RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (Full Version)

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Jhud -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/14/2008 5:10:18 PM)

quote:

Which makes you particularly level leaded. Although I don't ever remember hearing of Jhud the pragmatist!


Actually, I have a very strong pragmatic streak; it doesn't dominate me, but it is does influence me.

Personally, I think it comports more with Scriptural truth than people realize.



Real_Solitude -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 4:46:20 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud
I have never understood the ‘apart from the Bible’ dismissal. The New Testament is the collection of eyewitness accounts and early records of those who experienced a resurrected Christ – the fact that they are collected together doesn’t make them less reliable, but more so – and there is a clear connection between those documents, the founding of the church, and the universality of the experience that followed for the next 2000 years.

It is because I distrust information that can only be verified by a single source. The wider a confirmation for an event, the better. A single source is then is the least desirable number of sources to have. A single source is easily manipulated, easily changed, easily forged. The less chance of tampering, the better.
The problem I have with arguing history directly from the Bible is that it is the sole source of many fantastic claims. I am of the school of thought that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A lack of evidence detracts from the believability of a claim.

As for the books being collected:
From what I understand, the canonization process for selecting which books to accept and which to reject was basically based on popular usage. Many books were rejected from Biblical cannon simply because they were not as popular as others. Others were rejected specifically because they clashed with accepted books. Any cohesion in the New Testament is not purely because everything written agreed, but because Biblical cannon was designed to be in self-agreement. I do not find the cohesion argument persuasive, in part, because of this.

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You may not find such evidence persuasive, and that is of course your prerogative; but you cannot say there is no evidence.

This is a matter of little import, but still I'd like to address it. I have not, to my recollection, said that there is no evidence for the authenticity of the things purported in the Bible. To say so would be quite self-contradictory, as the Bible itself can be presented as evidence. I have, however, said that I have seen no extrabiblical evidence for the claims made in the Bible. This remains true. I am not persuaded by the claims laid out in the Bible, and as I have seen no ulterior verification for those claims, I my belief remains suspended. This is, as you have stated, my prerogative.

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Paul affirmed the testimony of the apostles, and the resurrection of Christ, and the witnesses thereof. In fact, he shared as a traveling companion one of the writers of the Gospels, Luke. So there is no disparity there, only confirmation.
I would, again, disagree with the claim that Paul preached the physical resurrection of Christ. This is, however, a rather trifling point, and so I shall not pursue it further.

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I didn’t say ‘extra-biblical evidence, because the fact that such accounts are gathered in the Bible is irrelevant; the accounts exist, they a from multiple witness and confirmed in the time they were written, and confirmed by the penalty many of those witnesses suffered for their testimony, which was frequently death. Your unwillingness to except them is a reflection of your own desires, not the sufficiency of the evidence.

I desire to find truth. I care not whether this desire shatters any notions I hold, or reshapes them. I attempt to suspend bias upon hearing any claim and evaluate it on its merits.
Many of the Biblical accounts weren't written until long after the supposed events. Certainly some of them were written in sufficient time to decried by those who had witnessed said events, but even the earliest of the books was written late enough for myth and distortion to creep in. I must judge the Bible by the same criteria that I judge everything else. The Bible makes quite a number of claims that clash with the understanding of the world I have developed. This, in and of itself is not intrinsically a bad thing, but a lack of corroborating evidence to confirm some of the bigger claims made by the Bible leads me to be seriously skeptical of those claims.


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Well, geology records many large floods in the Middle east, and genetics records the near extinction of the human species; how these may or may not correspond to God’s intent is a matter of faith, but the evidence exist none the less.


Surely you must admit that 'one worldwide flood that covered all land and killed all but eight people' and 'many large, localized floods" are two quite distinct claims. As far as the near extinction of humanity; I have never heard an account, other than the one in the Bible, that claims that a flood was the cause of this. A very large drought, indeed, but that is quite the opposite of flooding. Also, the average population claimed at this low period is usually 10,000. 10,000 is larger, by a few magnitudes, than 8. This is quite a margin of error, as the same margin of error would bring current population levels from 6 billion to 6 hundred thousand.
I am sure there have been a glut of quite large floods. Study, in fact, quite confirms this. There is, however, a sufficient lack of evidence for the claim of a single, worldwide flood as to dismiss the claim.

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As I pointed out, you may not find the evidence provided sufficient, but you cannot say as you have said previously there is no evidence – I have provided multiple lines of evidence which I think both confirm the objective reality of the events and the consistency of human experience and knowledge, and I find such evidence sufficient to warrant belief – whether you do is a matter of choice, a choice we all must make.

As stated above, I don't believe I've made the claim that there is no evidence. I will still persist in my denial to any evidence not in the Bible, but you seem to dismiss this argument, so it is no avail. At this point, my refusal and your acceptance of these claims does indeed boil down to personal choice. If it is purely a matter of choice, discussion becomes not based on fact, but on belief. If there is no evidence on way or the other to be presented that can change that belief, then the discussion becomes pure mental exercise with no real point.

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Hammurabi:
if RS rejects the unique, then wouldn't you be better off convincing him or her that the unique can occur in the way you've described it.

That is the thing, I do not reject the unique. I can no reject the unique because I have been party to unique events. The problem arises of convincing me of the veracity of any unique event. Even when I see things that I do not have any sort of explanation for, I required secondary witness before I accepted it to be true.
If this is the case for something I was part of, i will obviously demand much stronger evidence for a claim that I was not party to.
For me to accept someone else's claims of unique events as true it would require a rather large body of evidence. This is especially true of the 'big question' claims such as those presented in the Bible. There is rather sparse documentation of Alexander the Great. It does not bother me to believe the claims because they have no bearing on my life. I gain or lose nothing by refuting them.
Christianity, however, claims unique things that do effect me. If the claims are true, there are obvious consequences for belief of lack of, but even if they aren't true, the fact that many believe them to be still impacts me. Therefore I require what I would consider sufficient evidence for this claim before I will accept it. I have obviously not received such.



Jhud -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 11:30:41 AM)

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It is because I distrust information that can only be verified by a single source. The wider a confirmation for an event, the better. A single source is then is the least desirable number of sources to have. A single source is easily manipulated, easily changed, easily forged. The less chance of tampering, the better.
The problem I have with arguing history directly from the Bible is that it is the sole source of many fantastic claims. I am of the school of thought that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A lack of evidence detracts from the believability of a claim.


The Bible is not a ‘single source’, only someone who was unfamiliar with its composition and history would say this, so this point is irrelevant.

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From what I understand, the canonization process for selecting which books to accept and which to reject was basically based on popular usage. Many books were rejected from Biblical cannon simply because they were not as popular as others. Others were rejected specifically because they clashed with accepted books. Any cohesion in the New Testament is not purely because everything written agreed, but because Biblical cannon was designed to be in self-agreement. I do not find the cohesion argument persuasive, in part, because of this.


