So what is Dawkins afraid of? Does he have the guts to debate? (Buddha, follower)

[TRANSPONDER]

Gosh, Victorian punque. That is a lot to answer. I'll deal with it offline. I'll just say two things - Keats was wrong and Sherlock Holmes is fiction.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

Gosh, Victorian punque. That is a lot to answer. I'll deal with it offline. I'll just say two things - Keats was wrong and Sherlock Holmes is fiction.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
That's true, but it still leaves it as something that, when you look for it, turns out to be, on all evidence, a myth, a feeling, a convention and a term that can mean anything. It can be nature, love, personal excitement. All those things happen. But again, to call it 'God' is sticking a myth onto something or a number of things for no good reason other than people can't rid themselves of the trappings of theism.

Look at it this way: One says "my first kiss...it was wonderful! She was so misty eyed..." and then someone else says "KNOW! THERE WAS NO MIST! THERE WAS ONLY MOISUTURE AS A RESULT OF A EMOTIONAL RESPONDS! MIST IS AN ATMOSPHERIC CONDITION AND IT DOES NOT APPEAR IN THE HUMAN EYE!"
Why not add the "myth" of eyes having mist in them? It is romanticism. Hence, when I say "GOD is in the Rain" or "I see GOD reflectin in a child's eyes" it's the same thing, romanticism.
That is something that I find troubling about Dawkins: Rampant, mindless dimystification of everything. Why not stop at religion? Why not also do away with love, (which I am not sure I believe in BTW, as it is nothing but a few chemical reactions similar to insanity going off in the brain and I have never seen it work) beauty, art etc etc etc? I have a feeling that religion is only the first of many victims on our humanity, and the end result of "rationalism" will be...

I can take your point about 'things' that bring 'things' to one's life. That's why I appreciate festivals even if they are religious, so long as the religious brainwashing and exploitation is taken out. But I think one is doing one's intelligence a disservice to take it as anything more than colourful myth. If I can give the example of yoga. That has been pretty much stripped of its theist trappings and works just as well as a purely therapeutic activity, for all that some ministers who out to know better don't want Yoga classes in the Church hall as it is 'heathen religion'.
Religion involves GOD and, like I said, GOD is so many different things. I like GOD...GOD is a feeling, a way of life, a dream, a reality, and enemy, a friend etc. Hence, GOD is necessary
for the religion to work.

I suppose there is something in this. I suppose I'd miss the show and festival of some religions, though I'd not miss much about Christianity, truth to tell.
I must say I like Buddhism for the way you don't have to do it to order and the feeling of the fairground about it. Hinduism has quite a lot of fun about it, too. It's fine if one doesn't actually take it seriously, which I gather you don't. It's bit hard to understand what you mean by 'God' but it comes across to me as a habit you can't face kicking.

Well, so long as you you don't rob me to fund it, I'm not ging to force you.

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Now, I'm sure the Gnostics would have no problem with that, but it's like religion and science. It is possible to be a scientist and a Christian, but there is always the risk of the two clashing and the science must then suffer.

All that is necessary is for the religion to not be taken literally. The idea that the whole Bible is allogorical to the way we live our lives does away with any problem we would have reconciling religion and science.

Allegory is ok so long as it isn't given undue authority. I may mention two authors whose novels I greatly enjoyed. Leslie Charteris and Dennis Wheatly. Novels they were but they had an element of propaganda about them. Wheatley's first novel is a paean in praise of Brownshirt fascism and there's a strain of it though his books. Charteris had a line of xenophobia not to say racism and homophobia which I have to say transmuted into self - conscious political correctness in the later books. We may enjoy and even take ideas from all books but we should never give credence to what they say just because they say so. We have to evaluate the message or propaganda of all books. Certainly any undue weight given to the exhortations and claims of the Bible over any other book is to be deplored.

I mentioned Sherlock Holmes. Still a greatly admired detective today and there is a strong feeling of wanting him to be real. It would be a mistake to overlook the flaws in the books, the character and the philosophy, simply because one greatly enjoyed the books.

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Well straight away, there's the problem. You assume that 'Christ said' something. It doesn't cross your mind to suppose that he never said any such thing and therefore it carries no weight.

