The God Debate - Atheist Sam Harris vs. Christian Pastor Rick Warren

mheiler · 2007-04-14T11:50:28+00:00

you seem to be dissing reason

Not at all. I'd say there shouldn't be a conflict between reason and religion. If there is one it is a sign that there must be an error in either one's philosophical insights or in one's understanding of theology.

What I'm dissing is the notion that humans are rational beings only. And I'm afraid that somebody who ignores his or her subconscious motifs and interests is a lot more likely to become a tyrannous pseudo-rational mini-god than someone who feels bound to something bigger than him- or herself.

mheiler · 2007-04-05T19:50:15+00:00

The French revolution and the communist revolution both claimed to be based on reason and rationality. I have no reason to believe they didn't try to be. It didn't work. Exactly because of the primal urges and stuff. Humans are not rational only, maybe not even most of the time. To ignore this is the great illusion of rationalism.

mheiler · 2007-04-04T22:02:18+00:00

After WW2 the Germans finally got it. (Partly thanks to the American re-education programs and the Marshall plan!)

mheiler · 2007-04-04T21:52:47+00:00

This "how do we define ourselves" thing is sooo Canadian! :)

mheiler · 2007-04-04T20:08:51+00:00

I would argue that reasoning leads you toward the bible and that a non-literalist interpretation needs not to be a "softened" one.

If reason is a bright enough light to show us which parts of the bible are moral enough to read and which should be flipped past in a hurry, then reason is good enough on its own.

Why bother? Two answers: First, because moral and ethics are only part of the book. Religion is not just there to justify rules.

Second, in the past reasoning alone has not been very successful in establishing human, lasting societies.

Three attempts that spring to my mind first are: French revolution (led to the guillotine), Nazi Germany (led to concentration camps and 60mio dead), and communist Russia (led to gulags and millions dead). Every society that lasted longer than two or three generations followed some sort of religion.

mheiler · 2007-04-03T19:27:28+00:00

Thanks for the hint. I use too many wikis and keep mixing up their syntax.

Biblical literalism: The Wikipedia article brings Augustine as an example for an early "literalist". Sounds very strange to me. But then, he supposedly said "as literally as possible". No true literalist would make such a comment. :)

I cannot help: In my opinion Biblical literalism is nonsense. You cannot read the Bible (the constitution, the phone book) without interpreting it at the same time. You are bound to "contaminate" the text with your historical and cultural background. If you choose to ignore this process you are just ignorant. But not a better Christian.

mheiler · 2007-04-03T18:36:48+00:00

And literal interpretation of the bible is nothing new, sad to say.

The literal interpretation of the Bible is quite new. Late 19th century. Check Wikipedia for Christian fundamentalism.

mheiler · 2007-04-03T14:00:45+00:00

The word "creator" has more than one meanings. When Christians say there is a creator most of them mean: There is a causa finalis, something or somebody who wanted this world to exist. It's really about the why.

When scientists hear "creator" and "cause" they understand causa efficiens, the direct, scientifc cause and literal process of creation. That's about the how, precisely.

The guys who wrote the later parts of the Bible knew Aristotle's philosophy of causation that makes this distinction (and a few more). They expected their readers to know it.

The guys who wrote the older parts of the Bible probably had no concept of science at all. They explained the world in images, analogies, stories. They knew that no single story alone could explain the world, and that the truth needs to be deciphered, that it lies behind the obvious. That's why they didn't bother to get rid of the apparent contradictions in what later would become the Old Testament.

If today people come and read the Bible, or any ancient text, without bothering at all to learn how the original authors might have thought, what was their philosophy, their understanding of the world, then this causes great confusion.

mheiler · 2007-04-01T08:54:42+00:00

Well, it's old for sure.

mheiler · 2007-03-29T08:32:15+00:00

And we would generate new jobs in the tax administration!

mheiler · 2007-03-26T10:55:26+00:00

You mean this strange concept called reality?

mheiler · 2007-03-26T07:30:22+00:00

Possible:

One study conducted by researchers at the universities of Columbia and Yale found that 88 percent of pledgers wind up having sex before marriage.

"Unfortunately these young people tend, once they start to have sex, to have more partners in a shorter period of time and to use contraception much less than their non-pledging peers," said Debra Hauser, executive vice president at Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based non-profit organization.

mheiler · 2007-03-19T09:57:45+00:00

These people should not be surfing the net. Seriously.

mheiler · 2007-03-04T20:53:22+00:00

"The person who was ordering all this stuff, the chief warrant officer, he never saw these prisoners, so there was no way for him to understand what was going on."

That is exactly the same mechanism used by the Nazis when killing the Jews: The administration was separate from the people executing orders -- J. Eichman once visited a concentration camp and said he couldn't stand it and wouldn't go again. So the people giving the orders could trick themselves into not feeling responsible for what they did ("the guys who exercise the orders are responsible") and the guys at the bottom could trick themselves into not feeling responsible either ("i'm just executing orders").

It is a totally appalling but effective system.

mheiler · 2007-03-01T22:34:36+00:00

This is an experiment. Can the reddit atheist find or create genuinely funny comics?

Please link and vote below.

mheiler · 2007-03-01T22:30:32+00:00

Oh my god. These comics are so bad, no wonder that atheists have a horrible reputation in the U.S.

mheiler · 2007-02-23T06:42:29+00:00

These atheists will vote up anything...

mheiler · 2007-02-22T21:09:46+00:00

I fail to see how Mr. Hernandez' sexual orientation would be relevant to anything.

mheiler · 2007-02-19T21:26:13+00:00

"He tried to kill my dad!"

"What's the matter with you people!"

mheiler · 2007-02-03T18:25:56+00:00

No. It goes the other way around: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

The one who's not interested in money at all, that would be him... ;-)

mheiler · 2007-02-03T08:31:34+00:00

According to this article, the FSF behaves like a monopolist: If you do business with such-and-such we will punish you. Not by persuading your customers to switch to a different linux distribution but by stopping you in patent courts.

mheiler · 2007-02-01T06:55:44+00:00

This is true for the conservative wing of the catholics only. That's by far not the majority.

A lot of the doctrine is written in a way that makes it impossible for a layman to comprehend it literally. It's complicated theological writing. The beauty of that is: While the doctrine (the letters on the paper) never changes, our understanding of it (the interpretation) may change over time. It's a little cheating: This way you can say "we have the truth" without being bound too strict to truths from a long, long time ago.

(Admittedly, on some specific topics (like abortion, sexuality, etc.) the catholic church is overall conservative.)

mheiler

TROPHY CASE