The stance of a strong atheist is incommensurable with the stance of a weak agnostic.
Show that there is *religiously* motivated violence
- Thread starter wynn
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The stance of a strong atheist is incommensurable with the stance of a weak agnostic.
I am enlightened. Didn't you know that? I'm open to people describing their beliefs, but they can't redefine the language for themselves. It's intellectually dishonest.
I resemble that remark.
You replied to my dialogue concerning the Crusades so I related my answer to that subject, because it shows how deeply religious those murderous bastards were.
So jan
What else is there to relate to?
As far as I can tell you disagree that there can be religiously motivated violence because it creates a paradox. I say, no, despite the paradox, it still happens, here you go: Crusades.
You seem to have the idea of a theory that it can't be true, and so it must not be true. But it is. As I (fairly exhaustively) showed.
I might have painted your ideas wrong, if so, feel free to correct me.
To be sure, there are two extremes to consider here:
One is the definition of religion that I provided. It's a definition that addresses religious intention, religious aspiration, but cannot be used to pinpoint specific actions as either religious or irreligious.
The other extreme is that religion is whatever anyone says it is. These are the secular definitions of religion. They are used to pinpoint particular actions as "religious," but are 1. ignoring one crucial aspect of human action, namely, intention, and 2. they imply strong atheism. To work with those secular definitions of religion is to practice strong atheism, which those employing the secular definitions might not have intended.
It seems that for all practical intents and purposes, it might be feasible to have such a definition of "religion" - or another term - that would allow us to pinpoint specific actions simply from an external, third-party perspective.
It's a common tendency for people to desire to know another's motive simply by observing their actions.
It's also common to be able to correctly infer a person's motive simply by observing their actions.
But this doesn't automatically mean that projection is an adequate tool to ascertain motive; in fact, it is notorious as a deterrent to genuine communication.
Perhaps Jan is using the term like "enlightenment". Everyone that believes they are a Buddhist is probably a Buddhist, but not everyone that practices Buddhism is enlightened.
Maybe Jan can assert that there is no truly divinely inspired violence, and maybe that's correct.
Maybe Jan can assert that there is no truly divinely inspired violence, and maybe that's correct.
Perhaps not. It depends on whether one holds that you can believe in the non-existence of something you have no knowledge of.
A strong-atheist believes God does not exist.
A weak-agnostic lacks information to know whether God exists or not - although considers that there may one day be enough info.
So if you think it is possible to believe in the non-existence of something you don't have knowledge of, then the two positions are compatible.
You replied to my dialogue concerning the Crusades so I related my answer to that subject, because it shows how deeply religious those murderous bastards were.
Actually, what could be driving the atheists here is a case of their own cognitive dissonance:
On the one hand, they claim that religion is superstition, a delusion. As such, not to be taken seriously.
On the other hand, people have sometimes committed crimes and claimed they were motivated by their religion, or God and such. Given those crimes, it behooves to take those criminals and their assertions about their motives seriously.
But, and here's the crux, if religious people are delusional, and according to our legal system, that would automatically place them into the category of (temporary) insanity, this means they would have to be exculpated of the crimes they committed "in the name of God" and such.
But atheists don't like that.
They want that the religious/theists would be considered simultaneously delusional and fully legally responsible.
This, obviously, is mutually exclusive, hence the dissoance, and the according strife.
Ah, according to some self-declared Buddhists, everyone is enlightened.
But then your camp would say that there is nothing that would be divine.
Whose stance? If you mean me, I'm irrelevant. I wasn't in the Crusades doing the thing you say can't be done. If you mean the Crusaders, I'm lost, so I can only assume you mean me. :bawl:
Maybe you got lost in the continuity of thought: religious violence > engages > Crusades > engages > ...blah blah blah ... > engages > Credo
at which point you declared the Credo was not validly religious.
I was disabusing you of that error. It is classified religious. It can not be validated, because the benchmark, religion, is contaminated by superstition, so there is no intrinsic measure available for this. It is not an element of the set of "All things which are proven valid".
