problem as I see it

Erroneous dictionary?

Teg

What does that have to do with the topic? As you pointed out, we are, indeed, talking about Christians.

Why muck up the topic by transferring your aggressions toward Christianity to other paradigms?

Again, take the Catholics. Catholic philosophy is exceptionally tight save for two primary presuppositions. Those presuppositions merely represent a more concrete boundary, a putting of the foot, as another topic (already referred above) discusses. If you work your way down to the basis of morality, what is the difference between the point at which you draw the line? Logic is one thing, but that logic is based on presuppositions even in the atheistic sense. What makes something "wrong"? What logical basis is there for the criteria of judgment?

Like I said: Christian philosophy. Leave the rest of the theists out of it. It's not their fight, and it seems rather pointless to try and make it their fight.

So deal with the ignorant people. Show those common links.

Provide that translation. Show it.

And as you go through the diverse facets of theistic philosophy, can you show that the gods are the same? Show the common links. Provide the translation.

Just base your assertions in logic, not on a projection. Don't tell someone what God is just to debunk it. That's amateurish at best, even juvenile.

When I was young, I suffered from extremely dry skin. I, too, showered religiously. Then my doctor explained how showering every day at that point in my life was detrimental to my skin. Can you say objectively that your "religious" use of the shower has no detriment?

I hadn't heard of it, either, until it came up as a default dictionary server in my OmniDictionary.

So much for the authority of dictionaries.

Sorry, but given how many times people have referred to the dictionaries lately, I find that response of yours to be laughable. Thank you for the chuckle.

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Whatever.

Why don't you draw up a list of vital terms to the debate and enumerate the definitions we're allowed to use. Get back to me when that list is finished.

I generally agree, but the nature of these forums does not accept that. After all, what should we make over the disagreement between atheists as to what the words atheist and atheism mean? And how hard should we laugh at the dictionary definitions offered?

That's authoritative. Definitive. Quite obviously, that settles the issue.

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My humanistic friends? I guess I'll have to ask you to explain that.

Would you like a gold star for that one?

Really? Oh, that's right. You're authoritative, so it must necessarily be that way.

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Says you. Why don't you answer the question about killing, or the one about raping your mother?

What, then, does the membership of Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam say about their integrity? Why are they so annoying?

Specifically, that was Anselm, a Christian. Many other theists simply say they don't know and leave it at that.

Well, gods are not to be kept in shoeboxes. They should not be reduced to fit in the pages of a book.

Or it could be socioeconomic factors.

Frankly, stop hanging around with such stupid people. When I speak of theistic issues with theists, that God actually exists or not is an irrelevant issue. We, too, chuckle at such simplistic faith. Ecstatic religion is deeply philosophical, and God serves as a focal point, an anchor. It's one of the reasons such religions are often esoteric; they're dangerous if put into the hands of people who, by economic necessity or intellectual breadth cannot afford to put such thought into it. You know, if everyone in the world had even as much time as I make for philosophical considerations of various sorts--not necessarily theistic--they would be better off. But most people have to devote their efforts elsewhere--economy and socialization, for instance. Every couple of years I take an extended vacation to get away from that crap. I didn't plan it that way, but it seems to be what happens. And then I go back into the world and my paradigm freezes out of necessity. And then it no longer suffices because of new data, and when the cacophony gets to be too much, I step back and re-evaluate. A dynamic learning process serves me much better than standing on assumptions. For instance, I was paid for three years to take part in a large insurance racket. It's legal, but it's still a racket. They basically kept me away from the public because they knew I would not lie to people. After three years, though, I ran out of justifications to support my participation in such an unethical practice. Whoops--back to the lab to figure out the problem. Unlike my co-workers, I could not simply dismiss the fact that I was paid to participate in dishonesty. I could not simply say, "economic necessity" and continue that path. So I withdrew from the field and am enjoying the last weeks of my extended vacation; I cannot afford financially to continue my withdrawal. I must re-enter the fray at some point, and soon.

But I've had plenty of time to think. And I've seen several minor resolutions that seem progressive. God need not enter into it except for the fact that if everyone had this much time to think, if everyone could afford to set their social-participatory integrity in line with their moral paragidm, I think even the Christians would make major progress.

What's sad is that science and experience are not necessarily exclusive of one another. While I'm well aware of the condition you describe, I see it mostly among Christians--specifically among Protestant reformers.

That's a big claim, but I believe I see your meaning. Furthermore, while "harmonic dissonance" is more than a bit oxymoronic, it's a term I'm familiar with and can appreciate.

Agreed.

But I must confess that the theists you surround yourself with sound like idiots. And I mean remarkable idiots.

Of course, I see in your model that you have initiated the exchange. Why do so? One of the biggest problems I experience in human communication is that most people (theistic, atheistic ... doesn't matter) have difficulty communicating sympathetically. That is, they presume that the words coming out of a person's mouth or pen bear the same definitions and associations for the other that they do for the self.

In the case of Christians, that's the problem of evangelism. In the case of many other theistic philosophies, that's why the adherents avoid describing God. But consider this, a quote I pulled from Karen Armstrong that is going into a future topic:

• Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. New York: Knopf, 1994.

Why so many atheists continue to challenge the least educated, most superstitious theists is a mystery to me. Perhaps it's because that's all they're capable of?

I find it quite ironic, though, that an atheist has to tell me what God is in order to tell me God doesn't exist. Or that an atheist has to tell me what religion in order to tell me what's wrong with it.

But, just so I'm sure, does that mean we're finally done with dictionaries in the Religion Forum? I generally prefer to pull them out only when people are getting upset because they insist that a word can mean only this or that. Like my disagreement with Raithere about the word sense. In that case, it helped our communication to have it out that way. But I find "erroneous dictionary" so hilarious that you might wish to consider being ashamed of yourself.

It's like anything else in language: "Lemme axe you a kestchin."

Heck, for some people, it's easier than pronouncing the words correctly.

Or "obligated", which has a minutely different definition than "obliged". People substituted the former, though, for the latter, and I really do think that, like "disorient" and "disorientate", they did it to sound more intelligent based on the silly supposition that more syllables equals more intelligent communication.

But really, man ... thank you. That was f--king funny.

