As has been noted by more than a few people here and elsewhere, I tend to err more to the "let's just shut up and be nice" side of things.

Call it upbringing or something, my good, polite Christian mom taught me to do what you believe and believe what you want, and when your mouth opens, say something kind. I take a lot of pride in knowing that our community has had quite a long conversation back and forth across the issues without being unkind, so I'm comfortable reading and enjoying the arguments back and forth.

In terms of aggressive participation, I've lost interest in the aforementioned taboo conversation topics. I have a huge interest in the subjects at hand - but not in the form the conversations usually take, after years and years of having them.

There was a time when I was actively trying to convince Dorkman of the fallacies I found in his Christianity. In a long, unrelated simmering down, I've gotten to the point where people can talk about just about any damned thing and I don't feel the need to respond.

But, for full disclosure and because it's the question at hand...

I'm an atheist, and a very strong one, according to these terms. The part of the conversation I've always been most interested seems to be something that occurs in a proof far back in the arguments back and forth about "God" and the Bible and whatnot, and that is essentially a boiling down of what I see as the real question.

"Do you think the mechanism that facilitated the creation of the Universe cares about us?"

There may be more elegant ways to put it, but frankly, I find this pretty elegant. It pre-questions most of the arguments I've heard.

The mechanism. God? A cosmically inevitable cycle of bouncing gravity? An alien race in desperate need of more space, creating universes left and right for some unfathomable reason?

Facilitated. Through existence allowed or caused the universe to be created. God made it? The universe simply does this? Aliens artificially induced it?

Cares. Comes before all questions of worship, assuming knowledge in the first place. (The only leaping of a conclusion I detect in my sentence.) If God, or a God, did it, were we part of whatever he/they were doing, or a side-effect? If it's an eventuality of cosmic existence and the Drake equation, naturally there's not much of a question. If alien creatures are to blame, does whatever their plan happens to be preclude the existence of little ants mulling around on a rock within it?

It also has the effect of pouring water on the debate, and cools me down when I want to start nitpicking Bible verses. I sort of reject the premise of the Bible entirely, because it absolutely doesn't matter. An intelligent, spiritually active creator is what matters, and only insofar as it's one of many available possibilities. And as it's the keystone of major religions throughout history, not just modern ones, I'd say it's the safest representative of human interpretation in general.

What interests me is that the notion keeps happening - or at least, kept happening, until at least two thousand years ago - not whatever the fuck someone in one particular year in history believes.

I'm not intellectually opposed to some intelligent force creating the universe, that covers two of my basic three possibilities handily. The thing that strikes me as extremely unlikely is that anything responsible for creating a universe, and think about the term universe, cares at all about the various conglomerations of carbon extremely rarely scattered around within it.

Damn. Good post.

In lieu of posting my own response - whatever I'd probably have said has been said already by someone or other - I present you with Food For the Eagle.   

It's the text of a speech Adam (Mythbusters) Savage gave this month to the Harvard Humanist Society.

As supernatural worldviews go, the eagle-food model makes as much sense as any other.  Actually, it makes more sense than many...

I'm not big on labels, but you would not be wrong if you labeled me as a Soto Zen Buddhist.

While I could go on and on about why I practice Buddhism (which in my mind isn't a religion, but whatever) I'll sum up the differences between that and most religions as a contrast between faith and doubt.

I was raised Protestant, and minored in religion in college.  In my life and in my studies the common denominator in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is the concept of reward for faith.  Have faith in God an his chosen messenger (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed) and you will be rewarded.

What I find interesting about Zen in particular and Buddhism in general is that its not based in faith, but in doubt.  The whole point of our Zazen practice is to question, literally, everything.  Question authority, question society, question our community, our very understanding of the world around us.  But more important than any of that...question yourself.  Hold yourself accountable, don't let yourself off the hook.  This is especially hard since our own internal psychological defenses enable quite a bit of self delusion to protect our ego.  Through Zen we question that, and in doing so, aim to destroy this fallacy we have come to understand as, "self."  If this sounds a bit like Tyler Durden's, "You are not a precious snowflake routine," that's because Palahniuk basically took a lot of Zen and formed that character around it (the ritual of leaving the space monkeys at the doorstep and berating them for two days straight before letting them in the house is straight out of a Rinzai Zen ritual for accepting new monks.  I've literally seen it happen).

