When Does Religion Become Just Silly?

JoeMorgue said:
This is as deep into pure speculation as I'm comfortable getting but I've always had a hunch (I could be wrong, I'm not saying for certain) that a lot of stuff that gets turned into religious dogma that people literally believe is true started off as... I don't "joke" because that's more flippant then I mean but with a higher level of understood symbolism and less literalness.

Like it wouldn't surprise me if some goat herder in the Dead Sea a few thousand years ago looked at the Dead Sea Salt Formations, went "Hey that one kind looks like a lady looking back over her shoulder" (in the way we'd say that about a cloud or whatever) and a bunch of people laughed and said "Yes it does, how amusing" and that's where it ended for most of them... except one guy who's brain was wired a certain way and went further with it.
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Sure. The Dead Sea salt columns as an origin for the myth is, for example, an interesting conceit, intriguing possibly. But good luck to anyone trying to find evidence for it.
 
Thor 2 said:
It is interesting how words take on a meaning other than that originally thought. Atheist just means not a theist, nothing more - well to me anyway.
I recall Dawkins relating the tale of a woman whose daughter forthrightly told her she was an atheist. "An Atheist", the mother exclaimed, "I can accept you not believing in God, but to be an Atheist! ......" Sweden is one of the least religious countries in the world, and yet I find when talking to relations of mine in that country, most do not self describe as atheist. Strange? The word now seems to imply a radical, almost militant, mind set.
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Dawkins is referring to Julie Sweeney a comedian who use to be on SNL. Sweeney said that in her one woman show.
 
acbytesla said:
Dawkins is referring to Julie Sweeney a comedian who use to be on SNL. Sweeney said that in her one woman show.
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There is always one of my favourites anecdotes by Quentin Crisp.

At one of his one man shows:

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?' "
 
Christianity has been pretty silly all along.

After all, it was so badly designed there are thousands of different flavors now!

Unless, I suppose, God was looking to be entertained, so it was deliberate, to give him plenty of laughs seeing how silly humans are?
 
Darat said:
There is always one of my favourites anecdotes by Quentin Crisp.

At one of his one man shows:

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?' "
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:thumbsup: I like that one.


It reminds me of the story Christopher Hitchens use to tell about the man pulled out of his car in Northern Ireland and was asked, "are Protestant or Catholic"? He replied "neither. actually, I'm Jewish atheist". They then asked, "well, then are you Catholic or Protestant Jewish atheist"?
 
acbytesla said:
:thumbsup: I like that one.


It reminds me of the story Christopher Hitchens use to tell about the man pulled out of his car in Northern Ireland and was asked, "are Protestant or Catholic"? He replied "neither. actually, I'm Jewish atheist". They then asked, "well, then are you Catholic or Protestant Jewish atheist"?
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:D

I am reminded of one of Dara O'Brian's performances where he describes himself as "Not a very spiritual man ...... I don't believe in God ....... still a Catholic!"
 
Thor 2 said:
:D

I am reminded of one of Dara O'Brian's performances where he describes himself as "Not a very spiritual man ...... I don't believe in God ....... still a Catholic!"
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If you want silly. How about this one?

God shows up at a party.

 
Thor 2 said:
:D

I am reminded of one of Dara O'Brian's performances where he describes himself as "Not a very spiritual man ...... I don't believe in God ....... still a Catholic!"
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Dara is a funny guy, but like all good comedy, it is founded on a grain of truth. Once upon a long a not so long ago, Ireland was a 97% catholic country ostensibly. Everyone living in it knew it wasn't.

Usually, an underground subversive movement is carried out by a minority, but here it was everyone. Illegally importing contraceptives was an actual thing. There were Al Capone equivalents hurling condoms hither and yon. Yet everyone continued to tug the forelock to the clergy in public, while ignoring them in private. It was bizarre.
 
acbytesla said:
About 3 months ago I got in this discussion with a religious person who said he believes God is real because he drove further than he should of been able to on a tank of gas. He prayed to make it to his destination and he did. I said I didn't buy it was a miracle. That there must have been a reason. His response was I was just closed off. Finally, I gave in that it could have been a miracle. I doubt it. But yes it could have been. But even if it was a God that answered his prayers, there is no reason, none, to say his mileage God was the Jesus God.
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This is a good story because it shows how easily people can draw wrong conclusions about cause and effect. Yet all of us do it all the time, because despite its flaws this skill is essential for our survival.