Of course Christ said that. The question is, "what is Christ?" This is yet another part of Gnostic Christianity that makes it Dawkins-Proof: We are based on the teachings of Christ, not the person. Even is Christ never existed, the fact that the teachings are there is all that matters...look at it this way:
A young boy grows up reading Sherlock Holmes books and is inspired by his logic reasoning, deduction, and skills. The boy grows up and goes to College, becomes a FBI agent and later a Private Investigator. Finally, after years of being a great P.I., he finds out that Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character. So, should he scream "I'VE BEEN LIED TO!" and quit his rewarding career and just sulk, or shrug and say "fake or not, it has done great things in my life to follow his example"
Gnostics look at Christ that way. We understand that there is a chance he never existed. So what? We do not believe he died for our sins. All that is important to us is his teachings, and they are, indeed, real: Amazon.com: The Gospel of Thomas: Annotated & Explained (Skylight Illuminations,): Stevan L. Davies, Andrew Harvey: Books
So, either that book is not real (and we are living in the Matrix) or the Christ that counts to us Gnostics, i.e., his teachings, are real. This is Myth (uppercase "M") as in a story that can teach
us about our selves in profound ways. That is why we believe it. Not for the "facts" of the story, but for the point of the story. See Here: Teaching 6th grade Math=How religious scriptures
work for my take on religious scripture.

See above re. books. I'm afraid I can't take your ingenious and carefully constructed scenario, comparable to anything that C.S Lewis concocted as God's Propagandist, as good argument for abandoning reason and learning.
The rational person - one, I may say, better prepared for the collapse of cherished illusions that you may have envisaged - will understand and forgive the lapses of writers and perhaps be able to read the books more comfortably, understanding that, just because one likes them, one doesn't have to accept eveything in them.

Perhaps one might be inspired to become a detective or (from reading the Bible) someone useful to their fellow man. Not, if one was rationally appraising them, a fraud detective or an evangelical missionary, from failing to approach the books critically.

We owe it to ourselves to evaluate. I am gravely concerned about the choice of the Gospel of Thomas (a string of loose sayings that anyone could have said and which are hardly of a piece with the gospels - themselves no more believable than Star - trek) as a book which you apparently take as a significant basis for the way you live and think. There are many other books, just as deserving.

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You have given the answer. "I believe it works, and I understand it". You do NOT understand it (neither do I, yet) and you never will all the time you call it God and leave it at that. Our curiosity is what makes us alive and our eagerness for research makes us intelligently alive. To turn our backs on this and say 'God is what it all is', is to deny our humanity and waste the only life we have. One might be happy to stay drunk all one's life, but - what a waste.

I feel it, and I call it GOD. Look at it this way: Saying that "our love is all it is" could easily be seen as denying yourself and your own individuality in the name of a parasitic state of being called "a romantic relationship". I like GOD and my religion and I don't see how it could harm me or anyone else and I see it doing allot of good in my life. So why give it up? I could just as easily make an argument that love does not exist and try to convince others to give it up for all the harm it has called (domestic violence, messy divorces, etc) and write a book called "The Love Delusion".
But...you say that love for you is what makes you human? Well, having a divine power for me is what makes me human. Who wins?

Intellect should. And it is that, not love, which really makes us human. Acting through instinct, evolved or acquired, makes us animal. An animal with language, true, but still just an animal. Understanding the impulses that make us behave the way we do is important, both for us as individuals and collectively. Can you believe that anyone, understanding how poor is the evidence for any religion, would blow themselves up for it?

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Now I appreciate your claim that gnosticism eschews superstition and acclaims rational thought, but the arguments you have made here cast a little doubt on that as you have already preferred a shoulder-shrugging 'who knows - call it God' and quoting a religious text as evidence of something rather than think about it. It's a bit worrying. But, as I say, it's your decision. But, if you mention it to us or criticize Dawkins for not mentioning it, that's teaching about a religion. That's preaching.

GOD, as I define it, is not about "superstition". Again, in the words of Joseph Campbell " God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that." So, either the word "metaphor" does not exist, or there is a GOD.

That is a recipe for self -delusion. Label the unknown as 'God' and then persuade yourself that it somehow means that you now understand it? Or if you DON'T believe you understand it, what's the point of building a religion around it?
This remark "So, either the word "metaphor" does not exist, or there is a GOD" is, I am sorry to say, the stuff that Kdbrichs are made of.
The word 'metaphor' does exist and we know what it means. We could use 'Octopus' as a metaphor for the Rapid transport system. Poetic, but does it clarify or confuse? And if applied to those things which we so badly need to understand on a rational basis - Love, patriotism, xenophobia and religion, applying metaphors to it is not only unhelpful but alarming.

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Damn' wot a coincidence you took the words out of my mouth. Teaching religion is Preaching. Teaching should be confined to what has been pretty much confirmed by science. Though to be sure a lot of short cuts are taken and gaps filled in for convenience. But that's really the crux of it. Education - teaching - ought to be based on reasoned research, not speculation, including religious speculation. And the gnostic stuff you've been 'teaching' here is speculation, which is not fit to be taught (sorry) or sticking a pointless 'God' label onto matters which are best left to proper research.

