Searching for GOD...

[jeremyp]

Jeremy,

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.

And my point is that whether or not Vlad has justified his claim (he hasn't), that all Christians are bad (and everybody else) is something he himself believes. He agrees with the straw man he has constructed for Sam Harris.

[Nearly Sane]

NS,

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.   

And yet JK Rowling gets death and rape threats for saying rapists are male.

Gender is regressive patriarchal woo

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

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.

Learning by rote in Arabic is considered an impressive feat of memory but the Muslims I associate with would not consider memory feats alone as a sign that someone is not scripturally ignorant.

The Muslims I know or have read about or heard speaking think years of studying and reading around the topics is required to try to understand the meaning of the words being recited e.g. by learning Quranic Arabic, understanding the grammar, root words and knowing historical context, reading what various scholars have written and changing your views as you come across new information that could change the interpretation, therefore they would consider it ignorance for people to assume certainty about their position. Plus many verses of the Quran are considered to be metaphorical so trying to understand the metaphors would be a bit like doing an English degree - each word could have multiple layers of meanings. 
 

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.

I don't have much experience with American fundamentalism but have heard interviews with QAnon conspiracy theorists, who seemed very certain in their beliefs. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

And my point is that whether or not Vlad has justified his claim (he hasn't), that all Christians are bad (and everybody else) is something he himself believes. He agrees with the straw man he has constructed for Sam Harris.

And yet if you had read my Harris quote he goes further and rather than Religious extremists pushing us to the edge of the Abyss, it is religious moderates. That is a country mile from believing we are all sinners, some of us moderate some of us extremist and a league away from thinking religious moderates are more guilty than religious extremists of bringing armageddon.

Any way by the end of that book Harris comes to a different conclusion.
"What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe.''

Atheist armageddon? New Atheist paranoia?

[bluehillside Retd.]

NS,

And yet JK Rowling gets death and rape threats for saying rapists are male.

Gender is regressive patriarchal woo

Quite possibly. Back to the point though...?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

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?     

In essence, anything which emerges from material reactions will be entirely defined by those reactions.  In turn, these reactions will be defined by the laws of particle physics.  So in a materialistic scenario, there can be no conscious control over the laws of physics, so no conscious control over whatever emerges from material reactions.  Our conscious awareness can only perceive what has already been determined by the material reactions from which our conscious awareness emerges.  Yet we have the ability and motive to consciously contemplate whatever we perceive through our conscious awareness and guide our thought processes to reach meaningful conclusions.  If our conscious awareness is nothing more than a spectator of what emerges from material reactions, there can be no possibility for consciously driven interaction to drive the contemplation and guiding process of our thoughts.  If such guiding and contemplation is an illusion - "just the way it seems", whatever conclusions we reach will be just meaningless reactions with no means of validation.  I am fully aware that both you and I have the ability to consciously drive our thought processes to reach what we both believe to be valid conclusions - even though our conclusions may differ, the process of reaching and validating these conclusions can't be determined by the end result of reactions beyond our conscious control.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

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.

Yes the article offers an interesting analysis. I have read something similar to this idea from other sources:

To understand why people turn to Islamic political violence, another group of researchers have left aside the role played by ideas to assess the influence of economic and political factors. These studies do not state that ideas do not play any role in the radicalization process but that their influence is only contingent. In other words, causal factors leading people to adhere to some specific attitudes with regard to the use of violence are the same whatever the ideology they use to then justify these attitudes.

At the political level, the role of specific experiences in triggering radicalization received large empirical support. These experiences may be common to Muslims wherever they live or may only hold in certain social and political contexts. Overall, radical beliefs have been largely found to be associated with a perceived lack of legitimacy and justice of national and international politics. A study comparing Western European and Arabic Muslim countries showed that opposition to Western foreign policies is a key driver of respondents’ justification of political violence.44 In the same token, several analyses have pointed out that the approval and justification of terrorism are strongly correlated with anti-Americanism and with the perception that the foreign policies of Western powers.

This 2009 article on Yasir Qadhi soon after the attempted terrorist attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab while on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, discusses the difficulty for scholars to openly discuss jihad because they might be arrested by the authorities. This means it becomes harder to have a frank discussion to dissuade young hot-headed US Muslim students from militant action:
 
Since 2008, more than two dozen Muslim-Americans have joined or sought training with militant groups abroad. They are among the roughly 50 American citizens charged with terrorism-related offenses during that time. These suspects are a mixed lot. Some converted to Islam; others were raised in the faith. They come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and have migrated to different fronts in their global war, from Somalia to Pakistan. Their motivations differ, but the vast majority share two key attributes: a deep disdain for American foreign policy and an ideology rooted in Salafiya......

