Are Xians stupid?

[cosmosdan]

@furt

yes he does, but I feel the need to point out a rather enormous middle that he excludes as well:

If Christianity were neatly divided into two camps, outsiders would have an easier time of understanding it. The reality is that there is a broad spectrum of beliefs. The difficulty of understanding this is what leads some people to just throw up thier hands and say “they’re all alike.”

So noticing the great diversity leads to the conclusion that they’re all alike?
Whats wrong with that picture?

You’re right Christianity and religion in general is very diverse. It’s just a reflection of our diversity as humans.

[furt]

@cosmosdan

So noticing the great diversity leads to the conclusion that they’re all alike?
Whats wrong with that picture?

Not quite. More like “numerous subtle distinctions are harder to comprehend than one bright-line demarcation.”

Tigers and tabbycats are easily told apart, and most people can make the distinction. But when you start adding lions, leopards and lynxes and all the rest to the conversation, some people – either through genuine inabilty ot comprehend, or because they don’t want to make the effort – will just throw up their hands and say “aww, what difference does it make? They’re all cats, so they’re all the same.”

So much moreso if people aren’t really interested in understanding in the first place.

[Kalhoun]

@cosmosdan

You don’t have to distinguish between the two. You make your own judgments based on the actions of a person, believer or otherwise. Feeding the hungry is quite a different action than killing the innocent isn’t it? If you choose to ridicule and devalue compassion and kindness because of what you perceive as foolish beliefs thats your choice as well.

Of course it’s different. But it’s based on your perception of what’s good for the world, and that’s my point. A muslim truly believes it’s god’s will to crash planes into buildings because that is his perception of what’s good for the world. Do I choose the behavior that appeals to my sensibilities? Of course. I’m a secular being who was born and raised in the West and flying planes into buildings doesn’t appeal to me. But I’m talking about motivation here.

Both people claim to be motivated by the same force. I can say which behavior I prefer but I have no way of telling who’s right with regard to divine inspiration. It’s more useful to all of us to attribute both acts to the persons who committed them.

[Kalhoun]

@Polycarp

Okay, the grounds for presuming that a god exists have been spelled out several times before. But let’s take a walk through them, to make sure nobody is making false apprehensions about what’s being said.

1. There is nothing logically inconsistent in supposing that a god created the Universe in a manner consistent with, and using the methodology of, what science can tell us about its origins. A literalist six-days part-the-waters scenario is inconsistent. But if we presume that to have been myth, and instead postulate a creation-by-Big-Bang, abiogenetic molecular biology for the origin of life, genetically-shaped punctuated equilibrium evolution for the diversity of life over time, etc., it’s not inconsistent. Not required, either – any honest theist will admit that. Occam’s Razor suggests there is no need to presume a god from the nature of the Universe. But remember that Occam’s Razor is abductive – as between you forgetting where you set down your car keys, and magical pixies moving them, the answer which calls for the least odd assumptions is the more likely.

Note what this suggests: the only reason for presuming a Creator God is if He has some further evidence pointing to His existence. God is not a conclusion to be drawn from the Universe as His creation – but neither does it exclude that possibility.

2. God is a logical necessity. Any number of proofs in deductive logic and formal logic, of the sort that gives equations of the form ~K U L → M if not N, are advanced, hotly debated, debunked, reformulated, etc. I don’t propose to advance any of them – I frankly lack the training to work with them, and in any case feel that this is not how He wishes to be demonstrated. I merely note that some great minds find them persuasive (as well as some equally great minds who find them totally unpersuasive).

