Theological Ramblings.

So you're saying religious people tend to respond to anything perceived as threatening or unpleasant with irrational knee-jerking?

Yes, that was half of the implication of my statement.

The other half was that atheists respond in kind, with knee-jerk condescension. I can't really disagree, either.

"How dare they stick to their outdated beliefs in a modern world!" suddenly becomes "How dare they modify their beliefs? Isn't that proof that they're wrong?"

Well that was unexpected, I'll give you some credit there.

Doesn't really change the fact that christianity that we know it today still revolves around 'obey [me|my boss] or be tormented forever', does it.


Yeah, and the context for both are totally not different.

You're lucky fone's stupidity is much higher than yours.

That's two backhanded compliments from you today. I'm on a roll.

I don't think anyone takes direct offense to someone's yearn for living their own religious prerogative Ravael (for context reasons, your words, "outdated beliefs in a modern world"), so the 1->2 conjecture doesn't entirely fit. Most reasonable folks take offense to trying to project their religious prerogative onto others, however, via legislation or social policing.

As far as modifying beliefs, I don't care what religions do in order to stay relevant, so long as they abandon caustic practices in the process. That said, it is logically inadequate to say that the Bible is the literal word of a god, and yet, modify it, or cherry-pick to justify.

Not all Christians believe that and I have met a couple of preachers who've been excommunicated as a result. But, yes, the mainstream really loves their Calvinism, even though 99% of Christians have no idea what Calvinism is. More to the point, even if they did, they'd claim their nasty little judgmental hell-loving death cult is nothing like it.

Suppose that the Church was still the same one that existed circa 400 AD (i.e., openly accepted, community engaged, celebratorily humanistic, and not yet tainted by the hypocrisy of Augustine of Hippo). Would you be as hostile towards it for embracing irrational beliefs?

I'm genuinely curious.

I have a problem with how some people view religion.

What's 'true' actually matters(to me, anyways), and religion makes some pretty absurd claims. However, they're treated like some club that's trying to gain/retain members rather than an organization that claims to know real truth.

If you were part of a group that claims to know the real truth, but changes that truth every so often in light of new data, would you stay? Would you really believe that they know real truth?

I'm pretty sure you just described science. >.>;; Do remember that "science" literally means "knowledge."

Science never posits that any of its findings are ultimate truth, however. It acknowledges its own short-comings first and foremost.

I have for a long time been against the general acceptance of irrational thought as the answer to problems over deductive reasoning, which is hilarious as I was raised to think things through, then as an adult I get chastised by the same person who raised me when I do so. It came up when I was rolling my eyes of the ghost hunters show, and it just started a long argument. But it really got me off the hating religion in general thing, to the not liking of all irrational thought, some time has passed since then and I've come to understand everyone has irrational thought (while I still think the societal norm is to accept more of it than we should allow, but that's not really the point). It's best as long as we can all live together without imposing laws for others to follow that violate neutrality, that includes not passing discriminatory laws in the guise of religious freedom too.

Just because one has a belief/idea doesn't protect it from ridicule if they make it known. You're free to wear a colander on your head, but people are going to make fun of you for it, the same with the other stupid hats as well.

Edit: that's not even touching on the indoctrination part of keeping the religious cults alive...

Oh, I know, but it serves no one much good to start every line like so:

"This is just our best guess based on current data, but we're pretty sure the Earth revolves around the Sun."

but it's honest

Yes because [previous post].

I honestly don't care that much about the moral aspect of religion, though the absurdity does amuse me. What really bothers me is that these organizations gets people to believe in nonsense claims. On the far end of the nutjob scale, there are literally people who believe homosexuals cause tornadoes and earthquakes, which brings out hatred and legislation against that minority. Somewhere in the middle, we have people who believe that a soul enters an embryo at the moment of conception, which means no abortions (even though it's one of the most efficient ways to combat poverty) or stem cell research. On the light end, we have people who sit and ponder about the afterlife.

It'd be so nice if we could just get rid of all the absurdities and just focus on making this reality a better place.


As others have stated, science never claims to know the absolute truth. Even something like the speed of light, a pillar of science, was put into question a few years ago. Luckily, it was retested and an error was found in the initial run

There's a difference between "based on our data, ____ is likely true" and "our god, the creator of the universe just told me something".

