David H. Burns wrote:
> clipka wrote:
> 
>> In christianity for instance, everything bad is a conspiracy by Satan 
>> and his
>> demons.
> While far to many christians do hold this view, it is not fundamental to 
> christianity as
> I see it; and is dead wrong). It's always comforting to have someone, 
> other than ourselves,
> to blame for our own follies and mistakes. But you might wish to argue 
> that the belief and
> behavior of christians is what christianity is.
> 
Problem I have with this argument is always, "Have you read the damn 
book?" lol Seriously, the *point* of any religion, including 
Christianity, is that there is some thing, or things, able to fiddle 
around with the world and do things with/too it and us, which we can't 
ourselves, and its our job to avoid the nasty ones, while praising, 
worshiping, and hoping for a grand and happy after life for getting it 
right, from the "good" one(s).

The Fundigelics are ***dead right***. Those who practice Christianity 
are not Christians, by the definition of actually absolutely believing 
in the fundamental principles that define the Bible. They may believe in 
a god, but its not the OT god, and it, in some ways, doesn't even 
resemble the NT god, which was unhinged, a bit racists (those damn dirty 
unclean Sumeritans, who might as well have been atheists, but.. well, I 
found **one good one**, isn't that just amazing?!) and seriously 
clueless about some things, just like the old one was.

Lets put it this way. More liberal Christians define what "Christian" is 
by their own behaviors, then attempt, and generally fail, at projecting 
that back on the Bible, in a sort of revisionist, "Well, this is what 
Jesus would do if here now, even if he didn't, or even contradicted it, 
but since its what nice 'modern' Christians would do it, so would 
Jesus." One might as well make up a new term, or take the old "diest" 
one, and stop pretending to follow the NT/OT god, because its no more an 
accurate version of what people that believed would have done 2,000 
years ago, or 4,000 even, than China is the same now as it was under its 
first Emperor. All anyone is keeping is the name.

And the insane lunatics, who all claim to follow the "true" version of 
what was intended, (never mind their own glossing over of parts they 
find terribly inconvenient), are a) right, in that liberal Christians 
are less like the old world ones than themselves, they are also **so** 
old world, that, most of the time, they care more about if you or me are 
breaking rules than if "they" do so. After all, they know the rules, and 
are asking forgiveness for them, while the rest of you deny that the 
rules apply at all, or make sense.

Strictly speaking, there is very little, beyond a few bits that are 
nearly universal ideas anyway in many societies, and most hard fought 
and won "from" religious people that didn't care at all for them, which 
can be attributed to Christianity, by itself, in the modern form. Its 
like reading some blurb about a movie being "Based on a true story.", 
only you look into it and a) the original story has nothing to do with 
the movie at all (except superficially), and b) its seems rather likely 
that the original version was made up, then embellished, and finally 
exaggerated to the point of stupidity, before being published by some 
guy whose life work seems to be collecting crazy stories, from people in 
financial distress, who the locals all say, "Never heard of those 
ghosts, demons, or other strange goings on, until the bank foreclosed on 
the house, and so and so Ghost Hunter, showed up to talk to them about 
the non-existent Indian burial site under their house."

Fundies and the like are ***heavily*** investing in them being right, 
them being the ones "saved", and everyone else being, literally, damned 
wrong. Most Christians in the modern era have a sort of, "Well, everyone 
is probably going to be OK, except maybe vague groups A and B, who 
'might' be sinning a bit more than Jesus would forgive, but who am I to 
say so." Thus, they have no reason to want all, most, more than half of, 
or even *much of anything* in the Bible to be absolute, undeniable, true 
events. The only one they hold onto is Jesus, and then only because they 
can't quite give up the idea of living forever, and reincarnation is 
just "too weird" for most of them. Though, you will find some that even 
subscribe to that.

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void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
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   else
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clipka wrote:

> Of course the picture I painted is somewhat exaggerated to the respective
> fundamentalists' perspective.

Unfortunately, "fundamentalist" is one of those terms much abused by the 
media.
It ought to mean something like "believing or adhering to the 
fundamentals of",
whereas, it has come to mean something like "one ready to exercise violence
against those who disagree with his beliefs"
> 
> Further, I'd question the definition of a christian by his behavior, as behavior
> may be founded on a much different basis than christian belief.

