"I am afraid she'll listen to voices in her head, thinking they are divine inspiration, when confronted with national security issues. What if God tells her to launch the missiles?" (Usenet post about Sarah Palin, then running for vice president) The argument sounds right but I do not think it is.
<offering evidence from polling data that religious people are, religion aside, less given to what most of us would regard as irrational beliefs, than non-religious people.>
This is a non-sequitur as many religious people don't believe in the things you're positing the non-religious ("spiritual" and "lefties") believe in at a greater degree as part of their religion.
In other words, if you ask a religious Christian fundie about speaking with the dead, they'll either say, "no, that's against the rules," i.e. the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, OR they'd start spouting their belief in NDEs, which, if you've ever heard any fundie Christians talk about, is just as nutso as a cheap New Orleans psychic talking to your dead grandmother on your behalf.
The reason many (maybe most) Christian right-wingers don't "believe in" climate change isn't because they're more rational, it's because they either oppose the left on principle, or believe "God is in control," or a combination of those two things.
IF you polled the religious right about God healing cancer, bringing people unexpected money, finding them a lower mortgage rate (Sam Harris), healing their cataracts (Tim Minchin), talking to them about life decisions, yadda, yadda, yadda, the polling would probably level right out.
What's more crazy: Thinking God healed grandma's arthritis after you prayed in tongues or believing in Bigfoot?
I mean, personally, I think Bigfoot is more credible. And Atlantis and Mu being based on real places.
I don't believe those things, but I'd believe them before believing in healing prayer causing aunt Jane's breast cancer to be less severe last summer (even though, Praise Jesus, He took her home in the fall).
Here's the real issue to me:
Right-wing fundie Christians of a certain stripe (and I'm speaking from experience, having been one myself) believe without a doubt that in order for Jesus to return, the Temple must be rebuilt and perfect red heifers need their throat slit.
In order for this to happen, bye-bye Dome of the Rock...
So, yeah, Al Gore's craziness is not missed - but imagine a POTUS who's trying to decide in a very gray situation about whether to go from Defcon 3 to Defcon 2 or even more scary, Defcon 1, and he or she is thinking (maybe even a bit subconsciously) that the ONLY way Jesus is going to come back is if the Dome of the Rock is not there anymore...
There's also a class of Christians, I heard one who was badly injured say this after returning from Iraq, "I couldn't kill anyone that God didn't already ordain to be dead at that time."
That is why I wrote "religion aside." There are lots of irrational beliefs that are neither implied by a religion or inconsistent with it. The evidence, according to that article, is that religious people are less inclined to believe in those than non-religious people.
Once you say "religion aside" in an discussion of irrational beliefs, well, it's like saying, "what army is most dangerous if we put aside guns, knives, bombs, tanks, ships, planes, baseball bats, armor, uniforms, grenades, ranks, boots, and MREs?"
Fair enough, but I think, having not spend decades as a Christian or among Christians, you fail to appreciate, in fact can't even imagine, how much EVERYTHING is effected and subjected to a believer's imagination about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost, depending on your denominational affiliation).
And if you think that's nit-picking, there's Christians who believe if you're reading outside the King James Bible, you're a sinner going to hell.
So it's the Holy Ghost! As God intended.
I've known Christians who've believed they should pray about EVERYTHING, even where to go to lunch. "God might have a divine appointment for me at the Waffle House, or perhaps the Cracker Barrel, so I need to consult Him."
There's Christians who think God is moving the gears on every raindrop, guiding the bullet on every shot fired, and Who wants to be consulted before you do anything requiring thought, so putting religion aside on a discussion about what kind of POTUS would be more dangerous makes the discussion pointless, as you can't have a religious President, at least a Christian one (I mean a non-cultural one, who truly believes) that could make any decision or have any belief that wasn't influenced by the irrational belief in a Personal Savior. Who guides and speaks and blesses and curses...
<<There are lots of irrational beliefs that are neither implied by a religion or inconsistent with it.>>
You're leaving out influenced. There isn't a single irrational belief you can name that isn't influenced by religion (at least if we're talking Christianity).
UFOs? There's Christians who believe they are Nephilim (from Genesis 6, i.e. offspring of demons and human women).
So if you poll Christians and say, "Do you believe that aliens have or do visit the earth in the form of UFOs or UAP?"
They can answer, "NOPE," and you'll tell me, "SEE, they're more rational," but you're missing that they believe those things are DEMONS!
Lol....
You mentioned Bigfoot, but yeah, same smell, what percentage who said, "No, I don't believe in Bigfoot," would also hear a story about an encounter with a Bigfoot and say, "Of course it's not a Bigfoot, it's a demon. Let's pray together right now!"
Do vaccines cause autism?
Christian: NO, of course not, that's silly.
Do you believe autism is caused by demon?
Christian: That depends. Not all the time, of course, but if there is a generational curse, it's quite likely that demons are involved.
You neglect another reason a believer might be skeptical of AGW. Their religion doesn’t require them to believe in it. The New Age Gaians _are required_ to believe.
True enough, but believers have plenty of things they are required to believe.
The people most dangerous, imho, are those who believe they have the Absolute Truth in the form of a Holy Book (Bible or Koran, same smell) and they also "hear" from God (or Allah).
You'd be hard pressed to get a few hundred million (or a billion for that matter) New Agers to agree on a single expressed proclamation of action. Sure, they might all agree that "humans bad, earth good," (not that that is different than Christians or Muslims, "humans sin, God perfect") but it's not the same as having a massive voting bloc all agreeing that if you want to get reelected you'd better do what God just told us He wanted.
Considering the world is posed currently on a potential start to WWIII right there in the midst of an unsolvable conflict (based partially on things "God Said") I think this a lot more dangerous than leftie environmentalists stopping traffic in protest and demanding some new taxes or restrictions on trade (all nuts, I agree, but nothing there that can start nukes being dropped).
A massive voting bloc in America believes Israel needs to rebuild the temple. That's a fact. It's also fact that there's something in the way...
I don't think the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is fundamentally based on belief in Judaism and/or Islam, although some on each side make arguments from that. The fundamental problem is the existence of two ethnic groups that both want the same land. Lots of Israelis don't actually believe in Judaism, but have the same reaction to Hamas slaughtering people as the ones who do. Palestinians don't need a belief in Islam to resent people who pushed their grandparents out of what is now Israel and repeatedly proved their military superiority to the Palestinians and their allies.
No argument, but simply ask yourself what would be more dangerous:
An Israeli and an American as respective Presidents in which their religious beliefs were basically cultural and they weren't really "true believers" OR an Israeli President who absolutely believed, with NO DOUBT that GOD HIMSELF gave Israel all the land coupled with an American President who believed that Jesus would only be able to return with the Temple rebuilt (and the sacrificial system restored) and who also fully supported the Israeli President (i.e. agree that GOD HIMSELF wants Israeli occupation of the land since it's "what the Bible says."
There's no argument in my mind what's more dangerous and the other stuff, about the underlying reasons for the conflict, are non-sequiturs here.
This would actually lead to solving the issue for good, and so likely lead to less suffering than the current world will lead to.
Once the controlling parties decide too actually solve the issue (instead of keeping it open), it gets solved and the world forgets about it. See the various genocides going on.
