There were *reports* that the bodies were there, yes, but they weren't. There were no bodies anywhere, which is what all the current reports are saying.
And what does this have to do with religion? Uh, did you miss the unsupported magical claims and the magical thinking involved? And the number of supposedly responsible adults who took the claim seriously? Nobody said "Jesus", but then I didn't say "Christianity". I said "religion", and by extension religious "thinking", and the mistaken perception that religious claims should be taken seriously when unsupported by non-religious evidence.
Ah, about the finding lots of stuff... I read the article wrong. I misread and thought that initially they looked and didn't find anything, but went back and found dozens of bodies. When I guess it was the other way around. Then again, it's badly reported.
As to the religion... um... just because religion = fuzzy thinking doesn't mean fuzzy thinking = religion.
Religion causes fuzzy thinking and fuzzy thinking spreads. When you start thinking that maybe the earth is 6000 years old because all the evidence is lies and that sometimes the dead really do rise from their graves to save and/or eat the living and that if you wave the right kind of stick and say Avada Kedavra people really might die, you also start taking things like "I have had a VISION! There are DEAD BODIES!" seriously.
That still doesn't mean that somewhere fuzzy thinking lies, means it's based on religion. You're basically saying "well all these apples are fruit, so I found a fruit, that makes it an apple!"
Except for the people for whom it does. There are several religions, among them some common modern pagan religions, who support the existence of psychic phenomena. You do not get to decide what is or isn't religion for other people.
Even the ones that don't call it "psychic" still talk about the same things. There is no meaningful difference between transubstantiation and dowsing, between prophecy and clairvoyance, or between "expecto patronus" and "our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name".
Yeah. I was debating whether or not to point out the whole prophet thing; not because it's an incorrect categorization but because I am trying to aim for arguments that are most likely to succeed.
Oh, and as regards the cops themselves, I imagine they have to follow up on this sort of thing since you never know - I mean, I'm not a cop or specialist or anything, but criminals can be egoists, and I see it as quite possible someone could basically bury a bunch of bodies and, because their ego isn't getting stroked when the bodies are successfully hidden, stages an anonymous call with a "psychic tip" about all these bodies. Or maybe even a neighbor who sees something suspicious but doesn't want to get involved, so comes up with something just to get the police investigating.
Two cops could have checked it out. And if they found any evidence supporting the claim, they could have brought a corpse-sniffer-dog and his two handlers out to see if they had any indications that there were corpses.
All nice and quiet, four cops and a dog, low key, no press.
From the photos of the scene, and from the amount of press this thing has generated, it looks like the whole fucking department went tear-assing out there with thirty cars and sirens blaring.
See, the only place I've been reading about it was the link above, and it wasn't made clear just how many people went out investigating there. So yeah, then they're idiots in that, and should have kept it low-key.
I read an article in the NY Daily Times that said the police got a search warrant based on blood they found on the back door of the house. Turns out the daughter's boyfriend drunkenly attempted suicide a couple weeks ago (cut wrists), but the cops had no way of knowing that at the time.
Hardin is an itty bitty town about an hour outside of Houston, so they probably contract with the county sheriff's for police service. The cops got a call claiming there was a mass grave. They go check it out and find a blood stain on the back door. Even if they did a presumptive field test of the stain, if the blood was from the suicide attempt, the stain would have read as blood, and if they did another presumptive test, it would have come back as human blood. Hence, probable cause for a search warrant.
The cops did their job. They did not charge blindly in based on a tip alone. The tipster, however, needs a check-up from the neck-up. And the residents of that house need some housekeeping help...
I assume reporters still listen to police scanners. As soon as there is even a suspicion of a multiple homicide the cat is out of the bag. By the way, "Fuzzy thinking" and "religion" is not a categorical syllogism. That was, well...fuzzy thinking.
Tell you what, when you find a way to categorically tell the difference between "magical thinking because religion" and "magical thinking because not-religion", call me. Until then, I'm going to call it all magical thinking, and I'm going to continue complaining that training people to believe in magic is a bad idea because it results in them believing in magic.