It had nothing to do with ‘popularity’, that is some Da Vinci Code inspired myth, so again, this is irrelevant.

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This is a matter of little import, but still I'd like to address it. I have not, to my recollection, said that there is no evidence for the authenticity of the things
purported in the Bible. To say so would be quite self-contradictory, as the Bible itself can be presented as evidence. I have, however, said that I have seen no extrabiblical evidence for the claims made in the Bible. This remains true. I am not persuaded by the claims laid out in the Bible, and as I have seen no ulterior verification for those claims, I my belief remains suspended. This is, as you have stated, my prerogative.


As I have detailed throughout my posts, there is much ‘extra-biblical’ evidence, from Church history to cultural history of the impact Christianity, to personal experience, to the consistency of Christianity with other forms of knowledge.

And the term ‘extra-biblical’ really is meaningless in this context; recorded history is recorded history, it stand on its own merits whether or not it is part of a collection or not. The fact that most of the reliable accounts of Christ’s life and early church history happen to be collected together don’t diminish their value as evidence.

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I would, again, disagree with the claim that Paul preached the physical resurrection of Christ. This is, however, a rather trifling point, and so I shall not pursue it further.


Well you are wrong, you were shown where you were wrong, and now you are intentionally ignoring the fact that you are wrong, which should cast into suspicion your ability to either acknowledge facts, or understand them.

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I desire to find truth. I care not whether this desire shatters any notions I hold, or reshapes them. I attempt to suspend bias upon hearing any claim and evaluate it on its merits.
Many of the Biblical accounts weren't written until long after the supposed events. Certainly some of them were written in sufficient time to decried by those who had witnessed said events, but even the earliest of the books was written late enough for myth and distortion to creep in. I must judge the Bible by the same criteria that I judge everything else. The Bible makes quite a number of claims that clash with the understanding of the world I have developed. This, in and of itself is not intrinsically a bad thing, but a lack of corroborating evidence to confirm some of the bigger claims made by the Bible leads me to be seriously skeptical of those claims.


Well, no offense, but every evidence so far shows that you think you have found truth and are simply trying to convince others of this fact; your unwillingness or inability to acknowledge straight forward facts is an indication you have no interest in modifying your beliefs to comport with reality.

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Surely you must admit that 'one worldwide flood that covered all land and killed all but eight people' and 'many large, localized floods" are two quite distinct claims. As far as the near extinction of humanity; I have never heard an account, other than the one in the Bible, that claims that a flood was the cause of this. A very large drought, indeed, but that is quite the opposite of flooding. Also, the average population claimed at this low period is usually 10,000. 10,000 is larger, by a few magnitudes, than 8. This is quite a margin of error, as the same margin of error would bring current population levels from 6 billion to 6 hundred thousand.
I am sure there have been a glut of quite large floods. Study, in fact, quite confirms this. There is, however, a sufficient lack of evidence for the claim of a single, worldwide flood as to dismiss the claim.


I think Moses described the events exactly as God revealed them to him, and that based on our current assessment of the genetic history of the human race generally supports that narrative; I don’t know that the scientific assessment ever would or could be completely correlated with the Biblical one (in fact, I am fairly sure this is impossible, and so don’t expect it) but the fact that a simple shepherd living over 3000 years ago knew that the human race originated from a single female, swelled in population, went through an extinction event and them spread across the known world much as we have discovered scientifically 3000 years later through the use of the most sophisticated technology, is more than coincidence.

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As stated above, I don't believe I've made the claim that there is no evidence. I will still persist in my denial to any evidence not in the Bible, but you seem to dismiss this argument, so it is no avail. At this point, my refusal and your acceptance of these claims does indeed boil down to personal choice. If it is purely a matter of choice, discussion becomes not based on fact, but on belief. If there is no evidence on way or the other to be presented that can change that belief, then the discussion becomes pure mental exercise with no real point.


No, I have addressed the argument numerous times, and offered numerous evidences from all sorts of sources. Read back and read carefully; the evidence is apparent for anyone who would consider it.



abraxas -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 12:22:59 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

Paul and Luke weren’t at all part of his ‘recruits’.

I see I've lumped them in with the original 12. Like I said, I'm no historian! As a 'nobody' I was thinking of someone who never became a significant name, but who went on record somewhere. I know you have a hard time with the "extra-biblical" issue, but is there anything? Why is it all cannonized?

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But before Paul wrote his epistles? How can we be sure Paul wasn't influenced by Luke?


They may very well have influenced each other, but Paul never wrote as Luke did an exhaustive Gospel narrative, and Luke never wrote about theological implications of Christ's teaching, so what they did write about didn’t seem to overlap much.


But someone who has read Luke's narrative could then write about theological implications.

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Actually, he [Cowdrey] later broke away from Smith and the Mormon Church for most of his life, which would seem odd if they were the product of the events Cowdery himself witnessed. And he was never martyred for his faith.


I mentioned Cowdrey in response to your comment that "no Mormon other than Joseph Smith claimed to have witnessed the miraculous events that are said to have precipitated the writing of the Book of Mormon, so there were not multiple eyewitnesses." I think Cowdrey's break was over polygamy, but he never recanted his claims that he was visited by angels. So I do think there are some parallels. As for dying for the cause--Smith and his brother did, as did quite a few Mormons in Missouri; and John Taylor, the church's third leader after Brigham Young, barely survived the attack on the jail that killed the Smith brothers.

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I can't consider the apostles 'nobodies'. The 500 witnesses in Acts I can consider nobodies, but do we have primary sources from any of them, or only descriptions of them through Luke or other apostles? The witnesses to Christ's resurrection, as well, were not nobodies, but were intimately connected with Jesus. That they were woman, as you point out, is a fair point. Yet how does the book of Ruth affect that idea?


Well, you don’t consider them ‘nobodies’ because there are 2000 years of church history as well as most of Western civilization that is a product of their initial work. But they were just simple ordinary people at the beginning.


Yes, I can see how I'm making a difficult demand--anyone who has experienced something profound enough to transform them would probably not slip back into nobodyness. Of the 500, are there other primary-source accounts besides what Luke or the other Gospels recorded?

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Really, I'm not out to 'disprove' the whole thing--but I think that personal experience, as you referred to earlier, constitutes a significant portion of the evidence, and so it just seems to me to be ultimately a very personal form of evidence--granted a very powerful one.


Well, I don’t deny personal experience plays a large part in a Christian’s belief, but I don’t think that is unexpected, because Christians don’t believe so much in a set of facts as they do a living person; and having a relationship with a person is primarily, well, personal. [:)]


Agreed--in fact I would say it is expected. As Real_Solitude mentioned, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence--and I see quite a bit of the extraordinary evidence to be experiential and personal. I don't see the historical evidence, in my admittedly limited understanding of it, to be extraordinary, but I do find it interesting and I have learned quite a bit from this thread!

