the atheist handbook
I don’t think most atheists are familiar with their philosophy and/or philosophers or past & present pioneers/leaders in atheist philosophy. … I had a discussion with an atheist coworker, and he didn’t even know who Richard Dawkins or Nietzsche were or how these individuals have contributed to the development of atheism. If they knew, then would they still identify as or continue to be atheists? (RWL on Wintery Knight)
There seems to be a confusion about atheism from some people of a religious persuasion. Far from what the Christian above imagines, there are many routes to atheism (the lack of belief in gods).
Here is just a small selection:
– You examine the religion of your culture and come to the conclusion it doesn’t make sense e.g. the Christian who has a breakthrough doublethink moment and finally realises the Bible could never have been inspired by a benevolent deity.
– You examine all religions in detail, realise they can’t all be true and that they all seem as improbable as each other, cross reference this fact with a passing knowledge of general human behaviour, and come to the conclusion that gods and religions are all invented by fearful, ignorant humans.
– You may become suspicious that none of the many invisible gods invented by religions have made a verifiable appearance (records written a generation or more after a man doing tricks no more impressive than David Blane over 2000 years ago don’t really count) and come to the conclusion that, like ghosts or fairies, supernatural invisible creatures probably don’t actually exist.
– You might be born into a family or society where no-one believes in gods, and the idea of people worshipping invisible gods (if you ever stumble across it) as humans did thousands of years ago, is beyond bizarre.
– You might pick up a copy of a book written by one of the very many people who have reached the conclusion that gods don’t exist, and their outlook on life (which will vary from person to person, given that atheism doesn’t have a handbook or set philosophy) might influence how you view the world.
There may be several routes to religion, and Christianity in particular, but oddly enough I can only think of one:
– Another person tells you about it.
There may be several routes to religion, and Christianity in particular, but oddly enough I can only think of one:
– Another person tells you about it.
And if not maintained for a single generation, that religion (here being Christianity) will simply die off, never to be rediscovered.
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Good post
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… or maybe the benevolent god God would reveal himself more effectively the second time and leave a handbook more in tune with our current understanding of being nice to each other. Everyone makes mistakes and he must be kicking himself about some of the stuff that got in the Bible. 🙂
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Do you know, I was thinking about it, and you’re a person who’s sharp with words, there’s some kind of soundbite in this. Religion has traditionally suggested there’s only one path to truth, as if this is a good thing. But the reality is that there is only one way to believe any specific lie (hear the details of the lie) whereas there are many ways to discover it’s a lie. How do you say that in a cooler way?
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Don’t know, but it seems like something a bit large for a neat meme/soundbite. I tried this one, remember, but it’s a bit long
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I like it, but it’s not very snappy either. 😉
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There may be several routes to religion, and Christianity in particular, but oddly enough I can only think of one:
– Another person tells you about it.
Or as Jesus says, “believe the good news” or as Paul says “faith comes through hearing”, etc. You haven’t exactly discovered something new here, the gospel is preached. How else is anyone to know the story of an itinerant eschatological preacher in a semi-literate society?
The deeper question – to me anyway, I love to hear myself think – is why does religion make so little sense in the modern western world, while it makes perfect sense – in some form or another – for most of the rest of human existence? Because when confronted with these sorts of problems you retreat to unspoken presuppositions of what is logical and what is not, and the unspoken logic of modernity makes God an absurd figure.
To use the example at hand, modern logic is offended by the fact that Christianity is a story about contingent historical events and not the conclusion of a rational argument from self-evident truths, hence your argument. But a real community is not based on rationalism but on stories and traditions. In a mental world where stories and traditions and communal contact are seen as more “real” than abstract argument, the Gospel makes more sense.
Sometimes it seems like the hardest thing for modern people to get about Christianity, even for modern Christians, is that it is not an “ism” but a story and a community. Something about modern logic hates stories and communities, rips them up whenever possible.
That having been said, I agree that you don’t need to read books to be an atheist, though I think it helps to be a consistent atheist. You just need to embrace certain modern thought patterns and you are automatically well on your way to being a Gnostic or atheist.
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@Dpmonahan, you wrote: “…why does religion make so little sense in the modern western world…” Perhaps, to that question the answer lies in the same line of thought as why does the idea of spirit healing make so little sense in the modern western world? Sometimes we outgrow from false ideas, that were based on wishfull thinking. Do we not? Often the wishfull thinking carries us only so far, because it helped us to face obstacles we were unable to overcome, or even understand. But the better we understand reality, the less dependant we are on guessing. Right?
“Modern” logic does not hate stories. But it does not accept anecdotal evidence about extraordinary claims to be a reliable representation of reality. That is only reasonable, is it not?
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Spirit healing makes little sense because there is nothing linking the modern concept of spirit – res cogitans – with the modern concept of matter – res extensa. There is no conceptual tool to explain how one could influence the other, so modern thought tends towards either Heglianism – all is spirit – or materialism.
That is the sort of “logic” I’m talking about.
And yes, the modern world does hate stories. There is no cultural narrative and no organic community that does not suffer constant withering attack by the forces of exaggerated individualism and certain forms of capitalism.
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@Dpmonahan, indeed. Prayer does not work. Does it? There is nothing linking the wishfull thinking behind the motive of the person engaged in prayer to the concept of any gods actually altering reality. Is there?
Now you are reframing your own point, when you suddenly change the concept of “logic” to the concept of “world”. Did you notice how easily that came about, to you? However, the modern world does not hate stories either. It actually mass produces them. Look at Hollywood. Humans do tend to form all sorts of communities, regardless of how modern they percieve themselves. Was there once a time when individualism or “certain forms of capitalism” did not affect human behaviour? To what era are you referring to? When our ancestors were all hunter gatherers? Or further back?
Stories are stories. If “modern” logic dissects the truth value of stories, then it is only helping us to understand reality and the story better. As a result, a story may be very educational, even if we recognize it is fictional. Yet, knowing wich parts of a story are real and wich parts are made up, gives us much better chances of evaluating the value of the lesson in the story. Yes? If we recognize a story, let us say a modern story, like something about the UFOs as most likely fictional, it may save us a lot of unnecessary and possibly harmfull emotions and actions. Yes? Building a community around the blind faith in UFOs saving us from trouble we have caused ourselves, is not likely to help us overcome the trouble. Is it?
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I don’t know whether prayer “works” for healing or not. People report miracles all the time, I’ve never prayed for one myself, but I don’t discount the possibility. I don’t really presume to know how the spiritual world can influence the material.
I might have interchanged the concepts of world and logic, because they are more or less interchangeable. Your assumptions about metaphysics determine your logic and ethics. If you only use empiricist logic it is because of your materialist metaphysics.
Yes, Hollywood makes thousands of movies: they are all exactly the same.
But I’m talking about stories that really matter, the ones that define cultures and peoples. The modern attitude is that these things are all equally false, and what we really need is material goods. The result is the destruction of community. Modern people don’t really live in community. For one thing they are always moving around chasing money. If you want to stay put, your government imports foreigners to drive down the labor costs, and suddenly you are a stranger in your own neighborhood. The government is convinced that these new people will be good citizens, because culture does not matter – all equally false – and humans are interchangeable widgets defined by the dollar value of their labor. Then the newcomers steal your car.
The land your house sits on is not a cultural place, not a town with a tradition and history, it is real estate, nothing more. Why? Because that is all a materialist can see. It is all an empiricist can measure. The empiricist or materialist can have a feeling for the house, but neither he nor his contemporaries can justify the feeling with the mental tools they have.
There is no community between generations because morals change every ten years. I get a kick out of watching elderly Democratic candidates scrambling to understand current racial politics. If they say black and white lives are of equal value, they get booed and stand there blinking. Some black college students are asking for segregated classrooms. Older black activists must feel like they are living in a different country, and not a better one. The young Republicans the other day were talking about how great it is that women can now serve in combat as if 18 year old girls getting limbs blown off and disemboweled in combat is the greatest thing ever. Only the extremist Ted Cruz had the guts to call them morons.
High school students are shocked that Hillary Clinton was against gay marriage in 2009. It is like saying she used to eat babies, they cannot imagine a different world. As such, they can form no meaningful community with the pre-2009 world. The moral world is reinvented.
Why are morals torn up and shredded every ten years and replaced with new ones? For the same reason i-phones are replaced every two years: things are made to be torn apart and replaced to benefit the makers.
In such a world, in which every metric is material and community is systematically destroyed it is next to impossible to believe in gods, especially the Christian god who is a god of a community and whose revelation is not a discovered by algorithm but passed on by tradition.
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Well, “modern” logic determines, that prayer does not have a direct effect on reality, because when tested with logical tools like the double-blind tests, the effect is at best exactly the same as with a placebo, wich equals none at all. Without even this much evidence to back up, the frequent claims by people about miracles they supposedly have experienced, such claims are on the same level as frequent claims about the UFOs, are they not? They could be true, but I for one have no reason to take either of them for real. In all likelyhood they are more likely to fall under the vast realm of human imagination. Are they not?
Even ancient logic would have determined as much, if the ancient people had the same tools as we do, and if they had ever been able to run the same sort of tests. So, you can argue against logic, but that is – logically speaking – a lost battle.
Much like you, I have no idea how the spirit world could influence the material either. But before I assume any influence, I require evidence, that a spirit world exist at all outside human imagination. As much as alien cultures having an effect on our current world. Am I being unreasonable? Should I just go ahead and pick a cultural idea of a particular story about some particular form of “spirit world” and start accepting it at face value?
World and logic are nowhere near interchangable and to claim as much reveals a deep misunderstanding of one or the other on your part. I assure you (as I have done previously), there are no metaphysics, or other sort of guess work involved in what I consider likely, or unlikely. You keep bringing that red herring up. Why? Is it because you yourself are somehow impaired from seeing a cause and effect in reality around you, or in any of your own chosen values, or because those do not add up, so you have to come up with metaphysical assumptions and other guess work to justify your beliefs?
You have no idea how much a new story from Hollywood is going to matter in the future. Does the fact that Star Wars has had an obvious impact on the western culture make it any more real? Does the fact that Star Trek deals in moral issues far more reaching, than any of the ones percieved by the pre-modern cultures mean the series is going to “matter” in the future? Or the fact that there are propably more, more or less fanatical, Trekkies around the globe today, than there were – let’s say Christians – in the first century after Ceasar Augustus?
Does the fact, that for example the Mahabharata and Iliad are building blocks of our shared cultural heritage make Vishnu or Poseidon any more real? We are perfectly able to appriciate these stories despite the fact that we recognize them as fiction. Are you not?
You seem to have a very bleak view on democratic government. In my experience, when and if it is truly democratic, it serves to the needs of the voters and if it is humane, it serves the needs of humanity.
It seems you are confusing two different meanings to the term materialism. This is understandable, though unfortunate. A materialist may be seen as a person who does not value other people, and only values the material goods they are able to achieve. Or a materialist may be seen as a person who does not singn in to the imaginary preassumption that people are innately spirits, or that there exists a “spirit world” before some actual evidence for such has been put forward. Do you have any to provide? These two may be the same person, but they do not need to be and in my experience rather rarely even are.
Modern world values all sorts of communities. Only look at the UFO enthusiasts or the Trekkies. What do you suppose causes the popularity of such modern appliances like the internet? We are forming a modern community you and I here, right now. There are plenty of clubs and other social societies out there. If you feel lost and alone in the modern world, just go out and look for one. I myself am a member of several societies in wich I partake on varying levels of social connection. These do good and cultural work and I can recommend the satisfaction that it gives to do stuff in such a community. I have never been a member of any churches, most of whose answers to the problems of the world seem to be to pray them awaym, wich to me seems more like frustrating, and self serving. Let alone that those sorts of old fashioned communities like religious groups were in the least bit able to even recognize problems from their own bigotry and arbitrary tribal moralism.
The modern world has been able to create such communities as the UN and it’s many subsets like the UNESCO and WHO. It is the modern world, that has created modern nations like the US and brought together the EU from among countries that used to fight each other at every imaginable opportunity. The Nordic wellfare societies have been able to help and catch people on the fall who have fallen out from their traditional social networks, that still in many parts of the less modern world where work, family and religious groups are the only community a person really has, have utterly failed to help such people. The notion of religious charity is a self serving cancer on humanity. It only feeds to the needs and imaginary method of buying their gods graces of the individual who is in a position to help, and makes the needy their proxies and bitches. There is a lot of evil in the modern world, like among them “certain forms” of ideological capitalism, but I employ you to focus on the good you can build and not gloom at the evil you are unable to change.
The problem is not if morals change rapidly, but wether they change for the better. If they need to change for the better, they can not change too quikly. The question is about how do we know wether the cultural norms change for better or worse. Appealing to the ancient cultural norms of some ancient arbitrary commands of this or that god will simply not do. There has to be an evaluation of ethics in comparrison to the best possible information we have awailable, and that information comes through science, not some ancient tomes of metaphysical guesses by ignorant people. The best awailable informatin needs to be compared to general human wellbeing, because that should be the least bit of contact between all humans on agreeing what we all want. Should it not?
Of course, if you do not subscribe to logic, be it more or less modern, this all fails with you…
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“Logic” and “world” are more or less interchangeable if we are using them in the sense of “logos” and “world-view”, or epistemology and world-view. A person’s vision of reality defines what is seen as rational or logical. He can only recognize as true what his assumptions about reality let him recognize.
My terminology is often imprecise, I know.
Your comparison of a spiritual world to aliens speaks to my point. Aliens, in imagination, exist on the same plane of reality as humans. They might be more advanced in technology, or bigger and stronger, or whatever, but they are still beings on the material plane, just far away.
Now, if we think like we are living in the 5th or 12th century and think of “the world” – the sum of all reality – the spiritual world is not just like the material one, but it is the “more real” reality upon which this one is based. An angel is not an alien, but being that exhausts more potentialities of existence, the way I exhaust more potentialities of existence than a stone – a higher step on the gradation of existence. God is not another being among beings, but Being.
If you or I talk a walk through the woods, we see a bunch of things, maybe, at best, as working in an ecosystem. We might think it beautiful, but would have a hard time justifying that intuition. If a 12th century monk walks through the woods he sees manifestations of the glory of god and has no problem justifying the intuition of beauty. If a 3 century BC European takes a walk through the woods, he sees all things all things as animated by spirits which are themselves manifestations of the unity of being: pantheism.