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thanx,
Tiassa

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Tiassa

That statement just didn't jive with any of the defintions I found. I too used a Websters dictionary. All that really matters is the most common definition. My point was that Humanists using the label religion was innappropriate under the standard or most common defintion that requires a deity.

Under the fourth defintion you quoted me I am part of a religion. Everybody is in a religion. Even though the more proper description would say that we religiously do something. I am not a memeber of a religion, yet I act "as if" I had a code of conduct.

We may all have a beef with Christians, but there are other offending religions. Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism all have questionable practices and beliefs.

Puritans and Muslims: covering of body for religious reasons, unnatural level of shame. Too many to list: fasting, attendence of mandatory gathering, tithing, reliance on a single book. Hacidic Jews: having sex througha hole in a sheet. Practice of multiple marriages: Islam and Mormon (remove the second "m" for a better description).

There are religions that I am not including. To be sure there are religions without such weird practices. I cannot attack a relgion with five members for the reason that it is too obscure. I am only for the purposes of this discussion talking about the practices of religion in general. They go to a building every week. They listen to some guy repeat the same stupid stories every week. Then they go back about their lives as if nothing had happened. They aren't so much religious as they are simply wanting insurance of going to the positive afterlife. I would wager that not many of them even believe or listen to the crap issuing forth from the podium. They only go out of obligation and fear.

They make it easy for me to attack them. Complacency and faith are often the same.

That was my point. They all have different gods. They can't all be right. Every one of them has a god, though. If even one is right the others are making stuff up. What if I'm right though? That means they are all making crap up. And why not considering that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are all based on some guy called a prophet hearing words from a deity. We have another word besides prophet to describe these people now: schizophrenic.

Visiting church religiously can mean once a week. I shower more frequently than that. I practice this once a day.

I have no fault with dictionary defintions of any of that. I tend to go with the first as it is most common. After that one, who knows.

I find your comparison to fascists fitting. While Fascists are not neccessarily a religion, they often have religious similarities. They are annoying because they insist on dominating the lives of their followers and making their beliefs known at every instance.

Why is that irrelevant? It would seem that if the deity does not exist the belief has become outmoded. That seems integral to the belief itself. Are these friends complacent?

Then you just assume a god to exist. Generally a positive assertion requires at least a little proof before adopting it as truth. That is only rational thinking, I know. And as I have defined relgion as occurring from an irrational thought process, it seems simple enough to discard all of that mess offhand. They don't need to prove their belief to me, but they try and fail anyway.

But when does the contemplating end in favor of actual action. I have on occasion overexcercised my brain to the point of depression. All points lead to some level of suffering in the near future. That is non-productive.

How much of what you know do you truly understand? How much of who you are is dependent upon the path someone else has prescribed you? I contemplated those two questions for some time. On the first I came to the conclusion that I could know something enoguh to talk about it. For instance I know what an atomic bomb does, but I lack any real understanding of how it does it. Sure I can say that it splits the atom, but what does that mean? What does a split atom look like?

As for the second question I had decided that I was not the scientist that some earlier teacher in junior high thought I was. I was not willing to forgoe any other career for a life of lab work. I was also not of the skill to join the ranks of a true theoretical physicist. I altered my path in favor of law.

I did have sufficient time for contemplation. I spent six years in a lock of depression. I quit life from the end of Elementary School to the end of High School. I quibbled environmental issues, those other two questions. I found fault with faith. I formed a distaste for the school system. I went to those buildings 1/3 of the time and pulled out a 3.83 GPA. That was a failing. Sometimes they would fail me just because I did not attend, even though my papers would have given a B. That too was a failing.

I came to the conclusion that teachers are inherently ego driven. They are frustrated actors for a smaller audience. I found that lower level teaching is more subjective. I also found that often the people in my honors classes were more inclined to be cruel. I was assaulted by a jock, but more often I received verbal harrassment from those in my advanced and honors classes. Often from the more from the vulnerable ones.

That harmonic dissonance has more to do with my nack of finding patterns where none exist and ussually none intended to exist. It is my form of meditation. I would stare at a piece of paper long enough to see the imperfections in the fabric. I would darken the thinner areas until I had an image. I would get faces and jumbled messes of shapes. It is not unlike looking at the stars and clouds for a pattern. We compensate and feel better for it.

I haven't found one that does not fall under these categories. Most don't even want to discuss their identity. The others become to irrate for any logical discussion. I am actually referring to the more sound theists!

That was one case. Often they will initiate it like so:

Them: Heres a video about Christ.
Me: I don't want it.
Them: why?

That's where it ussually begins. I have had friendships with theists that lasted two or three years before the discussion of theism comes up. It's hard to know if the ones who agree are just placating me.

Then there was this particular female that confronted my friend and I with a passage from the bible denouncing homosexuality. More often than not actually they intiate.

Sometimes I will even forgo the discussion. Some people you know have a certain peace existing in a state of idnorant bliss. Removing them from that might be detrimental to their development.

This more has to do with the fact that we don't go looking for them. They find us. In fact most of those theists you are referring to fight with each other rather than us. They pick evolution, an idea adopted by the school system. Teachers like any community fall into the same statistics of religious to non. So they fight religious evolutionists.

I ask too. What are your parameters of god? That is of importance. They often go with a vague description. God is love. What does that mean? I can't come up with something that describes my deity that you can't immediatly see through. So it will become something that the secular community has too. But what is love? A feeling. Then god is that chemical reaction in your brain that illicits a feeling of love. Is that all we are human robots? Yes.

Perhaps it is that whole demystifying thing that people resist. We are only happy with what we don't understand. That is why we at base resist any attempt to understand.

 

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Um ... well ... er ... no comment on the length.

I was just looking through definitions of the word run, just for the hell of it. There's a couple in there that I'm not used to (e.g. a stream), and one or perhaps two that I don't see there. It happens.

Very few Humanists do label themselves as part of a Humanist religion.

But you're also looking at one of the reasons why I generally say I have no specific religion. I carry a conception of what the word "God" means, and I do find it funny that so many people have a problem with that definition. I also find it a little sickening, because people seem so bent on division that even the atheists have trouble dealing with this notion of the word "God", as I would hope is evidenced at least by recent debates at Sciforums. I mean, I understand when a Christian tells me that God must be this or that. I don't get it when an atheist does.

