What do you gain from criticism of a religious teaching you do not follow or believe in?

[Spirit of Light]

We do see examples of these folks in these debates. We see plenty of right wing disinformation and these same folks being evangelicals. They even spout off some rather racist rhetoric, of course subtly.


Well there's plenty of atheists who won't accept any religious truth from a believer. Why? Because those concepts are all based on faith, not facts or reason. Do you accept this? Do you accept that rational thinkers require facts and reason as a basis for belief?

The radical atheist sounds like a trouble maker and I don't see many of them.


And atheists are here to serve the blind faith audience. Do you accept this?

No I do not agree.

 

[Spirit of Light]

I only speak about 4-5 atheists not all of them

 

[F1fan]

Biased to whom? To the atheists?

Your bias against atheists. We see this bias frequently by believers. Believers have faith in their own belief, and their presumption of authority from God. It seems the existence of atheists is ITSELF an insult to those who believe in a God. In some sense the believer can wonder "How dare these people deny my God, or any God, exists."

A friend's mom once asked me about my religious beliefs and I knew she was a fervent Christian. I told her I was Buddhist (not atheist because i know there is a strong bias about this word) and she said "At least you believe in something." I found it an odd statement as if we humans need to believe in something to BE something. I don't. I try to limit my beliefs as much as possible. Theists really seem dependent on belief in God, and even if other theists believe in some other version of God it's at least someone who believes. Atheists break this comfort and tribal unity.

My Buddhism isn't about identity at all, it more that I recognize the lessons as a means to manage my mind.

 

[F1fan]

No I do not agree.

So you are demanding atheists accept things about theists but you aren't willing to accept things about atheists. This exposes the bias I was referring to. This is the problem. You don't want fairness, you want preferential treatment.

 

[PureX]

I've learned the folly of bringing evidence to those that don't use it, and a good way to deal with the request to expose its insincerity. I just tell them where to find answers on the Internet, and if they are actually interested in learning, to bring back what was learned and any questions about it, and we can go from there.

I doubt that's very effective, and here's why.

1. It assumed that the information that you find pertinent and the reasoning that you use to define it as evidential should be considered pertinent and validly evidential to them. You are applying the values of your existential cognitive paradigm to people that don't hold that paradigm.

2. You aren't showing any interest in finding out anything about how they are cognating their experience of existence except to use it against them. To "defeat" their cognitive paradigm.

3. You have automatically placed yourself in the position of both control and judgement. With all the absurd bias that will naturally go along with it.

Imagine how patient and kindly disposed someone would have to be toward you to accept these incredibly self-serving terms and still try to share their God-centered experience and understanding of existence with you. While you, in turn, take anything they share with you as a possible means of attacking their theistic paradigm, to 'defeat' it.

I gain significant insights here every few months. Only recently have I come to understand that many if not most people don't know what critical thinking, how it differs from faith-based thinking (I group all unjustified belief together under that heading), or what it's power is - what it can reveal and the usefulness of that. I had always assumed that most people knew what it was and had some respect for it even if they couldn't do it themselves, like they would mathematics, but I have discovered otherwise. I finally understood what, "That's just your opinion" means when it follows a sound argument.

You still have quite a way to go if you don't yet understand that faith (not blind presumption or 'belief') is not antithetical to critical thought.

I'm still exploring that. I find it hard to believe that there is nobody with a good answer to that. Some of these types seem pretty bright, especially the dharmics, and I haven't asked any that question, but I read their words and still don't see answers. What is this phenomenon, I wonder, and why does it appeal to so many?

A very worthy question by my reckoning. But then I cannot fathom philosophical materialism, from my end. I was born to be an artist. I love working physical material into a metaphysical existential expression. Every work of art ever made stands as abject proof that philosophical materialism is ... infantile. A kind of intellectual blindness. So it's hard for me to be patient and tolerant when I am being confronted by it.

I also get the opportunity to develop and clarify my thoughts by composing responses. Here on RF, I have gotten a much clearer idea of what I mean by truth, knowledge, God, religion, faith, critical thinking, free will, evidence, proof, and the like. I get the opportunity to read the opinions of other critical thinkers, and share mine with them. This is where I've learned to write better, to identify and name logical fallacies, and to form more cogent arguments. I couldn't have written this post ten years ago for a variety of reasons (I did this on another site for eight years before it folded in 2017).

I also share in this same experience, both in the thinking and the writing. As they do go 'hand in hand'. I can't really articulate a thought I'm having to someone else without first being able to articulate it clearly in my own mind.

