Religion

[Immanuel Can]

Apparently not. Apparently, all the obvious design in nature is not something capable of impressing you.

You are trivially impressed by cheap parlour tricks. I have higher standards.

Creation, a "trivially impressive, cheap parlour trick"?

Apparently I was right: nothing will impress you. That would signal not that you are referring to a high standard, but rather that you have no standards by which it's possible to make any impression on your chosen beliefs -- or so it would seem. Your mind's made up.

[Immanuel Can]

BOTH! Some are agnostic athiests and others are gnostic atheist.

Fine. Let's start there.

Agnostic Atheists know nothing about God, and just don't want Him to exist. Granted. But what does a Gnostic Atheist know, precisely? If it's "That God does not exist," then how does he come to know that? If it's not that, then what other relevant thing does he know?

I question the underlined addition here. Why do you think this is a necessary part of one being an Agnostic Atheist?

That's easy. If he said he "knew" something about the existence of God, he'd be claiming knowledge. That means he'd no longer be "agnostic," by definition. A "knowing agnostic" is like a square circle or a married bachelor...just a logical contradiction.

I just literally didn't know enough about any specific religion's presumed reality in light of the fact that there is at least more than ONE religion.

There's more than one answer to any question. Some of them aren't right, though.

Then it shouldn't be hard to say what your reasons are for "ruling out religious beings." What are they?

(1)I lack the power to observe beyond my particular life's existence. If a God is absent in the physical sense to us, what potential evidence suffices to determine THAT some being even exists at all?

That's just a claim not to know. And that's personal, not universal. Unless you claim that you are owed all knowledge, then the fact that you have a gap in your knowledge does not imply that the thing you don't know about does not exist. All it means is, if it exists you admit you know nothing about that; but that someone else might.

(2)People are prone to err.

Sure, sometimes they're wrong, and sometimes they're right. But that doesn't suggest anything about the God question. It doesn't tell us which it is. So again, this amounts to a personal worry that your own knowledge may be errant, but no certainty as to whether or not anybody else's is.

This means that any claims about things by people are not sufficient to PROVE their claims universally true for other people beyond themselves.

No, that doesn't follow. As we are right now, perhaps I lack the means to convince you I've been to Africa. But that won't mean I haven't been to Africa, or that Africa doesn't exist. Again, all it means is that week may I have proof for what you do not have proof.

(3)(a) If only one particular religion is correct, there are still more than one religion.

Did someone promise that all religions must be equal? Who told you that? Did they also tell you that all answers to "What is the capital of the United States" are equal?

Which of the infinite possible religions that we can create would be true.

No religion man himself could "create" could possibly be more than speculative.

(b) Would it be rationally pragmatic to think you can disprove an infinity of these possible claims?

It wouldn't even be necessary. It's not necessary to disprove that 2+2=1,226 in order to know that 2+2=4. Knowing the right answer rules out all the contradicting others, no matter how many there are.

(4) None can be disprovable.

See above.

My Gnostic take against specific religious beliefs are too many to list here. So begin with the general sample reasons above for a start.

Well, what you've suggested is that you are personally feeling confused as to what might be the truth. That's fair. But it's not a claim to knowledge of anything, but rather merely a confession of personal confusion. Nothing in that suggests that the confusion is universal or inevitable; only that it's your own present experience. But even for you, that can change. Personal experience is not permanent, and it has no application to other people.

So there would be no point in arguing in favour of Atheism, then. All you could reasonably say is, "Well, I don't know."

But note that I also

(5) ...would not even require calling myself 'Atheist' if it weren't for the FORCE of those who ARE religious that impose their beliefs upon me in some derogatory way.

I'm always bemused by this claim. Are you experiencing somebody "forcing" something, or "imposing" in some "derogatory" way? Or are you merely experiencing someone debating you as to the truth?

It's pretty hard to imagine how people can "force" you by email, or "impose" by the same means. So I surmise you must be referring to some experience in your own life, no?

Non-believer: "Why am I being punished by you?"
Believer: "You are not. God is punishing you THROUGH me. You'll have to take that up with Him."

Is somebody "punishing" you? Or, to use another word you used, is someone "abusing" you?

Or do you find discussion, debate and perhaps disagreement in an exchange of view as some kind of "violence"? That seems pretty fragile, if that's it.

