Serious The Atheism/Agnosticism thread

[shade]

If you don't consider creating an entire universe and giving people all the oportunity they need to recieve eternal life powerful and loving, I guess you have that right, but do understand that many people disagree with your opinion.

i dunno man, if i build a nice house for my pet mice but then proceed to piss all over them and make a few fight to the death because they are dying of starvation i sure am powerful but not very loving. plus whats the point in years of pain if you get eternal life anyway? how come some people get to be rich and white and live happy lives but some poor ugandans have to live in terrible pain and fear just to get the same result. doesn't seem very loving to me.

also who the fuck wants eternal life really that would be super shit and rly crowded

 

[McGrrr]

Cliffnotes of the discussion?

I'm assuming a non-religious circlejerk.

 

[Heaven's Limit]

In certain time frames I tend to think about what is god, who is god, does something like that even exist and wonder if it does exist as to what it feels and sees that we may not. But it is an unproven fact that something like that is of existence.

I once had a visit in London where i met a bunch of different People and had the experience to meet someone with a view clouded by religion and it was something that had shown me how religion can be a bad yet good thing.

Eternal Life / Immortality is something amazing yet also it may be a curse to whom may live to outlive everyone else, if everyone would live forever, then we may live in peace but also in destruction as the fear of death and prosecution would vanish from this sphere.

 

[~Eon~]

It looks like things have settled down here. Nearly everyone here has the same viewpoint and I didn't want to be just another person on top of everyone else saying what has probably been said already in the previous pages. Anyway, sorry for the late reply.

I just want to start off by saying that I'm not an expert in theology and I am only with familiar with religions that I have been exposed to, and I can only say that those practices I've mentioned before still exist. I don't see how I can hold any position if the argument is that some religions perform these rituals but some do not. In that case, I will require some specifics of which religion we are talking about and how it deals with evil.

However, I think that in the scope of natural theology, especially that natural theology that has been well-equipped by Hellenic tools, there must be some notion of inherent goodness in things of this world that belongs to them properly and essentially,

If that is a part of your creed, then it is fine with me. I do not want to steer the focus of this conversation into a discussion on the inherent properties of objects.

In this, that I count goodness a predicate that properly belongs to things, I do not see how we could say that I must have a concept of God prior to knowing that predicate, for it would seem otherwise to me, that I must first know this predicate in things in order to arrive at a concept of God.

If what you said is true then this is fair enough, however if everything in existence and by extension everything that will come into existence bring the property of good and evil with them, why do millions of humans devote their lives to holy texts? Many claim they do so to gain eternal life in heaven, but why bother if goodness (or the lack of it) is a property they are born with? If you are prepared to say that God can change this property (indirectly albeit), then why does it sound so implausible to you that a supernatural force can change people for worse, if I may ask?

I also cannot help but notice that you write "In this year of our Lord, MMXIV." A lord is someone who reigns — someone with authority — yet there is virtually nothing God has command over. I already regret the cliché but what is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet as put by a certain playwright. It seems rather absurd to me that we are trying to categorize and compare the validity of feats such as creating the universe and changing evil to good.

Perhaps that I cannot blame any person for an ambiguity in question, but, without blame, I would stand in saying that the ambiguity of the question does not lead us necessarily to a contradiction, and this I think is the chief weakness of such a rhetorical device, that it does not show in a rigorous or necessary way that such a contradiction is indeed the opposition of terms without a middle.

This quote is not exactly a treatise on atheism and it should not be immediately discarded because it lacks a certain rigor. I am certain that its main goal is to provoke discussion and conjecture on the topic.

Please, forgive me if I have misused some term, but I would be interested in a longer conversation on this and the relation of transcendental numbers to real objects and whether those abstractions possess a constructability. Would you be interested in reading any of the work that a relatively modern Thomist has done on these questions?

Perhaps the term transcendental is a misleading title for such numbers, but pi is indeed constructable. A personal favourite of mine is the technique used by the great Archimedes. Using a technique which can be called no less than a crude form of calculus, Archimedes bound pi with great accuracy by constructing several polygons with variable sides, circumscribing as well as inscribing them within a circle, and taking the difference in their perimeters. I sense that you prefer things of antiquity so I can offer a simpler technique for constructing pi. First construct a circle with radius 1/2 using a compass and create point A on the circumference. If you cut out the circle and wet the perimeter with ink, then you can construct a line with the magnitude of pi by rolling the circle cut out starting at point A to point A again. The accuracy of the construction I mentioned will depend on your tools just as it does with compass and straight edge.

I did not the read the entire work (of course) since it was over 600 pages. Instead I scanned through some pages and I read a quote in which someone was marvelled with the mathematical precision that the creator used to create the earth. Was this the goal of directing me to that work and is that your stand on the matter?

I look forward to your reply. Have a good day.

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

I may have more to say, but I wonder if "relatively modern Thomist" means Edward Feser.

 

[ivan_x3000]

The thing with Atheism is we all got into religions because of the security and core principles it provides. As atheists who should we follow what are our principles? Can't we just start out own atheistic club and theologize on principle like other religions?

 

[Codraroll]

^Nope, not per definition. Atheism is the absence of religion. You might as well ask: "Since we have decided not to collect stamps, how should we organize our stamp collection book?"

You might develop principles and morals not involving religion, of course, but that would be separate from your atheism. Naturalism and atheism often go hand in hand, but they are separate and neither mutually dependent nor exclusive.

 

[capefeather]

There are so many obvious problems with that list that I don't know where to start. The most important here would be Rev 19:6. In 1611 an English translator chose the word "omnipotent" to represent what John wrote in Greek. John did not write the word "omnipotent". The word he wrote does not mean what we commonly understand the modern English word "omnipotent" means.

If you don't consider creating an entire universe and giving people all the oportunity they need to recieve eternal life powerful and loving, I guess you have that right, but do understand that many people disagree with your opinion.

Counter-arguing a list by picking out the least meaningful, nitpicking detail (and even calling it the most important) is a trend that I see depressingly often from a wide variety of people. The fact remains, the Bible makes several claims along the lines of God being able to do anything, showing that the concept of omnipotence existed back then. Maybe someone really smart for the time, like a Greek philosopher, saw problems with the notion of a completely unrestricted being, and thus perhaps did not have a word for it. But all that's completely beside the point, anyway, because the post you replied to was discussing the notion of omnipotence as used by modern philosophers of religion. There's this entire categorization concerning logical possibility versus causal possibility versus physical possibility.

Concerning your last sentence, I was going more for trying to think about the scale of Jesus's miracles in comparison to the scale of the whole world. But to expand on shade's post, I'm going to quote something:

Several years ago, I had an interesting discussion with an evangelical Christian on the ethics of justification by faith. I promise you this will be relevant eventually.

I argued that it is unfair for God to restrict entry to Heaven to Christians alone. After all, 99% of native-born Ecuadorans are Christian, but less than 1% of native born Saudis are same. It follows that the chance of any native-born Ecuadorian of becoming Christian is 99%, and that of any native born Saudi, 1%. So if God judges people by their religion, then within 1% He's basically just decided it's free entry for Ecuadorians, but people born in Saudi Arabia can go to hell (literally).

My Christian friend argued that is not so: that there is a great difference between 0% of Saudis and 1% of Saudis. I answered that no, there was a 1% difference. But he said this 1% proves that the Saudis had free will: that even though all the cards were stacked against them, a few rare Saudis could still choose Christianity.

But what does it mean to have free will, if external circumstances can make 99% of people with free will decide one way in Ecuador, and the opposite way in Saudi Arabia?

One thing I dislike about theism is that there's almost a duty for a theist to be locked into specific positions on metaphysics and ethics. For example, Plantiga's free will defense is one of the strongest responses to the problem of evil, but it presupposes the libertarian position on the nature of free will. The thing that really bothers me is that people are so stuck onto such positions that they see nothing wrong with making a claim that's essentially equivalent to saying that Inferno is a better move than Heat Wave.

The thing with Atheism is we all got into religions because of the security and core principles it provides. As atheists who should we follow what are our principles? Can't we just start out own atheistic club and theologize on principle like other religions?

Not quite, but secular humanism does exist. Sure, there are theists who are in the movement and atheists who are not, but the movement is essentially non-religious. Though, many on the internet seem to think that simply declaring yourself a humanist makes you one.

 

[mattj]

The least meaningful? It's the only one that includes the word. I can understand why you would try to downplay it though. When there are problems as obvious as pointing to a word penned nearly 2000 years after the fact in a different language, as well as pointing to scriptures that talk about people other than God, (Judah in one case there), I can see how silly you must feel and why you'd want to backtrack.

"But people are born in places where Christianity isn't common!" is such a tired, silly objection. It shows an extreme lack of understanding of the Bible. The God of the Bible isn't limited by geography or social connection. Self identification means next to nothing when it comes to salvation. It could feasibly turn out that 1% of Saudi's will make it while .5% of Ecuadorians will.

