[PassedOut]

 blackshoe, on 2013-January-07, 21:59, said:

AFAIK, the Universe is 13.75 billion years old, ± 0.11 billion. Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but this planet ain't the whole Universe, in spite of what some may believe.

You're right of course. I need to be more careful when tossing out "facts"...

[Scarabin]

What puzzles me about this topic is not the rambling, incoherent nature of the posts but that the poll contradicts my preconceived opinions.

Thus I would have expected a bunch of bridge players to be of above average intelligence, and because of this I would expect the majority of votes to cluster round "tolerant, don't much care",which they do, and around "ambivalent,etc", which they don't. Perhaps this is due to multiple votes and some fanatics may have stacked the vote?

Added to this some posters seem to have no inhibition to contradicting themselves, nor to exposing themselves as narcissistic.

[Vampyr]

 Scarabin, on 2013-January-08, 01:07, said:

Thus I would have expected a bunch of bridge players to be of above average intelligence, and because of this I would expect the majority of votes to cluster round "tolerant, don't much care",which they do, and around "ambivalent,etc", which they don't. Perhaps this is due to multiple votes and some fanatics may have stacked the vote?

You thought that people of above-average intelligence would not have given any thought to the existence or not of a supernatural being or beings, and would not have formed an opinion based on evidence (or in some cases, some other basis)?

I will answer the poll when I am allowed to be tolerant of some and infuriated by others.

EDIT: Oh wait, I am

[mgoetze]

 Scarabin, on 2013-January-08, 01:07, said:

Thus I would have expected a bunch of bridge players to be of above average intelligence, and because of this I would expect the majority of votes to cluster [...] around "ambivalent,etc", which they don't.

The nasty answer to this: maybe most of them are even more intelligent than you. SCNR.

On a more serious note, I did indeed consider myself an agnostic for quite a while, but in the end it just seems too silly: I don't know whether "God" exists, I don't know whether the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, I don't know whether little green men live on Mars, whether the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus are good friends - I don't know anything really - but I do have very strong opinions about all this stuff. Why shouldn't I trust my own judgement?

In the strictest sense, of course, I do not endorse the statement "God does not exist". For me this is a nonstatement, the word "God" is undefined, and I don't say that just to win an argument on semantic grounds, I truly do not comprehend what people might possibly mean by it. Oh sure, some might think that it means there is some huge anthropomorphic being hiding out behind the sun laughing his ass off at how stupid we are but others deny this view fervently and yet still claim that "God exists". Well at least for the dude behind the sun I am willing to state definitely that he does not exist, and I still don't know what the other people are talking about.

 Vampyr, on 2013-January-08, 01:21, said:

I will answer the poll when I am allowed to be tolerant of some and infuriated by others.

You must have missed my reply way back on page 1.

 mgoetze, on 2012-December-19, 15:04, said:

I answered both "tolerant" and "infuriated" to question 2. I consider deism misguided, and pity those who feel the need for such silly explanations, but if that's what they need to help them cope - oh well. The "infuriated" part applies to organised religion. I strongly believe that religious organisations are harmful to society. The recent "debate" on circumcision here in Germany and the shameful law that was passed last week as a result is the newest point on a very very long list of evidence for this position.

[mikeh]

 Scarabin, on 2013-January-08, 01:07, said:

What puzzles me about this topic is not the rambling, incoherent nature of the posts but that the poll contradicts my preconceived opinions.

Thus I would have expected a bunch of bridge players to be of above average intelligence, and because of this I would expect the majority of votes to cluster round "tolerant, don't much care",which they do, and around "ambivalent,etc", which they don't. Perhaps this is due to multiple votes and some fanatics may have stacked the vote?

Added to this some posters seem to have no inhibition to contradicting themselves, nor to exposing themselves as narcissistic.

Given the evidence that there is a correlation between education and intelligence, and between education and atheism, I am puzzled that you are puzzled that a majority of the posters here are atheist.

As for people revealing themselves, well, this is the internet, and posts are often written and posted without the reflection that one would ordinarily employ in more traditional exchanges, so I would be reluctant to read too much of a psychiatric diagnosis into what anyone writes here

As for stacking the votes, wouldn't that require multiple log-ins, each with a different name, which seems like cheating and what's the point of that?


