Glad to see something new from you, Strafio!

This is not my contention.  I hold that fundamentalism and moderation are two degrees of the exact same thing.  All theism accepts the premise that things which are false according to materialism are true.  The only difference between moderates and fundamentalists is how many irrational beliefs they hold.

Psst... "A belief is irrational." 

[/editor hat OFF]

For the sake of simplicity, this is true, but it's not exactly complete.  I'll hold off for a bit though.

I maintain that one of the reasons all religion should be attacked is that indoctrination into the notion that "faith is a virtue" at a young age can permanently diminish a person's ability to think rationally.  There are many people who do know better and still believe.  Had they been introduced to the idea after being taught good thinking skills at a very young age, they would immediately dismiss it.

(EDITOR CHECK!!!)

I don't necessarily claim this as universally true.  It's splitting hairs a bit, but here's an example.  Last week, I went on vacation.  While I was gone, I drank constantly, ate as much as I wanted, and indulged in as much junk food as I wanted.  I got precious little sleep, and I spent most of next month's spending money.  My behavior was not rational by very many standards, and yet, because I am human, it was good for me.  Yes, we can make a case for my behavior being rational because it had good results, but that's the point I'm making.  Rational and irrational are often dependent on an arbitrary measuring stick.  For the goal of good health, my behavior was objectively irrational.  For the goal of financial gain, clearly and objectively irrational.  For mental health?  Very rational.

So, there are two ways in which the words rational and irrational can be used.  One is objective.  Believing that all traffic lights are figments of your imagination is irrational.  Period.  Traffic lights obviously exist, and there is no practical way of making that belief rational.  Vegetarianism, on the other hand, is both rational and irrational, and it is mainly a matter of personal values whether an individual's vegetarianism is rational or irrational.  If someone is vegetarian because they believe the government has introduced poison into all meat because they're trying to kill us all, their vegetarianism is irrational.  If they feel better on a vegetarian diet, it's rational.

You know my "Special Pleading" trigger finger is itchy.

Dangerous proposition.  If I am a sadist, inflicting great pain on others brings me personal meaning and happiness.  I'd like to see you expand this just a bit.

I see you running into some serious issues with this proposition.  I hope you've been following my writing about morality, primarily my contention that it is relative but not arbitrary. 

You realize that for this to occur, this religion is going to have to have virtually no meaning whatsoever.   By definition, the belief that a god influences the world in any way whatsoever does interfere with our practical rationality.

I'm responding as I read.  I hope you're going to justify this division, because I can't.

Special pleading.

The existence of another system in which to examine religion does not negate its existence as rational or irrational.  If I say that oranges and asparagus are nothing alike because one's a fruit and the other's a vegetable, that doesn't take away the fact that they are both foods that people eat.  If you are to have us believe that we should not apply the rational/irrational label to moderate theism, you're going to have to do more than say that there's another way we can look at it if we choose.

Well, if you choose to judge moderate religion only by its effect on the individual, that is your prerogative.  I think it's awfully shortsighted, since individuals get together in groups, and groups have effects on other groups.  I don't think I see any rational justification for excluding religion (SPECIAL PLEADING!) from the same kind of scrutiny we give to any other kind of belief. 

Yes.

I agree that moderates would not bet a lot of money on god, and that they tend not to let their religious beliefs get in the way of most practical activities.  I disagree that this is evidence that their religious belief doesn't effect their practical life in any meaningful way.  What you're doing is equivalent to telling me there are no marbles in a box, and then one by one, taking quarters out of the box and saying, "See, this isn't a marble!"

These are all exactly the same answers that a fundamentalist would give.

Same with fundamentalists.

Same with fundamentalists.

I hate to tell you, but it's not going to take me a year to come up with counter examples. 

You've just admitted my contention.  Fundamentalism and moderation are two degrees of the same thing.

I don't completely agree.  Children pick up religious faith because they are not presented with the alternative.  Rational adults who have been taught good thinking skills don't often turn to religion for the reasons religious people say they believe.  Once someone has grown up in an atheist world, they don't often feel the "innate longing for a god" that religious people claim everyone has.

Scientific fact is very relevant to people's belief.  Otherwise, why would highly schooled scientists be the least likely people to be religious? 

A bold claim.

You mean... like the whole justification for believing a religion?  That some things are proven by faith alone?

