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I am very embarrassed to discuss such a topic.
Science is getting rebuked by its Preachers.
The sacred objectivity of science is getting dragged into politics for nothing.
Science and Scientists hardly ever cared money.
To many it is as religious as Religion.
Some accusations sound similar to me...
Has religion and its followers failed Humanity ?
looks identical to
Has sceince and its followers failed Humanity ?
Respect Science as you respect Religon(as you probably fall on the Religion side... and are emotional about GOd.)
The only error Science ever made was made without any intention of making it happen.
It corrected itself whereever it was wrong like humble Genius.
Even today it correcting its own understanding...
Thats the beauty of it.
(Religion has its own beauty.)


Such genralized remarks are dangerous as many will interpret it as a failure of Science.
Which is just not ture as we have progressed and today we owe everything around us to its maginificient existence.

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ESless:"Since this is your believe, you are looking for it."

What exactly am I looking for?Do you actually read what you reply to? And for that matter do you understand what you read? because it seems to me that you are just spewing oxymoronic archetypes.So read again what I wrote and what you replied. Who knows, maybe you will understand, though it is quite unlikely.

ESless:"But I despise village idiot, Marx, and surely did not express anything you are hallucinating about."

Boy, you really are dumb. I can only conclude that you simply do not understand slightly complicated arguments above the level "God is good and the devil is bad". I am really sorry for you, although I hope for your sake that whatever it is that you have is treatable.

ESless:"I never said that. I think that good scientist is likely to have good common sense to support the institution of religion. And he is the most unlikely person to be rabid anti-religionist in any case."

The same common sense would also dictate that a pious man/religious person should support and respect science, which unfortunately it is not the case in too many instances. Including you.

You somehow want scientists to be good natured, support and respect the religious institution and stand by idle when bigots like you denigrate science in the name of one greater good or another. And somehow this makes them good scientists in your pitiful view. You don't need very high IQ to understand that under these circumstances this will not happen.

You are begging for respect and understanding from the part of scientists just to be able to insult them in return. What religion do you belong to, that taught you to be such a moron? Oh, sorry, I forgot. You are probably just expressing views from the already existing 99.99% pool of what is already known, without actually filtering it out. Good job.

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There's no evidence of that - just a claim.

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Falliable:

There is a lot of evidence. A staggering amount. And you have spewed it all over SAGG for quite some time.

Certainly enough to convince a jury of your peers.


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I said: Saying someone is illogical does not mean they are stupid. Often, they're just in over their understanding.

ES responded: Well, you can put it this way. It is true about anti-theists.

You responded: There is a lot of evidence. A staggering amount. And you have spewed it all over SAGG for quite some time. Certainly enough to convince a jury of your peers.

I have no idea what you are referring to. What have I spewed?

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"Well, TheFF and Dan, while what you say is true for those raised in a religious environment, your comments beg the following question: what about those who suddenly become fervent believers?"

It is nearly impossible for a person in a western society not to be continually bombarded with religious influences. Relatively few people are raised as actual atheists - and many of them may actually understand the philosophy behind the opinion. This can make even skeptical people susceptible to religious indoctrination.

***how do you explain for example modern phenomena as the appearance of mormonism (roughly 200 years old) or more recently, the appearance of scientology?***

Some people like being told what to do and how to think. They want a guru. It's not enough to figure out, they want someone else to tell them the right way to think - perhaps they are trying to avoid taking responsibility for their decision. A common xian belief is that the consequences of coming to the wrong conclusion are dire. Much better to let someone else take credit (or blame) for leading one about by the nose.

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FF:"It is nearly impossible for a person in a western society not to be continually bombarded with religious influences. Relatively few people are raised as actual atheists - and many of them may actually understand the philosophy behind the opinion. This can make even skeptical people susceptible to religious indoctrination."

