The fidelity rules for hypothetical lovers conjured up as debate fodder are somewhat more lax than those applicable to actually existing lovers. Matter of fact, I hear that that hypothetical lover (his name is Joe) is currently screwing that chick and that guy in your latest sexual fantasy when you’re not using them, so maybe you need to have a talk with those two if you require faithfulness from your mental constructs. 
[sub]I think I’ve had a little too much coffee today…[/sub]
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:rolleyes:
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My point is that people here aren’t bashing Christians. Polycarp, for example, has received no insults. All the insults are directed at fundies.
There is a difference between “Christian” and “fundamentalist Christian,” you know. Then again, maybe you don’t. See below.
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Actually, you’ve made it our business by making criticisms of us which relate to your opinions of Polycarp. To wit:
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You quote these people as being examples of folks who wouldn’t believe in the FC God even if the “Left Behind” scenario came true, and yet they would, in fact, believe. As a matter of fact, betenoir’s position, as quoted by you, is more or less identical to Polycarp’s.
So why don’t you list Polycarp as one of the stubborn folks who wouldn’t believe even if they had evidence? After all, you listed betenoir.
This is, of course, aside from the obvious comment one could make about your list:
“Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension skills.”
Let’s look at the list a little further:
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Actually, ML explicitly stated that the level of proof outlined in the OP would suffice for him. The intoxicating substances were mentioned only because they would be needed to dull the pain of having to admit that people like yourself were right after all. Perhaps you need to work on your reading comprehension skills?
Again, why do you mention Morrison’sLament, but not Polycarp, when their positions are essentially the same?
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So obviously tongue-in-cheek comments are proof that they wouldn’t believe? Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension skills.
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Rocket88 asked for clarification of the question, and said he’d examine the evidence carefully. Perhaps you need to work on your reading comprehension skills?
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So if a non-atheist talks about what he would hypothetically do if he were one, that justifies saying that the atheists on the SDMB are narrow-minded?
What kind of logic is that?
I admit, I was incorrect: there were maybe two or three serious answers which stated that they would not believe. Nonetheless, that doesn’t even remotely back up your original comments about how most of us wouldn’t believe, didn’t practice the kind of open-mindedness that we preached, and had turned the thread into a Christian-bashing fest.
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I didn’t say you did. Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension skills.
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Yes, they do. The books were explicitly mentioned in the OP, and that’s why, of all the interpretations of the book of Revelations (for example, that it is a metaphor for spiritual growth, that it represents persecutions under Nero, etc,) we’re discussing the one which formed the basis of the novels.
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Or perhaps it’s a scenario which JerseyDiamond explicitly mentioned? Perhaps you should work on your reading comprehension skills.
Sheesh… one would think that most of what I just wrote in this post would be obvious…
-Ben
Hmmm… I’m not quite sure. I’ll have to give that some thought. That’s the first time I’ve asked myself that question. Can you explain how the answers to the question will unload?
Now you’ve got me thoroughly confused. How does a person request a communication (e.g., a sign) from an entity that is as vaguely defined as division by zero? When you asked God for a sign before, who or what were you addressing? It seems fair that a cry out to nothing ought to yield, well, nothing.
That’s okay, [sub]He loves you anyway.[/sub] 
Plus Joe Cool completely ignored me. I said quite clearly that if I saw the literal events prophesied by St. John the Evangelist, then yes, I’d believe. C’mon, if you see the sky roll up like a scroll, 1/3 of the oceans turned into blood, and the Son of Man descending with a really pissed off expression, then that would be conclusive proof that the Fundies were right. I’m an atheist, but I’m not so prejudiced that I’d ignore supernatural events happening right under my nose.
What gets me about you Christians is that you’re so fixated on the future and the end of the world that you’re no good in the here and now. Did Jesus tell His apostles to concentrate exclusively on the End Times, or did He say to pray for their enemies (Luke 6:8), to visit the sick and imprisoned, to clothe the naked and feed the poor (Matthew 25:36)? Has it occured to you that maybe LaHaye and Jenkins are tools of Satan, distracting Christians from their true mission to act as the body of Christ?(Matthew 24:24) If you people lived your lives as vessels of the Holy Spirit, showing faith and compassion to the people you meet every day, acting as the light of the world and the salt of the Earth(Matthew 5:13-15), you might actually get some non-believers to change their minds. I think the Pharisees (Matthew 23:23) are running the Church.
(Apologies is this is the latter half of a double post)
True, in most cases pop culture is more familiar to others than the Bible, but I don’t think this holds true here.
