Catholic Ireland dead? **Mod Warning in Post #563**

The answer to your first question is "No". In fact no matter how much I re-read what I wrote I can not figure out how you came to that conclusion about what it is I am saying. Though in your defense you did pose it as a question about what I am saying rather than a statement.

In fact I am struggling to see you reply to anything I actually said. For example you say "To suggest that there are less atheists who commit murders is ridiculous" but I can find nowhere in my post where I said any such thing.

At this point I can do little but recommend you start again, completely reread my post, and attempt another reply. Nothing you have typed replies to anything I even remotely said.

But it continues to amaze me that you go on about not generalising and being respectful. Yet you described to your friend his decision to use a non religious school as "insane"? It seems to me that you have long ago chosen not to practice what you preach at all. The only person I am ACTUALLY seeing generalise and be disrespectful of others is you.

But no I see nothing "insane" about having children grow up with differing experiences. As parents we often have to choose experiences for our children and what we want for them. For example do I choose the school over there with a big sports program, or the one over there with almost no sports, or the one over there which specifically does Rugby? I myself went to primary school with Brian ODriscoll until we were 12 and I sat next to him. When we turned 13 I went to a school that played all soccer and no Rugby. He went to a school that I believe did the opposite. We likely had very different experiences.

I and another user who also posted on this thread also never did Santa Claus at Christmas with out children. I do not think for one moment my Children have suffered for not having shared that experience with other kids. Though the other user writes and explains that position better than I. I am perfectly content in my decision not to employ that, and have nothing against the parents who do.

The idea that all children should have a uniform identical education experience or upbringing therefore strikes me as a nonsense. And also untenable given the sheer diversity in social and economic backgrounds. And I see nothing "insane" about thinking that school should be about teaching what we have reason to think true, rather than as places to indoctrinate them into fantasy and unsubstantaited nonsense, and making my choice of school based off that desire. I would not consent to a school based solely on the notion that my kid should be doing what every other kid is doing. I see nothing to support such a notion. At. all.

While I would not see any reason to be "verbally abusive" I certainly can empathise with his choice to end the friendship on those grounds.

You ask how the sentence sounds? To me it sounds like a good opener to a useful conversation. I would not dismiss it with screeches of it being a generalisation or hurtful. We can easily and maturaly explore the claim and see if there is any substance behind it.

I would start by finding anything that unifies "atheists" and see if anything there supports or promotes hate or hatefulness. Straight away though your sentence is on weak ground as there is no particular belief that unites all atheists. The word is a descriptor of a single belief they LACK. And that is about as informative a unifier as trying to find what unites all people with (or without) beards. It is, straight away, a nonsense.

But you can go on to explore what atheism is and you then see that there is nothign in the sentence " I see no reason to think there is a god or gods" that in any way leads to "Therefore I must hate or be hateful". It's a COMPLETE non sequitur.

As a contrast we could test out the sentence "All Christians are haters". I do not belieive that sentence to be true OR useful. But having said that if we look at things that unify many or most Christians, like the Biblical text for example, the sentence is at least on firmer ground. Why? Well for example the Bible contains the notion "The fool hath said in their heart there is no god". Straight away the text is "othering" the non believer AND degrading them with a phrase like "fool".

So the statements are not equivilant. I do not believe EITHER of the statements as I said. But one sentence still, like it or not, has firmer ground than the other.

And this is why I laugh at the statement that "All fundamentalists are the same" coming from someone who is pretending to be against generalisation and lack of respect. Because while I do not believe Muslims have some monopoly on hate or violence (I really dont as I know and love many of them) or that Jains have a monopoly on non violence and love........ the simple fact remains that the more fundamentalist each of those two become in their beleifs.... given what their religions claim and preach...... the higher those relative potentials become in those individuals.

How am I supposed to comprehend this?

'Deep fundamentalist Muslims have flown planes into buildings. Deep fundamentalist Jains sweep the ground before them as they walk, for fear they might kill an insect. The most stident atheists that most people have heard of do little more than write books, while some fundamentalist Christians blow up abortion clinics or attack doctors who perform abortions.'