For something to be believable, you have to prove the cause and effect, not just that one event followed another. And why should we even consider the cause to be an imaginary being without a shred of evidence for? And is possible only in the sense that everything and anything is possible even though we KNOW that many things are not actually possible?
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For something to be believable you just have to believe it - and then it is stuck in your mind. Once a religious person gets the concept of a god in their heads it's difficult to give up, even when the evidence shows it doesn't exist. But that situation doesn't just apply to gods. Everybody has at least some wrong ideas that they hang onto in spite of contrary evidence.

How many times have you thought it was 'lucky' that things turned out a certain way? That's wrong thinking because being 'lucky' implies low odds, a position you don't want to be in. But most people are happier thinking of it as 'good fortune' rather than considering what 'should' have happened. Logically we should be living our lives based only on cold hard facts and rigorous statistics, but who wants to do that? We are people, not machines, and we need our fantasies to help us cope in an uncaring Universe.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
This is a good story because it shows how easily people can draw wrong conclusions about cause and effect. Yet all of us do it all the time, because despite its flaws this skill is essential for our survival.
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Nope. The miraculous filling of Uncle Bob's gas tank is a bucket of old hat that has persisted for a long time yet has no basis in fact. It's BS and always has been. For all the decades this claimed miracle has been wandering the intertubes.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
This is a good story because it shows how easily people can draw wrong conclusions about cause and effect. Yet all of us do it all the time, because despite its flaws this skill is essential for our survival.

For something to be believable you just have to believe it - and then it is stuck in your mind. Once a religious person gets the concept of a god in their heads it's difficult to give up, even when the evidence shows it doesn't exist. But that situation doesn't just apply to gods. Everybody has at least some wrong ideas that they hang onto in spite of contrary evidence.

How many times have you thought it was 'lucky' that things turned out a certain way? That's wrong thinking because being 'lucky' implies low odds, a position you don't want to be in. But most people are happier thinking of it as 'good fortune' rather than considering what 'should' have happened. Logically we should be living our lives based only on cold hard facts and rigorous statistics, but who wants to do that? We are people, not machines, and we need our fantasies to help us cope in an uncaring Universe.
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Basically, "post hoc, ergo propter hoc".

But what I really hate about the "god" conclusion is how people ignore all the times their prayers are not fulfilled. What about the time the car broke down in the middle of nowhere and they had to walk for miles? Or when they lost their job? Then it is always explained that God has his own plans.

Cause and effect. It is often very hard to to conclude what the cause is for anything. Let alone that the cause is something you really don't have clue is actually real.

Yet we're surrounded by people who do. I love it when I hear people attribute feeling ill to something they ate. Now maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't. But they really don't know.

Even some very smart people like Frances Collins who was the head of the NIH and the Human Genome Project fall prey to this kind of thinking. One day while hiking through the woods he came across a waterfall that froze into three branches and decided the Trinity was true. It's so incredibly silly and here this giant of science uses this to become an evangelical Christian.
 
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There is a sign in front of a church on my route to work “Pray for Wuhan and all the victims”. It has been there for several weeks since the number of infected was much smaller. Makes me wonder if they have considered that their prayers are not having the effect they hoped for.
 
Steve said:
There is a sign in front of a church on my route to work “Pray for Wuhan and all the victims”. It has been there for several weeks since the number of infected was much smaller. Makes me wonder if they have considered that their prayers are not having the effect they hoped for.
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Quite obviously the people praying did not have enough faith. God gets miffed if the faithful are short on faith so he doesn't answer their prayers.

You would think this action, or lack thereof, would diminish the religious conviction of the faithful. Not so it seems. The convoluted reasoning in the religious mind, just accommodates the lack of response to prayer, as God having His reasons. Reasons us poor sinners wouldn't understand. :confused:

The mind befuddled by religion - who can understand it?
 
