On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:40:12 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

>> 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.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

>> 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.

That's only true if one holds the point of view you hold.  In order to 
understand it, you have to step out of your own frame of reference and 
look at it from a different perspective.  That can be very difficult to 
do, admittedly, but it's not impossible.

>> 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,

See my above comment about stepping out of your own frame of reference.

>> 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, 

That happens even with rationalists, too.  The "punishment" tends to be 
ridicule rather than more the extreme punishments you outline for the 
"modern fundies", but the reaction is quite similar.

>> 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. 

I've seen it time and again in various religious discussions, so please, 
don't tell me it doesn't happen.  It does.  Maybe not every time, but I'm 
not outlining something that happens in every discussion, just something 
that in my experience happens a lot of the time in the discussions I 
participate in.

> 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.

This is why I often take the stand that the Bible is a mythology, because 
the stories have likely evolved.  There was an oral tradition at the time 
(so I've been led to understand) and that tends to amplify and modify 
stories, as anyone who's played the "telephone" game knows.

>> 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.

Again, I've seen extreme positions taken on both sides of the debate, 
from the self-proclaimed rationalist side, this tends to take the form of 
extreme ridicule rather than the proclamation of something like a 
fatwah.  But it does happen, and again, I've seen it over and over in 
discussions I've participated in over the years.

Jim

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