"The Skeptics Dictionary?" - Part One

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Xevious

Truth Beyond Logic
Registered Senior Member
“The Skeptics Dicitonary?” - Part One
A Commentary


The first entry in the Skeptics Dictionary which really bothered me was it’s entry on “What Would Jesus Do”. For reference, I will include a copy of it here:

WWJD? stands for What Would Jesus Do? A youth group in Holland, Michigan, began a movement based on this question asked by a tramp interrupting a worship service in the 1896 novel In His Steps by Charles M. Sheldon.
The founders of the movement started with a basic presupposition - if each person would ask the question - What Would Jesus Do? with each decision they made, the world would be changed for the better one question at a time.
I can save them a lot of worry and trouble. The first thing Jesus would do is tell each of us that our opinions as to what Jesus would do are irrelevant. Jesus would not ask anyone what to do. He would tell them. He would command them. And if they disobeyed he would threaten them with eternal damnation.
So, WWJD? Well, for starters, he wouldn't care what you think he'd do. Secondly, he wouldn't want you to use your rational intellect to decide what to do. He'd want you to follow orders. He wouldn't want you to do anything on your own. And, he certainly wouldn't want you to ask, What would Jesus do?
I prefer DTRT: Do the right thing. How do you figure that out? You use your critical rationality, you analyze, you debate, you argue, you defend with reasons. You show some intellectual humility and admit that you might be wrong. You do not look to some guru or book for the ready and infallible answer to tough questions. You take responsibility for what you do.
Source: The Skeptics Dictionary
http://skepdic.com/wwjd.html
Click to expand...

The author is showing specific loathing for Christianity and it’s practitioners in general here. Mayhaps there is in of itself nothing wrong with it, but this “skeptic” is in my opinion, seriously botching his goal of “how to think critically about them”. Those who practive religious beliefs do so out of their own free will and choosing to adapt those beliefs. It seems cheap talk to me for the author of the Skeptics Dictionary, who said “You show some intellectual humility and admit that you might be wrong,” to essentially be saying “My way of thinking should be practiced instead of yours.”
Of course you are going to ask me why I mention this at all. The answer is I think, that Robert T. Carroll has shown a lack of analyzation and rationality. The lack of rationality comes of course, from the tone of the entry, which sounds more like a rave and rant instead of a real critical discussion. He does not mention at all anything written in the Bible, or anything Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus) said or did in the bible. He simply posts his own final opinion without any kind of supporting arguments. If he had ever opened a Bible, he would know that every single thing he has condemned christianity for is nothing more than baseless accusation. Free will, responsibility for one’s own actions, and the quest for knowledge and understanding are all deeply rooted in Christian doctrine. It should also be pointed out that many of Yeshua’s philosophical discussions were in fact, DISCUSSIONS. Though he lectured to the masses, he also spoke privately in debate with his apostles, and to others who opposed his point of view at times. The Bible presents half of those said discussions – namely, the conclusions of Yeshua and his followers. If you want to see the other half, why not ask the Othordox Jews, who rejected Yeshua’s philosophies?
Mayhaps in this way, the Skeptics Dictionary, for all of it’s demands for debate and rationalization ends up looking more like a Bible in this entry: It shows only one side of the issue, and universally condemns someone else. At least in the Bible, one can find seccular reasonings behind many of it’s wisdoms if you look carefully. Then, perhaps this entry is less like the Bible. At it defends many of it’s positions based on rational thought.
 
You know, being skeptic is, well, being skeptic. A true skeptic will be skeptic to a skeptic site. The writer on Skeptics Dictionary, like most other people, has an axe to grind. I'm a skeptic, but I dont take what other skeptics say on face value, its just one more view on a subject.

Hans
 
I don't see that anything he said was terably wrong. The way he presents "what Jesus would do" is a lot more like "What would the Catholic Church do" Frankly neither he nor I or anyone else were ther to be with everyone's favorite liberal Jew, so we can't really say that's what he'd say.

