You Guys Need to Communicate! (thoughts from an ex evangelical Christian)

Buz wrote:

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Jar, me olde friend, what other scriptures/holy books even mention the name Jehovah? As for the signatures, i.e. naming Jehovah/YHWH, check out the ASV (American Standard Version), the most literal translation of the oldest manuscripts in existence.

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Um, what? Buz, as someone who believes Christian scriptures are important, you must be aware of the many sacred scriptures that also contain the same name (YHWH). Those include the Jewish writings that didn't end up in the Christian canon, as well as the many early Christian and other writings (such as the Gnostics) that claim to be from YHWH. And what is your view on the books like maccabbees, or others that are in the Catholic Bible and not the Protestant Bible? By what you wrote above, I'd have to conclude that you consider them to be correct.If you are going to claim that having that name in them is sufficient for inerrancy, they you are swallowing most of the various early Christianities. If you are going to reject them based on reason, then please don't use the bare presence of the name YHWH as evidence of anything. Thanks! Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

Buzsaw is clearly speaking about God's signature as a metaphor for its spiritual aspects. Why is that stupid? Would you say that a Muslim is stupid for believing the Qur'an is the only source of true inspiration? Would it be stupid for a Hindu to believe that the Vedas are the only source of inspiration?

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"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." -C.S. Lewis

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What exactly makes for brainwashing do you suppose? What is the criteria for brainwashing? When and how does someone move from listening to personal belief in liturgy to full on brainwashing?

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That's kind of my point though. Are parents essentially brainwashing their kids when they teach them values? Kids are impressionable, right? Or are we just teaching them how to live in this world just as our parents have done for us? What exactly makes for brainwashing? I doubt that anybody intends to "brainwash" or to "indoctrinate" their kids, even if they are actually doing it. I don't think people make a point to do this because of its negative connotations. If one parent talks to their child about Jesus, is that any more of an indoctrination process than telling them that such a person never existed? Where is the line of demarcation? Who gets to decide what is brainwashing material and who doesn't?

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"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." -C.S. Lewis

LOLMisdirection and stupid comments in one paragraph. Perhaps a new high even for you.I did not say that the person was stupid, but that the statement was stupid.And of course I would say that anyone who says "only one book written by just plain men is the only source of inspiration", makes a stupid statement.But Buz carried it even further to assert that a particular Translation carried the signature.I'm sorry but all that shows is a little mind incapable of critical thought.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Easy to say from the comfort of the educated middle-class... I see many not-so-fortunate individuals take immense comfort in their faith - people who otherwise would have very little to live for, or had previous lifestyles that were certainly counterproductive to society. These are not people who would ever consider the idea of "investing effort to determine the credibility of an idea", not least because they would struggle with the meaning of at least two of the words in quotes. Nearly everything they have learnt has been taken on faith, religious or not.Furthermore, speaking on behalf of most of the Christians I know, they do have a great deal of evidence to back up their faith - the fact that we would describe such evidence as purely subjective and existential will not faze them in the slighest.

It's stupid because use of a name is not a signature. If I write George W Bush here does that mean that George W Bush had anything to do with my post ? After all by Buz's standard George W. Bush has signed his name ot my post !It's also stupid because the Bible - the original manuscripts - never use "Jehovah". "Jehovah" is just an attempt to transliterate the actual name into German - and not a good one. (And yes it IS important that German is the intended language because that 'J' would be a 'Y' if it was English).It's even more stupid because the NT books don't even use the name. Yes, Buz knows this because he tried this sort of trick before. If you believe that a book has to use the name Yahweh to come from God then you'd better throw out the Gospels, Paul's Epistles and the rest of the NT. Is Buz going to do that ? Of course not.

While I agree, to some degree, with your "comfort" excuse and I happen to think there are other values in what we see in moderate religious organizations now I think that this quote applies: And we know from psychology that such subjective experience are not evidence that a rational person should trust. All you do is prove that there is danger in even moderate religious thought by suggesting that such experiences should count for anything at all.We all have this frailty; to encourage it is not a virtue. There are many frailties that we must come to understand and learn to overcome or our oh-so-brainy species might not make it.

