Tolerate the Christian right ... WHY ?

[JimC]

Yes it does. By believing in Jehovah or Jesus one believes that there is a Ultimate Authority who is in charge of everything. Oh they might pretend to support the idea of democracy but they would turn in a second given a charismatic political leader with some cash moxy and major media support the U.S. would be burning witches again within the fortnight.

If you want my respect, you will have to think for yourself... not just take a thought from the air and run with it.


just because I believe there is an ultimate authority, does not mean that ultimate authority is ME. Do some research into what the Christ taught, instead of what greedy, power hungry peple have decided to say he taught, before you say such nonsense, please.

I rather suspect you have missed the point in many ways...

1. Audley already admitted he was induging in a little hyperbole, by not qualifying his argument to a certain group of christians; not the vague, warm-and-fuzzy majority, but still a sizeable and influential minority. When applied to them, his analogy is perfectly reasonable; the writings of various members of this group over the years have amply confirmed that, to them, the structures of democracy and the rule of law are as but dust to the awful presence of their old-testament god...

2. "just because I believe there is an ultimate authority, does not mean that ultimate authority is ME."

Obviously so, but this has nothing to do with the key argument. There are those with an authoritarian vison of their religion, and a view that it should apply to all, without question. For them, the existence of such an Ultimate Authority clearly (in their minds) trumps any worldly politics, and leads very quickly to rather nasty means justifying the noble religious ends. Fundamentalist Islam springs to mind as well...

3. And before you start protesting that this has nothing to do with the warm and romantic view of your own particular religious beliefs, that too is irrelevant. The argument here is about a real and powerful sub-group of the American religious right. How much power they actually have in a pragmatic sense is another argument, but their motivation and unpleasant psychology is clear to see...

[Schneibster]

If science says then it must be so. magic sky daddy. Science accounts for everything. no longer a matter of conjecture ... long disproven.

Science works. Radio. X-ray diagnosis of bad teeth and broken bones. Airplanes. Refrigerators. Cell phones.

Just that simple. It's not hard, it's not a philosophical position, it's not bullshit. It's as plain as the nose on your face, you can't get around it. It plain flat works. You can test what it says.

Feel free to present a test for the existence of a super magic sky daddy anytime. Feel to present an infallible cure for appendicitis, or a circuit diagram and theory of operations, of a cell phone, from the magic book, anytime.

I won't hold my breath.

i have no magic, no magic book, i have my personal experience, which is not repeatable under laboratory conditions. Sorry.

Anecdote is not evidence. This is axiomatic. I can prove my claims; you can't prove yours. End of demonstration.

What proof do you have that stone age farmers wehre suffering from insanity?

Because they wrote about super magic sky daddies that don't exist, among other outrageous claims dismissed at the time and ever since by anyone who was interested in anything that even remotely resembled reality.

And you forgot the part about the drugs.

Keep your belief in science.

I don't "believe in" science. I know science, and when I analyze the world using it, I come to useful conclusions. Please feel free to present a useful conclusion you come to analyzing it according to the rules in your magic book about a super magic sky daddy written by stone age sheep herders. I'm sure they know plenty about cell phones, rockets to the moon, computers, appendicitis cures, and so forth; you seem to think their stone age knowledge is superior to all that.

Don't get appendicitis if you count on that magic book to save you. You'll die, it will take a long time, and it will hurt a lot.

After all, not so long ago a prominent scientist did say science no longer has any mystery to uncover. Oooops, that was before they discovered ...... rather a lot actually.

First of all, which prominent scientist?

Second, why should what one scientist does contaminate them all? That's the fallacy called poisoning the well, if you can even name such an individual and are not simply fabricating evidence because you can't think of what else to do.

And finally, you didn't answer my question: why is your super magic sky daddy better than their super magic sky daddies?

[wittywoman]

so Sorry for derailing the thread. For the record. Totally agree that fundamentalists, of any kind, have no place in administrating society. Thats not to say they wont try....

[Schneibster]

Can you seriously not answer any of those questions?

If so, why do you continue to delude yourself? Because it makes you feel comfortable?

Hey, I'm not against feeling comfortable. Feel free. Just don't confuse the lies you tell yourself with reality, that's all I ask.

