The Book(s) That Did It

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The Book(s) That Did It

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1princemuchao
Modifié : Sep 29, 2006, 2:15 am

What book or books have you read that made you question your entire worldview? That changed your life or your way of thinking significantly?

My first was The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson - despite (or because of) its mysticism, it showed me that there was so much more out there and got me THINKING. (Intellectual Curiosity)

Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth finally made me confront and dispose of the last vestiges of Christianity that clung to the far corners of my mind. (Bye, J.C.!)

George Orwell's Animal Farm firmly convinced me that humans were inherently evil and that there was no hope (Nihilist faze)

The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins brought what I had thought I understood about natural selection and evolution into sharp focus, and sent me firmly down the road of Skepticism, which in turn led to comfortable atheism and secular humanist thinking (where I'm at)

I'm planning on reading the Bible from cover to cover next year, so I need you guys to pray for me, okay?

2dodger
Modifié : Jan 28, 2007, 6:34 pm

Ah, good topic!

There are myriad books that have help shape my views on any number of subjects. But being the heathens group, I will stick mostly to those that have shaped my moral, religious, and world views.

The one single book that changed my way of thinking the most--in the broadest general sense--was Thoreau’s Walden. It changed the way I viewed most everything: nature, human existence, the ills of materialism (in the consumerism sense), even the pursuit of the so-called “American Dream.” And to a lesser extent--though still very important--Life Without Principal (no touchstone!) helped to further shape my views. I think I have offended more than one person when I say that Thoreau is my personal Jesus Christ.

My studies in philosophy, and specifically ethics, have led to many changes in my views. There are far too many books to list, but a verity of texts from Plato, Kant, Descartes, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, et al. assisted the most.

Two of the first books that I read that were truly critical of Christianity, and which helped me realize the topic wasn’t so taboo that no one dare argue it, were The Anti-christ by Nietzsche and Letters from the Earth from Mark Twain (which princemuchao also lists). A Mencken Chrestomathy by H. L. Mencken really helped me to organize my thoughts regarding religion as well. Specifically, I found that he felt as I felt, but had a more eloquent way of stating those beliefs.

Two books that help shake my former belief (one held by many Americans) that America is the be-all-end-all envy of the world, were Gore Vidal’s The Last Empire Essays and more recently Affluenza, which illustrated to me that America, may in fact, be harming the rest of the world with our rampant consumerism, industrialization and overall cupidity.

Finally, Richard Dawkins' and Sam Harris’ books have made me rethink hiding behind the term agnostic and calling myself an atheist; part of me feels a little dirty for giving in, since this particular shift is a stated goal of Dawkins, nevertheless, he has made some compelling arguments and I am comfortable in saying that I am an atheist.

Princemuchao, good luck on reading the “Good Book” cover to cover. I once started out on that mission, but I was only 10 or 11, and after reading about three pages of Geneses, I decided that my Peanuts books were a lot more interesting...though not nearly as violent! ;-)

3Catana
Sep 29, 2006, 9:40 am

Even in a herd of cats, my personal experiences tend to shift me to the borders. LOL. My first real influences were fairy stories and folk tales. From them I learned about a multitude of cultures, and the ways in which they're actually similar in regards to values. They also taught me about right effort, long before I ever heard of Buddhism. Since my parents had a complete set of Mark Twain's works, I wouldn't be surprised if Letters From Earth was an influence.

Later major influences have been Idries Shah's books on Sufism, studies in anthropology and psychology, and yes, the RAW/Shea, Leary crowd.

4sbrickner
Oct 1, 2006, 6:39 am

I'd have to say Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A Heinlein. Valentine Michael Smith and Jubal Harshaw religious ideas clearly suggested that what was traditional (pretty laissez-faire Catholicism, in my house growing up) wasn't necessarily reasonable, or right.

5amylphil Premier message
Modifié : Oct 1, 2006, 6:07 pm

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

6Suralon
Oct 14, 2006, 4:15 am

The books that started me on the path of unorhodoxy
belive in or not would be the works of Hans Holzer which I used to read quite avidly as teenager. The theories discussed cocerning the phenomenon of poltergeists and their origin certainly affected my theology and metaphysics. Another would be The Jesus Scroll ,by Donovan Joyce an australian writer
whose book I read while I was in college. Not an easy book to find any more if ever. I agree science fiction can broaden ones perpective. Not mention David Hume, Neitzche, Aleister Crowley, and others.

7amylphil
Oct 15, 2006, 7:43 pm

Ok, Let me try this again a. The books that most affected me was actually reading the bible itself. I would also recommend the Harlot by the Side of the Road and How We Believe. Both of these books are very eye opening.

9nicoletort
Oct 27, 2006, 3:53 pm

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho had a profound affect on how I live my life. I was a sophomore in high school when I read it, so I was at a good point to read a book about following your dreams and desires no matter what life throws at you. I just found it at the perfect time; I was on the verge of giving up things I've wanted for a long time in favor of soemthing safer, and it convinced me not to.

princemuchao: I'm baptised & confirmed Catholic, but I'm not particularly religous, and I don't remember the last time I went to church. That being said, having read the bible cover to cover, to see what christianity had to say about things (where the Church gets their ...different(to put it politely) political views), I recommend The Catholic Youth Bible... it's aimed towards teens and it has articles alongside the actual text to explain how it applies to life today, making it easier to understand where the christian views are coming from. But it depends on what you're reading it for.

And I learned the hard way that it's ok to skip the chapters describing the specific dimensions of how to build temples, because they're likely to turn you off, and skimming them won't detract from the overall story/message, depending on what you're reading for. I just wish someone had told me that when I decided to take it on, so I'm passing the knowledge on to you.

Good luck!

10bookcrazed
Nov 7, 2006, 3:41 am

For the most part, books come to me to confirm my developing thought, rather than to change it. But I recall that reading Deepak Chopra's Ageless Body, Timeless Mind completely changed my direction; not in my philosophical thought, but in the way I was living my life.

I finally read the bible after years and years of people telling me what they thought it said. Now I have my own views. Well, not really. I read Hugh Schonfield's The Original New Testament and my current views are very much influenced by the historical notes that are at the bottom of nearly every page. Schonfield sought out and translated the earliest manuscripts he could find of each of the books in the New Testament. He did find a few errors in translation (compared to the most widely read versions) but nothing substantive in my view. What was eye-opening was the detailed historical context he provided, as well as a view into Jewish mysticism that so informed the work and beliefs of St Paul. Once I realized that St Paul wrote in the context of a belief that the world was coming to an end within his lifetime, if not next week, his words have quite a different meaning. For instance, he preached celibacy, but said, Go ahead and get married if you just can't do that. In the context of the world coming to an end in a matter of days or months, it was a good idea to spend a lot of time getting hearts and minds ready and not waste energy on creating pregnancies that were not going to come to term. He most likely was not recommending celibacy as a way of life for people who expected to live a normal life span. This is only one example of hundreds that made my reading experience worthwhile.

I have just tackled the Old Testament in the form of a 1935 edition called The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature. It is the King James Version, but in print big enough to read comfortably and with all the verse and chapter markings removed. As well, poetry is printed in poetry format. It definitely is easier to read in this format.

I am also reading Genesis, the companion volume to Bill Moyers's TV series by the same name. I have not seen the video of the series, but now am motivated to seek it out. This round-table discussion of the stories in the first book of the Old Testament is stimulating, interesting and a peek into the world of those who make it their living to make sense of the bible. It has been particularly helpful in my efforts to understand the bible as literature. As a writer, I was entranced with the plot critiques by writers, actors, directors, biblical scholars and others who view Genesis as a very interesting collection of stories.

Finally, the very fascinating The Alphabet versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain motivated my purchase of a couple of bibles, just as a matter of self-education. I suppose his book could be considered a history of literacy, and the Christian bible just can't be left out of such a history. Briefly, he proposes that the abstract nature of non-pictographic alphabets stimulates the left side of the brain; and in the early stages of abstract-alphabet literacy in any society, the sudden overstimulation of the left side of the brain results in misogyny. Thus all societies go through a period of repression of (and violence against) women as they adopt an alphabet. His argument is persuasive.

11Pastafarian
Déc 14, 2006, 3:11 pm

A couple of books that come to mind:

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond laid out a very interesting idea about how and why societies developed the ways they did. I tend to be skeptical about this sort of speculation, which is all it is, in a way, but I found this book quite cogent and fascinating.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig influenced me mightily when I was young, and I read it several times. I read it again a few years ago, and I was less impressed. Still, it changed my way of thinking back in the day.

I'm reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins now, but another book whose title I can no longer remember introduced me to the idea that natural selection works at the level of the gene and not the organism. That changed the way I think.

12Hera
Modifié : Déc 14, 2006, 3:25 pm

I was brought up to be an Atheist by my family. Consequently, no one book 'did it' for me. My father's library consisted of Heinleim, Asimov, Lem, Jose Farmer et al. and I read them all as soon as I was able. I was given books about Evolution, the Universe and other scientific matters as Christmas presents. There was no Bible in my house until I was given one at secondary school. Coming from such a Rationalist background, school assemblies were torture, as was RE.

I've since read the Bible extensively, been on an Alpha course, hung out with Evangelicals and STILL don't believe in god. I tell religious people I'm a Buddhist to stall any conversations about Faith: Christians aren't very good at refuting Buddha, but they'll bore you to death if you profess straight Atheism.

13somebodyelse Premier message
Déc 15, 2006, 12:00 am

Like Hera, I was raised in a non-religious (agnostic, not atheist) family. So no one book really did it. I've been in Catholic schools for 10 years now (not because they're Catholic, but Jesuits make really good educators), and am still not convinced.

Recently I've been getting into more science books (as opposed to the humanities that I'd been interested) and as physics moved to biology, I started reading Dawkins which got me reading philosophy of Atheism, including his new The God Delusion and Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation. I've just started Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett, which is more about whether or not we should study religion scientifically.

All those have generally convinced me to move from agnosticism to atheism (with the caveat that of course we can't prove anything, but the burden of proof is always on the positive.)

14Bookmarque
Modifié : Jan 20, 2007, 9:52 am

My story fits, but not exactly the way yours do;

My parents became BACs when I was 10. The first few years of any born-againer are intense and in my early teens they would send me to evening sessions with our youth pastor to help us deal with the evils inherent to teenaged years - sex, drugs and the equally evil Rock and Roll.

So, this particular session was geared towards the music end of things - telling us that R&R was of the devil and how he tried to control people and collect their souls through it. Lucifer being a former angel whose very body was made up of musical instruments designed to praise God was used to illustrate how those instruments have now been corrupted. Whatever.

The visual aid to all of this were various album covers that showed how evil R&R really was. This was 1981-2 or so and I was 14/15. So we had the usual Ozzy Osbourne/Motley Crue fare as well as the harder to justify ELO and Led Zeppelin. Backwards Masking was a BIG DEAL. Poor Ozzy - he's hardly understandable forwards and now you think you can get coherence backwards?? Oy vey.

Then up on the screen goes the shot of the Uriah Heep album cover for Abominog (http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000005RG7.01._AA156_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg ) which does indeed look demonic. I give them that and if they only stopped there, perhaps I would still have faith in humanity and God.

But the youth pastor proceeded to explain that even the band's name was pure evil and that Uriah Heep was in fact one of the many demons or names of Satan (like Beelzebub). I sat there for a few seconds, mulling this over. Then I raised my hand and said

"Actually, Uriah Heep is a character in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield and while he was a slimy jerk and ended up in jail, I don't think he was the devil."

Pretty much I got silence and my whole question was glossed over and the pastor moved onto another slide featuring another innocent album cover.

This was the moment where 'the scales dropped from my eyes' and I realized that it was only luck that made me able to catch this lie. How many others had they told me? And wasn't lying wrong anyway? Why were they doing this? How could I ever trust them again?

My conclusion - it is all suspect and probably all bullshit. Over the next few years I separated myself from church and religion and ceased to believe. My parents are still BACs, but much less rabid about it and you'd never know if you met them unless you asked them. They wish I still believed, but at least they don't argue with me about it anymore.

15heinous-eli
Modifié : Jan 20, 2007, 3:54 am

In high school, my introduction to Existentialism came through Absurdist literature, namely Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. My dabblings in Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Existentialism were what helped lead me to skepticism and doubt.

Doing a thorough reading of the Quran as well as other Islamic literature such as The Fundamentals of Islamic Creed made me doubt even further.

The deal-breaker for me and Islam was an in-depth study of the writings of Augustine and realizing that all religions use the exact same (and identically fallacy-ridden) "reasoning" to reach disparate conclusions. In addition, it was through lectures on his works that I first encountered Stoicism, which is essentially what my personal philosophy has become. Descartes's notion of breaking all presumptions down and then reconstructing from nothing was also quite influential for me.

Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark made me feel much more confident about leaving behind my superstitious, archaic beliefs.

After the fact, Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out made me feel less alone and much prouder about the choice I made, as it made me realize that I came from a rich tradition of intellectual, humanistic, and sometimes spiritual individuals who faced adversity after leaving the faith into which they were born (although Ibn Warraq's Islamophobia is a bit ridiculous and single-minded to me).

16clamairy
Jan 25, 2007, 2:46 pm

It wasn't a book for me, but a college course called Religion, Magic and Witchcraft, in which those three subjects were treated with absolutely equality. You can probably begin to imagine the shock it caused my little Catholic conscience. I've never been the same, thankfully.

17darrow
Jan 25, 2007, 5:01 pm

Not a book but a magazine! I can't remember which one but it contained a very clear explanation of Darwin's theory. It sparked my interest in evolution. I read On The Origin of Species and Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. It all made sense and the few doubts I had rapidly evaporated.

18myshelves
Jan 26, 2007, 12:36 am

The first for me was probably The Rubaiyat, which I read as a child.

19WholeHouseLibrary
Jan 26, 2007, 4:59 am

Siddartha by Herman Hesse

It's not the book , per se, that was a major revelation. It was a confrontation between my friend Bruce and Sister Inez in 4th grade that shook my faith (and for good reason). I didn't read the book until I was in high school, and it gave me the understanding that absolutely no one has a real clue to the whys and wherefores of existence. That freed me of most of the psychological shackles that was my upbringing. I do not profess to be of any theological belief, choosing instead to be as generous and helpful as I can to others. I have to remind myself occasionally that I need to be good to myself as well.

Since high school, I've audited Comparative Religion classes, and independently read several books on either side of the god vs: nature argument. From where I stand, this is small potoatoes -- we've got much more important things to be concerned about.

20oh_that_zoe
Jan 28, 2007, 2:17 pm

The god vs. nature argument is only one facet of the war of the worldviews that has raged throughout human history. Metaphysical debate may seem to be so much sound and fury, but I invite you to begin counting the conflicts that have resulted from religious differences. For that reason alone, I believe that religion is an important force to understand. Many of us have unhappy memories of a particular worldview being wielded against us, but rather than reject religion/myth/spirituality altogether, we can grab the controls and recreate these qualities—reinscribe them with new possibilities and associations.

*Stepping down from soap box* That said, finding Hakim Bey's T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism during adolescence gave me important ideas I still use. When the number of revolutions turned reactionary starts to depress me, I think of the idea of continuous insurrection.

I'm also indebted to Barbara G. Walker, especially for her The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects and The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets for the tapping the power of myth to call an entire (patriarchal) worldview into question and imply (and enable the creation of) others.

I suppose I'll end the truncated list with Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman for leading me to a feeling of sacredness about my gender expression.

21dbookmaniac Premier message
Fév 13, 2007, 7:10 pm

Message 10 from bookcrazed wrote,
" (In the Bible, Paul) preached celibacy, but said, Go ahead and get married if you just can't do that."

Interestingly just this morning I read this passage in the bible, (1Corinthians chapter 7 verse 1and2) and I thought this was strange contridiction... after studying it a bit more I realized that Paul was responding to what the Corinthians wrote him.. they told Paul that Celebacy or not touching a women was good... Paul repeated their statement then he corrected that statement by saying that it is good to be married, and to go ahead and get married.

Of course we can all read the same thing and come away with very different views and understanding of what is really there. This is just what I came away with.

22michcall
Fév 13, 2007, 9:43 pm

Well while we're talking religion, The Book of Mormon has certainly had the greastest effect on my life. I find that it solves those little unanswered questions from the Bible and certainly has given me more to think about and ponder than any other book.

