Shooting Fish in Barrels

[cnorman18]

For some years now, I have observed a very great many threads that attempt to debate, or disprove, cast doubt upon, or otherwise dispute the beliefs or claims or value or morality or truth of religion. They have been popping up thick and fast of late, in several subforums, taking various tacks that all seem to center around the same assumptions. That is, virtually all of those threads appear to address fundamentalist Christianity of the Biblical-literalist variety, and for the most part seem cognizant of no other religious traditions at all.

When this is pointed out, the members who post these threads seem to me, after some ten years of posting on this forum and others, to fall into two groups:

Those in the first group say that they are quite consciously addressing ONLY fundamentalist Christianity of the most dogmatic and repressive kind, and that disputing that variety of religion is where their interest lies, and that they do not intend to consider or debate other approaches. This is said to be for various reasons; to wit, that that variety of religion is (a) the most pervasive, (b) the most influential, (c) the most pernicious, et cetera, and no other faiths are worthy of attention for those reasons; sometimes it is admitted that there are other iterations of religious belief or practice that are not so toxic and objectionable.

I think that's a reasonable approach; but in that case, I would think it would be a matter of clarity, if not simple intellectual honesty, to specify that one is only addressing dogmatic, fundamentalist Biblical literalism, and not religion without qualification.

I have also rather frequently dealt with members of the second group, on this forum and others; those who insist (ironically against both objective fact and logic) that any and all varieties of religious belief ARE equivalent to fundamentalist Christianity, and that there is no essential difference between any of them. Strangely, I have also seen the complete inverse of that claim, to wit, that any variety of religious expression that is NOT dogmatic, literalist, repressive, anti-science, etc., is not really religion at all, and that those of us who do not believe in those ways are either lying, closet atheists, or are on our way to becoming atheists.

Both of those claims are objectively and verifiably false, and in my experience those who insist on maintaining either (or, not infrequently, both) are just as dogmatic and doctrinaire in their own way as any Bible-thumping fundamentalist. There is only one correct way to think, and that is MY way -- even when one is thinking about religion. Even though I do not believe in it, I will make pronouncements which may not be questioned about how and what religionists must think and believe.

I have found it about as futile to attempt to debate the matter with them as it is to debate Young Earth Creationism with a Young Earth Creationist. The dogmatic mind is a closed mind, and theres little point in attempting to debate a person who assumes a priori that he knows the Truth, and ignores or dismisses everything you say in the firm and certain knowledge that you are either an obstinate sinner who clings to his sin, or an irrational fool who clings to his superstitious foolishness and is either lying about it or attempting to confuse the issue. Peace to both kinds of dogmatists; I have better things to do. Dogmatists, religious or antireligious, are not really interested in debate, only preaching, and I am not addressing them here.

But; For the first group, I propose that there is very frequently -- though not always -- another reason for concerning oneself exclusively with repressive, literalist fundamentalism in debate: It is the easiest kind of religion to argue against. The arguments in favor of it are easy to counter, and the arguments against it are easy to mount. Besides, its safe and fun -- the intellectual equivalent of beating up ten-year-olds.

Okay. But the way I learned it, shooting fish in barrels does not make you a master fisherman.

There are a number of enlightened liberal religious traditions and approaches, including some Christian ones, which teach and practice virtually none of the problematic dogmas and behaviors which one associates with literalist, fundamentalist Christianity; virtually none of those practices or teachings are found in modern Judaism, either. And yet, few are willing to extend their disputes with religion to these liberal and nonrepressive iterations of religious faith, without applying the transparently fallacious arguments outlined above -- and yet continue to insist that their argument is with RELIGION ITSELF and not only with the toxic varieties of it which they address and refer to in every post.

I have said here, many times, that there is no such thing as "religion." There are only religions, and there is not a single belief, practice or attitude that is common to them all. That FACT ought to have some bearing on this matter, in my opinion.

Question for debate:

Is it intellectually honest to claim to argue against "religion" when one is only arguing against certain varieties of religion -- and simultaneously refusing to engage with, or perhaps even admit the existence of, other varieties of religion which are not subject to one's complaints?

Is this tendency caused, at least in part, by the fact that repressive fundamentalist Biblical literalism is the easiest variety of religion to argue against?

[cnorman18]

Well, this is how I see it:

Religiosity is a spectrum.

On one end you have dogmatic and blind faith, and an absolutely literalist view of whatever scripture you believe in.

On the other end you have a completely skeptical and clear mind, where you only believe that for which there is good evidence, and only do so tentatively until such a time as new evidence is discovered.

