Crazy Religions (page 4)

jgnat

The Great Famine (Holodomor), cofty? 4-5 million deaths.

tec

tec, how do you judge an attitude? Is it the tone of the writing?

I'm not judging it. I am questioning it. It has nothing to do with tone. It has to do with what is being said. Out of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Peace,

tammy

Tec - you are partially correct but I'd like to expand the definition a little. You get atheists who are democrats and a subset of them are child abusers. This, hopefully minuscule, set of people has three overlaid convictions which on further analysis will be subdividable into further groupings. Within each grouping there may be behaviour or assumptions that are 'crazy' to mainstream society and then there will be behaviours and thought processes that are 'crazy' when analysed rationally. Society agrees that children don't want to be abused so something thinking they do is assigned a 'crazy' evaluation. Republicans think that Democrat policies are 'crazy'. Science tells us that belief in a 6000 year old world and a flood causing Jehovah is 'crazy' but many Republicans may well think that the atheist position is 'crazy'. In short craziness is both a social tagging system and an intrinsic quality of some behaviour.

The article pointed this out quite well. All religious faiths recognise the craziness in their peers but are blind to their own; fashion encourages health damaging behaviour that science can point out but the fashion industry is blind to. A believer or non believer are all parts of many sub groups who may or may take part in social or scientific tagged craziness.

I think that faith based religions , including personal religions of one or two believers, are scientifically shown to be crazy because all physical assumptions ( for example the biblical flood ) made by faith based religions tend to fail 100% ( I will agree there is evidence that social structures in faiths can be beneficial to mental health but the lack of preference for any one religion argues against a specific god blessing those believers.) Western society is beginning to socially tag religious faith as crazy as well but faith has had a good run as the dominant meme in recorded human history.

Personally I do think the pronouncements of many who hear voices or get messages are crazy ( I don't wish to open the can of worms regarding brain illnesses now, to be clear, like the article, I am using the term 'crazy' in its social and scientific sense I.e. nonsense) not because they are good/bad, nasty/ lovely but simply because they are unable to substantiate extremely unusual viewpoints with anything other than dogmatic assertion and in some cases religious style group testifying ( so and so is right I feel the spirit tell me so ).

cofty

Thanks jgnat - I think the Holodomor actually opened the way for Lysenko's rise to prominence.

The reality of chromosomes and genes was denied altogether, these being derided as "bourgeois constructs." Stalin himself argued for a distinction between "proletarian" and "bourgeois" science, extending Marxist class-struggle doctrine into biological science. .. Mendelian genetics was declared "reactionary", and it's practitioners declared to be "scholastics and metaphysicians."

From that day forward, the official biology of the Soviet union was to be Lysenko's. Talk of chromosomes and genes was ipso facto treasonous, and most of Lysenko's few remaining public opponents were hauled off to the gulags or executed...

In the late 1950s, Chinese farmers were commanded by Mao to follow several Lysenkoist doctrines imported from the USSR -- with predictably disastrous results....

Prevailing Lysenkoist doctrine also held that the root structures of plants would grow deeper in relation to how deeply the land was plowed, so farmers were ordered to plow 4-5 feet deep. Becker reports the example of Liaoning province in 1958, where 5 million people were forced to spend more than a month deep-plowing 3 million hectares of land, to no benefit whatsoever. At the other extreme, following the advice of Lysenkoist Vasily Williams, Mao ordered farmers to leave at least one-third of their land fallow.

The end result, of course, was the greatest preventable famine the world has ever seen.

jgnat

You've just tied another semantic gordian knot, tec. Untangle it yourself.

Qcmbr

Thanks for these illustrations Cofty, knowledge rocks. I'm off to look at Russian famines.

tec

Tec - you are partially correct but I'd like to expand the definition a little.

Okay.

