8 minutes ago, Burl said:

Data, dude.

You had your last word. If you have no other professional ambitions, I recommend becoming a climate scientists and revolutionizing the field, since you have proven the consensus of the field wrong.

55 minutes ago, Burl said:

Belief in anthropogenic global warming Is an excellent example of confirmation bias and the power of Scientism.  We have had several good threads on this in the past.

There is little nuance involved in understanding the AGW fraud.  Hard data going back to the Ordovichian period indisputably proves the only relevant variables affecting climate change are astrophysical and that CO2 levels are irrelevant.  Several prominent physicists and ecologists have explained this very simply in short YouTube clips.  

It's not difficult material, but the public is being deliberately misled by know-nothing celebrities like Bill Nye and Al Gore waving a science banner.  

I forgot to mention conspiracy theories as one key element of the current anti-intellectualism and anti-expertism. Thanks for the demonstration.

I won't hijack the thread to debate climate change so I'll drop this right here. Feel free to take one last swing if you want, but I won't respond. 

4 hours ago, Burl said:

Well put.  Also note the tendency to ignore data which does not support preconceptions, to failure to note the omission of data, the ignoring of outliers and the discounting of data by implementing personal standards or outright ad hominem bigotry.

Well, to be honest, I find all the above to be very minor problems compared to the rampant confirmation bias of today's society. It's almost impossible nowadays to convince anyone of anything based on fact-based arguments because everyone thinks they're the best expert on any topic and there is a false sense of equality when it comes to expertise. For two popular examples, an average Joe can't understand all the nuances of climate science or safety of average vaccination, yet lots of average Joe's have decided that they know better than climate scientists and doctors do. This overblown subjectivism is basically undoing the era of enlightenment in the West.

1 hour ago, PaulS said:

You're saying that if people choose to include in their life view certain things that are unverified or unverifiable, then they are not applying objective truth about reality.  What I am saying is that there is no reality other than that which is supported by objective truth.   Is it reality if it is not objective truth?

Oxford dictionary: Reality - The state of things as they actually exist.

What I'm saying is that the objective truth about the reality exists independently of human verification. That is not controversial idea, it's a scientific observation. The reality is not dependent of our verification and true things are just as true or untrue regardless of whether their existence is verified or not. New planets existed in reality before we discovered them etc.

With all due respect, I think you are using an appeal to emotion by hijacking the word "reality" to mean only the things which can be verified by humans. That's not the common sense meaning of the word.  Human experience can sometimes be ahead of the scientific knowledge, and in those cases, that particular human experience is more accurate guide to the reality than scientific knowledge is. For a historical example, again, the new continents. The human experience of the people who ended up in those continents described the reality (using the Oxford dictionary's meaning) more accurately than the scientific consensus of the time.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the same is necessarily the case with remote viewing etc. but I'm mentioning the possibility that it could be.

6 hours ago, PaulS said:

I could have worded my statement better.  In my mind I was thinking of things that are claimed to exist - they must be verifiable to be allowed to be called reality.  I accept we don't know what we don't know and that there could be things that exist that we do not know about.  But I think where one claims something to exist as a reality, then that claim should be verifiable.  If it is not verifiable, then the thing either a) doesn't exist in reality, or b) it is still a concept, a thought process, perhaps even a potentiality, however as it can not be validated by all common understanding of how we define reality,  I would suggest it is not a reality at that point.

I find "non verifiable claim" to be much more accurate description of such a situation than "not a reality".

If you choose not to include anything unverified or unverifiable in your life view, that's a choice in life philosophy, not a matter of objective truth about the reality. I disagree with the said life view, but I can respect it, but I can respect it only if it's stated as a life view and not as the ultimate, undeniable truth about the reality.

2 hours ago, PaulS said:

Reality is what exists.  How do we know something exists?  Because we can verify it's existence.  If we cannot verify it, then it does not exist.  I really think it's that simple.

It's not that simple. 