Maybe you should allow the evidence to cause you to rethink your prejudices, rather than search for reasons to preserve them by imagining unlikely explanations that explain away the evidence?

[Codo]

 mgoetze, on 2013-January-07, 17:58, said:

I would be interested to know what you think these positive effects are given that...


...are by and large actually the efforts of German taxpayers.

No, not so much by the tax payer. YOu are free to decide NOT to pay the church taxes and a lot of people did decide to do so.
But maybe you think about the money which is spend besides this direct taxes? Yes this is tricky and as always it is debateble why the state should support f.e. the restauration of old churches, the work of social workers from the churches or others. But as you surely know, the money is not spend just for the religious workers and buildings. so what is your point?

And for the benefits: Besides the social work where this work is needed, they give a lot of people just a good feeling, a community where they belong to. To believe spends consolation to many people.
So whether or not religions are an invention of man and accepting that bad things had happen in the name of God, they do have their benefits too. Hey man, even Mikes claims so, it must be true.

[Vampyr]

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 02:19, said:

No, not so much by the tax payer. YOu are free to decide NOT to pay the church taxes and a lot of people did decide to do so.

There are church taxes in Germany? And enough people pay these to fund a pretty huge welfare state?

[32519]

 Cyberyeti, on 2013-January-07, 08:30, said:

My belief, Jesus was a historical person, but no more the son of any deity than anybody else, and the "miracles" were exaggerated/invented by his followers to promote their religion. Am I prepared to challenge that? Yes, just give me some decent independent evidence.

You’ve just played your highest trump card, the Ace. This argument is the one sceptics just love because 2000 years down the line there is no way for the current generation to say whether or not the recorded miracles were invented or not. Guess what? There is a flaw in your argument.

The entire New Testament, excluding Luke and Acts, was written by Jews for Jews. To invent all these stories as you suggest would be completely laughable for the Jews of the day. They were the ones being healed of all sorts of diseases etc. When the non-Jews started accepting the New Testament message and writings, all sorts of corruptions of the original texts started creeping in. Non-Jews started adding/deleting/changing what was originally written. I have already mentioned two examples higher up in this thread. Here are some examples of the original texts being corrupted –
1. Start off with William Tyndale again (go read the post higher up)
2. The attempted deletion of parts of Romans (go read the post higher up)
3. Man made words that REPLACED the original word. Some classic examples include –
a. Church: The Greek word means assembly. When referring to followers of Christ, it is an assembly of believers
b. Repent: The Greek word means “change your mind.” But it needs to be read and understood in the context that it was written. The Jews had crucified their own Messiah. Read in context it says, “Change your mind and think differently about how you perceive Jesus.”
c. Gospel: The Greek means “good news” or “glad tidings.” What the hell is gospel anyway?
d. These are just some examples. There are plenty of others.
4. Then you have the endless list of words either transliterated or not translated at all. I’ll give you some examples here as well –
a. Hosanna: The Greek word is “hoosanna" and was a cry for help from Jesus meaning “save us, set us free now.” The Jews were expecting Jesus to overthrow the Roman oppressors of the day. When that never happened they crucified him, choosing to set free a freedom fighter. However, because the word was transliterated it has become a song of praise in institutionalised religion. Read this and you find something else where non-Jews have changed the original text http://www.gospel-my...t/barabbas.html
b. Angel: The Greek word is “angelos” and means messenger.
c. Again, there are plenty of other examples.
5. Luke and Acts are the only two books in the New Testament written by a non-Jew. Biblical scholars are growing in numbers who now understand that both were written in the form of an affidavit as part of Paul’s defence before Emperor Nero during his first Roman imprisonment. Both are addressed to Theophilus, another word never translated. Theophilus means “friend of God.” In Paul calling Nero a friend of God may have been to soften his stance? Paul’s hand in compiling both documents is unmistakeable. For sure Luke added the historical names, dates and places, etc. For Luke and Paul to fake the miracles recorded before Emperor Nero would have sealed Paul's death immediately.
6. Non-Jews have tried to conceal the identity of the false apostle and Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Paul identifies the culprit at least 3 times. The biggest clue as to the identity of the culprit comes from Jesus himself. But for reasons of their own, institutionalised religion has tried to conceal the culprits identity.
7. To add to all these inadequacies you have fictitious characters (Satan, devils and demons) (go read the post higher up)

