Incredibly Not So Smart

[Mokujin]

Great letter! I'd like to see the reply- if you get one. More than likely, you probably made him pee himself.

Folks like this ignoramus do more to repel people from religion than attract. I even heard some guy on the radio saying how it's wrong if you use more than a choir to worship in church. Huh?

I think I'll file this nut in the 'Rock -N- Roll is the Devil's Music' Category.

Peace!
Mokujin

[kungfu cowboy]

It's all thanks to the evil flat five.

[TaoBoy]

Personally, I dont give a hoot who does/doesn't believe in God and who does/doesn't meditate and who does/doesn't wear black robes and chant ancient rites.

As long as those people aren't preaching to me the virtues of their particular way of life and slandering mine. Why can't we all just admit that we really don't have a clue what's going on most of the time?

Kope - I don't think this thread has been about bashing Christians. More so it is about the ignorance of one man and how he is portraying Christianity in a poor light.

BrentCarey - Great letter. Please make sure you post any reply you receive.

Peace. Out!

[IronFist]

Originally posted by SevenStar


I actually no several people like that, one in partucular was close to my family at one time. She actually BOUGHT her daughters some pokemon stuff, but after finding out what pokemon was about (little fighting demons and humans using magic to control them) she threw the toys away and restricted her kids from watching the show. They are restricted from harry potter and lord of the rings, and anything similar in nature. also, they only music they are allowed to listen to is gospel.... they can't even watch/listen to Sclub7!!!

Dude, tell her pokemon aren't demons, they're just animals. If you notice, everything in the Pokemon world that isn't a human is a pokemon (as far as I know). So, a pokemon is no more satanic than a dog or a cat.

IronFist

[SanShou Guru]

A) Bite me.

B) If we looked at the percentage of world population that was killed in each century due to religious beliefs as compared to other reasons the numbers would be much more interesting I would bet. Also the fact that more people are alive today has little barring on the percentage of people “killed” due to religion as opposed to other reasons I think you would at the very least see some spikes. And who is to say that TjK’s excellent point about technology and what its effect would have been on these body counts. The Nazi’s killed as many Jews as they could I think we are all glad they did not have better “killing” Tech.

C) How many of today wars are for reasons other that religion. The days of fighting over land and resources are all but gone (Gulf war was over oil, but was played up as a holy war by Saddum and his buddies).

Yahweh (sp?), Allah, Jesus, God, Satan, whatever who’s to say who is right? What REAL evidence is there that anyone is? Provide me ONE piece of provable evidence that ANY god exists and that would be the greatest discovery on earth. Every religion on earth came from the mind of man, man created the ALL gods. I believe in NO god of any kind and I probably “sin” less than 90% of everybody you know. But I didn’t need god to tell me how to live.

People can believe in god all they want to as long as they leave those that disagree alone. The knumbnuts in office now think that believing in god is the answer to all our problems, well there are plenty of people that believe in god and still crap on the world BECAUSE they think they are better than people that do not believe as they do.

Can you even conceive of where we would be if EVERYBODY were christen. Living happy and dumb farming in and around the Mediterranean. After all the Earth is flat and if you sail over the horizon the demons will get you. The earth is the center of the universe, and we came from sand and a guy’s rib. Research is bad, questions are bad, and knowledge is bad. Like all great lies, they only work if you don’t try to disprove them. Do we know everything, why we are here, not yet but I for one think we should try.

If I’m wrong I would be ecstatic because my life would not just end, and “god” would be the greatest scientist we could conceive of and I would love to meet him. I would like to ask him, “who created you and what existed before you (assuming time is linear)?”

I would love to hear you evidence that god exists and “because I know he does” is a cop out, and I saw “Contact” don’t try those arguments. What will happen is you will disregard what I said because to believe anything I say would disprove the one great belief in your life. You will laugh uncomfortably and/or get mad and preach at me. Maybe even make fun of typos and such to make me look like a fool and that is fine because then you are just avoiding the issue. In these cases refer to A).

Maybe, just maybe, you will have a crisis of faith and I will save YOU. In any case I wish you no harm and a long and happy life, such that it is, because ignorance is bliss. I plan on raising my children to question everything and seek truth in our “one Nation, Indivisible”. (Wow who’s preaching now?)