Yo, Teg: you seemed to have a problem earlier in this topic that is starting to bug me. Remember, you said "theists", so I went on to discuss broader theism and you asked me what it had to do with a topic about Christianity?

Well?

Why are you so bent on extending your criticisms to other religions in this topic about Christianity when you were so confused about the presence of those ideas in the topic?

Start your own topic about the problems of Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism if you want.

It's getting a little irritating watching you so desperately trying to open this topic up so you can hold all theistic ideas--even those you don't understand and those you don't know exist--accountable for your frustrations with Christianity.

Wow ... you seriously need to start dealing with more intelligent people. Your conception of religion is quite stained by such theists.

I mean, also included in those religions is allegedly human kindness. I agree that what you've listed is pretty silly for religions, but we see a problem with people taking things too literally (e.g. hole in the sheet). I can't always tell you the original meaning of the idea, such as the hole in the sheet, because I haven't done that psychohistorical research. However, from Aziz Al-Akbari, Converstions With a Sufi Master:

• Al-Akbari, Aziza. "Conversations with a Sufi Master". From Sufi Thought and Action. Idries Shah, ed. London: Octagon, 1990. pp. 267-271

• It is a rule of mine to never copy an article in its entirety unless I can link you to it on the web; usually, I only ever reproduce web news articles in full. However, I have violated this rule, violated copyright laws blatantly, and, in the words of David Bowie: I did it all for you. I can only hope that the disservice I have done to the author is outweighed by the service such a reproduction can accomplish in the long run.

• I have chosen not to footnote the passage at all because I would rather leave it to you in order to let your purest reactions be present. How you read this article speaks much toward certain things. I'm more curious in seeing how things come up.

• I will, however, offer one contextual clarification because I'm not going to spend multiple posts undoing the damage it can cause if your objections ignore the idea. Adilbai Kharkovli notes: (T)he Sufis are operating in the field of religion which means that they are committed to a belief in a meaning for human life, the existence of a divine power, and a transmission of the knowledge of that meaning, that power and certain opportunities for mankind. This is a contextual note that I feel it necessary to remind people of because, frankly, it makes understanding what they mean by "progress" a little less confusing to those predisposed to assign attributes of one ideology to another.

Furthermore, the Armstrong citation in my prior post speaks directly of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: I think, quite clearly, she is describing a body of religion that has transcended the silliness you've mentioned.

Which is why I'm hammering on your use of "theist". Furthermore, I have not gone so far as to perceive your use of the words ignorant and theist as synonymous, despite what appears to be an effort to do so on your part. I'm happy to deal with issues of ignorance, and I'm happy to deal with issues of theism. But the two are not the same in the sense that ignorant people have much in common with other differently-grouped ignorant people. I'm perfectly happy to read that idea in terms of almost any paradigm. Watch what people do with Nietzsche, or with "Anarchism", or with "Marxism".

In that sense, I'm happy to accept the idea that ignorant people have much in common with other differently-grouped ignorant people.

We are, all of us, ignorant of certain things in the Universe. It's how we choose to approach them that counts. Most Christians, for instance, use God as a bulwark against the perception of ignorance. While God represents the sum of the mystery in the Universe (e.g. that of which we are ignorant in the Universe), it is demonstrably easier to superstitiously hold up that ignorance as an authority than it is to engage that ignorance and resolve it with knowledge. Such is my personal complaint about the nature of Christianity, for instance. To "know God" should mean to attempt to know as much of what "God" represents as possible. For those suffering from distraction as a result of accreted religious dogma, knowing God ceases to be about learning what is hitherto unknown, and becomes the obedience play we're all so familiar with.

Look back at the Armstrong quote:

Quite obviously, she is discussing a group of people that operates outside the narrow confines you describe. We might look at this, so to speak, in terms of esoterica. Why, for instance, do these people (for the sake of argument) "get it" while the clear majority of people do not appear to understand?

This can have profoundly negative implications. For instance, what is the use of the ideological system if the majority of the people cannot understand it?

This is an unfortunate condition of reality, so to speak. People are far too busy selling cars, freaking out over the news, and so forth to consider such ideas on a regular basis. The rest of the living experience often demands an immediate regard toward reality, such that abstractions are left for special or rare occasions.

However, when the budget comes up in the US, listen to the debate. Not a single legislator knows the entirety of what is contained in that budget. A budget is good or bad based solely on very narrow issues: abortion, defense, and so forth. Nobody is capable of taking the whole of its data and putting it into a context that explains its full relationship to the American people who will actually put the money down.

Or watch the news, and how people react to certain crimes. I'm always a fan of presumption toward murderers. It's beyond amusing; it's sickening. Psychopaths are psychopaths are psychopaths, and we do need to protect ourselves from them. But the shock people show--oh, the horror--is a little ridiculous. I well understand that some people, for various reasons of conditioning or biological necessity, are unable to recognize certain standards of conduct. It doesn't make them terrible people per se, but people equate the danger with some inner hatred. While it's true that the psychopathic killer is definitely operating according to a different scale of values, the hatred people assign to the psychopath's perspective is purely speculative, and only serves to reinforce the "good" people's sense of morality. Of the majority of people, it seems that nobody particularly cares to understand the whys and hows of the psychopathic killer, despite the fact that such information might provide us an opportunity to save people's lives by understanding the certain common links between psychopathic killers. I'll even give an example of this process, with something less than Ted Bundy as the example:

• When I was in college, my girlfriend had a thing for talk television. I still remember the last time I willingly watched Oprah. It was a show about a tragedy. Young people, out on a date, and for some reason the 17 year-old boyfriend murdered his girlfriend. Oprah invited him to appear on her show via satellite from prison. She asked him specifically what he's been up to in prison, and included in his response was that psychiatrists had been spending time with him. Oprah asked him specifically what for and what the psychiatrists said. He pointed out that the psychiatrists had diagnosed severe ADD. At which point Oprah exploded. How could he make such excuses for his crime? What kind of animal was he? Yadda, yadda, yadda and all I wanted to know was at what point the killer had made any excuses for his crime. He never held ADD up as an excuse; in fact, Oprah cut him off mid-sentence, so that if he was going to, he didn't have time. The audience gets all excited, cheering Oprah's holy rage. Nobody wanted an answer. The assignation of morality was such that people could not fathom his situation. Therefore, by their own morals, he was a deliberately horrible person despite the fact that nobody--killer included--understood fully why the crime had happened. People rushed to judgment, and chose to forego any opportunity to obtain new information.

