quite simply, group selection does not exist. Contrary to what you might like to believe, memetic selection operates only on memes, not on organisms.
I'M SORRY, BUT GROUP SELECTION DOES NOT EXIST, WHETHER YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT SELECTION PRESSURES APPLIED TO AN ORGANISM FROM 'TRADITIONAL' ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS OR FROM MEMETIC FACTORS.
Memes are not transcendent entities that operate above genetic selection.
To be honest, I think that Aaron Lynch came up with a series of rather catchy memes in his book Thought Contagion. Too bad you didn't have access to a meme that might have inspired some critical thought when you read it.
...always reminds me of a quote from Dave Barry Turns 50: "People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them." -cfw
--
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
Actually, I am having a cup of tea right now.
Twining's English Breakfast. Damn those limeys
make a good cup of tea... maybe I won't kill so
many next time...
Seriously though, I'm not an "angry young man"
except when it comes to religion. Just think what
we humans could accomplish if people would throw
down their crutches and THINK FOR THEMSELVES.
I know, I know... it's hard to do when most of
the world is under an oppressive government.
Actually, the printing press was a great threat to organized religion, being partially responsible for the success of the Protestant Reformation that caused the breakup of the Catholic Church. A quick reference on the web to some of Luther's printed propoganda can be found here at this URL: http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Books/luther. html
I disapprove of slavery because that is my moral opinion. Other people have moral opinions too, including ones that think slavery is okay. I acknowledge this. For the most part, I will leave other people alone no matter what their opinion. However, some things I feel strongly enough about that I will try to do something, such as try to argue with them or prevent them from doing something.
What gives me the "right"? That's what human society is about. Everyone interacts with everyone else. Some people may try to prevent me from doing things they think are wrong. I may do the same. They might think I'm wrong for doing that. And vice versa. That's part of the human interaction known as "society".
Moving everything off onto some external God does not solve anything. God has no more right to an opinion than anyone else.
If morality is just a matter of opinion, then anything you can get away with is okay? Maybe according to your morals! But mine say that certain things is wrong. If you think that those things are morally right, then that's fine, but I might try to stop you. I think that certain things are wrong, but I don't that there's some divine mandate that says that my opinion is the only valid one. People disagree on matters of morality, even Christians. This isn't news.
Microsoft now = X-tianity at the time of the Inquistion
Let's hope what happened to Christianity will happen to MS -- a long slide into obscurity and irrelevency (certain pockets of the USA excepted of course)
I consider myself a devout Muslim and I see no
problem with the net. It is not organized
religion's worst nightmare. Far from it. Sure, the
porn is problematic. However, the ability to have
our own forum, to get our own views across is
of tremendous benefit. If someone see a blatantly
bigotted movie or news report, they might only
hear that one side of the story. While we might
be intelligent and open-minded, popular
entertainment, news etc. often shapes our opinions.
When these types of reports are seen on television,
the thinking person absorbs it and moves on.
When this type of report is presented on the net,
the thinking person has the opportunity to search
for alternative viewpoints, to hear more than
just one side of any story. This may just be
as simple as reading the story from a different,
perhaps less-biased source (eg. BBC).
Punjabi
I'm not particularly religious, but I am just wondering what the religion-is-for-users people are going to do when your computer skills/interests become out-dated. Sure, the earth has been around for millions of years, and organized religions are barely a blip on the screen of Time (whoa, how stale and convoluted a metaphor was that?:). But if time is the test of authenticity, how valid is computer/cyber culture? One day this is all going to be old and outdated and we'll be videoconferencing with our supersmart grandkids, boring them with stories about how spiritual the opensource movement was. And as for this-is-our-club-you-can't-join snobbiness and we-own-the-earth arrogance, I've noticed that a lot of Linux'ers are as prone to that as Christians! :)
Jail them in a 3x6 room for life.
The real question is what do you do when you execute a person that was innocent? Think it can't happen? Rent "Thin Blue Line" and listen to Randall Adam's case. It happens rarely, but it happens, it happens.
People can do horrible things, doing horrible things to those people won't change anything. We all die, I don't think speeding up the process makes any difference. Why do you? You think that living in a jail room for life is a life? If so, commit a serious crime and get abort the EZ street express to retirement and prove it.
Of course the fatal flaw in Pascal's wager is that a human can change his/her beliefs at will. I would LOVE to be able to believe. I want very much to do so. I can't however, and even if I could which religion should I believe in?
As a former Catholic and a current atheist, I don't think you would want to believe. It's not fun, and it isn't useful. It is a way to control how you act and it limits what you can do. It is a crutch not a vehicle. I worked long and hard to rid myself of it. An organized religion is a cult. They are different in no way whatsoever except in social acceptance.
Just my opinion, and many other former religious people. I like to be able to completely reason, I could never justify all my actions and beliefs logically or defensibly when I was religious and it constantly left me in a state of self-doubt and turmoil. Self-doubt is not comfortable, to alleviate it you can do 2 things:
1) drop the religion (very difficult)
2) before more faithful (very easy).
Dropping the faith is well worth it. It was very difficult to work out and endure the change. It took years. It upset my entire belief system and it was a terribly difficult on me because I knew and came to realize how much time I had wasted. What I had wasted. Well, better to waste just a portion of life rather than all of it. I think in my case I'm a better person for it, and much better educated as well. In some ways, I'm glad I was once religious, but I wouldn't want to go through it again. It's like saying: I survived being a heroine addict.
If you're going to set arbitrary thresholds, you should justify them. Why >50%, and not >49%. What's not "prevalent" about a meme that lives in a mere 49% of the brains in a localized geographic region?
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I think he's right in that just because people don't attend churces and sing hymns they aren't religious.
He's also right in that religious symbols, even when worn/used in other contexts (fashion, teenage rebellion, etc) almost always betray a more serious religious interest beneath the surface.
However, I take issue with the tired old idea that somehow 'The Church' needs to constantly change and adapt to keep 'in tune with' the youth (which means, generally, 'the journalistic generalisation of youth').
I like the book of Common Prayer, and Cathedrals, and candles, and requiems by Faure and Mozart. I like Latin, and I like the fact that I can go to a church and hear the same words that people 15 generations ago were hearing. And I like them all the more because it is a rebellion against the modern notion that what is new is good and what is old is bad.
Sure, institutionalised religion may not be for everyone, but the Net doesn't undermine it. It provides a voice for those who _seek_ to undermine the institutional religions, but equally it provides a forum for those institutions.
"protect me O Lord, from the changes and chances of this fleeting world, in Thine eternal changelessness" (from the service of Compline)
-----
Be a good Christian and love them.
If you don't like the core messages of Jesus (love your enemies, don't judge, forgive, live poor, turn the other cheek etc.) you can of course always pick some other religion.
--
Look, you want to have it both ways. You want to appeal to the immutable English language, in all its static glory, to define "dogma" when it serves your needs, but you are reluctant to accept the dictionary definition of "atheism" when it undermines your thesis. That's intellectually dishonest. Deal with it.
What are you talking about? You never produced a dictionary defintion and I certainly never refuted it, since you never produced one. Here's the dictionary definiton of atheist:
atheist \A"the*ist\, n. [Gr. ? without god; 'a priv. + ? god: cf. F. ath['e]iste.] 1. One who disbelieves or denies the existence of a God, or supreme intelligent Being.
Now, fit that into religion:
religion n 1: a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; "he lost his faith but not his morality" [syn: faith, religious belief] 2: institution to express belief in a divine power; "he was raised in the Baptist religion"; "a member of his own faith contradicted him" [syn: faith]
Now, by DICTIONARY terms, is atheism a religion?
I rest my case, or I give up. Take your pick.
you'll be trying to tell me that science is not a religion! Sheesh!
I like reading the Bible and other ancient literature; I don't like ``youth culture'' (which is just a commercialisation of the rebellion of the 60s— you know, ``Be different&mdashDrink Pepsi.'') What I want is for each person to realise who they are in God, and to begin loving who they are, to love God, and love everyone else!
Gee, I'm starting to agree with Katz (somewhat). Scary.
Cheers,
Joshua. (It's so fun to have Lynx up one machine while you're hacking code on another...)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
On the topic of faith, I want to restate that it is just that: faith. It doesn't need to be corroborated[sp?] by observation (observation is generally wrong; determinism seems so valid, but a deeper scientific observation shows it is just one opinion of many). I believe in God because I've come to know him personally, and I want to follow his teachings. Maybe you don't. I wish you would, but I'm not going to force it on you; I want you to meed God for yourself.
But please don't turn on that broken record about ``look at the christians in the crusades, christians are all so unscientific!'' Of course I won't stand in your way of saying that...
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
I think it's more of a case of animosity toward God.
The reasoning seems to be: "My life sucks and I don't know why, and I don't have anyone to blame for it, so I guess I'll blame God, since He's ultimately responsible for everything."
Is that right, or did I just make that up?
TedC
PS. If there's anything better than Linux, it's gotta be preachin on the net! :-)
I think the golden rule is a fine measure for morality for the majority of people in the world. Why don't I kill people? Because I wouldn't like it if someone else killed me. This has nothing to do with god. Do you believe it is wrong to kill under any circumstances? Would you let someone else kill you or your loved ones if the only way you could prevent it would be to kill that person instead? If you say no, then your "ultimate morality" is now gone with reference to the statement that it is wrong to kill. If there are circumstances that justify killing, who decides what they are? God certainly hasn't given us any help in the gray areas.
