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Debate religion? Yes, please!


BadKarma

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To BadKarma as always:

Pirahã has no origin myths and are called "atheists" because they don't belive in any actual god, but they're not atheists the way "our" (western) atheists are (I mean, rationalists or materialists).

The missionary become an atheist because I find difficult to imagine a western man, a former missionary, which embraces a "primitive" belief in spirits, which is perhaps better not get in touch.

Since Pirahã do not even know any way to preserve food, I suppose that they are so happy because they do not suffer hunger. I think the more a life of a society has always been easy, the less that society needs religious weightings.

As I've said, the only thing that makes a person an atheist is their lack of belief in deities. The fact that they do not distinguish between dream reality and waking reality is not relevant regarding their lack of belief in gods.

I know, that's why I told myself in the first place that they are atheists, just I find it silly when some people (not you and not here) quote the Pirahã as an example of a "primitive society without irrational beliefs" (trust me, some does) as an effort to their theories about how much cultures don't need religions nor beliefs and how much cultures do not develop beliefs themselves (if cultures don't do that, then who does it?).

Also, they DO know how to preserve food. They've been shown how to do so extensively.

That's completely irrilevant. If I am playing Super Mario and my brother completes for me a level I wasn't able to win, that doesn't make me good at Super Mario.

Pirahã didn't discover it themselves, that's the important point, because obviously they can go on without preserving food. As you say, they still chose not to. A society that can survive even being lazy needs nothing in the world!! :P

As for a society not needing religion the happier and more content it is, I completely agree. Religions really are the opiate of the masses--they give people hope that their sucky lives weren't sucky out of sheer dumb luck while simultaneously mitigating pain and isolation by introducing Group Conformity for Dummies™.

Well that's not exactly what I said; I said " I think the more a life of a society has always been easy, the less that society needs religious weightings". I explain the difference: the religious thinking has been part of most of humanity since prehistorical ages, mostly because people had to deal with a world which was out of their control, and which both scared and amazed them. It doesn't mean that religions has always been negative or a way to control people; some anthropologists think that every social expression must have a social function ("functionalism"), particulary in a "primitive" society in which people could spend their time and resources better than dancing around a fire chanting to gods or spirits, for example.

But, anyway, now the religious thinking is part of our collective immaginary. We do not make rituals to aid the hunting anymore, but we focused on other beliefs.

Religions changed many times through history; their own purposes changed; at some point showed up religions which said we were going to go in different places after death, according to our behaviors during lifetime. Christianity is an example of it. Why so? Well, if you're living a sucky life and a new religion tells you "the more you suffer here, the more you will gain in afterlife", you can understand yourself that this religion could seem quite appealing. I think we can call it "marketing". A religion which doesn't give you such hopes about afterlife, I don't think could be labeled as "opiate". It has anyway other functions, as maybe unifying the society or telling people which is their place, as in ancient roman empire or in the sumerian society. These functions could be acceptable for modern morality or could be not, but they had to be useful at their times.

I believe in darwinism applied to human constructs; when something becomes useless to society, it simply dies. So happens even to religions. That's why religions change. So I believe.

But, back to the original issue, a society which has never had the need to develop religious thinking (or generically irrational beliefs), which would be an extremely rare case, would have no religious thinking deeply radicated in its collective immaginary; as a result (I think) that society - which is always lived easily and which still does - would need no religion even if other cultures would try to proselytize.

I don't think I've ever met a person who just called themselves "agnostic" who actually realized that it ISN'T a middle-line opinion between atheism and theism. They all seem to use it as "maybe God exists, maybe God doesn't", and then they assume that theism means "God definitely exists" and atheism means "God definitely doesn't exist".

Well, I often meet believers which opinion is that God definitely exists, an even if most atheists just say they don't believe in God because there are no proves of its existence, they seems anyway well convinced that those proves are impossible to find. So you can't really blame people who see both the theists and atheists as 100% sure. Even if maybe they're just 99% sure.

According to such a view, agnosticism (about theist's matters) is not "a way between two opposite opinions", it's a third and completely different way. Of course, if the assumption "theism and atheism are two opposite opinions based on 100% certainties" proves not to be true, as you say "agnostic" is not anymore a position, it's just an adjective.

You seem to like words, so let me ask you: if "agnostic" is just an adjective that could fit any person about any subject (like opinions about god's existence), then why does the word "agnosticism" exist? The suffix "ism" does not denote a current of thought?

Is it not possible that some people decided to take as a position the claim of not being able to make an opinion about God's existence because there are no real proofs of God's existence nor of his inexistence?

Of course you CAN make an opinion, based on what you believe to be possible and reasonable, and what tou believe to be not. But even having those opinions, self-declared-agnostics may object that even their own personal opinions value nothing because there are no decisive proofs. So they simply "suspend the judgement" by now.

That's what I meant by "50-50 agnostics". I didn't take your "50-50" literally.

No, wait, I'm holding one right now, I'm 100% sure that cats exist... unless we are in the Matrix or I am just dreaming my life or Cartesius was right about solipsism. But, seriously...

Exactly. ARE you sure that you aren't in the Matrix? Are you ABSOLUTELY sure that you aren't actually an amnesiac psychic who invented all of reality? Can you be absolutely, one hundred percent certain that the universe didn't spontaneously erupt into existence twenty seconds ago?

If the universe erupted to existence 20 seconds ago, well how can everything be "perfectly" formed? How can I have memories? Has a god made all this? (I'm kidding you)

Well, seriously, we are touching one of the things that makes my view different from yours.

If cats do exist for me, because I have a lot of empirical evidences of their existence, then they do exist at all. I don't care if they don't exist "for real" because we are in the Matrix or whatever; I don't believe in that "for real" thing, or at least I don't care about it.

