Raithere
Predetermined by the individual.
Well enough.
But I still feel that the Theists take the easy way out much of the time.
As compared to ... atheists? Or to others beyond that?
Attributing the validity of their beliefs to the authority of God they are able to escape a direct analysis of the belief itself.
Such as the wrongness of murder and rape. I agree.
But show me any generalized template for living that doesn't do that.
Nor am I saying that all Atheists have rational justification for all their beliefs.
Beyond atheism itself, which is rational according to the confines of our knowledge, very few justifications for beliefs are truly rational.
But analysis of Theistic belief is quite often bypassed and the argument falls to one regarding God, authority, or interpretation while Atheistic beliefs tend to be addressed more directly
What is the difference between:
• Murder is wrong because "God" says so.
... and ...
• Murder is wrong because ... well, because ... um ... because it just
is wrong.
(???)
A telling question to ask Theists is, “If I were able to prove that God did not exist would you still believe in ___? (Insert a particular belief here, for instance; “in the soul or spirit”)?”
I think even more functionally demonstrative would be,
If ... God did not exist would you still believe that _____? (Insert moral conclusion, e.g. murder is wrong, stealing is bad°, &c.)
Inherent in this system is a power structure, a hierarchy of authority, which is prone to manipulation and abuse. For instance, note the incredible number of Roman Catholics who believe in the infallibility of the Pope and Church.
And if you think a discussion of that concept can stay purely in religious sources, you're off base. The old connection between God and the power structure is much similar to the connection between economy and the power structure in the modern day. I encourage atheists who worry about power structures to watch the parallels 'twixt religion and government. As for foundations, each is similarly foolish.
This is despite thousands of years of stated beliefs being proved wrong. Yet many members continue to believe it inviolate due to the authority of God.
This depends, actually, on what specifically has been proved wrong. Though I tend to agree with you about Catholics, we must recognize that it does depend on what specifically has been proved wrong.
There are, however, religions out there which do not involve such power structures. The first place any witch looking for a waer-loga might seek is at the top of any coven's power structure; there shoudn't be much of a power structure beyond the fact that "somebody has to lead the ritual this week". The presence of a power structure among the adherents indicates a certain sickness at the core. Or, to move more broadly, would it surprise you that I'm thinking of the Sufis again as well? While there exists a structure of authority during training and preparation, and while some heirarchy may or may not be respected when many Sufis gather (this is a gray zone as we cross the line from respect to sycophantism, as the latter clouds one's objectivity), there is no prescribed power structure. Sufism, unlike Catholicism, never experienced a period when people in general looked to it for governance, and thus never entered that stake of being a governing body. Such a condition would be considered an accretion, and a very negative one.
Agreed. I find similar weaknesses in most political and business structures as well
And this is, in part, why religion gets a few free passes out of me. I give them out to other, equally ill-conceived ideas in faith that the people who say it's for the human benefit can explain and make real that condition. It is easy enough from this point to rule out the charlatans, e.g. waer-loga, the most apparent forms of Christianity, and so forth.
I agree; there are conceptions that are due much more attention. However, I do see the situation here in the USA with it’s predominating Christian factions to be critical and deserving of such focus.
I've found, in terms of Christianity and the USA, that the more I learn to sympathetically view Christian behavior, the more I understand why these people are so whacked.
To constantly press the attack, then, merely freezes the issues that are being fought over, and the numbers are called to the fight. You ever see a Christian defending a point that you know s/he would not accept anywhere else, but because another Christian has f--ked up and brought this point to scrutiny, the faithful rally blindly? An example: A few years ago, here in Seattle, a minister got into some sort of trouble when a newspaper uncovered evidence of (A) his arrest at DisneyWorld for indecently exposing himself to a little boy, and (B) a coverup effort by law enforcement sympathetic to his credibility as a pastor. When the story broke, the flock was furious. They rallied to his cause; how dare you invade his privacy over unsubstantiated rumors, the press ought to be ashamed of itself. Smear tactics, smear tactics. Why, oh, why, do they hate us Christians so? Lamentations, lamentations .... Turned out it was true. The guy did expose himself to a little boy and the local law enforcement did try to cover up his arrest. In the end, hundreds of Christians threw their support behind the privacy of a child-molester because it was more important to support the Christian cause.