[Feck]

The difference is that unlike the popular misconceptions Science is a dedication to finding truth by observation and repeatable experiment Science leads to knowledge and technology It advances the human condition It climbs on the work of others it's advance is cumulative logical and repeatable ... IT is not a Vague feeling that you cannot even logically explain .When you question a scientist He or she does not resort to his or her interpretation of an old book but they refer to Observed Repeated Qualified RESULTS ....... Let's face it would you trust surgeon to work from the knowledge in 'gods perfect book ' when he applied the scalpel ? No You would be horrified to think that medicine esp surgery had not advanced in 2'000 years . Morality has advanced Past those crude values in the Babble too ..YOU KNOW THIS ! you do not think that keeping female slaves as sex toys and throwing homosexuals off the nearest city wall are sensible or rational

[Feck]

If God Made the cosmos Why is almost every bit of it instantly Deadly to life ?

[Schneibster]

The difference is that unlike the popular misconceptions Science is a dedication to finding truth by observation and repeatable experiment Science leads to knowledge and technology It advances the human condition It climbs on the work of others it's advance is cumulative logical and repeatable ... IT is not a Vague feeling that you cannot even logically explain .When you question a scientist He or she does not resort to his or her interpretation of an old book but they refer to Observed Repeated Qualified RESULTS ....... Let's face it would you trust surgeon to work from the knowledge in 'gods perfect book ' when he applied the scalpel ? No You would be horrified to think that medicine esp surgery had not advanced in 2'000 years . Morality has advanced Past those crude values in the Babble too ..YOU KNOW THIS ! you do not think that keeping female slaves as sex toys and throwing homosexuals off the nearest city wall are sensible or rational

...and that is first among reasons that fundies shouldn't get their greasy grabbers on the handles that work the economy, or the nuclear weapons.

They're incapable of understanding how they work.

[wittywoman]

yes, I know what the scientific method is. But science does not have all the answers, (physics a damn good example of divergent theories that defy logic, but are perfectly viable). The truth is that logic does not explain me. Science has proven and disproven many things, we need the scientific way to make sense of the universe we live in. But i do not, personally, belief that the scientific method can be used today, with the accumulated knowledge we have, to explain humans and what they are in terms of thoughts, feelings and personal insights. I do not call you stupid and insane for believing it does, please do not call me stupid and insane for believing it does not. If God could be proved or disproved then we would not be talking about a spiritual (or mental) being, but a physical phenomena.

[Hermit]

After all, not so long ago a prominent scientist did say science no longer has any mystery to uncover. Oooops, that was before they discovered ...... rather a lot actually.

First of all, which prominent scientist?

That would have been the famous scientist, Phileas Fogg, a fictional character invented by Jules Verne for his 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days. At least according to Walt Disney's 2004 film adaptation, which attributed this to him: "Everything worth discovering has been discovered." The novel itself contains no such quote, so witty is quite correct that it has been said not so long ago.

[Feck]

The difference is that unlike the popular misconceptions Science is a dedication to finding truth by observation and repeatable experiment Science leads to knowledge and technology It advances the human condition It climbs on the work of others it's advance is cumulative logical and repeatable ... IT is not a Vague feeling that you cannot even logically explain .When you question a scientist He or she does not resort to his or her interpretation of an old book but they refer to Observed Repeated Qualified RESULTS ....... Let's face it would you trust surgeon to work from the knowledge in 'gods perfect book ' when he applied the scalpel ? No You would be horrified to think that medicine esp surgery had not advanced in 2'000 years . Morality has advanced Past those crude values in the Babble too ..YOU KNOW THIS ! you do not think that keeping female slaves as sex toys and throwing homosexuals off the nearest city wall are sensible or rational

...and that is first among reasons that fundies shouldn't get their greasy grabbers on the handles that work the economy, or the nuclear weapons.

They're incapable of understanding how they work.

i'd be more than happy to explain in detail the mechanics of Crucifixion to any fundies you send my way ...i'm not one of those Humanist Rational Atheists Preaching tolerance .

[Feck]

Science Does not have all the answers .. So THEREFORE YOUR BRAND OF THE FUCKING PINK SPARKLY UNICORN MUST EXIST ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? .

[Schneibster]

yes, I know what the scientific method is. But science does not have all the answers, (physics a damn good example of divergent theories that defy logic, but are perfectly viable).

