Darren New wrote:
> I thought that was the point of religion, yes? If you actually start 
> talking about *why* one set of morals is better than another, then 
> you're not longer talking about religion, but science. I have no bones 
> to pick with that approach.

Ethics is not science.  Science starts with a hypothesis and uses 
evidence to disprove or fail to disprove it.  Ethics is almost entirely 
arbitrary, aside some fundamental survival derivatives.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-empyrean

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Warp wrote:
>   1) Studying the ten commandments with everything the Bible has to offer
> would require an entire book.

So, part of the context of the ten commandments is the stuff that came a 
couple thousand years after they were written?  I guess God can get away 
with that.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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Tim Cook wrote:
> Ethics is almost entirely 
> arbitrary, aside some fundamental survival derivatives.

I would disagree, but that's OK.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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Darren New wrote:
> I've read the entire old and new testaments. What more is there about 
> the subject that I'm missing for context? Given that the bible is the 
> only place Moses or Jesus is mentioned in contemporary (to the Bible 
> that is) times, what context don't I have?

The Bible isn't the only place Moses or Jesus are mentioned in 
contemporary; there are all kinds of bits of Judaic lore and secular 
records that never made it into canon.  Lilith, among others.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-empyrean

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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
<snip>
> (Again, if one admits the Bible is simply allegorical fiction, on par
> with Zeus, Muhammed, and Qutezycoatl, then I'm cool with that. I only
> argue against people who somehow think their religion is more real than
> someone else's, or more real than actual experience as actual science,
> for example.)


I'll admit my religion is less real then someone elses, does that win me
an internet cookie?

>>   How could it not be context-dependent?
> 
> I dunno. Maybe because HE'S GOD!?  ;-)
> 
> I mean, if the message is so important you're going to condemn every
> single animal, plant, and human to eternal torture, you could manage to
> be clear about what you want.

And that's the problem with arguing about religion. There are always
people willing to take the same book and make opposing claims about it.
A sect of the Southern Baptist that I'm familiar with claim that every
word in the Bible is divine and was meant to be read in English, so
every phrase can be taken completely out of context. Arguing about
contradictory phrases resulted in the fall-back argument that one should
"just do what the church says is right." A person was expected to read
the Bible and ask God for the answer, and in the supposed rare case
where that didn't work should slowly escalate their question through the
church ranks, like a tech support request. "Besides, if God won't answer
you with what is the right belief, are you sure you aren't doing
something else wrong?"

The opposite results in the same problem. If the Bible requires intense
readings and thought, then anyone who comes to an answer different from
the correct one is just wrong. And probably either a sinner who wants to
read the wrong answer or just stupid. The end result, from both cases,
is that anyone who thinks differently about someone's choice religion is
 at best a sinner to be converted.

Atheists can fall into the same trap, the difference being that the
perceived sin is a lack of scientific reasoning. I forget if it was
Dawkins or someone else who made a statement that amounted to religion
being a genetic hold over or even a mental illness.

>>   Or maybe if you try to understand the message instead of trying
>> deliberately to misunderstand it to attack people.
> 
> I'm not attacking any person or people. And I *do* understand the
> message. I just don't understand it the same way you do.

Is there such a thing as a deliberate misunderstanding?

> I, however, have no personal interaction with any dieties, so when I
> talk about them, I tend to treat them as fictional. This isn't intended
> to be any more insulting than if I tell you I don't like the same kind
> of music you do or enjoy the same style of novels that you do. If I said
> "Band X sucks" and they're your favorite band, would you feel insulted?
> Nor should you when I point out flaws in the literal interpretation of
> religious texts that you believe or don't.

That might be a bad example. If I were to recommend a book to a friend,
I could explain to them the reasons that I liked the book. The reason is
personal, but based on things that can be shared. A book that tells a
story I can relate to might not touch someone else the same way, but
when explained I suspect that other people would at least be able to
understand why I liked that book. At least, you could suggest they just
read it. "Just be Christian for a week," doesn't have the same effect.

I've rarely heard religion discussed the same way. Most people that I've
discussed religion with can not express why they chose the religion that
they practice, in any definable way. They start with the same phrases
used to describe a book they like, "It touched me." or "It was what I
needed to hear." Or they describe it like friends, "They were there for
me." However, when trying to connect those reasons to something tangible
they can share, they eventually go with "Well, it just seems right to me."

Those still following the religion they were raised with don't even
offer those reasons.

