My conversation starter for Atheists : comments.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
|
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
| 14 |
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Also, Placebo
Yes, but faith is necessary to a religion. In other words, if you don't have faith, you don't have a religion.
That's the main problem with all of this. Under Ben's model, it's a religion with tangible, verifiable reproducable evidence.
That's not faith, it's fact. And because it's not faith, it's not religion.
Re: Also, Placebo
There's an awful lot of Christians and Jews out there* who regularly attend services and participate in any number of other religious rituals (Bat Mitzvah, etc), and would consider themselves members of that relgion, but have no actual faith whatsoever. Rather, they do it because it is a cultural thing or socially What You Do or because they were brought up in the religion and it's just What They've Always Done. I would say those people have religion but not faith, and those people do generally identify as being those religions when asked for censuses and such. Sure, *someone* having faith is necessary to a religion *existing*, but there are a lot of people *in* those existing religions who don't.
* I'm sure this happens in other religions too, especially in areas where they are particularly common, but I've seen it most frequently in these two. Christianity because it's socially dominant here in the US; Judaism because it's simultaneously a religion and an ethnicity.
Re: Also, Placebo
Re: Also, Placebo
Re: Also, Placebo
They aren't religious. They don't believe. You can be a part of a religion and not be religious, but you can't be religious without faith.
Re: Also, Placebo
Re: Also, Placebo
Faith has got zero to do with this conversation.
Re: Also, Placebo
Can you demonstrate a religion that doesn't require belief in something that can't be demonstrated to be true.
Re: Also, Placebo
Gods, I make no representations about. Kind of impossible by definition. Religions? They're real. People have them and do them. And therefore they can be studied and facts known about them. That's the kind of "expert" I am.
Arguable that most Buddhism is at worst no less "rational and empirical" than psychology or political science. Majority of traditional religious practices are more "folk science" than statements about abstract, unprovable concepts - they're often *wrong* factually, but they're not falsifiable within the arsenal of techniques their practitioners have/had available.
Nothing can be demonstrated to be true. Basic principle of scientific method: things are falsifiable, not provable.
Re: Also, Placebo
And using the "nothing is true" argument is bad form.