36 replies to this topic

[asian_american]

An article I like:

The Falsity of Religion: Twelve Indisputable Arguments

By John "Birdman" Bryant

Religion today hangs on the horns of a dilemma: On the one hand, it is false in the scientific sense, as we shall demonstrate below; but on the other hand, because religion in one form or another has been around as long as recorded history -- and in fact has played a central role in man's social and personal life -- it is almost certain that religion is useful in the sense that it has helped men to survive. The real dilemma of religion, however, is that it must be believed in order to be useful, yet this is impossible when people know that it is false.

The obvious solution to this dilemma -- if indeed there is a solution -- is to discover what is useful about religion, and to try to make use of this knowledge. This I have attempted to do in my book The Most Powerful Idea Ever Discovered. But we will be stymied in our attempt to accomplish this task -- or at least to bring it to fruition in the sense of teaching others -- if we do not first and finally sweep away the foolishness of religious belief by making a plain and clear statement as to religion's literal falsity. Accordingly, we cite below what we view as twelve compelling reasons why a rational person must regard religion as false.

[ . . . ]

Complete article at http://www.thebirdma...ig-Atheist.html

[jaydfox]

Cute.

Weak.

Taken as a whole, the twelve points make an interesting case, but in their own right, most of the points individually are just plain weak, and no better or more convincing than the justifications for religions.

Edit: fixed spelling

[lemon]

Jaydfox

The rational position is always the null. I cannot prove a negative, can you? You pre-suppose a god, or gods and you've opened Pandora's box wide open to every absurdity one can imagine with equal credibility.

Prove Invisible Pink Unicorns do not exist on Pluto. Absurd right? Well, theists would have you believe equally absurd constructs such as dieties.

[thumb]

[jaydfox]

Well, I've seen that one before, but actually, a theistic god and invisible pink unicorns on Pluto are not even remotely in the same class of plausibility (note I didn't say probability, though I doubt there in the same class there either).

The very fact that there aren't entire religions and cultures with multimillenial histories built up around worshipping invisible pink unicorns on Pluto is evidence enough that the plausibility of whether such a scenario represents the true God (assuming there is a god) is extremely low, relative to say, the Christian god or Allah.

This presupposes that the true god would have given us clues early on (e.g. scripture), which, if there were a god, seems as likely as not. So no, pink unicorns are another cute but pitifully weak argument against religion. Nice try.

[justinb]

Well, I've seen that one before, but actually, a theistic god and invisible pink unicorns on Pluto are not even remotely in the same class of plausibility (note I didn't say probability, though I doubt there in the same class there either).

Why not? There is no proof for the existence of either and simply having many people believing in something doesn't make it any more credible. Plus, everyone has their own definition of God. Which one are you going to go with?

The very fact that there aren't entire religions and cultures with multimillenial histories built up around worshipping invisible pink unicorns on Pluto is evidence enough that the plausibility of whether such a scenario represents the true God (assuming there is a god) is extremely low, relative to say, the Christian god or Allah.

The problem I have with many atheists is they miss the point of God entirely. People believe in God because of many different evolutionary reasons, there is no God in the sense that there is a car next door or not. God is a "abstract" created by the human mind, nothing else. So, again... the existence of God is no more plausible then the existence of an invisible naked man catching a ride on an asteriod in the solar system.

This presupposes that the true god would have given us clues early on (e.g. scripture), which, if there were a god, seems as likely as not. So no, pink unicorns are another cute but pitifully weak argument against religion. Nice try.

Here is the problem with that argument... schizophrenics develope the same forms of "logic" to make their beliefs "infallible."

I agree with Paul Cooijmans' assesment: link

When confronted with absurdities of life, some follow the strategy of rational analysis and explanation, while others take the path of irrationality, occultism and mysticism. The first strategy is only open to persons of very high intelligence, while the second occurs at any intelligence level.

[DJS]

I think what needs to be distinguished in this discussion is the difference between the general belief in a creative force (deism) and the belief in a wide array of unsubstantiated dogmas.

