BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 03:02 PM

It was clear to ME, that the subject was the 'possible' relationship of brain chemistry and DNA to religious orientation.... but it often happens that a couple of 'hot button' words like 'God' and 'religion' trigger reflexes in some folks, and it's like asking a politician a question about 'X' and getting a lecture on 'X^A'..or even Y.

We know 'thread drift' is a more potent force than the tides in The Bay of Fundy, but Jack oughta have his thread go kinda the way he planned.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Josepp
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 02:53 PM

That's funny, Jack. I post the exact definition found in Meriam-Webster and that's somehow me manipulating definitions. Damn, I'm good!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 02:19 PM

Stringsinger, you are making up your own nuanced definitions of commonly understood words and getting upset because others do not accept your definitions. I am sorry but that is a waste of my time.

josepp, You are doing the same, but more so. I have no interest in discussing either of the lines of argument you each have brought up. If someone else wants to, feel free, but please start your own thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 02:00 PM

Oops. I seem to have hiccupped. Editing a word I think eliminated a line somewhere. Still read OK above but a little ungrammatical...

Here is what I thought I'd typed "But wait - there's more! That freedom from biology and history and geology and cosmology and physics classes for their children be not only allowed but assumed to be normal, and the insistence even in materials for humanities, which I would have thought secular, that Christian mythology be stated as historical fact while other, even Abrahamic mythologies are given as possible beliefs... it busts my chops.

(Are the chops referred to being busted actually mutton chops?)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:54 PM

The problem here where I live is the idea that because you have freedom of religion we have freedom from facts. Insistence that demonstrated reality isn't real or demontrated, and that myths must be given equal credence as the known world. And that freedom from biology and history and geology and cosmology and physics classes for their children, and the insistence even in materials for humanities, which I would have thought secular, that Christian mythology be stated as historical fact while other, even Abrahamic mythologies are given as possible beliefs. Busts my chops and I don't even have sideburns.

I don't see how this can be argued as benign.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: josepp
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 01:14 PM

Jack is quoting Marx to discredit atheism via Stalin despite there being nothing but the most tenuous connection between the three.

Atheism is, at its root, anti-authoritarian because authoritarianism leads directly to the fallacy of believing in god as this divine creature that knows all and controls all. Therefore a state cannot be atheistic if it is totalitarian. Period. When a religious tenet holds that everything belongs to god, that is no different than the totalitarian tenet that everything belongs to the dictator, it is the same belief. There are no gods--religious or secular. Therefore, one cannot serve as a replacement for the other and be acceptable to the atheist. One person cannot play this god and hold the power of life and death over everyone else.

Someone ridiculed me for saying that an atheist state would represent the purest form of democracy but there is no argument. I specifically said "The purest form of democracy" and not simply the so-called democracy practiced in the United States. I am referring to "pure democracy" not some diluted, hack-up republicanism contaminated inextricably with capitalism.

From Meriam-Websters:

Main Entry:pure democracy
Function:noun
Date:1656

: democracy in which the power is exercised directly by the people rather than through representatives

Representatives generally become authority political figures and leads to a tangle of bureaucracy that eventually finds itself in the hopeless condition of eating itself to maintain itself. Just as in atheism where each person must think for himself and not rely on religious figures, officers or scriptures for truth, the people must govern themselves and not rely on others to govern them. To do so is to allow themselves to be controlled and that is the ultimate goal of atheism--to fight outside control. If that is not the goal of atheism then it has no real purpose.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 11:28 AM

Jack, FreeThinkers do not make up data. That's religious propaganda.

The Soviet Union did not realize the ambitions they set out for themselves because they created the god of Stalin and the religion of Communism. Karl Marx was not a politician but an economist and they used his ideas to further their own political ambitions.

Karl Marx is often misunderstood by his statement "Religion is the opium of the people:"
and no it is not clear enough. He never intended that statement to be derogatory. He made an observation about the role of religion but actually never condemned it ideologically. Many people who quote Marx have never read him and have missed much of what he really had to say.

What needs to be understood, here, is that when an ideology takes over a country, any other "religion" needs to be abolished as an enemy. Communism is a "religion", an ideology that has worshipers and followers who blindly adhere to its precepts. Remember also that Lenin's role in the USSR has gone through various changes in terms of his acceptance as a result.