23Atomicmutant
Modifié : Fév 14, 2007, 1:21 pm

#22 Hmmm, since the group is called "Happy Heathens", I hope it's not out of line for me to point out the book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, for a lot of good information on the Book of Mormon. Give that a read, come back and share what you think. (He politely suggested)

EDIT: Come to think of it, that Krakauer book could be a "book that did it"

24NicholasOakley
Fév 14, 2007, 12:17 pm

The Routledge Russell collection, particularly Western Philosophy and Why I Am Not a Christian, were particularly formative, inspiring both an interest in classical philosophical texts and the atheist position in a clear, understandable way.

Other texts including Atheism: The Case Against God and The God Delusion have helped me piece together a coherent personal position on religion, belief and superstition, and prompted membership to the (British) National Secular Society in a flurry of solidarity.

I also found The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Saramago an interesting humanist slant on the biblical story of Jesus and Mary, but not as good as The Brick Testament, which is, perhaps, the greatest introduction possible to biblical mythology!

25amancine
Modifié : Fév 14, 2007, 3:42 pm

For me, I think it was more a case of finding books that confirmed what I already believed (or didn't believe, perhaps I should say). Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth and Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A Heinlein were both influential, as was The War Prayer by Mark Twain, which was actually first read to me by one of my elementary school teachers.

26dodger
Fév 14, 2007, 5:20 pm

#24 balzac, indeed Why I Am Not a Christian is fantastic (Russell is fantastic!). I have to say that I did not care much for Atheism: The Case Against God though. For me, I think the title promised too much, and therefore I was disappointed with the content. Since then I have been reluctant to read any other works by Smith. Still, I would like to read his Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies; anyone here read it?

27Atomicmutant
Fév 14, 2007, 5:52 pm

I'd like to thank those in this thread that pointed out Letters from the Earth, I just stopped by my Half-Price books and picked it up! Looking forward to checking it out, I hadn't heard about this before.

28myshelves
Fév 14, 2007, 10:44 pm

#27
Letters from the Earth

Be careful. Do not drink or eat anything while reading; you may choke. It might be better not to read it in public; people rendered helpless by laughter can cause alarm. You should have someone available to whom you can gasp: "Listen to this!"

:-)

29incircles
Modifié : Fév 16, 2007, 4:53 pm

I was raised agnostic tending towards atheist. There have been a lot of times in my life when, craving a sense of awe, I almost decided to pursue some religion and almost didn't care which.

I've gradually developed an honest sense of spirituality, though, shaped by the psychedelic and the scientific: a reverence for the very small. The gene, the meme, the electron, the tiniest bits of energy that express themselves through our universe and ourselves. Creationism from the inside out. Ultimate meaning found through the expression of the eternal small in the transient large.

Richard Dawkins, to name a relatively recent discovery, helped shape that reverence.

Nevertheless, I feel more kinship with the religious than with those who subscribe to nihilistic and nonspiritual sorts of atheism.

30ExVivre
Fév 18, 2007, 6:42 am

I can't say a particular book rocked my worldview, but no book has done more to keep me happily heathen than the Bible.

I see there is a Christian Historical Fiction group - I wonder if this will top their reading list. ;)

31Atomicmutant
Fév 18, 2007, 11:04 am

Well, I got through Letters from the Earth, and the shorter Letter to the Earth. There are a bunch more short tales in the book, I'll pick those off a bit at a time.

But, yes, hilarious stuff. I particularly liked the bits about Noah and the flies!

I had read a short excerpt of this stuff in Doubt, a history, which I would highly recommend here as well. But for some reason I didn't know about the whole essay..this is a new treasure, I'm going to pass this along to others. Thanks again!

32myshelves
Fév 18, 2007, 12:56 pm

#31
Yes. I never hear one of the reports of disease in Africa without thinking of Noah and those flies. Had to get them aboard --- they are the result of Intelligent Design.

Nothing to do with religion, but be sure to check out the essay on Cooper's Literary Offenses. :-)

33Arctic-Stranger
Fév 28, 2007, 1:47 pm

Richard Dawkins is about to drive me back to the fundamentalists. He is every bit as unscholarly as they are, setting up straw men, demolishing them, and then trying to convince us that he has done something worthy.

If he is so all fired set on getting to the poison in religion itself, why doesnt he take on serious theologians, instead of the clowns he ends up going after. The few times I have read him debating Francis Collins he gives in on almost every point, saying something like, "I am not going after people like you."

In fact, A LOT of Christians think that Falwell, Robertson, Haggard, etc are ridiculous. Now if you can make Rheinhold Neibuhr or Karl Barth an object of scorn, then you have my attention.

34Scaryguy
Avr 23, 2007, 1:02 pm

Besides just observing religious delusional behaviour, once I allowed myself to question, the book that turned me was The Age of Reason: Being an investigation of true and fabulous theology by Thomas Paine. Over 200 years old and still just as heretical as before!

35Busifer
Modifié : Mai 8, 2007, 10:29 am

As a few of you others here I grew up in a strictly atheistic familiy - I grew up an atheist, and despite studying different religions I've had no reason to change my mind - quite the opposite, in fact.
Anyway, if one book truly has changed how I view things it has to be Samhället som teater. I'm sorry for there being no translation of it, or none that I know of. It's about aestethics and policymaking in the Third Reich, and the title could be loosely translated to "Society as theater".

It made me question my own views on aestethics. I once, when younger, was a harsh ruler of style and design. Not as in fashion, I've always been very uninterested in that, but as in what your aestethics told about you as a person etc. (Mind you, I was an Art Director at the time - since I evolved into User Experience and is by now at least nominally an usability consultant.)

To me that was a kind of religion, and reading that book helped med dispense with it - hopefully for good.

36DaynaRT
Mai 8, 2007, 10:37 am

The book that did it, eh? Must have been my 9th grade English textbook. We had just read an excerpt from the Epic of Gilgamesh out of it and I clearly remember that was when I realized the myths in the Christian bible were no different than the myths from Rome/Greece/Scandinavia.

37caspermilktoast Premier message
Mai 11, 2007, 10:43 pm

I was an evangelical, non-denominational Christian until two years ago. Because I was firmly entrenched within that belief system, my paradigm naturally started changing from within it:

1.) End Times Fiction: A Biblical Consideration Of The Left Behind Theology by Gary DeMar
2.) Last Days Madness by Gary DeMar
3.) The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord's Second Coming by James Stuart Russell
4.) The Second Coming: Mission Accomplished: An Alternative View to Current End-Times by Steve and Tom Kloske
5.) The Consummation of the Ages (A.D. 70 and the Second Coming in the Book of Revelation) by Kurt Simmons

Once my presuppositions and ignorance concerning the end times were demolished, I began to study Christianity from an outside point of view:

1.) The Origins of Christianity and the Bible by Andrew Benson
2.) Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman
3.) Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions by T. W. Doane

I moved on to investigating non-belief per se:

1.) Atheism: The Case Against God by George Smith
2.) Atheist Universe by David Mills
3.) Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
4.) Critiques of God edited by Peter A. Angeles
5.) The End of Faith by Sam Harris
6.) The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (though I generally do not prefer him due to his radical atheist agenda)
7.) Natural Atheism by David Eller
8.) Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

Those were the paradigm-shifting works near the beginning of my journey. However, there have been many since, all of which have made their own important contributions. I call myself an agnostic naturalist in large part thanks to these.

38WholeHouseLibrary
Mai 11, 2007, 11:11 pm

Welcome back from the Dark Side (tic).

39myshelves
Mai 11, 2007, 11:49 pm

caspermilktoast (love the name),

You almost give me hope for the human race. :-) It is so great to encounter someone who went through logical steps to arrive at his position.

What started you on the trail? Or had you always harbored a doubt or two?

40caspermilktoast
Modifié : Mai 12, 2007, 2:27 am

myshelves, thanks for kinds words.

I suppose that I always had my doubts about my faith. However, I had neither the knowledge nor the logical know-how to sort through the issues. I simply held fast to faith, and took comfort in "knowing" that I would eventually receive the answers, or would get to a point where I wouldn't need them.

As for my actual journey out of it, there were definitely times when I took detours into irrationality, and wanted to maintain my faith at all costs. But honest inquiry won out in the end, and after so many diverging areas of study revealed that religion has undergone evolution, and that a natural morality can equal or exceed the practicality of a religious one, I felt that I would rather be an outside observer than a participator. I'm still fascinated by all religions, and I continue to study them with an insatiable curiosity. However, school has hampered my independent studies in this areas recently (though I immensely enjoy studying philosophy and government at the University of Texas at Austin). I hope to get back to studying religion and spirituality soon.

I suppose that two web sites really helped to point me in the directions I would eventually explore:

The Preterist Archive (http://www.preteristarchive.com)
Craig Duckett's Control-Z (http://www.control-z.com) ***This is a FANTASTIC resource put together by a very impressive and encouraging individual. Were it not for this resource, I would probably be in an earlier, less mature stage of my paradigm.

By the way, I love that quote by Newton in your profile. I might steal it and put it on my wall. :-)

41myshelves
Mai 12, 2007, 2:50 am

casper,

I stole the quote from someone who used it as a sig file on e-mail, so why not. :-)

42c_wh_so
Mai 30, 2007, 1:45 am

Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul for pointing out the limitations of reason.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson for a epistle of simple, modern Christian faith.
The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey, which articulates the kind of earnest searching I wish I had.
And recently, the TV documentary "Root of All Evil" by Richard Dawkins, based on The God Delusion, for showing me that Christian fundamentalists aren't the only people who can be profoundly certain and profoundly ignorant at the same time. And, that very smart people can look very silly at times.
As you can tell, I'm starting to swing the other way.

43fikustree
Mai 30, 2007, 10:25 am

My I was raised Christian Orthodox but from hippie parents which lead to my current religion- open mindedness. I used to have total belief in science but then I read the structure of scientific revolutions and that opened up my mind on a lot of things. I read a lot of the mind is science folks and I believe in all of it, I just don't think that is the whole story.

Now I read a lot of Eastern religion, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism and others. It is a very interesting. I love Osho because he is kind of the other side of the Eastern Philosophy and his work has been opening my mind.

Probably what changed my world view the most was watching a lot of Star Trek the Next Generation growing up though.

44myshelves
Mai 30, 2007, 10:52 am

And if one finds "limitations of reason," one then moves on to embrace unreason?

What's with this "belief in science" business? No one is asked to have a "belief" in science. You look at the evidence, and you accept the conclusions or you don't. (However, if you don't accept some conclusions, such as those about electricity, and mess about with live wires....)

45littlegeek
Mai 30, 2007, 11:45 am

myshelves, you might want to check out the work of Godel if you want to understand the limitations of reason. Basically, our science is based on symbol systems, which necessarily begin with some axioms. You're already drawing a circle around what you can talk about simply by setting up a system of study. There's always something outside that circle.

Or at least, that's how I understand it.

The other thing that gives me pause is how various forms of mathematics presuppose things like imaginary numbers and irrational numbers, without which they won't work. You have to just agree as a given to use the square root of minus one, which everyone agrees is not possible. Rational? You decide.

46LolaWalser
Mai 30, 2007, 12:10 pm

Are velvet cakes made of velvet?

Irrational and imaginary numbers are used in perfectly rational, real ways, which enable us to investigate (reproducibly and reliably) a variety of phenomena. It is certainly more rational to employ axioms in ways that we have proven work, even if we cannot prove the axioms themselves, than to posit any of the myriad religious fantasies as absolute truths.

47littlegeek
Modifié : Mai 30, 2007, 12:36 pm

Lola, I agree, there's nothing wrong with using axioms, it's really our only option. It's just that people tend to forget about them and they do represent a limit to what can be talked about within a given system. myshelves seemed to be saying there weren't any with respect to reason.

We are all subject to our assumptions, even the most rational among us.

48myshelves
Modifié : Mai 30, 2007, 12:46 pm

#45 & 46 & 47

Quite. My question still stands.

If we can't get all the answers through reason do we abandon reason and opt for superstition?

Perhaps we need a definition of reason? I'd have said that Godel used it to arrive at his theorems. :-)

49littlegeek
Mai 30, 2007, 12:59 pm

I would never advocate abandoning reason entirely, just accept that even it has limits. Who was advocating total abandonment? I don't see that anywhere in this discussion.

50LolaWalser
Mai 30, 2007, 4:07 pm

Well, who doesn't accept that reason has limits--and imagination doesn't?

But saying that reason "has limits" is meaningless without context. What's the context? Astrophysics? Theology? Belief in Santa Claus? Falling in love?

I don't understand how going from, say, irrational numbers (if only those wacky mathematicians didn't delight in wackiness) brings one to the notion of, say, theology's rationality. Or, how the imperfection of our knowledge about the universe ends up meaning there actually IS a god.

51littlegeek
Mai 30, 2007, 5:14 pm

God has always been an umbrella concept for whatever we don't understand. But it really doesn't follow qed that because we don't understand everything, there must be someone who does. Quite a leap.

There's lot of things in life besides rationality to give people ideas. But for me they only bring up questions, not answers. I think many (maybe most) people get tired of asking questions and settle on some kind of canned answers. That's the only explanation I've come up with for religion.

52myshelves
Modifié : Mai 30, 2007, 5:22 pm

littlegeek,

I was reacting to #42. I don't see that "pointing out the limitations of reason" fits with "simple, modern Christian faith."

(Edited to add) #51: Agreed. Though I'd add that fear of death is also an explanation. "What? Wonderful precious me cease to exist? Can't be."

53nepejwster
Mai 30, 2007, 5:51 pm

The book that tipped the bucket of my faith upside-down was actually a textbook for a religion class at a Methodist College my freshman year. I was majoring in religion and planned to be a missionary. The book was about the Old Testament (that may or may not have been the name of it). It discussed myths from the Old Testament (such as the tower of Babel, the arc with two of each animal, the ten plagues God inflicted on the Egyptians, etc.), and explained how these were contained in more ancient religions and incorporated into the Old Testament as well as other religions of the time. I was crushed, having believed that every word of the bible was dictated by God. I quickly decided that if the Old Testament was just stories passed along by oral history until they were written down, I didn't trust the new testament either. After much consultation with my teachers, ministers, and mentors, who weren't able to assuage my doubts, I changed colleges and majors. I've been a skeptic ever since. I don't call myself an atheist because most of them I've read are absolutely certain they are right and everyone else is wrong. I have the same problem with that as I have with any other stripe of true believer. While I believe that, based on current scientific and historical evidence now available the odds of the existence of an supernatural entity are breathtakingly small, science reveals every day that our universe is breathtakingly stranger than we have yet comprehended. My mind is open to undreamt-of wonders, but only those for which there is reliable, and replicable evidence.

54c_wh_so
Mai 30, 2007, 10:41 pm

Myshelves, I'm not saying that because reason has limitations, you've got to discard it. That's a tad melodramatic, don't you think? It's like abandoning God because a few stories written 2,500 years ago aren't historically accurate, nor precisely applicable to modern times. Or, it's like abandoning chemistry because you figure out there's no such thing as phlogiston.

But I didn't intend to make a grand statement slating reason. It's just a personal anecdote. Before I read Voltaire's Bastards, I assumed that reason was "good", and the application of it would naturally lead to better outcomes. But it's not the case. Reason's just a tool used to make decisions (e.g. Hitler's Final Solution was immoral, but reasoned). Okay, it's not particularly profound point (and I'm stating the bleeding obvious), but as a book that "did it", this was a starting point.

Gilead I should've said was an example of applied modern, Christian faith. Sorry. I tend to waffle and write things I don't mean. It is a marvellous book, though. Read it sometime.

Nepejwster, it seems that a lot of people lose their faith when they realise the Bible isn't historically and theologically infalliable. I think the worst thing about fundamentalist Christianity is that it doesn't prepare people for the truth. The illectually dishonest bury their heads in the sand. A lot of others just walk away from it altogether.

But a personal faith is grounded in personal experience, right? To have studied religion and to have planned to be a missionary, you would've been pretty damn certain God exists. As a kid, you didn't believe in God because the Bible said that Noah built an Ark, or Elijah confronted the priests of Baal. You believed because you felt that God was active in your life (presumably). Just because bible stories didn't happen in real life doesn't automatically invalidate your experiences. Of course, it doesn't mean that those experiences aren't just a delusion, either. That's the crux of faith. You believe because you believe. You can't prove it, you can't prove against it. It's exceedingly unlikely that a deity exists, but possible. It's also exceedingly unlikely that sentient life exists, but I don't see anyone discounting their own existence because of the very slim odds.

But again, I waffle. Sorry all.

55Glassglue
Mai 31, 2007, 2:00 am

#54- "It's also exceedingly unlikely that sentient life exists, but I don't see anyone discounting their own existence because of the very slim odds."

