Ever notice how atheists are virtually always on the opposite side from God on many issues?

[LuisDantas]

..not as in "God showed me his physical face" .. and that would be illogical, in any case.
..but it is what is known as an "educated guess".

Are you claiming to be more educated in religion than I am?
Perhaps your guess, that religion is codswallop is .. well .. codswallop

Don't bet on that.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I think it immoral to indoctrinate children into religion because they are not old and wise enough to understand what adults are doing to their minds..

..whereas I see it as irresponsible to leave children without the benefit of their
parents wisdom.

No rational person could study religion and walk away thinking they are literally true..

Don't be absurd .. it has little to do with rationality.
..and more to do with the state of your soul/psyche.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I reckon some people just do not LIKE the correct answers

I like correct answers -- when you can demonstrate that they are correct, rather than just magisterially proclaim them to be correct. I'm not much of a fan of those who claim great authority on the basis of "because I said so!"

 

[F1fan]

..whereas I see it as irresponsible to leave children without the benefit of their
parents wisdom.

And for parents to believe that their religious dogma is wisdom illustrates how unwise they are, and backs up my assessment that indoctrination of children is immoral. Remember the discussion where you defended your right to rape your wife? And you justify this violent act because your religion allows it? There's an example of moral failure being taught. You certainly didn't claim to come up with that rule all by yourself.

Don't be absurd .. it has little to do with rationality.

I agree, walking away from religious lessons and thinking any one of them is literally true has nothing to do with rationality. It is the rational who will be able to reject most claims in any religion as inaccurate due to the ideas being inconsistent with reality, and lacking evidence. That is why theists like yourself defend indocrination of children, get them committed before they can understand what is happening to them.

..and more to do with the state of your soul/psyche.

A claim that lacks any credibility, as usual. No facts, no evidence, no reasoning, just superficial religious belief.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Day after day? A person becomes irrational five times a day.

Does he assume a god belief five times a day but not between? If so, he becomes irrational five times a day. If not, more likely that he the same person all day but revealing and indulging in his irrational side five times daily. You seem to be arguing that behaving rationally on the job precludes having irrational beliefs.

Is that your "critical thinking"?

Yes. The Abrahamic god has been ruled out. The universe was not created in six days. Did you want to try to refute that in order to restore this deity into the realm of possibility?

The theory of evolution is scientific, and has no bearing on religion.

Did you mean that the religious are free to ignore science? Agreed, but at their own peril.

That is specific to Orthodox [Roman] Christian belief.

The garden and fall of man story appears in the Old Testament, where the god of Abraham is introduced, which is common to all Abrahamic faiths.

I cannot become a Christian .. I already am one.

Then you accept the doctrines of the fall of Adam and Eve - the original pair of human beings - and original sin, the need for redemption and salvation, and the role Jesus and his resurrection played in that. If you don't believe that, should you be calling yourself Christian?

You see the teaching of religion as indoctrination, while the teaching of science is education. You are in error. They are BOTH worthy of study.

Theology has no value to the critical thinker, since it is based on the assumption that a god exists. If that's not correct, nothing derived from that belief has any meaning or value. Note that I am excluding academic treatments of religion, such as comparative religions, the Bible as a historical influence, and the Bible as literature.

I see it as irresponsible to leave children without the benefit of their parents wisdom.

If their parents are indoctrinating them with religion, they cannot becalled wise. Were you raised with religion before you were old enough to evaluate the claims properly? Probably. If so, I expect that you consider that a gift, but look around you at those living comfortably without gods and religions. Should they envy you?

If you were raised with humanist values, your life likely would have been different, just as if I had not opted out of Christianity at an early age, my life would have been very different, and none of those differences appeal to me. They include thousands of hours spent studying scripture, praying, and going to church, and thousands of dollars in tithes, and probably raising children, which didn't appeal to me. I'd probably be married to another believer, which is also unappealing to me now.

I'm happily married 33 years to another atheist who would not have given me a second thought if I were religious. And I would not have had the time or freedom to live the life I did, which has been a good one including frequent travel, performing music and attending hundreds of concerts, going out for most meals, and collecting art.

How about you? What differences do you imagine for yourself if you had not acquired a god belief?

 

[Windwalker]

You're not difficult to understand. You've been clear.

I agree that I have been clear, but am I being understood? The responses I am hearing indicate clearly to me that I am not. There are reasons for that though, and most of my posts have to do with me trying to find better ways to convey the context that is necessary first to understand what I am really say, which others are not hearing.