Deism can (arguably) be logically supported, most dogma can not. Now personally I find against deism because it is a violation of Ockham's razor, but I can still respect individuals who do find in favor of it. Unfortunately, in my experience I found true deists to be very rare. I think the reason for this is that a truly rational person will come to see that they have fallen victim to erroneous logic and instead eventually settle on some form of agnosticism.

With that said, God is not synonymous with religion. A religion must not be evaluated only on the claim of God, but on the veracity of all of its tangential claims as well. Take Christianity for example. [sfty] Jesus rose on the third day. Mary had a virgin birth. The holy trinity is three yet it is also one. Moses parted the red sea. Jesus turned water into wine, etc etc etc etc. All of these are metaphysical claims with no basis in reality. And Jay, these types of claims are most certainly the equivalent to little pink unicorns, as well as monkeys having just flown out of my butt.

All of the claims of the bible are pure utter nonsense. There is no rational reason to believe any of them.

Its funny because the average person will look on cults with such great disdain (and for good reason). Yet, in reality the only difference between a religion and a cult is that one is much more established than the other.

[justinb]

The problem with those "claims" is that most people take them literally, they are said to of actually happened. A lot of them are meant as metaphor.

[DJS]

Justin, I have heard this logic from many progressive Christians and it makes me laugh because it is such an awkward attempt at reconciling a failed belief system. Can someone explain to me why the old testament should be viewed as metaphor and the new testament as literal truth? When the hell was this decided upon? [huh]

I'll tell you when. When the advancement of science during the past two century made much of the old testament absurd. Calling the old testament a grand metaphor is yet another example of the incredible adaptability of the christian memecomplex.

[DJS]

By the way, I thought reasons 3, 4 and 6 were particularly strong.

[Cyto]

#1 is trying to put every science on a plane of religion. How annoying. How wrong.

[th3hegem0n]

The rational position is always the null. I cannot prove a negative, can you? You pre-suppose a god, or gods and you've opened Pandora's box wide open to every absurdity one can imagine with equal credibility.

Prove Invisible Pink Unicorns do not exist on Pluto. Absurd right? Well, theists would have you believe equally absurd constructs such as dieties

ah that's beautiful. i've said the same thing before a million times.


why are you athiest?

it's my null hypothesis [sfty]

[justinb]

#1 is trying to put every science on a plane of religion.  How annoying.  How wrong.

Yeah. As soon as I read that I was out of there.

[Lazarus Long]

The problem is that rather than simply dismiss number one I think it should be deconstructed to demonstrate its false dichotomy AND recognized as the primary stand of many theists. I look on this piece overall favorably though it starts off accepting a fallacy. What I am doing is repackaging the meme and preparing to draw the opposition in on number one as it is the favorite of theist argument. But I call this piece the *Twelve Steps to Reason* and present it as the antidote to the opiate of the masses and the basic introduction to a potentially popular *self help program.*

More and more as I attempt a rational discourse (I know, an exercise in futility itself) with theistic proponents of faith based reasoning the critical aspects of the debate appear to hinge around this definition. Theists basically consider knowledge to be a specific subcategory of belief and that knowledge by itself does not really exist. The irony is this is derivative of a kind of merger between ethical relativism and the idea that has become popular that truth is relative.

What I have recently done is turn the debate around by demonstrating that the primarily faith/trust/belief are addressed as the issues of certainty and trust for psychological measures for behavioral choice. I also ask: Why is a belief qualitatively any different than a guess?

The point is that faith is the product of rationally identifiable and describable qualitative distinctions for cognition and understanding this doesn't relegate faith to meaninglessness but reorders the priority of importance and reasserts reason/logic over faith/emotion. However I think both are still important unlike some of our compatriots here at Imminst.

I intentionally assert that "Truth is *always* testable" because it is both a *standard* (not an article of faith) and argue that the counter point is the necessity to demonstrate its falsifiability by logical and observable examples, not mythical ones.

I ask the opponent to describe any *known* truth without it also being a testable proposition and not a mystical claim.

God in other words is not a valid example because it is not anymore a falsifiable claim than extraterrestrials from a planet light years away (at the moment) or pink and green unicorns.

Very simply I ask they PROVE the statement false by offering a truth that is not testable and supporting your argument. The example you provide is specious because it is neither a proof nor an example of a *true* proposition; it is conjecture at best.

