The all new, totally accepted, bigotry thread - "Blame a Christian"

[Ajidica]

Cardiff is Cardiff. It's almost as bad as Newport, which has one of the highest rates of home insurance premiums in Britain!

So, the British version of Newark and Detroit?

 

[kochman]

I'm pretty sure schizophrenic illusions are also impossible to explain to someone who never experienced it, and have roughly the same outcome.

But people with schizophrenia usually don't just have one episode... and they are usually diagnosable... so, your point is pointless here.

 

[Arakhor]

So, the British version of Newark and Detroit?

Not quite as bad as Detroit, but high up on the urban deprivation and violent crime stakes.

 

[Ajidica]

So the British Rust Belt then. Remind me never to visit Cardiff if I visit the UK.

 

[El_Machinae]

But people with schizophrenia usually don't just have one episode... and they are usually diagnosable... so, your point is pointless here.

Not really. "Being diagnosable" is only a subset of the people with schizophrenic episodes. If there are people who get an excessive number of delusions, you know there're people with an inexcessive number too. These people will be more capable of leading productive lives, despite experiencing (unjustified) flashes of intuition or insight that we'd recognise as delusional if we could examine them in detail.

 

[kochman]

If they have schizophrenia, they meet the criteria to be diagnosed with it per DSM-IV...

 

[Leoreth]

Why can people who think God talks to them not be diagnosed?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Well, I do believe God can reveal doctrine to people

My question was how that would work.

People don't all feel the same things as each other...

Take love, for example. I've known a few who have never felt romantic love in their lives.

How does one describe love to someone who has never felt it?
Poets have been trying for centuries.

Love is an emotion, not a means to convey a usually very specific message. I can understand how one would feel the presence/love/something of some deity, I don't understand how that feeling translated into specific revelations or even directs the choice of a specific religion.

The religion someone subscribes to after having such an experience usually is the one which is most common for the location someone's at. Now either that's an incredible coincidence or the revelation of a God makes one search for a religion and settles for the supply which is present in the region. Or God is informing people from Texas Christianity plus choice denomination is the way to go, while telling people from Saudi Arabia Islam is the correct one.

Which would be an odd thing to do for a God who has to be pleased by specific rules or it denies you it's love and eternal blissful afterlife.

In short, personal experience leading to someone believing in the existence of God I can totally relate to. That experience leading to a specific set of rules seems incredibly arbitrary to me.

 

[timtofly]

My question was how that would work.

Love is an emotion, not a means to convey a usually very specific message. I can understand how one would feel the presence/love/something of some deity, I don't understand how that feeling translated into specific revelations or even directs the choice of a specific religion.

The religion someone subscribes to after having such an experience usually is the one which is most common for the location someone's at. Now either that's an incredible coincidence or the revelation of a God makes one search for a religion and settles for the supply which is present in the region. Or God is informing people from Texas Christianity plus choice denomination is the way to go, while telling people from Saudi Arabia Islam is the correct one.

Which would be an odd thing to do for a God who has to be pleased by specific rules or it denies you it's love and eternal blissful afterlife.

In short, personal experience leading to someone believing in the existence of God I can totally relate to. That experience leading to a specific set of rules seems incredibly arbitrary to me.

How does an idea form in the mind of a scientist?

Now the thought of an outside force putting thoughts into one's head may seem strange, and an athiest may deny God the ability to do so.

Thoughts are just neurons firing and relaying images that one has taken in. Scientist have figured out that by blocking receptors that "information" may be "controlled" in various ways. Applying that to the fact that one accepts the very breath they breath as a gift from God, why is there a stretch that God can intervene in the firing of neurons? Or for that matter any other non-corporal being that exist in the writings known as scripture, or any claims of any one with the ability of sugested mind control. Either it exist or it doesn't. I am sure that anger and knee jerk reactions can be described as non-existent, on a case by case basis, but can we deny they did not have an effect?

I think that a set of rules is arbitrary also. I think that the reason they exist is local evangelics do not want to be part of the local culture. The Bible says in so many terms not to be a part of the local culture. In todays personal rights society though, modern thinking and the Biblical perspective has blurred the intent of Scripture. Not to mention the fact that most local culture today is relatively harmless in relation to the culture of Biblical times. I do not think that the Bible leaves it up to the individual to try to change culture either. I think that history would show though that Christians have been on both sides of the fence when it comes to cultural issues like slavery that need to be changed. The Bible never commands one to go out and aquire slaves, it just said that if you happen to have them, then treat them like you want to be treated.

