Religion Thread

[Holmbo]

On 2016-07-20 at 0:24 AM, owl said:

Some people may have spiritual/religious beliefs of their own which don't follow an organised religion, but still believe in some sort of god (I guess?)

 

Then I did it wrong

[DeltaAro]

Ok, we have a low posting frequency here.

On 9/7/2017 at 12:09 AM, NullVector said:

It's interesting, as you say, how weak the arguments are for a lot of these sorts of things that tend to get taken for granted (by 'atheists' in particular?) To the extent I think about it at all (philosophy makes my brain hurt! )

The most perplexing thing is when popular writers on atheism, and this happens constantly, after professing reductive materialism, slip into some kind of ill-justified quasi-Cartesianism. They need that, otherwise their views would just become too unpalatable for the general public. For example, Dawkins: “All animals look after their short-term interests. Homo sapiens is the only species that can rebel against the otherwise universally selfish Darwinian impulse. We are Earth's last best hope. Our brains follow their own rules, which can rise above the rules of natural selection.”

 

So, reason, which presumably allows us to “rise above the rules of natural selection”, where does it come from? Dawkins thinks from sexual selection, but are not a few details missing here? How do we get from sexy flirting to, for example, number theory?

 

Dennett says that the evolution of language was the starting point. I guess, we can explain counting and calculating, a purely finite activity¹, as something arising from language. But the insight that mathematical induction (implicit already in some of Euclid's proofs) works is very different, because it rises vastly above this finite activity, to infinity; and at least that's the point where number theory seems to become irreducible to language. Right before anything interesting happens…

 

¹ there are even axiomatized formal systems far weaker than PA: they contain enough for doing calculations with natural numbers but can't express any general statements and, of course, lack an induction axiom. And so no interesting math can be done with them.

On 9/7/2017 at 12:09 AM, NullVector said:

Of course, I'm not claiming any originality of thought here: probably the empiricist philosophers like Hume and Berkeley laid it all out fairly comprehensively (wouldn't know: not read them first-hand! )

Well, I also don't know that much about Hume. But mental concepts (ideas) are just mental images for him (same for Berkeley). This seems very, very strange (for example, it also makes him claim that mathematics must be strictly finitist), but is central for his philosophy. That's also an essential part of his attack on causation… so if one believes in causation, I don't see how Hume's arguments could really induce any skepticism of it.

[DeltaAro]

On 7/15/2016 at 6:50 AM, DannyFenton123 said:

So this thread coming from an atheist is arguably rather strange, but a small incident this morning got me thinking about religion and I felt like starting a topic on Arocalypse. This isn't an atheist thread; everyone is welcome to share their beliefs and things pertaining to it on here

So I read something about the connection of religion and romantic love in Daniel Dennett's 2006 book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon and instead of posting a new thread, this seems to be on-topic here.

 

And if you are so much as willing to think about comparing your religion with others, or with having no religion at all, you must not be in love with your religion. This is a very personal love (not like the love of jazz, or baseball, or mountain scenery), but no single person — not the priest or the rabbi or the imam — or even any group of people—the congregation of the faithful, say — is the beloved. One's undying loyalty is not loyalty to them, singly or together, but to the system of ideas that unite them. Of course, people sometimes do fall in love — romantic love — with their priest or with a fellow parishioner, and this can be hard for them to distinguish from love of their religion, but I'm not suggesting that this is the nature of the love most God-loving people experience. I am suggesting, however, that their unquestioning loyalty, their unwillingness even to consider the virtues versus the vices, is a type of love, and more like romantic love than brotherly love or intellectual love.  It is surely no accident that the language of romantic love and the language of religious devotion are all but indistinguishable … (p. 251)

 

Has our evolved capacity for romantic love been exploited by religious memes? It would surely be a Good Trick. It would get people to think that it was actually honorable to take offense, to attack all skeptics with fury, to lash out wildly and without concern for their own safety — let alone the safety of the person they are attacking.  Their beloved deserves nothing less than this, they think: a total commitment to eradicating the blasphemer. (p. 256)

well, that's a pretty creative explanation… Do you think it's plausible?

 

What about religious aros? Doesn't their existence disprove the theory? Though more than half voted for some non-religious option (atheist, agnostic, …) here, the poll shows that they obviously do exist.

 

It's especially damaging to Dennett's theory if we find aros with a religion in which they didn't even grow up and adopted later as adolescents or adults. Like Wicca or Kemetic Orthodox¹ (in all likelihood) – for which in total we have three votes!