Now, you and I both know that these supporters do not advocate child molestation
per se. However, someone got a snapshot of an ethic in motion, held it up as a banner, and the flocks tromped to the field. It does, in fact, maintain the division between people to continually isolate aspects and call people to arms over them. Those isolated concepts become incomplete, and people will defend them in what seems like a nonsensical manner because the nonsense-aspect comes from the perception of an interrelationship that the attacker does not seem to understand exists.
I would argue that this is an uncommon perspective for a religious person to take regarding the entirety of their beliefs
I'll grant you that in a Abramic-dominated statistical base.
More often, in my experience, the religious person takes certain aspects as literal truth, reducing only that which they do not agree with literally as symbolic
This is a reaction to the statistical domination of ideas. It is also a reaction to having a political stake. People who learned the idea of "godless commies" in the 1950s will have considerably different associations to the notion of God (and to the idea of government) than someone who learned the idea of "god's children" in the 70's and 80's. Furthermore, to what degree the transformation is an
inclusive idea° as opposed to a
dominion paradigm° varied greatly from church to church--the variations especially being a "human issue" and not a "religious issue".
This is, in part, why it's important (to me, at least) to chase after that "ancient core" spoken and written of by the Sufis. As I go from Christian to Christian, the psychological associations awarded to the idea of God change within the confines of the template. And when we stop and consider that, in order to make the Bible make sense in any way as the "word of God" it has to be taken so mythically and so interpretively as to be, as it has been said of that god, "Greater than that which we can conceive," well ...? Specifically, the two ideas are the reason for each other. Diversity exists because of experiential associations of the faithful person's psychology, yet part of those experiential associations are dependent on diversity.
Few, are those who regard the entirety as symbolic and there is a vociferous faction that would claim to literalism in all aspects.
That vociferous faction is largely the least educated echelon of a religion whose recruitment policy is to target primarily the least-educated, most desperate in society. It's a little bit like giving a bunch of five year-olds loaded guns and saying, "Okay, kids ... go play." (Bang-bang, you're dead; did not, did too!
)
But, in the case of how to "stop" this vociferous faction we must realize that engaging them on a combative level will concretize the principles at stake, fix them, freeze them, and reduce considerations of God to such narrow necessities, and creating a series of associations which reinforce the idea that what the vociferous faction argues is, in fact, legitimately of God.
Try this notion: Everybody's honest. Not everybody knows it.
Specifically, not everybody realizes how honest they are. Their true colors shine through almost any veneer if you just deal accept the façade.
Take a look at how many atheists, while they would never consciously claim to be in it only for themselves (and some who would) never get past the "me" stage of their religious considerations and thus object to obscure or accreted ideas which don't really have to do with the larger considerations. Or, more simply, look at how many atheists deny the higher functions of theistic thought while lamenting the simplicity of theistic thought. If they get past the "me" stage, where everything is compared so directly to the self, complete with overwhelming moral weight, it can only help.
Seriously, whether it's the ballot box, the confessional, or the hidden diary, what is the measure of the value of an idea considered therein:
What does it get me? or
What's wrong with this idea?°
Most people operate according to what an idea gets them. This is expected, both as a biological and as a social result. But at some point, the principle becomes problematic, such as we see in:
•
Business/Commerce: With WorldComm layofs expected to reach as high as 17,000, did
anyone think of who gets hurt when spiking the books to their personal advantages?
•
Religion: People believed that X conditions earned or entitled them to heaven (or some such). If we take, for instance,
Matthew 25.31-ff as our example, and apply that to certain kinds of atrocities in history, and then to modern situational ethics, a pattern might come clear. I urge you to read the passage according to
What it gets/Who it hurts, and then apply that, to, say, accusing your neighbor of witchcraft (e.g. Inquisition, Salem Trials) or perhaps according to the psychological notion of Intervention such as we saw with alcoholics, drug users, people who liked sex, people abandoning Christianity, &c., in the 1980s.
•
Politics: Strange, eh, how the two prior points can be included here? But when one votes for a candidate because they promised a tax cut ... well, it works for Republicans, doesn't it?