Now, I, as a person on the skeptical side of the spectrum think of it this way: The closer you are to my worldview, the less of a beef I have with you.

And on that we are agreed. I am as opposed to fundamentalist literalism as you -- and perhaps more so. For one thing, fundamentalism gives ALL religion a bad name; for another, we Jews have historically been first in line for their wrath.

A person such as your typical modern Jew living in NYC who only manifests his faith by throwing a party for his 13 year old son, and having a vague feeling in his heart that there is some kind of creative force out there, is for all practical purposes an atheist. What would I debate him on? Should I try to convince him to have a secular Sweet 16 party for his kid, and not a Bar Mitzvah? Whatever!

The other way of looking at it is that most moderate and educated religious people tend NOT to make TESTABLE, EMPIRICAL claims. They will say something like "I hold the deistic view that some kind of force external to the universe was integral to the universe's beginning".

In terms of its "debatability" such a subjective, untestable claim is as meaningful to attack as the statement "My favorite color is blue".

On the contrary, fundamentalists make testable, empirical claims. They will say "Donkeys can talk". That's a testable claim. They will say "The earth is 6000 years old". That is a testable claim. I can mount a fact-based argument against those claims

Also, lets not forget the obvious. You don't see many moderates of any religion bombing abortion clinics, or blowing themselves up in supermarkets, or picketing the funerals of soldiers with "God hates Fags" signs, or refusing treatment for their children and then the children die.

For the record, the overwhelming majority of even other FUNDAMENTALISTS regard such practices as repugnant, never mind liberal theists. And Jews? Well, there are often "God Hates Jews" signs at those demonstrations, too, and when suicide bombers strike, we are their most frequent targets.

As for refusing treatment -- well, "My son, the doctor" is an old Jewish joke, mostly because so many Jewish sons (and daughters) ARE doctors -- and not a few of them perform abortions.

This is the bottom line:

I try to dissuade fundamentalists rather than moderates of their beliefs for the same reason that a doctor in an Emergency Room will treat the person that is bleeding to death from a major car accident BEFORE he treats a guy with a scratch on his hand.

Fundamentalists need more help!

LOL! I quite agree. I suppose we can disagree on whether liberal theists need any "help" at all -- at least as long as there are fundamentalists around. Till then, as far as I'm concerned, we're on the same side.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 50:

My thanks, as always, to my friend Joey for his kind words. I am humbled and grateful. But see below...
...

I just wanted to acknowledge the response, read in full, but have little to say that isn't a rehash.

Thanks for your patient efforts here my friend, I've learned much that is good from you and your people, and y'all's ways.

Where parts of the referenced post need my fessing up, or plowing under, here it is, at the observer's discretion. I hope to become better about it all.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

The Bible is not a guide to morality. It is the literary heritage of a people, and a springboard for discussion of morality (and of many other things) -- and that is precisely where its importance lies. If it were really as obsolete and irrelevant and insignificant as is often claimed, we would not be discussing it here and now, and books -- for and against -- would not still be being written and published and read about it. I do not say that it is the ONLY such ancient book that is valuable; books are still being published about the Iliad too -- but if we're going to consider numbers, the Bible is a much more popular topic, and not only among fundamentalists or even theists.

The bible isn't popular today because it's a great "springboard for discussion of morality." The bible is popular today because for the last 2000 years these people called Christians thought that if you read it and believed it you could live forever. Also a lot of them told their children from an early age to believe it or else they would be tortured by demons. If popularity is the only reason to include the bible in morality discussions, shouldn't we just drop it by now? Why use the most misunderstood book in existence as a "springboard" for anything? If that is where the bible's importance lies, I'd be curious to see some examples of it in action. You keep talking about the bible as a "springboard" but I'm not sure what that actually means.

I know all about biblical scholarship, it's a fascinating field. I mean to ask, what value does the bible have outside of scholarly interest?

An odd question. "Scholarly interest" can include the study of morality and the history of morality, the development of the concepts of Law, Justice, Truth, Liberty -- you know, all the things we mentioned before, not to mention the meaning of being human itself, of reality, of what is important and what is not -- and even early ideas about what we would call "medicine" and "science" and "government" and "human rights." Learning about what humans thought about those matters, and thus of how we got where we are today, is not mere academic trivia.

Did you bother to read the OP at the link I posted?

I read it when you posted it originally, again when you bumped it a while back, again now. I am trying to understand what religious value you place on the bible. Am I to understand that the religious value and scholarly value of the bible are identical from your point of view?

Another matter of opinion, I suppose. Okay -- but I, in turn, wonder why you seem to have this compulsion to find a way to say that religion is of no importance or significance.

