What will we replace religion with?

Mod note

Sockpuppet of banned member Nicholas1M7. Permanently banned.

 

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What science doesn't explain should not be believed. There are times when we must still make decisions based on incomplete information or evidence.

 

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+1

Religious people ARE talking about how we view the world, hence why it is called a "worldview". How we view the world also has an empirical effect on certain outcomes, i.e. placebo effect, health benefits of religious participation, etc..

You just seem unwilling to apply the exact same criteria you use for politics or art when dealing with religion. In politics and art you make choices about what, and even what parts, you find appealing or agreeable. You seem to want to take or leave religion, a very general term, as a whole, which would make it a personal problem rather than one inherent to religion.

 

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"Things", including myths, cannot be "stupid" (i.e. lacking in intelligence). So this can only be taken as an ad hominem of individuals who believe certain things, and as such is flirting with both hasty generalization and insult.

 

Refer to a dictionary, Syne. I mean, seriously, you're on the internet, there's no excuse for this kind of crap.

stupid

stu·pid [stoo-pid, styoo‐] Show IPA
adjective, stu·pid·er, stu·pid·est.
1. lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull.
2.characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless: a stupid question.
3. tediously dull, especially due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless: a stupid party.
4. annoying or irritating; troublesome: Turn off that stupid radio.
5.in a state of stupor; stupefied: stupid from fatigue.

Most of the definitions of the word allow for "things" to be defined as "stupid."

Seriously, back off.

 

The most widely discussed case for the fallacy of conflating them is fundamentalism, which incorrectly interprets the creation and flood myths of antiquity as historical narrative.

Science is needed, but even historians adhere to the same principles of logic that geometers do. Authority is earned by marshaling evidence. Evidence is the supreme authority. Most of the concern you are expressing is misplaced, since the distinction between myth and historical narrative is made prima facie. There is very little in the way of expert opinion to worry about. It's the contrary reasoning that's at issue--the one which thinks that the lines are blurred, that you never can tell, maybe this really is the inscription of a god. That's pure fantasy, no different than asking if the story of the Easter Bunny is historical narrative. I'm not sure how to respond about people whose fantasies blur reality, but that certainly speaks to the underlying causes for adopting myth as historical narrative.

The proof that legend and myth exists is trivial, since you only need to Google "myth" or "creation myth". Once we establish that it exists, and it does, then the thrust you speak of comes strictly from the evidence. Gods are created in myths, legends and fables. That's the thrust.

Ok.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm

Note that the text is recovered from damaged artifacts so there are gaps set off by ellipses. But it's complete enough to convey what we mean by myth.

Anyone who would accept this as historical narrative, acting with the normal intelligence of an average educated modern person, would be deemed irrational. A cult of such persons would be deemed irrational. The religion that professes this would be deemed irrational. With that as our opening proposition, we have a baseline for establishing a lower limit on the degree of mythical content which would necessarily rule out any conflation with historical narrative.

I can't guarantee my availability over the next couple of weeks, but I'll be glad to take a shot at it when I get my ducks in a row.

I wouldn't bother with that. I would stick with trying to establish whether the Prophet was a historical figure, and the origins of syncretism between JudeoChristianity and early Islam.

The statement you are objecting to is my assertion that myth is not properly called historical narrative. That's a truism which I had not anticipated anyone might object to. I've offered the ancient Mesopotamian myth as a baseline which shouldn't find any resistance from the naysayers, who are typically only concerned with the sanctity of their own systems of belief.

Nothing circular here. Just facts and evidence.

Well then I'll try to just stick to the facts when I reply to you. I can't guarantee that my sentence structure will appeal to anybody.

Who? Anthropologists. Historians. What? Tens of thousands of tablets from Mesopotamia. Steles. Tells. Ruins of every description. Statuary. Monuments. Inscriptions. How? Excavation. Curation. Cataloguing. Study. Peer review. Publication.

No. I'm just another poster with my own set of experiences.

No, I go about posting facts supported by evidence as it seems relevant to controverted facts raised by others.

