Oh, go away.
3 Likes
You do you, Sinead. I think you’re woefully misguiding yourself, but that’s been your journey for many years now, and the idea that hating the pope leads to becoming Islamic is no one’s idea of a logical transition. Still love your music, though, The Lion and the Cobra remains a staple of my playlist, as does I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.
7 Likes
The “natural conclusion” is a fascinating concept, and seems to be something that smart people use to rationalize adopting religion. I knew it sounded familiar.
I’m wondering if smart people are very good at identifying patterns, and if pattern-recognition eventually leads to a “natural conclusion” in a designed universe. As in, “everything can’t actually be meaningless chaos, if I could just find the right mixture of science / philosophy / literature, what-have-you, this would all make sense!”
11 Likes
It won’t end, that’s for sure.
5 Likes
Here’s a bit of logic with regards to atheism:
Note that it doesn’t support a particular religion or god(s). It just posits a cost/benefit analysis.
5 Likes
I don’t think the logic works unless you assume there’s only one deity to choose from.
20 Likes
So, having fought against the patriarchy of Catholicism, she’s now converted to another entirely patriarchal religion? And doing so really smugly? 
I wish her well, but uhg…
15 Likes
Sinead is making the worst of that wager by being very specific about which flavour of God she’s choosing to believe in (the more so because that choice requires a finite Earthly loss greater than other choices).
I recall watching a 60 Minutes piece many years ago about the American doctor to the House of Saud. He described a typical flight from Riyadh to London where, in order of seniority, each member of the party would retire to the restroom, change into Western clothing, then come back into the cabin where an alcoholic beverage was waiting at his or her seat.
The “loophole” in the vast majority of cases where a fundie violates his religion’s precepts is hypocrisy.
17 Likes
I support Heinlein’s view that man is a rationalizing animal. I tend to see religion as a catalyst, providing a framework for people to justify, and amplify the shitty (and also benevolent) behavior they’re already inclined towards.
6 Likes
When you say “loophole” do you mean not being watched by at all times by armed thugs watching for religious transgressions?
6 Likes
Yeah, I’ve got a work colleague who for years had been neither here nor there about religion. Then he married his wife, a devout Christian, and had 4 kids with her. He has now proclaimed that he’s Christian.
I try not to talk about religion with him these days, as it just ends up with us at eachother’s throats.
But I really, really want to ask “So did you shop around before deciding which religion to consign the fate of your eternal soul to, or did you just choose your wife’s religion to make life easy?”
Less snarkily, it’s interesting from a socio-political point of view, seeing a real-life example of how religion bypasses rational thought and propagates through groupthink.
14 Likes
This really gets to the con job that is religion, where it gets to promise benefits you can’t verify until after you die and can’t get a refund, but you need to pay upfront right now. The con artists don’t even need to do a blow off and run out of town to get away with the money. They get to stay right where they are and keep the con going indefinitely because they never have to actually pay out - the lure is entirely safe.
Pascal posits as long as the imagined reward is great enough you should assume a thing is true, and pay the costs of believing in that thing. The converse is implied, that if there is a true religion, but there are no fancy after death benefits to it, then there is no need to believe in it because there is no pay out.
Pascal’s wager is nonsense. By his calculations all I have to do is invent Heaven Plus, a heaven that has more perks than Christian heaven and Pascal not only has to believe it, he has to pay me for the privilege. (Why it’s almost as if Mormonism is written based on Pascal’s wager, you get your own planet if you believe right and tithe 10% of everything you make to the church, so you need to upgrade from regular Christianity to Christianity Plus based on Pascal’s Wager…)
17 Likes
“This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey. All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant.”
When a person with serious mental health issues approaches religious conversion with an open mind and spirit like this, how can it not end well?
3 Likes
Nope, it works even with multiple deities. The wager is to believe or not believe. You can sequentially apply the same wager over and over with any god or gods that offer eternal happiness.
You could say it assumes there is a finite number of possible gods to choose from.
2 Likes
Um, can everybody please refer to her by her chosen name? Whatever we/I feel about her having converted to Islam, I think we should respect her decision enough to call her Shuhada’. Could be wrong, but it seems to me calling her previous names is the equivalent of dead-naming a transperson.
22 Likes
To be fair Tehran is, I am told, quite the party city. Just often underground.
She is, and has not been, well for a long time. Attention doesn’t always help.
4 Likes
Does a cynical attempt to game the system get you into heaven?
3 Likes
How does that work? If you have chosen the wrong deity at your time of death, haven’t you erred? How do you do this sequentially?
6 Likes
I think you are probably right, but I don’t know that we always have to follow a person’s name change. How do you feel about when Prince wanted to be called an un-pronouncable symbol?
1 Like
That was shown in Persepolis as I recall. Not that I assumed the film was perfectly representative.