For the same reason, you would not take a culture specimen by your fingers and place it on the microscope slide, just after your dog licked your hand.
Not for validation purposes anyway.
Yeah, I would say that, but at least it would be a coherent way to talk about it.
Bells
Staff member
I am curious.
Why do you think homosexuality is a sin?
This is what this thread is about.
After all, you tell me to 'go and read the scripture', you are determined that homosexuality is a sin, because of what it says in the scripture. Yet you seem to believe that if someone has the exact same belief as you do, who gets it 'from the scripture' and then follows exactly what the Bible says and goes forth and kills that homosexual, you don't think that is religious violence?
Who are you fooling Jan? Yourself?
Why?
They think homosexuality is as much of a sin as you do. They also got their beliefs about homosexuality "from the scripture" like you have.
Your belief that homosexuality is a sin is not religious then?
So if your belief that it is a sin is not religious, where did it come from?
And your belief that homosexuality is a sin is not religious?
Let us have a look at the definition of "sin", shall we? Since you know, you are saying that those who believe it is a sin and do exactly as the Bible says in the Holiness Code is not religious..
sin
1 [sin] Show IPA noun, verb, sinned, sin·ning.
noun
1. transgression of divine law: the sin of Adam.
2. any act regarded as such a transgression, especially a willful or deliberate violation of some religious or moral principle.
1 [sin] Show IPA noun, verb, sinned, sin·ning.
noun
1. transgression of divine law: the sin of Adam.
2. any act regarded as such a transgression, especially a willful or deliberate violation of some religious or moral principle.
So, why do you think that someone who believes homosexuality is a sin, which is based on one's religious beliefs, and they then follow the Holiness Code in the Bible, which designates that people be as "holy as God" so that those people can become "holy" is not religious? After all, you follow it and believe that homosexuality is sinful, which is based on your religious beliefs.
If someone takes it a step further and actually does as the Bible orders because of their religious beliefs, you are actually claiming it isn't religious?
Would you prefer I use the example where God forces the death of everyone on Earth except Noah and his family?
Is that a better example for you?
The death of millions is better than the deaths of a few thousand people?
So why did God kill so many Jan?
And why does God order people to kill certain individuals in the Bible because those people are born that way?
Not at all. Your own Bible, the Scripture you tell me to follow, the very codes in the Bible you live by is full of religiously motivated violence. Unless of course you are going to claim that God is not a religious figure now?
You tell me to go and read the scripture, which states that homosexuality is a sin. That very same scripture also contains the Holiness Code, which defines how one is to treat sinners and particularly homosexuals. A man decides to follow said scripture because he believes homosexuality is a sin and he stones someone to death and you say that it is not religious and that I am wrong in saying that is proof that someone can be motivated by their religious beliefs to commit an act of violence.
I think you are backtracking and you are ashamed to admit that someone with the exact same beliefs as you, who also believes that homosexuality is a sin, can actually go out and kill someone because that is what God demands of his followers in the Bible.
Well you can't even define religion yourself. You allude to the scripture, to the 10 commandments, to what God says and then finally to Jesus, and when we point out that God also orders the killing of people because of how they were born, you balk and backtrack.
Your hypocrisy amuses me.
Oh yes, your reasoning is that 'well, he's God'..
Really?
That's what you're going with?
Are you telling me to go and read the very same scripture that demands homosexuals be put to death?
And why do you think using the fact that God murdered thousands of children only makes things seem worse? You just said he is God and he is always right. So is it right to murder thousands of children for revenge? Or is it only right if God does it?
Would you prefer I use the fact he also murdered everyone and everything on this planet, with the exception of Noah and his family? Is that better for you?
Just read your scripture Jan. After all, God ordered they be killed.
And that is religiously motivated violence.
Why?
Do you want me to find more examples of religiously motivated violence?
But that is what God says and defines and why he murdered so many people. To liberate them.
Says so in the scripture you just ordered me to read Jan.
Some of them are, yes.
Or do you think dropping a nuclear bomb does not amount to mass murder?
