Wikipedia defines logic as the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration.
Logic, as well as mathematics, formalize our system of thought. In a lot of cases we are already thinking logically when we go through our daily routine and are faced with propositions. The issue comes when we THINK we are acting logically and in fact, allowing our desires and biased world views to get in the way. When I have debated with people in the past and finally got them down to admitting that they believe something ‘because they want to believe it’ I have felt its a wonderful thing. Not because I won, I didn’t.. they still believe what they want to. However now they are being intellectually honest with themselves.
Of course I am no Vulcan. I don’t mean to imply that I walk around being more logical and thinking more clearly than everyone else. Just like the people that I reduced down to that admission of desire, I think I am being logical when I am fact am not. I am certain after some latter introspection that my position in some of the arguments I am referring to above were equally as illogical or based on weak induction, but I just was better in pointing out the flaws in the others argument. I know this because in other situations I was at the blunt end of the obvious stick.
This is why studying logic, and understanding the rules of it is so important. That way when you have the time, you can sit back and think about the positions you believe and determine if they are in fact well supported logically from the premises you have, or not.
Another really good reason to study logic is you get insight as to the importance of premises. When two different people are coming into a discussion with different premises in mind, they will never agree. The perfect example of this is the abortion argument. The pro-lifers and pro-choice people have different fundamental premises that they then build from to come to their abortion stance. The only way people convert from one side to the other is to change their premises (often a premise is the conclusion of some previous position, and sometimes its not).
What I intend to do is a mini-logic tutorial. Every few days, and at least once a week, I will discuss something in the world of logic and build out. It can serve as a refresher, a Logic 101 introduction, or just good read in case you can’t fall asleep.
I Highly recommend picking up a real logic book tho too. What would be great is if you would comment on the ‘lessons’ in order to help clarify things, give additional examples, etc so that other readers can benefit from the insight we all get when we make an effort to try to think clearly about thinking.
I am taking a class on Japanese philosophy, and had to read ‘The Code of the Samurai.’
The ‘Code of the Samurai’ is as relevant today as it was at the time of its writing. While it is true that it is less likely that the book will be read by those that are young or warriors today, it still speaks to a number of core values we hold today. Taira Shigesuke makes reference many times to the fact that it is currently a peaceful time and that many of the warrior class do not have to fight as they did in the past, showing that the book is written even for people that are administrators.
The code seems to be a guide book for living with a sense of honor and purpose. Today, as it was 400 years ago, we live in a world with a relative peace (obvious current engagements aside) but that requires our commitment to maintaining a level of excellence that would be required if things changed for the worse. The Samurai, from Shigesuke’s writings, seem to be as much administrators as warriors at the time. The code lays out in common sense terms value statements that would help any modern day warrior (or weekend warrior for that matter) better their lives and make those around them safer.
In the section “Managing a Home,” Shigesuke explains why it is dishonorable and cowardly to beat your wife (or anyone that presumabily can’t fight back). In ‘Severing Relationships’ he explains a piratical way to deal with people that you would choose not to associate with, but who you must have a working relationship with in order to better achieve a goal or job. There is a wealth of advice that, applied with only minor changes if any, work in almost any job or way of life.
While most of the teachings could be translated into modern day rules of life, there are a few that I think are culturally much more limited to the time period and not really applicable to todays world. The primary point subject revolve around dealing with relations. Shigesuke goes into great detail about what type of relationships one should have with your elder brothers sons, younger brothers sons, daughters sons, etc. Based on the principles of the time, the rules were sensible as to not offend another family or ones place in your own family. It suggested a certain distance in the way you would deal with different members based on what are, by todays standards, artificial social institutions.
Its a very quick read, only about 100 pages (I finished in about 2 hours) and worth the time. Hey, if nothing else you can say that you know the Code of the Samurai, but it be ashame if thats all you took away from this classic.
When you read a book like Richard Dawkins ‘The God Delusion’ you will most likely be in 1 of 2 camps. Either you were already an Athiest/Agnostic and you agree or you are a Thiest and you think he is crazy, mean, and stupid.
Well, for the record I agree with him, but I just don’t see his book convincing that many people. The arguements are perfect assuming you are willing to accept soem of the premises. Some of those premises are offensive to religious people, and they will most likely shut down.
But thats a book, not a conversation with a religious person. So how do you have a conversation with one?
