truthie

This is an issue that I have been thinking about.
What is the point of religious people debating against one another in terms of whether the religious belief is wrong/right, dumb, valid/invalid?
Especially, when their religions can’t be proven, suffer of common fallacies and in order to believe in the supernatural beliefs, you have to take the common leap of faith.

It just surprises me to read Christians vs. Muslims vs. Hindus, vs. Sikhs vs. Sufis vs. Neopagans vs. Jews and all the vice versa combinations possible combating and criticizing each others religious beliefs, and god(s) as if one of the religions is more valid than the other, and as if they knew their god(s) so much that they can assert which god is true/false, nice, good and false.
And also, which supernatural belief is true, nice, perfect or false.
I have seen enough of this debates between religious people and my conclusion is that when X religious person criticizes the religious beliefs of Y religious person by showing the negatives of the religious beliefs of Y, the former (X) does it because apparently, by criticizing another religion that is not your own, you “validate your own religion�? and confirm yourself that your religion is better than Y’s.

Example. Discussion:

Religious person of X religion says: “how ridiculous it is that these people believe that praying can heal diseases.�?
However, religious person of X religion believes in psychic powers and that you can heal a disease by working with the auras!
“Oh, his god/gods is/are evil, according to this story he committed atrocious crimes,�? says X religious person.
However, X religious person worships deities that in mythology did evil things too.
How does X religious person defend himself of this?
“No, my god/gods is/are not evil because the mythological stories were just that, myth…in other words, they were not true.�?
Isn’t this hypocritical? :banghead:

What is the justification that religious person of X religion has to criticize Y’s religious beliefs? What is the justification that religious people have to criticize each other’s belief?
After all, it is just potato, potahto.

T.

Veovis

I don't know. I'm just glad I'm safely standing outside, looking in.

truthie

Yeah...I think I will start doing the same, to watch the labradors and the golden retrievers (both dogs and family) fighting against one another.


T.

Ojuice5001

Yes and no, but mainly yes. We theists benefit from using our imagination to see that the strange beliefs of other theists are sometimes nothing more than competing ways of approaching our own. This is true of both of your examples (faith healing, the moral ambivalence of myth). My criticisms of Christianity are, for the most part, superficial rather than radical.

My religious journey illustrates this to some degree. I abandoned Christianity because I didn't like the theory that the world can be characterized by a war between two sides, good and evil. I also wasn't wild about the Christian concept of surrendering the self to God. But at the same time I found myself unable to sustain an adherence to atheism, embracing polytheism instead.

And I found that Christianity wasn't all that wrong about either of those things. First of all, it's not that bad to surrender your ego and give your self to the gods. I mean, is there really anything else worth doing with it?

It's the same way with the Christian claim of a war in heaven. The truth is that the people and things we see are good in themselves, but they are under constant attacks from forces that make them evil, and they usually aren't successful in resisting these forces. The truth is that there are supernatural intelligences striving to possess this world, and things will be different depending on which of these intelligences prevail. These are important truths that Christianity sees.

Of course, I have to disagree at some point, and it starts with the idea that there are only two powers, a good power and an evil power. It just doesn't seem like there would be a power that is pure good, and an utterly evil power, and nothing in between. What is this, Lord of the Rings? :huh: Therefore, I think that there are many gods in the world, and all are partly good but not entirely. Still, there are two that are the most powerful in America, and those are Yahweh and Descartes, head of the the post-Enlightenment gods (non-revealed gods of modern culture that I think exist but are not worshipped by any religion). They both have genuinely good qualities, they both have their flaws and dangerous intentions, they're both very powerful, and I'm honestly not sure which one I like better. I also think that if it's possible, it would be good if Jupiter and the other Roman gods restored a realm for themselves on Earth. (Note: They could do this in ways other than mass conversion to Roman paganism, although that is one way.)

So when the conservative Christians worry about whether it's God or Satan who is taking over the world, I don't look down on them. I don't agree with their ideas that Satan exists and Yahweh is who he claims to be, of course But I realize that they have more insight than most non-Christians give them credit for. Conservative Christians see God at work in a Mel Gibson movie, while the Hellenic pagans on Beliefnet wonder whether the gods are giving support to the Olympics in Greece. RaptureReady has a whole forum for prayer requests, and MysticWicks has one for sending positive energy through the world.

Now, that doesn't mean that one religion can't make an intelligent criticism of another. Even if the other guy's beliefs are just a different version of one's own, they are still a different version. To take the biggest disagreement, the debate between monotheism and polytheism is genuine. Is the world as characterized by multiplicity as the polytheists think, or as unified as the monotheists think, or even more unified, as the pantheistic religions think? Sometimes one's own version of a religious habit really is better than another; pagans and Christians each complain about their history of being persecuted by the other, but that doesn't mean that one isn't more right than the other. Sometimes your own religion really does have a superiority.

