Light sensors cause religious row

[OldLadyKnowsNothing]

Story here.

Maybe they should just move?

Leningrad: well it stops the worrying creep-in of privileging the superstitious that these people often want (think of the British Airways loon again, not only was she one of those fisheads who keep bleating on about how discriminated-against Christians are, she was one of the ones who mean 'I hate people who are not white Christians: the whole row began because she objected to Sikhs being allowed to wear turbans).

SGB: Why do you use language that is purely intended to offend? I find it bizarre.

I'm not trying to "win". I just wish more theists would admit that their beliefs are totally irrational.

I think it would be unacceptable for me to argue in the way that a lot of religious people do. If I did that, I'd just say "Well, there is no God. I know it because that's what I've experienced. Thousands of other people think so, too, so it must be true."

The fact that I back my standpoint up with some logic and rationalism - even if you want to argue against that and pick holes in it - shows a respect for the other side of the argument which is not reciprocated.

Leningrad - you have a point. But let's be careful what we mean by compromise. As soon as you start to compromise with the totally irrational you have compromised yourself.

I'm not trying to "win". I just wish more theists would admit that their beliefs are totally irrational.

I know, aren't they annoying! Those pesky theists...

The trouble is that both atheists and theists can be irrational. Whether they are illogical or irrational entirely depends on the atheist or theist who you are dealing with, and what arguments they use to arrive at their conclusions.

Welcome back, UQD. I know a love sceptic. He believes in the biochemical impulse which leads him to feel protective towards his chosen mate and to reproduce/protect his offspring. He also believes that we are genetically programmed to protect the species and that therefore acts of apparent self sacrifice which lead to the likely continuity of his social group/community/race/species are possible.

Are you saying that there are scientific/rational arguments which prove that he is wrong and that love exists?

I do think there is an attempt by some religious to have their cake and eat it which even the most dogmatic of atheists (Dawkins?) does not display. They want to say "well, it's faith, it's the Divine", as if that explains everything, and yet still expect anybody who dosn't accept this at face value to have some logical reason for doing so - a reason which they are not good enough to offer themselves.

It comes across as smug, even if this may not (always) be the intent.

They think that the concept of "faith" exempts them from having to put an argument. Which is what I meant by my sixth-form debating society comment.

I don't think that's good enough, and in a totally fair way I don't think it's good enough for me just to say the opposite, either. I think it's incumbent upon me to attempt to show (and I'm not saying I'm great at doing so) why non-belief in divine, spiritual, paranormal, fairy, mythical, fictional, et al creatures and concepts should be the default position.

notquitegrownup - love sceptic. interesting. No, I wouldn't say there are scientific arguments which prove him wrong. It sounds like an interesting dissection of what love might be. He may not be a sceptic at all - he may be someone whose investigations could be part of an understanding of it.

From a philosphical pov, agnosticism is the truest standpoint anyway. I have a friend who lectures in the philosophy of science, very interesting.

philosophical even.

Interestingly I was about to say that I have considered agnosticism as a default position. Intellectually it may have its merits. But pragmatically it just doesn't work for me.

This may not be true for everyone, but if I were to declare myself to be agnostic, I've (in my own mind) already defined what I am being agnostic about - so I have already formed in my mind a concept of the thing I don't believe in and am staying judgement on that thing.

When people say they are being agnostic in Western Europe and the USA, they usually mean towards the Judeo-Christian god. But what about all the rest of them? What many religious folks don't get is that, in nailing their God colours to the mast, they are declaring themselves atheist towards all the others - all the Hindu gods, all the Greek gods, etc. Thye may say that they're not, that they are all expression of the "divine" etc., but with only a very few exceptions the belief is partisan. For me, there is no more or less evidence for the "god" - i.e. the god who is the current vogue in the modern Western world, the one in the Bible - than there is for any of the others.

That's why I'm not agnostic. Because I can't go through life saying that I "cannot know" about all things "divine", "spiritual" or paranormal. I feel it incumbent on me to take a position and argue it.

(OlympedeGouges, were you IorekByrnison?... You don't have to answer that if you would rather not.)