The only reason that modern religions and every kind of religious organization is rejected by Communist ideology is the same way that Christians reject Muslims, Islam rejects Christianity, Judaism rejects Islam and vise versa, it's all a kind of "religious" ideology that guides this exclusionary thinking.

It is wrong headed to think that USSR was trying to save souls from religion. They were merely trying to supplant their ideologies for other "religions".

Atheists, or as I prefer, FreeThinkers are not Soviet style Communists but are skeptics and question any ideology that covets mass thinking. They are like the speaker in Monty Python's "Life of Brian" who exhorts his followers to "think for themselves" creating the irony of the crowd chanting the same idea parroting the speaker. FreeThinkers do not chant ideologies. That is pure unadulterated religious propaganda. To use Marxian applications by the Soviet Union as an example of true FreeThought is specious thinking.

Apparently, Jack, you don't know many real what you call atheists or your claims would be risible. You should really get to know them.

The problem with religionists is that they try to make complex issues simplistic to defend their viewpoints without really successfully examining them for their validity or veracity.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 11:03 AM

"Religion is the opium of the people:" Karl Marx is that not clear enough?

Religionists get accused of making up data to support their arguements. Apparently when "Free thinkers do that." its free thinking.

The USSR invaded Poland because in most ways the government was a continuation of the imperial system under the Tsars. If they were trying to "save souls" they were trying to save them FROM religion.

I will post this again. If you need any of the words or concepts explained. I will be happy to do it as I am sure most others would.

______

The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion[1] and its replacement with atheism as a fundamental ideological goal of the state.[2][3] Toward that end, the communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools.[4] The confiscation of religious assets was often based on accusations of illegal accumulation of wealth.

State atheism in the Soviet Union was known as "gosateizm,[5] and was based on the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. As the founder of the Soviet state V. I. Lenin put it:

    Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[6]

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 10:44 AM

GUEST,Lighter Actually I really don't care for the term Atheist. I much prefer and use FreeThinker. Atheist still has theism in it. As to the idea that by definition an atheist isn't concerned with humanity is simply misguided propaganda. Most atheists I've talked to are very concerned with humanity and the human condition and how that has been corrupted by religion.

When the US went into Vietnam, there was the religious support for it because it involved the reaction of the "other", something that religion always inculcates in its followers.
There was the "Anti-communist Christian Crusade" still active during Vietnam. The general pervading mood of the political system under LBJ was religious. There was virtually no outlet for any American to object to Vietnam legally without the "Supreme Being" litmus test.

Japan attacked China because they believed differently, a different culture and religion.
You have to remember who Tojo and Horohito were. What about the Kamakaze tea ceremonies? Remember the fanatics who were like Muslim extremists who flew their airplanes into enemy targets?

Einstein wanted to use the a-bomb on Berlin and was shocked when it was used in Hiroshima. A hidden religious component is there.

The USSR invaded Poland to save souls, communist souls. Gaddafi is probably thinking that the rebels are bad Muslims.

Old Testament slaughters, etc. are the rule rather than the exceptions and they were about religion. Saying "it ain't so" doesn't make it so. History tells us a different story.

If a bellicose leader calls on religion to whip up followers, there must be something wrong with that religion for allowing this to happen. From Constantine to Rick Perry, that is evident.

Most religious doctrines call for war, not peace. That's why there are so few conscientious objectors compared to willing participants in the military. Pacifists on religious grounds are definitely in the minority. God loves war. in the bible, he's created so many of them.

Atheists are not necessarily nicer but they are more rational.

Religious people are not nice because of their religion. In fact, most often they turn into little monsters.

Fortunately, today, young people are turning away from religion towards secularism. The growing interest and defection of young people from churches and religious institutions has been statistically documented.

Older people who are entrenched with their social, religious and political ideas find it hard to adapt to new thinking. Religion is unsustainable.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 08:23 AM

If by "atheists" Stringsinger means "humanists" he might have a stronger case.

A "humanist" by definition is concerned with humanity. An "atheist," not necessarily.