San Shou Guru

Atheist, scientist, father, and nice guy (most o the time ;-p).

[TaoBoy]

http://www.christianmartialartist.com/

[Kope]

I was going to post this as a private message . . but it's too **** long .. so . . .

------------

I would love to hear you evidence that god exists and “because I know he does” is a cop out, and I saw “Contact” don’t try those arguments. What will happen is you will disregard what I said because to believe anything I say would disprove the one great belief in your life. You will laugh uncomfortably and/or get mad and preach at me. Maybe even make fun of typos and such to make me look like a fool and that is fine because then you are just avoiding the issue. In these cases refer to A).

Maybe, just maybe, you will have a crisis of faith and I will save YOU. In any case I wish you no harm and a long and happy life, such that it is, because ignorance is bliss. I plan on raising my children to question everything and seek truth in our “one Nation, Indivisible”. (Wow who’s preaching now?)

SanShou -- first, just because someone believes something different from what you believe does not mean that you both don't have sufficient warrant to hold that belief.

"warrant" is a technical term from the field of epistemology -- for a belief to have warrant means that there is compelling reason for a particular person to hold that a particular belief is true. Moreover, it would be irrational for that person to deny that a warranted belief is in fact true.

Interestingly, while it used to be thought that warrant and truth where synonyms, it has recently (well, recent in terms of the history of philosophical development) been shown that they are not. It is quite possible, and indeed common, for a warranted belief to be demonstrably false. What makes this interesting is that it is still irrational to hold that that belief is NOT true -- as it is warranted!

So when you say "What will happen is you will disregard what I said because to believe anything I say would disprove the one great belief in your life." You do not demonstrate any great understanding of the subject matter you're discussing.

Have you read Lonergan's _Insight_? Or Plantinga's _Warrant and Belief_? Or perhaps Nielsen, Goetz, Cargile, Proudfoot, Shalkowski, Cahn or any of a dozen other modern atheistic philosophers who address actual questions of religious epistemological merit rather than rant.

You want to know what evidence I have that God exists? I wonder if you have even concieved of the possibility that that question is basically flawed. It's the wrong question. The question is "Can I prove that I have warrant for my belief?" "Evidence" is data. "Warrant" involves interpreting that data in a reasonable and defensible way and placing a valuation on the data as to it's importance in supporting a positioin.

I think I can do that quite adequately. Of course, warrant is by it's nature subjective. What suffices as warrant for me won't necessarily suffice for you. That isn't a problem, of course, as all beliefs are definitionally something held by a subject so it's no problem that one arrives at them subjectively -- that is AS subject. However, if you understand the concept of warrant, you'd understand that the truth of the belief is not an issue. What matters is the rationality of the belief and the value the person places on that belief in the context of their worldview.

You go on to say that ". . . because ignorance is bliss. I plan on raising my children to question everything and seek truth . . . ." A nice thinly veiled insult. I assure you I am not ignorant on this subject. Indeed, I would venture that I am far more well schooled than all but a handfull of people on this planet on this subject. That's what happens when one goes off in pursuit of graduate education in philosophy and theology with max'ed out test scores It's amazing what you can get money to study if you're smart enough.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it is those who believe, lacking all warrant I might add, that their evidentiary criteria for judgement on the truth of a matter requires their own conclussion in order to be rational or indeed are so deluded as to think that the "truth" is obtainable as knowledge and that it matters are the ones who are ignorantly blissful. When it comes to questions of religious epistemology, it is often the case that diametrically opposing views can both be warranted. The un-ignorant, intellectually honest people don't even use words like "prove" when talking about questions like "Does God exist?" For they have learned why that question is poorly formed.

Interestingly, there are even those people whose views on religion are nuanced enough that they can make claims like "I believe in God. I do not believe God exists."

Lastly, I'm sorry you are upset that I referred to your comment as ignorant. However, making a demonstrably false and inflammatory claim about historical fact can be attributed to 2 things that I can think of. Either the person making the claim is ignorant about the fact or the person making the claim is not ignorant about the fact. If the person is not ignorant about the fact then the person is making a false claim intentionally. Since the claim is also inflammatory, then it is natural to conclude that the person makes the knowingly false claim with intent to inflame. I preferred to presume the former as the latter would make you not worth my time.

