Southerly: The Problem With Religion
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My further respect.
Kewl, I'll, uh, pass it on. Like next time the Jehovah's show, as they're wont to do in these parts, I'll tell them how, while I wouldn't still be on deck but for a blood transfusion, I admire their pacifist stand in WW2. They always look so grateful as they toddle off in search of more promising victims, poor buggers.
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Then again, absence of proof is not proof of absence. William Cowper. He was a poet, and as Bjork said 'you can't trust a poet'.
Yes, as a principle for enabling the possibility of God, it sounds weak. When applied to some other domain, like my business, it's Gospel. The absence of proof of a bug is not proof of the absence of a bug. Indeed, it's near impossible to prove the absence of bugs*, and the corollary is that bugs almost certainly exist. Try using Occam's Razor as a way of showing there's no bugs in a program, and it won't fly.
Which is why I think that ideas like Occam's Razor betray an inherent bias that people often struggle to see. It's so built in to their understanding of science that they can't see that it's basically an aesthetic choice, not a rational one, in the end.
*Yes, I'm well aware that programs can be "proved correct" (and also aware that piss-all programs ever are). But that transfers the problem to finding bugs in the proof.
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Yes, as a principle for enabling the possibility of God, it sounds weak. When applied to some other domain, like my business, it's Gospel.
I'm just sayin'.
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Chris
Sorry, no Andin. My dish is but persuasive language with a sprinkling of anecdote
And you are very good at it.
Communication misunderstanding I thought you were referring to the Long March. I see from your links you meant the Cultural Revolution.
Not much I can say, I don't want to reduce all those lives lost to numbers. Its a problem in China (it may be changing I don't know) individual lives sometimes don't count for much. It may have something to do with China's history.
Russia had similar problems in its violent transition from an absolute monarchy to communism. The population transferred their total submission from the Czar/Church to the leaders of the Bolsheviks, and Stalin exploited it.
Anyway wayyy to serious, Im off to take in the sunset. -
Nice, enjoy it Andin.
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chris wrote:
'The Problem with Religion' works because
1. It is very funny
2 It is a popularized stance.
if this were an attack on feminism thinly veiled under the title 'The Problem with -isms', or an attack on homosexuality titled 'The Problem with Sexuality', all hell would break loose.Many thanks for your thoughtful comments, Chris. May I politely disagree with your point 2 (above).
I think it's the opposite of why the humour (hopefully) works. Religious belief is far and away the majority/power-holder position in the world; and humour tends to be a good tool when directed against the majority/power-holders. Poking fun at minorities/disempowered (feminists or homosexuals in your example) just isn't as funny -- or, at least, not to me.
In this piece I was attempting to use the word 'loud' as a metaphor (or do I mean metonym?) for the all-pervasiveness of religion in the world. If you're not religious, as I'm not, it's very easy to become downhearted by the 'loudness' of the hatred and intolerance, the horror of the hypocrisy and scandals (see Brendan Smyth, Graham Capill, etc.), and all the other 'bad' bits of religion.
Sometimes it requires an effort to stand back and remind myself that religion does also (much more quietly) do many good things for society -- as listed in the penultimate paragraph of the essay, which plays on the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46).
This is just my perspective as a non-religious person; as a religious person you will, no doubt, see these thing from an entirely different angle.
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the further adventures of Cardinal Number...
And try doing science without basic concepts like zero.
I believe the Mayan culture had Zero,
before the Conquistadors/church arrived
and tried to reduce them to that...
torching all their books for good measure -
Sometimes it requires an effort to stand back and remind myself that religion does also (much more quietly) do many good things for society.
I would much rather you gave the credit for all those good things to the people who perform them. Crediting it to that vague spectre religion does them a disservice. Tho' they may credit their particular faith, Im sure they would really get a kick out of a personal thanks at the time.
Ben
Then again, absence of proof is not proof of absence. William Cowper. He was a poet, and as Bjork said 'you can't trust a poet'.
Yes, as a principle for enabling the possibility of God, it sounds weak.You could on the right track there Ben.
Victor Stenger in his new book suggests a lack of evidence for gods is evidence for the lack of gods
David I must also apologise for my first grumpy post. Sorry. -
In very late 1999, I had a bet with the most senior programmer at the firm I was at that despite all the testing they had done for the millennium bug, that there would still be at least one. He was adamant that there would not be because they had gone over every program with a fine tooth comb for years, spent millions trying to find the bugs, and had fixed all the ones they found. All the evidence suggested that there was no bug.
I won. There was a bug, not at all serious, but still....
Y2K was the perfect scam, trading on religious fear in many ways. Yes, because it's significance derives from the birth of Christ, but also because it was a perfect Pascal's Bet scenario.
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andin wrote:
David I must also apologise for my first grumpy post. Sorry.