I'm not being flippant when I say this.  You give this a try.  Go to all the moderate churches, and see if you can get them to mount a targeted attack against fundamentalists.  Good luck.  When you get back, I have a few windmills you can tilt.

This is precisely why I maintain that we must attack all theism equally.  Moderates, if they have any brains at all, know that they cannot attack fundamentalists on any purely rational grounds.  They are left only with appeals to emotion.

Well, not to be harsh, but I don't see anything new in this.  It appears to me that your argument goes something like this:

1) Moderates are different than fundamentalists because moderates don't believe *really* wacky stuff, and they live normal lives, and religion makes them feel good.  (What do you call this fallacy?  You're creating a difference in kind when it's really a difference in degree.)

2) Religion should not be judged by rational/irrational criteria because moderates don't take their religion very seriously.  (Special pleading)

3) Some moderate beliefs don't let their beliefs affect X, Y, Z behaviors.  Therefore, moderates don't let religion affect their behaviors.  (Just plain goofy.)

4) Moderates ought to help us fight fundamentalists.  (Good luck.)

 

Good to see my work still interests you enough to reply!

I think that spreading the argument over an entire post perhaps made it unclear of my exact argument.
What I'll do is start with a sumarised version of the argument.
Then I'll pick up on some of the points you made and answer them.
I'll be leaving out all the various points you made on practical reason and morality etc.
This is because I don't really disagree with you and you seemed to be picking out niggly details that I didn't spell out.
The reason I didn't feel the need to fill in details was because we mostly think alike on these issues so I didn't need to argue what you already agreed with.
The best thing to do would be to give me 'the benefit of the doubt' - that is; given that I've admitted that I more or less agree with you on these issues, interpret it in a way that would make the most sense to you and that will be most likely what I am trying to say.
If we come across something we actually disagree on then we'll pick up debate there.




That's cool. Tell is how you see it else I'll never know where I'm going wrong.
Now I'll try and lay out the argument that I was trying to put forward:

Premise 1 - The diversity of language
I take this to be a fact about our language nature.
Other than words like river-bank/money-bank with obvious equivocations, there are more subtle ones too.
"I believe there's a chair in front of me"
"I believe in democracy"
"I can't believe you sometimes!!!"
We use the word 'believe' in a lot of ways that are related but still have subtle differences.

Nothing too controversial so far, right?

Hypothesis 1.1 - Belief in the 'religious' context is subtly different to belief in the 'scientific' context.
After the first premise, this is no ad hoc measure.
If we take that 'belief' can have a variety of subtly different meanings, it should be no surprise that these two different contexts hold examples.
Nevertheless, that's not enough to assert that there is a difference.
This is why it's a hypothesis - one that needs to be vindicated or falsified by evidence.
So now I put foward which characteristics differ and then compare it with people's behaviour in real life.
If their use of the word 'belief' matches then they are providing evidence towards my hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1.2 - There are two main differences between them - the practical application and justification
So here I set out the characteristics that we are looking for when we take the behaviour of people into account.
If I read you right, you agreed with my observations on religious behaviour and you agreed that they fitted the theory.
If I understood you, I think your complaint was that my theory wasn't the only one that fit the data, that the "delusion" theory fits too.
So I'd need to provide further arguments in order to place my "different practice" theory over the "delusion" theory.
I'll talk more on this subject later.

So my theory of religious belief isn't an ad hoc measure, it's an argued hypothesis on human practice/behaviour.
(I wanted to say "well argued hypothesis" but I thought that I'd let you be the judge of that! )


Now, for sake of argument, let's say that my hypothesis was correct - would I then be able to provide an argument that moderatism isn't irrational?
This means that we start with a new premise:

Premise 2 - Religious belief and scientific belief are subtly different practices with different applications.
I perhaps made a mistake in using the word 'practical' in the OP as that means more than I meant it to.
This time I've gone with scientific I think it'll give a clearer picture of what I mean.
Scientific propositions about the state of the world are ones that we base our action on.
For example, "There is a chair behind me" is a proposition that will determine whether I sit down or not.
Religious belief does have practical application - it is supposed to inspire the person's morality and spirituality etc.
This is a different kind of practical application to scientific belief though.
The accuracy of whether there is really a chair behind me doesn't really matter in the religious context - we don't have that kind of direct application.
Religious beliefs have the same kind of applications as morals and values do so.


