All about Religion. (Rights, wrongs, Theocracy, etc.)

[Vince Twelve]

What about people who are against the institution of marriage altogether because it promotes heteronormativity? Are they acting entirely on religious beliefs?

You're referring to people who want to stop marriage altogether because it forces women into "traditional female" roles (cooking, cleaning, and bearing children) and men into "traditional male" roles (working, watching sports, scratching themselves)?  Shouldn't these people (all five of them) be for gay marriages because they don't promote these roles?  I guess I'm just confused at how your example applies....

Unless it was a joke.  In which case... har har!

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

You're referring to people who want to stop marriage altogether because it forces women into "traditional female" roles (cooking, cleaning, and bearing children) and men into "traditional male" roles (working, watching sports, scratching themselves)?Ã,  Shouldn't these people (all five of them) be for gay marriages because they don't promote these roles?Ã,  I guess I'm just confused at how your example applies....

It's not just about gender roles, but more about marriage and the couple form in itself being an institution associated with child-rearing, sharing property, and accumulating capital. Some queer people would argue that all gay marriage does is force queer relationships to emulate straight relationships in order to be accepted by society, when in reality, sexual experiences encompass much more than just a monogamous two-person form.

I had to do an essay on this subject for my "Sex, Gender, and Philosophy" class last term, and found this particular point of view quite fascinating. As for my own views, well, I think it would be easier just for everyone to have civil unions, and to leave marriage to the religious institutions.

[Paper Carnival]

nihilyst: I don't understand how what you said can be considered wrong by every other Christian. That's exactly how I think of God and how I understand the Bible describes Him. It doesn't come in conflict with the literal interpretions at all. Maybe you are referring to Him as a faceless force, then that would be different; I see it as a force but also as a person at the same time, it's complicated to describe it.

[CaptainBinky]

Yay! Arguments about religion. Brilliant!

I personally can't handle any form of belief system that's based on absolutes. Faith to me is a horrible term because it conjures up messages of belief based on no fact. Or belief despite evidence which points to the contrary. Every time I've had discussions with religious types (irrelevant of which particular religion), it always comes down to "well, I have faith" and you really can't argue with that because it's like saying "well, yeah, there's all this evidence out there that man wasn't created by God, that the Universe wasn't created by God, that the Earth is in fact significantly older than it should be etc etc etc, but I'm going to throw all that out the window and form my opinions on some intangible concept that has absolutely no fact to back it up with."

This is why I believe that religion has no place in politics or he classroom. Believe it if you like, but don't teach it as fact.

It really bothers me when you hear Bush (and Blair recently) bringing up God during speeches about politics. It irritates me enough to hear crap about Iraq being about Islam (which it isn't) without our politicians resorting to the same sort of messages. How we're ever going to unite globally while we still have such archaic black and white views is beyond me.

The best thing that could happen to the world is if some aliens came down and blew all religion out of the water, then maybe we could have peace

Er, what was I saying? Is it even relevent? Don't know, just gonna hit "post" anyway

edit: What really narks me is when I've heard it said that natural selection, evolution, or just plain old physics takes all the mystery and wonder out of the universe. Personally I find it much more rubbish to write off all this amazing stuff out there with a throw away line like "God made it". Isn't it much more wonderful and mystifying if everyting out there did just happen? Isn't it more amazing to think that such complexity came about through tiny insignificant changes over millenia?

[Kinoko]

Well said, Binky.

Sorry, CAPTAIN ^_- I totally agree!

[Babar]

CaptainBinky, while your argument MAY have been valid if God could be proved or disproved, that is not really possible. When someone replies to verifiable scientific fact with "I don't believe it because God told me", then there  is something wrong. However, that rarely happens (anymore at least). I'm kind of at the opposite end of RickJ's ideas, as I think that science and belief go hand in hand, one with the other. They both seem to evolve together .
Rick gave the example of feeling "comfortable" with how the Big Bang seems to fit in with the scriptures. When some scientific evidence comes up that will show that the Big Bang was not the initial start up of it all, people will find another little tidbit in the scriptures that will support the new theory.

[CaptainBinky]

CaptainBinky, while your argument MAY have been valid if God could be proved or disproved, that is not really possible.

I have no idea if God exists or not and that's really not the point. You can define God as being everything we don't currently understand about the universe. That as a concept does exist. Does something happen to our souls when we die? Again, who knows. Quite possibly. Does a "soul" even exist? I don't know. Given that the matter we are constructed from has existed since the dawn of the universe, and will not be destroyed until the end of it, then you could say that of course there's life after death. Parts of me will be a raindrop, or a flower, or a gust of wind. Parts of me may have been in Napolean, or a caveman, or Mount Everest.