(If you would like to argue that religion does not require "fuzzy thinking", or that religion does not induce fuzzy thinking and predispose to acceptance of further fuzzy thinking, I'll expect you to support your position. Preferably with an example of a non-stupid religion, so I can convert.)
You define your term to suit your self. Then you say because all "A" are "B" that all "B" must be "A". Thus, because all Republicans are conservative, all conservatives must be Republicans.
By the way, lots of agnostics and Atheists actually practice magic. The late Robert Anton Wilson for one.
No, lots of self-proclaimed agnostics and atheists claim to practice magic. As magic is fictional and not a thing that actually exists, what they are actually doing is willfully entertaining delusions.
Regardless, that breaks the syllogism which was the point of the statement. I was having some fun with the poor logic chain the Weasel King used. Didn't mean to offend anyone's belief system.
As I said above: there is no meaningful difference between transubstantiation and dowsing, between prophecy and clairvoyance, or between "expecto patronus" and "our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name".
Which is to say, what you call the difference between religion and non-religion, I call the difference between cult and religion.
(Which is, not to put TOO fine a point on it, "popularity")
#1: Nobody "actually" practices magic. It's a misuse of the word. #2: This does not disprove my thesis that religion requires people to believe absurdities, and that believing absurdities in one place leaves you unfortunately well-prepared to believe absurdities in others. #3: I find it difficult to describe any "magic-user" as an atheist without also then describing a neo-pagan "spiritualist" who believes in no specific discrete personality-having deities as an "atheist". Agnostic, sure, that can work. "Possesses no belief in any supernatural beings" is REALLY hard to swing, though, as soon as you're expecting to be a supernatural being[1] yourself.
[1]: "Someone who does magic". Unless you want to try to redefine "magic" as "not supernatural", which pretty much defeats the purpose of having the word "magic" in the first place.
Let me offer a few examples and counterexamples for you to comment on as you wish.
1: Someone who believes everything - life on earth, the rise of mankind, quotidian chances and mischances - is ultimately the work of a single benevolent deity, who has a grand plan for everything and can't be argued or reasoned with. 2: Someone who believes that there is a benevolent deity that people are supposed to worship, and then there are evil spirits that people can make deals with. 3: Someone who believes that there are general, nameless spiritual powers maintaining a general cosmic balance, who can be influenced to change one's general luck or circumstances with the right prayers/rituals/offerings. 4: Someone who professes not to believe in any specific deities but makes a point of being generous and kind to other people because of their belief in karma or the threefold rule. 5: Someone who has learned or observed, say, a psychological rule (the twenty-dollar auction (http://www.slate.com/id/7103/) is one that stuck with me) and sees that it works a good deal of the time but can't explain exactly why it should work.
The problem with bringing "religion" into the mix is that most people (including you, it seems) use to word to reference the big organized religions. Key it down to "the stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works", and then sure, you have every right to say that this article illustrates the dangers of religion. Then the word also covers neo-pagan spiritualists. And it covers psychologists and quantum physicists as well. Want us to believe absurdities? Try telling people that most of the universe is made up of "dark matter" that you can't detect by any human means, but has to be there because this theory says so.
Magic isn't that hard to fit in to any of these belief systems (at least by my understanding of the word) - it's the equivalent of a special deal to get you off the hook, a snow day or a feww homework pass. It doesn't have to matter who's running the school.
Examples and counterexamples of what? People who practice real-world-affecting magic, people who are religious without believing absurdities, or "atheists" who somehow still believe in supernatural beings
But your cases are: 1. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*.
2. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*.
3. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*.
4. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*. Notably, a person can behave in this way *without* it being absurd, on the theory that the more people acting in this way, the more likely it is that people will act this way towards them. Which is KIND OF like karma, except involves things that, unlike karma, are real and actually happen.
5. Someone who is bad at math, or psychology. Or thinking in general - "I cannot explain this" is not justification at any time for "and therefore it is unexplainable", let alone "and therefore, God".
The problem with bringing "religion" into the mix is that most people (including you, it seems) use to word to reference the big organized religions.
