quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt Probably not, but a huge chunk of Christianity places a big emphasis on the writings/teachings of Paul..and if these people discovered that half of the letters supposedly written by him are actually forgeries written by unknown authors, that would have a pretty huge impact on their faith.

I have to take the opposing view. I know full well that a number of the books included in the Cannon are forged and it doesn't shake my faith at all. In fact, with some it actually helps... 1 Timothy is a great example; it expressly states women should have no positions of authority in the church; however, Paul set up churches with women in positions of authority within the community (even as preachers). Knowing that this book is a forgery certainly helps to rectify an inconsitancy between "Paul's" words and his actions. Granted, anyone who believes in bible inerrency would have some problems with this but I think we can all agree that forgeries in the Cannon are really the least of the problems with that belief.

Anyway, again, sorry for the topic drift.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by RickyM you're just a shit version of Moral Hazard. At least he knows what he's talking about.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN lol, i love it when moral feels the need to lay the smack down

quote:

Originally posted by Moral Hazard Hold on, let's compare apples to apples here. Doubt and investigation are encouraged in faith... hell, the vatican employes a sizable group of people who are tasked exclusively with the job of disproving reported mircals (both contemporary and historically). Seminaries are awash with researchers trying to locate and expose errors in scripture and critiqueing doctrines accordingly. Granted, a lot of adherents discourage other adherents from questioning things but those people cannot be said to be representative of their respective faiths as a whole. When you talk of science advocating investigation and faith you're talking the research fields, not the entire scientific community. Your statement that religions do not encourage doubt and investigation ignores a whole lot of work being done by theologians and scholars and is akin to someone entirely disregarding the research fields of science and focusing only on the practical application of existing knowlege. Is the level of activity in this regard on par between the two disaplines... absolutely not; however, saying it is absent or even not encouraged is simply a mischaracterization, no?

This is all very nice, however based on your claim, overall you're saying the catholic church is quite secular and doesn't employ any censorship or cover ups at all? Or at the very least less than the average government.

No I don't give a shit how many people are employed to disprove miracles, no doubt there's someone at the executive branch who decides whether a miracle is real or not based on politics more than anything. Some token effort doesn't discredit the fact of what really goes on and the rest of the things they do. I mean newton was only made not a heretic in the 1980s, and he didn't even have any anti church stuff apart from thinking of a few different ideas in physics.

quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt I would say they have evolved, but out of necessity and not by choice. Religion on a whole has resisted change over the centuries and tried to suppress discoveries that contradicted church dogma. This is inevitable when you have something called "dogma" in the first place..

For once a section by capitalizt I have no problem with.

I don't think moral hazard understands what conservatism (or more extreme conservatism) is. It doesn't mean 100% no change, it just means they'll dig their heels in and deliberately ignore evidence (due to reading into things in a way that means you see what you want to see) for a long time and then only change once they start to look excessively stupid.

Faith means deliberate discrediting of evidence (as the usually more bad side) or trust in a certain authority (for the generally positive side). Although the two are linked. The only reason to descredit evidence is if you know that whoever it is knows a lot more about it than you (e.g. having faith that global warming scientists are right when today is cold)... and the other side is trusting the authority of the catholic church. Which you know, is one of the least corrupt instutions in the world.

quote:

Originally posted by Moral Hazard I have to disagree... scientific discoveries make headlines before being peer reviewed and/or duplicated all the time. For most people (going beyond those of us for whom education is a priority) this is how they consume their "scientific knowledge" through news reports and magazine articles. By the time the peer reviews are done or the initial study has been replicated the layperson has generally moved on and the general media doesn't bother much with follow up.

That is indeed one bad aspect of life. One really bad example being the study that showed ecstacy destroys the brain, which oprey winfrey was quick to get on her show. When it turns out that the lab accidentally gave rats the jar labelled meth and not ecstacy no one gives a shit. "New discoveries" are way more interesting to the public than slightly new ones being descredited. However concidering how slow the catholic church has been to take up science, I think you'll find getting science through tabloids is a hell of a lot more accurate. So yes there's something wrong with the way less scientificly minded papers show science, however that doesn't make the catholic church any better.

quote:

Originally posted by Moral Hazard You're making too much of my verbiage... Nietzche and I are both making the point that most people accept what they are told about scientific discovery rather then what they have first hand knowledge of.

There's no real reason not to trust experts, so long as there's a reasonable number of them in the given field, they give a realistic idea of certainty on a subject (and people in that field have a history of doing so) and sources of bias are investigated.

Not to say they always have the right idea, but when whatever field of science has shown to have made few catastrophic errors in their field once 90% of them gives the thumbs up to a theory I don't see the issue with trusting them. I wouldn't trust either a millionare economist or an unemployed economist for instance though.