I have no problem with philosophical discussions about life, it's meaning, or what "life" even means. I do have a problem with dressing those discussions up around an arbitrary concept that has no real-world meaning. I'm pro morality and ethics, but do not need religion to instill those beliefs in me. That's what good parenting is for.

The way I see it, any rational human being doesn't have "beliefs", they have "theories". The beauty of theories is they are constantly revised as new evidence turns up. Beliefs are rarely refined in any fundamental way. People "believed" the earth was flat. Then it was shown to be round. People "believed" the sun orbitted the earth, then it was shown to be the other way round. These aren't beliefs at all, they are theories that tie into current scientific understanding, and they do the best they can with limitted knowledge. Evolution and natural selection are still theories, but all evidence currently seems to tally. That's not to say that in the future, we won't have some revised version of them. Heck, even traditional Newtonian physics which has worked perfectly for ages cocks up when dealing with the very tiny (like particles), so along comes the Quantum theory to make sense of that.

We will probably never know everything there is to know about how the universe ticks, but surely an open-minded approach has to be more benefical to society than striving to find some evidence of God's Hand.

There's a very famous argument (can't remember by whom specifically) that claimed that the complexity of life itself was evidence of God's Hand because how else could such complexity have arisen? This has possibly got to be the most close-minded argument I've ever heard. It's like saying "I personally am not clever enough to theorise a logical way this COULD have happened, therefore it MUST have been God".

edit: Ah, well the problem with the big bang is that if God created that, then what he's basically done is let loose a bunch of matter into the void and created the universe. No problem. But then if that's the case, he can't have made Man directly so man has no pedestal in the universe above trees, frogs, rocks, grass etc. The soul would therefore have had to evolve. Which means, pigs have a soul (or at least a slightly less complex version), and so too fleas, and mice, and trees. So do trees go to tree heaven when they die? Is there a judgement day for good trees? How does God then feel about us cutting them all down and writing on them?

edit2: Also, I don't quite understand why it's relevent to my argument whether or not you can prove God's existence. It is exactly BECAUSE you can't that politics and schooling should focus on things you can prove, like science.

I also theorise that I have killed this thread. Rats.

[Raggit]

edit2: Also, I don't quite understand why it's relevent to my argument whether or not you can prove God's existence. It is exactly BECAUSE you can't that politics and schooling should focus on things you can prove, like science.

I agree precisely!  I don't want my laws being based on the doctrine of somebody else's interpretation of a mysterious god. 

I don't typically agree with people who say that we have to have God to define morality, thus we have to have God to shape laws.  I think it's rather closed minded to say that you can't be moral on your own without God or religion.

[Babar]

The point that God can be proven or not is relevant, because as you said, you can't accept something based purely on faith. Thus, for you, God is an alien concept. I don't know where good parenting came up, though.. . The points most people would put forward to show their "proof" of God is generally not acceptable to those who don't believe, because they make use of concepts like "I can feel God with me all the time" or "I have the Holy Spirit with me" or "I can see God in everything of my life".

I agree that "God made it" wouldn't be a relevant explaination for something in the classroom, because it was all done through scientific principles that should be studied and investigated. I don't want to get into an argument about how God started the big bang, and how God is not in direct control, etc. Ã, because I think we're coming from two different directions here. My BELIEFS tell me that I should study my surroundings, the universe, the earth, life etc. and evidence of God will become clear to me. That if I find something missing or contradictory or wrong with what is in my beliefs and what is in my surroundings, I should "Drop it like it's hot" (So sorry).

About beliefs and theories: I'd think they'd be very much intertwined. Beliefs would be "updated" much like theories. People first believed that the world was flat. Now they believe that it is round. While we all "know" that it is round, not many people go through the effort to "prove" it. If you are talking about religion, then there have been many "updates" to it as well. Some concepts that were set before are changed. If your point is that "beliefs are fundementally changed, while theories are updated", I don't see that working either. It goes both ways for both, as I mentioned before. Scientific theories have had to be scrapped completely before, and scientific principles have had to be conjured up to fit observations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's only the small "lunatic fringe" (is that the term?) that says that "God made it" is the end all of all arguments, and who'll tell you that "dinosaur bones have been put their to lead the evil doers astray".

PS: You didn't kill nothing. Prolly me

[CaptainBinky]

About beliefs and theories: I'd think they'd be very much intertwined. Beliefs would be "updated" much like theories.

Okay, this is a semantic issue, but where I'm coming from a belief would be something like:

"I believe that cats go to heaven when they die". This can never be proven one way or the other.

Wheras a theory would be...

"I theorise that the earth is flat".

Theorising that the earth is flat makes sense if you don't know otherwise. If I look out to sea, I see an "edge". Theorising that the earth is flat is logical given the information available to me.