The switch to modernity starts when people stopped asking questions about being as such, and focusing on material being in motion. In some ways it is a very fruitful study, but in other ways impoverishing: entire categories of thought disappeared little by little, like teleology, the unity of being, or beauty. The idea of the cosmos is coming back thanks to the implications of relativity, but for a long time no one could really justify the idea of a cosmos or universe, all they could conceive was a bunch of stuff floating around in an infinite box.
Your comparison of trekkies to early Christians is a bit silly. Trekkies are nice people but they are not going to die for their hobby, nor would anybody imagine killing them for it. They do not consider themselves a people apart, a sort of trans-national race. We are talking community on two different levels.
I suppose many Christians nowadays do see themselves as club members – which is utterly foreign to how Christians of the first century saw themselves. Why would they, or you, see themselves as a club? Because that is the only thing the modern mind can see: a bunch of individuals hanging out, not the body of Christ.
Belonging to clubs is nice, but people do it because they are lonely. Feeling alone is a constant theme of the modern developed world. It is not a major theme before, nor do many people complain of loneliness in the undeveloped world. Why? Because the logic of modernity is to destroy community, to pull people and organic communities apart. We try to compensate by joining clubs.
I doubt you can subject a miracle to controlled experiment, I don’t think it is supposed to work that way. The best you could probably do would be a post facto examination.
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@Dpmonahan, yes the concepts of logic and a world view could be interchangable up to a degree, but that does not change the fact, that a objective reality resides outside any subjective view on either. Logic is usually referred to, when we are speaking of actual objective logic and world view when we are discussing the subjective view any single person holds. Can we agree that it is best for us all, to get as close to know the objective within our subjective views as we possibly can? Is that not what we as modern communities have so far discerned from objective reality to be compelling, though not compulsory? Or are you against this ancient, but also modern endeavour of logic?
Indeed aliens from other planets are less of a stretch and not nearly as extraordinary as suggestions as gods, or other spirits. They are also a more modern story than the spirits, but have one major attribute together with the gods. The fact, that all evidence is anecdotal. This does not only apply to aliens some particular gods, but all of the suggested aliens as well as all of the suggested gods. Simple.
Beaty lies in the eye of the beholder. It is a subjective value we give to the nature, not something inherent in nature. But nature is beautiful because we can observe the beauty and come to some form of consensus of it being beautiful. The monk living in the 12th century attributing this beaty to a god was plain and simple wrong. Even if asked then he could not have given a logical answer why all the beauty in nature should be attributed to a particular god. But nobody asked those questions, because if it had come up in a conversation, the person posing the questions would have been in serious danger to life and limb, or at the very least loosing all of his social network. Is that the kind of world you would wish to return, because it supposedly supported “community”? Is that not the very mockery of community?
Yes, the comparrison between Trekkies and early Christians was supposed to be silly. The willingness of an individual to lay down their lives for their ideal speaks nothing at all about the validity of their world view. Nazi stormtroopers were ready to fight to the death and Muslim terrorists often enough are fanatical enough to die for their cause. Should we take their ideas as more real and valid than the Star Trek because of that? Would Star Trek become magically more valid, if some Trekkies were ready to die for their fan fiction? If anything it should lead us to question the mental health of any person willing to die for an ideal or religion. But the early Christian martyrs did not believe they were really going to die, so we may ask what was their sacrifice in the first place? What would a few hours of pain be in comparrison to eternal bliss in the afterlife, if you really believe such nonsense? But there exists no evidence of any after life at all. Does there? It is mere wishfull thinking transformed from some sort of fanatical desperation into cultural tradition and a story, people take at face value and let it lead their value choises even in the face of opposite evidence.
People have always held many different types of community. Fraternity, marriages, families, clans, clubs, collegues, tribes, nations and yes, ideological communities, like for example political parties, cults and religions. The cultist may feel special belonging in a religious hegemony, and it may very well be that the cult is not in itself harmfull to the cultist member. But if the cult is construckted to cause the cultist member harm, if he tries to leave it, there is something fishy going on. If the cult is organized to do violence on anyone who suspects the metaphysical assumptions as presented by the cult, there is definately something wrong. If the cult expects the member to provide for the cult leaders and in return for being a good member of this cult makes unsubstantiated promises of obscure rewards, or alternatively equally unsubstantiated threats for the afterlife for anyone who leaves the cult, it is an unhealthy social construct, that causes people harm, even if they in their own subjective minds were unable to see it. Is it not? Cult-like societies, that perpetuate themselves by creating the need for people to be member or a particular religious movement are quite frequent among religions, are they not?
Speaking of wich, the “body of Christ”… What do you suppose the early Christians were getting out of that? No doubt they thought it was something special and it nicely plays into a tribal moralism inherent in the books of Old Testament on wich the new story was loosely based on, simply changing the main notion of the chosen people from an ethnic group of the Jews to the Christian cult. Inevitably that results in other people not be the chosen and is the first step of dehumanizing the vast majority of people. People like me. Ultimately Christendom is much like a tribe, whose members are the actual humans, who deserve eternal rewards in the alledged afterlife, most by mere fiat of having been born into a Christian family, while the rest of humanity deserve somehow being lost and possibly even tortured for ever. Sick.
Most people in the pre-modern world never felt very lonely, because their living quarters did not even grant that possibility. People lived in cramped tents or huts. But lonleliness was not unknown among them either. For example throughout the medieval period noble lords and ladies wrote stories about their melancholic lonliness. They of course lived in a lot less cramped circumstances, than most of the populace, but it seems their agony was culturally produced. Hermit monks sought for lonly places away from their natural communities to get closer to their particular notion of their own god.
Modern world has produced more opportunities among wich are more possibilites to be lonely and humans do become anxious about such choises. Not all are socially adept and some of those people become reclusive towards any social activities, or even find it hard to form long term commitments. Such individuals like the dudes in the manosphere often seem to desire for some long lost golden age, when some of their ancestors having the same disabilities, could simply force other people as part of their lives. Refuse divorces, even if they were abusive and such. But it is folly to think people were not ostracised in the ancient world. Oh yes they were, and sometimes even stoned to death or burned alive for what ever shortcomings other members of their societies saw in them.
The modern culture has – through logic and cultural heritage (the stories that matter) – come to all sorts of humane rules, regulations and political correctness, that define what are the rights and liberties of an individual and how much pressure one individual can put on a nother, that the 12th century monk could hardly have even imagined and yes, might have had hard time accepting. But wether these are right or wrong or wether we should further develop social justice is, lucky for us, not up to any such monk, but up to us. You and I. Let us take responsibility and research what is to benefit the human wellbeing.
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Aliens are material beings, divinities are not. The former should be subject to empirical observation, the latter should not. You will counter that empiricism is the only way to know anything (because your materialism determines your logic) but if that were the case we would have no knowledge of all manner of human goods, such as beauty, nobility, goodness, rights, etc.
Then you will argue that these things either 1) do not exist or 2) are in fact discernible by empirical observation, not as things, but as what statistically makes a for a pleasanter life.
Pleasanter for whom, I would then ask. Not everybody desires the same things. It is a circular argument: science discerns the values that make for a pleasant life, the pleasant life is the life I value.
Your account for the beauty of the woods on a spring morning – that they are not in fact beautiful – is both logically coherent and utterly impoverished. It completely fails to take the real lived experience into account, the experience that these woods outside of my head are in fact beautiful and my feeling of awe and reverence is appropriate and proportional to that reality. Nobody walking through the spring woods thinks: “these woods are not really beautiful, it is a figment of my brain’s overdeveloped capacity to see patterns. The woods are nothing other than highly complex organic patterns in a state of decay approaching entropy, as is all other being. They are not beautiful. They are utterly meaningless.”
If someone did try to live in such a state of what he imagined to be pure objectivity he would not be recognizably human – to use a Star Trek theme he would be an android or the Borg.
And he would not be objective, because the woods are beautiful. If you have to preserve objectivity by destroying the beauty of the woods you are doing it wrong.
The ideology of ISIS might be no less false than the narrative of Star Trek, but it is certainly more powerful. In fact it attracts comfortable young Muslims from Europe and North America who are looking for some meaning in life and explicitly reject the modern notion of the good life. I’m always mystified how Europeans respond to last year’s terror attacks by playing John Lennon’s Imagine. What makes them think Lennon’s tired and superficial nihilism can stand up to an ideology like that of ISIS? It is that exact emptiness that is being rejected by the kids who join ISIS.
I think the NT concept of the Body of Christ is probably much to big for this forum. And yes, the church did see itself as something like a tribe or nation, but I do not think the NT argues the universal condemnation of non-Christians. In fact, the NT talks about “going to heaven” much, much less than is commonly asserted. The point of joining the church is to give proper worship to God and live in new sort of community that grows up around this worship. This of course makes no sense to you, but if God is not a being among other beings but the being that sustains all, then giving worship is a proper human behavior.
Fixation on “going to heaven when you die” comes much later in Christian history, and this fixation in fact mirrors the growing individualization of Western culture from the 16th century onward.
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Both aliens and gods fall under the same scrutany logically, as their existance should not be assumed without any evidence to support their existance. Be that logic how ever ancient or modern. That is as much as they affect our lives on any level. There may be aliens on distant planets and as it is not such an unlikely assumption since there are trillions of planets in the material universe. There may be gods in some “spirit world” totally beyond our scope, but as we are totally unable to determine such even exists, the aliens are a far more likely suggestion. Yet, either of those to have any direct effect on our lives, and their very existance here and now should be determined by what evidence there exists. Why would you choose one of those unlikely suggestions at face value, just because of the anecdotal evidence for their existance and influence on us humans? Let alone, that you should choose the more unlikely one?
If gods or aliens have a direct effect on the material world, it really does not matter wether we are talking about material or immaterial agents, as the effects they are supposedly imposing on the material reality would necessarily be material and material effects are all we can research reliably. Logically speaking, we should not rely on something we can not reliably establish even exists, should we?
Beauty, nobility, goodness, rights etc. either manifest in the material reality, or they do not exist. Beauty is an elechtorchemical emotion within our brains as ordained by our evolution, nobility and goodness, just like rights are not immaterial. They exist in our actions, or at very least in our material brains when we evaluate possible actions. How could you possibly determine any of these do exist, if not in our physical minds and in our material actions?
I do not see how realizing, that the experience of “the beauty of the woods on a spring morning” is an electrochemical reaction within our physical brain, somehow “impoverishes” all of it in comparrison to self delution, that the beauty there exists as a result of some particular imaginary god character from a book. I do not see, how accepting reality discounts the experience? How did you come to the conclusion, that this somehow diminishes anything? By building a strawman of a non-existant person who thinks: “They are not beautiful. They are utterly meaningless.” Was that just a totally uncalled for and unnecessary attempt to wriggle yourself from logical conclusions, in order to support your fantasy?
Who ever said one could not be objective and accept one’s own subjective experience of the beauty of nature? You did. But the beauty of the nature is obectively true in the sense, that objectively humans do have these experiences in their material brain. Your demand for a person to live totally objectively as some sort of an android or the Borg from Star Trek is nonsensical. Why would that lead to humans becoming machine-like? Do you consider machines somehow more objective in their limited endeavours, than humans?
John Lennon’s Imagine is hardly nihilist in any sense of the word. You find European reactions to try to build bridges instead of bombing them mystifying? Perhaps, that is because you have your problems with logic. Yes, the young men joining ISIS are shocked by the cultural change and to many of them the loss of their priviledged position as taught to them by tradition at the same time as they are angered by western corporations robbing their nations bare, and they run back to their metaphysical assumptions of gods and what not other nonsense. But on some level even they recognize, the inability of gods to interfere on any level on reality and feel an urgent need to act on behalf of those gods.
Weak individuals often worship the imagery of power, that is what appeals to the kids joining ISIS, and as you see their presentation of power as power, you yourself have fallen to this trap. It is the trap set up by religious authoritarianism…
There are numbskulls in Europe too, but it is our historical experience, that violent religions are difficult to bomb away from existance. Violence does create violence, even though sometimes violence is necessary. It was humanism, the ideals of egality and democracy, that mellowed most of the edge from the terribly violent religion of Christianity through modern science as employed with logic. Hopefully it shall have the same effect on Islam in due time. Is that not much on the same lines as to what the Jesus character in the New Testament supposedly argues? He tells people to turn the other cheek, does he not? Why would you suppose he gives this advice? Is it not practical advice? Is it nonsensical, or could there be a practical application? He is not even alone with this, as Buddha, Confugius, Laoze and Zoroaster have much the same idea. Do they not? “The stories, that really matter” – Remember?
Would you prefer to try to live with Trekkies or with the ISIS dudes as a community? The Trekkies could of course demand you lived according to their ideals, but are unlikely to do that, because they realize their thing is after all imaginary. Only a story that “matters”. They do not consider to have a supreme authorty behind their notions to justify them to force you to live according to their rules. The ISIS dudes surely would be ready to even kill you, if you would not live according to their set of metaphysical assumptions. Would they not? They would also think they have a supernatural authorization from a story they took a bit too seriously to kill you, if you did not comply. Right?
You are absolutely right. To live as a member of a cult, that bases all of it’s metaphysical assumption about reality on an unverified deity, that promotes faith as a virtue, and yes, demands loyalty at the pain of death and after that eternal torture, does not make any sense to me. Should it?
You wrote: “…if God is not a being among other beings but the being that sustains all, then giving worship is a proper human behavior.” There are two major flaws in this claim. First there is the massively big “if”. How should you know that this is what your particular god is or is not? You yourself said there is no way of verifying even the existance of this god entity from within our material existance. Or is there? Who should ever believe this or that notion of a god, without any evidence to support the claim that such a thing even exists? Second, if such a thing as you described and defined actually existed and we could ever determine that to be even likely, why would that entity need our worship and for what ever for? Or alternatively, what ever for would humans need to worship it? To what ever end? To please it’s petty nature, in order to please it from wenting it’s mindless wrath upon us, for being what we are as we were alledgedly created by this very same entity? Or what?
