i think the hell issue is a bit confused here. Most of the atheists, it seems to me, think that hell is the burning lake of torture as described in Bible (admittedly, in different words - my knowledge of the Bible isn’t that great). But I think a lot of Christians of today do not believe this, or at least none of my Christian friends (they’re all Protestant of one form or another, though, so I’m not sure about other denominations). What I’ve read, and what I’ve heard my friends say, is that hell is to be without God. That is, when you reject God, your disbelief creates your hell. So it’s not that God is placing you in a torture chamber or anything like that. It’s just the feeling of loneliness and purposelessness and whatever else might come without belief in God. I think this is the kind of hell Lib is referring to (am I right Lib ?). Of course, belief in this kind of hell presumes that to be without God is to be miserable in one form or another, but that’s an argument for another thread.
To respond to the OP, Jesus’ message to me (what I “hear” when I read the Bible) is that I must believe that he is God in order to enter into heaven. I also hear what he says about love, which has been stated already in this thread, but to me this appears to be the secondary message. Then again, this might be influenced by what I’ve heard in church.
Czarcasm, I understand implicitly what you are saying, but may I suggest to you, without any overtones of moral superiority, that you are completely misperceiving what Libertarian and Triskadecamus have had to say?
Let me set up an analogy: Approximately twice a month somebody starts a Pit rant about the “evil Nazi moderators” who “won’t let them exercise their freedom of speech” – meaning that you who have been named by the Chicago Reader to keep the forums here running on an even keel, calming tempers and demanding that we refrain from insulting invective against each other, are trespassing on their sacred right to say what they want to say, when they want to say it, however they want to say it. Most of us know you as individuals, at least as well as one can get to know somebody else through on-line communication, and are well aware that you are doing no such thing. But if I chose to take their POV at face value, reject anything else that came to my attention, including the indications of other people online that they know you personally and that the accusations are totally unfounded, I could easily come to believe that your purpose in being a moderator is to keep me from expressing myself, not to enable me to express myself in an environment that is tailored to protect me, as well as everyone else, from the worst of my invective.
What we’re saying to you is that we know God, we know what sort of Person He is, and that the misrepresentations you take from people talking about His wrath and justice are not at all the true picture. Quite simply, you’ve been listening about God to the trolls and the people with a grudge against His rules, and have discovered that He is an Evil Nazi Administrator ™.
Well, yeah. But if I say, “I know God” and subject my experiences of knowing Him for your critique, you immediately state that I just think I’ve ever encountered Him, and there’s no proof that I have in fact done so. Likewise anybody who’s ever left a record of their experiences with Him, you reject because they claim to believe in Him, so their data is suspect (and, by the way, might have been written by somebody else with his or her own agenda).
Do you see from this the problem that you are setting up? If you take at face value the allegations made by people who work from the concepts of the fundamentalists and reject as whole-cloth fabrication the evidence (admittedly subjective, but no more so than the other material, and at least firsthand, which is more than you can say for most of what they have to say), you can “disprove” anything we have to say – by selective weighting of evidence, not by any evenhanded analysis.
I personally think that there is such a thing as Hell, but that it’s merely the choice which God gives to people who insist perpetually that they do not want to have anything to do with Him. And that it’s more in line with the guy who says that he can drink as much as he wants whenever he wants without becoming an alcoholic – possible, but as a practical matter, whatever he thinks about himself, the odds are strongly against him being right. I do not demand that you take any intellectual stance about what Jesus is reputed to have done or anything of that sort, simply ask that if you are somehow convinced of the existence of a loving God and in Jesus as in some way a manifestation of His love towards humanity acting through one man, then you would accept Him as your friend and love Him as you try to do your fellow man. That is, in a nutshell, what Christianity is all about – that we have come to know Him as One who loves us and who calls us to love Him and our fellow man. Understanding how He does this gets into some torturous theological concepts, but the bottom line is that we know He does, and that’s enough for us. And, I would trust, it would be enough for you if you came to accept it as a reasonable understanding of how the world, including Him, works.
Take any historical figure you care to name, evaluate him or her evenhandedly, and then start a GD thread on who he was, and I guarantee somebody on this board will attempt a debunking effort. Martin Luther King? Talked with the Communists, radical, opposed to states’ rights… FDR? Somebody recently did a wonderful job of showing what a horrible job he did of solving the Depression and creating WWII, at least in their opinion. Churchill? Horrible racist, anti-unionist…
God? Evil sadistic megalomaniac bent on creating people that He can torture unless they jump through the proper theological hoops.