Actually, there's a one hundred percent probability that sentient life exists; I just typed this sentence.

56myshelves
Mai 31, 2007, 11:15 am

#54

I suggested before that someone define "reason." If no one else will, I'll offer a standard definition.

Reason: the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination.

It is good. It is the ability which has, among other things, enabled homo sap to manipulate rather than merely adapt to his environment.

Reason has limits, as does the tool of logic, but the fact that a bigot reasoned from false premises to find a need for a "final solution" isn't one of them.

I think the worst thing about fundamentalist Christianity is that it doesn't prepare people for the truth.

But what they teach IS the truth, according to the fundamentalists. All else is lies, and of the devil. I think that those older myths are explained as God's way of preparing people for the Bible. Or something. :-)

As a kid, you didn't believe in God because the Bible said that Noah built an Ark, or Elijah confronted the priests of Baal. You believed because you felt that God was active in your life (presumably).

I can't answer for nepejwster, but I don't recall any child I knew who believed in God for any reason other than that we'd been taught to believe from the time we were toddlers. We also believed in Santa, who was active in our lives at least once a year, because our parents told us about him. Mileage may vary for those from religious backgrounds in which personal encounters with God are considered the norm. They were considered to be rare miracles in my tradition. You worshipped. God was known to like that. Keep it up, and obey the rules, and you'd get to heaven. You felt suitably pious and virtuous and smug. End of story.

57DromJohn
Mai 31, 2007, 11:26 am

No book did it, but the book that solidified "it" was the double hit of Abraham and Job of Fear and trembling and The Sickness unto death by Soren Kierkegaard.

The leap a faith is an admirable quality that I haven't found.

58myshelves
Mai 31, 2007, 11:42 am

#57:

What's admirable about a "leap of faith"?

I've never heard "wishful thinking" described as admirable, and I see little difference.

59Glassglue
Mai 31, 2007, 12:41 pm

#58

Wonderfully expressed.

60LolaWalser
Mai 31, 2007, 1:13 pm

Actually, there's a one hundred percent probability that sentient life exists; I just typed this sentence.

Actually, you may have simply passed the Turing test. :)

61Glassglue
Mai 31, 2007, 3:07 pm

Me? Machine intelligence? (Activating incredulity emulator)

I do like to think of myself as a meat robot.

62c_wh_so
Mai 31, 2007, 10:09 pm

Just saying that the odds of intelligent life are very slim. Putting it briefly - a rocky planet that's geologically active and large enough to sustain an atmosphere, that's X-kilometres from a yellow sun, with sufficient water, carbon, etc. to enable amino acids to form, sufficient time to allow those amino acids to form complex shapes like RNA, to replicate that structure, to evolve into cells (by the way, have we worked out how that happens?), to form multi-celled organisms, to evolve a CNS with a large cerebral cortex, to not get killed by random meteors, geological changes, weather fluctuations, solar flares, misc. tigers, lions, bears (oh my!), and be put under just the right kind of evolutionary strain to favour foresight and planning over brute strength and physical adaptation (think Homo Sapiens in a drying Sahara vs Neanderthals in Europe). That's a very slim chance. Not impossible (obviously), but very slim. Much like the existence of God. The probability that something exists isn't proof that it does/doesn't exists. *sigh* Yes, it means I have to concede the possibility of Martians, unicorns, lepricorns...

I can't answer for nepejwster, but like myshelves, I'll do so anyway (oh my, how nepejwster's ears must be burning!). Yes, you do believe what you're told as kid. But you do have a "spiritual sense" (kind of like Spiderman's spider-sense, only less tingly) that tells you it's real. As you get older, it's that spiritual sense that tells you that God is real. Just because the bible isn't historically accurate, it doesn't invalidate that spiritual sense. Admittedly, mine was never that attuned to begin with, but I imagine nepejwster's was, and hence, his/her's talk about religious studies and missonary work.

Fundamentalist Christianity has a peanut-brittle theology; it seems impressively solid, is extremely nuts, but it's so unyielding that once you exert the right kind of pressure, it snaps. That's what I dislike about those guys; they've got a moral responsibilty to give their kids a firm theological background, and they don't. They just spin stories.

I never feel virtuous or pious or smug. On the contrary, I'm depressed that my belief in science isn't compatible with the legacy of a fundamentialist Christain upbringing. Often, I wish I was atheist. It's simpler to believe and easier to understand. But it also cuts out so much. I believe in God. I can't prove it, but as long as I believe in Him, I can't walk away.

And no, myshelves, that's not the Christian message. It's about grace, love and acceptance. Read the gospels, and Paul's letters to the Romans and Corinthians. It's completely different from what you outlined.

63myshelves
Mai 31, 2007, 10:27 pm

#62

Read the NT. Not credible. Contradictory. Plus, I find the notion of killing someone (god or man) for my alleged sins to be immoral, and the idea of theophagy extremely distasteful. (Pun intended.) It's about grace, love, acceptance, and damnation for anyone who doesn't sign on with the program. Also read the OT. Interesting in parts, appalling in others. The deity described is no better then the Greek bunch, and far less interesting.

And as I keep saying, what is this "belief in science" s__t?! See message 44.

64dchaikin
Mai 31, 2007, 11:15 pm

I agree, what is with the "belief in science" s__t? Science isn't a belief, it's a method. It should not be confused with religious belief or non-belief.

Science is an awkward thing when it leaves the journals. Deep in the details science is a series of arguments that keep getting refined and sometimes completely overturned. There is no belief, you can't see beyond the data. There are no known facts. There is only data (evidence?), and there is best argument you can make with that data. That is science.

But, when taken out into the general public, suddenly scientific conclusions are stated a certain facts on the basis of "scientific evidence". So, it becomes either you believe in this "scientific" conclusion or you don't. That is just plain wrong. Belief has nothing to do with it.

To cover myself, this isn't a blank check for Christian fundamentalism (like creationism). This does not to say anything is possible. If you make an argument that contradicts the current best interpretation of the data, you still need to be able to support that argument through the scientific method: ie. you need a theory, expected results, data consistent with it, etc. Simply poking holes in a current theory and tossing it aside for another undefended theory, like most creationist arguments do, isn't good science.


65Glassglue
Mai 31, 2007, 11:24 pm

# 62

Interesting thing about unicorns; there's no good reason why they can't exist. They don't, but they could. Physiologically, unicorns are perfectly plausible. The Pliocene (is that right? maybe earlier or later) was a time of many variations on mammals (horse, deer, rhinoceros, etc...). I wouldn't be surprised if something resembling a unicorn were unearthed tomorrow.

# 63

Theophagy certainly does bring up some questions. In transubstantiation, the Eucharist and wine are taken to be literally transformed into the body and blood of christ. If one truly believes in transubstantiation, does partaking in the ritual make one a cannibal?

66myshelves
Modifié : Mai 31, 2007, 11:43 pm

#65

I'm an aunicornist, but if one is unearthed tomorrow, I will join with the unicornists.

I'm not sure if "cannibalism" applies to eating a deity, but as Jesus was a man (as well, or only, depending upon your viewpoint), the answer is yes. Even without transubstantiation or "actual presence," it is ritual cannibalism. I'm not too keen on that either. Can't imagine why people would want to do it, or why he'd have told them to.

67c_wh_so
Juin 1, 2007, 1:51 am

Belief in science, from my point of view - I'm not smart enough to know everything about everything. I haven't done the experiments. I haven't read the books. I take it on faith that someone else has, that it's been peer-reviewed and that it's the best explanation we have of a specific phenomeneon.

By the way, isn't anti-matter just a cover-all term for stuff we can't measure, can't observe, but is still "there"?

Myshelves, which parts of the Bible are contradictory? Specifics, man. And context. You can't be dismissive about something without context.

Catholics believe in transubstantiation. Prostestants don't. I think it's symbolism, myself. And I seriously doubt the last supper was meant to be taken literally. Imagine a guy, eating with his friends for the last time, knowing he's in for a horrible death in a few hours. You'd be emotional. You'd want to be remembered by your friends. You'd say something like "remember me whenever you're together", which is the gist of it. The first Christians didn't have a ritualised communion; they just brought food together and shared it.

But I've got to go home. End of Friday and all.

68littlegeek
Juin 1, 2007, 10:22 am

My take on "belief in science" is those people who believe that science has or will solve every human question. I trust the scientific method because it's the best thing we've devised as yet for many applications, but I don't believe it is the best tool for all purposes.

The real problem with Christians is they have not been taught how to think logically, nor to value their myths as myths. Actually expecting people to believe literally in such things as rising from the dead and transubstatiation robs the myth of its power, and causes confusion about what constititutes reality. Christians stole the whole transubstantiation thing from pagan religions where the whole point was that divine energy is immanent in the grain we eat (and everything else), therefore when we ritualize gratitute for this mystery, we remind ourselves are actually ingesting "god" every time we eat. When you take that beautiful and simple concept and attach a special cosmic zombie and eating his literal flesh, it's just creepy death cult stuff. AND it confuses people. You aren't supposed to literally believe silly things like this in any other context, but with god, you have to abandon rationality and poetry and mythology. It's crossing the streams.

It's explains to me why many Christians have such a problem understanding science and consider it a threat. They're confused and confunded trying to "have faith" and "believe" in stuff that's patently insane.

69BTRIPP
Modifié : Juin 1, 2007, 10:29 am

re #67: "By the way, isn't anti-matter just a cover-all term for stuff we can't measure, can't observe, but is still "there"?"

That sounds more like "dark matter" which is postulated to account for the "missing mass" that should be out in the universe according to current theories on galaxy formation, etc.

"Anti-matter" is matter composed of anti-particles. Anti-particles are things like the positron which is the anti-matter counterpart of the electron. Most of the constituent sub-atomic bits of matter have been discovered in their "anti" forms, and so it is possible for "anti-atoms" and "anti-molecules" to exist (such as "anti-hydrogen"), but these are very difficult to produce and tend to be very short-lived as any interaction with regular matter results in the annihilation of both into photons, etc.

Current theory postulates that at the Big Bang there was initially a 1:1 correspondence of anti-matter and matter particles, but some slight (a trillionth trillionth or so) imbalance in this in favor of matter resulted in all the "stuff" in the universe, made of the matter particles which remained after all the "matched pairs" annihilated each other.

It is also (via the Uncertainty Principle) postulated that matter/antimatter pairs are constantly being ephemerally created out of the void, with particles and anti-particles arising and then annihilating over very brief time frames. This also leads to the theories of how Black Holes can "evaporate" over time, with these pairs being split by the hole's horizon.

70DromJohn
Juin 1, 2007, 10:36 am

Myshelves,
What is your most and least favorite Kierkegaard?
Or and Either for me.

71reading_fox
Juin 1, 2007, 10:44 am

"Belief in Science" has tracked across several LT debates in the last few months.

#44 and #64 have the ideal version of science.

#67 picks up the problem. You (a lay person of joe general public) can't do the science, can't replicate the results, can't even examine all of the evidence, you can't trusts any one speaker over another because you have no way to evealuate their work.
For a historical problem you can just about view enough summaries of evidence that the right process was followed and the "generally accepted view of scientists" is correct. But becasue science is a process that takes decades to resolve questions, during that time it is down to "belief" that what we are told is true. This also applies to practising scientists recieveing news outside of their field, something the media is very poor (that is even worse than usual) at understanding.

72LolaWalser
Juin 1, 2007, 11:11 am

#67 picks up the problem. You (a lay person of joe general public) can't do the science,

What problem? The thing with science is that anyone COULD do it, if they so chose--or at least understand it (I'm not likely to blossom into a primaballerina at 38 either, but I CAN learn enough about and enjoy ballet nonetheless.) Science isn't a conspiracy or a religious mystery act for the initiates, trite propaganda aside.

Oh, yes, doing AND understanding science both imply some hard work. So? The point is that it's out there for anyone to study, read and think about.

73myshelves
Juin 1, 2007, 12:25 pm

#70
He was included in survey courses, but I never felt inclined to read any more.

74reading_fox
Juin 1, 2007, 12:37 pm

#72 theoretically yes.
Practiaclly no. Hence on a contraversal scientific topic such as evolution or the age of the earth, most of the debaters either believe in the science of the matter or they don't - As they have already taken a career they can't set aside 20+yrs to learn and replicate the various scientific techniques to the multitude of evidence and come up with a justification to contribute to a few posts in an online debate.

75myshelves
Juin 1, 2007, 12:57 pm

Only Catholics have transubstantiation. Others who believe in the "Real Presence" in one way or another, include Eastern rite churches, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists.

No matter. Whether it is held to be actual or symbolic, what it symbolizes is a cannibalistic rite. It is interesting to read about primitive cults in which members killed and ate a stand-in for the god in order to obtain some of the godlike powers or knowledge. (Or had defeated enemies for lunch to absorb their courage.) It is sad to see similar rituals practiced symbolically in the 21st century.

76LolaWalser
Juin 1, 2007, 1:24 pm

#74

most of the debaters either believe in the science of the matter or they don't

Well, that's the problem with discussion on teh internets, not science or the ability to teach and understand science. Moreover, it's true for any number of cherished Web topics--did the US save Europe's ass in WWII or not and so on.

As for understanding/doing science--again--if they cared enough, they could. Set aside twenty years and get a new career, or set aside two hours every day and learn how to read scientific papers, do calculus, or even perform experiments down in the cellar. To impress the importance of this "could" on you, consider the contrast with religious experience--prayer for instance. I don't even know why I'm insisting--the experiment is performed every time another kid enters university to study science. Not only that, but the experiments are endlessly repeated, experiments which prove any facet of science you can think of. Are oxygen and hydrogen gasses? Is the Earth round? Is DNA the carrier of genetic information in mice, camels and rhododendrons--there is no end to it.

You seem to be describing (prescribing?) ridiculously high levels of skepticism, whereas we are ALL laypeople in most respects. Maybe the physicists are leading us all on; I wouldn't know. Maybe my computer is powered by elves. If I ever get seriously worried about these possibilities, I know where to look for information, I know it is within my reach. And if not mine, perhaps a friend's or colleague's who already has mastery of the necessary field.

Or are we also, in addition to extreme skepticism about information, supposed to be paranoid about every other human being? Then perhaps we're slightly mad.

77myshelves
Juin 1, 2007, 2:18 pm

it is down to "belief" that what we are told is true.

Joe Public here, with a minimal education in the hard sciences. :-)

A long-ago gift of a year's subscription to "The Journal of Irreproducible Results" may have made me a tad skeptical of news reports of the latest discovery. But I accept what I'm told is "scientific truth" if it makes sense to me, or if it appears to work without making sense to me. (Lola, my computer is powered by elves, and they are cantankerous little creatures!) Luckily, no one is asking me to worship the chap who came up with the latest popular theory, or advocating that I be stoned to death if I have doubts about the Big Bang.

I wonder if the reason that theists insist that atheism and science are beliefs is that they can't imagine having reached a conclusion that is subject to change if and when new evidence is produced.

78Scaryguy
Juin 1, 2007, 2:27 pm

#67 "Myshelves, which parts of the Bible are contradictory? Specifics, man. And context. You can't be dismissive about something without context.

Here's one example

Granted, some are OT, but many are NT.

More

A Million More Examples

79myshelves
Juin 1, 2007, 2:27 pm

Myshelves, which parts of the Bible are contradictory? Specifics, man. And context. You can't be dismissive about something without context.

You can't really be innocent of all knowledge of contradictions (or as apologists call them "seeming contradictions") in the Bible, can you?

Probably the best known is the 2 accounts of the creation. The Wiki article "Creation according to Genesis" sums that one up. There are hundreds of others. At the risk of boring people who are aware of them, here are a few:

"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father..." Ezekiel 18:20
"I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation..." Exodus 20:5
"Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers" Isa 14: 21
"The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." Deu 24:16

See Matthew 1:6-16 and Luke 3:23-31. The ancestors of Jesus run from Abraham down to Joseph in Matthew, from Joseph up to Adam, in Luke. What was it about ancestry, or virginity, that they didn't understand?

They also give Joseph 2 different fathers, Matthew says Jacob & Like says Heli. I do genealogy. If someone shows me a tree and doesn't even have the grandfather correct, I don't put any credence in the list of more distant ancestors. :-)

"And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." Exodus 33:11
"For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Genesis 32:30
"No man hath seen God at any time..." John 1:18

"God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." Num 23:19
"And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people." Exodus 32:14

"I and my Father are one." John 10:30
"my Father is greater than I." John 14:28

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." -- James 1:13
"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham..." -- Genesis 22:1

"...The Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." -- Judges 1:19
Guess The Lord found he had business elsewhere when those iron chariots showed up. :-)

80Scaryguy
Juin 1, 2007, 2:29 pm

Wow, myshelves, we were going at the same time!

