Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Congressman, went and saw a Divine Performing Arts show and had this to say about the show’s meaning:
The fact is, some things are eternal, and no matter what the difficulties in this life the truth will prevail, and mankind cannot be destroyed.
That sounds nice, I guess, but it’s a list of bold, unprovable assertions. Especially “mankind cannot be destroyed.” I wonder if the Dodos had a similar mantra before they went extinct.
He goes on:
I was very moved by the song that talked about the damage that atheism has caused and is causing. It was very moving…. The songs carry the sense that evil will not prevail, and so the message is that the truth ultimately prevails…. These times will pass because eternal truth will survive atheism and the difficulties of the 20th Century.
In other words, atheism is evil and damaging society and “eternal truth” will prevail. And this is a Congressman!
338 Comments
Nothing but bigotry and ignorance.
He mentions the word ‘truth’ yet the reason I withold belief in any gods is that I put truth above wishful thinking.
He’s right about the truth prevailing. That’s why religions are doomed to failure, and why 99% of them have gone the way of the dodo, while modern atheism is the same as it has always been.
This is seriously laughable. Which is more damaging?
A skeptic mind that holds a position of non belief in the existence of something supernatural of which there is no evidence, …
Or the persistent shackles of religion that invade the minds of otherwise honest and logical people, as well as just about every political state that has ever existed, with it’s “truths” about the nature of people and the universe that are based in unsupported, uninformed faith in the man-made concept of the supernatural?
What do you expect? He’s a congressman who needs to appeal to the majority, which in the States, let me remind you, is Christian :)
@Karolis: I don’t think he’s appealing to the majority — I think he really believes that.
From the Epoch Times, ie. a Falun Gong propaganda rag. Sounds like the show is also a FG production.
Another Blind Idiot regurgitating the shit they swallow on faith.
“the damage that atheism has caused and is causing”
What damage does he means? I suppose he’s one of the folks who would say that Stalin and Hitler were atheists. I wonder what damage he thinks we’re causing now, though?
“I was very moved by the song that talked about the damage that the Jews have caused and is causing. It was very moving…. The songs carry the sense that evil will not prevail, and so the message is that the truth ultimately prevails…. These times will pass because eternal truth will survive the Jews and the difficulties of the 20th Century.”
Does that look acceptable to anyone else here? I didn’t think so..
It’s bigotry anyway you cut it. Unfortunately, Florida is full of crazies as well..
I live in south Florida and this guy, like most politicians that come from Miami, is a joke. The only thing that gets this guy and many other’s elected is the he’s latino and the latino community supports these guys cause hes ‘one of their own’. Like the rest of the country, they never vote for the best qualified or best person for the job, they vote for the ‘they are like us’ factor. Its not often in Florida you get candidates that are good for the job.
Even his assertion that “evil will not prevail” — assuming we could come up with a definition of “evil” we could all agree on — seems to assume that humans need do nothing to avert disaster and create their own destiny, that, rather, we can simply trust in the Divine Creator to sweep up our mess. How convenient.
Ah, yes! Evidence of the unpublished Beatitude: “Blessed are the ignorant, for they shall attain political office.”
:::banging head on keyboard:::
It’s so disturbing that there are people who eat this crap up. A lot of people. And what does he think atheism is damaging? What does that mean? Did no reporter try to pin him down on that? Or does he only allow his minions to interview him?
@Speaker-to-Animals:
And look how well that’s working! :)
@Digital Dame: Indeed
I agree with Jason that the “caudilo” rules in the Latin culture. Most of us are Catholic so he’s speaking to that group, which if it buys the Christian myth will buy others too. As far as atheism being damaging, it most certainly is. It’s damaging to the manipulation, lies and outright fantasies which are the basis for all religions. The terminally churched hate atheists more than they hate evil. Truth makes them look like gullible fools, which they are.
It is more specific than that. He is Cuban and anti-Castroism is one of his top legislative foci.
Scary thing is, it’s been going on for 2400 years.
Read Plato and the trial of Socrates.
“But still I should like to know, Meletus, in what I am affirmed to corrupt the young. I suppose you mean, as I infer from your indictment, that I teach them not to acknowledge the gods which the State acknowledges, but some other new divinities or spiritual agencies in their stead. These are the lessons which corrupt the youth, as you say.
Yes, that I say emphatically.
Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me and the court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean! for I do not as yet understand whether you affirm that I teach others to acknowledge some gods, and therefore do believe in gods and am not an entire atheist - this you do not lay to my charge; but only that they are not the same gods which the city recognizes - the charge is that they are different gods. Or, do you mean to say that I am an atheist simply, and a teacher of atheism?
I mean the latter - that you are a complete atheist.”
Please, people on this thread, don’t compare us to religious minorities in this country. We have enough trouble explaining why atheism is not a religion already.
Instead, why don’t we use this opportunity to talk about all of the great things that this congressman’s “eternal truth” has helped to offer to society?
Off of the top of my head I can come up with racism, censorship, homophobia, xenophobia, war, genital mutilation, chauvinism, slavery (both sex slavery and labor slavery) and, from time to time, genocide.
We really should make a push at this guy individually as a bigot, but please make it about the overwhelming point that his religion has made him a bigot, not simply that he is one.
to LUKE.
“That’s why religions are doomed to failure, and why 99% of them have gone the way of the dodo”
Christianity is growing for more rapidly than Atheism is today.
There is a religious reform in the west occurring right now that the Atheists– excuse me — “Brights” are to ignorant to realize.
“Christianity is growing for more rapidly than Atheism is today. ”
Well, that certainly is one interpretation of the available data.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/743/united-states-religion
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1010/p12s01-lire.html
@Dan -
“Brights” is a label that never took off for a variety of reasons. It has been discarded. And, of course, it never really applied to atheists alone. It was trying to be a replacement for the more antiquated phrase “free thinker.”
Addly, the fastest growing religious population in the country - according to one Pew survey at least - are the “unaffiliated.” Not necessarily atheists, but not confessional Christians either.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/25cnd-religion.html?_r=1&ex=1361682000&en=f0f81c08d22aea7c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
“The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”
while I believe that atheists are wrong, government sanctioned religion wouldn’t be that great either. The spiritual realm needs to be a personal matter for each of us to chose, or else we run the risk of a theocracy like Iran which would be the worst of all things.
Most “evangelical christians” in government are really blasphemers who abuse the Lord’s name in the pursuit of personal enrichment of earthly, material things. The filthy sins of these so called “evangelists” are why America is hurting so much today.
And if every religious person were like you, Patrick, I would never feel the need to mention religion again.
The man is an ass !!!!!!!!!!!
I thought we were in the 21st century, not the 20th.
Ed
Hasn’t evil already been in charge for the past few thousand years in the form of religion? I’d say the lack of religion equates to a lack of evil. For evil to exist at all, it takes religion.
Get back to me in 20 years when the swarms of fundie kids who are currently counted as the same faith as their parents are forced to deal with the real world and realize that their parents’ faith is undercutting their ability to compete for jobs.
And “brights”? I like Dennett a lot as both a philosopher and a teacher, but even I laughed at him for that one.
It does astound me when any Believer makes the claim that atheism is damaging and destructive, especially in light of the Christian and Jewish wars against Islam currently taking place in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in Gaza.
Don’t even pretend for a moment that these are wars on terror. There would be no Islamic terrorists were it not for Christians (US, UK) and Jews (US, Israel) stealing Arab land and resources.
Dan
To think that Christianity will endure shows naivety. As I said, 99% of religions have died out completely. Christianity will go the same way. It has already fractured so much into countless different orthodoxies, all different enough from each other as to render the umbrella term “Christianity” almost pontless.
On the other hand, as I said, atheism hasn’t changed, and atheists the world over are utterly united in their defining (lack of) belief.
I think what he meant to say was “the damage that atheism has caused and is causing … to religion”
Atheism is about having your mind released from the centuries of religious indoctrination. Atheism is about taking control of your own life, not waiting for someones sick little mindgame to come save you, there is a reason why they are called “flock” the blindly folow a piece of paper which has been translated, interpreted and more than likely had a sever case of chinese whispers.
@Luke:
Are we violently agreeing? I’m saying that the children of fundamentalist Christians will have a lot of pressure on them to pass over their parents’ faith and join the modern world in the coming decades.
and mankind cannot be destroyed
Hold on, isn’t that what’s meant to happen … something about that is mentioned at the end of his Bible…
A lifetime would be insufficient to enumerate the list of horrors and crimes committed in the name of religion…
Freely quoting Richard Dawkins
… There are good men and there are bad men; to turn good men into bad men, one needs religion…
Dan L:
Sorry, I was replying to “Dan”, not “Dan L”. Shoulda been more specific there. I agree with your posts.
atheism is just another widespread idea about the purpose of life. just like religion. i would even go as far as saying that it is a religion. but instead of worshipping a “god” you worship fact. everyone has their own way through life and when that is realized we will stop trying to force opinions or fact on people to make them believe something. the truth is that fact is just something that has been proven to be true over and over. it too started out as just an assumption or theory that few believed until it was fact. not saying that i am religious but i am spiritual and to completely deny something is to bring ignorance into your mind. not one person out there can say that their brain contains all the knowledge in the cosmos. therefore, you can not tell me that there is not a piece of information somewhere that proves or disproves someones religious belief. stop being concerned with what other people believe and focus inward.
Tell him what you think here:
http://diaz-balart.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Offices.Contact
As one of his constituents, I can only say this opponent was worse. In every way.
Sorry folks. The upside, he’s a rep which means he has about as much power as the DC metermaid who tickets his car.
aaron:
Um, yeah. Mean old us, complaining when theists say we’re immoral and evil, and insisting that we accept their religion (which you admit has no evidence in its favour) is “eternal truth”. We should totally get over that whole “not wanting to be treated like second-class citizens” thing, right? I mean, if someone, somewhere has a holy book that claims a certain group of people ought to be put to death, who could possibly have a problem with that?
First there was ‘agnostic atheism’, then pushy atheism, then radical-critical-of-others atheism; and now militant-in-your-face atheism… What is so different? Now you atheists do what all the intolerant religious freaks do, only you do for and about NOTHING!
You guys are not only pawned suckers of the New World Order (who want you dead, along with the rest of us), but your dumb schmucks. When you realize that to stand for NOTHING is to ACCEPT ANYTHING, you will realize that you have been suckered punched… But by then, the smiley face Neo-Nazis, with Amerikan-NAU flags on their Kevlar jackets, will be knocking at your flimsy door, waiting to put YOU on the gas chamber trains (the ones that drive INTO the gas chambers, not to them).
Wake up. It is only when the usary of the NWO pulls the strings of religion and the faithful, which causes the wars and spilled blood THEY profit from. Now they use you as they have used all the others.
Wake up Ameeerika! If you refuse to serve God, you will serve man. If you serve man, you will be either murdered, or enslaved (then worked to death). It is the REALITY of history.
Atheism is damaging… this isn’t rocket science.
Anything Christians have done pale in comparison to Stalin, Pol Pot and their ilk.
If there is no God, there is no ultimate truth.
If there is no ultimate truth, might makes right, no matter how much you personally “feel” that something is right or wrong. Who cares? Certainly not those with power, as shown by Stalin’s 50 million deaths during his reign of terror.
A society of atheists is a society which won’t be around very long. Atheism is the perfect belief system for those with no children and no desire to have them (and, frankly, no small bit of disdain for them).
Man, this story really kicked over the rock, didn’t it?
Why do you say that? Why do you think I love my daughter any less than anyone else loves their kids?
Did you get into a bet with some (maybe Christopher, directly above you) to see who could be the most obnoxiously offensive to complete strangers?
Atheism is damaging… this isn’t rocket science.
Then I suggest you try to prove it.
Anything Christians have done pale in comparison to Stalin, Pol Pot and their ilk.
Care to explain the reasoning that atheism caused their actions as opposed to their want for personal power?
If there is no God, there is no ultimate truth.
Prove it.
A society of atheists is a society which won’t be around very long.
Again, prove it. On the other hand, nations currently with a high percentage of secular/atheistic beliefs tend to be the best that can be currently found on the planet.
Atheism is the perfect belief system for those with no children and no desire to have them (and, frankly, no small bit of disdain for them).
Guess you’re out of luck there then, I have a child. And he’s doing pretty well in life so far.
I suggest you try actually doing some research and thinking before you make groundless and factually incorrect comments in future.
Well, wintermute, let’s put it this way: When I see atheistic families of 4, 5, 6 or more kids, then I’ll reconsider.
Oh wait. Those families are “selfish” because they’re harming the environment, right?
And if you’re teaching your daughter that there is no God, then you are, in fact, being much less loving than any other theistic parent would be, wittingly or not.
Be pissed off all you’d like: I consider it child abuse to tell a child that s/he is all alone in the universe, especially given the eternal repercussions.
That was strange. It’s like someone sent over the heard. I’m not even sure what the heck Christopher was talking about.
Why don’t people understand that some people are just bad, and some that might be bad are made bad by their beliefs, and it’s not possible to be made bad due to a lack of belief.
Are you joking? You’d rather tell your child that if they don’t believe in Christ that they will burn in hell for eternity, than to tell them they will not live on after death? You must be joking.
I don’t consider perpetuating a fairy tale “loving”. I’d rather not rely on superstition to make my child feel loved. It is too bad that you do not think that your love as a parent would suffice.
Well, wintermute, let’s put it this way: When I see atheistic families of 4, 5, 6 or more kids, then I’ll reconsider.
I could name some friends of my family who are in that precise family situation. You can take your foot out of your mouth now.
Oh wait. Those families are “selfish” because they’re harming the environment, right?
That doesn’t exactly have anything at all to do with atheism now, does it? But a case could be made, I suppose, that people who have too many children are contributing to the current overpopulation problem we seem to have at the moment. *shrugs*
And if you’re teaching your daughter that there is no God, then you are, in fact, being much less loving than any other theistic parent would be, wittingly or not.
How so?
Be pissed off all you’d like: I consider it child abuse to tell a child that s/he is all alone in the universe, especially given the eternal repercussions.
What eternal repercussions would that be then? That dying is exactly the same as going to sleep but don’t worry because there’s no eternal torture/torment/celine dione to worry about? That this life is your one shot at things so experience and appreciate the wonders of the universe around you while you can? To be good to people just for the sake of being good, not because a magic sky fairy will smack you if you don’t?
On the flip side of the coin, a case could be made that indoctrinating children (and reprimanding them if they dare not like going to church, praying or any other religious custom) before they can even properly conceive the concept of a deity is child abuse since you’re directly robbing them of free choice/will.
As for being ‘pissed off’, I don’t recall being any such thing over your incoherent and illogical ranting.
It’s always interesting how Christians bounce back and forth between claiming what a big threat atheism is, and then asserting that they have faith in God or in the truth to win out.
If God is powerful, and the truth of your faith is self-evident, then why worry about atheists?
Maybe lashing out at atheism is really a sign of weak faith.
“Maybe lashing out at atheism is really a sign of weak faith.”
I’ve often thought the same thing.
Perhaps there is a smoldering ember of doubt in the believer’s heart which is stoked when they encounter someone leading a happy, fulfilled life without the need for gods and afterlives.
Maybe a little envy, now that I think about it.
Matt, since when is depriving a child of free will “child abuse”. More humanistic thought processes from a doomed belief system (atheism).
gmcfly, there is a threat from atheism… be it a temporary one, it is still a threat. The threat being it robs others at a chance for salvation because it is so easy to follow. It doesn’t threaten God’s will at all, but we who care about our fellow man and his/her salvation are threatened by self-absorbed do what you want belief systems as they are easy to accept and the science knows all campus is attractive to those who want no responsiblity for their actions.
Matt,
Let’s take a few of your points.
1) “I love children”
Another I have “a child” one… sigh.
Can you honestly say that you plan to have a large family, to promote the concepts which you so passionately hold and to fill the earth with your gospel of… well, nothingness?
Faith and large families go together. A society of atheists is a demographic winter waiting to happen.
Actually, it’s already here: the birth rate in the States for atheists and people of no declared faith is 1.6, well below replacement.
Why do you think that is?
It is the same in all societies that I’ve ever studied: birth rates are substantially lower among those with no faith.
It’s entirely rational: If there’s no eternal consequences to our actions, why sacrifice here and now to raise children when I can buy another SUV, jaunt off to Tristan de Cunha or replace my furniture at Restoration Hardware?
Assuming there is no God, we will devolve, quite naturally, to a nation of self-seeking, narcissistic, materialistic moral relativists.
The best atheistic men and women will resist…. but the vast majority won’t, and it won’t make rational sense for those who do.
Why be self-sacrificial? Ayn Rand is right on this account: if God is a lie, then altruism is weakness. Do what’s best for you, and to hell with everyone else if they don’t like it.
If you teach atheism to your children, this is the de facto truths you teach. And it is the most cruel form of child abuse (hopefully in ignorance instead of malice) that I can imagine: the killing of the soul, both temporally and eternally.
2) Atheism as driver of immorality
Stalin and the Communist regime drove God from the public sphere as the basis of their power… not a sideline.
If you don’t agree, then I think the conversation is over. No man of good faith can really admit otherwise.
This doesn’t mean that all atheists want to kill and pillage, of course… just that it is a *rational* basis for those for whom there is no objective morality.
After all, if I am the god of this world… why not? I am Pol Pot, I am Josef Stalin… what’s to keep me from doing what I want to do to consolidate power? Who’s to say it’s wrong?
3) Objective truth
You’ve asked me to prove some things. I’ve tried to address some of your items above.
I will now return the favor: Prove that there is objective truth in a world lacking God.
Whose truth is the Truth? If you think that killing Blacks is just fine, and you have the power, why is it wrong? Because we post-modern Western peoples think it is? If so, then was it OK thousands of years ago? If not, what makes something right or wrong for all time? Is abortion, euthanasia, environmental distruction, homosexual activity, torture, genocide, having sex with children right or wrong?
Without a standard and ultimate Rulemaker, one who does not change over time… there is no standard.
And if you or I have enough power, we can just rape and pillage to our hearts’ desire.
Or worse, we can convince 51% of the population that something is right, and *poof* it is.
This fallacy, legal positivism, appears to have something of an atheistic bent behind it… but I’m sure most would reject it today if only because the passage of Proposition 8 brings it front and center.
4) “Atheistic societies tend to be the best on the planet”
My turn! PROVE IT. The evidence is quite to the contrary.
Demographers have repeatedly shown that the nations with the highest suicide rates have the highest rates of atheism.
Crime has historically risen in several Western democracies as religious underpinings to those societies have crumbled.
I can’t believe that even an atheist would want to live in a society completely devoid of religion.
The vast majority of my atheistic and agnostic friends admit that religion serves the purpose of keeping the social fabric together in a way that atheism simply cannot.
Atheists like to think of themselves as Morally Superior People(TM).
I apologize in advance if this isn’t you, but even my atheistic friends, people who ostensibly like to hang out with me, very bluntly say that God-believers are fools and deluded simpletons (in varying degrees of bluntness).
As such, I can hardly let the kneejerk response to this article of “Look at what this idiot thinks!” pass without pointing out the obvious:
He’s right. Atheism damages society.
“Are you joking? You’d rather tell your child that if they don’t believe in Christ that they will burn in hell for eternity, than to tell them they will not live on after death? You must be joking.”
I would rather tell my child the truth than a lie. And yours is a common misconception used by non-believers to hit home their arguments against Christians. I have been around Christians my whole life and have never heard one threaten their child with believe or go to hell. What happens… is the love of God is expressed and the children grow to love God because of it… not because of the threat of hell. This is eventually known but should not be the cause of your faith.
So if you want to be taken seriously, please use better arguments than, “it is child abuse to tell your child he/she is going to hell if they don’t believe.”
Nice one, gmcfly.
Maybe lashing out at Christianity is a sign of the doubt in every atheist’s heart that he may be wrong, eh? :)
It’s a silly game.
The genetic fallacy holds here: Regardless of *why* or my personal faith life (or lack thereof), the truth remains: Either atheism is true, or it is not. Either God exists in some form, or He does not.
A or not A. Can’t be both, can’t be neither.