I think a line needs to be drawn between challenging and offensive. If you think a statement is offensive, it should not be made.. All that you would be doing making athiests appear rude. Besides, you don’t destroy a castle by destroying a few posts, you need to destroy the foundation.
A religious persons foundation is, to them, more than the foundation of science is to a secularist. For a secularist, any rules, properties, and knowledge are subject to change. It is acknologed that secularists accept a certain process for properly decoding the universe as well as possible, but those conclusions and even the elements of how they test may have to change based on new evidence. Essentially, a secularist is willing to take off his/her glasses and put new ones on.
A religious individual has a different problem. They are willing to change certain conclusions within the scope allowed by their view of the world, but they believe that their glasses are required. They just don’t see a way out of it and (whats worse) really don’t want to find one. Thats how you get the complete logical error of implying that the universe must have a cause, ie God, but then not requiring a cause for God.
So when I talk to a religious individual (I don’t mean a Young-earth’r that thinks the world is 6000 years old, they are simply hopeless in my mind), I find it more valuble to talk about religion and values on a personal level. When you take a subitle approach like that you are more likely to engage the person in a deeper level.
This is not a cop out because of the religosity of an individual, but just the way we deal with any belief system (religious or otherwise). We invest ourselves in our beliefs in religion, science, values, etc and when those beliefs are attacked, human nature is to respond as tho our possession was attacked.
So unless you just want to mess with the person, a more strategic and subitle conversation may be called for. Use the knowledge of the beliefs to help them realize and have to explain problems.. I figure they should leave the conversation going “i cant believe that guy doesnt believe in god, he is such a nice guy. When you are done, they will still most likely believe in a God and their religion, and that is fine. Who cares? I don’t believe there is an after-life I am saving them from by convincing them of something else. If they want to believe in a religion that is ok, as long as they become more moderate in their view point.
The, um.. ok, excuse the phrase but, Holy Grail of the Athiest Movement should be, in my mind, to establish the same moral authority as a different religion has to the religious person. Sure, there are some religions that simply say they have the complete truth and you can’t be a good person unless you are that religion. But most religions just say they have the complete truth, and allow for good people to be other religions as well.
If we can get more understanding and acknologment that a ‘Good person’ and ‘Moral person’ doesn’t have to be religious AND convince people that morality doesn’t have to come from religion at all, then non-belief can become a more acceptable world view.
There is an article on 20-20 about a 13 year old girl that admitted at her school that she was an Atheist (link above)
But a few first thoughts about this article. First, not all christians are such bigots. In fact most are probabily not (tho the percentage will vary from location to location and I would assume the bible belt where the literal word of God is in their hands (a book that they can’t even read in the origional) rather than in their hearts have a higher persentage of these), the story is telling for a few major things.
First… How did this happen to begin with? The young girl who is still at an age where peer pressure kept many of us from saying what we believed, standing up for someone that was being picked on, etc. Yet she was forced to either engage in a practice that is completely outside of her belief structure (praying) or face ridicule by others. This is one of the primary reasons that there is a separation of Church and State. If this had been a private religious school, then the situation would be different; She could have talked to her parents about leaving the school. But this was a tax-payer funded education program and athletic program which her parents were paying into.
Secondly… Who can miss the Pastors wifes statement ‘They are good christian kids’. Its fairly obvious where she is coming from. While its possible this could just be based on the language people use in that area, its more likely in my mind that this shows a bias in her mind towards christians.
Now, I don’t want to suggest the whole town is full of bigotted idiots that would have burned her as a witch a few hundred years or anything, but everyone in the town that is letting this happen still should be ashamed. There are most likely at least a few people in that town that would have been at the head of the burn her crowd a few hundred years ago, but there are a few of every type of bigot in every large enough group. But why do they accept that she is such a problem child now? I mean, when she was on all the sports teams and it was not known that she was an Athiest, there were no issues with her were there?
Prayer should not be allowed in school. It isolates the individual that does not agree and can cause to reprocussions.
If you disagree with this, just consider your own child in a public school that perhaps one day has a majority Islamic students or some other religion. If your a christian do you want your child be the one that is pointed out for not praying in the direction of Mecca? Do you want the administration to single out your child because of the same fact? I know many christians that will say that they want prayer in schools, but would freak out at this possible scenario. Put yourself in her shoes or if you lack the creativity, put yourself in the shoes of the christian living in a non-american controlled location in an islamic country and then decide if Church and State should be separate.