81myshelves
Juin 1, 2007, 2:35 pm

#78 & 80:

Thanks, Scaryguy. As you've seen, I was working on it. Never even got to the 4 NT gospels not matching up. :-)

82reading_fox
Juin 1, 2007, 4:52 pm

#76 "Well, that's the problem with discussion on the internet, not science or the ability to teach and understand science. Moreover, it's true for any number of cherished Web topics--did the US save Europe's ass in WWII or not and so on.

As for understanding/doing science--again--if they cared enough, they could.
"

IF they cared, yes they could, possibly. However they don't care, and what is worse it is not just on internet/web discussion that they don't care. They don't care enough to research the science where it effects everyday life either. And 'they' becomes more than joe next door, because on his non-science career track he becomes your local politician who decides on recycling, airport expansion, et al And then there is a real problem because he still associates science with belief - you can choose what is the most appropriate answer for you.

But I don't have an answer as to how we make joe public care enough to look and see that we* aren't just making it up / copying what was said before / suiting out own conclusions.

*we, because, if it makes any difference, I am a practising scientist and know just how hard it is to discover even one very small focused element of 'the truth'. I haven't yet.

83Glassglue
Modifié : Mai 15, 2017, 9:32 pm

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

84c_wh_so
Juin 1, 2007, 10:11 pm

#69 - Thanks. Anti-matter, dark matter... my bad. Though, I'm still not smart enough to understand how they proved anti-matter, dark matter, etc. I look at the equations they come up with, and my eyes glaze over. So, what is dark matter? What does anti-matter consist of? How do you prove its existence? I'm fascinated by it all, but it's hilariously frustrating that you need a degree in advanced (whatever) to understand the equations behind it.

I posted #67 in response to people asking (nicely, I hope) "what's this belief in science sh_t?". What everyone here has said basically confirms my point. Yes, the proof for the science is accessible, but not practically so. Anyway, it's only "theoretically" accessible, because I assume you people haven't tried to replicate every experiment for yourselves. I have; I've found the philosopher's stone of alchemy on the fifteenth floor and befriended the sea-swimming dragons of Darwin, but I couldn't get past the wheel-chaired wizard guarding the potion of Astrophysics, though. Darn.

In summary, apart from the aforementioned position of extreme skepticism, we all have a "belief in science". You're all reacting to my choice of words, but what else would you call it? It's sure as hell not knowledge, as far as the punters on this thread go.

By the way, isn't it weird that #69 is the only one who has something scientific to say? Are you guys scientists, or science-believing atheists?

And myshelves old buddy, you have been busy, haven't you? As far as gauntlets go, that's a doozy.
I'll get back to it when I've read the quotes, and at the risk of boring everyone as you've done, I'll give you satisfaction.

85DaynaRT
Juin 1, 2007, 11:34 pm

at the risk of boring everyone as you've done
Please don't speak for me, ok, buddy?

86myshelves
Modifié : Juin 2, 2007, 12:22 am

#84

science-believing: I begin to suspect that this is the latest tactic in apologetics, as it crops up all over. "Well, I believe in something invisible, for which there is no evidence; but you believe in science, so we're even." I stick to my earlier characterization, which wasn't intended as a personal attack, but also wasn't intended to say anything "nice" about the use of the terminology. :-)

Frankly, I expect to go to my grave without having any need to decide whether or what I "believe" about dark matter or string theory. No leaps of faith, thank you. I'll just listen with interest and hope to understand more. In fact, at the risk of incurring the scorn of any who understand and agree with them, I'll come out and say that I have doubts about some cosmological theories. :-) I don't think that that will worry the cosmologists too much, or cause them to want to burn me at the stake. :-)

Old? Yes. Buddy?? Hmm. Glad you like the small sample of quotes. You can follow Scaryguy's links and find many more. Hardy a gauntlet, or a doozy. They and others have been debated, and the contradictions "explained away" (to the satisfaction of believers, but not to mine) for a long time. As I recall (been decades since I read it), Paine's The Age of Reason points out a number of contradictions in both old & new testaments.

87BTRIPP
Juin 2, 2007, 12:38 am

re #86: "Frankly, I expect to go to my grave without having any need to decide whether or what I "believe" about dark matter or string theory. No leaps of faith, thank you."

I just got an interesting book (on a friend's enthusiastic recommendation), Leonard Susskind's The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design ... I thought that the juxtaposition implied in the title was quite to the point of the current discussion!

88myshelves
Juin 2, 2007, 12:49 am

#87

Have you read/reviewed it yet?

89BTRIPP
Modifié : Juin 2, 2007, 1:04 am

No ... it just arrived from Amazon a week or so back, and I'm already in another four books at the moment. When I get done with Leonard Shlain's Art & Physics I'll slot it in there, but that could be another month down the road.

90c_wh_so
Juin 2, 2007, 1:13 am

Long story short:

I accept everything you say is right. We're not friends? I like you. You don't like me? How sad.

Short story long:

I was going to go through each website, verse by verse, argument by argument, when I realised it seemed oddly familiar. And then, serendipitously, there it was in the summary of one website:

“All of the above contradictions have been carefully studied, and when necessary the original languages have been consulted. Although it is always scholarly to consider the original languages, why should that be necessary with the "word of God?" An omnipotent, omniscient deity should have made his all-important message unmistakably clear to everyone, everywhere, at all times. No one should have to learn an extinct language to get God's message, especially an ancient language about which there is much scholarly disagreement. If the English translation is flawed or imprecise, then God failed to get his point across to English speakers. A true fundamentalist should consider the English version of the bible to be just as inerrant as the original because if we admit that human error was possible in the translation, then it was equally possible in the original writing. (Some fundamentalists do assert that the King James Version is perfect. One preacher reportedly said, "If the King James Version was good enough for the Apostle Paul, then it's good enough for me.") If a contradiction exists in English, then the bible is contradictory.”

The website author is arguing from a fundamentalist position – an insistence upon inerrancy, a universal, divine language, and a demand that the whole thing is either one hundred percent correct, or one hundred percent false. Ironically, this website has more “faith” in the veracity of the Christian religion than I do.

I remembered that I went through the same thing as a teenager. And yes, back then I realised that there were contradictions in the Bible (did I ever say there weren’t?). There are two creation stories in Genesis. God in the Old Testament is a vindictive, misogynist guy prone to random bursts of genocide. All true. And when I realised that as a teenager, my faith was shaken. I put my Bible on the shelf and left it there to gather dust. A few years later, I returned to the Bible. I picked it up again because I realised it was childish of me to throw out something that’s so beautiful, simply because a few things aren’t factually true. As I reread it, I came to the realization that the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Joshua, Sampson David, Solomon, etc. aren’t directed at me. They were directed at people circa 600BC, people who lived vastly different lives to me, had different values, different concepts, etc. And I realised that it was a bit self-centred to think that it’s all about me.

I never said that the Bible is historically true. If I gave that impression, I’m sorry. I can’t defend that claim. I can’t even claim that it’s theologically infallible - it isn’t. Paul’s homophobic, and misogyny is rife. You may have missed one, by the way. Feel free to fire it at the nearest church you see - in Leviticus, they suggest that if you rape a virgin, you can compensate by giving them x amount of sheep.

But I’m getting side-tracked, and people are getting bored. Here’s what I believe, as of this day. I can’t prove it, and I can’t say that I’m right, but I have faith that I’m on the right track.

The “Word of God” is Jesus. Jesus was the perfect example of God’s love for the world, in his time, in his place. You come to him through the Gospels, through the epistles to the early church, but these are imperfect. You never know Jesus completely through them. Do you think the Word of God can be articulated in words? I don’t. I cringe as I say this, but you’ve got to come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ (it’s the fundamentalist in me, I’m afraid). Sorry, but I can’t articulate it better than that.

As an aside, the four acknowledged gospels were each written with a different slant. The two oldest seem to be Mark and “Q”, which is where Matthew and Luke derive a lot of their material. Since Q has since been lost, Mark is considered the most historically accurate. Matthew was written for the Jews, and tries to convince that Jesus is the Messiah by alluding to Moses (coming out of Egypt) and David (genealogy). Luke was for the Gentiles. John’s a one off; freakish, complex and full of notable quotes. It’s so strange that people think it’s derived from an unknown source. So yes, there are differences between the gospels, and probably within each gospel, too. You’d expect that. The writers didn’t have the advantages of a university education, after all.

The Bible itself is the witness to the Word of God. It’s written by zealots and agnostics, pacifists and warriors, prophets and priests, kings and scholars, fishermen and shepherds, over a span of 3000 years (oral tradition included). Each author had his/her own ideas, prejudices and agendas. God wasn’t sitting beside them telling them what to write; each author looked deep inside them and found that little spark that was “inspired by God”. And the spark’s there; it’s in love between Jonathan and David (and yes, you can find a homosexual context to everything, if you look hard enough), in God’s care for Hagar and Ishmael when everyone in the world had abandoned them, in the second Isaiah’s vision of a new Judaism in exile, in Ezra’s attempts to rebuild a Jerusalem with nothing more than faith and bloody-mindedness.

I was in my early twenties when I came to that conclusion. Once I realised it, I decided to sit back and let the waves of science and modernity erode the foundations of my faith. I figured that the things which were eroded weren’t “inspired by God” and hence, weren’t important. It’s a painful process, and not nearly complete, but it’s necessary. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that when it’s finished, the only things left standing will be two slender pillars, with me on one, and Jesus Christ on the other. I’ll look at Him, He’ll look at me. And then, together, we’ll have to construct a personal theology to bridge that gap. It’ll lack the rock-hard strength of the fundamentalist model I’ve been brought up with, but it will be flexible enough to withstand the buffeting of the waves.

It’s interesting how obviously intelligent people have such blunt debating skills. You position me as a fundamentalist Christian, one who believes every word is literally true. Then, you give me website links and random quotes from antiquated Bibles (King James isn’t exactly cutting-edge, you know), and bombard me with quotes and examples of events I don’t believe in. I’m as much a biblical scholar as an astrophysicist (in other words, not much). I lack the knowledge to explain the quotes you’ve given me.

It’s very Richard Dawkins, very unoriginal, and very, very smug.

But I’m sure you want a cardboard cut-out to feel smugly superiorly to, and therefore, here’s the outtakes of my little spiel:

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." -- James 1:13
"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham..." -- Genesis 22:1

That’s not the best example of contradiction. Off the top of my head, Paul said somewhere that “God is faithful; he will never tempt you beyond you limit and will provide an escape for you.” It’s a better example of contradiction because you’ve got two contemporary writers. Why the difference, you ask? All I can say is that Paul’s a pugnacious kind of guy, who doesn’t like to be wrong. In Acts, I think he stopped a mission just so he could go back to Jerusalem to yell at Peter. James must’ve been a very, very brave man.

What a “tempteth”, by the way? How could medieval folk talk like that without dissolving into sniggers?

"God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." Num 23:19
"And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people." Exodus 32:14

He never did the evil, though, did he? If your wife was sleeping with the paperboy in the middle of the street, you’d be pretty angry as well. You’d be thinking of a lot of evil. As an aside, you might use quotes from the same Bible translation. It smacks of laziness, otherwise.

"I and my Father are one." John 10:30
"my Father is greater than I." John 14:28

The triune God is a bit of a mystery. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit; each is entirely separate and each is fully God. It’s awkward, from a literal point of view, and I don’t get it all myself. The Son is Jesus, the Word of God, the living representation of God in the world (i.e. God in time and space). You probably don’t appreciate how nonsensical that sounds, but it is freaky stuff. Anyway, I’m no theologian, but here’s a lay view; just maybe, the “Father in Heaven” is more powerful than a dude in living in Palestine who doesn’t wear underpants?

"And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." Exodus 33:11
"For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Genesis 32:30
"No man hath seen God at any time..." John 1:18

I’ve never spaketh to the Lord face to face, so I wouldn’t know if my life would be preserved if I did (maybe I’d be pickled?). My first thought was: the author of John got it wrong; therefore, the Bible must be wrong! Oh no, two thousand years of Christianity must be flushed down the drain! Do you actually think God has a face, like you and me? The end part of the Exodus chapter describes Him revealing the “back” of his “glory” to Moses, and likened it to the train of a man’s robes. By the way, my version doesn’t say “face to face”, so it’s probably not the verse that all of creation hangs upon.

They also give Joseph 2 different fathers, Matthew says Jacob & Like says Heli. I do genealogy. If someone shows me a tree and doesn't even have the grandfather correct, I don't put any credence in the list of more distant ancestors. :-)

If you insist on Biblical inerrancy, I’ve got to point out “Like” isn’t an author, even in the International Valley Girl Version of the Bible. You should also note that Matthew calls Joseph’s granddad Matthan, and “Luke” calls him Matthat. And yes, it diverges completely after that. It’s no big deal. Most people in that age tacked on notable notables to their genealogy to beef it up. It’s the ancients' version of the C.V. Interestingly (at least I find it interesting), Matthew’s extends to Abraham because he’s addressing the Jews. Luke’s addressing a gentile audience and stresses the Godliness of Jesus. Hence, he extends it to “son of Adam, son of God”. Love that line; it brings the whole thing together so nicely.

"...The Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." -- Judges 1:19
Guess The Lord found he had business elsewhere when those iron chariots showed up. :-)

Well, I’ve got no answer to this one. Atheists everywhere must be applauding, and secretly making an army of iron chariots to do war upon those pesky Christians. It still applies today; I’ve prayed and prayed, but I’m continually harassed by iron chariots. Have you ever tried stopping a car by the power of pray? We’ve lost too many “prayer warriors” going after those “iron chariots”.

"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father..." Ezekiel 18:20
"I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation..." Exodus 20:5
"Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers" Isa 14: 21
"The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." Deu 24:16

You realise Ezekiel was in exile in Babylon, right? He was rightly angry that his fathers cheesed God off enough that He destroyed the kingdom and got the rest of them carted off to Babylon. Did you know the Isaiah verse was part of a prophecy against Babylon? My, they must’ve hated that place, those exiles. Prophecies are funny like that.

Deuteronomy is the law between man and man, I suppose, and Exodus speaks of God. Like droit de signeur (sic?), He can do whatever he wants. He is God, you know. He must be a very jealous God, hey? Don’t piss Him off, myshelves, or your grandkids are doomed!

My, that was fun! Any other notable quotes? I realise I’m being incredibly flippant, but then again, so are you. I’ll be serious when you are serious.

91Scaryguy
Juin 2, 2007, 8:29 am

Don't forget that the first 'books' of the NT were written by someone who didn't even know Jesus in life - Paul (Granted he might have been trying to kill Jesus). Paul: someone whom the disciples of Jesus never trusted - they basically sent him to Siberia - as far away as possible. Peter and Paul disagreed vehemently - I think that goes to the second paragraph. The 'gospels' were much later and since there is no proof of a Q, except through inference, how do we know how valid the modern renditions of Q are?

Paul was first to write and Paul said 'Worship Jesus.' Interesting is that Jesus never said 'Worship me,' at least according to what is attributed to Jesus.

My argument is not whether Jesus existed - I really couldn't care if he did or not. My problem with the whole Jesus thing is that if he were God (modern Xtian dogma), how come he succumbed to simple, carnal desires - or was even tempted by them?

I mean, think about it. You are God. How can Satan tempt you? 'Look Jesus, I'll give you all this,' says Satan.
'Go away, doofus, I'm God,' say Jesus is all he would have to say. And what's the deal with 40 days in the desert?

Why would you disobey and needlessly worry your parents? 'Hey mom, dad. I'm going to talk to the priests. All right?' instead of sneaking away after they have left town. Sounds common, not God-like.

Why would you loose your temper in the temple? If he was God couldn't he have done Jedi mind tricks and sent the money changers on their way? "These aren't the droids you're looking for . . ."

Why would you be all 'Peace this, and Peace that' and then tell Simon (Peter) to get his sword.

Then after he dies and comes back - that one speaks for itself - he says I'll be back while some of you guys are still alive. Now, Mel Brooks aside, I don't know of any 2,000 year old Jew.

And, best for last, why come to Earth at all? You're God, you can do whatever you want - dare I say raise up stones for worshippers?

God as man would still be God. If a human mind were in a dog would it just join the group and leg-hump? No, I think it would lead by example and show itself to be something more than a simple dog.

Leg-humping is an analogy of the above simple human carnal traits. And if Jesus showed carnal traits - Rom 8:7 - how could he die for humanity to save it?