It seems to me that he's not really spacificaly picking on Christianity, you can apply what he says to just about any religion which touts itself as the 'true faith' and cites penalties for not conforming to their view, I beleive he just used christianity as an example because he knew his audience, and wanted maximum interest value (despite the fact that it's clearly going to run over into shock value, and he's not going to do anything but make some of his docile sheeplike readers completely furious for taking a shot at ol' JC) which really probably isn't the best way to go about it if he intends to really persuade anyone, but then sometimes it's also fun to watch people furrowing their brows trying to understand what was said, and completely miss the point.
 
If that were true, he would not have singled out any one particular religion. In this case, he did. He did not say anywhere that this was his general opinion on Religion... though I do agree it probably is. The issue is that he blatantly singled out a single religion, namely Christianity.

Then again, Science has become so distrusting of Christianity in general that it's all but declared at least in my perception, it's own little Jihad.
 
I used to be hard core skeptic.During my old posts here on Sciforums (ah! those days when we had our Avatars on and signs...;)) i had posted the roswell thing thread started by Stryderunknown saying:
Was the Roswell Crash a Weather Balloon

i had myself posted that the thingie was big joke.but it started to change when i got into depths and met a lot of people who share experiences.i have collected 3000 files of CIA which has information about UFO existence all around.I have personally witnessed a UFO and i know what it feels to be with it.


The skepticism is OKAY but blind shutting the truth is not.Either this is a mass delusion of some kind created by our own brain that presently science doesnt understands.but if its true then we need to know the truth.

the credible witnesses have reported things,not like those reported here,but real tapes obtained on FOIA are tantalising enough.

thanks for your time.

bye!
 
Originally posted by Xevious
If that were true, he would not have singled out any one particular religion. In this case, he did. He did not say anywhere that this was his general opinion on Religion... though I do agree it probably is. The issue is that he blatantly singled out a single religion, namely Christianity.

Then again, Science has become so distrusting of Christianity in general that it's all but declared at least in my perception, it's own little Jihad.
Click to expand...

Heh, Science isn't distrusting of Christianity, it's an imuteable constant, if something gets in it's way it's simply torn apart, that's just the way it works. If Christianity (or most religions in general) were based more on fact there wouldn't be a problem. . . but then they'd also probably end up just being science.
 
A TRUE skeptic is an individual who has become a skeptic due to extensive research in whatever topic or field he/she wants to express an educated opinion on. So, when a skeptic is challenged by believers the skeptic can simply point to the evidence that tells the believers they are wrong and that their POV was not derived from evidence. But, let's clarify what a believer is: a believer is a person that does not require evidence to accept whatever is thrown at him/her. A believer is the result of mind conditionig. IOW, belief follows conditioning, or conditioning results in belief.

Jesus is a belief and not based on any evidence. And the "evidence" that is quoted for his reality has always been in question. There really is just one two-part question: "Can there really be a WORLDWIDE god and why would a god need a human son?"

Religious believers are not taught the history of the church 'cause if they were you'd all be atheists!

Always remember this: the god so accepted by a large number of conditioned believer is the god of the jews who plagiarized a lot of their beliefs from other groupd such as the Egyptians. So, think of this: while the jews were going through their life in old Isreal and other parts of the middle east, there were the other civilizations that had their own gods and didn't know diddley squat about the gods of the jews, egyptians, greeks, etc. IOW, there was no worldwide god then. But thanks to Constantine, there is now.

Not in my mind. I am a free individuals who is not saddled with this crap. Believers: you cannot help yourself and you'll always deny what I've said above.
 
[/quote]Religious believers are not taught the history of the church 'cause if they were you'd all be atheists![/quote]

All your statement does however, is show how intollerant you yourself are of religion. It's funny that someone who decries religion as intollerance, stupidity, and close-mindedness would in the same words display the same behaviors he accuses religious people of, by demonstrating an egotistical Napoleon complex. That's OK, I forgive you. Shhhh, it's OK.... it's OK... no no, it's OK. I'm sorry if the priest did something to you while you were little. I understand, little alter-boy.
 
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