Premise 3 - An evaluation of a sentence/proposition depends on its purpose/application.
This should be fairly common sense.
Scientific claims are judged by how well they are supported by evidence.
Fictional stories might be judged by how entertaining they are (or atleast how they affect the listener)
Jokes will be judged on how funny they are and things like wit.
We judge them based on what they are supposed to do and are supposed to be.
A proposition with the application of 'character' building will be judged on the effect that it has on the person.

If the hypothesis above holds then the 'articles of faith' within a religious/spiritual worldview are applied to improve 'character' of the believer.
That means that this is how it is to be judged.
Religious beliefs that improve 'character' of the person are judged to be good, ones have bad effects are to be judged bad and neutral ones to be neutral.


Premise 4 - Propositions of theism tend to occur in a religious/spiritual context.
I don't think you'll find this controversial, especially in the modern world.
I don't think that anyone's motivation for believing in a God for scientific reasons, not in the modern world anyhow.

Conclusion - Theism is arational rather than rational/irrational. Its value should be determined by it's psychological effect.
This conclusion should quite clearly follow from the premises.
I'm expecting objection to be to the premises rather than the inference.
If theism is a religious belief and religious beliefs are to be judged by their effect then it logically follows that theism should be too.
As far as I can see, theism itself won't have a particular effect - it will depend on the characteristics of the particular theistic God in question.
This leads me to believe that theologies should be judged case by case rather than all theism discredited.
 

So that's my argument broken down into logical steps.
The conclusion that the scientific justification of God isn't necessary to justify religious belief, that it is to be judged by the impact on the believer, and that impact would depend on the theology attached to this God. I can't imagine any effects that would be apply whatever the characteristics of the God.

This attacks a particular kind of theology rather than religion in general.


My argument is that the system of evaluation that is appropiate depends on the characteristics of what is being evaluated.


I never said we had to purely judge individual beliefs.
Obviously group-held beliefs can be criticised in the same way.
My argument only makes claims about what kind of criticisms are appropiate.


Not really...
I'm showing a trend within theistic practice using examples.
Yes, it's not an absolute proof and it will leave me vulnerable to counter examples, but until these counter examples appear I think I atleast have the 'presumption'.
(Is that the right wording? I mean to say I have enough for the burden of proof to be on someone to find a marble in the box.)




Here is where I'll discuss the difference between moderatism and fundamentalism.
Both have the same religion at heart, just that fundamentalists clash their religion with secular knowledge and sometimes even common sense!
Moderates have implicitly recognised the value in religion.
In recognising what religion is for they recognise where it doesn't belong.
When they are telling stories they are telling stories.
When they are joking they are joking.
When they are being scientific they are being scientific, and when they are being religious they are being religious.
Furthermore, they place more emphasis on their religion incorporating common sense values wheras the fundamentalist will take their values more on doctrine.




Yes, but to you that 'same' thing is the number of irrational 'scientific beliefs'.
The way I see it, moderates enjoy their religious practice to a healthy moderate degree.
Fundamentalists abuse religion and apply it where it shouldn't be applied.




What I mean is that scientific belief doesn't fullfill the function the spiritual belief does.
Acceptance of religion and spirituality depends a lot on the aesthetics and the aesthetics of someone who deals a lot in scientific fact is perhaps more likely to find religion to be less appealing. They will find something else to fit these 'human needs' that people fill with religion.





There maybe a couple of counter examples out there but I'd be surprised if it didn't atleast hold as a strong rule of thumb.

Sorry for formatting problems in that last post.  I don't know why all of my formatting disappeared.

 

Ok... solid point.  I call "Unsupported hypothesis!"

I understand this.  I just don't buy it because it sounds like part of an argument (not a hypothesis) that relies on special pleading:

1) Belief is different for theists.  (Unsupported hypothesis)

2) Therefore, we should treat religion differently than anything else in regard to its rationality.  (Special pleading)

 

Belief is belief.  Practice is practice.  I get what you're saying.  Religious people practice things that sometimes work out pretty well, and sometimes make them feel good.  These practices are done because of their belief in a particular religion.  Therefore, there is a rationally justifiable reason to say that their behavior is rational.