My point is, of course, that an honest evaluation of those three men shows both good and bad. And I can grasp how some of the dogmata spouted off on God, particularly if reshaped to emphasize the horrible, evil stuff that someone alleged that He commanded or at least condoned, could lead you to a strongly negative view of Him.
We’re here to tell you that we’ve met Him, and He’s not like that. You’re welcome to think we’re self-deluded. But at least give our assertions the same weight as you do the anonymous clowns who claim He told them to kill all the Amelekites, and ve vus jusst followink orderss!
Polycarp, here are some logical problems that I found with what you wrote:
1.) Anecdotes are nice in that they’re easy to come up with, but logically they’re both usually vague and–logically speaking–they’re not accepted as evidence. I may tell you that I feel an invisible, pink koala sleeps in my bed at night, but if I can’t produce that koala through anything other than an anecdote, then there’s no real proof it’s there.
2.) Churchill, FDR and Martin Luther King are on verifiable record that they actually existed. We have physical proof to either support or disprove allegations against them. Not so with any god. For divine beings, all we have to go off of are anecdotes and writings produced by the followers.
3.) “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” For this reason, one should not give equal weight to all assertions. One should look skeptically at what the speaker/writer is saying and ask for proof. More priori weight should be given to the effects of gravity (because they can and have been proven over and over again; and they adhere to the laws of physics) than claims of chatting with an invisible divine being who doesn’t follow any natural law.
4.) Faith. Faith in and of itself is not logical. Faith starts where facts and provable events end. We’ve considered faith and have logically rejected it as a means to understand our surrounding world.
5.) And of course, the false analogy. I understand what you were attempting to do, but there’s just no rational comparison between a board moderator and a god. I can contact the moderator and produce his/her comments for all to see, leaving no doubt that he/she exists (or at least someone behind the curtain, Dorothy); however, as many times as you contact your god, you still have no verifiable proof that anyone is behind that theological curtain. Not only that, but a moderator will not define your eternal life by denying you entrance into a paradise. (And if he does, you can at least complain to Cecil.)
But the question of responsibility remains. Even if you define “hell” as being away from your god and “heaven” as being with your god after death, does your belief system allow me to change my mind after death, or am I doomed to wander in oblivion forever? If there are rules that state that after death there can be no changing my mind, then I am not the one who made the rules. If the rules state that I can gain access to “heaven” unless I believe in a certain diety in a certain way, then I am not the one who made those rules. It’s sort of like a cheap role-playing game where your character dies every time you make the wrong decision, with the added bonus of there being 10,000 different rule books to guide us. Not only that, but the game ends every time with a white screen that says,“If you played this correctly, you have won!”
There is no objective way to tell which sect of which religion is the right one until it is far too late to change your mind. Others who have “met” their gods say the exact same things you do, and unless you can come up with a valid reason for me to discredit their experiences, I can’t even begin to give credit to your experiences.
I’d say you have it pretty much right, yes. I must commend you on your willingness to be respectful toward people of faith despite that your own worldview differs from ours.
Please don’t be misled by this thread. The so-called “hard atheists” (people who believe in NoGod, or insist that God absolutely does not exist) are an extremely small minority here at Straight Dope. Like the classical fundamentalist Christian, they see those who believe differently from them as intellectually inferior, deluded, or somehow otherwise “missing” something. Despite that it is a common logical fallacy, they insist that their own lack of evidence for the proposition that God exists constitutes a reason to conclude that He doesn’t. They hold us in such contempt that they are unwilling to accept that our evidence, which we know from first-hand experience, has any validity whatsoever. They simply cannot allow that we might be right or that anything whatsoever is their own fault — this, despite that they acknowledge no third party entity whose fault it could be.
A very celebrated hard atheist (Lolo) was so intensely contemptuous that even most other hard atheists were embarrassed by him. He was eventually banned.
With respect to hell, hell is death. There is no life outside God. He is the very source of life itself. A woman’s spirit makes its decision about God as soon as she sees Him, whether that is during her moral play (earthly lifetime), or else upon seeing God when the play is finished. She will know instantly whether she prefers life or death. The nature of her spirit is eternal, and moral decisions are eternal ones. There is no “mind” — in the sense of an electrochemical organ — to change. Thus, she either gives herself over to God or else desires to stay to herself. The former is a rebirth into everlasting life; the latter is death without resurrection.
