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

psychocandy: >>Though I will say that I'm not uncomfortable with your overall way of thinking.<<

Aw, gee, thanks! At the risk of upping the cheese factor beyond that of a polite fondue party, I'll say "ditto"!

Regarding your idea that "theism *is* the very crux of the problem", I believe my last post to Edward addresses that point, in the section where I argue that the crux is actually something else.


GTB

GTB, you don't seem to want to follow the train of thought you initiated (post 7282) by asking us to comment on a religion that teaches its followers to deal with reality, reject superstition etc.

I suggested (post 7295) that the aims of such a religion would be better served through an education system about which I gave no details whatsoever. (The word 'secular' was not mentioned by me.)

You said (post 7298) that you didn't disagree with such a system. You then asked "is it enough?".

My friend, how can you pose such a question [or advocate more mathmatics (post 7303)] when the system hasn't been defined?

I then asked you (post 7307) "What is it that cannot be covered by a revamped education system?"

You now say (post 7339) "I would submit that what's missing is not something that should be part of a curriculum."

Would you tell us, then, precisely what it is that's "missing".

What ARE the qualities that can be nurtured through "good religion" but by no other means?

Now I may have this wrong, but this looks to me like more binary-logic misunderstanding. We began, I think, with atheists asserting the undesirability of religion. One or two of us offered balancing observations, indicating that religion has its good points. Now we are challenged to describe or define goodness that can *only* be achieved through religion, as if this is what we observed in the first place.

There will be a clever-sounding Latin name for this practice, I have no doubt. I call it retrospectively changing the topic of discussion so that life is easier for you and harder (preferably impossible) for your opponent. Doesn't trip off the tongue all that easily, and it's not Latin, but I think it does the trick.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

P.S. Nice posts, GTB. Very nice.

>I suggest a religion that makes explicit the teaching that Truth is not a simple, 2-valued thing. The religions I know that do this the most effectively are Discordianism, Buddhism (especially Zen Buddhism), and to some extent Taoism.<

True- although, unfortunately, most of the "converts" to Buddhism I know haven't grasped that concept (nor have they read much on the philospohy they claim to follow, but I suppose that's true of a majority of religious folk.

When I said that I think theism is the crux of the problem, it's not because I don't think religion and good deeds *can* go hand in hand, because in some rare instances, they do. I was referring to your proposition to introduce a "religion" that simultaneously discouraged superstition while emphasizing an attempt to connect to some godhead or divine force/power/being. It's the belief in the supernatural which is superstition, IMO, and I don't see how one could claim to have thrown off superstition while still believing in gods, trolls, and fairies.

>Now we are challenged to describe or define goodness that can *only* be achieved through religion, as if this is what we observed in the first place.<

Well, I have seen it observed here, several days back. But for argument's sake, let's pretend it wasn't...

Even if we hadn't observed that here, many religions, the Abrhamic ones in particular, do claim exactly that. Christianity, for example, defines goodness as attainable only through the religion and only because of the death of an otherwise seemingly decent, but obviously screamingly delusional, dead man. I've never seen any hard evidence to support that theory, though I've sure seen plenty to the contrary.

Hi PC!

<...a "religion" that simultaneously discouraged superstition while emphasizing an attempt to connect to some godhead...>

Can you define "superstition? I'm not asking for a bomb-proof, all-encompassing definition, just what you think superstition is, in the context of this discussion? That way we can avoid semantic misunderstandings.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Superstition would be belief in a number of things, including supernatural beings (fairies, gods, etc.), miracles and other supernatural "intervention", fate, destiny, magic, prognostication, prayer and other incantations, beliefs based on folklore or mythology, etc. Superstition would be defined as a belief in a divine or supernatural force behind the universe, as opposed to the application of reason, logic, statistics, and natural laws or principles.

OK, the point I wanted to make is, er, pointless. GTB is talking about . In your terms this is a contradiction in terms.

Your definition is interesting, though.

Do you think there is reason to believe that the latter is somehow more 'reliable' than the former? If so, why?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Yes, P-Chaser, you are quite wrong. You're attempting to attach unnecessary baggage to a perfectly reasonable question. If I started another thread with it, I wonder how you would respond.

Incidentally, I most certainly did not challenge anyone to describe or define 'goodness' - you were quick to call psychocandy 'a liar' when you felt misrepresented. Please do not continue to misrepresent me in your eagerness to score debating points (something I acknowledge you are very good at).

