Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: No problem.

Remember the nacreous spheroids?

Yes I do remember, but I am also aware of the thousands of lurkers who might be reading this thread and I feel compelled to counter statements, that are sometimes made, that I do not agree with.

thedoc wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: No problem.

Remember the nacreous spheroids?

Yes I do remember, but I am also aware of the thousands of lurkers who might be reading this thread and I feel compelled to counter statements, that are sometimes made, that I do not agree with.

Yes, I suppose. But maybe "thousands" is a bit high as an estimate. I'd think more in terms of the one or two...maybe.

Still, sometimes it's worth it. You're right.

Just not always.

thedoc wrote:It seems that AK is up to VT's tricks, picking a fight, and then trying to blame it on the other person. Perhaps they are just socks, one for the other.

Who's picking a fight? I'm commenting on what's been said.

Immanuel Can wrote:... He's already exhibited a suicidal tendency to insult God. ...

Who has? I just said 'it' was a bastard and given that presumably 'it' doesn't have a father that's just a fact. Your 'God' doesn't like facts?

I'm sure he doesn't think that there's any Judgment to come, ...

I don't give a shit if there is or not as I act fairly morally in my life and if this 'God' is as thin-skinned as Trump then it can go fuck 'itself'.

and I'm sure he imagines that he has no soul to lose; ...

Where's it going to go?

ut as a Christian, of course I do. I made a decision some time ago not to make his situation worse for him. ...

Mainly because you fear for yourself, guilt by association if your 'God's' wont is it not.

He may not care, but I actually do. ...

Save your piety, it's false.

So don't worry; we're not going to be communicating with each other at all.

But only on the sly eh!

thedoc wrote:Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim to follow "one God" yet they are all very different, they even have many different flavors of the "same" religion. Do you really still claim that all who believe in one God are a homogeneous mass of people? Do Anglicans, Lutherans and Quakers all believe the same thing?

Er! You all believe there is one and only one 'God' I'd have thought?

Are you claiming that there and loads of 'God's'? Although it does say this in the Bible so maybe you do. I know some Africans do, although they say the Muslim's 'God' is a false 'God' but a 'God' nonetheless, just not the one true one.

All the monotheistic cults assert that there are loads of gods: The True God (the one that had the good taste to choose us) and all the false gods, or idols or daemons or whatever all those rejected peoples worship. This means that we can do whatever we like with those other peoples (and their land and their daughters and their cattle), because our god doesn't like them or consider them worthy of respect or mercy.

It does say that in the bible.
Some of them pretend that their religion makes them loving and kind, but the vicious ones are equally true to their same religion.
Good people behave well, whether they believe in anything supernatural or not; bad people behave badly, no what they profess to believe.
And the apologists blow a lot of hot air.

Skip wrote:All the monotheistic cults assert that there are loads of gods: The True God (the one that had the good taste to choose us) and all the false gods, or idols or daemons or whatever all those rejected peoples worship.

Not at all true, of course. You've combined the terms "real God" and "imaginary gods" into a single collective, "loads of gods." There is but one, in monotheism, by definition.

This means that we can do whatever we like with those other peoples (and their land and their daughters and their cattle), because our god doesn't like them or consider them worthy of respect or mercy.

True in some cases. (Islam, for example, in Sura 5:51.) In others, not so. I've never heard of a Quaker or Mennonite who harmed other people (or their cattle) out of a belief such as you describe. In fact, Matthew 5:44 expressly rules out any such interpretation.

Some of them pretend that their religion makes them loving and kind, but the vicious ones are equally true to their same religion.

Not so. Judge the religion by what it says, and the people by the extent to which they obey it, and you'd be being fair. Generalize, and it's just bigotry.

Good people behave well, whether they believe in anything supernatural or not; bad people behave badly, no what they profess to believe.

Of course. But there's a key difference. People who are good for reasons of belief know WHY they are obliged to be good. People who do not have a belief of which they are aware, such as Atheists, say, may behave well...but there's not obligation for them to do so.