I'm ok with that.  However, they still do some things that are irrational because of their particular theistic belief, unless of course their belief has literally no effect on their behavior whatsoever, in which case, we might as well stop talking about this and have a beer.  (Or, in the case of their religious belief lining up 100% with rationality, in which case we can't very well call it a religion, so we can still grab that beer.)

How the person applies the proposition that they believe is how much "faith" they put in their belief -- where they fall on the continuum between fundamentalist literalist and moderate figurativist.  (If I can coin those terms for the moment.)

How a person justifies it is either by faith or reason.  If faith, then it is irrational.  If reason, it is either valid or invalid.

I understand the claim.  I disagree completely with your "slightly differing" hypothesis.  Yes, I get that moderates treat religion as a much more cultural and social thing than a strict description of truth.  We already have a way to describe that without saying that it's a different class of belief.  We say, "Moderates treat religion as a much more cultural and social thing than a strict description of truth."  Once we've done that, we can look at what the social practices are and evaluate them against their effectiveness in promoting happiness and societal well being.  No need to invent new classifications just because it's religious in nature.

Yep.  I understand that.  You proposed a slightly different definition, but then you don't say what it is.  Without so much as a "By your leave," you then start looking for evidence that your undefined definition exists.

Poor hypothesizing, if you ask me.

1) "Believe" means something different only when applied to religious moderates.

2) See, they don't behave like fundies.

3) Therefore, I'm right about the definition.

Feh...

No, I have the belief that a person's genes contain a blueprint for basic morality, and humans will naturally adopt a version of it consistent with the prevailing beliefs, both scientific and religious.

You seem to be falling into a trap that theists often lay.  They claim that people are either not smart enough, or not moral enough to be moral without some other motivation, or some mythology to explain it to them.  I see no evidence of this, since all societies have had some system of morality, whether they were religious or not.  Morality, it has been demonstrated, is not usually a matter of reason.  It's a matter of "gut feelings" -- feelings we have because natural selection has honed us into a species that very closely follows a modified tit-for-tat game strategy, and emotions are the most cost-effective way for our genes to enforce behaviors.

To be specific, I don't think people need an explanation or a mythology.  They will behave morally because it is human nature to do so.

We have these things built into our genes.  When we behave morally, we are rewarded socially.  We like getting those rewards, so we are inspired to do them again.  The will power comes from the simple fact that acting morally is usually in our best interest.

I think science clearly demonstrates that people are mostly inherently good.  Even the cruelest of despots in history, if you cataloged every act they ever did, from the mundane to the immense, would be shown to have acted within social convention (morally) virtually all the time.  We take notice of the gross exceptions, and so they seem dominant.  Think about this for a second, and you will see the truth of it.

I'd like specific definitions of each application of the word.

 

 

I'll come back to (1) later.
For now I just want to prove that if (1) was supported then something a bit like (2) would logically follow.
I also want to leave fundamentalists and moderates out of it as they are clouding the issue.
We'll talk about them again once the groundwork is clear.
There's various points you made that I wanted to make answers to but for now I want to focus on very specific points.
I'm sure that those points will pop up later on anyway.

For this post I'm going to try to stick to two minimalistic points that I need in place before I can do any more.
I'd like the rebuttals to be purely onto whether you agree or not and why.
I'd like to avoid "where I'm going with this" because:
a) It'll take away attention from the debate of the truth or falsity of the premise in question.
b) The whole point in breaking down the argument into premises is because we already know that you disagree with the argument as a whole, so now we need to know what you think of each premise individually, in its own context.
Here are the two premises I'll be forwarding:

(1) Evaluating beliefs as 'irrational' or 'rational' is only appropiate because we want beliefs to be accurate.
(2) Through the diversity of language, it should come as no surprise that there are a number of variations on the definition of 'belief'.
To claim that one is the correct one would be a positive claim that the claiment themselves must prove.

These will both be premises in the overall argument.
By narrowing the focus to just two relatively uncontroversial points at a time we'll be able to decisively settle steps rather than loosely commenting on the whole itself.

(1) Evaluating beliefs as 'irrational' or 'rational' is only appropiate because we want beliefs to be accurate.

Premise 1) There is a reason why we make rational/irrational evaluations on belief.
It is not just a matter of taste or cultural fetish, there's a good reason why we do this.
Either you agree with this or you disagree with this.
If you agree then the following premises follow:

Premise 1a) Applications of 'rational' and 'irrational' are to be justified through practical reason.
Premise 1b) The reason why rational and irrational are to be applied as they are is related to the 'human practice' we call belief.

