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Or 3) people whose every interaction with said group of people seems to confirm the bias. At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole?

ch4s3 10y ago
This sort of thing always seems to descend into some sort of odd "no true Scotsman" argument where people end up debate sincere vs insincere adherents of "X" belief. A lot of people are real pricks, may there is a correlation with belief system "X", but I've yet to see strong evidence that its causal. Now ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and global average temperature rise; thats a good causal relationship!
- betenoire 10y ago
  Are you saying my observation isn't valid because it may descend into a non-sensical debate? If we are throwing around fallacies, I have one too then. My observation remains though. The Christians who literally follow the scriptures number far far fewer than those that don't. That is NOT a comment about "sincere" vs "insincere" christians. The "insincere" ones seem just as sincere to me.
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    > Are you saying my observation isn't valid No. I'm just saying that it's hard to have a constructive conversation about in this forum based on my previous experience. I might also make the argument that to "literally follow the scriptures" is fundamentalism, and isn't necessarily a mark of a "true" adherent of the faith in question. But that is a bit of a tangent, and none of this has much to do with ocean trash so I don't have a lot more to add.
unit91 10y ago
I'm not sure why you're being down-voted here. This a legitimate case of the problem of induction, "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy" [1]. That said, it seems like the flaw in your reasoning (and ch4s3's) is the lack of an objective standard. Holding sincere beliefs and referring to oneself as a Christian don't in themselves make a person a Christian. For example, suppose you met a person who said "I'm a Christian. I don't believe in God and I think the Bible is fiction." Instead of "well ok, he's very sincere, he just doesn't follow the scriptures literally", I think we would rightly conclude "despite his sincere beliefs and identity claim, this person is not a Christian." That is, his identity claim is false. In order for a person's Christian identity claim to be true, he must hold and practice true (or approximately true) beliefs about the person, work, and teaching of Christ. So doesn't this deteriorate into a "no true Scotsman" argument? I don't think so. The hallmark of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is its ad hocness [2]. Otherwise, no taxonomy of any kind would be possible. But surely it isn't ad hoc to say "Christians follow Christ's teachings, and non-Christians don't." So what are Christ's teachings? That can only be adjudicated by examining scripture to find out what Jesus said. Some statements (e.g. "you shall love your neighbor as yourself") are pretty straightforward. Some are less so. But we shouldn't take the fact that people disagree about some of the interpretations to mean that Jesus had no meaning, or that his meaning in unknowable. Rather, this should prompt us to ask "what are your reasons for thinking that's what Jesus meant?". Getting back to your question, we're inductive creatures, and to an extent I don't think you can (or should) avoid drawing generic conclusions about cultures as a whole, given a large enough sample. But make sure that you're sampling persons whom you believe to be actual Christians, and not merely nominal Christians. For comparison, here are a couple of Jesus's metrics: "by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" [3] and "if you love me, you will keep my commandments" [4]. Sources: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman 3. John 13:35 4. John 14:15
- betenoire 10y ago
  Thanks for the response. Admittedly, my pool of christians is very skewed, but it's still the sample of christians that I have to work with. You said my flaw is a lack of objective standard. How is that _my_ flaw though? If a Christian doesn't want to wear the stereotypes of christianity, then ... they shouldn't call themselves christian? Either embrace the label, shun it, or change it. What I mean is, Christians don't even agree what the word means. (mormons call themselves christians, but baptists strongly disagree). I dunno, we have definitely derailed. Thanks again for the reply.
  - unit91 10y ago
    Ah, sorry for the lack of clarity. My point is that many people who refer to themselves as Christians don't actually follow Christ. The flaw I was pointing out was that it seems natural (and even polite) to merely accept a person's claim to be a Christian as valid. The problem is if you do this, you'll end up with false ideas about what Christianity is and what its adherents are like.
    - betenoire 10y ago
      lol, false ideas and no more friends!
  - Dove 10y ago