Doing things slowly and dragging them out causes angst
Understood, but expediency isn't the only factor here.
Nor is looking at "what would be best in a 100 years" as the answer to that might be things well well outside the Overton Window and while maybe fun to discuss theortically, nobody is going to act on them.
“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.” ~ Sam Harris
If the POTUS said he was talking to a friend named Harvey, it would be no different than one talking to Jesus or Yahweh or God or Allah or Krishna.
The point is simple: If you have an imaginary friend, you can say anything you want, and it's unfalsifiable.
If you have an imaginary friend in common with 150 million potential voters, the problem is obvious, you can say anything you want and if it's even remotely believable, you've got support to do what you want.
I'm not afraid that a POTUS will say, "God told me to go to war," as this would be no different than the world we live in today, US Presidents go to war when they want war, they justify the act after the fact. Easy-peasy.
I'm more concerned that a POTUS will escalate a war or not really consider all the ramifications, because of the reason, "God told me."
But, sure, I'll concede a secular humanist or leftist could do the same, we've already seen that when a Democratic President supports war, the anti-war left goes silence.
The set of political ideologies collectively known as the Left killed far more people in the 20th century than any other human cause in history, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population. Only Smallpox and Bubonic Plague exceed it.
Even Islam doesn’t approach it. If you consider religion dangerous, Islam should be at the top of your list.
Any ideology whereas the leader is considered in god-like terms is dangerous, and the communists killed millions (hundreds of millions, no argument) under such leaders.
But the topic was American elections, i.e. would you rather have an Al Gore type ideologue who believes in unscientific AGW (or other nonsense) or a right-wing ideologue who believes in Jesus rising from the dead and sending special messages.
I think the Jesus believer is more dangerous, for reasons given.
Now, would a Islamic POTUS be dangerous? Sure, same smell as a Christian, unless they're just a cultural believer.
Aayan Hirsi Ali is a good example of a Christian who doesn't actually believe anything, apparently, her public statement of faith is that she believes Christianity is the best way to fight radical Islam, wokeism, and the Russia/China threats. She'd likely make a good President, actually, since she's really an atheist and a decent person (as Dawkins notes) and she understands the dangers of religion.
Trump is another example of a "Christian" who made (might make again) a good or bad POTUS without any regard to his Christianity. Trump is obviously a cultural Christian as well, and it's apparent the only Person He worships is Himself.
As to Islam being the most dangerous religion, maybe...I guess it depends on your definition of religion. I consider the North Korean structure religious, since the leader is the "glorious" leader and is essentially a god in his own mind and among his people (at least in practice).
So, China is dangerous, although who knows if it's as dangerous as Islam as a whole, it's not as if Islamic countries all get along and could field the military China could under one leader.
The danger Islam poses begins with its foundational text. Any danger a Christian POTUS might pose does not originate in the New Testament. Anything can be perverted, but most perversions of Christianity go back to the Old Testament, without any of the centuries of Rabbinical commentary on it.
Jimmy Carter was the closest modern POTUS to the bogeyman in your head. He was mostly inept. The scenario you describe is rather far fetched. You’re editing reality the way that accounts of Sarah Palin were edited.
I wouldn’t vote for Al Gore for dog catcher. Among other things, he was a sore loser.
Why do you accuse me of having a "bogeyman" in my head?
I'm merely pointing out the truth, some Christians believe the temple must be rebuilt before Jesus can return. If you're not a fundie Christian, fine, don't get your panties in a bunch.
I suspect any Christian capable of reaching the WH will be a Christian in name only as a honest to goodness Christian wouldn't be able to get their hands that dirty.
I'm not editing anything about Sarah Palin, her choice was a foolish one, but so was McCain. I was still an evangelical back in that time (who'd voted for Bush) and I wrote in Ron Paul, as I felt "throwing my vote away" was better than endorsing such idiocy by the Republican Party.
A better choice would have been the governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, who was a white Jew woman Republican that got elected in one of the bluest states in the Union. Nearing the end of her 2nd term (yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus) she'd have made a much better prospective VP, not that McCain could have won with Jesus on the ticket. He was an old, sad, tired out same-ole same-ole choice.....anyway, that was the last time I ever voted.
Sarah Palin was a joke, and everyone knows this, it was almost as if the Republicans wanted to lose that election.
As for Christianity being perverted, this isn't necessary, one only need take the words of Jesus seriously, such as these following gems:
I came not to bring peace, but a sword.
and
Bring those who reject me as King bound and subdued so I can slit their throats.
You don't need the Old Testament to see that Jesus was a nationalist bigot who believed in slaughtering his enemies.
New Testament is, read literally, an extremist book that created an extremist movement both immediately after its creation and numerous times afterwards. It has quite enough passages on its own to get that there are two morals: horizontal, between humans (which is relatively nice compared to many other religions) and vertical, human-to-God, which is _not_ nice and effectively enables people to attack just like the other books do (the merchants in the temple is the obvious example, but there are less obvious ones).
> But the topic was American elections, i.e. would you rather have an Al Gore type ideologue who believes in unscientific AGW (or other nonsense) or a right-wing ideologue who believes in Jesus rising from the dead and sending special messages.
Al Gore, obviously. Why would you think the latter be dangerous, unless you think God actually exists but are afraid of the messages he might send?
> I mean, personally, I think Bigfoot is more credible. And Atlantis and Mu being based on real places.
> I don't believe those things, but I'd believe them before believing in healing prayer causing aunt Jane's breast cancer to be less severe last summer (even though, Praise Jesus, He took her home in the fall).
Massive amounts of evidence, including research studies on the efficacy of prayer, anecdotal evidence from nearly 40 years of being a born-again evangelical (much of which was spent in Pentecostal type churches that practiced "healing prayer," and finally the absence of evidence in an area where absence of evidence is evidence (i.e. with millions of people believing in miracles, there should be a large list of undeniable miracle occurrences that I couldn't explain away, there's not).
Now, I don't "believe in" Atlantis or Mu, but it's possible that some ancient city or civilization inspired the legends, so it's possible some minor parts of the legends are true. Just like in the case of Jesus, obviously he didn't really resurrect, and much of the gospel stories are invented narratives (often based on OT stories, other legends/fables, and in some cases inspired by Homer and other ancient Greek writings), but we don't dismiss that Augustus Caesar or Pontius Pilate were real people or that Judea existed.
I used to attend church with a PhD philosopher named JP Moreland, who's well-respected and often quoted, etc., like for an example, he appears in Lee Strobel's best-selling book (made into a film) as one of the experts consulted.
JP once asked my mother, some 15 years ago by my recollection, if she had access to the medical records for one of my siblings who'd been a critically ill baby/child (was sent on a Make-a-Wish trip as everyone thought she was gonna die before adulthood).
JP was seeking for evidence for miracles for a book.
Flash forward to a couple years ago, so over a decade after JP started his extensive research, and a major Christian publisher puts out a book about miracles by JP. So I bought it and read it because I was curious if he'd used my sister's story, and if so, how, and also if he'd come up with any good evidence.
And nope.
He didn't use that story or any story like it.
A decade of research and his "miracles" included:
A cold reading by the founder of a miracle healing movement (John Wimber, once interviewed by Peter Jennings for a television special, circa '95) on an airplane trip. Wimber said he called out some guy who was committing adultery. A cold reading...lol, this is something any cheap psychic could do, that was JP's evidence.