You wrote: “Fixation on “going to heaven when you die” comes much later in Christian history, and this fixation in fact mirrors the growing individualization of Western culture from the 16th century onward.”
So, do you not expect to go to heaven? What do you think is most likely that happens to you when you die? When the electrochemical impulses in your brain siese and your flesh starts to decompose, what then?
What is wrong with your god? Why has this god of yours been totally unable, or possibly unwilling to communicate to people what is true about the afterlife? Or much about anything? Billions of people have lived and died in all sorts of “good faith” of what this god entity expects of them. Some of those people have apparently in all sincerity believed, that by killing and torturing other people they shall be doing exactly what this god wants. How is that any different from any other gods and their similar inability to any more influence the minds of most people or the reality? Even to the extent that people think all gods need not just help to get their goals finished, but also the gods need constant persuation to do the right thing through prayer or other rituals? Why is it that all of these gods are inept at communicating to people other than through fairy tales and stories? Are they not all equally incompetent? How do you know anything you suppose this god of yours wants? Through a particular set of stories, that are unverifiable on any sane level, often contradictionary with what we do objectively know about reality? Or simply by other people telling you what this, or that god wants?
Exactly as our gracious host put it: “There may be several routes to religion, and Christianity in particular, but oddly enough I can only think of one:
– Another person tells you about it.”
Where is this god supposed to be in all of this?
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No, I think it is possible to have a rational discussion about things which do not have material existence. Aristotilian hylomorphism allows for it, questions of epistemology allow for it- if the human mind were purely material I can’t see how it can know both itself and its own thoughts simultaneously, for example. And then there are the big questions: why being and not nothing, why order and not static, why reason, etc. These are not questions that can be answered by controlled experiment, yet they are the questions that govern out lives.
Beauty and the experience of beauty are two different things. The entire experience of beauty implies that it is something real in the beautiful thing. Now you come along and say “Oh no, it is nothing other than a trick of the brain” and that turns the whole experience upside-down. And yes, it makes people robotic. There is something mechanical about modern man. I described above how modern government tends to treat people and communities as interchangeable widgets. Modern governments love technocratic systems and atomized individuals, and hate organic communities. There is a constant push to replace organic communities – the village, the family, the church, the extended family, the market, with bureaucracy.
“Imagine” is not building bridges, it is cultural imperialism pure and simple. It says “hey, Muslims, stop believing in Allah, be atheists like us, and we will all be happy and the earth will live as one”. Then you are shocked – shocked! – when the Muslim says “No, howsabout you be Muslims like us, or we kill you. Then we will all be happy ‘and the earth will live as one.'”
Playing Imagine at a funeral after terrorists shoot up Paris yet again is theater of the absurd. You act like yours is the default position, and when a suicide bomber rudely reminds you that there are competing visions of a perfect world you stick your head in the sand. I don’t know if more violence is the answer or not, it is not my call to make, but I know what candlelight vigils and playing Imagine is dumb..
By your account the modern world has lots of losers in it: Muslims, the manosphere, numbskulls, etc. Should’t that give a little pause? What percentage are losers? 30%? Certainly all the Trump and Sanders supporters over here, so maybe 50%?. What is modernity screwing up so badly if it is so full of losers?
Your assertion that Christianity is “terribly violent” is odd. The wars of religion were awful – truly the breakdown of medieval civilization and the birth of the modern – but lets not pretend that the modern secular Europe that began to emerge in the 16th century has not preformed violence on a much grander scale than the ancient or medieval ever dreamed. Much of the violence was considered quite scientific and progressive in its day, which shows just how reliable those labels are.
And I say this as a modern person who thinks the traditional nation state is the only means at hand to preserve order. I don’t trust it, but I accept the legacy of the modern state. I don’t pretend history starts and ends with the EU.
My point with the comment on salvation is to point out that your depiction of Christians as a tribe with exclusive rights to heaven is a caricature. This idea that one must know the exact means by which one is saved, and all others who don’t know it are lost, is a creation of the 16th century and became a fixation in the early 20th. Before that salvation was a concept that applied to life here and now – saved from sadness and sin, for example, saved from corrupting influences in society and entering a different group of people, and obviously included the notion of an afterlife, but obsessing over who gets in and who does not was not the central concern of Christian life the way it became later.
Your closing statement proves my point that the logic of modernity hates community. You are so deeply scandalized that Christianity is a community and not an ideology. How dare God want to found a human community and not write a scientific textbook! The greatest claim you and Violet can make against it is that it is a cultural and historical reality, as if I didn’t know that already and it is some kind of big revelation you came up with all by yourself when it is right in the letters of Paul.
But for people for whom community is more “real” than ideology it makes perfect sense.
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Of course we can have rational discussion about fictious issues. We can discuss quite rationally about gods, aliens, The Spaceballs, or what ever. To conclude aliens may exist on a remote world is not such a leap, given the sheer size of the universe. To conclude that the really meaningfull story of Spaceballs, or some particular suggested gods outside the observable material realit, not only could, but indeed should be taken for real, is nonsensical. Because we do not have any evidence to support either of those notions, other than the anecdotal evidence as found in some books, or the stories (often obviously quite gullible people) tell us, but a whole bunch of actual evidence that tells us, that stories of gods and the story of the Spaceballs is the work of vivid human imagination.
The fact that some questions are big, does not remove the need for their suggested answers to be verifiable before we accept them as truths. On the contrary, the more impact a suggested explanation has on our lives, the more important it is, that there is some reliable evidence to back it up. Gods are not really even any sort of answers to any of the really big questions. They are mere cop-outs. We do not know why there is existance instead of there not being existance. The question is moot, since all we can discern is that there is existance, and if there were not, we could not be bothered, since we would not exist. Besides, claiming that there must be a particular god, to create everything and that proves this god exist is circular deduction if there ever was any. Why not accept, that we do not know, how everything came about, than to say that a particular god did, it and then accept, that we do not know why, nor how this god did it? What would we gain by assuming a god whose motives, or methods we do not understand did something? A childish, but at best unverified and at worst totally false sense of security? Yes?
The experience of beauty is subjective, even though it sometimes may be collective. That does not diminish the experience in any way. Why should it? If I like a particular Motörhead song and you do not, is it then objectively beautifull, or not? If you like a particular type of “spring morning” but it is the type, that gives me headaches, wich of us is to determine that it is actually a beautifull thing? Me not appriciating as much something you value, does not make your sensation any less in any way and vice versa. Does it? What is objective about the beauty of either of those contradictionary experiences is that one of us objectively had an emotional response to something material we observed, within our electrochemical brains and despite the other one of us not liking the same phenomenon, we can recognize the value the other one of us is giving to it. Right?
You try to put words to my mouth, by claiming I would say: “Oh no, it is nothing other than a trick of the brain” Please stop that. I do not know if this is an intentional strawman on your part, or not, but that is not at all what I have said, or what I would say. You see, how silly it is that you would have me claim that it is some sort of “trick” of the mind? What caused you to expect me to say a silly thing like that? Is it the “atheist handbook”, you personally would want me to have read and stick to it’s “nihilist” script? Is it that “atheist handbook” you have, that demands even the beautiful song Imagine by John Lennon is somehow magically “nihilist”? Or is it just, that you do not understand the concept of nihilism, and as a result you tend to equate it to anything atheistic? Or what? Do you not see, how that is equally silly as if I would be demanding that since you are a Theist, you should stick to the script of the Hindus, and that a Theist must come to the same conclusions about divinities as the Hindus?
Do I come to you as “robotic”? If I do, let me assure you, you are the very first person during my already rather long and eventfull life, the first person to refer to me or my materialist world view by such a comparrison. Are you yourself “robotic”? What does that even mean? I certainly do not feel robotic in any way and I can not say I know much people to whom such a description would be fitting. A robot is a pre-programmed machine, that tirelessly works on some assembly line, yes? The scope of a robot is usually seen as very narrow and it’s choises limited if at all having choises. If anything the modern human has far more choises, than most of our pre-modern ancestors had. Far more opportunities to educate ourselves and even to have discussions about philosophical issues across the globe as we now are doing transmitting data and our perceptions in the blink of an eye. Do you have some sort of atavistic streak, or do you have so poor understanding of history, that you yearn for some long lost imaginary golden age? If you do, when was that precisely?
You wrote: ““Imagine” is not building bridges, it is cultural imperialism pure and simple. It says “hey, Muslims, stop believing in Allah, be atheists like us, and we will all be happy and the earth will live as one”. Then you are shocked – shocked! – when the Muslim says “No, howsabout you be Muslims like us, or we kill you. Then we will all be happy ‘and the earth will live as one.’”
Pfff… Now, to me this just comes out as you suffering from some sort of jihad-envy. Is that really the case? Please tell me, this is not so. The “Imagine” is a song. Just a song. But it seems to have gotten you totally railed off of your senses. Why? What are you affraid of? That, if you do “imagine” that there is no god, you might learn to accept it? There is no magic, or other supernatural, or otherwise unnatural powers at play here. You are perfectly safe, but you could just make the experiment of honestly imagining there is no god. No gods of any brand. What then? Would a “benevolent” god punish you for that thought crime? Or do you fear, that the god you think is in need of worship, does not actually ring out as such a benevolent deity after all, but a tyrant that shall punish the unbelief with some sort of concrete, material, or mental violence? There is a long way from your imagined “cultural imperialism” of asking people to try to behave and live in peace, to killing them if they do not comply. Is there not? All communities have songs, that describe their ideals. Do they not? The ideal, that excusing wars by gods should end, is not stupid at all, is it really? Nor is it stupid to think there propably are no gods, as there exists no evidence, other than flimsy anecdotes. Is it? Or do you subscribe to the imaginary character Dark Helmet in the movie Spaceballs, who says something on the lines of: “Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb!” 😉
Between the atheist and the Theist discussion, the atheist necessarily has the default position as in any discussion the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim. Theism is a claim, that gods do exist and atheism is the default position of refusing to believe such an extraordinary claim without any evidence, exept for rather flimsy and contradictionary anecdotes.
The theist claims there are gods, but fails to posit any actual evidence to support that claim. The atheist then may proceed either, to not believe in the specific claims of the Theist, or to take them at face value. Now repeat the same exercise by the words Theist by a neighbour, and the atheist with, let us say, co-worker and the concept of gods with the concept of leprechaurns. There are plenty of co-workers in the world who take claims about leprechaurns for real as they have been taught stories about leprechaurns as if those really did existed, but if the co-worker has a “modern” logic, or in fact any logic at all, they are not inclined to think that taking the stories about leprechaurns at face value is a virtue. That is however, exactly what the Theist demands from himself and the atheist. To take a notion about gods at face value and call it a virtue to do so. Or what would you call religious faith, other than that?
You wrote: “By your account the modern world has lots of losers in it: Muslims, the manosphere, numbskulls, etc. Should’t that give a little pause? What percentage are losers? 30%? Certainly all the Trump and Sanders supporters over here, so maybe 50%?. What is modernity screwing up so badly if it is so full of losers?” Again you are putting words to my mouth. “Losers” in the game of what? I did not say any of those people are any sort of losers. What I am willing to say, is that most of the dudes in the manosphere, Islamists, Trump supporters etc. are wrong. I sure hope that the majority of them may come to their senses for all of our sakes, theirs, mine and yours.
In a working and humane democracy the majority who win elections, see to it, that the rights of the minorities are respected. That is the direction the modern world has slowly been treading to for ages and with ever increasing speed. That is also the direction wich so annoys so many people who have either enjoyed a priviledge, that contradicts such, or who have percieved themselves as having had the opportunity to may have enjoyed such priviledges as a wishfull fantasy of theirs. Do you object to that direction of social development?
Well, Christianity is a terribly violent religion, if you look at most of it’s history. It’s sheer size a testament to how agressively and mainly through conquest it has spread across such a big part of the globe as opposed to any inherent and compelling truth value in it’s teachings. Yes, there are terrible deeds done at the name of other ideals and communities as well. However, let us not pretend, that during the modern era Christianity has been absent of acting to increase and achieve terrible atrocities and all sorts of morally corrupt and needless suffering and does that even today, even though in most western nations it has been tempered by secularization of the modern culture, judical system and government. We may compare Christianity to most other religions in the world and even in that sorry lot it is quite a record breaker on many a field of violence, both in sheer numbers and in comparrison to the number of contemporary populations and awailable means of any given time during it’s history. In all of that, it only manages to resemble all the other human ideologies and communities. It resembles nothing at all one could expect as a some sort of manifestation of a benign, or as blatantly alledged benevolent divinity acting on behalf of humanity on earth. Does it?
It seems we are at least totally in agreement on one thing. Neither of us thinks history begins, or ends with the formation of the EU. I have no clue as to why you stated it, but I stated it merely to point out that we do not disagree on that. Why did you point it out? Or was it just a nother strawman?
The idea of salvation in the afterlife was nothing new in the 16th century. But even if it had been, it would still mean that by far most self proclaimed sincere Christians throughout human history have believed it. Yet, if it was just a minor fragment of Christians during all times, who believed in it, but did it as sincerely as such people do, as you know they do, that would mean your god has failed to communicate the same simple idea to these people as he supposedly somehow communicated to the other Christians, or alternatively, that those Christians who did not believe it was in any way important were wrong about it’s importance and that the ones who have and do think it is terribly important were right. How could we possibly know? By reading the alledged revelation texts both of these groups have in all their capacity and sincerity tried to interprete and come to these ridiculously contradicting views about it. It is as foul idea as it is tribally moralistic. Is it not?
Christianity does not make communities healthier than any other particular religious social groups. And even if it did, that would not really offer any support to any superstions about gods, or other unnatural entities. So, if there is no salvation in the afterlife, if that is not even an issue, the Christian faith in particular does not offer anything at all in comparrison to any other religious group. Is that what you are saying? That would mean, it does not really matter on any level wether a person is a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or believes in the Asartu. But why stop there? Because religious community does not really offer anything exept a collective fantasy about fictious supernatural entities, a potentially and often enough practically harmfull set of values, that are quite often derived from tribal moralism.
