Finding faith amid disaster

Finding faith amid disaster

By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/20/finding-faith-amid-disaster/

Around the world, people are still struggling to come to terms with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which have left more than 8,000 dead, thousands more missing and hundreds of thousand others homeless. The threat of a nuclear crisis only adds to the uncertainty.

In times like these, many people find comfort in their faith. But disasters can also challenge long-held beliefs. The CNN Belief Blog asked some prominent voices with different views on religion how they make sense of such suffering, where they see inspiration amid destruction and how they respond to people who wonder, “How could God let this happen?”

Sam Harris’ contribution…

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.

Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, “this might be all part of God’s plan,” or “there are no accidents in life,” or “everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves” - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.

Is Harris being harsh? Let’s explore each element…

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

This is just stating the classic “problem of evil” argument, which is fair enough.

The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.

This makes sense to me. But at this point we need to clarify the definition of “Compassion”

From the OED… “Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.”

From my personal point of view, my initial reactions to disasters such as this is to imagine how I’d feel if I was a victim, and also to think about ways to help.

Harris continues…

Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion.

…and he gives examples:

“this might be all part of God’s plan”

There is certainly nothing in that thought which matches the definition of compassion. If I’ve just witnessed my children drowning, there’s no pity or concern coming from someone who is telling me the events were  pre-ordained somehow.

“everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves”

Again, nothing in that thought which matches the definition of compassion. Worse than that, it implies the victims had it coming!

“there are no accidents in life,”

And again, nothing there which matches the definition of compassion. This is similar to the first example, implying the events were not an accident and were therefore planned and deliberate.


Harris concludes:


these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous.

Well yes, that’s true, they are indeed callous because they are not compassionate although perhaps “misguided” would be fairer than “stupid”.

 They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings.

Personally I think children are more likely to connect with suffering than the adults who express these misguided sentiments. But yes, the lack of connection is a good observation. All three sentiments detach the observer from the situation by implying some kind of cosmic agent is responsible or somehow in control.


 It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.

That would be the most honest and natural reaction, but it’s also a source of fear. Many people do not want to believe that they could be wiped into oblivion with no warning by a natural disaster for no reason other than natural processes beyond our control. Religion provides an alternative which brings comfort to the observers but not necessarily the victims.

Random Picture Collection

Forgery versus pseudepigrapha

ETYMOLOGY

pseudepigraphy (n) is the "ascription of false authorship to a book," 1842, probably via German or French, from pseudo- + epigraph + -y (1).

Related: Pseudepigrapha; pseudepigraphic (1830);

pseudepigraphical (1838);

pseudepigraphal (1630s).

From Wikipedia... Many scholars maintain that no letter actually known to be pseudepigraphical would ever have been admitted to the New Testament canon. Other scholars suggest that the church only developed its hard line against pseudepigraphy because the practice was being abused. Some works that were definite forgeries led to a rejection of any sort of pseudepigraphy

Mark Powell writes that the first-century church did not seem to have a problem with the now-disputed letters since their thought was compatible with Paul's doctrines. An established convention at the time—especially epistles written in the first two or three decades after Paul's probable martyrdom, may have been viewed as part of the legitimate Pauline tradition and included as such in the New Testament canon.

However, that apparent attitude of "acceptable pseudepigraphy" was short lived and did not continue into the second century.

Powell says that there is no record of anyone in the early church ever recognizing that a writing was pseudepigraphical in any sense of the word and still regarding it as authoritative

Is this a genuine discussion board post, or is it fake? if it's fake, is it a forgery or is it pseudepigraphical?


Click here to find out!

Yahtzee

It is a fact that the entire population of the world are aware of the game called Yahtzee.

An Apologist misunderstands the Celestial Teapot Analogy

In this article....

https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2009/01/the-teapot-analogy/55930/

...Ross Douthat illustrates a misunderstanding of Russell's Celestial Teapot analogy - a misunderstanding that is commonly made by Religions Apologists who are unfamiliar with Russell's works. 