He also said he'd received a cheap swimming pool via a friend demanding illegal kickbacks from pool contractors, and that it was an "answer to prayer" and thus a miracle.
In another laugher, he said at a conference, he really had bad stomach pains and a prayer warrior friend of his prayed and he miraculously didn't poop his pants. Praise Jesus.
So, if one of today's most respected Christian apologist/philosopher/teachers spends over 10 years seeking for evidence for miracle cures/healings and cannot find ONE EXAMPLE, I figure the case is closed.
Don't you?
Or you have some evidence I'm missing?
And, as a sidebar, while I don't believe Bigfoot exists, science does on occasion find new species, so at least we have evidence the cryptozoology isn't totally fake, whereas ALL the claims of Christians of miracles and healings are probably either fake (lies) or simply just wishful thinking, proscribing a natural event the status of miracle, since it fits the narrative.
If miracle healings were a thing, I'd ask anyone who believed in them why they weren't at the children's hospital EVERY DAY to cure babies dying of various cancers, etc.
So from this you conclude that stories like your sister's don't happen, even though you don't need to read his book to know what happened with your sister?
My sister's story is that DOCTORS and SCIENCE saved her life.
Thus, JP Moreland couldn't use it as an example of supernatural healing, thus why it wasn't included in the book I suspect. I don't know for a fact why he left it out, but the fact that he included no such stories would indicate my reasoning is sound, he dismissed stories that were actually about doctors and science healing/curing people.
JP Moreland search for over 10 years for stories he COULD use, and found exactly ZERO.
So, in this case, absence of evidence is evidence of absence since we can see axiomatically that JP Moreland is a respected Christian writer with many published books and that having stories that proved his assertion would be helpful to both make his case and to profit from the publishing of the book.
Imagine an expert biologist, say someone on par with Jane Goodall, wrote a book titled, "Bigfoot Exists Today: And how you can learn to love animals!" and in the book they provided ZERO evidence of Bigfoot's existence, but instead, wrote about a bunch of people who BELIEVED Bigfoot existed.
Would that "prove" Bigfoot existed?
If I said that the author of the Bigfoot book approached my mom, because she'd once photographed Bigfoot, by her recollection, and then that account didn't appear in the book (because my mom's photo turned out to be photoshopped) would you say, "well, you conclude Bigfoot doesn't exist after knowing about your mom's photo?"
Lol, think man, think.
My sister's story doesn't "prove" there are no miracles, something that's impossible to prove anyway, but the fact that all stories in which there are actual documented healings involve doctors, medicine, or the body's natural healing capacities seem to show that healing stories giving God the credit are lies or at best, wishful thinking or something. Not stories based on truth, at the very least (even if we conclude that guys like JP aren't conmen, but really truly believe the stuff they try to "prove" with zero evidence).
If there were miracles, well, we'd know about them, no?
The irony to me is that if Christians believe that there are miracles, but that God hides the facts so they can retain faith, why write books trying to "prove" miracles are true?
Makes no sense to me.
It's like the young earth creationists who try to explain the day that Joshua asked God to pause the sun's movement across the sky so he could continue his genocidal war was based on ACTUAL cosmology, like one account I heard was the theory that mars orbited near the earth and caused it to tilt towards the sun for an extra 12 hours or so....lol....as if this could happen without destroying all life on the planet.
If mean, if you posit a miracle working God who is All-Powerful, why try to find natural explanations? Christians do this for the flood, the Star of Jesus, and other things, why? Just say it's magic, and be done with it.
What's more likely: The doctors were wrong, she recovered, or God saved her life, ignoring millions of other children who died (in those cases, the doctors were diagnosed the condition correctly)?
Or another way to ask this is why did my mom continue to take her to doctors and hospitals even though she lived? God does half-miracles in your view? Like he saved her life, sure, but she wasn't fully healthy then and never will be. Although she's still alive today, she's never had a normal healthy body.
Look, even the radical fundie JP Moreland who BELIEVES in miracles didn't believe she was a good case for his book on miracles, so case closed.
I think you're right that believers don't buy into these beliefs in part because their religion tells them not to, but that still counts for something. The point is that being non-religious does not seem to be very strong evidence that your beliefs are all highly rational. Lots of people are just temperamentally prone to weird beliefs. Arguably the person who accepts a weird belief system that's been around for thousands of years is more predictable and therefore less dangerous than the person who has a more unselected set of weird beliefs.
Or not believe. Episcopalians believe that whenever two or more are gathered together, a fifth is with them. That insulates Episcopalians from secular nutty beliefs.
I do think that most people have a religion shaped hole in them. If not filled with a true religion, it will be filled with a false one.
A person who believes in the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, Bigfoot, the lost continent of Mu or Atlantis, etc., doesn't have an agenda BASED on those beliefs.
Nobody who believes in Mu is saying, "Mu revealed to me that......"
Nobody is saying, "I had a prayer time with Bigfoot last and night, and He revealed...."
If you've never been a Christian, especially one prone to the charismatic, you might miss the fact that there are millions of Christians today who believe God speaks to the PERSONALLY and those "revelations" are on par with scripture.
Many Christians, if asked, "would you kill this guy, J. Nicholas, if God TOLD you to do it?" would answer, not, "No, of course not," but rather, they'd either admit, "yes" or they'd ask a clarifying question, "Am I positive it's REALLY Yahweh asking?"
As Hitchens used to say: Anyone can do evil but it takes a religious person to do evil because commanded to do so by the God Creator of the universe.
The debate here vanishes in a heartbeat if we substitute right-wing Christian for right-wing Muslim.
I don't think so. Afghanistan is almost all Muslim and I expect you would classify the Taliban as right wing. It is a society where, by what I have read, male homosexuality is common and accepted — despite being strongly banned by Islam.
You're confusing the idea that males can have sex with another male in an "open secret" kind of way with males being homosexual (or with LGBTQ in general) in the open and identifying as a homosexual. I suspect your referencing the bacha bazi practice.
Islam prohibits alcohol, as an example. It's a taboo that is practiced anyway, but that doesn't change how the laws are written or the idea that as a Muslim drinker, you have to be careful when/where you drink. My brother is Muslim. He only converted to marry a Muslim, which is illegal in Indonesia as a non-Muslim, he's a old, fat, white Jew like me, and an atheist. They eat pork, and drink, etc, even his wife is only culturally Muslim. My point here is at their wedding, his bar tab ran over 5 grand and he wondered why, only a few American family/friends made it to Jakarta. The Muslims said that "under the tent" Allah couldn't see them drinking, so it was "acceptable."
I suspect there is similar reasoning in the act of homosexual sex, it's done for the pleasure, and isn't considered a sin for some weird justification AND it's not publicly accepted and talked about, i.e. a military Taliban soldier would have no personal conflict having sex with a young boy on a Saturday night and then punishing (or even killing) a homosexual.
The traditional symbol of reason is the sword. Human beings pathologically desire simple models. If you give them control over the world, they will destroy complexity to make it understandable rather than increasing understanding. This is rational and adaptive but I would still say it is often bad. When you are building a machine, ruthless simplification is an unmitigated good. When you are managing society a lighter touch is to be desired, even though it makes the world less comprehensible and manageable. It is not always a virtue for the world to be more rational.
