"You're supposed to have faith." Biggest cop out

[Lisa]

Put their head for a spin, tell them man created god.

[Starglider]

To a degree, they are correct in that faith is not something that can be analysed in a scientific manner.

Absolutely it can. There's a ton of literature on where this delusion comes from / why humans have a systematic tendency to make shit up and declare it absolute truth. These days we can stick people in fMRI scanners and watch little bits of their brain light up when they start spouting metaphysical bullshit. Call me an eternal optimist, but I happily look forward to the day that faith is finally recognised as a mental illness.

[Broomstick]

I'm not sure how you can call something the vast majority of humanity suffers from to be a "mental illness", unless you decide 95% of the planet is mentally ill.

You get brain areas lighting up with any strong emotion, too - will you next declare emotions abnormal?

Like emotion, religion can be a good servant but is a poor master. Even if YOU don't have a use for it, many people find a use for the ritual, social bonding, and emotional outlets of religion. The fact that a bunch of people go apeshit and use it as an excuse to harm others does not elminate its potential for good.

And I think you know quite well I wasn't discussing the physiological aspects and brain chemistry involved. Faith being an emotion it's not very compatible with logic.

[Hugh]

Hmm... maybe because in common ethics you use the up-to-date system of human social relations, not the ancient words of some crazy monks writing from the name of a sky pixie. Sorry if that sounds offensive, but really, humanist ethics are superior to sky pixie beliefs.

No problem, I don't believe in a book, if you see what I mean.

So, you're saying that ethics is actually trying to determine what is good and bad based on actual human behavior, as opposed to "my supreme being tells me so"? Sounds a little like democracy versus monarchy, doesn't it?

Ethics is capable of actually explaining why something is bad without relying on the ever so common fallback of "My magic sky pixie says it's bad."

Oh? How, then? You're going to tell me that there's an objective definition of "good" and "bad"?

[General Zod]

Ethics is capable of actually explaining why something is bad without relying on the ever so common fallback of "My magic sky pixie says it's bad."

Oh? How, then? You're going to tell me that there's an objective definition of "good" and "bad"?

Yes. Something which causes actual harm is bad (actual physical pain, financial loss, reckless endangerment, unethical discrimination, etc.). Any really useful system of ethics works out methods of minimizing harm.

[K. A. Pital]

Sounds a little like democracy versus monarchy, doesn't it?

Sure. Most monotheistic religions are closely tied with monarchic concepts such as heavenly rulers, heavenly laws and other stuff. Obviously human ethics are logic-based, and they for the most part work towards minimizing the harm to a human society.

The key object of humanist ethics is human. Ethics are consequence-based, yes, they actually determine good and bad based on the consequences of a certain act for humans. There's also comparison, when acts are compared to determine if a new act could be classified good or bad by analogy with an old one that's already happened in the past.

On the other hand, monotheistic beliefs have God and his heavenly orders as an object. They are not consequence-based, but rather "faith-based", or if you want, intent-based. I.e. if your intent is to serve God, it's okay to slaughter civilians (Bible), lie out your ass (Luther), opress those who you see as "ungodly". Because the intent is validated according to God's "rules", and the consequence for humans aren't considered much...

You can see now how secular ethics are superior to religious "morality" shit the fundies always spew out when confronted about it.

[Hugh]

I.e. if your intent is to serve God, it's okay to slaughter civilians (Bible), lie out your ass (Luther), opress those who you see as "ungodly".

Funny. In my experience, priests never say it's OK to do such things (even though - I gather - the Bible implies it is). On the contrary. But of course people keep doing them. How is it religion's fault, then?

You can see now how secular ethics are superior to religious "morality" shit the fundies always spew out when confronted about it.

In theory, yes. In practice, people treat them just the same, as rough guidelines. Even worse, they do what they want, and then resort to some moral code to justify their actions. Or, as the saying goes, it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.

[General Zod]

I.e. if your intent is to serve God, it's okay to slaughter civilians (Bible), lie out your ass (Luther), opress those who you see as "ungodly".

Funny. In my experience, priests never say it's OK to do such things (even though - I gather - the Bible implies it is).

Have you ever actually read the Bible?

Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

Leviticus 24:16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

Leviticus 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

That's just after a quick skimming. I'm sure I could find more gems like these if I felt like taking the time.

In theory, yes. In practice, people treat them just the same, as rough guidelines. Even worse, they do what they want, and then resort to some moral code to justify their actions. Or, as the saying goes, it's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.

