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clipka wrote:
> "David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetel net> 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).
"Radical" is another media buzz-word that has come to have little
descriptive
meaning.
>
>> 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).
I think you are right, but they could accept him as a prophet
misunderstood or misrepresented
by the christians with little or no change in their beliefs.
> 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).
I think this is all true.
>
>> 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.
Also true.
David :)
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> How would you decide what's good and bad if it's fictional spirits teaching
> you that? How do you know euthanasia is good or bad, birth control is good
> or bad, without actually basing it in the facts of the results?
Nice ones you picked: Science tells us *zero* about these either.
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Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> while the key feature of religion is, "There is one right and true
>> way, so failing to follow it is automatically wrong."
>
> Nope. That's the key feature of monotheism.
>
And that is an vast oversimplification. :)
David
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > And if you look closely enough, science has actually led to what is commonly
> > considered one of the greatest cruelties in history: The Nazi-German Holocaust
> > - driven by belief in the concept of a "Herrenrasse", which was nothing than
> > Darwinism gone radical-fundamentalist.
>
> That wasn't science.
Yeah, that hurts scientific people to hear.
It was founded on *pure* science (sharing the same rationale as euthanasia at
that time) - Darwin's theories. The world at that time still had to learn that
science without morals is barbaric and cold right to the core.
The whole world, by the way. "Survival of the fittest"-type of thinking was very
popular back then all across the globe. Nazi-German excelled in it though.
> > Science led utterly astray, for sure.
>
> While they did do some awful experiments on humans, it wasn't science that
> gassed tens of millions of people.
>
> While they did do some awful experiments on humans, at least they didn't
> torture any animals!
Leaving aside that science did develop the means for gassing an incredible lot
of people, the *motivation* for these acts were firmly based on darwinism,
whether you like to hear that or not.
> Straw man.
> ...
> No, really, it doesn't. You just don't know what science actually is.
Very simple to type that as a response instead of really trying to grasp a
point.
I rather think you are refusing to accept the term "science" in the sense I'm
using it, because you don't like it being called a religion, and thrown from
its steeple.
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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> I have accepted the media usage too, although I believe the fundamentals
> of Christianity, I
> would now hesitate to call myself a fundamentalist. "Fundamentalist"
> and "fundamentalist" have been
> destroyed as useful descriptive terms and become largely pejorative. :)
.... also, some christian fundamentalists might consider "the fundamental of
christianity" to be a different set of things than you do ;)
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David H. Burns wrote:
> no real connection
> between believing in the fundamentals of something and being violent
> about it.
Except perhaps in religions that tell you everyone who doesn't believe as
you do are subhuman, which is my point.
> "Fundamentalist"
> and "fundamentalist" have been
> destroyed as useful descriptive terms and become largely pejorative. :)
Gee, I wonder who might have caused that?
--
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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David H. Burns wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> while the key feature of religion is, "There is one right and true
>>> way, so failing to follow it is automatically wrong."
>>
>> Nope. That's the key feature of monotheism.
>>
> And that is an vast oversimplification. :)
Why? If you have only one God and he created the universe and you're
supposed to worship him, it pretty shuts down the "there are lots of ways to
go about it" theory.
--
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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clipka wrote:
> .... and, in absolute numbers, there were less people suffering.
Yes, because without science, they died faster. :-)
> Which one does count - the number of people living a happy life? the number of
> people leading a miserable one? or maybe it's irrelevant?
And religion can?
> Science cannot tell us that.
It can help you achieve your ends, unlike religion, which can neither answer
those questions nor help you achieve your ends.
--
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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clipka wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> How would you decide what's good and bad if it's fictional spirits teaching
>> you that? How do you know euthanasia is good or bad, birth control is good
>> or bad, without actually basing it in the facts of the results?
>
> Nice ones you picked: Science tells us *zero* about these either.
And neither does religion. That's my point. Science gives you the
information to decide whether those things are good or bad, depending on
your goals.
--
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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clipka wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> And if you look closely enough, science has actually led to what is commonly
>>> considered one of the greatest cruelties in history: The Nazi-German Holocaust
>>> - driven by belief in the concept of a "Herrenrasse", which was nothing than
>>> Darwinism gone radical-fundamentalist.
>> That wasn't science.
>
> Yeah, that hurts scientific people to hear.
>
> It was founded on *pure* science (sharing the same rationale as euthanasia at
> that time) - Darwin's theories. The world at that time still had to learn that
> science without morals is barbaric and cold right to the core.
No. It was clothed in pseudo-science. You don't start with "the Aryan race
is best" and then try to prove it, if you're doing science. You certainly
don't kill millions of people in order to prove it.
> The whole world, by the way. "Survival of the fittest"-type of thinking was very
> popular back then all across the globe. Nazi-German excelled in it though.
Yep. It wasn't science, tho. "Survival of the fittest" isn't darwinism any
more than breeding show dogs is darwinism. People were breeding plants and
animals for specific traits thousands of years before Darwin was born.
> Leaving aside that science did develop the means for gassing an incredible lot
> of people, the *motivation* for these acts were firmly based on darwinism,
Uh, no? There was neither natural selection involved, nor change over
several generations. Why was it based more on darwinism than invading Russia
was? Darwin talked about natural selection and changes between generations.
How does that equate to killing millions of people based on their religion?
> whether you like to hear that or not.
OK, here's the question:
1) What hypothesis was the nazis trying to disprove by gassing millions of
people?
2) What would have they accepted as evidence that their hypothesis was wrong?
3) What events were they trying to observe by gassing millions of people in
support or refutation of their hypothesis?
Again, just because the nazis claimed it was science doesn't mean it was any
more science than throwing witches in the lake to see if they sink was
scientific.
If you don't say "We do this experiment, and if X is the result, then our
hypothesis is wrong", then you're not doing science. It's really pretty
simple - falsifiability is the hallmark of scientific theories.
>> Straw man.
>> ...
>> No, really, it doesn't. You just don't know what science actually is.
>
> Very simple to type that as a response instead of really trying to grasp a
> point.
I understand your point. Science doesn't provide moral guidance except in
some really obvious ways (like "a murder rate greater than the birth rate
tends to be bad for society, hence murder is bad"). The results of science
can be used for good or bad. Yep. Science isn't inherently good in a moral
sense, yep. (It's inherently good in the sense that it works and therefore
helps you achieve whatever goals you're trying to achieve, including
religious or moral goals.)
But religion (in general) doesn't provide moral guidance either. It just
states "this is good, that is bad" without saying how to achieve that
goodness, how to avoid the badness, or why anything would be good or bad. It
gives a fiat as to how you should behave without explanation or evidence.
Science isn't good or bad. It's a way of figuring out how the world works.
You have to decide whether it's good or bad. Unfortunately, religion isn't
the way to do this, since it's irrational and therefore ungrounded in
reality. Once you ground it in reality, it is *ta daaah* science.
> I rather think you are refusing to accept the term "science" in the sense I'm
> using it,
You're using it wrong. Science isn't technology. Science isn't terminology.
Science isn't "what the nazis said it was."
I'm refusing to accept the term as you're using it for the simple reason
that what you're talking about isn't science any more than faith healing is
moral guidance, nor any more than laws are religion.
> because you don't like it being called a religion, and thrown from
> its steeple.
You're so cute when you're trying to justify yourself.
--
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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