No community can turn the imaginary concepts of gods, that brought the community together, any more real. What such conceptual gods do, is turn communities into potential playthings of various levels of demagoues. As can be seen in almost any given religion at the moment and certainly in Christianity. Can you see that in effect? There are all sorts of communities in the modern world. If we want to make those communities better for all of us, we had better start with accepting reality, not by building and encouraging, let alone enforcing all sorts of fictious beliefs. Do you wish to make the world better for all people, or just yourself, or some particular tribe you happen to belong to? The first step to discern fictious beliefs, from as objective as we can achieve beliefs, is to realize, that faith is not a virtue in an adult person. To take anything at face value, is dangerous, is it not?
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Actually, the logical starting position would not be atheism but a limited agnosticism – one does not know if God exists and suspends judgement, but since he cannot presume to pure objectivity there is no need to jettison his entire belief system, just realize that it could be wrong. Then the question becomes “what means does one use to know about the existence or non-existence of God.” You however decide the question apriori by saying right off the bat that the only possible way to know anything is by empiricism, which is already an inherently atheistic (or materialistic) position. Your answer to your inquiry is predetermined by your methodology.
I don’t claim to be a systematic thinker but when I step back and look at my own thoughts on the matter I seem to proceed this way: first, what are the primary human experiences, things like love, family, community, idealism, rational inquiry, religion, the experience of virtue, of sin, of beauty, etc. Second, what are the models (or stories) that humans have told to explain those experiences (and there are basically three: pantheism, monotheistic revelation, materialism) third, which one strikes me as being more or less adequate? Then I chose to believe that one.
By far, the least adequate to real human experience is materialism, which just renders everything a little absurd. It can’t take things at face value but has to reduce them to some other factor.
For you, beauty is a trick of the mind. You might not like the way I put it but I can’t see how you can logically object to it. I don’t call you a robot, I don’t know you, but there is something robotic about modern man. Just look at modern art. Bauhause is for robots, not humans.
Yes, you really do seem to think history started with the foundation of the EU. Let me explain: I point out, without much judgement passed, that modern secular scientific progressive states have inflicted more carnage and mayhem on one another then their medieval Christian predecessors could have possibly imagined. Yet somehow this mayhem and carnage is not applicable to those modern states today, but the violence of Christians against one another is still applicable to them? The St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre is proof of the wickedness of Christianity, but the Terror and Napoleon and The Repression of the Vendee are not proof of the wickedness of secularism and progress? The World Wars and Cold War were not evidence of a massive civilizational failure, a failure that had little to do with Christianity and much to do with what then passed for reason and progress? Of course not, you would say, because we have progressed even further and started the Nordic Welfare State and the EU, absolving modernity of all sins formally committed in its name. True modernity begins with 1950s Sweden and ends with the EU, an unblemished record of glorious progress!
I don’t feel any particular need to improve the lives of people I’ve never met. My actions are statistically insignificant, and I don’t claim to know what is best for everyone. The conviction that through data and theory and government tinkering we can improve on other people’s lives is illusory and (I suspect) based on a secret lust for power and control over others.
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@Dpmonahan, you wrote: “Actually, the logical starting position would not be atheism but a limited agnosticism – one does not know if God exists and suspends judgement, but since he cannot presume to pure objectivity there is no need to jettison his entire belief system, just realize that it could be wrong.”
What you are describing here is actually atheism. I am an atheist – a positive atheist at that, but I am also agnostic. My atheism describes what I do not believe, my agnosticism describes what I do not know. I have the default position to the claim that there are no gods, untill any evidence to back up the claim for gods appears, or is presented by the Theist. None ever seems to appear, exept anecdotes that mostly resemble human storytelling, wich as you and I both know, is riddled with invented stories. Or some poorly constructed arguments, that invariably fail in their premises. Have you come across those?
You Continue: “Then the question becomes “what means does one use to know about the existence or non-existence of God.” You however decide the question apriori by saying right off the bat that the only possible way to know anything is by empiricism, which is already an inherently atheistic (or materialistic) position. Your answer to your inquiry is predetermined by your methodology.”
I use the methodology to determine wether gods, exist that I use to determine wether fairies, pixies or Australians exist. In my previous experience it is not only the best, but pretty much the only we humans have, as we are being confined by the reality of the material universe we inhabit, to determine what is most likely to be even close to any objective truth. Do you have an alternate, or better yet, some better method to determine wether pixies are for real? Or do you take them at face value?
It is the method, I presume, you would have your doctor to use to determine what ilnesses you might have and how to treat them. Right? Or do you think ilnesses are caused by demons and spirits, rather than by microbi and do you rather have prayer, crystals and holy inscent, than actual medication?
You wrote: “I don’t claim to be a systematic thinker but when I step back and look at my own thoughts on the matter I seem to proceed this way: first, what are the primary human experiences, things like love, family, community, idealism, rational inquiry, religion, the experience of virtue, of sin, of beauty, etc. Second, what are the models (or stories) that humans have told to explain those experiences (and there are basically three: pantheism, monotheistic revelation, materialism) third, which one strikes me as being more or less adequate? Then I chose to believe that one.
By far, the least adequate to real human experience is materialism, which just renders everything a little absurd. It can’t take things at face value but has to reduce them to some other factor.”
Now I see why you are having trouble to accept (modern) logic. I can only recommend systematic thinking, as I am sure you are capable of it, if you are not too affraid to let go of your fear of the unknown and the stories you were told, that “really matter” as much as to take these at face value. Were you not? The very basics of critical thinking is not to take anything at face value. Not even the comforting stories, we learned as little kids. If the stories are worth being called the stories “that really matter”, then they can take the criticism and same scrutany as any other stories. I can only recommend critical thinking, systematic thinking and logic, because it is pretty much impossible to convince a person who does not subscribe to logic through any manner of logic, that logic works. Do not take my word for it. Research it. Such a person who takes stories of the supernatural, or almost any stories, at face value lives in an alternate reality of their own making, where the events in the reality are explained away by taking (stories, anecdotes and metaphysical or other forms of) guesses at face value. Such may make the person satisfied in that the guess work answered the questions, that arose from the observed. But you see, in reality – the material and observable reality we all invariably inhabit – an answer is only so good as how objective it is in regard to reality. The best, if not the only method to get even close to the objectivity of an issue is through the scientific method. Or do you have an alternate method to suggest? If I choose to take at face value, that trolls are stealing my socks, as it conviniently explains my lost socks, I have not really answered the question of where my socks are, nor really how they did disappeared, not even though as how ever happy the idea of trolls stealing socks would make me. Same applies to any gods alledgedly creating the universe or doing pretty much anything.
You also wrote: “For you, beauty is a trick of the mind. You might not like the way I put it but I can’t see how you can logically object to it. I don’t call you a robot, I don’t know you, but there is something robotic about modern man. Just look at modern art. Bauhause is for robots, not humans.”
Hahaha! Do you know who else hated the Bauhaus? The Nazies did. Guess why? No, beauty is not a “trick of the mind” it is an element of the mind. Just like the emotion a song that I happen to like caused me to feel, even if you did not like the same song. The fact that beauty is something we assign on things according to our own brainchemistry does not diminish it at all. Wether if the Bauhaus art and design is beautifull is not a question of objectivity, and even less a question of absolute value, rather it is a matter of taste. Taste of art and beauty are aquired symptoms of our respective brainchemistries. Not some tricks, but actual experiences as caused and recorded by the interaction of reality and our brainchemistry. That is the objective side of the issue.
You see a pattern in wich what you percieve robots are constructed and you think you can recognize the same pattern of simplicity and purposefullness in a furniture designed in the Bauhaus. Indeed it even might be, that the designer had in mind an effort to reach similar patterns, but that does not make the designer, nor the person using the furniture any more robotic. You are overreaching in your attempt to recognize patterns. That is infact the cause of superstition as the scientific method has revealed to us decades ago. Is there a connection in your behaviour between your Theistic beliefs and you connecting modern art and design to modern humans being somehow robotic, is something I do not know, nor bother to even hazard a guess on, but perhaps you as the best interpretor of yourself here, could elaborate on the similarity of those thoughts. Could you?
Then you wrote: “Yes, you really do seem to think history started with the foundation of the EU… …True modernity begins with 1950s Sweden and ends with the EU, an unblemished record of glorious progress!”
That is not at all what I said, and I must confess, that if you did not get me the first time, I fear this second attempt will be as much wasted on you as the first one was. But I think you are a clever person, and that there is a possibility, that you can understand me, if I try again. When I compare the modern secular culture to the Christian religion as a whole, I point out that both are very human in that they are violent. Neither presents any divine aspect to them, nor are either of them divinely benevolent. Are they? Both have undergone a cultural evolution wich we could expect from a totally human constructed social movement. Yet, Christianity, as all religions, is inherently flawed by demanding that faith = a belief to things that can not be verified, is a virtue. It is indeed the secularity, that has risen science and lessened the political influence of Christianity, wich once before the rise of earliest modernism, was – as you and I both can attest to – a culture in wich torturing and burning humans alive for their opinions was lauded as a virtue. Was it not? The modern western culture drags a lot of barlast from history such as violence and authoritarianism as the one presented in Christianity when it was the culture that had united European nations into one. There is however a difference, is there not? We no longer burn people alive after a judical prosedure and call it a virtue. In most modern western countries (including Russia) we no longer even deal out the capital punishment as we have grown to understand how unfair and barbaric it is. Is it not?
Are you trying to denounce all the progress towards higher morality and better wellbeing of humans through centuries of development of modern secular culture and science it incorporates? Do you denounce medication and the comforts modern culture can provide you with? At least modern communication networks you seem to put into some use.
Would you rather be trialled by a court, that accepts supernatural wittness and torture, or one that does not, if ever anyone presented accusations of witchcraft towards you? Be honest, do you think your supernatural deity would come to rescue you in such a case? Why not? Can you think of any good excuse for a truly benevolent god not to interfere in a witch trial? I can not. Perhaps there is a reason, but as far as I do not see any, and to my knowledge, that is not very likely, I for one would rather defend my case in a secular court. That is the difference between any particular religion and modern logical secularism. The former is claimed to be a manifestation of some divine benevolence, but no gods interfere ever in any horror we humans, as the apes we are, act out. Modern logical secularism tries to follow the evidence to the logical conclusion, but we do stumble, as the apes we are. Nobody ever said we would not. Did they? Did I?
You actually wrote: “I don’t feel any particular need to improve the lives of people I’ve never met. My actions are statistically insignificant, and I don’t claim to know what is best for everyone. The conviction that through data and theory and government tinkering we can improve on other people’s lives is illusory and (I suspect) based on a secret lust for power and control over others.”
I am sorry, that you are limited in your altruistic ability to the people you have met. That is most unfortunate. No sane person claims to know what is best for everybody, so bringing that up is yet a nother strawman. Is it not? Why do you keep doing that? In a democratically governed society you are part of the government, no matter how insignificant, but in direct responsibility to all the others on how we are governed. I am sorry, that you feel impotent, in the face of things in your particular government, that to me seems a bit more like plutocracy, than my government, but you could remedy it by taking up a cause and become an activist and at the same time you could find a true community, that really mattered, since you seem to be in need of one. Mayby your feeling of inadequacy is a result of the poor state of democracy in your society and your cause could be to improve on that…
You demand that the modern man is faulty by being an individualist, but then you attest, that you are not interrested to improve the lives of people you have never met. You do realize that, that sort of tribalism is not so far removed from the worst sides of individualism, do you?
Government, what ever form it takes, be it the state, or just some tribe elders, or even a gang leader, is bound to affect the lives of people. Objectively the best way to get that effect to be rather improving the lives of any and all people than making it worse, is only through the best awailable data and theory. If those are not consulted when we are being governed, then even despite the good will and altruism for people, we have and have not met, the effects may be catastrophic and not lead to more human wellbeing but to less human wellbeing even on our own part. I do not expect either of us would want that? The need to improve the lives of humans means being responsible of oneself and over others. Being responsible does not mean you have a “secret lust for power and controll”. It is what being an adult member of a society means.
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You seriously recommend I look into logic and critical thinking? What have I been doing except looking critically the civilization I’ve grown up in?
When I say “take things at face value” I mean something more like “respect the integrity of the experience”. Everyone who thinks the spring woods are beautiful thinks the woods are actually beautiful, that the beauty they experience is the beauty of the woods, not a purely interior chemical reaction (aka a trick of the mind). If you have to redefine and reduce the experience to fit it into your system then you are warping what should serve as the starting point.
You invite me to live in reality: that is exactly what I attempt, but unlike you without an apriori definition of the real. Your metaphysics – all reality is material – determines your logic – empiricism – which reinforces your metaphysics.
The problems of human experience in the world can be explained with three possible approaches, and world religions and philosophical systems will generally boil down to one of these – a) pantheism -that material being and human experience is continuous with god, b) monotheism – that god sustains material being and human experience in existence, or c) materialism – that material being simply is and further questions are absurd. The answer is not going to be found under a microscope or in an enclosed experiment. It is not a question of this or that thing being “real” (which you apriori define as material anyway) but of the conditions of reality itself.
Argumentum ah Hitlerum. How enlightened. While you are at it please remind our hostess that Hitler was also a vegetarian.
You are still arguing that “true” modernity starts more or less with your lifetime. You can safely define all the scientifically minded progressives who proceeded you, and who plunged Europe into one horrible war after another, were barbarians awaiting the birth of the true modern, which is conveniently identified with your opinions.
Yes, I suppose I could get myself organised and start advocating for laws that I think will help everyone live better lives. Then if I am wildly successful the government will make those laws, and enforce them with fines and punishments. People who disagree with my vision of the good life will be harassed by the authorities, and if really stubborn, arrested and thrown into jail. Whether or not my idea of the good life is the true one would not matter at that point, because I would have already gotten what I really wanted.
No thanks. I feel no desire “to make the world a better place” like that.
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@Dpmonahan, it seems to me at this point of our conversation, that you are infact very much trying to shoehorn me into your own concept of an atheist handbook. Do you see what I mean?
You wrote: “You seriously recommend I look into logic and critical thinking? What have I been doing except looking critically the civilization I’ve grown up in?”
I salute your efforts to look critically at the civilization you have grown up in. Our endeavours are not dissimilar on that issue, though our conclusions may vary. What I am asking, is for you to put the same critique in play when evaluating claims for gods. Any gods. Including the one worshipped in your own heritage and appearing in the stories that “really matter” to you personally.