I will accept facts or even a theory but I also ask they demonstrate *why* said fact or theory cannot be tested with any validity. Even Heisenberg could test the validity of uncertainty. I include the counter point that this proposition is not a tenet of faith but an empirical observation so shouldn't attempt the challenge (based on Reason #1) to begin with. It is logically (and pragmatically) consistent with the definition of truth as I provided above.

Assumptions are not examples of faith, they are guesses or hypotheses. It is perfectly possible to guess and not presume an article of faith in said guess. The problem is this overlap whereby all guesses (beliefs) are treated as equivalent for credibility (validity) and this rational relativism is at the root of the problem IMHO.

We test hypotheses to develop a degree of trust in their propositions and come to a better understanding of what is meant and that is how *knowledge* is developed. Faith is not a requisite of science and that is a part of their difficulty. There is a demonstrable inability to operate beyond the self imposed limits of faith but these limitations are not necessarily the limitations experienced and understood by others.

Truth is *always* testable and science is distinguished today between the hard and soft sciences based upon the degree of certainty with respect to the specificity and certainty of conclusions derived of such testing. Even this proposal is a testable *truth*, as all such dangerous statements of absolutes should be understood to be, and as such is not only testable but demands such tests. In this instance logic is the *acid* used to test the metal of all principle not the glitter used to claim pyrite is gold.

[Lazarus Long]

Here is a fun exercise I created to pursue this approach. I call it the *skeptics' perspective*. Try it out for fun.


Belief is the *suspicion* that *X* is true.

Faith is the *supposition* that *X* is true.

Knowledge is the understanding for what validates proposition *X*.

Science is the best method for testing and validating a supposition *X* based on the suspicion of truth and then converting it to a proposition *X* when supported by rational models and empirical data.

***
This all hinges on the premise that belief can be pragmatically understood as a hypothesis (or a guess) and as such is a *supposition* is not a *proposition;* and when you apply faith as a condition of certainty it converts it to a PRESUMPTION (assumption without validating evidence) not a proposition.

A proposition is merely a model as theory and/or fact that is empirical derived from phenomenological data (observation and testing). Knowledge is the ability to provide a rational understanding/explanation for specifically observable conditions not mythical or imaginary ones.

By this method I am attempting to restrict knowledge that can be considered true to a specific condition for when it is consistent with observable facts and based upon logically consistent explicative modeling.

[jaydfox]

With that said, God is not synonymous with religion. A religion must not be evaluated only on the claim of God, but on the veracity of all of its tangential claims as well. Take Christianity for example.  Jesus rose on the third day. Mary had a virgin birth. The holy trinity is three yet it is also one. Moses parted the red sea. Jesus turned water into wine, etc etc etc etc. All of these are metaphysical claims with no basis in reality. And Jay, these types of claims are most certainly the equivalent to little pink unicorns, as well as monkeys having just flown out of my butt.

All of the claims of the bible are pure utter nonsense. There is no rational reason to believe any of them.

Its funny because the average person will look on cults with such great disdain (and for good reason). Yet, in reality the only difference between a religion and a cult is that one is much more established than the other.

Don, you missed my point. Not to say that Bayseian analysis is the right mode of explanation, nor is my use of it particularly rational.

But consider this: the odds of someone living to 115 years old are like 1 in a million, give or take an order of magnitude. But the odds of someone who is 114 years old living to 115 is like 50%.

Just because living to 115 in general is an absurdly low probability, that doesn't mean that, given the right prior conditions (someone is 114), the odds aren't all that bad.

It's as rational to think that if there is a god (a big if, but work with me), then that god would want to have provided us with clues about his existence. Whether those clues are scriptures, the babblings of prophets, or just pretty constellations, I'll leave that open. Nevertheless, it's as likely as not, if there is a god (our "prior"), that he/she/it/they would provide us with clues.

Well, given that prior, invisible pink unicorns on Pluto and monkeys flying out of your butt really do become orders of magnitude more implausible than any particular religion.

