Sentience is relative. Although I'm sure our ability to reason and dialogue is important to our relationship to God, nevertheless I suspect that the pleasure we offer God is very like the pleasure my cat gives me. We are much too grotesquely stupid to discourse on anything like equal terms with God. So what He gets from us can't possibly be intellectual stimulation. I'm doubtful that an intelligence that superior would find us recognizably sentient. The difference between us and a Holstein (which clearly also doesn't want to die) must seem slight indeed.

Where you are former Muslim or something? Only this is just the sort of division they create in mind between man and God?

No, I'm just elitist.

I've consistently talked about INTELLECT ONLY, and it seems like that part of it is not coming through to you. Ken spoke of sentience as a reason that destroying humans is bad, while destroying cows is not bad. I remarked that by the standards of someone with an IQ of 145, someone with an IQ of 55 is no more sentient than an animal. This is something that must be experienced to be truly appreciated.

If you've experienced it, it should be obvious that a surprisingly small difference in intelligence--on the order of 30 IQ points, say--is enough to create an unbridgeable gulf. People on one side of the gulf are not only incapable of thinking the thoughts that people on the other side can; they're incapable even of imagining in their dreams what those thoughts might be like. As a result, they're probably unaware that the gulf even exists. To folks on the other side, however, it can be like belonging to a different species entirely. You're not just speaking a foreign language when you communicate across the gulf: you're forced to do like the cowboys in a racist movie from the 1950s. "You like 'em fire water? Me bring heap plenty fire water! You bring 'em buffalo hide!"

Now I don't know what I look like to a genius. Part of not being one is that I can't see the world as he sees it. But based upon considerations as above, I know he sees a different world that I can't see. So merely knowing that God is "awfully awfully smart" is enough to know that His idea of an intellectual conversation is something I can't even envision in my dreams. Whatever pleasure He gets out of me, an intellectual conversation is not one of them.

Thanks, your videos explain a lot.

Aren't you one who is at a loss to explain suffering?

Of course that's true. Nobody said any different.

So back to Ken's question. I've seen my cat exhibit what looks like love, hate, fear, and even conscience. In its own way it wants to live, and doesn't want to die. Why is that not enough to make it wrong for me to decide whether it lives or dies? Who says its own brand of self-awareness isn't enough to make it deserving of life?

It seems remarkably self-serving, not to mention circular, to suggest that human sentience is the threshold at which murder becomes wrong. An alien race with an average IQ of 300 (on human IQ tests) would probably call us charming little animals with digital watches. They might well reason precisely as Ken does, but decide that we're below the threshold of intelligence that entitles us to our own lives. They'd probably keep us as pets, or perhaps servants. They would probably call us "self-aware, but not sentient," or perhaps, "sentient, but not intelligent." Of course yet another alien race, with an average IQ of 500 on human IQ tests, would probably call THEM charming little animals, and call us insects with digital watches...

Now I've no clue, nor do I care to guess, as to what God's IQ is. Nor, for that matter, do I claim that IQ really means anything. NOR, for that matter, do I claim that there's no upper limit to intelligence. For all I know, there's an upper limit to how intelligent any being can be, and the "300 IQ aliens" might be possible but the "500 IQ aliens" impossible.

None of that really affects my basic point. Namely, that Ken's attempt to use intelligence as a standard with which to bootstrap a prohibition against murder that at the same time justifies hamburgers, suffers from the defect that this threshold he posits is entirely arbitrary.

Not sure I can help you, Mercia. I reason with kids and stupid people all the time. I assure you it's a one-way process, in which I try to find the best way to crowbar information into their heads.

Do you actually think God is requesting a mutual exchange of ideas, in which He has a few good points and you have a few good points? Is that what you think?

I guess secular law sets us up to fail as well, seeing that most people break at least one piece of legislation at least once in their lives. It's not impossible to keep, but you'd hardly know that from our prison populations and the amount of money raked in by speeding fines.

Not the best example, since traffic law is tweaked to maximize fines. People actually are set up to fail: the law intentionally sets onerous limits not needed for safety, knowing people of good sense will break them. In some cases the law creates unsafe situations, in fact, where only a dangerous fool would comply.

"Social contract" morality--ugh. If the social contract authorizes gay sex and requires that Jews be handed over to the heimatsicherheitsdienst, would that make it moral?