One if repeatable, verifiable and based on actual observable information. The other isn't.

If god was real, he would have been smart and told me himself rather than rely on a multi-billion dollar organization to spread their own false version(your words, not mine) of the story.

Without actually using any imagination or hypothetical thinking, of course.

Incidentally, on the subject of deus, although I have no particular truck with belief I actually mean something more like "worship", I wouldn't be the least bit shocked if there is one or many (in part depending on what one defines a deity as). It would hardly be inconceivable that an entity that is evolutionarily as far above humans as we are above ants would be quite literally incapable of communicating almost anything to us. A certain perverse part of me would enjoy meeting "God" at some point and finding out that we were supposed to figure out the meaning of life from the patterns that frost makes on windows.

Oh, damnit, there I go used that awful, awful imagination again. I must devote all my energies towards curing the atom bomb and building cancer because the almighty unGod of atheism will punish me for having frivolous thoughts if I don't.

Just as an aside, there is now zero grounds for denial of using stem cells, even from a religious stand-point. Stem cells are able to be generated quickly and efficiently via new research. Scientists have been able to shock skin cells back into their stem cell state.

We've been able to make and use stem cells for a while, it's just that fetal stem cells were more robust or something to that effect. It was only fetal stem cells that were ever controversial.

And yet you won't find any Christians parading in the streets about the research done by medical and COSMETICS companies with infant foreskins that fuels the completely unjustified and largely areligious (in the US, anyhow) practice of circumcision mutilating boys' genitals before they're able to consent.

Yes, but it was costly and a slow process, making it a difficult field to make any progress in. With the advent of this latest finding, that won't be the case anymore and fetal stem cells would no longer be necessary.

There are plenty of disenfranchised children who need help. We just seem to think that arguing about things that have nothing to do with it, and plunging oodles of money into a broken political system, will fix it. Circumcision is a pretty abhorrent process, but I think there are more pressing matters honestly. That said,

Pretty sure it is, considering how he's supposedly already written, or "inspired", a book.


I'm not even going to give a proper response to the whole science-is-evil cliche.



We've only been set almost a decade back, no big deal.

Well, the difference between, say, feeding the starving children of American and not chopping half the skin off boys' penises is that literally nothing has to be done for the latter. It is the cessation of an action that is needed, which is nominally quite easy.

Don't mind me, though. Everyone has their personal crusade. Some people hate organized religion, I hate taking knives to infants.

The what? What on Earth are you whittering on about this time?

Don't straw-man it. You know it isn't that easy, Onorgul. Can you imagine the backlash of trying to make circumcision illegal?

I agree with you Ihina, but sometimes you just have to welcome the positive.

Actually, I can't, but that wasn't a straw-man, just a gross over-simplification. I wasn't trying to make a complex argument, just vent my spleen.

Touché.

Assuming you mean wittering.

When people like myself point to science as something to be vested in rather than religion, a popular comeback (perhaps from a big book) from religious folks is to point out all the evils that have come from science. Ya know, nuclear weapons, various carcinogens, etc.

Ok, but where was anything like that said?

And, yes, I occasionally throw an H where it doesn't belong. Shall I make a point that you failed to accent cliché properly?

There would be hardcore backlash, yadayada religious freedom, yadayada parental choice, yadayada tradition.

Not sure when those three trumped not mutilating a minor that cannot make a choice for themselves.

If it wasn't, then I retract my previous statement.

I pay a lot of attention to politics so I'm pretty in tune with various dog whistles.

I still think you were trying to sneak it in though, even if unintentional.



It's a free country, you can do what you want.

One of my pet hobbies is genetics and I've studied more about physiology and endocrinology for my own amusement than other people devote to making their fantasy football team or lazily copy/pasting a Spellcast XML. I assure you, though I'm well aware of the problems science has introduced to the world, I'm hardly one to decry it while indulging in the sorts of subjects that basically do everything science can to defy facile notions of deity.

And I only say facile because I consider it gross hubris to pretend that humans can glimpse what will pass for complexity 1,000 years from now. I'm a lousy student of history at best, but I certainly know how much the breadth of human knowledge has exploded just within my lifetime, much less the past 500 years. Is there a Moore's Law for homo sapiens sapiens?