No, in fact, my *not* doing so and including "a psychic" as an example of a religious person doing religious things and the acceptance of psychics as an example of religious thinking has produced most of the objections so far, in the thread.
Key it down to "the stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works", and then sure, you have every right to say that this article illustrates the dangers of religion.
Nope, because that would cover things people have *a consistent reason* to believe in, like "the sun will rise each day" and "Youtube comments will be vapid" as religious positions. Which would dilute the term into meaninglessness, because it would make ALL positions, religious or otherwise, into religious positions.
Want us to believe absurdities? Try telling people that most of the universe is made up of "dark matter" that you can't detect by any human means, but has to be there because this theory says so.
Again, not quite. "The logical outcome of a great deal of internally and externally consistent data requires that there be something here that we cannot see. This means either that we're doing something wrong, or there's something there we can't see", leading to a bunch of people saying "here's how we plan to look at the things we couldn't see before to see the stuff the theory says should be there", leading to oh look they found it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter).
This is the difference between "I have seen this man take home many hitchhikers, and none of them have left, and there is the smell of rotting meat from his garden, and my dog found a femur that I think might be human in his yard", and "Jesus tells me that man has a mass grave of children under his house".
Examples of how magic and belief in the supernatural and religion don't have to be all tied up together in one bundle. Specifically, how people can believe in magic-pracitioners who aren't necessarily supernatural. But that's a digression from the main topic anyway.
>including "a psychic" as an example of a religious person doing religious things and the acceptance of psychics as an example of religious thinking has produced most of the objections so far, in the thread.
This is exactly right. You know why? Because readers/commenters have become accustomed to your presenting examples of fundie Christian stupidity as religious stupidity. And even now, presenting your case for (what should be nondescript) religious stupidity, you say,
>"Jesus tells me that man has a mass grave of children under his house"
So essentially, you're misleading people into believing that a particular brand of religion, namely the kind you usually rail against, is directly featured in this case. And it isn't. Which is why people are getting upset.
Now you're backpedaling and claiming that this kind of "fuzzy thinking" has to equate with "religious thinking". "The stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works" was my proposed definition of religion in order to make your logic work. And you're right, it dilutes the word "religion" into meaninglessness. So my question is, where is the line you draw between religion and nonreligion, and why must it be so hard-and-fast? It clearly puts non-fundie quack psychics on one side, but scientific-types who don't always yet have proof for their theories but have equations and stubborn faith on the other. The line is never as glaringly obvious as you make it seem in your last sentence.
You know why? Because readers/commenters have become accustomed to your presenting examples of fundie Christian stupidity as religious stupidity.
Apparently you're new here.
*ALL* religion is "religious stupidity*, because religion inherently requires stupidity. Non-stupid religion does not exist. I maintain that it *cannot* exist because of how I understand the definitions of "stupid" and "religion", but am open to the possibility of counterexamples. No such counterexample, hypothetical or not, has ever, in the history of humankind, been produced.
So essentially, you're misleading people into believing that a particular brand of religion, namely the kind you usually rail against, is directly featured in this case.
Uh, no. I said that "my psychic powers tell me that" and "Jesus tells me that" are IDENTICAL and INDISTINGUISHABLE, and that people who had no idea what they were talking about were incorrectly making a distinction that one was more valid than the other.
Would you have preferred that I'd used "Thor" or "Mother Gaia" in my example instead of Jesus? Because I could. They're are, after all, all identical and meaningfully indistinguishable.
Now you're backpedaling and claiming that this kind of "fuzzy thinking" has to equate with "religious thinking"
No, I'm saying both then and now that this kind of thinking *is* religious thinking, because I do not see any reason to discriminate between religious beliefs on the basis of popularity.
"The stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works" was my proposed definition of religion in order to make your logic work. And you're right, it dilutes the word "religion" into meaninglessness.
Which pretty clearly means it doesn't match my logic.
Religion is belief without reason, without evidence, and without logic, in the face of facts that contradict. And I see no reason to consider papal infallibility and psychic visions and dowsing and homeopathy and karma to be *at all* more or less likely than The Cosmic Space Werewolf, who consumes all those who believe in Him, and against whom I am risking my life to even explain.
