Tom Capuder#Theists:
Some of you think the evidence for #evolution is insufficient.
Where’s sufficient evidence for a #god
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an #atheist vs #faith
myrmepropagandistI'm confused why anyone would want "evidence" for God. Isn't faith supposed to be an evidence-free activity?
Exactly, which is a good reason to oppose it.
For instance, in the case of evolution vs. creationism, evidence favors one side, and nothing but imagination is responsible for the other.
Faith is pretending to know things you don't know. And that's never a good basis for decision-making.
Evidence free activities have value. They can help us to understand how our ancestors may have seen the world. They can allow one to experiences a sense of mystery and feel a real connection to the religious traditions of the past.
It's just important to remember that they are "evidence free" and won't be able to really tell you anything useful in the empirical sense.
Why is it necessary to use evidence-free methods to understand how ancestors saw the world? We have enough evidence in writings and archeology to make informed judgements about ancestors' behavior.
I often experience "a sense of mystery" when I contemplate the world and universe. There's nothing wrong with not yet having answers to mysteries. It isn't advisable, however, to provide pat, soothing, imaginary "answers."
We've learned so much as a species that it's no longer necessary to revere religious traditions of the past, none of which have any place in the real world of today, IMO. They should be assigned to the dustheap of discarded mythologies.
One of the biggest benefits to recognizing and keeping evidence free activities a part of human culture is the simple fact that if you eliminate them someone will re-invent them off to the side and they'll come back without the protective wrapper of awareness that they are evidence free.
"It feels like I'm gaining knowledge about the truths of the universe, this has been hidden from us!"
Now blind faith is back and and causing problems.
People have constantly invented, reinvented, and adapted "evidence free activities," and no doubt would continue to do so.
There's no protective wrapper for theists. Believers generally think they have evidence for their beliefs (of course, it's not good, credible evidence, but mainly personal "revelation," anecdotes, or ancient books of fables.) It's only those outside a belief system who have the protective wrapper.
All "evidence free activities" are blind faith by definition.
So if I go to church and enjoy the music and the social life, and the mythology, but don't literally believe in the religion it's "blind faith" --
If I tell a ghost story and while I'm telling the story ghosts seem like they are real, but they obviously aren't that's just part of enjoying the story ... that's blind faith?
[sorry, didn't address this when I first posted it]
If you enjoy the music etc. but don't believe, that's not blind faith. If you believe the doctrine, you can only believe it with blind faith.
If you enjoy a ghost story and you know it isn't real, that's not blind faith. If you believe that ghosts exist, that's blind faith.
Please don't twist my words.
Religions provide social cohesion. People like them. They are important to human history. They shouldn't be forgotten or treated as obsolete, but rather, like folk stories practiced and celebrated with awareness of their limitations.
Of course many people won't want anything to do with this, and that's fine too.
@futurebird
One thing the religious have over the non-religious is community. The dark flip side to a religious community is that it almost always devolves into simple tribalism: “us vs. them.” The sense of community religious leaders impart to their flocks requires subservience to *their* interpretation of *other men’s imaginations.”
The idea that religions provide social cohesion is laughable. Look at what Christian Nationalism is doing to this country right now. Does Afghanistan, for example, provide the kind of cohesion that you assume religion provides, and it that a good thing for a thriving humanity?
"The idea that religions provide social cohesion is laughable."
Tell that to Dr. King.
Religion can be a positive or negative force. And will remain a major force regardless so we ought to understand it better and seek to bring out the best in religious practice and participation.
Thank you for discussing, but it appears we're at an impasse. Bye! ☮️
Daniel Schwarz 
@tomcapuder @futurebird For an atheist, you are using a very Christian conception of “religion” - the conception of it as a faith separate from one’s identity, that can be accepted or rejected on its own. For ethnoreligions, like Judaism, It’s a faith but also an identity; you can identify as Jewish and be an atheist if you like. Culture and traditions foster a level of social cohesion *within the group;* overall effect on society can be + or - as @futurebird noted.
Nate Gaylinn@futurebird @tomcapuder I've struggled with this. As a rational materialist, I reject religious ideas that are incompatible with science. For a long time, I thought that meant rejecting all of religion, and that believing in a higher power required proof of a higher power. But I now see that's misguided.
For me, it's because I had a superficial understanding of religion. A naive, literal view of the Bible is deeply problematic, but great spiritual thinkers have struggled with that since at least the middle ages. They found much better ways of engaging with these ideas that don't require false beliefs. And, like you say, it's largely about embracing ambiguity and non-literal views of reality.
So what is the basis for your belief in a higher power?