THAT is a VERY modern idea. The whole history of human thought until relatively modern times was inextricably linked with "religion" in every field, as even a casual perusal of historical documents in any field will attest. Medicine began in the temples of Apollo, chemistry began with the quest to transmute lead into gold and ordinary mortal souls into immortal and holy ones, astronomy began with tracking the gods across the sky, and so on.

In all of those fields, as they matured, the focus moved farther and farther away from "supernatural" assumptions and toward more "naturalistic" ones, as one would hope and expect; but there were still valid perspectives and insights in earlier times, and those ought not be dismissed and discarded -- and in the field of ethics, it's hard to see how we are more "civilized" than our ancestors. In the Bronze Age, one killed with a blade or a stone at close range, and was obliged to look one's enemy in the eyes and smell his breath; now we can kill millions with the push of a button from thousands of miles away and never even know their names or their number. The ancient world was, in very many and very significant ways, much less "barbaric" than this one. We sneer at the Bronze Age at our peril.

Do you have any actual examples? I agree that modern technology allows us to kill more efficiently, but surely you aren't actually claiming that ancient people would have been morally above using nuclear weapons or something like that?

Different standards. First, I question whether it makes sense to consider "percentages" here. According to this chart, the deaths of 8 million people at the fall of Rome is somehow worse than the deaths of 63 million people during WWII. I doubt that any of the 63 milliion would agree; the meaningful standard of "evil" here would the the individual human, not a statistical analysis.

Second, I was not speaking only of sheer numbers. I was speaking of EVIL.
...

Evil is not statistical and a matter of numbers; it is anecdotal, a matter of individual human pain and degradation, and the pleasure that others take in it.

"Evil" is not like "God". Perhaps it makes sense for you to talk about God without first defining it (religion as well, evidently). But to talk about evil like this? I don't see what purpose it serves other than to allow you to hold up the bible as a relevant standard without having to be concerned with empirical evidence to the contrary. The Bronze Age mostly sucked. The world as we now know it is the most peaceful and civilized it has ever been.

What do we have to learn from the bronze age in this regard? How to thoroughly exterminate an ethnic group so they never end up living among you in the first place?

It looks to me like we still have much to learn in the field of ethics and right and wrong, and we are a long, long way from being "mature" enough to discard the ideas of the past -- and don't hand me the Bible as evidence of the evils and horrors of religion; if you want to criticize Jewish ideas about ethics, you won't find them there. There are a few hundred years of discussions and debates on that general subject in the Talmud alone, and for depth and breadth of thought and openness and vigor in debate on that subject, there has never been anything in the literature of humanity to rival it. That discussion and debate continues to this day, and though it has little to do with trivial concerns like the nature of God and the Afterlife or "proofs" of either, it is a living and vital discussion for all that.

That may be the case. I can only say that for me to recognize the value and significance of religion you speak of would require something more tangible, some illustration of how the valuable wisdom of the bible can be applied. I think it's been sufficiently pointed out how old this tradition is and how many pages it has produced.

[cnorman18]

The Bible is not a guide to morality. It is the literary heritage of a people, and a springboard for discussion of morality (and of many other things) -- and that is precisely where its importance lies. If it were really as obsolete and irrelevant and insignificant as is often claimed, we would not be discussing it here and now, and books -- for and against -- would not still be being written and published and read about it. I do not say that it is the ONLY such ancient book that is valuable; books are still being published about the Iliad too -- but if we're going to consider numbers, the Bible is a much more popular topic, and not only among fundamentalists or even theists.

The bible isn't popular today because it's a great "springboard for discussion of morality." The bible is popular today because for the last 2000 years these people called Christians thought that if you read it and believed it you could live forever. Also a lot of them told their children from an early age to believe it or else they would be tortured by demons. If popularity is the only reason to include the bible in morality discussions, shouldn't we just drop it by now? Why use the most misunderstood book in existence as a "springboard" for anything? If that is where the bible's importance lies, I'd be curious to see some examples of it in action. You keep talking about the bible as a "springboard" but I'm not sure what that actually means.

I know all about biblical scholarship, it's a fascinating field. I mean to ask, what value does the bible have outside of scholarly interest?

An odd question. "Scholarly interest" can include the study of morality and the history of morality, the development of the concepts of Law, Justice, Truth, Liberty -- you know, all the things we mentioned before, not to mention the meaning of being human itself, of reality, of what is important and what is not -- and even early ideas about what we would call "medicine" and "science" and "government" and "human rights." Learning about what humans thought about those matters, and thus of how we got where we are today, is not mere academic trivia.

Did you bother to read the OP at the link I posted?