 

¹ Okay, not to offend anyone … that of course hinges on Wicca and Kemetic Orthodox being taken seriously… Are they? Especially Kemetic Orthodox. From the Egyptian Gods I absolutely love Seth and the Seth-animal (Sha) is just too cool. So I understand the appeal of Seth. But that believing in Seth – as anything more than purely symbolic – is a live option (in the sense of William James' The Will To Believe) for some people, would be quite surprising, indeed.

[Carson:)]

I am a Christian.

[The Angel of Eternity]

I don't put myself into a religious category, but I am spiritual. My beliefs line up mostly with Buddhism.

[femme_flock]

Wow I guess Im also a weird one here. There's not even a general, bland "paganism" option. :V

I'm a Lokean and Pop/Modern Culture Pagan primarily, along with self-worship. I guess I'd call myself "alterpagan" as a whole since my alterhumanity + paganism combine to make a unique path I've only found others relate to in alterhuman places.

My religious experience is basically going around to other gods as a small incarnate deity learning to be a bigger, better god. And Loki just happens to be the one I gravitated toward most and then ended up a godspouse of. Other deities (including Kemetic ones, though Im not Orthodox by any means :P) walk in and out of my life all the time.

[DeltaAro]

On 5/24/2018 at 2:16 AM, nixian_hound said:

Wow I guess Im also a weird one here.

It's difficult to top “Kemetic Orthodox” from @LunarSeas on the weirdness scale but you managed that. ?

 

But if anyone could, it would've been you. ?

On 5/24/2018 at 2:16 AM, nixian_hound said:

My religious experience is basically going around to other gods as a small incarnate deity learning to be a bigger, better god.

okay… yeah, why not… ?

On 5/24/2018 at 2:16 AM, nixian_hound said:

And Loki just happens to be the one I gravitated toward most and then ended up a godspouse of.

So, do you think Loki exists literally or is it more symbolic for you?

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

@DeltaV You know you're being pretty rude, right? Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean you have to be all "Lol, that's so weird" or "But does anyone really believe in that? Does anyone take that seriously? ;)"

I, personally, do actively believe in many ancient gods. Yes, even Kemetic ones. Shocking, I know. Even if you, personally, don't believe in something or find it weird, religion is often deeply personal and important to people, and it's incredibly disrespectful to treat it like a joke, especially to their faces. If you have respectful questions about certain types of paganism or other religions, I and I'm sure many other people would be happy to answer, but the way you've been phrasing things so far is not very nice at all.

[femme_flock]

6 hours ago, DeltaV said:

It's difficult to top “Kemetic Orthodox” from @LunarSeas on the weirdness scale but you managed that. ?

 

But if anyone could, it would've been you. ?

okay… yeah, why not… ?

So, do you think Loki exists literally or is it more symbolic for you?

"Kemetic Orthodox" is no more weird in all honesty than any other religion, and while I lightly dig at myself for being the "weird one" I feel like that "if anyone could, it would be you" comment is weirdly...personally directed? 

Yes, I absolutely believe Loki is an extant, literal being and god who I can and have interacted with for many many years. It's not different from any other god except you've been taught it's all fairytales instead of actual parts of religious history.

Do you have more actual questions about my religious experience? I would be happy to answer anything respectful, because yes, I do take my religious life seriously and it is a genuine belief. 

 

6 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

@DeltaV You know you're being pretty rude, right? Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean you have to be all "Lol, that's so weird" or "But does anyone really believe in that? Does anyone take that seriously? ;)"

I, personally, do actively believe in many ancient gods. Yes, even Kemetic ones. Shocking, I know. Even if you, personally, don't believe in something or find it weird, religion is often deeply personal and important to people, and it's incredibly disrespectful to treat it like a joke, especially to their faces. If you have respectful questions about certain types of paganism or other religions, I and I'm sure many other people would be happy to answer, but the way you've been phrasing things so far is not very nice at all.

I appreciate this, and agree again that I'd be happy to answer respectful questions.

[aro-bot]

I'm an agnostic atheist (although recently I've been leaning more heavily towards atheism as a concept) in that I believe there could be...something? Like, not any specific deity, more like I can't imagine that our universe was the first or only universe and there's probably beings out there somewhere that would seem like gods to us and maybe even something that created our universe, just nothing that would be considered divine? If that makes any sense lmao, i've put a great deal of thought into my views on religion in general and could probably write an essay on it

[DeltaAro]

On 5/25/2018 at 5:41 PM, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

You know you're being pretty rude, right?

