5 ms·

There's a huge difference between lying and holding allegedly mistaken but otherwise wholehearted beliefs.

jacquesm 9y ago
> wholehearted I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. The degree to which one would have to be willing to fudge things in order to make that work seems incredible to me. I can forgive the laypeople, the people who have placed their belief in others who claim an authority they don't have a right to but I find it impossible to afford the purveyors of the belief systems themselves the same leeway. After all, if you study something more than a little bit then you should be intricately familiar with the thing and in the case of religion it would require quite an act of self delusion in order to get to the point where you would start influencing the lives of others based on the belief you profess to be an authority in. Maybe they have some other code by which they live but a search for truth or a solid foundation under the religion at hand does not seem to factor into it. I've met quite a few priests, not a single one - to date, I'm prepared to be surprised - struck me as willing to place evidence over dogma and reason over belief. But that didn't stop them from eating over the backs of their subjects and making promises they would never be able to keep.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  > After all, if you study something more than a little bit then you should be intricately familiar with the thing and in the case of religion it would require quite an act of self delusion in order to get to the point where you would start influencing the lives of others based on the belief you profess to be an authority in. I'm not entirely sure what your actual implication is here. Could you try rephrasing? > Maybe they have some other code by which they live but a search for truth or a solid foundation under the religion at hand does not seem to factor into it. > I've met quite a few priests, not a single one - to date, I'm prepared to be surprised - struck me as willing to place evidence over dogma and reason over belief. But that didn't stop them from eating over the backs of their subjects and making promises they would never be able to keep. Given that dogma and faith are typically defining traits of religion... I'm unsure what you expect the results to be? Also, to be honest, I have a hard time distinguishing anything that you've said so far as a verbosely-worded "DAE atheism? reason right, religion wrong!" Which I personally is a bit of a false dichotomy that people like to present. But then again, I'm solidly in the agnostic camp. I believe such things are and will always be unknowable, so attempts to apply logical and knowledge-based arguments are misguided. But, in an attempt to offer some kind of response: Yes, there are plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things in the name of religion. There are also plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things for other reasons. As far as I can tell, this is just people being people, using whatever excuse or reasoning or power they can to serve their interests.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > I'm not entirely sure what your actual implication is here. Could you try rephrasing? I don't think that it is possible to study religion for any time at all and Catholicism in particular to conclude that it is just men making up stories that can't be verified in order to gain positions of power. This coupled with all the stage magic to impress the feeble minded should sour anybody that wants to be priest on the job. So to me those that make it through that filter are either feeble minded themselves (rare) or are cynical enough that they feel that in spite of knowing better they will still continue the charade. > Given that dogma and faith are typically defining traits of religion... I'm unsure what you expect the results to be? I can't help it, I'm always assuming that people would like to know the truth, I can see that if you throw that out the window that 'anything goes', but once you cross that bridge the differences between the church of scientology and the catholic church are smaller than the common bits. They're both structures put in place to allow the slightly more powerful to prey on the slightly weaker. > Also, to be honest, I have a hard time distinguishing anything that you've said so far as a verbosely-worded "DAE atheism? reason right, religion wrong!" Which I personally is a bit of a false dichotomy that people like to present. I had no clue what the meant so I looked it up, apparently DAE stands for 'does anyone else' and within that context I can't make soup of your accusation. FWIW I'm probably a lot worse than anything you'd like to accuse me of, personally I think that 'men of the cloth' are criminals of the worst order, they willingly and knowingly spread mental viruses that cause great harm to society. You can read just about any history book to verify that. Of course we don't have any laws against this so it is all fine and good. But that does not diminish the harm. > I believe such things are and will always be unknowable, so attempts to apply logical and knowledge-based arguments are misguided. Well, there you go: problem solved. > But, in an attempt to offer some kind of response: Yes, there are plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things in the name of religion. Nice to see we can agree on that. > There are also plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things for other reasons. This is true, but that's an argument that is along the same lines as people that don't want India to have a space program because lots of Indians are still hungry. The fact that people are doing bad things for other reasons is no ground to ignore the (vast amounts of) bad things done by religion. > As far as I can tell, this is just people being people, using whatever excuse or reasoning or power they can to serve their interests. Maybe our viewpoints are not that far from each other after all. Yes, it's just people being people.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  The current pope is trashing dogma.