John Platko wrote: I would call it a religious experiment, not a scientific experiment.
It's not experimenting, either. It's philosophizing. Inspecting a claim for consistency and merit relative to other claims or observations.
John Platko wrote: I have been led to believe that many atheists have found similar results when engaging in similiar experiments. And as for the great "experiment" at Lourdes, many forum members responded in previous threads weighing in on how the actual number of "cured" people didn't bode well for the capabilities of God.
This continues to depict the essential confusion you have with these terms.
John Platko wrote:Finally, if it would help, I think I could find the "scientific" paper Hackenslash posted on the effectiveness of prayer in a particular medical circumstance. If nothing else, that paper demonstrates nicely how normally scientific studies need to be adjusted when religion is involved.
Or, in fact, how religious claims fail to pass the standards of scientific inquiry. That the religious proponent tries to caricature that as the scientific method needing to change to accommodate religious claims is part and parcel of the nonsensical psychological factors at play in religious belief.
John Platko wrote:Finally, if you have any evidence, scientific or otherwise, that my hypothesis is wrong, please share it.
Firstly, it's not a hypothesis, scientific or not. You are observing what is apparent, then pretending that the observed quantities represent a claim which could constitute validation of your beliefs.
Secondly, your willful conjecture fails to even muster any degree of internal robustness. For example, just using the crap you slapped down as if it constituted some kind of validation process, God could be not good and have any level of potency, and the observations you made and ascribed to a validation of your claim would be equally explained within that diametric opposite. Or God could not exist at all, and the observations would still be consistent with that claim. Ergo, your claim has achieved nothing of validity except exposing your 'experimental' bias.
Which in turn shows that the process is one of barrel-scraping and retro-fitting, and highlights your total confusion of all the terminology which you're attempting to corral into your conversation to make it look like you know what you're doing!
Last edited by Spearthrower on Oct 31, 2014 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'm not an atheist; I just don't believe in gods :- that which I don't belong to isn't a group! Religion: Mass Stockholm Syndrome
Darwinsbulldog wrote:One thing that can be challenged scientifically is the previous Pope's claim that the soul is put into the evolved pieces of human meat by god. The non-magical soul [the personality or identity of the person] CAN be investigated by science, and can be explained by science. Thus a Pope or religious person does not have to invoke god as a cause for the material soul [ie mortal], and indeed, if he does, he does not accept the science of evolution-specifically-the part where evolutionary forces and current environments can give personality to a social ape such as ourselves. Of course the [claimed] supernatural/religious aspect of the soul is not subject to science unless we include an over-active imagination of the religious mind as a psychological phenomenon.
Active imagination is at the heart of religious psychological phenomenon.
Firstly, religion is practiced by people which are the quantity possessing imagination.
Secondly, imagination alone is not an indicator of existence. We can all imagine wondrous worlds which differ from what we immediately and routinely see in life.
DB's point still stands, even if you fail to treat it: namely that what the Pope has said does not constitute acceptance of science, it represents a fundamental undermining of everything required to operate scientifically.
John Platko wrote:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_imagination
Jung was insistent that some form of participation in active imagination was essential: 'You yourself must enter into the process with your personal reactions...as if the drama being enacted before your eyes were real'.[11]
And this, aside to simply deferring to Jung for no reason other than him saying something you like, does not validate employing only imagination in making claims about reality.
I'm not an atheist; I just don't believe in gods :- that which I don't belong to isn't a group! Religion: Mass Stockholm Syndrome
Nicko wrote:What I don't get is the basis by which you decide whether or not a given biblical passage is "meant" to be read literally or allegorically. I was wondering if you could explain that to us please.
Seconded.
I too would love to know how that works. My normally perfectly adequate reading comprehension, which seems to work consistently when applied to any other book I've encountered, always seems to let me down when it comes to the bible. Not one believer has been able to explain how it works when I've asked before but they can all apparently do it.
Well I'll try not to disappoint you. Reading the Bible can be tricky, what with all the errors and all. And sometimes, try as I might, I am simply unable to come up with any good interpretations of a story. Take this Adam, Eve, and a snake story, I know of no good interpretation of it. I'm convinced that whoever wrote it imagined a bad idea and then wrote a crappy story about it. And then there's this story about a guy who almost killed his son - but that one I got figured out, the moral of that story is don't even think about doing something like that.