Blaming God for our own desire to stay away from Him is logically indefensible. He simply is what He is. (Even His name is “I Am That I Am”.) He is holy. He is perfectly good. He loves unconditionally. If that is something that a person cannot abide, then that is her choice: she may reject what she sees when she meets Him. I have no doubts whatsoever that heaven is brimming with atheists.
Poly, I hope you will forgive me, but you know that I cannot resist debating a logician.
Some people can feel the koala, and some can’t. Some people used to think one was there, and no longer do. Some used to think that koala people were crazy, but now they feel koalas too. Some always have or always havent. And some cycle back and forth.
However, your point is moot simply because none of us is trying to convince you that there is a koala under your bed. We know that there is one under ours, but we understand that your moral reference frame — just like our own — is closed to our inspection. There may very well not be a koala under your bed at all. And whether you think there is or isn’t is none of our business.
You’re absolutely right so long as you did not mean exclusively divine beings. Lots of things exist for which you have no physical proof — that is, of course, unless you believe that science has finished its job and that we now know everything, there being nothing left to discover.
Agreed in principle; however, what might be extraordinary to you might not be so to me. And what might constitute proof to you might not to me. At one time in my life, the notion of God was extraordinary, but now it is quite ordinary. It became ordinary in an instant of time.
But again, we are not trying to prove to you that God exists, so you’re sort of standing on a soapbox and preaching to the choir. We know full well that, for you, He does not. And that what you experience in your closed frame of reference is as valid as what we experience in our own, which is equally closed to your inspection.
Of course, as my sainted mother used to say, “You never know what’s around the corner.”
Of course you have. When have you heard us insist that you have any faith?
Beauty is not logical either, and it is perfectly normal that we might both perceive the same thing in our surroundings, one of us as beautiful and the other as not. Simply because you and I do not see eye to eye on our interpretations of the world, I ought not to disrespect you summarily and categorically. I ought not to ridicule you. And I ought not to fret that you’re not applying logic to your life holistically, like Mr. Spock. You do not require of your lover logical proof of their love and admiration. You just know whether they love you. And you don’t construct syllogisms during orgasms. I presume.
Some people cannot contact the moderator. Of the planet’s billions, only a few thousand know of this place.
God denies you no entrance. All who decide to come are welcome. And there are no rules. The choice is yours whether you like what He is.
And by the way, SkipMagic, I got a kick out of your offering anecdotal evidence that anecdotal evidence is unacceptable.
Some things are known only subjectively from within closed reference frames. God, as an eternal and absolute entity, is one of those things. It isn’t so much a matter of whether God exists, but of whether He is beautiful.
Libertarian: Please excuse my opening remark above. I may disagree with almost everything you write, but that isn’t an excuse for a personal attack. It was ninetyfive degrees last night, I was covered with sawdust from a long day’s work, and this thread isn’t all that conducive to control of one’s emotions. Anyway I won’t do it again, at least outside the Pit.
First, it must be determined whether any gods exist at all.
Next, if it has been determined that there is a god or gods, we must decide which one or ones it is.
Then we have to decide which path is the right one to follow.
Then, and only then, can we decide whether or not to follow said god or gods.
Determining whether or not the god or gods you believe in are “beautiful” is a matter of opinion, and I suspect it has a lot to do with whether or not you agree with the precepts of the religion you follow.
Back to the OP-is there a website that lists all of the verses directly attributed to Jesus, filtering out the opinions of his followers and transcribers? It might be easier to determine what he means if we can first determine what he says, don’t you think?
It is illogical to assume something (in this case the Christian god) exists without any evidence proving that assumption; logic dictates that things do not exist unless we have evidence that they do. Because the existance of teaching of Jesus are not universially accepted as fact, conceding they are is insincere. Most people do not believe in unicorns, UFO’s, Marduk, or the tooth fairy even though they cannot prove that no unicorns, UFO’s, Babylonian Gods, or tooth fairies exist anywhere. It is reasonable not to believe an invisible koala lives underneath SkipMagic’s bed. SkipMagic will have to first prove that an invisible koala exists in order for other people to believe that he is under his bed. His assertions can then be tested for validity. Lack of belief is merely a default position that awaits proof. Give me evidence (not anecdotes) that your beliefs are true and I will believe. Obviously your indivudual “moral reference frame” can be conceptualized as you still persist in rationalizing your faith to non-believers.
And you hold the lack of belief of atheists in equal contempt, refusing to acknowledge that their personal evidence and experiences results in a lack of belief in gods.
