This is according to Michael Shermer. Certainly, in my view, we do not need the false Gods of Mormonism (Elohim, Jehovah and Michael).This is not meant to cause a debate between theists and atheists but to give Shermer's views of the Biblical God. Most theists have redefined 'God' and others argue for spirituality.

Neither is this post meant to start a discussion on Shermer's personal morality. We have done that one to death.

Here are Shermer's words:-

The Battle in Seattle Do We Need God?
by Michael Shermer

Do We Need God? No. Thank you. Okay, seriously, there are at least 10 reasons why we do not need God…

1.Ben Carson, or Religious Ignorance. Only belief in God could infect a brain as smart as the renowned neurosurgeon and prominent Presidential candidate Ben Carson to mangle the Big Bang theory and preposterously propose that Darwin’s theory of evolution is a trick of Satan.

2.Kim Davis, or Religious Bigotry. Only belief in God could convince an otherwise decent and loyal civil servant that her personal interpretation of the Bible trumps the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States, and the law of the land.

3.ISIS, Al Qaeda, & Islamism, or Religious Extremism. Only belief in God could lead large groups of people to believe that the most moral thing they can do is to murder people in the most gruesome manner imaginable—beheading—anyone who does not believe their barbaric and primitive religious tenets, such as capital punishment for apostasy.

4.Crusades, Witch Hunts, and Wars, or Religious Violence. Only belief in God could lie behind these catastrophic moral blunders: the Crusades (the People’s Crusade, the Northern Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, and Crusades One through Nine); the Inquisitions (Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman); witch hunts (the execution of tens of thousands of people, mostly women); Christian conquistadors (extermination of native peoples by the millions); the interminable European Wars of Religion (the Nine Years War, the Thirty Years War, the Eighty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the English Civil War); the American Civil War (in which Northern Christians and Southern Christians slaughtered one another over the issue of slavery); and the First World War (in which German Christians fought French, British, and American Christians, all of whom believed that God was on their side—German soldiers, for example, had Gott mit uns—God with us—embossed on their belt buckles.) And that’s just in the Western world. There are the seemingly endless religious conflicts in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, numerous countries in Africa, and of course Islamist terrorism.

5.Slavery and Civil Rights, or Religious Intolerance. Only belief in God kept the slave trade alive through religious and biblical arguments that blacks were inferior to whites, that slavery was good for black souls, that slavery gave blacks civilization, that blacks liked being enslaved, or, later, that blacks should not have the same civil rights as whites (such as equal treatment under the law—interracial marriage was illegal until 1967) simply because the pigment in their skin was darker.

6.Women’s Rights, or Religious Suppression. Only belief in God would lead otherwise good men to think that women should not have the same rights as they, which is what almost all Christians believed until the women’s rights movement of the 20th century (and many today still believe in wanting to control women’s sexuality and reproductive choices). Like the meddling Puritanical control freaks of the Early Modern Period there are still men today who think they should decide what women do with their vagina. Women flourish in societies that are either not very religious or those, like the United States, that have separation of church and state; i.e., less religion equals more rights and equality.

7.Gay Rights, or Religious Moralizing. Only belief in God could cause otherwise decent Christians to become perversely obsessed with what other people do with their genitals in the privacy of their bedrooms, and that if these people don’t insert their genitals into the biblically correct orifice, or if genitals are stimulated in a biblically unapproved manner, they should not have the same Constitutional rights as straights.

8.Tribalism, or Religious Xenophobia. The world’s religions are tribal and xenophobic by nature, serving to regulate moral rules within the community but not seeking to embrace humanity outside their circle. Religion, by definition, forms an identity of those like us, in sharp distinction from those not us, those heathens, those unbelievers. Most religions were pulled into the modern Enlightenment with their fingernails dug into the past. Change in religious beliefs and practices, when it happens at all, is slow and cumbersome, and it is almost always in response to the church or its leaders facing outside political or cultural forces (slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights).