But I thought the moral of that particularly vile story was to demonstrate that Abraham's loyalty to god was so absolute that it came above the love he had for his only son and to introduce the notion of the sacrificial lamb because god likes the smell of BBQ. That it is a vile and repugnant way to test the loyalty of one of your followers is obvious. Surely its also totally unnecessary for a god who knows our hearts etc or can he be fooled by a good poker player? Did Abraham just bluff god knowing that god was a big softy really?
I'm thinking you completely missed the point of this story. To me the rather obvious moral of the story is: don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things, as Abe almost did, because while the Self within him saved the day at the last moment it could have ended in tragedy.
But really, how are you supposed to read the book?
Reading the Bible is like walking into a library. You read the books you find in the science fiction section in a different way than you read the books you find in the science section. History books are read a different way. And the time period when the books are written and who wrote them effect how you read and how much you believe what you read. Books in the mythology section are read another way. Poetry - etc. etc.
Why is it so open to interpretation?
I imagine because it's not crystal clear about what it's saying. My hunch is that many of the writers weren't completely clear on what they were trying to say. It's a bit like a great Beatles song- Strawberry Fields for example. It can strike you in different ways at different times. It means one thing to me, likely another to you - who knows what John Lennon thought of it.
Here, this conveys the type of thing I'm talking about:
Now one might expect the historical parts to be a bit clearer. For example, the life of JC. But his life was so unusual that people had a hard time sussing It out. I've noticed that sort of thing happens all the time with people. And the writings came after he lived so telephone tag is in play. Technically speaking, what we know about JC's life was communicated through a noisy channel with a high error rate. However, since we have redundancy of the communication, and we can correlate the story with reality, with a bit of detective work we can correct a lot of the errors. For example, we know that a person can't make fish and loaves of bread materialize out of nothing, that's an easy error to correct. I would suggesting reading the NT the way Columbo would read a crime scene.
Just one more thing!
If its OK to interpret it however you like, why have there been so many willing to kill to impose their interpretation onto others?
I chalk it up to the human condition. Some people just seem to like to impose their will on others. Tell them who to love and who not to love, how to love, what's ok to think, what's not ok. It's sad- but that's just how it is. And this doesn't just happen among religious people. My wife and I have been together now for about 24 years and people are still trying to tell us that it's not ok- they are very invested in believing they are correct.
My hunch is that many of the people who wrote parts of the Bible experienced this kind of thing too, and/or other traumas, and their writings were their effort to help the situation. Some did better than others.
Why do some insist it's inerrant if others like yourself clearly disagree?
This one I can answer crisply. I'm thinking if someone says the Bible is inerrant they are either delusional or in denial. We can prove the Bible is not inerrant beyond all reasonable doubt. We have redundant stories in the Bible that contradict each other. They simply both can't be correct- and that's all there is to it.
Why isn't the testimony of god clear for all to understand?
Technically speaking, it's an impedance mismatch problem resulting in a poor signal to noise ratio. More simply, our image of God comes through our imagination influenced by what we infer about God based on our experience and the experience of others. To make matters worse we do this with a fragmented mental systems with conscious and unconscious biases. Clarity under such conditions is not easy to come by. And as crazy as it might sound, Catholic practices and rituals are some peoples best effort to increase the signal to noise ratio of the channel. And, to my astonishment, it can (but usually doesn't) do just that.
John Platko wrote:Accepting the science of evolution is not news for Catholics. We don't read Genesis literally.
Yeah. You guys got burned pretty bad - well not literally, it was other people who were literally burning - on that whole "heliocentrism vs. geocentrism" thing back in the day and learned your lesson. It's Protestant sects who do the biblical literalism thing as a rule.
I get that the "Garden of Eden" story can be read as a parable demonstrating the consequences of a species attaining the ability to make moral judgements. Or a parable demonstrating any number of other things for that matter.
What I don't get is the basis by which you decide whether or not a given biblical passage is "meant" to be read literally or allegorically. I was wondering if you could explain that to us please.
Why certainly! It's really rather simple. You just read the passage and sus out if it was "meant" to be read literally or not. For example, if you read a story that involves a talking snake then that's a clue that the story wasn't meant to be taken literally because snakes don't talk. And that's how I do it. Any questions?
Nope. Turns out that Griz was right.
Griz_ wrote:If it fits reality, it's literal. When it doesn't, it's allegory.
Of course, this does mean that you have conceded that Scripture is a wholly unreliable source of information, as whether or not a particular piece is allegory or the straight shit can - by the metric you have proposed - only be determined once research and investigation into the rest of reality has provided the necessary framework to sort the allegory from the straight shit. Since we do not - and likely will never have - this level of knowledge, we can basically just bin all the Bibles.