 

[Flaccus]

In this year of our Lord MMXIV,

Please, forgive the longer delay in my reply than I would have liked, but with this returned comment, hope with me that it is worth reading.

The thing-in-itself does not matter in what I'm saying.

If we are not concerned with the existence of a thing, but are only concerned with whether it is knowable to us that that thing exists, then it is clear that we are no longer attempting to lay a law for being in general, but specific beings. I am less interested in positing that such a thing that is unknown to us but is knowable in itself exists, and more interested in saying that the predication of existence is not absolutely opposed to our ignorance of it. In this, I had no hopes of demonstrating that any thing existed in this way, but only to add here that existence must only possess some intelligibility in general, and not the specific intelligibility in relation to us.

From this, I should say that if you read my comments you will not find any justification for the claim that this thing exists without our knowing it to exist, but only a short and rudimentary investigation into whether existence must itself contain a notion of our knowing it. For these reasons, I asked for your clarifications.

An entity G is defined as having a property P. G is incapable of having the property not-P, without ceasing to be G by definition.

Whether relational predicates, or properties, and negative properties, belong to a thing essentially would then be the question. That is, are these denials themselves the property or are the denials only a via negativa whereby a positive is known?

Thank you, again, for your response, capefeather, for I have very much enjoyed reading it.

I do not want to steer the focus of this conversation into a discussion on the inherent properties of objects.

Unfortunately, I do not know if these sorts of arguments, regardless of position, are sensible without a discussion of the properties of things. That is, I do not know if I could make any sense of a theological conversation without that philosophical groundwork from which to work.

If what you said is true then this is fair enough, however if everything in existence and by extension everything that will come into existence bring the property of good and evil with them, why do millions of humans devote their lives to holy texts? Many claim they do so to gain eternal life in heaven, but why bother if goodness (or the lack of it) is a property they are born with? If you are prepared to say that God can change this property (indirectly albeit), then why does it sound so implausible to you that a supernatural force can change people for worse, if I may ask?

I am not sure that I understand your questions. Would you, please, ask them again in another way?

I also cannot help but notice that you write "In this year of our Lord, MMXIV."

Small tokens of memory help me in a number of ways.

Perhaps the term transcendental is a misleading title for such numbers, but pi is indeed constructable.

Does it not belong to the category that every constructible number is algebraic? Perhaps I have not read the right articles, but do you have some authority that you could offer me on the category of construcibles?

I did not the read the entire work (of course) since it was over 600 pages. Instead I scanned through some pages and I read a quote in which someone was marvelled with the mathematical precision that the creator used to create the earth. Was this the goal of directing me to that work and is that your stand on the matter?

I recommended the work as an example of a reconciliation between the modern developments in mathematics, as found in the physical sciences, and the philosophical methods that preceded those, especially on the question of number and the explanatory power of number. More than a cursory reading of the text might be needed to bring that out, though.

Thank you again for your reply, ~Eon~.

I may have more to say, but I wonder if "relatively modern Thomist" means Edward Feser.

Feser belongs to the analytics, and, for that, I do not read much of him; although, if he has done work in this area on the philosophy of number theory, I would be surprised.

may Truth and Love prevail.

 

[~Eon~]

Unfortunately, I do not know if these sorts of arguments, regardless of position, are sensible without a discussion of the properties of things. That is, I do not know if I could make any sense of a theological conversation without that philosophical groundwork from which to work.
I am not sure that I understand your questions. Would you, please, ask them again in another way?

I decided not to get into that discussion because I had hoped to draw an inconstancy in that belief through my following question.

I am not sure that I understand your questions. Would you, please, ask them again in another way?

You claimed that good and bad are properties inherent to an object (or person) and my question is based off that. My premise is that good people go to heaven as promised by following the teachings of god. This means that bad people, if they change their ways and devote themselves to god (repent, ask for forgiveness, etc. ) can go to heaven (a place only for good people). This means that god has the power to convert bad people to good. My question is that if god can turn bad people into good people then why can't there exist supernatural forces that do the reverse? God must have some sort of part in this conversion because if people could convert on their own accord then there is no point to condemning humans for not devoting their lives to god. The point I was implying was that if religion can convert people from bad to good, then how are good and the lack of it inherent properties if they can change?

Does it not belong to the category that every constructible number is algebraic? Perhaps I have not read the right articles, but do you have some authority that you could offer me on the category of construcibles?