No, I don't know that.

 

It's now clear to me that you can get terribly, terribly offended about anything and everything. Just put me on your ignored users list, problem solved.

On 5/25/2018 at 5:41 PM, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean you have to be all "Lol, that's so weird" or "But does anyone really believe in that? Does anyone take that seriously? "

If you quote me, do it correctly. It's really telling that you have to resort to EXTREMELY tendentious paraphrasing here.

 

If I really had said something rude, literal quotes would suffice.

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

[arokaladin]

10 hours ago, aro-bot said:

I'm an agnostic atheist (although recently I've been leaning more heavily towards atheism as a concept) in that I believe there could be...something? Like, not any specific deity, more like I can't imagine that our universe was the first or only universe and there's probably beings out there somewhere that would seem like gods to us and maybe even something that created our universe, just nothing that would be considered divine? If that makes any sense lmao, i've put a great deal of thought into my views on religion in general and could probably write an essay on it

I'm personally an atheist and definitely need to put more time aside for contemplating my views on the universe. I'm weirdly not distressed by the idea that it just... always existed? idk it's like optimistic nihilism I guess! That being said, though I'm not sure how much I believe them, all sorts of theories are interesting to me. That another universe spat us out, or another being, or that perhaps the end of our universe kickstarts the beginning. I have. thoughts about time.

 

(sidenote relevant to this thread: as someone who's religious perspective is characterised by what I don't believe... it takes zero money or effort to respect things you don't believe in <3)

[DeltaAro]

15 hours ago, arokaladin said:

(sidenote relevant to this thread: as someone who's religious perspective is characterised by what I don't believe... it takes zero money or effort to respect things you don't believe in <3)

What does “respect” mean precisely in this context? Because it's a spectrum, not a binary thing: from supporting the legal right to believe what you want all the way up to deference and reverence.

 

Going by Jot-Aro Kun's latest complaints here it means she demands very far reaching self-censorship. If I hear of Lokeanism I'm very skeptical that people genuinely believe in that. If you're offended by that remark, sorry, I'm still going to say that.

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

Hey folks, we're all weird here and we all believe in weird things. Aromanticism is weird if you look at it through the lens of 99% of society and the amatonormativity that gets banged into everybody's head since the age of 2. It's weird to think somebody would have no desire or interest in romance. Given that example, we can see that having a belief that others see as weird doesn't necessarily make a person weird.

 

That being said, let's keep the discussion respectful. Remember that something like 90% of communication is lost when all you have is text instead of talking face to face. That 90% comes from body language and tone of voice. Avoid using sarcasm on the internet, and always read back what you've typed in a flat tone to make sure it still sounds like what you mean. If it doesn't, just delete it and try again.

 

Thanks all for participating in the forums. I'm glad to have y'all here.

[eatingcroutons]

On 5/27/2018 at 6:16 AM, aro-bot said:

I'm an agnostic atheist (although recently I've been leaning more heavily towards atheism as a concept)

For what it's worth, you don't have to think of agnosticism as a middle ground between theism and atheism - they're not contradictory views! Agnosticism isn't about whether you believe gods exist, it's a complementary view on whether you think it's possible to know for certain whether gods exist.

I mean, it's possible to be a gnostic atheist - to be 100% certain that it's a fact that no gods exist - but I can't say I've ever met anyone who thinks this way. Even Richard Dawkins calls himself an agnostic atheist.

 

I've always been an agnostic atheist. I can't entirely discount the possibility that the supernatural exists, but I have the same amount of belief in gods as I do in Russell's teapot.

[NullVector]

9 hours ago, eatingcroutons said:

but I have the same amount of belief in gods as I do in Russell's teapot

 

There is an additional complication with belief in god(s), I think. Everyone can more or less agree on what a teapot is, but the same cannot be said for god(s)! Which makes the question of belief (or lack of it) more complicated for god(s) than teapots, as you've first got to all agree on what it is you're looking for evidence of.

 

Plus the teapot is actually quite plausible nowadays ?

[DeltaAro]

4 hours ago, NullVector said:

Everyone can more or less agree on what a teapot is, but the same cannot be said for god(s)! Which makes the question of belief (or lack of it) more complicated for god(s) than teapots, as you've first got to all agree on what it is you're looking for evidence of.

I'd say there are tons of other issues with the teapot analogy.

