Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Gallup recorded significant declines in public confidence in 11 of the 16 institutions it tracks. Putting a halt to Right-wing judge shopping would help to improve  confidence. Designated extremist group, Moms for Liberty, have some great ideas for 2024 as ‘they who owns the youth will gain the future’.

The leader of the JFK-QAnon cult is dead or is that just what they want you to think?

Secular coalition, FFRF chastise Trump’s anti-atheist comments.

How to get excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

If your faith makes you discriminate at work, change jobs.

United Methodists lose one-fifth of U.S. churches in schism over LGBTQ rights. Not very united then, are they?

UK’s state-run CofE schools plan to ‘double number of children who are Christian disciples’. (read the comments section too).

Faith “switching”: Religions are leaking members and can’t plug the holes fast enough.

In Nigeria many humanists live in constant fear of attack from members of the religion of peace.

World of Woo: An entire pyramid of it.  Speed reading is bullshit.

Environment:  Broken heat records—and the promise of more.

A new study identifies key differences between religious “Nones” and religious “Dones” while another study finds children of highly religious mothers are more likely to internalize their problems.

More young adults are not religious, but Christianity still dominant religion in US.

Science activism is surging – which marks a culture shift among scientists.

The first pharmaceutical drugs ‘space factory’ was launched.

Richard Dawkins and the language of DNA while the oldest genetic data from a human relative is found in 2-million-year-old teeth.

Research is suggesting we don’t just inherit genes from our parents: “experiences can lead to changes in gene expression”.

Is Earth the only Goldilocks planet?

James Webb telescope image dazzles on science birthday. (See also first video below).

Creativity is not a right brain phenomenon.

Are people really becoming less ethical?

Long Reads: The science of consciousness still has no theory. Rebuilding Ukraine is an act of resistance. Four of the most dramatic shifts in American religion over the last 50 years. It’s not only political conservatives who worry about moral purity.

Sunday Book Club: Time Shelter.

Some photographs taken last week.  Nat Geo’s 21 most compelling images of the 21st century.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video:  Let’s travel to Maisie’s Galaxy with the JWST. Christopher Hitchens’ last Interview. Deconstructing Jordan Peterson on Religion. TEDx – Imagine no religion.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Have a  great week everyone!

[StregaModerator]

Thanks, Reg!!!

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Glad to see the Sunday School back!

Great news! I think I just managed to stop a Gish Gallop on another Forum.

To give a thumbnail sketch of what happened, there was a guy who was saying that Christianity was the source of literacy, higher learning, science, and civilization itself…as if to want a medal or a lollypop or grovelling or whatever.

I then pointed out that the Pre-Socratic philosophers did explorations of the Natural Universe, Socrates mastered and practiced his same-named Method, Aristotle discovered the Axioms of Logic and did further explorations in science, and in India, the Charvaka/Lokayata School honed methods of Empiricism and Rationalism to understand the world…and all of this pre-dated Hinduism and the Abrahamic Religions.

Well, this guy and another joining him went off on a tangent that included the Gnostics, the Scholastics, the Trinity, Communion, “Not All Christians,” plank ships, astrolabs, papyrus, agronomy, deep-chisel plows, transition to urban from rural life, industrial processes, gunpowder, original designs of revolvers and muzzleloaders, Denominations, Schisms, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and it got fuzzy from there…

So instead of trying to address each and every bit of this falderal, minutae, and insignifica, I just said:

Look, I’m sorry to be The loose horseshoe nail in your Gish Gallop, but you haven’t refuted a damn thing about my original post.

I then reiterated that Humans pursued, systematized, communicated, and institutionalized knowledge long before Paganism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and even before Hinduism and even to lesser degrees before religions prior to that. And they did so frequently despite and against the beliefs and practices of these religions.

And I added that, barring an extinction event that includes our species, humans–and whatever we may become–will continue to pursue, systematized, communicate, and institutionalize knowledge after religion.

The key to fighting a Gish Gallop is not to address every single item they throw at you, but rather, focus on what you said that prompted the deluge. If they address your point somewhere in the mess, then follow through, but if not, point that out and do nothing further.

Either way, you have rendered their massive effort an exhausting exercise in futility. It’s like mental Jiu-Jitsu turning an opponent’s overwhelming force against itself. 😁

• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Fixing a tag
• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Grammar

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Oh, and it’s been three days and the thread about Christianity as the source of All Good Things hasn’t come back to life. That is my equivalent of 30 pieces of Silver. 😁

[UnseenParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

If your faith makes you discriminate at work, change jobs.