9.Absolutism, or Religious Dogmatism. The foundation of the belief in an Absolute Morality is the belief in an Absolute Religion grounded in the One True God. This inexorably leads to the conclusion that anyone who believes differently has departed from The Truth and thus is unprotected by our moral obligations; even more, they must be forced to see the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Unlike science, religion has no systematic process and no empirical method to employ to determine the verisimilitude of its claims and beliefs, much less right and wrong, so it can never self-correct its mistakes, which are legion.

10.Preposterous Moral Rules, or Religious Immorality. The morality of holy books—most notably the Bible—is not the morality any of us would wish to live by. Put into historical context, the Bible’s moral prescriptions were for another time for another people and have little relevance for us today. In order to make the Bible relevant, believers must pick and choose biblical passages that suit their needs; thus the game of cherry picking from the Bible generally works to the advantage of the cherry pickers.

From Michael Shermer's new book:-

The Bible is one of the most immoral works in all literature. Woven throughout begats and chronicles, laws and customs, is a narrative of accounts written by, and about, a bunch of Middle Eastern tribal warlords who constantly fight over land and women, with the victors taking dominion over both. It features a jealous and vengeful God named Yahweh who decides to punish women for all eternity with the often intolerable pain of childbirth, and further condemns them to be little more than beasts of burden and sex slaves for the victorious warlords.

Why were women to be chastened this way? Why did they deserve an eternity of misery and submission? It was all for that one terrible sin, the first crime ever recorded in the history of humanity—a thought crime no less—when that audacious autodidact Eve dared to educate herself by partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Worse, she inveigled the first man—the unsuspecting Adam—to join her in choosing knowledge over ignorance. For the appalling crime of hearkening unto the voice of his wife, Yahweh condemned Adam to toil in thorn and thistle-infested fields, and further condemned him to death, to return to the dust from whence he came.

Yahweh then cast his first two delinquent children out of paradise, setting a Cherubim and a flaming sword at the entrance to be certain that they could never return. Then, in one of the many foul moods he was wont to fall into, Yahweh committed an epic hemoclysm of genocidal proportions by killing every sentient being on Earth—including unsuspecting adults, innocent children, and all the land animals—in a massive flood. In order to repopulate the planet after he decimated it of all life save those spared in the ark, Yahweh commanded the survivors—numerous times—to “be fruitful and multiply,” and rewarded his favorite warlords with as many wives as they desired. Thus was born the practice of polygamy and the keeping of harems, fully embraced and endorsed—along with slavery—in the so-called “good book.”

As an exercise in moral casuistry, this perspective-taking question comes to mind: did anyone ask the women how they felt about this arrangement? What about the millions of people living in other parts of the world who had never heard of Yahweh? What about the animals and the innocent children who drowned in the flood? What did they do to deserve such a final solution to Yahweh’s anger problem?

Many Christians say that they get their morality from the Bible, but this cannot be true because as holy books go the Bible is possibly the most unhelpful guide ever written for determining right from wrong. It’s chockfull of bizarre stories about dysfunctional families, advice about how to beat your slaves, how to kill your headstrong kids, how to sell your virgin daughters, and other clearly outdated practices that most cultures gave up centuries ago. It’s time we all gave it up now. Won’t you join me?

Good God, this is beyond turgid. Please, since you would like to tell us what to post, allow me to tell you something: buy better books.


Let's take just one of these claims:

Tom Phillips Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> 3.ISIS, Al Qaeda, & Islamism, or Religious
> Extremism. Only belief in God could lead large
> groups of people to believe that the most moral
> thing they can do is to murder people in the most
> gruesome manner imaginable—beheading—anyone
> who does not believe their barbaric and primitive
> religious tenets, such as capital punishment for
> apostasy.


This formulation, popular with many New Atheists, "Only belief in god can make people commit...*fill in an atrocity here* is so ridiculously false I can't believe ANYONE believes it let alone thinks it.