Oh, goody, a tax cut. And the government will do an even better job of fulfilling its duties than before. Does it
really make sense? Or what about the person who votes for a candidate because they oppose abortion rights or religions not your own?
What I think is amazing about it is that, while people will openly acknowledge the problems of the
What does it get me philosophy, they will often go forth with a problematic enactment of it while complaining about what everybody else wants for themselves.
You can throw that argument into race or gender politics, into just about anything. What people claim to want when justifying themselves or casting themeselves as benevolent is usually included in the
Who does it hurt or
What's wrong with the idea camp while their actions reflect the notion of
What does it get me?
I am often amazed as well, particularly by how people with disparate beliefs often act almost identically.
Suggesting that it may be a common human problem mixed up among various, accreted digressions? Or, so I would suggest it suggests ....
Agreed. And while I agree that, philosophically, we need to address larger questions I also feel, as I already mentioned, that the situation in the US is critical.
Well, polarizing the situation isn't going to do a whole lot for the situation without some other action. If one chooses to fix the ideas in order to fight against them, that is all they're fighting against. Here's where issues of vocabulary come into play (and you did once ask; I gave you a partial answer).
When I accepted that there was no God, I found I could no longer communicate with people in my life to whom God was still a big deal; in one case this also involved lessening the theistic grip around the person's conscience in order to alleviate a mound of stress contributing to possible psychosis.
It was impossible to do without meeting ideas of God on an honest field. Whether the ideas of God would stay honest is its own question. But I could have lied to someone experiencing psychiatric problems. I could have just made something up, but while atheism
got me virtually nothing I didn't have already, it
took from me a certain ability to communicate with other human beings, and thus
hurt other people because of the obligations one accepts for friends and family. In adopting atheism, I put myself in a situation where I could no longer communicate, or else communicate dishonestly. The latter would have been more damaging than the former.
Pointing out to a Christian, for instance, that they are
wrong (or any number of words more harsh than that simple term) only puts it into that context of right/wrong, and Christians are quite fluent with dualities, in case you hadn't noticed
. But to disagree with a Christian on the grounds that certain factors indicate that the interpretation they've offered may be incorrect or misguided--by shifting the weight of responsibility onto the ideas and not the person, one can communicate. An example: during the thick of the Gay Wars in Oregon, a Christian co-worker and I would occasionally discuss the issues. It was her opinion that what was "wrong" with gays was that something had hurt them, yadda-yadda-yadda, come back to God and make it better, Jesus weeps, hearts hurt,
ad nauseam. The end result of it being that I convinced her to vote against the anti-gay measure because I was able to convince her that such a vote reflected a greater portion of God's will. That is, I could have laughed and told her how embarrassingly wrong she actually was, but it seemed more useful to take the factors she had put in front of me and arrange them in a sequence the logic of which she could not deny, and thereby show her a result different from the one she had presumed as God's will according to the most basic and childish pop-religion. Given that the equality faction was barely winning at the ballot box, it seemed the right thing to do; over times, margins built because the equality faction received much help from Christians who seemed to be struggling with that very process. Do you win, for instance, at someone else's expense? Or can you entice them to the winner's circle, as such, as well?
Agreed. To paraphrase: “Man’s mind, once stretched to a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes
To paraphrase Thomas Wolfe: You can't go home again.
As far as you have explained it, I would concur. I, however, and many others have had drastically different experiences with Atheism. The problems, however, sounded like there were due more to the attending philosophy than to Atheism.
True, I could have merely called it atheism and went on behaving as dishonestly as anyone else. But since I chose the logical root in such a basic and fundamental identification, the extraneous idea of integrity got in my way.
Damn those attendant ideas, eh? F--k integrity? I mean, there's no reason my worldview and therefore the basis of my conduct toward and among other people shouldn't have been completely arbitrary. If they don't understand it, f--k 'em.
Literally, sir, I tried everything short of that to find a way to make life conduct match life philosophy. It couldn't be done. The ideas--quite common here--that atheism was rational or logical (either one) are what poisoned it. It seemed rather quite ludicrous to deliberately identify against something so inherent to the way people in my corner of the Universe thought in order to go forth with an elective, jigsaw of ethics. I mean, fair is fair, right? But what about when it's not? Experientially, I found to start with a sense of purpose creates a better result than going forth with none. (Meaning/purpose of life arguments.)
