Opinions on religion...?

[Asterion Orestes]

And no, you can't deny this: Religion is inherently illogical. It's believing in something which you have no evidence for. There's no logic in it.

I can deny your description: Believers tend to think they do have evidence, whether you or I would agree. Nor does religion need to be illogical. Logic was a standard subject at the medieval university, for example.

Doesn't mean Religion should be destroyed mind, there's lots of illogical things in the world.

Damn right, & one of the most illogical is sexuality! Perhaps we "aces" could even claim some kind some kind of more-logical-than-thou status--though that would probably win few friends...

[TheMuffinMan]

How is sexuality illogical, now?

[Synthesthetic]

So let me get this straight:

1) Religion is a joke.

2) If religion is a joke, it follows that the opposite of religion is also a joke.

3) Therefore, "irreligion" is a joke.

How does 2) follow from 1)?

The fugu thing is basically saying "You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't." It's saying like...People will think you're stupid for not having a religion, but at the same time, people will think you're stupid for having a religion. It depends on the set of people, and the actual subject.

Does that make more sense now?

Also, I believe the actual saying is something more like, "One is wise if they eat fugu once, stupid if they eat it twice." At least that's what I've heard, there may be two.

Pufferfish is supposed to be pretty darn delicious...

[Synthesthetic]

religion is like sexuality

it should be a personal thing...it only gets annoying when you try and force it on others

How is sexuality illogical, now?

Is this what you were refering to? I think all he meant is that one should keep it to one's self whatever it may be...Like...no one wants to be told they must be Bi-sexual just as no one wants to be told they want to be Christian...It takes a lot of research and soul searching to decide what you believe...so people should stop trying with the conversion thing...

[Inevitable]

And no, you can't deny this: Religion is inherently illogical. It's believing in something which you have no evidence for. There's no logic in it.

I can deny your description: Believers tend to think they do have evidence, whether you or I would agree. Nor does religion need to be illogical. Logic was a standard subject at the medieval university, for example.

Ok, first of all, let's dismis the bible. A book written by unknown authors is not evidence, however you look at it. "Miracle" recoveries rarely are. Near death experiences are easily explained. Hearing voices helping you is also easily explained. They may consider it evidence, but it's not; It doesn't apply to anyone except themselves. I'm not trying to devalue people's beliefs here, or use it as an excuse to destroy religion, like I said, there's nothing wrong with this. But when people tell me it's evidence and use it as a reason to try and get their beliefs taught as fact, I have a problem.

Also, this doesn't apple to every facet of every religion. I am generalising here.

[Næt.]

You can't just dismiss a document on the grounds of 'anonymity'.

[Asterion Orestes]

Inevitable

They may consider it evidence, but it's not; It doesn't apply to anyone except themselves.

My point is, it's evidence for them. I'm not talking about arguments used for trying to convert others: that's a whole other (spilled) kettle of lutefisk!

BTW--other people's experiences usually are "easily explained." It's one's own that demand consideration if not action. There's no conclusive proof these other people exist anyway--even off the Net! :twisted:

[Synthesthetic]

You can't just dismiss a document on the grounds of 'anonymity'.

But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't dismiss it either...why put THAT much faith into an annonymously written document?

It was obviously written by man, who are not spoken to by anything divine...it's no more than a fairy tale in my opinion, a very widely believed one.

[Sally]

If you can dismiss a work of art as being authentic because you can't trace it's provenance, you can certainly dismiss a document's authenticity if you can't prove who wrote it/when it was written. As far as the Bible (or what the West thinks of as the Bible), biblical scholars started attempting to research provenance of various books 150 years ago, through many different methods, just as art scholars do. They've made a lot of progress, but no one but other biblical scholars reads of their work. The general public just says, "Oh yeah, that's what I believe, and you can't convince me otherwise." That's not sound argument, but meh.

[Henny]

I'd actually say that there is no direct link between theism and religion.

[DarthMarth]

I'm a Christian...wow, I didn't realize there were so few of us here. (I somehow got Orthodox Quaker on that religion quiz...what?) I just wanted to address a few things I saw in this topic:

First, to people who assert there is no evidence for the existence of a God, I'll share a few things that I would consider to be such evidence.