Bridget Phillips@tomcapuder @ngaylinn @futurebird St. Thomas Aquinas always made the most sense to me on this topic.
In school, I had learned all the "proofs" of the existence of God, which Aquinas ofc covers. But those never made sense to me; they always seemed to assume their conclusion.
And that's what I read Aquinas saying, too! He said that we only know of God's existence because they reveal themselves directly to us by our subjective experience.
Nothing else will do!
Any attempt to erase religious practice becomes a form of cultural genocide, especially pernicious for those who have already targeted by cultural genocide.
I would hate to live in a world without the rhetorical traditions of the Black Baptist church, without Jewish cultures, without First People & their traditions.
It's not enough to write it down, it must be practiced.
I just don't think practice requires one to decide "this is the one and only way and truth"
👩🦯The Blind Fraggle@futurebird Right. Whenever I see people online saying, "all religion is evil and bad!" this is the sort of thing I think of. We do need these rituals in society.
How about we create a new culture where we take the best lessons from Dr King and all the religions and use them without the divine nonsense?
I've got it: We can call it "secular humanism."
And to build a fair and just society? The "Veil of Ignorance" is a good idea.
Culture can't easily be "created" all at once. Part of the value are the layers of reference & history embedded in rituals, stories, cosmologies, traditions.
Philosophers have tried to make synthetic religions (or religion surrogates) and they just don't catch on.
A better answer is to simply have an awareness of the limitations of religion so anyone using it to control people or "do science" ends up looking foolish.
maria/summer@tomcapuder @ngaylinn @futurebird one particular insight that you might want to understand is that not all religions contain a creator god, or “higher power” gods. you say you want to discard all religion, and in saying so, you say you want to discard “higher powers.” higher powers than what? some faiths believe that nature is a higher power than human beings. is this false?
@tomcapuder @ngaylinn @futurebird for some beliefs, from cultures that did not speak english, the word “god” itself is already pushing a certain ontology. many faiths do not have gods like the abrahamic god, but people translate their beliefs in nature spirits to “gods” and conflate them. we can’t simply document these traditions and beliefs because that documentation is in imperfect language, and these traditions do not exist purely inside of history
@ngaylinn @tomcapuder @futurebird different religions exist in discourse and continuum with human experience. they are not always an imposition of imagination from above that is handed down authoritatively. many religions do not have “sola scriptura” books, like the abrahamic religions do, and the ones that do have sola scriptura are not necessarily married to that scripture
@ngaylinn @tomcapuder @futurebird the insights of these faiths are valuable because they are alternative rationalities and ethical guidelines. instead of asking “is it factually materialistically true,” what if you were to ask the much more interesting question, “how would i behave if i were to assume that it is true?”
@ultraconformist @tomcapuder @futurebird I agree, and I find it quite interesting to explore various religions to see how their ideas overlap and complement each other. It helps to see it as lots of imperfect humans trying their best to make sense of something vastly beyond us.
Michael Gemar@futurebird @ngaylinn @tomcapuder But unfortunately that *is* the belief of some religions. I’m not sure how one preserves a practiced tradition of these religions without doing violence to their belief that they are the only source of Truth.
Matt McIrvin@futurebird @ngaylinn @tomcapuder Where we get into trouble is that people constantly try to use "religious practice" as a way to make end runs around other civil-rights law, or impose their values forcibly on others. "My business has to be allowed to discriminate in this way because it's my religious practice." "We have to be allowed to take all the pharmacist jobs in town and deny people birth control; that's our religious practice." And the courts seem increasingly sympathetic.
I'm not even sure it's *always* bad-faith: people identify their religion with their entire social-political worldview, and they probably do believe their right to free exercise is being denied if they can't hurt other people in these ways.
It's a hard boundary to define. It'd be unfortunate if this kind of abuse of free exercise of religion leads to the whole concept getting a bad smell.
AMS@futurebird @ngaylinn @tomcapuder I'm with you, right up until that practice includes "indoctrinate the children" or "enforce practices on non-adherants".
Aloopapu@futurebird @ngaylinn @tomcapuder problem with religion as I see it is faith. By which I mean belief without evidence or in spite of evidence. If you are willing to act against reality, Or in spite of reality. That's where you get people working against their best interests. And that's when people become especially easy to be controlled by the power hungry. Worse yet you get people who believe counterfactually taking rights from other people and generally holding back society from progressing.
@futurebird @ngaylinn @tomcapuder Religious people should be allowed to practice their faith. As long as it does interfere with people trying to exist based in reality.
Religious institutions should be treated like any other club.
