Moishe3rd wrote:kickycan wrote:Moishe3rd wrote:kickycan wrote:The main thing that makes religion so believable is repetition, and the fact that it gets drilled into people's heads at the earliest stages of development. The brainwashing begins right around the time you are able to speak, in most cases, handed down and jammed forcibly into fresh, clean minds by people who have also been brainwashed from their earliest moments of cognition.
A message repeated over and over to a young impressionable mind is going to get in there, and it's going to get stuck deep. And in the case of christianity, you are taught to never question it, because that would be a sin.
People have been doing this to their kids for centuries, which is why it is so prevalent. And people are sheep, which keeps the cycle going. Larry used the expression "100 million chinese can't be wrong", and that makes sense, insofar as it regards the neverending cycle of religion.
The only problem with your theory is that no one I know or grew up with did what you described or thinks the way you describe.
And that is where the "100 million chinese can't be wrong" part comes in. There are enough people in the world who have been taught to believe in god without question from the time they were children, and it has been happening for such a long time, that it is ingrained in the collective consciousness and given enough credibility to keep the cycle repeating.
Of course there are exceptions, but do you really think that the majority of religious people in the world never had it taught to them as a child?
Ah, yes, well that does make sense.
But whereas you seem to take a dim view of this "collective unconsciousness," I view it as a positive.
It would seem to me, vis-a-vis the 100 million Chinese, that anything that has permeated the human psyche to such an irreversible degree must have some sort of purpose and meaning.
For instance, one could say that more hedonistic practices such as casual sex; murder; the oppression of the weak by the strong; etcetera, are also ingrained in the human psyche and that various cultures and morays encourage those sorts of behaviors, but even a non-religious, rational view of things would place this sort of wanton hedonism in the "wrong" category as being self-destructive and counter - purposeful.
It would seem that hedonism, despite being part of the "collective unconsciousness" is not a system of ideas that even "100 million Chinese" can enforce or promulgate for any length of time.
The religious restrainers of thou shalt not's seem to trump hedonism.
That implies that religion is more powerful or less counter-productive...
Actually, I said collective consciousness, but I won't nitpick about that. And I don't see this collective consciousness as a good or a bad thing, only something that is part of being a member of the human race. I do think that religion serves a purpose also, but my point is not about that. My point is that it is an irrational belief, and that it is mainly given the credibility that allows people to believe it through it's having been passed down to impressionable minds generation after generation. Of course, there are other factors, such as human suffering and the desire to divest oneself of personal responsibility.
The dim view that I have is of religion itself. Having at one time in my life been a devoutly religious person, I now view it much like some reformed smokers view smoking. I see it as harmful, annoying, and now that I've quit, I finally realize how bad it smells.
Truth is a slippery thing. What is "true" for one may not be for another. Whatever it is that we believe, is to us the truth because only a madman has faith in what he believes false. What is a lie that is believed, if not truth to the person who believes the lie. Errors in what was perceived to be true at one time are in another revealed as the most blatant falsehood.
Then there is the matter of scale in "truth". There are little truths that apply to individuals, and larger truths that might be applied to whole groups. There are the truths that are evident as mathematical facts, and scientific "theory" that is so nearly certain that we regard it as fact and truth.
To discuss, much less discover, any sort of Universal Truth in religion is problematical. Staunch agnostics, like Frank, are really on much firmer ground than most of the folks who claim to know The Truth. For most, what is claimed as knowledge is, as Frank so dearly likes to remind us, is only a giant leap of faith toward what is little more than a guess.
But is all religious conviction only a guess? I think not, though it is impossible to present objective evidence for what is purely a personal experience. The experience is as sound a basis for believing in the "truth" of a transcendental insight, as experience is the teacher of such mundane verities as "to touch fire, is to be burnt".
As I've said elsewhere, there isn't a single religious experience but at least three varieties. There is the cultural belief set and rituals that we inherit and learn at our mother's breasts. These vary from one culture to another, though a strong socially beneficial thread tends to run through them. Taboos against incest, respect for one's elders, and the sasanctityf property and marriage are common. We believe in ghosts and things that go bump in the night just as our ancestors did around the campfires of antiquity. We tend to adopt the religion, and religious practices of our parents and the people in our peer group. It is important to belong, because we know in our genetic bones that to be "other" is dangerous. We follow religion to insure that our children will learn the same values that we hold. Anything that challenges those traditions, rituals and beliefs are rejected, sometimes violently. Challenges to the values and religion that we might otherwise hold almost nominally can sometimes cause us to "dig in our heels" and become more fervent in our beliefs than if there were no challenge to the status quo.
The second variety of rereligions the dogma and doctrines that have grown-up around the central core of a religion. The ororiginaleligion may have started out with a quite simple message, but time and interpretation as to the meaning of the rereligionlowly build a complex set of doctrines, dogmas, and rituals that become the modern form of the religion. Religious leaders and scholars spend their lives trying to decipher the inner meaning of the message, and they usually are sincere in their pronouncements. But, being human they seldom agree on much of anything. Schisms occur as the differences as to the inner meaning and "truth" of the religion become too large to remain as a single rereligeousaith. Religious leaders holding different interpretations compete for followers, thats an unpleasant little truth right there. Rereverenceor the past is almost always a strong appeal, so a teaching appears to have a certain sanctity merely by its ancient origins. Terrible logic, but appealing to a lot of people never-the-less.