    > What I mean is, Christians don't even agree what the word means. They actually substantially do. There are ~2.2 billion Christians in the world. Of these, about 1.2 billion are Catholic, 0.9 billion are Protestant, and the ~0.2 billion change are Orthodox. Everyone agrees the Catholics are Christian. Pretty much everyone agrees the Orthodox are Christian. Those two groups agree each other are Christian. In Protestantland, things get complicated -- major denominations range from membership in the 85M range to the 40M range, but again, everyone agrees that these major groups are Christian. As the groups get more obscure and more independent, people start to fall back on first principles, but my point is this -- the groups I've named account for something like 98% of the people on the planet who identify as Christian, and they all more or less agree that they all are Christians. With Mormonism, it is different. Mormons say they are Christians, but Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox agree they are not. At 14M believers, they are smaller than the smallest of the major denominations, and certainly don't command the sort of numbers such that voting for themselves significantly changes the percentage of Christians in the world who agree they are Christians. These sorts of things are both communally defined, and reference an objective standard -- and the fact that nobody agrees exactly about what that standard is does not make it subjective. Sounds complicated and confusing? It's really not. You already are familiar with a community that works this way: science. Lots of people in the world claim to believe in science, or even to be scientists. Not all of them are. There is an objective standard of behavior, and even if we don't all agree about exactly what it is, we definitely agree that it's objective, and we agree about who meets it the vast, vast majority of the time. The conspiracy crank on the internet says he is a scientist, and they physicist at a major university says he definitely is not. The outsider might just throw up his hands and say, "I'll count whoever claims the term", but to the insider that's very silly. One of those guys really is a scientist, and one really is not. Organizations help, but are an imperfect standard. Being a professor of hard sciences at a university does not make you a scientist, and being in leadership of a large and well-recognized Christian organization does not make you a Christian, but, well -- these organizations are pretty good at policing themselves, so the folks within them, particularly the farther you go toward the top, are almost always legit. There are disagreements around the edges. Some will say those folks are doing soft science, and others will say it's not really science. Some will say some obscure denomination has gone too far by rejecting tradition too much, others will say it's fine. But substantially, substantially, the vast majority agree on who is in and out. You will not find a teaching or practice where 30% of Christians think it disqualifies you and 70% think it does not. It's 99% or 1%, almost without exception. (Infant baptism might be the exception that proves the rule here ;) ) If you were an outsider to science, I would say your best bet to determine whether someone was a scientist would be to ask someone from a known safe institution. Find a local geology grad student at a Real University, and ask him if this guy off the internet qualifies. The same test works for Christianity. Find a relatively educated Catholic, Orthodox, or mainline Protestant, and ask them if the person you're wondering about qualifies. That'll give you a pretty accurate answer. There's a quick and dirty test, too. For science, I would say it is this: does the person you're talking to embrace the doctrine of falsification? They're probably doing science. For Christianity, I would say -- does the person you're wondering about embrace the divinity of Christ? Probably Christian. Not a perfect test, and as an outsider it'll be hard to execute correctly, but it's not a bad place to start.
deleted 10y ago
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sbov 10y ago
Just because someone is religious doesn't mean they wear it on their sleeve. There's probably more than 1 Christian on this forum - odds are you've interacted with them and you probably have no idea they're Christian. A lot of it probably has to do with where you live. Thinking rationally, the United States is a Christian majority country. If zero Christians believed in e.g. climate change or protecting the environment, it probably wouldn't be an issue that either party would pay attention to.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole? At the point where you've made sufficient study of the culture as a whole to have a reasonably justified belief that the criticism is valid for the group covered by the label, or, alternatively, to correctly identify the subgroup to which it does apply and direct the criticism appropriately.
- betenoire 10y ago
  lol, no. That's not even rational or feasible. How exactly do you make it through the day with that level of scrutiny?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Learning to use words like "some", "many", and "most" helps. But, yeah, unwarranted generalizations are easy mistakes to make; accepting that they are mistakes rather than defending them on the basis that you should be allowed to make unsupported negative characterization of broad groups is the appropriate response; the alternative is justifying bigotry with laziness.

