Anti-Semitism In France!

[Alexandra 55]

I think that the loaded words which you have used are rational and intelligent. Careless use of these two words is bound to attract hostility and, well, bad karma.

I am an atheist and am a fan of your view, Alexandra. Nevertheless, I would be cautious about employing such words as intelligent and rational in the same sentence. The Intelligent Design/Creationist gang have developped a rational explanation for their view of the world and how it was made. One might recognise that these cats are certainly rational. As to whether this view is intelligent is a whole other kettle of fish and one that is being debated on a number of threads on this site.

I get your point, indeed. But I'm not budging. The ID/creation "science" view may seem rational (to them), since it all proceeds in what they see as logical steps and has if/then arguments galore. But the "explanation" all the discussion points to---their hypothesis, if you will--remains utterly IRrational. Lots of terrifically intelligent people embrace it, I'm sure. And that's possible because they are understanding the nature of the world from a religious POV, and their rational minds are cowed into submission.

[Carlene 12]

I get your point, indeed. But I'm not budging. The ID/creation "science" view may seem rational (to them), since it all proceeds in what they see as logical steps and has if/then arguments galore. But the "explanation" all the discussion points to---their hypothesis, if you will--remains utterly IRrational. Lots of terrifically intelligent people embrace it, I'm sure. And that's possible because they are understanding the nature of the world from a religious POV, and their rational minds are cowed into submission.

I beg your pardon, but my rational mind is NOT "cowed into submission" by my religious beliefs. Perhaps your mind is simply incapable of grasping a concept that transcends your pitifully small human brain.

[Alexandra 55]

I beg your pardon, but my rational mind is NOT "cowed into submission" by my religious beliefs. Perhaps your mind is simply incapable of grasping a concept that transcends your pitifully small human brain.

Oops, guess Green was right. I'm really sorry, I didn't mean for this to offend and I certainly don't want it to get personal. I will refrain from making comments directed at specific individuals if you will, OK? I'm talking about concepts, not anyone specific.

But what concept is it that transcends my brain, exactly? :confused:

[Alexandra 55]

If I am irrational by virtue of my religion, so be it. I know this is next to impossible for non-believers to comprehend, but I truly did not choose God....God chose me. Another irrational idea.....I know. It's something that has to happen to you before you can understand it - kind of like love.

I'm sorry, I missed this post earlier. But it completely supports my position. Something that has to happen to you before you can understand it -- kind of like love -- is not, by definition, rational.

I guess what I am not getting across well is the fact that I value non-rational experience. I embrace the idea of a universal poetry, art, beauty, serendipity, all these things that can't be quantified but add immeasurable depth to our lives. For millions of people religion is one of those things. There's nothing wrong with that!

[gadgetlady 4]

Gadgetlady, I'm not saying one cannot be, in turns, both rational and religious. But they cannot be both at the same time. One must take either a rational or religious view of something. The important qualifer in my statement is to the extent. However, this explains why I don't believe any ordained minister is qualified to hold public office. Either he or she is a good ordained minister -- that is, his/her highest obligation is to his deity -- OR he or she will be a good public servant, whose highest obligation is to serve the public. In someone like GWB, we've seen the folly of electing someone who openly disdains the will of the people in favor of the will of a higher power. His faith has overridden his reason (if he ever had any to begin with).

So the people I mentioned -- and others -- would have been even smarter and more productive had they not bothered themselves with such irrelevant and irrational things as religion? Or is it, perhaps, that their religion centered them, informed their intellectual thought, and allowed them to be as brilliant and productive as they were? Why is it mutually exclusive so serve both a deity and your fellow man?

As an aside, I don't believe the "will of the people" is always what is best for the people. Just as early Americans justified slavery by mental and legal contortions and just because it was the "will of the people", that didn't make it right.

I know you think there is such a thing as "creation science" and that that completely undermines my statement. But by its very nature, creation science posits some sort of supernatural creator, and that is not a rational assumption or claim. It is a "well, there's no other explanation that satisfies me, so I'll just assume someone designed nature" claim. That is not rational. There is no evidence FOR a creator, no evidence FOR intelligent design. There is just evidence that nature makes sense, has patterns, and works in concert, and there are other explanations for that. Explanations that do stand up to testing. That's reason, not faith, in action.

