You know what the "Interfaith"-concept reminds me of? Conspiracy-theorists.

[DetlefK]

I recently read an article on cracked.com by someone who went to a convention. A convention about UFOs, ghost-hunting, aural photography, magic, mind-reading...

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-i-learned-infiltrating-paranormal-convention/

The point is:
The author was surprised how sane and recollected everybody there seemed.

No weirdos.

Nothing outrageous.

Just people standing around, having discussions, showing off their machines/evidences.

Everbody was outrageously forthcoming and respectful to everybody.

And after a while, the author realized where this tolerance for other people's ideas came from:
Everybody was afraid that their pet-idea would be attacked and dissected and ridiculed and argumented against. Just like all those other cruel people do all the time.

For example:
That's why a ghost-photographer COULDN'T outright dismiss someone's pet-idea that the barn on this photo is really a ghost-barn. Because it's not visible on the other photo. (Because it's out-of-frame, because the second photo was taken from another view-point.) Instead the ghost-photography-guy HAD TO WEASEL HIS WAY OUT OF THIS by saying that he really can't tell whether this is a ghost-barn because the images are so blurry. But it might be.

For example:
Rauni Kilde ... was an elderly woman with vats of charisma and a gaze like a nail driven directly between your eyes. You could have told me she was a professor at Harvard and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. And then, she dropped a page from her lecture notes without noticing it. Upon realizing that a page was missing, and without missing a beat, she declared that this happened to her quite often, and it was because the government was constantly stalking her and disintegrating her notes with their melt-rays when she wasn't looking.
And nobody said a thing.





The concept that various religions could coexist WITHOUT attacking each other seems similar to me: It wouldn't be a friendly, accepting coexistence. It would be a cease-fire: "I won't mention how ridiculous your beliefs are as long as you refrain from calling my beliefs ridiculous."

And in a world where it's not allowed to call out bad ideas, what happens?

[valerief]

1. You have a world of bad ideas. nt

[DetlefK]

3. Well, a religion is an explanation. Right?

"Why/How does X happen? Well, according to my religion, the explanation is Y."

Ask somebody with a different religion and the answer is: "Well, according to my religion, the explanation is Z."



Now, to take care of problem X, what approach should be taken?
The approach that deals with Y or the approach that deals with Z?

How could this dilemma possibly be solved?
Collect arguments? What kind of arguments?
It would absolutely be bad manners to come up with arguments why the other side is wrong.
On the other hand, it would be futile to come up with arguments why your side is right as those arguments come from within your religion and mean nothing to believers of the other religion. Unless you try to guilt the other side into agreeing with you by complaining that not agreeing with you would be intolerant.




Okay, simple example:
One religion beliefs that throwing a coconut into the volcano will calm the volcano-god. Anything else will anger him even more.
The other religion beliefs that throwing a fish into the volcano wil calm the volcano-god. Anything else will anger him even more.
Then the volcano starts spewing smoke.
So, what is it? Coconut or fish? And HOW does one arrive at an answer? (Reminder: You are not allowed to make arguments against either belief.)




Another example:
I think it's outrageous that Jesus Christ turns into bread. That totally excludes people with gluten-sensitivity. Can't Jesus turn into something else?

[valerief]

4. Magic thinking is not an explanation. Without science, nothing about religion is reasonable.

We are creatures of reason, after all.

And the "anything else will anger him more" scenarios? Not enough testing was done to reach either conclusion. Science.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. The thing that you are missing

is that all the participants in "interfaith" are using magic thinking. Just a little variation to it. That is why the arguments can't be made against one without risking ridicule of your religion from all the others. Better for all the religious people of all persuasions to be tolerant of each other.

[valerief]

11. I see. Birds of feather crazy. nt

[DetlefK]

17. Well, science evolved from magic, which in turn evolved from religion:

In religion, the laws of nature are
1. part of the realm of divine powers and therefore not researchable by humans
2. infallible

In the Renaissance, christian scholars (frustrated with the doctrine-laden ways of the Catholic Church) tried to go back to the original version of Christianity.

This is how the Middle-Ages ended and the Renaissance began.

They stumbled upon esoteric texts from ancient Greece from 200 AD, which sought to combine christian, jewish and egyptian teachings. These books were the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius. Due to a dating-error that had happened ~300 AD, they were thought to be from Ancient Egypt. So these christian scholars found a text from "Ancient Egypt" that contained hints at Christianity. That's how the magical teachings of the Hermeticists entered the mainstream.
(The medieval mystician Ramon Llull also played a crucial role, but it would go too far to elaborate on that.)

In the Renaissance-magic, the laws of nature are
1. separate from the realm of divine powers (-> Llull), and the human has the possibility to access them by magical means due to his divine heritage
2. infallible

During the Renaissance, these scholars tried to find these magical laws that would give them control over the forces of nature via experiments. They did so in secrecy, because the Catholic Church still wasn't sure whether this "magic" the hermetic texts are speaking about comes from God or from demons.
Giordano Bruno made the mistake of drawing too much attention to his works and drifting too far away from mainstream-Christianity.

The magical laws turned out to be failures. None of the experiments worked. Eventually, advancements in mathematics unearthed a further set of "laws of nature". From now on, the scholars, the magi, the researchers tried to incorporate math into their experiments. The goal switched from qualitative explanations to quantitative explanations.
The researchers knew they had developed a new method of gaining knowledge but they had no idea how to classify it. They just called it "the method".

This is how the Renaissance ended and the Age of Enlightenment began.

