Theological discussions

[Saxon]

I think we should bare in mind that, even if religion were demonstrated to have a net positive effect on people's personal life satisfaction or community cohesion (though as we've seen there is good reason to doubt this), that it's still a delusion and that holding certain religious beliefs can and does impair people from being able to perform certain jobs. For instance a man who believes the Earth's geology was formed in a single flood event will not be able to find natural resources effectively, because an understanding of actual geological history is necessary to do this. In this perspective religion is like a palliative drug for people who can afford to lead lives based on fantasies. :\ 

Moreover, there are definitive examples of religion causing specific harmful behaviours, such as the widespread denial of forbidden operations, such as emergency abortions when a pregnancy fails, which remain a serious problem in Catholic sponsored hospitals; women must be driven to non-religious hospitals to receive life saving operations.

Indeed, religiously inspired quackery even infects legitimate psychiatry; 17% of polled British therapists confessed that they've tried to change homosexual's orientations, often because the patient felt direct conflict with their personal religious beliefs or because of societal pressure, which is the legacy of religious homophobia: http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/527/art%253A10.1186%252F1471-244X-9-11.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fbmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com%2Farticle%2F10.1186%2F1471-244X-9-11&token2=exp=1459172857~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F527%2Fart%25253A10.1186%25252F1471-244X-9-11.pdf*~hmac=d45d072217e8b3d48fb21f06953cbeda894103bb02cc5cd444205e7f12771608

There is no evidence to show such therapies actually work, whereas some can be harmful. About 40% of the involved therapists organised treatment for homosexuality on the NHS, which means the tax payer is being charged for it. That's money which could have been spent on medical research or buying drugs. 

Given the huge catalogue of religiously motivated harmful behaviours, it just seems absurd to deny that it's harmful. If religion actually was a drug, the lable on the bottle would apparently read 'effects unquantified, ingredients fictitious' and the list of possible side effects would affect people who weren't even taking the drug. 

[Strongbob]

I see where you are going with this Saxon, but I'm wondering if theology or spirituality are to blame for most of the negative aspects of religions in general.  I would propose that the belief in a higher power itself is a positive thing for humanity, which is why a fairly small proportion of the worlds population (around 10%) consider themselves atheists.  I certainly agree the outdated rules and laws enforced by most religions will inevitably lead to conflicts, but I believe that the portions of society that are trying to enforce a specific set of arbitrary rules are more to blame than the overriding concept of spirituality.

[Saxon]

2 hours ago, Strongbob said:

I see where you are going with this Saxon, but I'm wondering if theology or spirituality are to blame for most of the negative aspects of religions in general.  I would propose that the belief in a higher power itself is a positive thing for humanity, which is why a fairly small proportion of the worlds population (around 10%) consider themselves atheists.  I certainly agree the outdated rules and laws enforced by most religions will inevitably lead to conflicts, but I believe that the portions of society that are trying to enforce a specific set of arbitrary rules are more to blame than the overriding concept of spirituality.

I doubt that the success of religious beliefs is a result of their positivity; they are widespread because they command people to proselytise them. In a similar fashion, the common cold is widespread because it makes people sneeze, not because coughs and sniffles do us any good. 

I think that people find the concept of a higher power intuitive because our brains have evolved to recognise human agency, which is why we often recognise faces in clouds when there aren't really any there, or interpret the state of the weather as its mood, when the weather isn't a person and can have no mood. We also learn right from wrong from our parents, a vulnerable stage when many new ideas are assimilated, often uncritically. 

Spirituality commonly exploits these psychological vulnerabilities by positing that the agency of an ephemeral parent figure controls our entire lives- many spiritualists explicitly refer to their followers as 'children', infantilising them and hence deconstructing their critical faculties which they might otherwise use to question the belief system. Almost all spiritual perspectives request that their followers indoctrinate their own children, guaranteeing the survival and spread of the belief system, much like a virus. 

[Rukh Whitefang]

On 3/25/2016 at 0:41 AM, Clove Darkwave said:

Let me be honest with you for the motivations of my question and show you the purpose.

Now my question was how you reason in your beliefs when other gods of different faiths existed long before the Abrahamic one. I was hoping, perhaps as foolishly as you hoped, that I would receive an answer that would impress me with its thoughtfulness and acceptance. Something rare.