1. The teapot is just a very normal, natural, physical object at an odd place. God(s) OTOH nearly always are/is conceived as spirit-like and supernatural.
2. Behind the “spirit” thing lurks a very deep problem. It seems that by definition no objective empirical evidence can ever definitely prove that other humans possess subjective (phenomenal) consciousness. Because of its subjectivity it eludes the grasp of verificationism (which motivated Daniel Dennett to basically deny its existence). Obviously, it is not the same to believe that other humans have subjective inner lives as to believe that trees house “tree spirits” – but this has more to do with common sense arguments¹ than with objective empirical evidence.
3. What is evidence outside of science anyway? We have to ask this question, since science excludes by definition anything supernatural (however that is defined). So what should evidence for a certain supernatural agent like Osiris (even if we all agree on what we mean by “Osiris”) look like?
   And why all this talk of “evidence for” anyway? Why not “reason for”?
4. Belief without evidence is commonplace for humans and many of those beliefs are not always implausible and certainly not always irrational. Hunches, guesswork, intuition, etc. we couldn't live without them…
   It seems epistemology (correct me if I'm wrong) is mainly concerned with what definite sound justification of beliefs is, but not when a sub-optimally justified or unjustified belief becomes irrational or incredible. So is God more like “magnetic monopoles” or is he more like something very fringe, like Russell's teapot? Without clarity on this issue, Russell's argument seems a bit like a petitio principii…
5. There's the strange problem of “I don't believe in X because if X would exist, I would already have come across good evidence”. If a Thai woman tells you that there are unicorns (horses with single horns on their heads) in her homeland, you would no way believe it: “Unicorns” in Thailand, yeah you would've heard of that. But considering all the strange animals² on this planet – and certainly you can't know them all – it seems solely cultural that we find horses with horns on their heads so implausible: If unicorns (the stuff of many legends) would exist (at least in some natural form), we would have heard about that. But let's say she claims there are cat-sized mammals who glide around from one tree to the next in Thailand… that suddenly seems less implausible (and they actually exist there i.e. Colugo).
   Russell's teapot is probably also an example of this: We assume we would have heard about it, if a space-faring nation shot a teapot into space.

 

As a final note regarding the discussion above, maybe polytheism itself is not less plausible than monotheism, but if we look at the concrete contemporary polytheistic religions like Hinduism, Shintoism, Chinese folk religion and the various other pagan or neo-pagan religions, we find that there are many, many different main fire deities, main solar deities, main sky deities, main water deities, main war deities, etc. It's a downright god-inflation! At least with monotheism, a Muslim, Christian and a Jew can claim to all believe in the same single god, they just differ on the “details” like God's nature and how to worship him.

 

In short, in the polytheistic religions, there are “god-equivalents”. For example, are the Celtic god Belenus (who rides the sun chariot across the sky) and the Greek god Helios and the Hindu god Surya, who do the same, different gods or just different names for the same god? Comparative mythology tries to trace those commonalities back to some shared sources, like the hypothesized “proto-indo-european religion” … so you would think that neo-pagans try to use that knowledge to make the contradiction between the different polytheistic pantheons less stark and bring some order to the whole system. But nope. Jot-Aro Kujo's statement “I, personally, do actively believe in many ancient gods. Yes, even Kemetic ones.” is especially problematic if you end up believing in many different gods who are very equivalent.

 

¹ it's misleading to think that it is directly supported by empirical science. If a neuroscientist like Christof Koch studies the neural correlates of consciousness, he can only do so because he accepts the common sense assumption that other people like himself do have subjective mental states and verbal reports about them are mostly truthful.

² sandfish, gliding lizards, pink fairy armadillos, glass frogs … for an alien visiting planet Earth horses with horns should seem pretty banal and plausible.

[femme_flock]

11 hours ago, NullVector said:

 

There is an additional complication with belief in god(s), I think. Everyone can more or less agree on what a teapot is, but the same cannot be said for god(s)! Which makes the question of belief (or lack of it) more complicated for god(s) than teapots, as you've first got to all agree on what it is you're looking for evidence of.

 

Plus the teapot is actually quite plausible nowadays ?

This is a good point, because the way I think of gods and the way other people might think of gods are two very different things. I see gods as "big people" who are equal but have more perspective and who you have to learn how to behave around individually, who we can interact with, and who embody in essence certain forces in the world such as destruction, or love, or strength, or survival. And they can all embody different interpretations of those forces and can all co-exist (as many who do worship different deities find and corroborate) or clash the same way any other force might, which is a big difference from monotheism where a single creator God is perfect and omnibenevolent and omniscient and exists to love Their creation. Meanwhile some of my gods might actively screw me over if I aint careful. 