And while I would speculate that 90% or more of the audience was religious, I can also say that in my own life, I observe similar processes among atheists. It's what I mean when I say it's a human problem; that it is not restricted merely to theistic or religious thought.

Rather than condemning the person outright, we can learn more if we try to understand the values involved in the crime. By doing so, we can undermine the perceived legitimacy (according to the criminal) of said values.

In this sense, such outrage as people tend to show is useless, selfish, and possibly even damaging.

My big question though is whether these religions you are not including are theistic? You seem to have some difficulty with the idea of a non-theistic religion, but if those are the religions you're not including, well, that's one thing. Nonetheless, I cannot believe the effort you're putting into transferring the problems of Christianity to the whole of theism. It's rather sad, as it undermines any sense that you know what you're talking about.

Well, that hardly constitutes all of theism, does it? Again, this is one of the reasons why I generally say I have no specific religion. Consider some terms:

• God
• Myth
• Religion
• Theism

Are they really synonymous?

Ah, redemptive religion. A little narrower a term than theism, eh?

Such is a problem with redemptionists, I agree.

Attacking is your own prerogative. Are there any other words you'd like to make synonymous for this debate, though?

How do you treat your family and friends? Do you ever have faith in them? Would you let someone speak ill of them, condemn them verbally, call them bad people, even if what that person is criticizing happens to be true? Or do you maintain your faith in your family and friends? Is it mere complacency?

Then why lump them together? Make it easier to attack? Make a big enough target and maybe you can hit the broad side of a barn at point-blank?

Correct. That's why I pursue essential definitions and concepts in religion. If the religious phenomenon can be understood, its detriment can be alleviated or eliminated.

It's entirely possible, but you seem to be focusing on the issue as if it's fully intentional.

Yes, but do you really think that any of those religions are looking at the core of what was said? There are, among Abramic monotheists, some who do, indeed, search for that "prophetic" core. Once again, consider the passage from Armstrong, especially the portion that has been presented a second time.

Quite narrow, indeed. What, the prophet couldn't have had good hashish or mushrooms? Don't read your kids fairy-tales or fables, or even children's stories. After all, trains and animals and trees don't talk.

Shel Silverstein's Giving Tree? Too bad it apparently has no value since trees don't talk.

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Much religion is like a mental illness, so I'm not going to chide you for that. But schizophrenia is a narrow range of possibilities.

In the meantime, your apparent compassion toward mental illness is such that I hope you never have occasion to counsel someone regarding issues of the psyche.

If it's a mental illness, why attack the ill? Why not help them?

Try answering the question next time, Teg.

What was the point of that response? No, don't bother telling me. I'd much rather you tried answering the question.

Which makes all other definitions illegitimate? What, because you choose a narrow range of definitions, everyone needs to figure out what that is in advance? While I generally place the responsibility for communication on the person attempting to communicate, there is something called learning, Teg. For instance, Raithere and I had a disagreement about the meaning of the word sense, and I gave him sh@t for "prioritizing" definitions. This is what I see you doing here. He and I disagreed about the word "sense", and his rejection came in part because there were definitions with lower ordinal numbers before the one I was using. Yet we see, for instance, the same use of the word sense as I used in the now already-cited (and, it feels, oft-ignored) Armstrong passage: It would have saved me a great deal of anxiety to hear--from eminent monotheists in all three faiths--that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself .... They would have told me that in an important sense God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found so inspiring. It's not so much a lack of comprehension on anyone's part, it seems, but an insistence on restricting the acceptable definitions of words in order to reduce the number of factors at play. It is easier to reject a "sense" of God if we limit that, as such, to direct sensory perception. However, as Raithere and I eventually settled that issue, so do I hope to be able to resolve our present disagreement over definitions. But I find it quite disgusting that one should reject a definition of a word merely because they're not used to using it that way. It creates the impression that one is not prepared to discuss that aspect of something, and therefore wishes to cut it out of consideration. Refusing the definition despite evidence to the contrary seems rather religious to me. And since that refusal stems from a discussion in which the atheistic perspective is essential to that part of the debate, it gives the impression that you're turning atheism into a religion. On the one hand, it keeps me chuckling. To the other, I wonder what the hell the problem is.

Well, I'm glad we could have that moment of accord. However, what of integrity? As you've asserted that low membership implies a lack of integrity in the religion, I'm wondering what membership says about the integrity of larger religions? I noticed you didn't address that point.

That God exists is irrelevant because, and I point you to this passage yet again:

In other words, it becomes irrelevant because there is little that can be said definitively about God. The mystical assertion that God is constitutes the whole of what can be said definitively about God. Before you react to that, stop and consider the number of things you might say about God in that response, and ask yourself, Who says that's true?

So what happens, then, is that the notion of God itself is the table, and is not so much on the table. From there, ideological considerations come into play. To wit: read through the Old Testament where the Hebrews are wandering through the desert. God abhors homosexuality, right? Well, to be quite honest, recreational sex in general--wasting of seed and exposure to disease--got a bad rap during that period. God says? Well, I'm sure that if the Hebrews had invented microscopes and discovered the existence of microbial life, the Bible could have made its case better. In the meantime, it is not my place to ask forgiveness for the Jews for their horrible failure. I mean, what kind of people are they, right? Don't have microscopes ... so ignorant, so ignorant.

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If you had no conception of genetics (lacking the equipment to document them) and no conception of microbes (again, lacking equipment to document them) and happened to be a tribal sage looking around at certain things going wrong in your community, how would you explain it? Don't have sex with your sister. But why not? Well, we see a problematic relationship between sleeping with your sister and the offspring produced. No gay sex? It's part of a larger idea about recreational sex: we see a problematic relationship between recreational sex and people getting sick. With no knowledge of genetics or microbes, how exactly do you explain this to the people?