A lot has been said in this thread criticising institutionalised religion (myself included). Let me add another five cents here. I am a 100% believer in the God of the Bible. But I left institutionalised religion for good in the late 1990s. I disagree with many of their practices. I also disagree with the way much of the Bible has been translated. Much of the original beauty of what was said or written has been lost.

Now a question for you:
Regarding the Ace of trumps played: what will your answer be to God when he establishes a revoke?

[Codo]

 mikeh, on 2013-January-07, 19:23, said:

Ah, the old no true scotsman argument. It would be funny, if it weren't so predictable, how so many religious people claim that the violence perpetrated in the name of religion is not based on their beliefs. Tell that to the descendants of the Canaanites, who shared Palestine with the Israelites. Ooops, you can't because, expressly in furtherance of the demands of their god, who is, I believe, your god, the Israelites murdered every single man, woman and child.

What are you talking about? Is this part of ancient history or was this a way to talk about the current desaster around Israel?

And why aren't you able to name the countries which are civilized enough to abaondon religion?

Quote

Tell that to the inhabitants of the 'Holy Lands' during the times of the many crusades.
Tell that to the Protestants murdered by the French catholics, or those tortured and murdered by the Holy Inquisition, or those Catholic killed by Protestants in the wars of the reformation.

You may take some history lesson or simply look at Wikipedia. There had been a lot of reasons for the crusades and for the big wars in the Middle Ages. If you had been right, you should have been able to show that there had been no fights between catholic states, but you cannot. Man make war. But anyway, these times are long gone.

Quote

Tell that to the women stoned to death in modern Saudi Arabia for adultery. Tell that to the apostates sentenced to death for refusing to believe or to lie about their lack of belief. Tell that to the family of the Pakistani Governor, shot to death because he advocated relaxing the law on blasphemy.....his murderer was accorded open applause by lawyers!

And where is your logical chain to religion here? Death penalty is by no means a part of religion. As written before, China is the land with the biggest number of death penalties. You won't accuse them of being overly religious, will you?
And again, somewhere on this planet there are always people who kill for silly resons, even in Pakistan. Do you mind to tell me the religious reasons the killer in the US have, who just run into schools and kill some pupils? Surely you believe them that God send them?

Quote

Tell that to the victims of civil strife that killed a million in India upon independence.

That that to the victims of the genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Turks in the 1920s.

Heck, these are just examples I can name off the top of my head.

I don't doubt that almost all believers will claim, with a straight face and a clear conscience, that violence done in the name of their religion was done by people who were not true believers. However, ask the killers, and their victims, and you'll no doubt get a different answer (of course the victims can't really speak, having been sent on to their lake of fire or what have you, to suffer eons of agony just for not believing correctly).

All your examples are quite old and some demonstably false. But anyway, we had been here before. People kill. If you ask them, they usually claim that they have a reason which is not for the personal advantage. They always tell you something about God, Honor, fame, race, state.

If this killing would stop after reaching atheism, I would support your fight for it. But unluckily it does not. Some of the biggest mass murderer in history had no real connection to religion. Stalin Pol Pot or Mao f.e. just fought for their own power, not for a God.

They need to tell their troops about the benefits of communism, or about the cruelty of the enemy or they have to promise wealth. They used the same words to motivate their soldiers then any leader in history used. They claimed any given reason to justify their fight. Well any one but one. They did not murder in the name of God. But their victims are as countless as the victims of people who claim to fight for a religion. So no, the superiority in atheism is not real. It is an Utopia.

Quote

As for the Chinese government, the casual use of executions is horrifying but seems to be based in part on historical tradition: reflecting an attitude towards a person's place in society and relation to the state that long pre-dates communism. A brutual regime practises brutal behaviours. I don't see any attempt by the Chinese to link their criminal justice system to atheism. And while the execution rate is horrific, it isn't as bad as the execution rates in Western Europe in historically recent times, when Christianity was the dominant world view.

