Atheists who don't hate religion

[David Mo]

What is the problem about stating that there won't be a physical boundary preventing the brain from functioning in such a way as to be capable of supporting supernatural want and designs?

First of all: I don’t know what you mean by “physical boundary”. I don’t know what you mean by “supernatural want” neither. I suppose that you mean the human brain is able to produce some supernatural beliefs in gods and immortality.

I don’t know what the structure of the brain will be in an indeterminate future, for the brain is not an immutable part of the human behaviour. The human brain is a product of evolution. It has changed in the past and can change in the future. But I can agree that the human brain is able to produce supernatural beliefs now. This is an obvious statement. This is the same obvious statement that “The human brain has not any “physical boundary” to produce beliefs of peace, violence, universal love, science, and metaphysics" and so on. This is so utterly obvious that it is an empty statement.

If you will say that the religion is a strong element of the human behaviour, I agree. It is an obvious inference from the History of humanity, not from the brain structure. The ability of the brain to produce religious beliefs is an obvious determinant of the continuity of different religions throughout the History. But this ability says nothing about the possibility of the continuity of the religious beliefs or the possibility of changing or removing them. There is not any obviousness at this point.

 

[JaysonR]

Alright.
So here we have an end we agree upon.
So long as the human brain is as it is for our species, religion may happen.

 

[yrreg]

But I still don't see anyone with a definition of what is religion, what is an atheist.

Here is again my definition of what is religion:

The belief of mankind in a superior being with whom mankind can expect assistance.

It is really most amazingly dismaying how folks can talk endlessly and never bother to define what they are talking about, namely, religion, and what is an atheist into, what script he is playing.

I challenge the posters here to produce their definition of religion and also what they see to be the script the atheists are playing: in regard to religion, and in regard to God -- that requires also a definition of God -- and please, no flippancy of evading serious genuine thinking by resorting to insulting God with calling Him spaghetti, unicorn, tooth fairy.

 

[Correa Neto]

OK...
But assuming god is a "he"... Can't it be offensive too?
What if god is a "she"?
Or genderless?
Or something else?
Bias, bias and bias...

 

[JaysonR]

yyreg,

The exact difinition does not matter in the current discussion.

 

[yrreg]

Definitions are very important to get to exchange ideas and come to concurrence; otherwise everyone is shouting out his mouth and feeling so sure that he is saying something of any cognitive worth.

Here is an illustration: a bunch of wise guys get together to each one bake an egg pie, but they don't have any concurred on idea of what is an egg pie; still they work on and on and on, each one mixing all kinds of ingredients and using all sorts of heat equipment and containers, and each one feeling that he will produce an egg pie.

The difference is that with an egg pie or something that can be seen visibly, they will sooner than later come to the fact that they are behaving so stupidly.

With words however, guys are so self-assured that the more words they produce the more wise they look to themselves and to readers of their words; but no one can see what the words are producing in the way of a judgment on who is saying something of any worth to human knowledge or it is all gibberish.

 

[marplots]

I'm leaning toward gibberish at the moment.

 

[JaysonR]

Definitions are very important to get to exchange ideas and come to concurrence; otherwise everyone is shouting out his mouth and feeling so sure that he is saying something of any cognitive worth.

Here is an illustration: a bunch of wise guys get together to each one bake an egg pie, but they don't have any concurred on idea of what is an egg pie; still they work on and on and on, each one mixing all kinds of ingredients and using all sorts of heat equipment and containers, and each one feeling that he will produce an egg pie.

The difference is that with an egg pie or something that can be seen visibly, they will sooner than later come to the fact that they are behaving so stupidly.

With words however, guys are so self-assured that the more words they produce the more wise they look to themselves and to readers of their words; but no one can see what the words are producing in the way of a judgment on who is saying something of any worth to human knowledge or it is all gibberish.

Oh for the love of ... here's a simple definition for you: The person calls it religion or "spiritual" (in whatever language you want) and reveres it with some more than average level of emotion.

I'm fairly confident that you can work out the rest; I have faith in your ability.

And, honestly...it doesn't matter.
We're currently talking about emergent behavior and whether or not it is possible to prevent emergent behavior in a species if the emergent behavior is a byproduct capability of their neurological process of assessing reality.

In other words, we could also just be talking about whether or not we could stop folks from "seeing" UFO's, Bigfoot, Psychics, or if we can stop folks form being fooled by magic tricks.

We don't need to derail into a pedantic tangent of taxonomy regarding the word, "religion" to discuss whether we can just outright stop the species from being susceptible to wishful thinking and misconception.

 

[Correa Neto]

But I still don't see anyone with a definition of what is religion, what is an atheist.