During the months I spent in the insular world of young American Salafis, it became clear how pressing those questions are for many conservative Muslims who have come of age after 9/11. They have watched as their own country wages war in Muslim lands, bearing witness — via satellite television and the Internet — to the carnage in Iraq, the drone attacks in Pakistan and the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo. While the dozens of AlMaghrib students I interviewed condemned the tactics of militant groups, many share their basic grievances.

For an ultraconservative cleric like Qadhi, the picture is more complicated. Engaging in a detailed discussion of militant jihad — a complex subject informed by centuries of scholarship — risks drawing the scrutiny of law enforcement and, Qadhi fears, possible prosecution. If he were to acknowledge that Islamic law endorses the legitimacy of armed resistance against Western forces in Muslim territory, he could give a green light to the very students he claims he is trying to keep off the militant path. Yet by remaining silent, Qadhi says he is losing the credibility he needs to persuade them of his ultimate message: those fights are not theirs, as Westerners, to fight. “My hands are tied, and my tongue is silent,” he said.

Militant clerics abroad have filled the void, none more than Anwar al-Awlaki, the American preacher..... Awlaki has been linked to numerous plots against the United States, including the botched underwear bombing. He has taken to the Internet with stirring battle cries directed at young American Muslims. “Many of your scholars,” Awlaki warned last year, are “standing between you and your duty of jihad.”

For example there are young Muslim men who are acutely aware that US authorities and US imams supported the Afghan resistance against the Soviets and therefore consider it hypocritical for them to condemn armed resistance against US troops that are engaged in oppression.

One of Qadhi’s followers, a feisty 27-year-old New Yorker, compared his experience of watching bombs fall on Iraq to what other Americans might feel at seeing “California being ravaged day in and day out. How would you feel?” He said he understood why Qadhi could not speak expansively about the conflicts overseas. Even so, he asked, who has greater credibility: the cleric living comfortably in America or the militant “in the cave” who sacrificed everything for his beliefs? “One thing about Awlaki no one can deny,” he said, “this man is fearless.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/magazine/mag-20Salafis-t.html/

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

And yet if you had read my Harris quote he goes further and rather than Religious extremists pushing us to the edge of the Abyss, it is religious moderates. That is a country mile from believing we are all sinners, some of us moderate some of us extremist and a league away from thinking religious moderates are more guilty than religious extremists of bringing armageddon.

You’re ranting now. What are you trying to say here?

Any way by the end of that book Harris comes to a different conclusion.

Your straw man version wasn’t his conclusion to start with, but ok…

"What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe.''

Why do you think he’s wrong about that? Do you really think that people who would fly passenger jets into crowded office blocks would hesitate to use nuclear weapons as well if they had access to them? Why?

Atheist armageddon?

No, not atheistic at all – more like “people who don’t want to be annihilated by religiously inspired fruit loops Armageddon”.   

New Atheist paranoia?

Yes.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

VG,

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

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

No I'm not. You are making the error of comparing 2 different categories.

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.

That's a very narrow definition of improved outcomes - whether a patient lives or dies - and is no way representative of the complexity of debate about what are improved patient outcomes. Medical ethics is a vast subject and your simplistic assertions do not compare like with like when it comes to comparing religious and non-religious ethics. 

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.

Invalid comparison - you are comparing religious ethics with basic measurable outcomes such as whether patients live or die. It's an invalid comparison.

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.

Invalid comparison for the reasons given above.
   

Yes it does fail – see above.

No it doesn't fail. See above.

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

What reasoning is there in the non-religious argument "because I want to"?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

You’re ranting now. What are you trying to say here?

Your straw man version wasn’t his conclusion to start with, but ok…

Why do you think he’s wrong about that? Do you really think that people who would fly passenger jets into crowded office blocks would hesitate to use nuclear weapons as well if they had access to them? Why?

No, not atheistic at all – more like “people who don’t want to be annihilated by religiously inspired fruit loops Armageddon”.   

Yes.

You aren't afraid though of american bombs, russian bombs, chinese bombs or isreali bombs. One islamic Government already has nuclear bombs...when then in your paranoid mind then do you suggest we make the first strike? Sure you go along with Harris?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

VG,

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”).

Given that many religious people's arguments are a lot more sophisticated than "it's my faith" you've created a straw man.

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.

An assertion you have not been able to justify as you still have not defined what privileging faith means and how it's any different to the non-religious justification "because I want to, because it feels good to me"
 

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 doesn't make it much better for Harris to assert the moderate religionists are doing bad things with good intentions without any supporting evidence that they their actions are bad. 

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.