Any number of rational constructs can be put together in which a particular religion is not irrational, and the justification for those constructs need not be terribly improbable. Thus, inventing absurb counterexamples, and then proclaiming their absurdity as analogous to religion, is not a strong argument. Hence, I said cute but weak. Don't get me wrong, it really is a cute attack.

Where religion does lose quite a bit of credibility is in its predictive power, relative to say, science. Deism, as opposed to more mystical religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.), does not fall apart so easily here, since the only strong prediction it really makes is that we are here, and leaves most if not all of the details up to science. I think, therefore I am. So no counterexample to point to. Which then takes us back to whether we can consider it absurd, but with proper priors, one can't make the blanket statement that it's completely absurd, as absurd as the invisible pink unicorns on Pluto. Absurd, perhaps, but not that absurd.

However, I enjoy the debate, even if both sides can make some pretty absurd and inaccurate or misleading statements about the other side (usually out of misunderstanding, and usually made by the side of religion, but the other side does it too). I myself, given my hostile inner rationalism, have never truly bought into Christianity. I don't think I could ever truly buy into any religion, or lack thereof. At heart I'm an agnostic, always have been, always will be. The scientist in me cannot be quenched. As such, I must constantly remind myself to stay open, because denying the open-ended nature of the question only builds inner conflict, which isn't healthy. However, I've seen enough and felt enough (admittedly potentially due to misinterpretation of statistical flukes, combined with irrational mental states, legacy of my evolutionary heritage), combined with my misgivings about science ever fully explaining the why and the how, that Christianity/religion holds a place in my life. I'm starting to lean away from it, though part of that relies on my coming to grips with the concept of separating symbols from that which they represent (a topic for another thread, related to physicalism and its weaknesses).

Anyway, even should I "fall away" from Chistianity, I at least appreciate the layers at which it is not nearly as irrational as its opponents would like to believe. Perhaps due to a latent inferiority complex, or perhaps to pent-up frustration with its hold over the barriers to "forward" progress, religion's opponents can be overly hostile when acceptance and tolerance and loving guidance are called for.


PS: I haven't read any of the replies below the one I am replying to, so pardon if what I have said finds itself at odds with subsequent posts.

[Lazarus Long]

Asian_American have you read this article?

It is relevant to anyone interested on this subject I suspect.

Faith, hope and belief
http://www.mwillett....eism/faith1.htm

[Chip]

"acceptance and tolerance and loving guidance"

You see sides to a debate. I see science verses idolatry, overt preoccupation with symbology. If you are willing to use such an ambiguous term as Christian to describe self, then why should I trust when you lay on the sweet sounding stuff like syrup on caca?

[jaydfox]

Chip, I take it you would beat a child to a bloody pulp that has ignorantly broken a "rule" of which he was unaware? If science is to take the high road and claim to be in the position of the father, while religionists are to be relegated to the position of ignorant children, then beating them bloody for their ignorance hardly makes atheists good stewards, and hence they are unfit fathers and should have their children removed from their custody.

I realize this applies only to a small subset of vocal atheists, the "fundamentalists", so to speak, but their actions belie their intentions as pseudo-religious in nature. Otherwise, why be so upset?

I don't say that we should just leave religionists to their ignorance. (And note that I say "we", for I would never try to push my religion on others, and hence although I do not yet assign myself to the status of agnostic, I at least try to act as though I were in that group, for the sake of others.) But certainly something more efficient than openly hostile tactics of denigrating both the religionsists and their religions is required. Hence, "loving guidance", as I put it. If someone has broken a rule they weren't aware of, make them aware of the rule, don't beat them bloody. Teach the tenets of rational thought and logic, rather than saying something is irrational and illogical to someone who has not the conceptual tools to appreciate your argument.

Or did you miss my point entirely. I'm not saying that atheists are absurdly wrong. I'm just saying they are ignorant and ineffective for saying religionists are absurdly irrational. Irrational, perhaps, but not absurdly so. Absurd beliefs, perhaps, but not entirely irrational. Seek to understand, rather than pummel, and you might get a few "converts".