So you concede that the current dominating atheist country practice brutal behaviours? Or is China somehow religious in your mind? I will concede that in the middle age, there had been horrible times on this planet. But luckily we matured. Maybe atheist states need to mature too?

Quote

However, I have never seen nor cannot imagine a leader rallying people to his cause by arguing: 'Join me in the name of not believing in a god...let us kill and maim in the name of rejecting superstition!'

Well it happend, as Adam pointed out. But it is simpler then that: You cannot rallying people for the support of "nothing". As I wrote before, leaders now claim to be offended, to be attacked, to destroy mass destruction weapons, to fight for or against communism or demcracy, etc. pp.

Quote

I have conceded that religion has some beneficial attributes. You, on the other hand, seem to be in denial about the costs. You resort to cheap and invalid arguments to avoid recognizing that religion not only often demands violence but is also a very handy, reliable means for leaders to rally and motivate the sheep into committing acts of incredible violence and brutality.

Yes, humans can no doubt be and often are motivated to such behaviour by other factors. So what? Eliminate the public use of religion, or deprive it of its power over the populace, and we will have reduced the power of the leaders to manipulate their people. Isn't that a worthy goal

Maybe my writing or your reading ability needs a brush up. Here where I live religion does not demand violence. Not a single religion does. I know that there are some "hate priests" somewhere. But sorry, they are a very small minority.
I conceded more then once that religion was abused to make a war creditable and to make it legitimate. I can and will always concede that the theory of the religion and the reality of what had been done is often not matching.
However since ancient times wars had been made between people of the same religion or without religion too. So there had always been a simple way to manipulate the people and motivate the sheep.

So basically I just claim that atheism does not lead to a superior, more peaceful and better world. If you compare the realities you can see no upside, nor can you see one if you compare the theories.
In theory both religion and atheism should lead to love and understanding. In practice, both ways of living failed so far to reach the final goal.

Religions failed much more often then atheism so far. But religion was (and is) the dominating way of living in the world- so just out of the pure number, it must have failed more often. Before the raise of communism, I can not remember any states with a significant amount of atheists in history. Can you? So all the cruelties in the dark ages could not have done from atheists. They simply did not exist at that times....

[Scarabin]

 Vampyr, on 2013-January-08, 01:21, said:

You thought that people of above-average intelligence would not have given any thought to the existence or not of a supernatural being or beings, and would not have formed an opinion based on evidence (or in some cases, some other basis)?

I will answer the poll when I am allowed to be tolerant of some and infuriated by others.

EDIT: Oh wait, I am

I would expect them to examine both sides of a question and end up with more balanced,less extreme views.

[Vampyr]

 Scarabin, on 2013-January-08, 03:16, said:

I would expect them to examine both sides of a question and end up with more balanced,less extreme views.

Being noncommittal about the existence of a god or gods is not really "balanced". It is not a position that people would tend to hold for long -- this is a question that thinking people want to have an answer to. It's also not really a question that has "both sides" -- most people would not consider that "both sides" were equally valid.

Ask another question, though, about politics, economics, cars, ice cream etc and you will get a spectrum of views.

[Vampyr]

Actually, the first question at least is pretty balanced -- about half (less than I would expect) are athiests. And half are not. It is interesting how the framing of a question can produce seeming data that are not accurate.

[Fluffy]

It could be said that I am more ambivalent than religious, wich means I don't have all with me that god is there or that he cares, in fact I don't reject many things some of wich would look absurd for most people. But I consider myself religious rather than ambivalent because religious is the main option.

When I make a decision I try it to go along all options if possible, but obviously it is not possible very often, so when those things contradict each other, I take the religious one over the others.

[gwnn]

in unrelated news, this poll is not a matrix if voting is anonymous (it is only the sums of the rows and the columns of a 5x5 matrix). Of course even the 25-option poll would have been flawed as more people have noted, because it is natural to be tolerant of some views and be appalled by some others. However, that's OK since you could choose more than one option - I think I chose all 5 answers for the second question.