In any event, my question was aimed at GTB. Lets see if he has anything substantial to say.

Trying to answer GTB without going into things line by line. ('cos I'm lazy).

No...I *do* still see theism/ superstition/ anti-rationality (good word!) as being the problem.

Yes, the great religious teachers do indeed agree on a core of truths (for behaviour, at least - they are all way off the mark when it comes to the material world). Of course they would. These are secular truths that it is within the power of all humans to grasp. Even atheists.

The problem is when they attach the supernatural to these truths. If one says allows that it is valid to base ones's world view on one form of anti-rationality, who's to say that that another form is unacceptable? If 'Honour thy Lord' [and therefore] 'Love thy neighbour', then why not 'Listen to the goblins [and therefore] 'Kill the guy next door'? No criticism of the teachers themselves - they taught what was culturally appropriate for their time - But surely now we've progressed enough to keep the good bits, throw out the silly bits that confuse their followers and have rational arguments which preclude the 'It's what Jesus would do' get-out?

You give good debate

re. Buddhist monks: I wasn't meaning 'there's probably no benefit in breathing exercises' - more 'You probably don't need a bunch of guys to enclose themselves within a monastery in order to have a happy society' or 'Blowing big trumpets and spinning prayer wheels probably doesn't achieve much' (yeah, yeah...someone's going to tell me about the value of ritual. It was a minor point!)

you reacted like this; it wasn't my intention.



No you didn't. And I didn't say you did, as far as I can see. The bit I was thinking of was . Specifically I was wondering about "...by no other means". But if you don't want to talk to me about it, I can't force you to.



Doesn't interest me in the slightest. Validating or understanding an argument - mine or someone else's - is a different matter.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Ah, , I see what you mean. [I just re-read my post again.] I should've expressed myself better. What I was aiming at was what I said in my previous note. Once again, my apologies.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Please excuse me if this posting seems vague... I seem to be experiencing an unusual number of interruptions and idiotic phone calls at work this morning, and I have a budget meeting in an hour.

P-C asked: >Your definition is interesting, though.

Do you think there is reason to believe that the latter is somehow more 'reliable' than the former? If so, why?<

Yes, I do believe that. Why?

Well, first of all, a dictionary definition of “superstition”:


su•per•sti•tion n.
An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.
a. A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance. b. A fearful or abject state of mind resulting from such ignorance or irrationality. c. Idolatry.
(The American Heritage ® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)


So, for purposes of this discussion, we’ll eliminate “idolatry”, because I consider all faiths to be equally “invalid” (for lack of better terminology), and most of the theists or religious folk participating here seem to consider all faiths to be of equal validity. Which is fair enough.

I’ll also give the benefit of the doubt and not address the “fearful” aspect of superstition in this context, because I don’t think it *always* applies to religion.

Which brings us to superstition as a series of irrational beliefs, maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance. Realizing that you’re not asking me which is “better”, but which is more “reliable”. (I, personally, think “reliable” is better, but I digress. )

I think that natural laws and principles, reason, logic, and statistical evidence are more reliable than irrational beliefs in magic and supernatural entities, because natural and statistical laws can be proven through scientific testing to be true. While perhaps not *all* superstition and magical thinking can be proven to be false, at least not by me, I personally don’t feel that living life based on a series of delusions, misassumptions, and fantasies is a desirable thing, and irrational belief systems aren’t much better.

We have to be careful here. P-C is bound to tell us (again ) that a) we can't prove certain things to be true scientifically and b) we can't prove there isn't a god. This is very much not to the point. The didderence is....some things can be evidenced, some not.

(and if necessary I can expand on what I mean by 'evidence')

btw - there's a prize offered of $250,000 for anyone who can prove that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - prize to be paid in Intelligently Designed currency.

PC hasn't been making himself anything like clear enough. The religious perspective is every bit as shaky as you think it is. But the alternative is not (IMO) as robust as you might like. *The latter* is the point I (try to) make so often.

Enough for now: it's time to go home. Maybe more later....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Fairynuff. I think I see what you're driving at.

Epistemology seems to be a bid thing to you: What is reality? etc. etc. This is another peculiar aspect of religion - subtly different to superstion.

It seems to me that the various species of religion seem to recognise various types of 'reality', in different combinations.

We all recognise the ordinary, prosaic reality of our day to day existence - the one we call 'reality' which has to do with chairs and rain and electricity and even subatomic particles.

Some faiths have added invisible pantheons - gods, fairies, spooks - which we can't see, but are meant to take on trust.

