551. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #166288 by Sargeist on April 23, 2008 at 5:07 am

One of the most infuriating things about (most?) theists is the way you can almost literally *hear* the ears shut, and the brain close off at the slightest hint of anything that draws attention to inconsistency in their thinking.

One of my girlfriend's friends is exactly like this. Quite willing to believe any old bollocks about Father Pio's spirit hanging around looking after her (said to her by her - surely - psychopathic father), about how people have been saved from tsunamis by making the sign of the cross. And just constant constant bullshit about faith this and faith that, and faith coming out of my fucking ears. Raaaa! It is all I can do sometimes not to smack their overly fucking smug faces in.

*deep breath*

552. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #166270 by Sargeist on April 23, 2008 at 4:27 am

Barry,

Your comment reminded me of the bit in The Mummy, where the greasy sort-of-bad guy uses all of his lucky charms one after the other to protect himself.

553. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #166261 by Sargeist on April 23, 2008 at 4:18 am

The title of this article is a trick question, right?

What's that? It's not? We're supposed to take the question seriously? Oh, okay then:

Yes.

(next!)

554. Resentment Over Darwin Evolves Into a Documentary

Comment #165713 by Sargeist on April 22, 2008 at 5:07 am

Steve,

I'm so glad you said tha, because I've been waning for so long o say i myself, and I wasn' sure if I would be able o wihou rying to make some ill-advised sarcasic remark.

hanks!

555. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163925 by Sargeist on April 19, 2008 at 9:42 am

Goodness, this cut and paste insanity does become rather wearing, doesn't it?

I confess that I find it rather hard to think myself down into the mindset that thinks that "ooh, organs must have evolved one at a time, in their modern forms" is meaningful in any non-retarded sense.

Can anyone reassure me that this cretinism is not contagious?

556. Flea of the week

Comment #163545 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 1:45 pm

Diacanu,

Amazing! I was just looking at this:

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13739-babelfish-to-translate-alien-tongues-could-be-built.html

557. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163367 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 8:44 am

Vaal,

One of my favourite jokes:

It's easy to distract fat people.
It's a piece of cake.

558. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163344 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 8:16 am

It's not about children being morons, it's about the fact that they cannot necessarily distinguish between truth and fiction. She worked out pretty early on that there is no Santa, but I think that the realisation that it was a made-up story might have been harder to come by if every adult she met had continue to tell her it was true.

Now, in my girlfriend's situation, she *did* scoff when taught about Muhammad's bargaining down from huge numbers of daily prayers to 5 a day by arguing with god (possibly an idea nicked from Lot?), and she did question the stuff about virgins, and ask what the women got out of it, and wasn't convinced by stories of Muhammad and the old goat producing milk - but her reward for questioning things was to be branded a trouble-maker, to get detentions and to get into trouble with her family.

559. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163328 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 7:48 am

The reason why it is dangerous to tell children certain things is evidenced by the time I told my niece that the reason I am so tall is that I was stretched by the doctors as soon as I was born. Her unquestioning belief in what I was saying as a member of her family caused me to immediately tell her I was joking. But that was the occasion when I realised exactly how careful one has to be.

560. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163317 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 7:39 am

Further to what I was just saying, but with all the necessary caveats about data collection and so on (and the warnings in the text itself) have a look at table 1.11 in:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/36496/0029047.pdf

561. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163314 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 7:31 am

Bonzai, re: indoctrination:

I had always assumed it was because of the (apparent) fact that, e.g., almost all Catholics are the children of Catholics.

Likewise Muslims. And, I suppose, why religions are organised into blobs covering large areas, rather than there being a randomish mix in all countries.

562. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163301 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 6:59 am

"power that is"?

563. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163281 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 6:10 am

Brian,

Is that the Palle Yourgrau one? "A world without time"? I've got to get around to reading that.

564. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163276 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 6:07 am

Cheers, Steve. I should have just wiki'd. But sometimes asking people makes me feel in touch with my past :)

565. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163269 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 5:49 am

Steve,

In various books I have read about Goedel, there has been mention of how Einstein accompanied him to his American citizenship hearing, and there was a concern about Goedel being considered a bit crazy because he had come up with a loophole in the US constitution. This is a story I have read a few times, but there is never (annoyingly) any mention of what this supposed loophole is/was.

Any ideas?

566. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163264 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 5:42 am

\begin{offtopic}
Given that I have been having the urge to go and redact history by removing my possibly ill advised posts from above, I was wondering what people thought about maybe having some mechanism by which comments and their edits could be tracked somehow?

It would probably not be fair to prohibit people from deleting their comments, but maybe a placeholder could be left so that we don't have the fleabytes syndrome of referring to comment 7508, say, when later on that is a different set of text.

I know we already have the #nnnnnn numbers, but these are not thread-specific. Also, an indication of when edits to a comment were made might be interesting (even if we wouldn't say *what* those edits were).
\end{offtopic}

567. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163254 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 5:25 am

I wouldn't want people to think that I am as gosh-darnedly nice as I may well be implying - simply because this would be inaccurate. I am no doubt projecting my own fears of my own volatility on other people, for which I apologise.

568. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163237 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 5:02 am

Allan:

My #163229 was replying to your #163225. I wasn't referring earlier to your #163212.

569. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163235 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 4:57 am

clodhopper:

I probably shouldn't have said anything - I was typing before thinking. I think I just got a bit narked. I can see that people do indeed dodge questions etc, and refuse to engage in a sensible debate. It's just the way it had appeared to me.

570. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163230 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 4:49 am

phatbat,

It's just an overall impression I've been getting. There have been a lot of "are you going to call it?" type of comments, which I had interpreted (maybe incorrectly) as "when are we going to say the time of death?" or "when are we going to label this person as a fucktard?"

It just occurred to me that, from where I'm sitting, this is not the most useful way to behave. Some people, with whom most of the commenters here disagree, appear and say things, and then maybe disappear off again for a while, not replying immediately to things that have been said to them. Some of them come back later, but before that they have already been assumed to be too afraid to return.

From my point of view, it seems that those people who are generally agreed with will come and go at their own speed, and people don't comment on how this means they have seen how stupid their comments are. They are merely doing other things with their lives. I don't get the impression that this is applied to those with whom the majority disagree.

Just my two-pennorth. Sorry.

[edit: typo]

571. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163229 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 4:44 am

Allan,
I can see that it might often become very infuriating to see the same arguments trolleyed out again and again, but I am (currently) immoveable with my feeling that throwing abuse doesn't help anyone. Whatever happened to ridiculing the beliefs but not the person? Shouldn't we be aiming for that?

572. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163222 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 4:33 am

Why is there this seeming urge to assume that those people with whom most of you disagree have to stay here for ever and ever, answering all your comments ad infinitum? Are people not supposed to take a break, go to bed, go and do something less boring instead? When Paula nips off for a while, people don't start declaring a time of death for that. Is it just pure and simple mean-spiritedness?

573. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163204 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 4:13 am

Ah, now, Egomaniac does make a fair point here, I think. Religious ideas are specifically excluded from the list of delusional mental states that indicate schizophrenia (for example). Most of the rest of the world believes in spirity fairy things. So we're the heretics!

574. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163189 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 4:00 am

And, furthermore, there are plenty of ways, especially in this internet age, of acquiring that quaint stuff called "information". Try going to find out what biologists think about abiogenesis. It's all very interesting.

Were you aware that people used to think that there was something special about organic compounds? That they could not be synthesised from inorganic compounds? That they needed the mysterious processes of life to make them? Oh, and then some guy went and made urea in a lab. Bugger, bang goes another idea - this time vitalism.

Now, I like speculative philosophy as much as the next guy (him, over there), but sooner or later we have to go looking for facts.