When you say that "there is no dogma of atheism", you are incorrect. It is possible for atheism to be held and propagated based upon shallow dogma. I know this to be true because I've met dogmatic atheists before.
List precisely what this dogma might be. If you can accomplish that correctly, I will agree there is a dogma related to atheism.
You cannot say that anyone is purely christian. Christianity is a defined religion , defined within the Bible. The inquisition flies in the face of things like the sermon on the mount and the ten commandments. So what you posted did not make any sense whatsoever. The Inquisition WAS NOT a pure example of christianity, in fact it was not Christian.
Creationism has little to do with my lack of religious conviction. It played no part in my disbelief. HOWEVER if it turned out that creationism did have scientific merit I would have to consider the possibility that god existed. When I researched Creationism and found nothing but scientific falsification I was led to believe that it provided no useful evidence for the existence of God. Now I've searched in many places for God and never found Him (geology, history, science, paleontology, myth). You'll never find a gold bouillon in your house if it doesn't exist.
My conclusion is based off from history, science, and psychology. There is no proof or evidence for a god, therefore I will not believe in a god. It is more likely that men created god than god creating men, so I again come to the only logical conclusion. It's just Occams's Razor. The entire concept of Christianity is relayed to you by PEOPLE not god, why do you trust these people that wrote the bible, the same that carried out the Inquisition, engaged war in the Crusades, burned Bruno, and believed in heliocentricity? It's just a myth, as simple as that, like all the myths of many of the cultures. What would lead you to believe that our culture is the unique in this respect? We're no different, we are just as wrong, it's as simple as that.
You are not the center of the Universe. We are not ordained by God. God will NOT make it better. God will not bring about world peace. Humans are NOT the most important living things. Christianity is not better than Hinduism. We are not the center of the Universe.
Get some humility. We're lucky to be alive, leave it at that.
I don't think the author demonstrate any particular animosity against organized religion. His point seems rather to be that in our era our generation has the right and the power to choose to follow any of the organized religions or to follow his own kind of religion. The whole book seems to be (I must admit that I havn't read it... yet...) about freedom of speech/thoughts and about being able to determine by ourself if what is good/bad rather. Being free to explore spirituality the way we want.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Lynch's book, although it is interesting and rather thought-provoking, really shouldn't given much credibility. I suggest that we stick to Dawkins' minimal definition of the meme and not worry too much about Lynch's overly complex (and rather disappointingly retrospective) analysis of social phenomena.
Of course, Lynch's notion of "quantity parental" mass infusion of memes into a child's tabula rasa has a lot of intuitive appeal. But this is not a feature of memes, specifically, but rather a relic of neural plasticity in human brains. Of course, some memes might "try" to take advantage of that plasticity, just like they would arguably try to take advantage of any characteristic of our minds, but thers is no reason to believe that the memes that would succeed in taking advantage would have any specific content... we can only generalize about their structure.
Anyway, forgive me for getting carried away with my criticism of Lynch's book... but I really didn't find it very scientific... I am thinking about attempting a more Chomskyian approach to memetic structures... but, of course this approach (although far more desirable theoretically) exposes the true challenges implicit in formulating a science of memetics.
However, I would challenge you to rely more on your experience in life, and not the experiences of other men (and women). You underestimate your ability to determine right and wrong for yourself.
If God or the Universe enforces morality with punishment, then morality is entirely utilitarian - i.e., I will do good to avoid hellfire/to avoid reincarnating as a banana slug.
If universal morality is not enforced by cosmic punishment, then there's the extra-moral question of "why should we follow this moral rule?"
Ironically, the only truly moral behavior comes out of moral intuition, which I think of as emerging from the social instinct of compassion, which is part of our biological legacy. It's neither universal nor "subjective," since it relies on subconcious, rather than conscious, aspects of the psyche.
There is so much more, but these came to mind first...
Most moral codes usually work out to the benefit of someone. In todays society there tends to be a balance between rights and responsibilities.
Civilization is game that we have played for thousands of years and moral codes are a part of the game. There are some nice benefits to having something better than anarcy.
I did not engage in this debate with the expectation of win or loss, nor do I have any emotional attatchment to any particular set of semantic bindings. I think that improving sets of semantic bindings is a noble quest. I won't debate your proposed binding for the word "you", as that pronoun is relative to the user, meaning that I'm not the only one who must suffer the pejorative intent. :-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
It seems to me, however, that we run into the danger of attributing everything to memes. Philosophically, it seems that more often than not we arrive at a belief in order to justify an action that we want to take. Lynch's perspective would imply that in fact memes control our behaviour and thus memes are somehow manipulating us through the incidental effects of their darwinian processes.
Of course, in terms of genetic selection, an organism's survival will be influenced by environmental factors. I agree that (in general) culture counts as an environmental factor. However, I feel that it is possible to get carried away thinking that memes themselves drive our physiology and our behavior. As a counterexample, suppose that memes do drive our physiology and our behaviour. Then, suppose we wanted to define the way in which a meme must exist physiologically (as a neural impulse, etc.). A meme would exist only relative to the structure of the brain that it resides in. So, if memes are both able to influence the structure of our brains and are defined by the structure of our brains, then they seem to me to be part of our brains. Thus, I think that a weaker connection between behavior and the specific kinds of selection that occurs in the ideosphere is warrented.
I would like to continue this discussion further. I thank you for your intelligent comments. If you would like to continue this discussion over email, feel free to email me at matt@linguistlist.org
Because some people's morality isn't about what you can get away with. I know people who would, say, steal something if they were absolutely certain they wouldn't get caught. I wouldn't. "Why not?" Because I think it's wrong, and that's good enough for me. Whether or not there's some external being (deity, human, or otherwise) telling me it's wrong is irrelevant to my moral judgement. (However, the consequences of my actions would of course have an influence on my actual actions, regardless of what I think of their morality.)
Posted by Nino the Mind Boggler:
If I'm crippled, I'm happy to use a crutch.
Can you give a specific number for the minimum requirements for being "prevalent"? Apparently common-use isn't enough. So what, then, is the requirement? Must it be as pervasive as the meme "my set of semantic bindings are right and yours are wrong"?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
The real problem is that god didn't say anything in the bible. God didn't write a single word of it. Not once did god lay pen to paper and give us the wisdom of his omniscience. Where as you recommend reading the bible, I would recommend also reading the koran, the tao te ching, the bhagavad gita, the book of mormon, dianetics, the many sutras of the buddhists, the eddas, and many other religious texts and trying to find out which one of them had god in it. My opinion is that they all do or none of them do, that is for you to decide.
So basically... religion as we know it today is dying. Certainly they will have to reinvent themselves if they are to survive on something as _anarchic_ as the internet, but will they? Historically, they've always been conservative, hesistant to embrace new changes and values, especially in technology. ex: Galileo and the heliocentric view. I can't imagine a world where people wake up at eight every Sunday morning, and log online to listen to their pastor speak--there's something wrong with that image ain't it? Or perhaps technology is basically incompatible with religion, and the internet--really a new culture based on technology--hardly would accept the information that religion presents, ie, that Jesus is the son of God, or Krishna portrayed as an avatar, due to the "leveling of information" someone mentioned above. Perhaps that will ultimately strengthen faith, though, instead of weakening it. One crucial fact remains, though: religion has to radically transform itself if it is to survive online. Let us not forget that the purpose of religion is to convey meaning about morality, the purpose of life, and the afterlife. If in fact something arose out of the internet trying to answer those questions, wouldn't it be religion under another name?
Religion is a way to live your life and a way to believe in something larger than ourselves. Attacks on "the institutions" and organized religion are getting out of control. The Net is no more a "threat" to organized religion than was the printing press. If anything, it allows religions to get their message out to more people because they are no longer restricted to personal contact to broadcast their messages.
I have some friends who are as much a hacker as myself who have strong personal faiths. That the recent movements towards a personal faith that each person decides individually is the best way to go. Organized religion provides a greater "community" of believers to interact, especially when they belive similarly.
I can't say it better than Joshua:
Cheers!
--Jason
There was a hanging in Australia back in the 60s, I think. There was a hell of an outcry about it, and several coordinated protest marchs, and there was a big media frenzy over it.
Very few people wanted it to happen. Executions are disgusting, unethical, immoral, and barbaric. And this isn't a religious point of view. I'm a hardened never-been-theist.
But America is well known as the Wacky Christian Country. For all the "seperation of state and church" that is claimed, it's so obvious that the government is tightly controlled by right wing nuts with blood lust and a narrow perspective on morals and ethics. The ignorant beliefs of the dogma-driven fools in power are destroying your country from the inside out.
Americans: enjoy your hell on earth.
In general, I have noticed that many otherwise very intelligent people absolutely refuse to acknowledge a higher power than ourselves. Many geek types can handle the notion of a great power that created the universe, but balk at the notion that there is anything "spiritual" about life.
Isn't it just possible that we (as a people) have some connection with each other -- other than just the physical? Haven't a lot of you felt an awareness that something was going to happen, then it does? I am sure this happens a lot to the people on here, since most of the people that read slashdot are rather intelligent ... and I think intelligence sparks spirituality.