"Preaching" is when one proclaims that their beliefs are 100% correct (which is what Dawkins does all the time, btw) while "teaching" simply means someone saying "this is what I believe." That is all I am saying: That my beliefs are quite different from other theists and are Dawkins-Proof for reasons A,B and C. I understand that I may be wrong, and I also understand that there is no one true religion. In the end, as Joseph Campbell once said: "Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."

Concepts perhaps matter more than definitions, but I'd say that 'Teaching' is (or should be) showing the work: giving reasons for why one should think something to be so. Just saying 'This is what I believe', unless backed up with some better rationale than 'it's a metaphor for what we don't understand', is preaching, or very close to it.

People often teach about other religions...it's called "anthropology" and "comparative religion". I am just stating beliefs, and not stating that they are true or not or the only way. As I said, Atheism is a completely understandable choice and there is nothing wrong with Atheism in and of it's self.
Also, why put "love" as a label for a neuro-chemical reaction which is best left for proper research? But, "love" is an emotion and is all in the mind you say? Well, one of the many definitions of GOD is an emotion which is all in the mind. I will stop calling that feeling "GOD" when you stop calling that hormonal reaction in your brain "love".

You are not doing yourself justice. You are looking for pretexts to carry on with this God-thing. I don't call the hormonal reaction 'love' Other people do that. They also have called it 'god' or 'heaven'. I don't do that, either.

However, I think you do label another kind of reaction 'God' - the emotion called 'the divine Instinct'. It may or may not be hormonal, but I'd like to find out. All the time we call it 'God' and regard it as something that shouldn't be considered rationally or medically, because that is somehow is removing the magic (if not actually slightly blasphemous), we never will.

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That doesn't make it right. A lot of people do things for irrational reasons, but they ought to be more rational. I only wish that reasoning and logic was on the school curriculum rather than religion. It is worrying and rather underlines all my reservations that you put forward the ignorance of the aspirin taker for symptoms upon which it can have no effect as a justification for your apparently pointless 'worshipping' of yourself. You illogic is showing. Of course you exist, So does the sun. Do we worship it? We could, but for what earthly reason other than to make ourselves feel good? It is totally pointless. If youare interested in yourself, investigate using logic, reason and science, not 'worship'.

First up, Pagans worship the sun and the natural world. Second...why not worship myself? After all, everything I know of reality stems from my being here. In the words of Nietzsche "If there truly is a God, I would be very suprised to find that I am not he."
Because there is no point. One might a well worship a rock. On all evidential showing, you might as well. You may say 'who knows' but, if you are going to say that, how on earth can you explain your claim that Gnosticism is rational?
Anyway...when did I ever say that Gnosticism was 100% logical? But, the question is, is Dawkins 100% logical. No. Reason being, and this usually end the debate: He, like most Atheist, believe in Love. Love is illogical in the extreme. I mean, I put my faith in GOD, which either is myself or does not exist. Someone who believes in love puts their faith in another human being, their lover. So...who is more likely to get betrayed, them or me? I expect GOD to do nothing but be there, while they expect their lover to help them, remain faithful for them etc.
Why not just use the sciences to find the way of ending any desire for intimacy and taking that drug? No more romance, no more STDs, no more wasted time on dating and dancing, no more money wasted on gifts, etc.
I haven't read enough dawkins to know whether he believes in love or not, but I would be very surprised to find that he used that label as a pretext for refusing to consider the biological causes behind it. And you are using theist think by apparently demanding thas dawkind must be 100% logical or any claim that his methid is more logical than your God -metaphor.
It is because we are not logicl that we have rules of logic reason and the scientific method. If you don't apply them you are falling short of dawkins and what you tourself are capable of doing.
If the choice was destroy all "need" for love and use the energy that could be spent on it on pursueing the sciences or something or maintaining the heartache, pain, wasted time and money and possible STDS...which choice would be the most "logical"?
But, you claim you need love? Well, I do not. I have never been on a date or had a girlfriend and I am doing fine, and I wonder if love actually exists, just as Dawkins does not believe in GOD and get's around just fine without it. GOD, however, I need, and could not imagine life without it, just as Dawkins could not imagine life without love.

This is probably not the place to embark on a dissertation on the physiology of 'love' - a metaphor for what we know - hormones, instincts and social codes. There is nothing to justify 'God' as a metaphorical pretext for ignoring investigation of all that. No more than the image of a curly headed winged sprite with a bow and arrow. A good metaphor and a bit of fun, but for Cupid's sake, don't build a lifestyle/religion around it or say that researching into hormones will spoil it.

