Pope Francis: Free expression doesn't mean right to insult others' faith
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Original post by yo radical one
A part of the French revolution was casting off Papal oppression, that is why to the average Brit, the French seem so obsessed with freedom of expression, freedom to mock, freedom to criticise, it is a part of their national DNA.
Ignoring the fact that in some respects France has more restrictive laws on free speech than we do. Including but not limited to laws on holocaust denial, laws on religious expression, laws on insulting the French Flag and French national anthem.
Original post by Spandy
Freedom to criticise, I'm fine with it. I wish I could say the same for freedom to mock. Freedom to mock is desirable, from a farsighted view point, but in today's world, it has no practical utility.
The best test I can think of, in terms of is what this person has said, reasonable, is swap religion for politics
Rather than a Pope saying you don't have the right to mock another's faith, imagine the Prime Minister, David Cameron, telling the electorate they don't have the right to mock the incumbent government.
When you put it in those terms, what the Pope has said, is actually incredibly sinister.
Original post by limetang
Ignoring the fact that in some respects France has more restrictive laws on free speech than we do. Including but not limited to laws on holocaust denial, laws on religious expression, laws on insulting the French Flag and French national anthem.
Maybe those laws are wrong, that doesn't make it OK to bring in other unfair laws though.
Original post by yo radical one
The best test I can think of, in terms of is what this person has said, reasonable, is swap religion for politics
Rather than a Pope saying you don't have the right to mock another's faith, imagine the Prime Minister, David Cameron, telling the electorate they don't have the right to mock the incumbent government.
When you put it in those terms, what the Pope has said, is actually incredibly sinister.
Maybe those laws are wrong, that doesn't make it OK to bring in other unfair laws though.
Rather than a Pope saying you don't have the right to mock another's faith, imagine the Prime Minister, David Cameron, telling the electorate they don't have the right to mock the incumbent government.
When you put it in those terms, what the Pope has said, is actually incredibly sinister.
Maybe those laws are wrong, that doesn't make it OK to bring in other unfair laws though.
I'm not saying it does, it was more as an aside than anything else.
Original post by scrotgrot
he wouldn't be much of a god if it was that easy to believe in him, would he? He'd just be a run-of-the-mill alien intelligence.
What's the difference between god and a highly superior alien intelligence?
Original post by young_guns
What's the difference between god and a highly superior alien intelligence?
No difference in terms of apparent capabilities, but they are very different from a philosophical standpoint.
1. God is extratemporal and extrauniversal
2. He is omnipotent rather than just very very powerful
3. He doesn't really pursue his own agenda
If God were real, you'd worship him because the universe and everything in it would be entirely set up on God's rules, plan and paradigm. But if you encountered a highly superior alien intelligence, you wouldn't worship it because you know ultimately it's just another child of the universe like we are, and you can conceive of a being more powerful than it. God is that being than which you cannot conceive of anything more powerful.
Anyone here actually care what Pope Francis thinks?
The Catholic church endorses the restriction of free speech. Much wow.
Original post by DeLite
killing "in the name of God" is wrong, but it is also wrong to "provoke" people by belittling their religion.
Just because something may be morally questionable doesn't mean people don't have a right to do it.
If a friend "says a swear word against my mother, then a punch awaits him
Not sure Mr Jesus would be happy with this. Didn't he advocate forgiveness rather than vengeance?
Original post by scrotgrot
No difference in terms of apparent capabilities, but they are very different from a philosophical standpoint.
1. God is extratemporal and extrauniversal
1. God is extratemporal and extrauniversal
I don't understand, why cant the alien be the same. You seem to be applying your own "laws" to match the outcome that you want to achieve
2. He is omnipotent rather than just very very powerful
Why cant the alien be Omnipotent?
3. He doesn't really pursue his own agenda
Didn't God make people with the agenda of them loving him, worshipping him and living with him in the kingdom of heaven?
He then pursues this by spreading his "word" among other people in the hopes that the population will believe. He then punishes none believers. How is this not pursuing his own agenda?
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by scrotgrot
No difference in terms of apparent capabilities, but they are very different from a philosophical standpoint.
1. God is extratemporal and extrauniversal
2. He is omnipotent rather than just very very powerful
3. He doesn't really pursue his own agenda
1. God is extratemporal and extrauniversal
2. He is omnipotent rather than just very very powerful
3. He doesn't really pursue his own agenda
Where is the evidence that the alleged god meets those three criteria? Those three criteria are simply man-made rules and claims that have no logical connection to any non-human being (for which you have provided no evidence anyway)
Besides, there is no reason why a highly superior alien being couldn't meet that criteria. A highly superior alien being could have created this universe, or it could be a simulation. Equally, it could be a benign alien in which case it's not pursuing its own agenda.