In practice, most people aren't even aware of the fact that there are non religious moral systems as you just demonstrated in your earlier post.

[Lusankya]

I.e. if your intent is to serve God, it's okay to slaughter civilians (Bible), lie out your ass (Luther), opress those who you see as "ungodly".

Funny. In my experience, priests never say it's OK to do such things (even though - I gather - the Bible implies it is). On the contrary. But of course people keep doing them. How is it religion's fault, then?

Because religion gives people a non-subjective measure of harm - that applied to a soul. A religious person could justify any atrocity if they believed that it was necessary to save the soul of themselves or others. After all, pain in this life is immaterial when compared to the pain suffered by worshiping the wrong god. Or worshiping the right God in the wrong way (because despite what you think, He actually wants you to worship on a Friday).

Religion isn't the only reason people do immoral things, of course, but it's the prime reason why people do them because of things that aren't real.

[K. A. Pital]

Funny. In my experience, priests never say it's OK to do such things

Who do you think the Imams are? Priests of Islam. And priests calling to kill gays, that's probably common in all religions. Opressing gays and racial minorities is also quite OK for fundamentalists, often with a silent reaction from "moderates" (if such exist in a given religion).

[Hugh]

Have you ever actually read the Bible?

Parts of it, mostly from the New Testament. The thing's huge.

Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

So you see, I could argue that the Bible actually promotes love and understanding. But as I said, I don't believe in a book.

In practice, most people aren't even aware of the fact that there are non religious moral systems as you just demonstrated in your earlier post.

Um, I was the one who mentioned ethics in the first place, wasn't I? And by the way, look what I found while searching for the above quotes:

"Which ones?" the man inquired. Jesus replied, "'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"

How are these commandments any different from the generally accepted rules of social behavior? Are they worse just because they supposedly come from a God?

[Hugh]

Sorry for the double post.

Who do you think the Imams are? Priests of Islam. And priests calling to kill gays, that's probably common in all religions.

I've seldom heard Imams speaking (only on TV, a couple of times), and they were consistently promoting tolerance. But I was referring to Orthodox Christian priests, who are a more common presence around here. And while I've heard of a few nutcases (again, they were in the news), the worst reaction I've met personally was shock at my ignorance of the rituals (as if everyone's a Christian. Heh). At the opposite end of the spectrum, I've been to a couple of conferences by a very enlightened monk, and I can tell you that Christianity really has such people. But hey, maybe I was lucky.

[K. A. Pital]

How are these commandments any different from the generally accepted rules of social behavior? Are they worse just because they supposedly come from a God?

The problem is, there's far more "rules" in holy books than just "love others, don't kill and be cuddly". You could find the same set of rules in just about any philosophical teaching even, hell, Confucius said virtually the same shit. And he - supposedly - wasn't a genocidal ancient deity.

So the key of modern moral system is that the anachronistic bigotry which poisoned ancient moral codes like religious teachings or old laws, is re-evaluated in the light of common humanist ethics. Which of course brings it "update" - I mean, look at those cuddly Catholics, they're almost secular by now.

But what happens if you don't "clean" the ancient writing with modern ethics, and people literally follow "God's will"? Well, one of the common things is, say, jihad.

[K. A. Pital]

I've seldom heard Imams speaking (only on TV, a couple of times), and they were consistently promoting tolerance.

Yeah, like in the Danish cartoon scandal.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Ooh... Jesus is so touchy feely he disagrees with the atrocities of the OT, oh wait...

Mathew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

Mathew 8:32 And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

Mathew 10:21 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

By his own Confession

Mathew 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Jesus admits to purposefully speaking in parables to confuse people so they will go to Hell

4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:

4:12 That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

[Rye]

Have you ever actually read the Bible?

Parts of it, mostly from the New Testament. The thing's huge.

Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

So you see, I could argue that the Bible actually promotes love and understanding. But as I said, I don't believe in a book.

You couldn't argue it objectively, because the whole thing is a mishmash of different traditions and views that contradicts itself often even within the same books. Sure, Jesus said some okay stuff (while condemning unbelievers to eternal torment), but nothing all that great in comparison to the stuff Epicurus said 400 years or so before Jesus even existed.

How are these commandments any different from the generally accepted rules of social behavior? Are they worse just because they supposedly come from a God?

No. Of course, shit like luke 19.27, his racism towards the canaanite women and the repeated assertions that the end of the world is just around the corner and god will provide everything are all more reminiscent of a man that we shouldn't really give a shit about when it comes to great moral teachings.

