Should this be allowed?

Sortelli · Post by **Sortelli** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:08 am

See if you can make Teller say something!

Blackaby · Post by **Blackaby** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:10 am

I like POD. I reckon they have a good message.

Warbaby1 · Post by **Warbaby1** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:40 am

If you're behind the 'do unto others' bit, then please avoid bashing other people's beliefs without provocation, especially considering that CW is more than polite for her part.

Firstly, there was no bashing of anyone's religion. I asked for an explanation of how the the word "rational" relates to Christian belief. If the tone of my question caused offence, I apologise. But the question stands.

Is it rational to discard thousands of years of belief?

Depends if the belief has any credibility or makes any sense. For thousands of years people believed in shape-shifting gods who threw lightning bolts around, but there's very little support for those ideas now. Longevity of a belief does nothing to change its rationality.

Is it rational to face death alone and without any hope for an afterlife?

Yes, it is. Not very comforting, granted; but given how many conflicting, unproven theories there are about what happens after we die, I'd say that skepticism and wider reading is a more rational approach to the eternal question.

Is it rational to deny the existence of something simply because you've never seen it?

No. But I never made the argument that it was.

Sortelli · Post by **Sortelli** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:54 am

warbaby1 wrote:Firstly, there was no bashing of anyone's religion.

I'd personally argue that non-religious belief systems are every bit as irrational as Christianity itself (and that it's a good thing) but you clearly associated Christianity's irrationality with a bunch of strawmen.

What Christians go around extolling martyrdom and blood-drinking? I understand the inference, but you deliberately skewed ideas about faith, self-sacrifice and communal wine to make an unkind point.

Warbaby1 · Post by **Warbaby1** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:27 am

No, I didn't.

The Roman Catholic church maintains that communion wine becomes the actual blood of Christ. As for martyrdom - probably the most fundamental tenet of Christian faith is that Jesus sacrificed himself in order to atone for the sins of mankind.

These are not the beliefs of some lunatic fringe. This is basic Christianity.

Sortelli · Post by **Sortelli** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 3:10 am

Don't be disingenious. Jesus did not pass out cups of his own blood at the last supper. Why not throw in canibalism with the communion wafers while you are at it? Some people take the symbolism of communion very seriously but they don't serve blood and meat, and you jumped all over CW over things she didn't even bring up.

RPin · Post by **RPin** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 3:26 am

I rather like Serenity, despite the art being flawy at times.

http://www.4serenity.org/ (Some guy hosting .rar files of the first four volumes. He's also hosting hentai manga that I've been translating, so it's quite a curious mix you got there...)

Warbaby1 · Post by **Warbaby1** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:26 am

Sortelli wrote:Don't be disingenious. Jesus did not pass out cups of his own blood at the last supper. Why not throw in canibalism with the communion wafers while you are at it? Some people take the symbolism of communion very seriously but they don't serve blood and meat, and you jumped all over CW over things she didn't even bring up.

I really don't believe that I "jumped all over" anybody. It certainly wasn't my intention.

I do not understand why it is so FREAKING HARD for a Christain to write something for NON CHRISTIANS about Christianity that would be able to present the whole thing rationally

This is the statement I was responding to. I attempted to illustrate exactly why it is "so freaking hard" for Christians to present their beliefs rationally, by pointing out what those beliefs are. And the dogma of transubstantiation is one of the beliefs that rationalists may find hard to swallow.

Again, I apologise for wording my response in a way that people have found offensive.

Sortelli · Post by **Sortelli** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:57 am

In that spirit I do agree with you, people can't reach conclusions about faith through reason alone, so you can't make a purely rational argument in favor of one faith over another.

I think CW was just lamenting that a lot of the people who try come out looking unreasonable, even to others of their faith. I'm sure she would feel that way if someone did a weird comic about how great it was to drink the blood of Christ.

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:21 am

Warbaby, I also thought your wording was unnecessarily harsh, especially given that of all the Christians I have ever met, CW is probably one of the very most sane and reasonable.

That said, you appologized, and she doesn't need a white knight to defend her. I'm all for just answering one of your points:

You wanted to know how the word "rational" relates to the Christian belief system.

By a hard science definition it does not - God can not be proven experimentally to exist, so at best he is an untestable hypothesis that may at some point be discarded for a more solid and testable theory.

But by a human definition, it's entirely reasonable. Everyone believes in something. I don't mean this by the religious definition of belief, but instead by the concept of accepting something as truth without evidence of that truth.

Examples:

I believe with every fiber of my being that we are not alone in the universe; that other intelligent life exists. We may never FIND it, but that does not alter my belief in it. There are lots of people like me.

Most people have at least one person in their lives whom they trust enough to accept whatever they say as truth without checking. Love is in the end, a belief system.

Despite facts to the contrary, many people believe that it is safer to drive than to fly. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, safer to drive than to fly.

Despite honestly wishing it were not so, most people if pressured, will admit to having some preconcieved notions about some group of people who are not like themselves, be that race, gender, religion, opposite political party, choice of lifestyle, culture, etcetera. I am not suggesting everyone is a bigot - just that it's a rare person indeed who doesn't hold some belief about some group of people that may not be supported by fact.

Huge numbers of women in the US believe they are ugly in some way, It's simply not reasonable to assume the majority of US women have some gene that makes them Ugly. Many of these women hold beliefs contrary to fact.