My position is that these gods of Kemetic faith existed long before yours, and indeed everyone on Earth knows this to be fact as their great wonders still stand to this day as a testament of that. So while it is obvious your faith's assertions about its prominence are false, I am willing to accept that your god is a god and that your heaven is a heaven among others. I'm also willing to accept the theory that there are multiple universes where physics may even function under different laws, and I'm also willing to accept that there may be 4th dimensional beings (that to us would doubtlessly seem as gods or fae or demons) in a manner similar to Carl Sagan's lesson on the matter. The point is, I'm willing to accept your god may exist as perhaps a younger member of the competition on the field. And it's how I accept that maybe just maybe against all science and reason we have that Osiris is a thing too. Because it's all fucking ridiculous.

In return, you gave me what amounted to "That's impossible because my god created everything and has existed since the beginning of time, so I don't see how such a timeline could be.". You basically said "My god is the right idea and yours is just lies since it couldn't have been." So let's be truthful about who's really being honest, engaging, and respectful here. I'm willing to make allowances for you, but you most certainly won't in turn.

Therefore, since your means of dialogue is exactly like that of the athiests in this thread whom you call rude and not worth your time, I believe they are your deserved playmates.

I think we both got off to the wrong start or assumed/misunderstood each other. I gave my honest answers to the questions asked. That's really all I can give. Asking for an exact date of how old my faith is, well from the worldly perspective that cannot be definitively answered. There is no recording of Noah, Cain, Able, Adam, or Eve outside of Scripture because of the flood. So I would venture the earliest date that the world would believe would be the time of Abraham. But again the problem lies in scholars cannot fully agree on when he lived. Best guess of when he lived was 2900 BC in the Early Dynastic Period. Were there other religions around then? Sure, absolutely, does that make then right? From my point of view, no. My belief doesn't come from what the world says, it comes from what I have seen and experienced.

On 3/25/2016 at 10:56 PM, FlynnCoyote said:

Perhaps I did. I'm human. Let me try again?

How then do you reconcile the ever increasing amounts of scientific based evidence for things like evolution and abiogenesis against the story of creation? How do you interpret the measurements of billions of light years that astronomers and astrophysicists have been able to observe with more and more modern telescopes against the story of Creationism over the course of six days? These things are being verified by independent labs all over the planet, and a good 90-95% of the scientific community no longer supports any form of religion having basis in fact.

What about medical advances being able to treat and even fix problems that in ages past were attributed to demons? Epilepsey was once considered caused by malevolent spirits. My own mother suffers from seizures, but her medication has rendered them almost nil. People with lost limbs will soon have bionic prosthetics readily available. But the scripture says no disfigured person shall enter heaven or some such right? I might need clarity on that. 

Most important of all, why has there been no verifiable example of any of this in the last thousand years at least? What makes you so sure Jesus was the messiah? How do you know the jews aren't right? What makes you so sure Mohamed wasn't a prophet? What if the muslims are right? Or better yet, how do you know any of them have basis in fact? They clearly can't all be right but it is perfectly feasible that all three are wrong, one fable built upon another, right? What about the people in other parts of the world growing up with their own religions entirely separate from the Abrahamic god?

So my question really boils down to; why in this modern scientific age do you give bronze age mythologies any credibility whatsoever? If it weren't for the Roman and British empires spreading these stories by sword, torch and pitchfork chances are you would not be growing up with them today. So why hold to them?

Thank you, I appreciate that you went back and rephrased your questions. I'll give brief answers to your shorter questions and then focus on the last one since it appears to be the main one if that's alright. Regarding evolution, I don't believe and flat out reject the claim. Macro evolution as in man evolving from apes. Evolution completely contradicts Scripture and isn't compatible in any way shape or form. As far as the age of the earth and universe the simplest way to answer that is just because something appears old doesn't always make it so. I personally believe that creation was made to appear old, if you didn't look close enough. Regarding demons, I assume your talking about demonic possession? It still happens. I have never seen it, but I have trusted friends who have. As far as the bible verse you reference that's Leviticus 21, which are the rules to the high priests. And specifically its in regards to entering the Tent of the Lord.

Lastly I see the main question is just why, why believe. Honest answer, because of what I have seen and experienced. Way to many things have happened in my life. Short answer, because I have seen and heard God. And when that happened everything changed. I believe because my faith isn't just a belief, its a real 2 way relationship.