First, I want to preface this with the following statement. I am not qualified to have an opinion on the inner workings and theoretical bases of String Theory or any other high level Physics. As such, I am not commenting on the absolute truth of the theory or attempting to poke holes in it.
The question I have is one that is more of categorization. Where does it belong? Is it truly theoretical science that is not just giving us a tool to better predict but is in fact explaining some underlying nature of the cosmos? Or is it just a tool, though an amazing one, showing that just as different types of geometry can be used to explain things in 3d space, so can different theories of physics help us predict the outcomes of various physical phenomena.
So if you really think about the question I am posing, you will find that I am begging the question on something, and begging on it big. I am in some way assuming that we can have an explanation of the underlying nature of the cosmos beyond predictive tools. This is not as simple a question as one might first think. Much of the history or philosophy can be defined as attempts to answer either the same problems in different ways or answering different problems using the same words. This creates conflicts, translation issues, etc. We have a certain set of concepts (of course we can add the # of concepts to us as well) which we can use in order to attempt to explain the world and events we see. This technique works fairly well in our scope of space. If I talk to you about a brown table with a flower on it, you have a general idea of what I am talking about. If you ask questions, I can attempt to answer them as well and we get along just fine in life. Of course the concept of the table would be more difficult to explain to a conscious mind that perhaps didn’t live in a physical reality (lets say an AI of some sort). We talk in categories that may not be applicable to other views of reality.
So assuming you accept my AI example (if you don’t like Tables, I am sure you can come up with some alternative idea that would provide the same issue. Unless the AI is forced in a 3d world, it may not understand 3d at all), then you accept that different aspects of reality may require different categories. We are coded for a certain set of categories which are not directly correlated to the very small or the very large (quantum physics and relativistic space). This doesn’t imply we can not do anything or predict anything in this realm, only that while the analogy you automatically draw in our mind when I describe a table to you by recalling a brown table you saw in a store may not be as strong as comparing to the data we see coming out of an experiment. We have the data, and its real, but the concepts we use beyond pure mathematics to understand the reality may be meaningless beyond giving us comfort. This is not to say we should do away with those ways of describing it, only that we need to be clear that these analogies are weak and fall apart.This is why we have the wave-particle duality with light (and everything else it seems). Our concepts are not complete descriptions of the event that is a photon of light. In this case, our math is not even a complete description of the event (at least at the Physics levels that I have taken classes on).
So when someone tells you that the world is made up of ‘strings’ it may be ok to correct them and say that no, its not. Strings are just a useful concept to describe our incomplete understanding of the physical world, if String Theory is true at all. Go Large Hadron Collider!! Find those Higgs Bosons!!!
On the recommendation of a philosophy professor I know, I recently decided to read David Hume’s ‘Dialogues concerning Natural Religion’. I have a certain fascination with Hume, who many consider the original philosophical skeptic (at least the first true one since the Ancient Greeks). This is the first in a series of thoughts regarding the text.
On reading this short (relatively) essay, I was struck the the already known realization that mankind has simply not changed much in the last few thousand years. Our ideas and beliefs taken as an average tend to be about the same. True, our factual understanding has changed dramatically leading to better understandings of certain processes and physical/biological interactions. We now understand the movement of the planets, how food keeps us alive, and that blood letting does nothing to assist in recovery.
But in a period in history where religion and science/reason are at particular odds, reading a book published almost 250 years ago that could easily be published, with a few changes to the references of scientific knowledge at the time, today by the likes of Richard Dawkins is truely amazing.
Hume makes it clear in the beginning of the book that he is not denying that there is a ‘god’ in terms of the cause of the beginning of the universe. And why should we hold this against him? First off he seems what he decides as a starting point is God would not be acceptible to most if not all spiritualists today. Also, the scientific knowledge at the time was much more lacking than now, and the God of the Gaps was more reasonable because there were much larger gaps.
After this, I feel that he is having fun with the concepts. For those that have not read the essay, the format is a dialectic like you would read in Plato or some of the earlier philosophy texts. I think this format is fantastic to get the point across to a less text book minded audience. Many people I know admit that they don’t like books when its mostly narrative and prefer dialog. How ever are these people going to enjoy a philosophy text? And what topic is more critical to the average person than that of the existance or non-existance of God? Or more specifically, the nature of God even given its necessity as a first cause.