History shows, however, that "humanists" rarely achieve political power, largely because they have other interests.

Lincoln was both a religionist in a conventional sense and a humanist in a broad sense. Which side of his brain gets credit or blame for what?

The discussion about who causes wars conveniently overlooks the fact that all wars have multiple intertwined causes. When the U.S. went into Vietnam, for example, it wasn't either to encourage or to protect Christianity. Japan didn't attack China for Shinto, and Germany and the USSR didn't invade Poland to save souls. Gaddafi didn't go after the rebels because they he thought they were being bad Muslims.

Old Testament slaughters, Aztec Flower Wars, the Crusades, and various Jihads are the obvious exceptions, but even they weren't exclusively about religion, and they remain exceptions. (Note too that ethnicity is no guarantee of pacifism.)

If a bellicose leader calls on religion to whip up his (or her) followers, that isn't religion's fault. Few religious doctrines prefer war to peace.

Experience teaches that any idea that atheists are just nicer is baloney.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: frogprince
Date: 13 Aug 11 - 12:00 AM

saying that a statw which holds atheism as a basic tenet is not an atheistic state, because it does not meet the ideals of an American atheist steeped in democracy, is doubletalk motivated by wishful thinking. The world has too many peope who believe that only Christiana can be decent human beings. The same attitude from atheists is no more realistic or constructive.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: josepp
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:30 PM

A true atheist state would be the purest form of democracy. It is laughable to say the least to point to a dictatorship and call it atheist. That's a dog that cannot and will not hunt if there ever was one. There are no gods be they religious or secular, nothing sacred, no one person can have the power of life and death over others, and therefore everyone is equal and has an equal voice and will go down in defeat only by their own inadequacies.

America's fear of atheists in the state machinery while allowing mad dogs as Palin, Bachmann and Perry free reign into the political ring is a sign of sheer stupidity on the part of that society. And a society that stupid deserves to burn to the ground as it is in the process of doing.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 10:29 PM

Understanding folktales and metaphors for what they are, of course, does not produce cognitive dissonance. It is when the data becomes fixed ideas, and you try to use them to gauge a volatile, dynamic, human situation, that your brain cells start to surrender en masse.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:19 PM

Be kind, Mrr. ;-)

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 09:04 PM

Oh, I am going to have FUN here as soon as my home internet is back!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 08:26 PM

Still, Amos, the Old Testament is a very interesting collection of writings, and even contains some fascinating folktales. The stories of Job and Jonah are two of the best, and include a nice touch of humor and an interesting lesson.

I think that most of what is said here is true of some religious people, those people who see their religious beliefs as unquestionable truths and a reason for condemnation of all who do not adhere to those truths.

But many religious people hold to religious traditions as a context within which to explore the mysteries of life - love, peace, death, the world that surrounds us, and life itself. Certainly, these mysteries can be explored without a religious tradition, but why not allow for the possibility that people should be allowed to explore the mysteries of life however they wish and without condemnation?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 07:39 PM

I think what it is about religions and political leaders is they are driven mad by religious postulates that don't match reality, and forced to stick to them by social pressure, resulting in extreme cognitive dissonance. Those who survive the pressure do so by intelligently compartmenting, realizing that a bogus set of religious tenets is not applicable in solving secular issues.

This is NOT to assert that there is no such thing as a set of religious tenets that could align with observed and experienced reality. But buying the Old Testament sure ain't it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Aug 11 - 06:00 PM

"And blaming war on religion is a dog that won't hunt as well. Most wars have been about power, land or money. "

And all of those have contained some element of religious fervor or fanaticism.
Most wars have roots in religion.

I would like to see those who weren't beholden to religious ideologies able to become leaders in politics.

The dog that won't hunt is denial about the role of religion in violence. Check history. Crusades, Reformation, Shintoism in Japan, Manifest Destiny against "godless savages", Islamic dictators in Africa, Mid-East problems, the Troubles in Ireland, The Languedoc invasions, Afghanistan, Iraq, the bible (lots of wars there based on religion)
and the list goes on. I could take up a whole page with these.

If you think non-believers would not make more rational political decisions, prove it.
Vote a non-believer into a position of leadership.