ch4s3 10y ago

This sort of thing always seems to descend into some sort of odd "no true Scotsman" argument where people end up debate sincere vs insincere adherents of "X" belief. A lot of people are real pricks, may there is a correlation with belief system "X", but I've yet to see strong evidence that its causal. Now ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and global average temperature rise; thats a good causal relationship!

betenoire 10y ago
Are you saying my observation isn't valid because it may descend into a non-sensical debate? If we are throwing around fallacies, I have one too then. My observation remains though. The Christians who literally follow the scriptures number far far fewer than those that don't. That is NOT a comment about "sincere" vs "insincere" christians. The "insincere" ones seem just as sincere to me.
- ch4s3 10y ago
  > Are you saying my observation isn't valid No. I'm just saying that it's hard to have a constructive conversation about in this forum based on my previous experience. I might also make the argument that to "literally follow the scriptures" is fundamentalism, and isn't necessarily a mark of a "true" adherent of the faith in question. But that is a bit of a tangent, and none of this has much to do with ocean trash so I don't have a lot more to add.

unit91 10y ago

I'm not sure why you're being down-voted here. This a legitimate case of the problem of induction, "the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy" [1]. That said, it seems like the flaw in your reasoning (and ch4s3's) is the lack of an objective standard. Holding sincere beliefs and referring to oneself as a Christian don't in themselves make a person a Christian. For example, suppose you met a person who said "I'm a Christian. I don't believe in God and I think the Bible is fiction." Instead of "well ok, he's very sincere, he just doesn't follow the scriptures literally", I think we would rightly conclude "despite his sincere beliefs and identity claim, this person is not a Christian." That is, his identity claim is false. In order for a person's Christian identity claim to be true, he must hold and practice true (or approximately true) beliefs about the person, work, and teaching of Christ. So doesn't this deteriorate into a "no true Scotsman" argument? I don't think so. The hallmark of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is its ad hocness [2]. Otherwise, no taxonomy of any kind would be possible. But surely it isn't ad hoc to say "Christians follow Christ's teachings, and non-Christians don't." So what are Christ's teachings? That can only be adjudicated by examining scripture to find out what Jesus said. Some statements (e.g. "you shall love your neighbor as yourself") are pretty straightforward. Some are less so. But we shouldn't take the fact that people disagree about some of the interpretations to mean that Jesus had no meaning, or that his meaning in unknowable. Rather, this should prompt us to ask "what are your reasons for thinking that's what Jesus meant?". Getting back to your question, we're inductive creatures, and to an extent I don't think you can (or should) avoid drawing generic conclusions about cultures as a whole, given a large enough sample. But make sure that you're sampling persons whom you believe to be actual Christians, and not merely nominal Christians. For comparison, here are a couple of Jesus's metrics: "by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" [3] and "if you love me, you will keep my commandments" [4]. Sources: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman 3. John 13:35 4. John 14:15