So my question is, where is the line you draw between religion and nonreligion,
Religions claim antifactual nonsense to avoid needing explanations. Nonreligions admit uncertainty and present testable claims, for the purpose of having said claims tested, with the willingness to abandon the claims if the tests fail, for the purpose of providing explanations.
and why must it be so hard-and-fast?
Because there is a continuing ongoing struggle, lasting millenia so far, between people who want to know what *IS* and people who want you to pay them so they can lie to you.
, but scientific-types who don't always yet have proof for their theories but have equations and stubborn faith on the other.
Yeah, uh, no. Grade-school science that you've apparently missed: "Proof" cannot exist outside of artificial realms, like mathematics. Out here in the real world, there is only "matches the evidence as well or better than other explanations, and provides testable predictions to provide further opportunties for disproof"
Describing what people who *examine* the world and *test their conclusions* do as "faith"? Is an insult.
Sorry for butting in here, but..."stubborn faith"? Really?
Let's say a scientist has a theory. It's an elegant theory, and she loves it because it seems to explain everything it needs to explain. So she puts it to the test. Many tests, in fact. And though it holds up for a long time, eventually it proves false. It fails to describe reality. The scientist may be sad that her elegant theory is disproven, but that sadness does not lead her to proclaim it is true in spite of her knowledge that it is not. She discards it and starts over, working towards an improved theory that truly explains everything it needs to explain.
And that's why there's a hard line between science and religion. Because religious people are unable to discard disproven theories, to come up with new ones that better describe reality. Well, that and the fact that when a religious man talks about a "theory" he's using the word in an entirely different way than a scientist does, but you already know that, right?
Yes, "faith" was the wrong word to use there. And in a perfect world all scientists - and indeed all reasonable humans - would behave as you've described, and not let their egos get in the way of searching for truth and explanation. But in my experience, when someone's pet theory gets proven wrong, she either publishes a paper criticizing the methodology of the study that proved her wrong, or persists in finding an ever more specialized case where her theory still holds true. (And this is why we still have to put up with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - the absolutely nutty strong version is being taught as general knowledge, but we can't throw it out on its head because the weak version seems to be true in some cases.)
This doesn't mean there's any less of a line between science and religion - just that scientists sometimes also can't discard theories.
Magic isn't that hard to fit in to any of these belief systems
This is true, as long as you're willing to accept misdirection, stage magic, and "bad at math" tricks as "magic" for #5. Which I am not.
In all the rest, yes, magic fits in perfectly, and *so does The Space Werewolf*. And yet, they reject The Space Werewolf and believe in magic. Why? Because they are bad at thinking.
(PS: The CORRECT response to the $20 auction is "Hey #2 bidder: I will split the profits with you while we are here at 1 cent and 2 cents. Provided we both stop bidding, we both stand to make $9.98. I will get the extra penny because I am good at math." Which is the first response I had when the question was posed, because I am not bad at math. If there is a third bidder? You offer the same deal to him, and if he doesn't take it, you're out 2 cents and he's up 19.97, oh well. If, post-explanation, there is a FOURTH bidder? You let them fight it out.)
(Pro tip: The same logic can be applied to any argument on the internet. Drop the thread and lose all the face you've already invested in the argument, or just spent five minutes to type out another rebuttal? Or play it safe and just never join in? Unfortunately over the internet you can't arrange to divvy up the difference in egos.)
Would this be the same kind of "if you're an idiot and have no idea what you're talking about, give up with a cookie picture and claim you had shit despite not" thing you talked about in your last post?
No, I just figured I had better things to do than defend my half-assed argument on a topic I don't actually have anything invested in, against someone who's clearly more interested in arguing itself and baiting people to continue than actually working things out to come conclusion. Sorry you don't like cookies.
What? The late Robert Anton Wilson is still actively practicing magic?!? That IS a good trick. And one I'd like to see (maybe not smell, but see...) 8^D
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 03:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 04:17 pm (UTC)There were *reports* that the bodies were there, yes, but they weren't. There were no bodies anywhere, which is what all the current reports are saying.
