Religion's value questioned

[Baby Nemesis]

Happy birthday, Pure_Argent.

Originally Posted by Pure_Argent

Originally Posted by Dann

No, BN insists that that religion has positive effects. That is very different from intrinsic value. This, by the way, is the reason why she obsessively
insists on her own basic delusion: that religion contains a beneficial element, some kind of substrate, which could be extracted and put to good use by
unbelievers in secular therapeutic circumstances, i.e. the essence of good in religion.

Yes, her thoughts on that issue are kind of ludicrous.

Actually, they're not. I wasn't saying secular therapists could draw out the "essence" of religion to use in therapy in secular settings. I said that if they were to explore what it was that often motivated people with psychological problems or who were causing social problems to become Christians, they might be able to adapt what it was about Christianity that attracted them, so the specifically religious elements were taken out and it was more suitable to a secular setting.

My idea wasn't entirely new. It's possible that some of my specific suggestions were, and wouldn't work; but the idea of adapting aspects of religious tradition to suit secular therapy isn't new. Take this BBC news story, for example: Group therapy 'beats depression'

Quote:

The group therapy is based on some techniques found in Buddhism

Group-taught meditation is as effective as staying on drug treatments for stopping people slipping back into depression, say UK scientists.

It's talking about mindfulness meditation, which is where you sit quietly, and whenever a thought or feeling comes into your mind, instead of letting it lead to other thoughts you get absorbed in, or telling yourself it's a good or bad thought, you think of yourself as just observing it go by. So, for instance, if your first thought was about a television programme you wanted to watch in a couple of hours, instead of beginning to think about the programme, you'd instead think, "Oh, there goes a thought about tonight's programme", and then let the thought go; or you'd imagine the thought was a log floating past you down a river or a car going past or something.

That kind of thing would help stop people suffering from depression and anxiety problems from getting absorbed in the thoughts that worried or depressed them till they just felt worse and worse. If instead of getting absorbed in them, they just noticed each thought and then thought of them drifting on by, it would be a way they could calm down, so their heads would be clearer to think of solutions to their problems.

Therapists can take inspiration from other religious principles as well. I heard a woman talking on the radio once who said she'd had therapy and noticed it was a bit like religious teaching. She gave the example of how she used to come downstairs and see her husband had left the place messy by throwing his coat and things down, and she used to get annoyed by it, so it would stop her feeling happy. But her therapist taught her to take an attitude that was a bit like turning the other cheek, just quickly sighing and shrugging and forgetting about it, and that made her feel more peaceful.

So secular therapists can take inspiration from religious teaching to develop secular therapies.

[Darth Rotor]

A pithy insight into your preferences:

Originally Posted by dann

- If Jesus makes you stop drinking, isn’t that okay?
- No, I never think that delusion is okay!

I see, we are dealing with an absolutist. Thanks for the confirmation. Some of us already knew that about your positions.

Your heroine wishes to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Contemptible. The title of your thread is "religion's value questioned" and your conversational gambits point to your position, "religion's non value proven."

Let's look at one hundred drunks for a moment.

27 of them get sober by finding Jesus at a few local Methodist or Lutheran churches and working forward from there.

40 of them go to AA, get sober (IIRC, there is a trace of religious influence on AA)

30 of them go to other counseling with explicityly secular only approaches, get sober.

3 of them die of alcohol poisoning.

But your heroine would reject the saving of the 27. That is the problem with her, and your, absolutist positions.

It is possible that the other two approaches might have worked, and might not have, for that 27. We can all agree we'd not want any of the 97 to end up as the three did.

DR

[pakeha]

Darth, sorry, but I find your example confusing.
Is it fact or fiction, for starters?

If fact, could you you source it, please?

[Baby Nemesis]

Originally Posted by pakeha

Darth, sorry, but I find your example confusing.
Is it fact or fiction, for starters?

If fact, could you you source it, please?

It was fictional, just an "imagine if this happened" scenario, to illustrate the point he made about how awful it is that Dann seems to think it would be better to stay an alcoholic than for it to be that horrifying great monolith religion to be what inspires people to turn away from it, even if that means they don't find another means of helping them stop drinking in time and die of alcohol poisoning in the meantime. Better to die than to become deluded, seems to be his perspective.

[pakeha]

To tell the truth, 'what if' arguments lost their charm for me some time ago.
Wouldn't it be more interesting to post up some real statistics on the effectiveness of different rehab programmes?
If this has been done and I've missed it, sorry and point me to them, please.

[Darth Rotor]

Originally Posted by pakeha

To tell the truth, 'what if' arguments lost their charm for me some time ago.
Wouldn't it be more interesting to post up some real statistics on the effectiveness of different rehab programmes?
If this has been done and I've missed it, sorry and point me to them, please.