Absolutely... I wasn't implying that this was by any means the only, err, "excuse" as you call it And I am very familiar with the quote... soundbites make for good humour but not good criticism - nor anything else for that matter. If we want to work on the level of this quote then it is obvously down to personal state of mind vs effect on society. On this basis it is abundantly clear that comparing believer/skeptic to drunk/sober is bogus. I am very pleased by the level of no-strings social work performed by the church I attend... it is why I support them. Of course, this is balanced by all manner of social injustices carried out by Christians... I'm not so sure there is such a balance in the social effect of drunkard behaviour. Do you still have the records you kept from when you first met your wife? I trust you wrote them up and submitted them for peer-review?

Message 8 with interlinear commentary. I'm ready for a book called The End of Clichés. The first one killed off should be any more book titles announcing The End of something. Consistent and intellectually honest like 'speciation is true, but evolution is false'?Consistent and intellectually honest like 'the story of Noah is literal fact, but Jesus didn't really mean for me to give any of my stuff to the poor'?Consistent and intellectually honest like 'Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, but when he comes back to earth next Tuesday after lunch he's going to set up an office in Jerusalem'?A rare breed of consistency, to be sure. The vast majority of fundamentalists defending 'inerrancy' don't read the books at all. They read tracts and memorize the prooftexts and rhetorical points. This creates the superficial appearance of familiarity with texts they know almost nothing about. It often fools the naive.Harris wouldn't fall for it if he talked to more fundies. Maybe he needs a gift subscription to EvC. When what one says is nonsense, how much virtue exists in knowing and believing it?An interesting ethical question to ponder...But the truth is that few anti-science fundies believe what they say. Actions, not statements, tell you what people really believe.There's a reason fundies let scientists do the research and limit themselves to carping about the findings. There's a reason they never actually go looking for those fossil tyrannosaurs with human bones in their stomachs. There's a reason why they visit a research hospital instead of an exorcist when they get cancer.Resisting science is whistling in the dark. Deep down, most of them know this. Declining to take a passage literally is hardly 'ignoring' it. Most moderates I've met read their Bibles and love to discuss anything in it. They aren't afraid to admit when a passage is difficult or even unbelievable.A shortcoming? Some would call that approach intellectual honesty. 'Accept' meaning 'take it literally,' of course. Harris has swallowed whole the fundamentalist assumption: that truth lies in being a letterhead.Small wonder fundamentalists come out ahead when measured (naively) by a yardstick they promote. And, as all thinking people know, anachronism and irrelevancy are hardly compelling reasons to regard one writing differently than another. And, as all thinking people know, it makes no sense to admit the existence of anything subjective in matters of personal faith. And if religion is revealed BS, fundamentalists have it all over everybody. I'm not an authority on religion, but from the standpoint of intellectual content I'd say the writings of Mircea Eliade have it all over the pulpy bestsellers. One thing I believe: with so much distressingly ordinary thought selling books, most of us are in the wrong career.Time for a Judith Krantz thread. She's made the bestseller list much more often than Sam Harris. She's not very 'moderate', but no one can top her intellectual honesty._______Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo.Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Nemesis wrote:

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Are parents essentially brainwashing their kids when they teach them values? Kids are impressionable, right? Or are we just teaching them how to live in this world just as our parents have done for us? What exactly makes for brainwashing?

