Searching for GOD...

[Nearly Sane]

Pleased to hear it.
Really?!? I'm struggling to see how that is possible given that the Spanish Inquisition took place centuries ago. Your mother must be very old.

Because you want to do guilt by association. Are you really this hard of thinking?

[Nearly Sane]

No it wasn't.

He's behind you

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Err - no they don't. But people who hitch their cart to a tribe that includes extremists and feel unable to speak out against that extremist for fear of devaluing the 'tribe' can and do give justification and cover for those extremists to bring their extremist behaviours to the fore.

If your criteria is whether the moderates speak out against the extremists, then Sam Harris generalising against all Christian moderates as bearing a terrible dogma is an unjustified, prejudiced generalisation as it would not apply to the religious moderates who speak out against the extremists in their tribe.

[ProfessorDavey]

Because you want to do guilt by association. Are you really this hard of thinking?

Not retrospectively I don't. If I am not guilty of the holocaust I cannot see how your mother is guilty of the inquisition.

[ProfessorDavey]

Because you want to do guilt by association.

I think you will find that the notion of collected inherited guilt is a key component of christianity and one that I have spoken out against many times on this MB as one of the most appalling and most destructive ideas even invented by people.

The notion that someone is guilty of the actions of their forefathers (or mothers) is abhorrent.

[Nearly Sane]

Not retrospectively I don't. If I am not guilty of the holocaust I cannot see how your mother is guilty of the inquisition.

What's the difference about it being retrospective. If a religious position justifies religious extremism. it's time agnostic.

[Nearly Sane]

I think you will find that the notion of collected inherited guilt is a key component of christianity and one that I have spoken out against many times on this MB as one of the most appalling and most destructive ideas even invented by people.

The notion that someone is guilty of the actions of their forefathers (or mothers) is abhorrent.

I see you are off on one of your multiple replies to the same post benders. See reply to your other reply.

[ProfessorDavey]

If your criteria is whether the moderates speak out against the extremists, then Sam Harris generalising against all Christian moderates as bearing a terrible dogma is an unjustified, prejudiced generalisation as it would not apply to the religious moderates who speak out against the extremists in their tribe.

I don't think I've actually given an opinion on Harris' views (except see below).

What I was challenging Vlad on was his assertion that Harris explicitly stated that all christians are bad people. The article he linked to provides no evidence to support that claim.

On the wider point - please note my more general opinion (reply 43496):

'And also agreed the sentiment remains valid and is one I've used not just for religious apologists but apologists of all sorts. It is a pretty well established opinion that those that hold moderate views but don't call out those within their 'tribe' who hold extreme views provide a legitimacy to those extreme views, even if they don't support those views themselves.'

Note my emphasis.

If Harris' view that regardless of whether people speak out then they legitimise the views of more extreme people then I disagree with him. But there is a further point about being formally part of a 'tribe' (whether a religion to a political party etc), where you can join, leave, be a member, not be a member. There is a further part where extreme opinions are the established view within a tribe - if you remain part of that tribe there is an element of derived legitimacy for those views even if you speak out, even more so if you don't.

So - as an example - some of the RCCs positions, e.g. on abortion, contraception, gay relationships - most catholics (certainly in the UK) don't agree with those views, but by virtue of being members of the RCC it is easy for the RCC to claim that their official teaching represents what catholics think and therefore legitimise those, in my opinion, extreme, views (note that even UK RCC members don't by and large agree with those views). So if you don't hold those views, you can leave the RCC, you can speak out, but you are being naive if you think that by remaining a member (particularly if you don't speak out) that you aren't providing legitimacy to those views.

Now that is very different to extreme views that lie well outside of the established/mainstream views of a religion, so for example extreme islamic ideologies that justify violence which seems to me to have no place within the mainstream opinions of the established muslim leadership in the UK (unlike views on abortion, contraception, gay relationships within the established RCC leadership in the UK).

[ProfessorDavey]

What's the difference about it being retrospective. If a religious position justifies religious extremism. it's time agnostic.

I disagree entirely.