Put a non-believer in the White House or in Congress and you will have a more rational person making decisions ; if you don't believe that, look at the lineup for the next American election, Perry, The Apostolic Reformer, the two Mormons, the faith-based Obama, Bachmann (need i say more), Palin, the rest of the GOP lineup, all these excluding perhaps Obama, are religious nut cases. You don't think any of them will put the US into extended wars? Dream on.

Superstition, imaginary friends, anti-science, faith-based congressional interrogations,
pulpit pounding politicians, bible verses on gun sites, Tea Party zealots, (no non-believers there) and where are the rational people these days?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:46 PM

Psychos find refuge wherever they can. Some choose religion, some UFOLogy, some numerology, and so on. Each of the domains they use as retreats from their own pathetic inadequacies is ALSO peopled by intelligent, curious, relatively competent people. None of this is in itself grounds for name-calling or excoriation. There's a whole lot of not-knowing in play, after all, to which no definitive solution exists. The dominance of empirical science in our culture is no more evidence of its absolute dominion than is the advanced nature of, say, our culinary arts. THe culture tends to make it look that way by denying anything of comparable magnitude for comparison.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 06:30 PM

I don't know why people find it so difficult to allow others to believe as they choose, without calling them stupid or deluded.

I don't frankly give a damn what any of you choose to believe, and I don't expect you to give a damn about what I choose to believe. It simply isn't that important.

What is important is the separation of beliefs into two categories, neither of which should be encouraged to interest itself in the affairs and activities of the other.

Category 1. The Spiritual!

This is the realm of religion, dealing fundamentally with the human soul, the existence of God (or Allah, Jehovah, the Cosmic Pixie, or whatever turns you on) and other spiritual concepts.

Category 2. The Material!

This is the realm of everyday worldly existence, dealing with physical events and is the proper domain of science.

Now I'm not saying that a belief in science should exclude a belief in God or a religious order, that would be ridiculous.

But we should all be able to figure out which system would apply in any specific circumstances, and apply it accordingly.

This would automatically preclude the involvement of any religion in the purely material matters of government.

The biggest single advantage would be the savings made in bandwidth by removing the need for Catters to call each other stupid or deluded, which has produced such a huge archive of threads devoted to converting the unconvertible.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: John P
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 03:33 PM

Little Hawk says: These threads always end up in a hopeless muddle, because too many people are all talking at once, most of them are trying to "win",

Nope, you're wrong. Try again. Or not. But you've been wrong every one of the other 100 times you've said the same thing in other discussions. Boring . . .

On the atheist government thing: It's a pointless discussion. People are people. Some religious folks are mass-murdering megalomaniacs. Some aren't. Some non-religious people are mass-murdering megalomaniacs, some aren't. Most people with a desire for that much power are corrupt. Some aren't. Religion or the lack thereof doesn't enter into it, except sometimes as an excuse.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:47 PM

There are man flags

There are many flags

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:32 PM

Again, Lighter makes a good point. Without religion, the psychos would find another ploy.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 11 Aug 11 - 01:30 PM

"Actually I did. I said that it is immaterial whether any such atheistic govt has ever existed (which I do not believe to be the case and perhaps you could enlighten us if there ever was one), Stalin and Mao do not represent such a govt. "

Stalin was "Comrade" Stalin, in an officially atheistic state. He was not Pope Stalin or God Stalin. His rule was enforced by the security services. Not by the promise of heavenly rewards or punishment. There are man flags here and statues of historical figures and pictures of people on the stamps and money. That is nationalism, not religion in any conventional sense. The concept could hardly be simpler.
What is below is from Wiki, I have read it elsewhere and studied it in University. But feel free to keep pulling things from your butt, as I will feel free to ignore the things you pull from your butt.

The Soviet Union was the first state to have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion[1] and its replacement with atheism as a fundamental ideological goal of the state.[2][3] Toward that end, the communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in the schools.[4] The confiscation of religious assets was often based on accusations of illegal accumulation of wealth.

State atheism in the Soviet Union was known as "gosateizm,[5] and was based on the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. As the founder of the Soviet state V. I. Lenin put it:

    Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[6]

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 09:34 PM

Anyway, brains on God vary.