No, it would not, since the mix in numbers are going to vary within each study, as my example suggests. A given person responds differently to different counselling and remedy approaches dealing with alcohol dependency. Religion helps some, not others. Seen this with my own eyes IRL. I see no point in tossing the baby out with the bath water. There is NOT One Best Solution that is a one size fits all for all comers.

Heck, AA isn't a one size fits all, although it's a decent program for many, to include my atheist cousin in California.

Note that Dann's little champion remarks along the lines of it being better not to be cured than to be deluded. (Also a problem of false dichotomy, but never mind). Baby out with the bath water. Not a very intelligent approach to problem solving with actual people.

DR

[pakeha]

Darth, that's an interesting take on rehab.
Does this mean there is no way to study the subject objectively at all?
It's starting to sound as though rehab is wooish in that it's in the mind of the beholder.

In which case, it seems to me it's impossible to have any sort of meaningful discussion about rehab, since it would be basically trading anecdotes, nothing more.
I enjoy exchanging anecdotes, but I was hoping to find conclusions drawn from studies of larger numbers of people.
Obviously the individual experience is 'what really counts' to the individual, but for a community or a nation to invest money in rehab projects, the decisions must be based on relative effectiveness, I'd have thought.
If there's a 'catch' in going from the individual and unique to the general and verifiable, I'd be inclined to say woo. That is, that the rehab programmes haven't a clue as to what they're dealing yet sometimes get it right.
Off to see what I can find out there.

[pakeha]

All this is rather an eye opener to me, of course, since my experience with drug rehab is based on what stories people have told me of their own experiences.
One thing I found so far which I think is rather surprising was this

Quote:

...One thing, however, is certain: An extremely high percentage of American drinkers who have been hospitalized for alcoholism or who have participated in other institutional alcoholism programs have participated in Alcoholics Anonymous.

The number of patients treated for alcoholism is now approximately 950,000 annually,xiv which (because 12-step treatment is used in well over 90% of institutional programs) is a good indication that the proportion of alcohol abusers who have been exposed to AA is very high.

It should also be kept in mind that in most parts of the country convicted drunk drivers are still routinely forced to attend AA as a condition of probation, which pushes the percentage of alcohol abusers exposed to AA even higher.

Further, in most areas AA is the only widely available—and widely media-promoted—alcoholism self-help group, so AA has a very high volume of "walk in" traffic.

But let's give AA the benefit of the doubt and estimate that only 50% of U.S. and Canadian alcohol abusers have tried AA. That would double the success rate calculated earlier (based on the total number of U.S. and Canadian alcohol abusers), and it would increase to 5.2% to 7.0% if the criterion of success is defined as five years' sobriety.

In a worst case scenario, where 90% of U.S. and Canadian alcohol abusers have tried AA, where success is defined as five or more years of sobriety, where 45% of AA members have been sober for five or more years (as AA indicates), and where there are 22 million alcohol abusers in the two countries, the AA success rate would be about 2.9% (and even lower than that if the criterion of success is lifelong sobriety rather than five years' sobriety).xv

The true success rate of AA is very probably somewhere between these two extremes, depending, of course, on how one defines "success"; that is, AA's success rate is probably somewhere between 2.9% and 7% (of those who have attended AA). ...

Excerpt from book: Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure? by Charles Bufe - Chapter 7: How Effective Is AA?
http://www.morerevealed.com/library/coc/chapter7.htm

What has realy surprised me is that AA is basically as good as it gets, at least for now and has a success rate of between 3 and 7%.
I had no idea drunken drivers were required to attend AA meetings, which doubtless makes the figures even more difficult to interpret.

Still, it seems to me something must be missing from the equation, if the best approach to recovering from alcoholism has a 3-7% success rate.

All the best to your cousin in California, Darth.

Off to find more.

[Darth Rotor]

Last comment:

People forced into AA for traffic tickets are a great way to jack up AA failed stats. AA wasn't built around that model, it was very much built around self referrel, not forced referral.

It is also one of a number of ways to try and kick the habit.

In the Navy, we used to have level I substance abuse counselling, Level II called CAAC, and Level III (Alcohol Rehab Center) which was a six week course that stripped you down to parade rest and tried to rebuild you into a new man or woman. Two sailors who worked for me went through it (two careers saved) and an officer I bunked with on one of my ships did as well, which also saved a career.

Even that level of effort didn't always work to keep someone who had a problem sober. (If you went back on the sauce again after completing ARC, it usually wasn't long before you got separated from the service administratively).

Whatever works, works, and I'd not want to leave any door unopened.

DR

[pakeha]

Thanks for those testimonies, Darth.
I'd like to learn more about that programme.
About the AA figures, the article I quoted took that 'inflated' figure very much into account.
Perhaps I'm completely wrong, but I thought the point of the article was to show that AA is the best thing there is as of writing, even given a 3 to 7% success rate.
Off to learn more.

[Darth Rotor]

Originally Posted by pakeha

Perhaps I'm completely wrong, but I thought the point of the article was to show that AA is the best thing there is as of writing, even given a 3 to 7% success rate.
Off to learn more.

