So. It may be a doctrine, but is it a dogma? Do you want to get to the truth, or do you want to live in a comfortable mess of... beliefs... that may or may not be true... most of them being highly improbable... some of them commanding you to do things that go against your consciousness and sense of compassion and justice... against your sensitivity...
So, yeah, if somehow you can have a religion AND be rid of the problem of Values Dissonance AND/OR Cognitive Dissonance, either because your religion doesn't have them in your opinion or because you don't angst about it... GOOD FOR YOU, once you are past this, it's all benefits.
If, on the other hand, such things confuse you and make you worry and angst and cry in the night in terror and moral conflict... you are better off without it.
You know, I still feel the Fear Of God from time to time. It was drilled in me. It is not pleasant. The doubt that I may be making the most terrible mistake imaginable. But then I think back at the convulted mess that are the Sourcebooks, and that reassures me through the episode.
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?So... accept to construct your entire life and set of values on a set of lies?
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?I was thinking more along the lines that a set of moral and philosophical guidelines presented on their own merit, with an associated ritual system again given for no reason other than Rule of Cool, would still meet many very liberal definitions of "Religion".
I don't know whether "fairness" has any relevance to this topic, but I'd only consider it to exist in situations where the above is clearly stated from the outset (e.g. the way many people take Buddhism). Suddenly changing the rules and deciding you want to redefine Christianity as a metaphorical system... would probably count as lying, yeah.
That sounds like Confucianism.
[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.Depends how you define success, really. Obviously nobody's come up with anything that even comes within orders of magnitude of the big religions, but Deism and various liberal interpretations of Buddhism and so on have relatively healthy communities in the tens of thousands. Irrelevant on a global level, but from an individual perspective that could be at least as important as anything else.
edited 17th Nov '10 11:37:07 AM by Jinren
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If you want to see such a mentality at work, look at The Federation in Legend Of Galactic Heroes. "Sacred duty towards our beloved nation". That republic is as French as it gets.
edited 17th Nov '10 1:53:34 PM by RawPower
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?Science determines facts. Religion is the quest for Truth.
And as for demonic possession, when the Church is brought in to evaluate cases, less than 1% are found to be unexplainable by science. The vast majority are found to be mental illness.
The exorcism is performed after medical and psychological problems have been ruled out, and only with permission of the local bishop.
The rite of exorcism itself is a sacramental, not a sacrament on the same level as baptism or communion. Sometimes the exorcism is successful after the first try, and some times repeated attempts are necessary. And finally, no Catholic is bound to "believe in" any particular case of possession. Belief in angels, both good and evil, is part of dogma, but belief in a particular exorcism case is a matter of personal opinion.
Move confidently in the direction of your dreams.Awesome post. Thanks for the clarifications.
Nevertheless
I don't know how to put this, but, uh, since when were you under the impression...?
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?If there is some sort of capital T truth that is distinctly separate from the accumulation of facts, why should we suppose that religion is at all good at finding it?
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.^^^And why should we suppose it isn't? You're assuming a false dichotomy. A religious ideology need not be looked upon by an outsider as either wholly, inexorably false or absolutely, unimpeachably true.
Like she said, religion IS the quest for Truth on both a universal and personal level, whether or not that's how *you* choose to search for transcendental Truths is a whole other matter, and irrelevant to this discussion.
edited 19th Nov '10 6:03:35 PM by TheBadinator
Right. Out of the vastness of example space, the potential methods for discovering Truth that are actually useless outnumber those that are useful to an unlimited degree. In an absence of evidence to suggest that a method works, the odds that it actually does are infinitesimally low.
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.Well, if Truth is something that exists beyond our perceptions, then we would be unable to perceive it, ergo we cannot perceive whether any given mechanism to arrive at truth is actually arriving at such. Ipso Facto, there can be no evidence of any given mechanism being better than any other-
-but by information theory, "Truth" is meaningless.
You can pretend to be a philosophical skeptic all you want, but you're still typing on a computer, making words come up on a screen, typing letters, and you know the letters will come up as the keys you press because it's always done so before.
You can operate on that knowledge because it's based on evidence, because your mind can interpret evidence. Any claim of knowledge "beyond our perceptions" is knowledge without evidence, which isn't knowledge at all.
edited 19th Nov '10 8:49:47 PM by Roman
| DA Page | Sketchbook |@Raw: First, as much as you like Yudkowsky, you should be able to know an Appealto Fictional Evidence when you see it typed out in a comment.
Second, one of the nice things about believing you're right is the confidence to say other people are wrong. Cultures aren't a magical source of sophisticated folk morality any more than religion is. The Dothraki are wrong on the subject of morality.
| DA Page | Sketchbook |@Roman: Dude, you should point at at what posts you are referring to, because I don't remember doing that. And the Dothraki's morality does make sense to them. It is internally consistent. In fact, like many Noble Savage depictions, it completely fails to show any people who are hypocritical about their beliefs: instead, we see pure honesty and truthfulness in a system that is immoral to us: we weren't shown people who were acting immoraly within that system. Except Daenerys, but her behaviour is more "unprecendented disregard for the rules" rather than what one usually means by immorality.