When I'm talking about the purity of the field, the example of the fact that relativity disproves certain ideas newton thought up doesn't mean we should feel embarassed about believing his theories for 100s of years. Compared to for instance half the reason for invading a country being nuclear weapons then not finding any we should certainly feel very embarrassed about. Since in that field the possibility for bias is giant and then surprise surprise the experts just happen to be wrong.

To sum it up: I feel a lot happier trusting climate change scientists who have little to gain from their theories being right (at most keeping a job at at most twice their salary) compared to a pharmaceutical company that could potentially increase profit 10 fold if they market the miracle drug.

I think being overly trusting of experts makes corruption easier (especially if you don't account for bias), however relying 100% on anecdotal evidence is really going to hold science back. I'd need to know more about the quote in context to judge nietchze for that quote though. While he has a point, just because you don't understand field x doesn't mean you should rely on your personal knowledge of it. Imagine if everyone relied very heavily on anecdotal evidence? Oh I don't know anyone who's gotten aids, therefore I won't get it. That can go really wrong. You need a balance.

On the one side there's being easily corrupted by power without accountability and on the other there's basically being stupid. It's possible to both gain knowledge and allow society to function exponentially better through the use of experts and have accountability.

quote:

Originally posted by Moral Hazard Additionally, very rarely have the major faiths changed anything through any process other then internal examination... if they did then that whole stability thing would have gone by the wayside.

Doesn't the counter reformation triggered by a few fringe priests on the outskirts of catholicism that went into a mass movement count as not "internal examination". The catholic church made some medium to major changes just because the people demanded them, not because of any new insight gained from studying scripture.

quote:

Originally posted by Capitalizt Sorry, I think you (and Nietzche) are really equivocating here on the term "faith" here. People can either believe things for good reasons or bad reasons. "Faith" as I see theists using it seems to be a copout..a placeholder they throw out when they don't want to examine or relay the *reasons* they have for believing the magical stuff they believe (usually because those reasons are very very bad). For those who appreciate the scientific method, there is no need to invoke the word faith at all..because the justifications for scientific beliefs are readily available and can be demonstrated. Faith is not based on any rational method of evidence-based inquiry. To the extent that you have evidence for your beliefs, you don't need faith. And to the extent that beliefs are not based on evidence and reason, we see no predictive power, no reliable results, and no conceivable means to prove that one faith-based assertion is more valid than any other.

I agree, there are two things aspects that are sometimes called faith or a part of faith that do every job needed in society way better.
1. Appeal to tradition
IMO should be used very sparingly nowadays
e.g. "We've eaten this food for thousands of years, therefore it is unlikely that we will get significant health problems from eating it in 10 years time"
2. Appeal to authority/expertise
"97% of climate change scientists agree that humans cause global warming"

Both of which are legitimate. However a lot of the time faith is just used as an excuse for not backing up your claims/opinions with good reasons. Which is just a "cop out". There isn't a nicer way to put it.


The real enemy of scientific inquiry is for lack of a better term (there probably is one but I don't know it) excessive optimism. The idea that believing something is a good idea just because it makes you happy.

There's a reason a few fundamentalists believe that knowledge is the enemy of faith, and hence why the more you value scientific reasoning the more likely you are to become an atheist. While faith and reason can co exist, they are at least somewhat ideologically opposed and hence why when people end up being heavily into both end up removing one from their life.

___________________


Check out my Goa and psy Trance mixes!

Last edited by Darkarbiter on Aug-10-2011 at 12:09

You're responding to arguments I haven't made.

quote:

Originally posted by Darkarbiter This is all very nice, however based on your claim, overall you're saying the catholic church is quite secular and doesn't employ any censorship or cover ups at all? Or at the very least less than the average government.

I am in no way saying the church is secular; quite the opposite, all the work to disprove miracles is entirely based on the belief that the more "miracles" that are disproven the ones that cannot be disproven are made stronger. I don't necessarally agree with this; howevver, that is the motivation. Irrespective, my comments were a respons to the position that the church does not encourage doubt and investigation, which is simply incorrect.

quote:

No I don't give a shit how many people are employed to disprove miracles, no doubt there's someone at the executive branch who decides whether a miracle is real or not based on politics more than anything.

that's really just conjecture on your part.

quote:

Some token effort doesn't discredit the fact of what really goes on and the rest of the things they do. I mean newton was only made not a heretic in the 1980s, and he didn't even have any anti church stuff apart from thinking of a few different ideas in physics.

