Suffering bothers us because it is part of our evolved mechanism of procreation and survival, which includes an emotion we have labeled "love". Did god give us love or did we as a species develop it on our own? An answer in a question might be, if we did not have love, would we have been so successful as a species? Yes, there's a great deal of the opposite number in our makeup, too, but no infant survived into adolescence, childhood and adulthood because his mother despised him.
Nickolas
JoinedPosts by Nickolas
-
328
A few Dawkins quotes to think about.
by AK - Jeff in"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
-
-
-
328
A few Dawkins quotes to think about.
by AK - Jeff in"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
-
-
Nickolas
I admire his faith in atheism
I see the old chestnut that atheism = faith is alive and well. I think you have a pretty good grasp on what atheism really is, but there are still a few blanks you need to fill in.
Vox Day, as you realise, is a play on the Latin "Vox Dei" which of course means "The Voice of God". Just a little pretentious, don't you think?
Sam was the guy that said if he could eliminate religion or rape, he would eliminate religion, that was him right?
Not that I have read, but I trust your memory. I don't agree with everything anyone says. If he said this, he's got a screw loose, but the rest of his intelligence machine seems to tick over rather well.
-
29
Why can't you ask questions?
by ihadnoidea ini know that some will disagree on this, and say you can ask questions.
yet, i ask you to honestly think what would happen if you openly started asking questions on jw doctrine or evolution.
likely you would be made to feel like i did below if you started asking these questions to other jws.. .
-
-
Nickolas
A great gem provided by poster Room215 in a recent thread entitled "undercover apostates":
As Cervantes said "I can live with questions I can't answer, but not with those I can't ask (or, put another way, "answers I can't question").
-
328
A few Dawkins quotes to think about.
by AK - Jeff in"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
-
-
Nickolas
Because we KNOW the difference between what IS and what OUGHT to be, but why do we know that?
Not knowledge, Paul, wish thinking.
-
328
A few Dawkins quotes to think about.
by AK - Jeff in"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
-
-
Nickolas
Yes, I understand from a previous conversation that you are not his biggest fan.
-
328
A few Dawkins quotes to think about.
by AK - Jeff in"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
-
-
Nickolas
Thank you, Paul, for illustrating my previous post so well.
-
328
A few Dawkins quotes to think about.
by AK - Jeff in"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
-
-
Nickolas
Let's throw in a couple of apropos Sam Harris quotes to spice things up:
"Is THE difference between good and evil just a matter of what any particular group of human beings says it is ? Consider that one of the greatest sources of amusement in sixteenth-century Paris was cat burning. At the midsummer's fair an impresario would gather dozens of cats in a net, hoist them high into the air from a special stage, and then, to everyone's delight, lower the whole writhing bundle onto a bonfire. The assembled spectators "shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized. Most of us would recoil from such a spectacle today. But would we be right to do so? Can we say that there are ethical truths of which all avid torturers of cats are ignorant?"
and I particularly like this one:
"This is the point at which our notions about mind and matter directly influence our notions of right and wrong. We should recall that the practice of vivisection was given new life by certain missteps in the philosophy of mind—when Descartes, in thrall to both Christian dogma and mechanistic physics, declared that all nonhuman animals were mere automata, devoid of souls and therefore insensible to pain. One of his contemporaries observed the immediate consequences of this view:
'The scientists administered beatings to dogs with perfect indifference and made fun of those who pitied the creatures as if they felt pain. They said the animals were clocks; that the cries they emitted when struck were only the noise of a little spring that had been touched, but that the whole body was without feeling. They nailed the poor animals up on boards by their four paws to vivisect them to see the circulation of blood, which was a great subject of controversy.'
Cognitive chauvinism of this sort has not merely been a problem for animals. The doubt, on the part of Spanish explorers, about whether or not South American Indians had "souls" surely contributed to the callousness with which they treated them during their conquest of the New World. Admittedly, it is difficult to say just how far down the phylogenic tree our ethical responsibilities run. Our intuitions about the consciousness of other animals are driven by a variety of factors, many of which probably have no bearing upon whether or not they are conscious. For instance, creatures that lack facial expressiveness—or faces at all—are more difficult to include within the circle of our moral concern. It seems that until we more fully understand the relationship between brains and minds, our judgments about the possible scope of animal suffering will remain relatively blind and relatively dogmatic."
-
103
How the WTBTS creates atheists
by Nickolas ini am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
-
-
Nickolas
You know another way to look at it is that your BIL was simply looking for someone or some group to acknowledge and accept him, give him a sense of purpose, and a sense of hope for him to turn his life around. In other words, deep down inside he wanted to be a good person. This could've been accomplished outside of a religion but it just so happens that it was the Watchtower religion that gave him the validation that he needed.
And I think you're absolutely right. The Watchtower was a good thing for him. It provided him with the moral compass that he otherwise lacked and turned his life around. The Watchtower isn't totally evil, after all. Just mostly evil.
But in some cases, if we believe in the wrong thing, our personal conscience may still lead us astray - in that we won't know we're doing something wrong, so we won't feel that twinge of guilt or warning.
It still goes to what constitues the wrong thing. The bible, for example, defines many things that are wrong and then prescribes punishments accordingly. From my perspective, many of those wrongs are victimless crimes for which some of the most horrendous punishments were meted out under the understanding that they were mandated by God himself. How do you tell if something is wrong if not by the golden rule? Being the film buff I am I am reminded about that line in "K-Pax" when Kevin Spacey says, "every creature in the universe knows the difference between right and wrong."
-
328
A few Dawkins quotes to think about.
by AK - Jeff in"faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.
faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.".
"my last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of september 11th 2001, followed by the "national day of prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous martin luther king impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.".
-
-
Nickolas
then I consider the comparison a compliment
It most certainly was.
Just humans, dear one?
Nope. Thought I'd covered that off. Critters suffer, too.
Ah, that's not accurate! There was no suffering in Eden... which is is recorded/written on paper/papyrus/vellum/whathaveyou... right?
Works of fiction do not count as evidence.
But it's not incomprehensible.
The thing about something being incomprehensible is that the one not comprehending is not comprehending. It is not possible to comprehend all the misery in the world. If you could comprehend a fraction of it, it would crush you.
I'm not sure what you're saying about animals, though. Do you empathise with them or consider them to be biological autometrons? I can't tell.
Some of us have experienced great suffering.
by whose measure?
I mean, not everyone "experiences" the same "world".
Depends how you measure "better". If 10% more of the total world population is living longer now than X years ago because their nutrition has improved, then it can be assumed that the world is getting better. However, I agree with you completely that the world is getting much better for the fat cats. How would you measure better?
the greed of pharmaceutical "fat cats"
yes, yes. Put the lot in pillories. But don't discount advances in medical science because of this lot of pirates.
This decade, no, but who knows what's to come?
Precisely. If you extrapolate the future from the past, what's to come looks pretty exciting. Why have such an apocalyptic perspective?
As to your final comments, Shelby, you leave me speechless.
-
103
How the WTBTS creates atheists
by Nickolas ini am an atheist.
i arrived at this juncture in my life despite not wanting to.
when i first met the witnesses at 22 i was a seeker looking for answers to the question of life - in other words, prime cult target material.
-
-
Nickolas
It's a corolory question, Tammy. I contend that having faith is not a requirement for having high moral standards. What is unsaid but understood is that many faithful as well as non-faithful people are honestly moral. The other thread spoke to faith not defining character, which I am taking as synonymous with "moral character". It's likely I misunderstood you.