The notions of how religions are used and what they justify evolves over time. Many of the things justified by religion (e.g. christianity), say 500 or 1000 years ago would be as abhorrent and appalling to the same religious establishments now as they are to the rest of us.

So let's use slavery as an example - justified by religious establishments over centuries, but the current religious establishments clearly reject those justification entirely. So it is ridiculous to claim that a current member of the RCC (an organisation that explicitly rejects slavery) somehow condones slavery because the RCC once did centuries ago. However there is a justifiable argument that they condone homophobia, even if they personally reject homophobia, because the organisation they are a member of currently has policies and views that are prejudiced against gay people and their relationships.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

I don't think I've actually given an opinion on Harris' views (except see below).

What I was challenging Vlad on was his assertion that Harris explicitly stated that all christians are bad people. The article he linked to provides no evidence to support that claim.

On the wider point - please note my more general opinion (reply 43496):

'And also agreed the sentiment remains valid and is one I've used not just for religious apologists but apologists of all sorts. It is a pretty well established opinion that those that hold moderate views but don't call out those within their 'tribe' who hold extreme views provide a legitimacy to those extreme views, even if they don't support those views themselves.'

Note my emphasis.

If Harris' view that regardless of whether people speak out then they legitimise the views of more extreme people then I disagree with him. But there is a further point about being formally part of a 'tribe' (whether a religion to a political party etc), where you can join, leave, be a member, not be a member. There is a further part where extreme opinions are the established view within a tribe - if you remain part of that tribe there is an element of derived legitimacy for those views even if you speak out, even more so if you don't.

So - as an example - some of the RCCs positions, e.g. on abortion, contraception, gay relationships - most catholics (certainly in the UK) don't agree with those views, but by virtue of being members of the RCC it is easy for the RCC to claim that their official teaching represents what catholics think and therefore legitimise those, in my opinion, extreme, views (note that even UK RCC members don't by and large agree with those views). So if you don't hold those views, you can leave the RCC, you can speak out, but you are being naive if you think that by remaining a member (particularly if you don't speak out) that you aren't providing legitimacy to those views.

Now that is very different to extreme views that lie well outside of the established/mainstream views of a religion, so for example extreme islamic ideologies that justify violence which seems to me to have no place within the mainstream opinions of the established muslim leadership in the UK (unlike views on abortion, contraception, gay relationships within the established RCC leadership in the UK).

Ok - I agree with your view that not speaking out against extremists gives legitimacy to extremists. I agree with your view that people should leave the tribe if it is too extreme e.g. the KKK or various Jihadi groups. Not sure I agree with your view that the RCC is extreme enough that people should leave the tribe.

I also think similar to the Brexit argument, if the tribe is not that extreme and there are significant benefits to being part of the tribe it's better to stay rather than being outside the tribe as you have less influence if you leave. It is more useful to stay and plug away at influencing /reforming from within.

[ProfessorDavey]

Ok - I agree with your view that not speaking out against extremists gives legitimacy to extremists.

Great.

I agree with your view that people should leave the tribe if it is too extreme e.g. the KKK or various Jihadi groups.

Great.

Not sure I agree with your view that the RCC is extreme enough that people should leave the tribe.

You may well be right, or perhaps it isn't that the RCC established views aren't extreme enough that people would leave - I suspect that plenty of RCCs would leave, for example the Labour Party, if it refused to have any women in senior positions or had policies that were overtly prejudicial to gay people. I think the challenge is the strength of the affiliation to the tribe - if you have been brought up RCC, if RCC is embedded in your societal and cultural thinking, it becomes very difficult to leave as it is more than ripping up your membership card, so to speak.

And it is, of course, for individuals to decide whether or not to speak our, and whether or not to leave. However those decisions should be made with eyes wide open. So a choice not to leave, particularly if you also don't really speak out, is providing justification and an element of derived legitimacy to those views. More so when you have a hierarchical orgnanisation where there is a ready channel for the promulgation of those established views as the views of the organisation and de facto of the membership.

[ProfessorDavey]

I also think similar to the Brexit argument, if the tribe is not that extreme and there are significant benefits to being part of the tribe it's better to stay rather than being outside the tribe as you have less influence if you leave. It is more useful to stay and plug away at influencing /reforming from within.