I wouldn't call it a token effort; however, I never suggested that their efforts have any impact on other positions they have taken. Again, I was simply pointing out that the claim the church does not encourage investigation is simply false.

quote:

That is indeed one bad aspect of life. One really bad example being the study that showed ecstacy destroys the brain, which oprey winfrey was quick to get on her show. When it turns out that the lab accidentally gave rats the jar labelled meth and not ecstacy no one gives a shit. "New discoveries" are way more interesting to the public than slightly new ones being descredited. However concidering how slow the catholic church has been to take up science, I think you'll find getting science through tabloids is a hell of a lot more accurate. So yes there's something wrong with the way less scientificly minded papers show science, however that doesn't make the catholic church any better.

Again, you're responding to a non-existant argument... I did not advocate aquiring knowledge through the church rather then anything else... in fact, if you read my posts you will see that I am quite clear in stating that established fact arrived at through the scientific process is more credible and should be accepted as such over theological positions. The quote you are responding to was simply me objecting to Moongoose's statement that by the time sciencetific information reaches the public it has been tested and peer reviewed (essentially that it has been established as fact), which is not the case and which you have explicitly agreed with.

To be sure, there are a great deal of things I have said that are arguable; why would you choose to argue with positions I didn't actually take?

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by RickyM you're just a shit version of Moral Hazard. At least he knows what he's talking about.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN lol, i love it when moral feels the need to lay the smack down

teach these filthy atheists a lesson, craig! especially that darkarbiter homo.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by EgosXII Completely agree, that description sounds god-aweful And all atheists know lots about science, and are always right, right? Seth mcfarlen seems like an idiot, I can't imagine this being good...

You seem like an idiot when you can't even write his name when it's on the top of the page+your tab.

___________________
BA-DUM-TSS

quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN teach these filthy atheists a lesson, craig! especially that darkarbiter homo.

Meh, I'm getting tired of it all. Normally I pop in to respond to something specific and then I get all sorts of positions foisted upon me because someone thinks they have a clever or insightful argument to make. It get's tiresome responding to objections against statements I never made. If it wasn't for the knowledge that at least some people appreciate my posts in these threads I wouldn't bother.

Note to all... I don't agree with the "filthy" characterization. Granted you're all insufferable heathens that will burn in the eternal fires of hell; that goes without saying, but I would never suggest you have poor hygiene...

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by RickyM you're just a shit version of Moral Hazard. At least he knows what he's talking about.

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN lol, i love it when moral feels the need to lay the smack down

I watched a documentary (History Channel, I think) on the purged gospels of the bible, it mostly covered the Judas Gospel, but they also mentioned the ones regarding Jesus' adolescense that had bits where he put a spell on a billygoat so it charged a priest's butt.

___________________
BA-DUM-TSS

quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

quote:

Originally posted by Moral Hazard Again, you're responding to a non-existant argument... I did not advocate aquiring knowledge through the church rather then anything else... in fact, if you read my posts you will see that I am quite clear in stating that established fact arrived at through the scientific process is more credible and should be accepted as such over theological positions. The quote you are responding to was simply me objecting to Moongoose's statement that by the time sciencetific information reaches the public it has been tested and peer reviewed (essentially that it has been established as fact), which is not the case and which you have explicitly agreed with. To be sure, there are a great deal of things I have said that are arguable; why would you choose to argue with positions I didn't actually take?

Possibly, well I don't disagree with anything you just said so parts of my post may have been redundant because I didn't read what you said in context. I should pay more attention when I'm posting. I'm much better at debating in real life, I can get a bit off track on forums.

quote:

Originally posted by Moral Hazard Note to all... I don't agree with the "filthy" characterization. Granted you're all insufferable heathens that will burn in the eternal fires of hell; that goes without saying, but I would never suggest you have poor hygiene...

I'm filthier than fingering your sister (approximately the same filthyness as a dubstep track that was described to me)

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN teach these filthy atheists a lesson, craig! especially that darkarbiter homo.

I object to my sexuality being used pejoratively, besides I'm only half gay.

___________________


Check out my Goa and psy Trance mixes!

Did you get it from your fathers or your mothers side?

___________________
BA-DUM-TSS

quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi Did you get it from your fathers or your mothers side?

Well my mother claims my father is gay for some reason, and my mother's brother is actually gay.
So both

Although it was PKC who introduced me to a forum that made me far more open about my sexuality, so it's actually his fault more than anyone.

___________________


Check out my Goa and psy Trance mixes!

quote:

Originally posted by Darkarbiter Well my mother claims my father is gay for some reason, and my mother's brother is actually gay. So both Although it was PKC who introduced me to a forum that made me far more open about my sexuality, so it's actually his fault more than anyone.

Oh, so you're actually 3/4 gay then. Nice!

___________________
BA-DUM-TSS

quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)