Coming from you I find that quite amusing but otherwise meaningless.
Der Trihs, Baby. Just what we need, your particualr, uh, worldview. Did you bring Manson with you? But Der, seriously, you disappointed me in your post. No claims of religion being evil and being respionsible for most of the deaths in the world. And my personal favorite, your claim that communism is a religion. C’mon, you’re slipping. Check the thread, someone tried to make the communism claim, but it just couldn’t do it the justice the master could.
I’m not asking you to prove any of your assertions - I just want to know what they are - what god you believe in. Many theists here accuse atheists of attacking religion based on a definition of god that doesn’t apply to them. There is some truth to this. I don’t want to disprove a god you don’t believe in - both of us can probably jointly disprove lots of gods that neither of us believe in.
Now, I can show that omnipotence is logically inconsistent with omniscience, so a god, who is not required to do logically impossible things like make a rock too big for him to move - can’t have these qualities. But that’s been done often here, I’m more interested in some new stuff.
As for creating the heavens and the earth - did he do this at the same time? Does your god lie to us, by planting evidence to make it look like they were created at different times? Some gods might, and some might not.
I’m quite curious whether you have a good picture of the god you believe in, and are not telling me what it is, or if the god you believe in is actually this fuzzy. I understand - the god I believe in as a kid was basically what my Hebrew school teachers told me about. As I learned more about science and history, and thought straighter, god became fuzzier and fuzzier until it was clear I was believing only because I grew up where everyone believed by default or just shut up about it.
Jesus was at the end of the process. The teachings of Jesus are more ethically advanced than what was in the Torah, but since it comes from God, they should have been identical.
And I’m talking about the teaching, not the acceptance of them. I agree, many people would not follow them - which is why I think the argument that God doesn’t directly give us his teachings because it would quash our free will is bogus. Individuals and societies do mature, god shouldn’t.
Well, if God showed up in court some day …
They’re talking about the problem of human evil. I’m talking about the argument from some people that God did not, say, forbid slavery because it would be too tough for anyone to obey. I can’t imagine a god with direct access to perfect morality that would take this as a reason for revealing an imperfect moral code.
Sure you are. That’s the next question.
I’m genuinely curious about this. Can you explain more. If it has to do with the “create a rock so big that even he couldn’t lift it”, you can disregard the request.
I’m of the mind that if things about the world or the cosmos appear inconsitent, then we are not understanding things correctly, whether that be God or the physical world. Or both, which is most likely.
I personally think it is ridiculous to anthropomorphisize God. I think the one thing he has in common with us is that we both have free will.
How is it bogus?
Well, for one thing it defines “free will” as “ignorance”. Actually, I think that “free will” is ignorance, but I don’t think that’s what people are trying to get at when they trot out the free will argument to defend God’s behavior.
That was Ammonius’ claim. Since he feels that people who make non-scientifically-verifiable claims should be marginalized and treated as if they were crazy, I was wondering if he should be as well.
Same objection that Revenant Threshold acknowledges - you can base an argument on facts, but it has to be accepted on faith that the facts have any relation to the conclusion. It has to be accepted on faith, IOW, that the fact that dead people cannot enjoy life (another unprovable, unfalsifiable assertion) means that murder is wrong.
I think we have gone around on this before. Something or other has to be accepted as axiomatic, or no morality is possible.
AFAICT, the argument is that they are essentially equivalent. Prohibition of murder is OK, because most people want this. Belief in God is not OK, even though most people want it.
But if you want to argue that things should be believed because they bring about happiness, then people should believe in God, because there is evidence that active theists are happier than non-believers. So if your morality is based on people enjoying life, then that is an argument for theism.
Regards,
Shodan
I see the argument. Do you say the same thing to your 2 year old as you do your 10 year old? Would their expression of your teachings to their peers seem identical?
btw, I don’t see Jesus as the end of the process. Even in teachings he told his apostles he had much to tell them that they were not ready or able to bear.
I don’t buy that argument either. This goes back to my previous post. Was Jesus dealing with slavery or the oppression of woman when he said love thy neighbor as thyself? People have often seen our relationship to God as a matter of obeying a certain set of rules. That’s understandable. What did Jesus say were the most important components of the law? It’s not to act as if you love, but to actually love.