The dialog consists of 3 player and one person who is watching. The first character, Cleanthes, is the theist who attempts to prove the existence of god by rational thought and it is this character that I want to talk about in this entry (I will talk about others in later entries). I only want to concentrate on the first few sections for now.
Cleanthes lays out the argument for intelligent design. Note now, that the intelligent design (ID) argument is not new, it is not science, it is a theological principle that is much older than the current debate that rages in our schools. Perhaps the only difference between 200 years ago and today is that the proponents of ID are less likely to push that it must be the Christian god that did the designing, as that admission hurts the argument for including the teaching in school.
Cleanthes uses the example of a House and the order of the universe to show that there must be an intelligence behind the the universe. We all now the main points of the ID proposition (if not, wikipedia it). Philo, who is another character in Hume’s play, has a much more skeptical position for believing in God. He does not in fact believe that reason can lead to any undenyable proofs or theorems regarding a supreme being. He points out that Human knowledge is suspect in all situations, and it is only by degrees that an individual assumes an outcome will be similar or the cause is similar to a similar effect. If all conditions are exactly the same, history has pointed to a similar outcome, but he points out that as soon as anything changes, even something that does not appear to be core to the cause, our assurance in an exactly similar outcome becomes less strong.
He is in fact laying out the argument for the fallacy of weak analogy. This is what ID essentially is, argument by analogy. He points out that while an intelligence is a possible cause (he seems to allow this point), it is by no means required or even supported by the overwelming evidence we see. Intelligence is not everywhere but is apparently a rare thing. Most animals do not display intelligence to a point that we would consider it worthy to compare to a God’s nature and most objects have no intelligence or life at all. He makes fascinating point that even as we look at other worlds, we do not see that life and intellegence are a norm, but are in fact apparently an anomaly.
As Neal Tyson points out at Beyond Belief (do a search on Youtube), the universe is full of places that would kill us instantly. This implies either unintelligent design.
So by what evidence to we take intelligence and make it a required first cause?
While an intersting article, I think that there is a false analogy here. He states “Zealous atheism renews some of the worst features of Christianity and Islam. Just as much as these religions, it is a project of universal conversion. Evangelical atheists never doubt that human life can be transformed if everyone accepts their view of things, and they are certain that one way of living - their own, suitably embellished - is right for everybody”
The same could be said for someone that believes in Democracy, or someone that believes in womens rights, or someone that believes.. well anything really. Pick one of your most important issues, like human rights andyou will find some objections from someone about you (or your country) forcing your ideas on them. The exception being that if you don’t have any issues at all of course.
This is not a question of how religion/Athiesm spread, but a question of how humans share ideas.
The Athiest proposition is that religion unnaturally hinders rational thought by putting forth propositions that while not disprovable, offer no support apart from Oral Tradition. The Athiest position is that any proposition that is seriously considered should be to some degree testable.
Because Athiests talk about Religion, there is a tendency to treat the tactics as a religion, however this is a dead end since the overlap in tactics is one that above religion or athiesm or science. The overlap is due to human nature and a cultural desire to share ideas that you deem important.
We form groups and are very good, as a species, to other members of that group. Think of how good someone is to their family pet for example. They have offically added that dog, cat, whatever into the group that they see as their cultural organization. That group can include alot of different people, ideas, beliefs, etc. It can include whole nations such as what could be described 100 years ago as White Mans Burden where all of Western Europe thought itself superior to the rest of the world and felt they had a special place.
Western Europe could group together in this way becasue they had some common set of understanding and therefore could see eachother in a group that, even if not as closely related as their own country, was more closely related to them than say Japan, India, or Africa.
Now, when ideas intrude which go against some fundamental base of the cultural group, whatever it is, we rebel. I think of how many people get worked up with the question of speaking English vs Spanish in the USA. Its just an example, but I think it demonstrates the issue. I know people that live in areas where everyone speaks english and still it bugs them.
Athiests are bugged too. They see 9-11 happen and realize its based on Religious Fundamentalism. They look at history and see a Dark Age that lasted one thousand years because questioning the established truth was reason to be burned. Finally, they see a world today where you don’t get a strange look if you say your Jewish, Islamic, or Christian (even Buddhist) but if you say your Athiest then there seems to be no social fopa in attacking, or saying that you can’t be a moral person.