If it's "the best" then that's grim news indeed.

DR

[pakeha]

My thought exactly, Darth.
It seems to me something is missing from the equation.
And once again, here's hoping all the best for your cousin.
Tomorrow is another day and I'll continue trawling for information.
One thing I picked up is that heroin withdrawal is almost never fatal, and there are people who go through it unfazed in the least, while withdrawal from alcohol is fatal to many people (heart goes) and should be done under supervision. Never alone.
Curious, no?

[Baby Nemesis]

Interesting stuff.

Part of alcohol recovery has to do with how much the alcoholic actually wants to recover. In a book about recovery from agoraphobia, (Freedom from Agoraphobia by Mark Eisenstadt), the author even goes so far as to say he once worked for six months as the doctor on an alcohol dependency ward, and some of the patients explained what they called "bottoming out". They said that was when an alcoholic had reached the point when drinking just cost too much to go on doing it so they'd stop. They said it was as if a decision made itself in them - something happened that finally made them decide they couldn't go on like that. The patients said for some alcoholics, it would take a lot more to get to that point than for others. For some, the point they made the firm decision to stop drinking would be when they'd lost their wives and kids, their jobs and their homes, and they found themselves sitting in freezing doorways drinking alcohol out of a bottle in a paper bag. On the next level up, some wouldn't stop drinking till they'd lost all that but had also had physical problems that had left them needing emergency treatment and had nearly killed them. The patients said for others, they wouldn't stop drinking this side of the grave.

The author said the patients also told him that if a man hadn't reached the point where the costs of drinking were just too high for him to carry on, then no matter how much part of him wanted to stop, and no matter how well-intentioned anyone who tried to help him was, he couldn't be helped.

The author says he thinks that's why Alcoholics' Anonymous has the concept of a higher power that can help people who are otherwise helpless to give up drinking themselves.

---------

But perhaps some good approaches just hadn't been tried with them that would have worked on some. Motivational counselling might go quite some way to changing the mind-sets of some of those people - talking them into being convinced that giving up will actually have benefits they really want, rather than simply being something they have to deny themselves. This might be one reason why religion can work for some - it can give them the promise of a new hopeful start in life, as well as a new set of things in their lives they can enjoy, which make up to some extent for the loss of drink in their lives so they're not just faced with a big void.

There are some treatments that use very different approaches to Alcoholics' Anonymous around, and some are optimistic about their success, though I'm not sure any have been studied much. I think they all operate on a much smaller scale. I'll be interested in the results of your continued research, pakeha.

[kuroyume0161]

The 'available' statistics for AA's success are pretty grim. Appealing to religion as a solvent for an addiction isn't any better than mind control (it is replacing a substance addiction with a mental addiction). I'd rather overcome an addiction on other grounds than finding an alternative belief system of no viable usefulness. It may seem a good result but it doesn't make for better results. Let's examine replacing internal anger with organized, acceptable anger in the form of fascist government. How is that better? Replacing addiction with addiction is not a solution - it is a lateral substitution.

I replaced religion with reality. Now I feel much better since it was not lateral...

[Baby Nemesis]

Oh no, it seems we have another extremist anti-religionist!

Have a look at the first post on this page. You presuppose religion has no value and that nothing in it is based on reality. That is not true, as you will discover. Perhaps that was your experience. Perhaps your experience was like an addiction, or "mind control", as you seem to imagine all religion is. But don't imagine that's always the case. Religion has a lot to do with a moral code. It isn't all to do with seeking comfort from a supernatural being you can't really be sure is there or something like that. Turning to religion can change behaviour in a direct way, because people can decide that following that moral code is important to them and they'll do their best to do that. There are a few Bible verses in the New Testament advising Christians not to get drunk.

It's true that it's unhealthy for addiction to simply be replaced with another addiction. But replacing it with something that gives you new hope and something that gives your life meaning, something you enjoy, can be a mechanism that makes addiction easier to shake off than it would be if addiction was replaced by nothing, so it just felt like self-denial.

But religion certainly doesn't have to be involved. If anyone follows the addiction self-help link in my signature, they'll see it's a long page, but there isn't anything to do with religion on it. It's all to do with other ways of breaking free of addiction, like finding ways of making your life more fulfilling and enjoyable, so again, contemplating shaking off the addiction doesn't feel like losing something and getting nothing worthwhile in return, but it's easier, because it's being replaced by enjoyable things.

[kuroyume0161]

As an atheist, humanist, skeptic, how could I be pro-religion in any form to any degree? I don't care about it's positive value potential. The premise of religion is organized fantasizing - plain and simple. As you note, religion is not a prerequisite for positivity. And as far as I'm concerned, the negativity that accompanies religion will always be there. Here, negativity not only means the 'bad' effects of religion but the delusional, useless effects of religion (devotion, blind faith, ritual, prayer, etc.).