92ExVivre
Juin 2, 2007, 9:20 am

>87 BTRIPP:, 88 The Cosmic Landscape is terrible. It's one of the few books I felt it necessary to review, if only to dissuade others from wasting their time on it.

93Noisy
Juin 2, 2007, 5:01 pm

>92 ExVivre:

Your review is caught up in the '3 reviews; 2 show' bug.

94ExVivre
Juin 2, 2007, 5:26 pm

>93 Noisy: Yes, I noticed and posted in Bug Collectors. If anyone's interested in the review, just go to my profile and click the reviews tab.

95Arctic-Stranger
Juin 3, 2007, 12:34 am

# 91

Ok, this is not meant as an attack, or even an attempt to change your mind on what you wrote. However....

The questions you pose are very interesting, and very old. Most of Christian theology in the second and third centuries were attempts to deal with these very question, an attempt that has continued to this day.

Essentially you are asking 20th century questions of second century texts. Asking these questions are similar to asking why Cyclops didnt feel under the bellies of sheep when the men were escaping.

For example, take Jesus' little stunt in the temple. In a modern biography of a religious leader, we would want to know what screw broke loose that caused Jesus to go beserk and start turning tables in the temple.

But let's take a different view of this; throughout the gospels Jesus almost NEVER mentions the Temple, yet the temple was the most important religious institition of the day. (The Dead Sea Scrolls were almost exclusively directed at temple corruption.) Except there is that little temple incident. Now what Jesus did was interesting...he attacked the money changers, not the priests like the other critics.

Also remember, the temple courts, where the money changers worked, was the size of three football fields. If Jesus had done this, it was have been a very small disturbance in a very large crowd.

To make a long story short, this particular story, true or not, is included in the gospels to show Jesus attitude toward the temple. The money changers were essential to the working order, and if they were out of business, the temple could not function. (See NT Wright for the specifics of this) Symbolicly Jesus is overthrowing the temple...and since the temple was destroyed by the time the gospels were written, we didnt need to read about Jesus going after temple corruption...which the historical Jesus probably did, which is probably what got him killed in the end.

as the Human/Divine parts of Jesus, the Patristics spent a lot of time asking much more difficult questions that most of us would ever think to pose, some of which they handled quite well, and some of which they never got a hold of.

Again, None of this is an attempt to try to change your mind...these are good questions for a twentieth century audience, but the gospels dont even make a stab at most of them.

96Arctic-Stranger
Juin 3, 2007, 12:42 am

# 91

Ok, this is not meant as an attack, or even an attempt to change your mind on what you wrote. However....

The questions you pose are very interesting, and very old. Most of Christian theology in the second and third centuries were attempts to deal with these very question, an attempt that has continued to this day.

Essentially you are asking 20th century questions of second century texts. Asking these questions are similar to asking why Cyclops didnt feel under the bellies of sheep when the men were escaping.

For example, take Jesus' little stunt in the temple. In a modern biography of a religious leader, we would want to know what screw broke loose that caused Jesus to go beserk and start turning tables in the temple.

But let's take a different view of this; throughout the gospels Jesus almost NEVER mentions the Temple, yet the temple was the most important religious institition of the day. (The Dead Sea Scrolls were almost exclusively directed at temple corruption.) Except there is that little temple incident. Now what Jesus did was interesting...he attacked the money changers, not the priests like the other critics.

Also remember, the temple courts, where the money changers worked, was the size of three football fields. If Jesus had done this, it was have been a very small disturbance in a very large crowd.

To make a long story short, this particular story, true or not, is included in the gospels to show Jesus attitude toward the temple. The money changers were essential to the working order, and if they were out of business, the temple could not function. (See NT Wright for the specifics of this) Symbolicly Jesus is overthrowing the temple...and since the temple was destroyed by the time the gospels were written, we didnt need to read about Jesus going after temple corruption...which the historical Jesus probably did, which is probably what got him killed in the end.

as the Human/Divine parts of Jesus, the Patristics spent a lot of time asking much more difficult questions that most of us would ever think to pose, some of which they handled quite well, and some of which they never got a hold of.

Again, None of this is an attempt to try to change your mind...these are good questions for a twentieth century audience, but the gospels dont even make a stab at most of them.

97Scaryguy
Juin 3, 2007, 10:35 am

Don't worry, Arc, I know.

I found one quote interesting: "Essentially you are asking 20th century questions of second century texts. Asking these questions are similar to asking why Cyclops didnt feel under the bellies of sheep when the men were escaping."

That's very true because I see the whole religion thing the same way I see stories about Cyclops.

To get back to the line of thought, I find the Dalai Lama more intriguing. I've studied Buddhism indepth and was eventually turned off by all the Hoo-doo, i.e. evil spirits, etc. but I still am impressed by the Dalai.

He seems to incarnate compassion and while his beliefs may never sway me, I can honestly say,"There's a man who teaches about the good in life." Of course, contemporary.

Whereas with Jesus, all we have are the miniscule references that are 2,000 years old. Then there are the other texts that have been "thrown away", e.g. The Gospel of Thomas et al that paint the picture of a zealot (an insurgent). Someone who would have been executed by the Romans. A simple guy preaching out in the countryside is not a candidate for crucifixion.

(And too, if he had so many followers, where were they when he was on his way to Golgotha? It seemed like the whole town came out to greet him, then they suddenly left - or decided to kill him instead of adore him?)

The best example today of comparing Jesus's apparent crimes to present is American Soldiers being called on to execute an Iraqi citizen by the current Iraqi government for being peaceful. Doesn't make sense.

The Romans may have been heavy handed, but they wouldn't have gone through all the pomp and circumstance of crucifixion for a simple nonconformist. The Jews could have stoned him - the Romans would have found him amusing. Maybe whipped him then sent him on his way.

But an insurgent? They would have made an example of him. I've always had trouble with that one - plus the passages that indicate his association with the zealots and his warlike cries: Simon get your sword, the kingdom comes with pain and suffering, etc.

But like you say, it's 2,000 years old. How can we truly make sense of something written by people we would see as cavemen today? I just can't make heads or tails out of that - to the chagrin of the JWs that prowl my street.

98Arctic-Stranger
Juin 3, 2007, 11:04 pm


well, we can make sense of it.

I am thinking of starting a new thread on "Reading Religious Texts" or something like that. I find people sometimes get all squirrely when I quote religious texts because they think I take them literally. I take them seriously, but not literally.

I think the stories of Jesus are incredibly informative on many levels. (I also think the creative narratives are also informative, and once gave a lecture at a UU church on Genesis 1 and 2, where the response was quite positive.)

They are not informative on a scientific or any other specifically objective basis, but they have their place. For instance, take the worst of the lot, Genesis. Adam and Eve got thrown out of Eden for eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I take that story very seriously especially after a man, who had an affair, described his emotional state to me. Now that he had tasted the "forbidden fruit" he KNEW how sweet it was, and he could never forget how good the affair felt, and how bad it made others (including his children) feel. He felt he lost his place in Eden, and could never go back to the innocence of the days when his marriage did not experience his affair.

Is that placing a 21th century understanding on this text? Yes and no. Yes, because his case was clearly modern, and my (biblical) intrepretation of it is as well, and is informed by modern pyschotherapy as much as the story.

But no in that these texts have been used this way long before the Enlightenment ever got a hold of them. They tended to see the texts as windows to deep inner truths, NOT as truth itself.

BTW the same is true of Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu texts as well.

Oh, and a caveat to that. I got accused of not preaching biblical sermons when I tried to preach this way.

99myshelves
Juin 3, 2007, 11:36 pm

#90

I realise I’m being incredibly flippant, but then again, so are you.

You demanded that I specify biblical contradictions. I provided some. Another poster directed you to more examples. What you do with them, whether you "lack the knowledge to explain" them, and whether you deal with them flippantly or otherwise, is your problem.

100myshelves
Juin 3, 2007, 11:49 pm

Arctic,

Don't most myths (and let's include the Greeks & the Norse & Native Americans & the rest) provide windows to deep inner truths about the people who created them, and often about all human beings? That's what makes them memorable and interesting, I'd say.

101Arctic-Stranger
Juin 4, 2007, 1:46 pm

#100 -- Absolutely. And yes, lets include the rest. There are some I find less helpful than others (the petulant god myths just dont do much for me) and others I find confusing (Inuit stories still baffle me) but that is me.

For me, the richest storehouses are found in the treasure of Buddhist and Christian stories, but then those are my religious roots.

102LolaWalser
Juin 4, 2007, 1:50 pm

I am a practising scientist and know just how hard it is to discover even one very small focused element of 'the truth'. I haven't yet.

Well... I'm glad you aren't working for me. :)

Seriously now--you probably mean that you haven't discovered anything new, added another shining brick to the edifice of Universal Knowledge etc. But is this literally true? If you're doing any work worthy of the name you're "discovering truth" all the time--even if it's rediscovery. And if you ever published anything, however modest and un-earthshaking, you've made a contribution to "truth" too. (Personally I dislike thinking in such over-generalised, unanchored terms, "the truth", in connection to work projects.)

Today I am dealing with this question: does a specific ultrasound treatment affect cell membrane permeabilisation under certain conditions, and if so, how can I best quantify the effect? Very few people (relative to the Earth's population) could be expected to get excited over the answer. But the answer is an "element of truth", if you like. It's part of the necessary work we do toward a certain goal that has been deemed sufficiently important for serious funding. So, I may not find out (I'm not even sure it exists) some free-floating universal truth applicable to everything and nothing, but I'm damn sure going to find out the truth about this problem.

#84

Yes, the proof for the science is accessible, but not practically so. Anyway, it's only "theoretically" accessible, because I assume you people haven't tried to replicate every experiment for yourselves.

Science is accessible to the millions who choose to study it every year, to the millions who work in research and industry, and to the millions it simply interests enough. Yes, not everyone is allowed to operate the Mt. Palomar telescope, just like not everyone will get to bang out tunes in Carnegie Hall. But those who do aren't mystically intuited deities or anointed priests--there's a pretty well-known career route to both: practice, practice, practice.

Oh, it's "hilariously frustrating" that understanding equations takes work? :) Now THAT'S hilarious.

103Arctic-Stranger
Juin 4, 2007, 3:46 pm

"Science is accessible to the millions who choose to study it every year, to the millions who work in research and industry, and to the millions it simply interests enough. Yes, not everyone is allowed to operate the Mt. Palomar telescope, just like not everyone will get to bang out tunes in Carnegie Hall. But those who do aren't mystically intuited deities or anointed priests--there's a pretty well-known career route to both: practice, practice, practice."

Hmmm...while that is partly true, the whole tenure process is, at times, proof of the insanity inherent in the universe. I cannot speak specifically to the folks at Mt. Palomar, but I know some people got tenured at Duke for some very stranger reasons (ie, their spouses were being recruited, and they came along for the ride, their gender or race was just right for the spot, they agreed with the outdated world view of the department chair, who was threatened by new developments...)

104LolaWalser
Juin 4, 2007, 3:48 pm

What part of my statement isn't true?

I see no connection between your second paragraph and the topic at hand at all.

105BTRIPP
Juin 4, 2007, 4:11 pm

#101: "the petulant god myths just dont do much for me"

But, doesn't that rule out pretty much the whole of the Old Testament?

106myshelves
Juin 4, 2007, 4:20 pm

#105

I was thinking that. :-)

107Arctic-Stranger
Juin 4, 2007, 4:47 pm

You will notice I said Buddhist and Christian...although there are parts of the OT I do find amazing.

Lola, I think you might want to take some of what I say a little less seriously...I was refering the practice, practice, practice part of advancement...my point was that sometimes academic advancement follows pretty irrational routes, and often sitting profs are the proof of the pudding.

I was not necessarily saying you were wrong...just pointing out that insanity is found in many interesting places.

108Unboundset
Juin 4, 2007, 5:45 pm

I was raised an Atheist, so there wasn't any moment of "awakening." However the book Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett helped me understand, for the first time how the concept of an "I" is created in the human brain.

109dchaikin
Juin 5, 2007, 1:00 am

I haven't been able to read all this, I made it to about #74 and started skimming, but response to the science as belief comments:

The accessibility of science in irrelevant. What is significant is the strength of the argument.

Regarding belief: Science is method of exploring the world. It's a process that tries to find the truth but NEVER actually gives ultimate truth. It can't. The real world is always more complex. Every conclusion is ripe for being corrected. So, you should NEVER believe a scientific argument as the final say, or a fact.

But, scientific conclusions are extraordinarily powerful because they are the best explanation available, and because they are consistent with the data. Even if a conclusion is dead wrong, it still may be the best argument available. It can only be overturned with a better argument (AND supporting data).

This is not a belief, it's only a process.

Religion is a belief. You can't prove it. It may be right, but it can't be proven to be so. If you did prove it, you would need to do so scientifically. The same process that is used to argue for a “ contraversal scientific topic such as evolution or the age of the earth ” (two things which aren't scientifically controversial) would also need to be used to argue for a different interpretation and for any other religious interpretation. (I do not mean to imply these are beliefs held my every religious person, just sensitive examples mentioned above.)

Hope this is coherent. I need to quit editing and get some sleep.

110dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 5, 2007, 12:29 pm

After reading the rest of the posts, a few comments:

#107: AS: Science in practice can be very irrational, and screwed up with prejudice and incorrect beliefs and egos and funding and…. But, there is still a best argument, that is based on the data available. That, at least, is the scientific method working properly

#102 LW: Your example with membrane permeabilisation is not that great, because it’s limited to the data collection. It’s a medical question, but not a full “scientific” experiment. There is no hypothesis, and there will be no interpretation (assuming instruments work as expected). If I’m correct, you are trying to “measure” whether there is an effect. But, that is not interpretation. For example, if it does effect the MP, then how? And if it doesn’t, why not? These questions require a hypothesis and an interpretation, and they will never be fully answered. You will collect the data and then you will be the expert and give the best answer possible to the how and why. That is the science.

I’m nitpicking, but it’s essential for my point that science is an method of argument (a powerful one), but never a truth.

111littlegeek
Juin 5, 2007, 2:21 pm

We place no reliance
On virgin or pidgeon
Our method is science
Our aim is religion


-Uncle Aleister

112LolaWalser
Modifié : Juin 6, 2007, 3:34 pm

Arctic:

my point was that sometimes academic advancement follows pretty irrational routes, and often sitting profs are the proof of the pudding.

And my point wasn't academic "advancement" at all, but learning.

#110

Your example with membrane permeabilisation is not that great, because it’s limited to the data collection. It’s a medical question, but not a full “scientific” experiment. There is no hypothesis, and there will be no interpretation (assuming instruments work as expected).

Utter nonsense, and offensive to boot. Where do you get the idea that this is a) a medical question (and what does that even mean?) b) that we work without a hypothesis and c) "there will be no interpretation"?!?!

I'm sorry if you came to these ridiculous conclusions because you feel I didn't give you the appropriate amount of information--something I'm likely to offer only when I'm actually discussing the work, and not using it to illustrate completely unrelated topics. I briefly gave an example of a real scientific question whose answer constitutes "an element of truth", in reading-fox's words. Perhaps rereading the post to which mine was a direct reply is in order to get the hang of the emphasis and the scale of the detail (none) I was replying to.

but it’s essential for my point that science is an method of argument (a powerful one), but never a truth.

I don't know what point you mean, and I'm not sure this applies (or replies) to anything I've posted. I would certainly never say anything so ungainly and illiterate as "science is (a) truth". (Note that reading_fox didn't say anything of the sort either.) Depending on how one frames what question, science may be used to discover the answer to it, and this answer becomes "a truth" of sorts. I'm not interested in semantic games at all, it seems to me I was clear enough...

113dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 6, 2007, 4:40 pm

112 LolaWalser

-- First, apologies, I have no idea what cell membrane permeabilisation means. I took a few guesses (such as the medical comment)....I got burned.

-- This is about finding an element of truth. That is also what I was talking about. I understood that clearly.

-- Will you find an element of truth? Your example is one that is hard to argue with because it's a very carefully constructed question. My thought yesterday was that your example was too simplified so that there was no hypothesis. Looking at it again, I think I see your hypothesis. I'm hesitant to give it another go... oh, what the heck...

As I see it:

You explanation:
"Today I am dealing with this question: does a specific ultrasound treatment affect cell membrane permeabilisation under certain conditions, and if so, how can I best quantify the effect?"

My interpretation:
So then your hypothesis must be:

Ultrasound effects on CMP can be measured and quantified by doing {some process}.

