101. A Revelation

Comment #78305 by bamafreethinker on October 12, 2007 at 11:50 am

To better understand how we Americans define a professor – please see Gilligan's Island re-runs… : )

102. A Revelation

Comment #78241 by bamafreethinker on October 12, 2007 at 8:32 am

Living in the south (Alabama) is different I suppose. People are friendly and warm on average and you really wouldn't know that most people are fundamentalists unless you really pull it out of them. Most people just live out their lives and pretty much function day-to-day as if there was no god. I honestly believe that most people aren't really fundamentalists and instead they; a. enjoy the social benefits that come church-going, b. don't want to be an outcast, and c. go to church just in case it is real so they can avoid going to hell. A few years ago, when I traveled over the central and northern parts of the nation I found that the south has no monopoly on stupid Americans and there is plenty of closed-minded ignorance everywhere. Don't get me wrong there is a minority of people I know that seem to structure their lives around their religion, but they generally mind their own business. People may profess an unwavering faith, but their actions prove them to be paying lip-service – to some extent at least. I have worked at a company of about 600 for almost three years now and so far, I have not been asked one time about my beliefs or heard anyone talking religion at the water cooler. I think that faith is slowly dying in the south, but church-going is a little behind the curve. Hell, I even go to church because my family does and some of my best friends are Christians – hell… all of my friends are "Christians"… by title at least!

103. A Face-Off Over Faith

Comment #75616 by bamafreethinker on October 3, 2007 at 6:26 am

Fixed Point Foundation is planning to release a DVD of the debate about 50 days from now. You can listen live to the debate here: http://www.mbn.org/GenMoody/default.asp?SectionID=AE310CD85BC742CD83662DB54DC2F486

You can also listen live to Rick and Bubba interview RD at 10:00 AM eastern time here: mms://72.236.125.114/wrtt

Good luck to RD!

104. Root and Branch

Comment #73532 by bamafreethinker on September 25, 2007 at 7:53 am

gcdavis -

However I sometimes feel that "the debate" can get too complicated, it is not between Darwin and religion or even science and religion, it is between common sense and religion. I came to the conclusion that there was no god before I knew anything of science and I still know precious little. It just didn't stack up when I began to think about it.

I agree to a point. My de-conversion happened without the aid of science as well. I first rejected the bible on its internal flaws - with a little help from Remsberg* and Paine. I assumed that Christianity simply had the wrong God. I didn't understand evolution very well at all at this point, but I knew that Genesis was wrong, so I no longer had a squabble with evolution. It depends on how you look at it, but I say that without religion there really is no argument as far as I can see.

I eventually read RD's books, but by that time – he was preaching to the choir (or at least working with an open mind)! Had I read RD before I rejected Christianity I would have had a problem with him, I'm sure.

If you haven't read Remsberg's The Christ (1909), an exhaustively comprehensive dissection and thrashing of Christianity, it is available free online here: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/rmsbrg00.htm

105. State Senator Ernie Chambers Sues God

Comment #71307 by bamafreethinker on September 18, 2007 at 11:14 am

Yorker,

Oh, it's pretty fun sometimes (and sometime depressing). I even go to bible studies in small groups and fall right in there with everyone. I was a fairly well-studied Christian for most of my life (led classes/prayers etc.), so I know more about the bible and theology than the average churchgoer. I can generally shed some light on many conversations, partially because I do not have to twist my mind around some stark contradictions and try to make sense of them. For example; Sunday night we were trying to solve how being saved by "grace" (through believing/faith) can be rectified with Jesus' commands to do this and don't do that. It sometime difficult to watch friends and family members squirm as they try to figure out just how to avoid eternal damnation when it is in no way clear in the bible how to do so. That very subject is what motivated me to study the bible in-depth because of conflicting ideas about which (mine or my wife's) side of my family was going to hell! Of course an open-minded, in-depth study of the bible generally leads one to either atheism or to a much more liberal form of religion than when you started : ) Our church sings a cappella and is good at it, and I do enjoy the singing (after ignoring the lyrics of course). Some of the songs are really pretty good if you substitute the word "nature" in all the places where god is used.

106. State Senator Ernie Chambers Sues God

Comment #71248 by bamafreethinker on September 18, 2007 at 7:20 am

I am reminded of the movie, Miracle on 34th Street, where they had the old man on trail to determine if he was really Santa Claus. The judge knew, the lawyers knew, everyone knew that there was no such thing as Santa, but nobody wanted to be the one to say so in public - in front of the kids! The old judge was just about ready to break the news until he looked at his wife (who was giving him quite a look) holding his kid (with those sad puppy dog eyes) and he couldn't do it.