The Gautama Buddha's dying words to his students were, "Be a lantern unto thyself."  He understood that everything needs to be questioned, even himself.  This appeals to me.  Anything or person that says, "THis is the definitive answer!" tends to set off BS alarms in my mind, and the fact that Zen doesn't claim to KNOW anything definitively feels honest to me.  Zen practice is less about discovering the truth, then pursuing it.

So yeah, while most religion rewards blind faith, Zen rewards contemplative doubt.

How is it that the religion thread is more civil and even tempered than the Star Trek thread?

......

Actually, it's not that surprising.  Never mind.

I look at the universe and am filled with a sense of wonder and beauty and power and awe, and that fills my heart with peace and happiness.  I see the perfect, rational sense that all of it could have absolutely no inherent meaning, naturally.  I also know that we are really bad, as a species, at seeing things that seem obvious in retrospect.  So for now, I'll say that I haven't seen any compelling evidence of a God- making me an atheist by the parameters set forth here.  But I do firmly believe that there is a great deal more order in our universe than we know, and I hope (and it may be a more flimsy hope than any faith) that our species makes it long enough without killing ourselves or being killed to have that order revealed to us.

But if there is a God, I hope it's Dorkman.

Last edited by Kyle (2010-05-16 10:39:23)

If someone asks if Dorkman's a God, YOU SAY YES

Bringing over the conversation from the DR. STRANGELOVE thread:

Of course it is. It is exactly a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

"No Christian would send death threats or harass anyone."
"What about the Crusades?"
"No TRUE Christian..."

Certainly you have a point, up to a point, that there is such a thing as definitional requirements. Someone cannot identify as an atheist but claim to believe in a god. It's not that "no true atheist" would do that, it's that by definition if you do that, you aren't an atheist.

But when it comes to Christianity, it's far less cut and dried. What's a True Christian(TM)? Roman Catholic? Coptic? Anglican? Lutheran? Methodist? Baptist? Anabaptist? Presbyterian? Episcopalian? Calvinist? Puritan? Greek Orthodox? Pentecostal? Congregationalist?

See, here's the problem. You say "New Testament teaching" as if it's some clear, agreed-upon thing. It's not. The whole reason we have so may sects is that they all disagree on what the teachings of the New Testament precisely are, and in particular what their order of priority is. You can argue that New Testament teachings lead one to oppose gay marriage and find scriptural support. You can argue that New Testament teachings support gay marriage and find scriptural support. You can argue that New Testament teachings lead to pacifism and find scriptural support. You can argue that New Testament teachings lead one to be a warhawk and find scriptural support.

"Following New Testament teachings" is so vague as to mean whatever you want them to mean, and as a result everyone thinks they're the True Christians and anyone who disagrees with them is somehow a False Christian, because the True Christian interpretation of scripture is self-evident. Therefore any behavior that disagrees with your idea of what a Christian ought to be can be dismissed as behavior that "no real Christian" would engage in.

You talk about certain things fitting certain categories by definition. As such, you argument fits "no true Scotsman" by definition.

Christ would be surprised to learn that he superseded Judaic law.

"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." -Matthew 5:18-19.

It was Paul -- a Gentile who never met Christ during Christ's life (though supposedly did in a vision years later, conveniently with no one around) -- who began teaching that Judaic law no longer applies. Which, according to Christ, means Paul shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

If we're going to get pedantic.

So, who should we believe? What would a True Christian do?

More likely that any change that occurs after the death of the founder should be viewed with a little suspicion. Either the Gods keep changing how they want to be worshiped, or humans keep changing what they're willing to do with little to no input from the divine. I wouldn't be shocked to discover that anyone not currently sacrificing animals to YHVH on the Temple Mount is in fact going to Hell.

I don't want to talk about this. I have no dog in this fight. I am not a Christian, nor do I subscribe to any other religious or spiritual creed, denomination, sect, cult, faction, fraternity, order or coven. On the other hand, I don't have any problem with anybody who does subscribe to any of that stuff; to them, I say verily, blessed are they that rocketh out with their cockeths out.

So I really don't care.

I do, however, want to clarify the point I (perhaps impulsively) made over in yonder thread from whence this recent attention came.