The third variety of religious experience is the personal transcendental experience. Often described as mystical, this is a religious experience that appears inindependentf our social origins, or even the religious teachings of our group. There seems to be a lot of commonality in the reported experience, with only small differences reported though the informants come from very different times, places, and cultural settings. Time and ego are described as vanishing, absorbed in a greater reality that transcends normal time/space. The transcendental experience is, not surprisingly, described in the terms common to the informant's cultural setting. There are many radical Christians who claim personal salvation as an experience, some will even go so far as to insist that their experience is a direct experience God. These claims seem to run counter to the transcendental experiences from religious mystics, poets, etc., who almost universally talk about Ultimate Reality in dde-personalizedterms. All of the eexperiencesare ultimately subjective, not provable, and may be no more than "a bit of undigested beef", or a romantic revery. It doesn't feel that way to the person having the experience, but the whole experience may have no validity at all.
It has been noted elsewhere in these thread and fforumsthat there are similarities between many of the world's religions. It may be that the founders of the "great" religions all shared the same transcendental experience. The message was the same to them, but their ability to communicate the message to their ddiscipleswas almost certainly inexact and open to interpretation in every case. Abraham reported his experience in terms that could be understood and accepted by the semites of his tribe, and they ran with it. Generations later Jesus reported his transcendental experience in terms relevant to Jews in Roman occupied Palestine. A few more generations and Mohamet's experience was cast into words and terms fitting his Arabic followers determined to win a political victory. Hindu holy men, Zarathustra, and Siddhartha may have had the same transcendental experience, but it was communicated in terms appropriate to their time, place, and circumstances. What Lao-Tse experienced may not be significantly different than the experiences of an Amazonian shaman, though their reports of the experience will conform to their cultural context. All of these experience may be the same, or maybe not. They all may be valid expressions of some great Universal Reality beyond normal perceptions, or they may all be a misfired synapse in the brain of a person predisposed to interpret the anomaly as mystical. No one can know for sure.
Asherman wrote:Truth is a slippery thing. What is "true" for one may not be for another. Whatever it is that we believe, is to us the truth because only a madman has faith in what he believes false.
I disagree here, Asherman.
What is "true" is "true"...without regard to what one may or may not "believe" about that truth.
"Believing something is true" does not make it true!
Frank Apisa wrote:CountDigit wrote:Frank Apisa wrote:CountDigit wrote: Hank Hanegraaff said, "Faith in Christ is not some blind leap into a dark chasm, but a faith based on established evidence." (11:3 continued)
Nonsense!
Every indication is that it is a blind leap!
Can you state one?
State one what???
Can you state one indication that it is a blind leap?
Asherman wrote:Truth is a slippery thing. What is "true" for one may not be for another. Whatever it is that we believe, is to us the truth because only a madman has faith in what he believes false. What is a lie that is believed, if not truth to the person who believes the lie. Errors in what was perceived to be true at one time are in another revealed as the most blatant falsehood.
What do we need the courts for? What are crime scene investigators investigating for then?
Frank Apisa wrote:CountDigit wrote:Frank Apisa wrote:CountDigit wrote:Frank Apisa wrote:CountDigit wrote: Hank Hanegraaff said, "Faith in Christ is not some blind leap into a dark chasm, but a faith based on established evidence." (11:3 continued)
Nonsense!
Every indication is that it is a blind leap!
Can you state one?
State one what???
Can you state one indication that it is a blind leap?
Yes I can.
ok Frank, please state one indication that it is a blind leap then.
kickycan wrote:Moishe3rd wrote:kickycan wrote:Moishe3rd wrote:kickycan wrote:The main thing that makes religion so believable is repetition, and the fact that it gets drilled into people's heads at the earliest stages of development. The brainwashing begins right around the time you are able to speak, in most cases, handed down and jammed forcibly into fresh, clean minds by people who have also been brainwashed from their earliest moments of cognition.
A message repeated over and over to a young impressionable mind is going to get in there, and it's going to get stuck deep. And in the case of christianity, you are taught to never question it, because that would be a sin.
People have been doing this to their kids for centuries, which is why it is so prevalent. And people are sheep, which keeps the cycle going. Larry used the expression "100 million chinese can't be wrong", and that makes sense, insofar as it regards the neverending cycle of religion.
The only problem with your theory is that no one I know or grew up with did what you described or thinks the way you describe.
And that is where the "100 million chinese can't be wrong" part comes in. There are enough people in the world who have been taught to believe in god without question from the time they were children, and it has been happening for such a long time, that it is ingrained in the collective consciousness and given enough credibility to keep the cycle repeating.