Crikey, no apology necessary! I wasn't offended at all. Although now I shall have to go back and check whether I should've been! [Checks] No... phew!
I would much rather you gave the credit for all those good things to the people who perform them. Crediting it to that vague spectre religion does them a disservice. Tho' they may credit their particular faith, Im sure they would really get a kick out of a personal thanks at the time.
It's rather unknowable, isn't it? Certainly I've met people who claim that religion provides them with a moral code that they are unable to find elsewhere -- and that, in some cases, this has enabled them to change (for the good) as people. But , of course, as you point out, it's always polite to thank people rather than their faith!
I've been having this same discussion by email with a couple of PA readers. One of them writes:
I believe in pretty much the same values and behaviour as mainstream Christianity, but without the prize of going to heaven, or the fear of going to hell if I don't. How magnanamous is that!
... which is an interesting point.
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Many thanks for your thoughtful comments, Chris. May I politely disagree with your point 2 (above).
Certainly David (and I have strong doubts that I'd fit the criteria of religious;), you're more than welcome to, perhaps I didn't word it so well, however I feel the ideas that
~Religious belief is far and away the majority/power-holder position in the world
~and anti religious critique has been popularized
are mutually exclusive. The bible has sold up to 6 billion copies, and compared to Mao's anti religious Red Book (800-900 million,) Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities (a mere 200 million) it's unparalleled in popularity. But I'd argue that they are all popular, and have all been popularized.
The Beatles remain a powerhouse to this day depite;
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink… We're more popular than Jesus now—I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity."
And while it's easy to overlook the influence of this moment in history (and others like it) from our vantage point, we can't underestimate the popularity of this perspective.
With regards to
Religious belief is far and away the majority/power-holder position in the world
I think the modern consensually agreed perspective of what constitutes reality as presented by mainstream media holds far more sway in terms of our belief and is far more influenced by science than any religion. I see very little mention of God's causal influence on the weather report, and very little connection between the laws that now govern us and the Ten Commandments, despite the fact that people can still be imprisoned for adultery in South Korea. When we sing "God Defend New Zealand", we know "The USA Defend New Zealand"
I especially the latter half of your initial post which I totally agree with, ie for every bad ass who will misappropriate religious/political/ cultural beliefs for selfish reasons there are scores of good ones, I just always get a little queasy when I see the religious or religions under the gun, as I feel for the most part many are in an unenviable position,especially the Hare Krishna. and I do feel sorry for some old timers who have done more good in their life than I'll ever do, according to the gospel, only to have the world turn on them.
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Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink… We're more popular than Jesus now—I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity."
I'm not sure which is more annoying - acting like Jesus was the son of God, or some musician. The massive scale rituals we enact to that effect definitely rival Christians for loudness. Last time I looked, Duran Duran had the Guinness Record for the loudest crowd at a concert.
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Duran Duran had the Guinness Record for the loudest crowd at a concert.
a dubious honour for the band. I've always wondered how it would feel to be in a band like that, maintaining a career decades after releasing anything of note. I'd rather be in Duran Duran than say Nickelback, but either way it must become torturous dolling out the same tired hits year after year. I couldn't imagine a worse profession.
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I see very little mention of God's causal influence on the weather report
Probly not such a winning sales pitch for the church, that one
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The deranged Doctor Durand-Durand, from whom the hairspray boys took their name, attempts some rather unchristian sonic mayhem:
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Ok, so they generally call this blowing smoke up someone's fattoush, but it speaks to the viral nature of religion (and the internet), idol worship, and a bit of a laff...
Hope it's not too old.
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No one seemed to notice my RB missive above. Or was it just too much for you all to admit that's how you feel? ;-)
Anyhoo, Stephen Hawkings said this;
To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.
"The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."
The argument is so strong... etc
If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans...
Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," warned Hawking.
I'm sorry, what? Oh, sorry, Stephen Hawkings said it, so it must be true.
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I tend to think that speculation about aliens is a form of science. It's very much akin to our speculation about gods thousands of years ago. From that, the occasional idea arises that might be observable, or lead to an experiment, and science progresses a little. Consider that the planets are named after gods...
But it's not particularly well developed science, however well developed the other science is that the speculators are working on, because so far no aliens have been reliably confirmed to exist.
Hawkings' guess is as good as anyone's. The sample data size of aliens is currently zero.
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Then there's the meteorite theory about the precursors of life on Earth coming from outer space. Amino acids, formic acid and the like being essential for the primordial soup to produce life, Jim, but not as we know it.
We are the aliens. And look at what we're doing to the planet! He is right.
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That bodes well for my chances of one day having sex with aliens.
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Ha!
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No one seemed to notice my RB missive above. Or was it just too much for you all to admit that's how you feel? ;-)
That bodes well for my chances of one day having sex with aliens.
Someonez haz to seez them firzt
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