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Black Bones posted:Muslims don't believe the Prophet, peace be upon him, wrote the Qur'an, he recited it. His literate companions wrote it down and collected it. But everyone's still not all those things simultaneously, and most religious adherents commit themselves to at least some position. And a lot of religious adherents -- the ones I think GAINING WEIGHT is trying to interrogate -- think it's correct to believe some doctrine over another one. He also seems to think that it hurts a religion's credibility to claim mutual exclusivity with other religions without providing a good reason not to follow those other religions instead, although maybe I'm reading too much into him. It sounds to me ("virtue of doubt") you feel like being uncertain makes you better off religiously than being certain does, and you seem to think it's the case because everyone has personal reasons to believe one thing or another, and asking about those personal reasons and expecting to be satisfied is either not empathetic or unfruitful. But if you don't feel it's reasonable to believe one religion excluding others, I don't think you're one of the people he's speaking to, and if you think it's acceptable to reject other religions in favor of a particular one, but not acceptable to ask why, then it just sounds like you don't like when people argue about this sort of thing, either because it's gauche or because it won't work. That said, it's possible you are one of the people he's speaking to, if he's really trying to ask how ordinary people feel about their religion and ordinary people have a position more like yours than like evangelicals'. I've personally found it varies a ton from person to person and I don't think I'd really generalize about how certain people are that their religion alone is right, but I think the people who are that certain are interesting to talk about, and GAINING WEIGHT probably wouldn't feel convinced unless he had that kind of certainty himself.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:22
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Black Bones posted:I do feel my faith is more secure because I accept that it could be wrong, so I perhaps have more mental/emotional leeway than someone who refuses to accept the possibility. Not sure if that's what you meant by "better off religiously". "Better off religiously" was ambiguous because I couldn't tell what you thought was favorable about it, but you seemed to think something was favorable about it. (now I have a better idea) The implication I got when you said this -- quote:"Why not believe something else?" can be asked of anyone. By accepting the virtue of doubt and having real empathy for others, one is not trapped in some either-or position regarding other faiths - we're all trying to figure poo poo out, go with whatever works best. For some this means Christianity, others Islam, etc. And whether I've understood the details or not, it still seems to me that you're responding to WEIGHT's question "why should I believe [x religion] over [y religion]?" with a version of "why would you need to ask that question?" Getting into that apparent why: something you've described is that your religious following believes that every religion can present divine truth. But I still don't think this really answers the issue completely. There are a lot of religions whose really basic tenets are mutually exclusive, even if they also have common parts. For any two different monotheistic religions, there's a contradiction by definition because each one says the other's deity doesn't exist. Whether I thought there could be some truth in the teachings of either, if I wasn't really sure about the existence and nature of the deity I wouldn't be comfortable representing myself as an adherent of either. If we took the golden rule -- a common tenet of nearly every religion -- and say "there, that's the divine part," and I agreed, I still wouldn't be comfortable calling myself for instance a Christian or talking about Jesus, and a lot of my metaphysical questions would be unanswered. And I think I'm still granting too much: more likely, I think it would come back to the same question about what the purpose of a divine revelation is when I can't distinguish the true bits of its human interpretation from the false bits. How would I know which religions have divine truth in them and which don't -- how would I even know that there's a religion on earth that presents has divine truth? Even more broadly, wouldn't any of the components of your faith, whether they seem nonspecific to your religious practice or not, including that one, be just more religious tenets I'd need to be convinced of? I feel like I'm missing some part of your argument but I don't know what.
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Dec 4, 2014 07:32
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I'm a little annoyed at the occasional hostility GAINING WEIGHT is getting! It seems like a lot of people are being very judgmental of him because he's willing to entertain the notion of "what would it take for me to be a Christian?" to death even though he doesn't currently do the faith thing and likes applying the same arguments for the validity of Christianity to lots of other religions -- and even some of its adherents (not all!!!!!) seem to have started mocking him or telling him it's not useful for him to keep asking because his questions are too weird or difficult. I think it's pretty easy and obvious to say "you are obviously not a Christian" here, but I don't think everyone who's making that response is exploring the implications. If the straightforward answer (coming from the Christians) really is "there is no way you will ever become a Christian, and although I believe your [epistemological views|moral views|???] views are wrong in this case, there is no way I will ever be able to convince you of that" I think that should raise a lot of bigger questions for whoever says it! In addition, I think a lot of people are making statements relevant only to specific interpretations of the religion while claiming they represent the religion in general. Granted, they have a right to do this in a lot of cases, because most of the atheists in this topic are hacking away at Christianity-in-general more than they're hacking away at Christianity-in-the-specific -- which went disastrously (for example) for CommieGIR, even though I like his spirit! It's acceptable to respond to "Christianity-as-a-whole says x!" with "Sect-z actually says y!" but it's not acceptable to respond to "Not-sect-z says x" with the same answer, because what sect-z says is irrelevant to that interpretation. I think this has led to some arguments that shouldn't have necessarily occurred, because I don't think they can be settled -- just now, does Christianity-in-general allow its adherents to use logic to interpret the holy book? (in alternative to using what, by the way? It's a hard book to read!) I feel that while nucleicmaxid's viewpoint is potentially valid as an interpretation, I don't believe it's necessarily representative of the religion as a whole! It generally seems that these arguments have fallen into back-and-forth in the pattern of "[anonymous] sect-z says x" // "but [anonymous] sect-q says y" // "but sect-z says x" // "well it shouldn't!" and it seems that even efforts to bring textual evidence into the matter have started up accusations of cherry-picking and affiliation with fundamentalist cliques! I'm really confused by that because it seems like something most of the Christians in this thread agree on is that the Bible is open to interpretation -- that is, it's not unambiguous. Even though that still allows some interpretations to be completely, unambiguously wrong (i.e. "the Bible advocates baby-eating"), I think that in cases where there's a wealth of textual evidence for multiple competing viewpoints, it's more reasonable to acknowledge both (and argue from a standpoint that assumes the validity of either) than to butt horns over which one is unambiguously right. There's still at least a few people, particularly the atheists trying to defend the literalist viewpoint, who seem to have a pretty hosed interpretation, although it's such a common one that I think it's still a good idea to acknowledge it. I think some Christians, especially the literalists, are so far from a reasonable reading of the Bible it may not always be best to bring the Bible into the discussion to begin with! Thanks to those of you who have kept cool, and even those falling into the above classifications who have kept cool to a moderate or inconsistent extent! This topic is fun to read. Apologies if any of you feel misrepresented.
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Dec 22, 2014 18:53
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