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commentary this week

kedo1981

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Good commentary this week, many useable quotes.
Really like the part that some of histories “great” thinkers had notions about the universe such as the Earth having a soul and so forth, that were common among the “faithful” that are now seen as complete nonsense, even to the most rabid fundies.
This is why JR is da man
 
I liked it. At first, I expected a rant about how religion, and Christianity in particular, are evil. Instead I found a reasoned discourse on why blind faith and unsupported belief have no place in a skeptic's tool kit.

As someone raised in a deeply religious household, I struggled with this insistance that you must BELIEVE, beyond doubt, because "the Bible says so" all sorts of impossible things. I guess I was somehow a born skeptic, because I just couldn't. Oh, I wanted to believe that a man named Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead. My family and the people around me acted like there was something wrong with ME because, in the end, I couldn't get past the fact that, for me, belief required observable proof.

I eventually embraced the philosophical side of Buddhism, but it is without the more supernatural and supersticious elements that have invaded even that most logical and skeptical of "religions". Yet, I've come to accept that for most people in the world, blind belief in miracles and Gods is as natural as breathing.
 
I can understand how some religious folks would take offense at the commentary.

And yet, I personally find little in the commentary that is intended to provoke offense. The commentary is not deliberately insulting of anyone. It does not take cheap shots. It does not make unfounded assertions or wild accusations. Many of the points are hard for some people to swallow, but they are the subject of fair debate. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, a religion that cannot tolerate scrutiny of this kind is probably not worth having.

Moreover, there are some religious thinkers who would agree with much of what Mr. Randi has said! There are some religious folks who think that a true religion has to distinguish itself from superstition and blind submission to authority. Many Christians, for example, do not accept the literal truth of the Garden of Eden story or the Noah fable, and many of them are just as perplexed as Mr. Randi by the confusing and contradictory stories in the New Testament.

In addition, there are many sincere persons of faith who think that religion has an affirmative obligation to avoid cult-ishness and fanaticism.

The late Steve Allen (who identified himself as a Christian) made observations along these lines. He found that some of the most troublesome criticisms of religious thought came not from outsiders or atheists, but from people well educated in the religion. In Allen's commentaries on religion and the Bible, he quotes the writings of several priests who have criticized teachings of their own Church. Had these men written these things a few hundred years ago, Allen notes, their lives would have been in peril.

Let us hope that those who diasgree with Mr. Randi avoid insults, cheap shots, unfounded assertions and wild accusations, as those sorts of tactics do not meaningfully contribute to the discussion. Let us regognize that there will be disagreement, but that there is also a considerable amount of common ground.
 
Diogenes said:
Maybe because it is easier to be lazy?? ( intellectually.. )
Click to expand...
I would say yes and no.

"Intellectually lazy" has a bad connotation associated with it. It implies a personal vice or weakness. If we take the term at face value, however, it could mean "going with what your gut tells you, without thinking too deeply about it."

In that sense, I think it is natural for people to perceive deities and miracles. We are pattern-spotting animals, and we naturally try to find patterns and reasons for things. Sometimes, random events seem to us to point to a supernatural entity or occurrence, and that is what our gut tells us.
 
Brown said:
I would say yes and no.

"Intellectually lazy" has a bad connotation associated with it. It implies a personal vice or weakness. If we take the term at face value, however, it could mean "going with what your gut tells you, without thinking too deeply about it."

In that sense, I think it is natural for people to perceive deities and miracles. We are pattern-spotting animals, and we naturally try to find patterns and reasons for things. Sometimes, random events seem to us to point to a supernatural entity or occurrence, and that is what our gut tells us.
Click to expand...

I think it's even more than that. I think it goes back to a type of conditioning...

Speaking for myself as a child, I found out early on, that one of my strengths was the ability to think about things, and as such, chose to overcome obstacles by considering them. That kind of positive reinforcement led to a lifetime habit of facing problems through careful analysis and examination.

There are others I'm sure who solve problems or surmount obstacles through action, or random chance, and in so doing reinforce a pattern that does not include careful forethought of the subject.

Why does someone grow up not examining their beliefs about the world? Because doing so has never yielded positive results up to this point. Simply doing, or acting instead of thinking has worked for them this far, and in a Pavlovian sense, why alter the cycle of stimulus and learned response?

Of course the counter-example is the story of Foodbunny, which I'm sure many of you will remember. She chose to examine the world, and the belief systems available to her, and received neagative responses. Why she continued that behaviour is a tough question. But certainly she made the right choice.
 
Criticizing religion/faith and (truthfully) dismissing it is seen as insulting enough, and Randi will recieve a lot of flak for it. It doesn't matter how justified he is in his opinion.
 
I don't know what's been going into Randi's email directly, but all the comments I've received so far have been extremely positive. We expected a lot of flak, but so far it's not appearing.
 
Right on Mr. Randi!

It was in fact my application of skepticism to the sill beliefs like astrology that lead to my atheism. I had but to turn that skepticism upon myself to realize that all faith is flawed.
 
