Jim Henderson wrote:
> My first thought was that it had to be some form of humour, but yeah, it 
> does seem like the guy is serious...

http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Poe%27s_Law

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:56:29 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> My first thought was that it had to be some form of humour, but yeah,
>> it does seem like the guy is serious...
> 
> http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Poe%27s_Law

<G>

Jim

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> A couple of remark inspired by the video: The first few 'question' 
> center around prayer. If you don't believe in prayer this will make no 
> sense. I don't know how common it is for Americans to believe that 
> prayer really helps, among the Christians that I know, it is AFAIK 
> uncommon. (Though there was recently a book that claimed that you could 
> get everything that you wanted if you visualized it every day and that 
> was also popular here. Forgot the name.) Aside, some people say that 
> praying to God to get (material) things is a sin against the second 
> commandment, they might have a point.
> Then follow a few things about selective usage of verses. Again if you 
> don't claim that everything in the bible is the Truth that won't make 
> any sense. It may come as a shock (at least it shocked me when I first 
> noted it in real life) but there are people who seriously believe that. 
> The remarks in this video are directed against those people. The bible 
> is internally inconsistent, inconsistent with laws and constitutions of 
> every western country, and inconsistent with science (though the 
> examples may not be the most convincing). I think that if someone claims 
> that every word in the bible is True, it is a reasonable to ask how that 
> person handles all the inconsistencies. I also know that by definition 
> no answer will ever satisfy the person asking.
> Interesting thing is also that the examples are mainly from the 
> old-testament and thus would be equally valid for jews and muslims. Yet 
> the title only mentions Christians. Yet another example that the maker 
> of this video is not able to abstract from his own cultural environment 
> and attacking the world at large assuming everybody thinks like he 
> assumes his neighbours think. All in all I think it is very shallow and 
> hardly convincing. I don't think I would have listened to more than 30 
> seconds of it if you would not have recommended it.
> 

Yeah, this is the, "You don't understand the *deep* arguments, so you 
argue about the shallow ones which no one believes.", assertion. Its 
made *a lot* by two sorts of people: 1) Those that have no concept what 
the deeper issues are, but haven't observed believers around them making 
the stupid arguments that are being attacked, **often** due to being 
European, and 2) believers that want to side track the issue, without 
actually bothering to say what those deeper issues are. The sad thing 
is, there are no deeper issues. A while back someone asked a number of 
"prominent" religious scholars, including European ones, what they 
believed the deeper issues of their religion where. They inexplicably 
babbled 10 or so things they claimed where "huge" issues, ranging from 
creation vs. evolution, to whether or not someone can *be* moral without 
their own god and following his Bible, etc. In other words, their 
"deeper issues" where precisely the nonsensical stuff that everyone from 
Dawkins to you non-religious neighbor might complain about with 
religion, and precisely the arguments, ideas, concepts, and/or bad 
reasoning that believers always insist, "Miss the issue, because they 
are dealing with the shallow matters, not the *deeper* and more 
important things that people with **real knowledge** of religion think 
about."

There is a subset of scholar that "do" imagine themselves thinking on 
deeper matters, and will tell you that they don't think, can't imagine, 
and simply refuse to believe, that 90% of the other people that call 
themselves Christian all believe such *silly* things as god watching 
them all the time, answering their prayers, like a customer service 
desk, or spending all his time tinkering with things to make sure the 
universe happens the way its supposed to. These people are delusional in 
an entirely odd way. They deny the very ideas and concepts that 90% of 
Christianity ***do*** believe in, yet, when asked what their "deeper 
concepts" are... well, lets just say that they don't have answers, and 
their questions just wander around until they run aground on the same 
bad ideas and false premises that everyone else does, leaving them 
looking like the very people they insist, "don't exist".

It would be rather funny, if it wasn't so sad, or dangerous. I mean, how 
do you plan to fight the supposed "false(r?)" perceptions, when you, as 
some high and mighty scholar, deny that the majority of people hold any 
of them in the first place? When they deny that "they" hold them, 
because it would contradict their claim that they actually do more than 
circular logic, designed to mask the very things they insist they don't 
subscribe to. If they admit that the unmasks, crazy, version is 
dangerous and wrong, how do you fight it, when all your doing is 
supporting a masked version of the same thing, "while" insisting that 
most people don't follow the crazy unmasked version? Talk about 
dissonance...