Here is again my definition of what is religion:

The belief of mankind in a superior being with whom mankind can expect assistance.

...snip...

That's not religion.

Religion is an ideology, a doctrine built from the starting point that there are supernatural entities. In many religions there are more than just one entity and in many these entities are not gods but spirits.

All these doctrines, ideologies also assume these supernatural entities can and will mess around with the world, interact with humans, care about what mankind does, set behavior rules for mankind and also that some folks (the very ones who created the religion in question) somehow not just managed know about these supernatural beings but also received from them a code, dogmas, telling us how they want us to act.

Without the code, the dogmas, the set of rules to govern the behavior of its adepts, it will not be a religion.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

But I still don't see anyone with a definition of what is religion, what is an atheist.

Here is again my definition of what is religion:

The belief of mankind in a superior being with whom mankind can expect assistance.

It is really most amazingly dismaying how folks can talk endlessly and never bother to define what they are talking about, namely, religion, and what is an atheist into, what script he is playing.

Okay, actually I agree with yrreg here, in that one should define religion if one is talking about religion. It's 100% pertinent to the topic at hand, so here goes.

If you want a dictionary definition, take your pick.

: the belief in a god or in a group of gods

: an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods

: an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group

As for the definition I'm using, it's an expanded variation of the above. I consider religion to be an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, rituals, laws, and traditions, typically associated with worship of the supernatural, that is used to reinforce the morals of a cultural or tribal group.

I challenge the posters here to produce their definition of religion and also what they see to be the script the atheists are playing: in regard to religion, and in regard to God -- that requires also a definition of God -- and please, no flippancy of evading serious genuine thinking by resorting to insulting God with calling Him spaghetti, unicorn, tooth fairy.

Just to clarify a point, the FSM, IPU, and tooth fairy comparisons are not actually insults against God. After all, how can atheists insult something they don't believe in? Rather, they are arguments intended to deconstruct the faulty logic some believers use to attempt to "prove" the existence of God, or the validity of creationism, or the belief in a childhood ritual.

 

[Leumas]

....
Anyone who professes belief in a religion...

Can you define what that means? What exactly is a "belief in a religion"?

Can you define what it means to believe in Christianity?

What exactly distinguishes belief in Christianity from belief in anything else?

Anyone who professes belief in a religion should be counted as a member of that religion.

Can one profess belief in Christianity and be considered by people (e.g. other Christians) to be in fact a Christian despite him asserting that Jesus did not exist?

How many Christian congregations or communities or churches would embrace and accept a self-professed believer in Christianity as a Christian if he states that Jesus was an illegitimate son of an adulterous woman and that he was psychologically all screwed up by that social stigma of the time that he grew up to be a pathetic fool who thought he was the son of god to assuage his cognitive dissonance?

Would any self-professed Christian church or community anywhere in the world teach that Jesus was just a charlatan cult leader who fooled his followers and when the Romans tried to kill him he ran away never to be seen again and as a result his cult fabricated the crucifixion and resurrection story so as to alleviate their cognitive dissonance?

Religion doesn't come exclusively from a book, it comes from one's family and one's community.

Indeed!

But that is also where one learns racism and bigotry and all sorts of other detrimental beliefs and mistaken irrational misconceptions about reality.

That is also where one learns about the Tooth Fairy and Santa and Leprechauns and those too have no scriptural basis.

What if one learned (as indeed they did not so very long ago) from his "family and church and community" that some people because of their racial traits are lesser species and that they should not enter restaurants and churches and schools of his community? Should we be tolerant and understanding? Should we say that the person is entitled to his beliefs and let him and his community go on applying segregation in their society? Should we accept it as their right to keep on teaching racism in their institutions and homes to their children? Should we not even try to point out the errors of their claims to them and to their unfortunate children? Should we respect their rights to educate their children as they see fit and allow them to home-school their children with books that show how these races are lesser creatures and even enforce that by cherry picked bits from some scripture or even just folklore?

An intelligent person when s/he grows up starts to compare what s/he was taught as a child with reality. Part of this process of learning things other than what one was indoctrinated and inculcated with during childhood is to read lengthy books and other data that require a lot of time to read and understand. It may even be necessary to highlight and annotate these books with copious notes and various types of markings so as to quickly pick out the salient points upon further and later readings of the books.

A person's religious beliefs are most likely to be the ones they were taught growing up. So no, they're not getting them by reading the Bible and deciding to take the stories literally. Rather, they're engaging in the practices and rituals they were taught by their parents.

In the case of Christianity, what are these practices and rituals? Where did the parents learn about them? Where did the person who taught the parents learn them?