You are right. It is much clearer to define a christian as one who 
accepts some form
of christian belief than simply one who exhibits what is generally 
accepted as good
behavior. There is, for example, no specifically christian morality or 
ethic. The behavior
enjoined by Jesus in those regards don't belong solely to christianity 
(as you say below).

> It's also a question what actually constitutes "christian" belief; if you're
> trying to separate it from concepts such as God, Satan, heaven, angels, saints,
> the Bible, or any some such, then you don't leave much that christians can
> exclusively claim their own, and "ethical person" may turn out a more fitting
> term.
> 
I wouldn't try to separate it from those concepts. The concept of God is 
fundamental to
  but not exclusive to, christian belief (and so is the Bible in a 
somewhat different way).
For instance, the essential difference between Christianity and Judaism 
is the acceptance
of Jesus as divine. A lot that many christians believe about Satan, 
heaven, angels, etc. is,
I think, accumulated tradition. Of course some no doubt regard the who 
of christian belief as
accumulated tradition.

>>> In science, everything inexplicable is just a flaw in the accepted theories.
>>> People refusing to accept those theories are obviously blinded by superstition.
>>> If some experiment confirms their predictions, it's proof that the theories are
>>> correct; if some experiment contradicts them, the system of theories just needs
>>> some more refinement and consolidation.
>>>
>>> Duh...
>>   Duh? This seems to be a pretty good description of the "scientific
>> method", which
>> I guess we could say is bothe the power and the weakness of science. :)
> 
> "Duh" because seen this way, I don't think there's much of a difference between
> religion and "fundamentalist" science either.
> 
> If a scientist claims that *everything* is (or will eventually become)
> explicable by science and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by
> superstition, then he's just as fundamentalist as a christian claiming that
> *everything* is explained in the Bible and anyone not acknowledging this is
> mislead by Satan, or a conspirationist claiming that *everything* is the work
> of The Powers That Be and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by the very
> same.
> 
> So the only point of view that seems somewhat different in this respect is that
> of the agnostic who claims he simply doesn't know - but even those may come in
> a fundamentalist flavor, claiming that we *cannot* know and anyone not
> acknowledging this is mislead by pride.

I agree. We should always beware of assigning motives to others, though 
few of us
observe that caution. Perhaps we might say that differences in beliefs, 
however important
and however strongly held, should never result in discourtesy (in a 
broad sense). :)

David

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clipka wrote:
> If a scientist claims that *everything* is (or will eventually become)
> explicable by science and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by
> superstition, then he's just as fundamentalist as a christian claiming that
> *everything* is explained in the Bible and anyone not acknowledging this is
> mislead by Satan, or a conspirationist claiming that *everything* is the work
> of The Powers That Be and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by the very
> same.
> 

Hmm. How about... Nothing so far has **ever** been, **actually** 
explained by the supernatural, which is to say, asserting, "Well, 
something had to be, so why not Pixies?", is not an "explanation", its a 
refusal to either look for an answer, or admit you don't know one. By 
the same token, **everything** we do have an answer for **has been** 
explained by science, just not always in the way, or to the 
satisfaction, of those that hate the resulting answer. i.e, things like 
mind/consciousness, etc., where "emergent property" isn't good enough 
for them, since denying "special cause", also denies, "special 
existence". But, when someone in science says, "science can answer 
that", then mean, "because none of the other BS things people have come 
up with provide anything that does, or which does so in a way that 
proves useful at making anything from the result, or making 'correct' 
predictions." This doesn't mean that, asked a direct question of, "Well, 
what is the answer then.", its not going to be, "I don't know."

This differs from religions. It differs in a very specific way. To 
religion, "I don't know.", is ***always*** an invalid answer, and the 
*correct* one is always some variation of, "That is just how it is.", 
"Because god wants it that way.", or, "Its too mysterious to bother 
figuring out." No scientist will ever say, "We can't know.", or, when 
given something that isn't explained yet, will resort to, "Just because, 
or because of some BS I just made up."