3. God can be redefined as this, that, and the other thing: pantheism (all that exists is collectively God); panentheism (everything that exists is within but not equal to God); God is the laws by which things happen; God is a philosophic construct, the ultimate ground of all being; etc. This is all well and good, but it transforms any dialogue into Humpty Dumptyism – “God is what I define Him as, so you have no right to disagree.” My bottom line here is that whatever God may be or not be, the characteristics of illimitable power (not necessarily omnipotence but practically so) and illimitable knowledge and wisdom (same caveat with regard to omnipotence) and the ability to interact on a personal level with humans are necessary characters. Caligula claimed to be a god; he died. Father Devine claimed to be the incarnation of God, but he couldn’t comprehend relativity. The Cosmos may or may not fit someone’s concept of God, but the Cosmos does not interact as if a person with many if any humans. ( ::: waits for Cosmosdan’s rejoinder ::: )

4. The Bible bears record of God’s supposed interactions with His Chosen People and then the incarnation of one Person of a triune Godhead and His life and teachings as Jesus of Nazareth. Put on the brakes here, and let’s look at what is postulated and what is not. For the conservative Christian, the whole thing is supposedly “the word of God” either dictated directly by Him or written by humans somehow so inspired by Him that they could introduce no error into it. I suspect that there’s unanimity among Dopers in considering that postulate the digestive wastes of male bovines.

Rather, what liberal Christians think about the Bible is precisely what a scholarly atheist like Diogenes does: it was the work of human authors who purported to describe their interactions with and understanding of the God in whom they believed. But we take it a step beyond that, and say that an approach to an understanding of His true nature can be discovered by the critical reading of the work – not accepting with credulity that He commanded a genocide 3700 years ago (any more than He did the same thing with another of His believers four years ago) – but instead sifting through the detritus of various people’s preconceptions to see what lies behind and beneath them. And there is a consistent call to ethical behavior, worship as a mode of humbling human arrogance rather than sycophancy to a despotic deity, a call to humane treatment of one’s fellow man as equivalent to proper response to Him. When you see that same message reiterated as having supposedly come from Moses, Isaiah, Micah, David, Jesus, and Paul, you begin to get a sense of a common theme that is not purely human invention.

And you apply scholarly techniques to find out what exactly was being said, by whom, to whom, in what idiom and with what cultural presuppositions, before you start deciding what’s purely cultural myth and what’s from that divine substrate. This is not “cherry-picking” – it’s running quality control measures on what cherries you put up for sale to the public.

4. The testimony of people who have claimed to experience Him in their lives. Now, any one, or even several, such testimonies can very easily be self-delusion, hallucination, delirium, you name it. Granted. But when there is a consistency across multiple cultures and 20 centuries to what such experiences are reported as, it becomes a bit less likely that it’s purely self-delusion. If your child comes and excitedly tells you there’s a tiger in the woods, you smile indulgently and think how wonderful a child’s imagination is. But if eight children and three adults independently report having seen a tiger in the woods, never having heard each other’s stories, you wipe off the indulgent smile and call the game warden to report the possibility of a cougar having entered the area.

5. The nature of deity is such as to make demonstrating a proof or disproof by scientific means extraordinarily difficult. One can in fact analyze whether prayer is beneficial to health, whether claimed supernatural healings do in fact happen, etc. That does not relate to the existence of God himself, but to supposed claims about Him --though of course any such story debunked becomes that much less evidence for His existence.

For me, I’m quite prepared to concede a Jamesian will to believe and credulity in myself – I’ve been “burned” by unscrupulous people trading on that in the past. Therefore I approached looking at my theophanic experience with quite a bit of skepticism – the farthest thing from “blind faith.”

However, what He did in those events was, in a phased manner, to reshape my personality in a manner that I consider has made me a far happier and emotionally healthier individual – and to have, in part, done it by causing me to take steps that led to such results by things that I myself could not have foreseen. The most obvious one of those is my “son” Chris, probably the most fulfilling relationship other than my marriage in my life – and I am certain that I would never have met him if it had not been for following a sense of doing what God had implanted in me to do for what turned out to be his friends before he had moved away, close to a month before his return and our first encounter. And it was in learning to relate to Chris as father figure, and in the wisdom that 16 years of hard knocks had given him, that I came to terms with most of the problems in my own personality and to overcome them. As between a God who had already spoken to me in my life and for whom there was abundant historical testimony having moved me to reach out to Chris’s friends and in consequence to meet him (which is what appears to have happened), pure chance, and the putative presumption that my subconscious is not only a genius at reshaping my own pyschology in ways that I was as yet actively fighting but also clairvoyant and precognitive to know that encounter would happen, I find the “God kicked my ass into doing the right thing for those boys” scenario to be the one that requires the least presumptions. Yes, coincidences do happen – but this one requires the sort of complex sequences of coincidences to occur that one justly rejects a book as depending on deus ex machina too extensively for.