I read it when you posted it originally, again when you bumped it a while back, again now. I am trying to understand what religious value you place on the bible. Am I to understand that the religious value and scholarly value of the bible are identical from your point of view?

Another matter of opinion, I suppose. Okay -- but I, in turn, wonder why you seem to have this compulsion to find a way to say that religion is of no importance or significance.

THAT is a VERY modern idea. The whole history of human thought until relatively modern times was inextricably linked with "religion" in every field, as even a casual perusal of historical documents in any field will attest. Medicine began in the temples of Apollo, chemistry began with the quest to transmute lead into gold and ordinary mortal souls into immortal and holy ones, astronomy began with tracking the gods across the sky, and so on.

In all of those fields, as they matured, the focus moved farther and farther away from "supernatural" assumptions and toward more "naturalistic" ones, as one would hope and expect; but there were still valid perspectives and insights in earlier times, and those ought not be dismissed and discarded -- and in the field of ethics, it's hard to see how we are more "civilized" than our ancestors. In the Bronze Age, one killed with a blade or a stone at close range, and was obliged to look one's enemy in the eyes and smell his breath; now we can kill millions with the push of a button from thousands of miles away and never even know their names or their number. The ancient world was, in very many and very significant ways, much less "barbaric" than this one. We sneer at the Bronze Age at our peril.

Do you have any actual examples? I agree that modern technology allows us to kill more efficiently, but surely you aren't actually claiming that ancient people would have been morally above using nuclear weapons or something like that?

Different standards. First, I question whether it makes sense to consider "percentages" here. According to this chart, the deaths of 8 million people at the fall of Rome is somehow worse than the deaths of 63 million people during WWII. I doubt that any of the 63 milliion would agree; the meaningful standard of "evil" here would the the individual human, not a statistical analysis.

Second, I was not speaking only of sheer numbers. I was speaking of EVIL.
...

Evil is not statistical and a matter of numbers; it is anecdotal, a matter of individual human pain and degradation, and the pleasure that others take in it.

"Evil" is not like "God". Perhaps it makes sense for you to talk about God without first defining it (religion as well, evidently). But to talk about evil like this? I don't see what purpose it serves other than to allow you to hold up the bible as a relevant standard without having to be concerned with empirical evidence to the contrary. The Bronze Age mostly sucked. The world as we now know it is the most peaceful and civilized it has ever been.

What do we have to learn from the bronze age in this regard? How to thoroughly exterminate an ethnic group so they never end up living among you in the first place?

It looks to me like we still have much to learn in the field of ethics and right and wrong, and we are a long, long way from being "mature" enough to discard the ideas of the past -- and don't hand me the Bible as evidence of the evils and horrors of religion; if you want to criticize Jewish ideas about ethics, you won't find them there. There are a few hundred years of discussions and debates on that general subject in the Talmud alone, and for depth and breadth of thought and openness and vigor in debate on that subject, there has never been anything in the literature of humanity to rival it. That discussion and debate continues to this day, and though it has little to do with trivial concerns like the nature of God and the Afterlife or "proofs" of either, it is a living and vital discussion for all that.

That may be the case. I can only say that for me to recognize the value and significance of religion you speak of would require something more tangible, some illustration of how the valuable wisdom of the bible can be applied. I think it's been sufficiently pointed out how old this tradition is and how many pages it has produced.

Here's something I think might be helpful before we go farther: How about giving me YOUR definition of "religion"? It appears that you are still insisting that it must be about supernatural beliefs and dogmas, and that nothing else is really "religious." Would that be an accurate statement? Because if it is, we have nothing to talk about, and our conversation here is back where it began.

[Jax Agnesson]

-- and in the field of ethics, it's hard to see how we are more "civilized" than our ancestors. In the Bronze Age, one killed with a blade or a stone at close range, and was obliged to look one's enemy in the eyes and smell his breath; now we can kill millions with the push of a button from thousands of miles away and never even know their names or their number. The ancient world was, in very many and very significant ways, much less "barbaric" than this one. We sneer at the Bronze Age at our peril.

For another opinion on this subject
The link to the interactive display, at the top of the piece, (The twenty worst things people have done to each other) is worth study.

Different standards. First, I question whether it makes sense to consider "percentages" here. According to this chart, the deaths of 8 million people at the fall of Rome is somehow worse than the deaths of 63 million people during WWII. I doubt that any of the 63 million would agree; the meaningful standard of "evil" here would the the individual human, not a statistical analysis.