An intelligent person and logical thinker does not take hearsay and folktales as fact. A skeptical thinker questions anecdotes and yarns by researching and examining data in depth. A skeptic who wants to verify things for himself expends the time and effort reading lots of lengthy books.

An intelligent skeptic questions the yarns he imbibed during his childhood from what might be a misinformed and prejudiced kin and kith albeit lovingly and warmly.

In the case of Christianity one source of inquiry and research is the all but concise Bible. Once a person takes the necessary time to examine in depth the Bible among other books and data she will find out that all the claptrap and hogwash she was inculcated with was nothing but drivel despite all the beautiful and warm memories of those stories from colorful children’s bibles her parents used to read for her.

The Bible is just there to reinforce

What if the Bible in fact does the exact opposite? What happens then?

but the Bible alone cannot be a source of one's behaviors. Most religious people don't know or don't care about what their scripture says. As I said, family, church, and community takes precedence. Therefore it doesn't make any sense to accuse them of following a book that's full of obvious absurdity and contradiction.

Which churches have you seen that do not preach “obvious absurdity and contradiction” such as the stuff in the verses in this post?

Rituals, beliefs, and laws change as the needs of a culture change over time. Would you expect anything else?

Please give me a citation for a church or community of self-professed believers in Christianity that have changed over time and now claim that the following is an "obvious absurdity and contradiction"

• Jesus is the Son of God, who loves me, and gave himself for me.
• Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
• And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
• If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
• For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
• For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Don't make the mistake of claiming that theists who don't adhere to the stereotypical beliefs and behaviors you describe are "not true Christians / Muslims / Jews."

I am not making any such claim whatsoever…. it is the Christians/Muslims/Jews who make the claim and actually burn each other and excommunicate each other and battle each other and torture each other. Even the “believers in the same religion” execrate each other over interpretations of the very same scripture.

That is why there are today THOUSANDS of different Christian denominations and sects. All of them are in disagreement over what is the meaning of various bits of the scriptures they cherry pick as important and all but "obviously absurd". Many have fought bloody battles and killed each other over their "beliefs in Christianity" in the past.

However, I will be very surprised if a single one of these sects that claim to be the correct Christians would call the verses in this post "obvious absurdity and contradiction" or would accept even a self-professed believer in Christianity who denies them.

Please give me a reference if you know of any self-professed Christian cult or sect or group that believe that the following is an "obvious absurdity and contradiction" or are willing to embrace as real Christians self-professed believers in Christianity who deny this.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day He rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Christian Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Can you define what that means? What exactly is a "belief in a religion"?

Can you define what it means to believe in Christianity?

What exactly distinguishes belief in Christianity from belief in anything else?

Why are you asking this question when you've already decided on the answer?

Can one profess belief in Christianity and be considered by people (e.g. other Christians) to be in fact a Christian despite him asserting that Jesus did not exist?

How many Christian congregations or communities or churches would embrace and accept a self-professed believer in Christianity as a Christian if he states that Jesus was an illegitimate son of an adulterous woman and that he was psychologically all screwed up by that social stigma of the time that he grew up to be a pathetic fool who thought he was the son of god to assuage his cognitive dissonance?

Would any self-professed Christian church or community anywhere in the world teach that Jesus was just a charlatan cult leader who fooled his followers and when the Romans tried to kill him he ran away never to be seen again and as a result his cult fabricated the crucifixion and resurrection story so as to alleviate their cognitive dissonance?

Are you asserting that your own interpretation of Biblical stories is the only correct version of reality, therefore anyone who believes in reality would be at odds with every single Christian denomination?

But that is also where one learns racism and bigotry and all sorts of other detrimental beliefs and mistaken irrational misconceptions about reality.

That is also where one learns about the Tooth Fairy and Santa and Leprechauns and those too have no scriptural basis.

What if one learned (as indeed they did not so very long ago) from his "family and church and community" that some people because of their racial traits are lesser species and that they should not enter restaurants and churches and schools of his community? Should we be tolerant and understanding? Should we say that the person is entitled to his beliefs and let him and his community go on applying segregation in their society? Should we accept it as their right to keep on teaching racism in their institutions and homes to their children? Should we not even try to point out the errors of their claims to them and to their unfortunate children? Should we respect their rights to educate their children as they see fit and allow them to home-school their children with books that show how these races are lesser creatures and even enforce that by cherry picked bits from some scripture or even just folklore?

You say that as if all religious denominations are racist and bigoted, or if all forms of religion are analogous to racism and bigotry. I notice you're also admitting to being intolerant, even though that's the same thing you're condemning in religion.