Of course there are exceptions, but do you really think that the majority of religious people in the world never had it taught to them as a child?
Ah, yes, well that does make sense.
But whereas you seem to take a dim view of this "collective unconsciousness," I view it as a positive.
It would seem to me, vis-a-vis the 100 million Chinese, that anything that has permeated the human psyche to such an irreversible degree must have some sort of purpose and meaning.
For instance, one could say that more hedonistic practices such as casual sex; murder; the oppression of the weak by the strong; etcetera, are also ingrained in the human psyche and that various cultures and morays encourage those sorts of behaviors, but even a non-religious, rational view of things would place this sort of wanton hedonism in the "wrong" category as being self-destructive and counter - purposeful.
It would seem that hedonism, despite being part of the "collective unconsciousness" is not a system of ideas that even "100 million Chinese" can enforce or promulgate for any length of time.
The religious restrainers of thou shalt not's seem to trump hedonism.
That implies that religion is more powerful or less counter-productive...
Actually, I said collective consciousness, but I won't nitpick about that. And I don't see this collective consciousness as a good or a bad thing, only something that is part of being a member of the human race. I do think that religion serves a purpose also, but my point is not about that. My point is that it is an irrational belief, and that it is mainly given the credibility that allows people to believe it through it's having been passed down to impressionable minds generation after generation. Of course, there are other factors, such as human suffering and the desire to divest oneself of personal responsibility.
The dim view that I have is of religion itself. Having at one time in my life been a devoutly religious person, I now view it much like some reformed smokers view smoking. I see it as harmful, annoying, and now that I've quit, I finally realize how bad it smells.
Again, I understand your reasoning. I simply disagree with your conclusions.
In terms of religions and hedonism; belief and disbelief; logic and faith; etcetera, I have "been there and done that."
It is through my array of life experiences; study of history; logic; and a little bit of science, that I have come to the conclusions that my particular religion (Judaism) is indeed true.
However, as an ex-smoker, I still purposefully walk by those who are smoking and inhale, catching some of that sweet aroma.
I have no problem with those who insist that life and the universe is one big accident or that the religious lore of several thousand years is one big fairy tale, as long as they don't try to force their beliefs down my throat.
(or try to kill me.
)
I have found, in my own personal experiences, that a person can indeed validate religious beliefs, if that person is interested in doing so.
It all depends on what you want.
Frank and Counterdigit,
Facts are objective; truth, like justice is subjective. The words aren't synonyms, though we often treat them as such. I'm a little surprised (not too much) that Frank raised this objection. It seems he is never shy of pointing out that what religious people regard as truth is no more than a guess. If you folks read a little deeper into the post I developed (or thought I did) that some truths are little, prosaic and so widely believed that they are accepted as fact. Then there are the big truths like there is more to the Universe than meets the eye, but that those deeper truths can be "known" to individuals.
Facts are the foundations on which we form our ideas about what is true. Does the math work? Can the experiment be repeated, and do reports of many observers agree. A single set of footprints going to and fro between a crime scene and a single individual is fact, but the conclusion that the individual is guilty is a truth that is sufficient to convict, but may never-the-less be wrong. When a person holds something to be "true" in defiance of all facts, they may either be right and the only sane person around, or they may be quite mad and in denial. To the patient/radical religious person their notion of truth is valid, though all the facts and reason in the world contradict their beliefs ... and others may regard them as crazy. They might be right, even if they are "guessing". I don't think so, nor do most of us, but we can't know for a certainty either, can we?
The difficulty in distinguishing knowing and believing was my point. We can never be sure of anything, our perceptions lie to us all the time and our reason fails more often than any of us like to admit. No one can submit proof of God's existence or non-existence, no matter how God is defined. No one can offer any better proof that we, or anything within the bounds of perception exist. If existence itself is open to question, what is truth?
Thanks, Asherman. You have a great ability to clearly epitomize in a comprehensive way a huge topic.
I think that the interpretation of mystical experience is very important, and getting a handle on it can take years. Within the context of church dogma, the experience may simply reinforce that dogma. The interpretation of an individual's mystical experience may be easily influenced by strong or charismatic personalities even to the point of forming cults, as the experience can be addictive in the chase for the "high." The writings of Alan Watts were of great help in the past to deal with the experience, and by now there is probably a wealth of literature available.
Asherman wrote:Frank and Counterdigit,
Facts are objective; truth, like justice is subjective.
Nonsense.
Quote: The words aren't synonyms, though we often treat them as such.
This sounds like a gratuitous definition of what "truth" is...and for good reason. Your argument hinges on your simply defining the word the way you want to.
Unfortunately...the dictionaries do not agree with you...or as Webster puts it in its first definition of the word: Truth: The state of being the case; FACT; the body of real things, events and facts.
Why would one assume that religion, of any description, is true?
Unless, of course, one refers to a religious devotion to meatloaf sammiches . . .
To use a musical analogy, that a symphony is great may be true, but it isn't a fact because it can't be proven. Subjective truth vs objective fact.