As for your long winded response to my example of being a hater, generalisations are wrong. Generalisations are very common, almost 100%, among all fundamentalists.

The person I responded to basically said that all Christians are sexual fiends.

That is the best fit to the evidence at the moment , but no one compells you to accept it. I personally don't.

I would enjoy some example of things that have been called Theory under the modern scientific method specifically (as opposed to theory in the vernacular) which have later been observed to be wrong. I trust the list will be realtively extensive given you stated above that this is what "usually" happens. So it sounds like you have plenty to choose from.

But from my knowledge, under the modern scientific method when something is called "Theory" this is the highest accolade of near certainty we ascribe anything in science. Atomic Theory or Evolution Theory for example. The word "Theory" in science indicates our very low expectation that the claims within it are likely to be falsified. Interestingly one of the first scientists to teach me this fact was Catholic Biologist Kenneth Miller.

Now perhaps you do not understand the difference between Scientific Theory and theory/hypothesis, and what you actually mean is that there is a lot of flux in the state of scientific hypotheses, especially at the fringes of our current knowledge and understanding. There you will get little argument from me. We come up with some wacky notions at times. And it can be quite fun and maybe even rare when those wacky notions turn out to be likely true. But most of them are indeed dismissed and rubbished by observation and falsification. That is how science works!

I have always understood the phrases "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy" to be placeholder terms for things we do not understand yet. There have been calculation results and observations that we do not understand and we gave those areas of ignorance names.

As such it falls on my ears strangely to read the statement "Dark matter does not exist after all". What does that even mean given the nature of what the phrase "dark matter" even means? Who is saying it does not exist? And what does the speaker say they actually mean by that statement?

The rest of your post however is making the fallacy of equivocating between two hypotheses. An error Sherlock Holmes, myself, and most scientists would never make. If you have two hypotheses X and Y, Y does not become more credible or more substantiated if you prove X is wrong. Why? Because BOTH can be wrong and the actual answer could be some other Z.

In other words even if you prove one idea wrong, the work to substantiate the second idea is STILL entirely ahead of you. A nonsense idea remains a nonsense idea, even if another idea turns out to be wrong.

Boy1: Where do babies come from?

Boy2: The stork brings them.

Boy1: I do not think that can be right.

Boy2: Well where do you think they come from?

Boy1: I have no idea.

Boy2: AHA! See??? The stork must bring them!!!

In the above conversation Boy2 falsely believes his idea becomes more credible, because Boy1 has no idea of his own. You and I can both see how and why Boy2 is engaged in a fallacy however I am sure. His idea was unsubstantated fantasy before Boy1 admitted to having no idea of his own. And it remains unsubstantiated fantasy after Boy1 admitted this.

Similarly your idea that some god created the universe remains unsubstantiated, regardless of whether Big Bang theory is accepted or falsified by science. Your pretence that there is only two ideas, and proving one wrong proves the other right, is just that. Pretense. And as I said I imagine Sherlock Holmes, were he real, would be embarrased to be associated with such fallacious reasoning.

I put up a piece of your post and asked you how I am supposed to comprehend what you say as you denied you said anything like it. You've put up another long winded post, something which could have been done in under 100 words, but in no way explained what I quoted in my response to you.

As regards me saying all atheists are haters. I do not believe that. I put it there as an example of why generalisations are wrong. The person I quoted is an atheist but also a hater.

I do not believe in any god just in case you missed that.

Below is what you said at the beginning of a post which I quoted,

'Deep fundamentalist Muslims have flown planes into buildings. Deep fundamentalist Jains sweep the ground before them as they walk, for fear they might kill an insect. The most stident atheists that most people have heard of do little more than write books, while some fundamentalist Christians blow up abortion clinics or attack doctors who perform abortions.'

This led to my response which started off with

Crikey, you are suggesting that only religious people can be sociopaths?

You responded to me basically asking me how I could ask that question and claim you never made any suggestion like it.