An exercise for people: sit down with a Bible, ignore the O.T. and everything from Acts on, classify if you like the miracle stories as credulous reports from the Weekly World News or National Perspirer-- but look at what Jesus’s actual teachings are, and what they say about the God for whom He supposedly spoke. The character of that God is not one who is interested in depriving gay people of rights in the name of some bizarre fundie morality scheme, nor of telling people to fly airplanes into buildings. Jesus uses hyperbole, parables (easily recognized as typical Jewish haggadah and halacha), pithy sayings, etc. But when all is said and done, he’s painted a picture of a loving God intent on bringing people to humane, righteous behavior – by working in their lives, not by externally commanding them. This is why I claim that there’s an intrinsic difference between our stance and those of the fundies and the Islamic terror-radicals.

Finally, I don’t claim that anyone is required to believe on account of that evidence. To me it’s highly suggestive of something active throughout history – and when that Something became active in my own life, I recognized it in history as well. What I do insist on is the same as always: your right to believe or not believe as you choose is conditioned on your willingness to extend the same right to others. Or, as someone once said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Just so you don’t think I’m ignoring you, I will try to respond to this throughout the day, but it may be in dribs and drabs as I just started a new job (thank god ) and at present I’m trying to figure out how to actually do it. Thanks for your response.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

I’ll start here, with an easy pitch Poly has tossed up:

@Polycarp

2. God is a logical necessity. Any number of proofs in deductive logic and formal logic, of the sort that gives equations of the form ~K U L → M if not N, are advanced, hotly debated, debunked, reformulated, etc. I don’t propose to advance any of them – I frankly lack the training to work with them, and in any case feel that this is not how He wishes to be demonstrated. I merely note that some great minds find them persuasive (as well as some equally great minds who find them totally unpersuasive).

This is simply an appeal to authority: i.e., “I don’t understand it, but some reeeeaaal smart folks say it’s so, so it must be so.” I’m not too swift on formal logic at its advanced stages either, but I know bullshit when I smell it, and this smells verily of bullshit. I believe there are other authorities who find serious flaws in this reasoning (so does Poly: “some great minds”), otherwise every atheist logician would be saying, “Uh, Okay, Poly’s right, I don’t know what I was thinking…Puh-raise Gawd!!”

[Mangetout]

@pseudotriton ruber ruber

…This is simply an appeal to authority…

Is that how you read it? To me, it looks more like something included in a list for the sake of completeness. I don’t think Poly is saying those are his personal reasons for believing, just that they are out there.

[tomndebb]

@pseudotriton ruber ruber

I’ll start here, with an easy pitch Poly has tossed up:

This is simply an appeal to authority: i.e., “I don’t understand it, but some reeeeaaal smart folks say it’s so, so it must be so.” I’m not too swift on formal logic at its advanced stages either, but I know bullshit when I smell it, and this smells verily of bullshit. I believe there are other authorities who find serious flaws in this reasoning (so does Poly: “some great minds”), otherwise every atheist logician would be saying, “Uh, Okay, Poly’s right, I don’t know what I was thinking…Puh-raise Gawd!!”

However, I do not think that Poly is offering this up as "proof’ of God. His points were that many people come to a belief in a god from numerous directions and he has outlined the ones that are more frequently encounterd among educated North Americans in the early 21st century.