...So your beef against the atheist should count for the other religions that also disagree with your interpretation of the truth at least relatively. It is NOT an antiquated concept. You believe that the God of the other religions is lacking substance or is 'mythical' in the same way an atheist would be towards all religions.

I would simply say that just as the Atheist thinks all "religious" people are wrong, the "religious" persons believe Atheists are wrong, and every contrary "religion" is also wrong. But that's very ordinary: in all matters that involve truth, the person who has one answer believes that every other answer is wrong. The person who believes the earth is round believes that those who said it was flat were all wrong. There's nothing even remotely unusual about that. Truth is always exclusive.

After all, don't Atheists claim that "religious" people are all wrong? Is that not because they think the statement "There is no God" is the truth? And if they don't think it's true, why do they even bother to assert it?

[Immanuel Can]

This is boring and stupid. All you ever do is pick a couple of sentences to argue against and ignore the point I make. I don't think that is very good, or very worthwhile.

You are not obligated, then. Conversation is always optional.

[Immanuel Can]

What experts have you consulted, Immanuel?

Quite a number, actually.

For example, the definition given by a guy like a Paden is very different from that of Frazer, or Durkheim, or Jung, or Berger, or Hart, or Freud...and so on. Go look, and you'll see: there's no actual standard definition -- just a bunch of different proposals for what it might be. And if you consult any expert at a university, they'll tell you the same thing.

[Univalence]

Creation, a "trivially impressive, cheap parlour trick"?

Apparently I was right: nothing will impress you. That would signal not that you are referring to a high standard, but rather that you have no standards by which it's possible to make any impression on your chosen beliefs -- or so it would seem. Your mind's made up.

Are you forgetful or just lying?

And if not, then what additional sign would the "entity" have to perform in order to convince you?

Spawn another universe.

[uwot]

If a God is absent in the physical sense to us, what potential evidence suffices to determine THAT some being even exists at all?

All it means is, if it exists you admit you know nothing about that; but that someone else might.

This tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Mr Can. He knows about his god, but you don't. Which stands to reason because, again, as Xenophanes pointed out:

But mortals suppose gods are born,
Wear their own clothes and have a voice and body.
The Ethiopians say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each of their own kind.

So ya see Mr Can's god is Mr Can.

[FlashDangerpants]

Even experts in the secular study of "religion" can't make up their collective minds what the right way to distinguish a "religion" really is. If you look at the literature, you'll see that's true. So it's not just my say-so, it's the reality.

What experts have you consulted, Immanuel? Religion is devotion to a common purpose and that being so it's sufficiently inclusive to cover Nazism , and Daesh, besides the primitive religions of place and natural forces that preceded the Axial Age.

He's not actually wrong on that point. In the social sciences there is a standard list used to sort of decide if something has the features of religion. It's all stuff like whether there are shared rituals and common purposes, but doesn't mention belief in any supernatural entity. I can't remember its name, but I got very low marks for an essay on the subject where I was enirely scathing of what amounts to a Buzzfeed listicle passing for serious analysis. The notorious problem with it is that it cannot reliably seperate out supporting a football team from a religion.

The value of this objection though is more or less zero. There are numerous things which are worth describing even though we cannot precisely define them. It is in their nature that sometimes the precise taxonomy is fuzzy around the edges, these controversies are often why we even bother to discuss them at all.

Sometimes we can't decide if a specific killing counts as a murder or not. We don't on this basis decide that murder is a worthless category that should no longer be mentioned. Murderers would probably like us to do so. I think Logik had a big silly thread about that somewhere.

It is genuinely difficult to work out whether some religions are mere cults or not, but that only shows that religion is a meaningful category that happens to be impossible define perfectly.

The classic though is obviously pornography. See the Supreme Court case Jacobellis v. Ohio of 1964. That was a case in which the precise definition of hardcore porno was in dispute and the judgment went like this...

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it

If the supreme court won't take the position that porno can't exist because it can't be strictly defined, that trick isn't going to work with anything else.

[Belinda]

No known society is without religion. Anthropologists study this species-wide phenomenon as a human trait or institution, an element of culture, seeking a deep understanding of all, not just the "world," religions and their local significance. From this breadth, anthropologists of religion ask: What is religion? Are there any common elements? How did it originate? Intentionally nontheological, the anthropology of religion is less concerned with, for example, whether ancestor spirits of the New Guinea Maring people really interact with the living people than with how that perception influences culture. Despite the intention of objectivity, a strong thread of philosophical naturalism permeates the field from E. B. Tylor, James Fraser, and Emile Durkheim to Raymond Firth and Stewart Guthrie. Important exceptions include Edward Evans-Pritchard, Victor Turner, and Roy Rappaport.