Apply this thought to everything, and you'll have my view. Now feel free to scream.

I'm not saying that you're wrong when you say that nothing is 100% sure for real; I just don't see this as an obstacle, but as a potential opportunity

Wait. If I have learned something in all these years is that any negative sentence could be turned into a positive one. I'm not telling that atheists would ever kill anybody in name of "lacking of beliefs" or in name of anything similar, but try for a moment to turn "lack of beliefs" into "rationalism"; rationalism is a way of thinking, not a lack of something.

If you couldn't kill nor act in name of lacking of something, though you could act (potentially even kill) in name of an idea or ideology (in this case, the idea of which way of thinking is the best).?

Ah. You see, I agree with you, but that's because you've proven my point. Atheism would be a subset of skepticism or rationalism, which themselves ARE beliefs/ideologies that COULD be theoretically "killed in the name of". While I could never technically kill in the name of atheism, I could "easily" kill in the name of materialism or rationalism or something.

Yappie!...

I doubt I'd ever have children--like most people here--but if I did, I'd never attempt to "convince them" of atheism unless they were at least 16, because otherwise that's the same sort of indoctrination that I highly dislike seeing in religious communities. I WOULD teach them how to be skeptical of peoples' claims, though; if there's something I'd be willing to indoctrinate kids into thinking, it's indoctrinating them into thinking critically.

I agree with you. To convince someone to not believe something is not that clever, imho. It would be far better if children (or persons) come to that conclusion by themselves. By teaching them how to think skeptically, they would probabily end up atheists.

As for my hypotetical children, I'd like to trasmit them my ethic values, not my beliefs. They should be free to be what they want. Religions should be not seen as football team's fan clubs.

?I think I've got a bit of a Dr. Manhattan approach to the differences between life and death. All of the atoms are still existing; they've just moved on into different forms.

Difference between life and death is a matter of points of view: if you ask me to describe a particular human living being, I could tell "his name is Alex, he's 35, he's living a difficult life, he claims to love me and he's totally nuts" (like "every person is different") or I could tell "caucasian, male, 165 cm height" (like "persons could be classified in big categories") or I could tell "mammalian, human being" (like every other human), or I could tell "an organism which chemical reactions proves it to be alive" (like every living creature) or, at least, "a mass of atoms" (like everything). Take these 5 definitions I used as pure examples: according to 4 of them, the description would change if the person dies. You don't have to care about people to see scientific differences between those two status.

My best method of determining a religion is seeing whether it contains these qualifiers:

1. A mythos

2. Symbols and allegory

3. Non-materialistic beliefs (anything "transcendent" or "spiritual" in any of their standardized definitions)

4. Rituals

5. An opinion on morality

6. Conformity of followers

If any more than one of these things are missing, it's probably not a religion. This avoids the nonsense that any belief system is automatically a religion, and it prevents personal "spiritual" beliefs from being grouped in.

Yes, I quite agree with you... Good points. I think also that often religions have persons whose the followers look to as guides. They could be a hierarchy or just "wiser people", as it should be in most protestant christian religions...

and if you haven't guessed by now, I don't like using words incorrectly.

Well I hope you'll never have to communicate with foreign people whose you have no language's knowledge in common. You don't seem the kind of person who could adapt to use a pidgin. :P

you don't seem to have any clear understanding of what spirituality is even supposed to mean

That's because "spirituality" is supposed to mean a lot of things, similar but different each other.

or how it's any different from how I view myself without using the word

Not true, the fact that you view yourself as not spiritual is the only one big difference I can see. Such different views implies a lot about the people who chose to use or not use the word "spiritual" to describe themselves. What I don't know is which difference could it be within us despite the fact we use different word to describe ourselves. Does this make any sense to you? I don't know if I managed to explain it.

As for "why do I think I need spirituality" (in both the meanings of the word), well you may also ask me why do like the colour blue.

To emphasize this, I'm going to take that analogy you gave. Y'see, blue is actually a pretty well-defined pigment. If you ask different people what 'blue' is, they're gonna give you very similar answers unless they're colorblind. You can like the color blue because it's actually there to be liked. However, since I still don't feel that you're coherently identifying what a 'spirit' is, I question how you can even somewhat know that you need it. To rewrite the analogy based on comparative specificity to "spirituality", you get something like this:

As for "why do I think I need spirituality", well you may also ask me why I like the best color.

People are not able to deascribe the color "blue" because blue it's there to be liked; people are able to describe it because they have a shared system of color categorization. (See William A. Foley, Anthropological Linguistics). Most likely people could anyway understand each other about the concept of "blue color", even with slight or less slight differences. But people can also understand each other about the concept of "spirit", which has equally sligh differences but all its meanings refere to the same system of beliefs... beliefs which are shared by almost all coltures. You could say that the spirit, unlike the color blue, is not "there to be liked". Well I could reply that it could be, since so many people feel it, or it could be not but that would make no difference, since many people feel it enough to understand each other about the concept (see my pov about cat's existence).

Sorry it took me so long time to reply, but it takes me an hour more or less, and I'm not always in the mood <_<

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  • 1 month later...

Okay. First and foremost, let me apologize for not responding for so long. I decided to start putting some vested effort into practicing for the June LSAT, and I didn't want this thread as a distraction until I got well into the study groove. My current scores are somewhere around 175 out of 180, which should give me a near 100% acceptance into Harvard (congratulate me, dammit!), but I want to go for a perfect 180 just for shits and giggles, and that will require some rigorous practice to completely perfect my already uber-rational approach to everything.