Clearly, none of them are going to provide some absolute establishment that (a) god exists. His point was more that when various non-believers claim that there is no reason to believe in (a) god, they are ignoring the fact that there are, indeed, reasons for such belief. One may challenge such reasons and, certainly, those reasons may (do) fail to persuade. However, they demonstrate that humans find themselves believing in (a) God for more reasons than simple “indoctrination” or “wishful thinking.”
Note that several of the reasons are in conflict with other reasons and that no person is likely to be persuaded (or even believe) all the reasons. You may go through each one and tick off the points in which it fails to persuade you, but at the end, you will not have demonstrated that (a) god cannot exist, only that none of the typical channels of coming to belief have had an effect on your life. That is fine as far as it goes. it only becomes a problem if you then assert (which you have not yet done) that all of the reasons are delusional (rather than personally unpersuasive)).

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

As to this:

4. The Bible bears record of God’s supposed interactions with His Chosen People and then the incarnation of one Person of a triune Godhead and His life and teachings as Jesus of Nazareth. Put on the brakes here, and let’s look at what is postulated and what is not. For the conservative Christian, the whole thing is supposedly “the word of God” either dictated directly by Him or written by humans somehow so inspired by Him that they could introduce no error into it. I suspect that there’s unanimity among Dopers in considering that postulate the digestive wastes of male bovines.

Rather, what liberal Christians think about the Bible is precisely what a scholarly atheist like Diogenes does: it was the work of human authors who purported to describe their interactions with and understanding of the God in whom they believed. But we take it a step beyond that, and say that an approach to an understanding of His true nature can be discovered by the critical reading of the work – not accepting with credulity that He commanded a genocide 3700 years ago (any more than He did the same thing with another of His believers four years ago) – but instead sifting through the detritus of various people’s preconceptions to see what lies behind and beneath them. And there is a consistent call to ethical behavior, worship as a mode of humbling human arrogance rather than sycophancy to a despotic deity, a call to humane treatment of one’s fellow man as equivalent to proper response to Him. When you see that same message reiterated as having supposedly come from Moses, Isaiah, Micah, David, Jesus, and Paul, you begin to get a sense of a common theme that is not purely human invention.

And you apply scholarly techniques to find out what exactly was being said, by whom, to whom, in what idiom and with what cultural presuppositions, before you start deciding what’s purely cultural myth and what’s from that divine substrate. This is not “cherry-picking” – it’s running quality control measures on what cherries you put up for sale to the public.

Of course, it’s cherry picking. More precisely, it’s using ex post facto logic to explicate passages by interpreting the Bible to keep up with science. The Bible makes hundreds, probably thousands, of observations that imply thngs about science, many of which happen to be provably wrong on a factual basis. Now if Xians had been claiming all along that the Bible was essentially a string of imaginary fables relying heavily on sometimes silly metaphors but in toto adding up to a larger truth, that would be one thing. But it was claimed for ages to be lierally true, because science lacked the ability to demonstrate some of the illogical implications. As soon as science manages to disprove some fairly obvious assertions, guys like Poly come along to say “Oh, that doesn’t count–that was just a metaphor anyway–the other stuff is still literally true, of course.”

On the principle of “False in one, false in all,” when a witness is shown to have lied about a substantive fact in his testimony, a jury may choose to disregard his entire testimony. But when a witness has been shown to be telling one whopper after another, and changing his story to suit evidence already presented, the jury pretty well HAS to decide that this is not a credible witness. If the Bible were a witness, it would have been long ago completely tainted by the lies it asserts as fact, and which centuries of Christians insisted on interpreting perfectly literally. (The centuries of literal interpretation also belies Poly’s fallacious reliance on how long how many people have believed in the Bible.) The Bible is the single best evidence that the God it speaks of is a fiction, because so much else in it is demonstrably fictive.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

And the reason it’s not “quality control” as Poly claims is (tell me if I’m wrong here) there is no degree of textual error that would convince Poly that God doesn’t exist. IOW, if it could somehow be proven to be entirely the work of some deranged first-century cretin, Poly would still believe in his God. So what poses as a quasi-scientific attempt at quality control, actually has no standards for deciding that the product is of unacceptable quality. This is a sham, and this argument needs to be discounted in its entirety.