We are all illogical. Only I am willing to admit it. So, I find a way to confine my illogical, human nature and have a religion without most of the drawbacks of other religions.

We all are. That why we invent methods of logic. We once had no idea how to work out how to share out nuts or fruits. That's why we invented mathematics. They are human inventions but they work. I suppose you should be commended for having constructed a religious nicotine patch that enables you to function normally while having the feeling that you are still smoking. But I really think you owe it to yourself to kick the habit.

There in lies what I do not understand about Dawkins and others like him: Instead of trying to get everyone to abandon religion all together, which would be about as successful as my efforts to get people to abandon love, why not just go after that religion which is the worst? I mean, I understand that love will always be around, and just hope that people at least get marriage counciling and avoid the worst of relationships, like domestic violence and date rape. So, why doesn't Dawkins understand that religion will always be here and push for things like a metaphorical interrupation of Creation and against the worst that religion has to offer, like religious violence and fundamenatlism?

It may be. I find it defeatist to suppose that domestic violence, rape, war, crime, intolerance, illogic and superstition will always be around. But it always will if people like Dawkins don't set out reasons to undertand why we do it, but don't have to. And if all religions are illogical, then none are exempt from being shown to be illogical.

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If someone told me that, I would want to know what the evidence was for it and what was the opinion of experts in the field. That's what I do with religious claims, too. If there was no evidence of the 'green flash', I would be agnostic. It is an unproven theory with nothing to support it. I would not believe it. I would believe in the car and what it does and what the experts know about it. I wouldn't believe what the 'science' could not demonstrate. With each example, you show what is wrong with your religion, that makes you put forward such illogical arguments. You are clearly a smart guy. You could, and should, think logically.
However, there is this, for me...I like the idea of the "green flash" and the car drives regardless. Why not keep one piece of mist alive? A mystery, a dream, a faraway land, a Myth, a religion, a monster at the bottom of the lake...these are the things that sing to the heart.

This was dealt with very well in Daniel Harbour's 'Intelligent person's guide to atheism (Duckworth press)

"He (Keats) cricicised Moses Mendelssohn, an important Enlightenment figure, by saying that once he, Mendelssohn, pinned the butterfly into his catalogue, he turned it from a beautiful bright creature into a dull and lifeless corpse ....Ironically, the response to Keats is another quotation from the very same poem (Lamia)...his beautiful speech begins:
"My silver planet, both of even and morn
why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn.."
The irony here is what Keats compares his serpent lady to: the planet Venus, which shines in the morning and in the evening. The ancients believed that what they saw was a star, not a planet, and that it was different from the star they saw in the evening.."

To sum up, Keats had scientific knowledge about Venus, but that had not "emptied the haunted air" It had not interred two heavenly bodies into "the dull catalogue of common things."

Succinctly, Keats was a fine poet but an illogical prat, and I have thought so ever since I read 'Beauty is truth and truth, beauty; that is all ye know and all ye need to know".

It is not true that science and the removal of mystery makes things dull and commonplace. It is an excuse - and a false one - used by those who love to cling to their superstitions and weird cults and will sieze on any pretext to discredit the logic and science that may undercut their treasured faiths.

Logically, you do not need love. But, you want it anyway. You could "think logically" and get a chemical castration and be freed of that pesky piece of your humanity...the probem is just that, "your humanity."
For me and Theists like me, it is not about rules of hell or anything like that, but about our humanity. I could not give up religion, even if it is "illogical" (but not as illogical as other religions) because, in the end, being a human is not "logical".

This is all of a piece with the 'mystery' argument. It misrepresents what Dawkins and myself are talking about. It is a strawman argument and you should know better. I talk about understanding the physiology, biology, conventions, myths, philology and physiology of love. To enhance it by understanding it and minimising dangers and problems by the same method. You just talk of chemical castration. If you think that's logic, it underlines all the dangers of what your apparently harmless adherence to a supposedly rational religion may bring.

For the record: I keep open the possibility that love does exists and would like to see if it works at some point, but I am not holding my breath. If love was GOD, I would be Agnostic.

If you paid attention to the sciences and evidence, you would understand that, though you may unfortunately lack a nose, noses exist. Evidence indicates that Christ didn't nor the words he is supposed to have uttered, either canonical or uncanonical. And they cannot be given more evidential support by pasting them as metaphorical labels over those closed draws of knowlege, the contents of which we are yet unaware.