New continents didn't start existing the moment they were discovered or the moment their existence was verified by multiple accounts. People who accidentally ended up to the new continents had a life there and the reality of the new continents very much determined how their lives turned out (or ended), even before the existence of the said continents was verified.

On 10/16/2018 at 1:02 AM, Burl said:

The fact that scientists are funded to study the phenomena means opinions are no longer sufficient.  The bar is now set higher.

Worth to know:

In the US defense space, since the moon landings, there has been a policy to study all the "crazy ideas". It's a policy to make sure that all the unthinkable ideas get researched, in order for the US to not get surprised by new inventions by someone else as happened with Sputnik.

To put it another way; if the US defense industry scientists study something, it means only that there is a government policy in place to allow the scientists study everything open-mindedly, in order to guarantee that if there is something to the idea, the US is the one who finds it first. It is not a proof that there actually is something to the idea. For that, you would need results.

On 5/12/2018 at 1:31 AM, JosephM said:

If i were from Canada or another country and read the news as reported i would share your view of him.

If a news channel reports that an earthquake killed 1000 people, when in fact, only 800 died, does that mean that everyone was, in fact, safe and nothing bad happened?

The pro-Trump case is always based on this distortion of reality, the claim that if someone exarrogates Trumps negatives, it somehow means that the said negatives don't exist at all.

The thing is, someone abroad doesn't need to have any particular news channels perspective on Trump to be bitterly opposed to him. All one has to do is to watch live coverage of his rallies and read his twitter feed and talk to his supporters and that will do it. During the election, I listened to Trumps own words, I read his twitter feed, I talked to his supporters and in few months that convinced me (based on my 20 years amateur interest in history and some knowledge of cults) that this is a very dangerous man, who, if left unchecked would damage the American republic beyond repair. To this day I have seen nothing that would prove my initial conclusion incorrect.

Edit:

Food for thought: During the rise of Putin, before he was a dictator, I talked to some Russians about politics and expressed alarm about Putin's dictatorial tendencies (again, based on my amateur interest of history). Their position was always the same "It's the Western media" The Western media says Putin is a bad guy. That's just the Western media. Western media is to blame.

Today Putin is a dictator. Probably the "Western media" got something right.

6 minutes ago, Burl said:

The flaw in this is that the late 19c belief system that 'the only thing that matters is what the Bible says' is not only unbiblical, but the Bible is obviously chock-a-block full of non-scriptural revelations.  The Bible also never makes any claim to inerrancy, which is another common fundamentalist paradox.

Yeah. There is a strong biblical case to be made that the "inerrant word of God" view on the Bible is not very biblical. Paul in the NT reads the OT (the only Bible of his world) rather creatively and allegorically. For example in Galatians 4 Paul goes all-in with allegoric reading of an OT story to make a point.
 

I think historically fundamentalism can be seen as a counter-reaction to two different phenomenons; first as a protestant counter-movement against the authority of the Catholic church and then again few centuries later as a counter-movement against the authority of science.

6 minutes ago, Burl said:

In truth, the Christians today who identify as fundamentalists today are anything but.  They are trying to recreate a splinter Christian dogma/social culture dating back to the 1800's from memory and imagination.  God bless 'em, but their planet flies in an eccentric orbit.

In Christian lingo, one could say that trying to live in the world of 1800's or 1950's is not any less worldly than living by the spirit of the times of 2018. It's just worldly life from another era.

22 hours ago, thormas said:

Fair enough. I think Spong's is more than secular humanism but he does move aways from traditional theism.

It could be that labeling him a secular humanist is not accurate. 

My personal spiritual experience is so strongly theistic that I guess I lost interest in trying to understand Sponge in depth at the point when I had become convinced that he's not a theist. I watched some interviews and I think he had insightful criticism of Christianity, but I didn't really share the direction where he was going. If I dig deeper into what Sponge and his kind exactly means in nuances, that would be for educational purposes only, but not something I'm personally out to embrace. I'm personally going into the opposite direction.