Plus, I believe myself to be a god, So the evidence someone might demand of me that gods exist is ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I mean I believe that Im a god, so that also challenges what kind of "evidence" people might look for, because I don't believe I need to be able to manifest some visibly extant and completely unexplainable by any other means kinda power to call myself that. So if that's the proof someone wants then that's not really gonna apply.

I argue subjective reality is more important here than consensus reality (though "PCPG" -- peer-corroborated personal gnosis -- is an interesting phenomenon!) with regards to the matter of "evidence" because quite frankly I don't care if it's something anyone else can perceive. There are psychology professionals who still refuse to believe Im one person sharing a body (or "one identity state" whatever the medical model is, i don't care) despite having a DID diagnosis and academic accounts that corroborate things like my system-mates having different pain tolerance, or being affected by substances differently, or not actually even sharing the same mental illnesses as me. But we still exist as multiple people sharing a body regardless. Likewise, I don't care if my gods or religious experiences are "real" or not because they are 1. experienced and observed by me, the only person I can account for even technically existing and experiencing consciousness and 2. they impact my life and perspective and sense of self in ways you can see from the changes in my behavior and attitude in life so they exist by virtue of my experiencing them and them impacting me.

Whether you think they exist in the same way I do is maybe a different matter, though. Like, my girlfriend is a Reform Jewish conversion candidate and has to reconcile my experiences that she's experienced secondhand with monotheism and believes that it could be G-d manifesting in different ways to different people, especially with the overlaps she sees in my own "domains" as a god and what she sees in Judaism -- themes of survival and caring for the oppressed and outcast most notably. Meanwhile someone else might view it as an extension of my neurodivergencies, my "magical thinking" and plurality. It's easy for someone else to believe my religious possession experiences are caused exclusively by our DID even though everyone who was around at the time it happened, both in and outside the system, would tell you very very differently, myself included. And again, even if it is, it's real enough in my experience to impact me in externally observable and personally meaningful ways, so I wouldn't really care if that was the case or not. Plus if anything, it might prove to some degree the existence of a being that I at least experience as being a god? ? Even if someone else wouldn't call it one. (And some do!)

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

Wh... why are you acting like it makes no sense to believe in multiple gods with common traits... Like, my best friend and I both have brown hair and brown eyes, like anime, and work at a renaissance faire, that doesn't mean we're both the same person, you know? A lot of gods historically are very similar or may even be considered equivalents (Artemis and Diana, Hermes and Thoth, etc.), but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to consolidate them all, or that polytheistic religions are somehow less valid. Different cultures interpret things differently, and I see no reason why one shouldn't be able to worship multiple pantheons. Empanadas are not pastelillos, but that doesn't mean that I can't eat both of them, or that I need to go duel a Mexican to determine which one of us has the right to cook meat pies.

[eatingcroutons]

19 hours ago, NullVector said:

There is an additional complication with belief in god(s), I think. Everyone can more or less agree on what a teapot is, but the same cannot be said for god(s)!

To clarify: I have the same amount of belief in Russell's teapot as I do in claims to the existence of any specific god or supernatural being or power  

[DeltaAro]

14 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Wh... why are you acting like it makes no sense to believe in multiple gods with common traits... Like, my best friend and I both have brown hair and brown eyes, like anime, and work at a renaissance faire, that doesn't mean we're both the same person, you know? A lot of gods historically are very similar or may even be considered equivalents (Artemis and Diana, Hermes and Thoth, etc.), but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to consolidate them all, or that polytheistic religions are somehow less valid. Different cultures interpret things differently, and I see no reason why one shouldn't be able to worship multiple pantheons. Empanadas are not pastelillos, but that doesn't mean that I can't eat both of them, or that I need to go duel a Mexican to determine which one of us has the right to cook meat pies.

Truth claims can be logically incompatible. That doesn't happen with different food recipes. If you believe in Hades and Osiris as distinct entities and believe that they have the powers and perform the tasks as attributed to them by the Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian religion, you subscribe to incompatible truth claims.

 

What happens to humans (their souls) when they leave this earthly plane?

1. Souls are judged by Hades who determines their future fates.
2. Souls are judged by Osiris who determines their future fates.

It cannot be both 1. and 2. without qualification.