You wrote: “When I say “take things at face value” I mean something more like “respect the integrity of the experience”. Everyone who thinks the spring woods are beautiful thinks the woods are actually beautiful, that the beauty they experience is the beauty of the woods, not a purely interior chemical reaction (aka a trick of the mind). If you have to redefine and reduce the experience to fit it into your system then you are warping what should serve as the starting point.”
The starting point inevitably is, that we are our physical brains. There is no “trickery” involved. That is merely the reality we live in. This much we have learned through the scientific method. The very same medical science, that most of us would rely our own health on, if we needed actual medical health. And for a good reason, would you not agree? Or would you consider exorcisms, or woodoo as possible cures for example to cancer? The competition to science comes from all sorts of superstitious beliefs based on metaphysical assumptions about spirits and whatnot nonsense in all fields of study. Logically, it is not much of a competition. Is it? The beauty of the morning wood is no more a “trick of the mind” than our eyes and nerves in them transmitting a perception of the spring morning in the wood to our brain is a “trick” of of our biology and neurochemistry.
The experience of the beauty of the woods is no less valuable to us, even if we do realize that it is a subjective experience. It can be a collective and shared experience, wich in turn may or may not add to the experience. We may even form a consensus of individuals who recognize the common experience, or alternatively we may disagree about our respective experiences. If we do, wich one of us is the one who gets to define wether this particular morning, in this particular wood is actually beautifull? A god who shall never share any experiences about the beauty of the wood, nor really anything? Or whom?
You wrote: “You invite me to live in reality: that is exactly what I attempt, but unlike you without an apriori definition of the real. Your metaphysics – all reality is material – determines your logic – empiricism – which reinforces your metaphysics.”
Once again, I do not employ metaphysics, or any other sort of guesswork in this issue. If you truly believe in any particular god, then it is you who has decided – apriori – how the reality works. My disbelief in anything without evidence to back it up is not an apriori assumption. It is the lack of an apriori assumption. I have evaluated different measures and methods to establish what is real and my conclusion is, that other than science, the found them wanting. If I then further employ a method that I have found producing reliable and consistent results, then that is my bias on how things work, but it is that for a good reason. What is your reason to choose a nother?
You wrote: “The problems of human experience in the world can be explained with three possible approaches, and world religions and philosophical systems will generally boil down to one of these – a) pantheism -that material being and human experience is continuous with god, b) monotheism – that god sustains material being and human experience in existence, or c) materialism – that material being simply is and further questions are absurd. The answer is not going to be found under a microscope or in an enclosed experiment. It is not a question of this or that thing being “real” (which you apriori define as material anyway) but of the conditions of reality itself.”
The problems of human experience in the world could be explained by a far more choises of explanations, than that. For example, we could claim to be able to explain it by extremely advanced semi-supernatural cultures of what we could define for example as pixies, gods or whatnot. But the number of choises is not the issue here. The question is, why on earth would we choose a god as an explanation, when we have absolutely zilch evidence, that such a being even exists? To make such a ridiculous choise would indeed require apriori assumption that it exists. Us not having even remotely objectively wittnessed any gods or for that matter anything at all we could define as supernatural, does not necessarily mean no such things exist, but to assume they do is necessarily illogical and indeed sometimes harmfull. However, we do have ample verifiable evidence of the material universe in wich and under wich conditions we do operate. Hence, it is only natural, that it is the base of our knownledge and assumptions alike. As the one that we are able to recognize most of the typical fictional characters of human storytelling, from any particular story despite their individual appearance and attributes. However, since we do not always recognize fiction from fact, we do not appriciate anecdotes and have a reasonable expectation of evidence for extraordinary claims such as gods. Correct?
You wrote: “Argumentum ah Hitlerum. How enlightened. While you are at it please remind our hostess that Hitler was also a vegetarian.”
Who said anything about Hitler? It was you yourself, who brought up Bauhaus and your reasons for your distaste of their designs. I can not help, if they were somewhat similar to the reasons why the Nazies hated Bauhaus design. The Nazies did hated the Bauhaus style, because it was too modern for their very conservative tastes. That is what they themselves expressed about it, when they shut it down. Were they right on that issue?
You wrote: “You are still arguing that “true” modernity starts more or less with your lifetime. You can safely define all the scientifically minded progressives who proceeded you, and who plunged Europe into one horrible war after another, were barbarians awaiting the birth of the true modern, which is conveniently identified with your opinions.”
No I do not. When I argue, that I would rather be trialled in a court, that would not accept supernatural wittness, I do not refer to my own lifetime, unless I happen to be over 300 years old. If you employ your critical thinking skills on the question of my age, do you find it logically likely, that I was so old? When I argue that logic is a good measure to evaluate reality I am referring to far more older methodology than modernity, but it is something you seem to detest, because modern culture is based on an appreciation of logic. When I argue I would rather be treated by modern medical methods, than exorcism and spirit healing I am not referring to merely the most recent medical research, though I expect it to be better than something before my birth. I am old, but not so old as to be able to refer to the UN as something having been established within my lifetime. Where did you get your notion, that I was only referring to something within my own lifetime, when I spoke in defence of the modern world? Was it just another strawman? Of course, if you do not appriate logic you do not care wether if your arguments are logical fallacies, or do you?
You wrote: “Yes, I suppose I could get myself organised and start advocating for laws that I think will help everyone live better lives. Then if I am wildly successful the government will make those laws, and enforce them with fines and punishments. People who disagree with my vision of the good life will be harassed by the authorities, and if really stubborn, arrested and thrown into jail. Whether or not my idea of the good life is the true one would not matter at that point, because I would have already gotten what I really wanted.
No thanks. I feel no desire “to make the world a better place” like that.”
What are you saying? That you think laws and jails are not necessary, or what? What is your solution on how to treat people who do not abide to the rules and laws of the society? I expect there could indeed be a better method yet. But at least we have decided not to burn people who disagree alive anymore, as was the Christian tradition for a very big part of Christendoms history. Was it not?
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” is why does religion make so little sense in the modern western world, while it makes perfect sense – in some form or another – for most of the rest of human existence?”
I don’t think you believe that any more than I do. You reject every other religion conceived in history. They don’t make perfect sense to you at all. People have always doubted the god or religion presented to them by their society, they just didn’t have the information available to them to conceive of any other explanation of this existence, and inevitably continued to assume some other invisible force was working behind the scenes. Hence the birth of ever more religions based on invisible deities.
Stories from religions have just as much relevance as any other fanciful stories that have influenced the development of our societies – dragon slaying, witches, mermaids. They tells us about the mindset and culture of the people who developed them. Gallant knights slaying fearsome monsters; women being victimised and sexualised. Christianity has been a great control mechanism and has shown itself to have a remarkably durable central message (guilt, forgiveness, equality). We don’t need to rip it up, just place in the context of our current body of knowledge about the world and about human behaviour.
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There is an interesting part of The City of God where Augustine makes fun of Roman religion, which had a god for the green grain, a god for maturing grain, a god for the the fuzzy stuff that grows off the top of the grain, etc.
A professor of mine, a very erudite Augustinian monk, pointed out that there was nothing to make fun of: old Roman folk religion was essentially pantheistic and each little god was not conceived as an individual but as manifestation of the divine in nature. The interesting thing, per the monk, about the passage is that Augustine, an educated Roman, does not understand his own culture’s ancestral religion. Moreover, nobody reading The City of God, not even the pagans, could make sense of it either. Roman culture had lost the conceptual tools which made its old religion intelligible. What made perfect sense to an agricultural society made no sense to an urban empire.
The information had not changed. What “information” did Augustine know that someone of his education did not posses five hundred years before? Heck, on a day to day level, what information do we have about running our lives that Augustine did not have? It isn’t data, nobody who ever lived has run their lives on data.
The rules of logic had changed.
“We don’t need to rip it up” you say as you claim that religions are nothing other than control mechanisms.
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Heck, on a day to day level, what information do we have about running our lives that Augustine did not have?
Information on waterborne/airborne diseases, information on the nature of chemical poisoning (Lead ruined Rome, remember), information on sexually transmitted diseases, food safety, food storage, environmental knowledge, weather forecast, not thinking people with epilepsy were possessed…. I could go on.
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Lead did not ruin Rome, anyone who has lived there knows the mineral deposits lined the pipes. Romans did not know about STDs? Didn’t know how to preserve food? Don’t be silly.
There is a line in Gospels about people bringing Jesus “the insane, the epileptic, and the possessed”. People knew there were differences.
I sincerely doubt you run your life by data.
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Yes, their pipes were made from lead. “Plumbing” comes from that Latin word. And I’m afraid, you’re mistaken about knowledge of epilepsy. The word used is “lunatic,” from the Greek word’s meaning of “moonstruck.” And you idiot, Jesus casts out the “demon” from the “lunatic” boy:
Matthew 17:14–18 “And Jesus answered, ‘O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.’ And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly” (ESV).
Honestly DP, your inability to admit you’re wrong must make your life a living hell.
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Your incapacity to read without interjecting your own stupid biases must really stink too.
The pipes were lead. The water of central Italy is hard, coating the inner diameter with mineral deposits.
Not all cases of epilepsy were considered to be caused by demons, as the line I referenced shows.
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Ho hum
“Did Lead Poisoning Bring Down Ancient Rome?”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/04/scienceshot-did-lead-poisoning-bring-down-ancient-rome
And DP, do stop being disingenuous. Only in Matthew’s account (and only in the ESV and NKJV translations) is the word epileptic used. But am I to believe you believe in demonic possession, as Jesus believed?
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You still having a hard time with reading comprehension? Did I claim lead was not used, or did I claim that the pipes would be coated by mineral deposits.
Only a dribbling moron thinks lead poisoning caused the decline and fall of the Western Empire. It was caused by a trade imbalance sucking all the money out of Italy – a fact the Romans were very aware of, which is why they moved the capital, and by climate change – the fifth century was very cold – and mass migrations.
I’m an agnostic about whether demons actually posses people but the phenomena does seem to be distinct from other forms of illness. Epileptics don’t claim to be possessed, “possessed” people do, but only while in a trance.
It must be the Matthew I’m referencing: demoniac, epileptics and the paralyzed I think is more exact. I don’t know cap and verse.
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The pipes were not simply mineral coated. They were “made” from lead… as was their love of the metal:
http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2012/01/lead-poisoning-in-rome-skeletal.html
I never said it was sole cause of the fall of Rome. Granted, if I’d added the word “helped” it might have read better. I was, however, saying, as per your original silly comment concerning life knowledge, it caused illnesses that were preventable… Illnesses we don’t not suffer from today.
Demonic possession, as I noted, is not a condition, as Jesus believed. Hence, our knowledge today concerning living is far superior to that of Jesus, or Augustine. Of course, this brings us back to the realisation that Jesus really didn’t know anything, and didn’t contribute a single shred of new information to the human theatre. In fact, he was out there perpetuating false ideas that caused untold misery. Not much of a “God,” wouldn’t you say?
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People have always doubted the god or religion presented to them by their society
And it’s an old, old state of mind… further quashing Dp’s silly assertion
“Earliest evidence for atheism predates Jesus by at least 500 years, Cambridge professor argues”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2016/02/16/earliest-evidence-for-atheism-predates-jesus-by-at-least-500-years-cambridge-professor-argues/?ref_widget=gr_trending&ref_blog=grails&ref_post=atheist&utm_content=bufferc7b95&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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The deeper question – to me anyway, I love to hear myself think – is why does religion make so little sense in the modern western world, while it makes perfect sense – in some form or another – for most of the rest of human existence?
Religion makes as much sense today as it did in the past: it’s a response to the fear and pain of death. It’s a promise that is as potent today as it was yesterday. Spiritualism of the 60’s and UFO religions of the 70’s and 80’s prove this. Your particular flavour of religion is not special, or unique. It’s just older.
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What on earth does fear of pain and death have to do with UFOs or Roman folk religion?
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The panacea of religion: life does not end, and cosmic justice will be delivered. It’s the same recipe repeated over and over again. Understandably, though, I might add. It’s a powerful deflection.
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Not all religions have the concept of eternal life. Some have the concept, but no real insistence on it as being essential doctrine – Judaism for example. How are they about escaping death?
How bout you back off the silly generalizations a bit?
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Jews most definitely believe in an afterlife: Olam Ha-Ba.
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Judaism has no central teaching authority, never did. Some Jews believe in an afterlife, not all. In ancient Judaism belief in an afterlife was not common or explicit. Around the time of Christ there were varying opinions on the subject, as there are today.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with the Bible knows this.
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You mean, someone like me? 😉
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I have never been impressed with your knowledge of the Bible. I saw once before your gaping ignorance of the letter to the Hebrews when you were asserting the Christians are for some reason subject to Jewish ceremonial law, and now I’m pointing out your gaping ignorance of Jewish notions of the afterlife in the OT and NT.
I think you just google stuff to look smart. Not the same as being smart. Try reading more, it will do you good.
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Christians are subject to Mosaic Law. Jesus never said a word freeing you. Nothing. In fact, here is a Christian theologian confirming exactly that: You are subject to Mosaic Law:
Are you a theologian, DP?
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Read the letter to the Hebrews. Reading is good for you.
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Paul, huh? I see.
So what you’re saying here is that in Jesus’ entire life, including his three-year ministry in which he had an awful lot to say about all sorts of things, including his specific thoughts on Mosaic Law, he simply forgot to mention that none of that actually still applied. Simply slipped his mind. He made a boo-boo, a blunder. In fact, according to you, he accidentally said the exact opposite of what was actually on his mind. Silly, foolish, stupid nincompoop. A veritable butter-fingers, the hopeless fool.
Ooops!
So, to make up for this rather embarrassing brain fart, some thirty years after his death he privately visits a man, Saul, to let him know that he blundered and that people really shouldn’t murder people suspected of, say, sorcery, or kill, for example, homosexuals. Slavery, though, was still permitted, and encouraged.
I see. That’s tremendously convincing, DP. Really, I’m sold…
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Hebrews is an anonymous work, idiot. Though Paul did write extensively on the matter elsewhere.
I cordially invite you to look into the matter for yourself. The whole debate in the first century church is very well recorded in this thing called the Bible which you do not in fact read aside from google searches.
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Paul wrote Hebrews, dickhead.