There is nothing else like these types of discussion forums available to me. Only here am I engaged in protracted discussion, sometimes over years, with candid, anonymous posters. This doesn't happen in face-to-face encounters with friends and neighbors, say over dinner. The discussions avoid such topics or brush on them briefly, and they are not candid because they are not anonymous. There are ramifications to being candid with coworkers, family, etc.. You get that emotional reaction there as well, but in those cases, such a reaction has ramifications for me and my wife, so I just don't go there. Here, however, there is no social harm. Theists routinely get their dander up, and I'm sorry that they have such reactions, but I can't control it, it's not a reason to discontinue what I do, and it has no social ramifications.

I agree 100%, and I much appreciate this site and the people who use it for those reasons. I think nearly everyone that comes here has a mind that LIKES to think. That is curious about other people, and wants to share their own thoughts with them. And I'm grateful to them for that. Because so am I, and so do I.

 

[PureX]

Theists seems to have a real assumption that their beliefs are true in an absolute sense. I asked MyM a series of questions about why pork is prohibited and what the punishment was if a Muslim eats it deliberately. I wasn't given an answer. The more you dig into WHY there are certain rules in religious dogmas the less acceptable the questions are. This breach of just accepting the authority and rules of the religion is harassment and attacking. But that is what a theist should expect in the way of questions from non-believers. We don't assign blanket authority to religion. We will ask questions the theist often is prohibited to ask, or is afraid to ask because it suggests a lack of faith in God.

It's somewhat puzzling to me why you would assume that knowing the why of everything 'religious' is of crucial importance. Religions are all about faith in lieu of knowledge. So you're not likely to get a lot of 'whys' answered by religion.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Your bias against atheists. We see this bias frequently by believers. Believers have faith in their own belief, and their presumption of authority from God. It seems the existence of atheists is ITSELF an insult to those who believe in a God. In some sense the believer can wonder "How dare these people deny my God, or any God, exists."

A friend's mom once asked me about my religious beliefs and I knew she was a fervent Christian. I told her I was Buddhist (not atheist because i know there is a strong bias about this word) and she said "At least you believe in something." I found it an odd statement as if we humans need to believe in something to BE something. I don't. I try to limit my beliefs as much as possible. Theists really seem dependent on belief in God, and even if other theists believe in some other version of God it's at least someone who believes. Atheists break this comfort and tribal unity.

My Buddhism isn't about identity at all, it more that I recognize the lessons as a means to manage my mind.

As long atheists bias against believers, I will keep biase toward certain atheists, I will not let them rest.

 

[PureX]

As long atheists bias against believers, I will keep biase toward certain atheists, I will not let them rest.

It's somewhat puzzling to me why you would assume that knowing the why of everything 'religious' is of crucial importance. Religions are all about faith in lieu of knowledge. So you're not likely to get a lot of 'whys' answered by religion. Religions are more about how to live without know the why.

 

[Spirit of Light]

It's somewhat puzzling to me why you would assume that knowing the why of everything 'religious' is of crucial importance. Religions are all about faith in lieu of knowledge. So you're not likely to get a lot of 'whys' answered by religion. Religions are more about how to live without know the why.

Personally I am spiritual not religious.
But I believe in the teaching of what people today call religion. Other people think differently.

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

I asked MyM a series of questions about why pork is prohibited and what the punishment was if a Muslim eats it deliberately. I wasn't given an answer.

I think you have been given an answer though.
The reasoning just doesn't seem to make sense to you when a Muslim says it's up to God to judge whether such a person deserves punishment for it or not.
Probably too vague and void of reason as far as your own reasoning can reach.

But that doesn't mean you haven't been given an answer.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You are applying the values of your existential cognitive paradigm to people that don't hold that paradigm.

In a sense, yes. What I am saying is that I have nothing to offer someone who decides what's true about the world using faith, and have given up trying. All I can offer is reason applied to evidence. Sam Harris says it well:

“Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, "Well, that's not how I choose to think about water."? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn't share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”

You aren't the least bit interested in finding out anything about how they are cognating their experience of existence except to use it against them.

What an odd thing for you to say to me. Understanding how people think is a passion and an avocation of mine. The post you responded to should serve as evidence of that.

I am not interested in faith-based thought except as a subject to study to better understand how people who rely on it cognate. I have come to my present position about bringing evidence to creationists and that being a wasted effort, for example, based on countless times when I brought that evidence and it was ignored. And so, because I *do* understand how they cognate, I only offer them a chance to do some investigating and share their insights and questions. It saves a lot of wasted effort.

