Kishkumen wrote:I agree. Human beings are complicated and the reasons for religious affiliation and belief are also complicated. Lampooning religious belief and affiliation can be an emotionally satisfying part of the process of leaving a religion, but in the long run it is arguably counterproductive and potentially deleterious.
But there is another side to this, I think. Something that cannot be ignored. When religionists seek to impose on others laws that follow from their unique beliefs they invite an inevitable blowback. Here in the US religious laws have retreated before principles of personal liberty. If your belief in the devil makes you fight the right of gays to marry, then you must accept that your exercise of political muscle to push the consequences of your beliefs on others will make you and your beliefs unpopular.
Some of the biggest mistakes I've made in life is to treat others as if they don't know, don't understand, haven't read enough or something like these. It's usually best to stop myself as such thoughts start to come in and accept that the other person has a useful life and perspective too. I can appreciate Dr Peterson's point to in that arguing under the assumption that the other is wholly and completely wrong never provides a win. Everyone goes away frustrated and divided.
I think that's a very important perspective, Stem. It helps me to remind myself that the other person is just like me -- trying to figure stuff out.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:I think that's a very important perspective, Stem. It helps me to remind myself that the other person is just like me -- trying to figure stuff out.
But is the other person insulting you and treating you like garbage?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
Res Ipsa wrote:I think that's a very important perspective, Stem. It helps me to remind myself that the other person is just like me -- trying to figure stuff out.
But is the other person insulting you and treating you like garbage?
Sometimes. So what?
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
I think DCP's post hits the tone Dr. Moore was after. Certainly intelligent people can disagree over religion and/or atheism or any other subject. I agree that putting people down for not believing a certain way doesn't work. However, I have a problem, though, when religionists try to spread their unsupported, emotional views on society through missionary work. Some disclaimer should be given that it is all based on guessing and that what counts for a spiritual experience is indistinguishable from an emotional one. Maybe religionists should exercise a little more humility?
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Exiled wrote:Maybe religionists should exercise a little more humility?
History says yes.
In the religious definition, humility too often means bowing one's head and doing what a religious authority asserts God wants you to do -- including making bold claims and testifying to know X or Y things.
That isn't humility in the proper sense. In fact, it can easily become arrogance.
Exiled wrote:Maybe religionists should exercise a little more humility?
I completely agree, but I would add that in fact people in general could use more humility. Communism includes several flavors of atheistic ideologies that have spread themselves aggressively, and one can see arrogant efforts at proselytizing from all kinds of political or even scientific viewpoints that have nothing to do with religion one way or another.
Res Ipsa wrote:I think that's a very important perspective, Stem. It helps me to remind myself that the other person is just like me -- trying to figure stuff out.
But is the other person insulting you and treating you like garbage?
Sometimes. That doesn’t change the fact that, at bottom, they are people just like me. Forgetting that is the first step toward the kind of tribalism that is tearing our world apart.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:Sometimes. That doesn’t change the fact that, at bottom, they are people just like me. Forgetting that is the first step toward the kind of tribalism that is tearing our world apart.
Not sure how to stop tribal thinking and acting, but humans can be really dumb and tribalism makes them stick to dumb beliefs and wanting to force everyone else to comply with those beliefs. Funny thing is most humans can be quite rational if various ideologies are not involved. That seems to work better if one can approach a subject in a way that doesn't get a person's tribal walls to go up. Perhaps people who stay in the church are better at exposing information not so friendly to church truth claims.
Res Ipsa wrote:Sometimes. That doesn’t change the fact that, at bottom, they are people just like me. Forgetting that is the first step toward the kind of tribalism that is tearing our world apart.
Not sure how to stop tribal thinking and acting, but humans can be really dumb and tribalism makes them stick to dumb beliefs and wanting to force everyone else to comply with those beliefs. Funny thing is most humans can be quite rational if various ideologies are not involved. That seems to work better if one can approach a subject in a way that doesn't get a person's tribal walls to go up. Perhaps people who stay in the church are better at exposing information not so friendly to church truth claims.
I don’t pretend to know how to stop tribalism. It’s hundreds of thousands of years of evolution hard-wired into the brain. The best I can do is try to understand it and watch for it in myself.
I’m not sure if the extent of human rationality. More and more I think we generally act for non-rational reasons, which we then create the explanation afterwards. What we think of as rational may be largely rationalization.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951