I understand that there is a lot of un-scientific stuff that people will scream and flame about whenever you deal with sprituality. I'd just say remember this, science is not god -- science is just our way of analysing the universe around us.
God is just a word we have assigned to those things we don't understand. I would make the argument that science is what we use to gain a greater understanding of god, not that science dis-proves the existance of a "god"...
I thin that it is good to see that there is a healthy discussion going on about this article, as opposed to the typical attack of the moronic A.C. posts. Kudos to all of the /. commununity to their efforts to keep this peacefull.
I for one think that some religions will change an others will not when looking at the net's influence. The traditional religions have not changed over the last hundreds or thousands of years. The media used to announce and even evangelize has changed, but the religions have not... and those that have should be examined as being religions...
I am a Christian and go to a Christian college where we are taught what the forefathers of our faith taught (Calvin, Wesely, Luther, Augustine, Paul) and strangely enough, after all this time, it is what we are still being taught, which I think emphaisises how the truth in a reigion is based upon an ultimate truth.
To be fair, there have been some slight swayings in teaching, but it is only in the minor things.
The net will and can not change a true religion.
Tim Toll
ttoll@css.tayloru.edu
#!/bin/bash
sed s/sins/blood/g ~ttoll/old.life > ~ttoll/new.life
rm -r old.*
chown -R jesus:wheel ~ttoll/*
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Because if they are invented by man, there's no reason anyone should feel bound by them. As men, we are all moral equals, so who among us has the stature to say what is moral and what isn't? Who gave other men the right to tell me what is right and wrong?
To say that morality exists is to say that there is something higher than yourself to which you owe allegiance. This something cannot be of your own invention, because if you invented it, you can change it whenever you feel like it. If so, it doesn't really constrain you at all and the term morality becomes meaningless.
This debate has sprawled out on the streets where people sport cars with decals of "Jesus" written in a fish, or "Darwin" written in a fish with leggs, or even a really big "Jesus" fish eating the little "Darwin" legged fish.
When Katz says that he's not sure weather Beudoin is right in saying that net culture will be more accepting of de-institutionalized religion, I think that many people will, but many people will also be repulsed by it too. But atleast this way, people will be thinking about it and making up their own minds in an informed manner, rather than having the dogma of the closest temple rammed down their throat.
cya
.sig
cya
I'm not sure what you mean by "purely political reasons". Most politics are pretty unclear/impure, involving as they do so many people, and some political results are good.
It is irresponsible and cowardly to claim that the Inquisition wasn't a Christian and purely Christian movement.
It was impurely political. Christianity was an important but not decisive concern. Look at what had just happened in Spain -- the Moslems had just left. The inquisition was a political defense. So was the Spanish conquest of the New World. Both emanated from the same basic root -- oppression under the occupation.
Even then, nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.
Every organization makes serious mistakes, don't deny Christianity is unique among them.
You're 100 percent right.
-Billy
that taking your example of the chicken and the egg, nobody has ever seen the chicken or the egg. They do not exist outside of your personal belief, and you cannot show them to anybody. The problem with religion is that it is anti-logical at it's very core. If I were a religious person, I would ask god why he punished with the curse of intelligence, since it causes me to question his works and puts me surely on the road to damnation.
I retract my claim of intellectual dishonesty, and apologize. I was, indeed, out of bounds. The dictionary clearly supports your viewpoint.
I had not realized how archaic the documented definitions of "dogma", "religion", and "atheism" really are. I think that, in the future, I'll stick to the neutral terminology. I concede defeat, and apologize again for my insensitive accusation. My only excuse is that my feathers were ruffled a little by your accusation that I was playing semantic games, when it was actually the case that I was trying very hard to be cognizant of the differences in our nomenclature.
Um. Assumming that this isn't sarcasm, and I don't think it is, I probably should tell you not to bother to read my last reply, because I'm afraid I lost patience. I have had the "atheism is a religion" argument many times. The reason I have had this argument before is that the "atheism is a religion" argument is chiefly used as a reason to remove evolution theory from the science cirriculum because it's a "religous belief". Evolution is a scientific fact, not a belief, and certainly not religious. There isn't just a little bit of evidence for evolution, but overwhelming evidence for evolution and many tests that demonstrate it, including ones you can do at home should you want to purchase some fruit flies and do really tedious experiments.
Science is also not a religion, and I can demonstrate why this is true as well. But I won't. The excercise is left to anybody but me.
I said:
Hiding behind literalistic definitions of terms in a vain effort to avoid the obvious -- that you are extremely religious -- is a cheap debating tactic.
To which you replied, completely ignoring the issue:
Without GOD you have no religion BY DEFINITION. I cannot change this. Atheism by DEFINITION is A=NO THEISM=GOD. It's isn't zealotry to point out when somebody has an incorrect definition and is using a word incorrectly.
I didn't say that hiding behind literalistic definitions was an example of zealotry; I said it was a cheap debating tactic to avoid the obvious: that you are religious ("extremely").
You falsely assume that the way things are now is the way they always have been. Who cares what decay rates have been like for a few decades? Who cares if the speed of light hasn't changed in 30 years? You CANNOT demonstrate that they have ALWAYS been this way. It is an untestable assumption. It requires faith to believe it. THAT is religious.
The remains of a three-toed horse can hardly be said to demonstrate the truth of evolution. That's just preposterous. Those bones do nothing but sit there. A scientist looks at them and concludes ("very scientifically," he assures us) that they represent a link in the evolutionary chain. Balderdash. Bones don't prove a process. They prove nothing more than that an animal once existed which had three toes but otherwise looked a lot like a horse.
Show me there is a god, give me testable evidence.
The evidence is all around you. Look at the world. You simply refuse to see it. You spend your entire life denying it.
Show me with "testable evidence" that there isn't a God. You can't. And it requires a religious (and highly dishonest) leap to categorically deny the existence of God when you can't prove it. That's like saying there's no oil in Kuwait because you dug a hole or two and didn't find any.
If you paid any attention at all you would see that I said nothing whatever (negative or otherwise) about the results of scientific effort. It is quite another thing when scientists make ridiculous efforts to explain the existence of the universe or deny the existence of God. Note what I criticized, please: useless scientific cosmology and epistemology. There are other things to criticize, of course (like so-called atheistic ethics). Observing that things work in such-and-such a way is very different from pathetic attempts to explain WHY they work that way. Here especially scientists fail.
Yes, I am an insignificant pipsqueak. I'll freely admit that. Even the greatest man alive is just a worm in comparison to God. That God deigns to have anything to do with us says more about his kindness than about our greatness.
Yes, I still think it's dubious, and this brings us full-circle back to the context of the book review: that the pervasiveness of the internet will have a significant impact on meme-transmission. I think we'll see the internet mitigate the effects of parental-transmission of memes. Time will tell.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
My personal belief is that someone can be just as much a Christian without any of the "Religion". Christianity does not have to be a long set of rules you have to follow. Christianity is a relationship with your creator that is very personal, and very special. How you demonstrate that faith is also very personal. For some people it may be attending structured religious institutions. For others it may be coding. (Hackers for Jesus?!?) I don't think that there is any contradiction between the net, 'cyber-culture' and Christianity or many other religions for that matter.
I do think that the net could pose a problem to structured religious institutions. If that is true then maybe these need to change. Christianity is flexible enough to cross cultural lines, even going into this new culture.
True faith can stand the test of being questioned.
-Phlip
Funny.
Show me one verse that in the Good Book (TM: all rights reserved) where is states slavery is wrong
In Deuteronomy rape is punished by forcing the rapist to marry the victim, and be fined for some cash (was it 50 sheckles? I forget).
Anyhow, morality doesn't spring from the bible. The bible isn't the word of god, its the law of a primitive people and a dead culture.
Sit down and READ that book objectively. I find it curious that some christians want to ban books when their holy book is full of rape, murder, incest, you name it. It's a very poor book on which to base a society, that's why the Dark Ages were the DARK ages. Things aren't perfect today, but I think it is argueably the very best time ever in which to live.
Yes, as your children too are free to gravitate in this direction if they so choose. That's what freedom of thought is all about. It's a wonderful thing.
Rather than being isolated from "memes from outside of one's meme-complex," people with views not part of the popular culture are often bombarded with competing viewpoints, hostility, disinformation (eg. FUD).
The net doesn't exactly level the playing field because the overwhelming content is still going to be that of the popular mindset. Nevertheless, the net at least provides non-popular views a forum. While it would be difficult to produce a movie, purchase a television or radio station, publish a magazine, anyone can post on newsgroups or set up a web page or an e-mail list.
I go to highschool right now, one thing I can say for sure, almost no one watches the oscars or the grammy's. Katz should at least attempt to base his bullshit conclusion on some ounce of truth. As for programming, it definitely is intellectually chalenging, but it is no way in hell really creative or narrative.
As for the net destroying religon, please give me a break. Katz thinks the net is going to destroy/change everything. The net is going to do a lot, but it isn't going to destroy everything in the world around us. If anything, the net is helping religons convey their message across. The net hasn't produced any more rebelious teens than in past generations when it wasn't around.