There are a few verses in the NT advising Christians to do other things:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26

34Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
I Corinthians 14: 34-37

Alcoholism isn't a disease or illness.

The 7 steps of AA's 12-step program which refer to religion:

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with
God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us
and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to
carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our
affairs.

Directly from the PDF list of the 12 Steps from www.aa.org.

There are better methodologies to be used for substance abuse and addiction - AA isn't one of them.

[Baby Nemesis]

Firstly, I mainly agree with what you say about alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, judging by what you've quoted. Someone emailed me some of their literature once to see what I thought of it, and I thought it was horrible, all about being powerless to change things oneself and having to surrender to a higher power. It seemed rather defeatist, like learned helplessness. It might be that some alcoholics do feel that way because they've tried to give up themselves and failed so many times that they feel sure they won't be able to succeed alone so the concept of a higher power gives them new hope that something can help them; but I would guess that learning new techniques to use in trying to give up could be far more effective, and could increase self-belief because a person will know they themselves have the tools they need to succeed if they experience success. That addiction link in my signature is totally opposite to the helplessness ethos of that AA literature I read. It's all about taking control of life yourself and learning new ways of helping yourself.

Still, that thing about confessing wrongdoing isn't all bad; after all, it mentions admitting wrongdoing to another person, and I think it's used to encourage members to apologise to others for the way they've hurt them, and try and make amends.

And that thing about humbly acknowledging shortcomings to God might not be all bad, because acknowledging shortcomings can sometimes be the first step to doing something to try to remedy them, although if they imagine they're helpless to change anything at all about their lives, rather than just their alcoholism, that won't work.

Perhaps Alcoholics' Anonymous would be more successful if it had a more positive, motivational ethos. I read in a book once about someone who toured lots of support groups in America, like AA ones, and she found that in most of them, people would just immerse themselves in self-pity, telling stories about their painful pasts. She said the only exception to this was a group of Cambodian women who'd newly arrived in America from the "killing fields", where they'd witnessed and been victims of horrifying scenes of murder and violence and had fled to America where they had to get used to a lot of new things. Unlike in the other "self-help" groups, they spent little time discussing their traumatic pasts, but they spent most of the time helping each other learn practical things that could help them in their everyday lives - more English phrases, the local bus system, and other such things. They joked and laughed a lot. Only once, when a news story of a similar massacre in another country came on the radio, did they become quiet and sad and talk a bit about their past experiences; but then they quickly moved back to searching for solutions rather than dwelling on problems.

It may be that more people who go to Alcoholics' Anonymous would succeed in giving up drinking if the groups focused on the future and ways of making life more fulfilling that made giving up drinking seem more enticing, rather than dwelling on misery and feeling helpless.

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

As an atheist, humanist, skeptic, how could I be pro-religion in any form to any degree? I don't care about it's positive value potential.

And why not? Why assume religion is all negative? Why not at least go halfway and concede that there are positive aspects to religion but that they can in fact be reproduced in secular settings, because it isn't the religion itself that makes them positive things - they just often tend to go along with it, or sometimes they were developed for religious reasons but secular versions can be just as good? Take Buddhist-style meditation, for example. Secular versions of that have been developed that can help people with some mental health problems. See the BBC News article Group therapy 'beats depression' for instance, that I discussed in the first post on this page:

Quote:

The group therapy is based on some techniques found in Buddhism

An unrelated study was done on the brains of some Buddhist experts in a style of deeper meditation and some Fransiscan nunns deep in prayer. There's an interesting article about how their brainwave patterns changed and how such changes might well lead people to feel as if they're having spiritual experiences: This is Your Brain on God It concludes:

Quote:

Newberg set out to demonstrate that "mystical experience is biologically, observably, and scientifically real" (Newberg 7), and he has succeeded in doing so. Although his research cannot prove whether or not God exists, it does lay to rest the long-held misconception that spiritual experience is the result of either emotional distress, delusion, or a pathological state (Newberg 100).3 He asserts that spirituality is the product of "sound, healthy minds coherently reacting to perceptions that in neurobiological terms are absolutely real" (Newberg 100). His research has also been important in demonstrating that the neurobiology of spiritual experience is virtually identical, regardless of theological subjectivity. This uniformity leads us to believe that spiritual experience may have a biological function. Perhaps the lowered blood pressure and superior mental health associated with religious people indicate that the brain's mechanism to allow for religious experience was selected for to improve the survival of man.

If religion gives an evolutionary survival advantage, how can people like you possibly object to it?

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

The premise of religion is organized fantasizing - plain and simple.

It might have been in the religion you grew up in, but as I've illustrated, even some non-religious scientists believe there's more to it. You believe it's based on lies and the beliefs of people who want to believe those lies. Its alleged untruth is very much disputable. Here's an article that disputes it. And here's another. But to keep to the topic of religion's value:

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

Here, negativity not only means the 'bad' effects of religion but the delusional, useless effects of religion (devotion, blind faith, ritual, prayer, etc.).

