The Glade 4.0

So basically the opposite of American society.

No wonder we suck at science.

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Holy shitsnacks!

There's something to that, actually.

Neil deGrasse Tyson explaned it with a long string of famous scientists from Ptolemy to Newton who believed in god, were brilliant men, but when the reached the limit of what they could explain, stopped questioning, and left it as the "purview of the Gods/God". Yet afterward, others would figure it out. The "God of the Gaps" is very dangerous to a scientific mind, because it causes you to stop investigating when you hit a comprehension wall.

This could be some of the most enlightening 39 minutes you'll ever watch, if you watch it.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Awesome talk.

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Holy shitsnacks!

My opinion isn't about religion. My opinion is about how you arrived at your opinion about religion. And that opinion is that you used about as much of a scientific approach to arrive at your opinion as the WBC used to arrive at their opinion about homosexuality.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Silly me, I thought Pantheism was belief in a Pantheon of gods.

Turns out Merriam Webster doesn't even have it as one of the alternatives. They define Pantheism as

PANTHEISM

1: a doctrine that equates God with the forces and laws of the universe

2: the worship of all gods of different creeds, cults, or peoples indifferently;

also : toleration of worship of all gods (as at certain periods of the Roman empire)

— pan·the·ist noun
— pan·the·is·tic also pan·the·is·ti·cal adjective
— pan·the·is·ti·cal·ly adverb

Origin of PANTHEISM
French panthéisme, from panthéiste pantheist, from English pantheist, from pan- + Greek theos god
First Known Use: 1732

---------------------------

For the time being I'll stay in the Deist camp, with Christian/Catholic background/upbringing and agnostic tendencies.

There is a lot of wisdom in both Testaments of the Bible, and a lot of other stuff too. Its hard to just chuck it away as irrelevant when one loses one's faith in the church and the dogma. I really don't want to ignore thousands of years of tradition, teaching and philosophy. It is still a good place to look for inspiration and guidance. I'm starting to liken it to, amusingly enough, science textbooks of 100 years ago which had a lot of good information, and a lot of information that would later be disproved. The basic difference is the science textbook authors go "oops" when proven wrong and revise and put out a new edition with the new knowledge. The only time the bible is revised is when a group thinks it can make a better translation 9http://carm.org/which-bible-version-is-best) or a more politically correct one (e.g. King James IMHO).

Of course disproving things taken on faith is always a tricky thing. The earth is somewhere around 6000 years old! Really, we have a fossil record going back almost three and a half billion years, and observation of the universe makes it much older than that. How do you explain away the science? God (or Satan) put it there to test your faith.

I prefer to remain flexible, show me the science. It isn't always right, but its usually a series of steps we can point to and say okay, this works, the principles keep supporting these facts.

The rest of the problem is you can neither prove or disprove God or the great majority of the metaphysical side of religion. We just don't know.

So, I'm still not sure of everything, and in a lot of ways, I hope I never am while I'm here.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I "arrived at my opinion" by reading books and watching videos like the ones linked. My stated arguments are similar or paraphrasings of ones I've read elsewhere. None of this stuff is original. I have been convinced by others. That was the point of the links. You aren't arguing with me. You're arguing with some rather famous brilliant minds and orators and calling them unscientific.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Thanks Talya, I had seen sections of that before but not the full video all together which helps to provide context.

So... Appeal to Authority is your entire argument?

I don't really feel like going into it again except to express, as I did in the 46% thread, that you have only qualitative factors in your argument, combined with numerous fallacies.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This is very true. This is why even Dawkins won't state with 100% certainty that there is no god.

However, he frequently lists other things we simply cannot know, in much the same fashion. For example...

-Which of the many contradictory religions are correct? They all have an equal lack of falsifiability or empirical evidence, even the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
-the Pixies in my Garden. Prove that they are not there.
-What about the invisible pink unicorn in my closet?

You are 100% correct that God is not something that can be proven or disproven. Religion itself, when it deigns to assign doctrine to the observable world around us, on the other hand, has serious problems. For science, this is not an issue. Science tries to prove itself wrong. That's what scientific advancement is. But when you assign infallible doctrine based on the word of your all-knowing God to something, it better not have any factual errors, or you've just shot your entire faith to hell, so to speak.

