Christianity in America

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Thucydides


Not according to where the word came from. Idiot is a classification of people of below average IQ's, along with Moron, Imbicile, and a couple of others that were ported over from the french classification scheme of intelligence and later became derogative terms used to insult someone's intelligence in english.

As I said the term is not limited to that meaning in its general usage. In general use its often a synomym for foolish. Former Secretary of the Interior James Watt was a bloody fool. I will continue to refer to him as an idiot or a fool as the general usage for either fits him exceedingly well. Considering that two different mileniums have come and gone without a Second Coming I think either term fits the believers of that nonsense at least when act as if they are right as James Watt did.

[Caligastia]

*sigh*

You're like an evangelical Ethelred. Your faith in man's science is unshakable. I feel its pointless even discussing anything with you, especially when you feel its necessary to insult me.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Ethelred
They made the decision to believe nonsense themselves. Same as you do. As I allready said 'idiot' is not just about IQ in general usage. If you want you can replace it with foolish.

Would you say that it is 'foolish' to believe something to be true which you do not understand or have never seen first hand evidence for?

If yes, then: do you believe the Standard Model of particle physics to be true? Do you believe Quantum Mechanics to be true? Do you believe string theory to be true?

If no, why do you call these people foolish?

Science is far more reliable than the writings of ancient men or the recordings of sleep talkers.

Now this depends on what you define to be science and who the 'ancient men' were. I agree that my own papers are more reliable than the writings of 'ancient men' () but I have seen a hell of a lot of 'science' which is complete rubbish. And I am not meaning cranks here - some of the authors of such drivel are well respected scientists who are at well respected universities. Indeed, there are some experiments whose published results neither I nor many of the physicists I talk to believe. Their results are a lot less believable than anything in the bible.....

Rogan mistated my position so he and you were wrong.

Could you remind me which statement miss-stated your position?

Just why should I start accepting things that can be and have been checked and found wanting?

I agree with this statement. If something is testable, then test it and see who is right. But, as I have already pointed out, there are a lot of untestable statements out there. Just because they are untestable does not make them wrong.

Both you and Rogan believe because you believe. I am not going to believe in the unverifiable, especially when it is verifiably wrong. This is in no way a some sort of defect.

Do you believe that I exist? Can you prove it without making any assumptions? If an angel came to you tonight and declared God to be real, would you believe him, or would you try and find some other explanation? What would it take to make you believe?

Whether or not your disbelief is a defect is a matter of opinion. I believe it is, and I believe you miss out on a lot by adhering to such a policy.....

[Ned]

I'm not going to bother to read this whole thread. I got the drift about "small minds" from an Ethelred post.

ER, you sound just like Ventura. Do you like to be in that company?

But on the whole, very religious people fleeing persecution in Europe formed America, in part. These tended to be Protestants, who, of course, read and take literally the bible from the days of Martin Luther.

Other Americans are from Ireland. These Americans wear their Catholicism as a badge of honor in their anti-British hatred. That hatred has never been stronger than in recent years.

A large number of Americans are from Catholic Eastern Europe, Cuba or Mexico. These people are very religious as a whole.

Continental Europeans and many Americans from all spheres are not religious at all. Some are even anti-religious. But these tend to be a minority, but a well-educated and vocal minority.

Whether religion is valid or not, it provides a social function in the United States. Churches are centers for people to meet and cooperate together.

Whether there is a God or not is unknowable. Those who affirm either polar position without evidence are equally relying on “faith.”

People who criticize religion, or for that matter, atheists, are bigots who should, in my opinion, bet condemned as such. We in the US tolerate those who have a different view on this issue than our own. Tolerance is the key to a civil society of multiple religions.

I repeat, and loudly, that those who criticized the religious as weak or simple-minded, or those who criticize the atheists for being inherently evil, are equally wrong and bigoted. On these issues, freedom of choice and respect for others is what is to be preferred.

So, Saint Marcus, you are a bigot, obviously. But so is CNN.

[Saint Marcus]

So, Saint Marcus, you are a bigot, obviously.

when did I say religion was bad?

but thanks for your insights

[Thucydides]

Originally posted by Ned


Whether there is a God or not is unknowable. Those who affirm either polar position without evidence are equally relying on “faith.”

People who criticize religion, or for that matter, atheists, are bigots who should, in my opinion, bet condemned as such. We in the US tolerate those who have a different view on this issue than our own. Tolerance is the key to a civil society of multiple religions.

I repeat, and loudly, that those who criticized the religious as weak or simple-minded, or those who criticize the atheists for being inherently evil, are equally wrong and bigoted. On these issues, freedom of choice and respect for others is what is to be preferred.

So, Saint Marcus, you are a bigot, obviously. But so is CNN.

So atheists are only people who criticize religious people as being weak or simple-minded? Or are you being bigoted yourself of people who don't happen to believe in God? Either way, I fail to see how you can without bigotry call every atheist or person who criticizes religion a bigot

As for to the existence of a (Jeudo-Christian) God being unknowable. Of course it is, because Christian have failed to provide a testable hypothesis. Even the existence of neutrinos, massless particles with no charge, is testable by science. Until the time that Christians can come with something that can be tested and when tested shows in their favour, the default position is the same with religion as for any other untestable hypothesis, a negative. There's no faith required for someone to take such a position.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Thucydides
Even the existence of neutrinos, massless particles with no charge, is testable by science.

Neutrinos have mass. Be careful what you believe in.