Premise 2) We evaluate a belief as 'rational' if and only if reason shows it to be accurate.
It is also the only criteria we have for considering a belief to be rational.
If you disagree with this then I would like and explanation and some counter examples.
If you agree with premises 1 and 2 then this follows:

Premise 2a) We evaluate a belief as rational if it is accurate, and there is a reason why we evaluate a belief as rational. Combination of (2) and (1a)
Premise 2b) If an evaluation of 'rational' is favourable then that shows that we want beliefs to be accurate. Follows from (2a) and (1b)
Premise 2c) That 'rational' and 'irrational' are appropiate evaluations is because we want belief to be accurate. Follows from (2b and 1a)

Conclusion) Evaluating beliefs as 'irrational' or 'rational' is only appropiate because we want beliefs to be accurate. Follows from 2c

I've broken down the argument into steps.
It'll be interesting to see where your disagreement lies.
On to the second one:

(2) It is quite possible that there is a 'human practice' that we call 'belief' that is similar to the 'belief in context of rationality' above in every single way except the purpose - it will have a different purpose than to 'being accurate'.

Premise 1) Language is diverse. A single word will likely have many variations with no absolute rule that connects them.
You didn't disagree with this earlier and it is a claim of Wittgenstein's that is commonly accepted.
You've probably heard me use the example of 'game' a several times.
There's no single rule that determines whether an activity is a game.
We apply the term to a variety of activities that have loose relations.
If you still have no disagreement then the following premises follow:

Premise 1a) 'Belief' as in the context of 'rational/irrational' evaluation need not be assumed to be the only definition, even if it is the most common one.
Premise 1b) A similar human practice with just one slight difference (i.e. the purpose) might also have been given the same name.
Premise 1c) It follows that there could be another context of 'Belief' where the purpose differs to 'being accurate'.

Conclusion) Such a usage of 'belief' could possibly be contained within our language.
Evidence of such a usage would include observations of people using the word 'belief' this way in real life.
I.e. Using the word belief to denote a 'human practice' with a different purpose than to 'being accurate'

Again, the steps have been clearly marked.
I need to see where your disagreement lies.
Once we have settled the debate on these premises, I'll make a further argument about them.

 

Is this debate dead?

I can tell you haven't read the book.  It's not just an explanation of where morality came from.  It's an explanation of why we are moral, regardless of whether or not we have an external belief system about it, or are aware of the cause of it.

You are still going to get back to the same place we've always gotten.  You can describe morality irrationally or rationally.  Religion describes it irrationally, and is therefore... irrational.  It's perfectly easy to explain morality rationally.  Once you understand it, it becomes easy to see that mythological frameworks don't actually promote rational morality.

 

Me and Strafio are discussing this here.

My view is this: (essentially I agree with Hamby that they are different degrees of the same thing, not different kinds)

Moderate religion is simply taking the parts of religion that conform to the social and moral zeitgeist of the time. You do this your called a moderate.

Fundamentalist religion is simply taking the religion, in its original form, as applying it into an different era. You do that and your called a fundamentalist.

Thus the only real difference is whether the content of the belief conforms to todays social standards.

When people declare that fundamentalism is a distortion of 'real' religion, all it does is reveal that they are incapable of putting the religion into historical and social context; they're stuck on their perch in their social/moral zeitgeist and can only analyze it from that perspective, thus, 'real' religion is merely what they think is moral, as per their societies moral zeitgeist.

As I've said before: there is no such thing as 'real' religion. Religion is simply the individual projecting their beliefs, their desires, their ideologies and their prejudices into a god in order to gain a divine mandate for what they want, and obviously what they want will be dictated by their society, which explains why scripture is full of things we would consider fundamentalist in any modern society: because when a religion is created it inherits the morals and standards of the society within which it is created, via the individuals that created it.

I think you're depending too much on the function of the beliefs when I don't think it changes the nature of the belief itself.
You either believe a given proposition corresponds to reality, the objective world, or you do not. The function the belief can vary, but the nature of the belief (whether it is held to be true or false) still remains, for every case.