I note further that you are now making significant adjustments on your claim .. and running to the shelter of historical "what ifs" rather than sticking to what actually obtained. To what end? To "prove" something? To save face in the forum? Historical "what ifs" are not particularly well suited arena of intellectual investigation . . . one can devise every historical "what if" to fit their pre-formed conclussions quite nicely.

[KC Elbows]

One poster commented that they didn't like catholicism because everyone gets to go to heaven.

Now, I'm rather perturbed that you should put me in a position where I'm the lone defender of catholicism, as I could care less, but, if I recall correctly, this tenet is wrong.

Those who seek forgiveness for their sins go to heaven. However, they must honestly seek forgiveness, and not seek forgiveness for selfish reasons.

So those catholics who confess because they are expected to, by catholic doctrine, are going straight to hell. Those who do it because they don't want to go to hell are also going straight to hell. Those who do it because they like being a catholic are also going to hell, as well as those who do it because their church expects them to, and, of course, those who do it because they feel special having one on one time with a priest are going to hell, too.

In fact, it was always my understanding that most everyone is going to hell, and that is why the property value is so low down there.

In fact, by catholic doctrine, all of you are going to hell, including Ryu, who, for a while, wasn't going to hell, then all this cyber-fornication began with chickypoo, and god really hates sado masochists, which, of course, means that the clergy are also going to hell with Ryu.

To my knowledge, all the fun people are going to hell in the catholic world.

I hope I straightened out your view of catholicism and hell. You can assume that everything I just said is absolutely true.

[SanShou Guru]

Excellent and well thought out response, one of the best I have ever received. I very rarely have such an intelligent and well schooled person with which to debate the issue of religion and its impact on the world. I admit you are better schooled in religion than I and seem to certainly have more historical information although you still pick and choose your comments to examine.

You say;
-“The question is "Can I prove that I have warrant for my belief?" "Evidence" is data. "Warrant" involves interpreting that data in a reasonable and defensible way and placing a valuation on the data as to it's importance in supporting a positioin.”

-I think I can do that quite adequately. Of course, warrant is by it's nature subjective. What suffices as warrant for me won't necessarily suffice for you. That isn't a problem, of course, as all beliefs are definitionally something held by a subject so it's no problem that one arrives at them subjectively -- that is AS subject. However, if you understand the concept of warrant, you'd understand that the truth of the belief is not an issue. What matters is the rationality of the belief and the value the person places on that belief in the context of their worldview.”


The flaw with this there is no defensible data that you or anybody has been able to provide. Warrant and truth were dissected because truth relies on fact only and warrant can rely on faith as well. To believe something must be true does not make it true, as you well know. The bible is hearsay as best and because it was written by people who believe they knew what god wanted or worse yet he spoke to or through. It’s meaning was formed by the need of those interpreting their belief. Worse yet, the false prophet (obviously I believe that ALL prophets are false, but not all were evil) that abuses peoples belief to their own benefit. I should also point out that you say you can quite “adequately” defend you position then don’t, not that I thought you could or would.

You should read:
“How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age”
by Theodore Schick, Lewis Vaughn (you can find it on amazon)

It’s a great text on critical thinking and making logical arguments. It has a great section on why faith is a weak argument.

-”You go on to say that ". . . because ignorance is bliss. I plan on raising my children to question everything and seek truth . . . ." A nice thinly veiled insult.”

A test.

-“I assure you I am not ignorant on this subject. Indeed, I would venture that I am far more well schooled than all but a handfull of people on this planet on this subject. That's what happens when one goes off in pursuit of graduate education in philosophy and theology with max'ed out test scores It's amazing what you can get money to study if you're smart enough.”

It certainly seems that way but many of the smartest, well schooled people on earth were wrong about their beliefs at the time. I put this to you; why do you believe god exists and do you believe in creationism and the rest? How would you interpret life on another planet like bacteria on Mars on in the oceans under the ice of Io, or even another sentient race? Would that turn religion on it’s ear? Do you believe that there is a possiblity that there is no god?