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Well, Pascal claimed, and I tend to agree, that disbelief, and skepticism ultimately had to do more with desire than intellect, because intellectually there is no reason not to want to live as Christ suggests; but our passions (selfish desires) prevent us from doing so – and so we defend our desires by expressing disbelief and clinging to skepticism. I of course can’t read another man’s heart, but I know that was certainly in my heart as an agnostic and skeptic.


I see here a confusion between (dis)belief and lifestyle. A lot of non-Christians live very upright lives. Wanting to live as Christ suggests--"living" in the temporal sense--and believing Christian theology are different things. Skepticism can derive from the obvious fact that so many of the many claims out there vying for our acceptance simply can't be true. You know, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, uh, well you can't fool me twice." ;)

I'm going to bow out of this one here--though of course I'll peek back in and follow what comes with interest. Thanks, Jhud! --and Real_Solitutude, Hammurabi, and others, I've enjoyed this discussion.



Jhud -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 1:22:39 PM)

quote:

I'm going to bow out of this one here--though of course I'll peek back in and follow what comes with interest. Thanks, Jhud! --and Real_Solitutude, Hammurabi, and others, I've enjoyed this discussion.


Thanks for participating, I appreciate your well thought out input!



MusicianDad -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 3:26:05 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: abraxas


I may be in the minority with this, but I do believe that any stance one takes on these things requires faith.


No, I'm with you there. That's my point. Atheism denounces what it practices; faith. It's the ultimate hypocracy.

quote:

ORIGIONAL: abraxis
Not sure if faith can be quantified. Could you expand on this?


I think plausubility is quantifiable. It seems to me that some things are obviously unprovable (ex. "the universe is infinate"). Somethings are illogocal (ex. the universe had a beginning and it's infinate). If something is implausible (ex. the universe ordered itself by chance), unprovable, and illogocal, then it takes a ton of faith to accept it. Atheism is unprovable and implausible and illogical, while Christianity is only unprovable and impossible to fully understand (ex. The Trinity).



hammurabi -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 3:37:02 PM)

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That is the thing, I do not reject the unique. I can no reject the unique because I have been party to unique events. The problem arises of convincing me of the veracity of any unique event. Even when I see things that I do not have any sort of explanation for, I required secondary witness before I accepted it to be true.


Well then, I would say you don't accept the unique. It seems to follow from the definition of the word ("A thing, fact, or circumstance which by reason of exceptional or special qualities stands alone and is without equal or parallel in its kind") that the unique must exist without possibility of repetition (if we accept a modal definition); is sui generis, existing outside any paradigm, any model, and construction of rules. Of course, I'm extending the definition, but I thought it was rhetorically obvious. My point being, that your acceptance of unique events is subject to doubt - more doubt than, say, a commonplace event purported to have occurred ("So, the other day, I say Jamie. She told me she bought a dog," etc.) in a common way.

For instance, I think Spinoza argues the existence of God (Deus sive Natura) in a convincing way, because he doesn't require the reader to accept the unique, only the realities of modal existence and the logical contingencies (being necessities) which arise from intuition. But the Bible, on the other hand, requires me to accept an ontology which requires the inexplicable. My point was: that seems to be the division here. And positivity isn't going to open this up, because positivity requires regulation. And pragmatic arguments are always reliant upon epistemic agnosticism.

Personally, I find it odd that pragmatic arguments would sway one in favor of accepting as true a theological position; in the sense that it seems slightly, well, dishonest.



hammurabi -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 3:51:48 PM)

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MusicianDad: No, I'm with you there. That's my point. Atheism denounces what it practices; faith. It's the ultimate hypocracy.


I think you're confusing faith with belief, here. Or, if you conflate the two definitions (which you do), you're not allowing for degrees of faith, and a difference of the objects one has faith in. Atheism doesn't denounce faith, in your general sense; it denounces faith in God or gods.



PromiseLander -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 4:13:18 PM)

How come the greatest critics of Christianity have never actually read the Bible? You read books ABOUT the Bible, but never the actual text...

Challenge... Read the Bible seriously, (yes, the whole thing) and with sincerity in an effort to determine what it actually says. But I will warn you - nothing on this planet is more detrimental to atheism than a sincere reading of God's Word.



frankman -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 4:28:30 PM)

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ORIGINAL: Real_Solitude

I quite disagree that there could be no more evidence than there is. A secondary resource recording the dead walking into Jerusalem would be a good start. The impossible three hour eclipse having been noted elsewhere would certainly be persuasive. A second-hand mention of the 500 witnesses would be cool.
The Bible isn't the only piece of literature from that time period to survive, but it's the only one that mentions these things happening.

Again, Hammurabi said it better than I.


[sm=comp1.gif] Allow me to challenge you on your above point. If your refusing to believe the Word of God, then how will you believe what mere men has to say? God`s Word is flawless, men`s word may or may not be true. God wrote only your Bible. Other books are only men`s thoughts. Now concerning the question of secondary resources, I could post you documented phrases from writers like Ignatius, Tacitus or Josephus who were writers during the 1st. and 2nd. century. These writers wrote apart from the Canon of Scripture and varified apart from the Bible the events of the resurrection of Christ etc.. In fact Josephus was a first century historian around 37-100AD who provided sweeping evidence of Jesus` life, miracles and resurrection. However I will not post this evidence because if I do somebody will post back and say that the Christian Church doctored the documents to suit their ideology. I`m not saying this is right, but if it is or isn`t, how am I to prove it either way. You and I don`t have a clue what those guys wrote way back then.

[sm=chef.gif] If those 500 witneses and those resurrected saints were to come down from heaven and join you for supper tonight, would you classify this as the large evidence your looking for? (specially if they also payed for the food bill.) Well guess what, if this really did happen you still would not believe in God or in the resurrection of Jesus. How do I know this? The Bible tells me so! In Luke 16:19-31 the rich man in this story begged Jesus for the chance to come back from the dead and back to earth in order to warn his five brothers to believe so they would not also end up in the place of torment were this rich man was. However Jesus reply to him was "NO WAY- NOTHING DOING". Here`s the reason why from Luke 16:31. "He said to him, `If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." If you can not believe your Bible, miracles, those large body of evidences your looking for, likely will not change your mind about God either. So please pray that God will give you the ability to believe His Word, your Bible, as the authoritative, inerrant Word of Truth. Your eternal destiny depends on this, so you can`t affort to be wrong here. The message of the Bible has not changed from the original autographs, and God`s Word is as relevant today as it was way back then. [:)] Only Christ can be your hope and real_solitude.



MusicianDad -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 4:43:14 PM)

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ORIGINAL: hammurabi

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MusicianDad: No, I'm with you there. That's my point. Atheism denounces what it practices; faith. It's the ultimate hypocracy.


I think you're confusing faith with belief, here. Or, if you conflate the two definitions (which you do), you're not allowing for degrees of faith, and a difference of the objects one has faith in. Atheism doesn't denounce faith, in your general sense; it denounces faith in God or gods.


