BBO Discussion Forums: Mother Teresa - BBO Discussion Forums

nige1, you still don't get it. If you are going to make fun of us for disagreeing (and giving reasons/arguments why) with the Nobel committee, you should try to address what we write first. This is just common courtesy. If you are not interested in addressing anything we write (and clearly you are not), you can just write your opinion without your cute little digs on the atheists here (a word that you still don't know what it means).

kenberg, on 2015-January-12, 18:02, said:

I would not make either of these statements. They are nonsensical, the word "god" is undefined. If someone tells me they believe in god, my response is "I have no idea what you're talking about."

mgoetze, on 2015-January-13, 06:43, said:

Fair enough, and that occurred to me. But the question was asked in these basic terms. I could have said a little more. God is undefined, but I cannot think of any reasonable way of defining god that would lead me to change my answer. As I understand it, some forms of theism hold that god exists: He set the universe in motion and observes the result, but never intervenes. Maybe I am mis-stating their position, but to my mind that belief is no different from my view that there is not a god. God did the Big Bang, and then he retired. What sort of religious belief is that, and why should I care whether it is true even if it is somehow meaningful?

Many references to god are really just a manner of speaking. Insurance companies sometimes include a clause that they are not financially responsible for acts of god. This is not a theological position and I cannot successfully sue toi insist that they must pay my claim unless they can give conclusive proof that it was really god who did it. I see "god vreated the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in it" is the same sort of thing. For the existence of god to matter, he has to actually do something, now and/or in the future. And that, I believe, does not happen.

My life has been such that the main reason I might wish there to be a god is so that there is someone who I can thank. I could say that I have been blessed with good health. But, for me, blessed is just a manner of speaking. My children have grown up well, far better than I have any right to expect given my parenting. A real blessing. I was brought up properly, and so I am suppose d to thank someone for these blessings. Alas, there is not god to thank. I have been lucky, I just have, I have known people who have not been so lucky. It was not all my doing, but it also was not an act of god. So I believe.

gwnn, on 2015-January-13, 01:43, said:

I quoted what I learnt about about Mother Teresa but I don't know how much of it is true. I quoted some criticisms of her but I'm poorly equipped to assess them. My tuppence worth on some of the criticisms ...

• Religion and Politics . Mother Teresa campaigned against abortion, divorce, and so on. Some RC doctrines (e.g. on contraception) clash with principles, in which I believe. For example I believe that overpopulation and the spread of sexual diseases like HIV are "bad things". The rights and principles that underlie my view are hypotheses that I can't logically justify. They are a matter of faith. I accept that others, e.g. many Christians start from different postulates. I think Mother Teresa had a right to hold her beliefs. An analogy: I disagree with some of Blackshoe's politics -- but I think he has a right to his beliefs -- and I don't think he's a bad person.
• Charitable contributions. I don't know how much money Mother Teresa collected or what she did with it. I guess that she lacked financial expertise but she did the best she could. She might have spread the money too thinly over too many projects. She might have handed it over to others whom she trusted. I doubt that she kept any of it for herself.
• Medical care. I've read some criticisms but, again, I lack details of people dates and places. Mother Teresa had only 6 month's medical training. Presumably, she concentrated mainly on nursing and left medical-care to doctors. Should she be blamed for their short-comings? Were contemporary assessments favourable? Did criticisms mostly surface after her death? Were the criticisms of her -- or of her colleagues or successors? What was Indian government policy about access to medicines? Another analogy: My experience of the NHS in the UK is favourable. I think general standards are good. Nevertheless, newspapers carry regular reports of horrendous anomalies, especially in the care of children, the aged, and the handicapped. Some failings are caused by rogue nurses and doctors but many are due to daft government policies.

  gwnn, on 2015-January-13, 01:43, said:

  If you are not interested in addressing anything we write (and clearly you are not), you can just write your opinion without your cute little digs on the atheists here (a word that you still don't know what it means).
  I shall probably continue to enjoy addressing Gwnn's posts and writing my opinions and trying to learn what I don't know

nige1, on 2015-January-12, 12:13, said:

Don't worry. I could not complain. But, of course, the point is that I know who put the stuff in the stockings... and it wasn't the guy who I thought it was when I was a child. That doesn't make Christmas eve less fun, though.

