Sam Harris has launched The Reason Project, a “charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society.”
It seeks to “encourage critical thinking and wise public policy through a variety of interrelated projects — all with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.”
Sounds like a good purpose to me!
They don’t seem to have a blog, which is an odd omission, but I’m sure they’ll get one up eventually.
In the meantime, be sure to check out their new website!
I predict that this will come in handy when debunking godbottery:
http://www.reasonproject.org/scripture_project/The_Bible:Genesis_1/
They have it wrong. The first few chapters of Genesis are not referring to that. It is a picture of the constitution of man’s design (physically & spiritually) both before and after the fall. “Earth” means the lower, physical, natural realm and the “Heavens” (heavenlies) refers to the higher, undefiled, pristine, spiritual plane of existance.
Think of Jesus saying in the Lord’s prayer…”may it be (again as it was in the beginning before the fall) on earth as it is in heaven”. This is what he would restore us to…as things once were, as they were originally intended….if we would believe Him and receive Him…again.
As the Psalmist asks…what is man that thou art mindful of Him? Man is the intended dwelling place (tabernacle) of God. But we no longer know it, have lost our sensitivity to the divine (spiritual) realm and have become “earthly” minded forgetting our spiritual “roots” along the way devolving further and further away from Father and thus we have the many divisions, war’s, religions, etc we see today in the “earth”. We refuse the very One who would love us, restore us back to our original Selves in Him.
“Think of Jesus saying in the Lord’s prayer…”may it be (again as it was in the beginning before the fall) on earth as it is in heaven”. This is what he would restore us to…as things once were, as they were originally intended….if we would believe Him and receive Him…again.”
Mat 6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
You get it wrong even on this simple verse, not to mention others.
I remember the yesteryears… when you will be naked in your hope of His coming, probably alone.
That’s what I said…on earth as it is in heaven…c’mon DM…be nice, play well with others bro.
I call BS. When Christians want to use the Bible to control everybody else, they say it is black and white, literal, without error, it means exactly what it says, we’re right and you are wrong, etc.
But when people point out contradictions, all of a sudden the Bible does NOT mean what it says, and it has to be put into context. All of a sudden you need to look at it from the right perspective. It’s, ummm, metaphorical, yeah, that’s it!
So Christians get the context that makes them look good, yet they never bother to look at other people’s lives in their own context. How convenient.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. You don’t get to apply “unchanging standards” when you want.
And if JohnC is not one of the many many many Christians who moves the goalposts, well, then maybe him and all the other Christians need to figure out just what this all-powerful god is really saying.
While some Christians use literalism as a rhetorical cudgel depressingly often, it is atypical behavior over the history of the religion generally; an anomaly caused by a mutation in the belief system mostly centered around denominations and sects established in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Catholic, Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches rarely make arguments from biblical literalism, and when they do, it is usually as special pleading for an article of faith rather than for justification of moral law or matter of fact. They tend to make arguments on the grounds of exegesis of the text that readily claims stories and claims to be metaphorical and/or allegorical. Far more often one finds, when Christians (except in the US) wish to frame arguments about social policy (i.e. “When Christians want to…control everybody else”) they tend to use arguments from Thomistic natural law, rather than biblical commandment.
Now, if your more general point is that Christians will always use the hermeneutic of interpretation that puts the best gloss on their position and intentions, well…yeah. Of course they do; everyone does. It’s like when lawyers argue over the interpretation of statute to service their client; if the plain language interpretation of the statute is favorable, they will argue in favor of a literal reading, whereas if it is not, they will prefer to construe phrases in the statute as terms of art or having been defined by case law away from the plain language reading, and argue that it is this definition which is correct.
Nothing special about Christians in that, I think.
Elemenope said “Nothing special about Christians in that, I think.”
That’s kind of the point. Isn’t god supposed to change them? Isn’t god supposed to help them become people who do not lie through their teeth?
If God only transforms when it is convenient for you, then you need to ask yourself what is really going on.