This reminds me CS Lewis, where he compares science to magic and contrasts both with religion.
"The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse."
It does very much feels like "science" zealots are the more dangerous bunch. Consider scientific Marxism, COVID regulations, eugenics, climate moral panic, inequality moral panic, etc. etc.
CS Lewis again:
"Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience".
Whether religious or not, too many of us mistakenly dismiss others, generalizing all members of a group based on the actions of a few. It’s the lazy way of ignoring common ground and discouraging any dialogue. It’s the easy way out and earns applause from our own in-group.
I think it is common sense that "all" and "too many" are the same when used ideologically. No one literally believes "all" (or "no one") is 100.000% (or 0.000%) inclusive. They are both generalizations which go against reality,
Words are part of language and context is vital. If you take everything literally, you cannot communicate. Words alone do not have useful meaning, only in context.
"I could care less" means exactly the same thing as "I couldn't care less". Everyone (!) understands the meaning, even if they quibble about the grammar.
"Plaintiffs' third cause of action is for false personation in violation of Penal Code section 528.5. That provision authorizes a civil action against "any person who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person ...""
What is "personating"? Is that the same as "impersonating"?
"knowingly and without consent" --- is it even possible to unknowingly personate someone?
"credibly" -- if it wasn't credible, it wouldn't be personation.
"another actual person" -- what does it even mean to personate yourself, or a fictional character?
Who decides how closely someone has been "personated"? I bet you could split a jury on that matter alone. Context matters.
If you say I am quibbling, darn tootin' I am, that's my whole point.
The way I’d put it is that all humans are crazy, but in different ways. And it’s hard to tell whether someone is dangerously crazy until he/she does something crazily dangerous. I’d count being conspicuously religious as a disadvantage in a politician, because I’m not religious; but all politicians have disadvantages. The question is whose disadvantages are worse.
That is why I find at least Christianity a good thing, and find it important to teach my children about it.
It is a kind of vaccine against things that may be directly horrible.
Humans always have a need for irrationality. Choosing to believing in Jesus, who by the way was a pacifist, seems to be a good way to handle this deficit.
I don't find the result that religious people have less belief in the occult particularly telling about the general irrationality - occult is _specifically_ the closest type of the beliefs to general religions, and this doesn't tell us whether the result will spread to "secular religions", i.e. other causes for doing things, as easily. (Or even if it's bad - maybe we actually do need people who have a secular cause, maybe it's actually just better than having people who believe in multiply-changed centuries-old norms?)
The simplest explanation is that some people are "crazy" enough to believe things for no reason (normally we'd use the word gullible to describe believing unlikely things just because someone said they were true), but not so crazy that they will believe contradictory things for no reason.
Years ago, I read an account of an anthropologist who was visiting a Doukhobor community in Canada. He had to go on an errand, and he asked his host to see that his notes were kept safe. And the host said that he had no wish to harm them, but that if the Holy Spirit moved him he would have to throw them into the fire. That's the kind of statement that inspires the concerns you refer to, I suspect.
Though I have to note two points that occur to me now: (1) We don't know that the host actually did anything of the sort, or that there was any likelihood of his doing so; he may just have been expressing an abstract premise. (2) Most religious people are not Doukhobors, or adherents of other intense as-the-spirit-moves-me faiths.
"The other [explanation for religion] is to make sense of life, to answer questions about what we ought to be doing and why."
Most people think of this as a "top-down" approach: God revealed certain truths and a religious person simply figures this out or is instructed by some combination of scripture, tradition, prophets, and wise leaders. But there is a "bottom-up" approach which is more evolutionary, and ironically resembles free markets, the common law, and evolution. Under this approach, tradition -- including texts, commentary, customs, rules -- are the starting point. They are entitled to some degree of deference. (A lot for more fundamentalist people; very little for very liberal people, and somewhere in the middle for the rest of us.) But science, philosophy, social science, and even social mores might warrant changes in certain circumstances.
Let me take a concrete example. Is is OK to lie?
A philosopher might come up with certain categories under which lying is mandatory (a murderer asking where the victim is), optional, or prohibited.
But Judaism (with which I am most familiar, and I assume this all applies to Christianity as well), offers concrete stories and law. So the serpent lies to Eve, and Eve in turn lies to Adam. God lies to Abraham (when he said Sarah laughed). Jacob lies to his father Isaac when he steals the blessing. Joseph's brothers lie to Jacob when they tell him Joseph had been killed. Potiphar's wife lies about Joseph trying to attack her. Etc,. Some of these are problematic, others are justified, and others are uncertain.
And there are rules, and scope of which is partially uncertain. Don't bear false witness. (Limited to court testimony?) And later texts contain additional rules. The Talmud says that a person should tell a bride she looks beautiful. The rabbis then ask, "But what if she is not beautiful?" And have a spirited (and somewhat amusing) debate on the issue,
So suppose someone is raised in this tradition, learns these stories and rules, studies the commentaries on all of these, and then engages in a series of discussion and questions and debates about when to lie. I would assume the person would have a pretty sophisticated set of categories under which lying is mandatory, permissible, and prohibited, much like the philosopher.
There are at least two interesting (to me, at least) contrasts between the religious thinker and the philosopher. First, this approach is much more accessible to most people. Most everyone, including children, can understand simple stories.
Second, these resulting categories might be path-dependent. A different religious tradition starting with different texts and traditions might end up with different categories.
Some philosophers have written about "continuing revelation," meaning that God's revelation of truths continues to happen in little bits as we continue to think and discover new things. When pushed to the limit, this approaches analytic philosophy.
The general point here is that there are a lot of beliefs that fall under the label "religion," some of which are closer to philosophy and social science than mysticism.
The problem with religious people is that some of them do what their religion commands. And religions - or their leaders - sometimes command things harmful to the believers, or their families, or their neighbours, or all three.
That's not all that different from people who habitually do what some other ideology - or its leaders - order them to do. But it really sucks to be someone the ideologists feel a duty to destroy, whether that's a descendant of a "rich peasant," a non-heterosexual, or a non-believer. It also sucks to be someone the locally powerful ideology wants crammed into a Procrustean bed.
On the other hand, religions sometimes command things that are beneficial to other people, such as not lying, helping those in need. Both Islam and traditional Christianity expected believers to donate some fraction of their income to good causes.
Everybody worries that *other people's* religions make them crazy. Including followers of the fashionable secular religions of the left.
<offering evidence from polling data that religious people are, religion aside, less given to what most of us would regard as irrational beliefs, than non-religious people.>
This is a non-sequitur as many religious people don't believe in the things you're positing the non-religious ("spiritual" and "lefties") believe in at a greater degree as part of their religion.
In other words, if you ask a religious Christian fundie about speaking with the dead, they'll either say, "no, that's against the rules," i.e. the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, OR they'd start spouting their belief in NDEs, which, if you've ever heard any fundie Christians talk about, is just as nutso as a cheap New Orleans psychic talking to your dead grandmother on your behalf.
The reason many (maybe most) Christian right-wingers don't "believe in" climate change isn't because they're more rational, it's because they either oppose the left on principle, or believe "God is in control," or a combination of those two things.
