Lefty-Science Privilege

[MigL]

I think you may have misunderstood all our posts BeeCee.
I suggest re-reading the whole thing ( if you are interested  ).

The definition of Christian is non-sensical.
There are no documented teachings of Jesus Christ ( if he even existed ). Only interpretations , some by people who existed 400 yrs after J Christ. As such Christians follow the ( human ) interpretations of the teachings of J Christ. Those have evolved/changed over the years,  and are still evolving as the Church attempts ( doesn't always succeed ) to keep up with modern society.

[Ten oz]

5 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I didn't see anything in there that said I'm not a Christian if I don't believe everything in the Bible. I think you are applying what you believe to be the definition of Christianity onto others, when many leaders of Christianity don't even take as rigid a stand as you do.  I don't know that I've ever met two individuals, much less everyone, who believes all the same things in the bible, and they were always considered Christians by the church leaders I knew.

Some take the stories in the Bible literally, others treat them as stories. They both cannot be correct, yet both are accepted by their peers and their leaders as Christians.

The life and teachings of Jesus are in the Bible. Grant it I suppose one could separate the New Testament out. I wasn't aware my reference to the Bible was the crux of the point you were making. If so than sure, I agree. 

[beecee]

1 minute ago, MigL said:

I think you may have misunderstood all our posts BeeCee.
I suggest re-reading the whole thing ( if you are interested  ).

The definition of Christian is non-sensical.
There are no documented teachings of Jesus Christ ( if he even existed ). Only interpretations , some by people who existed 400 yrs after J Christ. As such Christians follow the ( human ) interpretations of the teachings of J Christ. Those have evolved/changed over the years,  and are still evolving as the Church attempts ( doesn't always succeed ) to keep up with modern society.

Quite possible. I certainly have not read it all. I have been busy over the last few days...Most of my comments were simply elaborating on certain excerpts. Your above for instance is certainly something I can live with. 

[Delta1212]

38 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

The life and teachings of Jesus are in the Bible. Grant it I suppose one could separate the New Testament out. I wasn't aware my reference to the Bible was the crux of the point you were making. If so than sure, I agree. 

The New Testament encompasses a collection of accounts of his life and teachings. It does not include every account and includes a number of things that are by or about his followers rather than him directly. 

You could easily take a single book as gospel rather than the entire document or even subscribe to one of the various documents that didn't make it into the canon as it was decided upon at the Council of Nicea.

There is no single, unimpeachable document that is known to accurately and completely describe the life and teachings of Jesus. 

[Ten oz]

21 minutes ago, Delta1212 said:

The New Testament encompasses a collection of accounts of his life and teachings. It does not include every account and includes a number of things that are by or about his followers rather than him directly. 

You could easily take a single book as gospel rather than the entire document or even subscribe to one of the various documents that didn't make it into the canon as it was decided upon at the Council of Nicea.

There is no single, unimpeachable document that is known to accurately and completely describe the life and teachings of Jesus. 

Yes but aren't we well into that area where one would need to explain their differences? 

[Delta1212]

1 minute ago, Ten oz said:

Yes but aren't we well into that area where one would need to explain their differences? 

Sure, but those differences having been stated, I don't see any reason to expect the person in question to defend some other set of beliefs nor do I think that the label they are using becomes somehow less valid than if they fully subscribed to the initially assumed set of beliefs.

[Ten oz]

44 minutes ago, Delta1212 said:

Sure, but those differences having been stated, I don't see any reason to expect the person in question to defend some other set of beliefs nor do I think that the label they are using becomes somehow less valid than if they fully subscribed to the initially assumed set of beliefs.

More or less valid doesn't factor into it. 

[OldChemE]

I hardly think wikipedia can be referenced as a source for the proper definition of a religious sect that existed thousands of years before the various contributors wrote their wikipedia article, and which even existed for an extended period before the current versions of the religious texts were decided by a committee of scholars.  Those that try to dictate what constitutes 'being a Christian' are merely in a labeling exercise, not a source of fact.  The various subsets of Christian Churches willingly allow participants to self-identify.  This, and the fact that we have so many variations of Christian doctrine (Protestant, Baptist, Fundamentalist, etc, etc, etc), clearly indicates that the Christian Church recognizes shades of belief.

Edited August 20, 2017 by OldChemE

[Arete]

My .02

An education in science (hopefully) teaches a person a particular style of critical thinking which makes a person much harder to convince of things using populist arguments. Appeals to common sense, or tradition, or popularity, or conspiracy theories are less likely to strike a common chord. And, resultantly, Alex Jones's rants, or a vacuous anti GMO argument. are more likely to be summarily dismissed as non-evidenced wild speculation by someone with a trained, ingrained level of critical thinking than the average person off the street. 

Of course hampering this is the backfire effect (there's a great oatmeal comic about it) In which humans are neurologically adapted to reject information which does not fit into our existing worldview. THis means that for eg when Al Gore gets up and tells people that climate change is real and we need to do something about it, people with an entrenched, conservative worldview have a huge degree of innate resistance to that message, and the facts Al Gore presents may actually reinforce their beliefs that climate change is not real. Importantly, all of us have this type of confirmation bias built in - it can be overcome of course, but it's there in all of us. 

If you actively pursue scientific research, your research is going to (at least in my experience) thoroughly kick your confirmation bias in the balls. Your data will almost always show something different from even your most confident;y held a priori expectations. Doesn't this mean scientists have perfectly overcome their backfire effects and only and always accept evidence based premises? Hell no - I know plenty of scientists who have thrown years of funding out the window chasing ideas that the data repeatedly demonstrates is wrong, there have been several instances of scientists making up or falsely manipulating data to support a flawed idea. THey also compartmentalize to allow for evidence free beliefs, hell I know an accomplished geneticist who regularly sees a homeopath....

I think, what often happens is that when an average person hears an idea/ideology that seems to make sense, they accept it. A scientifically trained thinker is more likely to consider it critically, require objective support for it, and if that support is not found, is more likely to reject it. Unfortunately, when the two encounter each other, the critical rejection of the idea appear elitist and condescending to the average person, which triggers a backfire effect. The person leaves more entrenched in the idea than before they encountered the contradictory evidence.  This behoves the scientifically literate amongst us to approach an average person with a bad idea congenially, respectfully and with tact, if any changing of minds is gong to occur. 

Of course if it's a prothletising troll, this approach is probably acceptable: 

 

[Ken Fabian]

I hadn't noticed any "lefty-leaning hegemony" on this site. Certainly some subjects like climate change, nuclear energy, evolution or GMO's can reveal political or other biased assumptions or conclusions, prompting the examination of underlying motivations and heated discussion, yet strictly moderating out the political/ideological aspects can prevent discussion of matters of real significance.