Naturalistic Atheism, if you like then, which says there is only the physical. But what you say just points to the hypocracy of atheism, if, as you say, they denounce faith in God while practicing a religious faith of their own. They pretend to be something they are not; logical and seeking truth based on empirical evidence. They are neither.

I must say I'm a bit surprised at the tactic of splitting hairs over semantics, especially when my plain meaning is pretty clear. I thought only Christians fought over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?



hammurabi -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 5:55:35 PM)

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Naturalistic Atheism, if you like then, which says there is only the physical. But what you say just points to the hypocracy of atheism, if, as you say, they denounce faith in God while practicing a religious faith of their own. They pretend to be something they are not; logical and seeking truth based on empirical evidence. They are neither.

I must say I'm a bit surprised at the tactic of splitting hairs over semantics, especially when my plain meaning is pretty clear. I thought only Christians fought over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?


Right...So what I'm led to believe, according to you, is that all belief systems are necessarily religious if they have any degree of epistemic uncertainty. Which is ridiculous, like your claim that "Naturalistic Atheism" (which I didn't know was a proper noun) says there is only the physical, when clearly physicalism is the doctrine which precludes God contingently and says all which exists is physical. What you're talking about is a reductive ontology. Panpsychism, for instance, clearly deals with consciousness and minds, which reductive physicalisms cannot.

Okay, so? All faiths aren't beliefs, and all beliefs aren't of a religious nature. However you want to define "religious," there is clearly something separating the totality of all social phenomena called "religious" and the totality of all, for instance, philosophical doctrines called "naturalistic." All of them include belief, but of what nature? I could answer this, but I think you know the answer.

However, you want to claim things like "[they] pretend to be something they are not; logical and seeking truth based on empirical evidence." Now, I was under the impression that this particular "religion" was a belief-system because it posits logic and empirical evidence as the only way of obtaining verifiable and falsifiable knowledge, i.e., scientific knowledge. But this is all they pretend to be, and furthermore, all they are - they aren't dissimulating or obfuscating anything. They don't claim to do without belief; but without uncertain belief - that is, to do only with justified beliefs.

My point is, by not arguing semantics, which in this instance amounts to incorrectly portraying distinctions which are relied upon in order to have an intelligent conversation, you're practicing sophistry: moving between, around, and over definitions and words in order to conflate or separate them at will. So yes, semantics is important; only because being clear is important.



MusicianDad -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 6:50:02 PM)

I call atheism a religion because it's followers exibit a blind faith in the unkowable, unreasonable, illogical claim that they know that there is no God. That, and it's just fun to point out the hypocracy of a group of folks who generally, present company excluded, I'm sure, view themselves to be above such a thing.

If you want to caim such faith in that belief is logical, knock yourself out.



hammurabi -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 7:01:12 PM)

Straw man.
[image]http://myths.e2bn.org/library/1142585298/scarecrow2.usermyth.jpg[/image]

Define know.



MusicianDad -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 10:08:42 PM)

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ORIGINAL: Define know.



Uhh...well, that's kind of what I'm talking about. I guess it's easyer to play word games than deal with the absurdity of atheism. See, it's my contention that reasonable people don't claim to possess knowledge that they don't have. As I said before, I don't believe in E.T.'s. I don't state "there is no life on other planets", however, because I haven't been to all other planets to know if it's true or not. Atheists have not been everywhere and don't know everything, so their creed "there is no God" is purely speculative. They believe it because they want to. This is the same thing they accuse Christians of, and that's why it's a hypocritical faith.



Real_Solitude -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 11:04:41 PM)

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
The Bible is not a ‘single source’, only someone who was unfamiliar with its composition and history would say this, so this point is irrelevant.

Obviously it is composed of collected documents. My main point wasn't that it was written by one author, or all at the same time. My point was that it was written by a single group of people, and those people had core beliefs pertaining to the events in question in common, and they had a common agenda. The book is not a neutral recorder of history, but an attempt at persuasion. I would venture that it is recorded with the intent of chaining minds to suit the views of the authors. This does not inherently invalidate it, but casts suspicion on the veracity of those writings. Since the book has obvious bias, a secondary source is useful in validating the original content.

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It had nothing to do with ‘popularity’, that is some Da Vinci Code inspired myth, so again, this is irrelevant.

I've never seen or read Da Vinci Code. From my understanding, the reaching of a cannon scripture was largely a process of what books the majority of churches used, though this process was at points influenced by various councils of church leaders.
TQW, "According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Canon of the New Testament: "The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.""
Again, it seems it was determined largely by usage. E.g. 'popularity'.
There are only two real ways the cannon could have formed. Popularity, or council. This isn't to mention that council is, in itself, a form of deciding the popularity of the books.
How do you propose the cannon formed if not by popular use?

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As I have detailed throughout my posts, there is much ‘extra-biblical’ evidence, from Church history to cultural history of the impact Christianity, to personal experience, to the consistency of Christianity with other forms of knowledge.


Church history is full of Biblical editing and changes of wording and interpretation. I'm not sure what parts of Church history you're talking about, but if you'll detail them, I'd be grateful.
I reject cultural verification on the basis that many religious cultures influence various parts of the globe. This does not contribute to the truth-value of the claim. People once believe that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that all rotated around it. This influenced culture in a small way, the influence in no way verified the claim.
Personal experience can be rejected as evidence for much the same reasons. Unless we are to believe that aliens have taken a liking to probing people based on the number of people who have claimed this.
I'm not particularly sure what you mean by "consistency of Christianity with other forms of knowledge." unless it is a claim that science and history agree with Christianity. This is precisely what I have asked for evidence of.

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And the term ‘extra-biblical’ really is meaningless in this context; recorded history is recorded history, it stand on its own merits whether or not it is part of a collection or not. The fact that most of the reliable accounts of Christ’s life and early church history happen to be collected together don’t diminish their value as evidence.

This is true, but for reasons mentioned above, I find the veracity of the evidence dubious, and feel it would be strengthened by secular sources.

quote:

Well you are wrong, you were shown where you were wrong, and now you are intentionally ignoring the fact that you are wrong, which should cast into suspicion your ability to either acknowledge facts, or understand them.

The last word on this was me speaking about en anastasis and ek anastasis usege versus non-modified usage of anastasis. This was not replied to. I still find the point of little relevance, and still don't seek further discussion on it. The subject is not particularly pertinent to our current discussion.

You again impune my honesty and attack my motives. I would appreciate if you would not do this. I believe you to be an honest person, and to truly believe what you are saying. I would request the same modicum of respect.
The discussion on Paul was never finished. I do not believe that I was proven wrong. I'll admit I spoke in error that Paul never used the word anastasis, but still do not believe that he was referring to a physical resurrection. I, however, have no knowledge of the various meanings of anastasis in different contexts. The definition of anastasis that I did find was "The continued existence of the soul." From what I have seen, only when it is prefaced with ek or en is it used to mean physical resurrection.

quote:

Well, no offense, but every evidence so far shows that you think you have found truth and are simply trying to convince others of this fact; your unwillingness or inability to acknowledge straight forward facts is an indication you have no interest in modifying your beliefs to comport with reality.

