And really, so much of what goes on in this thread is tangental to the book itself, that it wouldn't really help to read through the entire thread before posting your thoughts about the book. The discussion may have taken Harris' arguments as a springboard, but they depart rather quickly from the book itself.

Tobiahsgirl: I think the best reliable evidence of individual religious belief is to look at the society we live in.Any interpretive view of society that ignores the methods by which is makes its decisions is bound to distort the view of the individual. In the case of referendums, for example, that there is a majority voting for one view or another may not serve as reliable evidence that the result of that vote actually reflects the beliefs or opinions of the majority of constituents. That's because voting is purely voluntary.Look at what I've suggested in previous posts. I'm saying that fundamentalists may seem more numerous than they actually are because they tend to be more vocal and active. That means, when there's voting referendum, you can expect most fervent fundamentalists to take part in that vote. Moderates, almost by definition, are less likely to vote. In part, this is due to the narrative of potential persecution that hardline conservative fundamentalists construct around themselves -- they tell themselves on a nearly daily basis that they're always on the precipice of being outnumbered and outgunned by homosexuals, militant minorities, depraved liberals and so forth, and the fear this generates motivates them to be more pro-active. As a result, they come out looking like a very numerous group, but that's mostly because the more moderate elements tend to be less visible unless you know them on a personal basis or make it a point to seek them out.It's necessary to draw a dinstinction between society as it is, and society as it presents itself. And the fact of our culture is that it has a nasty habit of only presenting the most extreme aspects of society. That's why hell-and-brimstone tele-evangelists are a more familiar trope than moderate clerics concentrating primarily on a congregation that they live among -- the extremes seek out their visibility. And it's easy to mistake that familiarity for evidence of an actual numerical proportion.All those individual beliefs add up to something; they do not exist on another plane or in a black hole.To really add up, there'd have to be anough identity between individual beliefs that we could treat them each as an easily consensibly unit. That's rarely possible with any sort of belief, be it religious or secular.We are the richest nation in the world; we have no national health care and we are dealing with disasters through charitable contributions. We don't have enough housing or provide many of our children with access to a good education. Many people in Maine are hungry some of the time. This is the best evidence to me of the nature of my fellow citizens' "religious" beliefs.Why would you pinpoint all of that as evidence as to the "religious" beliefs of the American population? That seems to me like a leap in logic. I'd say those things are evidence of our civic beliefs. Civic belief may be conditioned by religious belief, but to infer all of that from the statistics you've named is a huge step. More explanation would be necessary to satisfy me that the connection was as direct as all that.

Gandhi said if you think religion has nothing to do with politics, you know nothing about either subject. Even the people I know and have known who appear to be "Sunday morning Christians" definitely infect their "civic" beliefs with their "religious" beliefs. They may live with the illusion that somehow they are separate, but they constantly reveal the god they believe in through their speech, their actions. I see the woman who repeats her secondhand religion ("I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for my salvation . . .") as being perfectly consistent in repeating her secondhand political opinions, which reflect her Calvinist, judgmental, self-righteous upbringing. ("People who are not like me, not good, church-going Christians, do not deserve health care.")Even in the censored (that is, the canonical) gospels, Jesus comes across pretty clearly as a lyrical radical. So what does the woman with the secondhand ideas believe in? Certainly not the historical Jesus, nor the Living Christ (see Thich Naht Hanh), but a figure calculated by Constantine to bring together diverse peoples and consolidate his power. Christianity, as soon as it became a state religion, was identical with political power.I still don't buy the idea that there aren't a lot of fundamentalists out there. And if you think it is only a handful of "extremists" who are interested in constitutional amendments outlawing abortion, enforcing school prayer, defining marriage, etc., you don't know how I wish I could agree with you.I just wanted to add that regarding the death with dignity referendum (put out for referendum by a state representative who is one of the most decent, humane politicians I've ever met), the opposition came from the Catholic church (French, and relatively benign), and Hospice (which however good a group it is, has an aggressive agenda) which persuaded clergy such as my "liberal" Episcopal priest to speak out against death with dignity. Neither of these groups could be remotely considered "fundamentalist," yet their religious agendas sought to impose their beliefs upon the public at large. Edited by: Tobiahsgirl at: 5/10/06 7:54 am