You can try to redefine terms to squirm out of it, but at the end of the day, it’s one or the other.
What’s sad is that you can’t even logically think of why I would care to combat atheism… is there no logical reason you can think of as to why I would want to, given my Christian beliefs (which you rightfully inferred)?
C’mon. You guys are Brights. I’m sure you’ll figure it out, although it will make you sick to have to type it in.
I have faith (ha! get it? faith!) that you can do it. =D
Wormwood:
It’s not envy.
I envy, if you can call it that, those who are smarter or more diligent or more moral than I am.
I don’t at all envy those whose belief systems are a closed circle with themselves at the centre.
It is a small, pitiful, depressing universe in which there is nothing bigger or more important than man.
All that proves is that educated people don’t go around popping kids out. Atheists don’t have less kids because they have less supernatural love to spread. More educated people have a higher percentage of atheism, and more educated people have less kids on average. It’s called a correlation.
Am I the only Atheist who doesn’t care? And I know it’s gonna muddy some waters, but I don’t think Atheism could ever provide an adequate guiding mode for a society to exist. For one, it is usually arrived at through a level of intellect that most people won’t reach, and in most cases, can’t reach. The absolutism of society, consumeristic lifestyles, a poor education system–these prevent people from thinking. People need easy answers to complex problems. For most people, Christianity is that thing. In my opinion, the practical nature of Christianity is that of a box with a lever on it; pull the lever, some easy answers spits out. But let’s face it–the majority of the electorate needs that box. It puts a face on chaos. Kind of reminds me of The Stranger, when the main character mentions that he hopes his execution will be to the sound of the mob, of derisive comments and scorn. (Which is great, because I never really understood that part before.)
…And, if people need (at least, to a degree) their lever-box, the ethical thing to do is live and let live. We can laugh at them, but ought to keep it to ourselves, eh?
To introduce myself to the blog, I was raised to be an atheist but I have been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ Jesus. I hope that introduction will clear up and make void the assumption that every one who has faith in the Christian God was forced to go to Church by staunch believers.
I understand that the religion of Atheism is one that is built upon materialism. I use the word materialism in a naturalistic sense. By divorcing it’s self from the notion of anything supernatural the atheist has left himself or herself with only natural things; the world as the atheist sees it is made up of only the things that are observable. That said, I want to ask where the atheist observed any information that would suggest the non existence of the Christian God?
Of course I would argue that the historical accounts in the Bible serve as a proof of sorts that a being known as I AM or LORD as it translated into English made covenants or agreements with His creation that He later fulfilled in the person, Lord Jesus Christ.
I also understand that none of my statements will convert any atheist that may read them. And they are not meant for that purpose. My purpose in asking is I am curious how postmodern atheism deals with the historical accuracy of the Bible. I see atheism as a very inconsistent belief system. I hope someone will explain.
On a final note, I don’t see where he mentions Christianity in the quote. Why is it assumed? An atheist only observes.
“it’s not possible to be made bad due to a lack of belief.”
Because of the obvious lack of intelligence in this statement, I have to think you are no longer debatable. I hope those here, also, decline to respond to such ignorant narrative in the future.
And yes, I’m fully aware of the elitist ring of my comment. It’s not intended. Apologies.
McBloggenstein:
If your child has a medical condition, it is abuse to pretend it doesn’t exist so as to be “caring” and “loving”.
The real dilemma here is: Does God exist? Do Heaven and Hell exist? Are they fairy tales or the most real reality in existence?
In fairness, if there is no God and no Hell, then it is certainly true that to teach children there is one is horrific….
…. but, alas, Hell does exist. I wish with every fiber of my being it did not, but I also wish that my best friend hadn’t died in adolescence.
My wishes do not de facto equal reality, nor do yours.
Therefore, to teach your children it doesn’t is the most statistically certain way to point them in that direction.
Compared to that, all other child abuse is child’s play.
Taken seriously among whom? I was merely making an analogy. I don’t believe that Christians threaten their kids with that idea, but you must realize that that idea goes along with the rest of the superstition, and to let them figure that fact out later is basically hiding the bad stuff until all the good stuff is solidly in place so as to not let the bad stuff waiver their faith when confronted with it.
Good work on your accomplishment. I haven’t seen you here before, I’m afraid you don’t realize you are among skeptics.
I welcome anyone to point out what is wrong with that statement. I will in fact repeat it and encourage you, Ketch, to tell me what is wrong with it:
it’s not possible to be made bad due to a lack of belief
“we can simply trust in the Divine Creator to sweep up our mess. How convenient.”
Once again, lack of knowledge (ignorance) of the Christian faith. How many Christians in the house worship a God that doesn’t require us to be responsible for our actions? None. That is not the God we believe in so quit alluding to the idea that we do to promote your own agenda.
“assuming we could come up with a definition of “evil” we could all agree on”
Evil is the absence of God. So, yes, atheism is evil… whether you could all agree on it or not. Truth does not require belief to be true.
McBloggenstein,
With re: your commentary on children, what I’m trying to show you is that your atheism clouds a man’s judgment with regard to children.
Every society on earth… until the last 50-100 years… saw the simple equation as: More Children = More Blessed
We are the first society that fulfills the prophecy of Jesus (which, if you are so inclined, take as just the words of any other man… but realize that He said this 2,000 years ago):
“In those days they will say ‘Blessed are the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed’”
It was such an incredible thought to think that anyone would see fewer children as a blessing.
IN fact, every atheist I’ve met uses that phrase “popping kids out”… do you have meetings or something where you approve them?!
Seriously, more kids = better as a general rule. There are always exceptions, but that is a worldview which was quite universal across theist *and* agnostic-atheistic cultures until the 20th century.
Modern atheism takes us a bit further down the pathway to nihilism, as shown by the “popping kids out” model of thought.
If you really don’t see a problem with a 1.6 birth rate, or with 1.1 or 1.2 in Japan, Italy and elsewhere… then you are a de facto nihilist, as these are levels at which demographers declare a “demographic death spiral” from which we have never, historically, seen a return.
You’d think we would be drowning in children here in the States from the way folks like you talk… instead of rapidly inverting the population pyramid, which is only being staved off by immigration (Thank God).
Oh, and on a lighter note: You should send a thank you note to my kids, since they’ll be propping up Social Security for you. =D
I have always wondered how anyone knows what the “true” religion is. Each one believes their version of the truth and the others are misguided. It’s a decision to believe based on where you were born. All of them however are unaccepting of an atheist’s belief. If there is a God then does he/she belong to one faith or another? If God was able to create the earth and it’s flora and fauna… to create a whole universe- why do mere humans even dare to think for a moment we could understand the truths such a God would know. I don’t have any problem with believing in a God or spirit, I have a problem with the many organized religions that are so sure that they are the only ones that “get it.” I guess everyone else is going to hell… or purgatory or where ever non-believers go, which is also something you must decide to believe in.
Everybody thinks they have the answers on all sides of the religion debate when truly no one can realistically know for sure one way or the other what happens after this life is over but of course that doesn’t really matter does it?
McBloggenstein:
I think I can prove your statement false (as I only need one example to do so).
My lack of belief that illicit drugs are harmful (which has to be chosen, by the way) will certainly cause me great harm.
I grew up in the inner city of a large metropolitan area. Many of my friends growing up are either addicted or dead. I wish I could say that this was an exaggeration… I sadly say it is not.
Their lack of belief, their rejection of my cajoling to believe that drug use is evil, lead to their destruction.
Would you disagree?
PoliticalSeasoning,
The belief in God and the particular pathway to follow are beyond the scope of this conversation as I understand it.
Your objections are fair and noteworthy; I have, however, tried to approach this discussion from a Theist vs. Non-theist POV to keep things simple, and because (I presume) most readers on this site are atheists or agnostics.
That said, your insights are extremely important. I would be more than happy to discuss them with you offline if you would like.
One clue: Counterfeit money doesn’t disprove the fact that there is real money somewhere. In fact, a counterfeit usually is a strong proof that a genuine article exists… otherwise, what is being counterfeited?
“More educated people have a higher percentage of atheism, and more educated people have less kids on average.”
Intelligence makes you a fool without wisdom to back it up. Only the Word provides wisdom.
“it’s not possible to be made bad due to a lack of belief”
Well, to start with, “possible to be made bad” is not good writing. You aren’t made bad due to a lack of belief, but rather you lack adequate goodness without faith. Being good unto itself or yourself for worldy reasons are always selfish by nature. Until your only goal is for the glory of God, there is no goodness. Even the Scriptures tell us that there is none good, not even one.
So in conclusion, you are right, we cannot be made bad… we are already bad… even those of us with faith… we just have hope.
Jesse,
There are no truly easy answers in Christianity. A Christian gives up all in this world if he is truly Christian.
Frauds can use Christianity as a crutch, or as a shield… but I have found the relative incidence of crutch/shield to be much higher in atheism, frankly. I’ve had several conversations with atheists which end with “Well, I would have to change this or that and I don’t want to”.
I am glad at their honesty (there is always hope where honesty reigns), but saddened at their self-chosen delusion.
As Camus (whom you referenced indirectly in his book The Stranger) said “I refuse to believe in God because I wish to keep sleeping with my girlfriend.”
That’s about as honest an atheistic opinion I’ve seen, and I give him props for it.
Orthros
I don’t see how thinking the likelihood of there being a god being very low based on lack of evidence puts me at the center.
You are insinuating that atheists think that man is the most important thing in the universe?
I actually think it is egotistical of man to believe that he was made in God’s image, for a purpose, in a universe that was made for him, and that he will live eternally. That sounds far more egotistical than not assuming that he has a purpose. I am sorry that you feel that without your faith in something more, that you would feel small, pitiful, and depressed.
His beliefs are different then ours. Let’s kill him.
Oh, wait…
Orthros,
Do you blog elsewhere? I would love to read some of your stuff if possible. You definitely have insight in areas I would love to explore.
Orthros
I’m afraid that is not a very good proof.
You are assuming that without the belief that it is wrong, that you will not be able to control yourself and go crazy with the drugs. There is no reason to assume such a thing.
Orthros-
Excellent points on Christianity! My own belief is that true Atheists and true Christians (the allowably sceptical ones) can get along much better than popular discourse accommodates for them to do so–in fact, discourse these days only accommodates them as enemies, or “others” of one another.
But the Camus is example is a poor one. Camus, Sartre, and others arrived at Existential Atheism because of a demand for a Stronger moral/ethical system than Christianity or other twentieth century systems (dialectical materialism, nazi’ism, etc.). Their Atheism arose, in a word, from the death of God concept, which is nearly the OPPOSITE of the self-interest you appended to Camus…
We all have the idea of God in us… we just grow further from it as we go through life without Him. Pretty soon we find it difficult to imagine God at all… and with otherworldly influences convincing us that we are correct in non-belief, Christians must be the fools.
There has to be a reason some of the most intelligent people who ever lived were believers. I know that there are those who were non-believers, but this is easy to explain… without an active search for God and a real “wanting” to know Him, it won’t happen. But how do we explain intelligent, natural skeptics, claiming faith in Jesus? Something had to have taken place.
Matt, since when is depriving a child of free will “child abuse”.
You’re dictating a religious belief without letting the child experience alternatives before they can even create a schema about their own identity, let alone construct any sort of concept about any sort of deity figure. It’s indoctrination which is monstrous to push onto a child (or adult, for that matter).
More humanistic thought processes from a doomed belief system (atheism).
Oh, I don’t know. There have been atheists about since before christianity came onto the scene and it seems to be doing alright for itself.
The threat being it robs others at a chance for salvation because it is so easy to follow.
I’d actually say it’s harder to follow, since you don’t have the placebo of a deity figure supposedly watching out for you. The idea of a deity that watches you, answers prayers, etc is as comforting as it is false.
The rest of your comment was so poorly put together grammatically, I have no idea what you were actually trying to say.
Can you honestly say that you plan to have a large family
Do I have plans to have a large family? No. Nor do I have plans to have a small one. It’s not something my partner and I have discussed yet. We’re both still young, plenty of time.
to promote the concepts which you so passionately hold and to fill the earth with your gospel of… well, nothingness?
Ah, a quite interesting example of your own misconceptions of atheism. How is atheism based on ‘nothingness’ exactly? It is indeed quite the opposite, as I indicated in an earlier comment of mine. You be good just for the sake of it, not because a god will otherwise punish you. You take wonder in the universe around you and you appreciate your life because this is the one and only shot you get.
Faith and large families go together. A society of atheists is a demographic winter waiting to happen.
Which is no relevance at all whether or not it is correct.
On the other hand, having families (and thus populations) which are too large is a recipe for self destruction; you get factional separations, shortage of supplies, environmental stresses and so on.
Actually, it’s already here: the birth rate in the States for atheists and people of no declared faith is 1.6, well below replacement.
Why do you think that is?
Most likely atheists no about that thing called ‘birth control’ and that too many people on the planet is a bad thing (as we are starting to see at the moment).
It’s entirely rational: If there’s no eternal consequences to our actions, why sacrifice here and now to raise children when I can buy another SUV, jaunt off to Tristan de Cunha or replace my furniture at Restoration Hardware?
Because we’re people who actually have some idea of morality and ethics. It seems to me that if there was no god in your life, then you’d be the first to abandon your family and go on a tour of debauchery. How ridiculous.
I suggest you read up on such concepts as the ’social contract’ or the evolutionary basis of morality.
Assuming there is no God, we will devolve, quite naturally, to a nation of self-seeking, narcissistic, materialistic moral relativists.
Why would we do that? Secular societies across the planet have constantly been working to improve laws, issues of morality/ethics. Just look at the improvements to human culture that have happened just in the last two centuries as secularism has gotten more common; abolishment of slavery, mass education and so on.
Why be self-sacrificial? Ayn Rand is right on this account: if God is a lie, then altruism is weakness.
Not at all. Your ignorance of sociological studies seems apparent now. To put it as simply (which makes it somewhat inaccurate but I don’t think I have much choice) it simply becomes a matter of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours).
Of course, the appeal to altruism is false since we often see cases of apparent altruism in animal species such as primates, dolphins and some kinds of parrots on a regular basis. These creatures are not even self aware let alone hold any sort of god concept in their heads. Altruism, in other words, is a natural state for creatures that have any sort of social structure.
If you teach atheism to your children, this is the de facto truths you teach. And it is the most cruel form of child abuse (hopefully in ignorance instead of malice) that I can imagine: the killing of the soul, both temporally and eternally.
I’ve addressed the majority of this horrible misconception above.
But your statement does assume that the human soul actually exists, when there is no evidence for such.
Stalin and the Communist regime drove God from the public sphere as the basis of their power… not a sideline.
They used it as a stepping stone for their own greater glory/power/advancement, which is what all their actions were done for. It’s as simple as that. They would have done any action would have assisted in that, there can be little doubt of that.
After all, if I am the god of this world… why not? I am Pol Pot, I am Josef Stalin… what’s to keep me from doing what I want to do to consolidate power? Who’s to say it’s wrong?
Are you trying to say that atheists think of themselves as gods? Don’t be absurd. Again, this seems to be ignoring the ramifications of what you’re saying; that without god watching over your shoulder then christians (and everyone else) would go about raping and pillaging? Gee, I wonder who the moral people are now? (Hint: it’s not the god fearers).
Of course, the entire idea falls down when you realise that there are plenty of people living perfectly wonderful, moral, happy lives right now … who have never even heard of your god let alone believe in him.
I will now return the favor: Prove that there is objective truth in a world lacking God.
See above about people (both ancient and contemporary) who have never heard of god leading perfectly good lives.
If you think that killing Blacks is just fine, and you have the power, why is it wrong?
At one point, it wasn’t. Just like at one point slavery was encouraged and considered the in thing to do.
Of course, it has been interesting (as previously noted) how morality has changed over human history. If objective morality did exist (and dictated to society by an unchanging deity) then morality would never change and we’d still be running about slaughtering any tribes/nations/whoever happened to disagree with us.
Because we post-modern Western peoples think it is? If so, then was it OK thousands of years ago?
Yes, it was actually. I suggest you go study some history.
In fact, just look in your own bible for a few examples. Acts laid down as being holy and righteous are now considered to be monstrous and despicable.
Such things change. Usually for the better.
If not, what makes something right or wrong for all time?
Everything changes, though humanity’s record of improving their own moral practices is rather encouraging and one of the species more impressive achievements; being able to throw away practices and go with what is better for the whole.
Is abortion, euthanasia, environmental distruction, homosexual activity, torture, genocide, having sex with children right or wrong?
I won’t go into the reasons (because that’s a whole different debate) but as a quick response I’d say (and depending entirely on circumstances): Right, right, wrong, right, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Of those things you list, some were once considered to be perfectly fine. Having sex with children, for example, was quite fine just a few centuries ago - especially amongst members of the nobility. But again, humanity managed to improve itself and recognised that the practice was horrible and had it stopped.
Without a standard and ultimate Rulemaker, one who does not change over time… there is no standard.
Social contract or collective standard. To put it another way, the standard is always rising as humanity improves itself. You live by a static standard, you condemn yourself to mediocrity. Humanity needs to aim a lot higher than that.
4) “Atheistic societies tend to be the best on the planet”
My turn! PROVE IT. The evidence is quite to the contrary.
Look at parts of Europe for examples, it’s not hard to see. Best economic performances on a more or less constant basis, less crime, more social cohesion and so on.
Crime has historically risen in several Western democracies as religious underpinings to those societies have crumbled.
That’s interesting. The United States, as far as western countries go, is incredibly religious. Yet it has some of the highest crime rates of western nations. Linked to this is that 97% of incarcerated criminals have religious beliefs.
I can’t believe that even an atheist would want to live in a society completely devoid of religion.
I would not mind it. Though I am not for the abolishment of religion (and most atheists I know are of the same mind). People are free to believe whatever they choose but a) they should not try to impose those beliefs on society through laws/rules/whatever b) they should be prepared to defend those beliefs in a rational, coherent manner in an evidence based way. If you can’t defend them, then it can’t be much of a belief system to begin with.
He’s right. Atheism damages society.
Yet shows no evidence or even mentions any concrete ways that it does.
In fact, I’d say that is religious believes that often hurt societal cohesion. It often encourages intolerance (look at the idiotic proposition 8 idea) and holds back technological advancement (stem cell research springs to mind) while actively working to deny people they right to make their own choices (abortion debate, as an example).
McBLoggenstein,
Do you deny that you can be hurt by things of which you do not know?! That drugs, which you may believe are of modest harm, can cause addiction? That alcohol, if alcoholism runs in your family, may be your ruin?
I fail to see how this isn’t a very strong proof. In fact, most of the things that have hurt me most in life have had a strong dose of my refusal to belief that those things were, in fact, harmful to me, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Wow, these guys have all been reading from the same old theist argument playbook, haven’t they? Pascal’s wager? No morality without god? Pot Pot?
Are these idiots serious?
No point in wasting electrons on people who can’t even be bothered to read up on the counter arguments from their opposition.
Hey, religiotards, every single point you’ve brought up in this thread has been repudiated ad nauseum long before you showed up. Recycling tired arguments probably seems really smart when you are surrounded by the equally uneducated, but it won’t fly here.
And most of us atheists were at one time religious folks. I myself spent 30 years as a fundie evangelical before waking up to reality. So your accusations that we don’t know what we’re talking about when we talk about religion just make us laugh at you.
Now go away. You’ve got a kid you need to beat with a bible. He’ll be one of our recruits in twenty years or so. Thanks for the help.
Ty-
That explains your resentment, anger at Christians. Fundamentalism is legalistic, heavy, burdensome….religious.
Not at all what He came to offer…liberty, mercy, life, peace…unconditional love.
There is a life…
Ketch
What is your basis? There was a post here recently asking for proof of your “Word”. Feel free to provide your evidence over there.
Oh, that’s my cue. This is where I borrow your cop out and say that you have proved yourself not worthy of debate. You are using the teachings of your holy book to argue in this debate, which ultimately is about whether or not your holy book is based on fact. Those points are not admissible. You are allowed to call me selfish based on your perspective of the world, but you would not be able to based on my lack of belief, except for the fact that your holy book tells you that because I don’t believe, I “lack adequate goodness”. I reject your argument and I take offense to you saying that I lack goodness simply because I am a skeptic. Don’t tell me that I just need to open the mind and let the love in.