It depends on what you mean by constructable. In mathematical jargon constructable refers strictly to compass and straightedge in which pi is not constructable.
But in the general sense i.e to create a finite length segment then yes pi can be constructed. I do not know your level of mathematics so I assumed you meant constructable in the general sense because you said:

I would say that on the question of whether without the use of compass and straightedge, if certain transcendental numbers might be used in order to approximate an equivalent area, I could not affirm that the non-constructable has produced any definite figure,

The boded part is what I replied to specifically. I replied in a previous post that pi is constructable outside of compass and straightedge and I showed you how by using a disk with a labeled point. There should be no confusion unless you are intentionally avoiding my conclusion.

The reason why we got into the topic of geometry is because you likened man's ability to god's ability. You said that the geometer cannot square the circle as if it were some forbidden action. I was merely showing you (and proving my point at the same time) that a circle can be squared if that is what is desired. However I cannot do it by compass and straightedge because mathematics dictates otherwise and my logic is based off mathematics. It is an invalid question to ask and I claim that I can not do it. It is absurd to make this comparison to the abilities of a deity because god has been documented to perform actions that are impossible to those that study physics. How can anyone make any qualitative argument on what god can and cannot do if he has already shown evidence of events outside of our logic. So if you claim that Epicurus is at fault because God cannot get rid of evil, I must reject it unless it is stated otherwise by god or by the holy text.

 

[capefeather]

The least meaningful? It's the only one that includes the word. I can understand why you would try to downplay it though. When there are problems as obvious as pointing to a word penned nearly 2000 years after the fact in a different language, as well as pointing to scriptures that talk about people other than God, (Judah in one case there), I can see how silly you must feel and why you'd want to backtrack.

"But people are born in places where Christianity isn't common!" is such a tired, silly objection. It shows an extreme lack of understanding of the Bible. The God of the Bible isn't limited by geography or social connection. Self identification means next to nothing when it comes to salvation. It could feasibly turn out that 1% of Saudi's will make it while .5% of Ecuadorians will.

More common translations of the Revelation quote don't even use the word "omnipotence", using "almighty" instead (I checked NIV and ESV). Doesn't that hint to you that maybe the word itself isn't the problem? The word "omnipotence" is just that, a word. The important thing is the meaning ascribed to it, which clearly has existed for a long time.

Are you saying that some people who think that they have attained salvation won't? Then how can anybody tell that they're going to go to heaven? I thought that this was supposed to be a guarantee, that you'd KNOW you were going. Is it some authority that decides? Maybe you need the "correct theology". Problem is, theology has evolved over the centuries to account for changes in society. What was considered the totally correct word of God in the early church would be considered barbaric / wrong / "not Biblical" today. Well, maybe God accounts for that. "You were a fucking asshole in my name, but you couldn't have known that you were wrong. Cultural context!!!!" But then doesn't that also apply to the Ecuadorians whom you seem to think will "get it wrong" thus making the probabilities the same across all nations or something?

I'm aware that people like to tell themselves that nonbelievers have "an extreme lack of understanding of the Bible", but maybe nonbelievers just don't make the same assumptions that theist Bible scholars do. Not that that had anything to do with anything in this discussion. The problem that nonbelievers have isn't with the logic of theology. It's with the founding assumptions. Of course one can interpret the Bible in a way that is compatible with theist assumptions. Just ask any teenage fanfic writer.

 

[mattj]

Yes. That is what I'm saying. That is what the Bible plainly says, which is why I included that hasty estimation of your understanding of the Bible. That was dumb of me and I apologize.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’

Self identification, like your Ecuador example, means very little.

Couple that with the example of the Ethiopian Eunuch.

So, when they had solemnly testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they started back to Jerusalem, and were preaching the gospel to many villages of the Samaritans. But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, “Get up and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (fnThis is a desert road.) So he got up and went; and there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure; and he had come to Jerusalem to worship, and he was returning and sitting in his fnchariot, and was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go up and join this chariot.”

Philip's location, country of origin, culture, and circle of influence relative to the Ethiopian was no barrier between that eunuch and learning about the God of the Bible. The Eunuch wanted to learn about Christ so Christ directed Phillip to meet with him. This is what missionaries have been doing for nigh on 2,000 years.

This example is right in line with what Paul told the Athenians:

and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’

I can understand why anyone would choose to not believe in the God of the Bible. While I disagree with them, there are plenty of objections that are honest and not unreasonable. But "The God of the Bible is unfair because some people are born in majority Muslim countries and therefore don't have an equal chance at obtaining salvation" is not one of them. Maybe the gods worshiped in many churches in modern America are unable to order and direct people's lives so that they all have abundant opportunities to accept him, but not the God of the Bible.