Encyclopedia.com

Naturalism

in philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.


Britannica

Flashdangerpants wrote:

The notorious problem with it is that it cannot reliably seperate out supporting a football team from a religion.

But that's not too difficult. When supporting a football team ,its behaviour on and off pitch, its ethos, and its value to individuals becomes a significan part of the culture of the team's supporters it's a religion, and a worthwhile example of a religion.

[Belinda]

uwot wrote:

So ya see Mr Can's god is Mr Can.

That's okay as long as he recognises it and recognises each person's god pertains to that person only. God is subjective and often in important respects is intersubjective.

Nobody should coerce (or indoctrinate) others to believe in their god.

[Univalence]

No known society is without religion.
in philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophyy...

In the broadest of senses - if you practice a set of rituals as enshrined by a certain sub-culture, then you are religious.
It means you have made a choice to practice some rituals and not others.

You have chosen one religion and not another.

What isn't being addressed is "HOW and WHY have you chosen to practice that particular religion?"

But that's not too difficult. When supporting a football team ,its behavior on and off pitch, its ethos, and its value to individuals becomes a significan part of the culture of the team's supporters it's a religion, and a worthwhile example of a religion.

That doesn't address the fundamental issue. Sport and Philosophy and Christianity - they are all religions because they all enshrine a certain kind of ethos, a certain kind of rituals practices by all members of that sub-culture, and a certain set of values.

So far we have only spoken about inclusionary criteria. What IS a religion. Every belief-system is a religion, because in the broadest of sense every belief-system has rules, rituals and values.

We have said absolutely nothing about is exclusionary criteria. What criteria are sufficient for exclude something from being a religion?

[uwot]

uwot wrote:

So ya see Mr Can's god is Mr Can.

That's okay as long as he recognises it and recognises each person's god pertains to that person only. God is subjective and often in important respects is intersubjective.

Nobody should coerce (or indoctrinate) others to believe in their god.

Well said. Mr Can, along with anyone else, can believe whatever they like, but it's a bloody cheek to insist that anyone who disagrees is "irrational".

[Belinda]

Uwot wrote:

Mr Can, along with anyone else, can believe whatever they like, but it's a bloody cheek to insist that anyone who disagrees is "irrational".

There was a conversation perhaps on this thread where I mentioned St Paul and differentiating between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. I think this matters because although it's not irrational to hold to the literal interpretation of The Bible or the Koran it blinkers the person who does this as they then might find it difficult to see the spirit of the moral law.

[Immanuel Can]

Spawn another universe.

That makes no sense. If God literally "spawned another universe," and it was, by definition, "another universe," you could not possibly be aware of it -- because a "universe" is all that exists; and if you became aware of it, it would, by definition, no longer be another universe but a mere extension of this one.

So essentially, you've said "If God created a square circle or a married bachelor, then I'd believe in Him." But the problem is not in God's ability, but in your response. For God does not do the ridiculous or self-defeating. As C.S. Lewis observed in reference to the God-and-the-rock paradox, "Nonsense is still nonsense, even when we use it to talk about God."

So you'll have to forgive me for not taking a self-contradiction as a serious response.

[Univalence]

That makes no sense. If God literally "spawned another universe," and it was, by definition, "another universe," you could not possibly be aware of it -- because a "universe" is all that exists; and if you became aware of it, it would, by definition, no longer be another universe but a mere extension of this one.

So essentially, you've said "If God created a square circle or a married bachelor, then I'd believe in Him." But the problem is not in God's ability, but in your response. For God does not do the ridiculous or self-defeating. As C.S. Lewis observed in reference to the God-and-the-rock paradox, "Nonsense is still nonsense, even when we use it to talk about God."

So you'll have to forgive me for not taking a self-contradiction as a serious response.

"Essentially" I've said none of the things you are claiming that I've said.

All of the above 'problems' and 'contradictions' you are pointing out. They aren't problems with my definitions/conceptions/episteme.

They are problems with yours.

Because if "universe" is all that exists then your God doesn't...

It is when you have a true dichotomy. The light switch is on, or its off. The man is dead, or he is alive.

It's a true dichotomy. God either exists or doesn't...

[Immanuel Can]

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