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Oh, and if you want to argue that it wasn’t, then tell me who did.
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It is anonymous, idiot. Just. Read. It.
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Using the same language Paul uses. Different audience, different style. It’s really quite simple, DP. It is the overwhelming opinion of experts that it was Paul. Of course, it might have been Luke, however, who jotted down the thoughts of Paul’s sermon:
Either way, it’s Paul. So, to repeat:
so what you’re saying here is that in Jesus’ entire life, including his three-year ministry in which he had an awful lot to say about all sorts of things, including his specific thoughts on Mosaic Law, he simply forgot to mention that none of that actually still applied. Simply slipped his mind. He made a boo-boo, a blunder. In fact, according to you, he accidently said the exact opposite of what was actually on his mind. Silly, foolish, stupid nincompoop. A veritable butter-fingers, the hopeless fool.
Ooops!
So, to make up for this rather embarrassing brain fart, some thirty years after his death he privately visits a man, Saul, to let him know that he blundered and that people really shouldn’t murder people suspected of, say, sorcery, or kill, for example, homosexuals. Slavery, though, was still permitted, and encouraged.
I see. That’s tremendously convincing.
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It is not Paul’s style and never claims to be Paul. Majority opinion of scholars is that it is not Paul, at least as of ten years ago.
If you are not willing to do the reading necessary to even start talking abut the issue then you are just an ass clown.
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http://www.gotquestions.org/author-Hebrews.html
Regardless, Paul (as most believe) or not, my point stands. Jesus said nothing, nothing at all, ever, about Mosaic Law not applying. In fact, he said the opposite, so whether Paul or someone else, the following is 100% accurate:
so what you’re saying here is that in Jesus’ entire life, including his three-year ministry in which he had an awful lot to say about all sorts of things, including his specific thoughts on Mosaic Law, he simply forgot to mention that none of that actually still applied. Simply slipped his mind. He made a boo-boo, a blunder. In fact, according to you, he accidently said the exact opposite of what was actually on his mind. Silly, foolish, stupid nincompoop. A veritable butter-fingers, the hopeless fool.
Ooops!
So, to make up for this rather embarrassing brain fart, some thirty years after his death he privately visits a man, Saul, to let him know that he blundered and that people really shouldn’t murder people suspected of, say, sorcery, or kill, for example, homosexuals. Slavery, though, was still permitted, and encouraged.
That sums it up, doesn’t it, DP? That is what you believe… Jesus blundered horrendously on the most important theological point he could have made.
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I am very hesitant to discuss Jesus’ attitudes on Mosaic law and eschatology with an ignorant assclown who has not only not read the basic documents but who seems to takes pride the fact.
I will not offer “chapter and verse” because that is not how the documents in question were ever meant to be used. They are stories, not textbooks.
But it is safe to say this: Jesus was an eschatological prophet who predicted the fall of the Temple, and was therefore put to death. If the Temple was doomed, he did not expect Mosaic law to continue in force for very long. This was also seen in the fact that he invented or adapted his own set of rituals to replace the old ones. His exact thoughts on the law are unclear, but that he thought it was passing away was clear from his acts.
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Ah, so you can’t show me where Jesus said you’re free of Mosaic Law.
I see.
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Then there were the times Jesus said “You have heard it said (by Moses)… but I say to you… etc.” and the time he said “The time is coming when you will not worship on this mountain or that mountain (Zion) but in spirit and truth”…
Jesus never explicitly said the Mosaic law was abrogated, but his preaching his acts assumed it was not long for the world.
In fact, taking the matter as a whole, Jesus’ prophetic acts of picking the 12, setting up a sacrificial meal, and predicting the end of the temple make no sense if he thought Mosaic law would continue. Why set up a new ritual system if the old one would continue?
But since you don’t actually read the Bible all this is going right over your head, isn’t it.
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Right. You can’t show me where Jesus said Mosaic Law no-longer applied. You can, of course, show me some notes from Paul, which might imply that, although many Christians don’t think so. To repeat the theologians words:
You might want to read some of the work by Gary North, too. He’s quite convinced Mosaic Law stands.
That said, by your amateur understanding, you are saying Jesus simply forgot to make the most important theological point of the new religion… but, however, some thirty years after his death he remembered and popped back down to earth to tell Paul. That is, of course, what you’re saying. And let’s not beat around the bush… we’re talking here about the most important theological point of the new religion, and you’re saying Jesus forgot to mention it.
Now let’s be honest… His forgetfulness (Jesus’ brain fart you are offering here as an excuse) is a bit of a monstrosity to leave dangling out there. I mean, we have children being stoned to death for cursing their parents, gays being burnt alive, unfaithful partners having their heads cut off, rape victims being forced to marry their rapists… and let’s not forget the vibrant slave trade. All these things existing because Jesus was a, by your excuse, a stupid nincompoop who not only forgot to mention none of that still applied, but mistakenly said it all stands, to the letter, no change.
Truly, DP, it’s a tremendously persuasive argument.
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Never heard of this guy you like so much, where does he teach? He sounds like a moron. Birds of a feather, I guess.
Explain, oh wise Bible scholar who has never actually read it, why would Jesus predict the end of the Temple cult, offer new cult practices, and tell people to ignore aspects of Mosaic law if he thought it would continue?
And have I asked you why Jesus’ comment on the Mosaic law not passing away until is followed by a discourse on why his rules are superior to it? Might not the context reconcile the comment to the rest of Jesus’ work and subsequent debates?
But ah, that would require you to actually be familiar with the book, and we have long since established you are not up to that.
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If you disagree with the professional theologian, then I suggest you take it up with him. From where i stand, his view trumps yours.
Interesting, though, isn’t it, that you guys (including Jesus, by all accounts) can’t even get something like this straight. Kill witches, or not kill witches? Kill children, or not kill children? Rape victims marry their rapist, or not marry their rapist? Kill unfaithful partners, or not kill unfaithful partners? Slaves… Oh, well, Paul encouraged slavery, so that bit stands, obviously.
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Made the mistake of clicking your links. Gary North and GotQuestions are your resources, huh? Your mind is circus train wreck.
Can’t say it has been enlightening talking to you.
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1) Are you denying Gary North isn’t a leading Christian in the US, and a Tea Party favourite? He’s known as the Tea Party Economist, and principle voice in the Dominionist movement.
2) If you want to contend any information presented in that one article, then go right ahead.
Chapter and verse… where did Jesus say you’re free from Mosaic Law? I have shown you a theologian who says you’re not. You have merely give me your amateur “opinion.”
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1) Never heard of him until now, so I doubt he leads much of anything. I have friends involved in Tea Party stuff who have never mentioned him. I’ve only heard about the Dominionist movement from internet cranks like you, so I assume it is largely a figment of atheist imaginations.
2) I have never in my days of reading Bible modern or ancient commentaries heard anyone argue Paul is the author of Hebrews. Most medieval authors I’ve read assume it, the ancients either assumed it or denied it, the moderns all deny it. Its status as Pauline has always been in held doubt, which is why Jerome placed it after the other works attributed to Paul in his Vulgate, the rest of which he ordered by length.
As for theological opinions, why does Gary North’s opinion as a theologian matter more than Paul’s, or the author of the letter to the Hebrews, or the Gospel writers themselves for that matter who have Jesus correcting the law, promulgating new forms of worship, and predicting the end of the Temple, and hence the law?
But you don’t read books, so never mind. Go back to the flaming circus train wreck in your head.
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So, you’re back arguing that Jesus, rather stupidly, simply forgot to mention the most important theological point of the new religion.
Awesome stuff, DP. Truly, awesome.
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I’d assume because he didn’t want to get killed the first day on the job. I would have been a subversive message.
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Yes, wouldn’t want to waste three years adding absolutely nothing new or original to the human knowledge base 😉
Still, could have been something said at, say, the last supper? Or what about during the 40 day zombie walkabout?
Just a thought…
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And why would the god, God, be afraid? If his purpose was to die, well….
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I see that on top of a superficial knowledge of scripture you also have superficial knowledge of the hypostatic union.
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Do I? I guess, if you say so
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@DP.
The hypostatic union?Are you freaking serious?
What a fumb duck you truly are. You present another piece of dumb-arse Catholic Doctrine?
Why?
Oh, and the character, Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. He preached Mosaic Law.
And no , you can’t hold an intelligent conversation on religion because you are a Christian who believes he is a dirty rotten sinner and needs a make-believe Jewish rabbi figure to redeem him from all the naughty things he did – like shooting fucking squirrels – so’s he can get to spend eternity with a make-believe god in a make-believe place called heaven.
Jesus H farking christ, what a moron you are, dp.
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And again, are you a theologian, DP?
I think I’ll take the actual theologian’s interpretation to be more accurate than your amateur “opinion.”
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Fine, then read the freaking letter to the Hebrews, or Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans, because those documents were written by theologians, you ignoramus.
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Hey, if you have a problem with the theologians interpretation, take it up with him, you amateur. Mosaic Law stands.
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Hey jz
(sorry to infringe on DP’s easily dismantling of your claims)
Don’t you ever tire of walking in the vortex of your own contradictions?
You cite Mosaic law, Mosaic law, Mosaic law, yet you deny Moses ever lived……….. If you were in my courtroom, I would throw you out for bringing your circus antics while you pretend to be serious, thus mocking the genius of law.
Case dismissed.
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” you amateur.”
Pot calling the kettle black? Yes, I am an amateur, never claimed to be anything but. At least I have actually read the Bible and can hold an intelligent conversation about, say, Biblical notions of the afterlife. You are a simple ignoramus. And the worst thing is you could cure it by reading a little, but don’t.
“Mosaic Law stands.” Brave theological pronouncements from the guy who has never read the letter to the Hebrews.
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DP, please show me (chapter and verse) where Jesus says Mosaic Law no-longer applies.
I look forward to reviewing your answer.
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Hi Colourstorm
Please show me (chapter and verse) where Jesus says Mosaic Law no-longer applies.
I look forward to reviewing your answer.
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Yeah yeah, we’ve been through this before.
Every word of God is good, and the law is absolutely perfect, as a matter of fact, when correctly understood, it magnifies sin, glorifies God, and is the perfect welcome mat to Grace. Love God, love man, the whole law is summed up.
But the greater question for you is: on a thread which boasts of atheism, why do you focus 24/7 on the scriptures………on God……….on Moses…………on Christ………….? or is it simply you agree with what I have said all along: you must rid your self of truth to justify a world of non absolutes.
God is Absolutely. Your religion of atheism? eh. whatever.
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Please show me (chapter and verse) where Jesus says Mosaic Law no-longer applies.
I look forward to reviewing your answer.
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Oh john, DP has said it well, the ‘documents’ of scripture include a failsafe against such poor demands of ‘chapter and verse,’ as the word is ‘here a little, there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept.’
Perhaps you are beginning to understand God’s word is NOT as other books where ridicule abounds.
But you still have not answered the greater question: why do you have an interest in ahem, Mosaic law, since by your own testimony, assert Moses never lived?
The world awaits such an irreverent reply.
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God bless hermeneutics!
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Yep, even in this sarcasm there is truth, for God’s word is not meant to be understood by the unbelieving and lazy of thought, who can glean simple information from any other source such as Readers digest or ‘Time magazine.
If the Heart is not exercised unto Godliness, I dare say there will be very little content and even less satisfaction in seeking spiritual answers, so it is then no wonder that the results will be nothing but accusations and endless excuses.
Yet a child of four can be enriched, while a lifetime scholar has but touched the surface of the deepest truths.
Face it jz, no other book like it. It is that good.
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No other book like it? Certainly, with 79,000 hilarious contradictions it’s quite a remarkable book, indeed.
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Did you forget about the so called 30,000 denominations of people trying to get it right?
As to your allegations of contradictions, once more, you as an unbeliever are unqualified (as are all others) to ‘rightly divide the word of truth,’ where all so called faults of scripture dissipate in the morning light, just like watching the dew drop say adios. Here’s a tip for ya: A lack of understanding is not proof of weakness in the text………….
And please do not cry that so called ‘professional’ christians have made the claims. Let God be true, and every man a liar.
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You do a wonderful job driving people away from your religion, CS. Keep it up.
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Coming from you john, I will take that as a massive compliment which I do not deserve.
And by the way, if I were ‘religious,’ I would be ‘visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction,’ as described in the good book, which many have not a clue as to both scripture and religion.
But tkx to VW here for the opportunity to shed some much needed daylight.
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Essentially you’re both correct. There is no central dogma about the afterlife in Judaism. One belief that some Jews have is Olam Haba, the world to come, in which the righteous will be restored in a bodily resurrection and a new age of prosperity will arise, but there are other ideas about the afterlife as well and many Jews simply don’t believe in an afterlife.
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And just how do you know he said this?
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The attribution is reasonable enough.
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Based on the fact that the gospels are anonymous, written by people who never met the biblical character, Jesus of Nazareth, though how could meet a narrative construct is beyond me, and at least two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke used up to 60% of their material ripped off from ”Mark” who didn’t even have a post Resurrection account which had to be forged to give the early christians/ church some basis to develop a supernatural religion?
Yeah, I guess on those whitewashed and fallacious terms and that we are by and large dealing with intellectual, indoctrinated morons, then WTF, yes, you probably would call it ”reasonable”.
But no truly honest person in their right mind ever will.
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According to the gospels Jesus was an itinerant rabbi with a reputation for miracles, preaching a new way of being faithful to god in the light of impending disaster for Israel. This image is entirely fitting with what we know about 1st century Judaism, and what we know 1st century Christianity. Only a total prick with an ideological ax to grind and who forgot to take his medication this morning would find that anything but reasonable.
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No. And let me reiterate,for god ( any one god you prefer) forbid you might be one of those indoctrinated morons, DP, only the bible tells us he performed miracles.
Meaning, this is the only record of such supernatural feats of wonderment we have.
Now, if you are at least marginally honest and intellectual you will know that this is simply unverifiable nonsense.
And once more, as there is not a scrap of contemporary evidence, the Jesus of Nazareth character, as depicted in the gospels, can only be reasonable be considered a narrative construct.
And as for pricks, dp, you really can’t kick against the ones of conscience can you?
Not unless you admit to being an indoctrinated, intellectual moron, of course.
