poor Willblake. with nothing to believe in.
lets have an argument about something.
pick a topic.
Is that a lame attempt at sarcasm? A bad joke? If not then I don’t know what you mean.
If you are here to pick a fight about economics I wish you would start.
There are and have always been a small minority of mankind that has lacked any sort of compunction toward initiating force against peaceful people. These individuals will find an excuse to accumulate coercive power and wealth without having to subject themselves to free market competition and the supremacy of individual rights.
Their motivations vary: piety, greed, lust, love, hatred, jealousy, ambition, and faith are a few. Are we to condemn all or any of these motivations merely because a few, select individuals have been prompted by these emotions to commit heinous acts?
I would argue that we should not. Rather, it is the actions themselves that must be condemend. To praise motivations, as Ayn Rand has praised greed, or any number of preachers/imams/spiritual leaders have praised piety and faith, is to make the mistake of believing that motivations are either inherently good or evil. They are neither! Motivations can prompt both many different sorts of behaviors, both good and ill. It is the behaviors themselves that should be tagged with moral superlatives.
Theism has motivated crusaders to pillage and rape, jihadists to enslave and murder, inquisitors to torture, and kings and sultans to make wars of conquest. But it has also motivated good behavior that has been fundamentally beneficial to mankind. Let’s condemn or praise the behavior, not the motivation.
So in brief: no, I don’t think the world would be a better place without theism. Nor do I think it is a better place for it. Bad people will always find an excuse to do bad things. Gods have proven to offer convent excuses for many, but are we too blame the Gods for that? Hardly. In the absence of Gods, some other excuse will be found to use force. Let’s attack the real problem: force itself!
The real problem is the fraud that lies at the base of all organized religions. When some people(theocrats) pretend to be able to talk to the gods, and other people(subjects) tolerate such stupid fraud, bad things are bound to happen. Force is a CONSEQUENCE of organized religion, the problem itself is organized religion.
Can you disprove God? Of course not. You can’t prove a negative. So you can’t make the case that they are not talking to God. If they sincerely believe they are, then there is no fraud. Fraud is an intent to deceive. It is not exclusive to religion. Religion has as many useful idiots as science and statism.
Then explain crimes perpetrated by secular atheists. kthx.
Huh? Can you prove that judaism is the true one religion™? Or is it catholicism? (which means judaism is a fraud)
Or perhaps the true religion is one of the hundreds of protestant sects?
No, wait, hinduism is the true religion and all western religions are scams.
No, no - Jim Jones is the only true prophet. Or maybe not.
Regardless, your remark re:god was totally irrelevant…
But I’m all ears. You prove that all those organized religions are not frauds…
A–>B doesn’t necessarily imply B–>A. Next?
Can you prove they ‘sincerely’ believe their own lies? No you CAN’T.
But even more important : Saying that a liar is not a liar because he pretends to not be a liar is laughable circular nonsense.
SO, theocrats who assert that they represent ‘god’ on earth or similar nonsense HAVE THE BURDEN OF PROOF.
Again, fraud is willfully deception with the intent to deceive. A catholic and a jew can both believe their religions are the one true religion, and neither is committing fraud, just like you can believe chocolate is the best tasting ice cream and I can think vanilla is the best tasting ice cream, and neither of us would be committing fraud with our opinions.
What does that even mean? My point was, organized religion doesn’t necessitate force, Buddhism is a great example of that. Force becomes an issue when a moral doctrine ignores property rights. That is not unique to organized religion. It is common with secular atheists. Indeed, many of the world’s great mass murderers like George Bush, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and Lyndon Johnson committed their heinous crimes not for religious reasons (or ends) but for political and economic ideologies.
If you are asserting fraud, the burden of proof is on you.
WillBlake, when dealing with religion, you need to distinguish between fraud and schizophrenia.
Also, remember what Mises said about magic. Magic is a form of technology in that it is a means used to achieve an end. Granted, it is very ineffective beyond the placebo effect, but it is still a form of technology.
If I sincerely believe magic man will heal my sick son and I do not exercise any treatment or/and do not call for a doctor to help him, I can not be blamed when my son dies, because well, I sincerely believed. Sincerity is free gettoutofthejail card.
Magic is a form of technology in that it is a means used to achieve an end. Granted, it is very ineffective beyond the placebo effect, but it is still a form of technology.
what a hell am I reading.
I am a sovereign state.
Some who’ve heard me declare this are going to insist that is MY religion. And they would be correct to a certain extent: my state is certainly organized (well, at my age I should admit it is disorganized much of the time).
My state has its existance of The Creator, by The Creator, for the people.
So to say “we” would be better off had “religion” never existed – that would certainly have been unfortunate for ME; would it not?
Sam
I will say this. What you know is a lot less than what you don’t know. Every person acts on faith every single day. They drive their car, on the belief they will not get into an accident. They ride in elevators, believing that they won’t get stuck. They turn on gas stoves, confident that they won’t burn their house down.
And yet, elevators get stuck, traffic accidents happen and houses burn down from kitchen fires.
Even going to a medical doctor, approved by the latest state academics and state bureaucrats, isn’t a guarantee that he will provide the best or most competent treatment for your son. It is a faith in his training, a faith in the odds, a faith in the state, a faith in science, a faith in the social norms for medical treatment, whatever rationale you need, in order to make that leap of faith and act.
We may be perfectly rational in the Misesian sense, but we don’t have access to perfect knowledge, and this is where Athesist arguments become unglued. You can’t perfectly know God doesn’t exist, and I am sure many would agree, you can’t really prove he does. So belief or disbelief in God is an act of faith, that what you do not know isn’t different than what you think.
No, people who make obviously false claims, such as being able to talk to god(s), are the ones who have the burden of proof.
Please don’t play silly games with me.
Are you saying that so called religious people suffer schizophrenia? Your defense of them is hardly flattering…
Regardless, I don’t believe in the modern religion of psychiatry either.
Rather, this is a matter of common sense :
You(impersonal pronoun) claim to have access to the supernatural power(s) that created the universe? Amazing! Now, please PROVE IT.
Saying that people who believe in God are schizophrenic is like saying people who can’t pay attention in school have ADD.
I’m not playing games. To assert that all claims are fraud, would require the accused party to prove a negative (which is a logical fallacy), the negative being that they are NOT engaged in fraud. Proof is positive, not negative.
Quote by Willblake:“You(impersonal pronoun) claim to have access to the supernatural power(s) that created the universe? Amazing! Now, please PROVE IT.”
Well some people would say that everyone has access to God. Not in terms of “Hey man how are you doing?”, but that you have the ability to communicate with God just like anyone else without some sort of intermediary. That doesn’t mean God is going to talk back to you vocally or anything like that.
Although what I’ve been hearing you say is that you don’t like “organized” religion- so is your problem with priests that claim that they are closer to God than others are? If that’s the case, then even many religious people(Like me), won’t agree with that.
Perhaps you could be more specific as to what exactly it is you’re complaining about. There are different religions and beliefs that will tell you there are ways to access a supernatural “otherworldly” power. But that it requires a lot of work and very specific meditation. A lot of old yogi’s would tell you they do have access to a supernatural power- but that it makes them as a person more ordinary than extraordinary as paradoxical as that sounds. They’d even help you to access this power yourself(pretty much trying to answer your challenge) but would you be willing to put in the time and effort yourself to see if they work?
Sky cake… the key to civilization.
[View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w : 640 : 480]