1. The origin of the universe. Science/naturalism is getting increasingly close to explaining the origin of life, but I still haven't seen it come up with a satisfactory explanation of where the universe itself came from. How do we know there isn't a nonscientific explanation? It still takes blind faith to say there is a scientific explanation to this that we haven't found yet.

2. The existence of absolute moral law. Where did it come from? I don't mean anything related to how people act, which is often against this law, but why we seem to have a sense of right and wrong which we use to evaluate our and others' actions. Example: if I took a random person, you would probably be opposed to the idea of me killing them. Why?

3. Explaining the historical evidence of Jesus' life. Historical writings by people from many different backgrounds--including many who would have been eager to disprove the Christian story of Jesus--instead corroborate many of the details of Jesus' life and the actions of his followers.

4. Fractals. I don't really expect to convince anyone with this, but I personally consider their beauty and infinite complexity to be an argument for design. Just watch

and try not to be amazed.

So there is at least some evidence for the existence of God, or at least some arguments an atheistic worldview has to contend with. I'm not trying to give an objective proof of his existence (indeed, I don't think it's possible to do so) or force anyone to change their minds; I just hope that you'll stop and think before blindly asserting that there is 'no evidence' for the existence of God. I consider myself an extremely (possibly hyper-) logical person and I know lots of people of faith who I would not consider foolish, gullible, or illogical. It makes me sad that the Christians most visible today (televangelists, angry conservatives on the news, etc.) set such a bad example in many peoples' minds.

[thylacine]

I'm a Christian, and no, there are not so few here... maybe the atheists make more noise, or something.

Also, I'm not a "fundamentalist" -- I'm a liberal Christian, but the right wing nutbags in my church think I'm headed straight to hell for refusing to continue to vote Republican since I don't think that George W. is God's chosen one... (not making it up).

Anyway, since I'm not a fundamentalist, I am open minded to many other various things. I like to read Fortean Times & such -- keeps me entertained -- there are things on Earth that we cannot explain with our limited knowledge of the Universe.

There has to be Something Out There, besides what we can see.

[Inevitable]

I'm a Christian...wow, I didn't realize there were so few of us here. (I somehow got Orthodox Quaker on that religion quiz...what?) I just wanted to address a few things I saw in this topic:

First, to people who assert there is no evidence for the existence of a God, I'll share a few things that I would consider to be such evidence.

1. The origin of the universe. Science/naturalism is getting increasingly close to explaining the origin of life, but I still haven't seen it come up with a satisfactory explanation of where the universe itself came from. How do we know there isn't a nonscientific explanation? It still takes blind faith to say there is a scientific explanation to this that we haven't found yet.

2. The existence of absolute moral law. Where did it come from? I don't mean anything related to how people act, which is often against this law, but why we seem to have a sense of right and wrong which we use to evaluate our and others' actions. Example: if I took a random person, you would probably be opposed to the idea of me killing them. Why?

3. Explaining the historical evidence of Jesus' life. Historical writings by people from many different backgrounds--including many who would have been eager to disprove the Christian story of Jesus--instead corroborate many of the details of Jesus' life and the actions of his followers.

4. Fractals. I don't really expect to convince anyone with this, but I personally consider their beauty and infinite complexity to be an argument for design. Just watch

and try not to be amazed.

Firstly, none of that, except for 3, has anything to do with the Christian God. Secondly, all of that is nonsense anyway.

1. That's not how it works. There are flaws in all theories. Nothing is ever certain. You're just using "God did it" as an excuse without any evidence in favour of it. Science does not have to disprove the existance of God, you have to prove it.

2. Why does it have to be from God (See above)? As a matter of fact, there are many reasons why morality exists, I can't remember it exactly, but I saw a Youtube video where Dawkins outlined it in evolutionary terms.

3. What historical evidence for Jesus' life? Oh yeah, I'm sure there's some. A guy named Jesus may well have existed at about the right time and generally been a pious man. So? The Bible isn't going to be an accurate biography. It means nothing, in fact, it's more likely to be counter productive to the goal you've outlined.

4. Beauty is perspective based. There is no universally accepted example of it. Even so, that's got nothing to do with God. Fractals are a result of iterating equations. You could argue that the Creator designed maths to work in this way, but that's totally wrong because it had to work in some way, why not this? The Universe is random and chaotic, because something has happened in the way it has, doesn't mean it wasn't simple chance.