Santa, god, it is the same thing for me. I know now that the Earth was formed by coalescing dust particles over many years and not in a couple of days by a god, like I was told as a kid. That doesn't make our planet less fascinating or worthwhile.

Rik

Trinidad, on 2015-January-13, 15:11, said:

I would think that it would make it far more fascinating! I always wonder at the paucity of the imagination that can look at a star-filled clear night, the Milky Way stretching across the sky, the myriad points of light, some of which are not mere stars but galaxies, and think that the notion of their ineffable god is 'the' source of awe.

But when we realize WHAT we are looking at....that photons striking our eyes may have been emitted from a star before humans existed as a species (ok, maybe we need a telescope to see that far, in the sense of being able to perceive enough photons to notice a star or galaxy that far away)...and that it is all the result of natural processes on a vast scale....to me that is AWESOME. Add to it that current understanding is that all that we can see is embedded in far more stuff that we literally can't perceive, and that all of it is immersed in dark energy as well....the sheer beauty of all of that gives me what I suspect a religious person would experience as a spiritual feeling. I couldn't imagine shutting my mind to reality to the degree needed to ascribe all of this to that tiny concept of god....and tiny it is, no matter how the religious will argue. Gods are the creations of one species on one small planet in a modest solar system on one arm of a fairly typical spiral galaxy. Meanwhile, the universe is so much bigger than our conceits.

I find all of this...cosmology, evolution, the origins of homo sapiens, fascinating, and have many 'books for the intelligent layperson' type publications and only regret that I will never be more than a layperson on these topics. Throwing all that intellectual pleasure away and substituting 'god did it' would be a crime.

mikeh, on 2015-January-13, 15:37, said:

This might be as good a one sentence summary of my thoughts on this as I could hope for.

nige1, on 2015-January-13, 14:18, said:

If she had offered nursing or medical care I for one would be far more sympathetic towards her.

Read Hitchens' The Missionary Position and see whether you are inclined to offer the same excuses for MT.

nige1, on 2015-January-13, 14:18, said:

Why are you unable to articulate reasons that justify your view that overpopulation and the spread of disease are 'wrong'? Seems to me to be pretty simple.

We are animals. Whether you believe in that evolutionary pressures act only on the genes or on the organism or the species levels, or some combination, we have evolved to want to survive, to want to reproduce. While that basic drive suggests that we'd see breeding as 'good', we also have a brain able, to a limited degree, to look into the future and to evaluate, crudely, risk.

It is easy to see that overpopulation will result in a horrific situation for almost all forms of multi-cellular life, and in particular for humans. It hardly requires 'faith' to see that overpopulation is a bad thing. Indeed, oddly enough it seems that it requires 'faith' to block the ability to see this. Witness the Catholic Church...it is 'faith' that blocks the acceptance of contraception. As for disease, you must be joking when you say you can't think of a rational reason to be against the spread of disease.

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She wasn't, it seems, really at all interested in providing health care at all. She wasn't Florence Nightingale, hamstrung by a lack of personal qualifications and unable to attract/hire competent medical personnel. She was fixated on death: she wanted the dying to come closer to Christ, and she was happy as long as the dying were being preached to as they lay in pain.

Was she 'worse' than the Indian health care system? My suspicion is 'no', in that the Indian health care system, from what little I know of it, really doesn't exist for the poorest of the poor, and that is where she operated. In fact, my understanding, which is imperfect, is that she catered, in her macabre way, to those who had no other support system at all. It isn't, then, that she made things worse. it is that she didn't make them better, at least in the here and now, and that she used her resources not to improve lives but in an almost surely mistaken attempt to improve souls.

She never could have made more than a tiny dent in the living conditions of those to whom she ministered, but the reason I voted for her to be misguided, and why I consider her to have been monstrous, was that she never tried. She raised all that money (more power to her: had her mission been just slightly different in focus that would have made her a wonderful human) based largely on a false image, and whether she created or even permitted that image in the first place is beside the point. She certainly, in the later years, traded on that image.