And yes, I am ambiguous in my use of the term Christian. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the attacks of people who seek to destroy Christianity rather than to lovingly rescue its adherents. Yes, I technically belong to a particular organized sect of Christianity, though I'm not the most "faithful" of adherents, mainly because I do not believe a religion should require blind faith, and it bugs me that my "religion" praises those who are faithful without being compelled to be so (i.e. those irrationally following the religion). In that sense, I'm a heretic to my own religion, a religion that demands quite a bit of loyalty, which puts me between the proverbial rock and the hard space. A tortuous state which I navigate alone, for my wife cannot and chooses never to understand my position, for its inherent lack of faithfulness and its dependence on the wisdom of "Man" over the wisdom of "God". I could fall away from the Church today and not terribly regret it, and yet I don't really feel a reason to do so. It's not that I'm held in place by fear of Pascal's Wager, nor is it because I fear what would happen to my wife if her husband fell away from her Church. I'm held in place because I honestly believe many facets of my religion, facets which are as rational as not, and which offer explanations that current scientific understanding (not just of what we know, but of what is knowable) are not satisfactory. Should this latter problem be resolved (which I am hopeful of), then I will gladly shed the burden of my religion. But doing so now would be as irrational as not, so I stay.

[Chip]

Hmmmm, I'm glad to not have your baggage.

[jaydfox]

It's not the baggage that sucks, so much as being the type of bellhop that I am. I show signs of Asperger's, though that's about as meaningful as saying I might have ADD or ADHD: a real condition that's greatly over- and under-reported. So who knows? But Asperger's is an annoying condition to have when trying to consider one's core beliefs and vantage from which to view the world.

At any rate, even if I do eventually shed my Christian "shackles", as an atheist might call them, and commit myself to agnosticism, I still hold in my heart an appreciation of why it's completely understandable and forgiveable for people to not be the atheists that many atheists would want them to be.

[Chip]

Ever read "The God Within" by Rene Dubos? ( http://www.theosophy...nce/sc-coss.htm ) I mean, the alternative to embracing a so-called religion doesn't necessarily have to be atheism or agnosticism. I really don't think humanism is secular in the final analysis. I dare say that Christianity and the slew of other piecemeal partitionings of all too common cosmological perspectives is extremely secular. Square plugs into round jacks do not connect one all too readily to bonafide spirituality. Go figure...

[jaydfox]

Ever read "The God Within" by Rene Dubos?

Can't say that I have, but I'll take a look when I get a chance.

[lemon]

...so to some it all up, your wife would leave you if you left the church?

[jaydfox]

...so to some it all up, your wife would leave you if you left the church?

I doubt it, but she would be very sad. Of course, it would be one more straw on a camel's strained back, and marriages these days often don't take many straws, sadly...

[DJS]

Don, you missed my point. Not to say that Bayseian analysis is the right mode of explanation, nor is my use of it particularly rational.

But consider this: the odds of someone living to 115 years old are like 1 in a million, give or take an order of magnitude. But the odds of someone who is 114 years old living to 115 is like 50%.

Just because living to 115 in general is an absurdly low probability, that doesn't mean that, given the right prior conditions (someone is 114), the odds aren't all that bad.

It's as rational to think that if there is a god (a big if, but work with me), then that god would want to have provided us with clues about his existence. Whether those clues are scriptures, the babblings of prophets, or just pretty constellations, I'll leave that open. Nevertheless, it's as likely as not, if there is a god (our "prior"), that he/she/it/they would provide us with clues.

Why would God provide us with vague "clues" rather than obvious ones? Why is it that all of the "grand" miracles bestowed upon humanity by God supposedly happened in ancient times and none in modern times? And most importantly, what is the justification for infering an unobservable, unprovable omnicient being's motivations, and then using this ambigious supposition to inflate the bayesian probabilities of articles of faith? Come on Jay. I can deal with the fact that you have "faith" (its all part of my live and let live philosophy ). As I've said before, this is completely cool and I actually like the fact that you possess this faith because it provides me with a marginal christian to bounce my ideas off of. (So please stay Christian, I don't want to lose your perspective! [lol] )

But at the same time, let's not candy coat articles of faith as being potentially (or partially) "rational". Like little pink unicorns, their bayesian probability is negligible..... or maybe a better way to catagorize it would be -- indeterminate.