Considering the welfare of citizens in a country is a dictatorship automatically worse than a democratic republic? We see the term slavery as something awful but it’s about the relationship between people. Even though we no longer do the paperwork to denote one person owing another as property aren’t there still plenty of people who seek to manipulate, dominate and exploit others for their own benefit? I don’t think God or JC are concerned with the technicalities of semantics and official terminology. It’s the condition of the persons inner being.
Is that what you believe? That strikes me as unjustified.
Christianity, in particular, hinges on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the New Testament writers appealed to evidence for this belief – the testimonies of witnesses who claimed to have seen the risen Christ, for example. In addition, the conversion of Paul would be difficult to explain if he had not experienced something that was consonant with the Resurrection. The same holds true for the conversion of James, brother of Jesus. (Just FTR, while some historians are skeptical about certain details of the Resurrection accounts – the empty tomb, for example – virtually none of them deny the conversion of Paul and James. Nor do they deny that the disciples genuinely believed that they had met the risen Christ.) IMO, one can also make a strong case for the empty tomb and other pieces of evidence, though that’s beyond the scope of this thread.
Now, one might propose alternative explanations for the evidence… indeed, many do. One might even deny the quality of the evidence (misguidedly, IMO). However, one cannot claim that Christianity requires belief without any consideration of the evidence. That’s not what the New Testament teaches.
Right, cuz no has ever presented any arguments against the authors you mentioned. Maybe you should read something other than just books espousing an idea you already hold to be true. Just dropping a couple of names and going ‘Ta-da!’ doesnt make an argument. From my perspective, all their arguments for god and their particular religions have all been debunked, in some cases for quite a long time.
So we have two logical fallacies here, the ad hominem attack, and the appeal to popularity. So is logical fallacy the basis for your argument?
Yes that appears to be your opinion, so why dont you go ahead and try to give me some of that evidence. Dont just drop names, give me an argument.
Thats a tall order. Why dont you pick one.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Really? So youre of the opinion that god exists, why dont you give me the supporting facts?
I made it up? So you know all about me yeah? Wrong. I used to go to Bible study groups. Used to. I actually tried to learn more. Only the people I talked to weren’t interested in explanations or inquiry, they were more into blind obedience and diabtribe.
Why dont you chalk it up to missing some really obvious sarcasm?
Appeal to authority. I will accept being told ‘Theres peanut butter on the table’ from an authority without too much trouble, but being told ‘theres an invisible guy up in the sky who loves you and will send you to burn forever if you dont follow these rules’ is going to take a whole heck of a lot of authority before Ill accept that. The authority has to have a bearing on the belief conferred. Someone who was just in the kitchen will do for the peanut butter, but what kind of authority would qualify for telling people about something like god? Someone who’s seen it? All we have is their word. A book written by god? Again, just their word. Accepting something like god from an inadaquate authority is just blind unreasoning acceptance.
How about ‘science works’? Your computer works, your phone works, your car works. Prayer does not work. I dont ‘believe’ my computer will work, I know it. I dont have to believe. Its worked 1000s of times before, and unless something physical goes wrong with it, I know it will work again. Prayer has no better than random chance success.
So what about the argument:
A) Pious people lack (correct) justification for thier beliefs.
B) Person who lack (correct) justification for their beliefs are insane
.: Pious people are insane.
But are these new things discoveries or interpretations? Are they really finding something truly new, or are they rewording something that already existed?
Do you consider someone making something up ‘new’? A lot of the ideas in the Catholic church today havent been around the whole time, they came along later. Things like original sin. Was this concept always there, and just hadnt been disccovered, or is it just an interpretation of pre-existing things that someone just reinterpreted? Or maybe it was just made up out of whole cloth. It isnt explicitly in the bible. All those different churches and sects, do they have something new, or are they just rewording things that they already had. The Jehova’s Witnesses consider blood sacred, and wont take blood transfusions. Is this a new discovery, or is it just something they already had and reinterpreted?
I dont consider reworking old things to be making new things.
Oh? So the atheists in this thread have repeatedly stated that it’s “insane” to believe something unless you have evidence for it. Post the “lies” and “threats” from all Catholic authors to justify your belief. (Since there are so many of them, I’ll let you off the hook on every Catholic author and you settle for just examples from the major ones, say the ten I’ve already listed.) If you’re unable to do this, then I will assume that you believe Catholic authors write lies and threats without having evidence to back up this belief, and therefore you are insane according to your own reasoning.