And that's one of the simplest examples I can give.

In the sense that Christians adhere to "church values" because of God, I agree with you.

When one stumbles across a way of looking at God that is acceptable--ironically, mine comes from the annals of Christianity--it makes it easier then to set aside the argument of whether God exists or not. Christians and, it seems, atheists alike look toward narrow conceptions of God, that it is something, someone, or somehow definable. When you say that God is something, what happens to all that God is not? This is especially relevant in the Abramic monotheistic religions because God is supposed to be definitive and authoritative. However, when God becomes something that cannot be contained or expressed, when God is relegated to the ineffable, it becomes a word that represents a state or condition in the Universe that includes all things, all times, all ideas, and so forth. God is no longer something that gives orders and so forth. Even John Calvin, who is said to have invented God in his own image, was aware of this, and considered the reduction of the larger sense of God to the Biblical version a kind of baby-talk.

In what sense? None of them adhere to any one religion anymore because their studies of those religions have shown that the exclusivity of a major religion like Christianity is untenable. The individual adherent, for instance, can tell me what they experience. For instance, a Christian can tell me what they experience in Christianity. PhD's in theology, degrees in philosophy, and so forth, generally look at a larger picture than any one individual. One of the most basic questions at this level happens to be reasonably represented by the Sufi notion of an "ancient core" of principles or ideas (see Kharkovli thread referred above). As those who examine religions go through the list, there exist certain common values that humanity in general claims to recognize. Why is murder wrong? What about rape?

The foundation for Justice, for instance, cannot be shown to have an objective root. It is a comparative value and, just like in fables and fairy-tales, one can pull out of the symbols of a religious story the value at play, though the basis of that value is left to the nebulous "God", since it cannot be demonstrated.

Murder is wrong because it's wrong. Period. I can actually demonstrate that if we can accept that life does, indeed have a purpose, and that purpose is perpetuation and progress of the species.

Beyond that, nothing even approaching objectivity can be put as the root of why murder is wrong.

At such a level, studying religion becomes more philosophical than practically religious.

It's what happens when people stop worrying themselves about the pettiness and idiocy of such ideas as we find in Christianity or other redemptive religions, for instance.

But how does that god "exist"? Therein lies a very important question. As long as you're willing to lump theologies together, it will be difficult for you to recognize such perspectives as we've seen repeatedly in the Armstrong passage: A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist--and yet that "he" was the most important reality in the world.

So how does this condition come to be? Quite simply, by dealing within the reality that exists inside the myth. As such, God does not really exist, and the importance of that God comes from the fact that it is such an integral part of the human experience. Why that is, how it is expressed, and what to do about that become essential questions to the continuation of the human endeavor.

And for some people, that proof is empirical and not necessarily something that can be passed on for validation. If the individual observes it .... Well, ask someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens, or who thinks that all the Ufos are extraterrestrial or based on extraterrestrial technology. Ufos and alien-seed theory are fast becoming the new religion. I'm fascinated by the process, watching the classic values of old myths be translated into new myths representing the symbols of the era. Look back in history: angels? Okay, that almost makes sense if we consider that there were no flying craft, and even take into consideration an old painting of Madonna and Child featured in many a TLC/Discovery channels Ufology special which bears a flying, radiating crown in the background. The myth for the times. Cigar-shaped Ufos? Coincided with zeppelin technology. Ever see the classic "Kaiser helmet" photo out of Oregon in the 1950's? Think for a moment of the SR-72 Blackbird. Imagine a test version of the plane with only one tail. Now put it up in the sky at a distance and look straight down the nose of it: you'll see the basis for a "Kaiser helmet" Ufo. There's not much new about the Ufo/EBE mythos, except the accreted forms assigned to various traditional roles in the pageant.

Simple enough?

Well, put life into logical terms, according to logical thought processes. There will be among that logical process many irrational presuppositions.

Go for it. Many people talk about logic, but few, if any, want to spell that logic out.

Fair enough. I hope you don't mind if I hold you to the first part of that in the future.

Depends on the standards one sets. To the one hand, nothing is ever definitive, so that if you wait for that, you'll never act. To the other, though, is the observation that people in general at as if things were definitive.

My sympathies directly; I know the feeling well.

A twofold consideration for the moment:

• Given the inevitability of suffering, and accepting that suffering is bad even in the sense that it is non-productive, the reduction of suffering seems a positive aim. A friend of mine who is a student of Buddhism reminds that warfare is not immoral, as no morals exist, but it is still bad because it is a highly inefficient means of causing change. I can't necessarily argue with that point; I could, but I don't actually see a functional need to.

• Secondly, if suffering is non-productive, what does that mean? Again, from this topic (already referred): Without a goal, motion is meaningless. If Portland is your goal you can make progress by driving a mile down the road toward Portland, but if you have no goal, then driving a mile in the direction of Portland or in any other direction is meaningless motion, not progress. That "man sets his own goals" is an evasion, because human goals shift frequently and radically. One may make progress in terms of this or that limited goal, but unless there is a general and final goal, it is not possible to speak of progress overall. (Russell, Jeffrey B. Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1984. cf footnote 6, pp. 21-22) In other words, if suffering is non-productive, toward what does productivity aim?

Excellent questions. And these are fundamental to the purpose of the religious experience. But, as an American, most of my life, if not all, is dependent upon the paths laid before me by others.

An excellent point to examine: From what does law derive, and toward what does it aim? In other words, what is law for and why is that important? Now, you and I can probably agree that George Dubya needs to get the silver foot out of his mouth when he says that we need judges who know that the law is derived from God. However, once we've finished laughing our asses off at Dubya, there still remains the issue of whence comes the law and its authority. I had, actually, long forgotten that comparison, and thank you deeply for reminding me of it.

One of the saddest things I found from my own similar experience is that much of what caused the negative emotions that led to depression was a response to the paths laid before me. I quibbled many issues of history, politic, and humanity during that period. And for every rhetorical defeat I suffered, every conceptual failure I encountered, every ideological dead end I followed, it took from fourth grade until I had already dropped out of college to figure out that such disappointment is part of the active learning process.