[DJS]

There is actually one other thing that I would like to add. Jay, I want you to know that I am not blind to the point you are trying to make. I won't deny that there is a type of "quasi logic" that Christians follow. They are not simply making stuff up off of the top of their head. Yes, they have "reasons" for believing what they believe (regardless of how "absurd" their rationale is). This says nothing however about the validity of their logic (which is the real issue here).

Articles of faith which have been recorded and *stabalized* as a consistent memetic message over multiple generations can be seen as coming together to form an internally consistent system of belief. The cementing of this unified belief was quite a revolutionary event and was only possible with the advent of written records which allowed for more complex and codified systems to be possible. If you haven't read Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer I would highly recommend it. I found his ideas on literate guilds and how they evolved from more primative forms of animism to be quite thought provoking.

[susmariosep]

The good and utility of religion.


The founding fathers of the USA many or almost majority were rationalists with very little sympathy for religion.

Yet after everything was said and done, they still enshrined freedom of religion as a basic law of the country.

So, they must have seen and were convinced of the worth of religion for human society in the big picture, whatever the ills in history past and present.

Of course, freedom of religion means also being freed of religion.


Susma

[Chip]

DonSpanton: "Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer"

Sounds like an interesting book.

Susma: "Of course, freedom of religion means also being freed of religion."

Cool as heck.

[jaydfox]

Why would God provide us with vague "clues" rather than obvious ones? Why is it that all of the "grand" miracles bestowed upon humanity by God supposedly happened in ancient times and none in modern times? And most importantly, what is the justification for infering an unobservable, unprovable omnicient being's motivations, and then using this ambigious supposition to inflate the bayesian probabilities of articles of faith? Come on Jay.

Sorry to take so long, I've been wrapped up in my own personal turmoils...

Anyway, the miracles question is a fun one, in a way. If we start (for the sake of argument, regardless of how absurd these starting conditions are) with the position that god wants us to choose, and that such a choice requires both doubt and proof (proof enough to even ask the question, but doubt enough to where we can reasonably not believe), then the miracles situation actually seems pretty obvious.

In more ancient times, when people knew less about the world, A) god could get away with bigger miracles, because there wasn't a "science" or "rational logic" that they were defying, and B) the people, not having a rational/scientific background, needed a bigger miracle to be convinced. It wouldn't take a bearded man parting the Red Sea to convince most people today of a supernatural power (be that power "god", or a man using god's power via "priesthood", or just telekinesis).

On the other hand, 3,000 years ago, even if you hadn't ever seen someone lift a rock with his mind (like Luke using the Force), it wasn't something that would strike you as patently impossible. Perhaps this person was just an alchemist/wizard, or someone just really in tune with nature. But fire raining down from the sky and destroying a city, now that's not your everyday run of the mill miracle.

Secondly, more large scale miracles could be had back then, because all we'd have is a written record of a bunch of dead guys. No "proof". If such a miracle happened today in Siberia, and someone claimed they saw the miracle, rather than just calling them bonkers, we could go there and see the landscape devastated. If we can't find evidence of a volcano, nuke, asteroid impact, or other physical explanation, then we'd be left wondering, "could this really have been god's hand?" (Not speaking about the 1908 event, though I see the parallel now.) Of course, weird theories about miniature black holes and magnetic dipoles and strange matter and such would pop up.

More importantly, if fire started raining down on San Francisco (since we're talking religion, I hope no one will be offended by my not-so-veiled destruction of, well, the types of people that live in SF. Not that I would want to see this happen, but as long as we're talking about god raining down fire, which traditionally happens to cities of "sin", it seemed as good a target as any), with camera crews recording the whole thing, and satellites and radar couldn't verify any incoming objects until fireballs burst into existence 50 km above the city, then it'd hardly be something we could dismiss as foolish mythology. We don't live in a day and age where god could destroy a city or part the seas and not give himself away.

Of course, the counter to this is, "How convenient, he only performs miracles in such a way that we can't prove they were caused by god.", etc. The unfalsifiable, by nature, which would be useful as a memetic device to capture people's hearts and minds. Oh, you're not supposed to question or doubt, but accept on faith. Which to a non-religionist can seem completely irrational.