You've got your Pope, your Dalai Lama, your imams, your megachurch ministers, your orthodox rabbis, your Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, your Mormons, your Desert Fathers, your Universalist-Unitarians, your Sufis, your Raelians, your snake-handlers....

You've got Jesus, Moses, Mohammad, Mary, Mother Teresa, St. Francis, Bernadette of Lourdes, John XXIII, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Aztec high priests, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Joan of Arc....

You've got Jim Jones, Warren Jeffs....

The nice folks next door....

What have they got in common?

Without religion, their personalities would have come out some other way.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: josepp
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 09:31 PM

////On the one hand, josepp's statement that Stalin and Mao replaced the concept of God with themselves (and their political system) is quite correct. On the other hand, josepp's statement does not fairly address what Jack said about officially atheistic (meaning anti-God) governments committing atrocities just as heinous as theocracies do.////

Actually I did. I said that it is immaterial whether any such atheistic govt has ever existed (which I do not believe to be the case and perhaps you could enlighten us if there ever was one), Stalin and Mao do not represent such a govt.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,999 Sorry again!
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 09:13 PM

Looking at fundamentalists (that's what they call themselves. I always figured fundamentalists believe in one law: do unto others as you would have them do unto you), people like Bachmann and those damned TV preachers, I figure that the whole g/God thing is like the commercials,

"Your brain on dope/crack/heroin, etc." I figure the Bachmanns and TV evangelists have shown us all what your brain on God does. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 09:05 PM

I see I need to make shorter, pithy posts.... ☺

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 08:40 PM

I think there is a HUGE difference between a religion and a neurotic obsession.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Smokey.
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 08:17 PM

"Most wars have been about power, land or money."

Most religions have too, though maybe not always exclusively.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 07:13 PM

Lighter again makes a good point. Whether or not the leader thinks he is a god matters not. It is when the followers consider him a god that makes it a religion.

"your statement suggests that atheists in power would just naturally be less ambitious, less greedy, less paranoid, less violent, than their religious counterparts."

Which makes me wonder how and why they would gain power in the first place.

And blaming war on religion is a dog that won't hunt as well. Most wars have been about power, land or money.

Do you think that the Spanish would have killed the Inca for religion alone?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 06:55 PM

>Atheists, for the most part, don't start wars. They have no axe to grind.

Declared atheists, for the most part, haven't controlled enough governments for their warlike or pacifist tendencies to be evaluated in comparison with religiously observant rulers and leaders who did everything they could to follow the Golden Rule.

I hear laughter. Is it because that description covers almost no one we've ever heard of, no matter how religious they professed to be?

Nevertheless, your statement suggests that atheists in power would just naturally be less ambitious, less greedy, less paranoid, less violent, than their religious counterparts.

Why should that be? They might not launch wars for religion, but there are so many other reasons to choose from.

It's true that Hitler was raised a Catholic, but so what? He gave up on religion at an early age, and Blitzkrieg wasn't sold to the Germans as religiously inspired. (Nazism itself came closer, but it didn't involve gods or postmortem rewards.)

Whether Stalin and Pol Pot "thought they were gods" in the supernatural sense (the only kind that counts) seems dubious, to say the least.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 05:47 PM

Jack, Hitler was raised a Catholic. Stalin and Pol Pot thought they were gods. You could look at those movements as a kind of "religion".

Atheists, for the most part, don't start wars. They have no axe to grind.

The religious mindset tends to see things in black and white, making them vulnerable
to ideologies that they think they need to defend with violence.

Atheists on the other hand tend to weigh their actions carefully, seldom agree on much,
are aware that they can be targeted and hence are more judicious.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 04:49 PM

I posted my long comment several hours ago, and later Amos said: " ...you enter a squirrel-cage without end when you start an argument using one word to mean multiple, very different, things, and fail to define your terms."

   That's interesting because just last night we had guests from my old college days in Philosophy. Unlike myself, he made a career in Philosophy and was once chairman of a Dept. We were talking about what philosophy was good for, even NOT using it in teaching everyday, and I commented that I used knowledge of the informal fallacies on a regular basis....(yes...like in debating on Mudcat) and we agreed that *equivocation*, which is the technical term for Amos' point, is one of the very most common errors people make in trying to defend...or attack.. some position.