Do we consider the doctors who inflicted syphilis on black prison inmates in the US, in the 1940s and 50s, and left them untreated so as to be able to study the disease to be 'good'? They thought they were doing good, but I think most would now say they were misguided or worse. So too with MT.

mikeh, on 2015-January-14, 10:40, said:

For some, evolution is more than a scientific theory. Like Mike, I believe that that survival of humanity is a positive "good". Although other planetary species might differ, It accords with my instincts, and I'm happy to go along with that postulate. Can anybody come up with a logical derivation? Until then, it can only be a matter of belief. I also believe in other rights and principles, none of which have a scientific or logical basis. One of my beliefs is that others are entitled to hold and express beliefs that differ from mine.

mikeh, on 2015-January-14, 10:40, said:

Mother Teresa's stated motives seem to have been kind. Her nursing seems to have reduced the suffering of many. She nursed people according to their religion (e.g. she read the quran to dying muslims). Charitable contributions did buy medicine and medical care (although, for all I know, they might have bought more).

nige1, on 2015-January-14, 13:25, said:

What is it then?

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Yes. It is the reason we are here.

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"Then" has arrived.

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MT bought VERY little medicine or medical care. And many people in her "houses of the dying" we're not dying when they got there. In the link I posted above there is a link to an interview with a volunteer, who witnessed all this.

One of the reasons MT was not exposed for what she was is that a Potemkin Village was set up for the few prominent Westerners who saw her projects first-hand:

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Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position, p.10

Hitchens was himself quoting a reporter who was present during that visit.

Vampyr, on 2015-January-14, 13:48, said:

"Survival of the human race is the reason we are here" is almost a tautology. But why is human survival good? I believe it's good but you might argue that it's bad for other species and the planet. Survival is a basic instinct; but some of our mores restrain instinctive behaviour; so why is human survival a good that underpins a moral precept? I've also read arguments by MikeH and Trinidad. Thus far, however, I've been unable get from "is" to "ought" by science or logic without introducing unproveable hypotheses/postulates, such as "X is good" and "We ought to act so as to foster good (e.g. X)".

Vampyr, on 2015-January-14, 13:48, said:

Does anybody know how much control Mother Teresa had over charitable contributions?

Vampyr, on 2015-January-14, 13:48, said:

Thank you vampyr. I find that strange and worrying. When did the volunteer witness this? Was Mother Teresa there?

Vampyr, on 2015-January-14, 13:48, said:

I watched an interview with a volunteer (and other Christopher Hitchens videos). Most of his criticisms seem to have been of her views on abortion and so on and I can understand how that raised his passions. I haven't read his book. Was his evidence contemporary? Did it involve Mother Teresa herself? Is most other first-hand evidence favourable?

nige1, on 2015-January-14, 14:59, said:

Trying to hold a discussion with you is almost (not quite) as difficult as it used to be trying to discuss matters with Lukewarm. You appear to be speaking the same language, but there is a huge gap in understanding between us.

I think it is founded on the nonsensical notion that there is any form of absolute 'good' or morality. It is nonsensical because the only way that can be 'proved' is through arguments positing that it is so, and thus the arguments are meaningless.

I never suggested that the survival or prosperity of the human race is objectively 'good'. I suggested, as seems obvious enough, that humans, being the result of billions of years of selection pressure, demonstrably favouring the preservation and dominance of traits that increase the odds of propagation of our genes, are, as a species, liable to think or feel that the preservation of the human species is 'good'. It definitely is 'good' from the perspective of the species.

Since you are human, it ought to flow logically that to you it will seem to be good to avoid overpopulation. In other words, as a human, there is no need to have 'faith' that the preservation of the species is good for the species. It is good. For us and our genes.
You need no leap of faith to come to this conclusion.

As to whether it is objectively or absolutely 'good', in terms of the universe, why, if and to the extent you think that question makes any sense, then I grant you that you can't answer it other than based on 'faith'.

You might care to reflect on the proposition that if the only way to answer a question is through faith, then the question isn't worth answering. Another way of looking at that proposition is to say that if the only way to answer a question is through faith, then the question is meaningless.