The initial premise that moderate religionists' actions are bad is also unsupportable - it's just based on a subjective belief of what Sam Harris and like-minded atheists consider to be good or bad based on their personal preferences.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

You aren't afraid though of american bombs, russian bombs, chinese bombs or isreali bombs. One islamic Government already has nuclear bombs...when then in your paranoid mind then do you suggest we make the first strike? Sure you go along with Harris?

I'm afraid of any bombs if I have reasonable grounds to think someone would drop them on me if only they could. Russia etc are currently at least unlikely to do that because they know they'd be nuked if they tried. Islamic (and other fruit loop) fundies have no such deterrent - after all, getting nuked by the infidel would only get them to their 72 virgins that much faster (see also William Lane Craig justifying the murder of babies because it delivered them "god" sooner).

Again, why do you think people who would fly full passenger jets into crowded office blocks would hesitate to use nuclear weapons too if only they had access to them?

 

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

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.

That's ok as my point was that atheists like Sam Harris are taking the same approach as Vlad.

ETA: Having read Vlad's response I think Vlad saying we are all sinners is not the same as Sam Harris pointing the finger at only religious moderates. If Sam Harris acknowledges the terrible dangers of his own dogma, then that would be a bit less of a bigoted position.

[Nearly Sane]

NS,

Quite possibly. Back to the point though...?

You can join in over here but it was you that raised the issue here

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=15994.1400

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

I'm afraid of any bombs if I have reasonable grounds to think someone would drop them on me if only they could. Russia etc are currently at least unlikely to do that because they know they'd be nuked if they tried. Islamic (and other fruit loop) fundies have no such deterrent - after all, getting nuked by the infidel would only get them to their 72 virgins that much faster (see also William Lane Craig justifying the murder of babies because it delivered them "god" sooner).

Again, why do you think people who would fly full passenger jets into crowded office blocks would hesitate to use nuclear weapons too if only they had access to them?

Again one islamic regime has nukes. So your fevered conditions are met. According to you and Harris they want those virgins. When then in your paranoid mind do you think we should start the preemptive strike? For me, I think the islamic regime in question would be one of the last  to launch them our way.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Vlad,

I'm afraid of any bombs if I have reasonable grounds to think someone would drop them on me if only they could. Russia etc are currently at least unlikely to do that because they know they'd be nuked if they tried. Islamic (and other fruit loop) fundies have no such deterrent - after all, getting nuked by the infidel would only get them to their 72 virgins that much faster (see also William Lane Craig justifying the murder of babies because it delivered them "god" sooner).

Again, why do you think people who would fly full passenger jets into crowded office blocks would hesitate to use nuclear weapons too if only they had access to them?

I'm sure the fundies understand your sentiments - they probably feel that a country like the US, which has already deployed nuclear weapons against civilians in a country that did not have nuclear weapons (Japan) cannot be trusted not to do it again to another country without nuclear weapons. Not to mention the US and UK's non-nuclear foreign policy forays into armed conflict and overthrowing democratically elected governments.

The fundies probably consider it a wise strategy for them to also have nuclear weapons either as a deterrent or in case they need to carry out a pre-emptive strike against the US. They are probably thankful that their religious faith gives them courage, much like patriotism motivates the non-religious to kill and die for their country.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That's ok as my point was that atheists like Sam Harris are taking the same approach as Vlad.

Please don't link me with that bloke. I see myself as one of Harris' Religious moderates ''pushing everybody into the abyss''.
I have no truck with nuclear overkill just in case an islamic regime has nuclear weapons. He obviously forgot about the one that already has them.

Harris probably thinks that religion is what makes people do bad things. He obviously doesn't then include himself in that number. Where as I believe ALL have fallen short.
Secondly he thinks it justified to start a nuclear strike against Islamist regimes that gain nuclear weapons. That makes his views extreme.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Please don't link me with that bloke. I see myself as one of Harris' Religious moderates ''pushing everybody into the abyss''.
I have no truck with nuclear overkill just in case an islamic regime has nuclear weapons. He obviously forgot about the one that already has them.

Harris probably thinks that religion is what makes people do bad things. He obviously doesn't then include himself in that number. Where as I believe ALL have fallen short.
Secondly he thinks it justified to start a nuclear strike against Islamist regimes that gain nuclear weapons. That makes his views extreme.

Yes - apologies - I edited my reply, which I wrote before reading your reply #43603

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Yes - apologies - I edited my reply, which I wrote before reading your reply #43603

Thanks VG
No worries.

[torridon]

I am fully aware that both you and I have the ability to consciously drive our thought processes to reach what we both believe to be valid conclusions - even though our conclusions may differ, the process of reaching and validating these conclusions can't be determined by the end result of reactions beyond our conscious control.

However all the brain functioning going on to produce perception and conscious experience absolutely is 'beyond our conscious control'.  We cannot intervene to alter the functioning of biochemistry going on in our heads. All our conscious deliberations are the outcome of this non-conscious neural activity.