"Guys my grandfather is very sick, could everyone please pray for him"

*The next day*

"My grandfather is feeling much better and stronger! Thank you everybody!"

*The day after that*

"Okay my grandfather is running half marathons and doing Crossfit. Can everybody stop praying now?"

*The day after that*

"Everybody please stop praying for my grandfather! He's gotten too strong! The police can't stop him! He just flipped over a car!"
 
acbytesla said:
"Agnostic" means you don't know. Which frankly in my view is the most worthless word ever coined.
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An alternative meaning for "agnostic" is that you can't know. This is the agnostic possibility that psion was banging on about. The problem is that being unable to know whether something exists is philosophically identical with knowing that it does not. If it exists, it ought to be possible to know that it exists, and if it isn't, there's no reason to suggest that it exists - there is no gap for it to fill. It is an unnecessary entity and it's philisophically and epistemologically preferable to occam's razor it right out of there.
 
arthwollipot said:
An alternative meaning for "agnostic" is that you can't know. This is the agnostic possibility that psion was banging on about. The problem is that being unable to know whether something exists is philosophically identical with knowing that it does not. If it exists, it ought to be possible to know that it exists, and if it isn't, there's no reason to suggest that it exists - there is no gap for it to fill. It is an unnecessary entity and it's philisophically and epistemologically preferable to occam's razor it right out of there.
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To a degree. Remember Psion10's argument for his "possible" god was really a weak form of the ontological argument, based on being able to create a sentence in English that seems to be meaningful at first glance.
 
Darat said:
To a degree. Remember Psion10 <somebody else>'s argument for his "possible" god was really a weak form of the ontological argument, based on being able to create a sentence in English that seems to be meaningful at first glance.
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FTFY.
 
psionl0 said:
:jaw-dropp Not knowing if a container has something in it is "philosophically" identical to knowing that it is empty???
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"Not knowing [what is possible to know]", isn't the same thing as "being unable to know [what is impossible to know].

If it's impossible to know that something exists then it's rational to conclude it doesn't exist, and irrational to conclude it does exist.
 
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ynot said:
"Not knowing [what is possible to know]", isn't the same thing as "being unable to know [what is impossible to know].

If it's impossible to know something exists then it's rational to conclude it doesn't exist, and irrational to conclude it does exist.
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You are arguing that if it is impossible to (ever) examine the contents of a container then we must conclude that it is empty.

That is just as silly as saying that it contains X or even that there is "something" in the container.

Anybody who makes any statement whatsoever about what is in the container is just farting.
 
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psionl0 said:
You are arguing that if it is impossible to (ever) examine the contents of a container then we must conclude that it is empty.

That is just as silly as saying that it contains X or even that there is "something" in the container.

Anybody who makes any statement whatsoever about what is in the container is just farting.
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You obviously don’t have a clue what I’m arguing. I didn’t mention a container at all. However - A container can never be truly empty as it always contains something. To say a container can contain "nothing" (as you are) is what is really silly. (your analogy attempt is crap).


Q - "Does this container contain a marble?"
A - "I don't know."

Q - “Does this container possibly contain a marble?”
A - “I don’t know”.

Q - “Does this container possibly not contain a marble?”
A - “I don’t know”.

Q - "Does this container contain a god?"
A - "I don't know a god actually exists that can possibly be contained in any container."

Unless you can provide some evidence a god does exist, or method by which a god could even possibly exist, your are truly "just farting".
 
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ynot said:
You obviously don’t have a clue what I’m arguing. I didn’t mention a container at all.
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:sdl: You literally quoted a post about a container and your response wasn't about a "container at all"?

ynot said:
However - A container can never be truly empty as it always contains something. To say a container can contain "nothing" (as you are) is what is really silly. (your analogy attempt is crap).
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That is just verbal (or is it textual?) diarrhea.
 