Just as before, present your evidence. Give me a cite about an atheist being assaulted in a Bible study group. If not, I will again assume that you are insane according to your own reasoning.
Would you care to elaborate how somebody saying that they’ve seen something constitutes widespread “delusions and/or lying”?
How many is a lot? And youre going to have to define ‘known for decades’. Previously published? Agreed upon but never proven?
Yeah cuz string theory has tons of evidence, its not just all math… oh wait.
What makes you think I dont? Im all for math, but basing a physical system on something with no physical evidence is bad.
So you found one example, good for you. If I find two examples does that make me right?
You can either point to that paper and call the entire system a sham, or you can work to show that its wrong and set things right. Its up to you.
Peer review is a human system, yes, it isnt perfect. By saying there are some problems with it youre ignoring everything its accomplished. What would the peer review system look like if we could take out the human factor?
Coding errors? Youre trying to point to coding errors as a flaw in the peer review process? Its code, code has errors in it. Go to the code for any complex program, and youll find errors. Code is not a peer reviewed media, and this example does not work.
Um, no. Existing knowledge framework means something like biology or physics, a body of knowledge within a specialized area. If someone discovers something in biology, and says ‘this chemical does X’, then it has to conform to the existing knowledge frame of chemistry.
You should try reading that again. You do realize that ‘back to the lab’ is a colloquialism right?
Prove it.
Oh, so youre just whining that its YOU who cant see the brand spanking new stuff. Please, these people have a right to do what they want with their discoveries. Just because you cant see them doesnt mean that its not being peer reviewed.
You totally love that ad hominem attack. If youre going to assert that I havent read them, why dont you go ahead and prove it? Good luck proving the negative by the way.
What did Augustine discover? Even his stuff on original sin was just an interpretation of what he read in established dogma.
Luther’s ideas were just interpretations of what he read. All that stuff about penance and forgiveness already existed, it was just a different way of seeing it than the church at the time held. That, and he didnt like how the church was being run.
Again with the ad hominem. You should try posting actual arguments with more evidence and less name dropping, and definitely less playing to your audience.
And thats all you see peer review as? Would your pointing out that theres an incorrect equation on page 556 of volume 73 have any real impact? Does the author use this equation to make his conclusion? Is anything else wrong because of this? Or is it just a typo and youre doing things like pointing out theres only two u’s in quantum and are ungrateful that people arent wowed by your astute observation?
That is an ivalid disproof, since it falls only within omnipotence, and not requiring omnipotence to include logically inconsistent things (like creating a square circle) seems to be reasonable. Here is a brief sketch of how omnipotence and omniscience are inconsistent:
First, I assume that omniscience includes perfect knowledge about the future. Since Christianity is based on prophecy, that seems a safe bet - otherwise the prophets who supposedly knew the future would be more powefful than God.
Second, by omnipotence, if there are outcomes X and Y from some action A, (that are possible) God can cause either to happen. We’re not talking only about human actions - say we’re talking about when a leaf falls from a tree.
Okay, say God knows that an action A will have a consequence X in the future. Can God change the action to produce result Y? If he can, then his knowledge of the result is incorrect, and he is not omniscient. If he cannot, then he is not omnipotent.
Here are some of the objections to this, and why they are faulty. The first is the free will objection - since God granted us free will, he deliberately limited himself to not interfering. That’s an interesting thread by itself, and it’s been done, but we can consider purely physical actions, not involving people, so it is not a relevent objection.
Second, God has decided not to interfere in this way. Whether or not there is Biblical support for this, we’re talking hypotheticals, so what is important is what God can do, not what he decides to do. In any case, if I claim to be able to fly, and refuse to demonstrate it because I “choose” not to use it, you might doubt my claim.
Third, God has decided exactly what he’s going to do sometime in the distant past, so from here on in it is all set. I’m dubious that this addresses the claim, but even if it does, since God goes on forever in the past, there is a time before the time he decided. The action in that case might be if he is going to whack the holy winger at some point, but god can act even before he creates the universe.
So, we can conclude that a God both omnipotent and omniscient is logically inconsistent, and cannot exist. Your atheist registration form is in the mail. 
I’m not getting you. God can certainly create a perfectly consistent, yet fake, universe.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. By picture I mean a description of some of the characteristics, not a portrait. I don’t think you think he is a hairy thunderer.