If not, then what is your hypothesis? If this is your hypothesis, then yes, then I missed it yesterday. I thought you were taking the ability to measure for granted...hence I thought you were simply collecting data and pronouncing the data "an element of truth".

If my post is OK at this point, then I've finally untangled myself from your experiment. (fingers are crossed)

So, would this test give "an element of truth"? No! You have an argument, and, hopefully, it's the best argument out there and one that will serve as the basis for further successful study. But, it's still only an argument, and could potentially be overturned. You can never escape that.

114Arctic-Stranger
Juin 6, 2007, 4:34 pm

QUOTE: my point was that sometimes academic advancement follows pretty irrational routes, and often sitting profs are the proof of the pudding.

And my point wasn't academic "advancement" at all, but learning.

END QUOTE

I know you are going to have one of those "I have no idea what you are talking about" or "You are to stupid to understand what I am saying" responses, but YOU were the one who talked about "career routes." That is what I responded to.

115LolaWalser
Juin 6, 2007, 5:16 pm

Arctic, I was addressing ideas--specifically, the idea that science is intellectually "practically" "inaccessible". Nowhere did anyone discuss professional advancement. Although I don't remember talking about "career routes" at all--that's not a direct quote of me at all, is it?

Dchaikin, thank you for your apology, I'm in a bit of a rush so please forgive the "skimming" reply, I'll come back to this later to add frills and curlicues, if necessary.

Yes, NOW you are reading it as I'd hoped. :) I described the question as simply as possible, but I have a 34-page grant proposal draft (without references) describing our hypotheses and even offering a sketch of possible interpretations (of possible hoped-for results--and even a few unhoped ones). Nobody runs a gel without a hypothesis and some conceptual framework for interpreting the results.

However, going back to the aim of my post, again, it was simply meant to illustrate how almost every our step poses questions and discovers some "truth" (assuming well-done experiments), however "small" and uninteresting it may appear to those asking "is there a god"? "Why doesn't Brad love me?" etc.

You have an argument, and, hopefully, it's the best argument out there. But, it's still only an argument, and could potentially be overturned.

I'd have data, facts, which I'd use to build an argument. If they aren't correct I or somebody else will find out soon enough. Scientific facts don't exist in monadic solitude up in some aery spheres, they are constantly taken up, linked, used, churned, enmeshed in myriad networks in myriad theories. If I'm wrong about membrane permeability (under these conditions, in these cells etc. etc.), my next experiments/theory will collapse, or somebody else's experiments/theory will collapse, and so on. This is the only kind of "overturning" that matters, but the end result (whether I was wrong or correct) is the same: we discover an answer to a question, we learn a certain truth about a problem.

You seem to be going for some terminal philosophical uncertainty, whereby we don't know if anything is "true", and I don't doubt that in many philosophical systems you'd be right. Heck, there are perfectly logical philosophies in which we can't even know we exist. But those aren't the business of science.

116Arctic-Stranger
Modifié : Juin 6, 2007, 5:25 pm

Quote: Arctic, I was addressing ideas--specifically, the idea that science is intellectually "practically" "inaccessible". Nowhere did anyone discuss professional advancement. Although I don't remember talking about "career routes" at all--that's not a direct quote of me at all, is it?

As a matter of fact, it is.

"there's a pretty well-known career route to both: practice, practice, practice."

117LolaWalser
Juin 6, 2007, 5:33 pm

...which was a joke, too.

I should know better than to attempt those... :)

118Arctic-Stranger
Juin 6, 2007, 6:45 pm

"How do you get to Carnagie Hall?"

The joke was fine, it was your decidely non-funny retort when I responded to it that pissed me off.

119dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 6, 2007, 9:06 pm

#115 I'll let it rest with your conclusion.

My point is philosophical, but it's important when someone argues that they don't "believe" in science; as if religion and science are two sides of a coin (mainly because science does very bad things to religion, so it's preferable to deny its validity). When someone argues this, my retort is that science should be taken as a method of argument. You don't have to believe the results (evolution or whatever), they may be wrong. But you can't deny the argument. If someone desires to contradict the scientific results, they can't skip out with a religious preference of "well you believe this and I believe that". That door doesn't exist. They need to go through the scientific process and develop an alternative and better argument.

So, it's important that in science we don't confuse scientifically derived results with absolute, infallible truths of some sort. At that point the science does become a belief as problematic as creationism. The "scientist" has essentially lost the science-religion debate because he's lost the science. When we say something is "scientifically proven," the point should not be "it's correct, a done unapproachable deal", it should be "prove me wrong. No shortcuts." So, emphasizing that the scientific results may be wrong actually strengthens good scientific arguments.

120myshelves
Juin 6, 2007, 9:56 pm

I'm confused. I'm not a scientist; far from it. I would have thought that there were times when the results couldn't be wrong, if the experiment had been correctly set up and performed, and reviewed, and replicated. Take that stuff they made me do in high school chemistry. :-) The book said what would happen, and sure enough it did. I thought it was the interpretation of results, or the theories based upon them, that could be wrong.

Maybe I'm not using the word "results" in the correct technical sense?

121dchaikin
Juin 6, 2007, 11:43 pm

myshelves,

Tough queston...Ok, heres how I see it. In a lab test the results of a test are as true as the tools that measure them are accurate (the tool may be your eyes). We know it because we observed it, repeatedly. And, we presume, there are real laws to nature and there is a real truth. But, the explanation of why and how comes down to a scientific argument that is subject to correction.

Does that make sense? I'm not really sure how the draw the line between a known result and an argument that may be contradicted. It's more complicated then I realized.

(Part of my problem is that I keep thinking of this from a geological perspective, where for example, interpretations are based on noisy, and sometime slim data. So, for example, all sorts of theories were given for mountain building, and strange terms like geopsynclines came about - then the plate tectonic theory got fleshed out, and it was kind of an "Oh, well, that makes a heck of a lot more sense". Lab tests are quite different and throw me. They are controlled, repeatable, predictable. I just haven't thought it through enough.)

122myshelves
Juin 6, 2007, 11:58 pm

I think it makes sense to me. At least it's a truth that if you do that experiment (with existing equipment) you get that result. Yes? What it means is a whole other ballgame.

(Don't mind me; just came from posting to the baseball group. Grin.)

123reading_fox
Juin 7, 2007, 5:37 am

#122 More or less. You get a result. you do it again and again and you get a range of results. If other people do so you hope they all get results in the same range as yours, and then you have an answer - and it's time to start debating on what the question meant.

And that's often hard enough, often 'scientists' go on to say, My hypothesis was that result would occur, I have seen that result. Therefore my hypothesis is true.........
peer review is the process of science whereby everybody else in the field thinks of reasons why that might not be the case.

Lola's excellant example of current work shows why it is not practical for 'lay' people to repliocate the results.

Assuming the worthy grant proposal is accepted which took 1yr? of preparatory material to write, Lola will then spend another 2yrs? conducting the experiments and analysing the results and be able to say Ultrasound effects the membrane of these cells this way. Were Lola to spend the rest of his/her life in a similar manner Lola will be able to expand this to a variety of cells/membrane and ultrasound frequencies.

This would enable someone else expand their work on the permability of brain cells, and someone else on the effects of radiofreqs to permability and eventually the topically important questions of whether mobile phone siganls can damage your health and how do they do so would be answered.

BUT I still contend no lay person will ever be able to do this for themselves, and so they will always have to believe in the science that says they are safe or believe in the science that says they are not.

124dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 7, 2007, 8:04 am

#123 reading_fox: thanks. I think your explanation is better than my hand-waving in #121. It helps me, anyway.

I'm not so sure about the scientists who know and lay persons who believe breakdown. Certainly there are only a few experts in any highly specific aspect of study. Someone out of the know is dependent on their knowledge and expertise. But, that is not totally true. If it were, then the science would rest a teetering stool. How can you convince anyone if they don't even know what you are doing? What stabilizes the argument is the peer review process. Now, there is not just select few to "believe" but a whole community who are literate enough to evaluate the data and see it's strengths and limits. And they are all part of the scientific process (which does include human error). So, now an individual doesn't need to give up their jobs, sell their homes, mortgage the dog so they can begin their own study, and become the expert themselves. Instead they need only to become literate enough the follow and understand the peer review. In many cases, that can prohibitive in itself (see c_wh_so's comments above) but it's the starting point towards accessibility. And, once someone is able to follow the peer review process, accessibility is no longer the issue, it's now simply how strong is the argument.

After all that, I'm not sure I've changed your basic argument any. I think I'm now convinced accessibility is as important as the strength the of the argument itself.

Is accessibility the difference between "believing" the science and understanding the science?

125Arctic-Stranger
Juin 7, 2007, 1:06 pm

I know this comment may not be popular here, but it feels a bit disingenious having scientists say that the only type of knowing is scientific knowing. (And if I have overblown that argument, forgive me.)

I have no intent to dismiss scientific processes and the knowledge they bring to bear.

However there are certain things I "know" which have not been run through any sort of experimental basis. I know I love my children. I know that Dostoyevsky is a powerful writer. I know that my GPS will tend to help me find the next Geocache. I know that the patient I am seeing is bs'ing himself, and me, and that he is off his meds. I know when my wife is angry at me, even if she doesn't "act" angry. I know that if I play Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah at certain times, people will cry.

Further in, I know that when I am with a patient, there is a time to back off, and a time to probe. I know that sometimes when they cry, I need to push them further, and sometimes I need comfort them. I know that sometimes humor is good tool to use, and sometimes it is the worst tool to use, and I know how to make people laugh.

I know that when I have had a hard case (for instance a recent double murder/suicide--all teenagers--if I go to the Quaker meeting and sit in silence with people, I find the scream inside of me becomes managable. And I dont even have to tell them about the scream.

I know that when I feel homesick or emotionally disoriented, I always have a home in Middle Earth, and reading Lord of the Rings is a good grounding exercise.

I know when I am lonely, and I know when I am loved.

I know that Rick Wakeman first appeared on Lou Reed's first solo album, and that Chevy Chase used to play drums in the band that became Steely Dan when he was college.

I know that my heart breaks when I see my daughter cry over some stupid boyfriend.

Again, this is not to create a divide; I just want to widen the territory a bit to include other types of knowing.

126littlegeek
Juin 7, 2007, 1:41 pm

Artic, you're awesome.

Scientific method is a great tool, but there's so much more to being human, and so many other ways to know things. Thanks for putting it so unscientifically.

Here's a conundrum for all of you: If scientific knowledge is always subject to further research and its conclusions always available for further refinement, when do you ever "know" anything? It sure feels like certainty, but it's specifically set up not to be.

127dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 7, 2007, 2:11 pm

AS: enjoyed your post. I was going to respond with something about different meanings of "knowing" but then my brain got tangled up, smoke came out of my ears and I had to walk out of office and let the air clear. So, I'll just leave it here.

128dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 7, 2007, 2:12 pm

littlegeek: As I see it, in science you don't really "know" anything. You have data and try to explain what that data means. So, science is an argument. You take the best argument, then kick it around and bash it with whatever you have at hand... if it's still there, then you try to stand on it... if it doesn't collapse you try to build on it and keep going until something breaks. But, it all rests on an argument.

The data is different. That is real, that is what you know.

But, between myshelves post and AS's post and LolaWalser's test, I'm not so sure I'm making sense anymore. I might of derailed somewhere... looking back I can't seem to find where the truth actually is, or what it means anymore, philosophically or otherwise.

129littlegeek
Juin 7, 2007, 2:34 pm

dchaikin--"the further in you go, the bigger it gets...."

130Glassglue
Juin 7, 2007, 3:10 pm

#129

Like the TARDIS!

131myshelves
Juin 7, 2007, 4:00 pm

Wow. I wasn't trying to derail anything, honest.

I appreciate Arctic's post. But (you knew there'd be a "but") I can't help thinking that there are also people who know things that just aren't so.

There's the guy who knows that his wife would never even look at another man . . . while she is having affairs with two other men.

There was the Civil War general who knew that "they couldn't hit an elephant at this dista. . . ."

I grew up knowing a few things that I'd be embarassed to admit to. I think that as a teenager I knew that I knew everything. I've been shedding knows ever since.

So how do we define "know"?

132reading_fox
Juin 7, 2007, 4:01 pm

Artic - you certainly have a point.

But the reason why science exists is best demonstrated by looking out of a window, It is obvious and for hundred+ of years poeple 'knew' the world was flat. It felt right, it matched all their predictions repeatedly it wasn't even worth investigating, they knew what the answer was.

Your patient may not know what is 'wrong' with them despite knowing how they feel, you with your experiance do know why.

These concepts apply to all the examples you listed. Some of them 'science' is only just beginning to grasp the underlying hypothesis, and can't currently do much better than accept that the mind appears to be more than a simple sum of its parts - but an understanding of what happens when we feel different emotions is being investigated and progress made.

#129 yes. Always. There are very very few absolutes in life, even though it is convenient for us to treat many things as if they were so.

133Arctic-Stranger
Juin 7, 2007, 4:32 pm

Again, I in no way wanted to down play scientific knowledge.

But as someone alluded, the word "know" can carry a lot of freight. You spoke of how I might know a patient's diagnosis while they don't, but I have to tell you, in spite of tools like DSM-V, there is still a lot of intuition that goes on...and not just in mental health diagnoses.

Science may describe my hormonal state when I speak of loving my wife or children, but that is a thin slice of the knowledge of love. Try taking that to bank when dealing with love itself! (Or as Biff tells Jesus in Lamb;, I guess you have to be there.

The religious traditions I tend to follow these days stress unknowing; Suzuki Roshi and Sahn Seugn both stress "Beginner's Mind" or "Don't Know Mind," and the Orthodox spiritual tradition goes back to The Cloud of Unknowing.

If all we have is what we can encapsulate in scientific processes, I believe we have a poorer life. If we don't have the knowledge that arises from scientific knowledge, we also have a much poorer life.

134littlegeek
Juin 7, 2007, 4:39 pm

I agree, Artic. I find in infinitely sad that as a culture we have set science and spirit to argue with each other. Does everything have to be a contest, with only one winner? When did we stop containing multitudes?

135myshelves
Juin 7, 2007, 4:45 pm

If all we have is what we can encapsulate in scientific processes, I believe we have a poorer life. If we don't have the knowledge that arises from scientific knowledge, we also have a much poorer life.

Arctic,

I can't come up with a single "but" there. :-)

136Arctic-Stranger
Juin 7, 2007, 5:37 pm

Flattery will get you nowhere!

I take that as a high compliment...your "buts" are usually pretty informative.

(There are a lot worse way i could have said that...I like your buts...your buts are awesome...)

137Scaryguy
Juin 7, 2007, 5:53 pm

The only thing we know, thinking absolutes, goes to the cliche of death and taxes.

Science, in a basic form, is cutting down a tree and knowing how old it was. Building a house that won't collapse on the happy family. Knowing when to stop your finger when picking your nose.

For the person who doesn't have proper nerve endings, the latter example could be fatal and obviously not an absolute.

There really are absolutes in belief though. Either you believe or you don't.

Science may adjust every now and then, but it is still a stable primer of life. Try jumping out of a building to defy gravity. Try kissing a coral snake. Try not paying your taxes.

Evolution, in all its controversy, is really simple too. We may be postulating when thinking in terms of millions and millions of years ago, but when it comes to cousin Cletus and his superfluous fingers, we can easily find out about his dad or mother.

Did they have five 1/2 fingers so that Cletus could have 6 or was it a simple or complex mutation? Evolution is a tricky bastard. Skin tone takes hundreds if not thousands of years to change, and Cletus is born with 12 fingers and 12 toes in a nine month span.

What really matters in this short life of ours has nothing to do with dogma or science. What matters in the end is whether we were happy and were loved.

If you didn't have those two, you missed the bus. Probably were hit by it . . .

138dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 7, 2007, 9:12 pm

Science can do a lot of stuff, and much of our technology comes directly from it; but its value at answering questions is remarkably limited. Science only gives answers where we can make hypothesis AND collect data to argue for or against it. It's not complex enough for life's basic questions about things like love and enjoying life, the meaning of life (and pretty much everything Arctic-Stranger deals with in real life, no?).

BUT... it does inspire questions that rival and may surpass anything offered by religion. Once something like evolution clicks, what does that say about who you really are at your deepest, most primal level? Once we realized the earth wasn't the center of the universe, and the sun wasn't either, and that space was infinite, and that there might be other life forms out there, and that we might be wiped out by the next rogue meteor...

