Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Only to a non-religious person, and that is the distinction you keep insisting on ignoring.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

i'm not making a distinction between religious and non-religious, i'm just saying it has no factual meaning or useful for any kind of prediction or answering any question.

differentiate "god did it" with "it's magic"?

and i'm not talking bout moral values here, as that is a totally differnet debate.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

They believe God exists, they don't believe in magic. God to them is a specific construct with specific qualities in which they have invested a great deal of personal faith and belief. Magic is a random term that covers absoluetly everything that an individual person happens to not understand.

You're defining 'factual' as meaning 'provable by experimentation and observation' Given that definition, no right-thinking religious person would ever say their belief was factual, so I'm not seeing why this causes such a problem for you.

Let me reiterate: You are holding something to a standard it has never claimed to meet, and then denigrating that something for its failure to meet a standard that, again, it has never claimed to meet.

Taking the opinion statement of fanatics or fundamentalists as being indicative of the whole group is an incredible generalization. If you asked most religious people to prove their belief they would say "I (Note the use of I in that statement) don't need proof."

You clearly do need proof, and that is clearly why you are not a religious person. If you were religious and true to your beliefs, you would simply believe them. That's all there is to it.

"For people who like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing those people will like"

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

When one openly attacks a religion, they're thought of as rude? You joking? People BLATANTLY DESPISE religion, specifically Christianity, in this country, and religion is under copius amounts of scrutiny.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

quick question about faith in regards to debate:

If I were trying to tell people that guns should be allowed in schools, could I tell them that I had faith that nothing bad would happen? Because I do. I have faith that if teachers were allowed to have guns in school, that them having them would not cause any trouble. I am an atheist, but I have faith in that ideal. With my faith, that means I'm "right" and since it's "faith", it can't be questioned, right?

...

In OTHER WORDS, faith cannot possibly be admissible in intelligent discussion because it's fundamentally broken. You can believe whatever you like, but you can't use your unfounded beliefs to support (or even to denounce) arguments in a discussion. If unfounded beliefs were admissible in debates, it'd be a volley with people throwing ridiculous **** back and fourth with no regard to logic, deduction, or, to be frank, intelligence.

This is why we have the rule of no religion discussion here. What happened? Why are these things allowed now?

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

I see the faith argument as a weak excuse to escape all criticism and nothing more.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

There's an awful lot of Christians just on ffr for you to say that. In this new age of reason Christianity is still going strong, weak people need hope, who doesn't need some hope? Christianity is what's wrong with America, it's the reason Mcain and his female Bush will be elected and we'll go into recession.

I have faith that dinosaurs never existed. Faith is how you get around blatant flaws.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

This is a debate about the concept of religious debate, not a religious debate. That's why it's been allowed.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?



You deleted my post, didn't you

But really, there is no debate to the concept of it. It's simple. You can't debate it because it's beliefs rather than fact. You can't debate with religion on the grounds that it is unprovable by its own nature.

Not only that, but due to the nature of serious debate, unfounded beliefs aren't admissible on the grounds that they are not empirical. You could mention beliefs and such, but they cannot be used as support or as a means to denounce the opposition. If I have a belief that the death penalty is wrong, I can't walk into a debate and say "my beliefs say this is wrong" and walk out the winner of the argument.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

Afro, the thread is not about whether religion is true or not, but whether religion is scrutinized as much as it should be, and how it should be scrutinized. I'm not sure what you don't understand about that.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

It's not a debatable topic. You cannot say "prove it" to someone talking about religion.

That's the problem. You can't scientifically test religion, because if you try, your returned result is that it's not scientifically true. But a person's faith can be contrary to empirically proven truth, and as far as this topic is concerned, that's where it lies.

Thus, this scrutiny that some would suggest is tandamount to frankly stating "gods don't exist and all religions are wrong and/or lies." I personally am in favor of people taking that stance on the subject, but as far as this forum is concerned, I know it can't work. Too many people have their beliefs and they are at odds with the function of this forum. Thus, the best solution is to simply avoid such discussion, not to put a big sticker on it saying "god isn't real".

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

This is pretty much all that needed to be said to answer the OP's question. QFE.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

The idea that religion and science are two non-overlapping realms is not true. Religion makes various claims about the world, as does science. A universe with a god will look very different from a universe without one. Science is concerned with explaining what exists, so the truth claims of religion are directly in conflict with empirical science.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

what about this? science usually doesn't tell religion to stop doing something because it's wrong. religion has been telling science to shut up for centuries, now they go all out for contraceptives, genetics, and such. latest thing they've done is saying you can't check the genes of your embryons to see if there will be malformations/genetic diseases. THEY WANT BROKEN HUMANS TO BE BORN BECAUSE,THEY SAY, THE DIFFERENT SHOULDNT BE AVOIDED. yet they burned dissentors and "witches" in the past, and even nowadays people are exorcized. people who most likely need a psichiatric help, not a purification ritual. the amount of contradictions in the religious matters is huge and just cannot be ignored. this alone should keep people far from any religion, but it seems most people still need a sweet lie to feel reassured.

Re: Why religion isn't under the same amount of scrutiny?

I'd say religion isn't under as much scrutiny is because religion is unprovable and science can be disprovable, so if you're going to criticize something you're more likely to go for the one you can actually disprove. It's hard to criticize religion because religious people believe in what is set forth in a book, and so any argument relies on whether or not you take that book as valid.