But God cannot be proven or disproven. Why should people give any particular version of God their veneration, then?

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No. Their arguments are my arguments. And their arguments are simply better than any others I've seen. You have cause and effect backwards - they have authority because they have the knowledge and intellect and make the brilliant arguments. Their authority isn't the reason for believing what they say. What they say is the reason for their authority.

Including yours.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Sure, and that doesn't make them correct. More credible? Sure.

But you aren't arguing that. You're arguing that your position is correct because these other people said it. That's a fallacy.

Let's say I've misconstrued, and what you mean to say is that you have no opinion of your own (which isn't true given the thread title), but that you support these individuals because their opinions are correct. This would also be wrong, albeit not fallacious on your part.




Here's the point: there is no correct opinion on the correctness or incorrectness of a belief in god. Nor is there a verifiable claim as to the net impact of religion, because quantitative measures both do not exist nor could they themselves be tested. To claim otherwise (that something is "obvious" or "clear" or "undeniable" or whathaveyou), as you always do, is simply wrong. And honestly, a bit thick. It demonstrates confirmation bias and illogical thinking, which is why we (many of the objective members here) call you out on that bias.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That's also a strawman. It's the opposite of what you just quoted.



Their arguments are sound, with verifiable facts and concise and simple logic. This is no surprise, they are brilliant minds arguing in their areas of expertise. But while their expertise and intelligence informs their opinions and guides their arguments, it is the arguments themselves that have weight. Their authority exists precisely because they can make arguments like that.



I have opinions of my own, which have formed because I have been convinced by others, and not only are their arguments (based on facts and statistics and logic) persuasive and logically sound, but they ring true with my own anecdotal experience.

I have opinions of my own on the matter of religion, but they are by no means original. I'm not the source of those opinions, I'm not the first one to say them.





I agree, here. However, as I stated above, there's also no correct opinion on a belief in faeries, the flying spaghetti monster, or any other outlandish unfalsifiable claim. Take that as you will.



I disagree. I have been convinced by logical reasoning of that. I've linked a whole lot of that reasoning in posts above. You're just making a flat statement without support.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

/snipped for posterity.

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...
So are dozens of Theistic modern religions, with varying degrees of personal interpretation necessary to be so. I can think of very few that are, in the modern era, outright doctrinally hostile to or fundamentally incompatible with science. Modern theologists aren't trying to excommunicate particle physics researchers -- they simply acknowledge that their pursuits lie in what amounts to the philosophical equivalent of two skew lines. The disciplines do not intersect, but are not parallel, either.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I believe the inference is, views that are compatible with science will have no unfalsifiable factual claims. For something to be compatible with science, it needs to be more than just "not contradictory with science," but must also be testable with the scientific method.

The belief in God is not "compatible with science," it just doesn't contradict science. Put it another way: Software must be "compatible" with your operating system...meaning your operating system needs to be able to run it. A deck of cards isn't compatible with your operating system...it might not conflict with your operating system, but it's a physical deck of cards. Your operating system has nothing to do with it.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

You don't consider people working better together in a community a benefit? We're social creatures, working well together is essential for us to thrive. Religions have been used for thousands of years to encourage strangers to treat each other fairly and work together as opposed to cheating and stealing.

All I'm saying is I think it's ridiculous for you to assert that religion provides no benefits whatsoever. Religious people give more to charity, are more involved in the community, and spend more of their time helping the poor and needy. Are those not benefits for society too?

I believe I read (and don't have time to look it up now), that non-religious people give more to secular charities. Religious people give almost exclusively to religious charities. (Which makes sense. They see a collection plate every sunday.) The vast majority of that money gets spent on advancing the causes of the religion in question. Even the amounts that make it through to secular causes are used as essentially "public relations" causes for the churches.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I've often wondered about the percentage breakdown, actually. At the Episcopal church my family attended when I was growing up, I think the Sunday collection proceeds were used to pay the priest's salary, cover upkeep for the church building, etc. There were separate donation drives (both money and goods) for things like the food bank, the Christmas toy giveaway, the multi-denominational homeless shelter a few towns over, our "sister church" in Africa, and so on. I couldn't tell you whether the weekly collections added up to more or less than the standalone drives, but there was pretty much always some charitable donation activity going on, so I'd be surprised if "the vast majority" of the total went to advancing the causes of the church/religion itself.

