h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Clarification:

P--h is Scots for p--s. But it's used in the same way as the English would use c--p. Wgich in Scots is s---e.

Don't 'clarifications' normally makes things clearer?

Who is it you think should come out of the closet?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

I was also brought up in a Catholic family, although my father was Baptist, and my parents decided to leave the question open to us kids and allow us to make our own decisions. My mother was even supportive of me going off with friends to their churches of various other denominations, figuring that somewhere along the line I'd find a shoe that fit. Somehow it never even occurred to her that one of us would decide they were all too confining and just go barefoot.

Anyway, I'm out of the closet, and I have to say that, even coming from a fairly open-minded family, it's a bit more trouble than it's worth. My mother feels it necessary to point it out to everyone she can, like I've got a terrible defect and she's asking them to help me fix it. My uncle preaches at me, even though he considers himself a scholar on the matter and I run circles around him. And my grandmother just shakes her head and says she feels sorry for me.

But anyway, at least it's out in the open, so I don't have to pretend to be other than I am, and nobody asks me to say grace at Thanksgiving or anything stupid like that. My only real concern is that the family will decide my daughter needs saving from the evil clutches of her atheist parents, and whenever I leave her alone with family members they'll start filling her head with horrific nonsense of her parents burning in hell and boogey men watching her every step.

Yeah - but what puzzles me is when the formerly Xtian grab at any old new-age tosh. (Or, indeed, 'Ancient Wisdom' )

It doesn't really surprise me that much. New Age goofiness (usually dressed up to resemble some old-fashioned religion about which we know astonishingly little) isn't really all that different from Old Age goofiness as far as the logic and mental processes which underly them. So someone who appreciates certain aspects of goofiness but have specific issues with the Old Age version (for instance, the Catholic position on contraception) will readily adapt to the New. The total rejection of all goofiness is a much different process.

For example, for myself, I enjoyed studying the goofiness of all sorts of people, historical and contemporary, even though deep down I knew it was all just silly. But I also believed my particular goofiness was different, primarily because it had been handed to me directly from my family (children accept their parents as the ultimate authorities when they're young), and was overwhelmingly reinforced by society, that I figured it must have stood up to investigation and criticism. It never really occurred to me to question it, because it naturally should have been questioned over the centuries, and its endurance was proof of its truth.

It was many years before it ever came to my attention that the Christians had gotten it horribly wrong, at which point I was compelled to investigate the matter further and discovered that Christianity had failed so miserably to stand up to investigation and criticism, but the general population had reacted by metaphorically sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "Lalalala! I can't hear you! Lalalalala...." And this worldwide chant is so loud that the handful of enlightened individuals are easily drowned out.

That was definitely an eye-opening experience. Anyway, once I discovered Christianity was crap, the next step was obvious. If that one was c--p, and all the others I'd studied were c--p, then they must all be c--p. QED.

The more we have these conversations, the more I'm convinced that the point of religion has nothing (or very little) to do with what they believe/teach and whether you (or they) believe it. Rather, the point of having and following religious belief(s) is the focus and the purpose they give you.

If my 'god' is a committed pacifist, I will tend to be that way too. Yeah, it's a trivial example, but it's as good as any.

So to me, choosing your religion is like choosing your purpose, your aim, in life. I know the Catholics who raised and taught me wouldn't be too happy with that, but hey....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Hi P-C

Raving indeed, have you leant nothing my young padewan?

Despite your youth, being only in your fourth or fifth lifecycle, you grasp truth well.

The purpose of having a religion/spitiuality is indeed not conforming to a common delusion. To explore yourself beyond the accepted norms is one of the only ways to true personal development.

You are the some of your deeds not your words or expressed belief and/or prejudices

Be now, always,

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\

A druid on five too many single malts.

Oh b*ll*cks!

You want a lecture on the deleterious effects of unedited whisky abuse here it is...

leant = learnt
some = sum

Time to hit the sack,
Matholwch /|\

Oh, do I love it here. Yes, I think I do. No, really, I'm being honest.

But drop the silly "Since I think humanity is a stain on the underpants of God, I give more to charity for those stains" debate and instead focus on a more relevent, 'here and now' topic:

Cheese.

After all, Cheese is God. Except Cheese likes to spell "God" as "Flatulance." Spellings are relative to Cheese.