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> My first thought was that it had to be some form of humour, but yeah, 
>> it does seem like the guy is serious...
> 
> 
> http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
> 

Wow.  I am really naive.  But what does it all mean?

Actually, I have never 'gotten' Steven Colbert.  For me the absurdist 
vein to his humor undercuts the sactimony, satirical or otherwise.

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:07:37 -0400, Jim Charter wrote:

> Actually, I have never 'gotten' Steven Colbert.  For me the absurdist
> vein to his humor undercuts the sactimony, satirical or otherwise.

The thing that makes Colbert work for us is knowing there are people who 
think he's serious....

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 5-7-2009 3:38, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Yeah, this is the, "You don't understand the *deep* arguments, so you 
> argue about the shallow ones which no one believes.", assertion. Its 
> made *a lot* by two sorts of people: 1) Those that have no concept what 
> the deeper issues are, but haven't observed believers around them making 
> the stupid arguments that are being attacked, **often** due to being 
> European, and 2) believers that want to side track the issue, without 
> actually bothering to say what those deeper issues are. The sad thing 
> is, there are no deeper issues. A while back someone asked a number of 
> "prominent" religious scholars, including European ones, what they 
> believed the deeper issues of their religion where. They inexplicably 
> babbled 10 or so things they claimed where "huge" issues, ranging from 
> creation vs. evolution, to whether or not someone can *be* moral without 
> their own god and following his Bible, etc. In other words, their 
> "deeper issues" where precisely the nonsensical stuff that everyone from 
> Dawkins to you non-religious neighbor might complain about with 
> religion, and precisely the arguments, ideas, concepts, and/or bad 
> reasoning that believers always insist, "Miss the issue, because they 
> are dealing with the shallow matters, not the *deeper* and more 
> important things that people with **real knowledge** of religion think 
> about."
> 
> There is a subset of scholar that "do" imagine themselves thinking on 
> deeper matters, and will tell you that they don't think, can't imagine, 
> and simply refuse to believe, that 90% of the other people that call 
> themselves Christian all believe such *silly* things as god watching 
> them all the time, answering their prayers, like a customer service 
> desk, or spending all his time tinkering with things to make sure the 
> universe happens the way its supposed to. These people are delusional in 
> an entirely odd way. They deny the very ideas and concepts that 90% of 
> Christianity ***do*** believe in, yet, when asked what their "deeper 
> concepts" are... well, lets just say that they don't have answers, and 
> their questions just wander around until they run aground on the same 
> bad ideas and false premises that everyone else does, leaving them 
> looking like the very people they insist, "don't exist".
> 
> It would be rather funny, if it wasn't so sad, or dangerous. I mean, how 
> do you plan to fight the supposed "false(r?)" perceptions, when you, as 
> some high and mighty scholar, deny that the majority of people hold any 
> of them in the first place? When they deny that "they" hold them, 
> because it would contradict their claim that they actually do more than 
> circular logic, designed to mask the very things they insist they don't 
> subscribe to. If they admit that the unmasks, crazy, version is 
> dangerous and wrong, how do you fight it, when all your doing is 
> supporting a masked version of the same thing, "while" insisting that 
> most people don't follow the crazy unmasked version? Talk about 
> dissonance...
> 

I think there may be deeper issues, only those can be fundamentally 
different for different persons. For a gnostic it is totally different 
than for a true Roman Catholic or for a member of a pentecostal church 
or...
Like you I noticed that devout christians sometimes change a lot when 
they study theology. Often the 'God' becomes more abstract and/or their 
believe becomes more personal or gnostic. That is not strange, but it 
may result in a gap with the 'lay-man'. I don't have a problem with 
that, but it may appear hypocritical in certain circumstances.
As long as we take one another's religion serious and don't try to make 
fun of what differs from what we believe, there should not be a problem. 
This video fails pathetically in that respect.