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No, parents aren’t. The difference is that fundamentalists often work very hard to isolate their kids from non-fundamentalist sources of information. Raising a kid with values is good parenting, censoring the world from them is brainwashing. Moderate parents (Christian and non-Christian) will encourage their kids to investigate all spiritual paths, to think for themselves, to critically question all ideas using reason and evidence. Sure, they may introduce their own values to the kids first, and they may raise the kids with traditions consistent with their religion and not others. However, The child is always taught to investigate and question, and that nothing is taboo to question.For instance, my kids are being raised with my Native American and Pagan celebrations of the wheel of the year (the solstices, equinoxes, and their thermal equivalents), the names of the moons (such as the Snow moon for February), and my science-based view of the universe. They are also being taught the tools of critical thought, and will be encouraged to read, think, and investigate on their own. They are guaranteed my love, even if they decide to reject the values they’ve been taught (like the universal value of all people), and become, say, KKK members. They are being taught about many religions, like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on, all with honest discussions of their good and potential bad points, and with respect for all members of these religions. That includes visiting their worship services.Contrast that with the situation in many fundamentalist groups. Members (especially kids, but adults too) are pressured to only be exposed to Christian (and only the right kind of Christian) information sources. That includes listening to Christian radio, censoring or avoiding “heretical” or “worldly” books, not going to worship services of other faiths, etc. All of this is supported by the New Testament, which even orders that Christians aren’t supposed to let the wrong kind of Christian into their homes (2Jn 1:11), among other NT verses (like not to be “unequally yoked”, or to be “separate from unbelievers” etc.). Brainwashing can include implicit or explicit threats to revoke love and community if the person strays from the faith.See the difference? Both can be (and are) done in non-Christian as well as in Christian homes. However, it seems awfully more common in fundamentalist homes than in secular homes. This is part of the reason why we so often see people on boards like this who did look around and suddenly found out that their knowledge had giant holes in it due to Christian brainwashing. I don’t very often come across the opposite - Americans, secular or not, who don’t understand that Christianity exists, or that, say, Jesus is said to have died for our sins, or some such core tenet of Christianity.Do we agree that there is a difference between “teaching kids values”, and isolating them from critical thinking and from learning about other views?Have a fun weekend--Equinox

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-Equinox_ _ _ ___ _ _ _
You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

Well, yes, actually. Harris's position is that this climate of tolerance for other religions allows unfounded and potentially dangerous claims to go unchallenged. This is why I mentioned the Jewish claim that God gave Israel to the Jews. But Harris isn't saying that religious moderates are catering to fundamentalists. I think his position is much closer to Edmund Burke's, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Challenging and questioning the beliefs of other religions would be the height of intolerance, and so is discouraged.Expanding a little on Harris's views of religious moderation, he also feels it is bears some significant culpability for the west's underestimation of the Islamic threat to civilization. In the religious moderate's view, Islam is actually a religion of peace, and 9/11 was just an action taking by extremist Islamic terrorists who are not representative of mainstream Islam. I think the celebration in the Islamic world that followed 9/11 gives this the lie. Islam includes a strong tradition of violence that religious moderates paper over and hence fail to recognize, to our great peril.--Percy

No, but I'd call it pretty stupid if he tried to argue that position based on the fact that it says "Allah" in the Qur'an a bunch of times, as Buz just did.Is it just that you can't see ridiculous arguments when they're being offered by your coreligionists?

Thanks for sharing that, anastasia. Looks like Wentz has America's number. And your observation about moderates at the last--an eye opener.

It is a sound bite. The underlying valid issue is deciding that something is good if you are made happy even if it is false. It is fine to delude a child but what makes an adult is someone able to deal with reality and be happy. I've been married twice. I got it very right the second time. There was at least a little rationality that time. It is the total disregard for rationality ingendered by falling in love that makes for some very bad marriages.

All in all, I agree wholeheartedly with your post. I will defend the guy in this one line; out of context it sounds worse, but in context it probably entails worse. When Harris says; "they (fundementalists)know and believe exactly what they say", he means; exactly what the 'scriptures' say. Or, in other words, violent passages are taken just as literally and acted on just as fanatically, as those passages with peaceful messages. The problem is, anyone can know and believe exactly what the scriptures say, but what the hell do they actually mean? If anyone thinks and believes that scripture is commanding them to behave immorally, break civil laws, hurt others, etc. they need a wake-up call, and they need to be treated in exactly the same way as criminals of any other persuasion.Honestly, when you are outside of religion it is easy to point fingers, but when you are a completely religious, sane individual who functions normally and productively within the dictates of society, intolerance of any person, creed, background, or race is simply intolerance. You by no means have to agree with everyone, but you have to act rationally.Harris is no different from any other evangelist. He is 'converting' instead of forcing. There are plenty of examples of forced religious suppression, and forced religious expression. The tides have turned for both to 'evangelism'.I was thinking about some incidences of religious suppression; torture and blackmail of Buddhists in Tibet, Yiguan Daoists in Taiwan?, Catholics in Vietnam, and also about the old Hebrew scholar at my local pub, getting a school-boy grin at mere mention of the Bible, the guy next to him, here doing missionary work for the Bryn Athyn church of the New Jerusalem in Australia, the beautiful Russian liturgy, all of it. Do I want to live in a world where this culture and history is relegated to the museum's Ancient Wonders exhibit? Hell, no.