[General Zod]

So you see, I could argue that the Bible actually promotes love and understanding.

I challenge you to find a single humanist ethics system that has several pages dedicated to telling people what "sins" are worthy of stoning people to death.

But as I said, I don't believe in a book.

I don't recall seeing you say that, but the fact that you're defending it makes it moot.

How are these commandments any different from the generally accepted rules of social behavior? Are they worse just because they supposedly come from a God?

Telling people to kill someone for not obeying their magic sky pixie is generally not accepted by regular society moron. You can't cherry pick the Bible's commandments and say it's not a shitty ethics guide just because it happens to have some stuff about loving thy neighbor in it.

[Starglider]

I'm not sure how you can call something the vast majority of humanity suffers from to be a "mental illness", unless you decide 95% of the planet is mentally ill.

Correct, 95% of the planet is mentally ill. Usually I go by 'deviation from the human capability norm' but when there is a direct, systematic conflict between people's beliefs and reality, that is effectively a mental illness even though technically it's just one of the many sucky design features of the human mental architecture.

You get brain areas lighting up with any strong emotion, too

You get brain areas lighting up with any sort of mental activity. The point is that religious feelings are generated by a fairly specific physical mechanism. There is nothing mystical about them and given another decade or two of cogsci progress there will be nothing mysterious about them either.

will you next declare emotions abnormal?

Emotions aren't abnormal, but it's definitely arguable that the emotional makeup of humans is not well adapted to a) our very high capacity for rational thought (compared to other animals, it sucks compared to what say an AI could do) and b) modern civilisation. Human emotions are mostly legacy junk evolved to deal with life as monkeys, with a limited amount of adaptation for hunter-gatherer protohuman living. IMHO they need a) an overhaul and b) an off switch. While you're doing that you should put in some better support infrastructure for non-faith-or-emotion based ethics; right now this is unnecessarily hard for humans to do.

Like emotion, religion can be a good servant but is a poor master. Even if YOU don't have a use for it, many people find a use for the ritual, social bonding, and emotional outlets of religion.

As an authorised agent of The Technocracy I am permitted to tell you that we will provide superior rational, engineered substitutes for all these things. Hail progress, it makes things shiny!

The fact that a bunch of people go apeshit and use it as an excuse to harm others does not elminate its potential for good.

Whenever anyone says 'well this can be good or bad' there's usually a theoretical solution that has the good bits but not the bad bits. It just may take a lot of engineering effort to get there. If we can replace religion with something that has all the benefits but none of the drawbacks (or rather, render those benefits unnecessary and irrelevant), we should.

And I think you know quite well I wasn't discussing the physiological aspects and brain chemistry involved.

I know but I like to remind the make-shit-up-and-call-it-revelation idiots that we can now prove exactly which bit of their ass they're pulling this crap out of.

Faith being an emotion it's not very compatible with logic.

True. But in the end, logic will win. Because faith makes you sit there and pray while logic lets you make medicines and spaceships and death rays.

[Darth Wong]

How does one debate matters concerning religion with a religious moderate or someone who is religiously liberal? It seems that a religious liberal has abandoned significant portions of their holy book that they follow and rather believe in some sort of a bastardization of the original religion. I recently was drawn into a discussion regarding religion and every single point I brought up, they simple brushed it aside and made the simple statement, "You're supposed to have faith."

One-word response: "Why?"

I asked the question, "Is it possible for one to accept one part of religion and reject another aspect of it?" Their response was that it was absolutely ok to accept one part of religion and reject another part of it because religion is supposed to be tailored to your own views, that it allows you to have your own personal god.

What's the point of a God whose only purpose is to provide a spiritual proxy for your own pre-existing opinions?

The response was one which I never heard before which was, "Many holy books have been rewritten so many times that it has lost many of its original meanings, that there are bound to be errors.

Why is the "original meaning" necessarily superior? Why do religious people believe that the past is superior to the present? Look at the kind of people who wrote these "holy books" in the first place: ignorant savages at best. Even if you believe for some absurd reason that they actually witnessed some of the things they wrote about, who's to say that what they wrote had any resemblance to reality?

People back then didn't bother to differentiate between fact and fiction. This is something that real theologians recognize, but almost no regular religious people understand. When you have "historians" writing absurd stories about million-man Persian armies at Thermopylae or Alexander the Great being the son of a god or Augustus Caesar rising bodily into the sky at the moment of his death, it's pretty obvious that their attitude toward objective fact was totally different from our own (fun piece of trivia: the guy who wrote about Augustus Caesar rising into Heaven is also one of the primary sources used by Christians to prove the validity of the Jesus story; of course, they do not believe that Augustus Caesar actually rose into Heaven, but everything he wrote about Jesus must be true).