So I'll respond to each of your quoted sections in turn. My quick perusal of your post didn't reveal anything I deeply disagree with, so I doubt this will be as long as most of my posts. Then again, hypergraphia's a bitch.

I know, that's why I told myself in the first place that they are atheists, just I find it silly when some people (not you and not here) quote the Pirahã as an example of a "primitive society without irrational beliefs" (trust me, some does) as an effort to their theories about how much cultures don't need religions nor beliefs and how much cultures do not develop beliefs themselves (if cultures don't do that, then who does it?).

Some atheists are frankly quite irrational about a good many things, and they just happened to pick what I perceive to be the rational position on a single topic. Hell, I had (what I thought to be) a good atheist friend get severely angry at me for calling them out on being an anti-vaxxer (a position I find almost completely analogous to global warming denialism or young earth creationism), and then they defriended me after I told them that signing petitions to remove Rush Limbaugh from radio was an attack on free speech principles/a clear example of ochlocracy/mobocracy that made them no more morally defensible than One Million Moms or Santorum. You won't find me arguing that atheists are ever necessarily rational people, and I've met a fair deal of "believers" who are more rational, overall, than some atheists I've had the moderate displeasure of dealing with.

Honestly, I think it's a problem with personal bias. Often-used rhetoric by popular atheists is that they're the freethinkers/rationalists, and the laypeople who listen to those with more developed ontologies get pulled into an admittedly satisfying notion that, because they are a nonbeliever, that automatically makes all of their other positions equally rational (a clear fallacy of composition if ever there was one). I even worry that I may hold beliefs that I do not realize to be irrational (and I think a few of them, like my neverceasing optimism about the future of humanity, are clearly irrational and are more the product of willful wish thinking than crass realism), and the only thing that keeps me from doubting myself more in that regard is my empirically demonstrable penchant for the craft of logic (with things like my LSAT scores--beyond the 99.9 percentile--sufficing as strong evidence).

Enough philosophical self-gratification, though. Suffice it to say that the Piraha only demonstrate that many aspects of humanity previously assumed to be universal are only almost universal. They are a clear proof for the argument that a society does not NEED to have a creation story or deities or afterlife beliefs, but they do nothing for the argument that those things aren't common.

That's completely irrilevant. If I am playing Super Mario and my brother completes for me a level I wasn't able to win, that doesn't make me good at Super Mario.

Pirahã didn't discover it themselves, that's the important point, because obviously they can go on without preserving food. As you say, they still chose not to. A society that can survive even being lazy needs nothing in the world!! :P

Oh, completely agreed on that last part. You'll also never find me arguing that religious safety nets are somehow just as common in third world areas as they are in industrialized, first world nations. It almost goes without saying that supernatural beliefs are sometimes the only way that many people can even suffer through another day without offing themselves and that non-belief is most common only in places that are EXTREMELY well-off (most European countries) or mandated in deference to worship of the State (fauxmunnist nations).

Well that's not exactly what I said; I said " I think the more a life of a society has always been easy, the less that society needs religious weightings". I explain the difference: the religious thinking has been part of most of humanity since prehistorical ages, mostly because people had to deal with a world which was out of their control, and which both scared and amazed them. It doesn't mean that religions has always been negative or a way to control people; some anthropologists think that every social expression must have a social function ("functionalism"), particulary in a "primitive" society in which people could spend their time and resources better than dancing around a fire chanting to gods or spirits, for example.

Agreed. I'm sorry if I somehow said something that implied that this wasn't my position all along, and I'm equally sorry if I strongly implied that it wasn't your position (I don't really remember what I wrote a month and a half ago). And indeed, I'd easily admit that proto-religions like animism were hardly tools of organized social control (there are easier ways to control small group behavior than supernatural fear tactics, anyway). Although I will impress that, in accordance with my recently-used term, prehistorical magic rituals are not what I'd consider to be full-fledged religions, in the same way that I don't consider modern paranormal beliefs to be religions. They're proto-religions at best. I'd argue that they're missing 5 (moral opining) and 6 (conformity) on my "religious aspects" list... And possibly even 1 (a mythos, or at least an internally consistent one), as such a thing would be exceedingly difficult to keep straight through oral tradition alone.

But, anyway, now the religious thinking is part of our collective immaginary. We do not make rituals to aid the hunting anymore, but we focused on other beliefs.

Religions changed many times through history; their own purposes changed; at some point showed up religions which said we were going to go in different places after death, according to our behaviors during lifetime. Christianity is an example of it. Why so? Well, if you're living a sucky life and a new religion tells you "the more you suffer here, the more you will gain in afterlife", you can understand yourself that this religion could seem quite appealing. I think we can call it "marketing". A religion which doesn't give you such hopes about afterlife, I don't think could be labeled as "opiate". It has anyway other functions, as maybe unifying the society or telling people which is their place, as in ancient roman empire or in the sumerian society. These functions could be acceptable for modern morality or could be not, but they had to be useful at their times.

I believe in darwinism applied to human constructs; when something becomes useless to society, it simply dies. So happens even to religions. That's why religions change. So I believe.

You think people don't have hunting rituals? You need to visit America some time...

Facetiousness aside, ancient polytheistic religions still had afterlife beliefs. Certainly things like Greek/Roman polytheism weren't doling out the happy pills with Hades, but the notion still existed that people would continue living on. I can scarcely come up with a single religion, past or present, that doesn't have SOME sort of concocted "life continuation". I'll make a minor correction to your usage of Darwinism, too; natural selection doesn't immediately spell the destruction of less-effective forms, and indeed a fair deal of innocuous vestiges do get carried over for a long, long time. I agree with the general notion you have there, but saying that a religion 'simply dies' is a severe overexaggeration.