To reply to Jim Dixon who quoted me:
//Even capitalizing a word and saying that one 'believes' OR 'disbelieves' in *God* is an implicit assertion that there IS such a thing//

and replied: "Well, I don't believe in Hobbits. Do you consider that an implicit assertion that there is such a thing?"

No, and that misses my point. There is a difference between asking or asserting about a being we know and can prove was only a literary concept, and asking about a being whose conceptual origins are so ancient that the very concept has been subsumed as part of human language and is widely 'taken for granted'.
   Thus, "Do you believe in *God*?" is grammatically & conceptually 'almost' equivalent to asking: "Do you accept the truth of God?". The implicit answer is included in the question!
Stated this way, the question is usually loaded and comes as a dare or confrontation.   (This brings in a couple more of the 'informal fallacies', such as circular reasoning and 'assuming the consequent'.)

It is NOT the same as asking: "Do you think there might be some sort of being who 'made everything' and is personally concerned with how we behave?" This allows discussion and comparing of views.

Everyone either believes that 'there is no doubt about God', or knows someone who believes that way. What gets interesting is comparing how they believe 'god' is relevant and what 'it' does and what we should do about it.....which is why equivocation is at the heart of many discussions. Many people argue about the nature of God and proper religious behavior in spite of flatly not using the same terms and definitions! *sigh* Others define the term so broadly & generally (I have teased Little Hawk about this for years) that the concept becomes so vague and fuzzy as to be almost trivial, except as a poetic way of expression.

...and with all this confusion, we have a pile of politicians running for president who wear their 'faith' as a badge, even though most of them can't really explain the basis of their own beliefs!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 03:53 PM

Yeah, Jack, but I'd like to talk to just one person about it...namely the one who started the thread...without having to deal with a whole bunch of other people charging in at the same time. It gets too conflicted.

Accordingly, I have PM'd you.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 03:32 PM

No need for pm LH. I like to hear from everyone. I can filter out what I need.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 03:27 PM

Jim, just refer back to your own post, read it carefully, then read my response to it equally carefully, and all your questions will be answered.

Or not!

As the case may be....

(It depends on whether you're willing to bother trying to understand anything I said in a reasonable manner or whether you're just out to "win" an argument with me.)

These threads always end up in a hopeless muddle, because too many people are all talking at once, most of them are trying to "win", very few of them are listening with any real intent to find common ground, they're just trying to score points on each other. If I really wanted to talk about this in any depth and have a reasonable time doing so, I'd do it in PMs to Jack, and we could then discuss it as two individuals and probably get somewhere useful in understanding one another's thoughts. Here it's just like being in the middle of a raving football crowd and they're all yelling about something...

And why? Because they haven't got anything else to do at the moment, I guess...it's a way of keeping one's idle mind occupied.

I'm actually rather interested in what Jack is talking about here...and I'd be interested in talking to him about it...but like I say, I'll probably do it in PMs instead.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 03:26 PM

Actually, it occurs to me that a massive delusion would be a good argument for something more than material connection in the species which opens the door to all the spiritual woes that the befuddled mind of man is heir to.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 02:43 PM

Lighter, you make good points, I would add one more to it. It is how the adherents are kept in line.

If you toe the line because of a belief in some supernatural reward or punishment, Karma, Heaven, Hell, "God's blessing making you rich" It is a religion. If you toe the line because you are afraid of the secret police. It is something else.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 02:39 PM

Jim that comment about the accepted definition was not meant for you. You were not broadening the definition to make your point.

The current difference between Hobbits and for that Matter "Zeus and Hera" is that there are currently about 2.5 people who believe, one way or another in the God of Abraham. Also I believe another 1.5 billion in India and elsewhere, including my wife and I imagine, Amos and possibly Little Hawk who believe in what I consider to be different aspects of that same God.

Maybe it is just brain chemicals as some of the articles I linked to suggest.

Maybe it is as Joseph Campbell suggested, a manifestation of the collective unconscious of the human race.

Maybe it is a combination of natural forces we have not yet discovered.