If you have a conflict with this, then all you have to manage is to 
explain anything that provides knowledge about the world, which isn't 
testable via *some* sort of scientific examination (even if its, does it 
look like X number of people show what we describe as love), or which, 
when attempting to provide an explanation, goes farther than claiming 
that the things "exists", waffling about what it "is", and can't predict 
*jack* about the thing in question, without using purely circular 
associations, in which you predict A, because of B, which is happening 
because of A, which you **still** haven't correctly explained, or 
predicted in a way that can be said to "always" be a result of B.

Example, seem to remember a case a while back of reading someone who 
figured out that there was a specific "mathematical" scale that defined 
when we hear notes are a) part of the same sequence of music, and b) 
following logically, and where c) failing to follow that pattern made 
them dissonant. The pattern closely matched sounds like speech, animal 
calls, and other things that exist in nature, where each shift in 
frequency fell in that range, and thus provided us with "predictability" 
of how many things there where, what they where doing, and when those 
actions "changed". I.e., we like music because it conforms to patterns 
layed down in the brain to detect "sameness" of objects, distinguish 
between multiple objects, and tell us when something has **changed** 
significantly in our environment, thus disturbing us. Its probably 
**impossible** for any species that has adapted auditory reception and a 
means to react to changed in our environment, to "not" like music.

Is this satisfactory for telling why someone like Bach, and another 
Beethoven? Maybe not, but that is likely in their psychological make up, 
which is also testable, or in difference in their ability to perceive 
such shifts accurately, or even in memory recall, where a specific "set" 
of tonal events link up with a similar tonal pattern, which is 
"associated" in that memory with water falls, or sea shores, or wind, 
etc. Its all quantifiable, unsatisfactory, if all you want is to 
"poetic" and "philosophical" gibberish explanations, and simply **not** 
what people asking the question ***want*** to hear as an answer.

But, that is the point. Religions, in what ever form, are about what 
people *want* to be true. Science is supposed to be about what **is** 
true. (Well, at least as long as you don't hire some semi-fruitloop, 
like Francis Collins to run the NIH, but that is a side issue.)

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void main () {

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

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David H. Burns wrote:
> It ought to mean something like "believing or adhering to the 
> fundamentals of",
> whereas, it has come to mean something like "one ready to exercise violence
> against those who disagree with his beliefs"

And yet, those two things are the same for many fundamentalists.

-- 
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   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> Unfortunately, "fundamentalist" is one of those terms much abused by the
> media.
> It ought to mean something like "believing or adhering to the
> fundamentals of",
> whereas, it has come to mean something like "one ready to exercise violence
> against those who disagree with his beliefs"

That's what I'd call "radical" (though they're typically also fundamentalists).


> For instance, the essential difference between Christianity and Judaism
> is the acceptance of Jesus as divine.

A bit more than that, to all I know; Judaism does not even acknowledge Jesus as
a prophet (which, for instance, Islam does).

There's also strong dissent about the position whether the Mosaic rituals are
still binding; Jews are obviously convinced that this was the case, and even
many of the earliest Christians (who were Jews after all) seem to have
continued, and partially even insisted on, this tradition, while Paulus seems
to have taught otherwise among the Gentile christians (though he also seemed to
have strongly opposed the position that it was particularly *bad* to follow
those old rituals). And the thing is of course complicated further by various
christian sub-groups having introduced their own rituals instead (which
apparently were often adapted versions of older traditions).


> A lot that many christians believe about Satan,
> heaven, angels, etc. is,
> I think, accumulated tradition. Of course some no doubt regard the who
> of christian belief as
> accumulated tradition.

That's a very difficult topic, because a lot can be interpreted into the bible,
so it's hard to tell which is true christian, and which is heathen tradition
projected onto biblical terminology and the like.


> I agree. We should always beware of assigning motives to others, though
> few of us
> observe that caution. Perhaps we might say that differences in beliefs,
> however important
> and however strongly held, should never result in discourtesy (in a
> broad sense). :)

There's a point to that indeed.

