[ExI] de Waal

[William Flynn Wallace]

On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 3:48 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 12:49 PM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> * ​> ​Let me see some data on how far-out ideas don't change. *
>>
>
> Ideas don't get much further out than Christianity, an omnipotent being is
> unable to do something, unable to forgive the human race because one of
> them ate a apple unless​ they torture His son to death. So answer me this,
> do you think this comically stupid idea could have survived for generation
> after generation for 2000 years if it was customary for people to receive
> no religious instruction before the age of 17? I mean, its already
> customary for people to receive no calculus instruction before the age of
> 17, so why not religion too?
> ​---------
>
I have no idea what would happen if religious instruction came late. I
suspect that would never happen - people want people indoctrinated. I do
know that the ideas of virgin birth, walking on water, bringing people back
from the dead, going instantly to heaven, changing water to win, and all
the rest and more, were ideas that were around before, sometimes long
before Jesus was born - if he was.   Check out what was said about
Hercules. Wacko ideas are very common, as you know, and not only among the
illiterate and ​

​unintelligent.  Case in point:  Isaac Newton.​

bill w

> ​
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> *To John - all I meant by free will was that a person could examine his
>> beliefs in light of the evidence of his experiences and his reading and
>> other sources of information, and change them. *
>>
>
> ​
> That's the scientific method but it doesn't come naturally to us, even
> scientists have to struggle to make sure they adhere to it because, unlike
> ​​
> a gene to believe that what adults say is true, Evolution did not provide
> us with a scientific method gene and its easy to see why. If I refused to
> believe what adults said about which fruits were good to eat and which ones
> were poisons and insisted on seeing for myself by eating one strange fruit
> after another one by one and noting the physiological effects it had on me
> I'd soon end up dead.
>
> John K Clark    ​
>
>

​
​
a gene to believe that what adults say is true,  john

If you want to believe that I'll not criticize you at all, but I think that
kids are more tentative about what they believe.  Told something is
poisonous has not stopped a few children from doing what they were told not
to do.  What parents say just gets tossed in with all the rest:  teachers,
preachers, neighbors, other kids.  A child may wind up not believing in
their parents at all.  Kids have actually legally divorced parents.  "This
hurts me more than it hurts you"  What child has ever believed that?

My parents were Christians.  I am a naturalist.  They were conservatives. I
am a liberal.  I believe some of what they believed and told me, and some
of it was just wrong, as I discovered later.  I do not believe that I am an
outlier here.

bill w​

>
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