So, I’m a writer (which is true, in addition to a photographer and web designer). My belief system is atheist, which is a “faith” in a broad sense. It’s the sense that covers atheists under the Establishment Clause.

I think the distaste for the Supreme Court’s decision in the web designer’s case is a classic knee jerk reaction by people who haven’t thought through with fairly obvious thought problems.

I’m an atheist writer and my principles tell me not to promote religion by writing advertising or PR copy to help Catholics, evangelicals, or Scientologists promote their mission.

Should I refuse the work or change to…what?…selling insurance? I’m a writer. That’s my job.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by  Unseen.
• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by  Unseen.

[UnseenParticipant]

Research is suggesting we don’t just inherit genes from our parents: “experiences can lead to changes in gene expression”

This may help explain certain evolutionary spurts and why the fossil record in some species has inexplicable gaps like the lack of a progression showing the evolution of the cow similar to the one showing the evolution of the horse.

Cows have bones, you know.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@theencogitationer – The key to fighting a Gish Gallop is not to address every single item they throw at you, but rather, focus on what you said that prompted the deluge.

Exactly and that is the approach I take.  When theists stop me to ask if they can tell me about their god(s) I will say “Okay then”. I remain silent until they stop talking. When I question what they have said they will (always) ask me what I believe. I then remind them that I was questioning what they just told me and what I believe is irrelevant.  I want them to explain how, for example, how they acquired the ability to communicate with the Creator of the Universe via telepathy (or prayer as they call it). How does it work? Do you actually hear a voice speaking back to you?

At this point they both, or sometimes all of them, start firing a litany of questions at me in a blunderbuss approach. Morals, Evolution, Science, Jesus, Creation, C.S. Lewis, Yada Yada, all at the same time, allowing no time to answer any of them. I don’t debate science with them anymore. They only introduce it so they don’t have to explain their beliefs about their god(s). I will keep to the topic of faith. I will then return to asking the same question about prayer, or whatever question it happens to be, never allowing them to control the dialogue. You stopped me to tell me something so I want it explained to me, one point at a time.

W.L. Craig is a master of this approach. He sounds good to the choir but most of the time he only sounds like he has answered the question, once you breakdown his replies.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

W.L. Craig is a master of this approach. He sounds good to the choir but most of the time he only sounds like he has answered the question, once you breakdown his replies.

I think you underestimate WLC.  He’s a true thinker, and does a good job of exploring a problem – but yes, he’s wedded to his paradigms and not very flexible.  But that is normal, it seems.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Are people really becoming less ethical?

The article argues that if people think this, it’s an illusion.  I think, people’s perceptions depend on a number of factors, such as, their life circumstances, their communities (they vary in how prosocial / toxic they are), and their faith in humanity or lack of it.  Stephen Pinker provides documentary evidence that the social world is getting steadily nicer.  In wokeness (for all its faults), we see a pressure towards greater compassion and social justice.  That pressure is always there, in any culture.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

It’s not only political conservatives who worry about moral purity.

It’s true.  Dr Gray has a very interesting theory that although one side’s concerns about purity may seem silly and irrelevant to the other: they’re not so silly if we consider the possibility that they’re connected to doing real-world harm, and that is what people are really intuitively upset about.  In fact, he finds that any form of immorality is intuitively seen as harmful by people.  In normal moral psychology/philosophy, benefit/harm is just the most basic of all the moral intuitions that also include fairness, reciprocity, purity, etc.

[_Robert_Participant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

W.L. Craig is a master of this approach. He sounds good to the choir but most of the time he only sounds like he has answered the question, once you breakdown his replies.

I think you underestimate WLC. He’s a true thinker, and does a good job of exploring a problem – but yes, he’s wedded to his paradigms and not very flexible. But that is normal, it seems.

A good thinker doesn’t do apologetics. Every argument he ever made applies to Islam as well, so why isn’t he a Muslim?

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

_Robert_ wrote:

A good thinker doesn’t do apologetics. Every argument he ever made applies to Islam as well, so why isn’t he a Muslim?

Well, of course, any atheist would say that religion is irrational bullshit.  But there are large parts that hang together and make sense, even if it doesn’t do so as a whole.

WLC is not a Muslim because Muslims don’t believe that Jesus is the son of God and don’t hold Jesus in the same way as Christians.  I think that’s the ultimate basis of WLC’s belief system.  If you can convince yourself of that, then more of Christianity makes sense.  That’s his reason for dismissing the other religions (I think).

Sometimes WLC skates over relevant things.  He regularly makes me a Top Fan on his Facebook page which in my opinion is a mark of a mature thinker: he celebrates the honest opposition.

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