I’ve already done so on many occasions.
If I ever get the urge to drop a couple of names and go ‘Ta-da!’, I’ll keep that in mind.
I await an explanation for why you can’t present these debunkings, or post a link to them, or tell me what book or article they were published in. If, in your perspective, these authors have been debunked, but the debunkings exist only in forms that can’t be shown to anyone other than yourself, that doesn’t say much for the correctness of your perspective.
I did not use an ad hominem attack. You asserted that all theology is garbage based solely on the fact that you believe that all theology is garbage (see post 95). Given the rather extraordinary nature of this claim, it’s worth asking whether you have sufficient intelligence to justify making it. You’ll surely agree that only an extremely smart person can have their single opinion outweight the opinions of billions. It was therefore worth investigation whether you qualify as an extremely smart person, and I humbly submit that I proved the answer to be no.
As for appeal to popularity, it’s not a fallacy in this circumstance. Billions of people, over 2000 years, in thousands of cultures have believed the central tenets of Christianity and have read and respected these works of theology we’re discussing. To say, as Der did, that all these people are “lying or delusional”, is just plain nuts. Billions of people across 2000 years in thousands of different cultures could not all agree to tell the same lies, nor would they if they could. Nor could they all be having a delusion, because the delusion would have to spring originally from a lie, and we’d be back to the problem of an impossible number of people all agreeing on the same lie.
If I’m to pick a flaw in the arguments of the listed authors, you first have to give me a set of flaws to choose from. You’ve repeatedly stated that there are flaws in the arguments of these authors, but in four posts you have yet to actually provide a single example of such a flaw.
Suffice to say, I know that angry teenage atheists have no qualms about lying, particularly in debates about religion. You think you can gain some credibility by claiming to have extensive experinece in this or that, since there’s no way to check in an anonymous online debate. You neglected to consider the fact that some of us aren’t dumb enough to fall for that.
You’re so contemptuous of religion that you can’t even hold your temper for a few minutes while writing a post in an online debate. Yet in real life you’re so calm and intellectually curious that you spent several hours a week in pleasant debate just to expand your horizons in a topic that you view as total baloney? I think not.
Ah, the good old ‘it’s sarcasm’ whenever you get caught lying. Was your false claim to being an expert on Augustine and Aquinas also intended as scornful irony?
Because in the Bible - in the Exodus, in particular, God is directly present, does very visible miracles, and yet Israel rebels. If direct contact with god (as a cloud of dust) destroys free will, then the Golden Calf would never have happened. Moses and several of the patriarchs also had direct contact with God, and even argued with him.
I think this argument is a feeble excuse to explain away God’s absence.
As I’ve pointed out, he never said anything about science in his OP. He was talking about claims not based on evidence.
I’m not going to give you a logical argument from ethics that murder is wrong, but I’m sure you’ll agree one can be made. If I said dead people don’t have fun, so murder is wrong you might be justified in claiming I was basing the argument on faith, but that is not why people consider murder wrong. You’d be able to see all the steps. You might disagree with some of them, but it is hardly a faith based argument.
Dead people can’t enjoy life, not being of the living. That seems like a tautology. Perhaps dead people can enjoy death. Now, there are religious reasons not to kill people because they are ready, but if we learned somehow that all dead people survive death in a state of bliss, much happier than here, don’t you think the penalty for murder will change?
I’m not aware of an ethical argument against murder based on poll results.
Well, it’s good that I’m arguing no such thing. I was perfectly happy believing in God, I’m perfectly happy not believing. If there was evidence and a good logical argument for God, they would be valid even if belief made people miserable.
The rules would be the same (except for stuff the 10 year old would be allowed because she’s older) even if the expression were different. But I don’t think 700 years would have made that much difference, actually. The people who wrote the Tanakh, whether you think they did it by themselves or were inspired, had a high degree of moral sophistication.
I agree with some of your interpretation of the message. Love thy non-Hebrew neighbor does not seem a part of Joshua, for instance. And I know you think the message is only about the inner being, but the Bible is damn well concerned about the outer being. Judaism is all about living under very specific rules - I never did, but I know people who do, while Christianity was designed to appeal to people unwilling to limit themselves, by giving up shellfish or being circumsized. That’s another thing God supposedly changed his mind about, it’s true.