[cosmosdan]

@Kalhoun

Of course it’s different. But it’s based on your perception of what’s good for the world, and that’s my point. A muslim truly believes it’s god’s will to crash planes into buildings because that is his perception of what’s good for the world. Do I choose the behavior that appeals to my sensibilities? Of course. I’m a secular being who was born and raised in the West and flying planes into buildings doesn’t appeal to me. But I’m talking about motivation here.

Both people claim to be motivated by the same force. I can say which behavior I prefer but I have no way of telling who’s right with regard to divine inspiration. It’s more useful to all of us to attribute both acts to the persons who committed them.

I agree there’s no way for you or other non believers to tell which action was actually directed by God. That’s exactly why I say judge the action. For those who seek God and believe, Jesus preached a simple rule of thumb. Judge the actions. If someones words praise God but their actions do not then they are not following God’s will. Regardless of the justification for the act people still have to face the consequences for their actions be they believers or not. Likewise if someone claims " God wanted me to build a soup kitchen" you are free to think. “Thats loopy” but I wouldn’t expect you to casually dismiss any real good that came from the actions.

My point of contention was very specific and I wasn’t trying to play a game. You claimed that the religious lite people , by simply sharing the belief that God can and will commune with us, laid some kind of subtly supportive foundation for the cruel acts of others. I think thats baseless and false.

I believe the essence of God is love and truth and that’s how I judge. AFAIK Most people who believe in communing with God don’t believe they are always crystal clear about God’s will. They would admit they are influenced by other things. Still, because of their belief they try to discern the still small voice of the Holy Spirit in making decisions.

I can believe that and still take a strong stance against those who want to punish and kill others for not sharing their beliefs. In some ways I might be better equipped to sway them than a non believer because I can start from that common belief.

[Kalhoun]

@Polycarp

Okay, the grounds for presuming that a god exists have been spelled out several times before. But let’s take a walk through them, to make sure nobody is making false apprehensions about what’s being said.

1. There is nothing logically inconsistent in supposing that a god created the Universe in a manner consistent with, and using the methodology of, what science can tell us about its origins. A literalist six-days part-the-waters scenario is inconsistent. But if we presume that to have been myth, and instead postulate a creation-by-Big-Bang, abiogenetic molecular biology for the origin of life, genetically-shaped punctuated equilibrium evolution for the diversity of life over time, etc., it’s not inconsistent. Not required, either – any honest theist will admit that. Occam’s Razor suggests there is no need to presume a god from the nature of the Universe. But remember that Occam’s Razor is abductive – as between you forgetting where you set down your car keys, and magical pixies moving them, the answer which calls for the least odd assumptions is the more likely.

Note what this suggests: the only reason for presuming a Creator God is if He has some further evidence pointing to His existence. God is not a conclusion to be drawn from the Universe as His creation – but neither does it exclude that possibility.

Well, I’ll have to disagree with you at the get-go. I don’t see any logic whatsoever in attributing the creation of the universe to god. Evidence to the contrary is infinitely more compelling than the assumption that a divine creator started the whole thing. It is inconsistent with science as we understand it in today’s world. Of course there’s a possibility that god is behind it all. But the fact that we don’t know yet makes the “god default” inappropriate. We simply don’t know yet!

Regarding an answer, you are correct. It doesn’t point definitively either way. But here’s where you lose me: If one side of the argument points to divine creation and the other doesn’t, and if the rest of your reasoning throughout your life points toward scientific answers to questions we deal with every day as well as the big ones like evolution, why would you veer off that path for this particular question when the evidence we do have, while obviously not offering a definitive answer yet, overwhelmingly points toward a scientific answer rather than one of created by a supernatural being? We’re on a roll! Why shift gears here?