Not sure about your brexit analogy, but agree that some tribes are very difficult to leave - see my previous comment on RCC.

That said I'm not sure I buy the 'influencing /reforming from within' argument for religions. I think this may well be the case for political parties with democratic structures for the membership, where you can influence, get people to join and then take over and change policy etc. Not sure that works for many religions - my most visible example in this respect is the RCC as my wife and all her family are 'from the cradle' and still practicing catholics. As far as I'm aware, and I have discussed this with my wife and this is her view too, there is no meaningful and structured way to influence the position of the RCC on some of these key issues. Their position is set and will only change top down, never bottom up. So no amount of grass roots dissent will make any difference.

So if you disagree on those views you have a choice - you can, of course leave but as pointed out this can be hard. You can remain and accept a disconnect between your views and those of the church, but the notion of plugging away to influence/reform from within just isn't going to happen. And that is why there is such a gaping hole between the established views of the RCC on abortion, contraception, women priests, priests being able to marry, gay relationships etc and those of rank and file practicing catholics. And I think the lack of ability to influence/reform from within means that those that disagree have no forum to dissent nor is there any point so there is very little vocal dissent raised internally, regardless of the views of the rank and file because, frankly, it is rather pointless.

I wonder what the situation is within your branch of Islam VG - is there any meaningful channel for dissenting voices that provides a mechanism for reform of their position on, for example, homosexuality.

[Alan Burns]

And yet you have totally failed to provide even the first hint of any evidence or the merest suggestion of rational thought behind that assertion. Just endless fallacies and incoherent gibberish. Thus suggesting that your capacity for rational thought, when it comes to your favourite superstitions, is severely impaired.

And, of course, you are yet again misrepresenting the counterarguments in linking it directly to the physical. You can't even be honest enough to face up to the actual arguments against you.

And you have totally failed to provide any evidence for how the validity of your conclusions can be judged superior to my conclusions if every moment of our conscious thought processes are entirely determined by past moments over which we have no control.

You keep asserting that the concept of physically driven cause an effect is irrelevant, but it is physical reactions which define the arrow of time.  You cannot presume that anything outside the realm of physical material has the same time dimension.  If this material universe did not exist, how would the arrow of time be defined?

[Dicky Underpants]

Hmm I don't think it stands up. For a start Sam Harris' simplistic assertions are not backed by any evidence. This line "religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance" shows he has little direct experience of moderates, He also has not presented any evidence that he has any knowledge to accurately judge who is scripturally ignorant and who isn't.

This line "As moderates, we cannot say that religious fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely practising their freedom of belief. We can’t even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled.". Not sure who Sam Harris classifies as fundamentalists as his article is short on detail - or why he thinks their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled - the article just seems full of vague, hand-waving assertions.

.........

...
Perhaps Sam Harris and other like-minded atheists could try stepping out of their echo chambers and do a little reading to educate themselves. Or not...I suppose these atheists could choose to continue clinging onto their self-congratulatory beliefs like their simplistic religious counterparts.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/terrorist-extremists-dont-kill-for-islam-or-christianity

I understand that many of the Taliban were orphans and taken into religious institutions where the main activity was being forced to learn the Koran by rote, under threat of severe punishment. As far as I'm concerned the Taliban qualify as religious extremists.
I do have some sympathy with critics of Harris because of his emphasis on American fundamentalism. Nonetheless it is a very dangerous force there, and from my reading of his work, his acquaintance with the biblical literacy of the fundamentalists in question is considerable - and many of them do know their Bible very well.
The same goes for fundamentalist sects over here, though I doubt that they are as great a potential danger in political spheres. I myself know that Biblical knowledge is of extreme importance to such sects, since I was influenced by one such in my early teens, and investigated the approach of others of this kind before finally extricating myself from their clutches.

[Alan Burns]

Then why would you find a quote that specifically eliminates 'knowledge' and replaces it with 'faith' to be profound.