And I agree with your description of how such people process information and decide what's true about the world. The difference is that you seem to respect their faith-based beliefs, whereas I consider them flawed.

Considering how many times I have said to you "faith-based beliefs", as you put it as meaning absent of reason and evidence, is not at all what faith is, nor anything that I support. You have a personal idea of what faith is, and then wrongly assume I am an advocate of denying reason and evidence in favor of essentially wishful thinking.

If the statement I just made is true, than clearly you do not understand me at all. I have stated I don't believe that way clearly and directly as this countless times now.

If their conclusions are erroneous, their thinking isn't sound.

What you are failing to grasp here, is erroneous to who? To you or me, given our respective contexts? Yes, they fail to be valid conclusions. But given the context of their own paradigms, their reasoning and thinking may be perfectly sound. Do you really understand that? I don't believe you do.

Their reasoning processes may be perfectly sound, within their given contexts and understandings of reality, given the tools that are available to them. But in a larger context with greater views and understandings and tools of knowledge, their conclusions are incomplete and therefore fall short.

I can say this of your sound thinking as well, as you are working within your particular context of modernity. Move outside that into postmodernity, and the soundness of your reasoning begins to become incomplete, and your conclusions erroneous as well.

That's how it works. What may be sound reasoning and conclusions at one level, may be insufficient, incomplete, and erroneous at the next level. What is a reasonable thought process for some at age 10 within their given life experiences, may be less than reasonable for someone at age 30. God knows, how many of us just keep repeating the tools we developed to deal with life when we were 12 years old, and just keep repeating them when we're in our 50's, until and unless we have reason to examine those and change them.

This is what is common to human experience, and why so many adults are really just 12 year olds in adult skin sacks. Honestly, that's why so many are still mythic-literal religious believers as adults. It worked when they were young, so why change it if it gets them by?

(I've just answered a question for myself that I've been wondering about for a long time. It's just the way we as humans do things, unless we have sufficient reason to see that our learned patterns aren't working for us anymore, we just keep repeating them. It's how we do everything as humans.)

As usual, I mean this in the academic sense as I do when I say justified.

As am I. I'm just drawing from a larger pool of academic sources. You don't include anything from postmodernism that I can see. You're just drawing from the hard-sciences, like physics and the empiric-analytic sciences.

I also include the so-called "soft-sciences", like psychology, anthropology, sociology, ethnology, consciousness studies, etc, in addition to things like the complexity sciences, like emergentism, chaos-theory, and the like in creating a larger container or context in which to use "sound reasoning and logic" to create more inclusive maps and models of reality.

So, I am clearly not throwing out academia in favor of what you deem as "faith-based conclusions". Not in the least am I doing that. Why do you erroneously assume I am, when I can point to things like this, and always am able to offer rational, researched based support for pretty much everything I say?

It's not the same as what soft thinkers (not rigorous) mean by sound or justified, and their beliefs *ARE* "irrational, wrong, or based on falsehoods."

In that case, then should I conclude that you are a "soft thinker" who reasoning is not sound? No, I shouldn't. Based on the context you are operating from with, assessing what knowledge is available to you in your modernist framework, and you using the tools of your well-functioning reasoning mind to draw conclusions based upon those, I'd say you are NOT irrational, nor basing your views on falsehoods.

They are based upon truths as modernity that you are operating within shows them to be. But to me, your conclusions are erroneous, because you fail to take into account the larger picture of understanding that postmodernism, and beyond, affords us. Once you enter into that, then the surity of our rational conclusions of the past, became less certain, and less well-supported.

That's how this works. So now apply that to the mythic stage. They are not irrational, just as you are not irrational. But the operating system they are using, is version 3.0, and you are using OS version 4.0. So obviously, it is capable of doing more and applying the rules of binary processing (or reasoning in my analogy here) in greater ways. Same thing with OS version 6.0 compared to all of the earlier versions. They are all still executing the program language efficiently and effectively, they are simply just less capable of higher functionings of the higher OS versions. They aren't "irrational" versions. They aren't dysfunctional operating systems!

Yes, but I don't use that language.

So instead of using the words irrational and idiots or morons, then what language to describe them do you use? You are using that language now to speak about those at the mythic stage. You call them irrational.

To no avail? I believe what you wrote, and I assume others here do as well. But so what?