On the other hand, one of the deacons was a lawyer, and he drafted a will for one of his elderly clients (who was also a member of our church) that bequeathed her entire life savings (roughly $1 million) to a trust for the upkeep of the church, so there's that! (It was something of a local scandal, btw, and his reputation took a big hit. Of course, the church still kept the money.)

Not according to what I've read. Most of my sources are from books but here's an article I found online:

Not conservatives, but religious people, more charitable

Yeah, religious people may focus most of their charity on religious organizations, but they still donate as much or more to secular charities than atheists and non-religious people. I also take issue with your assertion that for religious charities, "the vast majority of that money gets spent on advancing the causes of the religion in question." That seems pretty extreme. Sure, some of that money might be spent on protesting abortion clinics and gay marriage or trying to convert people, but there's at least as much focus on giving to the poor, feeding the hungry, etc. I'm an atheist and I've still volunteered for some religious charities because the main focus was helping people.

And it's not so much that people's belief in God makes them want to help others and give to charity, but more that going to church every week and socializing with other people who are involved in the local community and helping out the less fortunate makes people more likely to get involved and help out. It gets people thinking about charity to begin with. I'm not involved in any such groups and I can easily have months go by where I don't think about charity at all. I'm sure you could come up with secular organizations that accomplish something similar, but the fact of the matter is non-religious people don't create such organizations on a significant level.

The thing is, any donation to a church is counted as "donating to charity" on final reports. There is no distinction made on tax returns. It is charity in the sense that a building at a university being named after the person who donated the money for the construction effort is counted as charity. Such a statistic is therefore totally meaningless, as only the most morally bankrupt of individuals would look at the opulence and wealth inside of, say, a Catholic cathedral and seriously attempt to equate that charity with something like Scouting for Food or Doctors Without Borders.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Indeed. I'd really like to see charitable donation stats broken out for the classic "aiding the poor and destitute" types of things. Forget the religious angle even. As far as I'm concerned, donating to Harvard's $30 billion endowment (seriously, thirty **** billion!) ain't charity in any meaningful sense of the word.

I refuse to include my donations to my Church as charitable donations on taxes. (and I know that 50% of our collections & pledges go directly to our charitable work/organizations, rather than church infrastructure, programs, lights, heat, ect)

That's something that must be accounted for. I don't think these studies just count church tithes as 100% charitable giving.

But we can sidestep that issue entirely by just looking at volunteering instead of monetary donations. Religious people volunteer more overall, including volunteering more for secular organizations than non-religious people.

This is what really needs to be focused on. Example...

Back when Hurrican Katrina hit, while everyone was focused on NO, there were many, many towns and communities outside of NO and in the lower parts of MS that were just as affected. Our church, for about a year I think(could have been 6 months but certainly not just a few weeks) had regular shifts of people that went once a week to help folks clean out their homes and other buildings. One group would go one week, come back, then another group would go. Donations of goods were sent along as well. Money is one thing, but folks at my church would rather donate time or go and buy things. It's nothing to hear about someone losing their house to a fire and 30-40 folks putting together care packages for the affected family. I'm assuming we are going to start back up now that the weather has turned up, but last year our Sunday School class would take Saturdays and go out into the neighborhoods and cut peoples grass, weed eat, you name it. When the church tries to give money out, it gets dicey. Lot's of folks out there who will scam.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Well... it is a charity, it just isn't the same sort of charity. I don't take issue with that. When someone says group A donates to charity, they imply that group is more moral and caring. That, I have a problem with, because it doesn't logically follow once you understand what is actually considered charity. The statement that group A donates more to charity is disingenuous, like talking the "average" something.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.