Orthros, I am open to discussion with you.
I almost feel as though you are suggesting that belief in God is necessary to proliferate. I have no doubt that a predominately atheist world would pop out less kids (as I like to say). Is that so bad? I understand that to you it is because of what the Bible says, but yes, I think that this planet is way over populated, and has been for a long time.
McBloggenstein! Put your five up!
*High-five*
Yeah!
Matt,
Thanks for responding. Your willingness to respond has provided me with an insight I hadn’t previously had (and isn’t that what all good debate is about, anyway?) on where the true divide lies betweens atheists and theists: Objective vs. Subjective Truth.
There is Objective Truth. Right is right and wrong is wrong, regardless of when and how many people follow it.
One cannot tell morality like one tells time. Slavery, abortion, euthanasia, environmental destruction, torture, and homosexual acts are always and forever evil, regardless if 1% or 99% of the population approves.
The irony is that by making truth relative, you open the door for things such as Proposition 8 (which, unsurprisingly, I enthusiastically supported) under your belief system. After all, if enough people believe it and inculturate it… it must be “true” based on a subjectivist perspective. This also creates issues for minorities, whether of belief, race, creed, etc. since, again, there is no foundational reason for their dignity and respect as persons, but rather whatever the prevailing milieu happens to be.
In short, legal positivism in a new dress.
While I may be (and almost certainly am) ignorant of the depths of sociological thought, I am not ignorant of history, religion, philosophy or logic, and would posit that my ignorance of sociology is balanced by yours in the areas I’ve happen to explore more deeply. This is especially so with respect to the concept of truth: nothing can be truly “true” if truth continues to move with the laws and mores of the time. Even altruism (as referenced above in your post) just becomes what we feel like doing within the context of a positive quid pro quo arrangement… and frankly, people are a lot less altruistic (relatively speaking) today than in past generations. (And doubly so, I have done enough work with game theory to know that altruism goes out the window if there’s something that works for me, screws you and I can get away with it).
Therefore, my conclusion from all this is that an atheist who believes in Objective Truth is a work in progress: He will either reject it and revert to subjectivism and legal positivism (and the social contract arguments you’ve made in posts above, which amount to a kinder, gentler positivism) to maintain intellectual consistency, or continue onward to some form of Theism which has an Eternal Lawmaker as arbiter of Truth, which has the advantage of both intellectual consistency and being true.
Orthros
I understand your point, but I don’t think it is a good analogy to not believing in God. Perhaps I erred by not being more specific in my statement, but I thought it was assumed I was always relating to the argument for faith.
If your point about drugs were a good analogy for believing in God, then by your logic, not believing in God makes me more prone to suffering. I understand that because of your faith, you probably do think that I am, but you must understand that because I do not get my morals from the Bible, and instead from my peers in the society that I live in, I do not see myself as more open to suffering because of anything besides my own actions and interactions with my fellow humans.
Ah, yes. I see we have heard from the bleating sheep. The US has the highest level of religiosity of any western country. It leads in other areas, as well: rates of nonviolent and non-lethal violent crime, homicide, adolescent suicide, teen pregnancy and teen STD transmission. Yet it is the least religious societies which are by any and every measure the most stable and happiest ones. Yet it is these same sheep that will tell you, along with the other unsubstantiated garbage in their comments above, that it is MORE religion that is needed. Critical thinking in these folks are at an all time low.
Ty,
You can be very well assured that, far from converting my children… my children will be there to try to convert you, if for no other reason to release you from whatever drove such bitterness into your soul.
If it is a Christian which has created this scenario (I sadly presume based on your response that this is the case), then please accept my heartfelt apology for the harm that has been done to you.
A true Christian aims to affirm and build up. I can see, even in this thread, that I haven’t always met that standard. But it is, in fact, what I aim to do, however imperfectly.
Also, be aware that I am an engineer by training, so I have my own special handicaps to overcome. :)
Peace,
O
Orthros
The most real reality in existence? I don’t know what that means, but what evidence do you have to believe in such things? Hell exists? How do you know??? Honestly, are you asking yourself why you believe these things?
You suggest that I am wishing that heaven, hell, God don’t exist. Why do you think that because I have not been presented with any evidence that shows me that they exist that I am “wishing” anything? I no more wish those things to not be true than I wish the answer to a mathematical problem to be a specific value. I am simply waiting for the problem to be worked out without any bias or assumption as to what the answer is. I am content with not knowing why we’re here, and I’m not going to assume that there even is a “why”.
McBloggenstein,
I’ve tried to avoid theistic arguments… because I understand that you do not accept the Bible as infallible, so it is pointless to refer to it as such.
That said, as I mentioned in the post to Matt above, I have made a rather large increase in my understanding of the issue that divides atheists and theists through this thread.
Objective truth demands that we accept truth whether we believe it or not. If I jump off a cliff, I will feel the effects of gravity whether I believe in gravity or not. Likewise, smoking crack will likely result in addiction even if I refuse to believe so.
Likewise, lack of God in one’s life, as it de facto separates objective truth from one’s personal approach to morality, is a real absence that results in something missing.
I’m not sure how to synthesize the proof better than that, and I do in fact realize that the assumption inherent in what I’ve said is the key of contention, and one that you reject.
I think I’ve just realized something else: Atheism vs. Theism are both matters of underlying assumptions or principles. If you start from objective truth, you are de facto a Theist. If you reject objective truth, you must, to be intellectually consistant, reject the idea of God and embrace moral subjectivism as identified by Matt in his post above.
Truly, this is, intellectually, the best 2 hours I’ve spent on the internet in ages. And to think that it started on Reddit! =D
McBloggenstein,
In response to your heaven/hell post: Unless we presume that we are the enlightened ones, and that scores of those already gone (Chesterton’s “Democracy of the Dead”) are mistaken, then Heaven and Hell exist.
And yes, I see the irony in my using a morally subjective argument based on numbers even though I believe in absolute truth. :)
But really… unless I’m mistaken, you believe in moral subjectivity, so has the vast majority of mankind been deluded? Has the truth eluded everyone except the enlightened cognescendi of this generation (and a few of the past generations)?
Actually, I just came to another insight: If this were to be true, atheism is really more like a gnostic sect than anything else: Secret, arcane knowledge that is rejected by the masses, which only the enlightened few can accept. And I mean that with no ill will or criticism whatsoever, just that it would appear to be the case from where I sit.
On another note, I never get a good answer other than a lot of anger when I pose this question, but I’ll try because it’s in good faith and I’m serious about it: How did everything, or anything, get here without a God? Even if the world started with a single atom… where’d it come from?
For some reason, this question ticks off people more than the others… but it’s a serious one, and I haven’t ever gotten a good answer. The most common answer: It was always there. Thoughts?
“One cannot tell morality like one tells time. ”
Orthros, this is certainly untrue. The moral zeitgeist has changed significantly over time. Even the definition of murder has changed. The commandment not to murder at the time it was written simply meant ‘do not kill a fellow Jew’. There were even rules when killing was okay. Was it moral to kill a fellow Jew in the act of killing a number of gentiles, for instance? The answer according to religious authority of the time was, yes.
You say slavery is immoral. Indeed, it is held that way by many today. Yet there was a time when it was considered an societal norm. It was tacitly approved by the bible. And, please, no nonsense about it being about indentured servitude. There is no such thing as a little bit of slavery.
Your objective truth comes down to obeying your god’s word. Yet he both commands to kill and not kill. So, it’s really about obeying your god’s whim. I fail to see anything objective in this.
Shamelesslyatheist,
Three points.
1) Religiosity doesn’t equate to true fervor, either in the States or in countries in Europe (e.g. Sweden) where there is still a formal Christian faith for which taxes are withheld
2) Pregnancy rates would be high if, say, people see abortion as murder and therefore refuse to be killers in addition to sexually impure
3) STDs are also much more likely to be diagnosed in the United States versus many other countries. I wish I had the data at my fingertips, but this was in a paper I read a few years back (ca. 2003) that had absolutely nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with the “1 in 8 teenagers has an STD” stat that had everyone in a tizzy a while back.
Correlation doesn’t equal causality… my favorite lesson when teaching stats classes.
Orthros:
Yes, why anything, rather than nothing? How can we even answer the question if we lazily substitute intensive observation and analysis with prior, unprovable truth (BOTH “it was always there” and “oh, you know, God did it”).
A la Heidegger, religion is antithetical to answering ontological or philosophical questions. A la Sartre and Camus, it is not only inadequate, but monstrously immoral.
The order of reality which your questions presuppose are only that which you have projected into them, that which you have put there for yourself to find, like a string in a maze. But the whole time, the maze unfolds in the other direction, does it not?
Wow. Just wow.
None of these arguments are original.
Okay Christians and other theists: what is your purpose for commenting on this thread?
If you really want to have a meaningful discussion with atheists such as myself, it would behoove you to do some basic research first before you come to us with the same tired arguments which have been debunked thoroughly, repeatedly.
Also, why do people keep saying that a declining population is a bad thing? The Earth is dramatically overpopulated — if anything, atheists are doing you a favor by having fewer children!
I sincerely wish that all of us (theists and atheists and everyone else) could move past the simple, exasperating, inaccurate assumptions and preconceptions which we have of each other.
Many Christians and other theists are intelligent people.
Many Atheists and agnostics are moral people.
Many Christians and other theists love their families.
Many Atheists and agnostics love their families.
Good people are good. Bad people are bad.
Some Christians like to tell me, in so many words, that “if you don’t believe what I believe, you have a smaller basis for morality than I do - you, in fact, have no basis for morality if you don’t believe exactly what I believe”.
No, I believe that I have a larger basis for morality than many Christians.
That book of yours, the Bible? Is that the basis for your morality?
Well, my morality is larger than the contents of your book. My morality has certainly undergone revision in the last few thousand years. A few things have changed. It helps to keep current — relatively speaking.
Even if the Bible is the basis for your morality, which parts of the Bible do you take your morals from? Do you accept the entirety of Biblical teaching without question? Do you accept every single verse and chapter of that book?
If not, then you must have some external standard which you apply to determine what Biblical lessons fit your personal standard of morality.
Your external standards for morality are as valid as my external standards — we all have external standards of morality which we actively apply through our interactions with this world.
Your argument that I am less moral than you is wrong. Wrong in that history contradicts you. Wrong in that a study of cultures contradicts you. And, in all likelihood, wrong in that your own personal experience contradicts you. Partly because we are so often badly misunderstood, there are many more atheists and agnostics out there than people realize. And we have no less capacity for morality than you do — we are no less moral than you are. Period.
Orthros, I haven’t read your last two responses yet, but I wanted to first point something out. I went back and noticed the wording of my original statement, and I think you missed one word that made the point. Here it is again:
“it’s not possible to be made bad due to a lack of belief”
The key word here is “made”. By your previous analogy, I see how it is possible to be bad due to lack of belief, but like I said about how you will not automatically start using drugs for no reason, a lack of belief will not “make” you bad. Lack of belief can allow it to happen (in which case the potential was already there), but it can not make it happen.
Shamelesslyatheist,
Then, ironically, what you’re saying is that the best world for an atheist… is a theocracy where the Pope is the head.
Under traditional Christianity, murder is murder. I can’t kill an atheist, because he annoys me, without serious repercussions in this world and the next.
Further irony is that an atheist who seized power a la Stalin could easily wipe out whole groups of people who would otherwise be sympathetic to atheists…. after all, the zeitgeist has changed, so morality has changed.
We’re back to that Objective Truth thing again too, I’m afraid. Right is right, even if only a few say so, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone approves. I think deep down you agree; otherwise, a government which gained popular approval for enslaving blacks again would have to be considered moral under your ethos.
As for the Bible, I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this post. I will only say this: Just as you and others challenge to understand their true positions, I challenge you to understand what the Bible truly says, within the context of the writer (exegesis) and not your assumptions of your time, color, origin, etc. (isogesis).
Context is key, and interpreting different styles of Hebraic literature using the same lens is as erroneous as interpreting a love poem by the standards of a tech manual.
McBloggenstein:
Re: “made” bad, I see your point.
The underlying thought as I interpreted it was: I cannot become something by merely rejecting something as true.
Without getting into what the word “Become” means, I am merely stating that refusal to accept truth that is revealed to us can be harmful or even fatal. Can we agree on this point?
Of course. But this is where you suggest that God’s existence is true, and non belief in him and his teachings can be harmful. And then we fall back to the question, what evidence do you have that God even exists? Note, I am not interested in an answer to that question. Just making a point.
Orthros,
Good point on the difference in the texts, but then again, no one worships Elizabeth Barrett Browning (at least as a deity).
A love poem? A tech manual? A history? A prophecy? What is the Bible?
I think we would both agree that in parts it is a bit of all of the above.
However, what is our interpretation of this?
I interpret these diverging purposes as an extension of the human origin of the text. It just seems to me that a clearly divinely inspired text would be different from what the Bible is. The Bible just reads like every other human religious document which we’ve already got. If Christianity purports to have a better claim than other religions to divine truth, then there should be a better rationale than the Bible. It is as human as any other people compiled by people under similar circumstances.
Also, about truth: I believe that our truth, like our morality, is firmly rooted in our human experience, since truth and morality are both ultimately human sensations.
That a thing is like what it is — that we can see that things have self-identity — it is a root of truth for us all. When a thing isn’t like what it is — when there is a discrepancy between the way something is and the way it is claimed to be — we know that is not truth.
We do not need a supernatural element to tell truth. The origins of truths, I hold, to be self-evident. ;)
Jesse and Teleprompter,
The same folks who say that Christians tout out “tired” arguments have, in my experience, never read Thomas Aquinas to the extent that I’ve read Nietschze.
Apologies if I’m wrong here, but since I’ve tried to keep the debate simple (Theist… of any stripe… vs. Non-theist), what exactly does the atheist prove by his (lack of) belief?
I will again restate my primary concerns. They have not been adequately answered:
1) Where did the first piece of matter originate?
2) What basis in morality do atheists have, if there is no God? What is the standard?
3) If the answer to # 2 is “zeitgeist of the times” or similar, what’s to stop a group of people in the future from killing a bunch of folks that they don’t like or performing other atrocities under the banner of Truth?
Not a proof per se, but a strong hint. # 1 is the closest to a proof, since scientifically speaking, nothing created can be its own originator. Therefore a non-created Creator has to exist… call Him what you will.
Teleprompter,
You asked an honest and damn good question: What’s the point?
I had hoped, given the intellectual depth of the audience, and the assumption that I was a Christian (correct), that you would already know the answer.
The answer is simply this: the salvation of souls.
I may fail, but that is all that really matters to a true Christian, and there is nothing more worth me staying up far past when I should be asleep so I don’t do a headplant on my desk tomorrow.
Believe it or not, I care for the folks I interact with on the Web… yes you guys… and hope that we can grab a beer together in the Great Hereafter.
I know this opens me to complete ridicule… but it’s the truth, and you deserve a truthful answer.
Oh, and only one of those places will have beer. The other will have Fresca. I’ll leave the proof as an exercise for the class. ;)
Orthros
Again, you are suggesting that the truth of God’s existence is there whether we believe it or not. And again, how do you know he even exists?
I’m afraid this is not correct. Remember this: Atheism assumes NOTHING. What do you think it assumes?
Think about this… If there were empirical evidence for God, we would not be having this discussion right now. Evidence for God puts him at the top of the list of things that explain stuff. Because there is no empirical evidence, God is very low on the list.
Now, you believe in God. Who is making the assumption?
Teleprompter:
Self-evident? Don’t you mean, socially-constructed? And consequently, relative?
“when a thing isn’t like what it is—when there is a discrepancy between the way something is and the way it is claimed to be…”
Claimed to be, by what, or whom, that does not have its origin in construction and finite, fleeting duration? Hmmm…
Orthros:
I can’t even read the rest of your post after the enormous assumptions contained in its first assumption:
the “first” piece of matter.
I would agree that a Christian’s ontological view of existence is fission, but that does not require that the rest of us be so nuked by centuries-old philosophical arguments.
I will repeat, the vectors which you perceive in reality, the telelology you proclaim, is only that which you have hidden for yourself to find.
There is Objective Truth. Right is right and wrong is wrong, regardless of when and how many people follow it.
There is no evidence to support this statement.
Slavery, abortion, euthanasia, environmental destruction, torture, and homosexual acts are always and forever evil, regardless if 1% or 99% of the population approves.
There is no evidence to support this statement.
As someone else mentioned, these acts were considered absolutely fine at one time or another. Some were even given the godly seal of approval in the bible but humanity has progressed since then and said ‘no’ to slavery, genocide and so on.
The irony is that by making truth relative, you open the door for things such as Proposition 8 (which, unsurprisingly, I enthusiastically supported) under your belief system. After all, if enough people believe it and inculturate it… it must be “true” based on a subjectivist perspective.
Not at all. I really have no idea how you reached that conclusion.
I would argue that proposition 8 is immoral since it segregates a section of the community over a harmless part of their individuality which they have no control over. It certainly hurts societal cohesion and contributes to discrimination and other unhelpful related things.
This also creates issues for minorities, whether of belief, race, creed, etc. since, again, there is no foundational reason for their dignity and respect as persons, but rather whatever the prevailing milieu happens to be.
Again, I have no idea how you reached this conclusion.
A moral person, as morality is understood in the modern day, would be absolutely appalled by your line of reasoning since it simply goes against everything humanity has been able to shape for itself as it has progressed through the millenniums.
(snip some irrelevant meanderings)
and frankly, people are a lot less altruistic (relatively speaking) today than in past generations.
I would like to see hard evidence for that claim. I would argue that the form altruism takes has changed (we get a lot more of anonymous financial aid given about, less hands on barter style altruism) but the actual levels … no, I have seen no evidence to indicate they’ve dropped significantly of late.
Then, ironically, what you’re saying is that the best world for an atheist… is a theocracy where the Pope is the head.
Theocracy’s have been tried, they really don’t work out very well at all.
Under traditional Christianity, murder is murder. I can’t kill an atheist, because he annoys me, without serious repercussions in this world and the next.
For a given value of ‘traditional’ (quickly approaching ‘true scotsman fallacy’ area here). You could, however, happily murder an atheist, his family, livestock, neighbours and anyone else if god told you to (or you thought he told you to). Happens all the time in the bible.
We’re back to that Objective Truth thing again too, I’m afraid. Right is right, even if only a few say so, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone approves.
Again, there is no evidence to support this statement (as opposed to the other side, where we clearly see a lot of change both in ideas and practices as time has progressed).
I challenge you to understand what the Bible truly says, within the context of the writer (exegesis) and not your assumptions of your time, color, origin, etc. (isogesis).
I’ve read it cover to cover on numerous occasions and studied it’s history, context and so forth (product of a religious upbringing and all that). I still hold it is only good if you want to do some literary study but worthless when it comes to history, philosophy, morality or pretty much anything else.
Context is key, and interpreting different styles of Hebraic literature using the same lens is as erroneous as interpreting a love poem by the standards of a tech manual.
I think we both agree that the translations of the Bible about in western society today are horrendous by any measure. Badly translated from hebrew, then badly translated to greek then badly translated to english (which got some people killed, some to think on it). I would support the notion that any really serious christian would really take the time to do some independent language study.
Well, yeah, Jesse, I didn’t say it was that simple.
I was merely speculating as to the origins of one type of truth.
Of course of the many guises of truth we observe in our world today, many of them, as you clearly pointed out, are socially constructed, and thus, relative.
However, there are some things in this universe that are just not relative.
Couple of housekeeping comments:
wintermute,
I owe you an apology. I’ve gone back to re-read the thread, and I acted with all the tact of a drunken ferret in my reply to you. I sincerely apologize for being hurtful to you. It certainly didn’t do anything to shed light on the subject; I am a bit of a hot-head, and get passionate about things. Hopefully you are married to an engineer… then you can say “At least you’re not like this guy”. Again, my apologies.
ketch22,
I don’t blog at present. I had a financial blog once upon a time… but that is long gone. Given that I have half a dozen kids and a (recently executive-level) job, I don’t have a lot of time for other interests.