There are literally thousands of examples I could cite. My point?

Everyone believes something. This implies that either the planet as a whole is not rational (which after you take the "Well DUH!" joke out of the mix, really doesn't make sense), or the capacity to believe despite absence of observation or facts to the contrary must be part of what it means to be human.

If the capacity to believe is a part of humanity, then Christians and their belief system must have it's roots in rational thought, regardless of how their dogma and traditions may appear to a non-Christian. To a christian, the Christian belief system is rational.

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:17 am

I believe in God like I believe in phonons. Bear with me.

Phonons are 'particles of sound' travelling through a material. It turns out that if you calculate the equations for sound waves, you can turn those equations around so that they instead describe fictional particles. It then becomes a lot easier to work the equations, as particle movements are easier to handle than waves. We know sound is a wave, but we can come up with useful and predictive description of it by treating it as a particle phenomena. Phonons do not actually exist, but by pretending they exist it's a little easier to understand and predict the world.

Similarly, I don't believe that God exists. But by pretending He exists, and is giving dictates to legions of worshippers, I am better able to understand and predict those worshippers and society as a whole. We're not even talking about religion anymore -- this is a tool for sociology and mass psychology that helps us understand the world. It helps those that are in the religion even more than it helps me, observing them from outside.

So does that make belief in God irrational?

Meh, I guess so. But it's too bloody *useful*. Sometimes irrationality is a good thing, a necessary thing.

Is the entire human race irrational? Absolutely, and no joke intended. As fleshy, fallible creatures the path of strictly logical thought is alien to us, and it's a wonder that we can describe pure logic at all, even if just mathematically. Human beings are dream machines, and we create things that do not exist but that must be treated as if they are real. Only androids and vulcans are logical all the time...and they, also, only exist in the minds of humanity.

Warbaby1 · Post by **Warbaby1** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:38 am

Thank you both for such considered replies. You certainly get no arguments from me against the usefulness of religious beliefs, whether I ascribe to them or not.

Thank you also for the lesson in manners. In future I'll try to express myself in a way that's less inflammatory.

Killbert-Robby · Post by **Killbert-Robby** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:45 am

For me religion is an iffy subject. Basically because I'm against any form of organized religion. I mean, its fine if you believe in a higher power, its fine if you and a group of friends believe in the same thing, but I start getting pissed off when people are being forced what to believe.

Personally, I believe every person should be to their own. If that means someone wants to follow the religious beliefs that are associated with Christianity, fine. But rest well knowing you're going to heaven, don't force others along with you.

Personally I don't believe in God, but I don't believe in a lack of a God. While I'm a man of science who will happily accept the theory of evolution, accept we're orbiting around the sun, this is because I personally think these ideas apply to me. And yet at the same time, I won't ignore anything without solid fact. Like Ryan, I believe in life on other planets. I believe that there are infinite universes and that they encompass every single possibility. I believe that love, though scientists try and explain it with hormones and psychology and body language, is still more magic than science. Hell, I'll readily say I believe in magic. Not even magic in the "I cast Fire Missile!" sense, but just that some things will never be explained by science. Love, dreams, memory.

Science is a strong force in our lives, but I refuse to see everything as being JUST science. There are things out there we just can't explain.

This is what religion is for.

Long story short - People's beliefs will ALWAYS seem strange to other people. Be it belief in a person, or belief in a religion. Putting down a belief is wrong. So is trying to put it on a pedistal. These comics aren't REAL religion. A truly religious person would not smack their face in the page of a comic book promoting his own Bible. Religion is something within each individual. And so arguing against a whole religion is completely irrational.

And as a by-the-by, the the belief is that the wine SYMBOLISES the blood, as far as I know.

Black Sparrow · Post by **Black Sparrow** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:49 am

That's beautiful, Robby. I'm partial to private rather than organized religion as well... but I could never have put it so eloquently...

Evil Jamie! · Post by **Evil Jamie!** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:57 am

Some believe that the wine literally becomes the blood, other believe it symbolizes it. I’m with the 'symbolizes' group, personally.

Blackaby · Post by **Blackaby** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:02 am

Given that I only ever work for organised religion-institutions (right now, teh pope), I am all for them.

Escushion · Post by **Escushion** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:10 am

I think what a lot of people miss is that beliefs are just that--beliefs. They're not facts, and it's a matter of faith to have them. I think it was Dostoevsky who said "Even if you can prove to me with every matter of scientific fact that Jesus Christ didn't exist, I would still believe he did."

Caduceus · Post by **Caduceus** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:17 am

Good book about Christianity, well liked by non-Christians:

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor. She is Catholic specifically.

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:30 am

blackaby wrote:Given that I only ever work for organised religion-institutions (right now, teh pope), I am all for them.

You work for the pope? You work for the pope. You work for the pope? ('against' is not 'for', you do realize, right?

)

Escushion wrote:I think what a lot of people miss is that beliefs are just that--beliefs. They're not facts, and it's a matter of faith to have them.

Ah, but the problem is that beliefs create reality, if only for the people who hold the beliefs. If you challenge a person's beliefs, you challenge their reality. When two people with conflicting views of reality meet, there is bound to be friction.

Which is why I can't get past this Blackaby and the Pope thing.

Escushion · Post by **Escushion** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 7:31 am

Flannery O'Connor was probably more critical of Catholics than any non-Catholic of her day.