Second, I was not speaking only of sheer numbers. I was speaking of EVIL. Did you know, for instance, that the Nazis carefully calculated how much food should be given a prisoner in order to wring the most work from him while starving him to death at the least expense? It worked out to about a quarter of a raw turnip and a cupful of thin broth per day. But on Yom Kippur -- the most sacred of Jewish holy days, when observant Jews eat and drink nothing at all -- the SS provided enormous feasts for the doomed prisoners, enough that some of those who had been so starved for months gorged themselves till they died. Pork, of course.

Prisoners on their way to the "showers" were often made to strip in their barracks and walk naked across the camp to their deaths. Too, the "latrines" were open, exposed trenches next to the parade ground, the most public place imaginable inside the wire, and prisoners were obliged to squat and relieve themselves in full view of everyone -- men and women alike. These practices were not based on efficiency or convenience. They were quite deliberately directed at Orthodox Jewish teachings of physical modesty (most of the Jewish prisoners were Orthodox; Reform and secular Jews had largely long since fled). The cremation of corpses was not for efficiency, either. Mass graves would have served as well, and have in other genocides in modern times; but in the Jewish religion, cremation of the dead was long considered a desecration and a horror.

These practices were not accidental. Adolf Eichmann was fluent in Hebrew and was long a student of Jewish tradition, literature and religious practice. It was all quite deliberate.

There is more, of course; unspeakable "medical experiments" where no anaesthetic was even considered, because the agony of the subject was of no concern at all -- or else was the subject of study. The "third line" at entering the camp, which is not well known; there were two primary lines -- one for prisoners who would work for a time before being killed, the other for those who were sent directly to the "showers." But there was often a third -- for attractive young girls and women, down to their early teens or younger. That line let to years in a free brothel for stormtroopers, or just mass rape followed by casual murder.

There is much more. I encourage no one to study this material; there are things I have learned that I wish I had not. The point is that all this took place, in a deliberate and calculated fashion, in what was universally considered at the time to be the most technologically and scientifically advanced, certainly the most educated and learned, the most sophisticated, the most highly cultured, and the most civilized nation on Earth -- and in my humble opinion, there has never been anything to match it in all of human history.

I have read a lot, from Hannah Arendt's 'Banality of Evil' to Primo Levi's 'Periodic Table'; from technical and logistical reports of the various stages of the holocaust to an analysis of the business structure and practices of the IG.
My lifelong opposition to all forms of racism and prejudice started with a horrified recognition of what the Nazis did to the Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Slavs, and anyone else they decided to hate.
Far be it from me to belittle that atrocity.
But it was an aberration, and I am willing to consider, at least, whether the sheer monstrosity of it has distorted our picture of human moral progress.

It is perhaps no accident, either, that Schadenfreude is a German word.

Anti-Semitism has been a disease across all of Europe for many centuries. I think the fact that it found its most horrible expression in one particular country under one particular political party does not tell us anything about German people or culture as such. I have known enough ignorant and violent racists in dear little civilised England to be aware that, had the socio-economic circumstances been different, Moseley's blackshirts would have acted in precisely the same way. And I don't see that an anti-Semitic holocaust could not have been committed in France, Spain, Holland, or indeed the USA, under similar circumstances.

[scourge99]

Is this tendency caused, at least in part, by the fact that the less learned anti-religionists are the easiest variety of non-theists to argue against?

Perhaps I am not learned enough, but I have no idea what you mean.

You seem to be complaining that non-theists usually only tackle non-liberal beliefs because they are the easiest. And that the one's who do this usually aren't even aware of liberal beliefs or put them in the same bucket as all religions. I think the people who do such are usually new to debate and religious study. Thus you would be picking on the easiest targets in the non-theist community which is ironic considering that your complaint is about people who pick on the easiest targets.

Isnt that pretty much what I said immediately below?

I must have missed it or misunderstand it if you did. In either case i think we are on the same page now so it doesn't matter.

If by less learned anti-religionists you mean those who are not aware of the fact that all religions are not the same, I dont think thats a matter of arguing, but of informing.

As for me, i have plenty of criticism for liberal believers but there simply aren't many here and they rarely, if ever, put their beliefs out there for discussion. IME, the times that they have, have been some of the most informative.

Yes, I agree, and some of those engagements have been with me. You are not among those whom I am criticizing here.

What I have in mind are threads like the following:

Does religion defy reality?

Would the world be a better place without religion?

God and mental illness

God is an imaginary friend for adults!

And so on. None of these distinguish between different religions or different kinds of "belief in God."