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ynot said:
Are you still claiming to have a "scientific mind"?
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You don't need a scientific mind to realize that it is possible for a container to be empty. "Contain nothing" (as if "nothing" was "something") is just nonsense and definitely doesn't prove that a container can't be empty.
 
psionl0 said:
You don't need a scientific mind to realize that it is possible for a container to be empty. "Contain nothing" (as if "nothing" was "something") is just nonsense and definitely doesn't prove that a container can't be empty.
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We know a container can't be empty.
 
ynot said:
If it's impossible to know that something exists then it's rational to conclude it doesn't exist, and irrational to conclude it does exist.
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Show me any scripture and I can pretty quickly conclude it is nonsense.
I haven't made an exhaustive study, but I did take a college course or two and was de facto religion editor at a pretty good-sized newspaper. I never did know how some people could be so sure they were on the right path - the odds of any given religion being true aren't great - if one religion is true, all the others are false.

But that sentence above: I don't know about the logic of the first part: If it's impossible to know that something exists, it's rational to conclude it doesn't exist. I offer my flawed analogy: It's currently impossible to know if there is life on other planets, yet it's irrational (IMO) to conclude it doesn't exist. And then you say, if it's impossible to know, it's irrational to conclude it does exist. But I could make a strong argument from probabilities that it's extremely likely to exist - so it would be rational to conclude it does exist. I can't prove it; but there is a strong inductive argument.

There is a lot of talking past each other on this thread. I know what I mean when I say I'm agnostic but some people think that's the most useless word ever invented. Still others tell me I'm an atheist. "I don't know" is considered an unacceptable position. But I really don't understand why. Maybe I'll come up with a better analogy. To me it's just a literal truth: I don't know. Why is that not a valid position?
 
JoeMorgue said:
This is as deep into pure speculation as I'm comfortable getting but I've always had a hunch (I could be wrong, I'm not saying for certain) that a lot of stuff that gets turned into religious dogma that people literally believe is true started off as... I don't "joke" because that's more flippant then I mean but with a higher level of understood symbolism and less literalness.

Like it wouldn't surprise me if some goat herder in the Dead Sea a few thousand years ago looked at the Dead Sea Salt Formations, went "Hey that one kind looks like a lady looking back over her shoulder" (in the way we'd say that about a cloud or whatever) and a bunch of people laughed and said "Yes it does, how amusing" and that's where it ended for most of them... except one guy who's brain was wired a certain way and went further with it.
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I've been saying for decades that earlier spiritual people were far less adamant about their stories than those of today.
 
ynot said:
If it's impossible to know that something exists then it's rational to conclude it doesn't exist, and irrational to conclude it does exist.
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Of course, no-one's ever actually SEEN Occam's Razor...
 
Oh look who's unflounced and fringe resetted. Jabba would be proud.

Philosophical nonsense about "Can we truly know if a container is empty" is not the point and yet another "No I demand we stop and discuss God differently then everything else" tactic.

Psion has heard someone call something "empty" at some point in their life and I assure you didn't freak out and have a crisis of faith over it. When Psion's car runs out of case he doesn't start yelling at the fuel gauge "HOW CAN YOU TRULY SAY SOMETHING IS EMPTY!?"

Dragon in the Garage still. Hasn't been addressed and it's still equally valid to every argument/excuse/apologetic put forth for the giant invisible sky wizard.

The only difference is when you look into your garage and don't see a dragon you stop looking for a dragon, indeed you never feel the need to start looking in the first place so nobody takes you to task for not... not seeing something the wrong way. But with God we just have to keep looking because the God Botherers say so and we let them dictate the course of the discussion and for some reason keep letting ourselves getting taking to task for not seeing something that isn't there the wrong way.

That's the question we're dancing around and letting Psion, like a good little apologists, start the discussion at the wrong end of and make us all work backwards, refuse to answer.

WHY ARE LOOKING FOR A GOD IN THE FIRST PLACE?

I take a jar of peanuts, dump all the peanuts out, show you empty jar and I want to know why you see God in it and not a dragon.
 
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Minoosh said:
Show me any scripture and I can pretty quickly conclude it is nonsense.

I haven't made an exhaustive study, but I did take a college course or two and was de facto religion editor at a pretty good-sized newspaper. I never did know how some people could be so sure they were on the right path - the odds of any given religion being true aren't great - if one religion is true, all the others are false.