15 minutes ago, Burl said:

Abortion was prohibited by the early Christians.  Contrast with the Roman custom of infanticide by exposure.  Later abortion was permitted by Christians but only before the heartbeat could be heard with the rationalization that ensoulment had not yet occurred.

Anti-abortion stance is not new to the culture of the ancient world: The Hippocratic Oath which originates centuries before the first Christians, specifically prohibits abortion. "I swear by Apollo the Healer.... I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion." That ancient Greek text, unlike any book in the Bible, is perfectly clear on the matter. But it's important to recognize that the existence of such a ban doesn't mean that the motive for it would be what we are inclined to think. It could be that it's considered a murder, or it could be that it's considered sexual impurity, or it could be that it's considered an unsafe practice, or something else.

But, we are getting off-topic here. The topic is fundamentalism, so I don't think it's relevant what the church did after the Bible was put together. From the point of view of fundamentalism, the church might just as well been unbiblical, and the only thing that matters is what the Bible says, not what the early Christians did. 

I rest my case. I recommend everyone who's interested in the topic and somewhat new to the ideas, to read the Wikipedia page "Abortion and Christianity".

2 hours ago, thormas said:

Jack,

Is this Exodus passage used as a defense against abortion by some Christians? When I first read your post, what came to mind was not a direct, intentional attack on the fetus but an attack/assault on a woman (whether the attacker knew or didn't know she was pregnant) that might result in a miscarriage. Thus they seem to be two different things. If so, it is not a direct statement on what we would call abortion (attack on the fetus not the mother). Just curious.

You'll find more educated opinion than mine on the topic of how to exactly interpret the verse by simply googling it. I'm just mentioning that it exists. The fact that the interpretation of single verse in the Mosaic law would be crucial here only highlights the fact that the Bible doesn't provide a good case against abortion.

Edit:

The Mosaic law is very detailed and spends lots of ink addressing far more trivial things. If the law wanted to make it clear, there would simply be a command something along the lines of "Whoever shall kill a pregnant woman, has taken two lives and the punishment shall be...". It's the absence of that kind of command that speaks the most to me.

6 hours ago, Skye said:

I believed, before coming to this site, that my attitude to Jesus had profoundly and violently matured, yet I arrive at the notion today that my new heartfelt relation to Jesus and the Father via the gospels and my resonance with them might be termed biblical fundamentalism. 

Fundamentalist is a pretty strong word. It means believing that every word in the Bible is there because God has commanded it to be there, and it's infallible. I often hear the label "classic Christian" used to describe a faith that is softer than fundamentalism, but takes the supernatural parts of the Bible seriously.

I think 11 out of those 12 are biblical beliefs, if the Bible is interpreted literally. The 1 that isn't is the abortion part. That is at best, debatable. The closest one we get in the Bible is a piece of Mosaic law, Exodus 21:22-25, that treats causing a miscarriage for a woman as a physical assault, and the punishment is a fine. If it was considered a murder or manslaughter, there would be a death penalty. Literally interpreted that would mean that in God's law, abortion (or it's iron age closest equivalent) was not a murder. To make the case for anti-abortion from the Bible, one has to quote a few poetic expressions such as psalms, and those are vague at best. 

It's actually funny that the one moral issue that is the most closest associated with fundamentalist Christian morals in the US is actually not based on the Bible, but rather on later philosophies. It's as if someone got political at some point down the line.

1 hour ago, thormas said:

Actually, when I was asking about the alternates I was wondering about your take on PC as an alternative. 

I think there are a variety of beliefs on this site, so you should feel free to offer your perspective on PC

Well first of all there seems to be no universal definition for PC so it's impossible to comment on it as a whole, but if we are talking about Sponge's version of PC, personally my core beliefs include theism and active supernatural so I can't really identify with a movement that considers theism and supernatural to be outdated concepts. To me Sponge's etc. religion is just secular humanism wrapped in Christian rhetoric. Not saying it's bad, there are far worse ideologies, but not my cup of tea.