I genuinely believe that many of these people aren't aware of liberal beliefs. I was one of them for quite a long time. I was religious during my youth, took a few religious study classes in college, and debated/discussed religion for quite a few years (including with some pastors) and never encountered anyone who clearly distinguished themselves from the literalists or "magical thinkers". Even the Jews I had debated made no attempt to make such a distinction and were often taking sides with literalist and magical thinking Christians to defend their beliefs and "faith". It wasn't until I came here that I encountered a clear and concerted effort by liberal believers to distinguish themselves from the others. This was from members such as you and Slopeshoulder.

Yes, and alas for his bad habits that got him banned. His voice was a rare one.

You are speaking, of course, of the reasons I posted this thread in the first place.

Ok.

Lastly, we have briefly disagreed on this before, but i think you greatly overestimate the numbers of liberal believers and their influence/exposure as compared to (1) the fundamentalists and (2) the more modern believers who don't take the bible completely literally but still engage in magical thinking.

On (1), I have no argument; you are quite right. The influence of liberal believers is not as visible, at least, as that of the conservative bunch. But then I have often pointed out that assuming that the fact that liberal believers do not get as much ink as others and therefore must exist in smaller numbers is an example of the Spotlight Fallacy and ought to be recognized as such.

Well that isn't quite the spotlight fallacy because the spotlight fallacy deals with conclusions made by observing the media's spotlight. Its not necessarily about one's personal observations.

If the spotlight of the media is what one bases ones argument upon, it makes little difference.

If knowing the exact reasoning why the person believes is required (such as believing because of the media's spotlight as opposed to believing for some other reason) then it makes it very difficult to demonstrate someone is committing the fallacy unless they tell you directly.

A possibility is still being treated as a fact, and thats what a fallacy IS.

I don't think any semi-intelligent person would make the kind of argument you accuse them of making. In particular I think it's a mistake to presume the use of such strict logic. Rather, most people are making inferences based on their experiences and the evidence. And we all do this. E.G., if you've only ever seen or heard about white swans and over the years have only seen or read about hundreds or thousands of white swans then its reasonable that if someone mentions a swan then you presume its white. But that presumption doesn't mean you are making some strict logical argument that all swans must be white. Rather, it's a reasonable inference from past experiences. If one day someone tells you that turquoise swans exist, that doesn't mean you have been committing a logical fallacy all this time. It does not mean you are committing the spotlight fallacy. It DOES mean your inference/belief/expectation (whatever you want to call it) is wrong though.

I think you should sympathize a bit more with non-theists who assume that all theists they meet are literalists and magical thinkers because after encountering hundreds or thousands of believers they probably have never encountered a liberal believer. Or worse, they may have encountered one but the liberal failed to clearly distinguish himself from the literalists and magic believers.

I dont know that sympathize is quite the right word. My intention here, as noted several times now, is to educate, in part by bringing this problem to the attention of those who seem unaware of it.

I support that.

(2) is similar. Id like to see a definition of magical thinking, and then Id like to see some evidence that the majority of liberal, nonliteral believers engage in it.

I was NOT claiming that all liberal jews or liberal christians engage in magical thinking.

What I am saying is that most present-day believers are NOT liberal. Most present-day believers are literalists or engage in magical thinking. E.G., some of the stories of the bible like adam and eve, tower of babel, noah's ark, etc, probably didn't actually happen or are myth/legend but Jesus literally rose from the dead, magically healed people with his spit, and flew into heaven like superman.

And as Ive said several times now, I have no reason to disagree with that. MY brief is for those, like myself, who do NOT so believe, and feel as though we ought not be invisible or considered insignificant.

I support you in that and would much prefer to live in a world where those beliefs dominate over the fundamentalist and magic beliefs. But that's not the world we live in.

I dont think thats true of Jews, and speaking from experience, I dont think its true of very many liberal Christians either.

I agree.

Only you have made it abudently clear To choose a convenient example, the belief in miracles; I dont think that acknowledging that miracles are possible -- I cant say that they are NOT possible, and neither can you -- is quite the same thing as assuming that they can be obtained at will or can be depended upon.

Miracles are possible only in that they cannot be proven impossible. Leprechauns and flying spaghetti monsters are possible in the same regard. But if we want to discuss whether leprechauns, spaghetti monsters, or gods are more or less probable/reasonable then that is a different discussion.

And I agree with THAT. See below.

In short, saying something is possible (or not impossible) is rather pointless because there are a seemingly infinite amount of things that are possible. Yet, people such as yourself who say they think god, miracles, etc are possible don't ever seem to also say that leprechauns, unicorns, or flying spaghetti monsters are possible in the same breath.