Surely if you consider that knowledge will lead us to the truth you'd find that quote to be foolish. Now the problem with 'faith' and in particular religious faith is that it isn't something that we use as a placeholder while we strive for knowledge. Rather it is held to be something somehow more worthy than knowledge, to such an extent that throughout history religious groups have actively closed down attempts to develop knowledge and refuse to accept knowledge that runs counter to their faith.

So the quote you provided isn't profound, in my opinion, it is foolish and also dangerous as it comes from someone with very, very considerable soft power over millions of people.

The act of reasoning is entirely dependent of having knowledge.  Knowledge alone will not lead you to the truth.  You need the ability to contemplate knowledge and consciously drive your thoughts in order to seek the truth.

[ProfessorDavey]

Hmm I don't think it stands up. For a start Sam Harris' simplistic assertions are not backed by any evidence. This line "religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance" shows he has little direct experience of moderates, He also has not presented any evidence that he has any knowledge to accurately judge who is scripturally ignorant and who isn't.

This line "As moderates, we cannot say that religious fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely practising their freedom of belief. We can’t even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled.". Not sure who Sam Harris classifies as fundamentalists as his article is short on detail - or why he thinks their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled - the article just seems full of vague, hand-waving assertions.

As this article points out https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/jihadist-radicalisation-islam-for-dummies_b_5697160.html In 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5's behavioural science unit, was leaked to the Guardian. It revealed that, "far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices." The analysts concluded that "a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation", the newspaper said.

Perhaps Sam Harris and other like-minded atheists could try stepping out of their echo chambers and do a little reading to educate themselves. Or not...I suppose these atheists could choose to continue clinging onto their self-congratulatory beliefs like their simplistic religious counterparts.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/terrorist-extremists-dont-kill-for-islam-or-christianity

I think the following may be an interesting read:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2019.1571696

Looks to be pretty detailed and I've not fully read it yet. Perhaps a topic for discussion VG (and others) once we've read it.

What does seem to be a take-home is that in places where islam is a minority religion increased religiosity/importance of religion correlates with increased extremist attitudes, including justification of terrorism. The reverse is true in muslim majority countries where increases religiosity/importance of religion correlates with reduced justification of terrorism.

[bluehillside Retd.]

VG,

No it isn't because "improving" is not objectively testable. It's a subjective claim that improvements have been made because any objective measures still need to be subjectively assessed as to whether they are "good" or "bad" outcomes.

You’re making the same error here – the “going nuclear” argument:

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/09/going-nuclear.html

I’m not suggesting the more patients getting better is necessarily morally “good” in some absolute sense, but it is a measurable outcome if you accept the premise that patient recovery is the desired outcome and want to debate two ways of achieving that. By contrast, the premises that rely on “this is what God wants” for their justification have no investigability or measurability at all – “what God wants” could be asserted to be helping the little old lady across the road or blowing up a school bus equally.     

How is it any worse than I justify X because that's what I want - which is the atheist's position. Surely my response should be s"o fucking what, who cares what you want"

First, that isn’t “the atheist’s position” at all (not least because there’s no such thing), but in any case you’re still conflating premises with axioms here. At a deep, axiomatic level you could rely for your position on anything, but once you’re at the premises level (patients recovering = desirable; patients dying = not desirable for example) then the rational, evidence-based means of achieving that premise can be tested whereas faith-based assertions cannot. You know this already though – that’s why if you fell gravely ill you’d opt for the trained surgeon option rather than for the Hopi Indian burning a bunch of sage leaves option.
   

The analogy does not fail because it is identical to if an atheist or a political activist said "I justify action X because that's what I want".

Yes it does fail – see above.

If you want to compare like with like, then we have to analyse the moral reasoning of a religious argument and analyse the moral reasoning of a political argument.

That would be nice, but what reasoning do you think there to be in the religious argument “but that’s my faith”?

[Stranger]

And you have totally failed to provide any evidence for how the validity of your conclusions can be judged superior to my conclusions if every moment of our conscious thought processes are entirely determined by past moments over which we have no control.

Why can't it? Remember the burden of proof here, as if you ever seemed to have grasped it (not to mention any other aspect of critical thinking) in the first place.