IF you polled the religious right about God healing cancer, bringing people unexpected money, finding them a lower mortgage rate (Sam Harris), healing their cataracts (Tim Minchin), talking to them about life decisions, yadda, yadda, yadda, the polling would probably level right out.
What's more crazy: Thinking God healed grandma's arthritis after you prayed in tongues or believing in Bigfoot?
I mean, personally, I think Bigfoot is more credible. And Atlantis and Mu being based on real places.
I don't believe those things, but I'd believe them before believing in healing prayer causing aunt Jane's breast cancer to be less severe last summer (even though, Praise Jesus, He took her home in the fall).
Here's the real issue to me:
Right-wing fundie Christians of a certain stripe (and I'm speaking from experience, having been one myself) believe without a doubt that in order for Jesus to return, the Temple must be rebuilt and perfect red heifers need their throat slit.
In order for this to happen, bye-bye Dome of the Rock...
So, yeah, Al Gore's craziness is not missed - but imagine a POTUS who's trying to decide in a very gray situation about whether to go from Defcon 3 to Defcon 2 or even more scary, Defcon 1, and he or she is thinking (maybe even a bit subconsciously) that the ONLY way Jesus is going to come back is if the Dome of the Rock is not there anymore...
There's also a class of Christians, I heard one who was badly injured say this after returning from Iraq, "I couldn't kill anyone that God didn't already ordain to be dead at that time."
That is why I wrote "religion aside." There are lots of irrational beliefs that are neither implied by a religion or inconsistent with it. The evidence, according to that article, is that religious people are less inclined to believe in those than non-religious people.
A non-sequitur.
Once you say "religion aside" in an discussion of irrational beliefs, well, it's like saying, "what army is most dangerous if we put aside guns, knives, bombs, tanks, ships, planes, baseball bats, armor, uniforms, grenades, ranks, boots, and MREs?"
It's a pointless point.
"What army is most dangerous if we put aside air power"
would be a perfectly legitimate question.
Fair enough, but I think, having not spend decades as a Christian or among Christians, you fail to appreciate, in fact can't even imagine, how much EVERYTHING is effected and subjected to a believer's imagination about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost, depending on your denominational affiliation).
And if you think that's nit-picking, there's Christians who believe if you're reading outside the King James Bible, you're a sinner going to hell.
So it's the Holy Ghost! As God intended.
I've known Christians who've believed they should pray about EVERYTHING, even where to go to lunch. "God might have a divine appointment for me at the Waffle House, or perhaps the Cracker Barrel, so I need to consult Him."
There's Christians who think God is moving the gears on every raindrop, guiding the bullet on every shot fired, and Who wants to be consulted before you do anything requiring thought, so putting religion aside on a discussion about what kind of POTUS would be more dangerous makes the discussion pointless, as you can't have a religious President, at least a Christian one (I mean a non-cultural one, who truly believes) that could make any decision or have any belief that wasn't influenced by the irrational belief in a Personal Savior. Who guides and speaks and blesses and curses...
<<There are lots of irrational beliefs that are neither implied by a religion or inconsistent with it.>>
You're leaving out influenced. There isn't a single irrational belief you can name that isn't influenced by religion (at least if we're talking Christianity).
UFOs? There's Christians who believe they are Nephilim (from Genesis 6, i.e. offspring of demons and human women).
So if you poll Christians and say, "Do you believe that aliens have or do visit the earth in the form of UFOs or UAP?"
They can answer, "NOPE," and you'll tell me, "SEE, they're more rational," but you're missing that they believe those things are DEMONS!
Lol....
You mentioned Bigfoot, but yeah, same smell, what percentage who said, "No, I don't believe in Bigfoot," would also hear a story about an encounter with a Bigfoot and say, "Of course it's not a Bigfoot, it's a demon. Let's pray together right now!"
Do vaccines cause autism?
Christian: NO, of course not, that's silly.
Do you believe autism is caused by demon?
Christian: That depends. Not all the time, of course, but if there is a generational curse, it's quite likely that demons are involved.
You neglect another reason a believer might be skeptical of AGW. Their religion doesn’t require them to believe in it. The New Age Gaians _are required_ to believe.
True enough, but believers have plenty of things they are required to believe.
The people most dangerous, imho, are those who believe they have the Absolute Truth in the form of a Holy Book (Bible or Koran, same smell) and they also "hear" from God (or Allah).
You'd be hard pressed to get a few hundred million (or a billion for that matter) New Agers to agree on a single expressed proclamation of action. Sure, they might all agree that "humans bad, earth good," (not that that is different than Christians or Muslims, "humans sin, God perfect") but it's not the same as having a massive voting bloc all agreeing that if you want to get reelected you'd better do what God just told us He wanted.
Considering the world is posed currently on a potential start to WWIII right there in the midst of an unsolvable conflict (based partially on things "God Said") I think this a lot more dangerous than leftie environmentalists stopping traffic in protest and demanding some new taxes or restrictions on trade (all nuts, I agree, but nothing there that can start nukes being dropped).
A massive voting bloc in America believes Israel needs to rebuild the temple. That's a fact. It's also fact that there's something in the way...
I don't think the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is fundamentally based on belief in Judaism and/or Islam, although some on each side make arguments from that. The fundamental problem is the existence of two ethnic groups that both want the same land. Lots of Israelis don't actually believe in Judaism, but have the same reaction to Hamas slaughtering people as the ones who do. Palestinians don't need a belief in Islam to resent people who pushed their grandparents out of what is now Israel and repeatedly proved their military superiority to the Palestinians and their allies.
No argument, but simply ask yourself what would be more dangerous:
An Israeli and an American as respective Presidents in which their religious beliefs were basically cultural and they weren't really "true believers" OR an Israeli President who absolutely believed, with NO DOUBT that GOD HIMSELF gave Israel all the land coupled with an American President who believed that Jesus would only be able to return with the Temple rebuilt (and the sacrificial system restored) and who also fully supported the Israeli President (i.e. agree that GOD HIMSELF wants Israeli occupation of the land since it's "what the Bible says."
There's no argument in my mind what's more dangerous and the other stuff, about the underlying reasons for the conflict, are non-sequiturs here.
This would actually lead to solving the issue for good, and so likely lead to less suffering than the current world will lead to.
Once the controlling parties decide too actually solve the issue (instead of keeping it open), it gets solved and the world forgets about it. See the various genocides going on.
Doing things slowly and dragging them out causes angst
Understood, but expediency isn't the only factor here.
Nor is looking at "what would be best in a 100 years" as the answer to that might be things well well outside the Overton Window and while maybe fun to discuss theortically, nobody is going to act on them.
Why don’t we ask what would happen if the president had a friend named Harvey?
“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.” ~ Sam Harris
If the POTUS said he was talking to a friend named Harvey, it would be no different than one talking to Jesus or Yahweh or God or Allah or Krishna.
The point is simple: If you have an imaginary friend, you can say anything you want, and it's unfalsifiable.
If you have an imaginary friend in common with 150 million potential voters, the problem is obvious, you can say anything you want and if it's even remotely believable, you've got support to do what you want.
I'm not afraid that a POTUS will say, "God told me to go to war," as this would be no different than the world we live in today, US Presidents go to war when they want war, they justify the act after the fact. Easy-peasy.