 

[capefeather]

Philip's location, country of origin, culture, and circle of influence relative to the Ethiopian was no barrier between that eunuch and learning about the God of the Bible. The Eunuch wanted to learn about Christ so Christ directed Phillip to meet with him. This is what missionaries have been doing for nigh on 2,000 years.

Oh I see, so all those people in countries that aren't predominantly Christian just chose not to seek out the One True God.

 

[mattj]

Actually, according to Jesus in that first verse up there, many of those people in countries that ARE predominantly Christian choose not to seek out the One True God too. I understand that it must seem to be a straight forward correlation, but the levels of self identification in Iran and Ecuador mean very little, if anything.

 

[KM]

i never knew "spreading the word of god" was an accepted variation of the phrase "spreading extreme racism, crippling pandemics, the degeneration of cultural diversity, slavery, and taking property and land from natives"

sorry if this seems harsh, but i'm not going to let you get away with describing the actions of missionaries as some pure and holy act that allows people all over the world to be saved. ignoring the systemic destruction that missionaries have caused through history (and, i might add, these hardships did not selectively affect those who didn't accept the word of God) in favor of a single biblical example doesn't sit right with me.

 

[capefeather]

I'm honestly not sure if mattj really didn't understand my objection to his argument, which I thought I laid out pretty explicitly, or he's biting the bullet and accepting the scenarios I described. Also, what kind of bizarro world is this where mattj and Crux like the same post but myzozoa and Crux like different posts?

 

[mattj]

How about the missionaries who do bad things are bad and the missionaries who do good things are good KM. I accept that there have been countless and that there still are many people who have done terrible things in the name of my god. I am not them. Every missionary is not them. Read the first verse I posted. Just because they profess to be legit doesn't mean they are. "christianity" (tm) is more of a culture and a business than a life altering relationship for most Christians. There are a ton of predators in it. I'm not one of them and neither is every modern missionary. Who was just in the news for getting ebola while treating ebola patients? It wasn't some pontificating atheist.

You may need to clarify capefeather. Which objection? You've moved the goalpost a couple times. The "your god is unfair because people are born in Iran" objection, or the more recent "yeah right I don't accept what the Bible says" objection? The first objection seems adequately answered. The only source of info on the God of the Bible says nationality isn't a hinderance, but rather a tool used to lead people. The second, we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

 

[Myzozoa]

i was just gonna leave this post un-posted until I cleared my browsing history and lost it forever, but caprefeather asked about it so, this is what I had going on:

saintly atheists, saving people from religion

anyway ima nitpick ur post capefeather because I feel it omits a few important points. I actually mainly agree with your post in a broader sense, but I actually would make the same point in a much ruder way, cause I disagree with religion just as I disagree with much of modern philosophy.

Counter-arguing a list by picking out the least meaningful, nitpicking detail (and even calling it the most important) is a trend that I see depressingly often from a wide variety of people.

In this spirit then...

The fact remains, the Bible makes several claims along the lines of God being able to do anything, showing that the concept of omnipotence existed back then. Maybe someone really smart for the time, like a Greek philosopher, saw problems with the notion of a completely unrestricted being, and thus perhaps did not have a word for it. But all that's completely beside the point, anyway, because the post you replied to was discussing the notion of omnipotence as used by modern philosophers of religion. There's this entire categorization concerning logical possibility versus causal possibility versus physical possibility.

See this whole paragraph is very confused, imo. What does it mean to be 'able to do anything'? This may seem to be a question about the logical possibility of a thing. I do not know any reason to suppose that anyone, at any point, that had a word for omnipotence or not, understood 'essentially' or universally what it 'truly' means to be omnipotent. Rather, 'omnipotence' requires some definition and description that has always been up for debate. As a metaphysical attribute of a supposed thing, its philosophical description is a pretty masturbatory task imo, and I think from what I've seen in your posts, you would agree that it is pretty masturbatory to debate the logical possibility of the omnipotence of something when no one has any idea what omnipotence is. It seems obvious, then, that in so far as 'omnipotence' has meaning primarily in relation to discourses about the possibility of God, it is 'surely' the case that God is omnipotent.

Several years ago, I had an interesting discussion with an evangelical Christian on the ethics of justification by faith. I promise you this will be relevant eventually.

I argued that it is unfair for God to restrict entry to Heaven to Christians alone. After all, 99% of native-born Ecuadorans are Christian, but less than 1% of native born Saudis are same. It follows that the chance of any native-born Ecuadorian of becoming Christian is 99%, and that of any native born Saudi, 1%.

I do not see how this follows. This is an unresearched proposition couched in terrible logic. It is in no way the case that, "Because presently 99% of ppl born in x are y attribute, that future people born in x have 99% chance of being y attribute."