I have ceded numerous points over my history on these boards when someone presents a strong argument against my potions. I did so, in part, in the section above.
If I am allowed to interpret my own actions, I would say that this indicates that I believe I have found the truth, but that I am willing to be proven wrong. If I did not believe I had found at least a part of the truth of a matter, I would not discuss it. I attempt to not speak on that of which I am overly ignorant simply because nothing can be gained from it. If I wish to speak on something, or take issue with something someone else says, I will generally give the subject at least cursory research before replying. I am willing to change my beliefs if someone presents compelling evidence, or compelling argument.

quote:

I think Moses described the events exactly as God revealed them to him, and that based on our current assessment of the genetic history of the human race generally supports that narrative; I don’t know that the scientific assessment ever would or could be completely correlated with the Biblical one (in fact, I am fairly sure this is impossible, and so don’t expect it) but the fact that a simple shepherd living over 3000 years ago knew that the human race originated from a single female, swelled in population, went through an extinction event and them spread across the known world much as we have discovered scientifically 3000 years later through the use of the most sophisticated technology, is more than coincidence.

I find this a thin attempt to re-interpret the presented evidence to fit your own view. This is in much the same vein that people believe in the validity of the works of Nostradamus or Edgar Casey's prediction/retro-dictions are true. Vague coherency to truth is not something I find compelling.



Real_Solitude -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/15/2008 11:48:32 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: hammurabi

I would not require repetition of the event. Obviously we can not expect Christ to come back and die again simply to prove a point. However, more extensive documentation of the claimed unique would be helpful.

For instance, the unique event that I was party to was an instance of levitation. It was, in fact, me who was levitating (while asleep), and my brother who was witness to the event. I was awakened roughly three feet in the air by my brothers screams, and fell to my bed. I've come up with a few rationalizations for this event, but still see it as a unique instance.
However, I would not expect anyone else to believe this tale, simply because it is an extraordinary claim with no evidence other than a single secondary eye-witness.


quote:

ORIGINAL: PromiseLander

How come the greatest critics of Christianity have never actually read the Bible? You read books ABOUT the Bible, but never the actual text...

Challenge... Read the Bible seriously, (yes, the whole thing) and with sincerity in an effort to determine what it actually says. But I will warn you - nothing on this planet is more detrimental to atheism than a sincere reading of God's Word.

I have done so, twice. I have read the four gospels six times, I believe. Genesis and Exodus both have been read at least ten times, and Revelations at least four. This was all while I still professed Christianity. It was, in part, the second read-through of the Bible that contributed to my move towards atheism. Still, perhaps I shall give it a third complete read through in the near future.


quote:

ORIGINAL: frankman
[sm=comp1.gif] Allow me to challenge you on your above point. If your refusing to believe the Word of God, then how will you believe what mere men has to say?

Indeed. Yet this does seem to be the crux of the issue. I do not believe in a god. I do not believe a god has written, nor inspired, a book. Therefore, I believe that the book purportedly written by God was, in fact, written by man. It is evidence for the existence of God which I have asked, and the evidence for the miracles purported in the Bible. I don't believe I have received a convincing reply to either of these.

Now concerning the question of secondary resources, I could post you documented phrases from writers like Ignatius, Tacitus or Josephus who were writers during the 1st. and 2nd. century. These writers wrote apart from the Canon of Scripture and varified apart from the Bible the events of the resurrection of Christ etc..
In fact Josephus was a first century historian around 37-100AD who provided sweeping evidence of Jesus` life, miracles and resurrection. However I will not post this evidence because if I do somebody will post back and say that the Christian Church doctored the documents to suit their ideology. I`m not saying this is right, but if it is or isn`t, how am I to prove it either way. You and I don`t have a clue what those guys wrote way back then.
I have read all of the pertinent writings, excepting Ignatius, who seems to have been a member of the church.
Neither Tacitus or Josephus verified the miracles of Christ, merely his existence. There is extensive evidence that the document of Josephus does indeed show signs of having been altered, though not fabricated entirely. The evidence is based on the differences in writing style and content between this document and others.

quote:

[sm=chef.gif] If those 500 witneses and those resurrected saints were to come down from heaven and join you for supper tonight, would you classify this as the large evidence your looking for? (specially if they also payed for the food bill.) Well guess what, if this really did happen you still would not believe in God or in the resurrection of Jesus. How do I know this? The Bible tells me so!

If this happened within my own home, I would indeed disbelieve. This is because my dining room can not hold 500 people. If 500 people were to be fed in my house, the would not be, properly, in my house.
If this was at a restaurant, there would be verification of them (therefore disproving hallucination) in the form of the bill, and other witnesses. Supposing these holy zombies did indeed treat me to a meal, I would indeed classify their existence as sufficient proof of the word of God as to believe.

quote:

If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." [/color] If you can not believe your Bible, miracles, those large body of evidences your looking for, likely will not change your mind about God either. So please pray that God will give you the ability to believe His Word, your Bible, as the authoritative, inerrant Word of Truth. Your eternal destiny depends on this, so you can`t affort to be wrong here. The message of the Bible has not changed from the original autographs, and God`s Word is as relevant today as it was way back then. [:)] Only Christ can be your hope and real_solitude.

Thankfully, this depiction in the Bible does not seem to be true, at least for me.. A dead man rising and speaking scripture would indeed be sufficient evidence for me. It would be, as it were, extraordinary evidence.
I don't have any special desire to believe the word of God, so I will ask no such boon of the gods. If it is proven to me that the word of God is the truth, I will believe it not because I have desire to believe it as truth, but because I have the desire to believe truth where I find it.

In addition, I do not believe in an eternal destiny, so this is not a persuasive argument. I might retort that your eternal existence is in danger if you do not accept Islam, Norse mythology, etc... Again, without physical evidence, this is not a good argument, though I do appreciate your concern.

quote:

ORIGINAL: MusicianDad

quote:

ORIGINAL: Define know.


Uhh...well, that's kind of what I'm talking about. I guess it's easyer to play word games than deal with the absurdity of atheism. See, it's my contention that reasonable people don't claim to possess knowledge that they don't have. As I said before, I don't believe in E.T.'s. I don't state "there is no life on other planets", however, because I haven't been to all other planets to know if it's true or not. Atheists have not been everywhere and don't know everything, so their creed "there is no God" is purely speculative. They believe it because they want to. This is the same thing they accuse Christians of, and that's why it's a hypocritical faith.