I'm more concerned that a POTUS will escalate a war or not really consider all the ramifications, because of the reason, "God told me."
But, sure, I'll concede a secular humanist or leftist could do the same, we've already seen that when a Democratic President supports war, the anti-war left goes silence.
The set of political ideologies collectively known as the Left killed far more people in the 20th century than any other human cause in history, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population. Only Smallpox and Bubonic Plague exceed it.
Even Islam doesn’t approach it. If you consider religion dangerous, Islam should be at the top of your list.
Any ideology whereas the leader is considered in god-like terms is dangerous, and the communists killed millions (hundreds of millions, no argument) under such leaders.
But the topic was American elections, i.e. would you rather have an Al Gore type ideologue who believes in unscientific AGW (or other nonsense) or a right-wing ideologue who believes in Jesus rising from the dead and sending special messages.
I think the Jesus believer is more dangerous, for reasons given.
Now, would a Islamic POTUS be dangerous? Sure, same smell as a Christian, unless they're just a cultural believer.
Aayan Hirsi Ali is a good example of a Christian who doesn't actually believe anything, apparently, her public statement of faith is that she believes Christianity is the best way to fight radical Islam, wokeism, and the Russia/China threats. She'd likely make a good President, actually, since she's really an atheist and a decent person (as Dawkins notes) and she understands the dangers of religion.
Trump is another example of a "Christian" who made (might make again) a good or bad POTUS without any regard to his Christianity. Trump is obviously a cultural Christian as well, and it's apparent the only Person He worships is Himself.
As to Islam being the most dangerous religion, maybe...I guess it depends on your definition of religion. I consider the North Korean structure religious, since the leader is the "glorious" leader and is essentially a god in his own mind and among his people (at least in practice).
So, China is dangerous, although who knows if it's as dangerous as Islam as a whole, it's not as if Islamic countries all get along and could field the military China could under one leader.
The danger Islam poses begins with its foundational text. Any danger a Christian POTUS might pose does not originate in the New Testament. Anything can be perverted, but most perversions of Christianity go back to the Old Testament, without any of the centuries of Rabbinical commentary on it.
Jimmy Carter was the closest modern POTUS to the bogeyman in your head. He was mostly inept. The scenario you describe is rather far fetched. You’re editing reality the way that accounts of Sarah Palin were edited.
I wouldn’t vote for Al Gore for dog catcher. Among other things, he was a sore loser.
Why do you accuse me of having a "bogeyman" in my head?
I'm merely pointing out the truth, some Christians believe the temple must be rebuilt before Jesus can return. If you're not a fundie Christian, fine, don't get your panties in a bunch.
I suspect any Christian capable of reaching the WH will be a Christian in name only as a honest to goodness Christian wouldn't be able to get their hands that dirty.
I'm not editing anything about Sarah Palin, her choice was a foolish one, but so was McCain. I was still an evangelical back in that time (who'd voted for Bush) and I wrote in Ron Paul, as I felt "throwing my vote away" was better than endorsing such idiocy by the Republican Party.
A better choice would have been the governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, who was a white Jew woman Republican that got elected in one of the bluest states in the Union. Nearing the end of her 2nd term (yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus) she'd have made a much better prospective VP, not that McCain could have won with Jesus on the ticket. He was an old, sad, tired out same-ole same-ole choice.....anyway, that was the last time I ever voted.
Sarah Palin was a joke, and everyone knows this, it was almost as if the Republicans wanted to lose that election.
As for Christianity being perverted, this isn't necessary, one only need take the words of Jesus seriously, such as these following gems:
I came not to bring peace, but a sword.
and
Bring those who reject me as King bound and subdued so I can slit their throats.
You don't need the Old Testament to see that Jesus was a nationalist bigot who believed in slaughtering his enemies.
Seriously, do y'all not read your own book?
New Testament is, read literally, an extremist book that created an extremist movement both immediately after its creation and numerous times afterwards. It has quite enough passages on its own to get that there are two morals: horizontal, between humans (which is relatively nice compared to many other religions) and vertical, human-to-God, which is _not_ nice and effectively enables people to attack just like the other books do (the merchants in the temple is the obvious example, but there are less obvious ones).
> But the topic was American elections, i.e. would you rather have an Al Gore type ideologue who believes in unscientific AGW (or other nonsense) or a right-wing ideologue who believes in Jesus rising from the dead and sending special messages.
Al Gore, obviously. Why would you think the latter be dangerous, unless you think God actually exists but are afraid of the messages he might send?
> I mean, personally, I think Bigfoot is more credible. And Atlantis and Mu being based on real places.
> I don't believe those things, but I'd believe them before believing in healing prayer causing aunt Jane's breast cancer to be less severe last summer (even though, Praise Jesus, He took her home in the fall).
What evidence are you basing these judgments on?
Massive amounts of evidence, including research studies on the efficacy of prayer, anecdotal evidence from nearly 40 years of being a born-again evangelical (much of which was spent in Pentecostal type churches that practiced "healing prayer," and finally the absence of evidence in an area where absence of evidence is evidence (i.e. with millions of people believing in miracles, there should be a large list of undeniable miracle occurrences that I couldn't explain away, there's not).
Now, I don't "believe in" Atlantis or Mu, but it's possible that some ancient city or civilization inspired the legends, so it's possible some minor parts of the legends are true. Just like in the case of Jesus, obviously he didn't really resurrect, and much of the gospel stories are invented narratives (often based on OT stories, other legends/fables, and in some cases inspired by Homer and other ancient Greek writings), but we don't dismiss that Augustus Caesar or Pontius Pilate were real people or that Judea existed.
I used to attend church with a PhD philosopher named JP Moreland, who's well-respected and often quoted, etc., like for an example, he appears in Lee Strobel's best-selling book (made into a film) as one of the experts consulted.
JP once asked my mother, some 15 years ago by my recollection, if she had access to the medical records for one of my siblings who'd been a critically ill baby/child (was sent on a Make-a-Wish trip as everyone thought she was gonna die before adulthood).
JP was seeking for evidence for miracles for a book.
Flash forward to a couple years ago, so over a decade after JP started his extensive research, and a major Christian publisher puts out a book about miracles by JP. So I bought it and read it because I was curious if he'd used my sister's story, and if so, how, and also if he'd come up with any good evidence.
And nope.
He didn't use that story or any story like it.
A decade of research and his "miracles" included:
A cold reading by the founder of a miracle healing movement (John Wimber, once interviewed by Peter Jennings for a television special, circa '95) on an airplane trip. Wimber said he called out some guy who was committing adultery. A cold reading...lol, this is something any cheap psychic could do, that was JP's evidence.
He also said he'd received a cheap swimming pool via a friend demanding illegal kickbacks from pool contractors, and that it was an "answer to prayer" and thus a miracle.
In another laugher, he said at a conference, he really had bad stomach pains and a prayer warrior friend of his prayed and he miraculously didn't poop his pants. Praise Jesus.
So, if one of today's most respected Christian apologist/philosopher/teachers spends over 10 years seeking for evidence for miracle cures/healings and cannot find ONE EXAMPLE, I figure the case is closed.
Don't you?
Or you have some evidence I'm missing?