People who have probably read the Bible: [ul]
[li]Fundamentalist Christians[/li][li]Non-fundamentalist Christians[/li][li]Non-Christians who want to understand the Christian perspective[/li][li]Non-Christians who see the Bible as a great historical work of literature[/li][li]Non-Christians who take an interest in studying various religions/mythologies[/ul][/li]
People who have probably read the Left Behind series: [ul][li]Fundamentalist Christians[/ul][/li]That’s pretty much it. Almost no one besides fundamentalists has read these books. This situation will probably not change any time soon. As pretty much every non-fundamentalist whose reviews of these books I’ve read has reported, they’re not very well written. Especially amongst this crowd, I’d have to say that Revelations in much more well-known than the LB series.
Amen!
Well, my vision of God was of necessity rather nebulous. If you are trying to determine whather something exist but you’re not sure exactly what its attributes are, better cast your net as wide as possible. For example, if I want to decide if unicorns exist at all, given the widely varying desciptions of unicorns I should look for anything that might arguably fufill the traits necessary to be considered a unicorn, I shouldn’t first decide, “Ok, if unicorns exist, they must be blue-eyed with lion’s tails and golden spiral horns and live in Sherwood Forest in England,” and then insist the blue-eyed lion-tailed spiral-horned equine living in Topeka couldn’t be a unicorn. So it was more like “if there is a nonhuman (with the Jesus caveat, to cover all my bases) person who created the world who communicates with humans occasionally, would you do something to show you’re there?”
My usual unthinking concept of God is probably pretty close to the tradtional Christian one simply because that’s the one I hear the most about, just like if you had a tabby cat when you were a kid, when you hear the word “cat” you think of a tabby. When I am arguing generic existence/nonexistence of God, I try to use the broadest definition possible so I don’t miss the unicorns in Topeka. When arguing with someone with a specific concept of God, I try to use their concept of God only, though I may refer to other people’s perceptions of God if it seems appropriate. So while I have a more solid concept of God customarily used during casual thinking, when doing more rigorous reasoning I try to be as inclusive as possible except when discussing one particular concept of God.
Joe Cool, I earlier asked a question about prophecy which you didn’t answer. To wit:
Is there any prophecy in the Bible which could possibly be proven wrong, according to your standard? (ie that an event takes place which the Bible stated would not happen.) The only example that comes to my mind is the prophecies that Babylon would never be rebuilt (for example, Isaiah’s poetic statements about Babylon becoming “a dwelling ground for foxes,” completely abandoned.) It seems to me that this is the kind of example you were talking about: had Babylon been rebuilt, the prophecy would have been proven wrong. Have I read you correctly? And is that the only example, or are there more? Because so far as I can tell, that’s the ONLY one.
-Ben
Wow, Gaudere, it’s amazing how much you teach people about themselves. After reading over your latest post and chewing on it for awhile, it occurred to me that it was specifically Love that I was looking for, and was exactly what I found. Thinking back, I looked for genies too, and never found them. I looked for the Old Man on the Throne, and never found him either. I looked for Jesus the Enemy Slayer, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found. I remember those days as I think over them, but I don’t think about them often any more. You reminded me. Thanks. I reckon He kind of snuck up on me, like mama used to when I cried for comfort. I wasn’t really crying for her, but for the comfort she brought. Apparently, I was led to God when I cried out for Love. I had forgotten lately the abruptness of it all. As I think about it, that was a big part of the epiphany I had with the “I am” thing. Not only was there a brand new and holistic comprehension and perception of everything around me and in me, but there was also an indescribable rush like feeling Love for the first time in my life. Thanks, Gaudere.
Protesilaus wrote:
[QUOTE]
People who have probably read the Bible: [ul][li]Fundamentalist Christians[/li][li]Non-fundamentalist Christians[/li][li]Non-Christians who want to understand the Christian perspective[/li][li]Non-Christians who see the Bible as a great historical work of literature[/li][li]Non-Christians who take an interest in studying various religions/mythologies[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
You left out:
[*]Godless anti-Christian atheist heathens who follow the doctrine of “know thine enemy” and/or enjoy using the Christians’ own holy book against them.
“Unload”?
-Ben
The best Christian Philosophy I have seen in the thread, or in fact much of anywhere, and it comes from someone who thinks he isn’t a Christian!
You go, boy!
Tris
I note that Joe_Cool apparently feels I am ridiculing Christians, and I’d like to clear the air if I can. I’ve actually found this thread quite interesting; sorry not to have responded previously, but I’ve been hauling mulch :rolleyes: all day recently and have been collapsing in my bed at night without my usual SMDB fix.