2 hours ago, thormas said:

what do you mean by "the option that makes the most pragmatic sense" and in what way?

what is your view of God that would go hand and hand with a practical fundamentalism?

I was agreeing with what Skye said. Enough of the stuff in the Bible resonates with my spiritual experience to think that I could at least imagine accepting the idea of considering the Bible to be the best available authority on matters of faith.

2 hours ago, thormas said:

are you saying these (secular humanism and the others) are the only alternative to such fundamentalism?

I think if you read the sentence again, you'll find the answer. I used in the same sentence two expressions suggesting otherwise "such as" and "etc."

2 hours ago, thormas said:

how about progressive Christianities?

I feel trapped by the question. This is a progressive-Christian friendly forum, so it would be disrespectful of me to post my list of anti-PC thesis here.

On 6/1/2017 at 1:31 AM, SteveS55 said:

I think many people end up deleting "God" from their minds, if not their vocabulary, Paul. Some of the great Christian mystics ended up befuddled from trying to comprehend what "God" even meant so they just gave up trying. At some point the concept must, for many people, just be abandoned! "Pray to God that you may be free of 'God'"- Meister Eckhart.

Having read some of these Christian mystics, incl. Eckhart myself, I think it's a huge leap to assume that they mean "abandoning God" in sense of becoming an atheist. When you put together everything Eckhart has said, and interpret this particular sentence in the light of everything else he says (as opposed to, being biased to see atheism in it) it's quite unlikely that this sentence speaks of desire to reject theism.

The most likely interpretation, in my opinion, is that it's a rhetorical device for trying to point to a distinction between the kind of worship that is born of the holy spirit, and the kind of worship that is a product of unholy human mind. This is a common theme in all Christian traditions and it's not limited to medieval mysticism. In modern days protestantism, the same idea is put in statements such as "reject your religion and start following Jesus" or "I lay down all my religion and follow God" etc. I think we all know that the people who utter phrases like that, are not talking about becoming an atheist and very likely, the same applies to the likes of Eckhart.

On 9/15/2018 at 3:53 AM, Skye said:

I am choosing to believe what is written in the bible, instead of commentary and philosophical musings. Things that we might find unacceptable might be necessary for reasons we do not comprehend.

.....

Some of what is written might not be true, but overall if I choose to believe it all and there is x% untrue, it still might be a higher percentage of overall truth than if I start deciding according to my own logic what is truth or not. 

This is the view on Christian scripture that would make the most sense to me, if I chose to commit to Christianity again. I would be a "practical fundamentalist", I would rely on the Bible, not because I believe it to be infallible, but because it's the option that makes the most pragmatic sense.

By now, I have seen what the alternative is, in practice the alternative is leaving a vacuum in place and that vacuum then gets filled by something else, such as secular humanism, scientific world view, eastern religious philosophy etc. In theory, being open-minded and leaving things open is great but in reality, especially in communities (any setting where there are more than 1 person sharing the belief system), such vacuums have a tendency of getting filled pretty quickly.

20 hours ago, JosephM said:

Jack,

That's an interesting observation. Personally i do not see it that way from the writings in John 10:30 where it records Jesus saying I and my Father are one and then later follows it in 

John 17:21-23 King James Version (KJV) with

²¹ That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us:

Very often in the Bible, any given topic gets addressed from two (at least seemingly) conflicting points of view. That is very characterical for the Bible, and the topic of "unity vs separate" is not an exception. If we put together the entire picture in both Jesus's life and his teachings, there is plenty of unity-talk, but also an unmistakable element of separation from God. f.e. In pretty much every single prayer Jesus utters, he talks to God the Father as a separate person who has a will independent from his will. 

What I'm trying to say is, in my point of view, what you say is indeed part of the message of the Bible, but not the whole story. If one chooses only the unity - element, the picture becomes recognizably different from the picture that the life and teachings of Jesus paint.

I think both of these versions about God are lacking, if we use the Gospels as the measuring stick:

1) Picking all the separation - verses and painting a church-art style picture of God, a human-like figure sitting on a cloud, separate and distant from mankind.