You are now reversing what you've been saying all along, that as the poster I was responding with this to had said, "why believe ideas that can’t be supported by evidence"? Are you now willing to acknowledge that even mythic believers aren't "just believing" out of thin air, but in fact do at least attempt to support their views with evidence?

I'm not arguing for the veracity of their evidence or their arguments, from the context of a modernstic, postmodernist, or integral perspective. I'm only saying this one thing. They are not devoid of using reasoning. They aren't irrational sods. (Although some certainly are. But you have those at at all stages. )

Understood. And until they master the proper analysis of evidence, that will remain the case.

I disagree in that you are putting the cart in front of the horse. It's not that they "master the proper analysis of the evidence" and then they will grow to the next stage of development. They have to first grow to the next stage of develoment in order to anaylyz the data that is avaible to that stage. You don't get access to it by simply hearing about it and looking at it, if your stage cannot properly understand what it is they are looking at.

From the developmentalist perspective (one of those so-called soft sciences), a 12 year old may have access to all the information avalible to the adults in their lives, but they simply are incapable of properly processing them in ways that they would be able to instantly become an adult in their mind and thinking processes. It's not access to knowledge or information that does that. A 1 gallon container cannot hold 5 gallons of water, regardless of them having access to it or not.

So what they hear instead of that 40 year old's reality, is filtered down into the container of their stage development, translated and interpreted into ways that they can think and process that information into things they can attempt to understand, or they outright ignore it or filter it out because it simply has no way to be processed by their minds, given the capacities it has at that stage.

At a higher, later stage, it can take in more, process more, process differently, see differently, think differently, and so forth. The same thing holds as true for you at your current stage, as it does for me at mine.

But once again, the disconnect here seems to be that you consider this an equally valid way of processing information, and I don't, which causes you to say that you aren't being understood even though your claims are clear.

They are valid ways of processing information for the given stage of development, yes. But the conclusions made are not valid for everyone at every stage! They may be perfectly valid conclusions for 12 year olds, but erroneous conclusions for 50 year olds, given the vastly more expanded realities they are living within.

Do you wish to argue that say in terms of cognitive developmental stages, that the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, and the concrete operational stage of not valid because you are now operating at the formal operational stage? Are you going to argue that earlier stages of development are invalid, and that only the stage you are at is valid? Is that what you want to make a case for here?

No, you're just being disagreed with.

Irrationally so, from my perspective from my given context.

I'd say a different world view, but the same reality perceived differently, and in my opinion, suboptimally based in the fruits of that method.

I would agree that is it the same reality, but... everyone's reality is an interpretation or a translation of that same "hard reality". No one is capable of understanding it rationally "as it is". All perceptions of reality are mediated by the filters of our minds, through language, and personal experience which includes one's developmental stages, such as cognitive development, spiritual development, moral development, and so forth.

Mythic reality is a perceptual framework, or lens. Magic is another Modernist or Rationalist reality is another. Postmodernist is another. Integral is another. These are all different realities, even though all of them, all of us, feel the effects of the same gravity and the same rays of the same sun.

And most of assume that our perception is the real "truth". You are no exception to this, anymore than the mythic believer is in his belief about his own perceptions.

 

[LuisDantas]

..whereas I see it as irresponsible to leave children without the benefit of their
parents wisdom.


Don't be absurd .. it has little to do with rationality.
..and more to do with the state of your soul/psyche.

Abrahamic creeds are hardly if ever part of anyone's wisdom, let alone that of one's own parents.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I have said to you "faith-based beliefs", as you put it as meaning absent of reason and evidence, is not at all what faith is

Then you use a different definition of the word.

erroneous to who?

Erroneous according to the standards of critical analysis for evaluating evidence and the soundness of arguments.

So instead of using the words irrational and idiots or morons, then what language to describe them do you use? You are using that language now to speak about those at the mythic stage. You call them irrational.

Irrational is fine.

Are you now willing to acknowledge that even mythic believers aren't "just believing" out of thin air, but in fact do at least attempt to support their views with evidence?

If you believe myths, you have unjustified beliefs meaning that they can only be believed by faith.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Remember the discussion where you defended your right to rape your wife?

No .. but I remember a discussion where people attempted to twist what I was saying..
Nothing new there.

That is why theists like yourself defend indocrination of children, get them committed before they can understand what is happening to them..

Don't be ridiculous.
What is the purpose of ANY education .. to prepare for the life ahead, no?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Don't be ridiculous.
What is the purpose of ANY education .. to prepare for the life ahead, no?