	Ross says…	Jim says…
1	Bertrand Russell's famous teapot analogy supposedly settles once and for all the question of whether nonbelievers should give any credence to the possibility that God exists:	This is a straw man – Russell makes no suggestion about the existence of God, but rather the failure of believers to justify their claim.   Russell invented the celestial teapot analogy to illustrate that the burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others. Russell’s view on the credence to the possibility that God exists can be found in his other work including the (unpublished) article he    wrote which included the Cestial Teapot (see #2).
2	“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. “	Ross provides part of Russell's analogy, omitting the introduction, thereby losing the context... “Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.” If someone doubts Russell’s teapot claim, Russell has the burden of proof. It would be a mistake for Russell to expect others to disprove the existence of the celestial teapot.
3	This analogy - like its modern descendant, the Flying Spaghetti Monster -	False equivocation.  The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a satire of religion, especially creationism and intelligent design.
4	…makes a great deal of sense if you believe that the idea of God is an absurdity dreamed up by crafty clerics in darkest antiquity and subsequently imposed on the human mind by force and fear, and that it only survives for want of brave souls willing to note how inherently absurd the whole thing is.	Straw man. The Celestial Teapot makes sense in the context of burden of proof. It is but one paragraph in a six page paper which explores various arguments for and against God. The Celestial Teapot illustrates the fallacy of people who argue for God by shifting the burden of proof.  Russell’s views on God can be found elsewhere, for example his essay “What I Believe” from 1925… “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist, so might the Gods of Olympus, Ancient Egypt or Babylon; but no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other. They lie outside the region of provable knowledge and there is no reason to consider any of them.” More on Russell's views about God here
5	As you might expect, I see the genesis of religion rather differently:	That is indeed what we would expect, because Ross is a Christian Apologist. .
6	An intuitive belief in some sort of presiding Agent seems to be an extremely common, albeit hardly universal, feature of human nature; this intuition has intersected, historically, with an enormous amount of subjective religious experience; and this intersection (along with, yes, the force of custom and tradition) has produced and sustained the religious traditions.	Two fallacies here: a)     The appeal to common belief  and b) The appeal to intuition
7	that seem to Richard Dawkins and company like so much teapot-worship	Straw man (see line 4). There are plenty of explanations for the existence of religion in terms of evolutionary biology and psychology, but that's a different topic and nothing to do with Celestial teapots.
8	The story of our civilization, in particular, is a story in which an extremely large circle of non-insane human beings have perceived themselves to be experiencing an interaction with a being who seems recognizable as the Judeo-Christian God (here I do feel comfortable using the term)	This is the appeal to common belief again (see line 6).
9	rather than merely being taught about Him in Sunday School.	There are some interesting point here which Ross has overlooked:   a)     Why are children taught about God in Sunday School (or by their parents)? b)     What would happen to belief in God if children were not taught that He exists? c)     Why the emphasis on “Judeo-Christian” God? What about the other interpretations?
10	I am unaware of anything similar holding true for orbiting pots or flying noodle beasts.	Obviously. See lines 1 and 3.
11	And without the persistence of this perceived interaction (and beneath it, the intuitive belief in some kind of God), it's difficult to imagine religious belief playing anything like the role it does in human affairs, no matter how many ancient scriptures there were propping the whole thing up.	Ross repeats the fallacious appeal to intuition.  Our intuition tells us the earth is flat. Our intuition tells us that if we have tossed 10 heads in a row we are very likely to roll a tail next. And so on. The intuitive belief in supernatural entities (such as God) persists because it is unfalsifiable.
12	This is not to say that humanity's religious experiences and intuitions are anything like a dispositive argument for the existence of God.	Correct. The only dispositive argument for the existence of anything would have to be based on compelling evidence. Not intuition or experience.
13	Certainly, there are all sorts of interesting efforts to explain them without recourse to the hypothesis that they correspond to anything real, and all kinds of reasons to choose atheism over faith.	Correct and nice to see the distinction between atheism and faith.
14	But it is one thing to disbelieve in God; it is quite another to never feel a twinge of doubt about one's own disbelief.  And just as the Christian who has never entertained doubts about his faith probably hasn't thought hard enough about the matter…	Correct. To repeat the quote from Russell “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist, so might the Gods of Olympus, Ancient Egypt or Babylon; but no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other. They lie outside the region of provable knowledge and there is no reason to consider any of them.”
15	…the atheist who perceives the Christian God and the flying spaghetti monster as equally ridiculous hypotheses.	Repeats the fallacy from line 3.
16	really needs to get out more often	A very lazy parting shot. And fallacious too, a form of ad hominem.  More specifically this is a fallacy made famous in The Emperor’s New Clothes, and known as the Courtier’s reply   For example,  it would be easy, but fallacious, for me to say “If Ross believes intuition is evidence for God he needs to get our more often” or I could aim at his Catholic beliefs and say "If Ross believes he is drinking the blood of Christ at communion he needs to get our more often".