P.s Gosh this has got long.

[victorianpunk]

Allegory is ok so long as it isn't given undue authority. I may mention two authors whose novels I greatly enjoyed. Leslie Charteris and Dennis Wheatly. Novels they were but they had an element of propaganda about them. Wheatley's first novel is a paen in praise of fascism and there's a strain of it though his books. Charteris had a line of xenophobia not to say racism which I have to say transmuted into self - conscious political correctness in the later books. We may enjoy and even take ideas from all books but we should never give credence to what they say just because they say. We have to evaluate the message or propaganda of all books. Certainly any undue weight given to the exhortations and claims of the Bible over any other book is to be deplored.

The bible is, for me, profound and with an amazing message (when understood in the Gnostic context)

Also, keep in mind that all the facism, xenophobia etc of Christianity came from the the non-Gnostics (Nicene) Christians, and not the Gnostics. We never had a history of violence. Even when we had the numbers and the resources to oppress and destroy, we never did.

The Gnostic Cathars of France were one of the few people in the medieval world to allow for freedom of religion in their territory for centuries...and then the Catholics wiped them out in the Albigensian Crusade. The Manicheanists also lived quietly and kept to themselves and allowed for freedom of worship for all people...they were wiped out by the Nicenes and the Muslims.

So, I have a message which has never caused any violence or oppression, nor do I think that it is the only message that is worth while. As a Gnostic, I understand that there is no one world religion...

the Rational Sciences on the other hand, they have a long history of death and oppression. From Darwin's theory being used to justify the extermination of "sub-human" Jews, from the Eugenics movement with the leading scientists of the day pushing for "genetic purity" in the US and elsewhere, to the Tuskegee Experiment with the focus on using the "negro" for an experiment, all the way up to the Nuclear Warhead and the "progress" that has lead to global warming and the biggest extinction event ever (the Holocene Extinction event)

So, while historically Gnosticism has never killed anyone, the Rationalism you are supporting has lead to the deaths of countless thousands...what is the logicall choice?

I mentioned Sherlock Holmes. Still a greatly admired detective today and there is a strong feeling of wanting him to be real. It would be a mistake to overlook the flaws in the books, the character and the philosophy, simply because one greatly enjoyed the books.

OF course. That is why Gnosticism, like Buddhism, teaches us to question everything, even if they are the words of our Mythic founder, in this case Christ. Blind faith has never been a part of Gnosticism...while the Rationalist does indeed have blind faith in the Scientific Method. But the Scientific method gets results you say? Well, for me my religion has gotten results for me (my life is better now then it was before I became Gnostic) and I might add, The Scientific Method, unlike Gnosticism, has caused allot of death and destruction around the world, as I explained above.

See above re. books. I'm afraid I can't take your ingenious and carefully constructed scenario, comparable to anything that C.S Lewis concocted as God's Propagandist, as good reason to abandon reason and learning.
The rational person - one, I may say, better prepared for the collapse of cherished illusions that you may envisage, will understand and forgive the lapses of writers and perhaps be able to read the books more comfortably, understanding that, just because one likes them, one doesn't have to accept eveything in them.

As I said, having a scripture and blindly following the scripture are two different things. Allot of people voted for Obama, but allot of them (well, okay, some of them) don't agree with everything he says.
Same with Christ for the Gnostics. We follow him, but we do not have to agree with everything he says. We understand that the Scriptures were translated and polluted over the past few hundred years and hence, we think critically about these things.

Perhaps one might be inspired to become a detective or (from reading the Bible) someone useful to their fellow man. Not, if one was rationally appraising them, a fraud detective or an evangelical missionary, from failing to approach the books critically.

OF course. But one can approach a book critically while understanding that it is allegory and metaphor...otherwise, "Animal Farm" would have been written off as a kid's story about barnyard animals.

We owe it to ourselves to evaluate. I am gravely concerned about the choice of the Gospel of Thomas (a string of loose sayings that anyone could have said and which are hardly of a piece with the gospels - themselves no more believable than Star - trek - as a book which you apparently take as a significant basis for the way you live and think. There are many other books, just as deserving.

Of course we evaluate and do not take anything (even reality) at face value. The Gospel of Thomas is a great book containing many pieces of deep symbolicism. In the end, it teaches, from the first two Logions, that GOD is within one's self and that is were one should look to find the answers and that the answers are always hard to understand.

Indeed, it, like any other piece of scripture, is not meant to be taken literally. As the great theist Joseph Campbell said, taking the Scripture literally, and not the Scripture in and of it's self, is the problem.