I don't find defining "know" in the context to be simply a mater of semantics. To steal an argument from Dawkins; I will claim to be an a-fairyist. I have a positive belief that fairies do not exist. This is because they violate known physical laws. I will not say there is an impossibility of fairies, because I do not know everything about the universe. I will, however, remain an a-fairyist because they violate what I do know, and there is no evidence that they exist. This is, in fact, a vast lack of evidence, especially with the ubiquity of modern surveillance equipment.
In the same manner, I am an atheist. I will not say that god is impossible (though some logically self-contradictory gods proposed are), because I do not know everything. I will say that there is a conspicuous lack of evidence for ones existence, and therefore will not believe in one. In addition, I will say that there is such a conspicuous lack of evidence as to proclaim that specific gods, such as the Christian God, do not exist, at least in their proposed state.

This whole issue was why such absurdities as the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn were proposed. They too can not be disproved, but I am willing to bet that even you would put forth the claim that they do not exist.



MusicianDad -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/16/2008 1:21:21 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real_Solitude

This whole issue was why such absurdities as the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn were proposed. They too can not be disproved, but I am willing to bet that even you would put forth the claim that they do not exist.



Now were talking. Thanks for not coming back with one of those, "that depends on what "is" is" things. Sheesh!

...anyway...

Ok, yeah, but how many a-unicornists are there out there? When something is silly, it's treated as such by most people. Atheist loud denials of God smack of "protesting too much".

BTW - I think you're really flirting with agnosticism there. It's really hard to stay the course with an unreasonable belief like atheism. It just takes so darned much faith. :)



hammurabi -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/16/2008 2:18:37 AM)

quote:

MusicianDad: Uhh...well, that's kind of what I'm talking about. I guess it's easyer to play word games than deal with the absurdity of atheism. See, it's my contention that reasonable people don't claim to possess knowledge that they don't have. As I said before, I don't believe in E.T.'s. I don't state "there is no life on other planets", however, because I haven't been to all other planets to know if it's true or not. Atheists have not been everywhere and don't know everything, so their creed "there is no God" is purely speculative. They believe it because they want to. This is the same thing they accuse Christians of, and that's why it's a hypocritical faith.


Real_Solitude said it better than I did. [:D]

Talking and argument and articulation is semantics. You just don't want to be distinct, clear, and relatively exacting when it comes to defining terms which infringe upon your belief system. Part of your belief system includes definitions of the word "know."

The point is, most (intelligent) atheists have a relatively coherent system regulating their metaphysical and ontological beliefs. So when they talk about knowledge, they're referencing their ability to discuss things which are and are organizing forces of what is. I see no real purpose is denigrating argument over "is." Half of philosophy is arguments over "is." If we discovered that no life can arise on other planets, for whatever reason, we would have a coherent belief in that, and it would be theoretically grounded. We don't, hence we don't claim to know.

But you have given yourself a definition of God existing outside the is of the "everywhere and...everything" - no matter how far, to the edge of the universe, past the edge of the universe into different universes, one walks, nobody will ever be able to discover God. God is a metaphysical proposition - beyond the physical, hyperphysical - and as such, you really can't levy those types of claims. But you can argue metaphysics, which most often amounts to semantics. The point being that atheism arises from beliefs systems like this which either preclude the ability of God to exist or persons to have knowledge of God; or knowledge in the way people usually use the word knowledge. So it's not ungrounded.

quote:

Ok, yeah, but how many a-unicornists are there out there? When something is silly, it's treated as such by most people. Atheist loud denials of God smack of "protesting too much".


Okay. I actually agree with you here! [:)] Personally, I think Dawkins, Hitchens, and the new atheist movement should shut up. Because they really don't present the complexity of their arguments, and sound more like advertising campaigns than actual investigators concerned with finding a truth.



hammurabi -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/16/2008 3:38:43 AM)

Anyways, you might find Alvin Plantinga's arguments against naturalism interesting. He's a Christian philosopher who is well known for reviving modal arguments for God's existence. (Click on his name for a link).

[Edit:

He's a supporter of reformed epistemology. HERE'S A LINK to an encyclopaedia article on it:

quote:

An influential contemporary rejection of evidentialism is reformed epistemology, due to Wolterstorff (1976) and Plantinga (1983). As Plantinga develops it, beliefs are warranted without Enlightenment-approved evidence provided they are (a) grounded, and (b) defended against known objections. Such beliefs then can themselves be used as evidence for other beliefs. But what grounding amounts to could be debated. Recently, Plantinga has proposed an account of warrant as proper functioning. This account seems to entail that S's belief that p is grounded in event E if (a) in the circumstances E caused S to believe that p, and (b) S's coming to believe that p was a case of proper functioning (Plantinga 1993b). It should be noted that the term "warrant" used elsewhere in philosophy as a synonym for "justified" (as in "warranted assertibility") is used by Plantinga to mean that which has to be adjoined to a true belief for it to be knowledge. (See Plantinga 1993a). Accordingly the most pressing criticism of Plantinga's recent position is that it largely ignores the question of justification, which, as Swinburne expresses it (Swinburne 2001) amounts to whether the religious beliefs are probable relative to total evidence.

While the details of grounding might be controversial I shall assume that reformed epistemologists assert that ordinary religious experiences of awe, gratitude, contrition, etc., ground the beliefs implied by the believer's sincere reports of such experiences, provided they can be said to cause those beliefs. Such grounded beliefs are warranted provided they can be defended against known objections. They can then be used as evidence for further religious beliefs. Thus if religious experience grounds the belief that God has forgiven me for doing what is wrong to other humans beings, then that is evidence for a personal God who acts in a morally upright fashion. For, it can be argued, only such a God would find anything to forgive in the wrongs I do to my fellow human beings.



MusicianDad -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/16/2008 9:38:10 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: hammurabi

quote:

MusicianDad: Uhh...well, that's kind of what I'm talking about. I guess it's easyer to play word games than deal with the absurdity of atheism. See, it's my contention that reasonable people don't claim to possess knowledge that they don't have. As I said before, I don't believe in E.T.'s. I don't state "there is no life on other planets", however, because I haven't been to all other planets to know if it's true or not. Atheists have not been everywhere and don't know everything, so their creed "there is no God" is purely speculative. They believe it because they want to. This is the same thing they accuse Christians of, and that's why it's a hypocritical faith.


Real_Solitude said it better than I did. [:D]

Talking and argument and articulation is semantics. You just don't want to be distinct, clear, and relatively exacting when it comes to defining terms which infringe upon your belief system. Part of your belief system includes definitions of the word "know."

The point is, most (intelligent) atheists have a relatively coherent system regulating their metaphysical and ontological beliefs. So when they talk about knowledge, they're referencing their ability to discuss things which are and are organizing forces of what is. I see no real purpose is denigrating argument over "is." Half of philosophy is arguments over "is." If we discovered that no life can arise on other planets, for whatever reason, we would have a coherent belief in that, and it would be theoretically grounded. We don't, hence we don't claim to know.

