Re: latin
Hi Tom.
You are likely correct on history being the reason that a person chooses a certain belief or pattern, although with some rabbid atheists I've met, (and of course being at a university I've met more than a few), it is often simply that they have never seen the bennificial side of religion or have encountered religious people who's ideas of faith and God are not so simplistic. A great example of this line of thinking was Arthur C clarke's novel the mountains of paradise, which involve communication with an alien probe who gives humanity plans for advanced technology. In a very offhand section of the novel (which is actually much more concerned with that technology and the building of a space elivator), Clarke describes a bishop transmitting the entirety of Thomas Aquinas meditations to the probe to recieve the answer "Bad data" or something like that.
What however struck me about this episode, is that Clarke imagines &q uot;aquinas" as the pinacle of religious discourse. Aquinas was both a great theologian and schollar of his day, and indeed furthered the course of what we would now think of as mathematics and science, but the idea that all religious philosophy has remained static sinse the thirteenth century is ridiculous! sinse while undoubtedly there are people who still maintain beliefs that haven't changed (like all those religious fundamentalists who are convinced on the 6000 year age of the earth which I believe was actually a scientific guess from the roman schollar Ptolomee).
It often strikes me tthat a lot of rabbid atheists (as well as needing a good dose of philosophy of science), see religion as soemthing of a straw man and actively disregard the active faith and religious experiences of mystics, preferring to characterize all religious belief as that sort of easily answered fundamentalism.
As regards suffering contradicting belief in God, while I do understand the position, at the same time it depends entirely on what you believe God to be capable of. I was never taught that God would literally intervine in the world, or that if I prayed for something it would automatically happen. Indeed when I! lost all of the vision of my right eye when i was seven in a massive expulsive hemmerage during an operation, which not only lost me most of my vision but also caused extreme and severe pain, I was never told to pray to God to make it better. Indeed the local vicar (himself having lost a leg in the war), came and gave me communian and talked to me about things. I was told bad things happen, but God would be there if I needed. As it turned out,that prooved literally true according to experiences, and something I remembered over the next few years, both when very alone at my specialist school and afterwards through some very bad circumstances.
Probably the best quote I've ever heard on this subject was at one meeting at Beth Shalom, a Br itish Memorial for victims of the Shoa (holocaust). Two survivers of the concentration camps were debating this. one chap felt (much as you do), that there could possibly be no God with what had happened to them in the concentration camps. he challenged the lady, who still maintained a belief in God and was a Practicing Jew "where was God in the camps?" to which she replied "I knew where God was, I had no problem with where God was. The real question is where was man!"
Of course my current problem is that I am not so sure anymore of that relationship to God , however I would never say it doesn't exist for some people or that I didn't have it at one time, my own issue at the moment is that I am no longer convinced God actively cares about anyone who isn't in touch with God, and if you lose that communication ---- well Tough Lukc.
Regarding science and conspiracy theories and such, well while it's absolutely true I've seen a lo t of dud advertising and the like, at the sme time even major scientists can be guilty of bad science, indeed when I was studdying philosophy of a science a friend of mine (himself with extremely good qualifications in physics maths and chemistry), used to read the new scientist and point out articals that fell fowl of say experimental regress or making unfalsifyable claimes.
To give one example, last year I watched a program on colour and psychology. One psychologist on the program (not a presenter, a qualified doctor of psychology), postulated that different colours would change people's perceptions of time, that red, being associated with blood and fire and such would make people perceive time to pass more quickly, while blue, being associated with calm and cold would have the opposite effect.
They took three groups of participants, and asked each to go individually into a coloured room and time how long they thought a minute was. One group went into a red room , the other a blue one, the control group into a plane black room.
The prediction was that the group in the blue room would estimate a minute as longer because they perceived time more slowly. What actually happened on the program was that those who went into the red room made the longest estimates and took the most time, while those in the blue room made the shortest estimates and came out more quickly. this was a direct contravention of the psychologist's initial hypothesis. what he said however was that he still! believed people felt time passing more slowly in the blue room, and made the shorter estimates because people believed they'd spent a minute in there already because of the slower passage of time.
this was one of the clearest cases of unfalsifyable scientific practice I've seen. The psychologist had! a theory, set up an experiment to test that theory, but once the experiment showed a different result altered the theory to remain the same despi te that result.
I also find it worrying particularly when people like Dorkins get on the evolutionary hobby horse and want to try and offer "Evolution" as the explanation for anything and everything, telling increasingly weerder unfalsifyable stories about human behaviour and present these as scientific fact, like the disability theory I mentioned earlier.
That evolution exists I do not doubt, indeed it's only necessary to studdy something like bacterial resistance to see evolution in action, but to claime evolution as some sort of explanetory force for anything and everything we don't understand, or assume that everything about humans must! come down to some almighty evolutionary survival of the fittest idea and that the selfish gene makes selfish individuals as many rabbid atheists do seems to me just as consistantly overkill.
Btw, to lighten the mood however, I have an absolutely true story about how philosophy was used for exorcism!
A very famous and well respected Ethicist told me once over dinner when I was president of the philosophy society at Durham, how he got sick of the endless university burocracy. one form asked him what further professional training he required in order to carry out his job properly. Being totally sick of stupid questions he wrote that he thought he needed qualifications in Exorcism!
This was fine until some time the next term, a first year student knocked on the professor's door one evening and asked him if he could please come and deel with a ghost in her room. She'd apparently looked on the university website and seen that he had recieved training from the university in exorcism!
The professor responded to this by grabbing a copy of David Hume's schepticism, and marching round and round this student's room reading it out in a very loud voice!
The professor says he's still not recieved any training in exorcism, but it must have d
one the trick sinse the student stopped complaining about Ghosts! .
URL: http://audiogamesforum.captivatingsound.com/viewtopic.php?pid=174515#p174515
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