It is the so-called mandates that do hinder the original and basically only command and that is just proclaim the Good News. It is up to God to handle the rest. Setting an example is not wrong, but telling others to do the same, without God doing so, is rather presumptuous.

 

[El_Machinae]

If they have schizophrenia, they meet the criteria to be diagnosed with it per DSM-IV...

What I mean is that someone can have schizophrenic delusions without being diagnosable as 'schizophrenic'.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

How does an idea form in the mind of a scientist?

He looks at observations and goes about interpreting them in all sorts of creative ways.

He doesn't have a 3rd party giving him a feeling from which he distils hypotheses.

Now the thought of an outside force putting thoughts into one's head may seem strange, and an athiest may deny God the ability to do so.

You're either not reading what I write or what I reply to, or you find the question too hard to answer.

I don't deny anything, I'm asking how one goes from an unexplainable emotion into a specific set of rules.

I'm not the one who brought up the unexplainable emotion. I'm just asking.

 

[Arakhor]

So the British Rust Belt then. Remind me never to visit Cardiff if I visit the UK.

That's Newport, which includes Port Talbot, the town with acid rain. Cardiff is where they film Torchwood.

 

[kochman]

Love is an emotion, not a means to convey a usually very specific message. I can understand how one would feel the presence/love/something of some deity, I don't understand how that feeling translated into specific revelations or even directs the choice of a specific religion.

I've never had any specific revelations, and would be highly, highly skeptical of anyone who claims they had... I don't say it is impossible.

The religion someone subscribes to after having such an experience usually is the one which is most common for the location someone's at. Now either that's an incredible coincidence or the revelation of a God makes one search for a religion and settles for the supply which is present in the region. Or God is informing people from Texas Christianity plus choice denomination is the way to go, while telling people from Saudi Arabia Islam is the correct one.

This has often crossed my mind. It is certainly an uncertainty.

In short, personal experience leading to someone believing in the existence of God I can totally relate to. That experience leading to a specific set of rules seems incredibly arbitrary to me.

Well, I think you know my take, but I will reiterate.
People, in all faiths, have added all sorts of rules, etc. Paul, in particular, did for Christianity. I don't buy into that though... the 4 books of the Gospel, that's my bag.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

See, I consider: I don't know, a perfectly reasonable response. So, fair enough.

 

[Cutlass]

Why can people who think God talks to them not be diagnosed?

Because that would be religious persecution. After all, we cannot prove that god did not talk to them. We just sorta take in on faith that they are either crazy or fraudulent.

 

[Traitorfish]

Oh ye of little faith.

Unless you have the faith of a child, you cannot enter heaven.

If I'm to understand that heaven is full of people with zero capacity for critical thought, then I'd frankly prefer purgatory.

 

[W|M]

Matthew 6:1-6.

 

[Leoreth]

Because that would be religious persecution. After all, we cannot prove that god did not talk to them. We just sorta take in on faith that they are either crazy or fraudulent.

My question was actually quite serious. Assuming God communicates or emotionally affects certain people (interestingly only those who already believe in him), what about shizophrenic people who simply hear voices but attribute them to their deity of choice? How can one tell the difference?

And especially, since we already have the claim that the latter can be diagnosed, it must be possible to clearly distinguish it from true divine inspiration, so that would mean that true divine inspiration could also be diagnosed, wouldn't it?

 

[kochman]

If I'm to understand that heaven is full of people with zero capacity for critical thought, then I'd frankly prefer purgatory.

Having faith doesn't mean the absence of critical thought. It means understand that some things are beyond you, something that requires critical thought to come to terms with.
In other words, swallowing your arrogance and realizing that neither earth, nor you and what you think, are the center of the universe.

 

[kochman]

My question was actually quite serious. Assuming God communicates or emotionally affects certain people (interestingly only those who already believe in him), what about shizophrenic people who simply hear voices but attribute them to their deity of choice? How can one tell the difference?

And especially, since we already have the claim that the latter can be diagnosed, it must be possible to clearly distinguish it from true divine inspiration, so that would mean that true divine inspiration could also be diagnosed, wouldn't it?

Who said that God only communicates with hose who already believe in Him? That's how a lot of people come to believe in Him... He effects them spiritually.

How can one tell the difference? If you hear voices... you're schizophrenic.

Was it different in the past? Perhaps... but again, people here get so wrapped up on dissing Christianity by taking all these stories literally... then criticize the Christians who take these stories literally. It makes no sense, really... people should try to be consistent.