2) Cherrypicking only the unity - parts and ending up painting a picture about impersonal life flow of the universe that connects everything but is really nobody in it's own right. 

I don't find either one of those pictures to be in harmony with the Gosples, or the New Testament. There has to be more dimensions to the story to make it fit to the entirety of the message of the Gospels. To make sense of that conflict, I find harmony in some "layer" - like thinking, which I'm not too great at articulating but it's somewhere in the direction of being both in unity with God and separate being from him. I guess I think that the unity and separateness are in different "layers" or something.

Does "freethinkers" refer generally to people who think freely in some undefined sense, or the freethinker movement? I think historically freethinkers are a counter-movement against state churches in Europe, thus the "free" in the name refers practically to freedom from the state churches. If the movement has a US version, I have no idea what they do.

In Finland, where I live, freethinkers are practically militant atheists and are actively (and arguably successfully) campaigning against the institution of the state church. The past chairman of the freethinkers organization, who resigned from it, called the group "The worst nutjob sect I have known" suggesting that the freethinkers (at least in Finland) tend to attract the most militant, most tribalist type of atheists. From the little I have personally met them, they are not particularly nice people. They are mostly Dawkins - type militant atheists.

I think the post is a perfect demonstration of the overlapping ideas of Christianity and New Age / Buddhism - type of spirituality.

I'm generally speaking sympathetic of the kind of spirituality you talk about but what I don't sign into is the rejection of theism, or at least, blurring of the concept. I think "Christ in me" is not a separate concept from personal level interactions with a personal, external God. Rather "Christ in me" is a channel for those interactions. I don't see "Christ in me" as an alternative concept for the classic "relationship with a personal God" - concept.

5 hours ago, FireDragon76 said:

That's one reason American Evangelical missionaries are so distressed by the rise of their religion being linked to nationalism and racism/xenophobia, as it was in the past decade.   On the one hand, their religious base at home is pleased but it hurts the reputation of missionaries overseas.

It annoys me when people treat their churches being overtaken by nationalism and racism as a mere image management problem. One could as well treat it as a case of "By their fruit you know them." I think there has to be something profoundly wrong with the movement to begin with, if it so easily falls into such destructive ideologies. Maybe the Evangelical movement was shallow and empty to begin with and the nationalism just filled the vacuum? 

On a personal level, I consider such public failures welcome warning signs to stay away from such religious movements (The Catholic Church and Evangelicalism being the prime examples). In my experience and knowledge, religious movements going wrong like that is almost never a case of "good people lapsing" but rather such failures are cases of deeply rooted spiritual and moral corruption being revealed by the public failure. Bad fruits come from a bad tree.

3 hours ago, FireDragon76 said:

American religion in the past two or three decades has been exported globally.  Fundamentalists in the US have taken their culture war overseas, particularly into Africa and Russia.  Parts of Australia also have ties to US fundamentalism.

Sure, the US religion has been exported globally, in fact I grew up in a family that was member in a revival movement with traceable roots to the US evangelicalism (called Viidesläisyys or literally "the fifth" - that family history probably explains some part of my interest in the US culture).

What I meant was, the US Evangelicalism seems to have become so political and so filled with political "Americanism" that it's not probably the kind of a thing too many people abroad would be very welcoming of. It's practically the same situation as with the Russian Orthodox church. Why would someone in say, Germany, want to convert to a religion that's filled with Russian nationalism? If not as a political pro-Russia statement

On 8/1/2018 at 9:03 PM, FireDragon76 said:

Evangelical fundamentalist churches are more prone to this than the Protestant mainline in the US.  Mainline Protestants have a variety of political orientations, though genuinely far right politics is extremely rare. 

I wonder if the US Evangelical movement should be even considered part of global mainstream Christianity at all, but rather a some kind of a sect. The European versions of the churches that come from a similar theological tradition are far less political. The US Evangelical Church stands out as an outlier. 

