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Author | Topic: Free will but how free really? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
Here's a chunk of Sam Harris
quote: Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Of course.
If the underlying causes of the problems are dealt with, who are you to say what did or did not do it?
It doesn't matter if a placebo is required or not, and even with one you can still get on doing useful things. But if religion does actually deal with the cause, then it isn't a placebo to begin with.
Right, cause that is dealing with the underlying causes
I doubt that I'll defeat you're prejudice and bias.
I'm not saying it is.
I thought so. Have a nice day.
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Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
I'm a guy on a forum giving an opinion. who are you? And I'm responding to the evidence that you gave of religious belief helping to reduce stress etc. I'd say that removing the causes of stress itself would be a better plan for all the people rather than just those who have fallen for the placebo of a particular belief system.
And I yours. But we've all agreed that that isn't our purpose here. Sam Harris has your position covered anyway. Just before I switched off the radio this morning in disgust at the church service that had started, I heard the priest use the words 'we need to become a human sacrifice acceptable to god.' Well fuck you, I thought. We spend a lot of time on these boards discussing religious belief in theoretical terms. I occasionally have to attend church services in various brands of Christian and Muslim settings for weddings and funerals. And what a pile of offensive, primitive superstitious, drivel we have to subordinate ourselves to during those seervices. Sit down, stand up, kneel down, worship him, be frightened of him, believe in him. 'This is his body and blood that was sacrificed for you.' And long riffs and rants of total crap made up by the idiot in fancy dress that we're asked to swallow whole. It turns my stomach - it's truly offensive. The real stuff of worship needs to be discussed more. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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Stile Member Posts: 4017 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 4.7
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Are you trying to say it's impossible for someone to find better support from religion than from objective scientific findings? I don't think that's true. People are different. Can you think of a person who is afraid of death? Myself, I find solace in the fact that no one has such answers. Therefore, I don't feel bad without knowing myself, and I feel better. But what if something like that doesn't work for someone else? Have you ever heard of someone feeling better because somebody gives them a hug and says: "Don't worry, you're safe now, it's all going to be okay." It can't possibly be true. But, still, this helps many people. Going back to being afraid of death, some people cannot find peace in the 'unknown.' They require a feeling that "everything's going to be okay" even if they don't understand how that's going to happen. God (or "religion" in more general terms) can provide such an "answer" for such people who need more of a "don't worry, that's taken care of" thought. Even if there's still a itching doubt... just as I still have an itching doubt about 'not knowing what's going to happen when I die.' It doesn't matter... an 'itching doubt' is much better than a paralyzing fear. Are you trying to say that it's impossible for such a person to exist? But, if you're trying to say that it's impossible for a person to exist that requires religious-ideas to get around paralyzing fears... I would, really, laugh in your face. As the anecdotal evidence (the only evidence available for such things... even against such things...) implies that you are completely wrong.
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Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
Obviously not. Wherever did you get that idea from?
Er, no. I'm beginning to think you're building a very large straw man.
You're just repeating the 'opium of the people' stuff. My postion is not that religion doesn't help some people sometimes. It's that because we know it's a fiction AND we know that social structures that don't have religions as their basal systems are better at making more people happier more of the time we'd be more sensible trying to build them. Particularly as we know they're dying anyway. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Yeah, which makes me wonder why you're focused on ridiculing a childish cartoon version of religion. But you admitted you're just biased so have fun with that.
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Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
I agree that it's both ridiculous and childish but it's not a cartoon version, it's the version I see and hear when I attend these services - in different denominations, though mainly Catholic and Anglican. I've no reason to believe that these services are anything out of the ordinary, in fact the reverse - they're pretty low key and liberal compared with some of the horrors I occasionally see from American evangelists. The nonsense spouted at these services probably sounds reasonable to you, you've normalised it and it suits YOUR bias. But to an uninfected outsider it's crazed. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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Stile Member Posts: 4017 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Must have read you wrong, then. I would only have issues on some sort of 'ban of religion' or something like that. I see no problems with 'letting religion die out' or even 'promoting secular social systems' in their stead. Especially on the basis of better results. I see religion as a way for certain people to use personally in order to have a healthy mind. Canada still has a government-funded Catholic school board.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
It seems to me like you are seeing church as something that is done to you rather than something that you participate in. It's like a child complaining about the chore of taking piano lessons instead of seeing the opportunity to learn to play music. But of course if you think music is bullshit then the lessons aren't going to be anything but a chore. ... I'll give you the American evangelists, though, those people are insane. In my journey through finding God, I felt a strong pull to evangelize for all of about 2 hours
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Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6
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Banning religions doesn't work - otherwise I might just be tempted..... Getting them outside of all things state though is a different game. They should not be in schools, they should have no political appointments (we have bishops in our second house), they shouldn't be turned to automatically when matters of so-called morality are being decided and they certainly shouldn't be given tax breaks. If we must have them, let them stand on their own two feet. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
Well it IS done to people. From childhood and people are forced to participate until they're old enough to see through the nonsense. When I attend these services it's something that is being done to me - I'm there only because a friend or relative wants me there so I put up with it.
What bollox. I'm not a child, I've learnt the same stuff everyone born into a religious family learns and having learned it and passed all the tests I found out that it was utter rubbish. It's just plain embarassing seeing adults behave that way. It would be really interesting to post a transcript of a service, if I could stomach it. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
You're acting like one.
Well I'm proud of myself and my accomplishments and I owe a lot to my religion.
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Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
Well my dad's bigger than your dad so there, neh. (You really said that, wow.)
Good for you.
And how would you know? Perhaps if you lived in Oslo and had never been troubled by irrational belief you could have acheived more. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Embracing God directly empowered me to make the changes to my life that I needed to make in order to survive.
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Tangle Member Posts: 8052 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 5.6 |
Had you lived in a different/fairer/more welfare-based society you may not have encountered the problems that required the insertion of a fantasy to fix, or at least found a less crazy way of dealing with them. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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