The burden of proof is always on the person asserting something. You are asserting that your personal experiences (God exists, Jesus = love) should be respected without any corroborating evidence; that your version of Christianity is true unless proven otherwise. There is no way to prove your experiences untrue without testing your (currently non-existant) evidence.
As of now, I have witnessed no such evidence other than personal experiences that support a belief in your version of the Christian God; experiences that cannot be tested. Since you are arguing that your concepts are valid, you must prove your experiences on our terms, using logic, since we are the people you are trying to convince. Anecdotal evidence is only compelling to people who already want to believe.
How do you know this? My version of Christianity contradicts your version of Christianity. My Christianity’s “hell” is nothing like your Christianity’s “hell.” My version of Jesus does not conform to your version of Jesus.You assert with certainty that your version is correct, thereby devaluing the faith of those who’s beliefs do not conform to your own. You are elevating your own beliefs over that of other believers and non-believers, demonstrating your “contempt” for their equally valid beliefs systems.
I see no one blaiming your version of the Christian God for his lack of existance. You seem to think there is only one reason for a lack of belief in your God; an illogical desire to avoid Him. Your version of God, his holiness, goodness, lovingness are abstract concepts being treated as concrete things. These things do not exists simply because they are characteristics you use to describe your God.
The scientific method starts from a viewpoint of disbelief, taking facts and building theories around existing evidence. The belief in the Christian God takes an idea and finds evidences to support that assumption; a method that will ensure an individual will aquire evidence for their assumption. Using facts to build a theory while starting from a viewpoint of disbelief contains more inherant believability than assuming something is true then manufacturing evidence to support that assumption.
Mapache, I accept your gracious apology, thanks. No harm was done.
Why should we care whether you believe or not? We’ve told what we know to be true. It would be illogical for us to deny our personal experience.
You’re right. I have never been face to face with a unicorn or UFO. I have no reason to believe in their existence. However, I have met God, and I would violate a key tenet of Ockham’s Razor if I denied it. “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum.”
Demonstrably false.
I wrote: “We know that there is one under ours, but we understand that your moral reference frame — just like our own — is closed to our inspection. There may very well not be a koala under your bed at all. And whether you think there is or isn’t is none of our business.”
You should select your points more carefully.
No, you are mistaken. I am asserting that I, as a human being who has done you no harm, am deserving of your respect. I am not asking you to accept my testimony; I am asking you to accept me as your societal peer.
My evidence is my experience. Your own experience testifies that there is no god (or NoGod). I respect that you are skeptical. I would be too.
Gosh. I don’t know how many times I have to say that I am not trying to convince you of anything before it will sink in for you. Maybe this time is the charm.
At any rate, you’re wrong. I don’t have to prove anything at all to you. Nor ought I to have to. You are not my creditor in any way, shape, or form. I owe you nothing. And if you think that logic (I presume that you mean general classical logic, as most lay people do) is the only valid epistemology, then you understand neither logic nor general philosophy, of which logic is but one branch.
And that is a lie.
I wrote: “We know full well that, for you, He does not. And that what you experience in your closed frame of reference is as valid as what we experience in our own, which is equally closed to your inspection.”
You really ought to be more discerning in a public forum where what people have said is a matter of record for everyone to see.
You’re pulling rabbits out of hats. As I explained in some detail, not all of our life experiences are logic-centric. Whether to believe in God is a moral choice, not a conclusion from a syllogism.
Not in my case. I had set out basically to prove the incompetence of Christian scholars. I got submarined.
Finally we something concrete to work with. You say that the difference between other peoples’ beliefs and your beliefs is that you have met God. Whould you mind telling us where and when you met God(a rare occurance, even in the Bible), and describe the meeting to us? Were there others present?
I presume that you will not respond with “I don’t have anything to prove to you!”, because you would not have brought up this incredible occurance otherwise, right?
One more thing — a general point for all those who demand what they will consider to be (irony alert) objective evidence. Have you ever had a flat tire? And if so, can you prove it?
Incredible claims require incredible proof-flat tires are a common enough occurance, actually meeting God is not. In fact, flat tires are such a common occurance that I would have trouble believing you if you claimed never to have had one.
I think it is pretty clear what has happened. Everyone has a different view of God. As we have seen in this thread even fellow believers have wildly dissimilar ideas of God. And yet many of these people claim to have personally met God. Unless God is telling different things to each person, it follows that at most one person has truly met God, and really knows him. Everyone else is either lying about meeting God or hallucinating. So in all likelyhood only one person will be saved, and spend eternity with god. Do you see what this means? God is looking for a soul mate! The universe is one big personal ad!