The case is this: That ancient cults invented the gods to explain phenomena for which they had no science. That the myths of antiquity were obsoleted by the scientific discoveries that explained those phenomena in terms of natural law. That conflating myth and historical narrative, when done in the light of about a high school level of education or better, is irrational, and egregiously so when done in such a way that the believer is required to jettison all the knowledge which supplanted the myth, merely to shore up the claim that myth and historical narrative are one and the same. I guess I would add that this is the rhetorical equivalent of pseudoscience. We may need to coin a new term, something along the lines of pseudo-rhetoric. But it does draw the high school level of English into the mix. I'm thinking in particular about the lessons on persuasive writing, which help students distinguish woo from objective statements: journalism vs editorializing. We would certainly want to apply this discipline of rhetoric as well.

The artifacts of history trace the evolution of human mythmaking from its animist roots. In the link I provided above, the cult of Mesopotamia is exhibiting the transition from animism to polytheism. It's not simply a question of gods being invented. What you see illustrated is the personification of the forces of nature (the Ocean) into some anthropomorphic animal form (Tiamat) who in this case is also the mother-creator (creatrix). Unless you actually believe such things, you would have no cause that I can think of to tell us that the Ocean, personified as a quasi-dragon-like monster, actually rose up into battle with a father-god, and then when he slew her and scattered her remains across the sky, they formed the universe. And before the battle she gave birth to the people and animals, completing the creation myth of that cult. That stuff is made up; a fact which I would assume most posters here would agree prima facie.

As you see, we don't strictly look these things up in an index, stamped by some authority, and then the index tells us how to think. So we have to be careful about what we mean when we say "history says". Actually history just says these are the artifacts, and it gives us the translations, and that's what goes into the record. It gives us warehouses full of facts to correlate them as needed to better understand the nature of the artifacts themselves, the myths and legends, the gods, and the people who created them, plus any incidental facts useful to the whoever is studying them. The value of historians is that they correlate the facts for us, reconstructing a culture in the way a forensic examiner reconstructs the face of a victim from a skull. They put the pieces together for us, and this helps a lot, although here we don't even dwell too much on detail. The evidence speaks for itself. These are fiction, not historical narrative.

The history of the world. Subject matter from a high school or lower division college course in World History, usually in the opening chapter.

By now it should be dawning on you that this question is moot.

 

I am going to have to throw my hat in with Balerion here... the intent of what he was saying was pretty crystal clear, even if the wording could be challenged on a technical (read, nit-pick) basis... after all, there are people out there that honestly, truly believe that Elvis is not dead and has just gone home for a while... Stupid comes to mind as the perfect word to describe such things.

 

So I could take part of a religion, then? Can I take the parts which deal with love and forgiveness, and leave out the parts where minorities are demonised? Can I leave out the parts where gay people are sentenced to Hell for loving someone? Or sentenced to death in this life for the same thing? Tell me it's true.

 

This is actually a good question, and I am not sure that I would have an answer.

I do plead, though, that the fact these religions once existed remains in the public consciousness. Art needs all the inspiration it can get. I would not wish to get rid of Handel's Messiah or Judas Maccabeus, Bach's B Minor Mass, Either the Puccini or Poulenc Glorias or the Verdi Requiem (although Verdi self-identified as a nonbeliever). Nor would I wish to see the Sistine Chapel demolished, nor Michaelangelo's many Pietas.

One can admire certain things that a religion has inspired, without the burden of believing that religion.

 

Believing a myth is reality is stupid behavior. But I know very smart people who do this, some of them good friends.

 

Where ad hominems are a posting violation, perhaps using words more along the lines of "unreasonable", "irrational", etc. would be preferable.

 

Yes, you can. Religion is only as meaningful as it is useful to you. This explains the very large variety of religions, denominations, and interpretations. Just like some claim the Bible (for instance) was inspired so it is with your reading of scriptures (or poetry, or viewing of art for that matter). It is about what "speaks" to you.

Granted, if you walk into a Catholic church and do not find that much "speaks" to you then you are in the wrong church, denomination, or religion.

 

So because we know somethings are direct products of natural causes, we should just accept everything (including everything we don't know) as direct product of natural causes?

Who invoked ''gods''?
Even if that was the case, how is it that you consider - ''the universe not only popped into existence out of no space, time, or, energy, but was it's own cause'', a better alternative?

jan.

 

That's not what I think at all (grin!).

jan.

 

Makes as much sense as "God just popped into existence"... and saves a step.

 

Why single out only homosexuals?

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

jan.

 

Especially as that is your concept of God, yes.


jan.

 

Where did I say I know space is nothing?

jan.

 

So.... yes or no?

jan.

 

Is ''believing''... behaviour?

jan.