Tobiahsgirl: Gandhi said if you think religion has nothing to do with politics, you know nothing about either subject.I haven't said that they have nothing to do with one another. What I've said is that it's not always clear precisely what they have to do with one another. People vote in contradiction to their religious beliefs on a regular basis. It isn't always clear what relationship a person's religion has to their political views, and attempts to draw a direct correlation are often fallacies waiting to happen.They may live with the illusion that somehow they are separate, but they constantly reveal the god they believe in through their speech, their actions.And I don't see why they shouldn't, really. If your religious beliefs are holistic -- that is, if you think they have some bearing on the whole of life -- then why would you draw a hard and fast distinction between your political beliefs and your religious beliefs.The question of primacy also arises. I have no doubt that the decision to align one's self with one religious group rather than another is influenced by one's political and civic view of the world. To broaden the applicability of Ghandi's quote, if you think that politics has nothing to do about religion...So what does the woman with the secondhand ideas believe in?I think it's funny how you seem to want to imply some sort of perjorative with the phrase "secondhand ideas". As far as I can tell, about a dozen "firsthand ideas" appear every decade, and usually as the result of a lifelong devotion to a particular question. Even those people aren't drawing their ideas up out of the ether; they're buiding on ideas and views of the world that they've received from the cultures and communities into which they've been born. Everyone is dealing with variations on ideas that they've gotten secondhand. Damn one such person and you damn us all.Certainly not the historical Jesus, nor the Living Christ (see Thich Naht Hanh), but a figure calculated by Constantine to bring together diverse peoples and consolidate his power.Constantine was no singlehandedly responsible for the consolidation of the church, nor did he produce the impulse to do so by some miraculous act of parthogenesis. The early church was in an almost constant state of persecution, and solidarity was the key to the survival of both the institution and its members. To that end, there were efforts to consolidate the church for a period of centuries. The view that the Church took the form it did as a matter of conspiratorial caluculation is a conspiracy theorist's simplification of the actual historical process. Recognizing that it took its ultimate form as a matter of organic development (occasioned by deliberate attempts to influence that development) doesn't mean that you have to agree with it, of course, but don't satisfy yourself with the distortion.Christianity, as soon as it became a state religion, was identical with political power.To some degree, yes. Christianity wouldn't really become the nexus of political power until around the 8th or 9th century, and again, this was not the result of a decree but rather of an organic development and the attempt to hold together a society in crisis. I've discussed that development elsewhere in these threads, though, so I won't go into it here.I still don't buy the idea that there aren't a lot of fundamentalists out there.There are probably a great many of them, yes. I'm just skeptical of the idea that they form any thing close to a majority -- neither a majority of American citizens, nor a majority of practicing Protestants. If they really were a majority, then they probably wouldn't need to be so forceful, so vocal. They could whisper, and know that the majority would agree with whatever it was they had whispered.Neither of these groups could be remotely considered "fundamentalist," yet their religious agendas sought to impose their beliefs upon the public at large.I do see that as a problem, at least to whatever degree we hope to maintain our secular guarantee of tolerance. And I think that a large part of the problem is the absence of any recognition of a third answer. Religious institutions have made a major mistake by attempting to identify their own authority over their voluntary constituents with the compulsory authority of the government. The result has been a weaking of religious authority even within it's own proper sphere. More and more, they religious institution has been compelled to identify its own agendas with political agendas, else its own consituency senses a moral disparity. The only real answer I can think of is to begin the slow process of drawing reasonable distinctions between law and morality, and between the rightful spheres of religious authority and civic authority.Anyway, that's a damn big subject, and I won't drag on about it.

Alan Jones, Journey Into Christ:One of our problems is that very few of us have developed any distinctive personal life. Everything about us seems secondhand, even our emotions. In many cases we have to rely on secondhand information in order to function. I accept the word of a physician, a scientist, a farmer on trust [my note: skepticism is not amiss in these cases, either]. I do not like to do this. I have to because they possess vital knowledge of living of which I am ignorant. Secondhand information concerning the state of my kidneys, the effects of cholesterol, and the raising of chickens, I can live with. But when it comes to questions of meaning, purpose, and death, secondhand information will not do. I cannot survive on a secondhand faith in a secondhand God. There has to be a personal word, a unique confrontation, if I am to come alive.There is a huge difference [me now] between unique ideas and actually experiencing life for yourself, thinking things out for yourself, instead of just swallowing propaganda, including religious propaganda. I must constantly remember on this forum that apparently other people have not had religious experiences, so "No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists" (William James).

Tobiahsgirl: There is a huge difference between unique ideas and actually experiencing life for yourself, thinking things out for yourself, instead of just swallowing propaganda, including religious propaganda. I must constantly remember on this forum that apparently other people have not had religious experiences...Most people in general, and throughout history, have not had a relevatory religious experience, and probably never will. Moreover, most religious experiences take place in a cultural context that shapes both the form and content of that experience, which means that even first hand religious experiences are built on the accretion of cultural material gained at second hand . So unless you want to bar the majority of people from religion altogether, it has to be accepted that religion comes, in large part, at second hand.