Well, are you?
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Yes, the only record of Jesus is the witness of the church. Obviously.
There are in fact real people who had reputations as miracle workers during their lifetimes. Does that mean they actually worked miracles? No, all we can say for sure is that it is how they were perceived and understood by their contemporaries. Jesus would fall into that sort of category.
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You are not paying attention, dp.
Now please stop jabbering for a few moments and exercise a little of that intellect you would like us all to believe you possess.
Yes, there were people who had such reputations but I am sure you afford them zero credibility, yes?
Good!
So, moving on ….
The ONLY record for the character, Jesus of Nazareth, is the bible.
This erroneous document that contains blatant forgery, and enough nonsense that only a poor indoctrinated fool would consider it had any veracity does not bear witness to an historical individual called Jesus of Nazareth.
Are we clear?
So, once more;
The character, Jesus of Nazareth, as reflected in the fallacious texts known as the gospels is nothing but a narrative construct and only a willfully ignorant or indoctrinated individual would lend the story any credibility at all.
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Were Pio of Pietrelcina or Giovanni Bosco wonder workers? I have no opinion on the matter. All I can say is that was their reputation while alive and they were real historical figures. Pio of Pietrelcina was a well known person with a reputation for miracles. Jesus was probably the same sort of person, it is not an unknown phenomena among religious leaders. Whether or not his reputation for miracles was based on him actually preforming them is another problem that I’m not addressing, and don’t think can be rationally addressed.
If the Bible did not exist the church would exist, so that is the primary witness. What you see in the Gospels are theologically elaborated versions of apostolic preaching. The rest of the NT are various doctrinal or pastoral works.
I don’t know what you care calling erroneous. Pseudo-epigraphy is not forgery, it was a standard literary practice. Various disagreements on detail or differing theological interpretations are not nonsense.
What you have is a very believable religious figure: an eschatological prophet predicting a cataclysmic event, with a reputation for miracles, who considers himself something of a messiah, a who starts a religious reform movement. Fits with what we know of first century Judaism and first century Christianity.
Now, was he really the messiah? Did he really preform miracles? All we can say is his followers thought so.
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You truly are grasping aren’t you?
Or more than likely demonstrating the effects of a converts life of willful ignorance and indoctrination.
”Theologically elaborated”? Oh my goodness’ me!
Hand me another shovel and let me help you spread the bullshit, dp.
erroneous
ɪˈrəʊnɪəs,ɛ-/Submit
adjective
wrong; incorrect.
“employers sometimes make erroneous assumptions”
synonyms: wrong, incorrect, mistaken, in error, inaccurate, not accurate, inexact, not exact, imprecise, invalid, untrue, false, fallacious, wide of the mark, off target;
Tell me, just how many examples of erroneous would you like me to list re: the gospels before you grasped the meaning?
One last time.
The church is only a witness to the religion they invented and formalized.
That is ALL.
The foundational tenets of the Christian religion are all based on lies.
The biblical character, Jesus of Nazareth is a narrative construct.
There is no evidence for ”him”.
His followers swallowed what they were told, which was a story, in a similar manner as a great any others have done over religious claims.
There is no evidence of an historical individual behind the biblical character, Jesus of Nazareth.
Therefore there is nothing at all to consider ”reasonable”.
Finito.
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There is an entire society that attributes its foundation to him that dates from more or less his lifetime, and there is an entirely believable portrait of him. It is most reasonable to think he existed as I’ve described above.
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His lifetime? Who’s lifetime?
What evidence do you have for this claim?
Who existed?
The biblical character is a narrative construct, so who are you talking about?
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Jesus, you dumbass.
Paul’s earliest writings are from the late 40s, Jesus died in the mid 30s. In the interval you have his followers preaching about him.
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There was no person, outside of the bible, called called Jesus of Nazareth. He is a narrative construct.
What evidence – besides the bible – do you have for the character, Saul of Tarsus, please?
And what evidence do you have for his ”followers” preaching about him between 30ce and the time of earliest writings of the character Saul of Tarsus?
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Finally you are showing your true colors as a bonafide internet wackjob and now is when I always start feeling sorry for you. Next come the conspiracy theories.
No serious historian doubts the existence of Paul or the authorship of his core letters. None doubt the existence of Jesus either, but they debate how true to life the stories about him are. With Paul, they discuss how accurate Acts’ depiction is, but not his existence or that Romans, Galatians, or Corinthians 1 &2 are his.
I mean who wrote Galatians, not “Paul” Paul but some other guy named Paul active around 40 AD?
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Wrong. No serious historian doubts that the confirmed letters were penned by the same individual, who is named in the bible as Saul of Tarsus ( Paul).
That is as far as it goes with serious historians. There is no evidence he existed.
Acts is palpable bullshit – largely a work of fiction- and that you consider it relevant merely shows how lacking you are in current biblical history.
So any non biblical evidence for the character, Saul of Tarsus?
How about any of the people he was supposed to have met on his travels?
Kings etc.
There are absolutely no Jewish records of the lone-‘gunslinger’ ”Christian Hunter” who went over to the Dark Side.
Not a peep.
So, once again, evidence please?
Oh, you do know what the word evidence means I hope?
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OK, let me get my popcorn while you make an ass of yourself expounding some alternate history:
Who invented Paul, the Masons?
Oh, Constantine, right?
I’ll take the conniving Jews for 500, Alex.
There is no talking to you, I’m done.
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And you have demonstrated to the world what an indoctrinated moron you are.
Shall I close the door as you leave?
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Excellent post, as usual!
Nevertheless, no matter how someone arrives at atheism, the end result is the complete rejection of reason.
Every atheist argument is based on a logical fallacy or a false claim or a personal opinion posing as the Gospel truth.
For example, Christopher Hitchens excoriated Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta for supposedly getting off on severe, hopeless poverty instead of getting off on trying to actually end it.
But the same argument could made for heart surgeons: that the heart surgeon gets off on all the blood and guts of cutting people’s chests open instead of actually trying to end heart disease.
The same argument could be made for hospital emergency room personnel: that they get off on all the blood and guts associated with road kill, drive by shootings, etc., instead of trying to end all those catastrophes.
Like doctors and first responders, people like Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta have a charism (a particular gift or calling).
And thank God they do, or this world would still be in the Stone Age.
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That’s a really interesting argument SOM. I’m not entirely sure it makes sense, but it certainly conjures up some vivid imagery.
I’d suggest that health services on a wider scale (certainly here, maybe not in the USA where it’s profit driven) place more emphasis on prevention than treatment. They treat where there is no other option, but there is an understanding that the bigger battle is in ensuring people are aware enough of the risks they face from unhealthy lifestyles, for example, to make a change before they have to go to a hospital. In much the same way, perhaps Mother Theresa was being criticised for not tackling poverty at root causes – I don’t know much about her, so can’t comment.
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@SOM
And what is the logical fallacy, SOM?
Please tell us.
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Ark,
Crack out a book, or in your case, Google and go searching for the mysterious logical fallacy yourself.
Certain things (like learning how to think rationally) you can only do for yourself.
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No, Senor Dipshit, you make an assertion, let’s see WordPress’s number one Christian Intellect explain it to Jesus’s Lost Children.
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Here you go, An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments… this is TERRIFIC!
https://bookofbadarguments.com/
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Ark,
I already explained things as clearly as possible.
You can either see that Hitchens’ argument is totally stupid or you can’t.
It you can’t, than you certainly won’t be able to understand anything about logical fallacies.
Let’s just say I’m putting you on a tricycle before letting you move up to the more mature training wheels.
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I truly appreciate your concern, but I am quite sure I can handle the argument. So,please, feel free to tell exactly what the logical fallacy is.
That is, if it is not too taxing for you to explain?
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Violate,
Here, from your own post, is an example of a personal opinion posing as the Gospel truth:
“You examine all religions in detail, realise they can’t all be true and that they all seem as improbable as each other, cross reference this fact with a passing knowledge of general human behaviour, and come to the conclusion that gods and religions are all invented by fearful, ignorant humans.”
First, it isn’t necessary that all religions be true, especially to the atheist for whom truth is simply a matter of personal opinion (that’s why you folks frequently disguise your opinions as the Gospel truth). Atheists create their own gospels just as the pagans create their own gods.
Second, what does “cross reference this fact with a passing knowledge of general human behavior,” even mean? Again, you are attempting to derive truth from a personal opinion that may mean the world to you, but to others is incomprehensible.
Third, the “conclusion that gods and religions are all invented by fearful, ignorant humans,” is not a personal opinion but there is no way for you to even know such a thing.
Your post is just riddled with this sort of thing, thus rendering to your post, a big zero-ZILLA in the truth department.
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Violate, brilliant. You should show Inanity that 😉
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“Your post is just riddled with this sort of thing, thus rendering to your post, a big zero-ZILLA in the truth department.”
This post is riddled with some of the many ways people might cease to believe in gods (or never do so in the first place). I agree there is no absolute truth embedded in them – they are simply routes I’m aware of for some people, which makes them a reflection of reality. I’m a number 1 (in case you’re interested).
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Good post VW.
I too wonder why people think every atheist must know of RD or Nietzsche.
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It’s bizarre, isn’t it? I wondered if the comment was a joke initially.
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Will they leave us in peace if we tell them we have read them and much more?
Or should we start asking them in return if they know Constantine and his role in the development of their religion, of Eusebius, of John Wesley, Luther, Hellen G. White? And many others I care not to mention?
Would knowledge of these people change any aspect of their faith?
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Great point! That’s another aspect I meant to go into when I started the post. Surely they can only claim to truly know their religion if, for example, they know all that, but also if they know the intimate details of every other religion conceived on the planet. Otherwise, how can they be sure they chose the correct one?
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The correct one happens usually to be the one their parents go to
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I wonder if it has something to do with following all ideas (whether they be atheistic, theistic or whatever) to their logical conclusions?
Great thinkers, like Dawkins, Nietzsche etc take the time to explore particular philosophical positions (and some of the consequences of holding these beliefs) in depth and communicate with the broader public. Therefore, if one happens to hold the same view (or even share in part some of their view e.g. that there is nothing more to the world than what is physical), then it might be interesting or even enlightening to know more about how people use those ideas – because ideas are not passive, all ideas have consequences for human behaviour. Therefore, Personally, I think it is wise to see how others, who hold similar views to oneself, use their ideas.
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mi myisleofserenity,
I think that’s putting an unjust demand on atheists for no reason whatsoever. If anyone is interested in an intellectual pursuit, then by all means we would expect them to be aware of other thinkers who have gone before you.
But for the ordinary Jane and Jack, it is enough they don’t believe.
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hi makagutu,
I realise it might have sounded like I was advocating for a full on intellectual pursuit of ideas (which I think it a worthwhile pursuit to a certain degree). However, I was advocating for pausing to reflect on what certain ideas might mean. People, even the humble Jane and Jane, do this all the time. Like, take for instance the notion of an all-seeing-all knowing God. If one believes there is no such thing, then sometimes it can change how one acts, even the most non-intellectual among us. In times of the breakdown of law and order (a type of human ordained all-seeing-all-knowing force), such as in city wide black outs or following devastating natural disasters, people who believe there is no-one watching anymore behave differently. The seemingly simple idea, that there is no god, can influence behaviour.
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i disagree with your clarification. One I have observed during riots or moments of civil disobedience, that people loot. now this is in Kenya where 99% belong to a religion of some sort. It was the same in those cities in the US during the riots some time last year. And you and I will agree, if we are not biased, that it is likely that 98% of them belong to a religion. The claim then that
which I read to imply is not meant positively doesn’t hold.
My grandmother died believing only what her priest told her. I am sure she doesn’t have an idea who Constantine was. My religious friends don’t know about John Wesley, any of the Clements. They are not interested in such stuff. To insist that the atheist should know what Dawkins has written is unwarranted and unjustifiable. The only time a case can be made, and I said this before, is for those interested in intellectual pursuits and even then I might read Ingersoll and not Dawkins or read Joseph Lewis.
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Upholding a belief that a smelly little , itinerant 1st century Jewish Rabbi of extremely dubious historicity is not only the key to a better life and the afterlife (sic), providing one admits to being a dirty rotten sinner, the penalty for which is an eternity being tortured in ”Hell”, but that he was also in his genocidal, egotistical and megalomaniacal form of Yahweh the creator of the universe (sic) has proven to have had some pretty horrendous consequences for humankind.
Wouldn’t you say so? If we are being brutally honest, here?
So much so, if fact, that, anyone who upholds such beliefs should not only question them deeply but also take a serious look at their emotional well being as to why on earth they feel the need to believe in the first place?
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Use nice words with Serenity, she’s a thoughtful and well meaning Christian. Don’t damage your valid points by calling her god ‘smelly’. Just a suggestion to help you communicate more effectively. 🙂
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Sorry. Would unwashed have been more PC?
Or non-deoderized.
How about, possibly-in-need-of-a-bath and a bit of de-licing?
Or: ”For Yahweh’s sake, JC, we told you to lay off the garlic before a sermon. Now stop messing about with Mary Mag – you’re in public -and turn these weeds into parsley, before your breath makes the donkeys keel over.”
I generally find the nice ones are the worst. They try to win you over with chocolates and stuff from the back of the metaphorical van.
Or nice blog pieces about gardening which makes me go weak at the knees.
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Ha ha, jokes, I get jokes!! (Actually, you are quite funny Ark 🙂 )
There ain’t nothin’ wrong with being nice, is there Ark. For instance, Violet is very nice and this makes actual conversation and the sharing of thoughts and ideas possible, and that ain’t a bad thing, is it?
Who said anything about winning people over anyway? I like to stick with the truth as I see it and know it, let people figure things out for themselves. Its always going to ultimately be between them and God anyway.
My blog is about my life and everything in it, including my passion for growing my own veggies. Not sure why my little garden updates would make anyone go weak at the knees..?! Very cool mantis shot on your blog though 🙂
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aww, thanks violet. I don’t mind the smelly remark 😉 there’s probably worse things he could have said. And if I’m right, he might meet Jesus one day, and then he can mention such things to him face to face 🙂
If his valid points are that we should all question our beliefs, then, agreed.
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@Serenity
Well, the biblical character, that Lake Tiberius pedestrian, Jesus of Nazareth is simply a narrative construct, but there might very well have been a first century itinerant eschatological Rabbi running hither and thither around Palestine. And if this was the case then he was most certainly a scruffy, smelly little Aramaic speaking Jew with very limited overall personal hygiene and more than likely bad teeth.
But I am still interested in a response regarding common sense as per the statement from Kurt Wise
Thoughts?
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Hi Ark, yes, exactly. We all should question deeply whatever it is we believe.
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Especially when then there is evidence to show it is mostly all made up.
I mean, who in their right mind believes that an octogenarian mountain climber in a long nightshirt get up and wooden staff who looked remarkably like Charlton Heston met someone called Yahweh who chiseled out a set of life rules on two bits of stone?
”S’okay, boss I promise I won’t break ’em.”
Sadly, a number of people actually do believe.
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“I wonder if it has something to do with following all ideas (whether they be atheistic, theistic or whatever) to their logical conclusions? ”
I don’t agree that every outlook on life has a logical conclusion. Humans think in patterns with repetitive concerns – the meaning of life has been hashed and rehashed by a billions of people with billions of conclusions. If you’re part of an established ideology that rests on specific texts and believes there are specific answers, then, yes, it’s wisest to trawl through all relevant works.
But for those of us who have come to the conclusion that ‘what you see is what you get’, anything beyond that is almost superfluous, to be perused if desired. I don’t ever want to repeat the mistake of having an outlook on life that is primarily based on someone else’s opinion.
Personally, I think Christians should all dedicate their time to the study of particle physics. How can you claim to understand the unseen, if you don’t fully understand the basics of reality before you? 😛
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That’s right, Violet. Go for the underbelly. Commonsense always befuddles ’em.
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So we are all intellectually inferior, incapable of understanding even basic common sense, are we Ark? Aren’t generalisations generally a little inadequate?
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I don’t know? Where do you stand on archaeological evidence that refutes the bible?
As an example: Kurt Wise is a highly qualified geologist. He is also a Young Earth Creationist and is on record stating that:
”Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.”
Wiki.
Do you consider this an example of someone who is able of ”understanding even basic common sense, ”.
You tell me?
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Sorry, we’ll have to agree to disagree then Violet. Maybe its the psychologist in me, but I cannot agree that ideas do not have consequences. I think that every outlook on life does emphatically lead to logical conclusions that then, in turn, influence behaviour. It would be oh-so-nice-and-simple if believing that “what you see is what you get” is all there is to it! That anything more is basically superfluous.
But, really, is that it? The idea that “there is nothing more” can’t possibly have a direct influence some people’s behaviour?
I don’t claim to understand either the unseen spiritual/supernatural realm nor particle physics 😉
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An exellent post.
I have several times run into this weird nonsense too. Even people who themselves have never read the Bible, but proclaim to be Christians, demand me of why have I not come to the same nihilist conclusions as Neitzche through my atheism. Or that I have to agree with everything Richard Dawkins has said, even though I have never read any of his books. At the weirdest end of such demands are, that I should consider what Darwin wrote as some form of holy book. How can you even have a discussion with people who have such nonsensical pre-assumptions, and to top that, happen to believe it is an actual virtue to have pre-assumptions, that they are going to be concretely rewarded for? After they die!!!
All of it is especially stupid to me as one of the people belonging more or less to this group: “– You might be born into a family or society where no-one believes in gods, and the idea of people worshipping invisible gods (if you ever stumble across it) as humans did thousands of years ago, is beyond bizarre.”
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I get the feeling you only come across this kind of thinking in the USA. There’s something weird about the way Christianity has rooted itself in their society, and seeped in so deeply they can’t imagine reality without it.
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Christianity is not a notion, but a way. Modern American Evangelicals have all sorts of beliefs, some of them ridiculous based on literal belief in Genesis, and shared belief can help bring a community together especially if it defines itself against an out-group, but Christianity is also practices such as celebrating communion, and Catholic teachings include particular ways of making moral decisions. And many Christians accept that the Bible contains stories, and any history is told for a particular theological purpose.
So not just being told about it: people see who we are, and think, “I want to be like that!” Ideally. I still feel like that with Quakers: I see Shelagh, and WANT to be like that.
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I guess in that respect it still needs to come from another person – you can’t work it out for yourself. And someone needs to tell you something at some point – you can’t guess the story of Jesus.
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<blockquote\.Christianity is not a notion, but a way.
Yes, Claire and the foundational tenets of this religion are all lies.
Why would you base your worldview on lies?
More to the point, do you not feel any sense moral responsibility not to spread this garbage to others?
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It seems to me that this is a kind of projection. At least one of the religious mindset out there is a deeply authoritarian personality for whom everything they do must be authorized by some cosmic will. Faced with people who reject that, they can only construe it in terms of an alternative authority.
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That’s an interesting way of looking at it. It’s amazing to think anyone could have such a limited outlook on life.
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Very good post, Violet.
I honestly think that where many theists make the mistake is in assuming that if the atheist does not have god(s) in their life, then they must need something to ‘fill the gap’, when in fact, no such gap exists.
I realised I was an atheist at age 47, after a lifetime of looking for spiritual fulfilment, and finding absolutely no evidence of god(s). Believe me, in the words of John Lennon, “I’ve seen religion, from Jesus to Baal.” I came to that conclusion on my own, and without reading Dawkins, Hitchens, Neill, Hawking, or any other prominent atheist.
Indeed, I have never read The God Delusion, my only real experience of Richard Dawkins was watching him giving the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and I don’t particularly like the man. Yes, he has an enormous intelligence, which I truly admire, but as a human being, he absolutely stinks. To me he comes across in public as an arrogant, self-satisfied, elitist snob, who needs a bloody good slap. And the least said of his views on child sexual abuse the better.
If there is any “philosophy” about atheism, then it is individual to every atheist, for the simple facts that every atheist comes to that position from their own observations and life experiences, and of course, unlike religion atheism carries no set dogma and certainly no ‘philosophy’ of it’s own. Therefore, even if there was a ‘gap’, then atheism could never fill it.
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I remember when I finally saw through Christianity I assumed I’d find the ‘correct’ religion in time. Hilarious. I haven’t seen or read anything of these horrible sounding atheist men, only what’s cropped as quotes in blogging land.
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after a lifetime of looking for spiritual fulfilment
What happened to that need for spiritual fulfillment? (I empathize with it, by the way.)
To me he comes across in public as an arrogant, self-satisfied, elitist snob, who needs a bloody good slap.
A surprising (or not) number of the “great” atheist men fit that bill.
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Well, Emma, I was brought up to believe in God, and I honestly thought I needed that in my life. It was only realising that there is no God that I realised I had no gap which needed to be filled.
I think a lot of people feel like that; brought up to believe in a god, they think they need that in their lives. But getting rid of that baggage, one realises that this life is all we have, and therefore we have to concentrate on making it the best we can.
Yes a lot of atheist men are arrogant, and seem to go into debate via their dicks. The only exception I can think of is Bill Nye, who is just such a sweetie.
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Thanks, xandrad.
Yes, I can empathize with that process and the realization at the end of it (although I cannot say that my spiritual longings have entirely disappeared along with the notion of god).
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I would answer that you do not need god(s) to be spiritual. Put me in a woodland, where life abounds from the top of the trees down to the very earth itself, and I feel very spiritual. Likewise, Buddhism is one of the most spiritual belief systems in the world, yet has no creator gods.
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Obviously, one does not need books or atheist thinkers per se of atheists to come to a personal conclusion that there is no evidence of a god(s). Likewise, one does not need a bible to think or wonder or believe that there might be a God. However, one might wish to read what great atheist thinkers “think” and one might choose to read a bible if they wanted to know more about the God presented in biblical texts.
I by and large agree with your description of Richard Dawkins (and I have read The God Delusion)! But I have to slightly disagree xandrad with your conclusion about the philosophical basis of atheism.
“Therefore, even if there was a ‘gap’, then atheism could never fill it.” – I think I’d agree with that.
” …atheism carries no set dogma and certainly no ‘philosophy’ of it’s own…” – I’m no philosopher and I don’t claim to know much about philosophy in general. I understand that atheism is technically not a philosophy. However, I do think atheism certainly can function as a philosophy, at times, especially when atheists attempt to explain why things (rather than nothing) exists e.g. Stephen Hawkings interprets and applies metaphysics – which is a branch of philosophy- to ultimate questions like the creation of the universe and the existence of God.
Which leads us back to Violet’s original post – is it worthwhile reading the works (or becoming at least familiar) with the ideas of intelligent, well-respected and well known people – I think it is. As I mentioned in a comment a little earlier, ideas shape our behaviour, so I think it is very enlightening to understand others ideas, even when they come from a position of atheism.
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Really interesting discussion point, Violet.
“There may be several routes to religion, and Christianity in particular, but oddly enough I can only think of one:
– Another person tells you about it.”
For me personally, the route to religion and Christianity specifically was something like – the world exists, it is a beautiful and brutal place – why? Followed by examining religious claims against evidence of their claims and observations of life.
For others I know the route to finding peace has been something like this
– seeking hope in a time of crisis (a husband’s diagnosis of a brain tumour)
“…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
1 Cor 13:12
– simple curiosity about what makes christians “tick”
– the “hunch” that there is more to life than meets the eye
– a love of truth
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I see what you mean, but there is a crucial difference. The paths to atheism I suggested are all direct routes – they are the inspiration (if required), the direction and the final destination. You’ve given examples of your inspiration, but you could never reach your final destination without another person telling you about it. Christianity, like any other man-made ideology or religion, requires specific word of mouth transition.
Speaking of which, it would be a fantastic experiment to give someone who know nothing at all about Christianity the Bible to read and ask what they thought the central messages were, wouldn’t it??
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What fundamentalists and atheists have in common in their approach to scripture is the expectation that it should be read separately from the historical community that produced it.
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DP, I’m not sure that was the point the author of the artless in your link was making. Weren’t they sating that historical context and community were important aspects of how to read the bible?
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“You’ve given examples of your inspiration, but you could never reach your final destination without another person telling you about it. ” – I suppose that’s right, in many ways. And yet, in countries where Christianity is banned and where there is no access to biblical texts, there are often reports of people seeing visions or having dreams in which they are told where to go meet someone (e.g. a christian with a bible). (“The Insanity of God” Nik Ripken) is a fascinating documentary style book about Christians in persecution). Which is a bit out there…But then biblical texts are also full of people having visions and dreams so…also pretty out there, but, what’s life without surprise, mystery and wonder?
“Christianity, like any other man-made ideology or religion, requires specific word of mouth transition.”
1. Simply because something requires word of mouth transition doesn’t automatically mean it cannot also be divine, can it?
2. There is the argument that nature speaks volumes about God, enough even to convict us in our claim to ignorance.
“…it would be a fantastic experiment to give someone who know nothing at all about Christianity the Bible to read and ask what they thought the central messages were, wouldn’t it??”
That ain’t no experiment. On a regular basis, people with limited or no previous knowledge of Christianity (e.g. in countries where the bible is banned) read or hear sections of the bible (especially the gospels) and come to a simple conclusion about its central message.
Yes, person-to-person transmission is involved but God is not limited to simply that.
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@Myisleofserenity. There are indeed Christians being persecuted in this world. The number of those individuals is respective to the amount of Christians as minorities in countries that treat their minorities badly. There are also representatives of a number of other religions from Buddhists to Muslims and even atheists being persecuted around the globe by the same approximate conditions. Some are persecuted by Christians. What does that tell us about the veracity of the beliefs of any of these people?
People changing religions like from Hindu to Christian or from Christian to Muslim are a minority among any adherents of any religion. Atheists are less likely to turn to any particular religious persuation, even though most atheists alive today have a religious upbringing and indoctrination behind them and are surrounded by more or less religious societies. That is just because atheism is one step further than the other religions in disbelieving the gods of the other religions, in that the atheist does not believe in any gods.
1. Since we are in no position to verify any gods, or anything else as unnatural as gods to exist, we need to examine claims about their existance in the perspective of how likely they are. The fact, that all the mutually contradicting religions have similar method of transmission, puts all of them on an equal footing in this issue. Is it a likely method for a god to use to spread the one true religion? Not by some obviously divine way, but by hiding the one special message among all the other made up messages? Especially in the case of a religion involving some sort of salvation for the believers, the method is arbitrary and unfair. Is it not? It is a method that causes disbelief in the message in the minds of skeptical people. Is there a god who prefers to save the more gullible individuals and individuals from cultures that make them more supceptible the this story shared by humans and not directly transmitted to us from beyond? Or is it more likely, that it is just a fable, like all other religions and fables?
2. Where does nature speak anything about such an unnatural entity as one that would primarly exist outside nature? Or of anything supernatural? Nature speaks volumes about how all of it and infact all that can be observed is natural – not divine.
I agree with you, that people come all the time to Christianity when they are given some specific parts of the Bible to read and those resonate with something in their respective cultural, or just natural perspectives. Just like people come to Islam when they are given some particular Qur’an verses that have the same effect on those people and same applies as well to any religion. I assume Violet meant, that an individual with the general western values and a healthy view on social morals, would read the Bible for the first hand and had no particular bias towards it. Actually I have met a number of former Christians who were members of a church, simply because they had been born into a family that belonged to one and when they read the Bible it was the reason why they came to contemplate the existance of any gods for the first time and eventually it led them to become atheists. There is even a proverb about this, that claims reading the Bible is the quikest way to deconvert from Christianity. Can you imagine why that would be?
As for people seeing dreams to go and seek Christians to become Christians themselves, well people do see all sorts of dreams and interprete them differently and assign them various levels of significance, not to mention how they remember them after having told about them to other people who assigned the story of a dream some meaning. I would be very carefull of taking such anecdotes as any sort of evidence for anything supernatural, because we do know how dreams are fromed in our brains and pretty much about why and because anecdotes serve as very poor evidence of much anything real.
If however, there are these respectly small number of people actually called by a god to come to hear about Christianity in order for them to have a chance to turn into Christianity, that would mean, that this god chooses not to call most other people in the world outside the immidiate cultural heritage of Christianity to do the same. Such favorism, seems evil, as well as the fact that as a phenomenon it is left unexplained and unjustified. Do you see what I mean?
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