\"Rev Dr\" Lenny Flank wrote:

Roy Jose Lorr wrote:

Mujin wrote:

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 18:37:37 +0000 (UTC), Roy Jose Lorr
<mosestorah@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

\"Rev Dr\" Lenny Flank wrote:

tooly wrote:

I say take the best of all worlds...and assimilate. If nothing else, the
bible is surely insight into the ideals of the human creature...and if
structures for living to make this creature most happy, to give him "cause"
for the most enobling acheivements and highest conditions for experience
[through fellow humans], that document should certainly be consulted in some
way.

Fine with me. That, of course, is equally true for the Baghavad Gita,
the Koran, the Tao te Ching, and pretty much any other
religious/moral/ethics book you'd like to name. So why limit ourselves
just to one particular book? Why leave out all the rest?

All save one ( Five Books of Moses, Genesis - Deuteronomy)
prescribe mixes of moral and immoral behavior.

Er, would you mind telling me how to determine hat is "moral" and what
is "immoral"? Something other than your Holy Say-so, please?

Read the thread.

Oh, and I am STILL waiting for you to tell me why your particular
religious opinions are any more authoritative than mine, my next door
neighbor's, my car mechanic's, or the kid who delivers my pizzas.
Something other than your Holy Say-so, please.

My moral guide is correct until proven wrong. Moral relativism is
wrong from the giddyup.

Is there some sort of problem with your answering that simple question .
. . ?

Come back when you've read the thread.

Please provide explicit examples of immoral behaviour prescribed by
any of the books mentioned by Lenny.

For now, instead of cherry picking through the authorized texts
I'll give one example common to them all. They all promise a
lie. They all promise an impossibility: life after death.

Er, no they don't.

Bullarky.

There is no afterlife in Taoism. Nor in Zen. The
Baghavad Gita and some schools of Buddhism refer to reincarnation, but
that is not the return of an individual "self" -- it simply means your
elements are returned to the Great Wheel. There is no individual
survival after death.

Believing in life after death does not mean only belief in heaven
and hell, reincarnation or the return of the individual self. When
you've done a little investigation into Eastern religious marmalade,
give me a jingle. Till then I must assume that when it comes to
knowledge of religion you're an ignoramus.

Are the rest of your religious opinions as, uh, well-informed, as this
one . . . . . ?

My religious opinions are based on study... and, "uh", yours?

All man made religion holds out the false promise of either
life after, or the defeat of defeat of death.

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 22:38:09 +0000 (UTC), "ta" <ta33@bellsouth.net>
posted in alt.atheism:

You're absolutely right, but let's be fair and acknowledge that this
phenonemon is certainly not unique to creationists (and I realize you aren't
necessarily suggesting that it is). Any belief system, including the current
prevailing one in western society, which places blind faith in science and
technology, is subject to the same sort of criticism.

Which is why most scientists don't place blind faith in science.

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 19:41:42 +0000 (UTC),

How are we to account for the observation that so many creationists,
when repeatedly confronted with overwhelming evidence in support of
the theory of evolution, seem either to not comprehend this evidence,
or to discount it without serious thought, or with clearly specious
reasoning?

It's much too easy to suppose that they really *do* understand it, and
yet for some cynical, ulterior motives, choose to pretend that they
don't. This explanation just doesn't hold water. Some of the things
they say seem so nonsensical that it's hard to believe that anyone
would willingly invite ridicule for saying such things if they really
understood how silly they were, and that people would deliberately
damage their own cause by such statements.

So how are we to account for such behavior? Is there some
psychological "brick wall" that somehow keeps them from understanding
normal science when that science seems to them to contradict some
theological dogma that they hold fast to?

they're pan-theists.

If so, just how does this
"brick wall" operate? Clearly, the proponents of modern science
education have not found a way so far to deal with this brick wall,
since it is seemingly still very much in operation in the minds of
creationists, in spite of all their attempts to break through it.

their religious concepts allow them to completely mix physical and
metaphysical and reject the notion that existence has an order or
logic to it and that it can be studied systematically.

It allows them
to say engineering principles work because god wants it that way, but
that the logic behind it doesn't -really- work. They also think that
the different fields of science are completly un-releated, and that
what happens in physics works only when in line with gods plan, what
ever that is, etc. IOW in the non logical universe there can be a
'closed set' of logically operating things, dug into the Ground. But
whats going on in one logical box doesn't co-relate with whats going
on in another, and its only a coincidence that they appear to do so.

its actually a rather interesting midframe. idiotic and never seems
to have its full implications flushed out, but then what world views
ever do, uhm, except science.

"R.Schenck" <nygdan_morteauxspam@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<9ted20lpqafdjvabajk3h6becc5oqdf59v@4ax.com>...

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 19:41:42 +0000 (UTC),

How are we to account for the observation that so many creationists,
when repeatedly confronted with overwhelming evidence in support of
the theory of evolution, seem either to not comprehend this evidence,
or to discount it without serious thought, or with clearly specious
reasoning?

It's much too easy to suppose that they really *do* understand it, and
yet for some cynical, ulterior motives, choose to pretend that they
don't. This explanation just doesn't hold water. Some of the things
they say seem so nonsensical that it's hard to believe that anyone
would willingly invite ridicule for saying such things if they really
understood how silly they were, and that people would deliberately
damage their own cause by such statements.

So how are we to account for such behavior? Is there some
psychological "brick wall" that somehow keeps them from understanding
normal science when that science seems to them to contradict some
theological dogma that they hold fast to?

they're pan-theists.

If so, just how does this
"brick wall" operate? Clearly, the proponents of modern science
education have not found a way so far to deal with this brick wall,
since it is seemingly still very much in operation in the minds of
creationists, in spite of all their attempts to break through it.

their religious concepts allow them to completely mix physical and
metaphysical and reject the notion that existence has an order or
logic to it and that it can be studied systematically.

Yes. Their religious concepts allows them to do this. My question
was, "exactly *how* does this happen?" *How* do these religious
concepts operate in the mind to allow them to construct such brick
walls? What is it about human psychology that makes it possible for
such a process to occur? We apparently don't understand this
phenomenon very well.

It allows them
to say engineering principles work because god wants it that way, but
that the logic behind it doesn't -really- work. They also think that
the different fields of science are completly un-releated, and that
what happens in physics works only when in line with gods plan, what
ever that is, etc. IOW in the non logical universe there can be a
'closed set' of logically operating things, dug into the Ground. But
whats going on in one logical box doesn't co-relate with whats going
on in another, and its only a coincidence that they appear to do so.

Yes. But *how* does this sort of compartmentalization of logical
boxes operate? And why isn't there more of a "bleed-over" effect of
one logical box into another, as is the case with many scientists, who
can readily integrate knowledge from one field with that from another?

It is *these* types of questions that we need answers to.

its actually a rather interesting midframe. idiotic and never seems
to have its full implications flushed out, but then what world views
ever do, uhm, except science.

Yes. It's very interesting. So why aren't more people studying it,
and why hasn't more progess been made in figuring it all out? And
what can we do to help?

DV