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Is that so? http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM He's not as bad as previous popes, but there is still a long way to go before I'll call him modern and besides that the selection process pretty much guarantees that only the most cynical or the most delusional person would rise to the position of pontiff to begin with. The arrogance involved in this whole business is staggering, but when looked at through the 'who benefits' lens it suddenly makes a whole lot more sense. The Church is simply a man made power structure, carefully constructed to allow a bunch of men to wield maximum power in the world while escaping culpability in almost every sense.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  Can't reply to your later response, so I'm replying here. I just wanted to note, in case you were unaware of this - that there are priests and other clergy who would self-identify as atheists, but choose not to "come out" for a variety of reasons, depending on their community, family, society, etc. Some can't or don't because they don't want to hurt their community or family, who see them as a leader, a friend, someone they can trust, etc. They stay in to preserve this foundation. Others don't because they don't have anything to fall back on for their livelyhood - no skills to provide for themselves and/or their family. Other stay in the position because they fear (or know) that the person coming after them (their replacement) may not have the best of intentions in regards to their community, their parishioners, the church organization, or whatnot. In other words, as an atheist with morals, they believe it is better for them to continue to guide their "people" as best as they can on whatever topics are out there being questioned, vs letting someone else come in who may do more damage (ie, "fleece the flock"). Any of these reasons or excuses - however you look at it - does have a moral dimension to it, and causes these people great anguish at times. For this reason, this was set up for these people - for those already "out", and for those "still in", but looking for a way out, or just to have a safe place to discuss things: https://foundationbeyondbelief.org/ https://foundationbeyondbelief.org/ It's not a perfect solution. There was a fairly recent event where a fairly well-known person was in the group as an "out atheist" for a few years, but then rediscovered her religion or something - don't ask me how that can happen, but I'm not one to say it can't - and there was a fear that because she had "insider information" about the group (their member list is kept very secret for good reasons, because some of the members could literally face a death sentence for apostasy); so far (as far as I am aware), nothing has occurred, but it is always a possibility that a "mole" could expose people to actual danger.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Wow, thank you for posting this, and it definitely shines a different light on the reasons why some people might remain even if they really do know better.
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    > Can't reply to your later response, so I'm replying here. HN does not show the reply button for recent posts. Maybe an attempt to prevent responses without thinking? Anyway, you can always click through the timestamp to the post's permalink. The reply box is always available there.

> wholehearted I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. The degree to which one would have to be willing to fudge things in order to make that work seems incredible to me. I can forgive the laypeople, the people who have placed their belief in others who claim an authority they don't have a right to but I find it impossible to afford the purveyors of the belief systems themselves the same leeway. After all, if you study something more than a little bit then you should be intricately familiar with the thing and in the case of religion it would require quite an act of self delusion in order to get to the point where you would start influencing the lives of others based on the belief you profess to be an authority in. Maybe they have some other code by which they live but a search for truth or a solid foundation under the religion at hand does not seem to factor into it. I've met quite a few priests, not a single one - to date, I'm prepared to be surprised - struck me as willing to place evidence over dogma and reason over belief. But that didn't stop them from eating over the backs of their subjects and making promises they would never be able to keep.

jdmichal 9y ago
> After all, if you study something more than a little bit then you should be intricately familiar with the thing and in the case of religion it would require quite an act of self delusion in order to get to the point where you would start influencing the lives of others based on the belief you profess to be an authority in. I'm not entirely sure what your actual implication is here. Could you try rephrasing? > Maybe they have some other code by which they live but a search for truth or a solid foundation under the religion at hand does not seem to factor into it. > I've met quite a few priests, not a single one - to date, I'm prepared to be surprised - struck me as willing to place evidence over dogma and reason over belief. But that didn't stop them from eating over the backs of their subjects and making promises they would never be able to keep. Given that dogma and faith are typically defining traits of religion... I'm unsure what you expect the results to be? Also, to be honest, I have a hard time distinguishing anything that you've said so far as a verbosely-worded "DAE atheism? reason right, religion wrong!" Which I personally is a bit of a false dichotomy that people like to present. But then again, I'm solidly in the agnostic camp. I believe such things are and will always be unknowable, so attempts to apply logical and knowledge-based arguments are misguided. But, in an attempt to offer some kind of response: Yes, there are plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things in the name of religion. There are also plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things for other reasons. As far as I can tell, this is just people being people, using whatever excuse or reasoning or power they can to serve their interests.