So if God judges people by their religion, then within 1% He's basically just decided it's free entry for Ecuadorians, but people born in Saudi Arabia can go to hell (literally).

No, because heaven may not admit every single person who is called a Christian according to a wikipedia-esque census of demographics, this is the stupid presumption that the dumb theist friend didnt notice or something idk. Cmon, is this critique that hard? the 'it follows that' cannot be the case!!!

My Christian friend argued that is not so: that there is a great difference between 0% of Saudis and 1% of Saudis. I answered that no, there was a 1% difference. But he said this 1% proves that the Saudis had free will: that even though all the cards were stacked against them, a few rare Saudis could still choose Christianity.

It is unfortunate for one to have dumb friends or to be dumb oneself (referring to the atheist in quotation), since there is actually a great difference AND a 1% difference between 0% and 1%, these descriptions are both true, especially in the context of a percentage as population statistic. 99/100 people in one place go to heaven, but 1/100 in another. One significant difference is that in many iterations a 0/100 'chance' will never allow even a single Saudi person in heaven, but it is probable that on a 1/100 chance many Saudis will eventually go to heaven. What is not true is that any of these numbers could prove that a given person or group of ppl possesses free will. which leads us to the next thing, which we at least agree on:

But what does it mean to have free will, if external circumstances can make 99% of people with free will decide one way in Ecuador, and the opposite way in Saudi Arabia?

Yeah free will is meaningless, congratulations atheist for telling us this, even though the logic was shit the conclusion is at least looking right.


And as mattj's naivette reminded me: it is as 'random' to believe in secular liberalism and its many variants as it is to believe in christianity, which is why I find it especially offensive when people only attribute their analysis to a critique of christianity, because neo-liberalism wears all the guises of christianity without the God, and that was also part of colonialism, genocide etc. Nor can we ignore science's own role in slavery, the holocaust, nuclear war. I find arguments that posit christianity as a significant cause of imperialism and slavery are quite incomplete without an acknowledgement of the intimate historical connection between science and faith.

Further, the historical actions attributed to Christians in no way relate to the validity of various theisms, which is why I did not like any of the posts related to such discussions, as such posts are logically off-topic. Nor were such discussions related to anything more interesting, ie more urgent, such as the neo-liberal political climate of america, in which an organized religion's conscious is deemed a more central legal right than the right to life of an individual body and corporations have more freedom of expression and access to institutional support than living bodies do.

It is simply not the case that causality can be attributed to nominal cultures, neither is the body of thought given the name "Christianity' homogenous. That grossly misunderstands the particularity of context, which is the foundational myth of universalizing historical analysis.





keep in mind that I wrote a lot of this in not a state of sobreity and also Im not sure whats on-topic for this thread anymore, so i kinda rescind those bits

 

[Crux]

lol capefeather you realise that myzozoa and i are, contrary to popular opinion, not just subsets of jumpluff

this whole argument is dumb and makes literally 0 sense to me

1) if a god exists it is probably not a christian god so who gives a fuck about christian interpretations of god your problem is with the organisation not the theism
2) in response to all the weird iran / ecuador stuff that is making absolutely 0 sense to me, yes the god of the bible would allow those individuals into heaven
3) the bible is not literal it is unclear why you are forcing that interpretation onto it.

can we stop all this discussion now it's very inane and uninteresting

 

[KM]

How about the missionaries who do bad things are bad and the missionaries who do good things are good KM. I accept that there have been countless and that there still are many people who have done terrible things in the name of my god. I am not them. Every missionary is not them. Read the first verse I posted. Just because they profess to be legit doesn't mean they are. "christianity" (tm) is more of a culture and a business than a life altering relationship for most Christians. There are a ton of predators in it. I'm not one of them and neither is every modern missionary. Who was just in the news for getting ebola while treating ebola patients? It wasn't some pontificating atheist.

You may need to clarify capefeather. Which objection? You've moved the goalpost a couple times. The "your god is unfair because people are born in Iran" objection, or the more recent "yeah right I don't accept what the Bible says" objection? The first objection seems adequately answered. The only source of info on the God of the Bible says nationality isn't a hinderance, but rather a tool used to lead people. The second, we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

Yeah, absolutely. Just like I don't appreciate others painting all missionaries as saints, I certainly don't think that that they were all using religion as an excuse to further their own lives and agendas. I do think your idea of "some missionaries are good and do good things, some are bad and do bad things" is somewhat of a gross oversimplification, as many missionaries truly did believe that they were doing right, and did achieve some good, yet also were players in some severe, distressing trends. What truly bothers me with the idea of missionaries is that it seems to me that, if a benevolent God existed, He would want to have his message spread to all corners of the earth, so that as many souls as possible could worship him.

