Choosing a faith

Comenius? Did you mean consensus? To the extent the Golden Rule is common to all religions and no religions it is a reflection of our inherent morality. It certainly isn't a reflection of a consensus formed among all the world religions. There is no indication, historical or otherwise, that religions worked together toward forming any consensus on this.But my main point was the lack of evidence. Were there actual evidence of spiritual truths then the world's religions would have built consensuses around these truths. They haven't. Because there's no evidence. Which you keep forgetting by instead saying things like "information from the world," which is just evidence, which you don't have.
​ But this was about your changing religious views. Now it seems like you're saying there's only one timeless truth and that's the Golden Rule. But if there's only one timeless truth and you've already found it, then what are you seeking?--Percy

You said that Krauss's claim of plausibility implied that other ideas must also be plausible. Tangle and I both assumed you were implying that it was your own ideas that must also be plausible, but you're saying that we were wrong to assume that.So now let's be very clear about what you claim you were saying. When you said that Krauss's claim of plausibility implied that other ideas must also be plausible, you were not in any way implying that it made your own ideas plausible.But since it's your ideas we're discussing, how is this in any way relevant? It isn't, of course, and so I don't believe you. You were clearly implying it was your own ideas that Krauss's claim rendered plausible.You're just continuing your strategy of trying to sneak in a wording that grants your ideas validity but that we won't object to, and you're doing this by being obfuscative. It won't work. The reason we can't see it is because you have no evidence (you don't have information from the world, either). There must be very few here who would find plausible something that had no evidence.--Percy

Making observations of the world around us is just another way of saying that you're gathering evidence. If philosophical evidence if just making observations of the world around us then philosophical evidence is just plain old ordinary evidence. Which you don't have. And what is the accumulation of evidence that brought about this consensus? Is this a universal truth, or are there exceptions, such as being engaged in armed conflict, or being the executioner at a prison, or being the victim of a violent crime? Is there any statistical data objectively showing that love and kindness bring about better outcomes than other approaches?Realize that I'm not questioning the Golden Rule, at least not now. I'm questioning your claim to have evidence of its efficacy, and that that's the reason a consensus developed around it.I submit that it's widely accepted because it expresses ideals of fairness and equality and appeals to our good nature, and not because of any analytical process based upon evidence. This is way over-simplistic. There are no reliable guidelines for how to balance one's own self-interest against the interests of others.--Percy

What happened to philosophical evidence and "observing the world around"?--Percy

Concerning health care as having Christian roots, Hippocrates lived in the 4th century BC, and he was by no means the only pre-Christian physician.Concerning education as having Christian roots, the Greeks had general education by the 5th century BC. The Roman system was loosely based on the Greek. Slavery was defended by practically every Southern minister and condemned by nearly every northern minister. Apparently Christian conclusions about slavery varied according to where you live. (As an aside, it's worth mentioning that Wilberforce's son Samuel had that famous dustup with Huxley at Oxford about evolution.) Since the beginning of time the sincerely religious have been taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. It isn't just the religious wars where the ruling class would recruit the devout to punish the sinners in some other country, or even just in some other political party. More recently, back in the 1980s Christianity in the US had a golden era of televangelists just raking in the cash, like Jim Bakker (fraud, did jail time) and Jimmy Swaggart (solicitation of prostitution).Can the constant victimization of the devout be laid at religion's door? After thousands of years you'd think every religion would have "How not to be victimized" classes, but that would mean providing tools of skepticism which might cause them to lose members, so this will never happen. So yes, of course religion can be blamed for religious wars. Oh, please. Everyone has the sense that things were better in the good old days but forget that those are the good old days of Jim Crow, the KKK, world wars, the Holocaust and McCarthyism. It's a false sense. Most people know that. You're saying that while religion has done bad things, science has done bad things, too, but that doesn't help you with the fact that science is based on reality while religion, as far as anyone has been able to demonstrate so far, is not. People whose lives are affected by science, whether positively (medical science) or negatively (nuclear bomb), it is by something tangible, something with evidence. But when people's lives are affected by religion, again, whether positively (a church wedding) or negatively (killed by Islamic terrorism), there is no evidence that God, the being behind it all, is actually real. Nothing's black or white, all good or all bad, but that's not the point. The point is that there's no evidence behind your claims, while our claims do have evidence, in many cases a great deal of evidence.--Percy

I don't think that describes the feeling that murder is wrong.--Percy

Instinctual. I think even young children, once they know what death is and before they've had a chance to absorb much from their surrounding culture, understand that making someone dead on purpose is a bad thing.--Percy

We might be talking about two different things. Learning how to deal with death is a cultural thing. Knowing that bringing about the purposeful death of another human being is wrong is an inherent thing.--Percy

You said that morality makes sense if we start from a theistic position. For the source of that theistic position I went to the Bible, which is "internally inconsistent and contradictory (there's a reason they're called apologists) and externally fantastical and wrong." In addition you concede that it isn't evidence, anyway.Where is your evidence, GDR? You've said several times that you draw your conclusions from observing the world around us, which is the very definition of evidence. So what's your evidence? Please end this merry-go-round of the contradictory. "I have no evidence, but I do have my observations of the world around us." Evidence is evidence, and observations of the world around us are evidence. You can't claim you both have evidence and don't.--Percy

Would he be a Jack Benny type? Will Rogers? Red Skeleton? Bob Hope? Gallagher? John Pinette? Mitch Hedberg? Looking forward to his show. Of course there's evidence. This is a well researched area:

• Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives - Google Books
• Frontiers | Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Insights From Non-human Primates
• How Compassion Made Us Human: The Evolutionary Origins of Tenderness, Trust ... - Penny Spikins - Google Books
• The Origins of Morality: An Evolutionary Account - Dennis Krebs - Google Books
• Morality: An Evolutionary Account
  
• ...

