Re: a late afternoon rant concerning willful and deliberate ignorance

user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
John Galt wrote:
user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
John Galt wrote:
Doobie Keebler wrote:
On Jul 4, 1:33 pm, John Galt <kady...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The reason that it's not a fact to another person, or to the broad
society, and why the fact cannot be confirmed scientifically, is because
the evidenciary observation cannot be repeated and thus confirmed.

Perhaps I'm missing your point, John. All such 'facts' are doomed to
the journals pages of JIR:
http://oldwww.acm.org/perlman/armleg.html

(lol!)

Heh. (However, yes, we are talking past each other.)

It seems to me that line of thinking is the slippery slope to faith
healing, snake handling, and grape kool-aide.

Sure, but don't forget that -- the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy. It gets used because some believe that it's better to, if you will "stay at the top of the slope where it's completely safe" as opposed to sliding down where tough distinctions have to be made.

I say, slide down, don't be afraid of making tough distinctions. All the things you mention above exist at the bottom of the slope, sure. So, however, do people with the heart and faith of Mother Theresa.

(with potentially dire consequences, as documented all too often:)
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20090609/WDH0101/90609030/1981


All I ask is that we not blur the line between faith and reason.

Sure. But as a religious person, what I see time and time again is people telling me that what ***I*** have personally and objectively experienced is nothing more but faith, and thus is irreason.

However, if I have objectively experienced something, it's more than opinion and more than just faith. Discussions between nontheists and theists break down when the former insists that the experiences of the latter are nothing more than opinion or faith. The theist *knows* that not to be true, but since nobody can convey a nonsensory experience to another, the discussion breaks down.

I believe that this is a failing of linguistics, nothing more. English has about 20,000 word forms to describe things, Greek, Arabic, Latin, Syriac, Hindi, Chinese......all these languages have about 50,000. English is very generalized, and has difficulty translating nuance, which is very important to theological thought.

There are plenty of examples of this in the Bible -- for example, the last verse of Matthew 1 cannot be translated into English without giving the sense that Mary and Joseph had normal marital relations after the birth of Christ. The Traditional religions (Catholic, Orthodox) who base their theology on Greek and Latin sources, have never believed this to be true, while the New World Protestant religions, who base their who based their views on English translations of the Vulgate, believe otherwise.

Another one is in the Lord's Prayer itself. In the Greek, "give us this day our daily bread" is a reference to the Grace of God through Christ himself; yet, 95% of English speakers doubtless believe it's referring to breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner.

The greeks philosphers held that information could be gathered in three ways that work together. primary ways: sensory perception, intelligence, and the nous, which gathers information holistically and experientially.

In Western thought, we've dropped the "nous" idea as a factor in information gathering and focused on the sensory/intellect as the only way of gathering information (despite the fact it's the only way to explain concepts such as love). But, the nous is necessary to experience God.

http://orthodoxwiki.org/Nous

JG




Sorry to say, but religion gets hardwired in young brains, much like learning to speak, if you don't indoctrinate people before puberty with the concept of religious dogma you've pretty much lost them. If you've
been taught expect to see manifestations since you were a crawler, you probably will.

Nuture is important in the development of the child, sure. Teachers tend to have children that become teachers. Lawyers tend to have children that become lawyers. Bigots tend to have have children that become bigots. Mysogenists tend to have children who are mysogenists. People to who like to read tend to have children who like to read. No reason to be "sorry to say" about that. You're just voicing something that is very obvious.

So, theist parents pass their tendency to be theists to their kids, and nontheist parents tend to pass their nontheism to their children.


My parents were church going people, My father was a church warden for years. It didn't rub off on me, as even early on I could see too many
contradictions, even at ten. Seeing decent people from the church who never hurt a fly brutally murdered just didn't jibe with the whole "Loving God/It's God's Will" angle.

Happens all the time. Nurture matters, but so does nature.

None of that has anything to do with whether or not actually exists or not. All it means is that parents pass their positions, pro or con, along to their children, who are less willing to consider the contrarian view because of it.


As for anything in the bible itself, it's a construct of
the early Roman Catholic church via the Nicaea Council of 325 A.D.

Well, there was no "Roman Catholic" church at the time. The Roman bishop was just one of numerous bishops of the Church; the distinction between "Roman Catholic" and "Orthodox Catholic" didn't appear until the Schism of 1066.

The council of Nicea is considered the beginning of the Roman Catholic church.

Sure, if you're Roman Catholic. :-) The debate over the primacy of the Roman bishop raged on for six hundred years, culminating in the Schism. The Orthodox side (with historical documentation) has always contended that the "You are Peter and upon this Rock...." verse was not interpreted by the early church as giving an absolute primacy to Peter and the line of the Bishop of Rome; rather, the early church was governed by a council of patriarchs, of which the Bishop of Rome held the seat of highest respect and honor, and that later Popes (as they become more political) twisted the meaning of that verse to usurp power.


But, that detail aside, precisely correct. The Church itself was built on an oral, not a written, tradition, and the Bible was simply a codification of the books that accurately articulated that oral tradition as it existed in the early period.


It is a construct of old folktales that date back to the Sumerian's, what didn't suit TPTB of the time was left out. Historical figures that went against the agenda were vilified,kicked out of the church or removed from the texts.

Should have said "NT" not "Bible". The textual analysis discussion of the two documents is very different. You're making the mythologic argument for the OT, not the NT.

It's a lack of understanding of that fact (that Christianity is not "a book") that causes a good deal of confusion amongst Christians, even today.

JG

True enough, it amazes me the people that invoke Christ with every other breath are the least like him.

Well, there are 2 billion Christians in the world, 99.9999999% of whom you've never spoken with; so, that's a difficult charge to levy. You're probably speaking of the ones you tend to see in the media, and since the Christian is enjoined from speaking of his religion if the purpose is simply to call attention to himself, it's not unusual that that sort would be unlike Christ in other ways, as well.

IOW, I agree that the ones that you generally see trumpeting their faith are not particularly like Christ. The ones that are right now volunteering their time dishing up soup in some urban charity kitchen are another matter.

Further, if you use the Orthodox analogy of the Church being a hospital where sick souls go to get well (as opposed to the favored Roman analogy of the Church as a courtroom where you go to get rewarded, counseled, or punished by the Judge), it should come as no surprise that you have found sick people there. One generally does indeed find sick people in hospitals.

JG

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