There is no way to look back at the worlds greatest thinkers and determine which were Athiests, Agnostics, or Thiests. I think there was a fair mix, at least of the latter two up till the last hundred years). But it is completely fair to say that the thinkers over the past 2000 years up to and not entirely including the previous 100 years could not openly state athiestic or truely agnostic (which to many religious people is the same thing as athiests with the exception that they may still have a hope of being converted) without fear of jail, excile, or perhaps, for a long period of time, death.
So if Athiests are talking as loud as the preacher you hear every single sunday and yet its not good taste to suggest they be silent, perhaps they aren’t really trying to convert you. Perhaps they are simply enjoying the first time period since Rome when christian where it was ok for them to speak their mind. Perhaps they are encouraging the others in the population who have no faith and do not believe, but go to mass every sunday because they no other way to start living truely to their own beliefs. Perhaps they are just sick and tired of taking so much crap for so long, and can’t hold it in any more.
I recently had a lenghty discussion with a co-worker over many beers about the nature of a moral or ethical person. You see, this individual knows that I have a young child at home who I love very much. He also knows that I have been happily married for 5 years, love my wife, and would not do anything ever hurt her. He knows that I have a strong work ethic and do not believe that the end justifies the means. Finally, he knows that I am a agnostic in the true sense of the word.
This, it came out, shocked him. He truly does not understand how a person can be moral without being religious. Now, he is not so myopic to think that only someone with a Christian value system and religious upbringing can be a moral individuals, but he does believe there needs to be some religion at the root of the moral system that a person employs, otherwise, as he put it, what keeps a person in line.
There were a number of flaws in his argument and position no doubt. To start with, his examples that he kept bringing up.. I love my wife and I love my child. Now he also is a parent, so the use of this example shocked me. How many parents out there love their children for the sake of their religion? In fact, if a person person loves their child largely or really in any major way only because of the underpinnings of teaching and a religious system, I question their fitness as a parent. After all, my bond with my child happened the day he was born and continues to grow with as he does, but if the relationship was based off of a religious requirement either entirely or in the majority, then that is not love but obligation.
I have no doubt that there have been and are people that have this sort of relationship with their children and even their spouse, but especially in the case of their children, I don’t think this is the norm. Granted, the way the relationship between my son and me develops and our roles are very based on a system that is cultural, but it is not a religious. This is how you can have so many religions with essentially the same family structure (as a Side note, I would recommend reading the Selfish-Gene by Richard Dawkens for a more evolutionary approach to even the family structure).
Here is the basic misconception by so many people. They believe that morality is defined by religion. This is not true, and all it takes is a look at history to figure this out. If morality was defined by religion, than Christians would have a few choices options to justify the fact that what was a moral action has changed considerably over the past 2000 years under the same religion. The fact that morality has changed is usually justified by the fact that society has become more civilized and there is no excuse for the actions in the past. So you have the situation where someone talks away the fact that the Old Testament documents the extermination and genocide of multiple peoples because they were on ‘gods land’ some 3000 years ago by pointing out that everyone did it back then, but today it is highly unethical, moral, and in fact evil (this term can have a secularist definition that matches in all practical ways the religious definition) what the Germans tried to do in world war II. By the way, I think this is exactly the right position to take on this issue. 3000 years ago as tribes of people were displaced due to a lack of recourses and growth in population, it was a Take or Die situation in many cases. While we should not condone the actions taken in the old testament, or the fact that it was justified by priests that attributed it to a God’s orders rather than the a more practical need, it is probable that it was done for survival. I wonder if the fact that it was later put into the official history as ‘we were told to do this by God’ is a sign of some cultural regret from a moral society that understood that what was done was necessary, but needed help moving past it due to either the actions taken or the personal losses they received during the wars. However, that is just a thought on my part and I am not a biblical scholar or a sociologist.
The truth of the matter then, is not that Morality is supported by religion. It is clearly that religion supports the morality of the times. Religious changes and reformations and divisions have occurred as societies change and moral and ethical views expand or contract. The religion either keeps up and changes its teaching, becomes marginalize, or fights back by behaving as a totalitarian government.