KATZ AT LEAST BASE PART OF YOUR BULLSHIT IN REALITY. MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE SOMEONE READ YOUR BS BEFORE YOU POST IT, SO THEY CAN EDIT OUT SOME OF THE MORE EXOTIC SHIT.
Heh, talk about religion... DEK takes a few "swats" at it every now and then...
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
The world as we know it is coming to an end. In the beginning of the 21st century a new age will begin. One of the characteristics of this new age will be change from collective to private spirituality. Which is what is happening and thereis not much we can do about it. :)
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
People expect other people to treat them as they treat other people. This is called "culture". As soon as you make it socially acceptable to kill another person, it is suddenly becomes socially acceptable to have somebody kill you. The so-called Golden Rule isn't the rule of Christianity, it is the centerpiece of every culture for this very reason.
You and I figure that if it becomes socially acceptable to kill people that we will suffer. Your wife could just as easily kill you after all. Would you want that? I'm guessing 'no'. Religion hardly dictates or provides a moral compass, one only needs to look at the Inquisition for verification of this statement where plenty of people were killed. Few people would say that it is "good" to kill "witches" today, but few people would have said it was "bad" to kill "witches" 500 years ago. Where was your absolute moral code then?
My point is that non-parental meme's cannot outcompete parental meme's. I can't think of a single instance where non-parental beats parental meme's on average. Can you?
Shakers didn't believe in having kids. 3 left.
Hussites (did I spell that right?) have on average 10 children. Population doubles in less than 25 years.
The downside is that memes from outside of one's meme-complex are now free to self-replicate freely. This means that your children, formerly isolated from infectious ideas like "there is no god", will now begin to consider that hypothesis, as children are wont to do. The danger, of course, is that they may adopt such a meme, and begin to aid in its propagation.
Q) How does atheism either increase birthrate or multiply as a meme?
A) it doesn't in either case
I'm an atheist, I don't want to have kids, feel no compulsion to get married, and have no need to spread my belief other than to argue about it. Atheism ALONE as a meme I don't think has survival benefits. Atheism coupled with secular humanism might, time will tell. I'm not a secular humanist either.
Fundamentalists (either Christian or Moslem) isolate their kids, atheists in general do the exact opposite. Which meme is more likely to spread? Face it, atheism is a luxury of the rich and the intelligent and as such is likely not to last or make it as a prevalent spiritual stance. We're in the minority and are going to stay there, make the most of it.
What's the record for the deepest comment on /. ?
To me it didn't sound like animosity towards religion. It sounded like animosity towards the institutions that claim to be to only source for religion.
Sean
lavelle.14@osu.edu
The REAL religion! Hail Eris!
Atheism, as defined above, is a meme that is transmittable by mere, mindless parental-programming. Never mind that it's unlikely. Never mind if one ought/ought-not do it. It simply can happen. I call such mindless-transmission "dogma". You don't, but the use of that particular word is irrelevant.
Peace.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Look up "dogma" in the dictionary. It is a set beliefs and rituals. Not a single belief. Is it dogma to believe that 1+1=2? Hey, that is a belief it's never been proven to be true by anybody. It is not a trivial problem, but it's hardly a religion.
Now I'm a former Catholic that once was very religious. You can still say that even though I checked the "Creation science" and learned radioactive carbon dating (and argon and potassium) and learned how stellar distances are calculated, and discovered why moon dust was miscaluclated in the 60's that I still have "faith" that there is no god. I will argue that I never once came across any independent evidence that a god exists and that "creation scientists" routinely falsify data or use data from scientists that is known to be faulty. But then it could be argued that even though "creation scientists" routinely falsify data or use data from scientists that is known to be faulty, it doesn't prove creation science is bullshit. Well, got me there, proof is a difficult thing to come by.
Now, apply Occam's Razor, and the conclusion becomes obvious. Is this faith or is this a logical conclusion? I argue it is the only logical conclusion, although some people argue this is faith. Faith is a tool used by those that are too stupid to check their facts or too lazy to think and I'm neither.
Join us then. You have both of our emails. Perhaps we could even requisition a discussion board. InsideTheWeb maybe?
Go for it. As long as you're not really hurting anyone, it is up to you what you do. (It is the definition of "hurt" you have to be careful with in this situation.)
I was mearly pointing out some of the benefits one might get from playing by the rules. That is not to say there isn't *any* benefits by not. It doesn't have to be either-or.
This sig is false.
Personally I think the review created rather a straw man of one view of the Church, then then criticised that. Harmless enough, and actually irrelevant for the vast majority of people - people will make their own minds up based on the information they have, and the net increases the availability of that information.
This so-called 'traditional church' which is supposed to be so inflexible (but inexplicably has survived 2000 years of social change) if it existed would deserve to die out. However in the real world the structures, traditions, etc. are merely a means to an end (leading people to God) - if the traditions fail to do that then forget them, and do something different. That is what appears to be happening - people creating their own 'church' based on their own experiences, needs, etc.
For myself, If Christianity[1] didn't embrace the things that make up my life (including things like the net, nightclubs, etc.) it could never be real. However it proves to be remarkably resilient. This is enough for me.
Tony
[1] In my case. I can only speak for my own experience, but I also believe the same is essentially true for any other expression of faith.
You have certainly convinced me!
Umm, I have to say that using quotes saying Buddhism is 'better' than other religions is not a particularly good way to make your point. Frankly, I found your post quite offensive in that regard, and I like to think of myself as a Buddhist.
The Buddha said emphatically, repeatedly, that Buddhism is not the One True Way, and that in fact there is no One True Way. Anyone who says or implies otherwise fails to understand his message, and IMHO fatally undermines their own arguments. He also said that mere appeals to authority (including his own) have no credibility, which makes the one sentence quote from Einstein somewhat pointless. Anyway, aside from these quibbles I do agree that some of the other quotes had relevancy, and I would certainly agree that Buddhism can fit in very well with the spirituality described and discussed in the review.
- "I never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine" - Bob Dylan (Tight Connection to my Heart)
Even though it's a bit presumptuous to make any comment about a book from a mere review, I got the impression that pop vs. established culture is at bottom here, with an emphasis on religion. Well, as a child of the sixties - wtf is Woodstock '94, some kinda soft drink? I've read/heard similar arguements about an earlier generation. Guess this just means that there is nothing really new, we just think so.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
I don't think the article ?animos? to religion. As you pointed out "Many who call themselves hackers are not. Many who call themselves 'Christians' are not." I gathered that this article had a fair amount of animosity towards those who call themselves 'Christians' but are not. Though it wasn't mentioned in the article I would assume that the author would hold the same animosity for Budhists who are not, or Jews, or Janists, or anyone else who talks about some religion without following it. I think he was realy trying to say that religion can be found in many forms. He objects to people trying to force their view of relgion on other people, and to those who denegrate other religions because they're not their own religion.
I can't tell you what religion I am because I'm too imperfect an example of it.
Occam's Razor is more commonly applied to logic than it is atheism. Atheism is a result of logic, but I would venture to say that over 50% of the American population apply Occam's Razor (created by a Franciscan monk of course) to everyday life.
The Occam's Razor meme has about the same likelihood of existing in a Christian as it does an atheist. It's just that the atheist takes the Occam's Razor meme much more to heart. Any scientist or professional MUST apply Occam's Razor, that doesn't prevent many of these people from being religious.
Now, I'm not religious. I don't see any reason to screw up my life having kids. I don't see any reason to educate the stupider groups that work in my field to my point of view. In my opinion, my collection of meme's is very beneficial to me and makes me more competitive. I'm a bit ruthless when it comes to work even. Why would I share that when being selfish I can profit from it immensely? I'm selfish, but I think I have a right to be. I've figured out the system for the most part and I did it on my own, slowly and painfully, and now I get the rewards.
There is no advantage to me to spread the meme. Unlike most people I am fully conscious of this. IF I have kids, I will teach them the same thing.
that most of the christians posting here are the kind that I would consider christian, but that most churches would not. This is refreshing and an entirely good thing, as I have met too many of the other kind.
The point is that the crusaders believed they were Christians and believed that they were doing the work of God as much as you believe that you "know" God. That belief is what led to their various murderous crusades.
Also, it's not hard to see how they got their ideas. Have you read the entire Bible? Not just the New Testament and its turn the other cheek business, but the whole thing. Notice the part where God commands people to kill blasphemers? It's not too hard to see how that could provide a bit of inspiration to crusaders. Not to mention the part where an Angel murders the innocent first-born children of all the houses that didn't have (lamb's?) blood on their doors (since the Christians put blood on their doors to let the angel know not to kill their children).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
One thing that also really irritates me is that people who are atheist usually justify their beliefs by pointing to no scientifc proof. One thing these people fail to recognize is that the institution they use as the basis of their beliefs was created by religously devout minds.
Bruno: burned at the stake
Galileo: imprissoned for life
Einstein: atheist
Darwin: atheist
Freud: atheist
Newton: devout
LeMaitre: devout
Segan: atheist
Occam: devout
What you fail to relize is that it wasn't JUST the devout, it's a mix of everybody and every culture. It's a huge oversimplification to state that science was built by religious people. It was built by *some* religious people. In the later years, it was built mostly be non religious people.