And, as a sidebar, while I don't believe Bigfoot exists, science does on occasion find new species, so at least we have evidence the cryptozoology isn't totally fake, whereas ALL the claims of Christians of miracles and healings are probably either fake (lies) or simply just wishful thinking, proscribing a natural event the status of miracle, since it fits the narrative.
If miracle healings were a thing, I'd ask anyone who believed in them why they weren't at the children's hospital EVERY DAY to cure babies dying of various cancers, etc.
Indeed. It is often believed that Plato's account of Atlantis is specifically based on Cretan civilization before Santorini explosion.
Yes, I've read that.
Obviously some civilizations existed that we know little or nothing about, so who knows....
> He didn't use that story or any story like it.
So from this you conclude that stories like your sister's don't happen, even though you don't need to read his book to know what happened with your sister?
Wait, what?
I think you're confused here.
My sister's story is that DOCTORS and SCIENCE saved her life.
Thus, JP Moreland couldn't use it as an example of supernatural healing, thus why it wasn't included in the book I suspect. I don't know for a fact why he left it out, but the fact that he included no such stories would indicate my reasoning is sound, he dismissed stories that were actually about doctors and science healing/curing people.
JP Moreland search for over 10 years for stories he COULD use, and found exactly ZERO.
So, in this case, absence of evidence is evidence of absence since we can see axiomatically that JP Moreland is a respected Christian writer with many published books and that having stories that proved his assertion would be helpful to both make his case and to profit from the publishing of the book.
Imagine an expert biologist, say someone on par with Jane Goodall, wrote a book titled, "Bigfoot Exists Today: And how you can learn to love animals!" and in the book they provided ZERO evidence of Bigfoot's existence, but instead, wrote about a bunch of people who BELIEVED Bigfoot existed.
Would that "prove" Bigfoot existed?
If I said that the author of the Bigfoot book approached my mom, because she'd once photographed Bigfoot, by her recollection, and then that account didn't appear in the book (because my mom's photo turned out to be photoshopped) would you say, "well, you conclude Bigfoot doesn't exist after knowing about your mom's photo?"
Lol, think man, think.
My sister's story doesn't "prove" there are no miracles, something that's impossible to prove anyway, but the fact that all stories in which there are actual documented healings involve doctors, medicine, or the body's natural healing capacities seem to show that healing stories giving God the credit are lies or at best, wishful thinking or something. Not stories based on truth, at the very least (even if we conclude that guys like JP aren't conmen, but really truly believe the stuff they try to "prove" with zero evidence).
If there were miracles, well, we'd know about them, no?
The irony to me is that if Christians believe that there are miracles, but that God hides the facts so they can retain faith, why write books trying to "prove" miracles are true?
Makes no sense to me.
It's like the young earth creationists who try to explain the day that Joshua asked God to pause the sun's movement across the sky so he could continue his genocidal war was based on ACTUAL cosmology, like one account I heard was the theory that mars orbited near the earth and caused it to tilt towards the sun for an extra 12 hours or so....lol....as if this could happen without destroying all life on the planet.
If mean, if you posit a miracle working God who is All-Powerful, why try to find natural explanations? Christians do this for the flood, the Star of Jesus, and other things, why? Just say it's magic, and be done with it.
> My sister's story is that DOCTORS and SCIENCE saved her life.
I thought you said Doctors were the ones who didn't expect her to survive to adulthood.
That is correct.
Doesn't mean it was a miracle that saved her.
What's more likely: The doctors were wrong, she recovered, or God saved her life, ignoring millions of other children who died (in those cases, the doctors were diagnosed the condition correctly)?
Or another way to ask this is why did my mom continue to take her to doctors and hospitals even though she lived? God does half-miracles in your view? Like he saved her life, sure, but she wasn't fully healthy then and never will be. Although she's still alive today, she's never had a normal healthy body.
Look, even the radical fundie JP Moreland who BELIEVES in miracles didn't believe she was a good case for his book on miracles, so case closed.
I think you're right that believers don't buy into these beliefs in part because their religion tells them not to, but that still counts for something. The point is that being non-religious does not seem to be very strong evidence that your beliefs are all highly rational. Lots of people are just temperamentally prone to weird beliefs. Arguably the person who accepts a weird belief system that's been around for thousands of years is more predictable and therefore less dangerous than the person who has a more unselected set of weird beliefs.
There are lots of nutty beliefs that the relevant religions don't imply anything about, hence that religious believers are free to believe.
Or not believe. Episcopalians believe that whenever two or more are gathered together, a fifth is with them. That insulates Episcopalians from secular nutty beliefs.
I do think that most people have a religion shaped hole in them. If not filled with a true religion, it will be filled with a false one.
I disagree for the following reasons:
A person who believes in the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, Bigfoot, the lost continent of Mu or Atlantis, etc., doesn't have an agenda BASED on those beliefs.
Nobody who believes in Mu is saying, "Mu revealed to me that......"
Nobody is saying, "I had a prayer time with Bigfoot last and night, and He revealed...."
If you've never been a Christian, especially one prone to the charismatic, you might miss the fact that there are millions of Christians today who believe God speaks to the PERSONALLY and those "revelations" are on par with scripture.
Many Christians, if asked, "would you kill this guy, J. Nicholas, if God TOLD you to do it?" would answer, not, "No, of course not," but rather, they'd either admit, "yes" or they'd ask a clarifying question, "Am I positive it's REALLY Yahweh asking?"
As Hitchens used to say: Anyone can do evil but it takes a religious person to do evil because commanded to do so by the God Creator of the universe.
The debate here vanishes in a heartbeat if we substitute right-wing Christian for right-wing Muslim.
I don't think so. Afghanistan is almost all Muslim and I expect you would classify the Taliban as right wing. It is a society where, by what I have read, male homosexuality is common and accepted — despite being strongly banned by Islam.
WHAT?
You're confusing the idea that males can have sex with another male in an "open secret" kind of way with males being homosexual (or with LGBTQ in general) in the open and identifying as a homosexual. I suspect your referencing the bacha bazi practice.
Islam prohibits alcohol, as an example. It's a taboo that is practiced anyway, but that doesn't change how the laws are written or the idea that as a Muslim drinker, you have to be careful when/where you drink. My brother is Muslim. He only converted to marry a Muslim, which is illegal in Indonesia as a non-Muslim, he's a old, fat, white Jew like me, and an atheist. They eat pork, and drink, etc, even his wife is only culturally Muslim. My point here is at their wedding, his bar tab ran over 5 grand and he wondered why, only a few American family/friends made it to Jakarta. The Muslims said that "under the tent" Allah couldn't see them drinking, so it was "acceptable."
I suspect there is similar reasoning in the act of homosexual sex, it's done for the pleasure, and isn't considered a sin for some weird justification AND it's not publicly accepted and talked about, i.e. a military Taliban soldier would have no personal conflict having sex with a young boy on a Saturday night and then punishing (or even killing) a homosexual.
The wiki article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Afghanistan links and references all kinds of stuff to counter any idea homosexuality is accepted in Afganistan.
A priori sounds like Christianity should be a risk factor for murder, do you think that holds?
I defer to a Hitchen's idea.
Everyone can do evil, but it takes religion to make a good person do evil for a good cause, thinking/believing they're doing good (God's Will).