And I don't use anything against anybody. This isn't personal.

I have been very interested in how you think, and have come to some tentative conclusions, but they're not things I feel comfortable discussing with you without your permission. It's not harsh, and you might even agree, but the point is, I am very interested in how people think including you.

Imagine how patient and kindly disposed someone would have to be toward you to accept these incredibly self-serving terms and still try to share their God-centered experience and understanding of existence with you.

I don't know what you're referring to. No patience or kindness is needed to communicate with me, but I'm not interested in their theology (beliefs based in a god belief) beyond knowing how they define God. Let them share that with people who ask them about it or want to hear about them.

You still have quite a way to go if you don't yet understand that faith (not blind presumption or 'belief') is not antithetical to critical thought.

That's not a rebuttal. I define faith as unjustified belief, and critical thinking as the process by which justified beliefs are justified. These are mutually exclusive categories, every belief belonging to one or the other, and none belonging to both or neither (MECE). Did you want to address that, and explain to me how unsupported belief isn't antithetical to critical thought, which takes great pains to exclude it?

I just made a presentation to my local Freethinkers Group on this topic that explains why it is, so I'll include several paragraphs of that here in a spoiler. It explains why I am a strict empiricist and reject unsupported belief, which you don't like to call faith, but that's how I define faith in the religious sense, and why I reject all faith-based thought (unjustified belief).

Spoiler

One definition of knowledge is the collection of ideas that can be used to accurately predict outcomes. In the sciences, that would be ideas such as that if pure liquid water is cooled, it will turn solid at or below 32 F, or the collection of ideas that led to successful manned moon missions. It was predicted that a certain specific spacecraft built using ideas from science and engineering would do what they did, confirming that those ideas are correct and can be added to the fund of useful human knowledge.

We use these ideas in the pursuit of happiness to attain desired outcomes, such as maintaining health, dealing successfully with people, and obtaining financial security, but also mundane things such as what to do to get a desired dining experience - where to go, what to order, etc.. Any idea that facilitates such goals is knowledge. These things are also learned and confirmed empirically (experientially). We try several local restaurants and discover where we are likely to find what we want, which may vary. Sometimes we want convenient and we know what is close and offers good parking. Sometimes we want good Italian food and are willing to do what it takes to get if. With knowledge, we can predict how these things are likely to turn out. We go to one restaurant for the former and another for the latter.

These are the only ideas that are useful to us in shaping our individual worlds. Even when we consider subjective truths, such as that one usually enjoys opera, but not broccoli, knowing this things about ourselves helps us achieve desired outcomes in the pursuit of happiness if they are repeatable experiences. This is also empirical knowledge (derived experientially through the senses).

Some ideas make predictions that are usually wrong, like astrology. Some ideas predict nothing, such as creationism. Neither of these is knowledge by the usefulness criterion. Neither can be used to predict outcomes, and so are useless in making decisions.

What do these last two things that can be used for nothing have in common, and what do the ideas that are useful have in common? Only the latter are derived empirically. Creationism and astrology are not ideas derived from experience. Useful ideas are. Therefore, we conclude that only empiricism can generate useful ideas. Whatever life one is seeking, only empirically derived and confirmed ideas can help one make that life.

Furthermore, false ideas believed without sufficient justification (evidentiary support) not only don't facilitate desired outcomes, they can facilitate undesirable outcomes. I'm thinking now about wrong ideas lacking empirical support or actually contradicted by evidence such as ideas about vaccines being more dangerous than the coronavirus, ideas that cannot be derived from the proper application of reason to evidence (empirically), and which contradict ideas that are. These ideas can be grouped with creationism and astrology as being neither derived empirically, nor able to help us make choices that facilitate desired outcomes.

Critical thinking includes the skillful and dispassionate application of reason to evidence. Once one realizes that this is the only method we know of to generate useful ideas (as defined above in terms of accurately predicting outcomes better than competing ideas), and that ideas generated by any other method are not useful, one loses interest in any other method of deciding what is true about the world for purposes of controlling life's circumstances. Of course, much remains out of our control even with this method - we might get sick and die however much useful knowledge we have access to, but other methods don't help us there either, so we still have no reason to employ them.
​

Every work of art ever made stands as abject proof that philosophical materialism is ... infantile.