Do not these people read newspapers? Can they not see the colonial atrocities Is.raelis commit and are committing this very moment (for throwing stones nonetheless) upon the Palestinians? Can they not understand the gruesomeness of Obama's penchant for bombing wedding parties and now MSF hospitals? Is it because the MSM doesn't post pictures of these things? Of children burned alive in their beds, say? And the other things, the many many many other things done in the name of Nationalism?

Of course they can. They just don't want their loyal readers to think about them should they see them. Better their readers think 'the other' is the barbaric one, the *most* barbaric, the one beyond the pale. It's how they get paid. It's what they're paid to do.

Buy better books.

Human

Actually Human, the essential part of the quote you omitted stated they did it for moral reasons or God commanded them "Only belief in God could lead large
> groups of people to believe that the most moral
> thing they can do is to murder people in the most
> gruesome manner imaginable

Of course many people commit atrocities. I think Shermer was just pointing out the moral justification for murder by quoting the bible or Q'ran.

And I am not, nor never will tell anyone what to post.

I agree with you to an extent. Wars have been fought over resources forever. Religion hasn't always been the motivation to go to war, but it's frequently been the justification for war. However, the particular quote you picked is about religious extremism, not war. The specific examples the author gave seem spot on.

Chump Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> ...the particular quote you picked is about
> religious extremism, not war. The specific
> examples the author gave seem spot on.

These terms "ISIS", "Al Qaeda", "Islamism", "Religious Extremism" are terms straight out of the "War On Terror". In other words, *specifically* about "war".

a lot of violent shit goes down under the lame excuse of religious belief to appease ones vengeance, greed, and idea of social order.... because religion is supposedly special and tolerated. No need to tolerate religious fundamentalism...it allows for all this violent extremism.

even with the violent secularist movements in Stalinist Russia, Moaist China, North Korea etc. All that shit was pursued with inflexible fundamentalist religious zeal, even if that religious zeal didn't include a belief in diety.

Humans are violent people.

take that back, there is nothing secular about Stalinist Russia, Moaist China, or in North Korea. It is pure fascist fundamentalism. Secularism is the polar opposite of fascism.

Nonsense.

Re: Posted by: riverogue ( )

"All that shit".

One of my dear, sweet, pragmatic mother's favorite words. When she used it, it fit.

You hear the false idea that all good comes from god, all morality comes from god, and that your conscience is the light of Christ.

When I was editing out of Mormonism I was doing research on early Christianity, evolution, and came across Richard Dawkins around the time I found Bart Ehrman.

Their ideas rocked my world, and helped in part bring my shelf down. I read almost everything by Dawkins and Hitchens as well as a lot on the Gnostics.

It was so freeing to be able to consider the world outside the narrow viewpoint of Mormonism.

I understand the criticisms of Richard Dawkins, especially lately, but I still object to the term New Atheists. I'm not part of a movement just because I don't believe in any gods but myself right at this moment in time. Especially when there is a distinction between atheists and evangelical anti-theists.

Also, the more I study the bible, the more amazing that book has become. I don't like Shermer's blunt description of the bible just as I don't like religion's description. Both are intellectually dishonest.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 12:49PM by Raptor Jesus.

Raptor Jesus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> but I still object to the term
> New Atheists. I'm not part of a movement just
> because I don't believe in any gods...

No one said you were.

> Especially when
> there is a distinction between atheists and
> evangelical anti-theists.

Whatever term you like R.J., e.a.t or n.a. Or what you will. The point of the term is the same: to distinguish between you, RJ, and Movement Atheism (another term).

We "especially" agree that there is a reason for the "term", just not necessarily upon the right word for it.

And not just by Mormons who consider us to be the "sin sick world," or the "mockers in the great and spacious building."

The non-religious group is one of the fastest growing "religious" groups of America. And frightened pastors, Mormon leaders, and religious pundits like Glenn Beck are trying to attach us to all the evils of the world.