It's sociopaths that blow up buildings and kill people. Fundamentalism is not terrorism and murder. Fundamentalists believe in following their faith, books and teachings to the letter of the law. Terrorists use religion to claim they are on a righteous path and to brainwash the less intelligent so they carry out their bidding.

As regards your issue with me saying all atheists are haters. That was put up as an example of generalisation.

I do not believe atheists are haters. There are some just like in all different faiths and beliefsl

I do not believe in any god just to make that clear to you as well.

You seem like a good guy but your posts are very long-winded. You could get your points across with a lot less words.

Now, can you please explain why my question beginning with 'crikey' is a surprise when you said what I've quoted there which begins with 'Deep fundamentalist Muslims'?

Yes, I repeat, I at no point said, or even implied, that only religious people can be sociopaths. If you are getting that notion from anything I wrote I can only assure you, you are misreading me.

Whether that is a failure in my ability to express myself, your ability to comprehend, or a mix of the two I do not know. But communication is alas always like that. All one can do is keep trying to express oneself until the other side gets it, regardless of which side (or both) the failure lies.

What I AM saying is that not all fundamentalists are the same. In that given what they believe, they can be more or less likely to engage in certain undesirable behaviours. Like violence.

So what they actually believe is very important. Not just that they are fundamentalist. But fundamentalist in WHAT specifically. There is a reason you do not get a lot of atheist or Jain suicide bombers.

For example the probability.... and I stress that it is a probability not an absolute.... that a deeply fundamentalist Muslim might commit violence upon you is massively higher than a deeply fundamentalist Jain. Why? Because the specfic tenants and contents of their respective faiths are massively different. The more fundamentalist you are as a Jain the less likely you are to commit violence.

As I said the really deep Jains drink and breath through cheese cloth so they minimise the harm to small forms of life and sweep the path before them as they walk so they will not even stand on a bug. They are deeply horrified by any level of violence.

And yes I did not take you as personally saying Atheists are Haters. Apologies if I was not clear there. I was showing you how I would evaluate the statement were you to make it. I was not intending to treat you AS IF you were making it. I thought since you were giving it as an example, you would read my response in the same light. The point was that not all generalisations are equal either. Some generalisations, while wrong, have at least some substance behind them. Others, not so much.

IMHO Catholicism went from a very public profession of faith ; weekly mass, confession, holy week, various saints days, corpus christi processions, Lent & Ash Wednesday, Blessings of the graves... (I could go on) to a more personal spiritual profession. In my recollection of my local church which was about 500 yards from my house, the numbers were declining before the horrific abuse and cover up scandals were made public.

After the scandals, the numbers dropped and I for one can't blame people for that. So by that metric Is catholic Ireland dead? I don't think so, but its certainly not the force it was which may be stating the obvious.

My parents went on holiday to Rome in their early 70s. Toured the Vatican and St. Peter’s. My dad came home and said “the architecture and art was amazing considering that nobody was working there”. He never went to mass again. Good for him.

WE are the taxpayers who paid for it . The state .

It's remarkable how you can think so differently about two belief systems. You say the above about religion and "if there were a basis in fact" but at the same time call people transphobes etc. for not agreeing a man can be a woman on other threads, which is purely a belief with no basis in fact.

It's amazing how people can twist and turn and be so inconsistent in their own "beliefs" depending on the subject. Fair play to you! lol

I would love to see that evidence, especially in reference to the dawn of time part.

Right, I will give you that.

Although further reading would unearth this: "A precise history of the global occurrence of transgender people is difficult to compose because the modern concept of being transgender, and of gender in general as relevant to transgender identity, did not develop until the mid-1900s. Historical understandings are thus inherently filtered through modern principles, and were largely viewed through a medical lens until the late 1900s."

So with that, I would say your stance is on a flawed ground.

Your original statement was "Evidence show that transgenderism is a consistent part of human experience and has been since the dawn of history.".

This is very much the same as religion, if anything religion is the first stab at cosmology, literature, health care etc.