 

[Saxon]

8 minutes ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

 

Thank you, I appreciate that you went back and rephrased your questions. I'll give brief answers to your shorter questions and then focus on the last one since it appears to be the main one if that's alright. Regarding evolution, I don't believe and flat out reject the claim. Macro evolution as in man evolving from apes. Evolution completely contradicts Scripture and isn't compatible in any way shape or form. As far as the age of the earth and universe the simplest way to answer that is just because something appears old doesn't always make it so. I personally believe that creation was made to appear old, if you didn't look close enough. Regarding demons, I assume your talking about demonic possession? It still happens. I have never seen it, but I have trusted friends who have. As far as the bible verse you reference that's Leviticus 21, which are the rules to the high priests. And specifically its in regards to entering the Tent of the Lord.

Lastly I see the main question is just why, why believe. Honest answer, because of what I have seen and experienced. Way to many things have happened in my life. Short answer, because I have seen and heard God. And when that happened everything changed. I believe because my faith isn't just a belief, its a real 2 way relationship.

 

I think this explanation is weak, because you're deliberately dismissing evidence that shows the universe is ancient, by claiming that evidence has deliberately been placed there to trick you. Needless to say, that's irrational. 

There is no such thing as daemonic possession; treating mentally ill people as if they are possessed denies them proper medical treatment. 

Dismissing macro evolution because it contradicts scripture isn't justified, because the level of confidence we invest in a hypothesis should be determined by the evidence which can be amassed to tell whether it is right or not, rather than whether you believe it is compatible with your religion. Understanding evolution has had important implications for discovering new natural resources, by using tiny fossils as age indicators, and understanding the evolution of vertebrates and life in general has significantly informed how we manage fish stocks and treat disease. 

Throwing away entire branches of science because you don't feel comfortable with them is callous. 

May I ask you whether you think it is possible for a new biological species to evolve?

 

[Strongbob]

13 minutes ago, Saxon said:

I think this explanation is weak, because you're deliberately dismissing evidence that shows the universe is ancient, by claiming that evidence has deliberately been placed there to trick you. Needless to say, that's irrational. 

 

I've got to go Saxon on this one.  Why would god make a world 10,000 years old and then make all of the hard evidence on that world appear to be 4 billion years old and then say "Hey, believe this text, not what you can see around you."  That is just a dick move pure and simple.  I wouldn't follow any god that deliberately misleads people.  

[Strongbob]

3 hours ago, Saxon said:

I doubt that the success of religious beliefs is a result of their positivity; they are widespread because they command people to proselytise them. In a similar fashion, the common cold is widespread because it makes people sneeze, not because coughs and sniffles do us any good. 

I think that people find the concept of a higher power intuitive because our brains have evolved to recognise human agency, which is why we often recognise faces in clouds when there aren't really any there, or interpret the state of the weather as its mood, when the weather isn't a person and can have no mood. We also learn right from wrong from our parents, a vulnerable stage when many new ideas are assimilated, often uncritically. 

Spirituality commonly exploits these psychological vulnerabilities by positing that the agency of an ephemeral parent figure controls our entire lives- many spiritualists explicitly refer to their followers as 'children', infantilising them and hence deconstructing their critical faculties which they might otherwise use to question the belief system. Almost all spiritual perspectives request that their followers indoctrinate their own children, guaranteeing the survival and spread of the belief system, much like a virus. 

 I follow what you are saying here Saxonthebeach (sorry, I've been drinking and I can't help myself), but as I read this I feel that you are talking more about theology than spirituality, at lease in my view.  I've become somewhat of an anti-theist because of exactly what you are describing here, but I honestly try to keep my spirituality from going down these destructive paths.   I think spirituality should be a very personal experience.  I don't want anyone to follow me, and I don't want to tell anyone what to do.  I don't really believe in good and evil.  I think we should do the best we can in this world and be true to ourselves and others.  I don't have all the answers, but maybe if I follow my spiritual path I will get out of this life alive and enter a world with hot fox sex.  My spirituality gives me hope and my hope gives me peace, and I just don't see anything wrong with that.

[FlynnCoyote]

8 hours ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Regarding evolution, I don't believe and flat out reject the claim. Macro evolution as in man evolving from apes. Evolution completely contradicts Scripture and isn't compatible in any way shape or form.