But, back to the original issue, a society which has never had the need to develop religious thinking (or generically irrational beliefs), which would be an extremely rare case, would have no religious thinking deeply radicated in its collective immaginary; as a result (I think) that society - which is always lived easily and which still does - would need no religion even if other cultures would try to proselytize.

Agreed. And from a naturalistic perspective, I could argue that religious beliefs actually may be a beneficial adaptation of humans after developing our "higher" consciousness; those who became self-aware at the time they did and DIDN'T quickly invent poor heuristics/irrational beliefs to sustain themselves would have either committed suicide or done got themselves ate by a big ol' lion. Surely the species has advanced to the point where we no longer need these beliefs and poor heuristics to survive (since we've developed the sciences and logic to replace the more ineffective remnants of our turbulent past), but it's possibly so ingrained into our very genetics that the assumption that we'd be able to eradicate irrationality entirely is almost laughably ridiculous, as much as I'd hope otherwise.

Well, I often meet believers which opinion is that God definitely exists, an even if most atheists just say they don't believe in God because there are no proves of its existence, they seems anyway well convinced that those proves are impossible to find. So you can't really blame people who see both the theists and atheists as 100% sure. Even if maybe they're just 99% sure.

According to such a view, agnosticism (about theist's matters) is not "a way between two opposite opinions", it's a third and completely different way. Of course, if the assumption "theism and atheism are two opposite opinions based on 100% certainties" proves not to be true, as you say "agnostic" is not anymore a position, it's just an adjective.

Well, I certainly CAN blame those people because they most certainly deserve the blame. That's not to say that I don't understand how they've come to their conclusions, but that's one of those poor heuristics I'm talking about. To say that a person is not guilty of a false notion because they're ignorant is incorrect. They might not be responsible, and if one is condescending enough, such a person could even be pitiable, but they're most certainly blameworthy.

I realize how people misuse agnosticism as a term, but that doesn't mean that they aren't misusing it. Essentially, 'agnostic' can be replaced with 'unconvinced', while theism and atheism refer to the baseline dichotomy. As such, a person with a cursory understanding of the history of these terms and their usage can clearly falsify the notion that theism/atheism refer to certainties instead of positions. I am an atheist in the sense that I do not accept the existence of gods, but I am still an agnostic in the sense that I am not completely convinced. And yes, I'm pretty close to completely convinced, but "pretty close" is the closest I'll be. It's not my fault if other people misuse words and then try to argue against me with those misconceptions; it's their fault for not properly researching and subsequently building up nonsensical straw men to body slam while I sit and sigh, waiting for them to address my actual position.

You seem to like words, so let me ask you: if "agnostic" is just an adjective that could fit any person about any subject (like opinions about god's existence), then why does the word "agnosticism" exist? The suffix "ism" does not denote a current of thought?

Is it not possible that some people decided to take as a position the claim of not being able to make an opinion about God's existence because there are no real proofs of God's existence nor of his inexistence?

Of course you CAN make an opinion, based on what you believe to be possible and reasonable, and what tou believe to be not. But even having those opinions, self-declared-agnostics may object that even their own personal opinions value nothing because there are no decisive proofs. So they simply "suspend the judgement" by now.

That's what I meant by "50-50 agnostics". I didn't take your "50-50" literally.

Agnosticism exists as a term because Thomas Huxley (Darwin's "Bulldog") invented it at a time when 'atheism' was still being misused by people (although the concept has been around for far longer). He meant it as it was; he thought that the god claim was at the present moment (and it still is, and might possibly always be in some sense) an unknowable proposition, and that therefore those who claimed definite knowledge were deluding themselves regardless of which side they were on. It doesn't help that in the 1800s (and once again, this is still true), 'atheist' was an exceedingly dirty term that was basically synonymous with baby rape. A two-thousand-year propaganda campaign will do that to a word.

Nevertheless, what you're describing in your second sentence is more aptly described by either ignosticism (the God claim cannot be commented on until 'god' is properly defined) or apatheism (the God claim is irrelevant to my life). If a person wants to take a non-position on the topic, they should call themselves either an apatheist or an ignostic, because those words exist for the purpose of being used. Note, of course, that such terms are not mutually exclusive with theism/atheism and agnosticism; a person could plausibly be an agnostic ignostic apatheist atheist--that is, they can't know, they don't have the capacity to know for lack of specification, they don't care, and they don't believe as a condition of not caring. A person could even be an apatheist theist (and I daresay that a fair deal of theists are actually in this category without realizing it).

So yeah. If a person wants to not have an opinion at all on the topic (something I find personally difficult to do with ANY topic, let alone the God claim, but to each their own), then they should use the right words. If they're not using the right words, and someone like myself who actually knows what the right words are after a great deal of study on the matter gets irritated when they tell me what they incorrectly believe the definitions to be, then they've rightfully provoked me for not visiting Wikipedia for two minutes.

If the universe erupted to existence 20 seconds ago, well how can everything be "perfectly" formed? How can I have memories? Has a god made all this? (I'm kidding you)

Well, seriously, we are touching one of the things that makes my view different from yours.

If cats do exist for me, because I have a lot of empirical evidences of their existence, then they do exist at all. I don't care if they don't exist "for real" because we are in the Matrix or whatever; I don't believe in that "for real" thing, or at least I don't care about it.

Apply this thought to everything, and you'll have my view. Now feel free to scream.

I'm not saying that you're wrong when you say that nothing is 100% sure for real; I just don't see this as an obstacle, but as a potential opportunity

I'm not going to scream. I have the same general view as you do. As a matter of fact, I much dislike postmodernism (as evidenced by my earlier posts here, especially the ones with Hap), because I honestly have quite a substantial amount of evidence to support the notion that empiricism and rationalism can prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt, at which point the only ways to refute empirical findings are to make up absurd hypothetical scenarios like Last Thursdayism.