Though I believe that most people (let's confine "people" here to churchgoers) have not had revelatory religious experience, I do not think that is because such experience is impossible or unlikely. In many aboriginal societies, such experiences were common and part of one's life path. Rather, most people fear what they may see when they peer into the abyss (thank you, Brother Void) and go to church for social contact (the number one reason cited when a minister I knew polled his congregation), comfort, ritual, etc.Even at my former Episcopal church, there were women who had had revelatory religious experiences, and I now attend a church where I'm guessing -- from the atmosphere created by the participants -- a number of the women have had firsthand experience of what they call God. Though these experiences may take on cultural shapes from our brain patterns (though I would certainly have expected to see the Buddha in my vision, not the Christ), it is not for anyone to say that makes them secondhand experiences.To finish the quote from William James: "One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment." [my emphasis]And on the numbers of fundamentalists in the U.S., Apocalypse by Charles B. Strozier, published in 1994: ". . . the survey data suggest that some 40 percent of the American public believes in the Bible as the 'actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.' That would approach 100 million people. . . . Nearly a third of all Americans firmly believe in the rapture. As Garry Wills puts it: 'It seems careless of scholars to keep misplacing such a large body of people.' "I have never suggested that fundamentalists form a majority of the American public, but I think the numbers cited above are significant and without question deeply influence the cultural and political life of our society. Everywhere my husband or I go in Maine, we come into contact with evidence of this belief system, whether it's visiting dull neighbors with their Frank Peretti novels and books explaining "the end times," our state senator who is a religious fanatic, fellow students who scoff at "evolution" and believe that late-term abortion is a common practice, etc., etc. I really want to know if people in this discussion are spending their lives cleaning up after other people, caring for unwanted/abused children, visiting said dull neighbors, and generally coming into contact with regular folks. Edited by: Tobiahsgirl at: 5/12/06 7:51 am

Tobiahsgirl: In many aboriginal societies, such experiences were common and part of one's life path.Religious experiences, maybe. But when I saw relevatory religous experience, I'm talking specifically about the sort of experiences that define religious -- unique revelation, it's been called. The religious experiences shared by any community of the faithful are conditioned experiences, and the whole import of orthodox ritual is to provide the conditions in which such experiences may take place. For that sort of thing, you don't need to go to aboriginal socities: it happens in modern religious communities all the time. But I would think that these conditioned religious experiences would fall into the category that you've named "second-hand" -- they're the result of immersion in an established orthodoxy with a set of well-delineated symbols and cultural forms.Though these experiences may take on cultural shapes from our brain patterns (though I would certainly have expected to see the Buddha in my vision, not the Christ), it is not for anyone to say that makes them secondhand experiences.The more we talk about it, the more I'm beginning to think that this distinction between second-hand and first-hand is somewhat arbitrary. What I've been getting at all along is that the first-hand experience is almost always produced -- or at the very least, conditioned -- by prior experience with a second-hand revelation. I don't see any evidence of anyone having arrived at a first-hand experience without some prior experience with the forms provided by an established orthodoxy. At best, we can infer that it must have happened at some point in pre-history. Even the advent of a new religious form is typically conditioned by familiarity with an established religious authority. Gershom Sholem has written an interesting essay on that subject, printed in his collection "On the Kabbalah and Its Symbols".As for the number of fundamentalists in the U.S., I've seen numbers as low as 20% of American Christians. The figures vary from survey to survey, and much depends on how you define fundamentalism. The term itself is pretty vague.

tobiahsgirl: I believe that most people (let's confine "people" here to churchgoers) have not had revelatory religious experienceHow do you define revelatory religious experience? I suppose it might refer to some sort of radical unsettling of identity, social location, cultural compass...a kind of revolutionary restructuring of who I am, to whom or what I belong, and to where I am headed. An ecstatic bursting of ego limitations, shattering fragile notions of self-hood, opening and expanding far beyond familial roles, personal history, social expectation, and traditional patterns. You simply are not the same person after such an experience: your horizons for what is possible and permissable have fundamentally changed.As far as revelatory, it seems this refers to a message delivered from some transcendent source: a communique with a mysterious force not subject to your intellectual capacities or powers of imagination. A powerful intrusion that supercedes all agendas, alliances, allegiences and already existing plans: forcing a radical change of course and action. An inexcapable clarity and absolutely persuasive perspective which delivers a truth that cannot and will not be denied or ignored. What is revealed makes such a profound impression that evertyhing else pales in importance, and is now evaluated entirely in its relation to the revelation.Considering the term religious, it becomes far more murky and enigmatic. Does the Mahayana Buddhist notion of pratitya samutpada carry more or less religious significance that the Renewal Jewish idea of tikkun olam? Does Bach's Mass in B Minor present a clearer religious experience than Mahalia Jackson's His Eye Is On the Sparrow? Do we learn more about religion by examining the lives and murders of Catholic Bishop Oscar Romero and Baptist Minister Martin Luther King, Jr.; or by studying prayer techniques in Tibetan Monasteries, Pentecostal homechurches, or urban Hospice wards? I should hope we would take as much of this diversity of experience as possible into consideration. Mad and yourself are hardly in need of this instruction, although I think Sam Harris may need a little help in this direction.

RivercOil:Quote:But it should be noted that a religion that once conducted a religious crusade no longer kills in the name of their god, which argues against Harris stance that all faith needs to be elimited for the human race to safely progress.Or has it become just more subtle in it's Crusade? I remember a thread that compared a murderer with a crooked CEO who bilked billions from the stockholders and bankrupted the company. I find the CEO to be more ethically wrong and causing more damage than the murderer of one. I feel the CEO has commited the more egregious crime. The murderer is brutal in his actions, but the cunning thief causes more widespread damage.Whatever the tactics...it is the ultimate goal that worries me.Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.Once you perceive the irrevocable truth, you can no longer justify the irrational denial. - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper