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Post by gillianren on Jan 1, 2010 21:23:01 GMT -4
With the caveat that, at first, people do change to a new religion because it speaks to them in some way their old one didn't, or else how would it have enough adherents that anyone would kill you over it?
I will also state that my conversion from Catholicism was not because it was fashionable but because the Church was failing me. On the other hand, so would most of the others which have been passionately advocated around here.
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lonewulf
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Post by lonewulf on Jan 1, 2010 21:38:07 GMT -4
With the caveat that, at first, people do change to a new religion because it speaks to them in some way their old one didn't, or else how would it have enough adherents that anyone would kill you over it? It's always fun to be a rebel. Okay, maybe there is more to it than that, but conversions are made arbitrarily nonetheless. Believing in Jesus was about as "cool" as believing in Buddha's teachings, even if you were a first-hand student/disciple. There's no objective reason to see one as "better" or more qualified than the other. The people that followed the prophet Mani probably thought he was cool as hell. But their ideas didn't keep, for geographical/political reasons more than because their viewpoint had less evidence for it than not. In fact, the spread of any religion is more geographical/political than anything else. If China wasn't selling Silk so much, it wouldn't be spreading Confucianism; and without the Silk Road, China wouldn't have learned about Buddhism. If an Emperor didn' think that Buddhism was cool and erected so many statues and temples throughout all of China, there would have been less of a following (and it may not have kept in the long run). Christianity wouldn't have even existed without the Silk Road, which provided a way for Christians to spread outside of Rome and get people interested that weren't as willing to kill them. Reason is one of the biggest reasons to drop out of a faith. If they're doing more harm than good to your person, or your reason, then it makes sense to drop out of it. Fortunately, we can choose to do that today. It was not always such.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 1, 2010 22:23:57 GMT -4
It's always fun to be a rebel. Yay, being burned alive? No, but "not objective" is not necessarily the same as "arbitrary." I opposed the Catholic Church's stances on a lot of issues, so I'm not Catholic anymore. That's not arbitrary. We, as I have said before, see God in our own image, and if my image of God is, shall we say, more inclusive, I will not be served by an exclusive God. Subjective? Yes. Arbitrary? No. Sure, and I don't ever dispute that I have no objective evidence whatsoever for my belief. That doesn't mean I chose my faith because it was "cool." At least not in the sense I think you mean. Well, yes, but the fact remains that there had to be enough Christians to spread it in the first place. The fact is, there were plenty of people who were interested in killing them; the early Catholic Church was built on martyrdom--because people never do learn that making martyrs out of people only strengthens their movement. I read a book wherein, if I recall, the splitting point between that history and our own was that the Carthaginians won. However, the Irish were still Christians. (I think the Arabs were in charge and Muslim.) The book was interesting, but its socioreligious history was crap. True. Or anyway, we could, but we would have to suffer much more dire consequences that pious imbeciles thinking they know better for you than you do.
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lonewulf
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Post by lonewulf on Jan 2, 2010 0:04:33 GMT -4
Doesn't stop the majority of rebellions. How is it not arbitrary? 90% of the time, what religion people adopt is entirely based on geographic location and beliefs of the parents. Jesus wasn't even exempt from this, as he was a rabbi and of the Jewish faith. Buddha's concepts came out of Hinduism, and in fact were a direct result of the "wheel of time" that every life goes through, a way to break out of the cycle of reincarnation. It's not decided on reason and facts, that's for sure. If it *is* decided on reason, then it's usually added onto the precepts of faith that were not decided on through reason alone. Hence the mind-boggling apologies for things like the Trinity, "One Godhead, three persons, Father and Son together outside of time", etc. etc. No, it's not. There are many good reasons to break out of a faith. You've changed the rules, but you haven't gotten out of the game. Still, your perspective of religion doesn't reject scientific notions, and doesn't make arbitrary demands on others. And Jesus and Buddha came to several different conclusions. Many people in Christianity see sex and sexuality as evil, but many people in different faiths do not. Why? Why this rule, and not that rule? The answer seems to be, "Because this feels right to me, and this doesn't". Otherwise, it's "Because this scripture says so". It may not be "arbitrary", but I'm not sure how to take it. Most people do, though. I do consider you an exception to the norm. In fact, I'd say most posters here on the Apollohoax board probably are. We are selecting from a group of more intelligent and educated individuals with an interest in science, after all. So? I really do fail to see how this disproves my statement. It shows that I did simplify things, yes, but why are people born in the bible belt more likely to pick up the bible than, say, the Koran or a Buddhist text? Of course the people that began it all would be in the minority. So what? You'll always get someone that comes up thinking he has a new way. There are others that find this new way interesting and follow him. They "learn" his way of thinking and preach it themselves. This isn't anything new to religion; this is true to understandings of "natural philosophy" and "magick" without using empirical evidence. You get someone that says that if you wave the disembodied head of a chicken around three times over someone, you can cure illness. Someone else says, "That's interesting, but I think it should be 5 times over the body with the head of a mackerel", and there's a schism. But if Jesus and Buddha are basing their ideas on ideas that they only came to learn through their parents, how can I describe these changes as to be anything else but arbitrary? They aren't the only ones that had ideas. There were other prophets. Their "correctness" usually depends on their popularity, if not immediately then later on. And why is the willingness to die for a cause any account of it being non-arbitrary? Some people are willing to die for a country, when the only reason why they are dying for Russia than, say, the US, is dependent on where they were born. I would call that arbitrary. Yes.