So please don't assume that I actually take myself seriously when I tell you that the existence of your cat can't be positively demonstrated. I use the "nothing can be completely known" occasionally as a Devil's Advocate argument and more typically as a sarcastic jab at postmodernists.

Yappie!...

Kay.

I agree with you. To convince someone to not believe something is not that clever, imho. It would be far better if children (or persons) come to that conclusion by themselves. By teaching them how to think skeptically, they would probabily end up atheists.

As for my hypotetical children, I'd like to trasmit them my ethic values, not my beliefs. They should be free to be what they want. Religions should be not seen as football team's fan clubs.

Indubitably.

Difference between life and death is a matter of points of view: if you ask me to describe a particular human living being, I could tell "his name is Alex, he's 35, he's living a difficult life, he claims to love me and he's totally nuts" (like "every person is different") or I could tell "caucasian, male, 165 cm height" (like "persons could be classified in big categories") or I could tell "mammalian, human being" (like every other human), or I could tell "an organism which chemical reactions proves it to be alive" (like every living creature) or, at least, "a mass of atoms" (like everything). Take these 5 definitions I used as pure examples: according to 4 of them, the description would change if the person dies. You don't have to care about people to see scientific differences between those two status.

I'd argue that four of those definitions would change after death. "Caucasian, male, 165 cm" would remain exactly the same in death, as would "mammaliam, human being", and the only reason that "his name is Alex..." would change is because you threw in "living a difficult life" as a tautology for your conclusion. Indeed, only "an organism whose chemical reactions..." is the only one I think provides a good argument in favor of a life-death dichotomy; all the other definitions would either remain exactly the same or be affected only by tense.

That's not to say that I somehow don't see life as something special. It's astounding. I just don't have the metaphysical compulsion that it's somehow completely unique compared to non-life. Honestly, the lack of that compulsion doesn't hinder my ability to appreciate the "magic", if you'd permit my usage of that word.

Yes, I quite agree with you... Good points. I think also that often religions have persons whose the followers look to as guides. They could be a hierarchy or just "wiser people", as it should be in most protestant christian religions...

Agreed, actually. I thought I had that--hierarchy, that is--on the list, but I clearly don't (I've had it on the list in other places I've written that up, so I apologize for forgetting about it here).

Well I hope you'll never have to communicate with foreign people whose you have no language's knowledge in common. You don't seem the kind of person who could adapt to use a pidgin. :P

I could adapt. I just wouldn't like it as much. I really do make many concessions to non-native speakers of a language because they shouldn't be expected to grasp all of the nuances, especially if they learned a language later in life. My Grammar Nazi tendencies are typically directed only at people who have no excuse for sounding like buffoons.

That's because "spirituality" is supposed to mean a lot of things, similar but different each other.

I hope you appreciate that that means it's almost impossible to actually discuss. Honestly, it's one of those sorts of terms that ignosticism applies to; how am I supposed to talk about something if the very intrinsic nature of it is so ambiguous as to, well, not be intrinsic in the slightest?

or how it's any different from how I view myself without using the word
Not true, the fact that you view yourself as not spiritual is the only one big difference I can see. Such different views implies a lot about the people who chose to use or not use the word "spiritual" to describe themselves. What I don't know is which difference could it be within us despite the fact we use different word to describe ourselves. Does this make any sense to you? I don't know if I managed to explain it.

Hmmm. People have already accused me of misrepresenting them in this thread---something I do not intend to do, as I'd never purposefully make a straw man, hence why I snidely blame the accusers for being inarticulate writers, because I'm apparently not above ad hominem attacks--so if I DO get this wrong, I seek your forgiveness/apology (lol).

If I'm reading this properly, your argument is that the very usage (or lack thereof) of the word itself is what defines the speaker, and not what they mean by it. in fact, I'd tend to agree with you from a psychological standpoint. Obviously I disagree from a linguistic standpoint, as people who are using words they don't have a clear meaning of should stop using those words, but if I'm to put aside that singular quarrel, I think that's actually a pretty profound notion. The fact that I don't use 'spiritual' to describe myself, despite my views of the universe being relatively synonymous with your own, is what classifies me as a materialist/rationalist/whatever and sets up the conception that I do not need to think of myself poetically in order to think of myself highly. In contrast, your usage of the term, despite it being wildly different than the meaning implied by a, uh, practicing Hindu, paints a notion of you as someone who prefers to look at the universe as an interconnected, constantly-enhanced mural instead of an art gallery of separate but still incredibly beautiful oil paintings.

I like it. I like it a lot. This is perhaps one of the best ideas to come out of this thread for me, and I thank you for that.

Unless, of course, I've completely misunderstood you. In that case, damn.

People are not able to deascribe the color "blue" because blue it's there to be liked; people are able to describe it because they have a shared system of color categorization. (See William A. Foley, Anthropological Linguistics). Most likely people could anyway understand each other about the concept of "blue color", even with slight or less slight differences. But people can also understand each other about the concept of "spirit", which has equally sligh differences but all its meanings refere to the same system of beliefs... beliefs which are shared by almost all coltures. You could say that the spirit, unlike the color blue, is not "there to be liked". Well I could reply that it could be, since so many people feel it, or it could be not but that would make no difference, since many people feel it enough to understand each other about the concept (see my pov about cat's existence).