Also keep in mind that in 1500, proclaiming yourself an atheist was a good way to get roasted in a fire, although this may not be a source of faith, I'm sure it's a source of proclamation of faith. I myself would probably not be an atheist if I didn't know as much as I do about science, but my education goes beyond the 1700's (at least in technology). Atheism will probably grow as we begin to understand more about how the world works and depend less on "god did it" like we used to with rain, storms, the sun, origins of life, etc. etc.
"Haven't a lot of you felt an awareness that something was going to happen, then it does?"
Please explain further. I am hoping we're not getting the "I was thinking of my long lost friend ernie, and then the phone rang, and it was ernie!" type stuff here.
It is the mind constantly looking for connections. When it finds them, it goes "aha!" - when it doesn't, the experience is discarded and forgotten. When one expects something to happen and it does, it goes toward proof of something supernatural. When one expects something to happen and it doesn't, it is discarded.
In fairness "scientists" do this all the time, just look at Mendel.
Why does there have to be an "absolute morality", if there is to be morality?
What is the problem with a "man-made morality", invented by man and that has evolved through time, along with everything else?
I don't see why "morals" MUST come from an omniscient being.
What I'm saying is that meme-complexes are very loosely-defined entities with an almost organic quality,
and trying to say, definitively, what one is or is not is a losing endeavor. It really does depend upon the
specific subspecies of meme, and the generalization which you are advocating does not hold for all
instances.
The use of Gen-X techno-jumbo does not make your point any more relevant.
ok, quoting REM "Losing my religion" discussing religion? someone needs to research their REM :-)
Losing My religion is actually an expression for losing ones patience. Listen to the song with that in mind, it makes a ton more sense.
and it actually becomes meaningless whenever used like this was. ya need to read more into stuff, its just like with their other song, The one i love. people make out and fuck to that song... LISTEN TO THE WORDS, its anti love! he says one line, a simple prop, to occupy my time.
sorry. this isnt really relevant, im just a big rem fan, and *sigh* i couldnt help myself.
Besides, the fact that the everything around us was created by us by chance from a big bang (where did those particles that created the big bang come from?) doesn't seem to much more likely than the fact that Everything around us was created by God.
Wait a minute:
You are saying that the Universe must have been created by God because the Universe must have come from somewhere.
Where did God come from? You do realize this is a double standard. The Universe cannot create itself or have always existed, but GOD can. This is your logic??
Nice comparison.
An incredbaly stupid and poor assumption. Add arrogant as well.
Oh? An how so? Please describe in DETAIL instead of making another blind baseless statement. I need a good laugh.
No, I'm talking about a very real and documented strain of thought at the time. In the late '50's, it was thought that religion = visionary experience = some kind of physiochemical imbalance brought on by chanting, fasting, drugs, or what have you. I'm not talking here about the class of drugs usually considered addictive, I tried to make it clear that LSD and the other psychedelics were meant. And what is religion but "following"?
I'm not advocating religious fundamentalism here, nor do I believe that so-called "changeless" faiths are the answer. Judaism in particular has changed greatly over the years, Islam less so, but still has had to adapt to the wide variety of peoples it's attracted throughout the globe. I hope this will clear things up.
teleny, friend of cats.
I see no need to believe in anything other than what I can see, touch, hear, or extrapolate through reason. I also see no need to tell other people how they should believe. I don't believe in happy ever after stories, but I respect those who do. In my humble opinion, you are born, you live, you die. What you do is not important at all. We are fleas on a dog in this massive universe. I personally think that any religion is tied to mankinds inherent ego. We think that we are so important that a God would spend his time and energy trying to save us. That this whole Universe is here just for us. Sorry, I just don't think mankind is that important. Anyway, that is my humble opinion. I would make no presumptions to force it upon you, only to share it with you. For I am just a mere human, who am I to say I am right.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
I hope you got your catharsis.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Both "proof" and "dogma" are well defined words in the English language. If you prefer to use your own personal dictionary to support your conclusion I cannot argue with you.
If you care to define silicon dioxide as "cheese" and then use that to make the statement that the Moon is made out of cheese, I can hardly do anything other than to point out that your undertanding the the English language is flawed and leave it at that.
I will not play games of semantics only to justify your erroneous position. Why not just define atheism as a "religious belief in no god" and be done with it? The definition will of course be wrong, but no more so than your definition of dogma or proof.
I say no, because I have a distaste for killing
people and because I don't want to think of
myself as someone who would do things like that.
It's true that with clever enough
reasoning you can justify anything. However,
society will do its best to protect itself,
and you need to live with yourself even if you
arn't caught.
Besides, if there's an absolute morality, how can
you claim that we've found it? There's lots of
other cultures with different associated
moralities. What's your yardstick for finding
which is "truer"?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
you have it all wrong, man.
all you need to do is to believe in whatever you feel is right and say that you are a Christian, and that you disagree with what the Christian institutions are teaching (because they are wrong and you are right)
after all who is god to tell us christians what to believe in.
"in case you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic."
-- "DUH!"
-Homer & Marge
"It is undesirable to believe something when there is no reason whatsoever to suppose it true" - Bertand Russel
Wrongness is a subjective quality. Why can
I still object to it? Well, it's harmful to
society to allow people to kill others without
a good reason, and so it's rational for a
society to protect its members from each other
in this manner.
When it comes to literacy on moral philosophy,
I *have* read quite a lot. Plato, Hegel, Hume,
Marx, C.S. Lewis, etc. They arn't particularly
convincing. I would suspect that the loss of
influence of philosophy is probably a result of
people finding the idea of an absolute morality
less appealing. This in itself doesn't mean that
it isn't valid, or at least it isn't sufficient,
but the existance of a practice doesn't validate
it automatically. There were once lots of
astrologers and alchemists, and those are now
pretty much dead pursuits.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
There is animosity towards religion on the internet,
because the internet attracts thinking, intelligent
people who do not believe everything everyone
tells them. People who are used to researching things
for themselves, gathering actual FACTS, and taking
very little "on faith."
Maybe they're also sick of how much death and
destruction can lay it's blame on religion. How
many people have died for "religious" reasons. How
many scientists have been tortured by close-minded
churches? (Catholics come to mind here.)
Mostly I'm turned off by the arrogance of 99% of
the religions that somehow think THEY are the
chosen ones.
Here's a factoid for you -- the earth's been here
for 4.5 BILLION years, and Christians (a piddly
2000 years old) think they are all that and a
bottle of wine.
How anything that is 2.25 MILLION YEARS YOUNGER
than the planet it lives on can feel anything but
small and unimportant is beyond me. But most
religions fall into this category.
It seems to me that religion is for the weak. People
that need something to help them when they can't
think of any reason to get off their ass and do
what is "right" (however you define that).
I mean, you must be a weak minded person (or
one brainwashed by years of listening to your
relatives) to believe something some man in a
funny outfit tells you every week. And don't you
christians get me started on the bible -- a book
so filled with inconsistencies it should be classified
as FANTASY in your local library.
I read an article in the LA Times that reported on
research into a so-called "god lobe" in the brain.
They noticed that people with larger and/or more
active "god lobes" were more likely to be moved
by spiritual/mystical experiences.
So ya see folks, this religion crap is just a
chemical imbalance.
OK I'll let you off the hook now... go read a
book that doesn't have BIBLE stamped on the front...
all 12 of you reading this. Try picking up Carl
Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World." If you read
and digest this book, you'll be much more likely
to use your brain, keep a healthy level of
skepticism, and perhaps not believe EVERYTHING
EVERYONE tells you.
Later.
See "Another fine example of religious zealotry" in this thread.
How is it to my benefit to restrain myself when I could gain an advantage by acting immorally?
There is benefit by playing by the rules. By playing by the rules, you don't suffer the consequences that society imposes for those who don't play by the rules (jail, death, whatever).
Take the law that makes it illegal to kill. It doesn't exist because of some absolute morality. It exists because people, in general, don't want to die. (Why don't they want to die? That's probably an evolutionary advantage a few living organisms picked up a long time ago. Those who didn't mind dying, for the most part, died off.) In light of this, society (by consensus usually) makes rules against it. It isn't that they are moral, but they decide that in order to save themselves, they make it illegal to kill. By coming to a consensus, more people are likely play by this rule, and you are less likely to be killed. Hence the benefit to you.
Unless that is...you don't mind dying. Then by all means, go break the rules.
This sig is false.
Hey, don't forget the old OT "eye for an eye" thing with which many Christians in the United States love to justify their support for capital punishment.
I'm not trying to make a comment for or against CP - but rather to show that many Christians have no problems whatsoever with killing in certain circumstances.
Hmmm, possible meaningless correlation:
USA: only western country where Christianity still demands to be taken seriously
USA: only western country where the government still routinely carries out executions of its own citizens
I don't know what conditions are like elsewhere, but the church I went to was very responsive to feedback.
I knew all the speakers (yes, more than one; If I'd put together a decent message, I could have preached for a day myself -- even if it conflicted with the elders' non-core beliefs). If I had something to say to them, I said it. These weren't folks to be treated gingerly and addressed as "Father" when we met them but the teachers, managers and laborors from around the community.
We needed no additional communications medium. We answered to no larger organization but rather to our members. If someone disagreed with a message, they discussed it with the speaker afterwards, in a meeting or (if their disagreement continued) during the service.