Just because someone holds their religious beliefs for reasons such as living a good life, inspiration, etc, does not in any way mean they cannot hold the beliefs to be literal/historical. Furthermore, I would content that all theists hold their beliefs for such reasons (living a good life, morality, etc). Fundamentalists just feel that in order to live a good moral life you have to turn to the original form of the religion. The moderates on the other hand recognize that somethings are incompatible to current moral/social standards and rejected stuff accordingly. This isn't different kinds of religion, its different degrees of the same thing.

I think the root of the problem is Strafio's definition of fundamentalism. He argues that fundamentalism is merely holding literal/historical belief. Any moderate who make a literal/factual claims is merely dabbling in fundamentalism. So belief in things like a literal resurrection, miracles, virgin births, or making the design argument mean you're a fundamentalist!

The problem with this position is that it is clearly the case that most, of not, all theists can and do hold literal beliefs of some kind, this means that under Strafio's definition of fundamentalism, almost all theists would be fundamentalist.

So, I see the word "need."  If you're not claiming that they need a mythology, what are you claiming that people need besides an explanation?

 

The moderates in my view know it's lie, yet they are dishonest. The cherry pick, so their only morality is really just whatever fells good, do it.

The hard core fundies may be delusional. So it's hard to critisize someone who may be suffering from brainwashing or a mental disorder. The may be scared to death of God and Hell.

Explanation is nothing without the will. Inspiration is about handling the will.
I don't have enough experience and research in psychology to give reasoned argument against this.
What's more, it's a tangent off the original topic so don't feel the need to discuss it anymore.
I can say that everything I do know about human psychology (and although I know little, that doesn't mean I'm just talking about naive intuitions here) disagrees with this.
It's not really something I'd be good at debating on, and there's other topics I'd rather tackle.

Well yes. My position is that an explanation is the least important out of the three.
That's a claim about explanations in general.
It doesn't matter what the explanation is at hand.
To be honest, maybe I was in "opposition mode" when I made it the least important, but you are certainly unbalanced in your preference of it.

Who said anything about it being objectively irrational?
I've made an argument that religious faith is a different type of practice to normal belief.
These differences result that it has a different form of evaluation.
There was a full on argument which you took a look at, but I didn't get the impression that you've grasped it. This isn't a put down.
It's a complex philosophical argument, much more complex than the ones Todangst used to try and get through to me and they took me months to get my head around.

We saw a tanget because you produced a counter argument saying "There are naturalistic explanations for morality etc therefore religion not needed"
That rested on the assumption that all a person needed in life was an explanation.
That's how we got to here. Anyway, I'm through with the tangent now.
If you were willing to accept, hypothetically for the sake of argument, the a person needed more than explanation, then I've got an argument that religious faith is a human practice that has a different function in life to explanation. Therefore it should be judged by that function, not by whether it gives an accurate explanation.
The logical steps are all laid out above.
If you have any more questions or rebuttals on the main argument then I'll watch this space.

(1) is something I'm still willing to debate.
Is it just a matter of evidence then?
You agree that it's atleast a hypothetical possibility that the evidence can affirm or falsify?

(2) doesn't represent my position.
I'm not trying to make a general argument in favour of religion.
What I'm arguing is that it's an a-rational practice and arguments such as "Religion offers motivation for people to be moral" can justify it.

You also seemed to mistake me for justifying religious belief in general.
I'm not arguing for religious belief in general and I have no intention to defend most religions in the world.
My case is just to point out where the justification and criticism of religion should be.
I still disagree with many of your points in two.
a) Asserted that we were 'naturally moral' but you didn't make it clear what you meant by that.
You used it to argue that we don't need 'motivation', but I think that was ignoring that such motivation was part of the 'natural process' that made us so moral.
Maybe the arguments in the book you recommended do have some relevence...


d) Showed that you misunderstood my claim.
I wasn't claiming at all that "Person + religion > person without religion", I was saying that religion can benefit a person.
In life we go through good times and bad time, each of us have our own strengths and weaknesses.
Depending on where you're at, a religious belief might do wonders for your character.
Maybe once this character building has been done you don't need religion to maintain it, and perhaps you have some other weaknesses that leaving religion has allowed you deal with.
What I'm trying to do here is avoid such abstract, generalised claims and point out that the value of religion is tied to the person's situation.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I specifically want to stick up for the value of religion.
I think people in general over-estimate its value rather than under estimate.
Besides, the only point I want to settle in this topic is that religion is a-rational and should be 'value judged' rather than 'accuracy judged'.
If a rational investigation into the value of religion shows it to be necessarily bad thing then so be it.
I just think that's where more focus should be put into the argument.