Fascinating.
Do you assume religious people are much more likely to be good people, beyond the effects of religion making people better?
Or are you just assuming we can select good people, so best to select good non-religious people to avoid the risk of them flipping?
The traditional symbol of reason is the sword. Human beings pathologically desire simple models. If you give them control over the world, they will destroy complexity to make it understandable rather than increasing understanding. This is rational and adaptive but I would still say it is often bad. When you are building a machine, ruthless simplification is an unmitigated good. When you are managing society a lighter touch is to be desired, even though it makes the world less comprehensible and manageable. It is not always a virtue for the world to be more rational.
This reminds me CS Lewis, where he compares science to magic and contrasts both with religion.
"The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse."
It does very much feels like "science" zealots are the more dangerous bunch. Consider scientific Marxism, COVID regulations, eugenics, climate moral panic, inequality moral panic, etc. etc.
CS Lewis again:
"Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience".
Thank you for these quotes.
Whether religious or not, too many of us mistakenly dismiss others, generalizing all members of a group based on the actions of a few. It’s the lazy way of ignoring common ground and discouraging any dialogue. It’s the easy way out and earns applause from our own in-group.
You mean like you just did?
He said "too many of us" not "all of us" or all of the members of some group.
I think it is common sense that "all" and "too many" are the same when used ideologically. No one literally believes "all" (or "no one") is 100.000% (or 0.000%) inclusive. They are both generalizations which go against reality,
No. The words mean what they mean. Otherwise there is no hope for communication.
Words are part of language and context is vital. If you take everything literally, you cannot communicate. Words alone do not have useful meaning, only in context.
"I could care less" means exactly the same thing as "I couldn't care less". Everyone (!) understands the meaning, even if they quibble about the grammar.
Look at this Volokh page: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/10/07/obvious-gripe-site-isnt-false-personation/
"Plaintiffs' third cause of action is for false personation in violation of Penal Code section 528.5. That provision authorizes a civil action against "any person who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person ...""
What is "personating"? Is that the same as "impersonating"?
"knowingly and without consent" --- is it even possible to unknowingly personate someone?
"credibly" -- if it wasn't credible, it wouldn't be personation.
"another actual person" -- what does it even mean to personate yourself, or a fictional character?
Who decides how closely someone has been "personated"? I bet you could split a jury on that matter alone. Context matters.
If you say I am quibbling, darn tootin' I am, that's my whole point.
Someone who hears voices may be religious, but that isn’t why they hear voices.
The press lies more than I would like to believe.
The way I’d put it is that all humans are crazy, but in different ways. And it’s hard to tell whether someone is dangerously crazy until he/she does something crazily dangerous. I’d count being conspicuously religious as a disadvantage in a politician, because I’m not religious; but all politicians have disadvantages. The question is whose disadvantages are worse.
That is why I find at least Christianity a good thing, and find it important to teach my children about it.
It is a kind of vaccine against things that may be directly horrible.
Humans always have a need for irrationality. Choosing to believing in Jesus, who by the way was a pacifist, seems to be a good way to handle this deficit.
I don't find the result that religious people have less belief in the occult particularly telling about the general irrationality - occult is _specifically_ the closest type of the beliefs to general religions, and this doesn't tell us whether the result will spread to "secular religions", i.e. other causes for doing things, as easily. (Or even if it's bad - maybe we actually do need people who have a secular cause, maybe it's actually just better than having people who believe in multiply-changed centuries-old norms?)
The simplest explanation is that some people are "crazy" enough to believe things for no reason (normally we'd use the word gullible to describe believing unlikely things just because someone said they were true), but not so crazy that they will believe contradictory things for no reason.
Years ago, I read an account of an anthropologist who was visiting a Doukhobor community in Canada. He had to go on an errand, and he asked his host to see that his notes were kept safe. And the host said that he had no wish to harm them, but that if the Holy Spirit moved him he would have to throw them into the fire. That's the kind of statement that inspires the concerns you refer to, I suspect.
Though I have to note two points that occur to me now: (1) We don't know that the host actually did anything of the sort, or that there was any likelihood of his doing so; he may just have been expressing an abstract premise. (2) Most religious people are not Doukhobors, or adherents of other intense as-the-spirit-moves-me faiths.
"The other [explanation for religion] is to make sense of life, to answer questions about what we ought to be doing and why."
Most people think of this as a "top-down" approach: God revealed certain truths and a religious person simply figures this out or is instructed by some combination of scripture, tradition, prophets, and wise leaders. But there is a "bottom-up" approach which is more evolutionary, and ironically resembles free markets, the common law, and evolution. Under this approach, tradition -- including texts, commentary, customs, rules -- are the starting point. They are entitled to some degree of deference. (A lot for more fundamentalist people; very little for very liberal people, and somewhere in the middle for the rest of us.) But science, philosophy, social science, and even social mores might warrant changes in certain circumstances.
Let me take a concrete example. Is is OK to lie?
A philosopher might come up with certain categories under which lying is mandatory (a murderer asking where the victim is), optional, or prohibited.
But Judaism (with which I am most familiar, and I assume this all applies to Christianity as well), offers concrete stories and law. So the serpent lies to Eve, and Eve in turn lies to Adam. God lies to Abraham (when he said Sarah laughed). Jacob lies to his father Isaac when he steals the blessing. Joseph's brothers lie to Jacob when they tell him Joseph had been killed. Potiphar's wife lies about Joseph trying to attack her. Etc,. Some of these are problematic, others are justified, and others are uncertain.
And there are rules, and scope of which is partially uncertain. Don't bear false witness. (Limited to court testimony?) And later texts contain additional rules. The Talmud says that a person should tell a bride she looks beautiful. The rabbis then ask, "But what if she is not beautiful?" And have a spirited (and somewhat amusing) debate on the issue,
So suppose someone is raised in this tradition, learns these stories and rules, studies the commentaries on all of these, and then engages in a series of discussion and questions and debates about when to lie. I would assume the person would have a pretty sophisticated set of categories under which lying is mandatory, permissible, and prohibited, much like the philosopher.
There are at least two interesting (to me, at least) contrasts between the religious thinker and the philosopher. First, this approach is much more accessible to most people. Most everyone, including children, can understand simple stories.
Second, these resulting categories might be path-dependent. A different religious tradition starting with different texts and traditions might end up with different categories.
Some philosophers have written about "continuing revelation," meaning that God's revelation of truths continues to happen in little bits as we continue to think and discover new things. When pushed to the limit, this approaches analytic philosophy.
The general point here is that there are a lot of beliefs that fall under the label "religion," some of which are closer to philosophy and social science than mysticism.
Why?
The problem with religious people is that some of them do what their religion commands. And religions - or their leaders - sometimes command things harmful to the believers, or their families, or their neighbours, or all three.
That's not all that different from people who habitually do what some other ideology - or its leaders - order them to do. But it really sucks to be someone the ideologists feel a duty to destroy, whether that's a descendant of a "rich peasant," a non-heterosexual, or a non-believer. It also sucks to be someone the locally powerful ideology wants crammed into a Procrustean bed.
On the other hand, religions sometimes command things that are beneficial to other people, such as not lying, helping those in need. Both Islam and traditional Christianity expected believers to donate some fraction of their income to good causes.