I had teachers who refused to fail me. I don't recall doing any homework aside from research papers and such for about the last two years of high school. My GPA suffered reasonably, but nonetheless, because of the school I was at, my combined mediocre GPA (2.8/4.0) and my mediocre SAT scores (1090 combined) still qualified me somehow as one of the state's top 10% of graduates. Pretty sad testament to the school system, although I did find out when I got to college how odd the public schools were. Students from Oregon's public schools, including a troop of my associates in college who were on various honor rolls, were damn near functionally illiterate. I wrote a bunch of papers for other people during that time; I should have charged money, but they learned more from sitting there watching me work and listening to me lecture them the whole time I wrote than they were learning elsewhere. In the end, after I dropped out, 2/3 of that circle would eventually drop out of school, and the remaining third happened to be the ones I didn't write papers for. Honor roll, my ass. This bunch was illiterate. However, leaving nostalgia behind ....

Consider the esoteric religions. What happens when people take what they think of a religion and make it "fact"? That is, look, for instance, at the number of selfish redemptionists who are visibly "learning-challenged", who discard fact in favor of long-standing religious belief. We can think in terms of the Sufi interview above when we stop to consider that by going forth without guidance they might have lost touch with the process. I was always annoyed at being graded on attendance; it was a disease factor, in a way, as people would haul themselves to class in no condition to be around anyone merely because if they missed five classes they would fail. But on the other hand, as the public lamented declining academic standards, it was apparent to me that professors were grading the papers on the grounds that, well, they were completed and turned in. One could make all sorts of wild assertions and generally not make sense, but if your sentence structure was okay, and your punctuation was accurate, and you met the page, word, and citation requirements, it was good enough. People can earn their degrees with no real guidance about what the information means in general, and merely base their "education" on their own perspective. Think of historical revisionists who refuse conventional history in order to make a political point. What happens, in the religious sense, when someone engages a similar process? Compassion and kindness? What proportion of Christians do you know who keep those ideas close to the center of their experience? Most of my acquaintance show an incredible intolerance of their fellow human being, and seem to get off reminding people of the consequences of not being just like them. Two cents stemming from the ideas of attendance and experience.

I cannot directly comment in the sense of a counterpoint. Although there does exist a sense of analogy if we stop to consider that, someday, we will be able to describe those patterns of imperfection in the paper (or other seemingly random aspects of life) mathematically. However, that risks becoming a huge digression best left for another day, so I'll leave it at that.

Well, if they were common, religion in general wouldn't be the mess that it is.

So is your described "conversation" from a post or two ago an exceptionally limited sample of your experience with theists? You wrote that it is the same conversation you have with every theist. Should we then conclude that this conversation, despite its consistency, represents a minority experience among the whole of theists of your acquaintance?

Irate in what way? For instance, we have seen much in recent weeks about disrespect, irate tantrums, and so forth in our discussion boards. I know that some theists, myself included, get really irate when people try to tell us what we think so that they can tell us it's wrong. If they don't care to pay attention to what we think, they ought not be commenting on it in the first place, as such behavior only goes to prove that the idiocy of the Christians this present topic discusses is not limited to Christianity or theism. As to the other, some people might be construed as rude if they choose not to dignify with a response such simplistic and aggressive inquiries as are generally put forth by an atheist who chooses to assign the attributes of one limited version of one deity to all versions of all deities.

Does one go forth to understand what the assertion of God is, or does one go forth asserting what God is in order to debunking it?

On the one hand, see the remarks immediately preceding this section. To the other, I'm wondering if those sound theists you're referring to happen to be among those described by the now oft-referred Armstrong passage?

Well, at this point, I'm wondering what specifically about Christ the video is. Propaganda? Of course I don't want it; I'll be impressed the day new Christian propaganda hits society. Presently it's all quite stale.

Furthermore, I see that you have once again shifted from theism to Christianity directly. I find the attempt to make them so directly synonymous offensive and ill-conceived.

As long as we're dealing with fundamentalist Christianity, it seems to me that I'm right there with you. However, the aggressive extension of those complaints and ideas to include broader theism is, well, rude and described best by terms outside civility.

Think of it this way: I don't like the American pseudo-Capitalism. Neither do the fundamentalist Muslims who like blowing stuff up. When they rant about Americans, they're forgetting about the section of the population that would quickly come to their direct aid if they would just calm the f--k down and stop making their own situation worse. But of those Americans who sympathize with the inequity shown the Muslim world by the West, well, they want to kill us, too. We're not inclined, then, to do much to intervene. In the meantime, we'll focus on those Muslims who aren't trying to blow us up, and try to hold our greedy government responsible for what unnecessary damage is visited upon the peaceful ones.

There are many people out there who spend much time and effort trying to unravel the conundrums of religion for the betterment of humanity. Including them in your rage ... well, if you call them ignorant ....

If atheism is just a disbelief in God, or a lack of belief, or whatever simple definition that could not necessarily be established because even our posting atheists found the dictionary definitions to be lacking, then that's fine. But this high-and-mighty oppositional stance that some people show when they try to lump all of theism together to fit the extremely narrow view of Christianity they oppose is a poor joke, and shows that the rejection of God or religion does little, if anything, to alleviate the conflicts 'twixt people. It establishes that a certain brand of idiocy that many of us do or have in the past related exclusively to religion in various degrees is, in fact, a human problem and not a religious problem.

Are we speaking of theism in general or Christianity specifically? You switch back and forth so much that it's hard to tell which one you're referring to.

They probably are. Were they more honest, and assuming that they have not been legitimately converted away from their faith by your ever-so-persuasive rhetoric, they would not placate you but try with varying degrees of patience, what the error is. Part of it is lack of information. Quite often, it is difficult to link the concepts together in a way that is relevant to you, or to any other person who might be the target of information exchange. But I tend to think the majority of them will simply be ducking the issue.

Well, being that we're back to Christianity, I'm right there with you.

What's really quite funny about that is that Christ directly disagrees with you (cf Matthew 25.31-ff). It is bad to leave people in a state of ignorant bliss.

Learning. Understanding. That famous watchword, "Compassion"?