That atheists, agnostics, secularists, humanists are just a growing group of true satanists out to destroy Christianity and by extension American Exceptionalism.

So, call it New Atheism and say I'm not part of it. But in this country - I'm being told I'm part of it.

The worst part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKLIrOGfUo

Yea, I know Dylan wrote the song, but I heard this version first...

BTW, Michael Shermer is one of the head honchos who's always discounting "recovered memories" (while never having any actual clinical experience), and like many others, he puts his narcissism on display regularly (and yes, I've done so in the past myself, but I'm not one to deny it, or insist I'm speaking as an absolute authority--even though I'm accused of that one by those with unresolved issues of their own in that area). We've had quite a few battles on the subject here, and sorry, but I'll take my deletions like a man, and I'm keeping the ol' police interceptor running and the headlights shining.

Per the immortal Edward Abbey who said of the LDS Church: "Nothing that ridiculous could be all bad."

That, IMHO, holds true for religion in general. As historians we can point to the Inquisition as evil but forget that it was a search for religious freedom that brought the first Europeans to New England. We can decry slavery--particularly of Native Americans by the Spanish--but we forget the abolitionist movement of the 19th Century was largely fueled by religious sorts.

And atheists conveniently ignore the genocide of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot in their analysis.

/insert old quip from late AA guru about "disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed."

The larger issue is that religious beliefs play a huge role in human history for the simple reason that almost all humans have had religion almost from the time they were able to think, and certainly since they built their settlements to avail themselves of the benefits of agriculture and animal husbandry.

It provides comfort to many and is a decided "mental demon" to many others, and that reality demands to be acknowledged. Authentic evil can hide just as easily among the pious as the impious. The same can be said of what we would call "good."

I regularly suggest Sheldon Kopp's "If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him" for a number of reasons, primarily because of his notion of "sharing of tales" (I suggest ignoring the pot smoking, but you're on your own if you don't). He also suggests "The guru is disciple to no man." For me, that definitely includes Michael Shermer.

Essentially, I'm left with sharing my own stories, and provisionally I've concluded a simple faith has advantages over a non-faith, and I'll leave it at that.

I could be wrong, however, but if that's the case it won't matter in the end.

/cabdriver philosopher voice off

Most people of the world find a reason to need a deity and a savior if they are Christian.
Some folks don't find they need a deity or a savior.
It's a personal choice about what works for them at the time.
We are free to change our mind.

It seems to me that you are not talking about God, but rather the writings of kookoobirds that God gets the blame for.

GodLedMeOut (nli) Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It seems to me that you are not talking about God,
> but rather the writings of kookoobirds that God
> gets the blame for.

He and mostly deity seems to be He-ity, gets given the blame/accountability for lots of things humans don't want to take responsibility for in theirs and others lives. It is a part of being God. People just argue about what he ought to have responsibility for like killing people with natural disasters and such.

Mr. Schermer raises an interesting chicken-and-egg question. He appears to be saying that it is God (or human beings' belief in God) that has caused all of the world's suffering.

However, I'm wondering if the shoe is not on the other foot. That is, did humans create their god(s) to justify their own behaviors. This seems more credible to me, given the various interpretations of not only the Bible but of all religious materials.

Yep...one group wanted their neighbor's land, possessions, women, etc..., so they made up stories about how they are God's chosen people, God told them to kill, steal, etc... Why would a loving, father-type God have a favored people in the first place? When things didn't go their way, they weren't righteous enough, they turned inward, they made up stories of a messiah that would save them, etc...

Shermer's comments logically entail the claim that belief in God is a necessary AND sufficient condition for violent, immoral conduct, which is obviously false.

Belief in God is NOT a necessary condition for immoral conduct because, as pointed out by HUMAN and others, such conduct clearly occurs absent such beliefs and motivations. Moreover, it is not a sufficient condition because some believers do NOT engage in immoral behavior; and in fact engage in much morally praiseworthy conduct, which, by the way, others might well "need."