And thus, missionaries! whom we are meant to believe were God's solution to this problem -- foreigners wish to learn about the glory of God, and missionaries are sent to them. And true, some of them were good people, who were motivated by their religious zeal, and converted people to Christianity and saved their souls (allegedly). However, the missionary system as a whole still was massively detrimental to the cultures who were exposed to this. Why would God want this most holy of tasks, the spreading of His religion and the saving of souls, to be largely driven by con artists, people who simply used their stated religion as a means to achieve their own selfish goals?

And yet, these people converted people to Christianity. They saved souls, in conjunction with destroying actual human lives and cultures. Why would God's (successful) holy messengers be anything less than holy?

 

[capefeather]

mattj's post

Are you saying that some people who think that they have attained salvation won't? Then how can anybody tell that they're going to go to heaven? I thought that this was supposed to be a guarantee, that you'd KNOW you were going. Is it some authority that decides? Maybe you need the "correct theology". Problem is, theology has evolved over the centuries to account for changes in society. What was considered the totally correct word of God in the early church would be considered barbaric / wrong / "not Biblical" today. Well, maybe God accounts for that. "You were a fucking asshole in my name, but you couldn't have known that you were wrong. Cultural context!!!!" But then doesn't that also apply to the Ecuadorians whom you seem to think will "get it wrong" thus making the probabilities the same across all nations or something?

I don't know if you just missed that whole thing in your eagerness to answer the first question. You keep saying "I'm not one of them" but by what authority do you claim that? What makes you so sure that you're right? The other denominations, subgroups, whatever all think that they're right and you may not be. I mean, when learned Christians by and large can't even agree on salvation by faith versus salvation by works...

crux's post

I'm only replying to specific posts because I feel like it and because there are pieces of rhetoric commonly used on the internet and elsewhere that bother me. I can perceive arguments as dangerously flawed whether it's about ~abstract theism~ or Christianity or Buddhism or whatever else. I'm only taking the Bible literally because mattj keeps talking about what the Bible does and does not say. I'd love to interpret the Bible as what it really is, a collection of disparate myths that were sodomized repeatedly until they formed a kind of coherent narrative about a monotheistic god. The point is, "what the Bible says" is not something that any group with an agenda should be able to claim authority on.

long post

So, I feel like we have to establish a distinction between empirical claims and purely logical ones. Take, for example, the argument, "97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is human-caused. Therefore, global warming is human-caused." Interpreting this purely logically, it's a fallacy of appeal to authority. You can't say that global warming MUST be human-caused, with logical certainty. However, it's clear to anyone reading the argument impartially that the speaker is talking about a very high probability. I really don't see why people get so hung up on this. It seems like a straightforward way to read imprecise communication to me. I feel that failing to make this simple distinction is at the root of most if not all political arguments that degenerate into tribalist meme/flame-spouting, so I can't help but feel a little disappointed that this thread may be heading the same way, especially now that even the high and mighty philosophers are calling people dumb.

So maybe the argument I quoted isn't Grade-A rigorous, but why should it be when the people that the argument is being made to often haven't even thought about the conflict between the naive libertarian notions of free will and an apparently compatibilist observable universe? My goal isn't so much to "pwn" the opponent (as may be the goal of many people on the internet and some philosophers) as it is to raise questions about how people look at things. And maybe we won't get to the cutting edge questions or break new ground all the time, but it's still worth talking about.

The stuff about omnipotence started with Eon quoting Epicurus. For better or worse, these forums use imprecise language and the word "omnipotence" has been taken to mean a lot of things. Epicurus's argument, though, only expects God to be "omnipotent" and "caring-about-us" enough to create a universe other than one that doesn't seem by all reasonable accounts like it gives a shit.

And for posterity, a continuation of the quote:

I do sort of believe in free will, or at least in "free will". But where my friend's free will was unidirectional, an arrow pointing from MIND to WORLD, my idea of free will is circular: MIND affects WORLD affects MIND affects WORLD and so on.

Yes, it is ultimately the mind and nothing else that decides whether to accept or reject Islam or Christianity. But it is the world that shapes the mind before it does its accepting or rejecting. A man raised in Saudi Arabia uses a mind forged by Saudi culture to make the decision, and chooses Islam. A woman raised in Ecuador uses a mind forged by Ecuador to make the decision, and chooses Christianity. And so there is no contradiction in the saying that the decision between Islam and Christianity is up entirely to the individual, yet that it is almost entirely culturally determined. For the mind is a box, filled with genes and ideas, and although it is a wonderful magical box that can take things and combine them and forge them into something quite different and unexpected, it is not infinitely magical, and it cannot create out of thin air.