Well, but the task isn’t explaining what God is or does to themselves, the task is to explain what God is or does to people who do not share the requisite assumptions. It suffices for the most part for a Christian to say to themselves or another believer “it’s a mystery” and leave that to be prayed or pondered upon at leisure. But they are aware, as I’m sure you are, that saying that to someone who does not believe is not particularly convincing or persuasive.
When locked in debate with a person with a hostile epistemology, it does not do to just assert. One must justify. That’s why, like the lawyers, they have to match their interpretation to the demands of the argument. When I say “nothing special about Christians in that”, I mean that it is a requirement of all people who wish to persuade another. Since an evangelizing or apologizing Christian is engaging in an attempt to persuade, it is unreasonable to expect something else.
I agree with this strongly. It is absurd that the mind of God is incomprehensible to puny man, except about certain subjects like what kind of underwear is appropriate, in which case we know God’s mind perfectly.
There is a very similar problem with God’s morality. I question the benevolence of a God that would destroy his creation or murder all the first-born male babies in Egypt. “Humans can’t understand, God works in mysterious ways, he is above creation… but the thing about homosexuals being icky? We and God do have that in common.”
I agree with this strongly. It is absurd that the mind of God is incomprehensible to puny man, except about certain subjects like what kind of underwear is appropriate, in which case we know God’s mind perfectly.
I agree that that would be absurd. I just simply don’t agree that most religious people believe (even institutionally) that they know “God’s mind perfectly”. Those that do are a loud and obnoxious minority, hard to ignore in the US only because they are greedy, corruptive symbionts with major political parties.
I should have said “at all” instead of “perfectly”.
That changes pretty much everything.
Is that not the same point as the second paragraph?
No. The difference is between the strength of the conviction and the number of convictions. Assume, say, there were three opinions that God holds that humans could know about. A person with perfect knowledge would be 100% sure of his knowledge of all three. However, a person with imperfect knowledge could have imperfect knowledge in two different ways. He could know fewer than three of the items with 100% certainty, or he could have discounted confidence in all three items.
Your example is the first sort, a person with 100% confidence in one belief and total lack of confidence in the other two. This is qualitatively different than a person who has qualified confidence (depending, one imagines, on some decision-procedure, like access to different quantities and qualities of evidence, experience, and intuition) in the set of all three beliefs. They are qualitatively different because, generally speaking, different thought-processes produce those different patterns of belief.
And I am arguing that the thought-process which generates the first is pretty rare in comparison to the second, even within the population of people who call themselves Christian, though depressingly common enough to cause frequent misery and annoyance.
My examples intend to compare zero confidence on one or more beliefs and non-zero confidence on one or more beliefs. From my perspective, you are effectively trying to argue that moderate, common religious beliefs are not absurd in this way. I disagree.
A religion group’s moderation is a measure of how many concessions they’ve made to reality.
Thanks for sharing this.
LRA: The scripture project you link to looks a lot like the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible.
Yes- you’re right. The guy that runs the Skeptic’s bible site donated the content to the Reason Project. I realized that after I posted!
As to getting the blog up, I’d say “eventually” is the right word- the site’s already been around for at least 15 months now. Still, looks good.
Has it? I just got an email from Sam Harris about it yesterday and hadn’t heard about the website before, so I assumed it was new.
I find this rather funny. I have a friend of mine just tell me about the Reason Project. I just got home to reserch the site, and here it on UF! NIce!
That genesis thing is awesome, it’s like a well done skeptic’s bible.
Yea, but unfortunately its wrong…not what the first part of Genesis is all about. I shared in an earlier post truth”truth” if anyone has ears to hear.
Yes, they’re not interpreting correctly.
(PS @Zach: it is the Skeptic’s Bible, with better graphics.)
Wanted to donate via regular mail. Could not find address! Should be esy.
I posted a normal reply to this, and it didn’t show up, so I got a duplicate post notice (which is cool), but I don’t see my post.
Does he hope to erode his own materialistic bigotry as well? Or is he only bigoted against others bigotry?
Tolerate intolerance!