I think that point is that you need to be able to demonstrate that it is education and not indoctrination.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Did you mean that the religious are free to ignore science? Agreed, but at their own peril..

You must live in a place where you are surrounded by ignorance.
One does not have to ignore science OR religion.

Then you accept the doctrines of the fall of Adam and Eve - the original pair of human beings - and original sin..

No..

..If you don't believe that, should you be calling yourself Christian?

It is all deception.
A Christian believes in Christ. One does not have to believe in the creed enforced
by the Roman Empire.

Theology has no value to the critical thinker..

If you mean that it has no value to a materialist, obviously not.

What differences do you imagine for yourself if you had not acquired a god belief?

I dread to think. It is the most important thing in my life.
Nobody forced it upon me. It was not shoved down my throat.
On the contrary, my soul was looking for something worthwhile and significant.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I think that point is that you need to be able to demonstrate that it is education and not indoctrination.

Well, can you demonstrate that rocket-science is of benefit to mankind, when we can't even look after
each other here on planet earth?

 

[F1fan]

No .. but I remember a discussion where people attempted to twist what I was saying..
Nothing new there.

Yes, we were trying to untwist your twisted belief that wives are property and not allowed to refuse sex from their husband. Thanks for remembering.

Don't be ridiculous.
What is the purpose of ANY education .. to prepare for the life ahead, no?

You prepare children by teaching them skills and knowledge. You don't tell tell them untrue religious dogma is true.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well, can you demonstrate that rocket-science is of benefit to mankind, when we can't even look after
each other here on planet earth?

But it is very easy to show how the technology from the space race has helped people in general. You should not give such easy challenges. How is your dogma of any benefit to children? Morals can be taught without unnecessary false beliefs.

 

[muhammad_isa]

You prepare children by teaching them skills and knowledge. You don't tell tell them untrue religious dogma is true.

Naturally, if you believe something is "untrue", then that is what you will teach your kids.
If you believe it to be true, then you will teach them that.

Of course, you can claim that you will let them make up their own minds..
That's not taking responsibility.. In any case, they will do just that, when they become of age.

 

[muhammad_isa]

But it is very easy to show how the technology from the space race has helped people in general..

I find it very easy to show how it has created more problems than its solved.

SZ: How is your dogma of any benefit to children?
MI: Truth is of benefit to everybody

If you do not perceive it to be true, then that is your perception .. but not mine.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I find it very easy to show how it has created more problems than its solved.

I doubt that.

SZ: How is your dogma of any benefit to children?
MI: Truth is of benefit to everybody

So it is not of benefit to children. Thank you.

If you do not perceive it to be true, then that is your perception .. but not mine.

That is not my problem.

 

[YmirGF]

If you do not perceive it to be true, then that is your perception .. but not mine.

Heaven forbid you think differently from non-Muslims, eh?

You sound like you have an interesting story to tell, inshallah.

 

[LuisDantas]

Naturally, if you believe something is "untrue", then that is what you will teach your kids.
If you believe it to be true, then you will teach them that.

Of course, you can claim that you will let them make up their own minds..
That's not taking responsibility.. In any case, they will do just that, when they become of age.

That is a pretty low bar that you are aiming for.

I don't think that it even qualifies as religious belief.

 

[F1fan]

Naturally, if you believe something is "untrue", then that is what you will teach your kids.
If you believe it to be true, then you will teach them that.

And that illustrates the motive to indoctrinate children, get them to believe and emotionally dependent on the religion so that later in life they are likely believers themselves.

Notice you refer to the ideas as beliefs, yes they are. Belief are ideas that humans have judged true, either with skill or through manipulation. But in any even all ideas believed to be true are uncertain and could be wrong. Yet theists are defiant and treat their adopted beliefs as certain and even absolute. This illustrates the irrational and uncompromising mind set around religious ideas. These ideas are decided as true even though they are exposed as lacking evidence that a skilled thinker relies on. Your fellow Muslims can be so certain that Islam is correct that they are willing to commit suicide attacks against any enemy their leaders say needs to be eliminated.

Of course, you can claim that you will let them make up their own minds..

Notice I have no gun to anyone's head. My offering criticism of the thinking of other forum members is why we are here. We know indocrination is effective. That is how child soldiers are created. You don;t care. You want your dogma to be spread even if it is immoral and manipulates children and exploits their lack of brin development.

That's not taking responsibility.. In any case, they will do just that, when they become of age.

Sounds like you are just upset that anyone dares challenges you and your beliefs on a debate forum. Oh the horror.