And what does this have to do with religion? Uh, did you miss the unsupported magical claims and the magical thinking involved? And the number of supposedly responsible adults who took the claim seriously? Nobody said "Jesus", but then I didn't say "Christianity". I said "religion", and by extension religious "thinking", and the mistaken perception that religious claims should be taken seriously when unsupported by non-religious evidence.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 04:26 pm (UTC)As to the religion... um... just because religion = fuzzy thinking doesn't mean fuzzy thinking = religion.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 04:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 04:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:58 pm (UTC)I will say that some psychics codify their fuzziness into quasi-religions, but don't know if this case is representative.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 04:54 pm (UTC)The cops?
Date: 2011-06-08 05:08 pm (UTC)All nice and quiet, four cops and a dog, low key, no press.
From the photos of the scene, and from the amount of press this thing has generated, it looks like the whole fucking department went tear-assing out there with thirty cars and sirens blaring.
See icon.
Re: The cops?
Date: 2011-06-08 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 05:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 04:54 pm (UTC)Hardin is an itty bitty town about an hour outside of Houston, so they probably contract with the county sheriff's for police service. The cops got a call claiming there was a mass grave. They go check it out and find a blood stain on the back door. Even if they did a presumptive field test of the stain, if the blood was from the suicide attempt, the stain would have read as blood, and if they did another presumptive test, it would have come back as human blood. Hence, probable cause for a search warrant.
The cops did their job. They did not charge blindly in based on a tip alone. The tipster, however, needs a check-up from the neck-up. And the residents of that house need some housekeeping help...
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 04:57 pm (UTC)Just sayin'.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 04:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 06:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 06:51 pm (UTC)Tell you what, when you find a way to categorically tell the difference between "magical thinking because religion" and "magical thinking because not-religion", call me. Until then, I'm going to call it all magical thinking, and I'm going to continue complaining that training people to believe in magic is a bad idea because it results in them believing in magic.
(If you would like to argue that religion does not require "fuzzy thinking", or that religion does not induce fuzzy thinking and predispose to acceptance of further fuzzy thinking, I'll expect you to support your position. Preferably with an example of a non-stupid religion, so I can convert.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:03 pm (UTC)By the way, lots of agnostics and Atheists actually practice magic. The late Robert Anton Wilson for one.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 08:31 pm (UTC)Which is to say, what you call the difference between religion and non-religion, I call the difference between cult and religion.
(Which is, not to put TOO fine a point on it, "popularity")
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-08 07:55 pm (UTC)#2: This does not disprove my thesis that religion requires people to believe absurdities, and that believing absurdities in one place leaves you unfortunately well-prepared to believe absurdities in others.
#3: I find it difficult to describe any "magic-user" as an atheist without also then describing a neo-pagan "spiritualist" who believes in no specific discrete personality-having deities as an "atheist". Agnostic, sure, that can work. "Possesses no belief in any supernatural beings" is REALLY hard to swing, though, as soon as you're expecting to be a supernatural being[1] yourself.
[1]: "Someone who does magic". Unless you want to try to redefine "magic" as "not supernatural", which pretty much defeats the purpose of having the word "magic" in the first place.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 12:26 am (UTC)1: Someone who believes everything - life on earth, the rise of mankind, quotidian chances and mischances - is ultimately the work of a single benevolent deity, who has a grand plan for everything and can't be argued or reasoned with.
2: Someone who believes that there is a benevolent deity that people are supposed to worship, and then there are evil spirits that people can make deals with.
3: Someone who believes that there are general, nameless spiritual powers maintaining a general cosmic balance, who can be influenced to change one's general luck or circumstances with the right prayers/rituals/offerings.
4: Someone who professes not to believe in any specific deities but makes a point of being generous and kind to other people because of their belief in karma or the threefold rule.
5: Someone who has learned or observed, say, a psychological rule (the twenty-dollar auction (http://www.slate.com/id/7103/) is one that stuck with me) and sees that it works a good deal of the time but can't explain exactly why it should work.