Not very cheesy, perhaps, but this is a thoughtful and reasoned approach to the recent religion-is-bad-for-states-and-countries survey: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1001-06.htm Unsurprisingly, I seek to defent my own viewpoint, and therefore wonder if the problem is not so much religion as absolutist and intolerant religion?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Yes, fair enough...decent religious people are better than deranged ones.

But there are still reasons why religion, in general and in the round, can be argued to be 'a bad thing'

a) Within the folds of a faith, the religious are allowed - encouraged, even - to hold inconsistent moral positions. Take the decent, hardworking Sally Army volunteer who also preaches homophobia.

b) On the warm and fluffy wing of religion, the dogma is that religion is a personal thing, that all approaches are a priori valid and different faiths should be respected. The absurd logic of this is that we should respect absolutist, intolerant religion.

c) Related to b)...in religion, the only test of the validity of an idea is 'I believe it' or 'It works for me.' Empirical verification, predictive power and falsifiability go out of the window. Thus from the religious viewpoint, we have no better argument against 'God wants me to kill people' than we have against 'The-universe-is-a-big-lovely-interconnected-thingy-and-all-beings-are-siblings.' The atheist rejects the illogicalities of both nasty and nice religion and concludes that, just as there is no god guiding believers into nastiness, the nice are also nice of their own accord.

Yes, that's the PC-gone-mad observation. What about the helpful side, though? Why did you ignore *that*? The bit you missed is that this, er, rule requires that such absolutists must in their turn respect the views of others of differing faiths, or even those sad cases that have no beliefs at all.



Quite rightly, as we all know that they simply do not apply to religious questions such as we are considering!

Nice to see you, Ed!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

<>



Why do falsifiability, predictive power, and empirical verification not apply to religious questions?

<The bit you missed is that this, er, rule requires that such absolutists must in their turn respect the views of others of differing faiths, or even those sad cases that have no beliefs at all.<

And you're implying that the absolutionists- the fundamentalists of the Abrahamic religions specifically- respect any beliefs other than their own? Puh-lease!!

Who are those sad cases who have no beliefs at all? I'd be interested in meeting a person like that, someone who can exist in an intellectual vacuum, who isn't religious.

In fairness to (the other) P-C, I think he's saying that the absolutists aren't keeping to the rules by which the fluffies judge them...and that's bad, 'not proper' religion.

The problem thoug is that the fluffies are declaring themselves to have de facto common ground - aligning themselves with the continuum of irrationalists.

But as for the empirical/ falsifiable/ predictive stuff...yeah! Why not?

Because, in general, religious propositions are not falsifiable (or verifiable). This rather puts a stop to the application of the sort of reasoning you refer to, doesn't it? If two or more hypotheses account for the real world evidence, there is no logical way to choose one over the other. [This applies even if *you* think one hypothesis is nonsensical. If you can't refute it, you mut admit to the *possibility* of its correctness.]



Psychocandy: meet Ed. Ed, meet....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Close! But it's not 'improper religion'. It's a necessary (secular) social convention. We *must* respect each others beliefs ... or kill each other. Purely pragmatic: no principle involved.

The absolutists, whether they like to or not, *must* respect the views of others, just as those others respect their absolutist nonsense! Oh! Did I say "nonsense"? And me a 'fluffy' too! I meant, er....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

>>in general, religious propositions are not falsifiable (or verifiable).

Which is the same as saying that they're b----cks, isn't it?

No, it's the same as saying they aren't testable, which is subtly different....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Whatever. The question is...why on earth choose one particular set of tosh out of the infinitude possible toshes? If gods, why not fairies?

<

Psychocandy: meet Ed. Ed, meet.... >

Excuse me?

Sad? Me? Quite the contrary.

And as for having no beliefs at all... I believe in lots of things. Things which can be quantified and proven *not* to be a load of, as Edward says, b*ll*cks. Religious rigamarole and imaginary friends just don't happen to be among them. So I guess by your oversimplification, you meant people with *no religious beliefs*? In that case, I'd argue that it's those who cling, either in blind faith or through willful ignorance, to "beliefs" which defy logic and reason- delusions, if you will- who are the sad ones. If we want to start calling people we disagree with names and making sweeping overgeneralizations, that is.