"Nature" is so incredibly complex that positing it happened by chance or by natural selection is, in my opinion, irrational. And I disagree that evolutionary explanations stand up to testing. But that's another discussion for another thread.

[gadgetlady 4]

But the "explanation" all the discussion points to---their hypothesis, if you will--remains utterly IRrational. Lots of terrifically intelligent people embrace it, I'm sure. And that's possible because they are understanding the nature of the world from a religious POV, and their rational minds are cowed into submission.

I would say the same for athiests.

[gadgetlady 4]

I beg your pardon, but my rational mind is NOT "cowed into submission" by my religious beliefs. Perhaps your mind is simply incapable of grasping a concept that transcends your pitifully small human brain.

LOL! You can always trust Carlene to be blunt!

Oops, guess Green was right. I'm really sorry, I didn't mean for this to offend and I certainly don't want it to get personal. I will refrain from making comments directed at specific individuals if you will, OK? I'm talking about concepts, not anyone specific."

I don't think you can call a whole group of people irrational and then say "oh, I wasn't talking specifically about YOU, but only the group you belong to that defines who you are". What you have said about faith and rationality logically means you view me as irrational. You are entitled to your viewpoint, but I want to be very clear that that's what you are saying.

[Alexandra 55]

So the people I mentioned -- and others -- would have been even smarter and more productive had they not bothered themselves with such irrelevant and irrational things as religion? Or is it, perhaps, that their religion centered them, informed their intellectual thought, and allowed them to be as brilliant and productive as they were? Why is it mutually exclusive so serve both a deity and your fellow man?

There is room in the same lifetime for both rational and irrational pursuits. It's what makes the human mind so awesome. And it's not mutually exclusive to serve a deity and our fellow men--but elected officials and ministers have to choose one over the other. I don't see how both could be on top.

I don't think you can call a whole group of people irrational and then say "oh, I wasn't talking specifically about YOU, but only the group you belong to that defines who you are". What you have said about faith and rationality logically means you view me as irrational. You are entitled to your viewpoint, but I want to be very clear that that's what you are saying.

No, I am not saying that I view anyone as being an irrational person, necessarily. That would depend on their actions and the extent to which they let religion govern them. There is room in the same lifetime, and in the same person, for varying frames of reference to be operational. As I said, the human mind is awesome that way. :biggrin1:

[Carlene 12]

Oops, guess Green was right. I'm really sorry, I didn't mean for this to offend and I certainly don't want it to get personal. I will refrain from making comments directed at specific individuals if you will, OK? I'm talking about concepts, not anyone specific.

But what concept is it that transcends my brain, exactly? :confused:

How can it NOT be personal when you are referring to all Christians? It's like saying blondes are not very smart. If you're blonde, that's a personal remark.

The concept I was referring to was the mere possibility of an omnipotent presence - a superior being hundreds of thousands of times more intelligent than humans and possessing capabilities which humans can only begin to imagine. That's a rather unemotional, clinical description of God, I suppose. But you know, if you were somehow able to re-visit the time and place where your great, great grandparents lived and attempted to describe the internet to them, their rational minds would reject it in a heartbeat. That's not to say they wouldn't believe you, only that they would be totally unprepared to leap, intellectually, from a world without electricity to one where machines not only "think", but communicate with one another. Being a Christian is not synonymous with irrational thinking. We are, rather, able to think beyond what we can see and believe in that which we cannot explain.

[anonemouse 1]

I can understand what Alexandra is attemting to say. I think you guys might be reading her words but missing what she is trying to say. At the same time, I think "logical" might be a better word to use than "rational", even though they are synonyms. I think that, by definition, believing in an all-powerful deity isn't "logical". If you think of it, if someone came up to you on a street and was raving about a giant purple frog that is all-powerful and created mankind, most people would automatically think, "Wow, this guy's nuts." What I have to ask is why is that man's belief more illogical than the mainstream beliefs of today? Believing in something that can not be proven and has no incontrovertible evidence to support it is not logical. That belief being widespread does not make it any more logical.