[Sally]

3. Explaining the historical evidence of Jesus' life. Historical writings by people from many different backgrounds--including many who would have been eager to disprove the Christian story of Jesus--instead corroborate many of the details of Jesus' life and the actions of his followers.

There are no "historical writings" (except for Josephus, who says little about Jesus) that we have from that particular period in that region. Jesus was a Jew and completely followed the Jewish religion. The Christian "story" has nothing to do with the details of Jesus' life and the actions of his followers. Christian theology was developed by Paul and the development continued through the following centuries -- all after Jesus died, who left no writings of his own, nor were there any contemporary histories. The Christian testament was written by various writers at various times during the late first century, again way after those disciples died whose names were attached to the gospels.

Read some more biblical criticism (and that doesn't mean criticism of the bible, it means research into literary, historical, and theological sources) before you make assumptions about something so important as theology.

[Henny]

1. The origin of the universe. Science/naturalism is getting increasingly close to explaining the origin of life, but I still haven't seen it come up with a satisfactory explanation of where the universe itself came from. How do we know there isn't a nonscientific explanation? It still takes blind faith to say there is a scientific explanation to this that we haven't found yet.

So you're basically being intellectually dishonest and trying to fill the gaps. Don't have an explanation for rain? Simple, god did it. This is called the Argument from Ignorance.

We don't know anything about how the universe came to be; how does the god hypothesis explain anything, though?

2. The existence of absolute moral law. Where did it come from? I don't mean anything related to how people act, which is often against this law, but why we seem to have a sense of right and wrong which we use to evaluate our and others' actions. Example: if I took a random person, you would probably be opposed to the idea of me killing them. Why?

I'm sorry, but you'll have to show that an absolute moral law exists, and how it points to a god.

3. Explaining the historical evidence of Jesus' life. Historical writings by people from many different backgrounds--including many who would have been eager to disprove the Christian story of Jesus--instead corroborate many of the details of Jesus' life and the actions of his followers.

I'd think you'd be more interested in Islam or Mormonism, in that case. At least their holy books were written by their founders.

4. Fractals. I don't really expect to convince anyone with this, but I personally consider their beauty and infinite complexity to be an argument for design. Just watch

and try not to be amazed.

Beauty is entirely subjective. Why do we find a child to be cute? We evolved to do so.

The Theory of Evolution has no element of design in it; it shows how very complex patterns can emerge from very primitive beginnings.

I consider myself an extremely (possibly hyper-) logical person

Mmm-hmm...

[Data]

I'm a Christian...wow, I didn't realize there were so few of us here. (I somehow got Orthodox Quaker on that religion quiz...what?) I just wanted to address a few things I saw in this topic:

First, to people who assert there is no evidence for the existence of a God, I'll share a few things that I would consider to be such evidence.

1. The origin of the universe. Science/naturalism is getting increasingly close to explaining the origin of life, but I still haven't seen it come up with a satisfactory explanation of where the universe itself came from. How do we know there isn't a nonscientific explanation? It still takes blind faith to say there is a scientific explanation to this that we haven't found yet.

That is an argument from ignorance. If we don't know how it had happen then God did it. How do you get from not knowing to God?

2. The existence of absolute moral law. Where did it come from? I don't mean anything related to how people act, which is often against this law, but why we seem to have a sense of right and wrong which we use to evaluate our and others' actions. Example: if I took a random person, you would probably be opposed to the idea of me killing them. Why?

Evolution explain it, and you see that is the problem with arguments from ignorance. That is like a famous watch maker argument just becouse humans didn't know evolution it does not mean that the only explanation was God.

As for why evolution had lead to moral feelings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

So there is at least some evidence for the existence of God, or at least some arguments an atheistic worldview has to contend with. I'm not trying to give an objective proof of his existence (indeed, I don't think it's possible to do so) or force anyone to change their minds; I just hope that you'll stop and think before blindly asserting that there is 'no evidence' for the existence of God. I consider myself an extremely (possibly hyper-) logical person and I know lots of people of faith who I would not consider foolish, gullible, or illogical. It makes me sad that the Christians most visible today (televangelists, angry conservatives on the news, etc.) set such a bad example in many peoples' minds.