That, and I had about 20 subscribers total… AdSense just wasn’t paying the bills. =D
Orthros
I’m not sure I completely understand what you are saying here. Do you have a better reason for believing in Hell other than the Bible says it exists?
There have always been atheists. Perhaps there are more now, and it is probably because of the nature of our modern society to promote free thinking more than our entire history. You are suggesting that it is right just because more people than not have always believed it to be true. This is not a good argument. There are many books on the subject of why our minds create such ideas. Some easy examples to use here are Egyptian and Greek gods. They were created to explain things that they didn’t know how to explain. Today, we can explain more things than ever, therefore, less of a need to assign things to God.
I’ll explain why this question upsets some people. It is because to ask it assumes that we need an answer.
My answer? I don’t know. Say it with me… I… don’t… know…
It’s really ok to say that. It’s ok to not know.
You may feel as though you know, because of your faith that the Bible is true, but then you must ask yourself why you believe it to be true.
Atheists are accused of making assumptions. I promise, we are not.
I wish I could continue the conversation, but it is now approaching 2am local time and I will need to be (somewhat) awake in a few hours.
I regret that I couldn’t finish the threads that have been going on here… they were getting quite interesting. Perhaps I can pick them up tomorrow evening, assuming anyone is still hanging around this page. :)
Thanks to all for your willingness to discuss and debate. I truly believe in the Socratic approach to debate and learn much more in that way than otherwise.
Regards and God bless, =D
O
1) Where did the first piece of matter originate?
I don’t know what that has to do with atheism per se but it is an interesting question.
Quite simply (and it is an extremely simple answer to the point of leaving a heck of a lot out and being somewhat inaccurate); The Big Bang (which is a fascinating area of study and supported by so much evidence that it isn’t funny from doppler shift, movement of galaxies, left over universal radiation, not to mention that the mathematics which fully supports it).
How did the Big Bang happen? That’s still being studied but some excellent work is being done and several good models are being studied. There’s one with spontaneously appearing molecules (or is it something else? The detriment to posting on a hot day while tired, I’m afraid. Regardless, this spontaneous appearance has been observed) which looks very promising.
2) What basis in morality do atheists have, if there is no God? What is the standard?
The standard is not static, obviously. Ever changing, ever (albeit it with the occasional step backward) improving. I believe I dealt with this earlier. Please don’t repeat the same question when it’s already been answered.
3) If the answer to # 2 is “zeitgeist of the times” or similar, what’s to stop a group of people in the future from killing a bunch of folks that they don’t like or performing other atrocities under the banner of Truth?
The ever improving human condition, I would think. Is there a chance that a group like you describe will appear in the future? Certainly. But that’s the real beauty of the human race; it’s up to us to teach ourselves how to be a coherent and harmonious society without the imaginary aid of any sort of deity figure.
Getting back to an earlier matter; When you start dealing with matters of ‘objective truth’ then there really is no evidence to support such a notion. Some people find the idea of lack of objective morality to be uncomfortable or unsettling … but really, tough. A lot of things about the universe are unsettling but that does not make them any less real (as observation has clearly shown).
Followers of all the now discarded gods throughout human history has had full conviction that their truth was THE truth and as far as we can tell, they were wrong. Then again we all might be wrong and when we die, we’ll be somewhat surprised to see Odin in a grand festhall ready to judge us.
Orthros,
“Jesse and Teleprompter,
The same folks who say that Christians tout out “tired” arguments have, in my experience, never read Thomas Aquinas to the extent that I’ve read Nietschze.”
The arguments are still tired. Also, it is just as mistaken for an atheist or agnostic or Muslim to assume that Aquinas represents the whole or brunt of Christian thinking as it would be mistaken for a Christian or Muslim to assume that Nietschze represents the brunt or whole of atheist thinking.
I’m glad you’ve read what you’ve read, but that intrinsically does not mean anything for this discussion.
“Apologies if I’m wrong here, but since I’ve tried to keep the debate simple (Theist… of any stripe… vs. Non-theist), what exactly does the atheist prove by his (lack of) belief?
I will again restate my primary concerns. They have not been adequately answered:
1) Where did the first piece of matter originate?
2) What basis in morality do atheists have, if there is no God? What is the standard?
3) If the answer to # 2 is “zeitgeist of the times” or similar, what’s to stop a group of people in the future from killing a bunch of folks that they don’t like or performing other atrocities under the banner of Truth?
Not a proof per se, but a strong hint. # 1 is the closest to a proof, since scientifically speaking, nothing created can be its own originator. Therefore a non-created Creator has to exist… call Him what you will.”
I am glad we are trying to keep this simple, but we both know it’s impossible.
1) Where did the first piece of matter originate? Where did your god originate? Do we have an explanation for either question? Not really. So why should I believe you? You’re making a claim on divine truth — so where’s your evidence? Your claim, so it’s also your burden of proof. Where did your god come from? If he could always be here, then why not matter?
2) What basis in morality do we have if there are no gods? What is our standard?
I believe that morality is rooted in social norms (which are rooted in our evolving social traditions — what others have labeled the “moral zeitgeist”, which clearly has changed over time) and our basic human empathy and compassion (which I believe are influenced by natural selection).
The “zeitgeist” argument’s shortcoming is that our natural empathy and compassion also play a role in the motivation for human altruism. You cannot ignore the role this plays in human behavior. Also, the laws and commonly acknowledged standards of our society are also powerful influences on our behavior. If this is the only life we’ve got, then we have even less incentives to spend it behind bars or be executed - if this is our one and only chance.
3) I told you that the answer to number 2 is only partially “zeitgeist of our times”, but also human empathy and compassion. It’s where we got the Golden Rule, which has been prevalent among many diverse societies.
If your god is the source of our morality, then how do you account for the morality of non-believers? This seems to be a fairly substantial gap in your argument.
“Teleprompter,
You asked an honest and damn good question: What’s the point?
I had hoped, given the intellectual depth of the audience, and the assumption that I was a Christian (correct), that you would already know the answer.
The answer is simply this: the salvation of souls.
I may fail, but that is all that really matters to a true Christian, and there is nothing more worth me staying up far past when I should be asleep so I don’t do a headplant on my desk tomorrow.
Believe it or not, I care for the folks I interact with on the Web… yes you guys… and hope that we can grab a beer together in the Great Hereafter.
I know this opens me to complete ridicule… but it’s the truth, and you deserve a truthful answer.
Oh, and only one of those places will have beer. The other will have Fresca. I’ll leave the proof as an exercise for the class. ;)”
Well, at least you’re honest about it.
Teleprompter:
Excellent clarifications! That should be useful for all. I liked the “moral zeitgeist” concept; it is incredibly difficult for most Atheists to rationalize morality, even as purely abstraction, in what appears to be a naturally immoral world…or however you would describe it, via whatever perspectives. Slavoj Zizek offers some pretty good analogies to the “moral zeitgeist” in terms of Hegel’s ideas (very strange reference for Zizek, an Atheist/Communist/Post-Marxist). I like Zizek because he is so challenging to read, and because he often challenges the claims of liberal “secular humanism” more strongly than your run of the mill righty stuff. Thanks again for your comment, though.
Jesse
Jesse
I’ve got my *five* up now…
I was out of breath before! hehe
Bedtime. Off to dream of a world without religion, where I can rape and pillage. Wishful thinking, right?
Bloggenstein,
Wishful thinking? I thought I was trying to avoid it?
But little did I know, right?
“1) Religiosity doesn’t equate to true fervor, either in the States or in countries in Europe (e.g. Sweden) where there is still a formal Christian faith for which taxes are withheld”
Ah, the True Christian(TM). How does one measure that? If you excluded everyone that doesn’t share the same belief you will be left with only yourself, and the same would be true for every other Christian. There is no such thing as a ‘True Christian’. You are Christian or you are not. Besides, if a True Christian(TM) is not a Christian, then is he/she an atheist? I think not.
“2) Pregnancy rates would be high if, say, people see abortion as murder and therefore refuse to be killers in addition to sexually impure”
Sexually impure? What the…? Pregnancy rates are high because teens are not given information. Abstinence-only programs produce only one difference in sexual activity in teenagers and that is to not arm them with the information they need to protect themselves. Your solution seems to be the Nancy Regan strategy. Didn’t work for drugs and won’t work with teens.
And what about violent crime? Spouse abuse? I see no refutation here at all.
“3) STDs are also much more likely to be diagnosed in the United States versus many other countries. I wish I had the data at my fingertips, but this was in a paper I read a few years back (ca. 2003) that had absolutely nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with the “1 in 8 teenagers has an STD” stat that had everyone in a tizzy a while back.”
You don’t have the data because it does not exist. Europeans and Canadians do just fine in diagnosing STDs. And it’s not 1 in 8. It’s 1 in 4 (at least where teenage girls are concerned). I’d say the CDC is a pretty good source. Teens taught abstinence only do not get the information on STD transmission, condom use, etc. It is only religious groups support such disastrous nonsense. So, contrary to your supposition, religion is very much in the thick of things on that score.
And Orthros, saying that context is the key to understanding scripture just turns it into nothing more than a Rorschach test. You take away from it what you want, but you already understood the ethics of living before you ever picked up a bible. In essence, you never needed it. As Teleprompter said above, ethics is the zeitgeist of the times. History shows us that this is true even for Christian societies. Living an ethical life does not require religion.
“…atheism has caused and is causing…The songs carry the sense that evil will not prevail…”
I don’t understand the link between “atheism” and “evil.” Most atheists I know are pointy-headed intellectuals — they are not evil.
Atheists would rather argue over a cup of coffee than go out and shoot up a Pro-Life Clinic.
Yet another crock-o-shit from trashy politics. He’s just not commenting, he is spreading appeal to the idiots who want to listen to his opinion. He’s thinking “votes” not realism… The damn jackass. He makes me sick.
Jesse ….
atheism = scientific
that’s a democracy !!
shamelesslyatheist,
Yes, not only did I say that morality is in part a result of the moral zeitgeist of our times, I also claimed that morality is a result of our empathy and compassion which are hard-wired within our humanity, probably by natural selection.
I just wanted to avoid the “your zeitgeist has no basis to establish good or bad because it changes so much with the times; having no basis is morality, it is inherently amoralistic” argument. By reinforcing the link between our concepts of morality and the natural empathy and compassion within us which inspire altruism, this argument can be refuted.
I tried to read some of the blather from this flock of theists, but it seemed to be the same tired fallacies. If they manage to overturn thousands of years of logic and prove god exists, thereby removing faith from their Faith, thereby no longer being believers because they know instead of believe, then let me know.
Until then it just reeks of witnessing.
Well that’s got me convinced!
I can’t help being reminded of the recent thread that religion has the upper hand over science as it can just make stuff up. Oh and lets remember that it was god that did it.
Seriously though this doesn’t actually represent the average views of a Christian does it?
he’s obviously religiously affiliated. And then I wonder, is he talking as himself? Or as a congressman?
Indeed, with great powers come great responsibility. I guess he was just expressing an opinion, no matter how discriminatory it is.
The best that “atheists” can achieve I think is to erode established, static religious. “Atheism” has some good contributions, actually. Among the good things that “atheists” have uncovered are myths, or obsolete teachings, of established religions. While atheism is trying to kill established religions, it is actually contributing towards the formation of one common belief and belief in one universal God. Religions are drawn closer together. The best that “atheists” can do is to refine religions, killing static religious.
A thesis [in this case religion] creates an anti-thesis [in this case atheism] that produces a synthesis or new thesis. [See Georg W. F. Hegel on Dialectic] Some anti-thesis became the synthesis [Protestantism from the old Roman Catholic Church, for example] but not all the time. Because, sometimes synthesis can develop as third party - by forces other than those representing the thesis and the anti-thesis. A more advanced and updated version of the old religion, plus something synthesized from the anti-thesis, developed.
Yet, sometimes the synthesis is formed within the old thesis. The old church itself must evolve or it will be left out for being obsolete. Surviving religions are not the same since the time of Galileo, for example. That the earth is center of creation and universe is obsolete. Same with 7-day -creation of man and universe; so, are Adam and Eve.
I don’t really believe in the existence of atheist as defined. All them I know have their feet [or at least a foot] stood on spiritual ground if they don’t know it. It is Religion or religious beliefs that are in fact, or factually, being opposed by them. And, an anti-thesis of religion is in fact [developing or modifying] religion.
[God did not say a thing in the first place. And it was man who said things. And it is what man believed and said that is being opposed by another man. So, who or what is being opposed there?]
But, I don’t think “Atheists” can kill religions and become the new thesis unless they can explain all the mysteries in this cosmos. If they can do that then God, and thus religions, will all be dead. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. That, in itself, is mystery that cannot be explained by science and by “atheists”.
So, what are all these cosmic drama all about in the “end”? A more refined mankind, I believe. An endless process of refinement, according to Hegel. Let’s thank the atheists for that in this case.
I agree the statement attributed to American congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart is indeed incomprehensible. Only Matter CANNOT be destroyed. Life forms can be destroyed, turned to ashes, or to gas, or to liquid. We do have seen extinction of species so, it CAN also happen to man if mankind does not do anything against self destruction – the nearest possible cause to its extinction.
That mankind cannot be destroyed is a blind statement. That mankind can possibly go extinct have some basis - species known to exist that are already gone extinct.
@rltjs - “I don’t really believe in the existence of atheist as defined. ”
And what, pray tell, is your definition of an atheist?
Here we tend to use the word atheist to mean someone without the belief in a deity. Certain kinds of Buddhists and Hindus are atheist, along with Jainists. So “atheist” is not a word in necessarily in opposition to religion and spirituality.
I would say that the antithesis of “spiritual” is “materialist.” I’ll grant you that most atheists you’ll meet online are materialists, but certainly not all.
I don’t tell her she’s all alone in the universe. After all, there are six billion other people who can keep her company.
Isn’t it equally unloving of you not to tell your children that Allah is real and will punish everyone who doesn’t worship him, given the eternal repercussions?
Is that statistically different than the birth rate for the population as a whole? Why do you think that the birth rate for Christians (taken as a whole) is also below the replacement rate? Is this intended as some proof that the Duggars are the Most True Christians on the planet, and everyone else should have exactly the same beliefs as them?
Greatly appreciated. For the record, both my wife and I are computer programmers.
In Sweden, and a lot of Northern Europe, there are still taxes that go to fund the upkeep of churches. In some countries, these taxes are voluntary and only paid by people who tell the government that they’re of a particular faith; in others, they’re not. However, the rate of church attendance in these countries is about 5%, and the number of people who admit to a belief in a deity is not more than 15%. These are not countries overflowing with either “religiosity” or “true fervor”; they may believe that churches are pretty buildings that shouldn’t be torn down to build a shopping center, but don’t actually believe in anything so silly as a god.
So, why do they have such low crime rates and such a high standard of living?
rltjs
It’s interesting that you think the fact that atheists are there to oppose religious nonsense is a way to “refine” religion. It cuts the fat, does it? This would mean that a believer of a particular religion, of which was put to atheists scrutiny, would actually concede points to those that oppose their ideas. This, to me, actually reveals the fallacy of far more than only what is conceded.
Simply put, you can’t imagine not believing in God. What a strange view of the world.
wintermute
HAHA, that lady has been pregnant for 19 years straight!!! Prayze Jeezus!!
@Reformedsteve:
I don’t think anyone here makes that assumption, Steve. It’s you who are making that assumption about us. I was not raised in a Christian household and became a Christian as a teenager. Many others have had similar experiences.
What’s interesting is you’ve taken the WEAKEST argument for Christianity and tried to turn it into your strongest argument. Where’s the historical accuracy for Eden? The tower of Babel? The worldwide flood? The miracles of Moses? The enslavement of the Jews under the Egyptians? ANY contemporary evidence for Jesus? Herod killing the baby boys? ANY evidence for Jesus miracles? ANY evidence for ANY miracle at all?
Steve, I know you are taught that the bible is historically accurate — and in some cases, it is — but it’s certainly not a model of historical scholarship. It’s a boatload of myths.
In other words, we deal with the “historical accuracy of the Bible” by denying it and seeing no relevance, even if it was true. Most modern history books are considered “historically accurate” by both Christians and atheists (which is better than the Bible) — is that evidence to you that they are inspired by God?
I think the theist arguments are best summed up by Shaw, on this thread:
“Pardon him. Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”
I was going to leave without further comment, but I feel Ortho needs responding to. Christopher’s just a bonus.
@Christopher:
No surprise you buy into New World Order conspiracy theorist crap. Religion is the single biggest conspiracy theory of all time.
Meanwhile, have you talked to a therapist yet?
Have you heard the good news of Nothing?
Nothing can save your soul!
What awaits you when you die? Nothing.
Nothing can magically cure all ills!
Much easier to believe that any god.
@Orthos:
So the Ultimate Truth is okay with all those killed by the Inquisition, for starters?
I suppose that death and torture was okay when it was religion doing it? Oh, but for you it’s about quantity:
“Anything Christians have done pale in comparison to Stalin, Pol Pot and their ilk.”
Ignoring the question of whether it matters that one or another genocidal maniac was an atheist ( I notice you prudently left Herr Schickelgruber off that list), are you saying that murdering a million people is inherently somehow worse than murdering a thousand?
Or one?
Sounds like moral relativism to me …
Would that not tend to indicate a belief system with no “Ultimate Truth” underlying it?
You want truth? There is no evidence for god, and least causes suggests to within an ace of certainty that he/she/it doesn’t exist except in the minds of his/her/its followers.
Luke,
I have trouble with your statement, here.
“Religions are doomed to failure, and … 99% of them have gone the way of the dodo, while modern atheism is the same as it has always been.”
First, you’re wrong. Religion is not extinct nor is becoming extinct. Your attempt at a witticism is actually flatulent falsehood. Religion has shown no decline in past centuries, and though, like many things, its strength will show trends in both upward and downward directions from time to time. To say that it is becoming extinct is wishful thinking.
Second, you’re wrong about atheism. It’s not the “same as it has always been.” It has changed. Additionally your defeat your statement when you modify the athiesm you indicate as specifically modern atheism. This implies that there was once a traditiona counterpart in the same worldview and that the modern athiest is a breakaway from the views of the traditional atheist. Furthermore, atheism in modern times is not the strategic and well-rationed atheism scholars find in texts of early philosophy. It is the formula for the angry brick-in-church-window burn-crosses prejudice and attitudes we find around the world today. If one openly proclaims himself or herself a Christian then modern atheists no longer need to logically refute the Christian worldview but merely call the Christian an idiot for “going the way of the dodo.”
Additionally, Truth as an abstract applies to more than arguments between little boys about whether there’s a God or not. The truth this politician indicates could be the truth found in human experience, be that the experience of illusions or sensations of human invulnerbility (a very real and widely shared human experience). Unfortunately, the truth is humans are often wrong about themselves. And still even more unfortunately, humans waste time attacking others for their beliefs.
“You can be very well assured that, far from converting my children… my children will be there to try to convert you, if for no other reason to release you from whatever drove such bitterness into your soul.”
“The same folks who say that Christians tout out “tired” arguments have, in my experience, never read Thomas Aquinas to the extent that I’ve read Nietschze.””
And like nearly everything else you’ve said, you would be wrong about these things as well.
I left religion, not because anything bad happened to me, but because I could no longer ignore the mountains of evidence against the biblical mythology. I don’t deal well with cognitive dissonance. Apparently you’re fine with it. But as far as your kids go? Statistics are on my side. More and more people are abandoning the religion they were raised in. That curve will only keep going up. ‘Unaffiliated’, the fastest growing religion in this century.
And I read Aquinas. I was a devout student of the bible and the apologists. I’d bet I can mop the floor with you in any sort of theological debate. The problem, and one of the reasons I am no longer religious, is that Aquinas utterly fails to make a convincing argument. I realized that once I’d stopped granting him all his initial premises, all his arguments fell apart. Aquinas makes compelling arguments in favor of god only for people who already believe in god. His work is filled with logical fallacies if you don’t.