Religious institutions should be treated like any other club.
Heath Borders@heathborders @futurebird @tomcapuder Oh, I just mean using words to describe real experiences that don't literally correspond to something measurable. For me, "God" is just such an example. If you don't take that word to mean "man in the sky" but instead "whatever makes all this happen" then suddenly it's not contradicting science at all.
Sometimes religious terminology is helpful, even if it's not literal / precise / scientific.
@ngaylinn @futurebird @tomcapuder that's fine on an individual level. I think using metaphors for this stuff around people unable to think critically about media is likely to propagate anti-science views. 🤷🏻♂️
@heathborders @futurebird @tomcapuder Won't argue with that. I figure, each person has a responsibility to understand the ideas they build their life around. I'm deeply suspicious of any religious tradition that encourages folks not to critically examine core religious tenants.
That's why I so appreciate Judaism. Every teaching is a debate, involving many generations of rabbinic scholars and you. Every rule has exceptions, to be resolved with reason, common sense, and compassion. None of this blind faith nonsense.
@ngaylinn @heathborders @tomcapuder
It tends to get lost in the sauce but this is how being Baptist is supposed to work. A Baptist has a responsibility to read an interpret the Bible for themselves.
In practice, churches where this is really happening are scarce, and people are more attracted to mega-churches and the magical thinking of prosperity gospel which isn't based on anything from the bible at all.
Chuck@futurebird @ngaylinn @heathborders @tomcapuder Good Lord ma'am, You sound like Roger Williams himself.
Righteous Hazard@futurebird @ngaylinn @heathborders @tomcapuder I was raised in a southern baptist church, and when I was around 8, the old pastor (whose sermons I only remember as a soporific torment, with my mom sitting next to me, pinching me hard whenever I succumbed to sleep) was about to retire. So the local seminary sent out two young men to audition for 6 months before they graduated. They shared ministerial duties, and preached alternate Sundays.
One was your bog-standard preacher type: charismatic, but also dogmatic, I don’t recall any questions being asked of scripture, or of the flock, in his sermons.
The other, in my dad’s words, was a “Damned Hippy. His sermons I do remember. He hosted an inquiry up there. I recall one sermon in particular where the congregants were asked to examine their role in capital punishment, especially as Christians whose central story was the execution of an innocent. My dad groused all Sunday afternoon about that one, at one point literally yelling “It wasn’t me who kill Jesus, it was the Jews!”
The Damned Hippy didn’t stand a chance. Tho he was popular among the younger golks, the decision was in the hands of old men like my dad. The other guy was selected, he bolted for a position in his hometown three years later, young folks like me drifted away, and the church died and its property was sold off when I was off at college.
In my experience, ideologies like theism and atheism are as boring and dumb as an old sermon, but honest inquiry feeds the soul’s deepest hunger.
@bertwells @futurebird @heathborders @tomcapuder Very well said. And I'd like to meet that Damn Hippy, for sure. :)
KweisiM@futurebird @tomcapuder I’ve always thought that religion should be more like organized sport. Support your team, throw tailgate parties, drink some beer, buy some merch, and that’s it. I’ve never had a Baltimore Ravens fan proselytizing at my door. Never had a Phoenix Suns fan try to pass laws, based on the teams offense strategy, that deprive groups of people of their basic human rights.
Sports is also something of an "evidence free" activity... insofar as one thinks oneself to be a "Yankess Fan" or "Redsocks Fan" --
There is credible evidence that I've been a Yankees fan since the '60s. What is the "evidence-free" portion?
How is sports an evidence-free activity, exactly? What evidence are you looking for and not finding?
That being a Yankees fan is anything more deep than an arbitrary allegiance that only has meaning because you continue to do it and because it connects you to others who do it.
Eva Chanda@tomcapuder @futurebird @ArtistX
All #fandoms, sports or otherwise, are evidence-free—they're based on personal preference & emotions, not evidence. I'm not a #Trekkie because of the evidence that it was the first US TV show to feature an interracial kiss (fact)—it's one of many explanations why I love #StarTrek. But explanations are not evidence, and *love* is not based on evidence. #Love is another evidence-free human endeavor I wouldn't want to live without! #LoveIsStrongerThanHate
All #fandoms, sports or otherwise, are evidence-free—they're based on personal preference & emotions, not evidence. I'm not a #Trekkie because of the evidence that it was the first US TV show to feature an interracial kiss (fact)—it's one of many explanations why I love #StarTrek. But explanations are not evidence, and *love* is not based on evidence. #Love is another evidence-free human endeavor I wouldn't want to live without! #LoveIsStrongerThanHate