But you have given yourself a definition of God existing outside the is of the "everywhere and...everything" - no matter how far, to the edge of the universe, past the edge of the universe into different universes, one walks, nobody will ever be able to discover God. God is a metaphysical proposition - beyond the physical, hyperphysical - and as such, you really can't levy those types of claims. But you can argue metaphysics, which most often amounts to semantics. The point being that atheism arises from beliefs systems like this which either preclude the ability of God to exist or persons to have knowledge of God; or knowledge in the way people usually use the word knowledge. So it's not ungrounded.

quote:

Ok, yeah, but how many a-unicornists are there out there? When something is silly, it's treated as such by most people. Atheist loud denials of God smack of "protesting too much".


Okay. I actually agree with you here! [:)] Personally, I think Dawkins, Hitchens, and the new atheist movement should shut up. Because they really don't present the complexity of their arguments, and sound more like advertising campaigns than actual investigators concerned with finding a truth.


Actually, I think my point is pretty straight forward. Atheists say they know (as in 2+2=4) that God doesn't exist. That's a lie. It's not my fault they compare belief in God to belief in fairies and then practice faith in a belief in the unknowable. That's hypocracy. When they hedge on their own creed, they show just how impossible their possition is. If they want to join the reasonable folks over on the agnostic side, they should just slink over there and have done with it.

As to agreeing with me, HOLY @#*!! Maybe cows can fly? ;)

Thanks for the Plantinga tip. I'll check it out.



Jhud -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/16/2008 11:51:30 AM)

quote:

Obviously it is composed of collected documents. My main point wasn't that it was written by one author, or all at the same time. My point was that it was written by a single group of people, and those people had core beliefs pertaining to the events in question in common, and they had a common agenda. The book is not a neutral recorder of history, but an attempt at persuasion. I would venture that it is recorded with the intent of chaining minds to suit the views of the authors. This does not inherently invalidate it, but casts suspicion on the veracity of those writings. Since the book has obvious bias, a secondary source is useful in validating the original content.


You keep referring to it as 'the book' as if all the authors sat in a room and decided to come up with some cohesive story to convince the unbelieving world. Believing that of course is evidence of ignorance of the actual case. Many of the people who wrote parts of NT barely knew one another. They came from all walks of life, simple people, educated people, Jews, Romans, those familiar with the Greeks. Luke makes it fairly plain where he derived his Gospel from, and his writing of Acts is nothing if not a long rambling narrative of a series of events that reads in many respects like personal diary, which was fairly unusual at that time. And the major figures throughout don't come across at all like great mythological figures, drawn up to inspire followers, but as flawed humans, drawn along by events much bigger than they can even imagine. Indeed, it was this reality, this difference between the writing of the NT that convinced the likes of Tolkien and Lewis, experts in ancient mythology, that these narratives were records of actual events, at least as the authors perceived them.

quote:

I've never seen or read Da Vinci Code. From my understanding, the reaching of a cannon scripture was largely a process of what books the majority of churches used, though this process was at points influenced by various councils of church leaders.
TQW, "According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Canon of the New Testament: "The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.""
Again, it seems it was determined largely by usage. E.g. 'popularity'.
There are only two real ways the cannon could have formed. Popularity, or council. This isn't to mention that council is, in itself, a form of deciding the popularity of the books.
How do you propose the cannon formed if not by popular use?


Well, the majority of the New Testament was recognized and organized fairly early, around 150AD, and Tridentitine council happened almost 1400 years later. It was not by that time collating the books, simply making clarification about what the church (the Catholic church in light of the Reformation) had been dealing with for over a thousand years.

The early church recognized the primary documents of the New Testament partly as those which existed completely and could be attributed reliably to those who were most close to the events, thus the early recognition of the four gospels, and the epistles of Paul and others. It wasn't a matter of picking and choosing amongst a plethora of possible sources, but simply continuing to use those books and letters which had been created by the foundational members of the church for the purpose of detailing all they had witnessed and learned. Their reliability came from their association with Christ and the lives they lived as a result. So no, 'popularity' really didn't come into it.

There is course much more to be said about the issue, of which your simple point and my simple responses aren't adequate. For a good glimpse at the depth of scholarship on the issue, I highly recommend the excellent series Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable? By Christian scholar Mark D. Roberts.

quote:

Church history is full of Biblical editing and changes of wording and interpretation. I'm not sure what parts of Church history you're talking about, but if you'll detail them, I'd be grateful.


Well, no again, this charge simply isn't true, though lengthy to deal with; I would again recommend the above series for anyone truly interested in understanding the issue.

quote:

I reject cultural verification on the basis that many religious cultures influence various parts of the globe. This does not contribute to the truth-value of the claim. People once believe that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that all rotated around it. This influenced culture in a small way, the influence in no way verified the claim.
Personal experience can be rejected as evidence for much the same reasons. Unless we are to believe that aliens have taken a liking to probing people based on the number of people who have claimed this.
I'm not particularly sure what you mean by "consistency of Christianity with other forms of knowledge." unless it is a claim that science and history agree with Christianity. This is precisely what I have asked for evidence of.


I think if you reject eyewitness testimony, cultural impact, and personal experience, you may be left with only that which is wholly empirically verifiable, but you will also know almost nothing about history, culture, philosophy, and most of what one needs to get through everyday life.

Indeed, the only thing you could possibly be left with are those things one has personally observed and tested - and even then, there is a significant modicum of personal experience as well as personal cultural bias and limits of the current state of knowledge, and so nothing could ever truly be known! This of course is the fate of the hyper-skeptic Pascal talked about - they in the end know nothing, and cannot rely on any form of acquired knowledge.

quote:

This is true, but for reasons mentioned above, I find the veracity of the evidence dubious, and feel it would be strengthened by secular sources.


'Secular sources' is an arbitrary designation - none of the sources of the New Testament records were considered 'religious' at the time they were written, and there would have been no distinction between 'religious' and 'secular' as there is in modern nomenclature.

quote:

The last word on this was me speaking about en anastasis and ek anastasis usege versus non-modified usage of anastasis. This was not replied to. I still find the point of little relevance, and still don't seek further discussion on it. The subject is not particularly pertinent to our current discussion.

You again impune my honesty and attack my motives. I would appreciate if you would not do this. I believe you to be an honest person, and to truly believe what you are saying. I would request the same modicum of respect.
The discussion on Paul was never finished. I do not believe that I was proven wrong. I'll admit I spoke in error that Paul never used the word anastasis, but still do not believe that he was referring to a physical resurrection. I, however, have no knowledge of the various meanings of anastasis in different contexts. The definition of anastasis that I did find was "The continued existence of the soul." From what I have seen, only when it is prefaced with ek or en is it used to mean physical resurrection.


I wasn't 'attacking your motives', as I said I don't know your motives for ignoring the facts presented, whether it is ignorance or intention. But you made a claim based on false data, and now the correct data is known, there is no reason to cling to that claim.

quote:

I have ceded numerous points over my history on these boards when someone presents a strong argument against my potions. I did so, in part, in the section above.
If I am allowed to interpret my own actions, I would say that this indicates that I believe I have found the truth, but that I am willing to be proven wrong. If I did not believe I had found at least a part of the truth of a matter, I would not discuss it. I attempt to not speak on that of which I am overly ignorant simply because nothing can be gained from it. If I wish to speak on something, or take issue with something someone else says, I will generally give the subject at least cursory research before replying. I am willing to change my beliefs if someone presents compelling evidence, or compelling argument.