Returning to the question at hand, every poor person has the opportunity to work hard and eventually become rich. Whether that poor person grasps the opportunity comes from that person's own personality. And that person's own personality derives eventually from factors outside that person's control. A clear look at the matter proves it must be so, or else personality would be self-created, like the story of the young man who received a gift of a time machine from a mysterious aged stranger, spent his life exploring past and future, and, in his own age, goes back and gives his time machine to his younger self.

I suppose I should have quoted this from the beginning for more context. I would have given a link, but the page itself is a long treatise on countering political libertarian arguments and I feel that linking would only derail the thread. It's an extremely bold claim to say that environment doesn't matter at all in terms of how fair the system of salvation is, and just saying, "Oh, well, it's possible that everything will work out" strikes me as obviously idiotic. It's like claiming that Sacred Fire and Inferno are equivalent moves.

 

[mattj]

I don't understand what my knowledge about the status of my salvation has to do with whether or not the God of the Bible is inhibited by cultural borders. The Bible says what it says. If you reject what it says about its god, how can you claim that its god is unfair? What does whether or not I have all my theology figured out have to do with it?

Not trolling. I genuinely don't understand your objection. We might have to just leave this here though.

 

[Iura]

To me, God just became someone who was made up since humans like to have the idea of an almighty King ruling over them who does not wrong. It's someone that humans aspired to be, but did could never become therefore he is not a human, but a God.
While, there are very many arguments on how Atheists can say God does not exist, there is one argument that always allows me to never argue. Since, I know anyone with half a brain should be able to come up with it. "God just created us, he lets us choose our own path as we please." Basically in my eyes, he just let us go do whatever we want for his amusement. Therefore, I stopped being a Christian/Buddhist around when I was 10. I still use God in my cursing though which is kind of amusing to me and I recently starting using Jesus for no particular reason.
Fun Fact: My school is like a giant multicultural school, therefore all races and religions are allowed, so I've openly said I'm Atheist many times over and I still have many friends who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish(well they're a minority but still), etc.
Just because I wanted to share my two cents.

 

[Hipmonlee]

A while back a guy I know posted something on google plus that I read, and I had some thoughts about it last night. But the guy in question has since passed away, so you guys are going to have to endure my philosophical ramblings because sometimes you need to get that shit out of your system.

It relates to Mary's room and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

Basically the assumption is that a computer simulation is capable of generating consciousness. Or in the case of Mary's room, is a representation of the information received by a conscious thing a complete description of that conscious thing's experience? If a computer simulation is capable of generating consciousness then some part of the computer simulation represents the information received by some conscious thing and that is a complete description of that thing's experience.

But the question is what is the point of the computer simulation in this? Cause a computer simulation is just a number representing a state with some rules about how that state will change. But you dont need the computer for that, you can do that on a pen and paper. Or I could say "a simulated universe with x starting rules from state y" and its as every bit as complete a description of a universe as you get in a computer simulation. The computer simulation is not any more accurate, it usually just specifies the exact same information in a manner that is easier for us to interact with. Like if you want to know how many planets there are in this simulation, it is probably easier to get that information out of the computer programme, but the information is still there in the statement.

The second point, is lets say the universe we live in is a simulation run on a turing complete machine. And just out of coincidence (or maybe intent) I start a simulation that happens to have the exact same starting point and rules as the universe we live in. How could I distinguish my consciousness from the consciousness in
the simulation when it reaches a state that is a perfect representation of my universe at some given point. While I could say "well I know I'm not in the simulation because I made the simulation" but the simulated version of me would think the same thing too.

Point being, if consciousness can be created by a computer simulation, then it would be very strange if it cant also be created by a throw-away sentence, and if it can be created by a throw-away sentence then it would be strange if all possible consciousnesses dont exist. Like by saying "a programme that systematically generates C files and tries to run them" (turing machines are countably infinite!) have I created all possible universes?

The other point is that saying "we probably live in a simulation" is a potentially accurate but misleading way of describing things. It is better to say that there probably is a computer simulation that is an accurate description of the universe we live in (or one of those other conclusions the simulation hypothesis had).

The other possibility is that consciousness cant be created from information---IE the information received by a concious thing is not a complete description of that conscious things experience---which would be strange.