I agree that even skeptical people may be susceptible to religious indoctrination. What puzzles me is not the general statistical case, but the extreme case. People switching from hard skeptics to fervent believers. And while this can be seen as the "tail of the distribution" from the statistical viewpoint, the issue is why is religion the preferred choice of this antipodal change? I am aware that this may be better approached from the psychological viewpoint, but to me it is a puzzling fact.

FF:"Some people like being told what to do and how to think. They want a guru. It's not enough to figure out, they want someone else to tell them the right way to think - perhaps they are trying to avoid taking responsibility for their decision."

I am aware of this issue. Your argument would explain why they followed the "leader of the pack". But think about mormonism. Almost all who followed Joseph Smith had previously belonged to other well established religious denominations. What is strange is that they accepted a new doctrine in an epoch when appartenance to a denomination/church was almost sacrosanct, and openmindedness towards other churches was almost inexistent.

FF:"A common xian belief is that the consequences of coming to the wrong conclusion are dire."

Gee, you mean someone should be responsible for their actions? Perish the thought in the western society. There is common sense and then there is the letter of the law, which often enough may be disjoint concepts laugh

FF:"Much better to let someone else take credit (or blame) for leading one about by the nose."

Hmm, this seems like an argument made in hindsight. I don't agree with it because it would make the flock smarter that its leader, and also capable of planning in advance. And I don't find evidence for such arguments for neither mormonism, nor scientology, as far as their beginning is concerned. As far as I am aware, it has been rather the other way around, the flock has been ruled by a (smarter/more cunning) leader.

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"People switching from hard skeptics to fervent believers."

It's not clear to me that this should be unexpected. Skeptics can be just as ignorant of their philosophical underpinnings as believers. I was raised a Baptist. I made a quick conversion early on to atheism - I call it a brush with infantile atheism. I was an atheist for the wrong reasons. Later, I realized that I was mistaken. I declared myself an atheist, but I wasn't REALLY an atheist. I still believed the first time around. Gradually I realized that I was something of a deist. Eventually I grew to agnosticism and now I consider myself an agnostic of the atheist persuasion.

"Almost all who followed Joseph Smith had previously belonged to other well established religious denominations."
Even ardent believers can be swayed when they see something that is a supposed miracle. Besides mormons consider themselves christians - they're kinduva new sect of an ancient religion.

Overaching issue though is that in that time period (1800s) there was a lot of mystical stuff floating about. I'm not that this was a period when being tied to a single church was sacrosanct. This was a period when people believed in fairies (literally), mediums, ghosts. It was a time when people who wanted to believe felt their beliefs under attack from science. They desperately WANTED to see miracles - or at least hear of them. Legends of tablets with strange and beautiful writing on them fit that bill.

"you mean someone should be responsible for their actions?"

Most incarnations of Xianity involve a god that doesn't just punish actions. It punishes beliefs. You can do the right thing your entire life and still got to hell. In fact this is an essential part of most xian beliefs.

Leader vs follower. I'm not sure that following a cult makes a person more intelligent than the cult-leader. While many religious people no doubt believe many stupid things, it's a big mistake to assume that they are necessarily stupid peole. The individual psychology is perhaps similar - though not identical - to the psychology of the powerful CEO who is into masochism.

Two of the smartest guys I've ever known joined up with two different cults: 1 was absorbed into the JWs and the other into the church of christ of boston.

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Quote:
And while this can be seen as the "tail of the distribution" from the statistical viewpoint, the issue is why is religion the preferred choice of this antipodal change? I am aware that this may be better approached from the psychological viewpoint, but to me it is a puzzling fact.
Perhaps this can be explained by the Anthropic Principle smile

Civilizations consisting of creatures which are very rational will evolve fast toward some form of machine civilization. This means that the total number of biological observers that will ever live in such a civilization will be far less than in civilizations were creatures are less rational. smile

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Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Perhaps this can be explained by the Anthropic Principle smile

Civilizations consisting of creatures which are very rational will evolve fast toward some form of machine civilization. This means that the total number of biological observers that will ever live in such a civilization will be far less than in civilizations were creatures are less rational. smile
This might explain the need in simple religious humans.

e smile s

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