Um, no. What I mean by not impossible is this: I have seen things, more than once, that I cannot explain and that no one acquainted with them, including the physicians involved, could explain. Were they miracles, or simply things for which we have not yet discovered or determined a reasonable explanation? I cant say. Im not talking about theoretical possibilities; that would be as fatuous as you say. Im talking about reality, which is not always as predictable and tame as we would like to think.

I fail to see a difference in reasoning between:
1) "i don't understand or know why that happened therefore it might have been caused by a god"
2) "i don't understand or know why that happened therefore it might have been caused by a leprechaun." (if the notion of leprechauns is too insulting then insert Zeus instead).


You seem to be telling me there is a difference but i don't see it other than the particular supernatural bias of the person. But i don't accept by non-argument that god magic is anymore reasonable than any other magic. And such criticism happens to be on track with my arguments against liberal believers. That their religious beliefs are arbitrary and their skepticism is arbitrarily exclusive (E.G., Yahweh magic is believable/possible/rational but Zeus/leprechaun magic isn't)

If I were an atheist, I would dismiss such incidents out of hand;

This is very unfair characterization of atheists. If you believe atheists dismiss such things out of hand then you do not understand atheists very well (except perhaps the fringe).

but Im not, and though I make no claim that anything out of the ordinary actually happened on any of these occasions, I am not quite arrogant enough to unequivocally claim that that MUST be the case.

Which is exactly the mindset of atheists as well. Except the difference seems to be a openmindedness to particular magical explanations rather than all of them.

When I pastored a small, rural church in north Texas -- hardly a bastion of liberalism -- many people had no objection to praying for the healing of an ill person, but they still expected that person to go to the doctor, and no one expected that person to be suddenly and magically cured of all illness. The consensus on prayer seemed to be, It cant hurt. I dont think that constitutes magical thinking, and I dont think it seriously impedes rational or critical thought.

I disagree. The idea that one is petitioning a supernatural being in the hopes that they magically heal the person certainly is magical thinking.

I accept that intercessory prayer is not always about requesting divine intervention. But your example was vague because you failed to explain the internal thoughts of the person praying that would make it non-magical. If, for example, the person praying was doing it purely as a show of support then that would be an example of non-magical thinking.

I was thinking of that, and also of the fact that such prayers are an ancient tradition in ALL faiths of which I have ever heard, and are regarded as comforting even if they are offered -- as, in my experience, they generally are -- without any real hope of their being answered.

Sure. I agree there can be many motivations behind particular rituals or practices. But I take Rick Perry and other dimwits at their word when they claim to pray for rain.

Imagine the frenzy and revival that would had occurred had it rained. Someone is bound to guess right eventually. Since you are so open to the idea that perhaps god maybe/sometimes/could answer prayers, what would you make of such a scenario if Rick's prayers were "answered" ?

As Dawkins' has said: "By all means be open minded, but not so open minded that our brains drop out." :p

[RobertUrbanek]

Some fish have evolved, grown limbs and climbed out of the barrel. I believe there is a new category of believers, myself included, whose beliefs are shaped less by the Bible and more by popular culture, which in recent years has questioned our sense of reality in such films as The Matrix, The Truman Show and The Adjustment Bureau.

We rely more on reasonable suspicion, not faith, and the uneasy feeling that there is something unreal about our reality, a perspective perhaps best encapsulated in this dialogue from The Matrix:

Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Here's something I think might be helpful before we go farther: How about giving me YOUR definition of "religion"? It appears that you are still insisting that it must be about supernatural beliefs and dogmas, and that nothing else is really "religious." Would that be an accurate statement? Because if it is, we have nothing to talk about, and our conversation here is back where it began.

I don't really have a definition of religion, at least not one that I try to impose upon people. I recognize that people use the term in different ways. I think from an academic perspective the most useful definition of religion would have to be some collection of beliefs and/or practices which involve some aspect of the supernatural. I think that is the most logical criteria with which to separate religion from politics and sport and the like, and it's what separates theology from philosophy. But certainly religion may be defined in any number of different ways depending on our purpose.

Now, I'm not sure why you are suggesting we have nothing to talk about. I have my understanding of religion. You have yours. I am trying to understand what your understanding of religion is, but this is made difficult as you lack a definition yourself. We can talk about ethics, for example, and we can even talk about ethics through analyzing the bible and the exegetical literature. For me, this is not a religious activity, but I get the impression that for you it might be. I think these are the sort of ambiguities that need to be worked out.

[scourge99]

-- and in the field of ethics, it's hard to see how we are more "civilized" than our ancestors. In the Bronze Age, one killed with a blade or a stone at close range, and was obliged to look one's enemy in the eyes and smell his breath; now we can kill millions with the push of a button from thousands of miles away and never even know their names or their number. The ancient world was, in very many and very significant ways, much less "barbaric" than this one. We sneer at the Bronze Age at our peril.

