mererdog

As is a conversation. We usually do not know why we believe what we believe, and when our beliefs shift we often can't pin down a specific cause. I assume this is because any significant shift in belief has a myriad causes. While a single conversation seems unlikely to have a profound effect, in and of itself, it can be a necessary last straw without which there is no broken back. There are also phenomenon like role-modeling, wherein repeated exposure through conversation can allow a person to have a profound impact on another, though not at all necessarily in ways intended...

That makes sense until you notice how often people's beliefs shift over time. It is not really rare for people who don't believe to come to believe, nor for people who believe to stop believing. Both of these kinds of events often happen after a deep personal tragedy fundamentally changes how the person is able to see things.

Very effective summary. I concur.

Its the same basic psychology at work. If your audience is not receptive to what you are teaching, you are basically wasting your breath. Even worse, you are kind of innoculating them against your position. And that also means that every time we conclude that something is nonsense, we could be falling prey to the same thing. Because the really nasty part is that we are usually blind to the fact that we are wearing blinders."Disturbing" barely covers it.

Of course, because we aren't entirely rational, we are rarely able to look at our irrationality rationally. Somehow, my irrationality is almost always more sensible than the other guy's. He jumps to conclusions while I see the obvious. He lacks solid proof but I have compelling evidence. When that tendency rears its ugly head, its really, really hard to catch myself doing it. Ironically enough for O Henry, anyone calling me out on it is likely to seem to just be doing what they are accusing me of. Given how amazingly good we are at protecting our preconceptions* its kind of a wonder anyone can ever talk anyone out of anything...

Ever read much about cognitive dissonance? Knowing you are able to be wrong does not prevent being completely convinced that you are right. Knowing my wife is imperfect does not mean I won't be surprised if she cheats. We are not entirely rational creatures. That irrational confidence is a survival trait because it allows us to face risks we would otherwiwe balk at. Which explains why it is so prevalent.

Consider for a moment that they are doing what they consider to be right when they tell you that you are wrong. And when you fault them for doing it, you are telling them that they are wrong in their determination. You have a right to determine what is right for yourself, but others have a right to try to influence that determination. Part of that is telling you when they think you are wrong. Of course, this means you have a right to try to influence them, and to tell them when you think that they are wrong. We can't have freedom of religion without freedom of speech. And if it is wrong to tell people they are wrong, there is very little it is not wrong to say, because basically everything you believe is actively disbelieved by someone else. Know what I mean?

Absolutely. We are imperfect creatures. Despite what Yoda quotes you may hear, all we can really ask of one another is that we try. All we can really expect from each other is a constant need to forgive and be forgiven. Anything beyond that is just gravy. But don't get me wrong: I love gravy.

I don't really see a moral difference between the two approaches. Neither causes harm, in and of itself. I balk at making others responsible for my reactions, so it is only fair that I don't hold myself responsible for their reactions to me. The only exception would be when the reaction was prompted intentionally, like when I get mad and say something mean just to hurt someone's feelings. To me, that crosses the line into unvirtuous behavior, and it prompts me to feel bad about it once I calm down. One of my proudest accomplishments is the fact that this no longer happens very often...

I don't think either approach is wrong. Depending on the situation and your goals, one will be more useful than the other. It can be really hard to tell which one, without the benefit of hindsight.

No higher power has made itself known to me, in a way that makes it possible for me to believe in it. This is not a complaint or an excuse, but a simple statement of fact. I cannot depend on what I do not believe in. If this is simply a weakneas on my end, it is not one I have any control over. So, once again, if I don't listen to my conscience, I have no alternative moral determiner. I can listen to my conscience, or I can ignore morality completely. Which of the options actually available to me do you suppose is better?

Same thing. The dictionary defines words based on common usage. Common usage is shaped by individual conception. Note that you did not cite every definition of religion, but merely the one that fit the conception of minister you are attempting to sell. Note also that dictionaries do not list all definitions, but only those that meet arbitrary standards of common usage, that vary from publisher to publisher. Just to be clear, if you have to define lack of religion as a religion in order to make your point, your pont loses credibility in my eyes. If we can't differentiate between what is and is not religion, the word loses all meaning.

I get what you are saying. The thing is, my conscience is what I have. God does not talk to me, possibly only because I do not believe in Him and therefore don't talk to Him. But, either way, to talk me out of listening to my conscience leaves me with no replacement. If I am talked into accepting the proposition that there are exceptions to the rule against violence, would I not also be talked into believing there are exceptions to the rules against theft and adultery? How can I both believe morality matters, and that I should ignore the only way I have for determining morality? As for Hitler, I said earlier that I believe all healthy adults have a conscience that is based on empathy. I also believe, however, that this conscience can become damaged by psychological trauma. In Biblical terms, the heart can become hardened. This perspective causes me to see Hitler as a tragic figure, as well as a villain. Not only did his actions harm others, but they made his own life so much shorter and less enjoyable than it otherwise could have been. If only he had been able to see himself in the other...

You would he wrong. Not everyone agrees. There are, in fact, ministers who represent no religion. Now, I suspect the reflexive response will be to say that those people are not really ministers. I will point out that such a response simply reinterates the notion that their conception of a minister is not "real," while yours is. As an example, I do not represent any religion, but I am a minister. I speak only for myself. My ordination came without question of faith, which also means it came with no obligation to represent a faith. Otherwise a person like myself, who has no religious beliefs, would be unable to be a minister. Once again, that would run counter to the ULC's commitment to religious freedom through religious equality.