Besides, there seem to be plenty examples of "god" pursuing its own agenda, and generally behaving in a way that's consistent with a BCE dictator rather than an enlightened and benevolent deity
If God were real, you'd worship him because the universe and everything in it would be entirely set up on God's rules, plan and paradigm.
I would not. Even if god created this universe, it doesn't make it inherently morally superior to me. And even if it was morally superior, I don't see how that warrants slavery
Original post by scrotgrot
If God existed, he wouldn't be much of a god if it was that easy to believe in him, would he? He'd just be a run-of-the-mill alien intelligence.
Religion is meaningless if you want evidence before you'll believe in it, the whole point of religion is making a leap of faith.
Many things are created through leaps of faith, for example currency and the economy. You can choose not to believe in that because none of it is actually real beyond the fact that others believe it is, but don't come crying to me when you starve to death.
God isn't really all that much like currency, a quale like love would be a better example, but it does show empiricism isn't the only game in town.
Religion is meaningless if you want evidence before you'll believe in it, the whole point of religion is making a leap of faith.
Many things are created through leaps of faith, for example currency and the economy. You can choose not to believe in that because none of it is actually real beyond the fact that others believe it is, but don't come crying to me when you starve to death.
God isn't really all that much like currency, a quale like love would be a better example, but it does show empiricism isn't the only game in town.
Except we know we made money up.
Original post by TurboCretin
Except we know we made money up.
As I acknowledged. Love is possibly a better example in some ways.
Original post by young_guns
Where is the evidence that the alleged god meets those three criteria? Those three criteria are simply man-made rules and claims that have no logical connection to any non-human being (for which you have provided no evidence anyway)
That is simply how God tends to be defined in philosophical argument.
Besides, there is no reason why a highly superior alien being couldn't meet that criteria. A highly superior alien being could have created this universe, or it could be a simulation. Equally, it could be a benign alien in which case it's not pursuing its own agenda.
Yes, but the point is it is possible to imagine a being which is superior even to the alien. Thus he cannot be God. One quintillion is a big number, but it ain't infinity.
Besides, there seem to be plenty examples of "god" pursuing its own agenda, and generally behaving in a way that's consistent with a BCE dictator rather than an enlightened and benevolent deity
Yes, in the Bible; that is irrelevant to a discussion of God from a philosophical standpoint.
I would not. Even if god created this universe, it doesn't make it inherently morally superior to me. And even if it was morally superior, I don't see how that warrants slavery
Slavery? Again you are not great on the difference between the Biblical God and the construct labelled God in philosophy. When we say God in this context, we are really talking about the idea of the prime mover.
Where did I say morally superior? "Rules, plan and paradigm" means God set up the initial conditions of the universe and let the experiment run. In any case, God plainly would be superior to you in terms of knowledge and power, and worthy of worship insofar as nobody else could ever be superior to him - unlike a super-intelligent alien.
With the silent majority of Christians, particularly in Europe, I'm sure they'd tend to see science as just another way of worshipping God. And they'd be right really: psychologically speaking science is a descendant of theology in that it arises from the human need for a systemic understanding of why things happen the way they do. The anti-science thing in Christianity and Islam comes from hyper-literalist readings of scripture: the Wahhabis, the Puritans.
Original post by amime
I don't understand, why cant the alien be the same. You seem to be applying your own "laws" to match the outcome that you want to achieve
Yes, I suppose the alien could be extrauniversal if we are embedded in a higher-dimensional plane. But the point is it would be possible to imagine a being from a universe of even higher dimensions than that. But I don't think the alien could be extratemporal and exist as we understand it, and certainly not be able to interact meaningfully with our universe.
Why cant the alien be Omnipotent?
No alien can be all-powerful, can it? One can always conceive of a being who's more powerful, so the alien can't be God.
Didn't God make people with the agenda of them loving him, worshipping him and living with him in the kingdom of heaven?
He then pursues this by spreading his "word" among other people in the hopes that the population will believe. He then punishes none believers. How is this not pursuing his own agenda?
He then pursues this by spreading his "word" among other people in the hopes that the population will believe. He then punishes none believers. How is this not pursuing his own agenda?
Well, now we are getting into Abrahamic theology, which is off the point. But my reading of the Bible was basically to see this whole "creation" and "human race" thing as an experiment. Like any earthly doctoral student, the God we know intervened whenever the experiment started to go bad. Glibly speaking, that was his agenda. The experiment is about the effect of suggestion on the free choices of humans. Independent variable is putting the Word out there to define what's bad and good, dependent variable is what humans actually choose.