I have two main issues with JerseyDiamond’s OP: 1) that the questions proposed were so vague (to my mind) as to be meaningless, and 2) JD seems to assume that we are to treat the events described in the “Left Behind” novels as Biblical canon. My first post really only dealt with these two points, perhaps in too oblique of a manner.
Point #1 I have rather strong feelings about, having seen too many of these threads already. Really, JD has shown no apparent interest whatever in the responses to the questions (s)he proposed, and so the OP probably goes down as just another drive-by witnessing (shrug). Where is the debate, great or otherwise?
As for #2, I was merely trying to say that it might be difficult for rational people to assume that experiencing the events described in the Left Behind books would be sufficient evidence to (presumably) either believe in the Christian God, or perhaps just in the whole end-times scenario described in Revelations (remember, JD really wasn’t clear about his/her terms).
The problem here is in trying to identify that an apparently supernatural event IS in fact supernatural. I am unaware of a single instance of a proven supernatural event having taken place, at least within my lifetime. It would appear, then, that the only way I can accept an event as supernatural, is to, er, believe that it is.
If this is the case, why would I be more likely to believe in a “prophecy” (i.e. the Left Behind scenario) which is NOT in fact part of Revelations, but a highly fictionalized extrapolation, than in anything actually to be found in the Bible?
Even if I did accept this, absent a guest appearance from God his/her/itself, why would I be more likely to become (presumably) a fundamentalist Christian than before? Whether now or in the end times, IMO, a certain amount of belief (or perhaps, suspension of disbelief) is required, so what makes Revelations so special?
Right, off to bed.
“Would you start to believe if events happened exactly as shown in the Bible…”?!?
Did I miss something? When did all of the Christians get together and reach a consensus on what exactly the Bible says? They can’t even agree on which version to follow!
Well, see, you asked a Complex Question (also called Loaded Question, the interrogative form of Begging the Question) along the lines of “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
I do think debating shares some attributes of a chess game, but neither a debate, nor a chess game, are necessarily activities without consequence.
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For the benefit of those onlookers who believe in logic and will take your statements at face value, I must clarify that my statement is not loaded in any way. You have stated before that you think that all epistemologies are valid and that logic is ultimately fallacious. I am merely asking why, having stated those beliefs, you engage in debates using at least the semblance of logic.
In fact, it’s even unclear to me why you talk about “Begging the Question” or “Loaded Questions.” Those are terms from logic, and you are even going so far as to use them to make accusations. That seems very unusual to me: if you don’t believe in the validity of logic, why accuse me of violating the ground rules of logic when such accusations could be hurtful to me? Why not simply applaud me for my Picasso-esque cleverness in breaking the rules? If you feel that logic is invalid, what difference would it make even if I were asking loaded questions?
What are the consequences? Again, I’ve asked a simple question, which you have not answered. Why do you go through the motions of following a set of rules which you do not believe to be any more or less valid than any other set of rules? For months, perhaps years, you have stated your beliefs about logic and epistemology over and over again. Can it really be the case that in all that time you have never articulated to yourself the reasons why you continue to debate using logic?
-Ben
I’ve never said that logic is an invalid epistemology, merely that logic is no more valid an epistemology than any other. Every epistemology is tautological.
There are certain epistemologies that, to me, seem appropriate for certain purposes. For witnessing, an experiential epistemology seems appropriate. For descriptions of physical properties, the scientific method seems appropriate. For debate, induction and deduction seem appropriate.
Your question was loaded because it tied the notion of skill in debate to consequences. If I answer yes, then you can say that I think there are no consequences to the debate, i.e., it is meaningless. If I answer no, then you can say that I have a frivolous regard for those whom I debate. Neither is the truth.
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I consider “tautological” to mean “invalid,” in this case. If logic is tautological, then that arguably defeats the entire purpose of logic, rendering it invalid.
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I am beginning to understand, but it’s not clear to me what epistemology you use to decide when other sub-epistemologies are appropriate, or why.
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I wasn’t “tying” anything. I was merely asking what you felt the consequences of debate were, if any.
Is seems to me that you’re reading a lot into this.
-Ben
You’re probably right. As a bonafide 100% Melancholy temperament, I do tend to over-analyze. Forgive me, if you will, and maybe we can start over.
Wowah, I was just casually searching for my name and here I see a hot debate over what I meant by an old post. “They really care! They really, really care!” 
I would most definitely go kiss God’s sweet ass if everyone who didn’t was going to hell for all eternity. I would have to get totally wasted, but I would do it. I mean, eternity is a pretty long time to spend in a place that has gotten the kind of press Hell gets these days.
— G. Raven