Intellect should. And it is that, not love, which really makes us human. Acting through instinct, evolved or acquired, makes us animal. An animal with language, true, but still just an animal. Understanding the impulses that make us behave the way we do is important, both for us as individuals and collectively. Can you believe that anyone, understanding how poor is the evidence for any religion, would blow themselves up for it?

We are an animal, and will always be an animal. That is what makes us human. If we strip away all emotions and all the beautifully (beauty is also illogical) illogical things that make us people, we are left with nothing but cold, steel logic. In other words, we would be:

So, either abandon emotion, beauty, love, art and every other illogical things that makes us human and take the next step of becoming a machine, or except and control the illogical and confine it.

Now, as for people blowing themselves up, that is, again, what literalists do. Show me one example of liberal theology (not politically liberal, but a liberal understanding of the nature of GOD) and a non-literalist blowing themselves up. The problem is not religion, the problem is literalism.

That is a recipe for self -delusion. Label the unknown God and then persuade yourself that it somehow means that you understand it? Or if you DON'T believe you understand it, what's the point of building a religion around it?

I never said I label everything that is unkonwn GOD. GOD, like beauty, has many different meanings and, also like beauty, is something that one knows when one sees it. When I look at the night sky in upstate New York, the mystic in me says "GOD"...while the Rationalist would slap me over the head and say (in the best robot voice)
<<<<ERROR1452/03>>>THERE IS NO GOD NOR BEAUTY\THESE THINGS ARE PRIMITIVE CONCEPTS\REFRAIN FROM LOOKING AT THE SKY AND RETURN TO YOUR DUTIES\YOU ARE BEING INEFFICENT
<<<END TRANSMISSION>>>

This remark "So, either the word "metaphor" does not exist, or there is a GOD" is, I am sorry to say, the stuff that Kdbrichs are made of.
The word 'metaphor' does exist and we know what it means. We could use 'Octopus' as a metaphor for the Rapid transport system. Poetic, but does it clarify or confuse? And if applied to those things which we so badly need to understand on a rational basis - Love, patriotism, xenophobia and religion, applying metaphors to it is not only unhelpful but alarming.

The metaphor exists to explain a very large concept that takes allot of explain, let alone say. The great spirit of mankind and the feeling of awe at the night sky, the understanding of our own mortality and the feeling of smallness at the vastness of the universe, the understanding that reality is only contained in our heads, fate and circumstances, the human mind, life it's self and our hopes and dreams and those things that we can experience but can never put into words...
...I could go on, or, the same way a scientist uses a model for something that is too big, too small or two complicated, I could use a "word model" for all those things and more: GOD

Also, there is absolutely nothing Rational about love. The Rational solution to "love" would be for everyone to get a surgery to do away with that desire and have all reproduction conducted at state run institutions and all children will be institutionally raised in a controled environment. Not sound nice? Well, it does sound "Rational", so who cares?

Concepts perhaps matter more than definitions, but I'd say that 'Teaching' is (or should be) showing the work: giving reasons for why one should think something. Just saying 'This is what I believe' unless backed up with some rationale other than 'it's a metaphor for what we don't understand' is preaching, or very close to it.

Okay. Explaining perhaps. I understand that it is an oppinion, and one can teach what there opinion or the opinion of a large group of people is. If a teacher says "the Hippies believed that materialistic society was flawed", is he proving that materialistic society is flawed? No, he is just teaching what the opinion of a large group of people is. That is all I am doing, saying what my Gnostic opinion is.

I need to back up my religion, which, like all religions, is an opinon, about as much as I have to back up my opinion that Fall Out Boy sucks.

You are not doing yourself justice. You are looking for pretexts to carry on with this God-thing. I don't call the hormonal reaction 'love' Other people do that. They also have called it 'god' or 'heaven'. I don't do that, either.

However, I think you do label another kind of reaction 'God'. It may or may not be hormonal, but I'd like to find out. All the time we call it 'god' and regard it as something that shouldn't be considered rationally or medically, because that is somehow is removing the magic, we never will.

I never said there should not be an investigation into it. GOD does exist, even if it is "just a hormonal reaction".

This is probably not the place to embark on a dissertation on the physiology of 'love' - a metaphor for what we know - hormones, instincts and social codes. There is nothing to justify 'God' as a metaphorical pretext for ignoring investigation of all that. No more than the image of a curly headed winged sprite with a bow and arrow. a good metaphor and a bit of fun, but for Cupid's sake, don't build a lifestyle/ religion around it.