But that sentence above: I don't know about the logic of the first part: If it's impossible to know that something exists, it's rational to conclude it doesn't exist. I offer my flawed analogy: It's currently impossible to know if there is life on other planets, yet it's irrational (IMO) to conclude it doesn't exist. And then you say, if it's impossible to know, it's irrational to conclude it does exist. But I could make a strong argument from probabilities that it's extremely likely to exist - so it would be rational to conclude it does exist. I can't prove it; but there is a strong inductive argument.



There is a lot of talking past each other on this thread. I know what I mean when I say I'm agnostic but some people think that's the most useless word ever invented. Still others tell me I'm an atheist. "I don't know" is considered an unacceptable position. But I really don't understand why. Maybe I'll come up with a better analogy. To me it's just a literal truth: I don't know. Why is that not a valid position?
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Theism and its opposite atheism should have nothing to do with knowledge, they are statements about belief. Stating you are an atheist is simply saying that when asked about which god you believe in you answer "none". An atheist may also believe a "god" could exist.
 
That's why I don't like the term atheist, it puts the ball back into the theist court by making the question a specifically theological one.
 
Minoosh said:
Show me any scripture and I can pretty quickly conclude it is nonsense.
I haven't made an exhaustive study, but I did take a college course or two and was de facto religion editor at a pretty good-sized newspaper. I never did know how some people could be so sure they were on the right path - the odds of any given religion being true aren't great - if one religion is true, all the others are false.

But that sentence above: I don't know about the logic of the first part: If it's impossible to know that something exists, it's rational to conclude it doesn't exist. I offer my flawed analogy: It's currently impossible to know if there is life on other planets, yet it's irrational (IMO) to conclude it doesn't exist. And then you say, if it's impossible to know, it's irrational to conclude it does exist. But I could make a strong argument from probabilities that it's extremely likely to exist - so it would be rational to conclude it does exist. I can't prove it; but there is a strong inductive argument.

There is a lot of talking past each other on this thread. I know what I mean when I say I'm agnostic but some people think that's the most useless word ever invented. Still others tell me I'm an atheist. "I don't know" is considered an unacceptable position. But I really don't understand why. Maybe I'll come up with a better analogy. To me it's just a literal truth: I don't know. Why is that not a valid position?
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Jesus wept.
 
Minoosh said:
"I don't know" is considered an unacceptable position. But I really don't understand why. Maybe I'll come up with a better analogy. To me it's just a literal truth: I don't know. Why is that not a valid position?
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My head is gonna hit the desk so hard it's gonna burrow into it at this point.

I literally don't know what words to say in what order to break people out of this.

"I don't know" is intellectually dishonest when you bend backwards to only apply to one topic.

Nobody looks for the dragon in the garage and concludes "Well it's inconclusive, so the right thing to do is to say you that don't know and not make any declarative statements."

The whole coy, passive aggressive "What? Oh alls little ole' me is saying is that I'm not sure and don't want to say anything for certain, golly me gosh I don't see what all the hostility is about" only works if we're pretending this discussion is taking place in a vacuum or lie and say put this much effort into not coming to conclusions based on any excuse we can find in other discussions.

If you looked in a garage, didn't see a dragon, said "There is no dragon" and someone started freaking out that someone dared to make a declarative statement about the existence of the dragon instead of a wishy-washy "Well we can't say for suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure..." piece of apologetics, you'd be where I'm at now.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Philosophical nonsense about "Can we truly know if a container is empty" . . . . .
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As usual, you take simple words and twist them around so that their meaning is the exact opposite of what they really mean.

THINK! If you are unable to examine what is inside a container then how can you tell whether it contains anything or not?
 
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psionl0 said:
No. That was a perfect analogy that highlighted why "being unable to know whether something exists is philosophically identical with knowing that it does not" is a ridiculous argument.
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*Poke. Poke*

What's in my garage Psion?
 
psionl0 said:
As usual, you take simple words and twist them around so that their meaning is the exact opposite of what they really mean.

THINK! If you are unable to examine what is inside a container then how can you tell whether it contains anything or not?
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The dragon remains in my garage for you to voice your opinion on. I'm not letting this go.
 
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