I’m not sure where Occam fits in here. The least odd assumption is always that there was no divine intervention. Appointing magical powers, particularly when you do it only in this one instance, goes against the logic we employ every day. Logical explanations (and the search for those explanations) is both courageous and satisfying. Staying stuck on the assumption that it all started from the ultimate divine creation, a concept that for millions of years has still not offered a definitive answer, would seem to be a red flag pointing to the assumption that we’re beating a dead horse.

(All this seems to be going off the OP, but for now I’m cool with that if you are.)

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

@pseudotriton ruber ruber

The Bible makes hundreds, probably thousands, of observations that imply thngs about science, many of which happen to be provably wrong on a factual basis.

Scientists over the centuries who were respected and still are made definitive statements about things scientific which are now provably wrong on a factual basis. Practitioners of traditional medicine have made many statements about the medicines, some of which have since been provably right on a factual basis.

It is a huge error in logic to apply the broad brush to all that happened before.

But it was claimed for ages to be lierally true, because science lacked the ability to demonstrate some of the illogical implications.

Why have you not answered this: your basis for what is ‘logical’ or ‘proven’ is 21stC science. How can that possibly ‘prove’ that something does or does not exist? The best you can say is that at this point we have no empirical evidence. Which means nothing since in 1615 there was no empirical evidence that charm and strange existed but they did then and do now.

On the principle of “False in one, false in all,” when a witness is shown to have lied about a substantive fact in his testimony, a jury may choose to disregard his entire testimony.

You are aware that the Bible is a compilation of books written by many people over many years, are you not? And isn’t it absurd to expect scientific rigor from people who predated all of modern science?

[tomndebb]

@pseudotriton ruber ruber

But it was claimed for ages to be lierally true, because science lacked the ability to demonstrate some of the illogical implications.

Actually, this is not a true statement. History, itself, was seen as more important for its moral lessons than for its ability to establish accurate facts for posterity until around the 18th century and there is no reason to presume that the historical aspects of the bible were written or treated any differently.

Clearly, there have been individuals who have held to a literal reading of the bible off and on throughout history–a point against which Augustine of Hippo argued as being an error at the cusp of the fifth century–but there is no record (or reason to beieve) that the bible was either written to present concrete facts or generally understood as presenting concrete facts prior to the Enlightenment when people began to change their view of how history ought to work.

[Kalhoun]

@Quiddity Glomfuster

You are aware that the Bible is a compilation of books written by many people over many years, are you not? And isn’t it absurd to expect scientific rigor from people who predated all of modern science?

I think most atheists will agree that the absurdity lies not in the fact that anyone expects scientific rigor from pre-modern people (we don’t); it’s that it isn’t expected from modern man.

[Quiddity_Glomfuster]

@Kalhoun

I think most atheists will agree that the absurdity lies not in the fact that anyone expects scientific rigor from pre-modern people (we don’t); it’s that it isn’t expected from modern man.

And again, ‘modern’ man is not necessarily that much more brilliant in terms of having grasped a significant amount of the sum of all possible knowledge than the caveman may be so where is your proof that ‘modern man’ has sufficient knowledge to ‘prove’ the existence of a Divine or not?

[Kalhoun]

@Quiddity Glomfuster

And again, ‘modern’ man is not necessarily that much more brilliant in terms of having grasped a significant amount of the sum of all possible knowledge than the caveman may be so where is your proof that ‘modern man’ has sufficient knowledge to ‘prove’ the existence of a Divine or not?

No one knows whether we ever will know. That still doesn’t warrant a default god. “I don’t know” is sufficient.