We could put it this way: At some point I will most likely be raising a child. Can I justify morality in
any way? No, not really. But I might as well shoot for consistency. It makes for a better result. A purely objective path leads to the brink of nihilism. On the one hand, I would hope to spare a child growing into an adult from this battle of conscience. To the other, I'm not sure it's avoidable.
What is the objective basis of right and wrong?
Because I say so is perhaps even more foolish a place to stand than the presumption that there is, in fact, a true right and wrong.
Because I say so is a result of the presence of the self, and therefore is a specific condition among life. To draw this separation 'twixt ourselves and the animals according to the objective observation that we have a higher thought process is nearly as foolish as using notions of divinity to justify human "superiority" over animals°.
Of course. Honest consideration cannot be made while holding an opinion about the subject one must let go of one’s preconceptions, at least for the moment.
In terms of the running did-not/did-too, do you really find that consideration present? I do not.
In the larger consideration, though, consider please the above portion on lexicon.
How does one learn anything?
A number of ways, but your meaning is, I think, well-received.
In terms of the analogy of the wife, we are presuming then that at the moment she leaves the husband, she is adequately skilled and prepared to undertake the demands of surviving in the world on her own. While many women are, in fact, capable in this sense, it seems quite foolish to rely on it as a generalization, especially in the analogy we're considering.
What is the boundary of the situation, for instance? On the one hand, to repair the situation can mean to fix the human associations. To the other, to fix the situation might be to reject them.
When I say that a situation might be repaired, I mean that the marriage might still be reconciled, the seed of unhappiness might be exposed, &c.
To simply presume from the get-go that the situation is irreconcilable on the level of human associations is a bit irresponsible in terms of the analogy we're considering.
It might be but consider the abuse that will occur in the mean time. Also consider that the husband must be willing, many are not.
Right. And either way, a solution will present itself. The analogy as you've presented it, however, gives the appearance of presuming one condition as uniform.
I well accept the analogy as you've presented it, but I am unable to presume that such is the only dimension of the analogy. It has other implications as well, such as those I've presented.
Sounds good, I’m there too.
Here, here ... I'll raise a Newcastle Brown to that.
Actually, I think we pretty much resolve the initial disagreement some time ago.
There's also the possibility that we've come so far from it that we're not going to wrap it up in this topic. However, merely recognizing that possibility is enough. I agree that it seems we've got certain common ground. If I pardon myself from trying to quantify it at this time, I hope you'll forgive me on that.
Notes:
° Stealing is bad: For instance, to establish that stealing is bad, one must establish the right of ownership or the condition of property. All of a sudden, a simple moral assertion gets huge real fast, eh?
° Inclusive idea: The idea that "we are all God's children" intended to cease disrespect based on religious ideas.
° Dominion paradigm: The idea that "we are all God's children" intended to undermine the claims of other religions and account for atheists (among other things).
° What does it get/What's wrong: In political arguments, I generally phrase the juxtaposition, What does it get me? versus Who does it hurt and how? In the political argument, to vote no on the school levy gets me a profit by reserving more of my own money for myself, as opposed to giving it to the schools. However, such a vote also hurts me (and many of my neighbors) by putting less educated people out in the world to either hold you up at knife/gunpoint (such as the examples go) or to be less prepared when flying your airplane or driving your bus or fireproofing the electrical system in your new house ....
° Superiority over animals: Come on, even I tend to think I'm doing better than a horse, who is doing better than the dog, who is doing better than the cat, who is doing better than the mouse .... The dolphins and whales might object; the elephants would have something to say if they had common language. And I'm told the mice might object, but that's purely an abstract notion. Nonetheless, watching sibling felines interact, there is a form of communication taking place which I cannot quantify. It is instantaneous, soundless, and can take place across disparate rooms visually separated. Whether this is a result of sonics above or beneath my perception, or of heat-related visual phenomena, I cannot say. But I'm also reasonably prepared for the notion that the animals have been talking to each other all along and wonder why we're silent except for our nonsensical braying. That is, I'm generally prepared for the notion that my cat wonders why I have nothing to say.
thanx,
Tiassa