At the risk of getting all strawmanny, we have two points of view here. One says, "Christianity sucks because Christians do bad things." The other says, "Those people aren't really Christians, so don't judge Christianity by their actions." If anybody wants to get all up in my face about how that's not a fair summation of whatever it is they were trying to say, go right ahead, but I don't care, 'cause those opposing points of view are what I'm talking about just at this very moment.

Both of these positions are fundamentally specious — pronounced "stupid." Lemme splain why.

The phrase "no real Christian" doesn't mean anything. Seriously. I know it means something to you, person who argues from that side of the fence, but it has no objective meaning. How you, as an individual person, define "Christian" is literally between you and your god. There's no objectively true definition of the word, and no authoritative body that has the universally recognized right to define it by fiat, and no widespread consensus about what, specifically, it means. It's inherently a fuzzy term.

Okay, so you say X isn't Christian, so anybody who does X can't be Christian. That's your opinion, and you believe it's — literally! — God's own truth. This is fine. But that doesn't change the fact that some other jerk says X is Christian, and he thinks it's God's own truth too, and sorry, but there's no simple way to determine whether he's right and you're wrong or vice versa.

And besides, the whole line of reasoning misses the point. When somebody says "Christians do X, so Christianity sucks," their argument doesn't hinge on the premise that the people who do X are really, truly, no-shit Christians. There's a subtext, and that subtext is something along the lines of, "People who hold to a set of beliefs that's more or less compatible with mainstream, man-on-the-street Christianity do X," or else, "People call themselves Christian and do X while the rest of the people who call themselves Christian don't denounce those guys," or something like that. It's got nothing to do with whether those guys are really Christian, or whether they're something entirely else but calling themselves by the wrong name, or whether they're just jerks who say they're Christian just to mess with other people who also say they're Christian. So saying that those guys aren't really Christian isn't going to make the argument go away.

On the other hand.

There are, in history, examples of ethics that I think we can all agree are just objectively bad. The notion that it's okay to own other people as property: I think we're all on board with saying that wasn't a great idea. The concept of dealing with workplace stress by loading up as many handguns and as much ammunition as you can carry and going to town on your coworkers? Bad plan. Premeditated genocide? Let's all just rethink that one, cause that one's dumb.

Christianity does not fall into this category. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but it just flat-out doesn't.

There is absolutely no legitimacy to the idea that you can, based on whether somebody self-describes as Christian, draw any conclusions whatsoever about that person's character, values or overall worth as a human being. It's pretty to imagine that self-described Christians should be paragons of virtue, but we all know there are those who aren't, so correlation denied. Whether somebody self-describes as Christian tells you precisely as much about what kind of person they are deep down inside as whether they prefer cream or sugar in their coffee.

So it's just as foolish to find a venal Christian and jump to the conclusion that all Christians are jerks as it is to find a virtuous one and assume they're all awesome. It just ain't that simple, folks.

And before anybody gets the idea that I'm talking about Christianity here, go through all that crap I just spewed out and replace the word "Christian" with any other named ethos you can think of. I'm pretty sure it'll still be just as valid.

Are there Christians out there who want to establish some kind of theocratic state? Sure, no doubt. But that's not true of all Christians, and it's also not unique to Christianity. Hell, Tibet used to be a Buddhist theocracy. Wherever there exists a group of people with a shared set of axioms, sooner or later some damn fool will show up who thinks those axioms should be made mandatory, and that the opposite of orthodoxy is apostasy. Those people are jerks, whatever flag they happen to pick their noses under.

But you know what else you can find if you look hard enough? Pick a religion, any religion, even expanding your definition of "religion" to include anything even vaguely spiritual. Look around for a bit, and I guarantee you'll find some adherent of that belief system who draws from it the comfort and courage he needs to get through the day. Maybe it comes from prayer, maybe it comes from chanting, maybe it comes from meditation, maybe it comes from stripping starkers and dancing around a bonfire like a weirdo. Whatever it is, it's not hurting anybody, and it's making at least that one person just that much happier.

And if you'd deny that guy his faith, and the joy he derives from it, just because some other guys who don't even know that guy decided to do something stupid … well, you're either somebody who's never longed for a little comfort or courage during a long, lonely night — in which case, fuck off, robot — or you're just an asshole.

TLDR? Some people are jerks. Most aren't. We should judge folks by what they do, not solely by what they profess to believe.