Some religious individuals may say that if man is inherently moral, after all, we are created in Gods’ image. That given, they go on to say that religion is the way to bring the most out of that potential. Ok, its tough to argue this first point. After all we are firmly outside the realm of experience and logic; This is Metaphysics at its best. But I’ll make a concession here. I will agree that Mankind is inherently a moral being, starting out moral, with a potential to develop or diminish those traits. Where I will disagree is that while the religious individual believes this morality is stemmed from the way we were created by God, I will contend that through evolutionary processes man has developed as a social creature and part of that nature is a propensity to act in a moral way. Not because moral actions are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but because they on the whole provide the best advantage for the individual, their closer relatives, and their species in general to prosper.
Right and Wrong still exist, but they are a emergent characteristic, just like consciousness, from our process of thinking and interacting with our environment.
Given this agreement in principle if disagreement in method, the religious individual now would need to show that ONLY religion provides the environment for enhancing this propensity for moral action. Furthermore, they should have to prove that ONLY THEIR religion properly does this, as religions vary so much over the world that there is no single quality (even the worship of a God for reward in heaven) that all share, allowing the possibility that a philosophical system could do equally well as religions in general. This is similar to justifying that, given Intelligent Design is true (eheh), their god and not the spaghetti monster is the only one that could have been the designer.
Now, something I have not addressed here is what is Morality. That is of course, the pink elephant in the room that I really should address, and will in a follow up post.
I’ve added a book section that can be reached by clicking books (or by clicking here).
The purpose of the page will be to collect a certain subset of philosophical and historic texts which are now part of the public domain and post them in smaller bit sized pieces. I this will allow people to read sections and, more importantly, provide comments closer to the text they are referring too.
I have started to post Dialogues of Natural Religion, by David Hume. Other texts will follow with time.
I want to add that the major source of texts I will be using will be the Gutenberg project, and suggest that if you find them to be as great a resource as I have, you donate to them to help keep this alive.
I just finished reading a great book call “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart Ehrman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman ).
I would strongly recommend this book to anyone that is interested in the history of the bible for either the purposes of their own religious investigation or because they are skeptics that are looking for a further understanding of a document that has shaped western history.The short of it is that over the past two thousand years, as people have copied the bible as well as translated it over and over again, which of course lead to errors.It baffles me that there are so many people that don’t realize that this is the case and believe that their translation (yes, you even have ‘the new translation’ which should be a dead giveaway that something was wrong with the old one) is accurate to whatever an original one would be.
Dr Ehrman discusses the early church history and gives props to Christianity for doing what it can to propagate the writings of its belief in an attempt to have a consistent view of what Christianity should mean across the Roman Empire.Let us not forget the Roman Empire was big and lines of communication were slow and not effective; Think that game you play in grade school where you whisper a message into someone’s ear and they do the same, with the line being hundreds of thousands of people long.That is, unless you made use of the written word.Issue was that the scribes (professionals) were expensive and the early Christians were not a rich or educated group all over the empire.There were also times where they were forced to be underground as well, meaning it was even more difficult to copy something by a professional unless they were part of the church.
Letters, such as the ones that Paul wrote and are now part of the traditional bible, would be sent to a city with the instructions that it should be copied and sent to other cities as well.Each time this occurred you had the possibility of errors as well as a local Christian changing something to fit more what they believed.
Also, the vast majority of people were not literate back then to the point of being able to read and compare these types of documents, meaning there was less error checking as well.
I could go on, or you could read the book, and I recommend you do.
In fact, it’s a perfect Birthday or Christmas present to someone that is religious.Now, for the sake of fairness, I will admit right here I am firmly agnostic when it comes to religion and God, however I don’t want to see more people read this book because it will hurt their faith.I want to see more people read this because it will hurt their orthodoxy.People that believe in the literal interpretation of the bible are scary in my mind, because when I look at the bible the things they can justify by using it are truly terrible.Women are second class citizens without question, Slavery is allowed, in the Old testament the rule is if your brother converts to some other religion, you must kill him, etc.
Even the founding fathers of the United States absolutely must go to hell according to the New Testament (Romans 13:1-2) – “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation”.
Ok, none of those statements after I mention birthday present have anything to do directly with the book, but seriously, the content of the bible has been used to justify some really scary stuff in the past. All it takes is the right speaker to twist a persons perspective by using the bible as a lever and bam, you have a religious person doing something terrible like shooting someone that works at an abortion clinic, convincing people that the end of the world is coming in 2012, or intellectually stunting their children by telling them that the world is 6000 years old.