Interestingly enough, the part that bugs me the most is the relationship between free will and faith.

I'll be tipping my hat here, but here goes:

The followng verses refer to a group of people who had been cast out of their synagogues because they were poor. Being told you can't be worthy to worship god because you're poor can be quite trying and depressing.

12 I say unto you, it is well that ye are cast out of your synagogues, that ye may be humble, and that ye may learn wisdom; for it is necessary that ye should learn wisdom; for it is because that ye are cast out, that ye are despised of your brethren because of your exceeding poverty, that ye are brought to a lowliness of heart; for ye are necessarily brought to be humble.

13 And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved.

Okay, so this prophet is speaking to this group of people, and saying that because they were compelled to be humble, they are blessed. In my mind, this isn't the best exercise of their free will. They didn't decide for themselves to be humble, and to repent, but did so to find solace in their oppression and depression. It's not quite the same as finding god with a gun to your head, but it's not far off either...

But it goes on:

14 And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be humble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word?

15 Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed—yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty.

16 Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.

Ah, now we are getting to the heart of the matter. More blessed are those who humble themselves of their own choice, rather than being compelled.

On face value, this seemed so much more a sign of free will, and I used to like this set of verses (even though parts of it didn't sit well with me, and I couldn't figure out why). But then I wondered about this last part: "blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe."

Believing in what then, if not the word of god, or being shown his power and miracles? Just knowing that it's true? How do people just know that it's true? The spirit whispered to them? The still small voice? Or it "just clicked", to use a modern idiom?

That's not free will, not in my book. The more I look at it, the more I see people being praised for accepting the "truth" without any evidence. It's one thing to be given small proofs with room for doubt, and decide to believe, but at what point are we just applying hope to something because we don't like the alternative? At what point are we being presented with A and B and choosing B "just because", for no defensible reason other than that it feels right?

How often do people get caught up in things like gambling, not because they're addicted, but because they have this vain fantasy hope that some higher power will intervene and help them out of a rut in their life by blessing them with luck in gambling? I heard a story about a woman who lost her home because she was failing financially, and when the new casino came to town, she spent the mortgage money "knowing" that god would bless her to win enough money to get out of debt. Instead of losing just the car, she lost everything!

Going by what just "feels right" or "touches my soul" hardly seems like a strong indicator of how well someone uses their free will. If anything, it sounds like poor stewardship. And this is to be praised above those who are compelled to be humble?

I don't know, doubts circulate, but it's funny, because most of the doubts aren't the points of absurdity and irrationality that I usually see from religion-bashers (not speaking to you Don, but just in general). After all, I see as much irrationality in the desires of some avid transhumanists to upload at the earliest convenience, firmly believing that there is nothing non-physical about human nature and experience, or at the least, believing there is nothing which couldn't be simulated in a simple binary computer with a hell of a lot of RAM and processing power. Sure, if you dive deeper, there is a possibility that any higher order physical processes (whether they be quantum in nature, or the very least, substrate dependent) will be open to our tinkering, but to believe that, without extreme doubts, is tantamount to believing that god will resurrect us one day. So I see irrationality on both sides of the divide, and it's not the beliefs then that are irrational, but how people apply them. Cosmos and others have done a good job of remaining non-committed, which is the best we can hope for right now (and where I feel myself increasingly being tugged).

[Karomesis]

If the massess believe this or that superstition, it is, to me, an excellent reason to believe the contrary; not because they are usually right, but because they are usually wrong. Saying that religion is incomparable to pink unicorns on pluto is an interesting argument, if not for the irony that real similarities actually exist between unicorns and verifiable animals called horses.That is far more than can be said for the existence of a deity, for whom nothing of even a remote similarity can be verified or measured.

The time frame given for the enduring foolishness is not in any way a realistic explanation for its validity. If your god existed in any way it would be worthy of nought but disdain and hatred for despotic acts upon the very humanity which deems it sacred. BTW did you get around to reading fuerbachs " the essence of christianity"? de sade is also an excellent starting point, but not for the faint of heart [:o] His writings require a fortitude that indeed few possess.