Linda said:
I don't know what's been going into Randi's email directly, but all the comments I've received so far have been extremely positive. We expected a lot of flak, but so far it's not appearing.
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That will take a while, those people have to mouth the words as they read.
 
Randi really needs to get his facts straight before he attacks these straw men. This isn't the first time he's been factually wrong about something he's holding up in evidence. It's just given those who would disagree something to focus on instead of the meat of his commentary.

According to the myth:
Adam and Eve didn't just have two children, there was also Seth, and countless nameless others born over the 900 year period that Adam and Eve lived.
Incest wasn't a sin until the time of Abraham, so why even bring it up?
 
Trueblood said:
According to the myth:
Adam and Eve didn't just have two children, there was also Seth, and countless nameless others born over the 900 year period that Adam and Eve lived.
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This is a good point, but I'm not sure that Mr. Randi's assertion is really a straw man. These questions have been legitimately debated for ages.

After Cain kills Abel, Cain expresses concern that others will kill him, even though there is supposedly no one else on the Earth except himself and his parents. And the question of where Cain got his wife has been one debated for years and years. The birth of Seth (through whom Jesus was allegedly descended) is not described until after Cain expresses fear for his life because of others, and after he and his wife depart.
 
Genesis 5
3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. 5 Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.
Click to expand...

According to the myth:
Adam and Eve didn't just have two children, there was also Seth, and countless nameless others born over the 900 year period that Adam and Eve lived.
Incest wasn't a sin until the time of Abraham, so why even bring it up?
Click to expand...
The incest not being a sin is a something of a retcon. I've also heard it said that there were other people living on earth, A&E were just the ones created by God, thus neatly explaining away the incest problem (if not the origin of the rest of humanity). As pointed out in the article, just because it's possible to come up with explanations to fit the story does not necessarily make those interpretationis correct.

The fundamental issue is really that the origin story was due to it being a story based on pantheistic beginnings where other gods were in play. "You shall have no other gods before me" isn't arguing for monotheism, just that Yahweh is the strongest bestest and all around niftiest of the gods floating around out there.

This makes sense from the societies of the time, but it sure makes literal interpretations that are stuck with monotheistic baggage into a bit of fun. :)
 
Aoidoi said:


The incest not being a sin is a something of a retcon. I've also heard it said that there were other people living on earth, A&E were just the ones created by God, thus neatly explaining away the incest problem (if not the origin of the rest of humanity). As pointed out in the article, just because it's possible to come up with explanations to fit the story does not necessarily make those interpretationis correct.
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(quickly looking up "retcon")
Agreed on all points, and I'm not even remotely trying to refute that religion isn't basically a myth. I just wish Randi wouldn't give his opponents ammo by getting his facts wrong.
 
Trueblood said:


(quickly looking up "retcon")
Agreed on all points, and I'm not even remotely trying to refute that religion isn't basically a myth. I just wish Randi wouldn't give his opponents ammo by getting his facts wrong.
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I think it would be impossible to express any ideas at all on religion without giving his opponents ammo.

To the point: If Adam and Eve were the first parents, then any grandchildren they had would have been the products of incest. If they were not, then the propositions of religion that derive from that story are false.

If the story (or stories) in Genesis are objectively true then they should be accessible to empirical inquiry and to falsification.

Also the notion that something is wrong only until a law is passed proscribing it, is one of the great lawyerly inventions of the apostle Paul (and therefore xtianity)
 
In the discussion of one pair of breeding humans requiring incest to populate the world, let's not forget that, according to the Bible, Eve was a clone of Adam to begin with. "Made from one of Adam's ribs" and all that. Buried in the fifth chapter is the mention that Adam had many sons and daughters, but the "just so" story of why farmers and shephards don't get along was spliced into the plot at a point before the third son, Seth, was born. Randy misspoke on saying Adam and Eve only had three sons, but that's a quibble. That is the impression you get up to the Cain and Abel story. Only much later do we learn otherwise.

If you're the only two humans on a planet, the laws against incest can't apply or there won't be any fruitful and multiplyingness. But the whole story is rediculous, on many levels. For one, murder wasn't a sin yet, either. It hadn't happened before, after all. God was punishing Cain for something the man didn't know was against God's rules. And the punishment was for Cain to wander homeless, yet Cain immediately goes out and founds a city. That's what happens when you splice a bunch of unrelated folkstories together.

The whole Genesis story shows an obvious attempt to splice a bunch of oral traditions together into one timeline, and it reflects the worldview of one small group of people in the middle East. That is, unless you're trapped into the belief that this is an actual history of humanity. Then, you have to believe that God is afraid a tower built in Babel is going to pierce the vault of Heaven and curses mankind again to stop its construction.
 
Trueblood said:

According to the myth:
Adam and Eve didn't just have two children, there was also Seth, and countless nameless others born over the 900 year period that Adam and Eve lived.
Incest wasn't a sin until the time of Abraham, so why even bring it up?
Click to expand...

To paraphrase R.A. Heinlein "If its a sin on Sunday, it seems it is a sin on the other days of the week"
The constant change-the-rules-as-you-go philosophy of the established religions is why I stay away from church.
 
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