According to you, anyway.
Well I wouldn't put it that way.
More like:
The Bible is an imperfect but not useless communication channel to the collective unconscious and the Self.
I am not sure whether you find yourself convincing, John, but you're hardly convincing anyone else.
There's absolutely no realistic way, for example, to consider Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Yahweh as having the allegorical message that fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things.
This is absolutely nonsensical on every level.
Now, you might wish that was what the Bible said as it would make it a more reasonable context, given your modern morals and other intrinsic beliefs, from which to conceive of the book as having a divine source, but it's complete make-believe to claim that it is actually what it represents or was intended to represent.
Either you are willfully engaging in obfuscation, or you are just extremely confused.
And frankly,, as far as I am concerned John, you have taken a great big steaming dump on this entire thread, but I am lead to believe that this is par for the course.
I'm not an atheist; I just don't believe in gods :- that which I don't belong to isn't a group! Religion: Mass Stockholm Syndrome
Spearthrower wrote:I am not sure whether you find yourself convincing, John, but you're hardly convincing anyone else.
There's absolutely no realistic way, for example, to consider Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Yahweh as having the allegorical message that fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things.
Agreed! I certainly didn't say that.
This is absolutely nonsensical on every level.
Now, you might wish that was what the Bible said as it would make it a more reasonable context, given your modern morals and other intrinsic beliefs, from which to conceive of the book as having a divine source, but it's complete make-believe to claim that it is actually what it represents or was intended to represent.
Either you are willfully engaging in obfuscation, or you are just extremely confused.
And frankly,, as far as I am concerned John, you have taken a great big steaming dump on this entire thread, but I am lead to believe that this is par for the course.
If you have a more sensible interpretation to the Abraham story then please give it.
To me, it just seems silly to think that some God exists that would give some loyalty test involving killing one;s son. On the other hand, it seems rather believable to me that someone might imagine that God wishes such a thing but after struggling with the thought came to their senses and talked themselves down.
Spearthrower wrote:I am not sure whether you find yourself convincing, John, but you're hardly convincing anyone else.
There's absolutely no realistic way, for example, to consider Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Yahweh as having the allegorical message that fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things.
Agreed! I certainly didn't say that.
John Platko wrote: I'm thinking you completely missed the point of this story. To me the rather obvious moral of the story is: don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things, as Abe almost did, because while the Self within him saved the day at the last moment it could have ended in tragedy.
You in fact said precisely that, you can tell because I copied and pasted it directly from what you said.
But again, this is the pattern throughout the thread. Obfuscation appears to be your desired outcome.
Now, you might wish that was what the Bible said as it would make it a more reasonable context, given your modern morals and other intrinsic beliefs, from which to conceive of the book as having a divine source, but it's complete make-believe to claim that it is actually what it represents or was intended to represent.
Either you are willfully engaging in obfuscation, or you are just extremely confused.
And frankly,, as far as I am concerned John, you have taken a great big steaming dump on this entire thread, but I am lead to believe that this is par for the course.
If you have a more sensible interpretation to the Abraham story then please give it.
I don't need to have a more sensible interpretation for my claim to be correct regarding your willful misreading of the text.
John Platko wrote:To me, it just seems silly to think that some God exists that would give some loyalty test involving killing one;s son.
Silly, yes. In the Bible, yes. That's the problem you have. You appear to think that you can resolve this conundrum by wish-thinking.
John Platko wrote:On the other hand, it seems rather believable to me that someone might imagine that God wishes such a thing but after struggling with the thought came to their senses and talked themselves down.
Perhaps you might want to try a similar line of reasoning, because there's no coherence to your god hypothesis, and your approach is slapdash, haphazard, and stultifying.
I'm not an atheist; I just don't believe in gods :- that which I don't belong to isn't a group! Religion: Mass Stockholm Syndrome
John Platko wrote:Well I wouldn't put it that way.
More like:
The Bible is an imperfect but not useless communication channel to the collective unconscious and the Self.
Okay.
Upon what basis do you decide whether or not a given biblical passage is "meant" to be read literally or allegorically? That is, how do you decide what parts of the Bible are teh straight shit and what parts are allegory?
Perhaps you do not understand the implications of your previous answer.
"Democracy is asset insurance for the rich. Stop skimping on the payments."
Spearthrower wrote:I am not sure whether you find yourself convincing, John, but you're hardly convincing anyone else.