Sorry it took me so long time to reply, but it takes me an hour more or less, and I'm not always in the mood <_<

I'm well aware of AnthLing. I still do disagree with your notion that spirituality is like a color scheme on the simple ground that every time I've heard someone use 'blue', they've all meant about the same color, but when someone says they're 'spiritual', they inevitably have WILDLY different views on what that means. These aren't shades of the same idea in my experience. You're here telling me that 'spirituality' means you're connected with a sacred universe that is, in your eyes, "God". This is not a unique definition, and I've met and talked to a fair deal of others who have almost identical opinions. I accept it as one of a variety of possible definitions. However, I also know "spiritualists" who think that they go on dates (i.e. "have a personal relationship") with Jesus. I know one particular "spiritualist" who quite literally told me, with a straight face, that she's a half-Christian half-Native American Spirit Warrior who goes into trances to fight corporeal demons on a higher plane and that she's an experienced exorcist. I've known "spiritualists" who are completely indistinguishable in thought and behavior from the organized religion they were indoctrinated into, and the only reason they even use the word is because they have enough common sense to not call themselves Roman Catholic for fear of being associated with an organized mainframe of child rapists. So I reject your conclusion quite emphatically that 'spiritual' is somehow a distinct term. I could agree with you that 'spirit' is a slightly more coherent idea--albeit only slightly--but there's a big difference between a 'spirit' and 'spiritualism'. Nevertheless, I do still very much like your previous notion regarding 'spirituality'.

As for you taking a while to reply, I hope my own tardiness has alleviated you of some guilt.

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You're going to law school, BK? God help us. So to speak. ^_^

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You're going to law school, BK? God help us. So to speak. ^_^

Considering what I like to do with my time, my only legitimate career options are lawyer, philosopher, logician, or astrophysicist. Seeing as the latter three have horrible job placement rates and don't provide me the opportunity of constantly arguing with people, I think I'm pretty well-suited to be an attorney. :)

God knows, so to speak, that my music degree has provided me with exactly 0 dollars because I don't care to audition for things or get gigs, so the least I can do is make use of my 3.87 undergrad GPA alongside an impeccable LSAT score to get into Harvard and spite my jealous fath--er, I mean, distinguish myself with a prestigious degree.

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Old_Tired_Heavily_Armed

ah...here's another interesting thread that I can troll.

ponder the following:

The meaning of the word "God" is so broad as to be totally useless. For God's sake, define your term before you use it so people will know what or who you are talking about.

Some people think there is some kind of connection between an afterlife and the existence of God...ergo, if there is a God, there must be an afterlife and if there is no God, there cannot be an afterlife. Who made this connection. I just don't see it. Can anyone explain?

Some people seem to feel the need to place limits on what God can do, understand why he does it and how he does it and require that His acts fit with our moral view. Why do people do that? If God wants to create the world in 7 days, He can. If he prefers to maintain plausible deniability and use a process akin to the Big Bang and evolution to hide his hand, then why can't he do that? If he sees some good purpose in massive disasters and murdering dictators, who's to say he's not right.

Some people think that if God does not exist it's OK to run wild and do what you want. Why is it necessary to have a God in the Universe in order to foster morality? Can't people just look at the suffering they cause when they act in inappropriate ways and value life enough to just behave?

And lastly, what makes anyone think that God is on anybody's side? That God is Christian, Muslim, or Jewish? Some abstract theological study would tell most intelligent people that those are just man made religions...do they really have anything to do with God, whatever that term may mean?

just some thoughts for mulling over.

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Guest member31022

The meaning of the word "God" is so broad as to be totally useless. For God's sake, define your term before you use it so people will know what or who you are talking about.

Usually, if it's God with a capital being referenced, it's the Abrahamic God - which is the Christian/Muslim/Judaic God. This isn't always the case, but it's usually a pretty sound bet.

Some people think there is some kind of connection between an afterlife and the existence of God...ergo, if there is a God, there must be an afterlife and if there is no God, there cannot be an afterlife. Who made this connection. I just don't see it. Can anyone explain?

In the case of an Abrahamic God, it's because if you believe in say, Christianity, the idea of an afterlife is explictly stated ("Kingdom of God") and so believing in one - and Jesus as part of that, you also believe what Jesus said, and hence, an afterlife. It's not a necessary connection, but that particular scripture makes them linked.

Some people seem to feel the need to place limits on what God can do, understand why he does it and how he does it and require that His acts fit with our moral view. Why do people do that? If God wants to create the world in 7 days, He can. If he prefers to maintain plausible deniability and use a process akin to the Big Bang and evolution to hide his hand, then why can't he do that? If he sees some good purpose in massive disasters and murdering dictators, who's to say he's not right.

Whilst some people think they need to limit God (probably in order to feel as though he's understandable), many people don't - there's entire schools of theological thought who believe that the closest we can get to understanding God is via analogy, and actually, we don't know anything about his qualities at all.

Some people think that if God does not exist it's OK to run wild and do what you want. Why is it necessary to have a God in the Universe in order to foster morality? Can't people just look at the suffering they cause when they act in inappropriate ways and value life enough to just behave?

It's probably linked to the afterlife - if there's no punishment, then why not? That said, that doesn't mean all people have that view, and it depends on how you're driven. Some people might be good because of threat of punishment, others because they believe in being good for good's sake - it's not so much religion as personal morality that does it.

And lastly, what makes anyone think that God is on anybody's side? That God is Christian, Muslim, or Jewish? Some abstract theological study would tell most intelligent people that those are just man made religions...do they really have anything to do with God, whatever that term may mean?