This one was a real matrix:
http://www.bridgebas...e-2x2-matrixes/

[Vampyr]

 Fluffy, on 2013-January-08, 03:31, said:

. But I consider myself religious rather than ambivalent because religious is the main option.

What do you mean by the "main option"?

[mgoetze]

 Codo, on 2013-January-08, 02:19, said:

No, not so much by the tax payer. YOu are free to decide NOT to pay the church taxes and a lot of people did decide to do so.
But maybe you think about the money which is spend besides this direct taxes? Yes this is tricky and as always it is debateble why the state should support f.e. the restauration of old churches, the work of social workers from the churches or others. But as you surely know, the money is not spend just for the religious workers and buildings. so what is your point?

I am NOT talking about church taxes, I am talking about regular government taxes (GST, income tax, etc.) spent on welfare institutions run by the church etc. etc. - even the religious indoctrinationeducation in public schools is paid for by the state, NOT by the church or the taxes collected on its behalf. Church taxes are mainly for paying for dwellings, chauffeurs etc. of bishops (whose salaries and pensions are paid by - you guessed it - the state).

The German church spends about 5% of its income on welfare. This is far less than the German state spends on the church (directly and indirectly e.g. via tax exemptions).

See e.g.
http://www.ibka.org/infos/ksteuer.html

http://www.spiegel.d...n-a-727683.html
(German language content)

[squealydan]

 Scarabin, on 2013-January-08, 03:16, said:

I would expect them to examine both sides of a question and end up with more balanced,less extreme views.

Are you sitting somewhere smoking a joint thinking "hey, dudes, how about we all just get along?"

The question is "is there a god"? What is a "balanced" view on this question?

Something like :

"Well, there's all this evidence which scientists who study it seem to think shows that the universe began 13 billion years ago in a big bang, and has been expanding ever since, and there seems to be a lot of evidence for this in the measurable movement of stars and galaxies, and measurements of cosmic radiation etc. And likewise there's a bunch of scientists who seem fairly sure humans evolved from other more simple mammals, and all life on the planet has ultimately evolved from single-cell entities a couple of billion years ago, and there seemns to be a lot of fossil evidence to support that view. Of course, we don't know exactly how - or why - the big bang occurred, and likewise we don't know how - or why - the first self-reproducing life form came into existence.

And on the other hand... pretty much every community of humans on the planet has decided that a god or gods created us, most of which then helpfully gave us some rules about how to live our lives. None of these gods is much like any of the others, many of them are directly contradictory, many of the messages these gods "delivered" about how humans should live their lives are also contradictory, and much of their teachings have been proven to completely wrong. An objective view of most of the gods and their teachings does make a thinking person wonder if maybe the gods weren't created by the people, rather than the other way around. But most folk around the world seem to say that believing in these entities makes them feel their life (and death) has a purpose and makes them feel better. A final important point is that few if any of these gods have a sensible explanation for how they themselves came into being, so their presence doesn't of itself answer the whole question of existence.

Ahh... could be one or the other. Doesn't really matter."


Is that seriously the sort of "balanced" view you were expecting?

[Cyberyeti]

 32519, on 2013-January-08, 02:45, said:

You’ve just played your highest trump card, the Ace. This argument is the one sceptics just love because 2000 years down the line there is no way for the current generation to say whether or not the recorded miracles were invented or not. Guess what? There is a flaw in your argument.

The entire New Testament, excluding Luke and Acts, was written by Jews for Jews. To invent all these stories as you suggest would be completely laughable for the Jews of the day. They were the ones being healed of all sorts of diseases etc. When the non-Jews started accepting the New Testament message and writings, all sorts of corruptions of the original texts started creeping in. Non-Jews started adding/deleting/changing what was originally written. I have already mentioned two examples higher up in this thread. Here are some

There were plenty of other historians around at that time IIRC and no mention of any of this stuff in historical records. Most of the gospels were written maybe 100 years after the event (now I'm not sure if that is the revisions of the original text or the first writing), so I just see the ancient version of an internet myth.