And again, you're misrepresenting, we are in control (your silly attempts to redefine the word aside). Determinism doesn't affect comparative knowledge, aptitude, and willingness to learn and use them. It just explains why they got that way, and why some people have different abilities to others.

Remember, you have never, ever, even once, explained how the impossible, self-contradictory, unimaginable ability to have done differently without randomness, would in any way at all affect anything that humans do. How about just trying for once in your life to get out of this stupid broken record mode, and actually think about, and address the multiple points and arguments people have put to you?

Cue some thought-free comment like "but how can I do this is all my actions are..." Anything but actually facing up to the argument.

You keep asserting that the concept of physically driven cause an effect is irrelevant, but it is physical reactions which define the arrow of time.  You cannot presume that anything outside the realm of physical material has the same time dimension.

Do you really have such a terrible memory? For about the ten-thousandth time: it doesn't matter a jot whether your mind (or a part thereof) has the same time dimension or not, unless it has some time dimension, then it literally can't do anything. It could play no part in choice making or do any interacting. If it has any time dimension, then it is either a deterministic system or it isn't (which, by definition, means it is partly random).

If this material universe did not exist, how would the arrow of time be defined?

That's a problem with your 'argument', not mine.

[bluehillside Retd.]

VG,

It's not a straw man. You and Sam Harris are telling the moderate religious that they bear a terrible dogma because they are providing religious cover for the extremists.

Not sure about the “terrible dogma” part, but I do think they exit the field of criticising extremists when the rationale each group relies on is the same (ie, “faith”). 

Presumably you think religious extremism is a bad thing?

Yes.

You are warning the moderates about the consequences of their moderate beliefs.

I’m not “warning” anyone of anything, but I do think that by privileging faith over just guessing about stuff they provide intellectual cover for extremists, yes.
 

Despite your warnings if the moderates still refuse to abandon their religious activism, no matter how moderate, you seem to be saying that the moderates are helping perpetuate religious extremism.

To some degree, yes. 

So I asked the question, if the doctors prescribing Thalidomide were warned of the terrible consequences, and yet they persisted in prescribing it, would you say what they did was good or bad.

Bad. That’s not what happened though.

If you are arguing that doing bad things does not make you a bad person, fair enough.

If you don’t know that they’re bad things, then yes that is what I’m arguing (it’s the “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” point again). Vlad’s mistake though was to asset that actions whose consequences were bad also meant that the character of the people executing them was bad. That doesn’t follow at all though.   

It's like the argument that telling gay people that gay sex is bad in the hope that they will stop practising it, is not the same as saying gay people are bad if they carry on having gay sex.

No it isn’t because the initial premise (that gay sex is bad) is unsupportable (especially when the only justification for it is “faith”). The doctors prescribing Thalidomide analogy is a better one – the outcome was demonstrably “bad” (if you accept axiomatically that disabled babies is a bad outcome) but the doctors were benign nonetheless. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

NS,

Gender is regressive patriarchal woo. Sex exists. There are two.

Happy to be corrected on the terminology, not so sure about the “there are two”. Even if we accept that there are two though, the point is that not everyone will fit neatly into one category or the other.

This doesn’t seem particularly controversial to me, but hey-ho.   

[bluehillside Retd.]

VG,

Ok - I agree with your view that not speaking out against extremists gives legitimacy to extremists.

Perhaps it does, but the point here is that religious moderates disarm themselves from “speaking out against extremists” because the response of the extremist would legitimately be “why is your faith position any more legitimate than my faith position?” We’re in two bald men arguing over a comb territory here. 

Of course if the moderate wants to junk his faith rationale and reason his way to an argument against the extremist instead that’s a different matter (starting with, “using faith to justify blowing up a school bus is a very bad idea”) but then how would he justify still relying on faith for his own positions after that?   

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

It is my knowledge of science and the laws governing particle physics which leads me to the conclusion that my abilities to believe, to contemplate and to reason are entirely incompatible with the fall out from a material entity whose every moment is entirely defined by unavoidable reactions to previous moments.