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Post by gwiz on Jan 2, 2010 5:56:25 GMT -4
All of our experience is at some level just happening in our heads. We can't possibly prove that some of our sensory input really is coming from some outside cause and not just our imagination, but we choose to believe that it is. Err, how is that argument supposed to help your cause? I say that you treat some subjective experiences as objective, so you say that there is no way to tell the difference? Does that mean you admit that your strong subjective experience of god cannot be shown to be objective?
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Post by gillianren on Jan 2, 2010 15:56:46 GMT -4
Doesn't stop the majority of rebellions. No, but it does tend to indicate that people are being rebellious for better reasons than "because it's fun" or "because I can." Yes, and that's fine, and I don't dispute it. I quite agree that a lot of people fail to put any thought into their religious beliefs at all, often to the extent that studying a different religion is considered opening themselves up to the forces of the Devil. However, for people who do put more thought than that into their beliefs, "arbitrary" is the wrong word. "Arbitrary" and "subjective" aren't the same thing. "Arbitrary" and "not based on reason" aren't the same thing. Agreed. I'm so glad you're willing to concede that. By that standard, though, political beliefs are also arbitrary. Any belief whatsoever is arbitrary. I believe that it is better for the nation to socialize certain industries, and I can back up what I'm saying with reasons, but there are people on this very board who would argue that point and give their reasons. I like peanut butter; Graham does not. Subjective, but not arbitrary. Mostly . . . . So all the sociopolitical and socioeconomic and so forth factors in the world can only document the spread of a religion, not the rise of one. Buddha could have said whatever he wanted to; what made that important in the long run was that people listened. You think that twit Ramtha down in Yelm is still going to be remembered in two thousand years? Not actually relevant to my point. I'm going before there was a Bible belt. Before there was a Koran by quite a stretch. In the Beginning, in the earliest days of Christianity, someone, indeed quite a lot of someones, had to make the decision that the New Religion suited their emotional and spiritual needs better than the old one. This despite all the pressure on them to choose otherwise, unto being burned alive for Nero's pleasure. Yet they still converted. Why? It can't just be because it was "cool"; cool doesn't last much before the first encounter with the soldiers. But you're still going to the point where there's a schism to be had that doesn't involve quite a lot of blood. Oh, I grant you, all the Not-Catholic Christian churches in the Western world rose with a lot of bloodshed, but I can promise you that a lot of that was also about land and social power. In yours, though, it isn't a new religion supplanting the old one, which is, let's face it, what happened in Rome. Christians weren't taking the possibilities of Jupiter or Juno in a slightly different way. Arguably, yes, the Hebrew Yahweh, but since the Jewish people were a minority, and not a well-liked one, in the Empire, that doesn't make it better for the Romans. I don't know if I entirely agree. Certain of Jesus's points, for example, seem to boil down to "treating people this way is bad, and it would be better to treat them this other way." It would not be difficult to reason that it's because he saw people being treated the old way, and it didn't work as well as he thought his new way might. Subjective, but in some cases, the actual Word of God (assuming, for the sake of it, that Jesus was God) would make things better. It is better, certainly in a small group, to forgive than hold grudges. Isn't it? If that's the only reason. But look at the American Revolution for a minute, or the American Civil War. Yes, a lot of those people died for nothing more than where they lived, and for those people, it was arbitrary. However, look at poor Great-Great-Great-Great (I think) Uncle Bobby. He actually made a choice. Yes, all right, his choice was, in the end, based on the arbitrary fact that he was born in Virginia, and I don't dispute that. However, would you call it arbitrary as well had he decided that it was his country that he should stand for? Then again, as you know, I'm not much for atheist proselytizing, either.