21 hours ago, PaulS said:

Well my own experience for one, even though I'm Australian.  My religious views changed because I questioned what I had been taught and found it wanting.  It had nothing to do with political parties driving me a certain way.

As the thread name suggests, I was talking particularly about the political-religious scene of the US. In the US, very many people appear to identify strongly with either one of the major political parties.

21 hours ago, PaulS said:

No doubt media drive 'talking points' as you suggest, but I think that is distinctly different from driving beliefs.  Those beliefs already existed it's just that the voices on social media start getting louder simply because the topic was raised in mainstream media.  For instance, I don't support slavery but don't really post anything about it because it's largely irrelevant in my day-to-day.  But if the media started reporting on a slavery issue I'd probably be a little more vocal socially about it  because it'd be a current topic of discussion.

A fair point, that's possible as well.

21 hours ago, PaulS said:

Can you give any examples of where you think the media has led religious belief that may assist?

I'm going to demonstrate the phenomenon with a more historical example, just to highlight it:

The best historical example would be the Christian support for democracy and the concept of freedom of religion. In it's historical roots, democracy was a pagan invention, promoted by deists, atheists etc. while good Christians supported monarchy. Nowadays, the Western Christians more or less universally consider "god-given freedoms" in a democracy to be something of a Christian value to uphold and protect. Do you believe that Christians, during the recent centuries just independently ended up supporting freedom of religion over state religion and democracy over monarchy as a result of a Bible study done in a monastery? I think it's obvious that the political landscape changed, and the religion followed.

In the present day US, I have heard many times Evangelicals talk along very anti-environmentalist lines claiming things like "People who worry about the environment do so because they don't believe that God is in control" expressing that environmentalism is a result of lack of faith etc. The idea quite transparently originates to right-wing anti-regulatory, pro "let the market decide" - type of political philosophy, but it has somewhere along the line mutated into something of a religious belief (which imo, has started as a religious excuse, then went on and turned into a belief). Please note that such a belief is by no means a coherent principle, which would be applied across the broad to all issues, just selectively to environmentalism. f.e. the Christians who worry about terrorism are, according to the same people, perfectly fine believers. Maybe because that fear is compatible with the right-wing political agenda...

However, in more short periods of time, media and politics tend to drive emphasis, rather than changing core beliefs. But that's how it starts.

1 hour ago, PaulS said:

Personally, I think what we call progressive Christians have made their move away from traditional Christianity because they find it lacking in today's world.  That and they find new biblical scholarship challenging long held beliefs.  Of course that doesn't hold true for all types of Christians, but I think PC's have moved away from traditional religion because of these modern developments.  I think this then feeds into their support for the various political positions.  

That's plausible, but is there something to support the idea that the change of heart happens in that order (the religion changes first, then the political views) and not the other way around (politics comes first, then the religion follows)?

The reason why I suspect the "politics first" to be the case, is the heavy emphasis on political thought and the correlation between the political and religious topics people are interested in talking about. If I watch the American political media, and then follow religious people on social media, the correlation is obvious. The people seem to get their talking points from the political media and then shoehorn them into their religion. For example, the liberals tend to word their Christian message in a fashion that mimics the Democratic party line, like f.e. "The message of Jesus is to accept everyone regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation." or the conservatives saying stuff like "Christians are not called to live in the political correctness of the world." - again mimicing the rhetoric of the conservative political pundits. 

Sidenote 1: To be clear, I'm not trying to address the technical substance of either one of those statements, but rather I'm trying to highlight the fact that the connection to political thought is very obvious and most likely both of the statements simply come from the talking points of the political media. It's highly unlikely that the ideas originate to some kind of a Bible study that somehow independently just happened to end up to an overlapping conclusion with a political message.

Sidenote 2: Both of those are just examples, not attempts at capturing the whole story.

Sidenote 3: I do realize that nothing is that simple and complex cultural phenomenons have multiple simultaneous dimensions but this is a phenomenon that's really hard to miss.