In other words, not only was the "original meaning" lost, but the original meaning itself was bullshit in the first place. Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor was a triumph of historically accurate movie-making in comparison to the things people wrote back then.

I asked the question, "If you see the holy book as necessary to interpret because of errors, then how can you accept the original premise?"

"You're supposed to have faith."

Faith, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, is the ability to believe something without any logical reason to do so. Some people uphold its value because it could potentially lead someone to believe something that is true or beneficial. But I would submit that if something is true, then you shouldn't need faith in order to believe it. And if something is beneficial, then you shouldn't need faith in order to realize that. Meanwhile, faith can just as easily lead people to believe things that are false or horrible, and because of the way it leads people to dismiss facts, there is no counterweight to this mechanism in the mind of a true believer.

[Hugh]

Telling people to kill someone for not obeying their magic sky pixie is generally not accepted by regular society moron. You can't cherry pick the Bible's commandments and say it's not a shitty ethics guide just because it happens to have some stuff about loving thy neighbor in it.

Because you are not cherry picking? Oh wait, I think I understand. You have already made up your mind that everything connected to religion is evil, but there's evidence against it so you have to somehow make it seem irrelevant, or else you'd have to admit that things aren't black and white.

What's the point of a God whose only purpose is to provide a spiritual proxy for your own pre-existing opinions?

Now, that is a good question. Based on my own limited experience (Stas Bush, I don't know about the Danish Imams; maybe they're not like their Romanian counterparts), most people don't follow blindly their respective religions; they pick what they need to justify their own behavior. The Bible certainly has enough contradicting teachings to support any position.

But you know what? If that's the case, then most religious people are guilty of hypocrisy, and religion itself isn't guilty of anything.

[General Zod]

Because you are not cherry picking? Oh wait, I think I understand. You have already made up your mind that everything connected to religion is evil, but there's evidence against it so you have to somehow make it seem irrelevant, or else you'd have to admit that things aren't black and white.

How about a rebuttal that isn't a complete strawman you lying dipshit? I'm still waiting on you to address my point about pointing out any humanist ethics systems that advocate even half the shit the Bible does.

[K. A. Pital]

But you know what? If that's the case, then most religious people are guilty of hypocrisy, and religion itself isn't guilty of anything.

That's fucking insane. It's like... what? People who are hypocrites, but religious, are okay - those who follow more or less everything (the fundies) are... what? Not okay? Then maybe there's something wrong with the religion, eh?

[Patrick Degan]

But you know what? If that's the case, then most religious people are guilty of hypocrisy, and religion itself isn't guilty of anything.

Bullshit —just what do you think these "hypocrites" are basing their actions on in the first place?

[Hugh]

I'm still waiting on you to address my point about pointing out any humanist ethics systems that advocate even half the shit the Bible does.

I can't. Does that make the good parts of the Bible irrelevant?

Bullshit —just what do you think these "hypocrites" are basing their actions on in the first place?

Their own interests. They merely use religion as a pretext.

[TithonusSyndrome]

What about religions that do have a holy book, but consider retconning it to be a perfectly acceptable practice in order to keep the religion up to date(in some sense of the word)?

Huh. Good question. Can you name such a religion?

Would first have to know how the group defines "keeping it up to date".

I don't have an off-the-cuff response, I'll have to think about it.

What would you call the Catholic Church calling off the whole limbo thing recently? I don't know if text itself gets retconned all that often, but the spin put on the texts by the priests and imams at the grassroots level amounts to the same thing in practice. In many circles, it's proven to have greater appeal for certain churches to have more liberal "love thy neighbor" takes on the bible, and of course the fire-and-brimstone approach catches more flies than honey and vinegar put together elsewhere.

Have you ever actually read the Bible?

Parts of it, mostly from the New Testament. The thing's huge.

Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

So you see, I could argue that the Bible actually promotes love and understanding. But as I said, I don't believe in a book.

It could be argued that "your neighbor" only refers to fellow members of God's Chosen Tribe. I certainly don't think that the fathers of the material that inspired those phrases had ever intended to woo moderates with warm fuzzy phrases like "love your fellow man" that sell well in the contemporary public arena, instead of the more xenophobic "stick together with the tribe and be ready to strike as one against any foul outsider who blasphemes YHWH".