Well, I can certainly understand that, especially having lived through Oregon's anti-gay campaigns. But think of it this way: you can keep sending troops to the front line to shoot, kill, and die, or you can send teams deep behind the lines to cut off the enemy's capability to create and equip soldiers. Cut the supply lines, cut the foundation of the operation. Staying out in the skirmish is merely that. Understand their religion better than they do, cut off their ability to push for the usurpation of human equality and respect.

Well, did you forget that to such fundamentalists as the topic allegedly discusses, we, who have less or even no religion, and who do not read according to the fundamentalist mores, are just as much sinners than you? Even worse, according to some? And besides, when dealing with ideas that so directly affect human conduct, ought we not be sure of what we're seeing? Much disagreement might come among the academic theists and philosophers about what something means, but at least they're not holding an end result up as a cause and going forth from that point.

On the one hand, you seem to be shifting back to the Christians instead of the fundamentalists. To the other hand, what?

And, sometimes, you tell, also.

In that sense I often wonder about the atheists who got upset because I wouldn't give them a shoebox version of God. It seems atheists have a hard time dealing with ideas that they can't shoot down from the word go. In other words, it seems atheists have a hard time transcending narrow, nightstand gods as many fundamentalists do.

Technically, it is not my problem if one is so dedicated to an idea of God that they cannot understand another. However, if that one insists that the narrow idea of God to which that one is dedicated is the only acceptable version, and substitutes it in lieu of other ideas of God just to criticize a person as ignorant or to ritually repeat the knocking-off of that miniscule God, well, you shouldn't speak such ill of people. Period. It is rather lacking any intellectual value to do so.

However, insofar as I can tell, the idea that God is love arises from the notion of love and hate. God, in the Abramic monotheistic religions, is supposed to represent what is good. Love is the good side of a generalized dualism. God is love is a compressed version of a larger idea, and that larger idea compressed from something else. When that compression is tacked on to the essence of the idea of God, it becomes an accretion.

God is love is a rather pollyanna perspective. It hasn't anything to do necessarily with arrogance of separating love and hate and then allying oneself with the better. It is, in fact, sheer optimism. There are times when such a phrase is effective in the situation, but generally speaking such sugar-coated sentiments are baby-talk.

Love is also an abstract idea.

It's possible. If God is merely a feeling, I'll agree.

But think of this: There are days when the chemical feeling of love is not present. So what happens if my kid goes out and smashes the car on a joyride intended to impress the guy she wants to go out with? If that chemical reaction that is love is absent, does that mean I don't love my daughter?

Just ... don't. Please don't make me ask you who or what programmed the robot. Cool enough?

A computer, sure. A robot? No.

That's definitely part of it, but not the whole of it. For instance:

Getting there is often a large part of the reason for the experience. Most people I know stopped playing with their Rubik's cube after solving it a couple of times. It's not like I know anyone who still sits around, asking their kids to mix it up for them so they can solve it yet again. More relevantly, I don't play Civilization III anymore because, barring an absolutely ridiculous terraforming, I can beat it. It's a matter of predicting how long it takes you to get through the tech tree and aiming for the options that get you the most. Betweeen the Great Library of Alexandria and the Great Wall of China, I can consistently keep enough of a technical advantage to secure the UN and other "wonders". At that point, I can invoke a fundamentalist government and proceed to stomp across the map. Presently, it's all a matter of how fast I can hit keys. That's about the only thing that varies the game time for me. If I'm really lucky, though, I get a terraform that is almost impossible to cope with. Why play the game? It's boring. I know what comes next. Why play Tic-Tac-Toe anymore? I know that technically, you can't win.

Chess, however, has enough variations to keep me interested.

Just a few examples.

I must admit, though, I had always presumed that people found understanding too difficult. When we add up biology, chemistry, social conditioning factors, and environmental factors, it's not quite as easy to figure as the tech tree in video game. When there's too many factors, people economize. From those economizations come the images that, when taken literally as the whole of the truth, become religious ideas.

thanx much,
Tiassa

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Ekimklaw--source: Irenaeus

Mike

• Pagels, Elaine. The Origin of Satan. New York: Vintage, 1995. (pg. 69)

Pagels' bibliographic notes cite the following:

• Irenaeus, Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses, ed. W. W. Harvey (Cambridge: Typis Academicis, 1857), vol. 1, 3.11.9

Online text of Adversus Haereses

I'll get back to you on the Christ/India thing. There's a topic on it around here somewhere that I didn't write. I'll dig that up and see what it says, too.

But for now, there's the sources on Irenaeus. One from an historian, and one from Irenaeus himself.

thanx,
Tiassa

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Re: Re: Hmmm ...

Ummm. No, that's just plain wrong. This is not the view of "Christians", it is the view of "creationists". There is no way of teaching both evolutionary theory and creationism that is complementary. Ultimately, the teacher is going to come down on the side of one of them at which point it is no longer a case of "let the children decide", but rather indoctrination into the belief of the teacher. By getting this so called "balance" into schools, creationists think they can swing things their way by getting creationist teachers into the school.

 

Ekimklaw--notes on India & the Christ myth

I thought I'd try to get this information together for you.

First, from PositiveAtheism.org:

Or, perhaps, this page by Acharya S:

and, from the same page,

From V. Wilkinson's review of Malik Jabbar's The Astrological Foundation of the Christ-Myth:

Another page from Acharya S:

I might also point your attention toward a relevant discussion here at Sciforums.

Just a few points on elements of the Christ myth borrowed, inherited, or adapted from India. As you can see, many other pagan influences are involved, as well.

And here I'm intrigued by your response to issues of the Great Flood:

How does the diversity of preexisting sources for the Christ myth relate to the diversity of preexisting sources of the Flood myth?

If, for instance, the Bible is the true word of God, what of these stories that come before it and tell similar, if not nearly-identical tales? Are they all mere preludes for God's real show? You know, sanding out the rough spots, experimentation: Whoops, I may be God, but I got that wrong ... maybe if I tweak it right here I'll get the more desired result .... Darn ... okay, okay. Think, Yahweh, think! There must be something we're overlooking ....

While I recognize a certain validity in both the Flood and Christ myths, I recognize a different condition of validity than most Christians aspire to. I'm aware that these myths are merely that--myths. They reflect certain truths, but they're hardly definitive.