The religions that preach hate and bigotry are in the minority, otherwise we'd all be dead right now.

An intelligent person when s/he grows up starts to compare what s/he was taught as a child with reality. Part of this process of learning things other than what one was indoctrinated and inculcated with during childhood is to read lengthy books and other data that require a lot of time to read and understand. It may even be necessary to highlight and annotate these books with copious notes and various types of markings so as to quickly pick out the salient points upon further and later readings of the books.

This has nothing to do with my point, but okay.

In the case of Christianity, what are these practices and rituals? Where did the parents learn about them? Where did the person who taught the parents learn them?

It doesn't all come from the Bible, as you seemed to suggest. Give a kid a Bible and you're not going to turn him into a Christian. Cultural traditions are passed down through the generations. If you're asking where they originate, it depends on which culture, but that's a discussion for a different topic entirely.

An intelligent person and logical thinker does not take hearsay and folktales as fact. A skeptical thinker questions anecdotes and yarns by researching and examining data in depth. A skeptic who wants to verify things for himself expends the time and effort reading lots of lengthy books.

An intelligent skeptic questions the yarns he imbibed during his childhood from what might be a misinformed and prejudiced kin and kith albeit lovingly and warmly.

In the case of Christianity one source of inquiry and research is the all but concise Bible. Once a person takes the necessary time to examine in depth the Bible among other books and data she will find out that all the claptrap and hogwash she was inculcated with was nothing but drivel despite all the beautiful and warm memories of those stories from colorful children’s bibles her parents used to read for her.

That's nice, but it also has nothing to do with my point.

What if the Bible in fact does the exact opposite? What happens then?

Then they might change their beliefs and decide for themselves, which I also have no problem with.

Which churches have you seen that do not preach “obvious absurdity and contradiction” such as the stuff in the verses in this post?

Churches aren't all about strict adherence to scripture. They usually just talk about whatever stories, morals, or lessons they feel like, and pull up scripture when it's relevant.

Please give me a citation for a church or community of self-professed believers in Christianity that have changed over time and now claim that the following is an "obvious absurdity and contradiction"

• Jesus is the Son of God, who loves me, and gave himself for me.
• Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
• And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
• If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
• For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
• For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

You're taking what I said out of context. Here's an obvious example of beliefs changing over time. Look up ANY Biblical contradiction. Chances are that it's the result of a later author recording the change in tradition and the wants / needs of the people.

Also, different Christian denominations will interpret the teachings you listed in different ways. Some literal, some not so much. Take the Christ dying for sins, for example. Some believe this means his death gets you off the hook for anything bad you did, and all you have to do is believe in him. Others say no, what it means is that the corrupted and sinful state of the world led to his death, and one should take this as a lesson not to take things for granted.

I am not making any such claim whatsoever…. it is the Christians/Muslims/Jews who make the claim and actually burn each other and excommunicate each other and battle each other and torture each other. Even the “believers in the same religion” execrate each other over interpretations of the very same scripture.

That is why there are today THOUSANDS of different Christian denominations and sects. All of them are in disagreement over what is the meaning of various bits of the scriptures they cherry pick as important and all but "obviously absurd". Many have fought bloody battles and killed each other over their "beliefs in Christianity" in the past.

And yet the peaceful ones who can coexist with other religions outnumber the violent ones. Again though, you're taking what I said out of context. You listed a number of literal interpretations of scripture, and then insisted that "no true Christian / Muslim / Jew" would deviate from those. I was pointing out that plenty have, and do.

However, I will be very surprised if a single one of these sects that claim to be the correct Christians would call the verses in this post "obvious absurdity and contradiction" or would accept even a self-professed believer in Christianity who denies them.

Please give me a reference if you know of any self-professed Christian cult or sect or group that believe that the following is an "obvious absurdity and contradiction" or are willing to embrace as real Christians self-professed believers in Christianity who deny this.

How many Christians have you spoken to? Have you asked them about these beliefs? Depending on their denomination, they'll give you very different answers about what these beliefs mean to them. The more liberal ones I've spoken to tend to take these tenets more metaphorically.

Here's an example. What does it mean to believe in God? You'll get a different answer for every individual person you ask. Some people believe in an actual being sitting on a throne in the clouds and counting every dead sparrow. Others believe that God is an abstract concept that represents something higher than us, and more powerful than us, where belief in God is a form of humility.

 

[JaysonR]

Wait...are we now arguing over what the definition of "religion" is?

 

[Leumas]

You listed a number of literal interpretations of scripture, and then insisted that "no true Christian / Muslim / Jew" would deviate from those. I was pointing out that plenty have, and do.