But I agree with you in spirit. The debate between ethnocentrists and pluralists is one of those paradoxes that make theology seem attractive to some people and futile to others.

truthie

Intelligent criticism?

But what happens is the following; X religious person catches the fault in Y’s religion and not of his/her own religion!
And if a fault in the religion of X is spotted and presented to X, X just ducks the issue and starts defending the superiority of his/her religion.
X does not want to realize that his religion has as many fallacies as Y’s.
Why can’t X be humble and say…�?You know it is true, my religion has a,b,c problem.�?

How arrogant and hypocritical is that?
“My religion is not to question, but yours is.�?


Why did you focus on some kind of polytheism vs. monotheism issue?
(I know you are a Neopagan, but….) :banghead:
The point of the OP shows that supernatural religious beliefs are all intertwined and correlated (well, it is the supernatural after all), whereas it is funny and IMO ridiculous to read religious people battling against one another because each one of them thinks that their own religion, religious ideas are superior or more logical/valid, when in reality, they believe in the same thing and all of their religions have fallacies, but don't want to admit it because "my religion is better than...."

Potato, potahto.


Sure, for the religious believer because he/she is biased...or what?
Do you think that a Neopagan will say that Islam is superior to Neopaganism?
Or that a Hindu will say that Christianity is superior to Hinduism?
Or that a Jew will say that Sikhism is superior to Judaism?

:rolling:

T.

Ojuice5001

Funny how I mostly agreed with you, but you only replied to the disagreements. Anyway...

Unless there really isn't an equivalent. For instance, I would venture to say that no other popular religion believes anything as unscientific as young-earth creationism. So doesn't that mean that whatever flaws X's religion has, he's still right in criticizing YEC. (Hey does Y stand for young-earth creationist? )

I think that I try to do that. For instance, Greek mythology is criticized for explaining things via God-of-the-Gaps. Now, the critics never seem put their case right, but if they ever did, I would admit they were right.

My religion is open to question. I'm just not all freaky about it. I think that Christianity has a lot of insights. I question it in the sense that I don't agree with it on everything, but that's inevitable. If that weren't so, I'd be a Christian.

Do you think it doesn't matter which of the two, if either, is true? I think that each side has reasons why it makes more sense. The monotheists sometimes give their best reasons, and when they don't, it's because they aren't trying their hardest, thinking that polytheism is dead. Just like the God-of-the-Gaps critics I mentioned earlier. I do think that the reasons for polytheism are better, but again, if I didn't think that, I wouldn't be a polytheist.

And I agreed with this.

They believe in different versions of the same thing. Their ideas are different in their particulars, and theists can compare them in that way.

No, if they did, they'd be a Muslim, a Christian, and a Sikh. Doesn't mean that they're not right. There's an old saying, "He and I are both biased. But I'm biased and right, and he's biased and wrong."

Mentalepsy

I think he meant that it can be superior in specific aspects.

For example, on the subject of getting to heaven, it's hard to get much more ridiculous than to claim that the all-powerful God had no choice but to sacrifice himself to himself in order to allow himself to circumvent a rule that he made himself that would have forced him to send his own creations to a hell he made himself because he didn't create them properly in the first place.

Ojuice5001

Yes, that's the lines I was thinking along.

truthie

But the religion of the person who is making the critique has ridiculous fallacies too.
However, the critic does not want to admit them or does not recognize them, instead she/he legitimizes her own religion by criticizing another’s religious beliefs regardless of the fact that her religion has its faultiness too.

Plus, you can find this same kind of religious fallacy (your example) in other religious mythological books too.

Even when the aspects of the supernatural religious beliefs vary, the underlying core of the religious beliefs is the same.

T.

truthie

And if he holds supernatural beliefs as ridiculous as YEC?
And if he puts other people’s beliefs under the burden of skepticism and not his own?
No, Y does not stand for YEC.

Is it that they put their case right? But still, you don't care or are indifferent towards it?
Come on, we are all biased, it happens to atheists too.


But, most of the times that someone in this board has made a logical critique of your religion, you don’t seem to want to admit that they have a good point.
Of course it is your religion and the religious person can shape his/her religion to the point that he/she likes and feels comfy. Plus, there is bias.

Whether monotheism or polytheism is true, I care less about that, besides, that is not the point of the OP.
For you, a polytheist, polytheism makes sense. For the monotheist, monotheism makes sense.
Biases + what you feel comfortable with and like.
Again, the labradors and golden retrievers can keep fighting against one another.

I agree.
Ah...if they compared, but most of them don't do that.
They just want to "prove" the invalidity of each other religious beliefs by pointing the negative aspects of one another’s religions regardless of the fact that their beliefs are technically the same.... even when the aspects of the supernatural religious beliefs vary, the underlying core of the religious beliefs is the same.

T.