Perhaps the plaintiff will first have to prove that God exists, or does the court assume that already? If you ask me, this puts the theists between a rock and a hard place. They can't say that God isn't real, but…

I've been a non-believer for about six years now, but I still go to church every Sunday with my family (I am somewhat in the closet still – but I do not participate in the service in any way). It does upset me sometimes to listen to the things people believe, but I am becoming more and more convinced that most of the Christian I know really don't believe most of the crap they say they do. I can tell that my wife is beginning to change – not so much in what she says, but in what she doesn't say. I can tell that her heart just isn't (as) in it any more. I think most of the poor folks are just afraid of hell so they go through the motions.

107. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #70171 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 8:38 am

oxytocin,

I haven't thought much about the structure and terminology of scientific research since the ninth grade (about 25 years ago) so forgive me :).

I think we agree... we just don't realize it.

108. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #70163 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 8:24 am

Living in the bible belt, it's hard to find ANYONE who's not a believer and I've not had much experience with doctors – thank god (Oops… I've only been out a few years : )

The doctors I've dealt with however, seemed to keep their religion totally out of their medical business – with the exception of a few wall-hangings – so it doesn't bother me much at all. As long as they know they're stuff…

RD is coming to my state (about an hour away) on Oct. 3 (my birthday), but the event is sold out : (

Bama

109. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #70157 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 8:13 am

oxytocin,

I agree that all scientists have an agenda, and without a doubt the best agenda is to find the truth/facts without preconceptions – but there again a hypothesis is a kind of preconception isn't it? The best scenario may be when you have two legitimate hypothesis and you get to let them compete without prejudice. I think that the double-blind test is one of science's greatest tools.

Religion thinks it already has the facts so why bother looking? That is one of the saddest things about religion!

Can't trust and faith be used interchangeably in religion a well? The trust is just shifted to religions leaders or magic texts? More semantics I guess - not really worth thinking about much more.

Great thought everyone! I've enjoyed them all.

Bama

110. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #70146 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 7:57 am

Yorker,

I would think that the child might compartmentalize things in such a case. "Mom is usually good at keeping me safe, she just doesn't know much about wires. I'll ask dad when he get's home."

I think we have to go on track records when it come to faith/trust and hopefully mom has a good one up to this point and some of the child's "testing" has proven that; such as checking to see if that iron was really hot or that vinegar really tasted bad.

Hence my rejection of the bible.

Or maybe she should just spank his little arse and send him to his room : )

111. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #70128 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 7:30 am

Oxytocin

I thought about the trust/faith question quite a bit and I think they can, for the discussion at hand anyway, be used almost interchangeably. We trust our parents to transfer good beliefs/knowledge to us. Our beliefs are based on our faith in our parents.

Faith is an ambiguous word isn't it? Almost as prone to semantics as the words god and religion!

112. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #70124 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 7:19 am

19. Comment #70108 by Yorker,

If there are three wires protruding, only one of them would be "hot" so perhaps he didn't touch the right one. For whatever reason, because junior now has a belief based on personal experience, it will be even harder for mom to convince him otherwise. He thinks that he now has sound knowledge based on evidence, but he does not yet know that his experiment is incomplete. Mom's only shot may be to try to explain that he must have touched the wrong wire (assuming she knows as much), but perhaps his confidence (in mom) is shaken to this point - at least as far as electricity is concerned (she's still useful for an occasional PB&J sandwich : ).

This is similar to the way my confidence in the bible faded each time it contradicted what I had previously believed. The bible was its own worst enemy when I started my journey out of Christianity (about six years ago). That is actually where my reasoning was going with the article. I realized that my faith was not directly in Jesus or God – it was in my parents, preachers, etc, who told me that the bible was true. But I reasoned that they were depending on their parents and preachers, who were… generation after generation! It really goes back, not only to the original authors of the bible, but to the hundreds of translators who were supposedly bringing us the most important information known to man! The sad thing is that these people had an agenda separate from just telling the facts.

When I was finally able to resist my fear of burning in hell enough to say to myself, "What IF the bible is man-made?", then I was able to see things in a whole new light and the floodgates were opened. Before, I was going at it backwards. I was assuming the bible was the word of God, so I had to twist my head around that unmovable fact. But when I was able to look at it as if, just maybe it was not... WOW! Someone can betray our trust once or twice and can eventually restore that trust by being right most of the time – the authors and translators of the bible blew over and over again!

I have nothing against faith. I don't have time/resources to dig up fossils to prove evolution with first-hand experience (or even study it enough to understand all aspects of it) nor do I have an interest in getting a medical degree so I don't have to have faith in my doctor. I'm just fine with trusting other people to do the dirty work for me (and I'll pay the doctor for his time and RD for his books).

I'm sure you will agree that religious faith is not even in the same category. It all comes down to the source of faith and how reliable it is. Science is backed up (hopefully without an agenda); religion is all agenda and no evidence.