139Arctic-Stranger
Juin 8, 2007, 12:38 am

Quote: BUT... it does inspire questions that rival and may surpass anything offered by religion. Once something like evolution clicks, what does that say about who you really are at your deepest, most primal level? Once we realized the earth wasn't the center of the universe, and the sun wasn't either, and that space was infinite, and that there might be other life forms out there, and that we might be wiped out by the next rogue meteor...END QUOTE

For you, science offers questions that are unrivaled. For me, no. I can appreciate what science offers, but I would have to say that for me, religion inspires questions that surpass anything offered by other sources. What does it mean to be at peace with one's own self? How do we forgive those who harm us? How do we transcend anger, greed, and pride? How can I show compassion to others, especially when I dont particularly like the others?

These are the questions that turn ME on. Perhaps science can shed some light on some of them, perhaps not. My questions are not any better than yours dchaikin, they are just my questions. I really appreciate that some people are driven by questions like, "How can I cure cancer?" or "What foods are really good for you?" or "What are the properties of snow build up?" I benefit by the work of those who ask them, and who pursue them. I like to think that some people benefit from the way I deal with my questions.

QUOTE: What really matters in this short life of ours has nothing to do with dogma or science. What matters in the end is whether we were happy and were loved. UNQUOTE

Ira Byock identifies four things we need to say before we die
1) I forgive you.
2) Forgive me.
3) Thank you.
4) I love you.

140Glassglue
Modifié : Mai 15, 2017, 9:32 pm

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

141clamairy
Modifié : Juin 8, 2007, 6:56 pm

I guess that after wandering in the desert for 40 years a flaming shrub that just happened to speak Hebrew might be one of the more pedestrian things I would be apt to hallucinate. Perhaps that six tusked elephant of Queen Maya's would make an appearance as well.

142littlegeek
Juin 8, 2007, 11:58 am

monohex, you might think of spiritual knowledge as subjectively empirical, as opposed to science, which is objecitvely empirical. If you honestly attempt to reproduce spiritual results using "technologies" like meditation on yourself, you may be surprised how suddenly all the blather makes some weird kind of sense.

The bugaboo is you have to approach it with an open mind, which is a bit hard when you've already decided that objective scientific method is the only reliable thing going. My personal technique is to abandon rationality for the purposes of my "experiment," then afterwards use my rationality to try to make sense of whatever occurs. In any case, abandoning rationality for a bit is a refreshing change.

143ryner
Juin 8, 2007, 12:25 pm

This thread no longer seems to be about "The Book(s) That Did It" ...

144LolaWalser
Juin 8, 2007, 12:38 pm

Reading _fox, it seems to me you've pushed the "impracticality" argument to absurdity. No, a random lay person in the street cannot replicate my experiments, but given a modicum of reason, interest and time, they could understand them; given a whole lot more time, energy and opportunity they could do them. Meanwhile, why isn't it enough that millions of current or recent "laypeople" are daily training and working in a way that enables them to both understand and do those experiments?

I haven't seen Angkor Vat, although many other people did. Does it not exist until I've seen it too? Until all six-billion-and-change do?

Where we seem to differ is in what it means not to be able to do something AT ALL, and not to be able to do something unless you take certain pains to do it. Crucially, I don't think that learning French or physics is "impractical" because it takes work to do so--I think that requirement is obvious, and category "practicality" doesn't apply at all.

Dchaikin:

Science... It's not complex enough for life's basic questions about things like love and enjoying life, the meaning of life

Forgive me, but:

Oh, BOO HOO!!! :-)

This is like complaining that fish can't drive bicycles, and then implying that the poor fish are therefore somehow... inadequate. Underachieving. Disappointing, really.

The fish are excellent at being fish and proceeding fishily, and science is best at answering scientific questions. If one is expecting science to answer philosophical questions about "the meaning of life", then one doesn't know science, what it is, what it's for.

Of course, one can philosophise about the results of science--people have done so for millenia. In this sense too, science can be the most enriching, most exhilarating trove of human knowledge. People get a kick out of Sagan's and Gould's writing for this very reason, for their synthetic vision of life and the cosmos as disclosed by science--in detail.

But who knows, perhaps that heady synthesis is part of the problem, why people seem to think actual scientific work begins with such nebulous mush as "where did we come from"?, when everyday science is mostly narrowly focussed painstaking analysis, small incremental steps toward one or the other "localised" insight...

145Glassglue
Modifié : Mai 15, 2017, 9:33 pm

Ce message a été supprimé par son auteur

146littlegeek
Juin 8, 2007, 1:00 pm

monohex, that's cool. Chacon a son gout.

147Arctic-Stranger
Juin 8, 2007, 1:13 pm

If religions means having to believe that flaming bushes speak to people, and one man can make the sun stand still, and that lotus blooms appeared in the Buddha's footsteps, then we all have issues, monohex.

For me religion (or spirituality or whatever you want to call it) is more....complicated, I guess. (I was casting about the right word--sublime, transcendent, subtle...)

I dont know if Moses spoke to a burning bush, but I know the concept of Exodus from slavery is worth spending time on...both external slavery (which exists in the world today) and internal (our own petty addictions).

I dont know if Jesus came back from the grave, but know that forgiveness is an essential part of human interaction.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

My more fundamentalist friends would say I have given up "religion" for "philosophy" since I dont depend on external "spiritual forces" in my faith, but I spent enough time with the philosophers to see that they just brought us down one dead end after another. Also, it is more a matter of practice for me than assent to doctrine, standards, theories or belief systems.

I guess I am saying that while I truly appreciate objectivity, I cannot abandon subjectivity.

148littlegeek
Juin 8, 2007, 2:32 pm

Somewhere on another thread I accused HH discussions of always coming down to epistemology.

Sometimes I ask myself what would I do if I were god? Would I make knowing truth contingent upon a logical symbol system, like language or science? Or would I make wisdom directly accessible? Looks to me like God did both, and more. There's many paths and no reason to limit ourselves to one, or pit one against the other, imho.

149dchaikin
Juin 8, 2007, 3:33 pm

LolaWalser regarding #144:
I agree with you, well mostly, that was kind of my point. But don't over-simplify science. We kind of are at a point where "everyday science is mostly narrowly focussed painstaking analysis, small incremental steps toward"... This wasn't always true. Science and the philosophy of science had to develop; And in the past science did seriously ask the larger questions. Only as science dug deeper and everything got more complex, as it still does and will always do, did science began to divide and individual focus became narrower. (the benefits and deficits of which could lead to another whole discussion)

Arctic-Stranger regarding this in #147 and other comments made above: "I dont know if Moses spoke to a burning bush, but I know the concept of Exodus from slavery is worth spending time on...

Just curious, is the bible's value to you in religion, or as thought provoking literature? Or does it even make a difference?

Message 143:ryner :
There were books in this discussion? :)

150Arctic-Stranger
Juin 8, 2007, 3:49 pm

Well, I could say Literature is my religion, and as I write that, the smile fades, and I realize how true that is.

I have always gravitated toward literary interpretations of texts, even as an evangelical. (I was even accused of being an English major by one of my pastors!)

At one time I viewed the Bible as a special kind of literature (inspired) but for me it was always literature, even if God was the muse who inspired it. (I never held to verbal inspiration theories, where God dictates the text to the writers.)

Now? I guess I just don't know.

(Five points for anyone who can identify the song that is running through my head while I wrote those last words.)

151WholeHouseLibrary
Juin 8, 2007, 3:58 pm

Just a wild guess --

Heroin by Velvet Underground?

152Arctic-Stranger
Juin 8, 2007, 4:00 pm

Amen brother. Actually Lou Reed's Rock and Roll Animal.was going through my head. Just a different version.

153WholeHouseLibrary
Juin 8, 2007, 4:07 pm

Cool! Put my 5 points in as a credit at the Green Dragon -- I'm getting ready to do another session there before I do an Alaskan cruise (sorry -- Fairbanks is not on the itinerary), and then a road trip for a 9-month gig on the East Coast.

154dchaikin
Juin 8, 2007, 9:38 pm

#150 AS: I was even accused of being an English major by one of my pastors!

I'm very entertained by that. :)

155clamairy
Modifié : Juin 9, 2007, 9:40 am

I was even accused of being an English major by one of my pastors!

Hey! I resemble that! LOL

I was a double major in college, Mathematics and English. I didn't even declare the English until my senior year, when I noticed I'd completed most of the course requirements without even realizing it. I then ended up getting a graduate assistantship, and doing my post grad work in English.

156Dragonfly
Juin 9, 2007, 7:27 pm

Back to "books that did it", i. e. change world view. When I graduated from my Catholic high school, I started attending a local commuter college and a couple of the first friends I made were Jewish. So I checked a couple of books about Jewish history out of the library. Sadly, I can't remember what books they were although I believe one was mostly about the Inquisition. It gave me nightmares for months. It also left me with a big question. How could the religion I was brought up in that taught you should be nice to other people do such horrible things to people like my new friends? (Remember I was 18 or so at the time.) So not science but reading history led me to question my assumptions. Dangerous places, libraries.

157fikustree
Juin 14, 2007, 10:47 am


#109- That is what I meant when I said I don't believe in science.

I used to believe that if Science had decided something it was a undisputable fact. The Scientific method was followed, experiments were reproduced, and an answer was found. Then I learned that all sorts of other things come in to play and science is really a best guess about most things.

158dchaikin
Juin 14, 2007, 11:11 am

#157 fikustree
I also have Thomas Kuhn very much in mind when trying to think this through. That book (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) is a huge influence on how I look at the world now. I don't think I ever would have posted in #109 or #119 without having once read it.

I would argue a scientific conclusion should be THE best guess... but that's nitpicking :)

159littlegeek
Juin 14, 2007, 12:06 pm

I understand how the scientific method works, and that it is a reliable tool for evaluating & verifying facts and testing theories. But, by design, it is a refining technique, its conclusions always subject to revision. This is its strength.

Spiritual knowing is a whole 'nother animal, not subject to scientific method. Its conclusions also beg additional questions, are notoriously ineffable, and are unverifiable, except to an individual with an open mind. This is its strength.

160Scaryguy
Juin 14, 2007, 12:30 pm

This is an older reference (1999), but it still is interesting.

God relegated to firing synapses in the brain

I saw an NBC report years ago (one of their prime time news shows). The reporter put on the helmet and immediately felt 'god's' presence in the room. It was really freaky. Some people experience aliens.

R.J. Sawyer has interesting parallels in his Neanderthal trilogy.

161myshelves
Juin 14, 2007, 12:36 pm

#159

Can you give an example or two of conclusions reached by spiritual knowing that would/should be verifiable by someone with an open mind?

Not trying to yank your chain. I just can't think what an example would be. There are things that are "obvious" to me that aren't to some people I usually think of as having open minds. But maybe they don't fit under "spiritual knowing."

162littlegeek
Juin 14, 2007, 12:52 pm

myshelves...try scayguy's god helmet!

I was just referring to standard unverifiable stuff like feeling the presence of God, astral projection (which I could never do, btw), etc. Conclusions (and begged questions) would be that "hey, there IS a god, or is it some other presence?" or "wow, I really CAN astral project....but where did I go? Was it all of me or just a part?"

163dchaikin
Modifié : Juin 14, 2007, 1:10 pm

#160 Scaryguy: Cool article, lots of food for thought. I'm pondering this idea:

His theory is that the sensation described as "having a religious experience" is merely a side effect of our bicameral brain's feverish activities. Simplified considerably, the idea goes like so: When the right hemisphere of the brain, the seat of emotion, is stimulated in the cerebral region presumed to control notions of self, and then the left hemisphere, the seat of language, is called upon to make sense of this nonexistent entity, the mind generates a "sensed presence."

First, I'm trying to understand what that means. Is this "sense presence" thing all a result of our brain trying to handle impulses from different parts that don't seem to fit into a nice package? So our brains, trying to make sense of it all, works out its own explanation. Maybe this only happens with very intense impulses (i.e. skeptics are damned from the get go, since they force everything out of emotion and into logic). I wonder if all our brilliantly inspired ideas come from the same kind thing.

(edited to add that perhaps the word brilliantly should be in quotes ... )

164dchaikin
Juin 14, 2007, 1:14 pm

#159/162 Littlegeek: I think I've missed some of your key posts somewhere. Interesting kind of elaborate balance of thoughts. Where do you get this from?

165myshelves
Juin 14, 2007, 1:18 pm

Oh well . . . guess I'm hopeless. :-) All I can imagine concluding is that I'd experienced certain interesting sensations. Doesn't look as if the 1999 reporter got much beyond that, in spite of expecting that he might see god.

I was thinking more of "sense of wonder" stuff. I reckon that's my version of spiritual. The first time I got to look through a telescope at the local planetarium...!

166littlegeek
Juin 14, 2007, 1:27 pm

#164 That's a summing up made up by my own little mind. It's based on nothing else. Go ahead and rip on me, I can take it!

As to scaryguy's article, I find it intriguing that the author was underwhelmed. He did seem to have some pleasant memories, tho.

First, they didn't believe that people were electrochemical. Once they proved there was such a thing as brainwaves, they did experiments with yogis showing how their brainwaves changed, thereby "proving" that they were doing something and that their subjective experience correlated with something measurable. Now they use probably similar equipment to induce the experience, thereby "proving" that it's "only" electrochemical.

Results are one thing, interpretation is another. That's all I'm saying.

167dchaikin
Juin 14, 2007, 1:39 pm

littlegeek... apologies, no ripping intended, you have good ideas. I was just curious where your coming from.

168littlegeek
Juin 14, 2007, 2:38 pm

no need to apologise. I like a good debate. I even like being proved wrong. Or should I say "proved." (See, I can even dish it out....to myself!)

169littlegeek
Modifié : Juin 14, 2007, 3:37 pm

Going back to the thread topic, one of the most intriguing books I ever read was Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I didn't notice it mentioned above. I recently saw in the bookstore I Am A Strange Loop, a new Hofstadter book on basically the same subjects, now from the perspective of a 50-something rather than 20-something. Looked interesting.

170Scaryguy
Juin 14, 2007, 7:09 pm

There is an interesting moment in evolution, what is called the great leap forward, where it seems that we went from the fright or flight mental frame to I wonder what I should do? I am a bit hungry, but this large creature seems intent on eating me, so maybe I should run. I wonder if he knows of a nice place to eat?

A simple mutation that took place about 50,000 years ago caused us to make tools, trade, make art. What has been postulated is that's when we got our little "voice."

To illustrate, my six year old son just discovered that he can talk in his mind and no one else can hear. He thought that rather cool.

Put that in the rational of a primitive and could that not be god? "Should I eat those berries?" NO! says the brain voice. "Who was that! I don't know, so it must be god."

It wasn't that long ago that the god voice in people's heads affected large masses of willing followers, e.g. Joan of Arc, Adolph Hitler, Jerry Fallwell, Crusades, modern Islamist terrorists, etc.

What if god is only our ego? Or worse, what if god is just one of us on the other side with an ego? I'm still looking for a nice place to eat . . .

171littlegeek
Juin 14, 2007, 7:15 pm

God, ego. Tomato, tomato. Maybe it's all semantics.

172clamairy
Juin 14, 2007, 7:38 pm

I, for one, think Joan of Arc ate too many bad rutabagas, or possibly took a mighty blow to the head as a yoot. She kicked some serious English booty with that army, though!

173myshelves
Juin 14, 2007, 11:03 pm

I think Joan's history comes as close to a miracle as anything I've ever heard.

Here's this illiterate teenage girl advising the king, leading armies, lifting the siege of Orleans, kicking English butt, and pulling off a coronation. She gave them a damn good run for their money at the trial, too, without legal advice.

If she got bad rutabagas, maybe the French should have sent a case to all of their generals, nobles, royals, etc. :-)

(The "book that did it" in this case being The Trial of Joan of Arc: Being the Verbatim Report of the Proceedings from the Orleans Manuscript.)

174clamairy
Juin 15, 2007, 6:37 am

Actually, many French generals have been in need of those rutabagas since the Napoleonic Era... haven't they? (JOKE)

Agreed, myshelves. My comment was a feeble attempt to be funny. I was mightily impressed with Joan as a child. I didn't learn about all the voices she heard until I was older.

175ORFisHome
Juin 18, 2007, 11:53 am

For those of you that plan to read through the Bible this year, I would encourage you to Google a chronological order of the Bible and read it in that manner. The Bible that we have now is not arranged chronologically, and reading it chronologically will help things appear much more cohesive.

176clamairy
Juin 18, 2007, 12:32 pm

Thanks scott, but I have no plans the read the bible this year, or next year either.