Morningpaper I'm dying to know why you "might feel somewhat sorry for someone who believes in fairies" and why you might stop going to a cranial osteopath who did?

I can't help noticing that when religion comes up it is often about why this rule must be followed (as in the lighting sensors) but when challenged it becomes "millions of humans experience the need to commune with the divine" or "feel a spiritual need"

As an atheist I have no problem with religious people feeling "a spiritual need". Mostly I find myself arguing that I should not be expected to follow the rules of a very specific god who wants this done right now.

We have moved onto christ now who did say things like "why can't people just get on with each other" and are told that we shouldn't mention those old fashioned/outdated bits in the OT. But the rules that started this thread are the same rules from the same time. They are right there next to the ones about putting gay people to death and murdering everyone in a region to make room for god's people to occupy it (and making sure to kill all the babies too)

If you want to just go for the 'feeling spiritual' because it's easier to justify then you can't also talk about god's rules.

Morningpaper I'm dying to know why you "might feel somewhat sorry for someone who believes in fairies" and why you might stop going to a cranial osteopath who did?

Well, largely I felt a bit resentful that I paid her £50 an hour to fall asleep on her couch and she was then buying fairy food with it. And my back still really hurt.

If you want to just go for the 'feeling spiritual' because it's easier to justify then you can't also talk about god's rules.

Not sure what you are referring to as I don't think I have talked about God's rules - what do you mean?

I think the feeling sorry for someone who believes in fairies invalidates a lot of what you have been saying in defense of people's need to believe etc, but if you don't feel like facing up to that I can understand that. You don't need to convince me anyway. Just think it over yourself.

If you want to just go for the 'feeling spiritual' because it's easier to justify then you can't also talk about god's rules.

That bit wasn't just to you, but if anyone is just defining religion as that 'feeling spiritual' then what has that got to do with this thread? The people concerned are talking about a specific god who has rules. It's a trick commonly used to deflect difficult questions to suddenly change to talking about some vague spiritual needs.

The right to be critical of superstition and to object to any special pleading or demands for extra rights on the behalf of the superstitious is an important one. The is no reason at all why followers of one myth system (Christianity, Islam, Shinto, whatever) should be given more 'respect' than followers of the Norse, Wiccan or Vaudun myth systems. THe only way people have a reasonable chance of getting along is by not demanding more rights than their neighbours get, in the name of an imaginary friend.

The people concerned are talking about a specific god who has rules. It's a trick commonly used to deflect difficult questions to suddenly change to talking about some vague spiritual needs.

That phrase was used in relation to a discussion about theism, not specific rules, as far as I know.

SGB: I'm not sure that people are going to have a "reasonable chance of getting along" when you are so awfully keen to claim the rights to use language that offends them.

Yes. I happen to agree with SGB. It is just impossible to logically draw out the difference between the rights of Catholics to profess and to practice, and the rights of Scientologists. And thus, by extension, the rights of fairy believing osteopaths.

Where is the qualitative and quantitative leap one would need to make to distinguish one acceptable set of beliefs from another unacceptable one?

Surely one has to examine each case on it's own merit, and come to conclusions accordingly?

BTW I'm not claiming that a belief in fairies is a valid one. Fairies would be part of the natural world, and one would expect to see evidence for that e.g. dead fairies in the compost. They are well within the realms of scientific study.

The nature of divinity is not so.

But having said that I still believe utterly in the 'politics of recognition'. For religious faith, as for ethnic cultures and cultural/personal/sexual identities.

People have the right to protected freedom to believe what they like.

But I don't think we can get away with allowing ANY and ALL expressions of such tolerance. We have to have a mode of judging between acceptable and unacceptable practices. I tend to hang with Habermas on this one: public debate and open communication within a democratic (and secular, natch) polity is the only way to have debates about social justice.

The same question in faith terms is more complex. Science is - for non-believers - seen as the measure of validity (the equivalent to democracy in politics?). So given that a scientific world view and a theistic world view might be uncommensurable, where is the territory upon which debates of cultural relativism might be resolved?

I'm sounding like a Wanker now aren't I?

Although I did come to the conclusion that perhaps a belief in cranial osteopathy and a belief in fairies were perhaps not unrelated

incommensurable, clearly.