[edit: mention urea (silly fool I am)]

575. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163187 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 3:56 am

Egomaniac: Evolution has nothing to do with the origins of life.

576. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163179 by Sargeist on April 18, 2008 at 3:52 am

Philip #163170:

I'm *always* wondering how I can get hold of Alyson Hannigan!

577. Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions

Comment #163058 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 11:38 pm

Goldy said:

Indeed, there is no excuse not to know everything

578. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162652 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 7:06 am

I would say that "no" and "there is no evidence that god exists" are not *necessarily* linked. But I just have a problem with the emphasis of the "no".

579. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162648 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 7:04 am

meso: I shall see if I can find that book. I think it has appeared in my Amazon recommendations from time to time.

You reminded me of a conversation I had with my wonderful niece on her last birthday. She happened to say that "you know sometimes people dream about things and then they happen?" and I think she was asking what I thought about it. I said, "Well, it can happen. Last night I dreamt I was coming to your birthday party, and here I am!" She saw quite easily that this was not amazing at all, and I was quite pleased to see how she saw the point I was making about why someone might apparently be able to predict things.

580. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162639 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 6:56 am

Sorry, but I didn't understand Brother John's post, and I know that I, too, can be so parenthetical (even though I do try not to be) that at times (or maybe most of the time) I am hard (impossible?) to follow.

Clodhopper: this is clearly a case where you have taken only the times when Marcus Brigstock is being funny and David Robertson is being frightening. This cherry picking of yours simply will not do! ;)

581. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162616 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 6:19 am

I think that the reason I would be (and have been) very cautious in my answers to various questions like (but not actually) the god existence question is that adults would know to take what I'm saying as an opinion, but my niece might well assume that I know the absolute truth about what she has asked me. Of course, she will soon be getting to an age where she starts to think *she* knows best about everything, at which point maybe I'll change tack!

I am rather uncomfortable with the fact that she does go to Sunday school. But I managed to come out of that pretty ok, so maybe she will too. :)

582. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162606 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 6:04 am

I know Steve's comparison wasn't perfect, but I just took it as meaning that not everything that is not universally harmful should therefore be encouraged.

But.. I don't think it means we should discourage it either. Pah, I dunno what I think.

These days I like to imagine how I would answer my niece if she were to ask me a question:

So, easy one:
"Uncle Mark, is the earth flat?" "No."

But:
"Uncle Mark, is there a god?" "Er..., um... well, a lot of people think there is, but I don't, but I wouldn't like to tell you that there isn't, er.., um ..., bluster"

On the other hand, to an adult I am quite happy to say: "You know, it's all bollocks really, and doesn't stand up to scrutiny."

I am just rather concerned about indoctrination in either direction, I think!

583. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162600 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 5:52 am

Steve: once again, you present a nice counterexample!

Quetz: Yep, that's the post I was obliquely referring to earlier.

My feeling is that people who have something of substance to say at this site, who say it with care, are not generally attacked with abuse and ridicule. Even if what they say is not broadly agreed with.

[edit: made it clear that I meant at this site!]

584. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162589 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 5:19 am

[Sorry for being so slow with this, but I've been reading some of fcos, and it (the stuff on which people have been commenting in this thread) doesn't seem very credible.]

I'm bothered by your reply, Roland_F: I know exactly where you're coming from with this, and Richard et al's comments about moderates leaving the way open for the extremists does kind of ring true with me. But I can't quite reconcile that with some of the people I know and love who, although they drive me crazy with their inability to see that what they believe seems a bit silly, are nonetheless lovely people.

585. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162556 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 4:11 am

Thanks, Steve. You always manage to make it concise! :)

Well, I would say that it is not a good thing in general. But there seems to me to be a difference between believing in things for which we have good evidence of their non-existence or incorrectness, and believing in things for which we have no evidence of their correctness.

If you see what I mean.

Er... let me try: I believe there are solutions to x^n plus y^n = z^n for n != 2. I am wrong, because Wiles has shown that no such solutions exist. But you might believe there are odd perfect numbers. These have not been shown to *not* exist, so you are justified in believing it, even if your reason is just "I like the idea".