I am, however, reading A History of God and learning about how many parts of said bible were rewritten/edited/revised/discared/replaced after the fact, to suit the politics or beliefs of the time. It's one of those facts I knew, but reading these details has my mouth hanging open at times.

177ORFisHome
Modifié : Juin 18, 2007, 3:04 pm

Clamairy, there were a few further up in the thread that were currently reading the Bible or had plans to do so. Just trying to help lend some perspective to a very perplexing, at times, book.

178dodger
Juin 18, 2007, 2:42 pm

I would--maybe, someday, perhaps, if all of my other books suddenly disappeared (read: act of God)--like to read the entire Bible, and the chronological order idea does sound interesting; if nothing else, I may skim through it in chronological order.

I have read a fair share of the Bible, and, I’m not just trying to be rude here, but like clam’s reading of “A History of God,” there are a lot of moments where my mouth hangs open! And, not because I’m inspired or moved...

179Arctic-Stranger
Juin 19, 2007, 1:21 am

Dr. Stan Hauerwas (who regularly tweeks the noses of good christians, even more so because he is one) tells of Alistar MacIntyre who is a Philosopher at Duke. According to Hauerwas, MacIntyre was an atheist, who believed in apparations of the Virgin. The Virgin always appeared to young girls, who lived in isolated areas, and gave them all the same message. Apparerently the idea that somehow the girls all heard the messages from other girls, enough to replicated it themselves, was harder for MacIntyre to believe than that they might have come from the Virgin.

Later MacIntyre converted to Christianity, but not until after his belief in the appearances. Which reminds me...what is an Irish atheist?

Someone who does not believe in God, but knows that Mary is his mother.

180ExVivre
Juin 20, 2007, 9:16 am

>179 Arctic-Stranger: - I love that definition of an Irish atheist! It's right up there with "Irish Protestant is an oxymoron." ;)

181KathyWoodall
Juin 20, 2007, 5:43 pm

I was trying to think if there was a book that finally made me rethink my views and honestly as strange as it sounds it was the bible itself. I have been unhappy with religion for some time so honestly it didnt take much. A couple of books that I have really enjoyed reading lately have been A Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris and I'm currently reading American Fascists by Chris Hedges.
Kathy

182slickdpdx
Modifié : Juin 27, 2007, 11:19 pm

The Bible, I remember as a firstborn youngster gentile reading/learning about the passover...

Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary is a fun read and he comes at things from a different angle than a lot of more modern thinkers.

183dchaikin
Juin 21, 2007, 6:22 am

181,182: I can see the bible itself turning one off from religion. I've only read the first five books of the old testament, so I speak in limited experience. But Numbers really did a trick on me; it really bothered me and still does. To me, Numbers is cruelty in God's name and with God's blessing; and I wonder how, after reading that, one can argue that a fair and just God can found in the bible.

184Arctic-Stranger
Juin 21, 2007, 12:52 pm

I noticed the Bible popped up on a few lists here. And yes, while there are some horrific passages (children, NEVER make fun of a bald man!) there are also some incredibly moving passages. Ruth, Job, II Isaiah, Lamentations, Ecclessiastes, the Psalms (which I think chart the anatomy of human emotion quite well), the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of John, I Corinthians (good advice for any organization here, religious or otherwise) Jonah (NOT just a whale of a story, but a penetrating study on hatred and fear) Esther....

It is not that any of these stories or books will "convert" you to anything, other than an appreciation of humanity, literature, the complexity of life, evil, and the on-going struggle of living an authentic life.

I will say that when I preached strictly from the Bible, the most conservative folks in my congregation would complain that I was not "Christian" enough.

185dodger
Modifié : Juin 21, 2007, 4:16 pm

Arctic, I agree. There are, of course, many good moments in the Bible. However, what bothers me is that most of those “good” stories are incredibly fanciful, and yet so many people interpret them as an actual account of history.

I could just as easily pick up a book by Aesop, and learn important life lessons from such stories as “The Tortoise and the Hare” or “The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf” without weeding through the abusive violence of a creator god who supposedly loves us unconditionally, but who--as a self-described “jealous God”--has no problem killing anyone who angers him.

Ultimately, and as a whole, the only lesson the Bible teaches us is: Don’t piss the Big Guy off... ;-)

186Arctic-Stranger
Juin 21, 2007, 4:26 pm

Ultimately, and as a whole, the only lesson the Bible teaches us is: Don’t piss the Big Guy off... ;-)

That is a bit like saying, Ultimately, as a whole, astronomy boils down to "Twinkle, Twinkle, little star..."

187dodger
Juin 21, 2007, 4:37 pm

I know. ;-)

My tongue was in my cheek when I wrote it (that’s what the winky-guy was for).

188Arctic-Stranger
Juin 21, 2007, 5:48 pm

Winky guy!!!??? Are we letting gay teletubbies on this board? O, you heathen you, bringing the sin of Sodom down to...

oh wait...Winky, not tinky winky. oh, and I guess we ARE heathens.....

Never mind.

189dodger
Juin 21, 2007, 6:15 pm

LOL, I had a feeling I'd get some crap for “winky.” I couldn't decided what to call it, or if it was winky or winkie, or if the whole thing was too suggestive ... What’s a happy heathen to do?

190clamairy
Juin 21, 2007, 8:36 pm

Were you guys showing us your winkies? Sheesh.

;o)

191dodger
Juin 21, 2007, 8:40 pm

Sorry clam, but I figured we were all close enough now. ;-)

192clamairy
Juin 21, 2007, 8:47 pm

Well, dodger, if we can talk about our darkest political and religious beliefs, I guess we shouldn't hold anything back.

;o)

193Arctic-Stranger
Juin 22, 2007, 12:53 pm

Clam, clam clam...sigh....

We are men...we were not showing our winkies, we were MEASURING our winkies!

194clamairy
Juin 22, 2007, 2:50 pm

Ah yes.

"I see your Schwartz is as big as mine."

195Scaryguy
Juin 22, 2007, 3:19 pm

Speak for yourself! Some may have winkies, others of us have wonkers. ;)

196Arctic-Stranger
Juin 22, 2007, 3:20 pm

Schwartz? Big?

Oh where is your mind? We were measuring our cell phones, and mine is MUCH smaller than his!

197dodger
Juin 22, 2007, 4:34 pm

Boy, I’ve really done it now. This thread has gone off topic before, but I’ve managed to divert it *way* off topic! :-o

Perhaps we could discuss the size of our libraries now, that would put it back a little closer to the topic. Of course, then, mine is the smallest of us four (Arctic, clam, Scary, and me)! That also means that clam’s is the biggest! *Blushes a little.*

198clamairy
Juin 22, 2007, 5:17 pm

"That also means that clam’s is the biggest!"

Oh dear!!!

*blushes, too*

*grins evilly, as well*

199JPB
Juin 22, 2007, 8:26 pm

* throws down his library into the mix *

Looks around, walks away.

Besides, I always thought it wasn't the size of the library, but the thickness of the books.

Something like that.

* goes back to annoying headache *

200BTRIPP
Juin 22, 2007, 11:40 pm

"That also means that clam’s is the biggest!"

Heh ... reminds me of the answer to the question in the title of Black Flag's classic live album: Who's Got the 10½?

201Busifer
Modifié : Juin 24, 2007, 7:01 am

You know, sometime I'll maybe actually read some books about why religion is bad... I own one, I say ONE, book by Sam Harris and no other.
I plan to read it. Some time.
I know how this sounds, but I was born knowing religion of any sort - all -isms and such included - are wrong; we are born with brains, why not use them, like? And so I feel kind of wary about this "heathen" or "atheist" thing going off in a very definitely religious way - especially with this New Atehism sect.

I don't mean to offend anyone, what I'm saying is more like well, religion and belief has its ways into our society and or brains... and some atheists (which I am, and which I think most of the rest of you are not - more agnostics, secularists and pantheists, as I've gathered?) are very close on starting a church of their own.

And do we really need those books that they write as some kind of holy scriptures?

202dchaikin
Juin 24, 2007, 11:35 pm

So, in the process of criticizing the major religious beliefs are we all basically showing we actually have our own alternative religion? Have we atheists ironically become the hypocrites? Actually, I think that may be true, but I don't think undermines any of it.

We all grew up breathing in religion at some level. It is embedded in the world view we created as we formed ourselves (like age 0-6 years). So, when we find things contradictory to this, it is very intense; it shakes our whole foundation. Coming to terms with it one way or the other is difficult, and very complex psychologically. Probably, the more religious our childhood, the more intense the reaction. I think that is where this type of debate originates and this is why we feel the need to discuss this. (And why bookaphiles feel the need look into books that discuss it directly and indirectly.)

I guess if someone grew up entirely nonreligious, they might shrug their shoulders at this debate. But, with the exception of house pets (my pups are rolling their eyes at this whole thing) I don't think any of us can be totally free of religion. Even if we are raised atheist, we are still raised in a societies founded on religion. We can't escape our heritage.

203myshelves
Juin 25, 2007, 12:18 am

Busifer,

I think it may be that you feel less threatened by organized religious fanatics. In the U.S., it isn't that long ago that we had laws against selling contraceptives, had Sunday closing laws, had laws on the books preventing nonbelievers from holding office, serving on juries, or becoming notaries public, etc., etc., etc. Aside from campaigns to teach creationism in schools, a new campaign into which millions of dollars is being poured in the wake of the Schiavo case is to pass legislation and get judges appointed to vitiate the effect of living wills and appointments of health care surrogates. The thought of the Bush brothers, Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Randall Terry, et. al. deciding whether I'm to be kept alive on tubes scares the bejezus out of me!

204Busifer
Juin 25, 2007, 1:57 am

#202 & 203 - I don't disagree. We have our share of religious controversies in Sweden, but virtually no one campaigns for creationism; those who do are viewed as oddballs.

I also agree that we can not grow up untainted by religion. But part of my wariness over joining this group stems from not having strong feelings about religion - it's more of an interesting concept in that it has, and does, affect/ed humanity and our history.

Have to run to a meeting now, sorry, would have written more else!

205gregtmills
Juil 5, 2007, 9:51 pm

MAD Magazine doomed me very, very early. Candide at 16 finished the job.

206ellevee
Juil 7, 2007, 11:16 am

I cite it in every thread, but Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail changed my life in every way possible. Suddenly, nothing was black and white. It also taught me that not ALL politicans are evil and corrupt.

207GertrudeTonks
Août 12, 2007, 3:02 am

Message #84 c_wh_so:
I totally agree with #85.
I was not bored either.

I see that I am a few months late to make much of a difference in the conversation, but that has never stopped me before.
I believed because I was taught to believe.
I also started having doubts after two college classes on the Bible. I went to a Baptist school and there were four groups in the small school. There were true believers, foreigners, Bible toters, and the fun people. I had no problem with any of the groups except the Bible toters. They partied all night and as hard as the fun people but when the sun came up they pretended to be true believers.
I caught hell for dating a "foreigner" but told people to kiss my ...
When my ex-husband and I got divorced I thought I would go to hell if I ever got married again. A preacher told me that I would be fine. (I actually need to call that man and thank him.)
Fast forward 4-5 years. I met my current husband and we had a tubal pregnancy and I changed forever.
My mother is convinced that we are all going to hell for not going to church.
Hell does not exist but I am still on the fence about the afterlife thing.
I have seen ghosts.

208maggie1944
Août 12, 2007, 9:49 am

I would love it if you ever felt like posting a thread on seeing ghosts. Woooeeeee......

p.s. never too late to say something here, we all like to read, remember..

209GertrudeTonks
Août 12, 2007, 9:30 pm

Maggie:
I will when school starts. I will have time for myself then.
I do have a question. I saw where someone was fussing
about someone else using two posts in a row. Is that a no-no
here? I know on eBay Answer center one "post police person"
always gets on and wastes a slot telling others not to waste
slots and has a fit if anyone revives a question more than a
month old. (Answer center only has ten.) How does it work here?
Thanks!

210maggie1944
Août 12, 2007, 9:42 pm

I have seen a few "two posts in a row" by people here and have done it myself a couple of times; I hit "submit" and then remember one more thing...

no one has said anything since I've been reading here (maybe a month or so). I am not "an oldtimer" but I am sure if there's a problem we will hear about it...

Seems like there is plenty of air space on LT and I have seen posts on old threads too and have not heard complaints. "more shall be revealed" no doubt.

211rachelbrandfire
Août 12, 2007, 9:49 pm

212dchaikin
Août 12, 2007, 10:19 pm

#209 GT - Welcome to LT. I agree with Maggie, two posts in a row is kind of normal. As for reviving "dead" conversation, many are designed to receive only occasional feedback, or to serve as a sort of permanent reference. And, if it's a good thread, then a new face with a new point of view is always welcome.

213GertrudeTonks
Août 13, 2007, 12:29 am

Thanks to 210 Maggie and 212 dchaikin.
I like this place. I was telling my mom and she said
to tell my sister. I don't think so. My name here is just the
name we gave our baby hedgehog and she will recognize
it right away. My mom is a Fundy Baptist and swears I am
going to hell and taking the kids with me. I have no idea my
sister's true thoughts on religion. If she goes to church it is
just for show. BTW, most of the bible thumpers in the South do
NOT practice what they preach. There are some true believers
but it is mostly a status symbol. It matters who you are and what
church you belong to. You can have money but if you are not a
member of the right church, you will never be considered a pillar of
society or be accepted as one of them. You will forever be an outcast.

214reading_fox
Modifié : Août 13, 2007, 5:42 am

Two posts in a row isn't exactly a problem, but if you've just forgotten something, there is an edit feature (that little pencil icon on the top right of your posts).

see just like this. Edit:
and ditto #212, welcome and new points of view are always interesting!

215maggie1944
Modifié : Août 13, 2007, 10:56 am

Thanks, reading_fox, I did actually see that the other day and have used it. One of the things I most like about LT is I keep learning stuff and can impress my grandson that I actually can be a happy successful computer user (-;

like just now - edited for typo, called you reading_fix....hehehehehe

216PedrBran
Mai 28, 2014, 7:07 pm

This is a 7 year old dead post, but let me add my two cents for those who still follow this post.

These books awakened me as a college student in the late 70's. I eventually studied philosophy under Joseph Kockelmans at Penn State ( although I was a math major - he loved having students who weren't philosophy majors ). He taught me phenomenology, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, etc.

0) Everything by Karl Popper. It freed my mind from justificationism and the quest for certainty. If you are philsophically inclined and seek certainty and security, save your money on therapy and read Popper. The search for knowledge must now be done in a falsificationist context.

1) The Retreat to Commitment. This rocked my world even more than Popper. It made me realize that to maintain my belief in Christianity, I had to ultimately jettison reason and become an irrationalist. This was a step I was unwilling to take and so I gave up belief...completely...I am now an atheist ( I am an agnostic with regard to philosophical gods...I am an atheist with regard to Abrahamic gods. It is a trivial demonstration that the world as we know it is inconsistent with the existence of these entities ).

2) The New Testament:The History of the Investigation of its Problems. A book dealing with how to understand what the New Testament is and its problems. I was a naive fundamentalist and this book made me realize that if you take seriously mankind's effort to investigate the past, you have to give up most of one's Christian beliefs - otherwise you have to stand in contempt of these efforts and adhere to some type of false consciousness or conspiracy theory. There are similar books showing the shoddy fundamentalist historiography for Judaism and Islam.

3) The Selfish Gene Doesn't Dawkins eventually show up on every Heathens list?

4) Phenomenology of Perception Much more than Heidegger, this book shaped my thinking. No long was the subject/object dichotomy an issue after reading this - Kocklemans led me through the thorny paths.

5) The First Circle and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

6) The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Although I am no longer a Christian, I have a deep appreciation for this man. Whatever your values, this man lived his and serves as an inspiration to live ours.

7) The Second Sex An examination of women's 'situation' from an existentialist perspective...an amazing book.

I have more recent books that have shaped my thinking, but I will save those for another post.

217EricJT
Mai 30, 2014, 6:25 am

OK: I'll join in too to mention one book that certainly made me review my thinking - Killing No Murder: a study of assassination as a political means by Edward Hyams.

218Sandydog1
Mai 31, 2014, 9:57 pm

The most significant book had to be The New Oxford Annotated Bible.

219EricJT
Juin 3, 2014, 12:14 pm

220Sandydog1
Juin 3, 2014, 8:22 pm

Oh, I I don't think I would have needed that treasure. I think any ol' version, King James, etc., would have done it.

221Sandydog1
Juil 13, 2014, 1:04 pm

I'm finally reading Letters from Earth. But I'm such a Twain-o-maniac, and he's so damn repetitive, it's possible that I have read this long ago...