There's absolutely no realistic way, for example, to consider Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Yahweh as having the allegorical message that fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things.
Agreed! I certainly didn't say that.
John Platko wrote: I'm thinking you completely missed the point of this story. To me the rather obvious moral of the story is: don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things, as Abe almost did, because while the Self within him saved the day at the last moment it could have ended in tragedy.
You in fact said precisely that, you can tell because I copied and pasted it directly from what you said.
But again, this is the pattern throughout the thread. Obfuscation appears to be your desired outcome.
fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things
!=
don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things
Now, you might wish that was what the Bible said as it would make it a more reasonable context, given your modern morals and other intrinsic beliefs, from which to conceive of the book as having a divine source, but it's complete make-believe to claim that it is actually what it represents or was intended to represent.
Either you are willfully engaging in obfuscation, or you are just extremely confused.
And frankly,, as far as I am concerned John, you have taken a great big steaming dump on this entire thread, but I am lead to believe that this is par for the course.
If you have a more sensible interpretation to the Abraham story then please give it.
I don't need to have a more sensible interpretation for my claim to be correct regarding your willful misreading of the text.
John Platko wrote:To me, it just seems silly to think that some God exists that would give some loyalty test involving killing one;s son.
Silly, yes. In the Bible, yes. That's the problem you have. You appear to think that you can resolve this conundrum by wish-thinking.
John Platko wrote:On the other hand, it seems rather believable to me that someone might imagine that God wishes such a thing but after struggling with the thought came to their senses and talked themselves down.
Perhaps you might want to try a similar line of reasoning, because there's no coherence to your god hypothesis, and your approach is slapdash, haphazard, and stultifying.
The problem with fantasies is you can't really insist that everyone else believes in yours, the other problem with fantasies is that most believers of fantasies eventually get around to doing exactly that.
The problem with fantasies is you can't really insist that everyone else believes in yours, the other problem with fantasies is that most believers of fantasies eventually get around to doing exactly that.
John Platko wrote: I'm thinking you completely missed the point of this story. To me the rather obvious moral of the story is: don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things, as Abe almost did, because while the Self within him saved the day at the last moment it could have ended in tragedy.
I'm going to try one more direct question.....
To be honest, I prefer your interpretation. But this is certainly not what I was taught by the Catholic Church. The usual theme of interpretations involve testing Abraham's faith, unwavering trust and unconditional obedience to god. I spent many years in the Church and have never heard your interpretation of this story. What makes your interpretation the correct one and how did you arrive at that conclusion?
John Platko wrote:Well I wouldn't put it that way.
More like:
The Bible is an imperfect but not useless communication channel to the collective unconscious and the Self.
Okay.
Upon what basis do you decide whether or not a given biblical passage is "meant" to be read literally or allegorically? That is, how do you decide what parts of the Bible are teh straight shit and what parts are allegory?
Well I use good judgment of course! For example, if a talking snake is involved I'm thinking: "now this shouldn't be taken literally." And if a person is magically parting a sea I'm thinking, "people can't really do that sort of thing so I shouldn't take all of this story as literally factual even though it does seem to be conveying something about something that probably happened.
Generally speaking, I'd be careful with anything that sounds like magic is actually happening. Watch out for the so called supernatural stuff- that always seems to mess with peoples minds.
And if a person claims to be talking to God then I remind myself that although the person may believe they are talking to God what they are really experiencing is better thought of as a psychological experience where they are experiencing something that makes them feel like they are talking to God.
On the other hand, if it talks about things that I know happen, like the political scheming of religious leaders or the persecution of people with unique ideas, then I'm more likely to take it literally. To be sure, there's an art to milking the Bible for all it's worth. But to be honest, I wouldn't think it worth the effort if it wasn't for the story about the life of Jesus- there's a lot to be milked out of that one that relates to human behavior and human ideas. I think the whole human condition can be explored by investigating that story.
Perhaps you do not understand the implications of your previous answer.
John Platko wrote: Generally speaking, I'd be careful with anything that sounds like magic is actually happening. Watch out for the so called supernatural stuff- that always seems to mess with peoples minds.
Seems to me that a God must by definition be a supernatural being/entity. Otherwise He is part of the natural world and not a God at all.
John Platko wrote: I'm thinking you completely missed the point of this story. To me the rather obvious moral of the story is: don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things, as Abe almost did, because while the Self within him saved the day at the last moment it could have ended in tragedy.
I'm going to try one more direct question.....