The problem with bringing "religion" into the mix is that most people (including you, it seems) use to word to reference the big organized religions. Key it down to "the stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works", and then sure, you have every right to say that this article illustrates the dangers of religion. Then the word also covers neo-pagan spiritualists. And it covers psychologists and quantum physicists as well. Want us to believe absurdities? Try telling people that most of the universe is made up of "dark matter" that you can't detect by any human means, but has to be there because this theory says so.
Magic isn't that hard to fit in to any of these belief systems (at least by my understanding of the word) - it's the equivalent of a special deal to get you off the hook, a snow day or a feww homework pass. It doesn't have to matter who's running the school.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 01:33 am (UTC)But your cases are:
1. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*.
2. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*.
3. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*.
4. a theist, who believes something for which there is exactly as much evidence as The Cosmic Space Werewolf, and has either failed at thinking because they think this is more likely than The Werewolf, or has failed at thinking because they think it's just as likely as The Werewolf *and still believe it instead*. Notably, a person can behave in this way *without* it being absurd, on the theory that the more people acting in this way, the more likely it is that people will act this way towards them. Which is KIND OF like karma, except involves things that, unlike karma, are real and actually happen.
5. Someone who is bad at math, or psychology. Or thinking in general - "I cannot explain this" is not justification at any time for "and therefore it is unexplainable", let alone "and therefore, God".
The problem with bringing "religion" into the mix is that most people (including you, it seems) use to word to reference the big organized religions.
No, in fact, my *not* doing so and including "a psychic" as an example of a religious person doing religious things and the acceptance of psychics as an example of religious thinking has produced most of the objections so far, in the thread.
Key it down to "the stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works", and then sure, you have every right to say that this article illustrates the dangers of religion.
Nope, because that would cover things people have *a consistent reason* to believe in, like "the sun will rise each day" and "Youtube comments will be vapid" as religious positions. Which would dilute the term into meaninglessness, because it would make ALL positions, religious or otherwise, into religious positions.
Want us to believe absurdities? Try telling people that most of the universe is made up of "dark matter" that you can't detect by any human means, but has to be there because this theory says so.
Again, not quite. "The logical outcome of a great deal of internally and externally consistent data requires that there be something here that we cannot see. This means either that we're doing something wrong, or there's something there we can't see", leading to a bunch of people saying "here's how we plan to look at the things we couldn't see before to see the stuff the theory says should be there", leading to oh look they found it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter).
This is the difference between "I have seen this man take home many hitchhikers, and none of them have left, and there is the smell of rotting meat from his garden, and my dog found a femur that I think might be human in his yard", and "Jesus tells me that man has a mass grave of children under his house".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 02:20 am (UTC)>including "a psychic" as an example of a religious person doing religious things and the acceptance of psychics as an example of religious thinking has produced most of the objections so far, in the thread.
This is exactly right. You know why? Because readers/commenters have become accustomed to your presenting examples of fundie Christian stupidity as religious stupidity. And even now, presenting your case for (what should be nondescript) religious stupidity, you say,
>"Jesus tells me that man has a mass grave of children under his house"
So essentially, you're misleading people into believing that a particular brand of religion, namely the kind you usually rail against, is directly featured in this case. And it isn't. Which is why people are getting upset.
Now you're backpedaling and claiming that this kind of "fuzzy thinking" has to equate with "religious thinking". "The stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works" was my proposed definition of religion in order to make your logic work. And you're right, it dilutes the word "religion" into meaninglessness. So my question is, where is the line you draw between religion and nonreligion, and why must it be so hard-and-fast? It clearly puts non-fundie quack psychics on one side, but scientific-types who don't always yet have proof for their theories but have equations and stubborn faith on the other. The line is never as glaringly obvious as you make it seem in your last sentence.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 02:45 am (UTC)Apparently you're new here.
*ALL* religion is "religious stupidity*, because religion inherently requires stupidity. Non-stupid religion does not exist. I maintain that it *cannot* exist because of how I understand the definitions of "stupid" and "religion", but am open to the possibility of counterexamples. No such counterexample, hypothetical or not, has ever, in the history of humankind, been produced.