So you encountered a direct contradiction between two schools of thought, as anyone who searched would. And rather than cross examine them both thoroughly to decide which one has more credibility, you simply chose the one that fitted with your pre-existing belief. You mention macro evolution here, which leads me to wonder. As the vast majority of evolution deniers I've talked to simply have no idea how evolution actually works, can I ask you to provide me a detailed description of how you understand it?

8 hours ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

As far as the age of the earth and universe the simplest way to answer that is just because something appears old doesn't always make it so. I personally believe that creation was made to appear old, if you didn't look close enough.

Look close enough at what exactly? There are entire fields of science dedicated to doing exactly that; looking closely at things. Be they the ground below the surface or the deepest measurable parts of the observable universe, these things have been examined in detail for decades, even centuries now. We have calculated the speed of light, and with it used advanced telescopes to measure the distance of various objects beyond our own galaxy. This is not just a matter of looking close enough, many objects have been accurately measured to be billions of light years away, meaning the light has taken billions of years to reach is, meaning the universe itself is at least billions of years old. The bible seems to refute that time frame and yet the evidence is right there, measured and recorded by astrophysicists all over the world. Ditto with fossils and assorted other remains buried within the ground. Molecular decay happens at a rate than has been measured and is now a proven and accurate way to measure the age of items dug up. You know of carbon dating yes? How do you just deny things like these because of what a book says? What makes this book more reliable than literal mountains of tested and proven scientific evidence?

8 hours ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Regarding demons, I assume your talking about demonic possession? It still happens. I have never seen it, but I have trusted friends who have.

No Rukh, it does not. Various medical issues happen, and sometimes foolhardy people react the wrong way and make false assumptions. Unless your trusted friends are more scientifically minded than you, I would no more trust them on this matter than I would trust you. There has never been a tangible case of demonic possession recorded in any hospital I'm aware of, and if your friends had taken their possession victim to a real hospital instead of a church or whatever they did, I imagine that figure will remain the same.

8 hours ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Lastly I see the main question is just why, why believe. Honest answer, because of what I have seen and experienced. Way to many things have happened in my life. Short answer, because I have seen and heard God. And when that happened everything changed. I believe because my faith isn't just a belief, its a real 2 way relationship.

In what manner have you seen and heard God? In a literal there he is before you calling your name sense, or a metaphorical I feel it in my heart sense?

I'm gonna go with the latter, because I'm sure someone would have locked you up by now if you said the former. In any case, I think your approach is now clearer to me, and while it isn't surprising, it is pretty disappointing. You've got it ass about.

 

Edited March 29, 2016 by FlynnCoyote

[Saxon]

@FlynnCoyote Fossils are not dated by molecular decay. In any case carbon dating is a form of radioactive decay of nuclei, not molecules. You cannot carbon date fossils, because fossils have no organic carbon in them and, even if they did, are far too old; all the carbon 14 would have decayed by then. Carbon 14 is only useful for terrestrial archaeological dating, within the last ~50,000 years. 

Fossils are dated relative to each other by determining the order of the deposition of the rock layers that contain them. 

The absolute date of those rock layers can be determined by dating volcanic rocks laid down within them, called tuffs, often with U-Th dating, a radioactive decay chain that has a much longer half life than Carbon 14. Radiochronometric dating is considerably more complicated than I have described here. 

The absolute date of rocks can be determined with even greater precision within the last ~50 million years, by counting rock layer cycles, which are caused by 'mega-seasons', that have a regular rhythm, caused by the orbits of the planets. This is called 'astrochronometric dating' and is considerably more complicated than my cursory description. 

 

It's good that there are multiple means of dating rocks and fossils, because this allows geologists to double check the dates they derive, to make sure they can be confident in them. 

 

 

[FlynnCoyote]

Hmm. I knew Carbon dating was applied in archaeology, it did not occur to me that it would not be of use in paleontology. My bad. Thank you Saxon.

[Saxon]

Just now, FlynnCoyote said:

Hmm. I knew Carbon dating was applied in archaeology, it did not occur to me that it would not be of use in paleontology. My bad. Thank you Saxon.

It's the same principal as radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating is actually very difficult, but very accurate; you can date objects within a couple of years sometimes, because the carbon dating system is cross-checked against ancient tree rings preserved in bogs in north west Europe. 

Radiochronometric dating using species like Uranium is often even more complicated, for all sorts of crazy reasons, but the upside is that because there are two radioactive isotopes of Uranium, Uranium dates have a built-in double check:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93lead_dating