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I'm not saying religion can only have absolutes. I'm saying that as it's 
>> written in the Bible, it's pretty absolute.
> 
>   Yes. Take one single verse, remove it from the rest of the book, and
> state that single verse, all by itself, is absolute, without even
> understanding the context in which it has been written.
> 
>   Why is the concept of a principle being written over a larger span of
> literature so difficult to understand or accept?
>   You have to take *everything* that is written about the subject. You can't
> take one single verse, rip it off, and take that as the absolute truth.
> It's no different from taking individual words from the Bible and creating
> sentences with them.
[snipped more of the same]

Thanks Warp, finally something we can all agree on. Of course you can 
not take a verse from a holy book out of context and interpret it in any 
way you like. Problem is that too many people do that. There is a big 
group of fundamentalist Christians that take the bible for an absolute 
truth. What they mean is that their particular selection of texts fits 
their current set of values. If their favorite selection happens to 
include e.g. some anti-homosexual texts and not the more liberal ones, 
then they feel fully justified to attack any gay people they meet, 
because of their 'religion'. Same mechanism with that group that had a 
vision of a better world, found their verses in the holy book and flew a 
couple of planes into buildings. OTOH there are also fundamentalist 
Christians, Muslims and Jews (etc) that have a more pacifistic set of 
morals, they choose other texts. Which brings me back to the point I 
tried to make in the post you highjacked to start a discussion on the 
death penalty: In practice it starts with people thinking about ethics 
and only after they decided what is good and bad they find their 
selection of holy texts to base that ethics on. If you agree with their 
opinion you generally won't notice, if you disagree it leaves you 
flabbergasted.

So, given that we agree you can not take just a couple of verses, we 
might agree also that you can not take a couple of verses from genesis 
and claim that the earth was created in six days and that women are 
inferior to men. Though somehow I think you won't go as far as that.

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On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:23:54 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> "God can make exceptions - for example, if God commands you to kill,
>> then you aren't in violation of the 5th commandment, because God said
>> to do it."
> 
> Well, sure. Obviously if it comes from *God* it makes sense that it's an
> exception. Where JHVH commanded his followers to commit genocide,
> obviously they were justified in doing so. Or if someone says "thou
> shalt not suffer a witch to live," I guess that would override the "thou
> shalt not kill" bit.

The difficult thing for me (and I suspect for you as well) is the whole 
"God commanded me to do it" piece.  It's not provable (scientifically) 
that God has spoken to anyone, ever, so in order to not receive 
punishment those implementing the laws of man would have to have faith 
that what the "implementer" of God's will did in fact receive 
instructions from God.

I would think, as an "implementer" of God's will that one would have to 
assume that God would know there would be punishment in the laws of man 
and that there would be a price to pay in that regard.  So, either God 
intended the implementer to be punished or God would intervene and 
prevent the punishment from happening.

> But then, that would seem pretty absolute too. I guess some would argue
> you *should* kill the witch, some would argue you *shouldn't* kill the
> witch, so yah, OK, I guess there's some other context there. :-)

Quite possibly.

Jim

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In article <475### [at] hotmailcom>, a_l### [at] hotmailcom 
says...
> nemesis wrote:
> > Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> >> That is why, in public, I let the
> >> people that are good at this stuff make the statements. They are *far*
> >> better at it. And some, like Greta Christina:
> >>
> >> http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/
> >>
> >> do so with a profound grace and choice of words that often leaves me
> >> absolutely astounded.
> > 
> > looks like a slut and sounds like a slut.  oh wait, she's actually a pr
o... :P
> > 
> > That was a loong rant, sir. 
> Indeed it was. I don't think that helps to get the message across. 
> Perhaps Patrick would also benefit from watching some Marx Brothers 
> movies ;)
> > The thing atheists don't seem to grasp is that they
> > sound just about as annoying and boring in their anti-religion rants as
> > religious fanatics in their convert stories...
> > 
> As just another atheist I'd like to point out that atheism is a religion
 
> too. Many deists think that an atheist is someone who is not convinced 
> that God does exist (or worse: not yet). They are wrong. I *believe* 
> that God does not exist and I mean that in the same way as a Christian 
> or Muslim or whatever believes the opposite. I.e. I *know* that God does
 
> not exit moreover my ethical values are fundamentally based on the non 
> existence of God. If it turned out she did exist after all, I would need
 
> a couple of weeks to rethink my ethics.
> We atheist have no reason to form churches and that means that we have 
> no religious leaders. Sadly that means that our believe is less 
> protected than the church forming religions. That is already subtly 
> noticeable even in the Netherlands. In the US it seems to be much worse,
 
> and under the inspired leadership of the current president it has 
> apparently even reached the level of discrimination. I think that was 
> one of the more important points of Patrick.
> 
Speak for yourself. You are what some of us call "hard atheists", and we 
do consider you as much a believer in unfounded woo as the other side, 
even while you are on ours. In fact, atheists run the gambit from those 
that just provisionally reject **churches**, but sort of kind of believe 
in some stuff that might lead to god, if anyone could ever prove that 
one was believable, to those like myself, who provisionally reject 
**any** gods, both because none of the definitions make any sense, and 
because there doesn't seem to be any valid reason why there needs to be 
one, to those that, like you, insist that there absolutely can't be one, 
which is *not* a rational conclusion. So, you want to claim you are 
religious, on the grounds that your own view is purely emotional, not 
rational, then go ahead, but please, call yourself something else, 
because we have enough problems with the idiots that **want** to insist 
atheism is a religion (never mind that the very definition of religion 
means, "belief in the stuff atheists pretty much all reject as 
unbelievable".), without you giving the wackos something to quote mine 
as some sort of ammunition for why secular views should be rejected 
**instead** of theirs.