When you refer to materialism or scientism, I always understand that as an objection to the critical thinker's insistence on empiricism being the sole path to useful knowledge about the world as I just described in the spoiler above. You have given no argument against this kind of thinking. Here you imply that a materialist paradigm cannot account for the aesthetic sense and experience. I disagree. It's simply another faculty of the brain, which is material.

Perhaps you'd like to try to rebut that, by which I mean, give an counterargument that if correct, makes mine incorrect - not mere dissent followed by words that add further to what you believe, but don't explain how you know that the above is incorrect.

 

[F1fan]

It's somewhat puzzling to me why you would assume that knowing the why of everything 'religious' is of crucial importance.

Frankly I don't see how the WHY of everything religious can be explained except by science. I've engaged with many, many theists ov er the decades who know what they believe, but have no real clue why they believe it. This is what I find most interesting, is the religious person being asked questions they don't ask themselves.

Religions are all about faith in lieu of knowledge. So you're not likely to get a lot of 'whys' answered by religion.

Yet most theists DO think their beliefs represent reality even though under scrutiny the ideas are typical contradictory to what we do know of reality. Religious faith is notoriously unreliable yet theists keep falling back on it to justify their beliefs.

 

[F1fan]

As long atheists bias against believers, I will keep biase toward certain atheists, I will not let them rest.

I suspect they welcome your pressure.

 

[F1fan]

I think you have been given an answer though.
The reasoning just doesn't seem to make sense to you when a Muslim says it's up to God to judge whether such a person deserves punishment for it or not.

I had a followup question to that. It was apparent the ingestion of pork wasn't the sin, it is the deliberate ingestion of pork, so I was curious why it's a sin at all. And what is the actual punishment because if it is a slap on the wrist I might not worry about the prohibition and enjoy pork.

But that doesn't mean you haven't been given an answer.

Many answers to "ask me about my religion" questions are pretty superficial. Once we get past the superficial level of question the more in-depth stage begins, and theists often don't like them.

 

[MyM]

If that's how you feel, why do you do it so often?

sighs

 

[MyM]

But don't you have the advantage of God being on your side? It sounds like God doesn't;t give you the support you need to cope with uncomfortable comments in a debate forum that you volunteer to be part of.

your opinion

 

[MyM]

I had a followup question to that. It was apparent the ingestion of pork wasn't the sin, it is the deliberate ingestion of pork, so I was curious why it's a sin at all. And what is the actual punishment because if it is a slap on the wrist I might not worry about the prohibition and enjoy pork.


Many answers to "ask me about my religion" questions are pretty superficial. Once we get past the superficial level of question the more in-depth stage begins, and theists often don't like them.

I will give you a very clear answer. Pork is forbidden. If eaten accidentally it is not looked upon as intentional and therefore not the fault of the one ingesting it. In the Quran, Allah says pork is forbidden.

He has made unlawful to you only carrion and blood and the flesh of swine and that over which there has been pronounced the name of anyone other than Allah’s.171 But he who is constrained (to eat of them) – and he neither covets them nor exceeds the indispensable limit incurs no sin: Allah is All-Forgiving, All-Compassionate. Baqarah 2:173

Allah is the one that judges. He doesn't always tell us what his punishments are and we have no right to take part in a decision already ordained.

 

[F1fan]

your opinion

Which has better evidence than for any gods.

Or do you think belief in a God is more than an opinion?

 

[MyM]

Which has better evidence than for any gods.

Or do you think belief in a God is more than an opinion?

I don't understand your question, can you elaborate a lil please?

 

[F1fan]

I will give you a very clear answer. Pork is forbidden. If eaten accidentally it is not looked upon as intentional and therefore not the fault of the one ingesting it. In the Quran, Allah says pork is forbidden.

He has made unlawful to you only carrion and blood and the flesh of swine and that over which there has been pronounced the name of anyone other than Allah’s.171 But he who is constrained (to eat of them) – and he neither covets them nor exceeds the indispensable limit incurs no sin: Allah is All-Forgiving, All-Compassionate. Baqarah 2:173

Allah is the one that judges. He doesn't always tell us what his punishments are and we have no right to take part in a decision already ordained.

So there is no explanation for this prohibition? Muslims just have to follow the rule?

And you still haven't explained what the punishment is. Do Muslims not know what it is?

If God is OK with a person eating it accidentally it can't be that it's bad for you, yes?

Perhaps there was a reason in the 8th century to not eat pork and now in the 21st century it's safe.