[Alexandra 55]

How can it NOT be personal when you are referring to all Christians? It's like saying blondes are not very smart. If you're blonde, that's a personal remark.

Except "religion" in my statements does not equate to Christianity, and "rational" does not equate to "smart." So your analogy is off the mark.

The concept I was referring to was the mere possibility of an omnipotent presence - a superior being hundreds of thousands of times more intelligent than humans and possessing capabilities which humans can only begin to imagine. That's a rather unemotional, clinical description of God, I suppose.

Of course I can grasp the concept. I just don't believe in it.

But you know, if you were somehow able to re-visit the time and place where your great, great grandparents lived and attempted to describe the internet to them, their rational minds would reject it in a heartbeat. That's not to say they wouldn't believe you, only that they would be totally unprepared to leap, intellectually, from a world without electricity to one where machines not only "think", but communicate with one another. Being a Christian is not synonymous with irrational thinking. We are, rather, able to think beyond what we can see and believe in that which we cannot explain.

Yet there were people in those times who were able to make those leaps in purely rational ways--the scientists--and it would now indeed be possible to explain the Internet to my ancestors, using purely scientific terminology and without relying on anything supernatural to fill in gaps.

Gotta go to bed now. Have a nice evening!

[Carlene 12]

Believing in something that can not be proven and has no incontrovertible evidence to support it is not logical. That belief being widespread does not make it any more logical.

And the mere fact that you don't believe in it doesn't mean it can't exist. Neither does the fact that it can't be proven to your satisfaction. For centuries, no one could prove that the world wasn't flat, thus most everyone believed it was. Not only that, but it WAS a logical concept. After all, it LOOKS flat.

[anonemouse 1]

And the mere fact that you don't believe in it doesn't mean it can't exist. Neither does the fact that it can't be proven to your satisfaction. For centuries, no one could prove that the world wasn't flat, thus most everyone believed it was. Not only that, but it WAS a logical concept. After all, it LOOKS flat.

That's true. But what we have to go on is what we know or what can be proven. Today, we don't really rely on appearances to give credit to beliefs. Saying that we should continue to believe in an idea that can't be proven or even tested is simply illogical. Does that make anyone's belief in it less valid? No. Everyone needs to believe in something, whether it is religion or science. But I do think that religious faith in itself is illogical, based on the knowledge that if you have to have faith in something in order to believe it, there is no way to prove it. After all, it wouldn't be called faith, otherwise.

[Carlene 12]

That's true. But what we have to go on is what we know or what can be proven. Today, we don't really rely on appearances to give credit to beliefs. Saying that we should continue to believe in an idea that can't be proven or even tested is simply illogical. Does that make anyone's belief in it less valid? No. Everyone needs to believe in something, whether it is religion or science. But I do think that religious faith in itself is illogical, based on the knowledge that if you have to have faith in something in order to believe it, there is no way to prove it. After all, it wouldn't be called faith, otherwise.

Even science, with its "logical" approach to so-called facts, is sometimes wrong. After all these years, we were informed recently that Pluto isn't a planet, after all. Imagine that! Even when something has been scientifically "proven", it's still subject to being unproven at a later date. So much for the reliability of science.

[anonemouse 1]

Even science, with its "logical" approach to so-called facts, is sometimes wrong. After all these years, we were informed recently that Pluto isn't a planet, after all. Imagine that! Even when something has been scientifically "proven", it's still subject to being unproven at a later date. So much for the reliability of science.

But it is still more reliable than faith. With faith, you have no evidence at all, or at least none that can't be explained by other factors. Faith is just that, faith. And I would argue that science is reliable, as long as you realize that claims are never made with 100% certainty. Yes, science can be wrong and the definitions of scientific categories can be changed, but it always requires proof, or at least as close to proof as we can get with modern technology.