Some of that is probably a waste of time and an unhealthy trip into the bizarre; but it doesn't have to be taken to extremes. And good things can come out of a frame of mind dedicated to devotion and prayer, regardless of whether there's a supernatural being listening or not, such as self-reflection that focuses on determining how to better oneself morally, a more peaceful state of mind, and unity borne out of a group of people all wanting the same thing. Of course I'm well aware that religion has led to fierce divisions and emnity over the years, but religion is not a monolith, and some forms of it are much more healthy than others.

Incidentally, "blind faith" is a misnoma, at least when applied to faith in general. Faith is based on the reports of people considered trustworthy. I can only believe Queen Elizabeth I existed through faith - it's a similar thing. Yes, there's more documentation about her existence, and the things she did were, on the face of it, easier to believe. But then, a lot more people could read and write by that time, and a lot of things have happened since then that wouldn't have been believed for a second by most people of the day, such as the development of planes and trains, the discovery of radio waves that enable someone to hear something going on in London when they're hundreds of miles away, or telephones that can enable people to talk when they're thousands of miles away, and the discovery that things as microscopically tiny as germs can even kill. If someone had theorised in the sixteenth century that such things would be discovered, many people would have just laughed them to scorn or said such things were absolutely impossible. It would have taken a lot of faith to believe that one day, such things might just happen. It's for a similar reason that atheists aren't convincing when they say what the Bible says Jesus did just couldn't have happened - no one knows all there is to know yet.

But back to the faith necessary to believe Elizabeth I existed - yes, there's a lot written down about her - or so we're led to believe. But really, how do we know the documentors were all telling the truth, and that the romantic era of the Great Queen wasn't in fact a fabrication to cover up the fact that in reality, there might have been on the throne a model, - yes, a doll made of wood, symbolising a person who was being manipulated by the faction in power - an easy manipulation to achieve, since the person didn't even exist? The truth is, we can't be absolutely sure. We even have to take it on faith that documentation about Elizabeth's reign actually exists, and that it isn't the media of the modern era perpetrating a hoax on us.

So yeah, basically, faith is belief based on accounts of people you believe you can trust.

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

There are a few verses in the NT advising Christians to do other things:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:26

And do you know any Christians who take that literally and do do their best to hate their family? Or do most Christians you know recognise it for the hyperbole it is? If so, is that verse really damaging to anyone? It was apparently common for people to use hyperbole to emphasise points they wanted people to remember in the culture of the day. See On the use of hyperbole and "extreme language" in the Bible. Jesus would simply have been emphasising that following him would mean committing oneself to putting doing that before loyalty to others, so if the two conflicted, it would come first.

Originally Posted by kuroyume0161

34Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the
law.
35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
I Corinthians 14: 34-37

Well, maybe that passage has been more influential in certain sects. But Paul can't have meant absolute silence, since only a few chapters earlier, he was giving instructions about women "praying" and "prophesying" in church. It isn't necessary that Christianity is denigrated because of such verses, just that more understanding about them should be gained.

For instance, there's an account on a web page about what it might possibly have been like in Paul's culture. Many of the things he said in his letters were written to stop specific behaviours that were going on in the churches he was writing to, so they're a little bit like one half of a phone conversation - we don't always know what the issues were that the church was raising and asking Paul to address in his letters to them. We'd understand better if we did. But here's something that might be similar to something that could have been going on:

Quote:

1 Cor 14:34-35 sounds like an absolute ban on women even speaking in a church assembly. But how does this square with 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, where Paul assumes women will pray and prophesy in church?

Let us bear in mind that Paul has spent most of chapter 14 correcting disorderly conduct in the church service, especially with regard to tongues. Could there have been another cause of disorder in the church service? Kari Torejsen furnishes an excellent example:

My mother used to compare the situation in Corinth to the one she and my father faced in northern China. Back in the 1920s when they were the first to bring God's message to that forgotten area, they found women with bound feet who seldom left their homes and who, unlike men, had never in their whole lives attended a public meeting or a class. They had never been told as little girls, 'Now you must sit still and listen to the teacher.' Their only concept of an assembly was a family feast where everyone talked at once.

When these women came to my parents' church and gathered on the women's side of the sanctuary, they thought this was a chance to catch up on the news with their neighbors and to ask questions about the story of Jesus they were hearing. Needless to say, along with babies crying and toddlers running about, the women's section got rather noisy! Add to that the temptation for the women to shout their questions to their husbands across the aisle, and you can imagine the chaos. As my mother patiently tried to tell the women that they should listen first and chitchat or ask questions later, she would mutter under her breath, 'Just like Corinth; it just couldn't be more like Corinth.'

[Kari Torejsen Malcolm, Women at the Crossroads (USA:IVP, 1982), 73-74]

[dann]

Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis

Jesus would simply have been emphasising that following him would mean committing oneself to putting doing that before loyalty to others, so if the two conflicted, it would come first.