Also, is it necessary to personally sign onto this "contract" in order to be bound by it? Or is it like a shrink-wrap license you "agree to" by being born and not expatriating?

Agreed, Fort. Nor other "victimless crimes," either.

It's a different situation, but still apropos, to note that Solomon's first judicial act was to give justice to a prostitute. It doesn't say he seized and executed her; it says he awarded her custody of her child. Would a modern court do the same? These days "undesirables" are often denied justice, have their children seized, etc. And we personally are likely to deny others just treatment because of our prejudice against the victim. TV cop shows illustrate this with the trope of cops expressing indifference when "low lifes" murder each other.

My beef is with the use of the perjorative 'indoctrination' to describe a process which is not, in fact, indoctrination.

Sounds like a piffling quibble. When someone says, "You're indoctrinating your kid," you reply that you're not, because you aren't strapping 'em down; I reply that I certainly am, and so is every parent who ever lived since our rodent-like ancestor in the age of the dinosaurs.

My answer is a bit more accurate than yours. I freely acknowledge that I am raising my child with the overwhelming likelihood of belonging to the Christadelphian church, and liking science fiction, enjoying country music, Asian food, and the shooting sports, and rather disliking cops. And yet I am unusually scrupulous about giving him choices and not imposing my will on him. And yet... he recently told me that after meeting he'd like to go to the shooting range, then to a hibachi restaurant, and finally come home and watch Buck Rogers. It's quite obvious that I'm indoctrinating the living daylights out of him, despite the utter absence of any cult-like mind-control techniques, nor even the slightest desire to instill my personal likes and dislikes in him.

I have no doubt that it occurs in our community, but using this word as a blanket generalisation simply not accurate.

On the contrary, it's not nearly blanket enough. If you aren't profoundly influencing your child's views in almost all areas of life, then you are either a non-custodial parent, or dead.

The trouble is that all children are "indoctrinated," whether the parents like it or not. The single best predictor of a person's views, is their parents' views. And children are clever beggars: they aren't fooled by our pretenses of neutrality. They're very good at figuring out what we REALLY think, and then they go with that.

A believer raising their kids to "make up their own mind" will end up producing a believer; an atheist doing the same thing will end up producing an atheist. A hypocritical churchgoer will raise an unbeliever; and a superstitious person who attends no church will nevertheless raise a believer (in whatever). Perhaps not always, but usually.

There's nothing arrogant about saying you're not indoctrinating your kids when you're not. It's only arrogant (and false) when you are.

Please read again from the top, with comprehension. When we say we're "not indoctrinating our kids," we are claiming that "we aren't profoundly influencing their views on practically every subject." Which is false, because we are. If we aren't, it's because we don't have custody, or are dead.

If instead we interpret that statement to mean, "we aren't systematically using cult brainwashing techniques, but have instead decided to go about profoundly shaping our kids views on practically every subject using the more mundane technique of raising them in our household as dependents," then the question arises what the hell we're so proud of. But I suppose we deserve a cookie for not doing this:

Yes the stats show you are more likely to do what you perceive as normal according to the environment in which you grew up. BUT there are lots of exceptions. That's the wonder of human free will.

Agreed. However, it puts the lie to arrogant claims that one isn't indoctrinating one's kids. The best you can claim is that you aren't actively trying to brainwash them.

Religious Indoctrination is the process of continually subjecting children to complex religious rituals, ceremonies, laws and doctrines before they have the ability to critically assess and consent to what they are doing.

So that would include most mainstream Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims etc. Pretty much most of the world really.

But withholding such things powerfully biases against ever adopting them; sleeping in on Sundays powerfully biases the kids to sleep in on Sundays as well. For that matter, going to church on Sundays but missing midweek class powerfully biases the kids to do the same. Of the full range of Christadelphian ritual (which is fairly narrow), the best predictor is the parents. My own non scientific inter generational observations support this as well. The kids raised going on Sunday infrequently keep doing so, skipping Bible classes and daily readings; the ones raised faithfully going to meeting only keep doing so; the ones raised going to meeting and Bible class keep doing that but not the readings, and the ones raised doing the readings keep doing them. Likewise for praying before meals or not.