Single father of one seeks soulmate for friendship, fun, romance, and avoidance of everlasting damnation. Willing to experience religious ecstasy, fervor; predisposition to hallucinations and meglomania a must. Omnipotent, omniscient, perfection personified, I created the rules of the universe, the world, mankind. I am the principle object of worship of the major monotheistic religions. Enjoys tennis, moonlight walks, and footrubs. No fatties, please.
I’m Sorry, someone had to do it.
For a person who forcefully demands respect for his belief system and has consistently decried his poor treatment from “hard atheists,” you are incredibly dissmissive and contemptuous of opposing viewpoints.
Why, indeed. If you didn’t care, you would’t be spending so much time asserting your personal interpretation of Christianity, hell, and the nature of God. No one is denying you the right to personal religious experiences; I merely choose not to percieve that experience as fact, nor as valid evidence that your personal experience supercedes that of billions of other people.
If you have no interest in proving your experience is correct, stop hijacking this thread about the nature of the teachings of Jesus. I doubt anyone has any interest in proving your experience is incorrect.
You are interpretating a lack of belief in your interpretation of Christianity and your religious experiences as disrespect for you personally. I respect your right to believe you have had these experiences and that your interpretation of Christianity is the correct one; I do not believe those experiences are probable or that your supercilious attitude toward other people’s experiences is valid.
It is clear you do not respect belief systems that oppose your own; your persistance in characterizing “hard atheists” as stubbornly ignorant of your God’s love is only one example of this.
.
However, you are trying to explain your belief system to people who obviously do not accept evidence that is not “logic-centric.” Why persist in this cause?
I also do not understand your defining belief in God or Gods as a “moral” choice.
>>And by the way, SkipMagic, I got a kick out of your offering anecdotal evidence that anecdotal evidence is unacceptable.<<
I should hope so. That was kind of the point, ya’ know? Not to amuse you, I mean (although, hey, take it where you can get it), but proffering a fake anecdote to illustrate the lack of rationality of accepting “anecdotal evidence” as hard facts.
>>Poly, I hope you will forgive me, but you know that I cannot resist debating a logician.<<
Cool beans, chilidog; I’m glad you feel this way because from what I’ve read so far, I believe the two of us need the practice.
>>We know that there is one under ours…<<
With respect to my poor, abused, invisible, pink koala (I’m changing it, by the way–I think Bob Carroll from www.skepdic.com or James Randi from www.randi.org already pulled an invisible, pink unicorn out of a hat; my koala is now a see-through, magenta example) saying that you know something doesn’t make it true. I mean, I can say that I know Ghengis Kahn runs a strip-joint in an abandoned and hollowed-out log in the middle of Barvaria’s Black Forest, but that doesn’t make it so. To reasonably expect others to accept my claim I’d have to offer up verifiable evidence. Like, for instance, a Mongolian stripper with splinters on her boobs–and a map with directions back to the log. (Because it’d be simply be uncouth of me to only have boobs as evidence.)
>>Lots of things exist for which you have no physical proof<<
Depends on what you’re talking about. Have an example?
>>I ought not to ridicule you.<<
I know it’s been said before in this thread, but I’m willing to have it written one more time: disagreement with your beliefs, or questioning your statements is in no way ridicule.
>>And you don’t construct syllogisms during orgasms.<<
Kinda, actually. I mean, I definitely learn my lessons. For example, if I play with the splinters in the stripper’s boob THIS way, well, she gets all excited. So, if “A” then “B”! Alright!
Not only that, but an orgasm is physical and really not to be questioned unless you want to ask “Are you faking it?”; in which case a whole can of nasty worms has just been opened. Feelings would be hurt, wounds sprinkled with salt, accusations would fly and no one would end up happy. Bummer.
>>Some people cannot contact the moderator. Of the planet’s billions, only a few thousand know of this place.<<
That’s really weak, and I suspect you know that. Some people cannot contact the moderator not because of his/her ambiguous existence, but because they lack a connection to the internet. I can, at any time, bring a laptop to those who doubt and connect to the Straight Dope. And what do you mean only a few thousand? I thought we were the “teeming millions”!
>>And there are no rules.<<
For salvation? For entrance into Heaven? None? Are you sure, because that’s a new one for me.