The shamanistic go for internal realities - but we can distinguish these from real reality, just as surely as we can the delusions of the hypomanic.

Then there's the 'Ah...but how do we know that reality is real?' reality. As philosophy has developed, we have learnt to play this kind of mindgame. However...it's somewhat of a leap to imagine that reality is relative, that we can choose different kinds of reality, that something beyond chairs and rain etc. is in any way germaine in the 'real' real world we inhabit.

It seems to me that as pantheons have been shown to be piffle, refuge has been taken by some religions in the esoterica of alternative realities. Really (sic!), though...reality remains robust, can be studied empirically, and nothing else has to do with the price of fish.

Pattern-Chaser. And an apology from me - my comment about scoring points was unfair.

If it wasn't for the high standard of debate on this forum, I doubt I'd still be with h2g2. You, Edward, Blatherskite, Matholwych and others have been entertaining me for a long time.

In fact, I feel like the child (or a character from the film 'Pleasantville') who reaches out, through the television screen, to touch that which so fascinates.

In other words, I'm a fan, man, and quite likely to revert to read-only mode at any moment.

All the best.

(scuse the even larger no. of typos than usual - typing while a wean is hassling me. i hope my drift is catchable)

PC: <>

Not to be picking on Math, but more to be making a point: Let's say some happy Druid goes off into the woods and talks to a spirit that lives in a particular tree, and this leads him to clean up the woods and give money to Greenpeace. Now let's say that a lumber company has been given permission to cut in that forest in a sustainable and ecologically-friendly manner. They select his tree. He acts to protect the tree, and one person dies and four are injured before he is stopped and arrested.

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

<>

There may be a binary misunderstanding, but not by the atheists. The argument defending religion was that there are good things that come from it. But if there are alternative means of accomplishing the same things, then what is the point of religion?

I mean, sure, you CAN travel over distances in a horse-drawn carriage...

Rudest Elf?, hi.

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to you. Y'know... life.

Sorry also if I'm seeming to be evasive about this point - that's not my intention. I think I'm real clear now on what you (and others) are asking.



What benefit does religion confer on society that is not also obtained through secular means? Ok. Let's start with an easier one: what benefit does art confer on society? Some dualistic thinkers say none, and art curricula get cut. That reduces the number of kids who are compelled by anything they see at school, and increases the number of dropouts, drug-addicts, criminals, etc. It would be pretty difficult, impossible even, in any particular case, to say that such-and-such violent criminal would have taken a different path if he'd had access to a potter's wheel when he was twelve. That doesn't make it any less true, in some number of cases, even if you can't count them or identify them individually.

Religion is there for people who thirst for it. Such people exist. Dissuaded from religion, they'll seek whatever counter-cultural, underground version of religion they can find. (Will you ever root them all out?) Do you want to force religion underground? That won't make it less violent and weird. Everyone knows where prohibition leads... Why not instead have religions around, even encourage religions, that teach the same kinds of values that you're pushing in other arenas (in your secular education) without also pushing some kind of dangerous dualism, but in a religious context, because experience teaches us that some people will only hear the message that way. It won't be hard, because all the religions already contain the message, all we need to work on are the impurities - the seeds of black and white thinking - that are so dangerous. We need to attack those wherever they appear - in a religion or otherwise.

So that's the concrete benefit (or so I suggest in this post) that religion confers on society: religion is yet another safety net, catching some of those who fall through the cracks of all the other systems that are in place to encourage people to behave in a socially acceptable way. You can't eliminate all the cracks in every other system, because you can't anticipate everything. If a religion is in place that harms no one, and helps one person, then let it be.



Now, I realize that most religions active in the world today are far from harming no one. I blame the map/territory fallacy - believing that reality is a simple as the systems we use to describe reality - for the bad effects of religions, and also of other systems.

In a way, the map/territory fallacy is yet another incarnation of the Ptolemaic fallacy: misidentifying ones own personal motions as the motions of the universe around one.

Have I managed to answer your question this time, Rudest Elf, somewhere in the above? I feel my most contentious point is where I said that there naturally exist people who will seek out religion and who will not be satisfied by anything else. If one were to accept that, would the rest hold up?



It's difficult to say what benefit is conferred by religion when I can't cite the obvious religious benefits of actual spiritual growth, because I can't assume that my audience considers such growth meaningful. A good challenge, though - I appreciate your insisting on an answer, Rudest Elf.



GTB