Where of course "the ones raised... Keep doing..." is a shorthand for, "doing... In childhood is the best predictor of doing... In adulthood." I even know examples of people raised reading but not going to meeting--devout "isolation" families, who grew up and kept reading and praying before meals, but living in isolation. And I know families where the kids were sent to Sunday school while the parents stayed home, and you'll never guess what!

Indoctrination by immersion is incredibly pervasive. It even includes ridiculously small details about mannerisms, ways of conducting relationships, etc. it contributes to statistical patterns like children of divorce being more likely to divorce, and daughters of single mothers being more likely to become single mothers themselves.

The trouble is that all children are "indoctrinated," whether the parents like it or not.

So? You seem to be suggesting that because avoiding indoctrinating would be very difficult, it isn't a good approach.

I didn't say it's difficult. I said it's impossible. I didn't say most children are often; I said ALL children ARE. You can avoid blatant attempts at mind control, and I fully support that, but you're deluding yourself if you believe you're not indoctrinating. You are, merely by existing--the being they're genetically programmed to imitate, upon whom they are utterly dependent for mere survival, who establishes the routines that make up their lives. By what you say and don't say, read and don't read, do and don't do, where you go and don't go, you are indoctrinating them.

If you have kids and think you're not indoctrinating them, then you should maybe get that avatar you talked about, because you're engaging in nothing more than intellectual self-gratification.

Atheist's don't believe in anything, they LACK belief.

Lack of belief, skepticism, doubt, disinterest--the content of your indoctrination includes much more than a list of tenets. It includes attitudes, views held and not held, epistemology, esthetics, etc. Fort mentioned strong atheism, but indoctrination can also communicate mere doubt, uncertainty, or indifference as well. Deism or agnosticism are also communicated--including not merely the intellectual notion that God probably does or probably doesn't exist, but doubt whether we can know, or disinterest in knowing, or a firm belief that we can't know, etc.

A believer raising their kids to "make up their own mind" will end up producing a believer

I come from a family of 4 children. Our parents raised us to make up our own minds. Two of my siblings became unbelievers.

I believe you. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data," though. The fact remains that the best predictor of present views is the parents' views.

... calling every Christian 'deluded' smacks of petulance and whining at the fact that his Outsider Test hasn't resulted in every Christian deconverting and thanking him for delivering them from obscurantist bondage.

I haven't looked deeply into his "outsider test," but it sounds like something Wittgenstein would have enjoyed: it presupposes some significant unknowns about how beliefs are formed--including atheistic beliefs. It's true that your parents believing something is the best predictor of your believing something, so if you equate "insider" with "raised in this belief," it clearly plays an important role.

But what exactly disposes a person to convert from anything to anything? Loftus is apparently presupposing that conversion to atheism always results from a coldly rational disposition to follow the evidence wherever it leads--but if that we the case, we wouldn't have phenomena like Bedson, who deconverts and then spends his life begging and pleading for his former associates to validate his deconversion by joining him. It wouldn't fully account for Dawkins, or Coyne, or their type, either: even if their atheism were purely rational, that wouldn't explain their evangelism. What prompts them (even assuming they're right) to take on the doomed cause of fighting ignorance and error? What makes them want to spread their views, instead of being content with their own rationality?

Without some sort of answer to those questions, it's unclear whether the "outsider test" has any validity. Does "thinking like an outsider" make you objective? Or is it yet another brainwashing technique: given our facility for post-hoc rationalization, does "thinking like an outsider" actually set up the right conditions for talking ourselves out of belief--not because the evidence is good or bad, but because "pretending not to believe" activates the mechanism we have for justifying prior decisions? The latter is actually more plausible to me.



As an aside, I've noted the phenomenon that movie actors who play lovers, sooner or later end up dating. The stars of Twilight are a recent example. It might be nothing more than sexual libertinism and a tendency to casually form shallow relationships. But I've suspected for decades that something else is at work. I suspect that pretending to be in love triggers the manufacture of justifications for being in love, which in turn convince them that they really are in love. As a teenager I would have said "actors are so stupid, they fall for their own acting!" My original explanation wasn't very precise or nuanced, but it's substantially the same as the explanation I'd give today.