In fact, a mass murderer is not a "bad Atheist." Stalin and Mao were as "good" as Atheists as anybody. Atheism has no view of whether or not it's right to murder...in fact, no opinion about moral matters at all.

So what will always happen is this: nice Atheists won't kill, and not-so-nice Atheists will. Both will be equally "good" or "bad" Atheists, whichever they do. In fact, they will have no way of even being able to prove what "good" and "bad" are, so they're just be plain "Atheists," whether they kill or not. Again, Atheism has no statement on that issue.

and the apologists blow hot air

Isn't it kinda pathetic, when the only good Christians a Christian apologist can cite are the ones the mainstream Christian churches forced right off their continent? (Not the ones they exterminated.)

Any religion can be made to say anything its most power practitioners want it to, at any given moment, and its exact opposite three minutes later.

Immanuel Can wrote:People who do not have a belief of which they are aware, such as Atheists, say, may behave well...but there's not obligation for them to do so.

Really? Do goodwill, empathy, compassion, friendliness, kindness not count here? Why do you assume that all non believers are not philosophically inclined? Many see religion as an impediment to ethics because unreasoned dogma has a long history of driving conflict and disharmony.

Whatever, as Skip suggested, we all just basically do what we think is right, no matter our beliefs. What else can we do with what we've been given but the best we can manage at any given time? If our "best" involves prioritising the wisdom of antiquity over the stronger grasp of reality of modernity, or vice versa, it doesn't much matter in the final washup.

In the end some commonsense is needed. People who believed that viruses and bacteria were evil spirits and treated illness with exorcism may have interesting ideas, but they are obviously not reliable enough witnesses to quote their beliefs in science text books, for instance.

However, when it comes to working with internal dynamics, science tends not to have much to say. So there is value in the ancients' reports of their experiments in consciousness. Buddhists and Hindus had a direct approach here whereas the less cerebral Abrahamic religions reported their findings achieved via the devotional path. That's valuable knowledge passed down by our ancestors, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was something more to it all than is supposed by pragmatic materialism. However, most religious material strikes me as culturally specific rather than universal, with the pearls buried amongst the swine.

Immanuel Can wrote: Yes, I suppose. But maybe "thousands" is a bit high as an estimate. I'd think more in terms of the one or two...maybe.

Still, sometimes it's worth it. You're right.

Just not always.

So I'm an optimist.

Greta wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:People who do not have a belief of which they are aware, such as Atheists, say, may behave well...but there's not obligation for them to do so.

Really? Do goodwill, empathy, compassion, friendliness, kindness not count here? Why do you assume that all non believers are not philosophically inclined? Many see religion as an impediment to ethics because unreasoned dogma has a long history of driving conflict and disharmony.

You seem to have missed the word "obligation", all those qualities are part of christian teaching, but are not part of the Atheist dogma, even though many Atheists hold those qualities as important. That is not to say that some Christians and some Atheists do not see those qualities as important, but that is not the point, the point is what is taught and what is expected.

thedoc wrote:

Greta wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:People who do not have a belief of which they are aware, such as Atheists, say, may behave well...but there's not obligation for them to do so.

Really? Do goodwill, empathy, compassion, friendliness, kindness not count here? Why do you assume that all non believers are not philosophically inclined? Many see religion as an impediment to ethics because unreasoned dogma has a long history of driving conflict and disharmony.

You seem to have missed the word "obligation", all those qualities are part of christian teaching, but are not part of the Atheist dogma, even though many Atheists hold those qualities as important. That is not to say that some Christians and some Atheists do not see those qualities as important, but that is not the point, the point is what is taught and what is expected.

"Atheist dogma"? Could you please direct me to the texts?

If you think secular thinkers are not frequently bound by strong senses of obligation then that is a failure of empathy on your part. We are fully formed humans, just like you. We are in no way inhuman, despite what some may think.

thedoc wrote: the Atheist dogma,

Where, please, is the text to be found?