But it is okay to build a lifestyle based on the existince of love? My religious lifestyle, as I said, is defined by my relationship with someone who can never hurt me...someone's love life is defined by someone who can indeed hurt them, i.e., their "lover". I will stop building my lifestyle around GOD, which Dawkins does not believe in, if he will stop building his lifestyle (marriage) around love (his wife) which I don't believe in.

We all are. That why we invent methods of logic. We have no idea how to work out who gets how many nuts or fruits. That's why we invent mathematics. They are human inventions but they work. I suppose you should be commended for having constructed a religious nicotine patch that enables you to function normally while under the delusion that you are still smoking. But I really think you owe it to yourself to kick the habit.

Indeed. I need my "fix" of the illogical nature of GOD. I admit it. However, as a T-shirt I once saw said "I don't suffer from addiction. I enjoy it immensly, that you very much"

It may be. I find it defeatist to suppose that domestic violence, rape, war, crime, intolerance, illogic and superstition will always be around. But it will if people like Dawkins don't set out reasons. And if religion is illogical, then none are excempt from being shown to be illogical.

It is not defeatist to be a realist. It is in our nature to be a savage animal. Human beings have a great capacity to destroy and a hunger for violence and it will always be that way. It comes with the territory.

[quote]
This was dealt with very well in Daniel Harbour's 'Intelligent person's guide to atheism (Duckworth press)

"He (Keats) cricicised Moses Mendelssohn, an important Enlightenment figure, by saying that once he, Mendelssohn, pinned the butterfly into his catalogue, he turned it from a beautiful bright creature into a dull and lifeless corpse ....Ironically, the response to Keats is another quotation from the very same poem (Lamia)...his beautiful speech begins:
"My silver planet, both of even and morn
why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn.."
The irony here is what Keats compares his serpent lady to: the planet Venus, which shines in the morning and in the evening. The ancients believed that what they saw was a star, not a planet, and that it was different from the star they saw in the evening.."

To sum up, Keats had scientific knowledge about Venus, but that had not "emptied the haunted air" It had not interred two heavenly bodies into "the dull catalogue of common things."

Succinctly, Keats was a fine poet but an illogical prat, and I have thought so ever since I read 'Beauty is truth and truth, beauty; that is all ye know and all ye need to know".

It is not true that science and the removal of mystery makes things dull and commonplace. It is an excuse - and a false one - used by those who love to cling to their superstitions and weird cults and will sieze on any pretext to discredit the logic and science that may undercut their treasured faiths.
[quote]


First of all, again, I have no "Faith". Second, I never said that science does away with beauty and all that. No. There is a word for self proclaimed Rationalist scientist who makes a poem about planet: A hypocrite. If he truly was a Rationalist, he would understand that he is wasting ink which could be better used on a research paper, time which could be better spent typing code, and mental capacity which could be better spent on equations.

Like a priest who rapes alter boys, a Rationalist who still holds on to irrational things like Love (the most irrational concept on Earth after GOD) beauty, etc is a hypocrite.

Now, if there was a Rationalists who was taking treatments to become asexual, did not view art, hated music, and lived in a completely utilitarian home and existed only to be efficent: HE WOULD GET MY UPMOST RESPECT. I would still disagree with him, but at least I would find that he is indeed consistent.

This is all of a piece with the 'mystery' argument. It misrepresents what dawkins and myself are talking about. It is a strawman argument and you should know better. I talk about undertanding the physiology, biology, conventions, myths, philology and physiology of love. To enhance it bu understanding and minimising dangers and problems by the same method. You talk of chemical castration. If you think that'slogic, it underlines all the dangers of what your apparently harmless adherence to a supposedly rational religion may bring.

Every other Gnostic I know agrees: My lack of the belief in Love does not make sense. It is not a religious thing, it is a Victorianpunk thing.

Anyway, as I said, the logicall thing to do would be to understand that love does not exist and, like psychosis, is just a parasitic chemical reaction of the brain. It might have been necessary at one point, but, in light of all the pain love causes, it, like picking mites out of our sibling's hair and eating them, has long sense lost it's usefullness.

We can and should strive to be asexual and do away with the pain that "love" causes. That is the logicall solution.

I do not really want people to get chemically castrated. I am just saying that that would be the logical thing to do. However, as I said...logic, when taken to an extreme, sucks.

If you paid attention to the sciences and evidence, you would understans that, though you may unfortunately lack a nose, noses exist. Evidence indicates that Christ didn't nor the words he is supposed to have uttered, either canonical or uncanonical. And the cannot be made better evidentially supported by pasting them as metaphorical labels over those closed draws of knowlege, the contents of which we are yet unaware.