Please show me where do I do this.... you even use quotation marks so please show me where I make such a statement.

In fact please show me any post in this ENTIRE thread where I myself use the word "true" in any of my posts in this thread.

 

[Leumas]

Wait...are we now arguing over what the definition of "religion" is?

I am not.

I suggest you review the exchange and you will see what is going on:

• Leumas
• Frozenwolf150
• Leumas
• Frozenwolf150
• Leumas
• Frozenwolf150
• Leumas

I stated in this post that religions cause people to believe in absurdities as if they were facts and that leads on to The Petri Dish Effect. I used as examples of some of the absurdities a couple of sarcastic description of what are in fact the basic tenets of some of the most common religions.

I was then accusingly questioned if I was "asserting that every single monotheist is a Biblical literalist who takes the worst possible message from scripture".

I was glad that Frozenwolf agreed that the described beliefs are in fact absurd and "the worst possible message from scripture".

But I defended against the accusation in this post by showing that I was not asserting anything. However, cherry picking or otherwise, the sarcastic descriptions in the case of Christianity are the basic creed of Christianity and it is doubtful that any person can claim to be Christian and not believe that

Jesus as the incarnation of the almighty god creator of the universe, slithered out from inside a girl to become 30 years later - with nary a useful significance to his existence in the intervening time - a human blood sacrifice of himself to himself to appease himself so as to atone for the sins of humans.​

I used some verses from the NT as an example of how that is the case. I also gave a link to a list of the Christian creeds which is what churches of different Christian denomination use as a statement of faith that their congregations ought to avow.

Frozenwolf responded in this post which basically states that Christians do not adhere to their scriptures nor to their creeds and that they learn their religion from folklore and yarns told to them by their kin and kith and only use the Bible to "reinforce" their beliefs.

He accused me of "claiming that theists who don't adhere to the stereotypical beliefs and behaviors I describe are "not true Christians / Muslims / Jews.""

I do not know how he formulated that idea and despite him using quotation marks, I have not even used the word "true" in any of my posts in this whole thread.

He went on to make the amazing statement

Anyone who professes belief in a religion should be counted as a member of that religion.

I then, in this post, asked him a few questions to help show the mistakes in logic he was making. I was trying to get him to define "belief in religion" not religion itself..... rather to define what exactly it means to "believe in a religion" not define what religion means.

I wanted him to realize that believing in a religion only has significance in the context of believing in the creeds and tenets of the religion regardless of where they come from. And my albeit sarcastic description is in fact the basic creed as avowed by Christians.

But since he realizes that such a creed is "the worst possible message from scripture", he is trying hard to deny that the Christian creed is avowed by nice Christians. In other words he is claiming that liberal Christians can still be meaningfully Christian despite not believig in Jesus Christ nor in what Jesus Christ stands for or means. Which is in any case irrelevant to the original point I was making in the first post.

 

[JaysonR]

Huh...what an odd discourse.

People do believe in a wide rang of ideas; I've even met Christians who firmly hold to thst claim while at the same time claim Jesus never existed.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

This may be a derail, but for the purpose of "belief in A", how you view A will determine, what you get as an outcome. So if you forget religion as a special case and go for: Harm, fairness, ingroup/community/loyalty, authority and purity and then ask how a given person gives reason to the 5 categories and analyze this in a context of objective versus subjective, religion as a special case disappears.

 

[JaysonR]

Pretty much agrred there Tommy.
A pigeon will repeatedly do whatever it was they were doing when the automated feeder first delivered food in the mistaken belief that that action, and not a timer, causes food to appear. Failure for food to appear causes them to repeat the action more, rather than stop it.

I seriously doubt correlative and primal behaviour is then exclusive to religion.

People with and without religion believe some very odd things.

 

[Leumas]

Huh...what an odd discourse.

People do believe in a wide rang of ideas; I've even met Christians who firmly hold to thst claim while at the same time claim Jesus never existed.

Yes indeed!

Some people believe they have been abducted by extraterrestrials. Some may even believe it while maintaining that there are no extraterrestrials.

There is no accounting for the quirkiness of the human mind.

If anything the fact that some people can claim to be Christian despite not believing that there was a Christ proves the vitiating effect of religion on the human brain.

I personally think that a person who beives that he was abducted by nonexistent aliens is just as irrational as a person who believes in a god who he believes does not exist.

 

[JaysonR]

Typically, and I know this is not popular, I tend to think of it as the human brain's effect upon religion.
Meaning; the individuals tend to want what they believe. Once unsettled, few tend to be made to believe again.

For religion to do so much, we would be granting it primacy in form...which I don't think it really deserves.