The points most people would put forward to show their "proof" of God is generally not acceptable to those who don't believe, because they make use of concepts like "I can feel God with me all the time" or "I have the Holy Spirit with me" or "I can see God in everything of my life".

Those ideas don't constitute "proof" as they are intangible. Hence the difference between beliefs and theories. I'm not saying you shouldn't believe what you feel, that's your perogative.

You see, the problem I have with religion (I'll use Christianity as example) is that there's so much variation in what you hear off (religious) people. Either the Bible is the word of God, or it isn't. Either it's a parable and symbolic or it's fact. As soon as you start picking and choosing the relevance of it, you destroy taking any of it seriously. I don't understand how somebody can seriously say, this bit's true, and this bit's symbolic. How can you know? Surely only if it were all true could you use it as the basis of a faith..?

I don't typically agree with people who say that we have to have God to define morality, thus we have to have God to shape laws.Ã,  I think it's rather closed minded to say that you can't be moral on your own without God or religion.

I agree. And furthermore, doesn't it make you a better person if you are moral and ethical because you CHOOSE to do it, despite believing that you have nothing to gain at the end of it? Rather than being ethical because ultimately you want to get to Heaven? Isn't that being rather selfish?

[Raggit]

I think one of the major problems here is that most orthodox Christians don't WANT to update or revise their beliefs, because you just can't do that with an absolute.  They believe, as the Bible says, God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  So they tend to think that changing their beliefs, even a bit, is denying that God means what he says, even if they've interpreted it wrong from the start.

[big brother]

For a system of values (morality) to exist in a world that fails to demonstate any form of perfection, man must be inborn with a sense of an exterior measurement. For example, think of the metric system in a world of unlabeled distances (since morality is a form of measuring actions). Without a perfect (absolute) meter stick locked up in a museum somewhere, evaluating distances in metric becomes meaningless. Without absolute measurements, the entire concept of judging specific distances quantitatively is an exercise in futility. "What's right for her may not be right for me" is an result of this empty reasoning.

[Helm]

Well, there's absolute ethics, there's relative ethics... There's morality systems without categorical imperatives, we're not stuck in Kant's age, thankfully... Your golden measuring stick stuck in a museum is a concept that isn't the same in two people's minds, and seeing it, scrutinizing it and even fully agreeing on it's features doesn't mean it becomes the same in people's minds, as the point of view of a human being is strictly subjective, so a bit more advanced systems of dealing with codified human interaction have been devised since the stuff you were talking about have been relevant trends (again, check back in Kant, lol!) Big Brother, please do study these things before proclaiming the Futility of Relative Ethics. Thanks.

[lo_res_man]

I have a scientific theory what God is (if he exists, which can't be proved one way or other)
God (or gods, it could be a committee  ) is a extrauniversal being. It created the universe in what can best be described vast computer simulation. outside our universe .Of course this doesn't answer the question, "then were did god come from?" but modern scientific thought doesn't answer the question "Were did the universe come from?" Maybe there is an  Scientific Atheist explanation for the way the universe the came to be, but present evidence in my opinion doesn't justify it.( I do recommend  we keep looking) I can believe that life evolved, but I can't believe, from the evidence I have seen, that the universe just happened.

[big brother]

Ok, well sure the concept exists differently in people's minds, but I'm talking about a practical equivalent. We can agree on a similar use of a meter stick. Yes, we can also obfuscate the concept, and no definition can cover every little detail, but we can't rely on that fact alone to prevent any logical conclusions.

I have studied Kant, taking Philopsophy classes... but thanks for assuming, Helm.

[Helm]

No problem.

It's one thing for to people to agree on something and completely another to depend on their common definition on being understood and endorsed by those agreeing. Human interaction doesn't work like that, I think. We're not so simple machines to agree on the RGB value of 'navy blue' and all understand the same thing. The evolution of ethics has grown in the relative direction exactly to cover for all the loss of signal going on in seemingly otherwise simple agreement-based human interaction. You've studied Kant you say, then maybe you need to study something a bit more up to date, like Mackie's 'Inventing Right and Wrong' or something.

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

A question: when you people speak of "theories", are you actually talking about theories, or are you really talking about hypotheses?

[LimpingFish]

I like hypotheses.

Although I prefer Rhinoseres.

No, wait...

[CaptainBinky]

@helm and bb - could you please argue in english? it'd be so much easier for the rest of us! :p     @ossquinky - yes, okay, hypothesis. but the point is still valid.

[Helm]

you're not missing much, here's a translation:

bb: something relevant

helm: not something relevant, but some minute alteration of something relevant. Plus, I'm smarter than you and enjoy the intellectual high-ground.

bb: No you're not, but thanks for assuming! I did philo 101 at business school! Plato: How to make an Ideal Sell!  Sartre: Hell is in Other Products! Camus: The Strange Cold Call!

helm: read books I've read!