So, logically Shermer's comments are flawed. Of the several books I have read by Shermer, they are frankly ALL laced with logical and factual errors to the point of raising the question of his own intellectual competence, or perhaps his own motivation for being so intellectually loose and careless.

So, if someone wants to read Shermer, O.K. However, I am sure an astute and careful reader (like most on the Board) will find such reading similar in intellectual quality to Mormon apologetics; though perhaps a bit more "faith promoting" for those atheists feeling a bit insecure.

(P.S. A secure atheist does not NEED such BS.)

+1

Citing Old Testament passages for a theocratic Israel as somehow a guide for Christians is something I'd expect from an ill-informed hack atheist talking to friends over a beer, but not something that is a serious criticism of Christianity. Find me a Christian pastor who gives instructions for selling virgins, otherwise you're just cherry picking irrelevant passages for your personal agenda.

I'd recommend you limit this sort of data to an amen choir of fellow atheists looking for a little red meat. In terms of actual, reasonable or critical thought, you're not really offering anything.

So, what? You're a Marcionite? Is the god of the Tanakh not the same god as the god of the New Testament?

Did Jesus kill ol' Angry, Warmongering, Whoring, Unstable Yahweh and take his place?

What relationship does the Old Testament have with the New?
Before answering, I will be clear up front that I intend to quote scripture at your supple round bubble butt that indicate that the writers of the NT clearly relied on the authority of the Tanakh as a holy compendium to assert the legitimacy of their claims.

Came from cherry picking scriptures of the Old Testament.

The gospels that claim Jesus was divine from prophecy use cherry picked scriptures from Isaih and Daniel as well as others. Jesus's teachings are sometimes cherry picked from the Old Testament as well.

Modern Christianity also emphasizes only select scriptures as it sees fit for their agenda. And each Christian sect emphasizes certain scriptures over others to "prove" their correctness over another sect.

Seventh Day Adventists have their handful to show the sabbath is always on Sunday. Mormons have their handful to legitimize the Book of Mormon an modern day prophets. Baptists and other Protestanste have theirs to show that they are correct over the Catholic Church.

Furthermore, the modern homophobia from Christianity comes from incredibly cherry picked scriptures both from the old and New Testament.

As society changes, the emphasized scriptures will change because this is how a religion stays relevant.

Raptor Jesus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Seventh Day Adventists have their handful to show
> the sabbath is always on Sunday.

Isn't the Sabbath always on Saturday for Seventh Day Adventists???

Isn't this more-or-less the point of their particular Christian religion?

"Find me a Christian pastor who gives instructions for selling virgins, otherwise you're just cherry picking irrelevant passages for your personal agenda."

Do you disagree with his claim that religious folks cherry pick what they like to support their agenda? How much of the OT would be "quotable" in a Christian sermon? All of the well known OT stories combined make up a very small fraction of the book. Even in LDS OT SS, MAYBE 10% of the OT is covered. They often quote 1-2 verses from Malachi when discussing tithing, but ignore the context, etc... That's clearly cherry picking. Can you really call it cherry picking if you can randomly turn to any page in the OT and likely find multiple verses that contradict Mormon/Christian doctrine on the nature of God?

His comments obviously don't apply to all Christians, but they do apply to Bible literalists, like Mormons.

Tom, and perhaps the some of you, wish to have your cake and eat it too. He says above,

"Many Christians say that they get their morality from the Bible, but this cannot be true because as holy books go the Bible is possibly the most unhelpful guide ever written for determining right from wrong. It’s chockfull of bizarre stories about dysfunctional families, advice about how to beat your slaves, how to kill your headstrong kids, how to sell your virgin daughters, and other clearly outdated practices that most cultures gave up centuries ago."

So he cites passages that are universally recognized as governing over a theocratic Israel (which hasn't existed for thousands of years) and lays them at the feet of Christians who have embraced a "New Covenant" and are not part of any theocracy. Even Israel itself does not embrace these rules today.