Post a reply to this message

andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > It's completely full of fallacious argumentation,

> Why don't you point them out?

  Done that a long time ago:

http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseTo10Questions.html

> I think it is horrible, very American, and 
> assuming a type of religion that is not very common among European 
> intellectuals, but that does not make the arguments false.

  My point is not really whether what they are *trying* to say is, in the
end, true or false (because that's the whole question in atheism and
religion). My point is that the *way* they are saying it is wrong because
they present a bunch of fallacious distorted arguments and outright straw
men, and then present questions and conclusions based directly on them.
I think the term for this is petitio principii: Start from a fallacious
statement and then formulate a question assuming the statement is valid.

  The people who made the video are trying to be clever, and to many people
(especially fellow atheists) they do it rather convincingly, but they are
still basing their arguments on fallacies and straw men.

> Then follow a few things about selective usage of verses. Again if you 
> don't claim that everything in the bible is the Truth that won't make 
> any sense.

  I wouldn't use the words "some christians don't claim that everything in
the bible is the Truth" because that sounds like they believed that some
parts of it are false. (Ok, there certainly *are* some people who call
themselves christians *and* believe there are outright falsities in the
bible, but I'm not referring to those.)

  Some christians understand that the bible uses a lot of metaphors and
similes, but they believe that the *message* these metaphors and similes
are expressing is true. Of course you have to understand that it *is* a
metaphor, and what it is trying to say. (Naturally different people may
have different interpretations, which is why we have a myriad of different
churches, branches, sects and whatnot.)

  Some christians take some metaphors too literally and they are way too
dogmatic about them. Some of them are so fanatic that it seems like they
thought that anyone who didn't interpret these parts literally is claiming
the bible contains lies. Ironically, they are themselves most probably
misinterpreting and distorting the bible by obscuring the true message
these metaphors are trying to convey and replacing it with their own
interpretations.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 5-7-2009 12:24, Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>> It's completely full of fallacious argumentation,
> 
>> Why don't you point them out?
> 
>   Done that a long time ago:
> 
> http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseTo10Questions.html

How was I supposed to know that?

>> I think it is horrible, very American, and 
>> assuming a type of religion that is not very common among European 
>> intellectuals, but that does not make the arguments false.
> 
>   My point is not really whether what they are *trying* to say is, in the
> end, true or false (because that's the whole question in atheism and
> religion). My point is that the *way* they are saying it is wrong because
> they present a bunch of fallacious distorted arguments and outright straw
> men, and then present questions and conclusions based directly on them.
> I think the term for this is petitio principii: Start from a fallacious
> statement and then formulate a question assuming the statement is valid.
> 
>   The people who made the video are trying to be clever, and to many people
> (especially fellow atheists) they do it rather convincingly, but they are
> still basing their arguments on fallacies and straw men.
> 
>> Then follow a few things about selective usage of verses. Again if you 
>> don't claim that everything in the bible is the Truth that won't make 
>> any sense.
> 
>   I wouldn't use the words "some christians don't claim that everything in
> the bible is the Truth" because that sounds like they believed that some
> parts of it are false. (Ok, there certainly *are* some people who call
> themselves christians *and* believe there are outright falsities in the
> bible, but I'm not referring to those.)
> 
>   Some christians understand that the bible uses a lot of metaphors and
> similes, but they believe that the *message* these metaphors and similes
> are expressing is true. Of course you have to understand that it *is* a
> metaphor, and what it is trying to say. (Naturally different people may
> have different interpretations, which is why we have a myriad of different
> churches, branches, sects and whatnot.)
> 
>   Some christians take some metaphors too literally and they are way too
> dogmatic about them. Some of them are so fanatic that it seems like they
> thought that anyone who didn't interpret these parts literally is claiming
> the bible contains lies. Ironically, they are themselves most probably
> misinterpreting and distorting the bible by obscuring the true message
> these metaphors are trying to convey and replacing it with their own
> interpretations.

Ok, so you are from the metaphor interpretation side of the church. That 
is good to know. ;)
I agree with you on that point, but I disagree that that is the common, 
the best, or the only sensible interpretation and I think the above and 
your ResponseTo10Questions at least suggest that.