And if you think Nietschze has anything to do with anyone becoming atheist, you really are ignorant of the other side. I don’t know a single person who became an atheist after reading Nietschze. I know dozens of them who became atheists after reading the bible. I personally became an atheist after reading thousands of pages of apologetics and attempts to justify biblical inaccuracy.
The fact is, your arguments ARE tired. They are weak, worn out, limp attempts to fight the dissonance in your own head. Don’t be surprised when they totally fail to convince anyone else.
Now go troll someone else’s blog.
A few centuries ago, the Catholic Church could execute people for not being Catholic, and ~95% of Europe was Christian. Now, no church claims that amount of power, and about 30% of Europeans consider themselves religious.
I would say that counts as a “decline”.
Wrong on several levels. “Atheism”, pure and simple, is not believing in gods. If there has been any change in atheism over time, it’s purely that atheists today argue against different gods than Aristotle did.
True, there are some atheists today (but far from all of them) who are more outspoken than they tended to be in the past. But that probably has more to do with the fact that they’re far less likely to be executed for their disbelief. Lynch mobs still murder the occasional atheist, but this is far from it being an official policy.
Many atheists don’t care about religion at all, and many only object when religion forces its way into the public sphere (when politicians say that atheists shouldn’t be considered citizens, for example). Some small minority believe that everyone should give up religion, but I’m not aware of any that want atheism imposed by force; we tend to believe in personal freedom, after all.
Even those who believe that religion is inherently harmful (Dawkins, for example) will argue against religion rather than simply writing theists off as “idiots” for “going the way of the dodo”. Of course, if you’re the 100th person to raise the same stupid, illogical, unworkable, factually incorrect arguments with them, it’s probably not too surprising if they’ve already gotten fed up with fighting the same battles over and over and over again. Come up with something original, and you’ll get a lot of polite, respectful attention from atheists.
Unfortunately, that never seems to happen.
Yeah. I think the most annoying thing are the theistic assumptions that 1) we haven’t really thought about it, 2) we don’t understand Christ/Christianity, because if we did, we would be Christians, and 3) we secretly believe in god, we just hate him.
Once a person drops any of those three on me, they’re an idiot. I mean, I understand why they do. I used to fling those three fallacies around like nobody’s business when I was religious. But, then, I was also an idiot. I don’t hold anyone else to a standard I don’t hold myself to.
@carefulfish
You know, I mentioned that to the guys down at the Circle of Zeus just the other day. Both of them agreed with you. So did the High Priestess of Samhain (we let her hang out with us because her false religion seems incapable of attracting more cultists).
The only difference between the Christian mythology and any other that predeceased it is the power of literacy. An idea can capture a mind (even a bad idea), but it spreads more easily as interpretable text than as verbiage (or indeed as blog comments). The head in which the knowledge of God is encased can be removed (as the Christian Romans did to so many folks), but the book endures.
But as history fills itself with examples, and the world and universe grow ever wider and more explored, religion eventually dies of terminal contradiction. Atheism is the only unchanged philosophy. There are no gods, period.
This “flatulent falsehood,” you speak of–that explains why so many churches have to burn candles and incense!
Because modern Christians have a total corner on logical argument refutation. Atheists just turn up at baptisms, beat up preachers, and burn crosses or something. Ha!
Although … um, cross-burning and beatings seem to be primarily a Christian activity, so far as I know. Or are you saying the Ku Klux Klan are Buddhists or something? Most atheists will just talk you to death.
May I just say:
Well YOU started it!
Vorjack,
see webster or encarta about “atheist/atheism” and I mean what I said. I know what I talk about.
I see myself more of science and a materialism. A materialist will neither deny nor confirm the existence of God. For or against any argument in there cannot be proven. No proof. A waste of time. It would be unscientific to be talking about thing one cannot prove or substantiate. see?
A person who concludes that there is no God is in fact a phony, a fake if he says he is of science. There has never been solid proof that there is no God… The opposite side of some coin.
By the way, Matter cannot be created therefore it has no beginning. Matter is there all the time since infinity. No explaination. Mystery. Not even Albert Einstein will venture a word more than that. Because I will bet you, you will have your feet off the ground and youll be flloating in spiritual space if you do.
Beyond facts is off limits to true science and materialism. There is space for theory in there but not for conclusion.
Mcbloggen,
If you have not seen one, now you do - me.
I look at what the very religious say and I look at what the “unreligious” say and I get what I sense is Nutrients in there and throw away the bones. That’s my religion.
@RLTJ -
Well, my Websters defines Atheism as a disbelief in a deity. This states positively what I said negatively: a lack of belief in a deity. So, what’s your point?
“There has never been solid proof that there is no God… The opposite side of some coin.”
Man, I’m waiting until this one is finally dead. We respond to it on a weekly basis.
1) It is impossible to prove a negative in most circumstances. I cannot prove that there is no God. You cannot prove I don’t have a dragon in my garage. You cannot even prove I don’t have a garage. I might have a house you don’t know about. I might have a garage in another dimension. I might have metaphorical garage.
2) Since it is impossible to prove a negative, the burden of proof must fall upon the the one making the positive assertion. It is not for the skeptic to disprove the entity. The person making the assertion that the entity exists must provide sufficient evidence.
3) The rule of parsimony states that we should not posit new entities when there is no need. There is no current evidence that require a deity to explain. Until such evidence is presented, we must provisionally conclude that no such entity exists.
This simple fact is the point behind such thought experiments as Carl Sagan’s “dragon in the garage” and Bertrand Russell’s “teapot orbiting mars.” We cannot prove that there is no teapot orbiting mars. Is it reasonable to believe that there is one? Is it reasonable to be agnostic as to its existence?
It is also behind such internet jokes as the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the invisible pink unicorn.
@RLTJ
You do not have the right to redefine a word contrary to what the established definition is. This is commonly done in order to deceive. If you cannot use the accepted definition of a word, don’t use it.
Remember that. Not just now and here, but in all your future conversations with atheists and anyone else: the moment you feel the urge to redefine a word, you are being deceptive. Perhaps even deceiving yourself.
Intellectually honest people will not act in that way. If you want to carry on a discussion using the actual definitions of words, please do.
Vorjak-
Just a minor note, but thanks for those bullet points about the burden evidence. Always useful, and yet so easily lost in discussion. Thank you!
@Orthos:
“Well, wintermute, let’s put it this way: When I see atheistic families of 4, 5, 6 or more kids, then I’ll reconsider. ”
Great - my “atheistic” family includes 4 kids and 2 loving parents. We are friends with at least two other “atheistic” families of 6.
Now we can put this whole stupid argument behind us.
“Be pissed off all you’d like: I consider it child abuse to tell a child that s/he is all alone in the universe, especially given the eternal repercussion.”
1. My kids aren’t alone in the universe, they are part of a loving family.
2. If you consider this child abuse, you probably haven’t seen what child abuse actually looks like.
3. There are no eternal repercussions for not believing in God.
4. Scaring a kid in to believing that an eternity of torture awaits him for failing to believe or act the right way is just cruel.
The arguments of theists on this blog remind me of the old joke. It concerned a man who found himself shipwrecked on a desert island. On his first night he was discovered by a party of castaways, all survivors of different vessels, who took him in and fed him.
That night around the campfire, he witnessed a strange ritual. One man shouted “42!” And everyone laughed. Another shouted out “67!” and everyone howled. Standing beused as the numbers flew, the man asked a local what the deal was.
“Oh,” replied his host, “We have only one book here, a joke book. And since it’s quite precious we don’t handle it. Instead, each of us reads it and commits the pages to memory, then when we want to tell a joke we simply yell out the number. He turned to the group and called out “Nine!” And everyone fell about laughing.
So our hero dedicated his next couple of days to memorizing the text. Finally one night around the fire he stood up and called out “26!”
There was utter silence.
“Sorry,” he asked, “Did I say something wrong?”
“Not really, replied a voice from the darkness beyond the fire, “It’s just that some people can tell a joke, and some can’t.”
From now on, I suggest we pick some tome or blog post, and whenever someone turns up with the usual composted arguments that we had to beat flat last week, we simply reply with a link and a number.
In the case of RLTJ’s Pascal’s Wager argument, I cannot offer a number. I would simply send him here.
In other news, an agnostic claims that congressmen are DAMAGING!
Teleprompter: Well said. Those that dispute that ethics are inherent need a dose of Marc Hauser’s Moral Minds.
I love how the old canard comes up of the ‘evil atheist’. Hitler (who’s name was surprisingly not mentioned - maybe some theists finally realize he was not an atheist), Pol Pot, Stalin - these were ideologues (where the real problem lies) every bit as dangerous as de Torquemada and his ilk.
One fact that blows this argument out of the water is what of all those who carried out the terrible orders of their masters. Were they all atheists too? Rather impossible, I should think. People are people and religion is no guarantor of ethical behavior. In fact, it doesn’t seem to make any difference at all. Find out how the city of Jüdenberg got its name and you will know exactly what Stephen Weinberg was thinking of when he wrote:
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
Metro:
I started a page of often brought up and silly creationist arguments on my blog, if you’re interested.
I like it, Metro.
It does seem frustrating to have to keep repeating yourself to beat down the same arguments over and over. I wonder, though, if it would be as fun. I mean, it is rare that a theist actually poses an interesting question, so if we had those threads to link to, we would mostly just be doing that in response to those tired arguments. In which case I think you would miss the debating as much as I.
@ Mcblog-
If you are looking for an interesting question why dont you take a stab at the one I just post on the “atheists dont oppose God” thread.
Consider what a game-changer that would be…or just how it might change…Mcb…
Or…just pick it apart upon seeing the the letters “John C” as usual w/o ever even examining the content from a NEW perspective.
JC
@Daniel Florien:
If you don’t think anyone (read non-believer) here makes assumptions then you don’t read your own blog. I was making an observation about the comments that are posted here. You sir have made assumptions about me because you assumed that what I know about the accuracies of Scripture is based by what I was told in Church. The truth of the matter doesn’t fit so neatly.
In other words, we deal with the “historical accuracy of the Bible” by denying it and seeing no relevance, even if it was true.
So if I were to do this with a Richard Dawkin’s book you would accuse me of what exactly? I myself would accuse myself of putting my head in the sand and not dealing with the issues that oppose my beliefs.
I’m still wanting you to point out where Christianity was discussed in the article.
Solo Christo,
Reformedsteve
@reformedsteve - “In other words, we deal with the “historical accuracy of the Bible” by denying it and seeing no relevance, even if it was true.”
Historians view the books of the Hebrew Bible as collections of myth, theology, literature and propaganda with a smattering of history - pretty much the same way we view the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Enuma Elish and the Bhagavad Gita. Perhaps you can make a case that we should treat it differently. I’d be interested in hearing it.
VorJack,
Your statement is utterly false. To use “historians” by itself with no identifier makes your entire statement incorrect. Try the word “some”, or “a few”, etc… The vast majority of historians view the Bible as historically accurate.
ketch22,
Which parts of the Bible are historically accurate: Adam and Eve? Cain killing Abel? Noah and the flood?
Are you sure about this?
The history and archeology of the area in question is well known. The bible tells falsehoods. The land was not monotheistic at a time when the bible claims it was. This is proven by the distribution of holy symbols of other religions. There are many scholarly works on this that you could read if you chose to. This information is all available publicly.
Ketch, you claim that the vast majority of historians view the bible as historically accurate. I dare you to find a source for this. Something real and verifiable. As far as I know, the most knowledgeable in the relevant areas of history and archeology would disagree with you. You have made a claim that you should back up. If you want to declare that those experts in the fields of history and archeology are wrong, you will need to find something in a peer reviewed journal to back up a claim of that sgnificance.
@Ketch22
I am a historian. (well, public historian, but let’s not start a fight here.) I am unaware that the bulk of those in my field have thrown out the principle of analogy, the hermeneutics of suspicion, the rules of evidence and the rest of the historians toolkit.
Perhaps you can provide some evidence to back up your claim?
“Yeah. I think the most annoying thing are the theistic assumptions that 1) we haven’t really thought about it, 2) we don’t understand Christ/Christianity, because if we did, we would be Christians, and 3) we secretly believe in god, we just hate him.”
I think the most annoying things are the anti-theist assumptions that 1) all Christians are Catholic and anything the Catholic religion has done relates to all belief in Christ, 2) Hitler was a Christian… believing in Jesus does not make you a Christian… trust and faith in what He did to atone for your sins and living a life in stride with His is what makes you a Christian, Hitler doesn’t fit the bill, 3) the biggest assumption they make is that there is no God. They spout that there is no evidence for God, while most people submit that there is (who is wrong?) If 95% of a nation tells you that they are oppressed, and 5% tells you that it is a great nation without oppression, most intelligent people would probably believe that the nation is oppressive. All Christians will tell you that God has made Himself real to them… just because you don’t have that revealed to you, doesn’t make it false… it just means that God hasn’t revealed Himself to you. Get over yourselves thinking that and blog about something you know… not something you don’t know (disbelief).
“Once a person drops any of those three on me, they’re an idiot. I mean, I understand why they do. I used to fling those three fallacies around like nobody’s business when I was religious. But, then, I was also an idiot. I don’t hold anyone else to a standard I don’t hold myself to.”
You were probably an idiot if you flung those three fallacies around. I don’t believe that about athiests and I am a believer. So if you did believe this when you were “religious” then you were probably an idiot. And idiocy doesn’t change just because you stop believing in a god.
VorJack,
You first made the claim, so I will wait (I am sure you will find it) for proof of your claim that historians don’t believe the Bible to be an accurate depiction of history. I will follow that up gladly by allowing you to see a few prominent historians (I won’t name them all) who view the Bible as historically accurate (and they aren’t even believers… just great historians).
The Bible is one of the most well written historical documents from this era… other documents from this era don’t have the background this book has, yet they are without question… accurate for the most part. Because the Bible also claims to be divine in nature, a lot of athiest historians immediately dismiss the accuracy.
And let us stop the child abuse nonsense. There is no child abuse in telling your child about God. That is complete nonsense and I think you know it.
Wow, nice to know someone in Congress still knows who controls the universe (and is in keeping with our founding principles).
@VorJack:
Historians view the books of the Hebrew Bible as collections of myth, theology, literature and propaganda with a smattering of history - pretty much the same way we view the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Enuma Elish and the Bhagavad Gita. Perhaps you can make a case that we should treat it differently. I’d be interested in hearing it.
You want me to do the one thing I can not and that is to change your mind. You seem to want me to make a case for this reason. After all in order for you to admit the Bible has a divine author you must leave a naturalistic view of truth aka you get converted. I maintain that the only one who can change your mind is God. This issue is highlighted by the arguements that are put forth on this blog. Both sides seem to use the same sources but see very different things. For example, I say the Bible is accurate and you say yes but so are other ancient books. The only difference is the presumptions used in their reasoning (your refusal and my acceptance of God as the author of the Scriptures). I was only interested to see how current atheists reason the non existence of God in the hopes of growing in my understanding of the religion and the people who practice it.
Sadly, there is nothing new that can be added. From my point of view this is by design as it underlines the grace bestowed in the Lord Jesus Christ and not the persuasiveness of the debater.
To use a church cliche, if I were able to save you I would have saved myself along time ago.
Solo Christo,
Reformedsteve
I’m having trouble making it through this thread, but a few things for the theists to consider:
1) Having a large family is not a goodness in and of itself. Worldwide, the birth rate is far above the rate of replacement and there is no risk of mankind going extinct. The argument that atheists are bad because they’re not having enough children is stupid. How many children did Mary have? How many children did Jesus have? And there are plenty of devout Christians with few children and none at all. Perhaps some people are simply not “called” to have children?
If you’re wondering why the most successful societies were the ones with the most children, the question answers itself. When the average lifespan is 25 years and stillbirths and infant deaths are commonplace, only societies that have a lot of children are going to survive. But conditions have changed somewhat in the last century or so, in case you haven’t noticed.
The other strange thing is that it’s typically atheists who have the biggest interest in leaving the earth a nice place for the future, even though they don’t seem to have so many of their own children. Perhaps atheists are SO moral that they see all of mankind as their family and wish to see all their brothers and sisters prosper both in the present and the future.
2) Atheism is not a religion. If atheism were a religion, we would congregate and worship; say prayers and perform rituals. We don’t. We don’t worship anything. That’s the point. We don’t worship “facts” or “science” either. We see enough nobility in mankind that we don’t feel obliged to bow before some other power. It is not a “belief in nothing” that characterizes atheism, it is constant skepticism of ideas new and old. It is the notion that if you want be to respect your ideas, you should demonstrate why they are respectable.
3) Without the Bible, there is no absolute morality. This is not a problem, because WITH the Bible there is no absolute morality. How many of you think homosexuals should be put to death? Disobedient children? Do you think you’re morally obligated not to eat lobster? Besides that, it seems to me that the New Testament doesn’t forbid anyone from anything as long as they repent and find Christ (even if it is on their deathbed). The fact is that you can take any tiny, homogeneous, orthodox Christian sect and STILL find several people in that sect who can’t agree on right and wrong. If you want to use your superior morals as an argument, maybe you should figure out what those are first and foremost. Seriously, go talk amongst yourselves. We’ll wait.
Incidentally, there is a strikingly low proportion of atheists in the US prison population. Do you think this means that atheists CAN be (and are) moral, or just that they’re smart enough to get away with being immoral?
4) A lack of a higher power than man does not indicate that “might makes right.” All over the animal kingdom we see cooperation used as a survival strategy, and it works quite well. Most people realize that cooperation is its own reward and that working together, people can accomplish much more than they can on their own.
5) For those of us who base their atheism on doubt, the Stalin/Hitler/Pol Pot argument holds no water. The fact is that all three of these people came to power through a lack of skepticism on the part of their constituencies. Had the Russians, Germans, or Cambodians bothered to question why they were being told to do the things they did (as I would, and as I believe just about every one of the regular readers here), that evil wouldn’t have festered the way it did. All three of these men capitalized on the fact that their cultures put a premium on blind obedience, which is the very opposite of the philosophy of most atheists. Those nations were not atheist by choice; they were atheists by decree. This is the very opposite of the free thought that my sort espouse.
Incidentally, I don’t believe that religion “causes” religious wars, inquisitions, or pogroms and I never use that argument. Such widespread acts of violence are, from what I know of history, always committed for the purpose of gaining political or economic power. When religion is involved, it is because those who stand to gain money or influence use it as a lever to motivate (really, manipulate) those who stand to gain nothing by laying down their lives. So I don’t think religion is inherently immoral, but I think it can be used to make people tools in the hands of immoral people.
6) Someone above asked for an objective truth. Trivial. You will never at any point in your life leave the surface of the earth merely by flapping your arms. Objective truth: the earth is almost perfectly spherical. Light moves through a vacuum at 3 * 10^8 meters per second. I could come up with a hundred more off the top of my head, and these are all things with which only lunatics would disagree. The things about which we could find the most consensus across all the people of the earth are simple material facts. And the only people I’ve seen doubt the more complex material facts are people who don’t have the knowledge or background to understand how their truth was determined. Interesting, that.
I see that many of my points were already made by some of the other posters, but I wanted to express myself on a couple of points made by believers above.
I absolutely despise people like this. They have no logical reason to believe in “God” and yet STILL persecute and practice bigotry it “His” name. I have no issue with Jesus Christ, or those affiliated with his name- they have the right to believe whatever they want. I myself believe that, though Jesus Christ did a lot of good, he was not the son of “God”, and regardless of whether he was or not his image should NEVER be used in anything less than a positive way toward any group.
That being said, I feel that religion is a thing of the past, something that existed to explain the then unexplainable. People scoff at the Greeks’ notion of the Pantheon, without even considering that their explanation is just as far-fetched.
@Ketch22 -
Well, let see. We can start with Isreal Finklestein, a Jewish archeologist in Tel Aviv. He’s probably the most prominent Biblical Minimalist currently operating. His works - “David and Solomon,” “Unearthing the Bible” and so forth - are probably the most approachable entry into the field - other that the tongue-in-cheek Guild of the Biblical Minimalists. You can see a list of their members here: http://minimalists.wordpress.com/
Finklestein, and other minimalists like Hector Avalos, have managed to establish the a-historical nature of the Exodus by showing the lack of transition in the archeological record. They’ve even been able to wrangle concessions out of their nemesis, William Dever.