That's dishonest and intellectually vacuous. Feel free to defend that. Many atheists do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 04:29PM by Tall Man, Short Hair.

And yet they're still being used today by fundamentalist Christians to support racism, misogyny, and homophobia, to name a few.

You want to spend time arguing about which scriptures are holy or secular, allegorical or literal? Start yelling at your Fundie friends. They're the assholes making the lot of you look bad.

Peter and Paul were at complete odds as to whether or not Christians should be observant Jews. Paul thought Gentiles should be converted and that it would be OK to blend some of their gentile traditions because Christianity was a "new thing."

Peter, the Rock, didn't agree. He felt that Christianity was for elite Jews and only agreed to what Paul was doing when Paul sent tithing money to Peter.

The new covenant was an idea of Paul's, and ironically for this post is the most cherry picked scripture of Christianity.

It's a smart move though because whatever modern agenda a sect has, they just incorporate it into the New Covenant.

The Christian god may claim that he is never changing, but his rules certainly do.

So you want honesty when you say "That's dishonest and intellectually vacuous. Feel free to defend that. Many atheists do." ?

How is this for honesty, based on the facts as stated in the NT:-

**Jesus, if a real person, was not a Christian, he was a Jew.

**He did not do away with the teachings of the OT, he endorsed them and quoted from them.

**Some of his teachings were also dysfunctional.

**No teaching in the NT, nor statements attributed to Jesus, add anything worthwhile to morals/ethics. The usual teachings ascribed to him such as the 'Golden Rule' were published 500 years earlier by the likes of Confucius.

**The real NT author of 'Christianity' was Paul and a large chunk of the NT is ascribed to him, not Jesus.

**Jesus wrote nothing.

The fact that modern day Christians distance themselves from the OT is itself dishonest and intellectually vacuous.

However, as stated in the OP, I did wish to avoid this kind of arguing. For me there is absolutely no doubt that there is no God as described by Mormonism - a man who once lived on an earth, died and became an anthropomorphic, polygamous God who created the universe and is intimately involved in observing whether we masturbate, and finding our car keys.

I assume exmos on this board agree, whether or not they are theists (having redefined God) or Christians (having redefined Christianity). Those visiting the board who are still TBM may also find this position of interest to be addressed in their journey.

Tom, you really just seem intent on pushing forward with an argument that suits your agenda, but has no real place in the real world.

Christians, and honest critics of Christianity recognize the emergence of Christianity represented a change in spiritual economy. This is why you don't see many laws intended for running a small semitic nation several millennia ago being taught as relevant to the life of an individual follower of Jesus. Unless you're an atheist with an agenda.

So, I continue to suggest you save this irrelevant, vacuous argument for your buddies over beer. It's just not a well thought out argument.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 05:31PM by Tall Man, Short Hair.

As a guy who deliberately lied so as to slander the young woman who accused him of taking sexual advantage of her, serially cheated on his wife, drinks far too much, and regularly sexually harrassed women so badly that James Randi almost banned him from the skeptic's conferences, Michael Shermer seems to need belief in a Higher Power as much as anyone else.

You can start reading about Michael's unusual relationship with what most people call ethics here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2014/09/the-shermer-affair-erupts/



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 05:03PM by Tal Bachman.

By the way, speaking of another guy who could maybe use faith in a higher power, James Randi has been caught numerous times in quite spectacular lies (about his accomplishments). He was also caught in a police sting soliciting sex from teenage boys (he was recorded on wiretap, and if you Google long enough, you can find and hear those recordings. I have heard them. However, as New Jersey could not prove that Randi had had sex with any boys under the age of sixteen, he was not charged with statutory rape. Still, the tapes are truly nauseating).