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> clipka wrote:
> > If a scientist claims that *everything* is (or will eventually become)
> > explicable by science and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by
> > superstition, then he's just as fundamentalist as a christian claiming that
> > *everything* is explained in the Bible and anyone not acknowledging this is
> > mislead by Satan, or a conspirationist claiming that *everything* is the work
> > of The Powers That Be and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by the very
> > same.
>
> Hmm. How about... Nothing so far has **ever** been, **actually**
> explained by the supernatural, which is to say, asserting, "Well,
> something had to be, so why not Pixies?", is not an "explanation", its a
> refusal to either look for an answer, or admit you don't know one.

And that - I'm sorry to say - is *rubbish*.

"It was the Pixies" is, as such, just as good as an explanation as "it was the
electric discharge of blah whatever".

The *true* quality of the explanation is not in what faith it is based upon, but
in how useful it is to base decisions and actions thereupon. If the Pixies
explanation leads me to act the same as the Electric Discharge explanation,
then there's no difference in quality among those two whatsoever.

The fact that sciencentific explanations seem to be better suited in today's
times to guide to good decisions and actions should not lead us to frown upon
anyone who based - or even still base - their decisions and action on Pixie
explanations. There's even evidence that our faith in science has been leading
us into wrong directions, and that for instance we missed some points "natural
religions" seem to be more proficient at (and have been so for thousands of
years).

Actually, scientific explanaitions seem to be particularly *bad* at giving
guidance for action, because they're perfectly detached from any moral aspects.
At best it can lead me to try to achieve what *I* think is best, even if those
thoughts happen to be total rubbish.


> This doesn't mean that, asked a direct question of, "Well,
> what is the answer then.", its not going to be, "I don't know."
>
> This differs from religions.

No, this is not the difference between science and religion - it is instead the
difference between fundamentalism and... well, non-fundamentalism.

Ask any non-fundamentalist christian a tricky question about their faith, and
they'll possibly respond with "I don't know" as well.

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clipka wrote:
> "It was the Pixies" is, as such, just as good as an explanation as "it was the
> electric discharge of blah whatever".

Let me know when you get those pixies charging your car battery for you.

> The *true* quality of the explanation is not in what faith it is based upon, but
> in how useful it is to base decisions and actions thereupon. 

Study in contrast: Dark Ages vs Industrial Revolution.

> If the Pixies
> explanation leads me to act the same as the Electric Discharge explanation,
> then there's no difference in quality among those two whatsoever.

That is incorrect.

> Actually, scientific explanaitions seem to be particularly *bad* at giving
> guidance for action, because they're perfectly detached from any moral aspects.

This is incorrect.

In any case, religion isn't any better at providing moral guidance.

> At best it can lead me to try to achieve what *I* think is best, even if those
> thoughts happen to be total rubbish.

And this differs from religion how?  Can we say Salem Witch Trials?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> where there are time limits and the audience is already thinking they 
> should have gone down the street to watch the strippers, than sit and 
> listen to two people debate about the hollow earth theory of reptile 

Maybe scientists would have more success if they had strippers explain 
why the hollow earth theory is false? :)

-- 
Chambers

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Darren New wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> My favorite quote:
>> "Conspiracy theorists view logical argument as cheating."
> 
> I was hoping for 44 funny conspiracy theories. I liked the Rambo quote 
> better, myself.

I almost quoted that one, too.  But then, I would have quoted another 
part... and another... and pretty soon, I would have quoted the whole 
da** article :)

-- 
Chambers

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4a6f1f7e$1@news.povray.org...
> Chambers wrote:
> > My favorite quote:
> > "Conspiracy theorists view logical argument as cheating."
>
> I was hoping for 44 funny conspiracy theories. I liked the Rambo quote
> better, myself.
>
> Altho it's funny. I've started seeing religion in these types of articles.
> When people make fun of conspiracy theories, and then you read exactly the
> same thing and put the word "religion" in there, it sounds the same to me.
> Maybe that's just me, tho.

Ironically, religions provide the antithesis of some of the arguments of the
anti-conspiracy theorists, in that while it's near impossible to make
everyone believe the story, with a little bit of luck, it's relatively easy
to fool the majority for centuries at a time, and it needn't even take that
much logistics and effort. Of course failure rate of religions is high
enough and results are not fully predictable, so it's not the ideal model to
plant a conspiracy surely and speedily.

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