Then there are literary historians like Thomas L. Thompson out of Copenhagen. He’s an interesting one. He’s done a lot of work with archeology and ancient history, but his most recent work is examining ancient literature. In his work, “The Messiah Myth,” he tries to show how literary themes from the ancient world are adapted in Jewish and early Christian literature.
There’s a lot of interesting work being done on Jewish polytheism. Dr. Mike Heiser has a blog, “Two Powers in Heaven,” that looks like it’s picking up. Jarl Fossum, Daniel Boyarin and Alan Segal have also written about it.
Let’s see, Phillip Davies, Kurt Noll, and Dorothy King are biblical minimalists. Of course, we’re stuck with Tom Harpur (Pagan Christ), but you’re stuck with Hershel Shanks (and you have my condolences.) There are other, like Rene Salm, who believe that the archeological evidence shows that Nazareth was unoccupied at the time of Jesus, but I can’t find out if there’s anything behind that. The mythicist debate is getting heated and I don’t like what it is doing to the discussion.
I could list some blogosphere stalwarts, like Richard Carrier, Robert Price and so forth. I’m trying to avoid multiple links to avoid getting stuck in moderation, so you’ll have to google. Richard Carrier has some great essay up at Internet Infidels. While I’m at it, Dr. April DeConick - who would probably fit into the category of minimalist - has a great post up called “Theology is not History.”
OK, I’m rambling at this point. I’ll stop.
Historians know that there was no global flood that killed all of humanity except one family; that Herod didn’t order a slaughter of the innocents; that the Census of Quirinius didn’t require people to leave their homes; that the walls of Jericho didn’t collapse just because someone played a trumpet.
These are all historical claims made by the Bible that are contradicted by huge amounts of physical and textural evidence. The only people who do believe that these events actually happened are those people who do not consider any evidence other than the Bible itself; these people are not historians but apologists.
Some questions I found somewhere in the mess above are worth answering:
This challenge has teeth only if you assume that the common-sense notion of causality is true universally. And it’s not. On another thread, I listed a few phenomena that do not obey causality, and they are some of the most fundamental phenomena in the universe: nuclear decay, atomic emission of radiation, particle/antiparticle creation and annihilation.
In addition, human beings have a very parochial sense of what “time” is, and if you were to take the time to learn a little about modern physics, I think you would be forced to concede that the notion of the universe beginning is more problematic than you are implying in asking this question. I’ve used the example before that if you were to approach a black hole, your local time would slow down to the point that you could turn around and watch stars form only to supernova seconds or milliseconds later. You would watch the whole universe dissipate into a fine vapor before you made it past the event horizon. If the big bang was a singularity and you could travel backwards in time, you would experience something similar; you would never reach the actual beginning of time. You would experience something very like Zeno’s paradox.
The notion that the origins of the universe should be intuitive is, at least to my mind, a very arrogant notion. Even so, I can think up a few possibilities to suggest that such a thing could happen without any sort of divine intervention. For example, there are interpretations of quantum theory — real, mathematically rigorous interpretations — that rely on many-worlds scenarios and say, in essence, that everything that could ever happen happens. Since our universe is clearly a possible universe, it MUST exist. There are other possibilities, and the fact that you think you’ve thought through all of them demonstrates nothing more than ignorance and a lack of imagination (sorry if I sound rude; I realize you must be a pretty bright fellow and quite imaginative in your own right, so please understand that I am only making this judgment within the context of origins).
The golden rule makes a great standard, though I don’t think even that is necessary. Chimps and wolves don’t have God or His Word, but if you watch a social group of either species, they behave exquisitely morally towards one another. I’ve seen an alpha wolf give another wolf a “time out” because she tried to steal food from another member of the pack. She had to stand in a particular spot and any time she tried to move, another member would nip at her — though not hard enough to harm her. You can try to pass this off as autonomic behavior, but as I watched it, it seemed completely willful and strangely human.
What’s to stop them in the past or the present? That sort of behavior has been around for all of recorded history, and probably a lot longer. It’s coexisted with religion that whole time, and religion has often been used to justify it. While there have been societies that were nominally atheist that killed millions, they didn’t kill in the name of atheism; they didn’t justify those deaths through atheism. In fact, they tried to hide those deaths, because even in those societies they realized that murder is morally wrong. The notion that these things won’t happen as long as people continue to believe in God is laughable, since atrocities and belief have gone side by side for millenia.
I would also like to make the point that morality must, in some ways, predate religion. The first believers must have felt some sort of resonance with the religion as it was preached to decide to devote themselves to it. In fact, if you want to get together a group large enough to be called a “religion”, they need to be moral enough to live together in relative peace even before they start talking about theology. Christianity (and Judaism) hasn’t been around for eternity, or even all of human history. Have you ever asked yourselves how people got by before they heard the Good News?
@Ketch 22:
No, you made the claim that it was accurate before he made the claim that it was inaccurate. Pony up some scholarship to that effect. The ball is in your court. Nice try, though.
1) I’ve never assumed all Christians are Catholics ever since I learned that there were other churches (I was raised Catholic). However, where did your Bible come from? Was there some kind of organization that compiled and preserved the texts between the years, let’s say, 100 AD and 1500 AD? Do you think it’s possible that the historical Catholic church may have had some universal impact on the current state of Christianity, as diverse as it is?
2) In other words, you reserve the right to redefine Christianity until it excludes all people who might be an embarrassment to your claims of moral superiority. This sounds like a fun game. I want to play. OK, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot said they didn’t believe in God, but they weren’t true atheists. Hey, this is fun!
3) I also assume there are no unicorns, fairies, goblins, gremlins, Hellenic gods, Egyptian gods, Norse gods, martians, or teapots orbiting Mars. Do these assumptions also annoy you?
@Reformedsteve:
Please see my number (3) above. I assume things don’t exist until I see evidence otherwise, for the reasons Vorjack stated quite eloquently upthread. Since it’s impossible to prove a universal negative empirically, the negative position must be assumed until a positive case is made; otherwise, knowledge is arbitrary. This is how I reason the non-existence of God. And if God were to appear to me tomorrow, I would cease to be an atheist — the positive case would have been made.
Also, if you’re going to say that atheism is a religion, please define “religion.” Otherwise, I am simply going to say “atheism is not a religion,” and you will say “is too!” and I will say “is not!” etc. The only way we can decide once and for all whether you’re correct that atheism is a religion is to have a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a phenomenon to be considered a religion, i.e. we need a rigorous definition. I am doing you the courtesy of allowing you to define it, and I promise to abide by your definition so long as it meets the requirements mentioned in the previous sentence.
@Reformedsteve:
Also, what do you mean “practice it”? I’ve never seen an atheist church or a book of atheist psalms. I don’t know of any rituals that are performed by all atheists. In what sense can atheists be said to be “practicing” a religion?
I LOVE THIS BLOG!!!
@Ketch22 - “a lot of athiest historians immediately dismiss the accuracy.”
I think it has less to do with religion than you think. William Dever, a maximalist, is a secular humanist. Israel Finkelstein is a Jew and a pragmatic zionist (”we’re here, deal with it”). Finkelstein receives threats for his work showing that the conquest of Canaan and the Davidic empire never extended very far, which undercuts some of the Jewish claim to the Holy Land.
Or take Dr. Jim West (please! http://jwest.wordpress.com/ ). He’s a minimalist, yet also a fairly conservative Christian. In equal measure he rants about “total depravity” and sneers at the latest attempts to prove the biblical narrative. But he’s a follower of Rudolf Bultmann, the great neo-orthodox theologian and historian who taught the necessity of de-mythologizing the Bible.
So it’s not a clear athiest vs. Christian issue.
I do so love the Word of God!
Maybe I should clarify - “There’s a lot of interesting work being done on Jewish polytheism. ”
The folks I’m citing here are dealing with late Jewish Binatarinism, which not really polytheism, but is a really complex topic. It may be important to early Christian theology, but it doesn’t really fit the discussion. That’s the problem with doing a stream-of-consciousness post.
Early Jewish polytheism is another matter, and seems to be a pretty done deal. Take this paper from 1984 by - of all people - William Dever. It deals with Asherah, the consort of Yahweh: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1357073 .
Alright, I promise I’ll shut up now.
@JimmyO-
What did AI represent Jimmy? Do you know? Do you understand the deep symbolism? Who is Joshua a type of?
Why was it necessary to leave none alive Jimmy? And why the number 12,000? What does that represent? Any idea’s? hmm?
Tell us Jimmy…please.
God will not be mocked.
OK, I lied.
@reformedsteve - “After all in order for you to admit the Bible has a divine author you must leave a naturalistic view of truth aka you get converted.”
If it come down to a leap of faith, we’re screwed. Let me put it this way:
The Gospels say that Jesus was crucified, died, and rose for the dead.
The Qur’an states that Jesus escaped crucifixion - though exactly how is up to interpretation.
Both books are said by their adherents to be inerrant. But one of them must be wrong.
The historian could make a leap of faith in order to decide which book to believe. But deciding which direction to leap in will probably come down to which book is accurate. Catch-22.
If only there were some non-sectarian way to decide what actually happened. But you say there’s not. I guess we’ll never know.
@Dan L.
Religion is practiced in the matter which the religion in question defines it. For the Jews it is atonement of blood through the sacrifice of animals. This of course leads to the ultimate fulfillment of Christ for the Christian.
I would argue that an atheist practices his/her beliefs in likewise manner. In the case of atheism it would worshiping one’s self. Finding pleasure in the flesh with the assumption of non existence in death. This pleasure be it indulgence or pride in a good work will ultimately be self worship. This is how an atheist practices his religion; scripture also teaches this as the sin of Satan. The atheist is not as “free” from the chains of religion as they might like to think.
Unlike atheism Christianity directs it’s worship away from self and toward Jesus Christ who by his death and resurrection showed the glory of the Father.
I say these things not to scare you. You have proven that you do not fear the judgment of God so I would be wasting my time if I brought up divine judgment as a scare tactic. Plus, too many false conversions have been the only result of a, “turn or burn” approach of the Gospel. I simply point out that atheism is a religion with its own set of conduct just like Christianity.
Sola Fide,
Reformedsteve
PS. I hate to be a bother about this one point, but I’m still waiting for you or someone to show me where the article this thread is about mentions Christianity. I’m having difficulty finding it.
@VorJack
Read Genesis until you get to the bit about Sarah and Hagar. Then read the first chapter of Matthew. I think you will see why the Old Testament is more reliable. Also, bare in mind that the genealogy of the Old Testament has to this day a major impact on the Jewish culture. In case you want to know why I don’t have you look at the Islamic holy book it is because it’s first five books are the same with known modifications from the original Scriptures (look up the masorites if you have any questions about how that can be proven).
Solo Christus,
Reformedsteve
It has been said before, here… unless the veil is pulled back, the non-believer will never see, understand, comprehend what the believer does… they will mock and spit in your face what you know to be True.
I love the jimmyobishop rant about the OT and God allowing the smiting of all those people. I love how the atheist cannot comprehend God. How they continually put man’s rules on an infinite God. “God killed innocent people… oooohhhh I want to follow that God.” You cannot even comprehend that God lives outside the rules He set for man… i.e. killing. It isn’t killing for God if He is the one that gave you life in the first place… it is just Him 1) taking back what was freely given, or 2) God moving a person from a natural point of existence to a spiritual one. It is His plan, His will, and for us to humanize it is idiotic. If you cannot even comprehend this very important idea of who God is, how can you debate His existence?
@Dan L.
No, He made the comment that historians don’t believe the accuracy of the Bible before I made the follow up comment that they do. And he still hasn’t proved his point… as he said historians, indicating most or all. All I got was a few references and they are obscure at best… especially the “minimalist” who claim Christianity yet refute the accuracy of the Bible. Laughable. So when God says that this is His word… He also meant “but it is not accurate.”? I respect the atheist more at his word than a self-proclaimed Christian who denies God’s authority and Word.
And as the great Robbie James once said… debate rarely wins a soul to Christ, but prayer often does. So I will say a prayer for the group of you tonight, Christians included, that the Truth will reveal itself to you and/or strenghten you and that you will find it in your heart to truly seek God.
Remember, He left the 99 to find the 1… and we are the 1.
It has been said before, here… unless the veil is pulled back, the non-believer will never see, understand, comprehend what the believer does… they will mock and spit in your face what you know to be True.
If you can’t see the logical problem with that statement, you’re in trouble. Here’s a hint: Giving statements which boil down to ‘you can only believe if you want to believe’ is rather unhelpful and logically absurd.
How they continually put man’s rules on an infinite God.
So you admit to worshipping a god who is immoral and not bound to any sort of standards? Well, best of luck with that.
On the other hand, I hold that any being/entity with the judeo christian god’s track record should be regarded as a petty and jealous monster not worthy of pretty much anything.
And as the great Robbie James once said… debate rarely wins a soul to Christ, but prayer often does.
Um, right. I’ve yet to see evidence that prayer actually does anything of any worth what-so-ever. I think you’d be better off doing something practical like offering to go and fix someone’s plumbing or whatever.
@VorJack,
If you truly want to debate the proof of the resurrection vs. the fallicy of the Koran, I can shoot you on over to multiple sites where this debate takes place. There are a couple of things you have to acknowledge.
1. The truth can only be revealed to a seeking heart by God’s grace.
2. The resurrection was not just written about in a couple of books, but over 500 people witnessed the resurrected Christ. People whose lives were changed radically by this witness. People who denied Christ and persecuted Christians, after seeing Christ risen, became the persecuted and spent the rest of their life in ministry, torture, and jail for this witness. People like Saul/Paul, Peter who was even afraid to say he knew Jesus became a radical, etc… and this doesn’t happen unless you see someone who definitely convinces you that He is alive and well. There is alot more here and if you want we can talk about it. I suggest reading some of Peter Kreeft for more on this.
3. There have always been multiple religions opposed to the one true God… it has never been easy choosing. That is why we don’t choose based on what is best for us like most people do… we choose to submit and recognize our sin and depravity, and then only can we recognize the need for a God that only Jesus can supply… one who came and brought heaven to us… lived and then died to bring us to heaven. No other God offers that. Buddah can offer enlightenment, Confucious can offer words, Muhammed can offer the sword, but only Jesus did what needed to be done to offer us God. This is the God that I want to love and that I need. If you don’t think you need this, you are so wrong, but then again, you have to see it or you will never believe it.
“If you can’t see the logical problem with that statement, you’re in trouble. Here’s a hint: Giving statements which boil down to ‘you can only believe if you want to believe’ is rather unhelpful and logically absurd.”
The Truth will always be absurd to the blind. And you can only believe if you want to believe is truth… until you have no choice, but then it will be too late.
“So you admit to worshipping a god who is immoral and not bound to any sort of standards? Well, best of luck with that.
On the other hand, I hold that any being/entity with the judeo christian god’s track record should be regarded as a petty and jealous monster not worthy of pretty much anything.”
I submit the floor to you as you prove my point… you once again put a humanist view of what God should be in your argument about immorality. We are bound to God’s standards, God is not bound to ours. God sets the rules. I will say this again… how is it immoral for God to take life? When is it immoral for Him to take it? Should He let people live forever? (it was tried). Should He let people live and then die of natural causes only? What is natural? Doesn’t He still cause this death since He gives life and death? Should He not allow babies to die but only adults past the age of 18? Should He intervene in man’s stupidity in living in a hurricane zone and save everybody all the time? You tell me what His limits should be.
I will tell you that God eliminated evil in the OT because it effected the way His world was headed. The innocent children were taken before they could be corrupted and spend eternity apart from God… and they were brought to God before this could happen. Where is the immorality?
@Reformedsteve
First of all, find me a Jew who sacrifices animals. Unless you’re saying that all the modern Jews who don’t sacrifice animals aren’t really Jews who don’t practice Judaism?
Secondly, you’re accusing me of worshiping myself, and you don’t even know me. This only raises more questions. If you refuse to define “religion,” then define “worship” — offer me necessary and sufficient conditions for an action to constitute “worship” or we run into the same problem where you say “you worship yourself” and I say “I do not” and you say “do too!” and I say “do not!” ad nauseum. I would say that I don’t worship anything, least of all myself. If you want to convince me that I do, you will have to tell me what it means to “worship” myself.
If you won’t define terms, then you’re not defending your claims: you’re masturbating. And I would call that self worship.
As far as finding pleasure in the flesh, I’m more chaste than most Christians I know, and my greatest pleasures come from ideas rather than material comforts. I’m sure you can somehow spin my asceticism into “finding pleasures in the flesh” as long as you insist on refraining from entering into a serious debate, but if you do so please excuse me for writing you off as a judgmental coward.
@Ketch22
He never made the claim that any historians take the Bible seriously as a historical document. In fact, he pointed out a bunch of historians (theists no less!) who have written about historical inaccuracies in the Bible.
Of course, historians don’t arbitrarily pick and choose what they decide is historically accurate. They compare independent sources, and when the sources agree despite their independence, the historian acknowledges that the accounts are probably historically accurate. It helps when the claims in those sources are backed up by archaeology. The fact that you don’t seem aware of this makes me highly dubious of the validity of your historical perspective.
Of course, if you’re an inerrantist, you really have your work cut out for you. We only have to find one instance where the Bible is factually inaccurate to blow your premise out of the water. Here it is:
There was never a worldwide flood as described in Genesis. It never happened. If it had happened, it would be pretty obvious to geologists; and if it happened within the last 10,000 years it would be obvious to archaeologists as well. Since the archaeological and geological consensus is that no such thing happened, well, the Biblical account isn’t looking so hot.
@ketch22
Can you consider for a moment the fact that I could say the exact same thing to you? The Truth (that there is no God) will always be absurd to the blind (the religious) and you can only believe the truth if you want to believe the truth (i.e. if you don’t want to lie to yourself).
And if, on your death bed, you finally realize their is no God and that you’ve wasted your life that you could have spent admiring the beauty and complexity of the real world and the wonderful people in it instead of some imaginary sky monster, you will have to acknowledge that it’s too late. You will have already wasted your life.
Can you even imagine yourself being wrong? Imagining yourself being wrong is the essence of skepticism, which is the driving force behind my atheism, and I believe that of most of the regulars here if not all. Are you really so arrogant to assume that you’re the one with all the answers?
And here I thought humility was a virtue.
ketch22, you said the following:
“I submit the floor to you as you prove my point… you once again put a humanist view of what God should be in your argument about immorality. We are bound to God’s standards, God is not bound to ours. God sets the rules. I will say this again… how is it immoral for God to take life? When is it immoral for Him to take it? Should He let people live forever? (it was tried). Should He let people live and then die of natural causes only? What is natural? Doesn’t He still cause this death since He gives life and death? Should He not allow babies to die but only adults past the age of 18? Should He intervene in man’s stupidity in living in a hurricane zone and save everybody all the time? You tell me what His limits should be.”
Imagine a human father and his children. Here’s what I’m hearing from you:
“I submit the floor to you as you prove my point…you once again put a childist view on what the father should be in your argument about immorality. The kids are bound to their father’s standards, the father is not bound to his children’s standards. The father set the rules. I will say this again…how is it immoral for the father to take life? When is it immoral for him to take the lives of his children? When is it immoral to allow them to place their hands in electrical sockets and on hot surfaces, even though they don’t know any better, and then punish them for it, when he knew perfectly well that it was in their nature to do just that? What should we expect him to do? Prevent his children from sticking their hands in dangerous places until they know better - or childproofing the house? What should he do when the kids hurt themselves — reprimand them, and then use the experience as a valuable lesson for continued development? No, he should be completely negligent about child-proofing the house and then punish his kids for not listening, even though it was completely beyond their ability to follow his rules.”
According to your own accounts, your god never “sin-proofed” this world, took no precautions to protect us, and instead of teaching us to do the right things from experience when we didn’t know any better (knowing neither good nor evil), he irrationally decided (how typical) that it was impossible for us to learn to follow his rules altogether and cruelly condemned us, all the while causing chaos in the natural world as a further excessive punishment.
