Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:33:28 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Well, maybe, but what's wrong with that?
>> Nothing, if you accept irrationality.
> 
> Exactly.  There's no dictum that states that humans have to be 100% 
> rational 100% of the time.  Some scientists (and quite well known 
> scientists, at that) believe there may be a higher power.
> 
And, all of them would have a century ago. This doesn't mean much.

> Some also, I understand, look at the universe and consider it possible 
> that there was a "supreme being" that set things in motion, but the 
> natural laws of the universe are such that once things are set in motion, 
> they're in motion.  Kinda like playing "Mousetrap" and enforcing a rule 
> that once you hit the trigger to start the whole thing off, you can't 
> interfere with it until it's done.
> 
> Some also consider that there might have been a "creation" event, but 
> that evolution is the means by which life progresses.
> 
Both of which are meaningless, since they don't provide anything at all 
useful. The arguments are not even "made", except as a means of keeping 
alive the more specific, and far less plausible, idea that this same god 
made up a bunch of rules to follow, and following them right means you 
get to spend eternity drinking mead and.. oh, wait, wrong mythological 
gibberish.

> I'm not saying I agree with any of these things, but there are ways to 
> interpret things that do not make these two ideas incompatible.
> 
True, but again, they are almost totally pointless interpretations, 
unless the believer "gets" something out of it for believing in it. 
Otherwise, you could make up almost "anything", and it would be just as 
plausible, just as ridiculous, and just as irrelevant to anything in the 
real world.

>>> Religion has always been used
>>> to explain that which can't be explained.  The ancient Romans used a
>>> polytheistic system to explain various scientific phenomena that they
>>> couldn't understand.
>> Is this really true?  Did romans *really* think Zeus threw lightning
>> bolts, or was it that Zeus was in their stories and he just got assigned
>> the blame?
>>
>> I mean, did they really think Apollo was towing the sun with his
>> chariot, or was it "we don't know why the sun moves, but babies come
>> from storks" kind of things?  Nobody believes that the wolf would dress
>> up like grandma, but it's a good story because it keeps young kids from
>> wandering into the woods and getting eaten.
> 
> Could be, but it seems to me that the idea of Apollo pulling the sun 
> across the sky in his chariot is an explanation that was used for quite a 
> long time - so there are likely some who took it seriously.
> 
And, such people, when they find their ideas being sidelined, get really 
pissy about it, even to the point of, like modern fundies, doing 
everything short of killing you, to stop people from pointing out that 
less and less people believe their version any more. Though, it should 
be noted, more than a few seem to have what has been termed "fatwa 
envy". This is exhibited as some wacko stating, "I hate you, you will 
burn in hell, and you should be glad I ain't one of them Muslims, 
because *they* would kill you for it." (To those making this argument: 
Uh.. Shouldn't that be more accurately stated as, "I can't get by with 
killing you for it?", because.. seriously dude, if the comic sans, 
random capitalizations and apparent lack of ability to spell more than 
two words a sentence correctly, wasn't enough to call it into 
question... the fact that you also 'wish' you could kill me would seem 
to imply that you are a tad 'unhinged'. lol) Seriously, this is pretty 
much par for the course. If one of them ever really "got" elected, I 
wouldn't be surprised if entire state documents where done in this 
style, and that they would "insist" on preventing other people editing 
it so that it didn't look insane to normal people.

>>> This isn't a binary option - ie it's not "either you believe the whole
>>> bible is the truth as written or you believe the whole thing is
>>> fiction".  Mythologies don't evolve that way.
>> I don't think the concern is with people who only believe some parts. 
> 
> And yet it seems that many who don't believe in a deity point to 
> Christianity and the related religions and say "one thing in this is 
> ridiculous/provable to be incorrect, therefore the whole thing is" - and 
> then go on to ridicule those who believe any of it.
> 
Umm. Hardly. Some of its "history", in the sense of places, and 
sometimes people, are not that inaccurate (well, unless you consider 
getting the wrong century and Egyptian leader to be "critical", for 
example. But, heh, at least they didn't place it in Norway or 
something..) Actual details of events.. not so much. Most of the 
contents are pure gibberish, even if the places are right. In some 
cases.. you get the same "character" supposedly conquering 3-4 places, 
when the "archeology" suggests that one fell to region wide earth quakes 
100 years later, and a couple others couldn't have been by the same guy, 
unless he could be in two places at the some time, or had modern Jet 
flight..

And, it just gets worse after that. The NT being the "real" gem. Since 
nearly all evidence of its contents in self referential, and what isn't 
can't be proven to be written "later" than the NT itself (or more 
specifically the NT earlier), and the rest, seem to conveniently be by 
the Flavians, who became the first members of the new faith, or by their 
servants.

Its not that parts are wrong, therefor the whole thing is. Its like.. 
Arguing that because the **places** in Hemingway's novels existed, we 
should "also" assume that any or all of the characters did too, that 
they did the things they did in the books, and that references to "real" 
people of the time, which may have been made, are somehow "evidence" of 
this, even when we have no evidence at all that they "did" meet in real 
life. Or, to put it another way, not unlike claiming that because Data 
talked to Samuel Clemens on Star Trek:TNG, that he really traveled into 
the future. After all, he existed, the places he appeared in the "past" 
,in the story existed, he is quoted as saying some of the things 
repeated in the story, therefor the "made up people" and events are 
"credible".

The problem isn't that some of it may be true, its that there is *no* 
valid criteria, nor may we ever have any, by which to judge which, if 
any, parts are a) exaggerations, b) misunderstandings of what was being 
witnessed, c) made up after the fact, then amplified in retelling, or d) 
as implausible as all modern understandings of the world make such 
things, actually somehow real.

You might as well come back in 2,000 years and argue that Harry Potter 
really existed, based on photos of the actors, and pointing out how 
there really where train stations back then.

>> I
>> think the concern is with people who only believe some parts, but then
>> want to force you to follow their interpretation of those parts because
>> it's from God.
> 
> There are extremists on both sides of the fence in this one.
> 
Hmm. Yeah. Met some of the extremists on my side the other day. I think 
they laughed at someone, then bought a copy of Skeptical Enquirer. It 
was horrifying! lol Seriously though, this isn't entirely accurate. The 
problem here is delusional thinking, not specifically religion, and the 
"extremists" on the side against religion tend to trade belief different 
gibberish for what "would have been" religion.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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