I am afraid that there is a large group of Christians that claim the 
bible is the Truth and that e.g. the earth was indeed created in 6 days. 
Where 'day' has the conventional meaning of 24 hours. Many also claim 
that woman is inferior to man because of Genesis 2:21-22 (and won't 
answer to questions about Genesis 1:27-29). The literal truth of the 
bible also plays a vital role in the evolution debate.

Under your interpretation (that the bible contains metaphors and that it 
is the underlying message that is important) the assumptions made in the 
video are wrong. But does that mean that the arguments are absolutely 
wrong or that the maker used 'Christians' where he should have used a 
much more elaborate definition to make sure you were not included but 
the ones he meets everyday were? How fruitful is it to argue that any 
general statement about Christians, Buddhists, atheists, men, women, 
etc. is wrong because there are always exceptions? That would imply that 
you can not even say that Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe in one 
God because I know a few that don't. Ok, we could argue that this is so 
fundamental to e.g. Christianity that they can not be called Christians 
anymore, but that's a slippery slope. Who is going to decide what is 
fundamental?

Or perhaps your point is simply that we shouldn't make any general 
statement about groups at all because everybody is unique. I can agree 
with that, although I fear that there are even exceptions to that.

Post a reply to this message

andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Ok, so you are from the metaphor interpretation side of the church. That 
> is good to know. ;)

  I don't really like being categorized based on belief systems.

> Under your interpretation (that the bible contains metaphors and that it 
> is the underlying message that is important) the assumptions made in the 
> video are wrong. But does that mean that the arguments are absolutely 
> wrong or that the maker used 'Christians' where he should have used a 
> much more elaborate definition to make sure you were not included but 
> the ones he meets everyday were?

  There were clearly wrong assumptions being made in the video. For example,
there's no claim in the bible, literal or metaphorical, that people who
believe in God and are saved never divorce. I don't even remember hearing
any christian making such claim. (Well, I'm sure that there exist people
who make all kinds of claims, eg. that if two people divorce they are not
"true" christians, or whatever. But that's not what any mainstream christian
church teaches.)

  I really can't understand why they included that one. Even I can think of
plenty of tougher questions.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 5-7-2009 15:08, Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Ok, so you are from the metaphor interpretation side of the church. That 
>> is good to know. ;)
> 
>   I don't really like being categorized based on belief systems.

That would have been a valid remark if that was a full category. Here it 
is only a detail based on what you wrote yourself. If you don't like it, 
consider it a 'note to self' that you accidentally read. BTW you forgot 
to shed doubt on the church part. Now we could read it as a confession 
that you are member of a church. ;)

>> Under your interpretation (that the bible contains metaphors and that it 
>> is the underlying message that is important) the assumptions made in the 
>> video are wrong. But does that mean that the arguments are absolutely 
>> wrong or that the maker used 'Christians' where he should have used a 
>> much more elaborate definition to make sure you were not included but 
>> the ones he meets everyday were?
> 
>   There were clearly wrong assumptions being made in the video. For example,
> there's no claim in the bible, literal or metaphorical, that people who
> believe in God and are saved never divorce. I don't even remember hearing
> any christian making such claim. (Well, I'm sure that there exist people
> who make all kinds of claims, eg. that if two people divorce they are not
> "true" christians, or whatever. But that's not what any mainstream christian
> church teaches.)

Matthew 19:1-12 especially 19:6

>   I really can't understand why they included that one. Even I can think of
> plenty of tougher questions.

The assumption is that people who believe that God united them in 
marriage will be more hesitant to divorce, more so because God 
explicitly forbids it. Divorce rates were indeed much lower in the first 
half of the 20th century because of this here. Apparently the words of 
Matthew became less important during the last century.

The only accepted reason for divorce was adultery (following Matthew 
19:8). My mother even mentioned the existence of the concept of the 'big 
lie' (or a name something like that). If two people decided that they 
had to divorce but this condition did not apply, one or both would admit 
adultery that had never taken place.

Post a reply to this message