[Polycarp]

Quickly answering four points:

Furt: You are of course right; there is a spectrum of belief far wider than anything brought forth here to date. I found the liberal scholarship/literalist conservative dichotomy useful for explicating something regarding our (liberals’) stance that was unclear to well-meaning nonbelievers like Kalhoun. If you feel like discoursing on the differences between your beliefs and, on one hand, mine and those who generally agree with me, and on the other, the Answers in Genesis crowd, do feel free – I for one would welcome the clarification. My apologies for painting an Excluded Middle of my own: it was inadvertent, the result of my desire to compare and contrast two strongly divergent stances.

PRR: That “all or nothing” is simply you (following badchad) asserting that the only proper methodology for approaching the Bible is the inerrant literalist one. But by that criterion you find absolutely no value in Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides. Is that in fact true? Or can you isolate important human truths amid the myth?

Regarding my point 2, Tom~ and others are correct: it’s not a personally convincing argument, but one that has affected people I respect highly like Liberal and some of the great philosophers of history. So I felt it deserved acknowledgement as among “reasons that people believe.”

Kalhoun: Regarding point 1, it’s SOP in conservative circles to do the facile “Creation implies a Creator” argument – which I agree is not convincing. But I made a more subtle point that I find escapes both sides in such arguments: Occam’s Razor never proves anything. It was the first step in understanding the field of abductive reasoning (the name has nothing to do with kidnapping, but was coined by Peirse as a parallel to deductive and inductive). What it does, is to provide a simple means of avoiding blind alleys, red herrings, and other logical traps – the most probable answer is the one that calls for fewest unproven assumptions.

The nature of the Universe does not require God. But neither does it disprove God. Rather, it says that if He created it, He did so in accord with what we can learn by the methods of science, and that any proof pro or con His existence needs to be sought elsewhere.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Kalhoun

I can say which behavior I prefer but I have no way of telling who’s right with regard to divine inspiration. It’s more useful to all of us to attribute both acts to the persons who committed them.

cosmodan has already fielded this pretty well, but I’ll point out that none of us are suggesting that you, as an outside observer, have any need to decide who is or is not divinely inspired.

Nor are any of us suggesting that claiming divine inspiration removes responsibility for an individual’s actions. If I thought God wanted me to do something, I would still have to decide for myself whether or not to do it. (And among the factors that would go into that decision, for me, would be why I thought, and how sure I was, that God really did want me to do it.) And if I did decide to do it, I would still take responsibility for doing so.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

@Polycarp

But by that criterion you find absolutely no value in Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides. Is that in fact true? Or can you isolate important human truths amid the myth?

This borders on silly. Do I find that these authors make valuable points about human nature, or write well or movingly? Of course I do. Yet I have zero problem in asserting that their religious views or cosmological understanding is bordering on batshit-insane, and I can only assume that it has nothing to do with what they actually believed or else that their beliefs are entirely separate from their artistic merits.

What you are doing with the Bile as I understand it is valuing it not as an aesthetic object, or as a historical document, but asserting that, say, the Ten Commandment are valuable to understanding the core values that you believe your God to be saying (or embodying, or any other verb you wish to use.) They are real, and you believe in them, and other cherrypicked fragments, as literally as any literalist reader of the Bible.

Before you set me straight, could just answer whether or not you subscribe to the Ten Commandments, not as a mythopoetic document but as a true statement of your own religious precepts, and sanctified as being God’s position on these ten issues?

[Sarahfeena]

I find this idea of “cherry-picking” when it comes to religion to be a very odd nit that is picked endlessly around here. Religion is an abstract concept, and by that nature is hopelessly prone to being reexamined, debated, reinterpreted, and generally manipulated into being a concept that makes sense to people. All philosophies and other abstract concepts are subject to the same thing, and IMO, it is the reexamination that makes these concepts MORE valid rather than less. I don’t see how careful thought and arriving at one’s own conclusions (even if it is different from everyone else’s), somehow lowers the respectability of the idea. It may mean that other people won’t relate to it or agree to it, but that is an inherent characteristic of all abstract ideas. All of the atheists here don’t agree on what atheism is supposed to mean, either.