The problem here is the term 'man-made' - what exactly do you mean by it? That they're entirely made up, or merely biased, or actually have divine inspiration but are faulty due to being written by people? To some people, a religion (particularly it's scripture) is how you come to learn of God, and that's why you might subscribe to one in particular. It's not the only way people experience God, and, as you mentioned theology here, it's interesting to note that there is a movement in modern theology towards the 'all roads leading to the same place' idea - a really nice guy to look up is John Hick, who refers to something known as 'The Real' which each religion comes across differently - to Christianity, it's a personal god, whereas to Buddhism, it's something completely different. This links to the idea of not placing limits on God.

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SquirrelCat

Totally beside the point thing that occurred to me after five cups of coffee.

Every time I see the title of this thread I always always think of Willy Wonka, I can't explain why...

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In the case of an Abrahamic God, it's because if you believe in say, Christianity, the idea of an afterlife is explictly stated ("Kingdom of God") and so believing in one - and Jesus as part of that, you also believe what Jesus said, and hence, an afterlife. It's not a necessary connection, but that particular scripture makes them linked.

The original Abrahamic religion, Judaism -- of which Abraham, the actual person, was the first member -- does not specify believing in an afterlife. It's misleading to talk about Abrahamic religions, because the three religions usually designated with that term are quite different.

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Guest member31022

In the case of an Abrahamic God, it's because if you believe in say, Christianity, the idea of an afterlife is explictly stated ("Kingdom of God") and so believing in one - and Jesus as part of that, you also believe what Jesus said, and hence, an afterlife. It's not a necessary connection, but that particular scripture makes them linked.

The original Abrahamic religion, Judaism -- of which Abraham, the actual person, was the first member -- does not specify believing in an afterlife. It's misleading to talk about Abrahamic religions, because the three religions usually designated with that term are quite different.

Sorry if it wasn't clear - I was aiming to move from the general Abrahamic religions to a specifically Abrahamic religion that is Christianity with that point. I'm aware that Judaism has different beliefs, the Abrahamic God bit was more a clarification from the first point (and Abrahamic God usually refers to: omnipotent, benevolent, personal, and creator God but with no more specificity than that - at least, that's how my course uses it?) so I was trying to clarify what type of God, then move onto that 'type' within a specific religion. If that makes it clearer?

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The original Abrahamic religion, Judaism -- of which Abraham, the actual person, was the first member -- does not specify believing in an afterlife. It's misleading to talk about Abrahamic religions, because the three religions usually designated with that term are quite different.

Four religions; don't forget about Baha'i!

Of course, I'd dispute that Abraham ever existed in the same way I'd dispute the existence of Moses, buuuut...

Sally is quite right, beyondweird, about the discrepancy of afterlife notions in the various Abrahamic religions. Judaism doesn't have an afterlife remotely as concrete as Christianity/Islam. There are a few verses here and there that speak of various ideas, but there's nothing to suggest that Judaism has a "heaven" in remotely the same capacity as its usurpers, and "hell" is split into a variety of different terms in the Tanakh (emphasized just for you, Sally -_^), none of which directly imply eternal punishment. That stuff is all Christian in origin.

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Of course, I'd dispute that Abraham ever existed in the same way I'd dispute the existence of Moses, buuuut...

Ha. I could hear you saying that before I posted, BK.

You will make an excellent lawyer and will drive your opposing counsel nuts, as every good lawyer should.

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Asterion Orestes

Old_Tired_Heavily_Armed:

Some people think that if God does not exist it's OK to run wild and do what you want. Why is it necessary to have a God in the Universe in order to foster morality? Can't people just look at the suffering they cause when they act in inappropriate ways and value life enough to just behave?

Well, for starters, there's this line from a stupid old beer ad: "You only go around once in life, so you gotta grab for all the gusto you can." Even if you're not theistic, however, you still might allow for a moral order to this universe. If, on the other hand, you regard the 'verse as random & meaningless--well, what the hell, who's greater & more important here than you? No need to worry about other's suffering--even if it's real, you don't experience it. And who's anyone else to tell you what's "inappropriate?" If the world's s meaningless, then life has no value (except what you set for it)...

Not my views, but there are enough people who live that way, & it's not too far a drive.

Seattle Sally sez:

The original Abrahamic religion, Judaism -- of which Abraham, the actual person, was the first member -- does not specify believing in an afterlife. It's misleading to talk about Abrahamic religions, because the three religions usually designated with that term are quite different.

Uhh--how could Abe be a Judaist when the guy the religion was named for wasn't to come till the third generation after? (Yeah, I know--trivial.)

You will make an excellent lawyer and will drive your opposing counsel nuts, as every good lawyer should.

Tomorrow a lawyer, the day after, a politician. Scary!

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Tomorrow a lawyer, the day after, a politician. Scary!

I've got very little hope of that unless the American political system experiences a massive reconstruction. There's only one admitted atheist in the entirety of Congress, and he took over a decade of holding his seat to admit it. My irreligious views are pretty much complete political suicide in this current climate.

Of course, if the system DOES experience a massive reconstruction... Then maybe.

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Uhh--how could Abe be a Judaist when the guy the religion was named for wasn't to come till the third generation after? (Yeah, I know--trivial.)

[

Uhh--Abe was a Jew, because the religion's now called Judaism. There's no other word for it. And the religion wasn't named for a guy; it was named for the separate country of Judah, which was named for originally being the tribe of Judah. The religion wasn't named for Judah the person.

If you're going to get trivial, get it right, or just leave it alone.

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Uhh--Abe was a Jew, because the religion's now called Judaism. There's no other word for it. And the religion wasn't named for a guy; it was named for the separate country of Judah, which was named for originally being the tribe of Judah. The religion wasn't named for Judah the person.

If you're going to get trivial, get it right, or just leave it alone.