[edit: problem with plus signs]
??

586. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162554 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 4:07 am

Damn, now I'm thinking: "My elderly aunt with cancer thinks that she will go to a nice place full of bunnies, and so she does not mind not being treated. This causes me emotional distress, so by my previous attempt at refutation, I should force her to have treatment, so it does not harm me."

But, then I am harming her by forcing her to do something against her will. I cannot prove to her that she is wrong. She cannot prove to me that I am wrong. All we really have is the fact that no one has provided evidence to back up the afterlife belief. But she could say: "well, it doesn't make me wrong."

587. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162552 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 4:05 am

I think that the "harm other people" bit could be reasonably construed to include causing me emotional distress.

But, I admit, the "no harm" proviso is probably somewhat hard to define.

Is this why people like truth? It doesn't matter if it makes you feel good or not, there is something nice and concrete and unarguable about it? That's often how I feel.

588. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162549 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 4:03 am

Is it the "doesn't harm other people" bit? There are people here who value truth over much else, and I am one of them. But there are other ways of living, and much as I might think religious people are loonies, I can't really get worked up over the ones who hold entirely nebulous beliefs about afterlives etc. If they start making truth claims for which we have refuting evidence, then by all means demonstrate their incorrectness. But saying "I like to think there is an afterlife, because it's a nice way for the universe to be", seems vague enough to be bearable. By me, at least.

Or is the worry that this is normally followed at some point by: "and I know what god wants, and it is to cut you all into tiny pieces"?

589. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162542 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 3:55 am

I'm not sure what the problem is with people believing something that is not true, if it makes them happy and doesn't harm other people.

Have I misunderstood people's objections?

590. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162481 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 2:48 am

While vaguely on the topic of god being able to do anything, have I blathered on here about one of my favourite criticisms of god and his miracles? Why are miracles so bloody banal? Not to mention rather inscrutable.

I mean, in what sense is a weeping statue actually representative of an all loving god? My girlfriend pointed out last night that things usually cry when you've been nasty to them. So surely a weeping Madonna is a bad sign? (not as bad as her recent Bond theme, though - argh!)

Anyway, about miracles: water into wine is simply liquid into another liquid. What about sand into wine? Shoes into wine? Roman centurions into wine? Or, radically, just make some bloody wine out of thin air!?

There is more of this nonsense in Islam, too. Mohammad makes an old she-goat produce milk when he and his followers were marching around in need of refreshment. A miracle! Hmm, female goats making milk - wow. How about: stones making milk? Combine harvesters making milk. Or, again, bloody bottles of ice cold milk, with little foil tops on!

Rargh!

[edit: damned typos!]

591. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162477 by Sargeist on April 17, 2008 at 2:44 am

Steve,

I'm not sure if it's really "meaning", but more a conflation of "reason" with "meaning". If some conscious being out there made a decision to bring us into existence then, even if we don't know why, or like it, then there is the possibility of there being a usual, human-like kind of "reason" for it.

I don't find it reassuring, but clearly a lot of people do.

Either that, or they are all just parrotting something they once heard in the hope that it'll deflect attention away from the fact that they've been brainwashed. Like when people end up using "not fit for purpose" or "institutionally " just because they can't be bothered to think for themselves.

592. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162280 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 1:46 pm

You can't go wrong with a bit of Perl, epeeist. Oh, wait, maybe I've spelled that wrong...

Steve: I suppose I'm basing my view of theist private beliefs on my dealings with those who start of with what they call "arguments" and end up with "well, that's why they call it faith". Surely no one would ever use that as a fallback if they actually knew their beliefs held water?

(ps. I'm afraid that I can't keep up with these threads with the tenacity of the rest of you!)

593. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162219 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 11:36 am

I sort of side with the view that there is just something about the brains of the irreligious that prevents them (us?) from quite "getting it" as concerns those airy-fairy fairy-beliefs.

