Quote of the Day, By ORAXX
"A god that needs to be worshiped isn't much of a god."
Two in five Americans say they regularly attend religious services. Upward of 90 percent of all Americans believe in God, pollsters report, and more than 70 percent have absolutely no doubt that God exists. There is only one conclusion to draw from these numbers: Americans are significantly more religious than the citizens of other industrialized nations.The fact is that Americans are leaving religion behind.
Except they are not.
Beyond the polls, social scientists have conducted more rigorous analyses of religious behavior. Rather than ask people how often they attend church, the better studies measure what people actually do. The results are surprising. Americans are hardly more religious than people living in other industrialized countries. Yet they consistently—and more or less uniquely—want others to believe they are more religious than they really are.
Even as pundits theorized about why Americans were so much more religious than Europeans, quiet voices on the ground asked how, if so many Americans were attending services, the pews of so many churches could be deserted. LINK.
Labels: Liars for Jesus
I realize that many Christians are not Bible believers, but rather people who glean through the Christian tradition to claim what seems timeless and wise. I also realize that most Bible believers aren’t trying to do harm—in fact the opposite. I know because I’ve been there. But, when you treat the words of our Iron Age ancestors as if they flowed straight from the mouth of God, you end up putting your life energy, whether you see it that way or not, into bringing back the Iron Age.
The Iron Age was a time of incredible brutality—tribalism, warfare, destitution, disease, murder, misogyny, sexual slavery and superstition of biblical proportions. Most of us would rather not go back, thank you very much. Christians who want a better future are welcome to join in the inquiry and teamwork it will take to get there, and many do. For the rest of you: please forgive the fact that your Iron Age fantasies trigger some of us to experience wry Iron Age fantasies of our own. LINK.
Click on pictures to enlarge |
Whether Christianity was particular in its mistreatment of women, it never overcame the culture and showed where the culture was wrong...in this or any other regard. The same goes for all religions. Their gods never seemed to be able to break out of the culture. If slavery was the "thing," the gods and holy men told 'em how to do slaves. If dominating women was the thing, god and the holy men told 'em how to do women. If the culture hated homosexuality, then their god hated it too. If they were ignorant about science, their God didn't know science either. If the culture superstitiously thought blood had some special magical powers, then god used blood to mark doorways and wash away sins. If the culture thought diseases and mental illness was due to sin's curse or demons, then their god acted like that was true too. Why do their gods never tell them anything they don't already know?
Picture from the national organization for "In God We Trust" |
Labels: freedom of mind, j. m. green
[T]he philosophy of religion is not “dead,” but it is in serious condition, if not on life support. This can be shown by counting the number of philosophy departments at secular colleges and universities which have faculty lines for philosophy of religion. (They are very rare.) Why is this? I think that one contributing factor to this state of affairs is the blatant partisanship which is very much the norm in the philosophy of religion. Many philosophers of religion, including both atheists and theists, function as natural theologians (if theists) or natural atheologians (if atheists). In other words, they act as if their job description says, “If you’re a theist, defend theism; if you’re an atheist, defend atheism.” It’s rare for philosophers of religion to engage in genuine inquiry and to spend equal amounts of time defending theism and defending atheism. But, if a philosopher of religion is going to act like a philosopher, not an apologist, they should be engaging in inquiry. LINK.Below is my response, which I guarantee will be worth a click of your time. ;-)
Labels: Lowder, Philosophy of Religion
There is not a method that exists that can find something that's not there, plain and simple.
Methodological naturalism would rule out a supernatural explanation in any event.Now if you want to see what a delusion can do to an otherwise intelligent mind you must read this! I asked if he really read what I wrote and he commented as follows:
I have to agree with Peter Boghossian that the bulk of work in that field (indeed, nearly all of it) is worthless. I am a fan of philosophy as a whole, or at least branches of it (especially the philosophy of science and ethical philosophy), and don’t think it’s worthless by any means, but I have no use for the philosophy of religion. Look at the above: the author is telling us that it’s likely that God, had he created the Universe, would have created a multiverse (that’s what Draper means by “many worlds”)! If you want a real laugh, go see why God would have been likely to create many universes. It’s garbage: pure mental masturbation. But such is the philosophy of religion, for it’s the philosophy of a nonexistent construct. It’s like a field called “the philosophy of fairies.” LINKI have said that atheist philosophy of religion exists because there is bad Christian philosophy of religion that must be answered. And yet I don't think there is anything that atheists haven't already answered. My judgment is that atheists working in that field have trounced their opponents so badly there is nothing left to say. We can therefore dispense with it as an academic discipline in our universities as unworthy of serious attention. Let's replace it with the various sciences, like geology, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, psychology and neurology. Until Christians can come up with sufficient evidence to believe we should no longer have to deal with their rationalizations, gerrymanderings, non-sequiturs and baseless assertions masquerading as a reasonable discussion. I hereby declare the philosophy of religion dead. All we have to do from now on is quote what has already been written. Please move along. There is nothing here to see.
Labels: Philosophy of Religion