Actually, if the measure of Judaism is adherence to the Law, Abraham couldn't be a member because the Law wasn't revealed until Moses. The Rabbinic movement might well have retconned the story to make him a psychic practitioner (despite all written evidence to the contrary), but otherwise, the only thing Abraham had going for him was direct communion with God, and his grandfather Noah had him beat by a century or more (not to mention all those who came before Noah, although I still contend that all of these characters are made up and there's no historical evidence anywhere to even slightly support their extra-biblical existence). While Abraham is viewed as the maker of the first covenant, he cannot well be considered a Jew by any typical understanding of the term. He simply wasn't part of the religion because the religion itself wasn't a religion until much later. All he did was try to kill his son because he heard a voice in his head (and let me just say that it's hilarious that multiple current world religions all draw their lineage back to a murderous delusional schizophrenic).

Indeed, Abraham couldn't be a Jew because he is the mythical progenitor of the people of Judah, which came into existence as a state, at max, 9th century BCE and as an unorganized tribe no more than a few centuries before.

In fact, I'm siding with Asterion completely here, because Judah the state/tribe got its namesake from Judah the man, son of Jacob (and great grandson of Abraham). While the religion may well have been named after the state of Judah, there is no doubt that the word "Judaism" or "Jew" or any other derivatives thereof existed in the time of Abraham, IF he is assumed to actually be a real person instead of a fantasy patriarch. Simply put, Abraham most certainly was not a Jew, because he neither followed the Mitzvot (which didn't exist then) nor was he a member of Judah (which didn't exist at the time), and he definitely didn't know his great grandson unless God is actually Doctor Emmett Brown and Abraham drove a DeLorean.

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Whether Abraham was a Jew is a matter of definition. Some Jewish people consider Abraham a Jew. Some don't.

On the other hand, it seems most Christians do not view Jesus as a Christian.

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Whether Abraham was a Jew is a matter of definition. Some Jewish people consider Abraham a Jew. Some don't.

On the other hand, it seems most Christians do not view Jesus as a Christian.

It's a matter of rewriting stories. Again, the notion that Abraham was a practicing Jew came about in the first century CE Rabbinic Judaism movement (I believe it was first century, anyway) when they insisted that he had had the Law privately revealed to him, despite there being no evidence of such behavior in the Jewish writings.

As for Christians not viewing Jesus as a Christian, that honestly makes sense in its own contorted way. Christian is literally 'follower of Christ', and as Jesus is God the Son, and God cannot follow Himself, Jesus is etymologically incapable of being a Christian.

Of course, the membership of either of these quasi-historical figures into their founding religions doesn't really have any relevance to the weight of the religion. There may be many suppositions that both groups rely upon, but a Jewish Abraham/Christian Jesus are not on such a list.

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Ahh... I've missed you, BK! Congrats and stuff! :wub:

Ok, carry on.

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Whether Abraham was a Jew is a matter of definition. Some Jewish people consider Abraham a Jew. Some don't.

On the other hand, it seems most Christians do not view Jesus as a Christian.

It's a matter of rewriting stories. Again, the notion that Abraham was a practicing Jew came about in the first century CE Rabbinic Judaism movement (I believe it was first century, anyway) when they insisted that he had had the Law privately revealed to him, despite there being no evidence of such behavior in the Jewish writings.

That could well be, but "practising Jew" is a different discussion. There are plenty of non-practising Jewish people today, who are still Jewish.

And yes, I agree it makes more sense to say that Jesus was not a Christian. Again a matter of definition though.

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That could well be, but "practising Jew" is a different discussion. There are plenty of non-practising Jewish people today, who are still Jewish.

And yes, I agree it makes more sense to say that Jesus was not a Christian. Again a matter of definition though.

However, the non-practicing Jews are still called Jews because of heritage/tradition. A person born into a Jewish family who follows some Jewish customs may well be a "cultural Jew", but that's because their ancestors were Jews. In comparison, an Egyptian Gentile born in 1850 whose children had children who had children, one of whom married a Diaspora Jew whose grandchildren moved to Palestine after the reformation of Israel, could not by any sane person be considered Jewish. They were simply the Egyptian who had a lot of descendents and might be spoken of fondly at family reunions.

It's not like we call Lafe Waterbury a non-practicing Scientologist because his grandson L. Ron decided to found it. Waterbury might well have been an extravagant rancher who gave his grandson the opportunity to see wondrous things and travel places (despite unbiased historical records stating that he was actually some poor veterinarian who wasn't anything like Scientologists claim him to be, which I think actually makes this an entertaining analogy), but the mere fact that he was Hubbard's moderately important ancestor doesn't mean he is a part of the Church of Scientology. I simply don't think there's any good reason (there may be bad/crazy ones, but I'm not interested in those) to say that Abraham was a Jew if the tribe that invented the religion came centuries after his death, the rituals involved in the religion were never known to him, and the god of the religion supposedly spoke to him in a no-more-special capacity than it did to Noah or Adam or Lot (all of whom it also made tenuous covenants with).

And hello to you too, Murmur. :)

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Asterion Orestes

Sally:

Uhh--Abe was a Jew, because the religion's now called Judaism. There's no other word for it. And the religion wasn't named for a guy; it was named for the separate country of Judah, which was named for originally being the tribe of Judah. The religion wasn't named for Judah the person.

If you're going to get trivial, get it right, or just leave it alone.

Or Kitty may scratch! :rolleyes:

The tribe of Judah, named for its eponymous ancestor, son of Jacob/Israel, son of Isaac, son of Abe. The country traditionally became its own entity after northern Israel broke away in a fight over taxes--but that was centuries after Abe's time. He was said to have come from "Ur of the Chaldees," though there's that "wandering Aramean" line which suggests to some that he could've hailed from a different Ur. Call him Jewish if you want; I don't.

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