Answers to what? We've established where the universe came from, where we come from, why we're here, why we feel like we do, where religious feelings come from. We've established how life started, where the Earth came from, and why things are the way they are.

Religion gave us answers; answers we know are wrong. Science gave us the right answers to all these questions, some of which religious people claimed "science could never answer." They were wrong. For what reason do you claim we should continue to believe what we know is wrong, when we know what is right?

The truth is that logic does not explain me.

Science is not logic. We'll review "explain you" in a minute.

Science has proven and disproven many things, we need the scientific way to make sense of the universe we live in. But i do not, personally, belief that the scientific method can be used today, with the accumulated knowledge we have, to explain humans and what they are in terms of thoughts, feelings and personal insights.

It's called neurophysiology. We can identify conservatives as opposed to liberals with fMRI by watching where oxygen is consumed in the brain in response to appropriate stimuli.

Sorry, your thoughts, feelings, and personal insights are accessible to science now, and shortly we should be able to read minds with instruments. Try some other place where you can instantiate the god of the gaps. The gaps are getting smaller and smaller every day, and the big ones, creation of the universe for example, have already been conquered by science.

I do not call you stupid and insane for believing it does, please do not call me stupid and insane for believing it does not.

I'm not calling you stupid or insane, I'm calling you a normal human who believes what they want to believe regardless of the actual character of reality. Most people do not have the strength of will to confront it, are you embarrassed to be human?

All I ask is that you separate your fantasies from reality. Is that so much that it makes you feel I must hate you to ask it? Why does it threaten you so?

It's reality. There isn't any super magic sky daddy. The stone age sheep herders didn't know as much as we do, and following their stone age beliefs is counter productive in the space age. We need new morals, not a lack of them; new religion, not no religion. But it has to be about reality, and about humans, not about super magic sky daddies.

If God could be proved or disproved then we would not be talking about a spiritual (or mental) being, but a physical phenomena.

Science is about things that can be proved or disproved. Spiritual phenomena occur in the right temporal lobe; it's been proven by neurophysiology, and the proof is the existence of a disease called "psychomotor epilepsy," whose victims describe their experience of seizures as "religious" and by follow-on research establishing that their seizures emanate from that area of the brain. Mental phenomena I covered above, they are accessible by fMRI, and it won't be long before we know what they mean.

You're left with a god you can't prove exists; I can't prove unicorns don't exist either, but sure as hell nobody's seen one in a couple hundred years. I'm gonna go with "there's no unicorns," you got a problem with that?

We need a new religion that doesn't have gods in it. There aren't any gods, or if there are, they don't care about us and probably don't even know we exist. This stuff causes a lot of people to act irrationally, to the detriment of us all; shortly we will have control of technology that can destroy us and everything on this planet. We must be rational before then, because it will be the equivalent of every man, woman, and child on Earth having their finger on the nuclear weapons button. Religions that tell lies are not helping. But destroying it all will not help either.

[Rum]

Re-rail?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-Harris/22457171014

[Schneibster]

The point is, the Christian right is standing in the way, at least in the US, of a new religion that doesn't have a super magic sky daddy in it, that can actually help us instead of holding us back.

In addition, there is the argument about the levers of state being in the hands of people who believe things that are demonstrably not true. Such people are literally delusional, actually psychologically disturbed and unable to correctly assess the true content of consensus reality, as opposed to people like wittywoman who merely allows herself to delude herself, in order to gain emotional comfort.

On another thread, I saw someone claim that psychological disturbances are of a social nature, giving belief in meeting dead ancestors as an example. I would contend that there is a scientific definition of psychological disturbances, and that it consists of assertions that items or events that no one else experienced are part of reality. No one would assert that someone who says there are elephants coming out of the walls that no one else can see is sane, in any reasonable culture.

And claiming you met your dead ancestors is one thing; claiming they told you to launch nuclear weapons at China entirely another, I think. I saw a quote someone posted here that if you talk to god, you're religious, if he talks back you're crazy, and it seems pretty obvious to me.

[Rum]

In terms of delusional beliefs my main concern would be that people who believe the world is in its final days would be in charge of nuclear weapons and would be yelling 'bring it on' whenever international tensions heat up a bit!