When I was younger I did have religious lessons. They were rather liberal I could discuss with the priest. I was trying to find sense in religion, and I was looking for explanations, but the answers that were given to me were underwhelming they were either logical fallacies (didn't know the world then but I had understand the problem), or just well ramblings like explaining everything that is wrong with the gift of free will with no ability to explain on what it actually is, and what is good about it.

[Sally]

When I would talk with Christian friends, especially Episcopalians for some reason (Anglican), I'd get to a point in questioning them where they'd say, "It's a mystery." I thought that meant they didn't know, but finally I was told that "mystery" was an actual Christian term for...something...but that "mystery" was an important part of the theology. I am still confused about that. You notice a big hole in your knowledge, label it a "mystery", and parade it as sacred? But I guess that's what all theists do with God.

[Næt.]

The Qur'an wasn't written by Mohammed. His purported 'revelations' were written down, and the version known today was collated by the caliph Uthman, sometime in the mid-seventh century.

I'd love to know how 'complexity' is quantified. Is rain complex? Are apples?

And if you believe that God did create the universe, you shouldn't end there. The next step should be 'okay, God did it. How did he do it'?

[Sally]

The Qur'an wasn't written by Mohammed. His purported 'revelations' were written down, and the version known today was collated by the caliph Uthman, sometime in the mid-seventh century.

I'd love to know how 'complexity' is quantified. Is rain complex? Are apples?

And if you believe that God did create the universe, you shouldn't end there. The next step should be 'okay, God did it. How did he do it'?

It's a "mystery."

We've now got four religion threads running. Just like old times.

[sonofzeal]

"For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it."

- an excerpt from Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton.

The wider context is a discussion of thought and reason in the context of various philosophies. What Chesterton's railing against is the undermining of certainty, both in religion and in other topics. We no longer say, "God created the world", or "colliding P-branes created the world". Instead we say "well I think God created the world but that's only my opinion", or "I feel that colliding P-branes fits the evidence I've seen about the Big Bang, though I can't say for certain that's what happened".

Of course what you say is only your opinion, of course we don't have all the information and can't say for certain. But why would we say that? Herein lies the danger, of internalizing this intellectual modesty. Unless you're functionally certain that a chair is going to support your weight, you're going to have a hard time sitting. Unless you're functionally certain in your multiplication tables and addition techniques, you're going to have a hard time balancing your checkbook. Unless you're functionally certain that socialized healthcare is good for people, you're going to have a hard time campaigning for it. Unless you're functionally certain you can live your life with this person, you're going to have a hard time marrying them.

Unfortunately, we can't really prove any of those. We can't even give good evidence for some of them. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, remember? And often we don't even have that. We can't even really prove that math works, all we can do is accept a starting list of Axioms that have no proof themselves but sound reasonable, and deduce from there. This isn't to say that the chair won't support you (it almost certainly will), or that math doesn't work (it does), or that healthcare shouldn't be socialized (depends on the implementation), or that this person isn't the right one for you (they may be). However, decisive action requires a degree of certainty and faith that is not strictly logical. Whether that's a faith in the axioms presented, or in the instruction of your professors, or in the teachings of your pastor, or in your own perception of the world, we need that functional certainty to act decisively.

And without decisive action... what are you doing with your life?

[Synthesthetic]

Well...maybe it's just me, but has anyone stopped to think that a huge amount of religions are the SAME?

Such as, Christianity stole a lot of things from paganism (It's pretty much pagan now aside from the whole monotheism thing -once again, my view-)

Holidays, traditions, dieties even...all taken from somewhere else...

I'd suggest that you all watch - this.

and if you have time, the whole doccumntary, it's one of my favourites...

[Dylan-Michael]

I'm Roman Catholic.

[Næt.]

Is that the 'Jesus-Mithras-Horus' crock?

[Synthesthetic]

Is that the 'Jesus-Mithras-Horus' crock?

It explains the astro-theoligical base of Christianity...as well as the connection between the different religious figures.

Also, I think that the majority of Christians have never really researched the origins or the bible (and stories, etc) enough to know what they're talking about....therefor they are ignorant. They take what their family, what society tells them to believe and say "alright, I believe it" without questioning it...

[Næt.]

Is that the 'Jesus-Mithras-Horus' crock?

It explains the astro-tholigical base of Christianity...as well as the connection between the different religious figures.

