Should Scientology Be Banned?

One could say that at least it's honest in its intentions. Christianity often favours the rich and the powerful more subtly....

 

You're not wrong. But at the base point of christianity if you take it extracted from modern churches this isn't present.

 

To an extent you're right to say that, certainly in the explicit sense. "It is easier for a camel to fit through the Eye of Needle than for a rich man to enter heaven" etc. However if one were to analyse heaven itself as something of an opiate for the masses, one could see how religion naturally tends towards - even if it was not intended to be used as - a means to keep the poor in their place and the rich in power....

 

... Battlefield Earth.


If it were not for Scientology we would not have this shitty movie. ^_^




Ok, sorry, I have nothing really important to contribute on the matter so just wanted to say something, and I don't think I'd posted this yet.

 

Pascal's wager is an interesting one; it's somewhat machiavellian, is it not, to wager that it's the safest route is to choose to believe in god on the basis that there may be some reward or at least no punishment? You are choosing to believe something not because you really believe, but purely out of self interest. Do you not imagine an omniscient god would see into your heart and be able to tell that you've chosen to feign belief in him purely for the potential goodies you'll get for doing so? It assumes this god will reward the cowardice and greed of a belief feigned out of self interest.

It also assumes god will punish those who, given the best of their intellectual abilities, and observing all the evidence that god has laid out in the world for us, choose to be honest and stick to their genuine and sincere belief that there really is no very good reason to believe. If that's the kind of god it is - one who rewards cowardice and punishes honesty, then frankly I want nothing to do with him.

Also, which god do you choose to believe in? If you get it wrong, won't the real one be doubly angry?

Pascal's wager is an absurd rationalisation...

 

I wouldn't go that far. But I used Pascal as a simple explanation for being decisive. So what if some people use the concept with truly selfish means; afterall such a belief can only be. Again, my angle isn't about looking toward any religious institution whether its monotheist or not, and being swept up by its dogma and godhead, but about recognising that all doesn't seem to fit with a simple belief in being fact based and scientific. I think L.Ron Hubbard has played on this, some of you would look at people as weak for being seduced by such charlitans. What I feel is we debate the politics of faith and ignore what it truly is. It being something personal, selfish to a point.

 

What I struggle with is peoples dismissal of a godhead on the basis that the religious books are nonsense, okay say earlier man misunderstood does that negate then the possiblity of a god, chucking out the baby with the bath water ?

 

I think the reason why we often debate the politics of religion is because religious institutions are very often political bodies disguised as spiritual ones; they get heavily involved in earthly matters on the pretext of heavenly motivation.

That religious books may be nonsense does not of course negate the possibility of a godhead due to the fallacy of negative proof and the concomitant statement that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The only sensible approach given the evidence we do have is to state that the existence of a god or gods is a possibility, one among many, and given the balance of probability, a slim one. I'm prepared to accept there may be a Christian God just as I'm prepared to accept that there may be unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, Ahura Mazda, tooth fairies, Thor, Zeus, Apollo, volcanic space aliens, santa claus, giant turtles all the way down, etc. Given a lack of evidence we cannot say they don't exist, so I can't rule out the possibility, but in practice I go about my life as if the likelihood is really rather slim and the evidence is such that to claim any knowledge of it is somewhat absurd. If evidence for god's existence were to be discovered I would, like a good scientist, change my mind in a heartbeat to accomodate the new data. Same is if evidence of Santa Claus were found in Lapland, I would modify my Santa-atheism.

I prefer my sincere and honest evidence-based approach, even if it is an honest mistake, than to falsely claim to know something I cannot possibly know. I like to think if I'm wrong and the christian god turns out to be the real one, he should be the kind of god who admires the fact that I have employed my rational faculties to the best of the abilities he gave me and approached the issue in a sincere, if mistaken, way. If he isn't, fuck the bastard.

 

tch, tch, no need for expletives it only tends to agravate what some people feel a serious matter, cheers.

Think outside the box lithium, god is dead long live god.

it is not a person and does not interfere, drop the books, perhaps then god may be beheld in the awareness of beauty, just perhaps your awareness contains soul, perhaps it matters how you treat it

 

That's all very well and of course all our experience includes ideas of beauty, reverence, awe and wonder, but the problem with using these specific names (god etc) metaphorically, as you suggest, is all the baggage they come with. Einstein used the word "god" to refer to his naturalistic reverence at the wonder of the universe and has been misquoted as if he is defending the idea of the personal, literal, "nobodaddy" (in Blake's term) of traditional christianity, when he was doing nothing of the sort. Yes, allow for reverence and wonder - a scientific understanding has that in spades - but why call it by the old names when they are associated with something that on almost all occasions stands for something really quite different?

As for suggesting god is a bastard, please accept my genuine apology if that offends you, but I sometimes like to use such words on rare occasions for comic emphasis and will not censor my humour on the basis it might offend. I think most people are perfectly capable of discerning irony - if they aren't, fuck 'em.:tongue:

 

Old old news surely but when replying to my posts kindly refrain from abusive terminology, funny but I find it abusive, or then again one could always take the attitude that offending others is their problem and not ones own

Until someone can come up with a better word than god as opposed to God surely can suffice, I'm not familiar with Einsteins thoughts on the matter but there sounds a little sense in there maybe.

So perhaps then an investiagation into god is not a completely irational thing to do.

 

Einstein referring to the way his words about the beauty of existence were taken to be a defence of Christian mythology:

In that sense, I am religious - almost no-one would deny being religious in that sense. But that of course is to stretch the definition of 'religion' and 'god' until they are meaningless. If I go about saying I am religious (in the Einsteinian sense) people will naturally assume I believe in the traditional, personal, interventionist god of the Bible. I need to use another term in order to accurately express what I really think. The term I use to express this idea of being religious in the Einsteinian sense is "atheist" or "Bright".

No investigation into anything is irrational But claiming knowledge in the absence of good evidence is.

 

Thanks!

 

http://www.the-brights.net/

 

Well that says that many Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Anglicans are also "Brights", so you could say that it has gone full circle and eveyone is back to being "one" despite personal faith!

Having a religious faith does not necessarily mean that people are "culturally stifled or civically marginalized". So this could narrow the arguement.

 

Being a bright means you have a naturalistic worldview free from supernatural and mystical elements - yes, there are many religious people who are in fact atheists, who adhere to the religion culturally but do not believe in its supernatural core. This is particularly true of Judaism, but I'm sure there are many examples from the other faiths. Being a bright is partly about having the courage to break away from this cultural default and giving people a way to define themselves that doesn't have the stigma of "atheism".

The point the movement makes about cultural marginalisation is that a naturalistic worldview is not the norm and is generally under-represented in public life. A vast majority of people have some form of supernatural belief system, those of us who reject the mysticism of faith are in a marginalised minority

 

Well I know where I stand!

 

Chances are 90% you have exactly the same god that your parents brought you up with If you'd happened to have been born in India or the Middle East chances are 90% you'd be Hindu / Muslim accordingly.

 

Well in that case I am in the 10% that makes their own decisions in life! I think I am intelligent enough to think things through for myself and then decide what I want in life. I don't think faith has narrowed my outlook on life, reasoning or attitude to most things!

But then wait, if I am a Christian then clearly I must be stuck in an old fashioned mind frame and only follow the church and not think for myself! :huh:

 

Why did you just happen to choose Christianity rather than say Islam or Scientology or Zoroastrianism? Why are you an atheist about those gods?