So essentially, you're misleading people into believing that a particular brand of religion, namely the kind you usually rail against, is directly featured in this case.
Uh, no. I said that "my psychic powers tell me that" and "Jesus tells me that" are IDENTICAL and INDISTINGUISHABLE, and that people who had no idea what they were talking about were incorrectly making a distinction that one was more valid than the other.
Would you have preferred that I'd used "Thor" or "Mother Gaia" in my example instead of Jesus? Because I could. They're are, after all, all identical and meaningfully indistinguishable.
Now you're backpedaling and claiming that this kind of "fuzzy thinking" has to equate with "religious thinking"
No, I'm saying both then and now that this kind of thinking *is* religious thinking, because I do not see any reason to discriminate between religious beliefs on the basis of popularity.
"The stuff people believe in, to explain how the world works" was my proposed definition of religion in order to make your logic work. And you're right, it dilutes the word "religion" into meaninglessness.
Which pretty clearly means it doesn't match my logic.
Religion is belief without reason, without evidence, and without logic, in the face of facts that contradict. And I see no reason to consider papal infallibility and psychic visions and dowsing and homeopathy and karma to be *at all* more or less likely than The Cosmic Space Werewolf, who consumes all those who believe in Him, and against whom I am risking my life to even explain.
So my question is, where is the line you draw between religion and nonreligion,
Religions claim antifactual nonsense to avoid needing explanations. Nonreligions admit uncertainty and present testable claims, for the purpose of having said claims tested, with the willingness to abandon the claims if the tests fail, for the purpose of providing explanations.
and why must it be so hard-and-fast?
Because there is a continuing ongoing struggle, lasting millenia so far, between people who want to know what *IS* and people who want you to pay them so they can lie to you.
, but scientific-types who don't always yet have proof for their theories but have equations and stubborn faith on the other.
Yeah, uh, no. Grade-school science that you've apparently missed: "Proof" cannot exist outside of artificial realms, like mathematics. Out here in the real world, there is only "matches the evidence as well or better than other explanations, and provides testable predictions to provide further opportunties for disproof"
Describing what people who *examine* the world and *test their conclusions* do as "faith"? Is an insult.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 08:02 am (UTC)Let's say a scientist has a theory. It's an elegant theory, and she loves it because it seems to explain everything it needs to explain. So she puts it to the test. Many tests, in fact. And though it holds up for a long time, eventually it proves false. It fails to describe reality. The scientist may be sad that her elegant theory is disproven, but that sadness does not lead her to proclaim it is true in spite of her knowledge that it is not. She discards it and starts over, working towards an improved theory that truly explains everything it needs to explain.
And that's why there's a hard line between science and religion. Because religious people are unable to discard disproven theories, to come up with new ones that better describe reality. Well, that and the fact that when a religious man talks about a "theory" he's using the word in an entirely different way than a scientist does, but you already know that, right?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 01:01 pm (UTC)This doesn't mean there's any less of a line between science and religion - just that scientists sometimes also can't discard theories.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 01:33 am (UTC)This is true, as long as you're willing to accept misdirection, stage magic, and "bad at math" tricks as "magic" for #5. Which I am not.
In all the rest, yes, magic fits in perfectly, and *so does The Space Werewolf*. And yet, they reject The Space Werewolf and believe in magic. Why? Because they are bad at thinking.
(PS: The CORRECT response to the $20 auction is "Hey #2 bidder: I will split the profits with you while we are here at 1 cent and 2 cents. Provided we both stop bidding, we both stand to make $9.98. I will get the extra penny because I am good at math." Which is the first response I had when the question was posed, because I am not bad at math. If there is a third bidder?
You offer the same deal to him, and if he doesn't take it, you're out 2 cents and he's up 19.97, oh well. If, post-explanation, there is a FOURTH bidder? You let them fight it out.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 02:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 02:47 am (UTC)They don't.
You don't.
You being bad at basic math *and* basic sociology does not make me any less right.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 03:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 03:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 03:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 03:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-09 05:05 pm (UTC)