It explains nothing. It's conspiracy theory hogwash.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-02-25#feature

[Synthesthetic]

It doesn't look so to me...it makes more sense than the alternative...

It explains why there are so many religious figures that are the same, why the Christian religion is the way it is...

[sonofzeal]

It doesn't look so to me...it makes more sense than the alternative...

It explains why there are so many religious figures that are the same, why the Christian religion is the way it is...

I'm sorry to say, but IAmAFish is right, Peter Joseph is pretty much a laughingstock, not taken seriously at all. My dad tried looking up some of his references, consulted Egyptologists, and apparently a bunch of his stuff is pure hogwash. It's not even a proper conspiracy theory, because conspiracy theories make specious extrapolations off of real evidence. Peter Joseph makes up a decent chunk of his evidence.

Also, a lot of the times the influence went the other way. Much of what we know of various historical religions was recorded by Christian historians with a Christian mindframe, interpreting things with a Christian worldview. Also, the work of prior Christian missionaries may have influenced the culture before the historians got there.

This is not to say Christianity doesn't have strong influences, especially from celtic paganism and roman mythology. The dates of many religious holidays have no foundation more firm than borrowing it from another previously-celebrated one. That doesn't undermine the whole faith though, that just shows it changing and adapting over time. And Christianity has always been a rather adaptive faith.

[DarthMarth]

*sigh* I'll just answer the first one for now in light of all the responses.

So you're basically being intellectually dishonest and trying to fill the gaps. Don't have an explanation for rain? Simple, god did it. This is called the Argument from Ignorance.

That is an argument from ignorance. If we don't know how it had happen then God did it. How do you get from not knowing to God?

You know, you have a point that this doesn't automatically point to theism. I overstepped my bounds and I'm sorry. I think my point is this: proceeding from the unanswered question of where the universe came from takes faith either way--faith that science has an as-yet-unknown explanation for it, or faith that God did it. You have to assume something either way. And yes, science has explained countless things in the world; I don't dispute this or say that we shouldn't keep trying to apply it to unanswered questions. But to say that it can explain everything and excluding the possibility that it might not requires faith in science. I may be missing a possibility, but I think the only response that requires no faith is 'I don't know'.

And rain is a bad example, since we definitely do have a scientific explanation for it. Evolution also doesn't really work; I do think that it's the answer to the question of how. (For life, that is. There isn't much controversy on what happened between the Big Bang and life)

I consider myself an extremely (possibly hyper-) logical person

Mmm-hmm...

Was this really necessary?

[Henny]

You know, you have a point that this doesn't automatically point to theism. I overstepped my bounds and I'm sorry. I think my point is this: proceeding from the unanswered question of where the universe came from takes faith either way--faith that science has an as-yet-unknown explanation for it, or faith that God did it.

Or perhaps the explanation really is "god". I don't rule this out. This is a bit of a stretch to actually believing in god.

And you still haven't explained how the god hypothesis explains anything...

You have to assume something either way. And yes, science has explained countless things in the world; I don't dispute this or say that we shouldn't keep trying to apply it to unanswered questions. But to say that it can explain everything and excluding the possibility that it might not requires faith in science. I may be missing a possibility, but I think the only response that requires no faith is 'I don't know'.

Well yes, that's what I'm doing, instead of using god as a gap-filler. Any other answer than "I don't know" is intellectually dishonest at the moment.

And rain is a bad example, since we definitely do have a scientific explanation for it.

And people did use god as a supernatural explanation for it. Kind of my whole point.

Evolution also doesn't really work; I do think that it's the answer to the question of how.

Er, would there be any other question than "how"?

I consider myself an extremely (possibly hyper-) logical person

Mmm-hmm...

Was this really necessary?

*cough* No comment.

[Data]

Evolution also doesn't really work; I do think that it's the answer to the question of how. (For life, that is. There isn't much controversy on what happened between the Big Bang and life)

It explain why in the only meaningful way. It explain why animal/humans have "moral feelings". It explain why it had ended in this way. Evolution don't explain what is the purpose, but there is no valid reason to assume any. From what I know purpose is vastly overrated concept it is a human emotion, something may feel purposeful to you just like something can taste good, that don't indicate that there is any innate purpose in the outside world, or that tasty food have feelings of tasting good. It is just projecting.