Is that why you don't think God murdered anyone when he killed everyone on the planet, except Noah and his family and then later on went on to kill the first born's of Egypt out of revenge and spite?
Do you think it is a sin to kill a homosexual as it states in the Scripture Jan?
Yes I do.
Do you?
Yes, you actually did.
Are you going to deny doing that now?
Are you going to lie, Jan?
No. I asked you if you accept that is what God demands of his followers in the scripture?
Or, as God says, you should die.
So a sin is religious because that is what God and the scripture says. But to kill "sinners" according to the very same scripture and God is not religiously motivated..
How exactly does that work Jan?
So why did you say it was a choice?
I do think people choose to act. But people do not have a choice in how they are born.
My dear woman! You have already demanded at least twice in your previous post that I read the scriptures. The very scriptures that states God says to kill homosexuals because it is a sin.
A man who reads those scriptures and who actually believes that claptrap goes forth and kills another man because he believes as God ordered him to believe, is religiously motivated by his religious beliefs.
That is what you have claimed.
You consider it a sin because that is what God says in the Bible. And then you stated that one should follow the laws of the land, ie. not murder.
Aqueous Id,
Then you must have been an ugly baby.
Did you mean you ''resent'' that remark?
If not, please explain.
The only way you would know how ''religious'' they were, would be to know what each of them really thought.
Is George Bush Jr really patriotic, or did he use a patriotic tone to rally the troops, and gain political levarge?
Can you show that he is patriotic, or are you just taking his word for it?
I don't mind admitting that the Crusades were religiously motivated, but you have to show why.
Am I religious or not?
Explain the reason for your answer.
Ah! The old atheist trick. Make out like your driving home obvious answers, over and over again. Here's the deal, you've said one thing, and guess what, it isn't conclusive. You've believed all these years that the Crusades were religions big monster, only to find out it's not as simple as you thought.
That ''religion'' is not as simple as you thought. You're in shock, sit down and take the weight off.
Just look at them again, and give me a regular answer that comes from you.
Religion is about that, the personal, get used to it.
jan.
I resemble that remark.
Then you must have been an ugly baby.
Did you mean you ''resent'' that remark?
If not, please explain.
You replied to my dialogue concerning the Crusades so I related my answer to that subject, because it shows how deeply religious those murderous bastards were.
The only way you would know how ''religious'' they were, would be to know what each of them really thought.
Is George Bush Jr really patriotic, or did he use a patriotic tone to rally the troops, and gain political levarge?
Can you show that he is patriotic, or are you just taking his word for it?
So jan
What else is there to relate to?
As far as I can tell you disagree that there can be religiously motivated violence because it creates a paradox. I say, no, despite the paradox, it still happens, here you go: Crusades.
I don't mind admitting that the Crusades were religiously motivated, but you have to show why.
Am I religious or not?
Explain the reason for your answer.
Ah! The old atheist trick. Make out like your driving home obvious answers, over and over again. Here's the deal, you've said one thing, and guess what, it isn't conclusive. You've believed all these years that the Crusades were religions big monster, only to find out it's not as simple as you thought.
That ''religion'' is not as simple as you thought. You're in shock, sit down and take the weight off.
Just look at them again, and give me a regular answer that comes from you.
Religion is about that, the personal, get used to it.
jan.
The thing is, the secular idea of religion has a purpose behind it's ignorance, and that is to get rid of religion, and notions of God and spirituality, and replace it with nothing other than what it wants.
One only has to see the work of Dawkins et al.
There are no good intentions asociated to their thinking.
jan.
You're still in the frame of mind that I don't think there is ''religiously motivated violence'', despite my insistance.
I want you to show that there is.
jan.
So you can continue to misunderstand basic English? No, thank you. I have a wall I would rather beat my head against.
In order to maintain cognitive consonance with law and principles arising from the best evidence observed in nature, atheists generally find that superstition, and its manifestations commonly observed in religious expression, are incongruent with established truth and must therefore be attributed to a flawed reasoning process which can also be characterized as cognitive dissonance.