I went to church every Sunday until I was about 13, and I really don't know if I believed in god. What would I have said if I had been asked? Probably would never have occurred to me: I was too young, I expect. But grown people who cannot give you a straight answer when you ask why they believe something... it boggles the mind. I know that people may want to debate my definitions here, but I do think that everyone has "evidence" on which they base their beliefs. I say this because everyone has some kind of reason, and that reason had to have been engendered by something. But all they really have evidence for, I contend, is the fact that they believe. The frozen waterfall, the blinding flash of light, the 87 pound 50, etc, all presented evidence that led them to belief, if not evidence of the thing they believe in.

What really bothers me though, really, deep into my guts, is that these people won't even entertain the notion that there is another explanation for what they experienced.

Oh, there are just so many things to say, and so little chance of my being coherent about them!

594. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162167 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 9:02 am

epeeist,

My conclusion has been for some time now that, in some way I cannot quite fathom, they must *know* that their beliefs are nonsense, that they are skating on thin evidentiary ice, that they are wasting their time on an insubstantial apparition of a parody of a worthwhile endeavour. And because they know that everything will crash down at the slightest breath, they really cannot permit themselves to acknowledge any chinks of doubt.

595. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162154 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 8:34 am

Al-

I appreciate entirely that all of us have different shades of opinion on this. In fact, I am not entirely certain that I am comfortable with my "try not to be nasty" attitude all the time. I think that through the text medium it is safer to avoid direct abuse in order to get an argument across. But, naturally, there are some people who will be offended simply by "what you are saying is verifiably incorrect". So, ultimately, maybe a mixture of all approaches is a good one :)

596. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162152 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 8:32 am

Vaal:

Now that makes me smirk like a crazy :)

597. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162145 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 8:23 am

Al-

I behave in the same way. I am generally littering my comments here and my interpersonal conversations with "it seems to me", "I think that", "(to me)", "from my point of view" and so on. I just think (there it is again) that the ideal we should hold ourselves up to is to be polite, simply and only because we don't like others being rude to us.

And I may be using "we" and "us" when I really me "I" and "me", but you get my gist.

More specifically, though, I was not saying "we should be polite because it gets results." If I may give an example: I once had a housemate who would play his music really loudly. I was often tempted to just play mine loudly too, as "that'll show him", but if he is playing his music loudly simply because he has no sense of politeness, but I play mine loudly *deliberately to annoy*, then I think I am more wrong.

598. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162131 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 8:06 am

Al-
Much as I know it is difficult to do so, I tend to think that if a person is behaving in a way that I find offensive or unpleasant then, by inference, I must wish them not to behave like that. Hence, for me to behave in those ways I dislike is inconsistent with my position.

Now, of course, in practice I am not as polite as the ideal, but I do think this is the ideal up to which to hold ourselves.

599. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162130 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 8:03 am

Philip,
I thought it was coffee passed through a civet? Or is a civet a type of cat? (rargh, in the age of t'internet, one can not be permitted to get things wrong... *runs to check* yes, a civet is a cat, damn)

Found a site selling it: http://www.firebox.com/product/1077
This part of the description of bog-standard coffees made me smirk:

it's gonna take more than a few choccy sprinkles and an injection of hot milk to get us frothing with excitement.

600. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162126 by Sargeist on April 16, 2008 at 7:52 am

I often think that people are being rather inconsistent when, essentially, letting "mentally ill" people off the hook for their behaviour. He's not a bad man, he just has anger management issues. He's not a rude git, he just has mild autism. Or whatever example you want to use. My view is that the very existence of that which we call *personality* is effectively the evidence (for me) that we lack the kind of free will that some theologians and others would like to think we have.

It just seems to be the case that only the extreme end of the personality variation curve is designated as "uncontrollable", while the rest of it is just "rude", "angry", "unpleasant". Is it simply the uncommonness of some behaviours that lead to them being described as an "illness"?