The Garden of Eden was basically like you say, humans were there to wander around with God, only separated from the animals by their ability to communicate with him. God initially gave humans free will without the informed consent needed to make any choices, and using the tree, fruit and serpent, set up a way they could get this (self-)knowledge if they wanted it. And the result was that they went for it. Man signed up for the experiment.
Now, this was a game-changer, because until then God had been the only person with that level of understanding of the world. Man had made a grab at becoming divine. In a narrative told to a people who lived under pre-modern warlords, they would have understood God kicked them out because he took it as a threat of usurpation. God basically said, "OK then, you want to be a god, you can be a god, but not on my turf" and gave man a kingdom on earth to rule over. But no more suckling on the teat: man was to perform the duties and tasks necessary to survive on his own. Also, if he could use his quasi-divine intelligence to design and arrange resources in such a way as to make life easier, all well and good. None of God's business either way.
(Of course, in "reality", even this bit was all still planned, so that humanity was also making a choice not just between knowledge and ignorance, but also between living more like an animal or living more like a god.)
Thus God had adjusted the experiment to see how humanity fared in terms of free will when they were running their own affairs. Would they choose good or bad?
Lo and behold, a few generations later the world was full of sinners. God decided to drown them all, except for one virtuous man, Noah, in order to eliminate any evil that had accrued in the gene pool and ensure he was starting with a blank slate. He apologised for doing this and gave Noah and his descendants the new covenant.
When once again humans began to choose the wrong paths, it was clear it was something basic to the human condition rather than a heritable trait.
There was a brief interlude where God tried to get Moses and his crew back to their homeland. You might say God tried to ignore the mounting sin and went the chosen people/manifest destiny route, the idea being that as long as he supported the purest people, they'd ultimately win out over all the sinful heathen tribes of the earth.
That was proven wrong pretty conclusively when the Romans annexed Judaea. Having failed many times to get humanity choosing the path of good, God came up with a re-imagining of the whole sin/goodness concept itself. He sent an emissary, Jesus, to set out the new contract. Jesus achieved two things:
1. redefined the law under which people's actions were classified as sinful or good. Before, it had been tailored to a roving desert tribe looking to fight off enemies, find a prime spot and settle down to do some agriculture. Now, it applied better to a powerless caste under an empire, i.e. he made it all about collectivism and solidarity.
2. did a sound-and-fury crucifixion thing that allowed people to accept the economically unviable idea that it made sense for them to be able to repent at leisure and get out of having their sins held against them.
So the "Christ-ian" covenant was basically an accounting trick that rigged the boundaries so even sinners could be free from sin. At this point, as you say, it is less about sin and purity and more about believers and non-believers. God had come off the gold standard and gone onto fiat currency.
And then God was called in for his viva, got ripped to shreds for rigging the experiment and kicked off his PhD. Now we live under a secular system.
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by scrotgrot
As I acknowledged. Love is possibly a better example in some ways.
In what respect? And what do you mean by love?
Do you mean the chemical response, or do you mean the subjective experience?
If you mean the chemical response, well, we can investigate that empirically.
If you mean the subjective experience, that has no bearing on any physical claims about the universe.
Original post by TurboCretin
In what respect? And what do you mean by love?
Do you mean the chemical response, or do you mean the subjective experience?
If you mean the chemical response, well, we can investigate that empirically.
If you mean the subjective experience, that has no bearing on any physical claims about the universe.
Do you mean the chemical response, or do you mean the subjective experience?
If you mean the chemical response, well, we can investigate that empirically.
If you mean the subjective experience, that has no bearing on any physical claims about the universe.
The subjective experience. And if it has no bearing on any physical claims about the universe, then what is it? On what level is it reality?
God is brought into being in a similar way. It's hard to consciously reflect on whether you're in love or not, mainly because you have no properly measurable evidence about what love actually feels like, and even if you did, you'd still have no way to objectively judge the nature of your own feelings.
So if you decide you're in love, you're in love, and nobody can really say otherwise; if you decide God exists, he exists, and nobody can really say otherwise.
God of course does not really exist outside of people's minds, except insofar as people's individual concepts of what belief in God is supposed to consist of are shaped by shared religious traditions, which are an attempt at someone else's effusion of their own spiritual experiences. Same as love, which is shaped by shared fairy tales, music, and other scripture, which are attempts at someone else's effusion of their own romantic experiences.
(edited 9 years ago)
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