[Codo]

 mgoetze, on 2013-January-08, 04:32, said:

I am NOT talking about church taxes, I am talking about regular government taxes (GST, income tax, etc.) spent on welfare institutions run by the church etc. etc. - even the religious indoctrinationeducation in public schools is paid for by the state, NOT by the church or the taxes collected on its behalf. Church taxes are mainly for paying for dwellings, chauffeurs etc. of bishops (whose salaries and pensions are paid by - you guessed it - the state).

The German church spends about 5% of its income on welfare. This is far less than the German state spends on the church (directly and indirectly e.g. via tax exemptions).

See e.g.
http://www.ibka.org/infos/ksteuer.html

http://www.spiegel.d...n-a-727683.html
(German language content)

1. your source is a club which want s people to leave the church. Hardly very relevant, but anyway:
2. Priest (and other employees of the church) do quite a lot for wellfare. Do you have a priest between your friends/relatives? You may ask him how much time he spends doing "wellfare" compared to the time doing "indoctrination". So even their payment is part of the wellfare structure.
3. How many atheists, muslims etc. are healed in christian hospitals? So what is the point in critisze that these hospitals are not payed by the churches?
4. How many nursing homes do you know, which are payed by the state, an insurance or someone else, but are just open for members of a special church? Zero..

I usually trust the "Spiegel", but what did he wrote: We all spend even more money for the churches then you thought. There are discussion to reduce these payments. So what? Do we agree that there are millions spend in a way we do not support? Surely. This is true for any given big organisation, most likely for any state or governement I know.

[Codo]

 squealydan, on 2013-January-08, 05:11, said:

Are you sitting somewhere smoking a joint thinking "hey, dudes, how about we all just get along?"

The question is "is there a god"? What is a "balanced" view on this question?

Something like :

"Well, there's all this evidence which scientists who study it seem to think shows that the universe began 13 billion years ago in a big bang, and has been expanding ever since, and there seems to be a lot of evidence for this in the measurable movement of stars and galaxies, and measurements of cosmic radiation etc. And likewise there's a bunch of scientists who seem fairly sure humans evolved from other more simple mammals, and all life on the planet has ultimately evolved from single-cell entities a couple of billion years ago, and there seemns to be a lot of fossil evidence to support that view. Of course, we don't know exactly how - or why - the big bang occurred, and likewise we don't know how - or why - the first self-reproducing life form came into existence.

And on the other hand... pretty much every community of humans on the planet has decided that a god or gods created us, most of which then helpfully gave us some rules about how to live our lives. None of these gods is much like any of the others, many of them are directly contradictory, many of the messages these gods "delivered" about how humans should live their lives are also contradictory, and much of their teachings have been proven to completely wrong. An objective view of most of the gods and their teachings does make a thinking person wonder if maybe the gods weren't created by the people, rather than the other way around. But most folk around the world seem to say that believing in these entities makes them feel their life (and death) has a purpose and makes them feel better. A final important point is that few if any of these gods have a sensible explanation for how they themselves came into being, so their presence doesn't of itself answer the whole question of existence.

Ahh... could be one or the other. Doesn't really matter."


Is that seriously the sort of "balanced" view you were expecting?

I do not get your point- why do you compare apples with oranges?

Even if the theory of the big bang will be verified (or falsified)- which impact will this have on the question whether a God exists or not?
Maybe if we can proove beyond doubt that our feelings like love and hate etc are just a matter of chemistry and we are just a heap of cells which funnily work together, maybe this will change the point of view of some theists. But I prefer the idea of a free will to decide between right and wrong and of real feelings to the idea of being a slave to the biology of my cells.

And that a lot religions mayed silly statements thru the centuries is true. Of course scientists never erred. Just go West and arrive in India. Use leech against anything. An atom is indivisible. Etc PP.
In an century, a lot of our today theories will be verified, some falsified.
But on the other hand religions must be perfect from the first day of the neanderthal man. They are not allow to err, because if God is perfect, his servants on earth and the holy books must be perfect too? Why do you think so?
To err is human, not religious.

I thought Scarabin meant that a God may or may not exist is a balanced way to look at this subject. Sounds like a balanced view to me...