As for why and when "Killing Is Bad", I had attempted to provide objective, unversal proof, you know, actual reasons, besides appeal to sentimentality or a recieved morality, that killing be wrong.
There are people I love, and people that are useful to me, even necessary for my daily functioning: their death would hurt me or inconvence me greatly. Therefore I don't want them to be killed.
I want to lead the sort of confortable, routinely, predictable life that relies on people not dying unpredictably. Therefore I would like there to be a social institution that makes killings predictable to a certain degree.
I would also like to be able to kill people if existence hurts me or inceonveniences me, or if killing them will dissuade other people from doing things that would hurt or inconvenience me (that includes killing people for the sake of gaining a greater social status in societies where Asskicking Equals Authority).
I would also, if at all possible, like to be able to kill people for sport, If I feel like it, because it can be an enjoyable, entertaining and ego-boosting experience if I'm that kind of person or if I've been brought up that way.
We are associate in a society. If our society is the sort that relies in the predictability of death for functioning; we will agree that "killings without reason", i.e. unpredictable killings, should be banned, at least among equals, and dissuaded, either through argument, sheer belief, preventative measures, or punishment, including killing the rulebreaker (that counts as killing with reason). However, ruling classes may impose, by force if necessary, that lower classes may be subjected to arbitrary killing by them."
This is by no means a universal argument: it relies heavily onn a number of assumptions, some of them innate and some of them conventional, but conditioning can erase the former and different conventions the latter.
I wouldn't know about Real Life examples (male Romans could kill their children, as long as they were young enough, at whim: however, one may argue that, to the Romans, kids simply didn't count as "people") but in A Song Of Ice And Fire the Dothraki, a Fantasy Counterpart to Mongols, kill each other without provocation and their societies are entirely based on force and charismatic leadership: either you're a Badass or you're less than shit. And let's not get into Warhammer 40k examples.
Nor "the benefit of as many people as possible should be sought after by society": that's Utilitarianism, a creed that is either accepted on principle or on the assumption by the individual who practices it that such a system will end up to their personal benefit. Again, that's not true for everyone.
And then I found out that those reasons were dependent upon a precise model of society, that of a sedentary system where the measure of time is important, and where people dying screws your life plans up and can indeed land you in deep shit, especially if you are indebted somehow. In a system such as that of the Dothraki, where life is day-to-day and there are no plans, no money, no accumulation of riches, and where your social status is purely decided by how much of a charismatic badass you are, killing people is not only fair, it is awesome, and lands you chicks and respect. Thugs, who live the closest thing to that lifestyle that exists in a modern agricultural bank-centered society, have a similar mindset... until they become a stable part of the system in the form of Friendly Neighbhorhood Gangsters, in which case their interests shift tremendously into keeping stuff as stable and low-profile as possible.
And, finally, Roman, I hate being flanderized into a Yudkowsky fanboy. I find it an insult to my intelligence and my capacity for independent thought, and I think it veers to outright Unfortunate Implications when such fanboyism is described in terms of romantic or sexual attraction. I do strongly enjoy Yudkowsky's work, as mauch as I enjoy the work of other authors. I have not ofrmed an opinion on Yudkowsky as a person, and whether I like him or not is anyways irrelevant to the discussion. Next time such a thing happens I'm going to open an IJBM and sort it out once and for all. It seriously offends me.
'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?I have to admit, religion can be considered a double-edged sword. The good? Laconic: Human Dignity, the concept that man is more than just an animal of the highest order, the value of human life. Without that, Hobbes would be correct in his depiction of human life. The bad? Like other nontangible concepts, it can (and in Real Life had or has) be twisted out of shape by the wrong people.
The Southpaw has no brakes!Phew. A lot of thoughts and opinions here. Some like Raw Power and Desertopa seems to be more or less against religion, others defend it quite admirably, and everyone has clearly thought out their opinions.
Does religion do more harm or good? Hard to say. Is there anything in this world, whether a living breathing creature, an inanimate object ( a knife for instance), or an idea that can't be used for both good and evil, despite it's original intention.
I've recently found myself saying that no, there isn't.
Well wait, I've never heard or Atheism being responsible for wars or anything, but I tend to miss these things.
Though a religious man myself (although not that much. I go to church only twice a year), I can't deny the horrible things that religion has been responsible for. I also don't think it's fair to ignore the good done by it. I think the fairest thing to is say that it has done just as much harm as good. That answer actually dissatisfies me, but I think it's the best I can do.
edited 8th Jan '11 9:22:15 AM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!

No, it means that religion contradicts the scientific method. Science isn't just a job, it's a means of determining truth. Methods of determining truth that aren't trustworthy in the laboratory don't become trustworthy when you leave it. There is no doctrine of applying scientific methodology to every aspect of one's life, you either follow trustworthy methods of investigation or you don't, and "follow trustworthy methods of investigation" is the core of science.
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.