So what knowledge is it that you have that justifies that conclusion?

We’ve heard you make this assertion may times, but never so far as I can tell have you told us what this supposed knowledge is. Consciousness as an emergent property of brains seems an entirely reasonable possibility to me – why do you think it isn’t?     

[jeremyp]

That's just pedantry. We don't care if Sam Harris explicitly said all christians are bad people. The point Vlad was making was a negative generalisation about a group of people. The negative generalisation was that moderate Christians are the bearers of a terrible dogma. Being the bearer of a terrible dogma is not a compliment - it might have put the moderate Chrisitians in a bad light except luckily many people are not bigots and would dismiss the SH's sentiment as being simple-minded.

sorry to pick on this particular post to reply to but it's convenient.

This whole thread has taken a surreal turn with Professor Davy having to defend Sam Harris from people making straw men out of his arguments. I say it's surreal because it is a central thesis of Vlad's religion that we are all bad. He says it himself all the time. The hypocrisy of a Christian calling out other people for making generalisations about how bad people are is utterly breathtaking.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Jeremy,

This whole thread has taken a surreal turn with Professor Davy having to defend Sam Harris from people making straw men out of his arguments. I say it's surreal because it is a central thesis of Vlad's religion that we are all bad. He says it himself all the time. The hypocrisy of a Christian calling out other people for making generalisations about how bad people are is utterly breathtaking.

Quite. Vlad asserted that "…Christians are now portrayed by some as bad people". When asked to justify the assertion he cited an article by Sam Harris that didn’t say that at all. Violent Gabriella, then tried to divert us into the reasonableness or otherwise of SH’s argument, and NS tried to correlate the outcomes of actions with the character of the people undertaking them.

The point though remains that Vlad hasn’t justified his claim. 

 

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Not sure about your brexit analogy, but agree that some tribes are very difficult to leave - see my previous comment on RCC.

That said I'm not sure I buy the 'influencing /reforming from within' argument for religions. I think this may well be the case for political parties with democratic structures for the membership, where you can influence, get people to join and then take over and change policy etc. Not sure that works for many religions - my most visible example in this respect is the RCC as my wife and all her family are 'from the cradle' and still practicing catholics. As far as I'm aware, and I have discussed this with my wife and this is her view too, there is no meaningful and structured way to influence the position of the RCC on some of these key issues. Their position is set and will only change top down, never bottom up. So no amount of grass roots dissent will make any difference.

So if you disagree on those views you have a choice - you can, of course leave but as pointed out this can be hard. You can remain and accept a disconnect between your views and those of the church, but the notion of plugging away to influence/reform from within just isn't going to happen. And that is why there is such a gaping hole between the established views of the RCC on abortion, contraception, women priests, priests being able to marry, gay relationships etc and those of rank and file practicing catholics. And I think the lack of ability to influence/reform from within means that those that disagree have no forum to dissent nor is there any point so there is very little vocal dissent raised internally, regardless of the views of the rank and file because, frankly, it is rather pointless.

I am not sure it is so bleak. This article talks about the reforms in the Catholic Church during the 1960s including the challenges to the teachings about birth control. https://uscatholic.org/articles/201106/the-times-they-were-achanging-mark-massa-on-the-catholic-60s/ It is an interview with a church historian, Mark Massa, who relates how since the 1960s young Catholics grew up into adulthood with the idea that you can reform the Catholic Church. He relates that the changes in the 1960s means:

The answer from authority works if you say, “I’m authoritative because I speak for the tradition that is unchanging.” It works less well if you say, “I speak for a tradition that was this way for 100 years and then we did something else and then we did something else.” That makes it more difficult to hold the line and say, “No, we’re not even going to talk about this.” People say, “Well, why not? Why can’t we talk about it?”

I wonder what the situation is within your branch of Islam VG - is there any meaningful channel for dissenting voices that provides a mechanism for reform of their position on, for example, homosexuality.

There is no central priesthood or authority so change would be bottom up. https://religionnews.com/2016/06/17/muslim-attitudes-about-lbgt-are-complex-and-far-from-universally-anti-gay/