Xlint debating you all. I think most of us would agree that any positives of religion could and would be better accomplished by logic and reasoning, which of course means being actively compassionate, moral, loving,  .....

I suppose if a christian was ready to jump from the bridge, I might yell, " but Jesus loves you", but that means I love you, which I would expain later .... ( well, if he didn't jump ..... ouch      

What is rational about theism?

Hamby nailed it there , I do believe .... ....  

    .... "a lie can yield false positives." ....

    Wow, I love language ..... it is FUN      

 

Let's be clear here, do I worship life ? YES,  ME , and the way them girls talk and walk. .... I hug trees too, oh wow and my flower friends, while my friends the birds sing     

Rhad used a good example to show that running and cycling are both competing forms of exercise, but choosing either one could be a rational decision.
I could likewise hold that theism and atheism are both potentially rational choices.
Besides, I'm not claiming that religion is rational, just not 'irrational'.
That might mean rational but for now I'm leaning towards 'a-rational'
(a-rational means reason is irrelevent, a bit like taste)

My position would probably have made more sense if you'd read more of the topic than just that one line.

I've only seen descriptions, not definitions.

Belief: a mental representation of a concept, in which the person accepts the concept as true.

Action is not mentioned in this.  You are equating belief and action without defining a new category of belief such that action is necessary and sufficient for belief to exist.

No, it's not.  Belief can and does motivate behavior, but at a psychological level, belief is simply a mental state.

I just did.

And all you've said is that some beliefs weigh more heavily on a person's decision making processes than others, and religious beliefs in moderates tend not to have high value.  So what?

...which, so far, doesn't exist.

This is very simple, Strafio.  You're equating belief and action, and they are most certainly not the same.  Just think of one instance that you acted against something you believed to be true, and you've proven the point.

If you want to talk about the behaviors of moderates vs. fundamentalists, go right ahead.  If you want to talk about the relative degree of certainty of belief, fine.  Mitigating social factors?  Great.  Cultural practice vs. private belief?  Dandy.

You cannot, without a lot more precision, equate belief and action.

Then it's not arational.

While we're at it, could you tell me something else that's devoid of rational content?  Don't say "a stop sign" because that's an object, not a concept, and once we apply the conceptual purpose of a stop sign, it gains rational meaning within context.

If you're going to claim that religion is arational, you're going to have to claim that it has no purpose.  If it has no purpose, then it's extraneous and useless.  If it causes one bad thing to happen while adding nothing, it is irrational to adhere to it.

I feel like I'm going in circles. 

I understand that you think religion can serve a purpose by which it can be judged.  Duh.

You completely avoided my comment that many irrational beliefs can produce false positives.  This doesn't make the beliefs any less irrational.  It makes the results positive.

Actions and beliefs are not the same.  Unless you can philosophically show that actions are necessary and sufficient for beliefs, you're sunk.  Beliefs are necessary and sufficient for actions, but the reverse is not true.

 

It is not. Running and cycling are both physical exercises and both can be performed sequentially to maintain physical health. Theism and atheism are entirely antithetic and definitely can not be applied sequentially nor parallelistically.

Then proceed.
Prove theism is rational.

Theism is a belief; it is either rational or irrational. It cannot be nonpartisan to belief.

Since your contention to theism is about rationality, you must argue for rationality or irrationality; otherwise it appears you are saying everything is either rational or 'irrelevant'. But the argument cannot be irrelevant because it is relevant to 'rational' or 'irrational'.

It did not.

Thanks to Strafio. Understanding ( love the enemy ) is the way to eliminating dogma. That is not appeasement. I think when we can all someday say, with conviction, "we are simply god", meaning nothing separate to worship, we will have made an important advancement towards universal happiness. I AM an optimist. Thanks RRS for progress ....    

 

It is your claim that theism is “a-rational” which you defined as being irrelevant to reason which you have failed to justify.

 

 

So then you do think theism is irrational. Good.

What an awesome thread!