In science, the laws of nature are:
1. independent from a divine realm and researchable by the humans
2. fallible

[valerief]

18. But Christianity wasn't the only religion in the world at that time and science wasn't held captive

Last edited Wed Dec 9, 2015, 01:07 PM - Edit history (1)

solely to Christianity. Wouldn't science likely continue in the world despite Christianity? Science, at least, as trial and error, as mechanical engineering or agriculture. It's still science even if it's not formal, isn't it?

But thanks for the European history lesson.

[DetlefK]

19. Of course, experimental trial-and-error preceded that. But science also concerns theoretical models.

China developed gun-powder, but I doubt that they had a theory of chemical reactions.

The Arabs developed optical lenses, but I doubt that they had a theory on the nature of light.

The Vikings had "sunstones" (polarization-filters made from crystal that allowed them to locate the sun even when it's cloudy). But that doesn't mean they had a model of what solids are made of.

Otto von Guericke made famous vacuum-experiments mid-17th century, but he had no theory on the nature of gases.



What's critical here is the philosophical step that humans are even capable of using the laws of nature for their own ends. This was a clear step away from "God wills it."

Another critical component is a mindset that ceased to exist with the end of the Renaissance:
"Anything old is better than anything new. The present is a poor, corrupted offshot of a golden past. Old explanations are best and only fools would doubt them or even try to replace them with new explanations."
There wasn't even the mindset that theories should be tested and treated according to their abilities to make accurate predictions! Old theories were automatically considered correct, because they contained the wisdom of the elders. The older, the correcter.

Nowadays we have the mindset "newer is better" and the other mindset seems thoroughly alien to us.

[AlbertCat]

16. Besides

Religion claims authority....as in the way you should behave.

Paranormal stuff does not really do this. Ghost Hunters do not tell you what to wear or eat. Paranormal investigators do not insist you marry certain people or come to a lecture very week. There are no rituals with serious consequences.

[trotsky]

2. I think that's an apt comparison.

A cease-fire. Where publicly and to each other, it's all about validating everyone's beliefs. Yet it seems at the end of the day, what everyone really means when they say "We all worship the same god" is "You all are actually worshiping MY god and don't realize it."

[Goblinmonger]

6. That last sentence nails it.

It's like in education. We undoubtedly get to the point when discussing a change in procedure where someone says "We need to be consistent." What they actually mean is "I want you all to do it my way." My general response is, "If consistency is the main problem, then everyone should just do it my way. Consistency solved."

Now make it about religious beliefs and not about hall passes and it gets ugly.

[skepticscott]

5. It's been a common pattern

among the religionists here to deny that when two different "faiths" make directly contradictory truth claims, at least one of them MUST be wrong.

[Act_of_Reparation]

8. Two caveats:

The First:

The guy with the bottle of homeopathy pills might not say it outright, but he still believes the guy with the alien microchip in his brain is a fucking nutcase. Sure they're respectful, but it's a superficial respect in which everyone agrees not to tell anyone else how they really feel.

It works fine for brief, banal interactions, but it's not viable in long-term relationships. Once the homeopath discovers microchip man supports increased FDA regulations on useless sugar pills, the saccharine friendliness will disappear.

The Second:

The homeopath and microchip man both hold fringe beliefs. They can get along relatively well because there's the tacit understanding that neither of them commands a single shred of influence beyond the confines of their tiny subculture. They get along because they're stronger together and there's no tangible benefit to be gained from attacking each other.

The situation is reversed for numerically superior belief systems. They have little to loose from attacking other religions, and actually risk losing followers if they appear to lend alternative belief systems even a shred of credibility.

That's why interfaith movements tend to be small, quiet, and have virtually no impact whatsoever.

[trotsky]

10. Nailed it:

That's why interfaith movements tend to be small, quiet, and have virtually no impact whatsoever.

[mr blur]

12. Nah, conspiracy theorists sometimes seem quite rational.

[beam me up scottie]

13. I said before that Thou shalt not diss another's woo should be part of the woo woo credo.

They don't dare question anyone else because that would open them up to the same sort of speculation. So they nod and smile and pretend that they're all solid, sound theories while secretly thinking the same thing as skeptics.

Just like religion, the other guy's woo is always crazy.

[Yorktown]

14. The parallel doesn't take into account the shared heritage of abrahamic religions

An homeopath and a ghost chaser do not share much ground.

While Jews, Xians an Muslims are all supposed to believe in Abraham, Moses and Noah.

Which makes their disagreements look even more petty and pathetic.

[onager]

15. They don't attack each other until...

One religion gets its grubby paws on power in the real world. Then the mask falls off and those other heretics are fair game.

e.g., here in One Nation Under Jesus, we had the Philadelphia Bible Wars:

In fact, the parallels between the rhetoric of nineteenth-century America's Protestant majority and today's Religious Right are startling. As Roman Catholics and Protestants battled more than a century ago over prayer and Bible reading in public schools, Protestants relied on the same arguments uttered by modern-day TV preachers: Protestant practices in public schools were "traditional"; those who don't like the exercises could get up and leave the room; a little religion never hurt anyone; and finally, Protestants were the majority and should have the right to do whatever they wanted.

Like the modern Religious Right, ultraconservative Protestant leaders of the nineteenth century insisted the United States was a "Christian nation." Only one catch: by "Christian" they really meant "Protestant."

http://candst.tripod.com/boston3.htm

I saw this many times in Egypt, between Muslims and Coptic Xians. When religious leaders wanted the freedom to discriminate against atheists or gays etc., they could come together in public and whine to the govt. about it. But that Kumbayah Krap stopped when a political candidate wanted to stir up the populace, or when the demographics of a neighborhood changed and a new church or mosque was being built. Then riots often broke out.