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lonewulf
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Post by lonewulf on Jan 2, 2010 18:48:22 GMT -4
No, but it does tend to indicate that people are being rebellious for better reasons than "because it's fun" or "because I can." I think the problem is, I'm using my terms more broadly than you think I am. Most that I know, who choose from modern religions, tend to do just that; pick what's "popular" today. I do have a friend that's a bit nonconformist and a bit of an asiaphile, and he picked Shintoism, because he likes Japan and kinda likes Shinto. It still seems rather arbitrary to me; why not pick Daoism, or Buddhism? Why not go far back further, and pick Korean animism? Or heck, even Japanese animism, before Shinto was developed and took on Daoist themes? Then I'll search for a better word. Selecting something and rejecting all the other possibilities with little to go by doesn't seem just "subjective" to me. Not sure if you're being sarcastic here, but yes, I am. That's why I have little problem with your beliefs. Since you don't reject scientific discovery, and you don't come down and judge people for living lifestyles that you don't agree with, your religious belief gives way in the event of discovery and causes little to no harm to other people. Most of what you call a "sin", I agree on for purely secular reasons. As far as I remember, the biggest "sin" you talked about was acting against reason. Some are, actually. Some people say, "I'm Republican" because their parents are Republican. Some say, "I'm Democrat", because they they've always voted Democrat. I do consider this rather arbitrary. There are many who put real thought into their voting, though, and I do think that political beliefs can be informed by the facts. For instance, knowing the details of how stem cell research actually works does influence whether or not you'd be against it or not; and that helps inform you as to which political candidate to favor. Economics is another issue that has a whole field of study devoted to it, and is a big part of politics. Though with economics, "who gets what" is one of the major issues, so naturally people are going to be biased depending on their social status in life. This isn't really arbitrary, IMO. Saying, "I think sexuality is a sin" as a Christian, and "I think sexuality is great and is actually a reverence to the Gods" is a clear dichotomy, and neither has anything to back it up. It's not like choosing peanut butter or jelly, which is actually chosen on the basis of what your tastebuds say tastes good or not (and something you cannot control), it's saying what's "sinful" or not just based on which concept you happen to jump into. Liking peanut butter and deciding on how economics in a country are run is a very very very weird comparison. Not likely. I think you underestimate that feeling you get when you feel like you're right, that you've discovered a new way, that the people that came before got it all wrong, and that you're now following a powerful spiritual leader. "Cool" may not be the right word, but that's the direction I'm heading in. But why pick this prophet, and not that prophet? Well, yes. Right. Yes, but that doesn't need religious support. Confucius said much the same thing, and he didn't need God or angels to support it. There are some good secular ideas in religions. "Treat others as you want to be treated" one of the most quoted lines of morality that directly involves Jesus, as far as I know, and ithis line is considered the "Golden Rule", surpassing the religion of the person it came out of. Sure. But I don't need religion to agree with some of Jesus' points and ideas. There were philosophers that came up with good ideas. I can favor one philosopher over another. But when it comes to downright worship, and acting like this philosopher was Blessed by the Heavens and thus must be right, it kind of changes the game we're playing. And there were plenty of secular moral philosophers that came up with some pretty good ideas on how to treat people. I think I'm just using a broader version of the word "arbitrary". If I were looking on the outside, as an observer looking at people as if they were ants, though, I would say that's more true than not true. But yes, I can see why he would fight to bring the country together. So yes, I can see your point. Yes, I figured that was where you were taking it.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 3, 2010 0:29:34 GMT -4
You're misusing the word "arbitrary." I care about words, too.
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lonewulf
Earth
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Post by lonewulf on Jan 3, 2010 2:43:10 GMT -4
Probably.
Either way, to return to my original point, I don't find Jason's argument very good at all.
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Post by gillianren on Jan 3, 2010 17:12:46 GMT -4
On that, we are assuredly agreed.
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Post by rick on Jan 4, 2010 5:50:02 GMT -4
Jason, the fragment is from a part that Smith transltated. NO, it isn't. One of the existing fragments has a drawing that is in the Book of Abraham. The drawing has no writing on it, and so couldn't be translated. There is no way to tell what else was on the missing fragments in the scroll which contained the drawing. Smith interpreted the picture incorrectly. Translation is synonymous in this context with interpretation Jason, you mention some facts without any conclusion. Sure there was a lot more translated, but that does not mean anything conclusive. What exactly do you mean by " There is no way to tell what else was on the missing fragments in the scroll which contained the drawing"? Also you mention some analogies that have no application to this issue. Your comment about translating a large amount of Dutch -- or whatever language -- does not apply. The facts are this. It is clear that the fragment discovered is from the facsimile. It is clear that the fragment cannot be from another part of the papyri. It is clear that Smith got the translation wrong. The "Spiritual" reading is not the same as the real interpretation or translation. Rhodes makes this clear in his effort to explain away the fact that Smith got it wrong. How do you define something as being "anti-science"? It has nothing to do with the fact that many Mornoms are scientists.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 4, 2010 12:46:19 GMT -4
All of our experience is at some level just happening in our heads. We can't possibly prove that some of our sensory input really is coming from some outside cause and not just our imagination, but we choose to believe that it is. Err, how is that argument supposed to help your cause? I say that you treat some subjective experiences as objective, so you say that there is no way to tell the difference? Does that mean you admit that your strong subjective experience of god cannot be shown to be objective? I am saying that in one sense there is no such thing as objective experience. Not only can God not be shown to be objective, but neither can things like gravity or matter. Can you prove that I'm not imagining you? You can prove it beyond reasonable doubt, perhaps, but what is considered reasonable is itself subjective, isn't it? At some level, we all accept concepts and ideas for which we have no real objective evidence as truth. It's necessary in order to function in a society. Essentially, we all live by faith. That makes my reliance on it not as unnusual or unreasonable as it may first appear.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 4, 2010 12:52:57 GMT -4
Probably. Either way, to return to my original point, I don't find Jason's argument very good at all. I have a few questions about your own argument, lonewulf. You seem to be proceeding from the assumption that religious choice must be arbitrary because none of them can be right in an objective sense. Why assume that they must all be wrong? Why assume that there can be no real evidence for one or the other? Wouldn't it be more sensible to take the approach that there is no evidence that you personally know of, rather than rule out the possibility of any evidence existing? I'm not sure about your idea that 90% of people are the religion their parents/region is. I have no data at hand but would guess that the actual percentage is much lower, especially in more secular societies like Europe and the U.S.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 4, 2010 13:07:35 GMT -4
Smith interpreted the picture incorrectly. Translation is synonymous in this context with interpretation But wouldn't you agree that a picture is more open to varying interpretations than text is? If two people look at a piece of art and come away with different impressions of what it meant we usually don't say one is right and the other was wrong. Just what I said. We don't have the rest of that particular scroll, so there is no way to tell what was written there. We certainly have no way of telling what was on the other papyrii that didn't survive at all either. If I rip a page out of a book and send it to you, do you know of some foolproof way to derive the rest of the text of the book from the page I sent you? Please be specific. What in particular is wrong with my analogy? It would be more correct to say that it seems quite probable that the fragment recovered is the remains of the drawing which served as the original for the facsimile. So? It is clear that if Smith was translating from the fragments that remain then he got it wrong, but was he? This is only significant if you assume that Smith made his translation of the Book of Abraham from a text of the Book of Breathings, as per your last point. Why should we assume that the Book of Breathings is all that was on that particular scroll, considering that we have so little of it left? I would be more interested in hearing your version of what makes something anti-science, since you brought up the term. Apparently you don't use it to mean "an organization that discourages its members from becoming scientists."
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Post by gwiz on Jan 5, 2010 10:03:14 GMT -4
I am saying that in one sense there is no such thing as objective experience. Not only can God not be shown to be objective, but neither can things like gravity or matter. Can you prove that I'm not imagining you? You can prove it beyond reasonable doubt, perhaps, but what is considered reasonable is itself subjective, isn't it? At some level, we all accept concepts and ideas for which we have no real objective evidence as truth. It's necessary in order to function in a society. Essentially, we all live by faith. That makes my reliance on it not as unnusual or unreasonable as it may first appear. If everything is subjective and nothing exists outside your skull, then god is included in that nothing. If there is an objective reality, then the things most likely to be objective are the things that people agree upon, like gravity. Things that people experience differently, like their gods, are likely to be subjective.
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