But we see, though, as we look through the myths, the borrowed and traded philosophical heritages, and the political nature of the determination of the canon, that the Bible's credibility as "the word of God" is best left to a mythic definition, for should it assert a whole and complete truth, it is lacks sadly; the very basis for its pseudo-objective authority (e.g. this is the word of God) is dubious, at best.

Anyway, there's some info on the relationship 'twixt India and the Christ-myth.

R.P. Oliver on the Christ-Myth
The Jews of Cochin, India

I'm happy to throw more links out if necessary, but I would hope to have established at least a groundwork for the position that the Christ-myth contains elements borrowed from India.

thanx,
Tiassa

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Jesus and pre-Jesus-like characters

The problem with any argument about the story of Jesus coming from some other culture, is that Christianity holds that God told humanity about many details of Jesus' life long before Jesus actually came. Some even put forth that Adam and Eve had a clear picture of the eventual salvation of humanity through Jesus and kept this through the centuries by naming the stars and constellations to show the gospel message to ancient humanity. The people who look into this say that the star names are strangely similar across all cultures of the world--which is unexpected in its outset if it is true. There is some interesting speculation along this line (and several web pages that go into detail) that is worth looking into if you're interested in the origins of many ancient myths (including many Greek myths).

If Christianity is hypothetically held as true, even strong similarities could come from the story slowly changing over generations from the version originally told by God to the first humans. Assuming the story of Jesus wasn't kept secret by God through the ages, similar stories in other cultures bolster, rather than hinder that notion.

 

lotuseatsvipers
Even though tiassa has left my tongue lolling out of my head

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here are some of my theories which (eventually and indirectly) address your statement/question.

I, too, was once a fundamentalist christian. When I was about 14 I went to a “Christian” school for about three months, and that experience planted the rotting seeds of fundamentalist thinking in my mind. I have long been away from that kind of thinking, but the results of its guilt-producing circular logic still echo around in my head every so often.

When I was about 16, my born-again sister told me that my compassion for people who suffer and my urge to do something to stem that suffering was my “spiritual gift” because I obviously had it in unnatural amounts. It must have been a gift. I replied “Aren’t all christians supposed to be compassionate?” She didn’t think so. It just wasn’t one of her spiritual gifts to be
compassionate, maybe? It seemed to me then, and now, that to be compassionate, to share the love they feel from God, with other human beings seems of primary importance ("I desire mercy not sacrifice," love, not rules)? Shouldn't christians be the “salt of the world?” Salt is flavor. It brings out flavors already in food, enhances them. If christians are the salt of the world, they should be trying to enhance the natural goodness of the world, to bring out flavors which have become dulled by pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be causing more pain. That’s what love is. That is what compassion helps people to do. If God so loved the world, why would he want his followers to be unemotional and cruel to that world?

One of the ways I explain fundamentalist cruelty to myself is that many fundamentalists worship the bible. They (by they I mean those fundamentalist christians I have observed or spoken to) worship the phrases that they bandy about (their particular dogma consisting of phrases that seem to flow from one born-again to the next). They repeat these phrases in various combinations--combinations which are creative just by the nature of their connections. But that is where their God-given creativity ends. They cannot seem to rearrange the words in these phrases, to use that natural human talent to find ways to make themselves grow as humans in loving, constructive ways. I’ve heard fundamentalist christians talk about other people as being “spiritually dead” but that kind of pat repetition
/ memorization of phrases is anything but spiritually alive.

They don’t have that sense of child-like wonder at life. They seem to want to control everything--God, life, emotions, etc. Out of a fear for the unknown comes a need to control. If that unknown happens to be God, well, then define God. Put it in a box and label it as something that can be derived from one’s interpretation of the bible. If that unknown happens to be the actions of people who do not agree to live as that interpretation of the bible dictates, then put them in the box of sinner, sub-box fornicator/homosexual/baby-killer, etc. One does not have to interact, to cross into that unknown place of love and compassion, with anything in a box, one just has to continue to shove it back in where it “belongs.”

However hard they try, that attempt to control cannot keep things static (because nothing in life is static, not even “death”) so, instead of growing and flourishing, they decay. That decay, from what I have seen, is what perverts the christian fundamentalist’s sense of love. As I heard in different ways from the mouths of several born-agains “Love is not that ‘good feeling’ you have when you think of someone. Love is sharing with others God’s plan for their salvation.” That “plan for salvation”--whether it includes shunning people ‘for their own good,’ sharing pictures of dead fetuses with anyone passing on the street, hating the sin so much they support the state sanctioned murdering of the sinner, or lining up crosses to show how many children have been murdered by abortion--then becomes paramount to a simple love and caring for fellow human beings, and with that, a love for God.

Examples of what I have written about can be found in this very thread. {Excuse me Ekimklaw, if I write about you as if you would not read this, but I do not hold much value for
statements constructed using solely other people’s words and phrases. If you are not willing to take the chance to speak from an honest place, I am not willing to afford you very much courtesy. Tough love, perhaps?} Ekimklaw'sposts consist of a string of phrases anyone familiar with born-again cant has heard. Imagination (except in the aforementioned manner of connecting the phrases) and innovation was lacking in his replies. While the
posts addressed to Ekimklaw were playfully sarcastic, he immediately found them as an assault on him personally “Do I even KNOW you...” Perhaps the play of words was lost upon him because he has lost that child-like quality God gave. He has lost it, or it has been pounded out of him by guilt.

In fact, much of the overweening guilt in born-again philosophy can be traced directly back to the culture of alcoholism and drug-addiction that it springs from. It is not the masterful knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, but the psychology of the addict which creates the black-and-white thinking. Addicts are still addicts, whether they are addicted to a substance or to church-words, their thinking has been restricted into linear,
narrow concepts. When ex-drug addicts are members of churches, that kind of addictive thinking / behavior can then ‘infect’ those around them, including children who are not
addicts.

 

welcome to sciforums EvelinaAnville!

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Very interesting observation, I agree as everything I have seen in the culture through other people and through myself is in agreement with this.

I believe they refer to it as TYPE A personality

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good post eve, its interesting to talk to someone else who has also escaped the clutches of such a debilitating 'disease'.