That Jesus dude sure had a way with words, didn't he?!
He was unable to tell his potential victims in plain words that in order to accept him as their guru, they had to put loyalty to him above anything else (Where have we seen that before and after?), which is bad enough, but in order to make the message more obvious, we are now informed by BN, he used "hyperbole", which resulted in this wonderful clarification:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26
I can see why this guy would appeal to gangbangers, drug addicts and alcoholics.

Kuroyume0161, I hope that you noticed that BM seems to think that atheists have the same attitude to evolution as Christians have to the commandments:

Quote:

If religion gives an evolutionary survival advantage, how can people like you possibly object to it?

When I have the time, I'll return with my answers to DR's nonsense.

[Baby Nemesis]

Hey, Dann's back! You do realise, don't you dann, that the more you reply to this thread, the longer it will take to die.

Jesus' "victims"? Any "victims" of Christianity won't be Jesus' victims, but will be victims of distortions of his teachings, and actions perpetrated by people on the basis of distortions of his teachings. See these again, for example:

Eleven Marks of Perverted Authority.
Aberrant Christianity: What is it?
The Experience of Someone Who Went to a Church Where They Taught That Women Should Never Cut Their Hair.
Twisted Scriptures - the International Church of Christ and Bible Study.
Jane Akshar's Story.

You don't actually seem to be making a coherent point regarding Jesus and hyperbole. Nevertheless, I'll quote an article On the use of hyperbole and "extreme language" in the Bible

Quote:

... Another example cited by critics is Luke 14:26, in which Jesus tells us that we must "hate" others for the sake of the Gospel. Critics want to read this as literal hate; we reply by identifying such sayings as containing a rhetorical emphasis, not referring to literal hate.

And in fact, such rhetorical emphasis typifies ancient and even modern Semitic cultures. G. B. Caird, in The Language and Imagery of the Bible [110ff], notes the frequent use of hyperbole among Semitic peoples, and notes that "its frequent use arises out of a habitual cast of mind" which tends to view matters in extremes, or as we would say, "black and white." The Semitic mindset is dogmatic, and despises doubt; things are either one way or another, and there is no room for introspection. As a result, statements like Luke 14:26 are simply typical of this mindset that encourages extreme forms of expression.

(For more on Luke 14:26, see here.)

(Is there not an irony in bringing up dogmatic mind-sets in this thread?)

The article linked to is called Does Luke 14:26 teach literal hate?

Dann seems to be suggesting it does, and that that is the reason the gospel might appeal to violent people. The point is not sensible, whether made flippantly or not, since is there anyone who takes it to mean literal hate outside a small group of Bible critics hungry to find fault? And when it conflicts with Jesus' general message of compassion, is it really plausible that anyone would delude themselves into believing they were following him based on obedience to the command that mentions hate and total disregard of the rest of the gospel message?

And all the examples of gangsters and criminals I've given have been examples of people who've given up violence when they became Jesus' followers. Here's one example I quoted earlier in this post here. It sounds incredible, but it's interesting that such things can happen. Here's why this man was attracted to Jesus, and I've heard of other criminal types being attracted to him for similar reasons:

Quote:

He always wanted to help and despite this the preacher said: "The human race crucified him!" They were so cruel to him. They did not just want to hurt him but also humiliate him; and then I began to think about how he had felt.

The preacher’s words had hit me hard! He had painted a wonderful picture of Jesus for me.

I had understood how he was ignored and thrown out. I also realised that the people wanted to crucify him; and I could still here my mother’s voice: "You are not my son. I don’t love you. You are the son of Satan!"

I could also hear the voice of society: "Shut him away, kill him, he is sick. He will never amount to anything, he’s too dangerous. The only hope for him is the electric chair!" - Ignored and abandoned! Yes, I knew how Jesus had felt! However there was a big difference between him and me: He was the pure son of God and had sacrificed himself for others.

Nicky Cruz was different! I was a sinner, yes, I was in the clutches of sin and chained by evil.

So basically he's been inspired to follow someone who he's been taught cared so much for humanity that he would be prepared to go through all that even though he didn't deserve it, someone he can identify with and respect and really admire, and yet who lived a good life and wants his followers to do the same.

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The point regarding religion and evolutionary advantage is that if a rationale can be given as to why religion has value in evolutionary terms, or in fact any other, then religion shouldn't be dismissed as having no value.

[dann]

Nobody's claimed that religion has no evolutionary value: Read Steve Kowit's article about the Mass-Suicide of the Xhosa, in English or in Danish.
Cynics might even argue that a stunt like the one pulled by the American reverend Jim Jones several years ago in Guyana would be worthy of a Darwin award.

[dann]

Christians seem to be rather fond of sacrifices and tests of loyalty, don't they?


In the city of Godham: i.e. in the Old Testament.


And in the New Testament, i.e. in Jesusville:
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26" &

Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis

Jesus would simply have been emphasising that following him would mean committing oneself to putting doing that before loyalty to others, so if the two conflicted, it would come first.