Frankly, I think this is The Right Way to run a church. Any need for additional feedback being filled by some new medium shows inadiquate mechanisms presently in place.
I just have to say that anyone who wonders about religion ought to read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. It is a book written by an author who is religious... from the perspective of satan's henchmen... It's quite an entertaining perspective on people who see themselves as "good christians"... it really turns a lot of the modern religious status quo ideas concerning "shoulds" upside-down. And the book has definite geek-appeal...
I for one am glad someone is finally willing to face up to the fact that today's prevelant religious streotypes don't apply to the modern digitized world. Christian society, which has opressed Jews, Muslems, Pagans and even fellow Christians, are finally losing the power that they hold over the masses. The "alternative" religous groups like the Wicca and Athiests (yes athiesm is a religion) are able to adapt better without the underlying dogma to hold them back. Let the digital age begin without having to worry if "god" is going to disapprove of my actions.
---------
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
I also think that religions tend to be leaders in social progression. You generally think of "church" and get an image of some stuffy place with old people but churches, including the Catholic church, have been very progressive historically. Just look at the 2nd Vatican council and some of the proclamations the Pope has made recently. They don't need to adapt so much as they need to keep doing what they are doing if they wish to continue and they will. Memberships are up, people go to church, the trend isn't going the otherway.
That being said, I think the world, particularly the west, is on a forked road. It is currently easier than ever before to believe what you want. Speech is easy and it is very easy to be heard. Truth is getting harder to determine, just look at recent political scandals, there is so much "information" floating about that it is very easy to find support for your point of view, no matter how extreme it is. Credibility of the information provider no longer means anything, the media is either liberal and protects there guys or they are scandal mongers in a feeding frenzy depending on which side you're on. Or take some other examples (these are just examples, I'm not trying to suggest anything) like pot, pot users will say it is harmless. Anti-Pot people will say it is a terrible drug. Who is right? It's almost impossible to find truth because each side has there own "information" and then has ways to discount the credibility of the other side. Pot users "are addicts" and anti-pot people "stand to lose money to pot."
Two other topics that come to mind and have a slightly more spiritual slant are homosexuality and abortion. There is some evidence that homosexuality is a genetic trait. There is also evidence that suggests that homosexuality is at least partially the result of events during a child's upbringing (pick up a psychology book, a disproportionate number of homosexuals have supposedly been abused or come from familes where abuse occurred.) Not that it makes a difference but now the issue is jaded. Never mind the fact that humans are extremely complex beasts and it likely that you can arrive at a condition more than one way but there are two distinct factions: one that believes it is a purely genetic thing and one that doesn't and neither side has much evidence and both sides have pride and face to lose by being wrong so they have to undermine the other side's evidence.
Same for abortion, there have been articles published in well regarded journals which suggest that abortions may increase the risk of breast cancer. This doesn't sound like much of a stretch but the issue is so heated that it is impossible for somebody to study it and determine the truth. Proponents are labeled as religious extremists and opponents refuse to study the issue. People are less concerned with the truth and more concerned with maintaining their currently beliefs.
Anyhow my point was that you can believe what you want and there are more than enough people out there who will defend your belief and support it and pat you on the back saying you're right. We've reached a point where it is very easy to believe in something and then disbelieve in contradictory evidence by attacking the credibility of the creator of that information.
Religion doesn't fit well into that world. It's a popular target and an easy way to brand somebody who doesn't agree with you. You're no longer a doctor who in concerned about the health risks/benefit of pot use, you're a right wing religious doctor who has been corrupted by the system and is out to prove that pot is evil or you're a doctor who has no ethics and uses pot.
On the other end of spectrum, society is very tolerant of just about everything. The only sin in modern culture is intolerence. This kind of coincides with the refusal to seek truth because you're intolerent if you support an idea that is against somebody else. Religion is one of the last popular pockets of intolerence. If you say something about the color of somebody's skin you get fired from you job and are shunned but you can still make sweeping alegations about somebody's church or religion. Somewhere the US flip-flopped and the first amendment got changed from something designed to protect the church by keeping the government out of it to a law to keep the church out of public affairs. It's now a political weapon to accuse someone of being a right-wing religious person. The tolerence trend will eventually change that, religion will once again be a private matter, not to be judged by others. It has to because we are running out of other things to tolerate.
It will be interesting to see how things pan out. I'm positive that religion won't go away. Churches will continue to adjust and remain popular, it's foolish to think otherwise because in a world where you can believe what you want people will still want the solid and unquestionable foundation of a religion (unquestion being the credibility of the information) it's impossible to argue with faith. Likewise, when religion is once again on the tolerated list, it won't have to adapt as much and it becomes a much easier to abuse the good nature of religion or church and use it for evil.
I agree with you that confining someone for life (especially given the conditions in some American prisons) is a horrible punishment; in fact, I think it's worse than the death penalty so I support the death penalty as a human alternative to life imprisonment.
Forgive me but I don't beleive you. An individual that is incarcerated for life always has the option of suicide. You can do it with underwear. Forcing death isn't a humane alternative to life imprisonment, it just satifies blood lust. Most people, no matter how desperate they are, tend to cling to life, no matter how meaningless that life is. It's biology.
Also consider that Nazi war criminals weren't put to death. The death penalty is just stooping to someone else's level. Life sentences should be life sentences however. Once you do a grisly murder and taken away all somebody had and all they could have, you loose your rights too. Fair is fair.
If religion was so unimportant, why did you go to such lengths to decry it?
What a specious argument. You religious fanatics are trying to impose your views on us -- on abortion, on politics, and even on science (creationism!)
Some of you comments are foolish, and others are wrong but understandable.
I pee on Jesus. BTW "Jesus" sounds a bit like "I suck" (je suce) in French.
People talk of the harm done by religion, but I think it is small compared with the good. Some thousands
have been killed in religious wars, but many, many more have lived suffering from incurable disease,
poverty, and oppression, and found religion their source of hope and solace.
A good joint or Prozac can achieve the same ends, yunno.
It is the nature of people to war over strongly held beliefs that conflict, whether or not those beliefs are
religious.
No one ever die of a KDE vs. Gnome flame war AFAIK.
Blasphemy is fun.
Burning a church a day keeps the drooling macaques away.
dude, that's completely insane. even christians
aren't that messed up.
George Carlin says a lot of things, mostly centered around vulgarities and four-lettered words. Some of his stuff would actually be funny if he didn't try to be kewl by using the F word as punctuation. I wouldn't credit him with any great insight about religion, though...
-Eric
Good question. There are scientific reasons, such as the causation of the big bang and origin of the cell, but nothing really convincing. The short answer to your question is twofold. The first is this... any well-trained scientist will confess that science actually proves nothing. All it can do is offer hypotheses that are consistent with our observations. We cannot ultimately rule out another hypothesis that explains the observations equally well. By the same principle, my spiritual beliefs explain my experiences better than any other belief system I am acquainted with, including non-spiritual or non-religious ones. so I accept my beliefs as the best hypothesis to explaing my observations (experiences). The second part of the answer is that I have had experiences, whose persuasiveness is not transferrable to anyone else, that compel me to believe in Deity.
Not complete, but thats basically the pith of it.
But the fatal flaw, and damn obvious one, of your argument is that your definition will never be found in any dictionary on the planet.
Q) Why not use a standard definition instead of making one up?.
A) The standard definition would show that you are wrong.
I fail to understand how dragging Creationism (or Scientific Creationism, pick your strawman) and the skewing of data used to support it lends credence to your assertion that there is no God. This is on the same level as outright rejecting that eggs come from chickens because you've never seen one laid.
Also, while I respect and defend your right to criticize Roman Catholicism for its excesses and dogmatism, I must disagree that because it may have been wrong in one thing that it is wrong all through. (BTW, I am not Catholic, nor have I ever been.) To paste some salve on that raw wound you harbor called "Creationism", I would like to point out that even Pope John Paul II acknowledged last year that the theory of evolution may have something to it, but that even if it were true, it does not impact the central message of Christianity: A just God providing redeption for a rebellious and self-absorbed race.
Since others have said it better, I'll invoke their voices. C.S. Lewis summed the existance of God question and the truthfulness of religious systems up thus: "When I was an athiest, I believed that all religions were dangerous because their basic premise (an unseen Deity) was wrong all through. When I became a Christian, I was able to take a more liberal view [of other religions].
Robert Heinlein (who was ever an old rational-anarchist-atheist) admitted that atheism was merely "god-ism" turned on its head. It offered no more answers than its progenitor.
flames > dev/null
I think it's past time for people to grow up and learn to deal with problems on their own without the crutch of religion.
Atheism is not a religion. There is no philosophy of atheism, there is no dogma of atheism, there is no cohesiveness among atheists and there is no worship done by atheists. Atheists simply don't believe in a god, for the sole reason that there is absolutely no evidence that would indicate that a god would exist. Only people say there is a god, nothing in nature even hints a living and sentient god exists.
Believing in god takes that same faith as believing in men on Mars. There is 0 evidence to indicate Martians exist, even if a lot of people believe it, it doesn't make it true. Atheism isn't the "faith in believing there is not god", atheism is the rejection of human claims that a god exists. That's not faith, it's skepticism.