[Stranger]

 
And round, and round, and round we go....

In essence, anything which emerges from material reactions...

Misrepresentation of the logical impossibility of your alternative.

...will be entirely defined by those reactions.  In turn, these reactions will be defined by the laws of particle physics.  So in a materialistic scenario, there can be no conscious control over the laws of physics, so no conscious control over whatever emerges from material reactions.

It is a direct experience and a logical necessity that we have no concious control over what enters our conscious mind next, regardless. You can't consciously think about what your next conscious thought will be, that's an absurd infinite regress.

Our conscious awareness can only perceive what has already been determined by the material reactions from which our conscious awareness emerges.

Gibberish.

Yet we have the ability and motive to consciously contemplate whatever we perceive through our conscious awareness and guide our thought processes to reach meaningful conclusions.

More gibberish. We can decide to think about whatever we want to think about, but we can't just decide to have a great idea, or when something new will occur to us. It doesn't look like you've had any new thought on this subject for decades, not even on how to phrase it differently.

If our conscious awareness is nothing more than a spectator of what emerges from material reactions...

Nobody knows what role consciousness plays (another misrepresentation), and it's still totally irrelevant to the impossibility of your version of freedom.

...there can be no possibility for consciously driven interaction to drive the contemplation and guiding process of our thoughts.

As I said, we can decide to think about whatever we want to. We can also organise our ideas and examine them to see if, for example, they follow a logical path or one full of assumption, incredulity, and fallacies. If we don't know how to do that, we can decide to learn how to.

It's about time you tried it.

I am fully aware that both you and I have the ability to consciously drive our thought processes...

This really doesn't mean very much, and to the extent it does (see above), it's totally irrelevant.

...to reach what we both believe to be valid conclusions - even though our conclusions may differ, the process of reaching and validating these conclusions can't be determined by the end result of reactions beyond our conscious control.

More misrepresentation and a baseless assertion. 

[jeremyp]

And yet if you had read my Harris quote he goes further and rather than Religious extremists pushing us to the edge of the Abyss, it is religious moderates.

That's something you're reading into Harris that I don't think is there.

On the other hand, you think everybody is bad. No exceptions. How is your opinion better than Sam Harris's?

That is a country mile from believing we are all sinners,

There you go again "we are all evil".

some of us moderate some of us extremist and a league away from thinking religious moderates are more guilty than religious extremists of bringing armageddon.

There's your straw man again. Nobody thinks religious moderates are more guilty than the extremists.

"What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe.''

Atheist armageddon? New Atheist paranoia?

Do you think some extremist Islamic regime getting hold of nuclear weapons and deciding that the infidels (that's us) need to burn in hell - literally - is not a terrifying prospect.

[jeremyp]

You aren't afraid though of american bombs, russian bombs, chinese bombs or isreali bombs.

We should be.

One islamic Government already has nuclear bombs

Are you talking about Pakistan? Definitely afraid of them having the Bomb, although the country they are most likely to use it on is a long way from here.

...when then in your paranoid mind then do you suggest we make the first strike? Sure you go along with Harris?

When Iran gets the Bomb, I expect Israel will strike first, with conventional weapons. If the prospect doesn't terrify you, it should.

[Alan Burns]

Misrepresentation of the logical impossibility of your alternative.

You put a lot of faith in your "logical impossibility" conclusion being derived from the presumption that the time related cause and effect events we perceive in material behaviour are applicable to all reality - even outside the realm of our material universe.  You need to open up your mind to the bigger picture in which our ability to consciously control our thoughts words and actions can become a reality rather than an illusion.  If everything we do, think or say is derived from the conscious awareness emerging from material reactions, the only conclusion must be that conscious control is an illusion, but this forum contains ample evidence that such conscious control is a reality, not an illusion.  You may claim to believe that it all happens in subconscious brain activity, but the act of belief itself is evidence of your own conscious control in being able to contemplate and drive your thought processes to reach that belief.

[Gordon]

You put a lot of faith in your "logical impossibility" conclusion being derived from the presumption that the time related cause and effect events we perceive in material behaviour are applicable to all reality - even outside the realm of our material universe.

What does "outside the realm of our material universe" mean?

You need to open up your mind to the bigger picture in which our ability to consciously control our thoughts words and actions can become a reality rather than an illusion.  If everything we do, think or say is derived from the conscious awareness emerging from material reactions, the only conclusion must be that conscious control is an illusion, but this forum contains ample evidence that such conscious control is a reality, not an illusion.  You may claim to believe that it all happens in subconscious brain activity, but the act of belief itself is evidence of your own conscious control in being able to contemplate and drive your thought processes to reach that belief.

Another fallacy-salad