Simone Weil's weird take on religious belief

Simone Weil's weird take on religious belief Apr 30, 2019 14:57:03 GMT goz likes this

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Post by general313 on Apr 30, 2019 14:57:03 GMT

Apr 30, 2019 10:18:19 GMT Arlon10 said:

Apr 28, 2019 21:12:21 GMT general313 said:

Ok, you make a fair point here. I'm reminded of my own conceptions of Jesus and God when I was a Christian, and, except perhaps when I was a child, I didn't think so literally. I think one of the problems that many atheists have with understanding Christians is that there are very many of them that take a very literal interpretation of the Bible (and they tend to be among the most vocal). The Bible and most of its proponents don't seem to go out of their way to encourage a non-literal interpretation. In any case, there seem to be adults that take the Noah's Ark theme park in Kentucky quite seriously.

   Although the term "plainspoken" is sometimes used in a pejorative sense correctly, being plainspoken is beneficial and preferred in many circumstances. Many issues in society should be settled in an unambiguous way that is clear to all people.

   News writing is necessarily "artless" in that sense. Everyone needs to know what happened. That's all, just the plain facts. The underlying causes might not be readily available or muddled by lies or misunderstanding.

   Children need to learn to be plainspoken first. Only after can they learn more artful methods. Elementary school children are typically not taught to debate. It is best if they just accept as facts the basic foundation they will need later to debate anything else. Without that foundation they are in no position to debate the issues in society at large.

   Testimony in court needs to be plain and unambiguous.

   Like a good novice journalist Wikipedia deals in facts without assigning any meaning to them. That's why people use it. There are times when Wikipedia strays beyond that and repeats things that are not as certain as portrayed, usually with things on the frontiers of math and science.

   Although religious radio takes "lessons" from Bible stories, it usually operates like most news media at a low reading level with a healthy proportion of simple facts.

   Many people on this board believe they have reasoned out their opinions when in fact they have never advanced to a level where they can. They continue as in early grades in school to repeat mindlessly, only following a herd instead of a teacher. An example is how they repeat "correlation is not causation." Actually there usually is causation for almost everything. That people have free choice can mean this number or that happens with no apparent cause, but those things are not often the reason for an investigation. If something is being investigated there are suspected causes and those can be more or less strongly identified by careful surveys.

   I meant to answer you earlier but several real life things needed more attention than usual.

One thing for sure is that in this world there is no shortage of people that overestimate their grasp of truth. It's so much easier to spot in others than in ourselves. I see it all the time on these forums and elsewhere. Not being so sure of oneself and questioning one's own competence are important first steps toward a more objective understanding of one's abilities and limitations.

In my opinion (and those of many others), the methods of science (at least at its best) are most suited to overcome these limitations, by marginalizing the role of personal opinion or dogma and relying instead on observation.