betenoire 10y ago
Thanks for the response. Admittedly, my pool of christians is very skewed, but it's still the sample of christians that I have to work with. You said my flaw is a lack of objective standard. How is that _my_ flaw though? If a Christian doesn't want to wear the stereotypes of christianity, then ... they shouldn't call themselves christian? Either embrace the label, shun it, or change it. What I mean is, Christians don't even agree what the word means. (mormons call themselves christians, but baptists strongly disagree). I dunno, we have definitely derailed. Thanks again for the reply.
- unit91 10y ago
  Ah, sorry for the lack of clarity. My point is that many people who refer to themselves as Christians don't actually follow Christ. The flaw I was pointing out was that it seems natural (and even polite) to merely accept a person's claim to be a Christian as valid. The problem is if you do this, you'll end up with false ideas about what Christianity is and what its adherents are like.
  - betenoire 10y ago
    lol, false ideas and no more friends!
- Dove 10y ago
  > What I mean is, Christians don't even agree what the word means. They actually substantially do. There are ~2.2 billion Christians in the world. Of these, about 1.2 billion are Catholic, 0.9 billion are Protestant, and the ~0.2 billion change are Orthodox. Everyone agrees the Catholics are Christian. Pretty much everyone agrees the Orthodox are Christian. Those two groups agree each other are Christian. In Protestantland, things get complicated -- major denominations range from membership in the 85M range to the 40M range, but again, everyone agrees that these major groups are Christian. As the groups get more obscure and more independent, people start to fall back on first principles, but my point is this -- the groups I've named account for something like 98% of the people on the planet who identify as Christian, and they all more or less agree that they all are Christians. With Mormonism, it is different. Mormons say they are Christians, but Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox agree they are not. At 14M believers, they are smaller than the smallest of the major denominations, and certainly don't command the sort of numbers such that voting for themselves significantly changes the percentage of Christians in the world who agree they are Christians. These sorts of things are both communally defined, and reference an objective standard -- and the fact that nobody agrees exactly about what that standard is does not make it subjective. Sounds complicated and confusing? It's really not. You already are familiar with a community that works this way: science. Lots of people in the world claim to believe in science, or even to be scientists. Not all of them are. There is an objective standard of behavior, and even if we don't all agree about exactly what it is, we definitely agree that it's objective, and we agree about who meets it the vast, vast majority of the time. The conspiracy crank on the internet says he is a scientist, and they physicist at a major university says he definitely is not. The outsider might just throw up his hands and say, "I'll count whoever claims the term", but to the insider that's very silly. One of those guys really is a scientist, and one really is not. Organizations help, but are an imperfect standard. Being a professor of hard sciences at a university does not make you a scientist, and being in leadership of a large and well-recognized Christian organization does not make you a Christian, but, well -- these organizations are pretty good at policing themselves, so the folks within them, particularly the farther you go toward the top, are almost always legit. There are disagreements around the edges. Some will say those folks are doing soft science, and others will say it's not really science. Some will say some obscure denomination has gone too far by rejecting tradition too much, others will say it's fine. But substantially, substantially, the vast majority agree on who is in and out. You will not find a teaching or practice where 30% of Christians think it disqualifies you and 70% think it does not. It's 99% or 1%, almost without exception. (Infant baptism might be the exception that proves the rule here ;) ) If you were an outsider to science, I would say your best bet to determine whether someone was a scientist would be to ask someone from a known safe institution. Find a local geology grad student at a Real University, and ask him if this guy off the internet qualifies. The same test works for Christianity. Find a relatively educated Catholic, Orthodox, or mainline Protestant, and ask them if the person you're wondering about qualifies. That'll give you a pretty accurate answer. There's a quick and dirty test, too. For science, I would say it is this: does the person you're talking to embrace the doctrine of falsification? They're probably doing science. For Christianity, I would say -- does the person you're wondering about embrace the divinity of Christ? Probably Christian. Not a perfect test, and as an outsider it'll be hard to execute correctly, but it's not a bad place to start.

deleted 10y ago

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sbov 10y ago

Just because someone is religious doesn't mean they wear it on their sleeve. There's probably more than 1 Christian on this forum - odds are you've interacted with them and you probably have no idea they're Christian. A lot of it probably has to do with where you live. Thinking rationally, the United States is a Christian majority country. If zero Christians believed in e.g. climate change or protecting the environment, it probably wouldn't be an issue that either party would pay attention to.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> At what point am I allowed to criticize the culture as a whole? At the point where you've made sufficient study of the culture as a whole to have a reasonably justified belief that the criticism is valid for the group covered by the label, or, alternatively, to correctly identify the subgroup to which it does apply and direct the criticism appropriately.

betenoire 10y ago
lol, no. That's not even rational or feasible. How exactly do you make it through the day with that level of scrutiny?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Learning to use words like "some", "many", and "most" helps. But, yeah, unwarranted generalizations are easy mistakes to make; accepting that they are mistakes rather than defending them on the basis that you should be allowed to make unsupported negative characterization of broad groups is the appropriate response; the alternative is justifying bigotry with laziness.