The fact is that human languages are quite capable of coming up with meaningless statements. 'The next sentence I write is false. The preceding statement is true.'

The fact that I can frame statements that make no sense should be a clue that our minds may entertain similar meaningless, but more subtle, propositions.

nige1, on 2015-January-14, 14:59, said:

It's the selfish gene thing. I can't describe it in a post. I can only recommend Dawkins' excellent so-titled book.

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Yes, those things are more important to me than the survival of the human species. But I don't want it to end while I am still alive!

mikeh, on 2015-January-14, 15:45, said:

No, I think that this is a belief, and that that is not the same as "faith". While it is true that a distinction between the two is not made when the question is about "belief in God or gods", normally when we believe something we have reasons. You or I or Nigel may have the same facts at our disposal, and have differing views of which facts are more important than others. So we can believe different things, but we would be able to state our reasons.

nige1, on 2015-January-14, 14:59, said:

I haven't finished the book, I had started it some time ago, but then it was moved by my partner or cleaner. As this thread progressed I was inspired to find it. I started over, but it is a slim volume. I just haven't had the time in The past few days.

i can't quote the whole book anyway, but I will just mention how he discusses MT's association with the Duvaliers and her great admiration for Mrs. D as a friend of the poor and a wonderful human being. MT received the Haitian Legion of Honour award for this, and didn't publicly comment when the couple stole the National Treasury and fled the country.

And she commented in a press conference:

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As I said, it is a slim volume, and very interesting. I think you would enjoy it.

Vampyr, on 2015-January-14, 16:42, said:

I enjoyed reading Dawkin's books. I watched a few Hitchens' videos but disagree with some of his views (for example my attitude to the US official welcome given to an Irish "freedom fighter" is coloured by my awareness that my uncle was killed by one). Anyway, I rarely read Biography, so I probably won't read Hitchens' book.

The excerpt from Mother Teresa's statement "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people", might be intended to convey that you can offer up your suffering to God. Anyway, her mission was to alleviate suffering and many judged her to be good at it.

A post script that reinforces vampyr's view is Donal MacIntyre's critical report for the New Statesman, featuring highlights from his 2005 channel 5 program "Mother Teresa's Legacy".


http://www.newstates...y-mother-teresa

In fairness, however, Donal published excerpts from the reply of the Missionaries of Charity. They "welcome constructive criticism", and the children we saw were tied for their own safety and for "educational purposes". Sister Nirmala even welcomed our film: "Our hopes continue to be simply to provide immediate and effective service to the poorest of the poor as long as they have no one to help them . . . May God bless you and your efforts to promote the dignity of human life, especially for those who are underprivileged."

The idea of tying children for "educational purposes" is distasteful but the willingness to act on constructive criticism is a healthy sign.

nige1, on 2015-January-14, 18:15, said:

The book is not a biography.

Why do you think MT's mission was to alleviate suffering? I feel that I am being very generous when I say tht her mission was to watch the suffering of others.

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Please tell me you are being sarcastic.

mikeh, on 2015-January-12, 13:03, said:

There is some scientific evidence that suggests that religious belief is in some part induced by our brain. You can convince people (in a double blinded experiment) that they have having a spiritual experience by subjecting their brains to strong magnetic fields. Additionally, it is possible (plausible?) that there are evolutionary psychology reasons that would select for religious belief.

Indeed, there probably is, because you don't gain an selection advantage by explaining the thunder or rain as 'god did it' so there is likely a reason for these beliefs.

Cthulhu D, on 2015-January-15, 01:41, said:

Heh. Which other body part could possibly be responsible?

I am personally a bit sceptical about evolutionary explanations of religion. As I see it there are a number of phenomena in need of explanation:

- The obsession with speculating about causes and origins. This drives science as well as religion.

- Spiritual experience. Probably I am a bit naive about this but to me it looks like random imperfection of the brain.

- worshipping. You can worship a football team. It may be interesting to discuss if we have a worshipping instinct or not. My guess would be yes. Anyway, the link between worshipping and belief is probably something for a sociologist to think of rather than a biologist.

The meme theory is interesting but again it is not specifically about religion.