You have to stop you're "we're both an equal footing" campaign. We are not on an equal footing. As we keep telling you over and over again, we have evidence and you don't. If you like we can dive into any one of those books. That murder is wrong is inherent in our makeup as human beings. How we incorporate that moral feature into our behavior is individual and a reflection of our free will. Atheists seeing themselves as gods while at the same time being materialists is contradictory. I think you're still hung up on thinking that atheists know there is a God but just deny him. Being in charge of and responsible for your own life makes you a human being, not a god.Like most groups atheists are highly varied, but for the most part they're materialists. Both atheists and materialists should have no trouble accepting the existence of dark matter since there is so much evidence for it beginning at least as early as the 1930's. Your contradictions abound. Here you say that, "Religion isn't just about love," but in your previous Message 358 you said, "I would add that the only rule is to love others which includes being good stewards of all of creation."It's like human beings have a switch inside their head that when turned on says, "This makes sense," no matter how irrational. Your making contradictory, nonsensical and just plain wrong statements left and right, but your "This makes sense" switch is on, and so you'll never see it.--Percy

This began with your claim of other types of evidence, like philosophical evidence. I still don't know what that is and have concluded it's just normal evidence. I asked for an example of accumulating philosophical evidence driving a consensus among the world's religions, and you didn't seem to have one. You admit you have no evidence but that you have "information from the world," which is just evidence, which you don't have, and so you have no "information from the world."What is it that you do have? In the space where I hoped you would address that question you instead preached about Jesus and Christianity's commonality with other religions. But evidence? Nope.And I don't see why you need an institution to spread His love. You have love inside you, spread that, and not just through the church but everywhere.--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Logic like that will lead you into mistaking swans and geese for ducks.You want to see design so you see design, but natural processes for which we have mountains of evidence produce the diversity of life we see today and that we know from fossil evidence existed in the past. There's no evidence for design or the designer.The direction you think you see in evolution is not there. Increasing complexity is a natural outcome of evolutionary processes since mutational changes can build upon what came before, and there is also an evolutionary arms race where, for example, the greater speed of the cheetah is met with greater speed in the rabbit which in turn is met with greater speed in the cheetah and so forth, each increase in speed potentially requiring compensatory changes that likely include increased complexity.But all that matters in evolution concerning selection is differential reproductive success, which is just the scientific way of saying that you get more of what works (increasing population size), and less of what doesn't work (decreasing population size and potential extinction). Evolution is not a relentless march of progress. Cavefish lost their eyesight. Penguins and dodos lost the ability to fly. Snakes lost their legs. Birds lost their teeth. These happened because losing these capabilities provided greater survival opportunities.If you're being honest that you're in favor of science then you need to incorporate what science actually says into your thinking instead of making up fantasies. A scientifically accurate picture of evolution is that it has no direction, and you need to accept that.--Percy

You're just describing your position again from scratch.No, you are wrong. Krauss claiming plausibility for certain views in no way impacts the plausibility of your own views. Your views must earn their plausibility on their own merits. I didn't comment on whether you're competent to carry out this strategy. I said this is the strategy you're employing, whether you're consciously aware of it or not.And it isn't a matter of competence. It's a matter of impossibility. No one is going to buy that because Krauss claimed plausibility for a couple of his ideas that it implies plausibility for your ideas, but instead of dropping the idea you just keep repeating it with vaguer and vaguer wording. It isn't going to work.--Percy

But the Bible is the foundation of your beliefs. Millions before you have said the exact same thing as you about the Bible, but there is no right answer about which portions of the Bible to accept except when based upon evidence. John the Baptist, who did nothing more than baptize people, was likely a real person because there is confirmatory evidence from Josephus. Jesus was likely not a real person because despite his incredible works, far far greater than anything John the Baptist did, he is mentioned nowhere but in the Bible. Why do you think any of this is evidence of anything? Here's another list, "evidence" you forgot:

1. Wars
2. Genocide
3. Parasites
4. Murder
5. Rape
6. Torture
7. Injuries
8. Drownings
9. House fires
10. Disease
11. Birth defects
12. Earthquakes
13. Hurricanes
14. Droughts
15. Floods
16. Tsunamis
17. Famine
18. Sea level rise
19. Climate change
20. Rot and decay
21. Forest fires
22. Infidelity
23. Betrayal
24. Lies and deceit
25. Theft

If your list is evidence of something, then this list must be evidence of something, too, especially since everything on it is objectively tangible while the items on your list are either subjective or a statement of fact with no supernatural implications or just silly.Your first item fits in this last category. Since when do the parts or substances that make up anything, whether a truck or a building or dirt or a gas, have to have the same qualities. Are hydrogen or oxygen wet? Of course not. But do you think it supernatural that when combined chemically in a 2-to-1 ratio they form water? Or is it maybe making less sense to you now that a sentient being must be made up of sentient atoms and molecules?The actual truth is that there is no evidence for the supernatural in either list.--Percy

Why are you making us tell you this is wrong yet again? It understandably causes frustration when you ignore what people say and force them to repeat themselves. You are causing the very escalation you dislike.First, for the nth time, science doesn't prove anything.Second, also for the nth time, yes, we have evidence.Third, again for the nth time, no, you do not have evidence. You've conceded as much. Why are you now saying that you do have evidence? Can we not somehow make progress? Is there nothing you say that you won't later qualify or pretend you never said?You also don't have information from the world, which is just evidence.You''re obviously not a creationist with a literal interpretation of the Bible, but your style of argumentation in the way you keep returning to the same points as if they'd never been discussed before and in the way you seem to believe that the way you say things is more important than what you say is very much like them.--Percy