As another aside, I read something 20-30 years ago about brain-washing in Japanese POW camps. The trick I remember was that they had essay contests, with cigarettes for prizes, and they freely awarded prizes to jingoist pro-American essays--but prisoners knew they could improve their chances if they found anything positive to say about the Japanese. So they waved the flag vigorously, but included things like, "That's not to say that the Japanese are evil plain and simple; many of them suffer the deluded belief that their cause is just." After the POWs were released, they were found to have noticeably less anti-Japanese ardor than their brethren who were never prisoners. Which IIRC, was the opposite of the expected outcome. POW camp is not fun; you'd expect them to come away more hate-filled than ever. But viewing the Japanese with "insider mind" changed their views.

Via Diglotting:

While I claim ignorance regarding what happens when we die, I must say that I definitely don’t ascribe to the idea of hell. Even though I did believe in it during my teenage years, I now find the idea of eternal conscious retributive punishment to be an abhorrent thing to believe in. I do believe in some sort of existence after death, but I am somewhat skeptical of the idea of an incorporeal soul part of us that survives death and flies through a tunnel of light to heaven. I find the idea of a future resurrection of the body to be a much more holistic and meaningful concept in this modern scientific age regarding the question of life-after-death.

I do. I ascribe several things to the idea of hell. Barbarity, injustice, sadism, sociopathy, and unspeakable horror, to name a few. I do not, however, subscribe to the idea of hell.









Sorry, couldn't resist. My hobby is spotting when smart people use the wrong fancy word. My Dad got me started, with his awful habit of saying "prodigious" when he meant "propitious."

I'd like to be encouraging about your project, and I hope it's very successful. As far as looking up, and commenting on, every use of the word "one" in scripture, I think it's good to remember that the Hebrews were ordinary humans, and "one" was an ordinary word to them. If you imagine what it would be like to look up every occurrence of "one" in Moby Dick, say, or War and Peace, I think you would conclude that it was a huge effort likely to bear only a very little fruit.

On your question, I know that Malachi never heard of the "Holy Trinity," had no conception of the Holy Spirit as a person, and had never in his life heard of "God the Son." So he couldn't possibly be arguing for or against any of those ideas. Just like the verse says, Malachi was saying, "We all have the same God, so we should all be true to each other and our religion."

What Fort said. Some evidence suggests that Goliath's kit was much more deluxe than the average Philistine's, and Samuel supports this: if he were dressed like any other Philistine, they wouldn't describe his armor in such detail. (A later writer would probably not have described the Greek kit in detail, BTW, since he would assume all Philistines dressed like that.)

But my remarks about the "Judean Lourdes" aren't about historical debates like that. My point is that those bits read like superstition in an otherwise not superstitious book. They don't fit. Even references like demons are not done superstitiously. No girls levitating over their beds and rotating their heads 360 degrees like the Exorcist. No description of horned beasties running away from the scene after being expelled. The parable of "seven other demons" hints at a popular superstition, but in a restrained way. And this idea of an angel offering periodic healings as a lark would, apart from that one verse, read like another popular superstition. It's plausible that a marginal note explaining the superstition crept into the text, where it suddenly reads like an endorsement and not just an explanation.

It's my general feeling that we Christadelphians avoid talking about that particular passage. I'm not sure exactly what would happen if brethren argued a similar position about it within the ecclesia.

A much milder passage is John 5:4. It reads differently than the rest of the Bible generally. Do angels really amuse themselves by splashing in a pool, healing the first sick person to struggle into the water, and presumably having a bit of a laugh at the poor disappointed losers who didn't make it? We Christadelphians believe that Lourdes is a fraud--it's one of our distinctives. In this case I've casually accepted the theory that verse 4 is a scribal gloss that leaked from the margin into the text, and not felt motivated to argue about it. I think most brethren read it without anything like the dissonance that Matthew's passage causes--and so without avoiding it, but without particularly questioning it either.

(On a hermeneutical note, I can point to other places where the writers of scripture report others' beliefs without comment. Did the scribe believe that the witch at Endor really did raise Samuel? I don't think it's clear-cut; the scribe reports the scene as Saul perceived it, without affirming or denying its veracity. It's a prime example why we should really hesitate to make an inferential case for a doctrine. That incident supplies plenty of ammunition to argue by inference that ghosts and mediums are real.)

His science is incredibly garbled, but I give him full marks for not trying to blame tornadoes on teh gayz.

Yep, that's my grandpap!












Just kidding; I dunno if he's any relation. But wow.