Some scientists do have an agenda that may influence the way they interpret data and I give them much more skepticism than I would give a scientist who does not seem to have one. Scientists who believe in ID are a good example. They ignore mountains of evidence contrary to their pre-conceived world-view and admonish tiny anomalies that support them. And although I do think global warming is a real threat, I am pretty skeptical of some of the evidence because I feel that much of it is politically tainted. The people working with the Alex the parrot are good example too. I think they wanted him to reason and think so much that they sometimes let their emotions cloud and influence the way they interpreted what they were seeing - maybe not.

Sorry to carry on so long, but faith is one of my favorite subjects.

Bama

113. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #69986 by bamafreethinker on September 13, 2007 at 2:01 pm

Robert, I meant to convey that I have a "belief" in both Carter and Washington having been president, but that one was based on personal experiences (backed up by modern historians) and the other was strictly based on faith in others – my belief is very strong however in old Georgie. I guess we could strip it down to my faith that the news media wasn't pulling my leg, but then we'd have a conspiracy theory on our hands : ) Of course I could have imagined that whole Jimmy Carter thing…

114. Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science

Comment #69980 by bamafreethinker on September 13, 2007 at 1:19 pm

A little piece on faith I wrote a time ago...

A Real Live Wire

Imagine that a child has made it to the age of five without ever having stuck his finger, or a butter knife, into an electrical outlet and felt the unmistakable sensation of 110 volts traveling through his body. Let's say that this hypothetical child's dad is building an addition to their house and there are exposed, live wires sticking out of a wall plug. Dad had to go away on an emergency business trip and there was just no way to avoid leaving this hazard behind. Of course the boy's mother is very worried that junior will be shocked or even electrocuted, so she sits him down and tries to warn him of the danger.

Mom knows what will happen from experience – now she wants to transfer that belief to her son. She explains that if he so much as touches the exposed wires or touches them with another object, he will get shocked. He will of course ask what it means to get shocked, and she will simply have to say that it hurts – because there is no way to convey what being shocked feels like if you have never experienced it. And although the chances of being killed are low; she may exaggerate the danger a bit to make her son take it as seriously as his immature mind will allow.

But the child thinks how odd this is. He has touched everything in his world up to now, and has never been "shocked". He can imagine how it would hurt if he scraped his legs on the sharp wires, but it has never hurt just to "touch" something like that before. His mother is asking him to accept a strange new belief on faith alone. But this concept just doesn't make any sense to junior. So the boy has two options: He can trust his mother and adopt her belief about what will happen - on faith; or he can walk over to the exposed wires and see what it feels like for himself. If mom has done an effective job of convincing the child, he will probably avoid the hazard. If she is less than persuasive, or if the child is overly-curious; she may still have to keep her eye on him at all times.

Faith allows us to take shortcuts to knowledge or a belief - by relying on the knowledge and experiences of the people in whom we place it. Getting shocked by electricity is only a concept to junior - until the moment he reaches out an inquisitive finger and gets a jolt – then it becomes first hand knowledge! We all know that lessons learned from experience are the best – but that is not always possible or even practical.

Faith: Belief - What's the Difference!

We often use "faith" and "belief" interchangeably, but I would like to point out that there is a significant difference between the two – at least as we will be using them here. Belief is the recognition of a truth. This "truth" may or may not actually be true – but belief means that we think it is. Faith is a substitution for study, learning, and experience. Faith is how we come to believe things that we have not yet had the chance to learn, or perhaps things that we simply are not able to know because of some limitation in our ability, our environment, or the time in which we live.

For example: I believe that Jimmy Carter was President of the United States because I lived during the time that it happened. I saw him on TV, in newspapers, and heard him on the radio. I also believe that George Washington was President, but I am totally lacking any personal experiences like those above. Therefore, my belief in George is based entirely on faith. What is my faith in? Ultimately, it's in the people who recorded and preserved the history of the United States – it's that simple!

So there are two paths that can lead us to a belief in something:

The path of personal experience and first-hand knowledge

The path of faith (Relying on the experience and knowledge of other people)

Which is easier?

Which is better?

Path number one is obviously the best way to learn things: but of course not feasible for everything. We can't all learn to be doctors, lawyers, mechanics, and so on; and we can't go back in time to prove something happened. Number one is not such a good way to learn that jumping off a high building will kill you either!

Ron Coleman

115. Scientists' Good News: Earth May Survive Sun's Demise in 5 Billion Years

Comment #69970 by bamafreethinker on September 13, 2007 at 12:18 pm

The likelihood of a planet "surviving" such an event is probably so small that; when you apply the odds to one particular planet (i.e. earth), the chances are probably greater that a particular god exists! The scientists seem to be looking at it backwards to me. Sure the earth could survive, but then again the FSM could exist.