Oddly, people were both obliged and expected to behave well in all the human communities that existed for +/-30,000 years before the invention of any of the One True Gods. Most of them managed to do it, without any threat of hellfire or promise of heaven - just because it was proper behaviour.
Beats me, why the Abrahamics find common decency so difficult.

Immanuel Can wrote:You've combined the terms "real God" and "imaginary gods" into a single collective, "loads of gods." There is but one, in monotheism, by definition.

The bible is a genuinely miraculous book: it means exactly what you wish it to mean without having to read it. The first of the 10 commandments god gives to Moses is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." There are references to other gods throughout the OT; Yahweh is the god of Israel, everyone else has their own god, that Yahweh created to keep order. This is short, to the point and written by someone who has actually read the bible: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusi ... -many-gods

Immanuel Can wrote:

This means that we can do whatever we like with those other peoples (and their land and their daughters and their cattle), because our god doesn't like them or consider them worthy of respect or mercy.

True in some cases. (Islam, for example, in Sura 5:51.) In others, not so. I've never heard of a Quaker or Mennonite who harmed other people (or their cattle) out of a belief such as you describe. In fact, Matthew 5:44 expressly rules out any such interpretation.

Clearly Mr Can has not read the book of Joshua, which is almost exclusively about conquest, genocide, spies hiding in the house of a prostitute, slavery, all, as Skip implies, with the blessing and sometimes orders from god.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Some of them pretend that their religion makes them loving and kind, but the vicious ones are equally true to their same religion.

Not so. Judge the religion by what it says, and the people by the extent to which they obey it, and you'd be being fair. Generalize, and it's just bigotry.

The thing is, Quakers and Mennonites, along with everyone else that calls themselves a christian, uses the same source material as everyone else. Some of these people believe that members of other sects will burn in hell, because they are not worshipping the right way.

Immanuel Can wrote:People who are good for reasons of belief know WHY they are obliged to be good.

Because they will burn in hell if they don't.

Immanuel Can wrote:People who do not have a belief of which they are aware, such as Atheists, say, may behave well...but there's not obligation for them to do so.

No; they're just good people.

Immanuel Can wrote:Atheism has no view of whether or not it's right to murder...in fact, no opinion about moral matters at all.

Ha!

Immanuel Can wrote:Generalize, and it's just bigotry.

That is because you are a divine command theorist, and believe that whatever god commands is 'good', genocide, slavery, killing 'witches' being examples. Atheists, having no fear of everlasting torture, base their ethics on concerns for the well-being of people here, now, on Earth.

Greta wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:People who do not have a belief of which they are aware, such as Atheists, say, may behave well...but there's not obligation for them to do so.

Really? Do goodwill, empathy, compassion, friendliness, kindness not count here?

How on earth do you come to that conclusion?

No, they always matter...but commitment to them is only haphazard and local, unless it can be shown that there is a rational and necessary basis for practicing them. There are nice Atheists...I have a lot of friends who don't agree with my Theism, and they're fine people. But not one of them -- not a single one, nor anyone here -- can explain to me why any Atheist MUST be good. Atheism has no such explanation.

Why do you assume that all non believers are not philosophically inclined?

Show me where I said that.

I did not. And I do not.

Many see religion as an impediment to ethics because unreasoned dogma has a long history of driving conflict and disharmony.

And there's a lot too that. But you need to specify what religion. For some have "driven" quite a lot, and none more than the alleged "Religion of Peace," Islam -- and that's statistical. However, some groups have never produced a single war, a single pogrom or as single act of cruelty on record. Consider the Salvation Army, the Anabaptists, the Quakers, and so on. Their records, by any fair account, are wonderful.

Meanwhile, 148 million died in secular wars in the last century alone. Not only is "religion' not a significant cause of that, it's not even in the top five causes.

What's number 1? Secular ideologies: and chief among them, Communism. But then, there isn't a thing in Atheism to say why a good Atheist cannot be an operative for Stalin's purges or the Maoist Cultural Revolution. Those are entirely-permissible Atheist options.

Buddhists and Hindus...

Take a look around the world. How do you see their countries faring? Any ideas why?