You get atheists who are democrats and a subset of them are child abusers. This, hopefully minuscule, set of people has three overlaid convictions which on further analysis will be subdividable into further groupings. Within each grouping there may be behaviour or assumptions that are 'crazy' to mainstream society and then there will be behaviours and thought processes that are 'crazy' when analysed rationally. Society agrees that children don't want to be abused so something thinking they do is assigned a 'crazy' evaluation. Republicans think that Democrat policies are 'crazy'. Science tells us that belief in a 6000 year old world and a flood causing Jehovah is 'crazy' but many Republicans may well think that the atheist position is 'crazy'. In short craziness is both a social tagging system and an intrinsic quality of some behaviour.

Okay. I would suggest that by your definition, mainstream society would then tag atheism as crazy. It is not the social norm. (and it has, i know, but i disagree with that as much as i am disagreeing with you and this article)

You state that you accept what science has proven to be true (or very likely), and nothing more than that. I would not think to judge you as something for this; it is none of my business; and I would not cast aspirations on your character or intelligence for being an atheist.

The article pointed this out quite well. All religious faiths recognise the craziness in their peers but are blind to their own; fashion encourages health damaging behaviour that science can point out but the fashion industry is blind to. A believer or non believer are all parts of many sub groups who may or may take part in social or scientific tagged craziness.

By religious, i am going to assume that you also mean faith that has no affiliation with an organization or person, other than Christ.

I am more of a live and let live kind of person... "he who is not against you is for you". I make no judgments as to the 'craziness' (in context or otherwise) of someone else's religion... though I may disagree and speak to that disagreement with some.

I think that faith based religions , including personal religions of one or two believers, are scientifically shown to be crazy because all physical assumptions ( for example the biblical flood ) made by faith based religions tend to fail 100%

Not all faiths view such things as literally written in the bible, Q. Some leave such things to the realm of 'I don't know'; while at the same time not denying the scientific evidence; or even undertanding that science can help to show some things of the spiritual realm by using the phsyical as examples to help us see.

So I understand that this is what you think. But science itself makes no such statment against people of faith, and certainly not such a generalizing one. That is your personal conclusion. You are of course entitled to it.

( I will agree there is evidence that social structures in faiths can be beneficial to mental health but the lack of preference for any one religion argues against a specific god blessing those believers.) Western society is beginning to socially tag religious faith as crazy as well but faith has had a good run as the dominant meme in recorded human history.

I would suggest that anything that promotes love, honesty and support, will be beneficial to the health of various people. Religious, or otherwise. Some people also need/want firm structure and rules and prefer an organization (religious or otherwise) that will provide such.

Personally I do think the pronouncements of many who hear voices or get messages are crazy ( I don't wish to open the can of worms regarding brain illnesses now, to be clear, like the article, I am using the term 'crazy' in its social and scientific sense I.e. nonsense)

I understand.

not because they are good/bad, nasty/ lovely but simply because they are unable to substantiate extremely unusual viewpoints with anything other than dogmatic assertion and in some cases religious style group testifying ( so and so is right I feel the spirit tell me so ).

But i think it is a biased view of faith that has you thinking this. Because if I were to agree with someone on the terms that you consider acceptable... then that would be okay. People agree with what others say and post here all the time, even to the point of quoting verbatim someone like Dawkins and his sentiments about faith/religion. This is acceptable. This is not 'crazy'.

I follow the Spirit of Christ. So the spirit within me often 'hears' the truth or falseness of something shared. But if I agree with something in this 'crazy' manner, then it seems that I must be dismissed, and called someone's disciple (someone other than Christ, that is, because i do not dispute following Him).

Peace to you,

tammy

ldrnomo

http://homepage.eircom.net/~palmardetroya/rules.htm

Check out this crazy religion, only about 2000 members. A guy that I worked with is a part of this. Him is wife and their 13 children at least at last count.

thes link sends you to a list of their do's and DONT'S I emphisize dont's

Qcmbr

Ldmomo, I found myself reading the list going, ' that's crazy' and then I reminded myself what this thread was about and had a little chuckle.

jgnat

My daughter worked with a woman who, by her religion, was not permitted to work on the internet. Considering a fair number of the company's forms were web-based, that was a bit of a problem. She also believed the "unequally yoked" thing meant she had to marry color-to-color (black woman to black man), and he had to be from her same (small) church. Can anyone spell s-p-i-n-s-t-e-r?

Crazy Religions

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