Your god fails at parenting. In fact, your god as he is described is pretty much an abusive or negligent parent. Forget to reveal yourself for thousands of years into human cultural development, and then neglect almost all of humanity for the first few thousands years of your intervention? — more like a deadbeat dad to me.
The Truth will always be absurd to the blind. And you can only believe if you want to believe is truth… until you have no choice, but then it will be too late.
Thank you for repeating exactly what you previously said without actually offering any sort of proof/evidence to back it up. It is still logically absurd, especially when you consider that it can be just as easily applied to any other religious belief system as your own.
I submit the floor to you as you prove my point… you once again put a humanist view of what God should be in your argument about immorality.
No, I say he should be bound by common decency no matter his role in existence (not that he exists, but let’s just roll with the hypothetical). I hold that any deity that willingly performs the acts detailed in the bible when other options are clearly available is a monster and is only worthy of worship by people who are themselves morally bankrupt (whew, that was a convulted sentence).
We are bound to God’s standards, God is not bound to ours. God sets the rules. I will say this again… how is it immoral for God to take life?
How is it not? It’s immoral for scientists to destroy life they create in a lab, hence why all experiments have to go through an ethical standards test/hearing. God is in no different position than that when you think about it.
Should He let people live forever? (it was tried).
No, it wasn’t; as can be evidenced by the fact there are no immortals walking the earth today. There are also no immortals mentioned in the bible … maybe you’re thinking about adam and eve but their supposed stint in paradise didn’t exactly last long, did it? And who do we have to blame for setting them up for their fruit tasting? Oh yeah … god.
I will tell you that God eliminated evil in the OT because it effected the way His world was headed.
Now how did he do that? Ah yes, by supposedly killing every person on the planet via flood sans one family when other options were clearly available (he’s supposedly omnipotent which means that there are ALWAYS other options available). There was also the ordering of genocide, including the massacres of women, children and even live stock (guess god doesn’t like sheep and goats or something. Oh well, to each his own).
God, mostly in the OT but there are examples in the NT, is a self confessed jealous and petty god so by that standard we should be petty and jealous as well. Hey, after all, he’s god and nothing he does could possibly be bad. Now you might be starting to see where your line of argument falls down on it’s ass.
So basically, “You will only see it if you want to see it.”
Which in this case boils down to, “If you want to see it bad enough, you will see it.”
McBloggenstein,
Isn’t this where all of our conversations with theists end up?
Heh.. yeah it’s interesting. I suppose it is inevitable, because all arguments by theists are based on an assumption that we are unable to accept for the most part, even for discussion’s sake, since that assumption has no basis. What’s even more interesting to me is that they can’t let go of their assumption for arguments sake. It sounds unfair to expect them to do such a thing when I don’t expect us to, but the point is that we are not making any assumptions, they are.
Of course, they would not agree with that.
I only wish I could keep up as much as some of you!
To recap: the initial atheist position is that atheism is not damaging. The original theist position is that it IS damaging.
That argument has devolved into an inerrantist spouting tautologies and insisting on the absurd lie that most or all historians vouch for the historical accuracy of the Bible (though he’s probably using his trick of “well, they’re not real historians if they don’t agree with ME…I mean the Bible!”) and an atheist come Christian (notice I don’t capitalize my word) insisting that I am a religion of one worshiping myself (even though he refuses to say what “religion” even means…I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he simply hasn’t seen my request to define “worship” yet).
None of which does anything to make the case that atheism is damaging. In fact, they’ve steadfastly refused to address the arguments to the effect that it is not damaging.
I think a certain quotation bears repeating here:
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” ~ Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics
Vorjack,
“And what, pray tell, is your definition of an atheist?”
Since I was asked my own definition of Atheism here it is:
Atheist or Godless was an invention by religious chauvinists to tag a person that in their view or opinion is inimical to their belief or faith, a tool in their efforts to maintain religious status quo – their status. rltj
And following is one established definition by Encarta:
atheism [áythi izəm] noun
unbelief in God or deities: disbelief in the existence of God or deities.
[Late 16th century. Via French from, ultimately, Greek atheos ‘godless’, from theos (see theo-).]
I think the established definition of the word atheism is factual enough. To change the definition could be twisting facts. And, as we can see my definition does not redefine the word but, incorporated into it, simply, actually just modified it.
Because you are right, in reality “atheism” has been applied to people that are not atheist. [I don’t even believe that there are real atheists. People calling themselves atheist, maybe. But I’d rather not dance to the tune of the chauvinists. I myself had been tagged an atheist.] NEITHER DENYING NOR AFFIRMING the existence of God is not the same as CONCLUDING that there is, or there is no God. Science is not atheism as many says it is.
I think we have to stick to established definition because if everyone makes his own re-definition there could be misunderstanding and confusion. I think that’s what you made to the word atheism. [“Here we tend to use the word atheist to mean someone without the belief in a deity”]
“These times will pass because eternal truth will survive atheism and the difficulties of the 20th Century.”
I am calling God Wins Law!
RLTJ
There is a difference between not believing in something, and knowing it doesn’t exist.
No one here has claimed that they know God does not exist. In fact, I have read several atheists say that they are open to evidence of his existence, and would change their minds if given it. You probably think that our definition of evidence is held to an impossible standard, when it comes to God. I will say that it is merely the same standard that we (and probably you) hold to everything else in our world.
Another note about your atheism definition: It is not actually that black and white. Richard Dawkins explains it well with a scale between 1-Strong theist, that knows God exists, and 7-Strong atheist, that knows he doesn’t.
Even Dawkins says that he doubts there are many #7’s. He says that he himself is a #6, meaning:
This is by definition, a skeptic. Someone that doesn’t believe something to be true, unless he is shown good evidence.
@RLTJ
“NEITHER DENYING NOR AFFIRMING the existence of God is not the same as CONCLUDING that there is, or there is no God.”
No. A lack of evidence requires us to render the provisional conclusion that the proposed entity does not exist. I laid out the steps behind that logic in my comment here: http://unreasonablefaith.com/2009/01/12/congressman-says-atheism-is-damaging/#comment-8445
What step do you take issue with? Do you not accept the principle of parsimony, the famous Occam’s Razor? Do you not agree that it is impossible in most cases to prove a negative? I cited Russell and Sagan. Do you disagree with their assessments?
Or is this all too high-brow? How about I quote from a magician instead of a philosopher? Here’s Penn Jillette from his “This I Believe” piece:
——–
“I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word “elephant” includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?
“So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. ”
——–
What part of that do you disagree with? Do you believe that is is reasonable to be agnostic about the elephant in his trunk?
Or should we use another example? Over at godchecker.com they list 2,850 different gods that humanity has believed in over the eons. They include the creature Yara-Ma-Yha-Who from the Australian aborigines. This charming fellow is a vampire with no teeth and suckers on his fingers who pounces on people who rest beneath trees and eats them. And them vomits them up, alive but a bit shorter than before.
I think I can confidently say that 99.9% of humanity is willing to disbelieve in the existence of Yara-Ma-Yha-Who despite a lack of evidence either way. Would you say that this is not reasonable? Would you say that we should remain agnostic as to his existence - and to the existence of the 2,849 other Gods listed?
@ Dan L.
VorJack stated: “Historians view the books of the Hebrew Bible as collections of myth, theology, literature and propaganda with a smattering of history - pretty much the same way we view the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Enuma Elish and the Bhagavad Gita. Perhaps you can make a case that we should treat it differently. I’d be interested in hearing it.”
This was the first statement I responded to… so quit spouting that he did not say it or that he did not say it first.
“There was never a worldwide flood as described in Genesis. It never happened. If it had happened, it would be pretty obvious to geologists; and if it happened within the last 10,000 years it would be obvious to archaeologists as well. Since the archaeological and geological consensus is that no such thing happened, well, the Biblical account isn’t looking so hot.”
From an athiest point of view, I can guess how you would come to this conclusion. There is no god, therefore any evidence that points to Biblical accuracy has to be refuted and investigated… and if we find something that points to its inaccuracy, it has to be truth… There is a bias here, just as there is a bias on the part of believers. We know the Bible to be accurate, because we know God to be accurate, therefore anything pointing to Biblical inaccuracy has to be wrong and investigations lead in that direction.
The Black Sea flood is one such answer. I have read numerous reports and such by great archeologists who claim its accuracy. You, on the other hand, would tend to listen to those who claim it is not. So until you understand that God is real, no claim made by anybody, no matter how convincing… would convince you… you would always seek somebody who had a refute and side with him/her.
@poobles:
On the contrary, God has been mocked throughout history, is being mocked right now, and will be mocked in the future. Yet he does nothing about it — and he told me to tell you this — because he doesn’t actually exist.
So you are wrong.
“And if, on your death bed, you finally realize their is no God and that you’ve wasted your life that you could have spent admiring the beauty and complexity of the real world and the wonderful people in it instead of some imaginary sky monster, you will have to acknowledge that it’s too late. You will have already wasted your life.”
This does not effect me. 1) I don’t know how I could finally realize that there is no God. I will either know, or I won’t know. When I arrive in Paradise, I will know. If I cease to exist, who cares. I won’t. I won’t even know. 2) I admire the world and the wonderful people in it while being a Christian. I can multi-task. You use terms like “sky monster” to reiterate your ignorance and inability to debate. 3) How is it a wasted life if I somehow find out I am wrong? I lived my life as a Christian… I found something that shaped me into a good person who helped out in his community, loved his fellow man, raised great children, had a wife who didn’t give up on me because her faith indicated that marriage was sacred and so we whethered the rough spots and now we have a stronger marriage… I didn’t focus on things that don’t matter in the long run (I will cease to exist in a little bit and everything I learned and did will no longer matter to me). 4) Eventually everything will cease to exist and the universe will eventually die, and all the good and bad we did as humans will not be known… anywhere… in fact, we are basically like the cockroach and worm or some other organism who goes through life and eventually ceases to exist. Our laws don’t matter and our justice system is a joke because eventually everybody has the same fate… non-existence. Hitler and Mother Theresa are basically the same, just 2 similar organisms who chose different paths in life… and even rememberance of this will cease to exist.
Answer me this. If you can’t possibly “know” that God doesn’t exist… you just believe He doesn’t exist… how can you debate against Him? Apparantly there is the possiblity that He does exist. And if He does, there is a possiblity He makes it known to some… and if He does, how can you, as a man of science, debate and claim that those who claim He does exist are idiots? You can’t possibly know everything that exists in the universe and the power that all these existences have to communicate with us. So if there is even the slightest possibility, how can you sit there and claim to know that we are wrong and that we haven’t been “communicated” to?
But it’s not the flood described in the Bible. It’s not global. It didn’t entirely destroy all humans who weren’t in Noah’s immediate family. It didn’t last an entire year.
Are you saying that the historical claims made in the Bible about this flood are false?
@Metro-
In one of your posts, you mentioned that Atheists were a “non-prophet society”. I understand what you are saying but I see endless quoting and esteeming of such as Dawkins, Hitchens & Harris types…these to me very much appear to be your “prophets”….no? They herald and influence thought…perspectives, etc (quite falsely I might add) but have every right to do so.
Just an observation….thx
JC…
They hold about the same status as Aquinus or Rick Warren; which is to say that they’re intelligent, thoughtful people who have interesting opinions of the topic and a fair amout of exposure, but no-one’s obligated to agree with them, or to take them seriously.
But when people make the same, tired argument for the 20th time, it’s easier to link them to someone else’s refutation of that argument than to type it all your yourself.
@John C.
“these to me very much appear to be your “prophets””
I don’t know if that analogy quite works. Prophets were originally God’s spokesmen in ancient Israel. Their authority stemmed from the belief that their words were inspired by God. Dawkins et. al., don’t possess that kind of authority among atheists. At most, they speak for a certain percentage of the group that happens to agree with them.
Vorjack
“I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do. You can’t prove that there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car…”
That there is no God is another BELIEF, see?
You may argue about non-existence of God forever and it wont get you anywhere, see?
It’s because what you believe is ’solid proof’ are in fact presumptions, assumptions, perceptions and beliefs. Same things as the thesis, just the opposite side of it. Beliefs.
And we are talking about real thing called matter that has no beginning and not about car trunk and elephant which wont fit in it.
Matter has no beginning and no end. Dot.
Maybe you can do better. Maybe you can explain why matter has no beginning and no end. But, I can guarantee you all that are mere theory based on beliefs. So, normally I will end with the Dot and no farther. There is no sense in arguing about something no longer solid and concrete in the first place.
“knowing”? Thats a belief. Opinion.
where are the facts? Dont tell me because what you have are beliefs upon heaps of beliefs. see? Id been there.
@rltjs
Did you bother reading the rest of the quote?
“So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. ”
The default assumption is that the proposed entity does not exist. The burden of proof falls upon the person making the assertion.
Look, I’ll admit the language gets sloppy. Most people consider “disbelief,” “lack of belief,” and “belief in the non-existence” to all be synonymous. Penn’s a magician and professional nutjob, he’s doesn’t exactly have a philosopher’s clarity of language. But the basic point remains the same: prove it. You’re making the assertion, now define your terms and make your case. Until you do so, I am entitled conclude that your deity does not exist.
Look, the only thing atheists and agnostics need to do is wait for evidence. It’s not our burden of proof.
People keep saying “how do you prove this?” or “how do you account for this?” I’m not the one making the supernatural claim(s).
I want some evidence. I want evidence that there is an intelligent, personal, supernatural being or beings, and that out of all the myriad gods which humans have ever conceived of, your god or gods is indeed the correct one.
All I can do is evalute the evidence I’ve been given. On one hand, I have all this evidence indicating that religion probably was evolved by humans (mythology, psychology, biology, sociology, comparative religion). On the other hand, the only reference I have for each deity are individual scriptures and theological works, which are often internally inconsistent and unreliable in many other ways.
For those interested in the internal inconsistency of the Bible, for example, here is a great post from another blog:
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/12/idq-flaw-of-meaninglessness.html
There are multiple articles in the series.
Please, tell me why I should believe your claims when there is no reliable source which tells me about your claims, and most of the other information I have contradicts your claims. None of the other issues are that important, except: why should I believe you? Where is your evidence? And how do you account for contradicting evidence? Thanks.
RLTJ, your definition of an atheist is just another attempt to misdefine a word in order to skew the direction of the discussion. If you cannot use the accepted definition of a word, then stop using the word. If you claim to have the right to redefine atheist, then you are allowing everyone in the world to redefine any word they want to mean anything they want. I assume you are able to see how stupid that would be. Now that you see how stupid your opinion is, retract it and attempt to learn from your mistakes.
I’ve said this countless times before: those who have the truth on their side will not feel the need to deceive. What you are doing here is just a common attempt to deceive. You may not see it that way, but every time I have seen a person deliberately misdefine a word it has come down to intentional deception. That should be enough to make you ask yourself some questions. If your beliefs are true, what is your reason for using deception? Shouldn’t the truth be able to defend itself? Why would a person with the truth on his side ever feel the need to avoid it, or hide it, or trick anyone at all? A person who truly believed in something would never feel the need to knowingly use misdirection and fallacies. Perhaps you do so unknowingly, perhaps.
Oh, and this ‘matter has no beginning and no end’… false. Simply blatantly false. It is always surprising when theists start using terminology from the sciences, because it so often goes back to misdirection and ignorance. If you are ignorant of the relation between matter and energy, don’t bother bringing it up in a conversation about gods, because you will find yourself dealing with people who know vastly more about the subject than you do and the inevitable result of that is that you make yourself look foolish.
If there is no sense in arguing about something that isn’t solid, why the hell are you here on an atheist website arguing about your religion? Each time your beliefs are confronted as being baseless, your response is ’so are yours’. The truth of that claim is open to discussion, but the implications of you saying what you have said is also open to discussion. By saying that you have admitted that your beliefs are baseless.
But this is all beside the point. The fact that you are here, attempting to use some form of logic and reason (however poorly) shows that you understand that logic and reason trumps faith. You wish to prove to us that your beliefs are true, which shows you understand how important it is to prove things. That causes a problem with faith. You see, if you had true faith you would not need or want or desire proof. Proof would remove faith from the equation. So by coming here and acknowledging the power of rational thought you are admitting that your own faith is not what it should be.
Excellent point!
Aor-
Try something original, you use the accusations “deceptive”, “mis-defined” words etc over and over. They really DONT apply to everyone my friend…besides, I was feeling kinda special for a while there with all those titles (crowns) you donned me with…lol
Try and hurl some new, original accusations…please.
JC
@Daniel-
I thought you said you couldnt prove He didnt exist? Now you tell poobles that God (rather emphatically) doesnt exist? This is the first such language I have heard from you in the definitive.
As far as God being mocked…He has no identity crisis, feels no compulsion to MAKE you believe…besides, that is not the correct interp of the word “mocked” anyway my friend.
Perhaps you have entered 09 with a more fervant “unbelief” than 08? Well…you know what that will bring dont you? Can you handle it? Yep…you are so close to invoking the mighty, ferociuos, holy…love of God (what did you think I was gonna say anyway?) lol
JC
@John: I don’t think God exists. I live my life that way, and I’ll tell others that’s what I think. However, he could still exist. I’ve been wrong before and I could be wrong now.
Fair enough…thx D for the response…you are good about that.
@Vorjack-
Thx V…a prophet need not be Jewish…besides, have you not heard? “he is not a jew (Gods chosen people) who is one outwardly, but rather who is one inwardly”. Romans 2:28.
So yes…a true’er, more contemporary and relevent definition would be one who pointed the way…and that influenced people inclined to believe that is the way. So yes, while I normally am quite docile w/regards to such discussions I would say that these men (dawkins, hitchens, harris) are much more the modern day atheist “prophet” than you might be inclined to accept.
JC
“Try and hurl some new, original accusations…please.”
Hehe… Why should the accusations be new, when the theist tactics remain the same?
(no offence to you John)
Hmm.. Well, think of it like this: They are not coming up with new ideas, really. They are just each arguing their side the best way they know how, based on ideas about belief that have been around for a long time, and the current culture happens to relate to their words better than other authors. I’m not sure that means that they are “pointing the way” in at all the same way the old definition of a prophet would. I see what you are saying though. But they don’t appear to wish upon others that they should think like they do. They have merely put their ideas out there, and lots have just happened to have agreed with it, and have made them a little famous.
@John C
Hmmm. Maybe. I think that waters down the definition a bit much. I should say that I have a strong bias in this matter: I refer to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the American prophet. I find that no other word has the resonance that suits the purpose. I don’t want to see the word become overused and prosaic.
Whatever I am now, I was raised a liberal Christian Southerner. There are certain built in facts that are non-negotiable. There are quite a few people of my father’s generation who speak as if Dr. King died for our sins.
Still, I take your point, that Dawkins, James “The Amazing” Randi, Daniel Dennet and so forth have a great deal of influence and unofficial leadership over the modern atheist movement. I’d quibble over Harris, who I think is not as respected.
McBlog-
Actually, even you might have to admit…”after further review” that I have maintained some rather original (and hotly contested) viewpoints there Mr. Marshmellow man…including many that my fellow “theists” would not dare yet venture into…yet.
Or have you even noticed…perhaps you have been too busy defending the unbelieving fort of prey and its garrison from those tyrannical “theist” intrusions. lol
JC
John C,
I do not dispute that your points are unusual for a theist, but I would still submit that they are mostly unoriginal.
@Tele-
Gee…thx Tele…love you too man.
“Theist” loving John lol
One thing that always puzzles me - theists assume that atheism _necessitates_ belief in the nonexistence of the human soul.
This is a non sequitur, in my opinion; it would be like atheists assuming that theism necessitates belief in the existence of the human soul. There’s no necessary connection between the two ideas, as far as I can see. I’m familiar with a number of belief systems that include the one, and not the other.
