The Truth?

[NeverSayAnything]

You've never met a Christian who prays and talks about their personal relationship with Jesus, or a Wiccan who does "magic" and talks about communing with the Goddess? You can't have met many religious people if that's the case. .

I have met Christians and Wiccans who have those experiences, but both groups would deny that they are reducible or even match up perfectly with physical neurological activity. That is what I meant when I said it is not their view of God, that they would say neurotheology is misguided because it is reductionist. .

It seems like a substantial leap of faith to argue that Hitchens simply wanted to build understanding between the religious and nonreligious. All his public statements on the matter seem designed to attack the former group and lionize the latter, which is rarely a sign of someone who wants peace. As a rule of thumb, if you're focused on "winning", you're not listening. .

I do think Hitchens wanted there to be understanding between non-religious and religious believers, or more generally just of religion itself. He had a very negative view of it, but that is not based on a shallow reading of the Bible. In debates with pastors and other religious leaders, several of them agreed with him that if Christianity is false, then it is not good for the world. He was not simply trying to attack religious believers, but their beliefs. Likewise, he didn't think someone being non-religious automatically made them praiseworthy.

I'm sure they would reject the assertion if it was stated in those terms; these are people who like to think of themselves as beyond such things after all. Nonetheless, they are placing absolute faith in their philosophy in much the same way that Objectivists and Satanists do, which can be determined by observing the amount of ridicule they direct toward the "unenlightened". By trying to counter what they see as the insidious effect of religion, they've adopted a faith-based worldview that's no more moral than that of the religious extremists that they hate. .

What would you say their philosophy is? Naturalism? Empiricism? I think whatever you come up with here, there would be counterexamples. Dawkins' book The God Delusion is not the best book on religion by any means, but it makes a great point in reminding us that while most religious believers affirm that they are 100% convinced of their worldview, most atheists would fall far short of that mark. Hitchens' writes that challenging beliefs is meaningless if you're not willing to challenge what seems most obvious to you. You could say that this is simply rhetoric and not really what they believed, but that just seems disingenous. Again, I'm not sure what "world-view" you think they had as a result of their views on the negative effects of religion. They certainly made strong cases individually about how religion causes harm, and despite the subtitle of Hitchen's book "How Religion Poisons Everything" they were not beyond admitting that religion does some good. Indeed Hitchens loved to ask whether the good done by religious believers was done because the person believed it, or would have been done otherwise. It doesn't seem farfetched to say that the latter is true, though I have met Christians who say if they didn't believe in God they would be liars, thiefs, and murderers. But what are we to think of such people?

Rational argument has serious limitations as well. It's slow, consumes a great deal of time and energy, requires that the person be properly educated both in logic/critical thinking in general and in the subject at hand, oftentimes causes choice paralysis, and so on. It's become widely accepted in the social sciences (and confirmed by computer scientists working on more advanced AIs) that so-called heuristics--mental rules of thumb that work in most cases but not all, and underlie most fallacious reasoning-- are in many cases the most effective means of approaching a problem. The key is in learning when to go with your gut and when to ignore it and use your head, which to my mind is the essence of what people call "wisdom". .

I see your point about the limitations of rational argument, and I even agree that in general our moral intuition is right and should be followed(which I think is our built in heuristics for morality). However as I said before, these intuitions often come up with contradictory verdicts on specific cases, and where can we turn then except to rational debate? I think that such cases of contradictory intuitions are clearly some of those where we should use our head. (I'm a bit wise?!) There must be other cases, since no one should think their intuition is infallible.

I've thought a lot about this last topic (one of my majors is Philosophy), because it bothers me that in general disagreements are settled by appeals to intuition. It is inevitable since even wanting to have everything done by rational debate requires axioms, and those axioms by definition must be unjustified(except by intuition). In general I think we can rely on intuition in everyday life, but ultimately the defense of such things must be rational argument. Perhaps this is just because mathematics is my other major though.

[Ollie_94]

Religion is like a football team, your only going to support one club.

[Stridar]

I don't believe anyone has heard he voice of god except prophets like Moses and Jesus. God is always listening.

[ECB]

Maybe this will interest someone?

[ImShifty]

its all bull shit, the only thing that matters is what has been proven. religion is just something used by stupid people to help them cope with why were here...

[Aisha216]

Satan and hells army yes I am a satanist but before you go to judge me you must relize I have a good reason why I am the truth needs to be heard no longer should people live in the lies of what's nothing but. Hoax http://www.joyofsatan.org/ this website proves all Christians lies go look for yourself and see what us satanist really are!!! FOR SATAN AND HIS DEMONS ARE NOT EVIL SATAN IS OUR TRUE CREATOR!!!!

[steff_anie]

That's the thing though. There shouldn't be many "religions." As most people don't know, religions are a man-made thing. It's just another word for a club. There is only one truth. The only truth. It's not called a religion because it's the way of life we're suppose to be following but all fail to do because we are not perfect.
Now, I can sit here and tell you what you should follow, but then you'd say I'm choosing a religion.
It's just one of those things where you must listen to your gut instinct and your heart. Pray to God, and He'll listen to you whether you believe it or not.
Like I said, there's only one truth. All these other religions are just distractions.

[Mahometan]

That's the thing though. There shouldn't be many "religions." As most people don't know, religions are a man-made thing. It's just another word for a club. There is only one truth. The only truth. It's not called a religion because it's the way of life we're suppose to be following but all fail to do because we are not perfect.
Now, I can sit here and tell you what you should follow, but then you'd say I'm choosing a religion.
It's just one of those things where you must listen to your gut instinct and your heart. Pray to God, and He'll listen to you whether you believe it or not.
Like I said, there's only one truth. All these other religions are just distractions.

And what makes you so sure about that?