Randi was so besotted with one of his young gay lovers, a desperate, teenaged, illegal immigrant from South America living in New York City named David Pena, that Randi masterminded a serious crime - the identity theft of a real New York man named Jose Alvarez - so that his illegal lover could stick around. As a result, federal officials harassed and even punished the real Mr. Alvarez for years - and Alvarez had no idea who had stolen his identity. This poor man spent thousands of dollars trying to defend himself against accusations from federal law enforcement officials, while Randi was traveling around the world with his young lover, (illegally) employing him as his assistant, using Alvarez's passport. That is a felony.

And when the police finally figured out what had happened, and arrested and charged Pena a couple of years ago, another beacon of atheist morality, Richard Dawkins, came to testify *in support of the thief*. Dawkins expressed NO sympathy for the decades-long victim of the crime perpetrated by his pal Randi, and his lover. Randi himself announced that *no one had been inconvenienced by the identity theft* - which means either that Randi is stupid (not true), or that he is incapable of empathy for those he hurts (we all know what word we use for people like that). (You can start reading about this here: http://zthoughtcriminal.blogspot.ca/2013/04/randis-involvement-with-identity-theft.html).

So as far as I'm concerned, James Randi is *another* guy who might benefit from belief in a Higher Power. So is Richard Dawkins, who in addition to favouring felony thieves over their victims, is on record as stating that women have a *moral obligation* to abort children with Down's Syndrome, and who, in "The God Delusion", announced moral equivalence between repeatedly raping a child, and teaching a child about God.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 04:58PM by Tal Bachman.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 05:02PM by Tal Bachman.

Tal,

Read the OP. I hoped we would avoid this discussion which has already been done to death by you. Let's just address Shermer's arguments, whether he is a mass murderer or not. I am not here to defend him, I have merely reported what he has said in this particular context.

Agree with or argue against those points, not what he has done with women.

Tom

And the reason is I genuinely think he believes his own assertions, and I can tell from my long experiences in recovery and working in treatment that the narcissism and denial he regularly puts on display also exist alongside some severe perceptual distortions.

The easy analogies are the drinking alcoholic or the über Mormon who insists "the church is true" despite being confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They literally believe their own bull $#%!, and all of their "logic" and rhetoric, etc. is geared toward promoting that "reality."

And thanks, Tal, for that additional information. We've butted heads in the past (and I'm seriously nervous about the people here I'm "agreeing" with), but I will look at that in-depth and objectively. I hadn't heard that about Randi; I'll fact check that as well, and I recognize he has his enemies...

I remember the Wise Ol' Cabbie saying something about not getting into a "pissing contest between two skunks," and that possibility remains on the table for me.

Well sure, Tom, but my question is:

Where do slimebags like Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and James Randi get off telling us about morality? Why should *anyone* listen to anything these people have to say about the topic?

Besides, I am pointing out why slimebags like Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and James Randi *might actually need God*: clearly the law does not restrain them, so maybe belief in an imaginary being embodying all justice, who will one day punish them for their misdeeds, would work.

That trio IS a possible rebuttal to the basic point of Shermer's piece.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 05:05PM by Tal Bachman.

The claim should be looked at and examined given the evidences of the authors.

Asking the question you did about the authors is a clear ad hominem attack and obvious deflection to the claim.

Raptor - I'll respond to the points later.

But I believe my other point is valid. Would you take health tips gleaned from the health regimen of a 400 pound drug addict smoker? No, you wouldn't. His own actions undermine his credibility, and we would have a prima facie reason to be extremely skeptical about anything the guy said.

In the case of the guys I mentioned above, they have demonstrated through their actions *that they cannot be relied upon to give sound advice on morality*. Is pointing that out an "ad hominem fallacy"? No, I don't think so.

But maybe more important is that their very behaviour itself is the ultimate rebuttal to their claims. That is the point I am making. Their own senses of decency did not restrain them from immoral opinions and actions; the law did not restrain them; maybe a certain kind of deeply held belief (even if it is untrue) would. *That is a valid point, and Shermer himself, and his pals, are the very ones who have raised it with their own words and deeds*.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 05:30PM by Tal Bachman.