 

You need to either invent some ad hoc modification (“some souls are assigned to be judged by Hades, others are assigned to be judged by Osiris”, “Hades and Osiris jointly judge souls”) OR a general maneuver like the one by John Hick:

 

In developing his pluralistic hypothesis, Hick relies heavily on Kant’s distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal, where the former is the world as humanly experienced and the latter is the world an sich, as it is in itself. Hick applies this model directly to the religious Ultimate, distinguishing between the Real as humanly experienced and the Real an sich. For Hick, the personal gods described by the various religions, such as Yahweh, the Trinity, Allah, Shiva and Vishnu are experienced at the phenomenal level, as are the non-personal depictions of the religious ultimate which are characteristic of Eastern religions, such as the Absolute, Brahman and Dharmakaya. The concepts of personae and impersonae are based on our phenomenological experiences of the Real; however, such descriptions cannot be literally applied to the Real an sich, which is transcategorial or ineffable. As Hick states, the Real an sich “cannot be said to be one or many, person or thing, substance or process, good or evil, purposive or non-purposive” (IR, 246). Only purely formal categories can be applied to the Real an sich, such as, for example, that it is the ground of our religious experience. In order for religious experiences to be veridical—which Hick argues for at length—he posits the Real an sich as “the necessary postulate of the pluralistic religious life of humanity” (IR, 249). In other words, in order to avoid the extremes of religious exclusivism, where only one religion accurately describes the Real, and religious non-realism, where all religious experience is based on human projection, Hick posits the transcategorial Real as the ground for all authentic religious experience, though the Real in itself is not describable by any one religion.

 

– Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: John Hick

2 hours ago, eatingcroutons said:

To clarify: I have the same amount of belief in Russell's teapot as I do in claims to the existence of any specific god or supernatural being or power  

It may feel like nitpicking but now it might perhaps be a good time to clarify “supernatural”… For some people already psychophysical causation would be supernatural.

 

A “supernatural power” is such a broad and rough concept that the analogy to the china teapot orbiting Earth, which is very specific, seems to really break down, imho.

[eatingcroutons]

54 minutes ago, DeltaV said:

It may feel like nitpicking but now it might perhaps be a good time to clarify “supernatural”

I'm not sure the semantic details of my beliefs are particularly important to anyone else, but in my case I'd consider the supernatural to be something that can't be observed/measured/explained by laws of nature.

 

The analogy with the teapot is that I don't believe in things we've got no observable, measurable evidence for.

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

...

1 hour ago, DeltaV said:

 

What happens to humans (their souls) when they leave this earthly plane?

1. Souls are judged by Hades who determines their future fates.
2. Souls are judged by Osiris who determines their future fates.

 

I dunno, let's ask Wikipedia:

 

Quote

Judges of the Underworld[edit]

Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus are the judges of the dead. They judged the deeds of the deceased and created the laws that governed the underworld. However, none of the laws provided a true justice to the souls of the dead, and the dead did not receive rewards for following them or punishment for wicked actions.^[37]

Aeacus was the guardian of the Keys of the Underworld and the judge of the men of Europe. Rhadamanthys was Lord of Elysium and judge of the men of Asia. Minos was the judge of the final vote.

 

Wow, it's almost as if... that question doesn't have any meaning because Hades doesn't judge dead souls. ?

[DeltaAro]

1 hour ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Wow, it's almost as if... that question doesn't have any meaning because Hades doesn't judge dead souls. ? 

Yeah… only that the specific details don't change anything about the general thrust of the argument.

 

Actually, I first wanted to write it that way. But it became quite cumbersome and so I simplified it to “Hades judges the souls” – after all, the judges have been appointed by him.

 

Anyway, more precisely, there are the following two incompatible truth claims:

1. Three judges (Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus) appointed by Hades judge the souls
2. Osiris (assisted by helpers like Anubis, Thoth) judges the souls.

As said above:

3 hours ago, DeltaV said:

If you believe in Hades and Osiris as distinct entities and believe that they have the powers and perform the tasks as attributed to them by the Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian religion, you subscribe to incompatible truth claims. 

 

1 hour ago, eatingcroutons said:

The analogy with the teapot is that I don't believe in things we've got no observable, measurable evidence for. 

See point 2 an 4 here. Especially the problem of subjective (phenomenal) consciousness, which in other humans can't be measured or observed. But we certainly believe it exists. So belief without observable, measurable evidence isn't necessarily absurd (like belief in Russell's teapot is) and in the case of consciousness (which may have been the starting point of the whole “spirit”/“gods” thing) it is actually very weird to be skeptical.