It's interesting for you to say you have 'found the truth'; what would you say is the truth about the nature of the world, God and humanity? What reliable sources do you base this 'truth' on?

quote:

I find this a thin attempt to re-interpret the presented evidence to fit your own view. This is in much the same vein that people believe in the validity of the works of Nostradamus or Edgar Casey's prediction/retro-dictions are true. Vague coherency to truth is not something I find compelling.


Well I didn't invent gene sequencing, and as I said, I have no expectation of correlating specific science with Biblical narratives, and so it doesn't matter to me either way - but it is correlative none the less, whether you comprehend it or not.



Real_Solitude -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/16/2008 6:42:22 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: MusicianDad
Now were talking. Thanks for not coming back with one of those, "that depends on what "is" is" things. Sheesh!

...anyway...

Ok, yeah, but how many a-unicornists are there out there? When something is silly, it's treated as such by most people. Atheist loud denials of God smack of "protesting too much".

BTW - I think you're really flirting with agnosticism there. It's really hard to stay the course with an unreasonable belief like atheism. It just takes so darned much faith. :)


I would consider myself an a-unicornist. It has no bearing on my daily life, but I do lack a belief in unicorns. The reason the word atheist became popular was because, unlike unicornists, theists do not always keep to themselves about their beliefs, not do they always communicate in a nice manner. (Granted, neither do atheists, but that's humanity for you.)
The unicornists have never tired to push a piece of legislation, or revise textbooks. They do not rally in protests about moral issues they find offensive. There is no place for an a-unicornist movement.

Sidenote: I am not what is traditionally thought of as a 'strong' atheist. I would fall somewhere between the 'strong' atheist and the 'weak' atheist ( read: agnostic).

quote:

Hammurabi
Okay. I actually agree with you here! Personally, I think Dawkins, Hitchens, and the new atheist movement should shut up. Because they really don't present the complexity of their arguments, and sound more like advertising campaigns than actual investigators concerned with finding a truth.

Dawkins and Hitchens might not, but Sam Harris agrees with you on this point.



Real_Solitude -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/16/2008 7:49:45 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

Yay, new information. I'll read (watch/listen?) to the item you linked when I get the time. We're finally getting somewhere new.

quote:

I think if you reject eyewitness testimony, cultural impact, and personal experience, you may be left with only that which is wholly empirically verifiable, but you will also know almost nothing about history, culture, philosophy, and most of what one needs to get through everyday life.


I will not immediately reject eyewitness testimony. It is one of the less preferable forms of evidence, but still a valid one. It becomes a problem for me to believe something someone says from an eye-witness point of view when they're tying their observation directly to an attempt to persuade people of something. If someone says to me "This is what I have seen..." I am more likely believe them than if they say "This is what I have seen, and if you don't believe me you face eternity in a flaming pit." (Yes, I know that's a poor approximation of the NT, but it's fair as far as hyperbolic statements go.) This is because it's not simply a record of events, it's an active interpretation at the same time. It's the (prepare for a horrid analogy) difference between, "Dave was wearing glasses." and "Dave was wearing ugly glasses, you shouldn't hang out with someone with such bad fashion taste."
I know that the books of the Bible differ in their approach, and I really should attempt to mentally separate them, but it's been a bit ingrained via culture and church into me to treat it as a synthetic whole.

quote:

Indeed, the only thing you could possibly be left with are those things one has personally observed and tested - and even then, there is a significant modicum of personal experience as well as personal cultural bias and limits of the current state of knowledge, and so nothing could ever truly be known! This of course is the fate of the hyper-skeptic Pascal talked about - they in the end know nothing, and cannot rely on any form of acquired knowledge.


If I were to always follow my own rules, this would be true. However, I do not. I am a naturally trusting person. Hammurabi touched on this when he was talking about accepting unique events. I don't question when someone relates a commonplace event. I will also not generally challenge someone when they purport a unique event. However, when someone purports a unique event as an attempt to persuade me of something, I require quite a bit of substantiation of this claim before I'll accept the persuasion.

quote:

This is true, but for reasons mentioned above, I find the veracity of the evidence dubious, and feel it would be strengthened by secular sources.


'Secular sources' is an arbitrary designation - none of the sources of the New Testament records were considered 'religious' at the time they were written, and there would have been no distinction between 'religious' and 'secular' as there is in modern nomenclature.
True, religion was pretty much omni-prevalent at the time. In this case I would consider "secular" to be things not written by a Christian. A note on the eclipse by someone who worshiped the Roman pantheon, and was claiming it was the work of Zeus, doing battle with Apollo, or something of that nature. A claim that Pluto had let the dead wander into Jerusalem. Etc...

quote:

It's interesting for you to say you have 'found the truth'; what would you say is the truth about the nature of the world, God and humanity? What reliable sources do you base this 'truth' on?

Not the whole truth, not necessarily always an objective truth. By truth, I mean the most accurate approximation of reality that I have yet come across. If I believe that I had come across a more accurate description of reality, the old belief would be discarded in favor of the new one.



hammurabi -> RE: Atheism Is The Opiate Of The Jaded. (5/17/2008 5:23:50 PM)

quote:

Actually, I think my point is pretty straight forward. Atheists say they know (as in 2+2=4) that God doesn't exist. That's a lie. It's not my fault they compare belief in God to belief in fairies and then practice faith in a belief in the unknowable. That's hypocracy. When they hedge on their own creed, they show just how impossible their possition is. If they want to join the reasonable folks over on the agnostic side, they should just slink over there and have done with it.


Actually, I don't think most do. Mathematical statements are analytic propositions, meaning they are always true. They will always be true, to eternity, because of their nature. For someone to prove that God doesn't exist, they also need to permit analytic statements to be made about God. But most, if not all, accept that the existence of an object cannot be a predicate of the object, as opposed to an agreement between the concept of a thing and its objective existence. That is, whether or not God exists either has to be an postulate following from other sets of inferences or axioms; or a synthetic statement (i.e., a product of investigation; natural theology). The point being, "God does or does not exist" isn't a valid analytic statement, it is a statement of correspondence.

Again, it's probably important to differentiate certainty, belief, faith, fact, and truth. Not that I have sophisticated arguments, but others do, and I rarely see this type of certainty pop up.

So I agree the statement is impossible. It's an impossibility of having a cognitive statement predicating existence to a thing which is God in a wholly meaningful way. But the atheist movement has other grounds for saying that God does not exist, most of which have to do with a logic of induction and inference, not deduction (i.e., from absolutely true axioms).


quote:

As to agreeing with me, HOLY @#*!! Maybe cows can fly? ;)

Thanks for the Plantinga tip. I'll check it out.


Lol



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