Sorry. I actually have a life apart from Slashdot. I was living it. You have your answer now.
Geek : 4 (0.15%)
Regards, Ralph.
I'm sorry, if God declared that torturing people is Good, I ain't gonna follow him. Just because he said so doesn't make it an Absolute Truth.
1. Did I say religion is unimportant?
2. "Some of my comments are foolish, and others
are wrong but understandable." Which ones and how?
3. Not thousands... try millions.
4. Religion is THE number one cause of death in
the world. Do some research.
The "facts" you spout off as being of most importance are based on faith.
I offer this very discussion as evidence to the contrary!
Let's fix an abstract individual, J. Random Atheist, who believes that there is no god as a mere article of faith. Let's assume that J holds this belief because his parents told him that this was the case, and that J has no other thoughts on the matter. (In J's defense, let's assume that the subject merely never comes up.) It appears, to me, that people are saying that J is not a true atheist, because he holds the view dogmatically. That's a pointlessly divisive way to cleave the category, IMO.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
ppl the whole idea of faith itself is misleading. equally the viewing of physical evidence or hardcore logical proof is also misleading from the thoeretical standpoint that there are alternative realities/dementions to ours,that obey under other set laws of logic.The bottom line is that no one can say what is correct and false in a world where everybody has their own concept of reality and perception of the universe. acknowledging that we are senitient beings, alone, requires faith and acceptance of a truth we cant actually proove. though we may not accept this conciously this concept is elementary and primal to our needs/self being. from what i gather from this review is that this book is more of an attack on traditional values/religion as opposed to personal faith and the acceptance of a higher power. It should be noted that through studying /most/ religious literary works that they seem to concentrate more on the individual's relation with god/higher power, as opposed to one's faith in an institution. this idea of faith in an institution has been brought apon by man's discontent with beliving in something he cant see at a realistic level ergo making a social club/cliche for companionship and greatening your overall feeling of importance. from any rational standpoint i think the idolitry of organization is due to a primal fear of lonelyness and insecureness. it can be also argued that these primalistic virtues were set in place by the higher power itself as a calling. the argument can wage on for hours on end and we still would get nowhere.
the thing people need to start understanding is: my reality is mine and your reality is yours. Stop trying to disprove my reality in an attempt to makes yours seem more real & secure.
that wouldent be very godlike would it?
If civilization and life are merely a game, why should I play by the rules? How is it to my benefit to restrain myself when I could gain an advantage by acting immorally?
No where in there did it say killing someone (that was in a previous post). AndI will admit, I repsonded to that in a more general sense than just killing someone. I used the example of killing someone in my post because it was handy. So there is one thing we need to clear up before continuing, are we talking about just killing someone, or doing someone someone deems "immoral?" So I appologize. When you said "acting immorally," I took it to mean more than what you did.
I don't mean you shouldn't kill someone *period*. I mean you shouldn't kill someone because there *are* consequences. If you are *sure* you can get away with it, there is no *absolute* reason you should not. This is why society imposes the rules it does. Because, by consesus, the people who impose these rules, don't want to be killed, and by imposing them on *everyone*, they better the chances that they won't be killed. Now if your problem is that you don't want these rules imposed upon you, go move away from society.
My point is, there is no reason you should care beyond the consequences and personal preference. (If you choose to care, that is your business, not mine. But you cant say that belief has is, in any way, absolute). Society knows this, and to protect itself, it imposes rules.
This sig is false.
"I find that my faith is completely compatible with what I do;indeed, I consider it part of my higher calling. Working on free software is a way I have found I can show my love for mankind. (I know, it sounds weird. Get over it.)"
It's not weird at all. Just ask Larry Wall.
The whole idea is that memes exist and udergo selection entirely apart from our survivial. Martyrdom is an example of a kind of meme that sacrefices its own host in order to replicate.
Any kind of analysis that attempts to look at the way that particular memes influence human survival is really just a pseudoscientific way of justifying cultural or ideological biases.
Dawkins' whole point was that our particular beliefs don't matter all that much... what is important is that ideas compete for survival (in our minds, voices, books, emails, etc.).
What is interesting about memes is not the possibility of isolating "good" memes from "bad" memes. Memes (by definition) are not subject to moral evaluation since morals themselves are memes.
The meme of memetics gives us a tool to look at culture and the transmission of culture as a phenomenon that may take shape partially because of the structured interactions between atomic units (memes) that operate according to the logic of natural selection.
I'm guessing that what you mean is my reference to my experiences supporting a belief system. As a simple (and perhaps poor) example, I sometimes do something for someone else without any expectation of compensation of any kind. In a non-spiritual (e.g. Darwinian sociology) context, this altruism doesn't make any sense; it conveys no benefit. Having said this, I'm sure that there are many arguments that could be made that I am benefiting somehow and don't know it or that it makes me happy because I believed it would or whatever. I'm sure there are an infinite level of philosophical layers here. This is a perfect example of what you call in your thinking essay (which I enjoyed) a "subjective question". So, I can't, and won't try, to convince you that I am happier because I do things for other people without reward. Another example, purely for the sake of example, is that I believe that in general the best way to gain influence in an individual's life (e.g. to try to get them to change)is to show them that you love and care about them. This is a principle taught in the New Testament (and other places) and my experiences have supported this belief, so I continue to believe in it.
Sometimes, I will have an experience that does not seem to fit within the context of my beliefs. When this happens, I re-evaluate the belief, and 1) modify it 2) extend it 3)throw it completely out if I find the problem to be unresolvable. I have done all three. So thats it.
Incidentally, just for educational purposes, your post on the explanation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was wrong. It is a common misperception that the uncertainty principle (u.p.) is about our practical ability to observe something, but its not. We can now actually get around the kinds of problems you described by observing where a particle *isn't*. The u.p. is actually more literal than that. The u.p. is a mathematical relationship that says that anytime the operators for any two observable do not commute, they will obey the relationship (>h-bar/2). So this means that position and momentum obey it, as do energy and time, and others. What this means is that the property in question actually *physically* delocalizes! Thus electrons are described as waves (a delocalized distribution) as well as particles. Scientists take advantage of the literality (literalness?) of the u.p. all the time. For example, they can sharpen a peak on a spectrograph (an energy measurement) by measuring it for longer time. This literality of the u.p. was one of many things that severely irked Einstein about quantum mechanics.
Finally, since I noticed that you were interested in the workings of the brain, I thought I'd mention something I've noticed about the brain. I'm sure you've had the experience that you know you know something, but can't retrieve it. I find this fascinating. Its like your brain has an index that it references before it retrieves the actual data. In an object-oriented context, it might be comparable to an enormous (perhaps hierarchial) array of objects, each of which contains a pointer to the actual data and a short description of what is stored there. When you are not able to retrieve the data, you might say that either a) something voided your pointer or b) someone deleted the memory that was pointed to. What do you think?
Thats all.
actualy from what you said and the review, it looks like you are in complete agreement. You call your self a fundamental christian yet you don't attend a church. you have a spiritual side with out attaching yourself a orginized version of your religion. you interact with people of different faiths without losing yours. I think that is exactly what the article is talking about.
If someone _claims_ they are a Christian, or Nazi, or Neo-Pagan and shows by example their interpretation of said religion (organized or otherwise) then we must accept that individual as a member of the greater religious community they claim membership in. If a weenie file leach claims to be a hacker, God forbid ;), then he/she/it is a hacker.
Who sets definitions? Is it the elite? The people? Who are the people? The prolitariate? Only those educated enough to make an informed decision?
Right now most Protestant churches bear little resemblance to the original _cults_ of Christ that existed 1500-1900 years ago. Hell, I'm a Christian cultist myself. (As well as Linux preselyte, heh heh.)
The thing is, the churches (lets say ROs / religious organizations so we're not so narrow of scope) will change and either betray their beliefs to suit potential members or find means to rationalize popular, humanist thought with the RO's traditional idea of the divine. Now is that coming to new revelations about truth or is it spin doctoring old dogma.
And as far as I know, dogma is only dogma if you don't want to listen and noone takes the time to explain it.
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if there's only one window,
you can't see the whole world
knock down the walls
open source
But that has no effect on the validity of what I said, of course.
chiefly because there was no validity to your statement.
I'm being entirely intellectually honest. Your definition of dogma exists only in your head. Just because you have an incorrect definition isn't a basis for your interpretation being correct. If you don't want to use a dictionary fine, but don't expect me to agree with your personal definitions that only exist to satisfy your argument. You definitions are only concocted for the sole reason as to make you argument palatable, this is being intellectually dishonest.
I understand that definitions do change over time, but please don't change your definitions just to win an argument and expect me to not cry foul. When the rest of the population agrees with you, then we'll have something to discuss.
You're out of bounds, deal with it.
Hiding behind literalistic definitions of terms in a vain effort to avoid the obvious -- that you are extremely religious -- is a cheap debating tactic.
Without GOD you have no religion BY DEFINITION. I cannot change this. Atheism by DEFINITION is A=NO THEISM=GOD. It's isn't zealotry to point out when somebody has an incorrect definition and is using a word incorrectly.
There is little if any fundamental difference between theistic systems of belief and your unsubstantiable claims concerning the legitimacy of the scientific method as a means for obtaining certainty concerning cosmological and epistemological issues.