Maybe it is a Freud suggested, and Dawkins after him, a massive delusion. (Though Freud's view of psychology and the world was so flawed that I have trouble taking anything he said seriously except to apply it to a small, frankly crazy minority.)

Maybe there is only one God and his name is Allah.

Maybe nearly everyone is right, Maybe only the Quakers or the RC Church is right.

I don't know. I am just trying to find my own way.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 02:19 PM

No, my point was that the statement was nonsense: I mean the statement that saying you don't believe in something somehow confirms that the thing you don't believe in actually exists. I don't see how that statement can be anything BUT nonsense. Forget capitalization.

What if I didn't know that Hobbits were meant to be fictional? Would that mean I couldn't disbelieve in them?

Would it make any difference if I had said "Zeus and Hera" instead of "Hobbits?" I don't believe in them, either, although as far as I know, Zeus and Hera weren't originally conceived as fictional characters.

I assume by mentioning Zeus and Hera I am sticking to the "current, generally accepted, definition of religion." After all, there are any number of books and articles about "Religion in ancient Greece."

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 02:03 PM

If it doesn't appeal to usually invisible, mostly incomprehensible forces beyond the natural world, and claim that earthly reality is less important than what happens on or through the operation of some other plane of existence, it isn't a religion.

No amount of special pleading affects that basic premise. Every culture on earth recognizes it. The Communists who banned religion could obviously tell the difference, even if some people have convinced themselves there is none.

Atheism is not a religion. Agnosticism is not a religion. A sociopolitical system is not a religion. Britney Spears is not a religion. Aztec cosmic paranoia was a religion.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 01:59 PM

Goddiness means so many things to so many that the discussion always reverts to the scenario described in the tale of the blind men and the elephant.

Goddiness is a verb.

Goddiness is an anthropomorphic figurehead generating moral strictures.

Goddiness is an endless pool of mystic beingness without form, shape or location in spacetime.

Goddiness is the principle that forms female psyches here on Earth.

Etc., etc.

Goddiness is tantamount to giddyness.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 01:51 PM

I would ask you all to please stick to the current, generally accepted, definition of religion.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 01:49 PM

I thought your point was about capitalization, and taken on its own it made perfect sense. But Bill was making a distinction between god and *God*, which seemed to be a different point than distinguishing between hobbit and Hobbit.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 01:46 PM

I know about the Rabbit Hole. But I enjoy talking to many of you about it. Not being a beagle, I simply need to spend a little less time chasing the rabbits.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 01:45 PM

//Therefore it's not a suitable example to illustrate your point.//

If it's not a suitable example, then how do you know what my point was? If you don't know what my point was, how can you tell whether it was a suitable example?

By the way, what WAS my point anyway?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 01:45 PM

I don't find calling any thing that has something in common with religion a religion very useful. Though Lord of the Rings fandom has a lot in common with some aspects of religion, it is not a religion in any normally defined or practical sense. Likewise communism.

People could read and follow the dictates of Mao's little red book without believing him to be a God. I think that most did.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 01:01 PM

Yeah, it's an endless rabbit-hole, Amos.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 12:58 PM

Jim, everyone knows perfectly well that the Hobbits were created as fictional creatures in a book that was clearly written by its author AS fiction from the start and was never intended as anything but fiction and allegory.

Therefore it's not a suitable example to illustrate your point.

Skepticism is indeed a useful skill. That's why I bring a certain amount of it to what ANY authority system or peer group tells me...not just the traditional religious authority systems.

The shortcoming of the average so-called "skeptic" is that he is only vigorously skeptical about things in certain mental boxes that he has already labelled in his mind as "unreal"...such as the "religious" box or the "UFOs and aliens" box...or the "spirits and ghosts" box or the "existence of a soul" box, etc. He has an antipathy toward those certain subjects, and he directs his skepticism just at those subjects while he fails to be equally rigorous in his skeptical approach to a whole host of far more conventional mental boxes that he takes for granted, such as the box of conventional science, conventional medicine, conventional politics, conventional social customs, etc.

His skepticism is not parcelled out in a fair and equal fashion acorss the board. Prior prejudice directs it only into certain specific areas of life and spares the rest.