For another opinion on this subject
The link to the interactive display, at the top of the piece, (The twenty worst things people have done to each other) is worth study.

Different standards. First, I question whether it makes sense to consider "percentages" here. According to this chart, the deaths of 8 million people at the fall of Rome is somehow worse than the deaths of 63 million people during WWII. I doubt that any of the 63 million would agree; the meaningful standard of "evil" here would the the individual human, not a statistical analysis.

Second, I was not speaking only of sheer numbers. I was speaking of EVIL. Did you know, for instance, that the Nazis carefully calculated how much food should be given a prisoner in order to wring the most work from him while starving him to death at the least expense? It worked out to about a quarter of a raw turnip and a cupful of thin broth per day. But on Yom Kippur -- the most sacred of Jewish holy days, when observant Jews eat and drink nothing at all -- the SS provided enormous feasts for the doomed prisoners, enough that some of those who had been so starved for months gorged themselves till they died. Pork, of course.

Prisoners on their way to the "showers" were often made to strip in their barracks and walk naked across the camp to their deaths. Too, the "latrines" were open, exposed trenches next to the parade ground, the most public place imaginable inside the wire, and prisoners were obliged to squat and relieve themselves in full view of everyone -- men and women alike. These practices were not based on efficiency or convenience. They were quite deliberately directed at Orthodox Jewish teachings of physical modesty (most of the Jewish prisoners were Orthodox; Reform and secular Jews had largely long since fled). The cremation of corpses was not for efficiency, either. Mass graves would have served as well, and have in other genocides in modern times; but in the Jewish religion, cremation of the dead was long considered a desecration and a horror.

These practices were not accidental. Adolf Eichmann was fluent in Hebrew and was long a student of Jewish tradition, literature and religious practice. It was all quite deliberate.

There is more, of course; unspeakable "medical experiments" where no anaesthetic was even considered, because the agony of the subject was of no concern at all -- or else was the subject of study. The "third line" at entering the camp, which is not well known; there were two primary lines -- one for prisoners who would work for a time before being killed, the other for those who were sent directly to the "showers." But there was often a third -- for attractive young girls and women, down to their early teens or younger. That line let to years in a free brothel for stormtroopers, or just mass rape followed by casual murder.

There is much more. I encourage no one to study this material; there are things I have learned that I wish I had not. The point is that all this took place, in a deliberate and calculated fashion, in what was universally considered at the time to be the most technologically and scientifically advanced, certainly the most educated and learned, the most sophisticated, the most highly cultured, and the most civilized nation on Earth -- and in my humble opinion, there has never been anything to match it in all of human history.

I have read a lot, from Hannah Arendt's 'Banality of Evil' to Primo Levi's 'Periodic Table'; from technical and logistical reports of the various stages of the holocaust to an analysis of the business structure and practices of the IG.
My lifelong opposition to all forms of racism and prejudice started with a horrified recognition of what the Nazis did to the Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Slavs, and anyone else they decided to hate.
Far be it from me to belittle that atrocity.
But it was an aberration, and I am willing to consider, at least, whether the sheer monstrosity of it has distorted our picture of human moral progress.

It is perhaps no accident, either, that Schadenfreude is a German word.

Anti-Semitism has been a disease across all of Europe for many centuries. I think the fact that it found its most horrible expression in one particular country under one particular political party does not tell us anything about German people or culture as such. I have known enough ignorant and violent racists in dear little civilised England to be aware that, had the socio-economic circumstances been different, Moseley's blackshirts would have acted in precisely the same way. And I don't see that an anti-Semitic holocaust could not have been committed in France, Spain, Holland, or indeed the USA, under similar circumstances.

Minority groups who otherize themselves by exclusion, seclusion from main society, communal activity, etc, are often the target of discrimination, suspicion, and condemnation.

[cnorman18]

With no anticipation of anything yet to come in this discussion -- I am not yet certain what I will be posting, since I have to give it some thought in every case (and this is a GOOD thing) -- I'll be getting back to everyone in a day or three. Actual offline life intrudes, but beyond that, I find I am being forced to think a bit more deeply and carefully myself.

That is perhaps the most important reason I keep coming back here. I consider things I had not previously considered, and I even CHANGE MY OPINIONS from time to time.

Back soon.

(PS -- One more thought, directed at no one in particular; if those things don't happen to you, then you're not doing this right. If your views are the same as they were five years ago -- well, you're dead and just haven't had the good grace to lie down yet.)