First, pacifism does not require allowing others to harm you. It is a sign of poor problem-solving skills to believe the only way to avoid harm to yourself is to harm others. We have other options. So my basic position is to view use of violence as a personal failure to do right. People are all imperfect, however, so I am hesitant to treat someone else's personal failures as being worse than my own. I would also just like to point out that passive-aggression is a very misunderstood cocept in popular culture. Also that when you speak of what befits a call to ministry you are suggesting that your conception of ministry is more "real" than someone else's. That is of course your right, and a perfectly natural position to take, but it runs counter to the philosophical underpinnings of the ULC. Religious freedom through religious equality - No hierarchy and no standards. Ordained for free and for life without question. See it? Now, on a personal level, I do wonder why anyone would discourage me from following my conscience. If I should ignore the little voice telling me violence is wrong, why shouldn't I also ignore it when it tells me not to break my marriage vows?

Essentially, NC is loathe to void marriages. If the couple entered into the arrangement with the good faith intention of creating a legal marriage, the courts will overlook pretty much any problems with the paperwork. This is to protect people from incurring major damages caused by trusting the wrong advice. I have had trouble pulling up the case I was thinking of, but found a few others all repeating the same general theme. If you are willing and able to dig, Google searches along the lines of "NC divorce case unqualified officiant" will produce a lot of junk, but also some gold... The sad fact is that NC's marriage laws are poorly laid out, and the courts have not given completely consistent rulings. So there is obvious risk involved. When I lived in NC, my position was simple. I know my rights, even if the state doesn't. I will do what is right, despite the risk. Everyone makes their own risk/reward determinations, of course.

You can teach math and it can have nothing to do with religion. You cant teach religion without religion. That's sort of obvious, isn't it? Give government authority over religious education, and you give government authority to pick and choose what can be taught and how. This gives them authority to say we can only be taught from a Catholic Bible, or that anyone who isn't a Baptist is unqualified to teach the Bible. As for compelling interest, the Bill of Rights exists because there are things where principle should always trump practical concerns. Also, for the record, Harvard Divinity School describes itself as non-sectarian, not secular.

There was a divorce case in NC years ago setting a very important precedent. Basically, the court's opinion was that if a couple genuinely believed the officiant was legally qualified at the time of the wedding, the marriage is valid even if the officiant was not legally qualified. I don't have time to Google the specifics right now.

I admit to being less comfortable with interpreting dreams than I am with interpreting text. Let's actually call that "way less comfortable". My goto response when told about someone's dream is to say "Oh, that's a textbook sexual frustration dream!" The joke usually gets laughs, and can prompt an enjoyable game of Spot The Accidental Innuendo. It also ruins any chance at serious discussion about someone else's subconscious, which is my ulterior motive, in a nutshell. But I suppose I brought it up, eh? Personally, I don't think there is more to it than what I posted. In my sleep-addled state, I believed the dream to be real, and reacted as if it were. There is a fairly common conversation where an atheist gets asked what they would do if they got some sort of incontrovertible proof that God was real. I now have to say that I would get very sad. I think that may actually be an improvement over my previous replies...

One night, I dreamed of angels- giant flaming chariots in the sky. They came with a sudden crushing sadness that shook me deep. I woke up crying, which I have never thought of as a normalIty It made me think about a guy who posted on this forum years ago. He asked me what he could do to prove his God to me, and I stayed up all night long waiting for the angels he promised. I didn't wait up because I thought it might happen, or because I wanted to prove him wrong. He asked me to wait, I said I would wait, and I waited. And the angels did not show up. Or, at least, I saw no angels. The roof would have blocked my view of any giant flaming chariots. But why so sad? So soul-crushingly, mind-numbingly sad? The last thing my dream-self said before I awoke was "I didn't want that to be true."

It tends to have the opposite effect. The ULC exists at the intersection of religion and politics, which are subjects famous the world over for their ability to kill a polite conversation. It takes dedication to keep the place civil, so any help is appreciated.

Yep. Also a rare example of a joke that is told almost exclusively in a classroom setting. The first time I heard it, my creative writing instructor was explaining why "It really happened" is not the same as "It sounds realistic." Part of his argument revolved around the whole "reading him his rights" thing. In real life, getting arrested doesn't work like it does in the movies, but the movie version has become so ingrained in our collective unconscious that a more realistic depiction just looks wrong, and keeps most people from following the plot....

In case anyone didn't get the "blue brick" reference.

All story-telling requires the use of an internal logic. While the characters and plot may make no sense in terms of the real world, they must make sense within the context of the story, or it creates those blue bricks that are impossible to see past. "Long works, in particular, require considerable formal organization, and so Dante relies on Aquinas and Catholic theology to structure his vision of the afterlife, just as Victor Hugo and Tolstoy embed powerful discourses about history inThe Hunchback of Notre Dame and War and Peace. Similarly, Yeats’s late poetry turns on the detailed cosmology he elaborates in A Visionwhile Robert Graves’s best love poems celebrate the somber mythos of The White Goddess: 'There is one story and one story only.' Sometimes the writers truly believe in these various systems, sometimes the systems merely serve as useful architectural blueprints to produce original and coherent works of art. Of course, what matters most is that the resulting novel or poem, through its use of such theoretical struts and joists, can somehow do an even better job than usual of, say, breaking our hearts." - Michael Dirda

Does it follow as a necessary conclusion to what I said?