Religion, in rejecting the best evidence observed in nature, and in embracing ideologies often characterized as superstitious, comports with a false reasoning process that yields false conclusions, and, when held closely as sincere beliefs concerning nature and ultimate reality, is often characterized as delusion. (Note: not implied here is the alternate meaning of delusion: a psychotic event producing personality disintegation, usually accompanied by hallucinations.)
Atheists strongly believe that delusions should not be taken seriously.
More commonly, religiously motivated violence is evident beyond the scenario in which claims are made
More commonly, the facts proving religiously motivated violence are independent of any special case where claims may be made. Cases where claims are made and must be taken seriously, usually involve a verbal threat prior to a crime, such as assault, and when the utterance contains hate speech against the victim including express references to religion, the criminal charge will generally include a severity enhancement based on statutes that prohibit the commission of any crime on account of religion.
Atheism does not advocate the mass incarceration of theists, and in fact are legally allowed to disbelieve under the same legal guarantees that permit theists to believe.
"Not guilty by reason of insanity" is a subjective finding that courts refer to mental health experts for competent evaluation. Usually, religious delusion is not excused, although, in a few cases, when accompanied by other acute conditions, such as psychoses, the MHMR expert will return a finding of insanity. The criminally insane are bound over to the jurisdiction of the civil court, which places them into civil commitment, which is a prison inside of a mental facility. Civil commitment is not "exculpatory"; in fact, many prisoners are held for life in this manner for offenses that may have otherwise been punishable by only a fine or probation.
Delusion can exist as a false belief without inducing psychosis. These weak-delusion theists do not necessarily pose a threat to society, so they are considered safe on the streets. The transition from weak-delusion (false belief) to strong-delusion (psychosis) needs MHMR evaluation, and atheists strongly recommend that all psychotic episodes (hearing voices, seeing apparitions, etc) be referred immediately to Emergency Medical Responders. In many cases, weak-delusion theists will have transitioned to the strong-delusion (psychosis) phase for etiologies associated with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, stroke, contusion, fever or infection. In any case, always refer signs of physical or mental illness to the appropriate medical professional.
That would be called an ad infans attack, ex post facto. New law opens up here. I will defer.
More to the point, do you characterize my speech as ugly, if so, why.
No, it means I noticed I was being referenced, nothing more. US slang.
In law, all proof is established under a standard. One commonly used is called perponderance. This has been my assumption in various threads I entered, noting the ways people were often skirting evidence. My belief was that readers would tend to evaluate claims by this standard. By raising the bar beyond practical means, nothing can be known, nothing can be proved, and anything can be claimed or discredited, For this reason it would seem pointless to require "mind-reading" as wynn once noted.
However, if I bring you the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, will you accept that these writings give us the knowledge of what he thinks? Similarly, when I gave gave the report of the massacre at Mainz, would you say that this establishes not only the writer's mental state, but the state of mind of the murderers? Or when I showed the illustration (below), will you accept as proof that this depicts Christians murdering Jews (you just have to know them by their headgear)? Then, when I show that this illustration is from an ancient Bible illustration, will you accept that is demonstrates the state of mind of the artist, owner, and all who tolerated it? These are just a few artifacts; there are so many. But if you dismiss each and every piece of evidence under the too-high standard of proof, as I said before, all knowledge about everything would have to go out with the bathwater.
So we know what they thought by evidence such as this. Now: is it sufficient, if so, how do you propose to know anything?
Bush deserves to go to prison. Unfortunately, he has legal immunity.
My antipathy makes it impossible for me to explore this further.
Not if you admit it. Then we're agreed.
Yes.
You demonstrate religiosity.
Truth often calls for tactics.
Asserting a position that is true, and has been proven so. Bringing competent data that reflects the truth of matters, repeatedly.
I am driving it home. Have been.
I brought you many kinds of evidence. The evidence speaks for itself.
The inability to form conclusions speaks to the nature of one's errors.
My knowledge of the Crusades has not changed, nor my ideas about religion. The only thing that changed was my ideas about you. At first I thought you were a twerp. Now I think you're somebody different.