[Sava]

Religion, the cause of, and solution to, all our problems.

[Thucydides]

Neutrinos have mass. Be careful what you believe in

my mistake, your right. they're nearly massless, but they do some miniscule mass (I'd have to look it up to find the number). They're still perhaps the one type of particle theorized that interacts the least with anything else in the universe, and even their existence can be tested.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Sava
Religion, the cause of, and solution to, all our problems.

I thought that was alcohol...

Then again, if religion is the opiate of the masses, then it fits that phrasing just as well as alcohol.

[Bosh]

But on the whole, very religious people fleeing persecution in Europe formed America, in part.

Or alternatively, very religous people who tried to set up religious persecution in europe, failed to do so and so went to America so that they could set up religious persecution here. The Pilgrims are a fine example of this...

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Boshko
A lot of it has to do with the success of European countries to centralize and set up national churches (even Spain and France, since the French had Gallicism and the Spainish were always into being "more Catholic than the Pope"). The European countries generally had a real cultural epicenter and a fairly unified culture which allowed these national churches to dominate fairly well, at least among the elite. In the cases where there was a large minority church that survived it was generally among a small minority culture (like the Welsh going Methodist and the Western Norwegians going Pietist as a result of which western norway is easily still the most religoius part of the country).
When these national churches went into institutional decline they never were replaced by a new vigorous sect, so when people got around to revolting against the national church they generally went with a secular doctrine when the national churches had generally (with England being the major exception) kept religion fairly monopolized. This is especially the case as the welfare state started to grow and thus take away the church's traditional place in poor relief and education (much earlier than in the US when we didn't have much of a welfare state until the New Deal and education remained locally enough controlled that there was a lot of blatant religion in public schools into quite recently, something that didn't happen in europe where education was far more centralized and secular). And finally since the European churches were generally much more monoplistic, centralized, and powerful than any of the US's thousands of small sects (with the exception of the Southern Baptists in large swaths of the south) lead to a reaction in the form of political anti-clericalism which never really existed in the US since religion wa so fractured.

In the US's case having a lot of immigrants from fringe religions (puritans, disproportionate amounts of pietists from germanic countries etc.) the most important difference in the case of the US was the frontier. It was big, damn big. Big enough to make any kind of centralization impossible until very recently. This mean that while there were a number of attempts to establish religious monopolies (especially in New England) they generally failed miserably since they never could extend their reach into the frontier effectively. This lead to lots of fairly independent churches poping up all along the frontier and kept religion in the US a lot more dynamic and vibrant. Equally important is that US culture became FAR less centralized than European culture, not only do you have the dozens of immigrant groups with their own religions but you had lots of regional cultures each with one (or more) predominant religion. This meant that religion was something that was YOURS something that brought together your community and backed you up and provided support, not some vast hierarchy controlled by the rich and which was in bed with the government that was taxing your ass off (in many cases to pay the clergy) and being generally annoying.

Another result of the frontier on american culture was that it was damn hard to set up much in the way of government on the frontier (much less a welfare state) and it was hard to set up much of a civil society that would give people an alternative to church for socialization etc. Thus there really wasn't much out there besides the church to provide social glue so christianity sunk its roots deep. Similar sorts of things happened on the Russian frontier in Siberia with various forms of Old Belief.

Finally the American Revolution had a lot to do with America becomming much more religious than Europe. Contrary to bull **** Christian propaganda the Founding Fathers were EXTREMALLY secular and so was the bulk of the American elite (with the south being something of and exception), while at the same time the European elites were religous (although often pretty cyncial about it or just holding too it because they though it made a good opiate for the masses). So when the common people got around to rebelling against the elite, some secular doctrine (especially socialism) looked damn good in Europe while the vigrant Great Awakening american popular christianity made a pretty decent vehicle of revolting against the Deist merchantocracy of the coast...

Finally someone answered the the post's topic. Thank you. It was informative.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by joseph1944
If I remember right one of the several thing that has to happen is rebuilding Solomon Temple for the third time. There is a small problem with that right now, because I believed the Dome of the Rock is now located on the same site as Solomon temple was. If I'm wrong I'm sure one of you will correct it.

You are correct. That is one of the key signs. This is one of the reasons of why US fundamentalist christians support Israel so strongly. They want that third temple built and usher in the return of their Christ.

It would be an interesting experiment if this was allowed, then we could settle this part of the debate forever.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Caligastia
So you think science has the power to explain everything? Interesting.

Science is a method or tool for understanding the physical nature of the universe and like any tool it can't do all jobs, but it is the best tool we have. Science has no method for studying the metaphysical.

The reason I state this is that these attempted dialectics of science vs. religion are doomed to failure. You both may be playing football, but you are in different arenas.

metaphysics

metaphysics (mèt´e-fîz´îks) noun
Abbr. met., metaph.
1.(used with a sing. verb). Philosophy. The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
2.(used with a pl. verb). The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.
3.(used with a sing. verb). A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
4.(used with a sing. verb). Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.

[Pl. of Middle English methaphisik, from Medieval Latin metaphysica, from Medieval Greek (ta) metaphusika, Greek (Ta) meta (ta) phusika, (the things) after the physics, the title of Aristotle's treatise on first principles (so called because it followed his work on physics) : meta, after. See meta- + phusika, physics. See physics.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
Science has no method for studying the metaphysical.

Nothing has a method for studying the metaphysical. Metaphysics can be most accurately described as "making **** up."