116. Scientists' Good News: Earth May Survive Sun's Demise in 5 Billion Years

Comment #69945 by bamafreethinker on September 13, 2007 at 9:25 am

(which, as we all know, has much more urgent problems by the way)

I hope this is just a side project and not what some of the best minds in science spend the bulk of their time on...

117. Alex the Parrot

Comment #69746 by bamafreethinker on September 12, 2007 at 2:13 pm

Many of the things we consider to be "love" are probably hard-wired into our brains, but because we can communicate, we tend to analyze things with our peers and put complex and often misplaced meanings behind those traits. Humans often brag to their friends how they would lay down their lives for their children – but how many other species could say the same thing if… they could "say" the same thing : ) I think "love" is a wonderful thing, but I doubt it can be separated definitively from many evolutionary beneficial instincts.

118. Another view

Comment #66184 by bamafreethinker on August 29, 2007 at 7:43 am

"Tell me again how sheep's bladder may be employed to prevent earthquakes."

We've been employing sheep's bladder thusly in Alabama and have had no more than a barely detectible tremor in decades - see it works! You can't prove it doesn't work, so you're a crusty ole stick-in-the-mud if you doubt that it works!

119. Shop targets U.S. hunters with camo Bibles

Comment #66174 by bamafreethinker on August 29, 2007 at 7:29 am

Comment #66119 by Veronique

Oh, dear. What freedom of the press, what freedom of speech and what separation of church and state? It has been so eroded as to be functionally non-existent.

I agree with you totally – my point was that those freedoms are important to strive for. I fear that the more America ages and her government grows and becomes more powerful, the farther we get from those ideal precepts.

Though hunting with modern weapons is in no way a "fair" game between hunter and hunted – it does seem a little more the way nature has done things in the past – especially compared to herding domesticated animals through a slaughter house to receive a bullet to the head or hanging millions of chickens by their feet on a conveyer belt as they are dipped into a pool to be electrocuted. A refrigerated-meat-eater who never pulls a trigger still has blood on his hands figuratively at least. The fact that a hunter enjoys the thrill and the challenge of the chase is something that is probably deeply routed in his evolutionary makeup – aka survival!

Most of us live in a society wealthy and stable enough to support our families through commercial means (where we are sheltered from the killing), but there could perceivably come a time when hunting, fishing, and farming will become a necessity for individual/family survival. There's probably not a poster to this thread who would not kill an innocent dear to survive or to feed his children if there were no readily available alternatives. He or she would probably even feel a sense of pride and satisfaction from having done so – even if the prey had to suffer a little in the process. All of the hunters I know take seriously their responsibility to make as clean and humane a kill as possible and express (I believe) sincere remorse when they fail to do so.

So if a hunter enjoys getting out in nature and responsibly killing his own food and helps to keep the animal population in control – more power to him. (There's always going to be a few idiots out there giving the average hunter a bad name – you can't judge an idiot by the camo on his back) Even If a responsible hunter enjoys pulling the trigger a little - is that any worse than when a non-hunter smiles as he sinks his teeth into a thick, tender fillet?

But who am I to defend deer hunters? I don't even hunt deer! I guess it's the freethinker in me… I do enjoy wild quail hunting a few times a year - and boy, do those little birds taste good… like chicken… only… happier!

The happy animals taste better thing was funny – I don't care who you are!

Bama

120. Shop targets U.S. hunters with camo Bibles

Comment #65870 by bamafreethinker on August 27, 2007 at 7:24 am

I'm from Alabama and yes, I do occasionally wear camo : )

Almost everyone I know is an evangelical Christian and a deer hunter, and close to 100% of those hunters eat what they shoot. Only a vegan could criticize such a hunter – but no more than he should criticize a non-hunting meat-eater or leather consumer. What makes me angry is when one of those hunters makes the statement, "That's what animals were put here for". But I'm not surprised – I saw things through their world view just a few years ago.

I also think that owning guns for sport, recreation, or self-protection is an important part of maintaining a free society. I feel that the right to bear arms is one of the vital necessities to the strength of our country – on par with a free press, the freedom of speech, and the separation of church and state. I own several guns, and use them for recreational target shooting and for their collector's value – and to protect my family if need be. Obviously, some degree of gun control is desirable, but when it comes down to it, gun control takes guns away from the law-abiding citizen and leaves them in the hands of the criminals. I consider it arrogant for someone to think that only a choice few are responsible (moral) enough to own a weapon. Who's to decide who those few are?

I'm proud of America to a degree, but do not blindly agree with everything she does, so I'm no dogmatic patriot. I'm a freethinker when it comes to hunting, guns, patriotism, religion, and the choice of one's garments or the covering of his or her sacred, ancient-myth-texts…