But otherwise, you are correct. In the US atheism is literally the 
**last** bastion of bigotry and irrational paranoia for the religious 
lunatics. You are *expected* to be embarrassed about being a racist, or 
any number of other things, and even trying to claim that being black 
makes you lazy, American Indian a con artist, jewish a part of a 
conspiracy to rule the world, or any number of other stereo types, 
**will** get you fired, ostracized and possibly jailed (depending on how 
far you take it), sometimes by people that secretly believe the same BS 
idiocies, since they don't want people to find out they hold those 
views. But, you want to hate an atheist? No problem. You can sue them 
for things that are made up, beat them up, fire them, shun them, lie 
about them, claim they have no morals, claim they are satanists, claim 
they are the single sole cause of everything wrong with the world, etc., 
and no one in a position of authority to stop it will lift one finger to 
do so.

The most recent case was someone sending an email that *mentioned* that 
an author was going to be in town, to talk about their book, which was 
about the invalid science and problems with intelligent design. There 
was no mention in the letter that she supported the views, no mention 
that they *had* to see the author, nothing. Just a statement of FYI, so 
and so will be in town. The problem? Texas, where this happened, is 
currently in the middle of determining if changes need to be made to 
their science curriculum *and* she was one of only about 10% of those on 
the panel that didn't like the idea of including intelligent design in 
the standard, and the **head** of the group is a fundie who believes it 
*should be*. In other words, she was fired because she thought 
discussing the **scientific** merits of the subject was a valid thing to 
do, given that it was science they where discussing, rather than using 
what the majority of the "group" **felt** should be in it as the 
criteria.

Mind you, this is Texas, and it should have been renamed something like, 
"The Holy See of American Fundamentalism", years ago, just to avoid 
confusing it with a state, but... This crap is becoming increasingly 
common over here, and its all driven by a small number of like 1% of the 
population, who are desperate to gain power, so they can prove to God 
that they where true followers, before the "End of Times" gets here. 
They are paranoid, desperate, unethical, immoral, and willing to do damn 
near anything to convert the country (or at least make it more pleasing 
to what they imagine their God wants). As far as they are concerned, 
they *finally* got Gods will right, everyone else is wrong, and anything 
they can get by with is legitimate to making everyone else see the 
light, and I can't help wonder, given their praise of the 911 bombers, 
and claims that America deserved it, what their real long term goal 
might be in trying to add right wing fundamentalism to our standing 
military's *training* to make them soldiers... Given they have already 
tried and failed to convince people to circumvent and/or rewrite the 
constitution to give *them* more power to enforce their world view on 
the country, I can't imagine its to teach them to stand in airports and 
hand out flowers.

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In article <4751e72a$1@news.povray.org>, 
nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom says...

> >> I think "tl;dr" about most of Patrick's posts; no offense intended...
> > none taken
> 
> I meant no offense to Patrick...
> 
No offense taken. I get a bit carried away some times when trying to be 
complete in what I am saying.

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In article <4752219e$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Warp wrote:
> >   Let's approach it from yet another angle: Another commandment says
> > that you must respect your parents. Yet if your father commits a horrib
le
> > crime should you respect him or should you report it to the authorities
?
> > Even though the answer is the latter, that doesn't make the commandment
> > any less relevant.
> 
> You're presuming that the answer is the latter, tho. How does one know?
 
> Is it because one's religion told you so? Or is it because one has been
 
> taught it's really the right thing, and then one adds non-existent 
> exceptions to the rule to adjust the religion to match the existent 
> morality?
> 
> If the latter, it's nonsensical to say that religious people are more 
> moral or kinder or whatever than areligious people.
> 
And of course, the single biggest problem is its them saying that, and 
then insisting that because its true, everyone else's morality is either 
a) inferior, even if it appears superior, or b) non-existent, since any 
act that appears to be equal or superior to their is either mimicry, or 
derived from God anyway, in which case the person in question just isn't 
being honest about *where* its coming from.

If an absurd rationalization exists for why their tendency to seem 
immoral, unethical, actively evil, or just blind to the harm they cause 
exists, someone, some place, and used it to try to explain why the 
observer has it all wrong and it *was* moral, ethical, good and or 
harmless. But trying to point out why none of the rationalizations make 
sense will cause you to spend time in a rubber room from trying "long" 
before they will ever see the inside of one.

I like this, which shows just how far back "some" people where looking 
at the whole mess and going, "Does this really make any bloody sense?":

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/12/02/winning_athiests.jpg

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