No shock. No recoil. No weight to take off except when I overeat or get lazy and don't exercise. Religion is not more complicated than I ever thought it was. It complicates itself. I have known that since my youth. And I have known that it was false and I have known why.
Ok, here's regular me: Hi, jan. I am speaking, no one else. There is no God. There is no phantom. These are machinations of the mind. Mostly manifest through disturbances. Religion accretes these manifestations, as individuals go though acculturation. At some point it achieves universal status. It becomes commonly held. This is the second meaning of the term, an assembly. The religion may become known outside of its small circle of friends. It may grow to world status. But it was always based on imaginary renderings of reality. It may grow to the stage of one that carries bodies of work, especially doctrinal writing, that either arose out of oral tradition, or from schools of writers whose works are later collated. The religion ages, evolves, loses its own history, and writings become garbled, altered, or lost. New stories arise and over time a new religion arises that individuals are born into and now they have a book to go by. The significant change here is that the believers of this era found their tenets upon writings, which now acquire magical status. They are deemed infallible, despite their many flaws. These are erased from view. The new religion requires denial. Anything that contradicts scripture must be exterminated. For centuries the process repeats itself, innumerable factions and sects arise, each struggling to influence a particular rendering of the spiritual truth. Innumerable wars and repressions are inflicted, out of the fear that the doctrine may be lost or altered. Yet it was already lost and altered. Over millennia the religion, in name, or in some precept, survives, in some fragmentary fashion. Today we have a word: God, which is a remnant of that history.
Now here i am. I am talking to you. But it's just a message board, it has no real meaning. I can convey my deepest held belief or not, and you can do the same. We can criticize each other, support each other, or not. We can derive some ephemeral sense of well being from that, or drive ourselves into some emotional state that is perhaps desirable to us. In any case, it is just talk.
Now here I am. I'm talking because you said so, but I have no idea why I should talk or how far I should go, because I don't know you as a person, only as an arguer of ideas I tend to disagree with. For all i know you could be a simulation. You do sometimes say some humanlike things, other times you seem like you don't want to be yourself or let your guard down. For all I know you're doing a survey or study of some kind, or maybe your bored crazy or maybe you like to relax and do this to unload your mind. Anything is possible.
I will never convince you there is no God and you will never convince me there is. Yet here we are. Why? I think I can answer that. I think we are both curious why people think differently than we do, and what are the underlying motives for thinking these thoughts. It's almost like a close friendship but it lacks personal contact, it's safe, convenient, and there is no emotional baggage to lug around. Turn on, turn off, imaginary friend comes, then goes. Maybe for some of us it's better described as a game.
What do you do when you shut down? Do you light a candle, ring a bell, read the Vedas? Do yoga? Meditate. My guess is that you do at least one of those. Does that mean you are religious? Yes. Is religion merely an act? No. Is religion merely thought? No. Am I religious? No. Do religious people sometimes commit religiously motivated violence? Yes. Have I proven it? Yes, and countless others too. Do you acknowledge the proof? No. Can I prove it to you? No, for the same reason I can not change your mind about God, I can not change your mind about religiously motivated violence.
What will happen next? We will cycle our days, over and over, replaying ideas and experiences. We will wake out of a fog and sometimes, in a half-dream state, we will sense a presence that is not there. Is it God? No, it's a dream, nothing more.
Yes, religion is personal. Killing by the hand of God is personal:
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Classified as such by whom?
If something is to be about God, such as what is commonly known as "theistic religion," then without God's input, we cannot make any definitive claims about religion, other than tentative ones that reserve a space for God's input (such as my definition of religion).
You, on the other hand, per default consider all religion to be man-made, which per default leads you to exlude any consideration of God's input.
You have previously made a comment to the effect that you treat religion on religion's terms (such as when going by the Catholic Encyclopedia).
But you're not actually doing that, as you impose your own notion that religion is man-made, which leads you to exclude any consideration of God's input.
The Catholics reserve a space for God's input. But you don't, even though you claim to go by the Catholic definitions of things.