And finally in Jonestown: "When the time came when we should have dropped dead, Rev. Jones explained that the poison was not real and that we had just been through a loyalty test."

[dann]

Quote:

Brief Summary: The book opens with a scene in heaven where Satan comes to accuse Job before God. He insists Job only serves God because God protects him and seeks God’s permission to test Job’s faith and loyalty. God grants His permission, only within certain boundaries. Why do the righteous suffer? This is the question raised after Job loses his family, his wealth, and his health. Job's three friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, come to “comfort” him and to discuss his crushing series of tragedies. They insist his suffering is punishment for sin in his life. Job, though, remains devoted to God through all of this and contends that his life has not been one of sin. A fourth man, Elihu, tells Job he needs to humble himself and submit to God's use of trials to purify his life. Finally, Job questions God Himself and learns valuable lessons about the sovereignty of God and his need to totally trust in the Lord. Job is then restored to health, happiness and prosperity beyond his earlier state. http://www.gotquestions.org/Book-of-Job.html

As we know from history, health, happiness and prosperity are the usual outcome when we "totally trust" in someone ...

[Baby Nemesis]

Originally Posted by dann

Nobody's claimed that religion has no evolutionary value: Read Steve Kowit's article about the Mass-Suicide of the Xhosa, in English or in Danish.
Cynics might even argue that a stunt like the one pulled by the American reverend Jim Jones several years ago in Guyana would be worthy of a Darwin award.

Dann, Dann, oh how you have sacrificed your professed principles! What a coincidence it is that less than a week ago, I found a horrible thread about a woman who died while doing something that wasn't a sensible thing to do at all, and you protested the callousness of the person who found it amusing and had proposed she should get a Darwin award. You said,

Quote:

Darwin??! Or some @$$holes at a radio station who took advantage of a woman who happened to want to please her children, but did not have quite enough money
to do so!
This cynical "Darwin" argument is getting more and more stupid!

Apparently indignant that the woman should have been spoken of by the OP with such a lack of compassion, you go on to illustrate why she deserved it by quoting from the article:

Quote:

the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner.

"She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad," said Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at
Radiological Associates of Sacramento. "She was crying, and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."
(...)
"I was talking to her and she was a nice lady," Ybarra said. "She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for her kids."

But are you now doing the same thing yourself? You link to examples of where many women as well as children die this time. Is your point that those so sucked into a harmful religious belief they all die deserve a Darwin Award?? Why the difference in your attitude?

Does your hatred of religion really make so much difference to the amount of compassion you think people deserve? Aren't human beings still human beings deserving of compassion no matter what belief system they've been sucked into following?

It's disturbing the way sentiments that appear to be borne out of compassion can in fact come very much secondary to ideology, even ideology that professes to be promoting their welfare. I've been reading a depressing book called Behind the Forbidden Door by some Italian bloke - See it on Amazon. It's about China, and was written in the early 1980s. He talks quite a lot about China's history.

The author says a lot of peasants fought for the Communists in the 1940s when they were trying to overthrow the establishment, because the Communists promised them that they would take the land away from oppressive landlords and let them own it themselves. A lot of landlords had exploited the workers and famines had resulted.

Landlords were driven away. And at first, peasants were allowed to own their own land so they were happy. But then:

In the late 1950s, Mao Zedung put into operation his ideal of an egalitarian state. All private property was forbidden. Garden plots and livestock were confiscated from peasants. They were no longer allowed to hold markets to sell or buy things. They weren't even allowed to plant some vegetables for themselves along the side of a canal. Everything would belong to the state. They became detached from the land! Each one worked for communes of about 50 thousand members, one day perhaps helping to build a dike, the next day on a road, and the next in an iron-smelting plant. In return for their work, they'd be guaranteed food and clothing, education, and some other things.

But it didn't work out as planned. In fact, this policy, designed to make everyone equal, was disastrous! Output of grain, pork and sugar fell to the levels it had been at ten years earlier. Millions of people were plunged into famine, and many died.

In the early 1960s, they were allowed private plots to grow what they liked on again, and they called them "life saving plots". But this was short-lived, because when the Cultural Revolution started, Mao's "leftist" ideology was put into force again, and private plots were no longer allowed, again with disastrous consequences.

At the time the author wrote the book, many communes had been abolished and peasants were allowed to own their own land, and output of crops had increased a lot. People could remark on how much better cared-for the private plots were than the publicly-owned land was. The abolition of the commune system brought big problems though, since at least when all food belonged to the commune, people who didn't work, like old people, got a share. But grain production certainly rose afterwards. The private plots were a lot more productive than the others.

It was perhaps partly selfishness that led to the decline in productivity when everything was publicly owned - people wouldn't feel as motivated to work on land they might not see again or which other people might not work hard on so they didn't know if their efforts would pay off, as they would on land where they knew they'd have a definite percentage of what was produced, and where they could actually witness the results of their work in progress.