To be honest, I prefer your interpretation. But this is certainly not what I was taught by the Catholic Church. The usual theme of interpretations involve testing Abraham's faith, unwavering trust and unconditional obedience to god. I spent many years in the Church and have never heard your interpretation of this story. What makes your interpretation the correct one and how did you arrive at that conclusion?
Sadly, the Catholic Church has also misunderstood the good moral to be found in that story. That is, the Church hasn't learned not to let its fantasies about God cause it to do harmful things. And sadly, the Church also hasn't figured out that unwavering trust and unconditional obedience to your image of god, or anything, is not something worth aspiring to.
Now I don't claim that my interpretation of the story is the "correct one", it's a story, and like John Lennon explained to one of his confused fans about his songs, they don't have just one meaning, what matters to you is what they mean to you. But if you listen to one of Lennon's song and then go all Charles Manson, don't blame Lennon.
I wouldn't bother trying to make some positive sense (rationilazation) out of ancient Bible stories except for two reasons.
1) Years of having this and other Catholic stuff poured in my brain when I was too young to defend against what was happening has a lasting effect that creeps into thoughts and actions in ways that are hard to control. I'm saying, broken and mixed up ideas don't just go away- especially if they're tied to strong family emotions, holiday celebrations, and such. So I find I need, for my own sanity, to sort the crappy ideas from whatever good could be found and try to untangle the mess of mixed up ideas that was stuffed into my brain. And while I like my interpretation of the Abraham story, what is most important is not to think " unwavering trust and unconditional obedience to your image of god" is a good thing- and I don't mean just consciously but deep down to the core of your being. And the only way I know how to approach doing that is to untangle the giant mess- metaphysics and all. For me, this was a necessity, I guess I got a pretty heavy dose of the Catholic, your mileage may vary.
2) As I sorted through the tangled ideas of my Catholic religious education I realized that the story around the life of Jesus had a lot to teach about how people see each other, treat each other, understand each other, confuse each other, hurt each other, etc.. I was blown away by how much practical information was there once one got passed the woo. It's a case study for the human psyche, human behavior, human relationships.
But that's just me. I certainly understand why many here think it's all a lot of crap- or worse. I just think about a bit differently.
John Platko wrote:To be sure, there's an art to milking the Bible for all it's worth. But to be honest, I wouldn't think it worth the effort if it wasn't for the story about the life of Jesus- there's a lot to be milked out of that one that relates to human behavior and human ideas. I think the whole human condition can be explored by investigating that story.
Why not just read the Jefferson Bible? It comes with all the magic and divinely sanctioned murder removed.
"Things don't need to be true, as long as they are believed" - Alexander Nix, CEO Cambridge Analytica
The story of jesus makes no sense even if you accept the supernatural shit.
Tell you what, you convince me that god and heaven really exists then you have my full permission to crucify me. Couple of days of agony and its up to heaven.
If you know heaven exists as fact then the suffering of jesus was fuck all
I think I'm beginning to understand where you're coming from. I had a VERY heavy dose of Catholicism and your line of thinking actually sounds a lot like mine at one time while I was trying to make sense of the nonsense. But after many years of seeking I eventually arrived at atheism. I know that many here don't understand your thought process at all. I disagree with you, but in a way I do understand it as I've had similar experience. You and I likely would have agreed on many things, at one time.
I believe you still refer to yourself as a Catholic, so given that I'm curious about where you stand on transubstantiation.
Last edited by Griz_ on Oct 31, 2014 8:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Spearthrower wrote:I am not sure whether you find yourself convincing, John, but you're hardly convincing anyone else.
There's absolutely no realistic way, for example, to consider Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Yahweh as having the allegorical message that fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things.
I'm thinking you completely missed the point of this story. To me the rather obvious moral of the story is: don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things, as Abe almost did, because while the Self within him saved the day at the last moment it could have ended in tragedy.
You in fact said precisely that, you can tell because I copied and pasted it directly from what you said.
But again, this is the pattern throughout the thread. Obfuscation appears to be your desired outcome.
fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things
!=
don't let your fantasies about God cause you to do harmful things
Sigh .....
Now, I know you're taking the piss. Goodbye.
I'm not an atheist; I just don't believe in gods :- that which I don't belong to isn't a group! Religion: Mass Stockholm Syndrome
by 
And as crazy as it might sound, Catholic practices and rituals are some peoples best effort to increase the signal to noise ratio of the channel. And, to my astonishment, it can (but usually doesn't) do just that.