Actually, there is more evidence for the existince of a historic Christ then against one. And yes, again, I understand that he may not have said those words and it does not matter. I simply used the scientific method:



Question: Will being a Gnostic Christian make my life better?

Research: Read books on Gnosticism, and visited a Gnostic Church and met Gnostics

Hypothesis: If I live as a Gnostic, I will have a better life

Experiment: I lived as a Gnostic for three months.

Analyzed the Data: I looked at my thoughts in my diary (emo as hell for a guy to have a diary, I know) and compared how I felt before the expirement to after

Results: Being a Gnostic Christian makes me happier and have a more fulfilling life.

So...how is that "illogical"? It is, sense it involves religiona and GOD I suppose...but not in the extreme.

[Aeroman]

Originally Posted by victorianpunk

(emo as hell for a guy to have a diary, I know)

Call it a journal.

[TRANSPONDER]

Question: Will being a Gnostic Christian make my life better?

Research: Read books on Gnosticism, and visited a Gnostic Church and met Gnostics

Hypothesis: If I live as a Gnostic, I will have a better life

Experiment: I lived as a Gnostic for three months.

Analyzed the Data: I looked at my thoughts in my diary (emo as hell for a guy to have a diary, I know) and compared how I felt before the expirement to after

Results: Being a Gnostic Christian makes me happier and have a more fulfilling life.

So...how is that "illogical"? It is, sense it involves religiona and GOD I suppose...but not in the extreme.

That is far too much for me to reply to and so much of it is getting off discussing what you said and discussing whether what you said was really what you said. And I don't have that much of an issue with your views anyway.

I suppose there is a sort of logic in doing something because it makes you feel good, so long as you are not trying to push it onto anyone else. However, I will continue to argue for the rational, not the feelgood.

As to the chart, I have seen other versions.

Question: Is there any logical basis for Gnostic Christianity?

Hypothesis: If I live as a Gnostic, I will have a better life

Research: Read books on Gnosticism, and visited a Gnostic Church and met Gnostics and anything else that will tend to confirm the hypothesis.

(The hypothesis should really come before the research, as I'm sure you know)

Experiment: I lived as a Gnostic for three months. Don't have a control to the experiment, like living as anything else for three months.

Analyzed the Data: I looked at my thoughts in my diary (emo as hell for a guy to have a diary, I know) and compared how I felt before the expirement to after.

Results. Gave you exactly the result you wanted.

You will forgive me if I can't see that as anything like a valid social experiment. But I'll give you the best. It's just too much work for no result.

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

P.s Gosh this has got long.

I am in awe. I'll just go into the corner and shut up, 'cause you've said it so well.

At least I feel vindicated and justified and at peace, being a long-time scientist and, oh yeah, by corollary, an atheist.

"Evidence cannot lie; we leave that to interpretation." me.

[Roxolan]

The videos of the Thunderf00t vs Ray Comfort discussion have been uploaded. Complete playlist here, first video below. I haven't watched the whole thing yet (it's 1h30 long).


YouTube - The Thunderf00t - Ray Comfort discussion (Part 1)

[MrBlueSky_]

Originally Posted by Roxolan

The videos of the Thunderf00t vs Ray Comfort discussion have been uploaded. Complete playlist here, first video below. I haven't watched the whole thing yet (it's 1h30 long).

Well, one doesn't have to watch this very long to see quite clearly that Mr. Comfort is going to get totally pwned in this entire exchange. He doesn't even comprehend the majority of what Thunderfoot is telling him. He just ignores reason and logic and blabbers on about scripture.

Pretty much par for the course as far as fundies/creatards go.

Not sure whether to give kudos to Thunderfoot for humoring the clown. He definitely has more patience than I do! If anything this demonstrates exactly why Dawkins will not "debate" creationists. Teaching sign language to a chimp would be far more rewarding..

[kdbrich]

Funny...but it looked to me that mr thunderfoot was evasive and rambling. When Comfort tried to pin him down on something he'd just say "we don't know". It was like trying to nail jello to the wall.

[sanspeur]

Originally Posted by MrBlueSky_

Well, one doesn't have to watch this very long to see quite clearly that Mr. Comfort is going to get totally pwned in this entire exchange. He doesn't even comprehend the majority of what Thunderfoot is telling him. He just ignores reason and logic and blabbers on about scripture.

Pretty much par for the course as far as fundies/creatards go.

Not sure whether to give kudos to Thunderfoot for humoring the clown. He definitely has more patience than I do! If anything this demonstrates exactly why Dawkins will not "debate" creationists. Teaching sign language to a chimp would be far more rewarding..

Exactly, and the chimp would actually learn something.