A Great Question About Religion

Debate Room
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A surgeon and a psychiatrist friend are having dinner one night. They are discussing the surgeon’s career. (S = Surgeon, P=Psychiatrist). S: This practice is killing me! P: If you could choose any other career field, what would it be? S: I always wanted to be a sportscaster. P: So why don’t you do it? S: Because I decided at 18 to become a doctor. P: Would you go to an 18 year old today at age 45 for career guidance? S: Of course not! P: Isn’t that what you’re doing!?

I ask the same type of question to religious believers: Would you go to a 2nd century ancient person today for guidance on your entire life? Isn’t that what you’re doing when you read your Bible!?

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careful. they will likely respond with the same argument about science. true, science is modern and is updating everyday, getting more and more accurate, but you still gotta be careful with those. it is a head scratcher though!

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I do think however that it highlights the sunk cost fallacy. The Surgeon’s rationale is that the decision was made long ago and can’t be undone. What he’s really saying is he spent years and tons of $ on college and residency and clawing his way up in his profession and if he changes his mind it would all be for naught.

It is like that for the devout / serious religious person. All the self-denial, all the study, all the permiter defense – for decades perhaps – to admit that it was wrong to make those investments is to admit you were in a sense a failure. It need not be such a zero sum consideration but that’s the human tendency. And it’s made worse by the fact that to accept that the dogma is wrong, may well involve losing your marriage and family, the kind regard of parents and mentors you used to respect, to accept their shame and derision and rejection, and as a result to lose the only support system you’ve ever known. And to in a way become what you once hated.

It’s a tough row to hoe.

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This, essentially, is my argument about not using a holy book to inform my life. Why would I form my worldview or beliefs around a collection of story books written by people living in abysmal ignorance in the Iron Age?

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If the apologists that wash up here (and elsewhere for that matter) are any example, they don’t read it.

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A big difference in the case of this analogy being, of course, that the surgeon may regret his choice of career, but unlike the mythology fanboy, provided a welcome service to others and learned much that was useful.

Not that this will stop the usual suspects from peddling excrementally palsied ex recto apologetic fabrications, after all, they’ve never let facts or genuine logic act as an impediment to their pretentious wishful thinking, so we can safely operate on the basis that this won’t either.

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Some of the specimens in question establish this, by providing evidence of functional illiteracy when peddling their nonsense.

I suspect a good few of the specimens that turn up here, fall into a very specific demographic. Namely, they’re homeschooled teenage boys from pathologically fundamentalist households, pretending that they’re going to “stick it to the stoopid atheists™” in order to impress some similarly naive teenage girl from their “Bible Study” group, with the ultimate aim of getting into her knickers.

This plan on the part of said demographic, of course, ends up being reduced to a smoking crater in the ground, when it runs into the fatal terrain known as “people who possess actual knowledge of facts and relevant concepts”. At which point his plan to show off his prowess to his equally wet behind the ears lust interest, is rapidly aborted.

This demographic makes itself obvious, when the posts emanating therefrom include such details as:

[1] Basic errors of spelling and grammar;

[2] Woefully incompetent attempts to use emojis and Internet slang, that much more clued up teenagers would point and laugh at;

[3] Obvious failures of even elementary understanding of [3a] the rules of proper discourse, and [3b] the concepts being covered in their failed attempts at discourse;

[4] Appeals to infantile levels of circular reasoning that even other mythology fanboys would regard as embarrassing, such as openly naive declarations to the effect that their goat herder mythology is right just because it says so.

Many of these individuals never developed a proper ability to read, never acquired knowledge of basic facts that the rest of us absorbed with ease at five years of age, or expressed even a fraction of the curiosity that the rest of us exhibited as children. Any that did exhibit normal human behaviours as children, almost certainly had this beaten out of them by the time they no longer needed to wear nappies.

One sad aspect of the pathology being that some never grow out of this state, and remain epistemological infants throughout their lives - sometimes adding ethical infancy to the mix in addition.

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Here’s how I would handle that as a true and faithful Child of God: “Well, I’m not getting guidance form an ancient PERSON. I’m getting my guidance from The Perfect Word of God! :face_with_steam_from_nose:”

What you have to understand is the fact that MOST Christians do not acknowledge the bible being written by ancient MAN. They consider it to have been “inspired by GOD”, who thus used man to write his holy book according to his personal dictation to said scribes. (Of course, that begs the question of WHY would an all-knowing/all-powerful entity that can create the entire universe need a human to write a simple book? But that’s a whole other discussion on its own.) Those who are faithful to their beloved bible NEVER consider how the bible was translated, interpreted, and edited countless times BY MAN over the centuries prior to arriving at the “finished” product it is today. (Speaking primarily about the King James version that has dominated the population for centuries.) And they most CERTAINLY do not dare do their own research on the history of the bible and how it was developed. To do that would mean they are doubting their precious god who tells them they will be on the expressway to the unholy eternal melting pot if they ever question or doubt him. Basically, it all boils down to how FEAR keeps them in their place and subservient to anybody who controls the religion. So, Keith, while your question is fair and does make sense to those of us who lost our “God-glasses” along the way, to those who have never questioned their chosen faith, that question is very easy for them to bat aside.

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Yep. Very easy for them to plead ignorance if they don’t actually read what is between the covers of the book. Or, if they read only carefully selected happy-happy-feel-good portions of it.

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Yes indeed, there are the ones who when it is read to them deny what it literally and unequivocally says of course.

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i asked my teacher about this in high school and they told me god is timeless, so there’s their answer.

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God is also immutable, never-changing – and yet what God supposedly wants of people in terms of behavior and practice still changes gradually. Usually a generation or so behind the times.

So for example if you were a fundamentalist in the 1920s you would be harangued about the evils of radio and dancing and hem lengths above the ankle. A generation later they figured out they could harangue people about Jesus on the radio so they focused their fulminations on movies, later TV, and today fundagelical women mostly dress the same as any other woman, in a way that would scandalize their 1920s counterparts, etc.

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It’d be real nice if we had an actual Anti-War religion that practiced what it preached. Yet, (from my pov) a religion of peace is actually a religion of war and murder.

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there are some that follow something like this. take Ahimsa from Jainism and the pañca-sila from Buddhists for example

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There are xtian sects that are anti-war.

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i know xtian is some kind of variation of the spelling christian but it seems to be used in a different context here. what does xtian mean here? exchristian? just another term for christian (unlikely according to my observation)? because both “chris” and “x” are used in different contexts, as i’ve observed in this forum.

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Don’t know how others use it but if I did it would be similar to Xmas vs Christmas or xBase vs dBase … the generic system, something that applies to that whole system or class of systems and isn’t specific to any one flavor.

But at the same time I think in the case of Xtian and Xmas it ends up getting used in part because it’s just faster to type as an abbreviation. I wouldn’t read too much into it. Some fundies for instance see it as replacing Christ with X or X’ing out Christ and that is trying to make a conspiracy where none exists. Something they’re very fond of doing.

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Most Christians hate the word xtian or xmas lol. My mom gets really annoyed when I refer to Christmas like that. :joy:

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Yeah, it is old fashion but X is sometimes used as an abbreviation for Christ.

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That’s a great analogy. It really highlights why relying on ancient beliefs for modern life decisions doesn’t make much sense.

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