Tell you what: I'll measure the echo of the big bang (i.e. background radiation of the Universe), measure the age of the planet in 5 different ways, show that the farthest stars are 15 billion light years away in 3 different ways, show that radioactivity is constant over the last 40 years, demonstrate the the speed of light has been constant at least since the 60's, show that the Great Deluge couldn't produce the fossil record we see, demonstrate the 10,000 species of animal couldn't survive on an Ark for 40 days and 40 nights (much less be fed) and show you transitional fossils for the horse, the pig, and the bird.
Show me there is a god, give me testable evidence. I don't even need to have multiple ways of testing it. Just 1. That's all I ask.
That crappy unprovable "scientific method" cured small pox, allows 6 billion people to live on the world at the same time, has more than doubled your lifespan, has made the flu a mild irratation instead of death sentence, created electricity, computers, television, cars, medicine, cures for cancer, pesticides. What has your miraculous religion done? Should we pray for a cancer cure or FIND one? Next time you're sick, scew antibiotics, forget medicine. Pray instead. God will let you live if it is His will right?
Your god is yourself. Your worship may not take place in a church building, but your devotion to your own opinions betrays a reverence that is indistinguishable from religious fervor.
You believe that you are created by the same Omnipotent all powerful being that created 30 billion light years of space. That created the very Sun, the Earth, SuperNova's, Black Holes, Pulsar's, Galaxies, and time itself. You believe that you are so important that this SUPER BEING takes a personal interest in YOU, in 30 BILLION LIGHT YEARS OF SPACE. Of that UNIMAGINABLE GREATNESS. YOU are important to the BEING that created ALL THAT. You are so PERSONALLY important that God Himself cares about you and takes a personal interest in your well being.
And you say I think I'm god? There is no god. I'm an insignificant pipsqueak, and so are you. You are so arrogant to think you have a personal relationship with that? Give me a break.
I agree with the premise that today's tech-savvy in no way endangers current religions. However, I think this dispute has helped some people's quickness to judge rise to the surface and make their righteous exteriors ugly. Who are you, out there, to assume what my beliefs are? Who truly is a 'vanilla believer'? It is sad to see, in such an informed group, that ignorance still pervades.
No one can say, "Christians do this:... and dont to this:..." Christians thought they were doing the right thing in The Crusades, and militant pro-life activists think they are doing the right thing by killing doctors. My point is 'picking, choosing, and changing' keeps popping up in religion, and it's not going away just 'cause a person prints in this forum:"this group does this... and that's it." Think you're safe? Priests rape, people lie under oath (so help you God), Christians kill, hackers crack, and everyone lies, cheats, and steals. Earth isnt friendly to absolutes.
At the core, religion is a personal belief to place faith in irrational things. No religion can point a mocking finger to another, saying, "I told you so!"
If we were to look at 'The Bible' as the definitive source of what God wants, which bible should we look at? Which translation? Which interpretation? When you hide behind scripture, you dont have God in your corner, you have a bound hunk of wood pulp. The Bible, taken word for word, is against homosexuality, masturbation, menstration, physical activity on one day out of seven... still Christian? 'Thou shall not covet'... "hey, stop checking out my K7!!!" Still Christian?
I secretly believe that hackers who want to have some fun at someone else's expense, do so, then blame a mysterious group of hooligans who are nothing but trouble called 'crackers'. Still 3733T3? Be realistic and dont dictate rules to people who believe in an imaginary force controlling everything. I do, and, darn it... got mad at my phone, threw it across the room. Violence. Uh-oh, better shop for another religion.
While were on the subject... take a peek at the website of a man who swears he is doing God's work. The idiot's name is Reverend Phelps.
http://www.godhatesfags.com He doesnt exactly enhance my Christian pride, but goes to show people think and believe in what they darn well please.
Nope... not wrong :)
(i hope not, since a major portion of my dissertation had to do with this.) go to this url and read the part about the thought experiment... particularly about how its not the experimenter's fault.
http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08a.htm
Enjoyed the conversation. I liked your essays... they show thoughtfulness.
Later.
"Objective morality" is an oxymoron. Just because it's declared by fiat from some God doesn't make it any more valid than if I say it.
Whoa there! Jeld didnt say the world was ending, just the world as we know it. In past recorded history, when the calendar of the time (remember they changed from Julian to Gregorian on 10-15-1582) people *always* start wigging out right before the nigh time. Then when everyone sees nothing bad happened, a renaissance emerges. :)
"What do you or anyone else know about the next great paradigm shift?" Well, who the hell determines what the 'in' colors for next fall will be? All of business is either predicting what the consumer will want in the future or supporting those businesses that do the predicting. With so much effort put into finding out what will happen down the road, dont you think discovering personalized beliefs will be 'in' is just another forcast?
By the way, are you the same person who was so sick of people picking and choosing what they want to believe in? humph... I'm a nihilist, and i dont believe you.
Truth is truth. Apparent conflicts between science and religion are a result of an incomplete understanding of how things really are. For those who disagree without any thought, I'd point out an example in the science domain: the apparent unresolvable problem as to whether light was a wave or a particle. As it turned out this apparent disagreement was a result of our poor understanding of reality. I myself have a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry and a B.S. in molecular biology. I feel I understand the science landscape pretty well and yet I have a firm faith in Deity. If there is a fundamental difference between science and religion, I'd say it's that science is quick to admit they don't know everything, whereas religion is not. It'll all come out in the end. Maybe.
The OT is universally accepted by all Christian groups as the word of God, and thus fit for publication within the Bible.
Does that mean they (all) still consider it applicable? No.
And openness and scientific/logical inquiry are encouraged.
Here are a few quotes that might help to reveal the nature of Buddhist thought and why it is still very relevant in our modern scientific age.
Enjoy!
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In the Beginner's Mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind, there are few.
(Shunryu Suzuki)
The freedom of thought allowed by the Buddha is unheard of elsewhere in the history of
religions. This freedom is necessary because, according to the Buddha, man's emancipation
depends on his own realization of Truth, and not on the benevolent grace of a god or any
external power as a reward for his obedient good behaviour.
(Ven. Dr. W. Rahula, "What the Buddha Taught")
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and
avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based
on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual -- as
a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.
(Albert Einstein)
If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.
(Albert Einstein)
Buddhism is hundred times more realistic than other religions. It has entered upon the
inheritance of objectively and cooly putting up with problems. It came to life after several
hundred years of philosophical development. The notion of God is done away with as soon as
it appears. Prayer is out of the question. So is asceticism. No categorical imperative. No
coercion at all, not even within the monastic community. Hence it also does not challenge to
tight against those of different faiths. Its teaching turns against nothing so impressively
as against the feeling of revengefulness, animosity and resentment.
(Friedrich Nietzche, A German Philosopher)
The Buddha discourages the vain search after and the theoretical discussion of absolute
notions such as the origin and the end of the universe or of the self. Instead, He demands,
first, a study of life and phenomena in respect of their laws. This makes Buddhist
Philosophy a scientific or positive philosophy.
(Dr. W. F. Jayasuriya, "The Psychology and Philosophy of Buddhism")
Among the great founders of religions, it was the Buddha alone, who encouraged the spirit of
investigation in his followers and warned them, not to accept his teaching with blind faith.
Therefore it is not exaggeration to say that Buddhism is the only world religion that can be
called modern.
(Madam A. David Neel, a French Buddhist Scholar)
Because a more recent word of god explicitly overrides it.
Religion would help nerds cope with their lack of sexual life -- by making it appear as a choice instead as of a fatality.
Huh, ain't I so rude?
I just *hate* religion.
It's just part of my genetic programming. I started coding around 10 y.o., but I *knew* I hated religion (as well as the militaries) when I was around 8 y.o. I was kicked out of sunday school because I told them it was "bullshit" (des conneries, in French).
Religion is about manipulating people. Get to realize that. Stand up!
Most of the Christian churches I know hold views quite compatible with each other. The Baptists, the Prespeterians and the Unitarians (for example) all believe each others' followers to be saved.
Any Christian church that does not accept this, IMHO, becomes a cult.
It is I who have been bringing us back to this point: the defining characteristic of "religion" is the uncritical transmission of articles of faith. I would say that, yes, P is accepting the statement religiously.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Very nice article!
On a different note, I looked up dogma in an unabridged dictionary, and there is, indeed, an alternate semantic binding: a statement taken to be true a priori. I've met such atheists, but I guess they're not really atheists because they merely believe there is no god, rather than failing to believe there is one. It's now much more clear to me. Hurray!
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Sir, Christianity did not appear from outerspace.
It is well defined in the Bible. You cannot say you are christian just because you want to then go killing 2000 people. I suggest you bone up on history and philosophy.
...is, as you pointed out, OT.
And it says pretty dang explicitly in the New Testament that OT law no longer applies. Most of the people and organizations I've seen that rely heavily on OT law do so to justify their own hate.
One who follows the New Testament is a Christian.
One who follows the Old Testament is a Jew.
One who follows whatever the hell is most convenient at the moment is... what?
One is right under your nose: the metameme, or the meme about memes. That one is growing in popularity, and is rarely transmitted parentally.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Nice piece, Jon. Thanks for opening those windows.