I agree with everything in your OP, Straf. I think there is a solid line between believing things that you acknowledge are outside reason and believing things that you think are scientifically true. To the extent that moderates fall into the first camp, my approach has always been to say that I don't give a shit what you believe, as long as you keep it to yourself. The problem with theism today is the way it has broken out of churches and spilled into the public square. Absent that phenomenon, I probably wouldn't even bother to post on these boards.

I also think that you can have rational grounds for holding a theistic belief that are entirely divorced from the truth or falsehood of the belief itself. Let's say you are in a trench in a war and clinging to the belief that you will go to heaven if you die is the only way you can summon the courage to fight. The irrational belief in this case has a very rational use, so it is rational to hold it rather than the reverse. So the belief is irrational, but the person remains rational.

If we ever found a moderate theist that had any inclination whatsoever to join us in confronting fundamentalists I'm sure we would welcome their assistance. But most moderates can't do that. In the first place, the arguments that separate moderate belief from fundamentalist belief are too complex and subtle for most people. Most people think that the choice is between tolerating belief in God or not tolerating belief in God. Given that moderates, in some sense, want to believe in God they think they are, in fairness, obligated to tolerate the fundamentalist's belief in God. Even arguments against the wackiest fundy beliefs make them squirm as they inevitably involve attacks on the veracity of the Bible and the philosophical underpinnings of faith. While the moderate is not the target of those attacks, he can still feel their sting and experience an unpleasant cognitive dissonance.

Remember when Harris told the atheist convention that we shouldn't use the word atheist? His philosophical and rhetorical points were bang-on, but I think a consensus emerged that the word atheist is too valuable as a well-understood label to abandon at this stage in our struggle. I would say the same thing about your post. There is no doctrinal need for us to challenge the private beliefs of moderates, but it is politically necessary for us to carry the fight against fundamentalists right to the root of the problem: faith, and the unfortunate consequences it has for the stupid.

See the main topic.
If there's a flaw in there see if you can point it out.
Anyone can just say the justification failed.
Heck, theists say that everytime they don't understand our arguments.

I think the difference between religious belief and other beliefs is in the fact that religious beliefs are held through faith. They are an act of will rather than a natural consequence of brain function. Think of Winston seeing five fingers under torture when O'Brien was really only holding up four.

Dennet questions whether this kind of belief even exists or not, saying it is possible that these are only professed beliefs that do not act in the mind in the same way as real beliefs at all. I suppose one could argue that moderates only profess belief and do not really have it, if beliefs must be about one's real opinion of how the world really is.

Thanks. To be honest I wasn't expecting much of that kind of reaction.
I was figuring that I was challenging a position held by almost everyone here.
I guess it can be too easy to assume a conformity and underestimate the diversity within a community.
I remember people commenting about that time when Dawkins, Harris, Dennet and Hitchens got together for a discussion and people were saying stuff like:
"What was really surprising was on how much these fellow atheists disagreed on various subjects.


I don't know. In England, the biggest criticism against Dawkins is that he treats moderates too much like fundamentalists.
They claim he doesn't understand moderate religion.
The way I see it, moderates are as willing to stand up to fundamentalists as much as atheists and agnostics, it just depends on whether they are apathetic or find themselves in debate.
I think with atheists, because their beliefs are more likely to be attacked, they find themselves more likely to be in debate.
In my experience, moderates have always fought their corner once debate is thrown upon them.
I've seen my parents debate with my grandad over his religious views, be disgusted at certain things a priest has said in a church.
(They didn't like it when one said that Hinduism is the religion of the devil and that they will burn in hell.)
Many of the biology teachers who fought against having to teach intelligent design where moderate Christians.
Do you watch West Wing? President Bartlet is a faithful Catholic, but he demonstrates on many occasions his ability to lay into a fundie.

In the same way, many atheists and agnostics out there are pretty apathetic.
They see religious nuts as the odd minority that no one takes seriously anyway and just shrug and leave them to it.
So I think that if we develloped the right rhetoric and right arguments we could make.
Ofcourse, it's one thing to say all these ifs and maybes, another for it to work in real life.
 

Perhaps.
Having said that, I think there's plenty of potential for arguments that damn fundamentalists without touching moderatism, it's just not the sort of arguments we've been develloping here.
Anyway, cheers for the comments.
I wouldn't come here if I didn't enjoy hard debate but it's nice to sometimes get a compliment too!