@John C
If the shoe fits, wear it. If theists didn’t repeatedly use deception and falsehoods and fallacies, I wouldn’t have to keep pointing out their use of deception and falsehoods and fallacies. Like, for example, how I pointed out your blatant lies, and proved them to be lies. Like how you don’t even deny that I proved you to be a liar multiple times on multiple threads, and instead you just pretend it didn’t happen. Like how you refuse to concede a point no matter how clearly and precisely it is made, nor how often. Like your attempts to misdefine words in order to suit yourself. Are you still claiming not to be religious, by the way? Are you still claiming atheists can’t feel love the way believers can? As I have said time and time again, John, you have no credibility and you have nobody to blame for that but yourself. You have tried to shift the blame to me, again, but if you had not come in and lied to us I would have no reason to call you a liar.
Some advice, John. The best way to regain your credibility would be to admit to your lies and apologize for them. In fact, I think some people would call it the christian thing to do.
ketch22:
Your entire PREMISE is that the Bible is inerrant. All your claims in this entire thread are based on this premise. You are the one making claims of inerrancy, and it is incumbent upon YOU to back them up.
Note that Biblical inerrancy does NOT follow from the existence of God, unless there is some reason to believe that God is, in fact, Yahweh and not some other deity from among an infinitude of possibilities. What reason do you have to believe this aside from faith? If it’s faith, bug off. We don’t have it and we don’t want it. Faith causes this kind of thinking:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/opinion/14goldberg-1.html?ref=opinion
ketch22:
By the way, this is incorrect. If evidence supports a certain part of the Biblical account, then they mutually reinforce each other. I don’t go out of my way to refute the Biblical account; I just won’t believe it unless it’s verified through reconciliation with independent sources. The fact that Herod was king during the time of Christ is not in doubt because it’s confirmed through multiple independent sources. The belief that Christ rose from the dead IS in doubt because the only source attesting it is the Bible itself (not to mention the fact that it’s prima facie an incredible story). I don’t deny that parts of the Bible are historically accurate. But much of it isn’t. See below.
But the Black Sea flood is NOT the Biblical flood, unless the Bible got the details all wrong — which contradicts your premise of Biblical inerrancy. In fact, I’ve also read about the Black Sea flood and I find it rather plausible, although there’s not exactly a smoking gun. If someone were to find stone foundations of an ancient settlement underwater 20 miles from the coast of the Black Sea, I would say the Black Sea flood happened. That would be enough reason for me to believe it. The fact that the Bible includes an account of a flood does not have any bearing on whether or not any particular historical flood happened.
It’s not a matter of me listening to this person instead of that person; I listen to EVERYBODY and doubt everything that ANYONE says unless they can make a good case for it. I try to systematically avoid bias. I would guess that you are projecting because your point of view is inherently biased and you refuse to acknowledge that someone else might try to avoid such a position.
Aor-
Dude…your like a broken record of unbelief…do you ever get tired of hearing…you?
Try something new…after all it a whole…New Year!
Try kindness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness…see if any of those shoes…fit.
JC
Are you suggesting that atheists aren’t already trying those things?
John C,
Yes, atheists are just as capable of being “kindly, compassionate, merciful, and forgiving” (paraphrase).
Why does one need spirituality…specifically your kind of spirituality…to realize these qualities?
@Dan L.:
Jews don’t sacrifice animals? Have you not read the Old Testament? Also, from a Christian point of view, the Book of Romans states very plainly that the church, meaning the believers in Jesus Christ, are the new Israel. Are they sacfricing animals now? No, most likely because they don’t have a temple. Why don’t they just build one. Oh, they will and it will be where the Man of Lawless proclaims himself above God (read 2thessolans). As far as your post about defining terms. I defined them all for you and gave examples. I am sorry that you do not like them. The thing about postmodernism and empricalism(sp?) is that you will never be able to know anything. If empricalism states, your experience determines truth rather then filtering truth through experience. You can’t do the later because truth is relative according to postmodernism. You in essence can never be sure of anything.
I know a good bit about you from your posts. The route you go in debating is a hallmark of everything that I have said. How can I get away with that statement? Read 2Peter chapter two. You might not like it. If you don’t like it you may want to ask why. If truth is relative anyway then what does it matter. And if knowledge and or truth is determined by experience you can only get mad if you had the experience of 2Peter. Either way you go, I hope you make a consistent choice.
Don’t result to name calling. But if you must I prefer something that rings true about me. Bible beater or Jesus freak comes to mind. Coward doesn’t fit because I have had this same discussion with people more knowledgeable then you in person. This is not to say that I think my intellect is greater then yours, but to say that my Master has promised that because He overcame the world so will I, because I belong to Him.
Sola Christus,
Reformedsteve
ketch22:
Hahahahahaha! Hahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha! Hahahaha! Hahaha! Oh, that’s rich…
How thick can you be? I’ve answered this question no less than three times on this thread alone, as have many others. I don’t “know” that unicorns don’t exist any more than I don’t “know” that God exists, but I will call anyone who CLAIMS that unicorns exist an idiot unless they can back it up with a live or dead unicorn that, upon examination by someone qualified to determine such a thing, seems to be authentic.
And if they do turn up the unicorn, then unicorns exist. It’s as simple as that.
@Reformedsteve:
Have you been to a synagogue? Again, find me a Jew alive today who sacrifices animals to God. That is not how Jews worship.
No you didn’t. You never said what a religion was. You never said what it meant to practice a religion except that it was “worship,” and you didn’t define that one either. Your “example” was the laughable one above that Jews practice by sacrificing animals, which simply isn’t true. You fail at debate.
What makes you think I’m a postmodernist? I’ve certainly never claimed to be one, nor made any arguments in the mode of postmodernism. In fact, I vehemently deny being a postmodernist and will argue with any postmodernist who tries to tell me that truth is relative. Because I don’t believe that truth is relative.
Evidently not if you think I’m a postmodernist or if you think that I believe that truth is relative. The route I go in debating is, in fact, antithetical to postmodernism, so if you concluded that I am a postmodernist from my method of argumentation, you also fail at reading interpretation.
Coward fits because you consistently fail to address my arguments or engage in debate in an honest manner. Instead, you refer me to more or less irrelevant passages from the Bible. What is 2 Peter:2 supposed to prove, exactly?
And more knowledgeable in what domain? Biblical scholarship? I concede. To me, the Bible is worth the $5 I paid for my copy. Science? I haven’t summed up my entire knowledge of science in this thread, so I don’t see how you could conclude such a thing. Similar for philosophy.
@Tele/Winter-
No…I was referring specifically to Aor…who is always harsh to me and any (theist) who might have a dissenting opinion….just encouraging him to make a change…or two.
Was not a general indictment…
JC
@Tele-
What are the origins of said qualities? Our difference is that you take ownership of them and I say they are aspects of our original paternity…thats all.
Btw…I’m sure you are a nice enough guy Tele…no wories there my friend.
JC
@ketch22:
Basically, by know they (atheists) mean they have made an assumption based in observation an example of this is macro-evolution. You can’t say the Big Bang theory is a case of this because no one, but God, has witnessed creation of any kind. It is backed up by his unicorn example. If he was to take that example and apply it to the saving power of Jesus Christ, his dead unicorn would be the judgment throne of God. Most likely he will then say it is God’s fault for not giving him the proof he needed for belief. If he debates this way then his man centerness is revealed, if he doesn’t then he is boastful in his ability to stand before a holy God.
Grace and peace in the name of Jesus Christ,
Reformedsteve
@john c
I notice that once again you don’t deny anything that you lied. Its hard not to take that as a complete agreement with what I stated. If you planned on not acting like a liar, you sure picked a strange way to do it.
Are you asking for forgiveness, John? Are you asking people to forgive you your lies, the lies you won’t quite ever admit to making? Are you asking for compassion? Do unrepentant liars deserve compassion? Are you asking for mercy? Kindness? Are you worthy of either? On what grounds? Shouldn’t you show yourself worthy of forgiveness by admitting your errors, worthy of compassion by repenting your lying and deceptive ways? You fail to live up to the ideals you claim to love, John. Fail horribly.
I know you won’t have any rational response to this, as usual John.
@ketch22, Reformedsteve:
Each of you has denigrated my debating skills after each of you has shown you know absolutely nothing about how to debate. Here are some tips:
Defining Terms:
Debate is impossible if each side has different interpretations for the same words. Thus, to make any progress in a debate it’s necessary to specify the meanings of the important words in an unambiguous way. This means stating all the conditions that MUST be met for a phenomenon to meet a certain definition (necessary conditions) and all the conditions that (each alone) necessitate that a phenomenon satisfies a certain definition (sufficient conditions). In practice, it is often sufficient to state a sufficient condition to show that a phenomenon satisfies a certain definition.
Stating Premises:
Premises are the underlying assumptions made at the outset of a debate. In true debate, both sides must agree on the premises. Thus, in this case “God exists” is not a valid premise as some of the debaters are not willing to assume its truthfulness. Argument entails showing that the debater’s conclusions follow logically from the premises given the definitions involved.
When a party to a debate is unwilling to either define terms or state premises — and neither of you have been willing to do either — I have to assume that they are not arguing in good faith. That party is essentially refusing to take a position in the debate, usually with the intention of subtly changing the character of their argument without informing the other parties. This is par for the course in internet apologetics by the way.
Here you show a complete lack of understanding of science and the philosophy underlying skepticism. There is good reason to believe that the Big Bang occurred, but no such evidence for unicorns. You fail science too.
@Dan L.
Is this were I find a way to compare you to Nazi Germany? Just Kidding, that comment was meant in good fun.
I thank you for your advice. It is the same thing I heard in a Gordon H. Clark lecture. You should look into his work you might like it and even value it.
I am interested in how`you would define religion.
@Dan L
Has a human being ever experienced a creation of a universe? You can’t have it both ways. You either know truth through the senses or you don’t.
Try and discredit me and brush me off all you want. The fact you do speaks volumes about how you have run out of ammo.
John C said:
“What are the origins of said qualities? Our difference is that you take ownership of them and I say they are aspects of our original paternity”
Yes, I take ownership of them! You have just said better than I ever could have exactly what I’ve been trying to say this whole time, John C. I take ownership of the good and bad that I do in this world. I don’t need an “original paternity” to complicate these questions. Thank you for illuminating my position.
Reformedsteve said:
“Has a human being ever experienced a creation of a universe? You can’t have it both ways. You either know truth through the senses or you don’t.”
Has a human being ever experienced the creation of a god? Has any human being ever found anything that had an objectively verifiable supernatural explanation? Then how do we know any gods exist? You either apply your own principles to all things equally or you don’t. Otherwise you’re guilty of special pleading.
Also, why do you insist that we must “know truth through the senses”? What does that even mean? Do your “senses” tell you that there is an intellligent, personal creator or creators, that s(he)/they that exist(s) are the ones which you worship, and that the dogma you agree with is the correct interpretation of these circumstances?
Do you know all of that through your “senses”?
Also, if you had been born to a Muslim family, wouldn’t your senses be equally like to indicate Allah in the same ways that you perceive your current beliefs? If you had been born in a Hindu family, wouldn’t your senses be equally likely to indicate Krishna and Vishnu and Shiva in the same way? What’s the difference between your opinions and those who disagree with you on religion? What separates your claim from other religious claims? Your “senses”?
Would you like to know what doesn’t make sense to me through my senses? (This is a re-post from earlier.)
“I submit the floor to you as you prove my point… you once again put a humanist view of what God should be in your argument about immorality. We are bound to God’s standards; God is not bound to ours. God sets the rules. I will say this again… how is it immoral for God to take life? When is it immoral for Him to take it? Should He let people live forever? (It was tried). Should He let people live and then die of natural causes only? What is natural? Doesn’t He still cause this death since He gives life and death? Should He not allow babies to die but only adults past the age of 18? Should He intervene in man’s stupidity in living in a hurricane zone and save everybody all the time? You tell me what His limits should be.”
Imagine a human father and his children. Here’s what I’m hearing from you:
“I submit the floor to you as you prove my point…you once again put a childist view on what the father should be in your argument about immorality. The kids are bound to their father’s standards; the father is not bound to his children’s standards. The father set the rules. I will say this again…how is it immoral for the father to take life? When is it immoral for him to take the lives of his children? When is it immoral to allow them to place their hands in electrical sockets and on hot surfaces, even though they don’t know any better, and then punish them for it, when he knew perfectly well that it was in their nature to do just that? What should we expect him to do? Prevent his children from sticking their hands in dangerous places until they know better - or childproofing the house? What should he do when the kids hurt themselves — reprimand them, and then use the experience as a valuable lesson for continued development? No, he should be completely negligent about child-proofing the house and then punish his kids for not listening, even though it was completely beyond their ability to follow his rules.”
According to your own accounts, your god never “sin-proofed” this world, took no precautions to protect us, and instead of teaching us to do the right things from experience when we didn’t know any better (knowing neither good nor evil), he irrationally decided (how typical) that it was impossible for us to learn to follow his rules altogether and cruelly condemned us, all the while causing chaos in the natural world as a further excessive punishment.
Your god fails at parenting. In fact, your god as he is described is pretty much an abusive or negligent parent. Forget to reveal yourself for thousands of years into human cultural development, and then neglect almost all of humanity for the first few thousand years of your intervention? — He’s more like a deadbeat dad to me.
@Teleprompter:
I don’t normally send people to wikipedia, but for you I make an exception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
I am not an empiricist. I’m a calvinist so your ideas on free will are way different then mine. The bible is clear that it is man’s nature to sin. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.
Also, I’m curious, do you imply that it is possible for a human being to fulfill all the requirements of the Law that is found in the Old Testament?
Reformedsteve,
No, I do not imply that it is possible for a human being to fulfill all of the requirements of OT law. In fact, I believe that it is impossible to fulfill all of those requirements, which makes this whole plan even more ridiculous in my opinion.
By the way, do you believe in the concept of “free will”? If not, why? If so, what is your interpretation of it?
You said:
“We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.”
To me, that’s like saying “we’re not smokers because we smoke, we smoke because we are smokers”. That kind of statement just doesn’t make sense to me because it really fails to account for why people are smokers. You’re just telling us what people are. Also, it’s circular.
Where do you think “sin” comes from? You just said that we sin because we are sinners? If Adam and Eve committed the first sin, did they sin because they were sinners? Isn’t it impossible for someone without sin to be a sinner? Or did they sin because they were always going to sin, even when they were without sin? Then they would’ve had no choice, and in my opinion, it would be blatantly unfair for your god to punish them under this scenario. So you see, that sentence just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Reformedsteve,
No, I do not imply that it is possible for a human being to fulfill all of the requirements of OT law. In fact, I believe that it is impossible to fulfill all of those requirements, which makes this whole plan even more ridiculous in my opinion.
By the way, do you believe in the concept of “free will”? If not, why? If so, what is your interpretation of it?
You said:
“We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.”
To me, that’s like saying “we’re not smokers because we smoke, we smoke because we are smokers”. That kind of statement just doesn’t make sense to me because it really fails to account for why people are smokers. You’re just telling us what people are. Also, it’s circular.
Where do you think “sin” comes from? You just said that we sin because we are sinners? If Adam and Eve committed the first sin, did they sin because they were sinners? Isn’t it impossible for someone without sin to be a sinner? Or did they sin because they were always going to sin, even when they were without sin? Then they would’ve had no choice, and in my opinion, it would be blatantly unfair for your god to punish them under this scenario. So you see, that sentence just doesn’t make any sense to me.
@Reformedsteve:
It’s not an easy word to define, I’ll grant you. That is part of why I object so strongly to glib statements like “atheism is a religion.” I don’t think this is self evident, and object to such a statement unless the claimant can make a real case for it.
Here is what Webster’s has to say:
I have omitted the quotations, but they can be looked up easily enough on dictionary.com. To me, it’s evident that atheism does not satisfy definitions 1 through 3; a case could be made for 4, but dictionaries order definitions by the most widespread and accepted interpretations at top, so if one were to do so, I would say that atheism is only a religion in a pretty weak sense. Definition 1 is, I think, the most unambiguous and common sense interpretation given here.
Personally, I would submit that necessary conditions for a religion would include:
(a) a congregation
(b) rituals
(c) a creed
Since atheism does not have (a) or (b), I would say that atheism is not a religion (I think (c) could be argued either way, but I think most forms would qualify as having creeds). However, I like to offer religious folk the opportunity to define it themselves since they are stuck with being members of a religion and I think it’s unfair to some extent to impose my own definition in such a situation.
I am sorry if I may have gotten a little carried away. As I said, it irks me when people make glib statements about atheism constituting a religion when they refuse to say what they mean by it. I have been in too many arguments with theists wherein they refused to take an unambiguous position and prevaricated until all hope of reaching any kind of understanding was lost. To this end, I will be sure to check out Gordon H. Clark, since from what you say he is an advocate for reasoned debate, which is all I really look for in these kinds of arguments (at least I hope my debate is reasoned and try my best to make it so).
It also bothers me when people assume things about my philosophical perspectives after reading only a few paragraphs of what I’ve written. I think that some of my beliefs are rather unorthodox even among atheists, but I try to challenge those beliefs at every opportunity and the ones I hold now are the ones that have best stood up to intense scrutiny. Of course, there’s always going to be some doubt as to how impartial one can be when criticizing one’s own beliefs, but I assure you that I at least try my best to do so.
Thank you for trying to lighten the mood a little and for calming the debate down. While I’m not sure either of us are going to change our opinions as a result of this discussion, maybe each of us can at least come to understand the other’s position a little better. If we can do that as well as examine our own beliefs a little more critically, I think this conversation would be worth the investment.
@Reformedsteve:
I am trying to be conciliatory at this point because I think the invective is a little counterproductive, but again, if this is what you think then you simply have a poor understanding of science. I am not trying to be rude — this is simply an observation.
It’s true that I’m asserting that I can only learn truth through my senses, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t infer results that I can’t sense directly. The fact that Galileo could not see the moons of Jupiter with his naked eye did nothing to invalidate his discoveries, nor the inference he made from them that the earth revolves around the sun. Similarly, there are features of the universe that are incredibly difficult to explain without inferring the occurrence of the Big Bang. I’ve described these to some extent on another thread, and I think Daniel may be posting a little more on this some time soon if you’re interested in learning. If you would like to speak some more about why I think events that can only be inferred rather than perceived directly can still be considered “true” or continue any other part of this debate, feel free to email me at guyincognitozz@aol.com.
And I assure you I am nowhere close to “out of ammo.” You’ve seen that my posts are rather long; this is after making the conscious effort to restrain my arguments to only the pithiest and most relevant points, and to allow a fair amount of blow-by. I would go so far as to say that so far you’ve only been hit with rubber bullets.
“But it’s not the flood described in the Bible. It’s not global. It didn’t entirely destroy all humans who weren’t in Noah’s immediate family. It didn’t last an entire year.
Are you saying that the historical claims made in the Bible about this flood are false?”
You are assuming that I believe in a new earth… I don’t. I also don’t believe the Black Sea was related to the Genesis flood. I believe the Genesis flood happened a while back when man was new… more than a few thousand years. I used the Black Sea as “one such answer” to counter that I don’t believe everything believers believe or ascribe to.
If you don’t believe God exists, that is your prerogative… but don’t pretend that you know. I can respect the atheist that says, “there is no evidence that I have seen or experienced to lead me to believe in God.” But to those atheists that claim that there is no evidence that has led others to believe in God is arrogant and self-serving.
1.You can’t possibly know there is no God
2.Because of number 1, God can possibly exist (makes you agnostic)
3.If God can possibly exist, then He can also possibly communicate to others without your knowledge
4.If God can possibly communicate to others without your knowledge, your claims that believers are idiots are because you are not atheist, but rather anti-theist. Because if you were not against God, but just didn’t believe in Him, you wouldn’t go to all the trouble of debating against those that state they have had an experience with God.
What if there is proof that God exists all around, but we don’t understand it unless He lets us? If He exists this is possible. I mean, He created the universe, He can keep us from understanding, right? The bacteria probably doesn’t understand anything outside its world… the ant… etc… even the dog and cat understand very little about anything outside their little worlds. So how can we expect to know much of anything outside our world? We don’t even know what causes gravity… we have theories, but we don’t know… we know such a little fraction of our universe, for anyone to say God doesn’t exist is ignorant and arrogant… and to say you don’t believe in God is fine, but arrogant to ridicule another who just might have met Him.