But the point is that even when it had been discovered that Mao's ideology was leading to disaster, the same ideology, purported to be all about the promotion of human welfare but in reality causing disaster, was still implemented as the policy. What makes people put an ideology that professes to be all about human well-being above human well-being itself when it proves to be harming it? What makes people consider human welfare as so much less important than an ideal they hold, such as the abolition of religion for the good of the people?

Those articles seem interesting though. Shame the first one's ten pages long, although the pages are short. I'll get to reading all of it though in the end.

[Baby Nemesis]

Originally Posted by dann

Christians seem to be rather fond of sacrifices and tests of loyalty, don't they?


In the city of Godham: i.e. in the Old Testament.


And in the New Testament, i.e. in Jesusville:
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26" &



And finally in Jonestown: "When the time came when we should have dropped dead, Rev. Jones explained that the poison was not real and that we had just been through a loyalty test."

And just what was there in Jesus words about following him that urged people to die for him? Remember this was the same Jesus who said, "When you're persecuted in one town, flee to another".

Jesus' words about putting him before family can be put in context and shown to mean something very different from what you're inferring they mean. You'll see if you read the whole of Luke chapter 14 yourself. Jesus is making a point in the next verses about counting the cost of following him before you even bother to start. Hence Jesus' illustration immediately after the verse about putting him before parents of someone building a tower and having to stop after he laid the foundations because he didn't have enough material to build it, and just being laughed at, because he didn't count the cost of building it before he started. The illustrations Jesus gives before the verse are of people basically making excuses for not wanting to follow him - divided loyalties.

As for your Job example, you seem to have really missed the point of the book. The amount of complaining it says Job did about God proves it isn't a parable to teach loyalty to God no matter what! His complaining starts quite near the beginning, and goes on persistently through many chapters. It's probably a parable that teaches a far more profound message than that.

Here's what it's more likely to be:

The Book of Job is an important counter-balance to faulty assumptions that might be made through reading too much into the rest of the Old Testament, since most of the Old Testament is about God's punishment on societies for sins such as violence and oppression of the poor, but some might think it's saying tragedy is always a punishment for sin, rather than sometimes having nothing to do with it. The Old Testament doesn't say that every instance of such suffering would be a punishment from God, and it doesn't address the reasons for the suffering of individuals. However, it may have been easy for anyone to assume it meant that when individuals suffered tragedy, they were being punished for something by God, so it was their fault. It may be for this reason that the New Testament tells us the disciples of Jesus asked him when they saw a man who'd been blind from birth, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" They might have got ideas like that from the Old Testament. The Book of Job is an essential corrective to this mistaken belief, since it's about how suffering can happen to the best of us for no obvious reason.

If it wasn't for the Book of Job, a terrible stigma could have grown up against people who suffered tragedy, because other people might have mistakenly thought the Bible shows that they must be suffering as a result of God's punishment. Thus, the Book of Job could have prevented mental torment of many who might otherwise have suffered the effects of judgmentalism by such people on top of the tragedies they were already suffering.

[Baby Nemesis]

Hey Dann, look at this!! I know I suggested I wouldn't post again if you didn't, but this is just too good to miss!

Just when it seemed the reputation of Christianity was so far-gone it would never again be able to struggle to its feet and drag itself haltingly out of the mud, Yippy! Someone pops up to save the day! Here we have Christianity showing the good side it's supposed to. Here's a link to another thread on here: An Interview with a Former KKK Leader.

... Ahem, before everyone reading this faints in shock or flies into a rage and rushes to reply with a bellowing tirade of outraged indignation for my offensive audacity, no, I'm not suggesting the KKK is the good side of Christianity. Here's what I'm saying:

The former KKK leader talks about how he and his Klan followers threatened a certain preacher. I looked up a bit more about the preacher in Wikipedia and it turns out he was active in the civil rights movement and a friend of Martin Luther King. The Ku Klux Klan leader said he and his gang threatened him in the 1980s. He said the preacher responded by being nice to him and using humour. I found an article about him that I link to in that thread, that says his attitude towards black people changed as a result, and he now even works with a group to combat racism. It's yet another inspirational story.

... And I read that he's become a clergyman as well. Sorry Dann, it seems I've collected yet another gangster-gone-good story.

(I nearly managed to do a bit of cheek-turning myself in the religion forum a few weeks ago, inspired by remembering something someone I presume is an atheist said/did in a conversation I had with them and others when I first got here; but unfortunately my temper got the better of me. ... Still, some of the results were entertaining, and possibly instructive in a round-about way, although probably best not repeated, although they have to be two of my best posts. Kind of relevant though, funnily enough.)

Anyway, the interview with the former KKK leader is linked to in the thread about him - it's an audio interview on YouTube, but it's only short. Definitely worth a listen for anyone interested. The chicken-kissing episode might be especially of note to some.