Tuesday, February 22, 2011

the likelihood of the second must be weighed against the likelihood of the first.

A miracle is a disturbance or interruption in the expected and established course of things. This could involve anything from the sun rising in the west to an animal suddenly bursting into the recitation of verse. Very well, then, free will also involves decision. If you seem to witness such a thing, there are two possibilities. The first is that the laws of nature have been suspended (in your favor). The second is that you are under a misapprehension, or suffering from a delusion. Thus the likelihood of the second must be weighed against the likelihood of the first. If you only hear a report of the miracle from a second or third party, the odds must be adjusted accordingly before you can decide to credit a witness who claims to have seen something that you did not see. And if you are separated from the "sighting" by many generations, and have no independent corroboration, the odds must be adjusted still more drastically.

according to the New Testament, the thing could be done in an almost commonplace way. Jesus managed it twice in other people's cases, by raising both Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus, and nobody seems to have thought it worthwhile to interview either survivor to ask about their extraordinary experiences. Nor does anyone seem to have kept a record of whether or not, or how, these two individuals "died" again. If they stayed immortal, then they joined the ancient company of the "Wandering Jew," who was condemned by early Christianity to keep walking forever after he met Jesus on the Via Dolorosa, this misery being inflicted upon a mere bystander in order to fulfill the otherwise unfulfilled prophecy that Jesus would come again in the lifetime of at least one person who had seen him the first time around. On the same day that Jesus met that luckless vagrant, he was himself put to death with revolting cruelty, at which time, according to the Gospel of Matthew 27:52-53, "the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." This seems incoherent, since the corpses apparently rose both at the time of the death on the cross and of the Resurrection, but it is narrated in the same matter-of-fact way as the earthquake, the rending of the veil of the temple (two other events that did not attract the attention of any historian), and the reverent comments of the Roman centurion.
This supposed frequency of resurrection can only undermine the uniqueness of the one by which mankind purchased forgiveness of sins. And there is no cult or religion before or since, from Osiris to vampirism to voodoo, that does not rely on some innate belief in the "undead." To this day, Christians disagree as to whether the day of judgment will give you back the old wreck of a body that has already died on you, or will reequip you in some other form. For now, and on a review even of the claims made by the faithful, one can say that resurrection would not prove the truth of the dead man's doctrine, nor his paternity, nor the probability of still another return in fleshly or recognizable form. Yet again, also, too much is being "proved." The action of a man who volunteers to die for his fellow creatures is universally regarded as noble. The extra claim not to have "really" died makes the whole sacrifice tricky and meretricious. (Thus, those who say "Christ died for my sins," when he did not really "die" at all, are making a statement that is false in its own terms.) Having no reliable or consistent witnesses, in anything like the time period needed to certify such an extraordinary claim, we are finally entitled to say that we have a right, if not an obligation, to respect ourselves enough to disbelieve the whole thing. That is, unless or until superior evidence is presented, which it has not been. And exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.

Monday, February 21, 2011

why talk about god/christians if we dont believe in god...

there are easily and quickly 2 reasons we talk about god...though we don’t believe in god, we certainly believe in christians. They’re everywhere, it seems. And while most of them are harmless, a number of them are annoying… or worse. Much worse. They bomb abortion clinics. They do their best to hinder the advancement of science and the arts. They elect candidates based not on their competency, but on whether “he prays” (and says so more often than his opponent). They try to interfere — and get laws to do it — in the sexual lives of consenting adults. They ban stem cell research and contraceptives, thus condemning millions around the world to disease and suffering, because of books written by primitive desert nomads thousands of years ago. So, yes, christians are a problem.

and

Wouldn’t you try to help someone descending into alcoholism? Wouldn’t you care if you saw someone destroying their lives because of booze? Well, in a way, religion is like alcoholism. It attacks the mind, the power of reasoning, it makes people believe in absurd things. It destroys lives – both of the alcoholic / believer, and often those of their family, too. So it’s natural that some of us care — even about strangers. We don’t think we’ll ever “unconvert” fundamentalists; by definition, they’ve long stopped thinking about their belief critically — indeed, they believe that doing so would be a sin. But some people may be at a “crossroads”, so to speak. They may believe simply because they’ve never thought about it; everyone around them believes unquestioningly, and they’ve never even heard of an alternative. So maybe an atheist can make a difference.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

"Values are a certain kind of fact, Just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish will change the way we talk about morality,"

he argued.
However, Harris quickly rejected the notion that religion would offer the answers to moral questions. Instead, he argued for a scientific approach to achieving a universal morality, one that conceptualizes human well-being as something that can be quantified and maximized in any number of equally successful ways -- much like health and nutrition.

He criticized the tendency to regard moral questions as matters of opinion rather than as questions that have scientifically verifiable right and wrong answers. "How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise, or moral talent, or moral genius, even?" he asked. "How have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count?"

"Just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish will change the way we talk about morality," he said.