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > I'm not entirely sure what your actual implication is here. Could you try rephrasing? I don't think that it is possible to study religion for any time at all and Catholicism in particular to conclude that it is just men making up stories that can't be verified in order to gain positions of power. This coupled with all the stage magic to impress the feeble minded should sour anybody that wants to be priest on the job. So to me those that make it through that filter are either feeble minded themselves (rare) or are cynical enough that they feel that in spite of knowing better they will still continue the charade. > Given that dogma and faith are typically defining traits of religion... I'm unsure what you expect the results to be? I can't help it, I'm always assuming that people would like to know the truth, I can see that if you throw that out the window that 'anything goes', but once you cross that bridge the differences between the church of scientology and the catholic church are smaller than the common bits. They're both structures put in place to allow the slightly more powerful to prey on the slightly weaker. > Also, to be honest, I have a hard time distinguishing anything that you've said so far as a verbosely-worded "DAE atheism? reason right, religion wrong!" Which I personally is a bit of a false dichotomy that people like to present. I had no clue what the meant so I looked it up, apparently DAE stands for 'does anyone else' and within that context I can't make soup of your accusation. FWIW I'm probably a lot worse than anything you'd like to accuse me of, personally I think that 'men of the cloth' are criminals of the worst order, they willingly and knowingly spread mental viruses that cause great harm to society. You can read just about any history book to verify that. Of course we don't have any laws against this so it is all fine and good. But that does not diminish the harm. > I believe such things are and will always be unknowable, so attempts to apply logical and knowledge-based arguments are misguided. Well, there you go: problem solved. > But, in an attempt to offer some kind of response: Yes, there are plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things in the name of religion. Nice to see we can agree on that. > There are also plenty of accounts of people doing terrible things for other reasons. This is true, but that's an argument that is along the same lines as people that don't want India to have a space program because lots of Indians are still hungry. The fact that people are doing bad things for other reasons is no ground to ignore the (vast amounts of) bad things done by religion. > As far as I can tell, this is just people being people, using whatever excuse or reasoning or power they can to serve their interests. Maybe our viewpoints are not that far from each other after all. Yes, it's just people being people.
fjsolwmv 9y ago
The current pope is trashing dogma.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Is that so? http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM He's not as bad as previous popes, but there is still a long way to go before I'll call him modern and besides that the selection process pretty much guarantees that only the most cynical or the most delusional person would rise to the position of pontiff to begin with. The arrogance involved in this whole business is staggering, but when looked at through the 'who benefits' lens it suddenly makes a whole lot more sense. The Church is simply a man made power structure, carefully constructed to allow a bunch of men to wield maximum power in the world while escaping culpability in almost every sense.
cr0sh 9y ago
Can't reply to your later response, so I'm replying here. I just wanted to note, in case you were unaware of this - that there are priests and other clergy who would self-identify as atheists, but choose not to "come out" for a variety of reasons, depending on their community, family, society, etc. Some can't or don't because they don't want to hurt their community or family, who see them as a leader, a friend, someone they can trust, etc. They stay in to preserve this foundation. Others don't because they don't have anything to fall back on for their livelyhood - no skills to provide for themselves and/or their family. Other stay in the position because they fear (or know) that the person coming after them (their replacement) may not have the best of intentions in regards to their community, their parishioners, the church organization, or whatnot. In other words, as an atheist with morals, they believe it is better for them to continue to guide their "people" as best as they can on whatever topics are out there being questioned, vs letting someone else come in who may do more damage (ie, "fleece the flock"). Any of these reasons or excuses - however you look at it - does have a moral dimension to it, and causes these people great anguish at times. For this reason, this was set up for these people - for those already "out", and for those "still in", but looking for a way out, or just to have a safe place to discuss things: https://foundationbeyondbelief.org/ https://foundationbeyondbelief.org/ It's not a perfect solution. There was a fairly recent event where a fairly well-known person was in the group as an "out atheist" for a few years, but then rediscovered her religion or something - don't ask me how that can happen, but I'm not one to say it can't - and there was a fear that because she had "insider information" about the group (their member list is kept very secret for good reasons, because some of the members could literally face a death sentence for apostasy); so far (as far as I am aware), nothing has occurred, but it is always a possibility that a "mole" could expose people to actual danger.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Wow, thank you for posting this, and it definitely shines a different light on the reasons why some people might remain even if they really do know better.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  > Can't reply to your later response, so I'm replying here. HN does not show the reply button for recent posts. Maybe an attempt to prevent responses without thinking? Anyway, you can always click through the timestamp to the post's permalink. The reply box is always available there.