MAJOR derail from Screwball Thread

[bridgeforsale]

Really and truly, TBT, you ought to do a post about how John doesn't deserve to be seen at a place like SBL, given his abominable moral record. Whoever is inviting him to these functions should know better.

How is Loftus immoral? Even if somehow he is immoral how did his immorality inform his atheism? Whether or not he is immoral .... what does his moral standing have to do with his arguments?

[Manwë Súlimo]

How is Loftus immoral? Even if somehow he is immoral how did his immorality inform his atheism? Whether or not he is immoral .... what does his moral standing have to do with his arguments?

They don't. They have everything to do with how much trust the listener should give him to be intellectually honest in the first place.

[bridgeforsale]

They don't. They have everything to do with how much trust the listener should give him to be intellectually honest in the first place.

I started by asking how this individual was immoral; to which I still have no answer (all I could find on the internet was that he's a former pastor who is now an atheist apologist). Why should I believe this man's ideological opponents regarding his character.

Besides being a classic ad hominem -- it's also a red herring, because atheist arguments are pretty straight forward. There's no need to rely on the moral integrity of the person making the argument. Atheists are not the ones endorsing ancient stories of flying angels and god-men who rise from the dead.

Atheists make claims that can usually be examined on their face. For instance, where is this god who at one time made so many appearances to our ancient predecessors? From splitting seas to rising god-men to turning rivers into blood, sticks into snakes, flooding the earth, knocking down ancient sky-scrapers, and all the rest .... but then all of a sudden not a peep (coincidentally just as man began quantifying the physical universe through the prism of science).

Atheists say (simply) weight this against the evidence you do have for religion, like copies upon copies of yet more copies of ancient manuscripts no one can agree on (or two sentences by Josephus, and we're not even sure to what extent those writings were interpolations)?

Obviously there's dozens of more arguments (I could have fun and start picking on Kirk Cameron's project to discredit evolutionary science and discuss the millions of pieces of evidence in the form of fossil records we have, but that's too easy ); but in the interest of brevity (and no overwhelming desire to engage on this issue) I'll stop here.

[bridgeforsale]

how could anyone not believe in talking snakes and flying angels (who mysteriously elude our telescopes) .... they must be a screwball

Juuuust kidding

[Manwë Súlimo]

how could anyone not believe in talking snakes and flying angels (who mysteriously elude our telescopes)

Lawl, I know, right? I mean, surely spirits could be found with a telescope! Silly Christians.....

[Steve007]

Obviously there's dozens of more arguments.

I don't doubt for a second that you have dozens of bad arguments.

[T-Shirt Ninja]

I started by asking how this individual was immoral; to which I still have no answer (all I could find on the internet was that he's a former pastor who is now an atheist apologist). Why should I believe this man's ideological opponents regarding his character.

Read this thread. When you get to page 20, it will be glaringly obvious why John Loftus is immoral.

[Truth be Told]

Better yet, check the blog skippy: http://debunkingloftus.blogspot.com Your official source for everything Loftus doesn't want you to know about, and stuff he usually as a knack for either neglecting or obsessing on.

Oh and John repeats his "modern day Christianity is different from the original" type of stupidity again. Gee John, I wonder where you got such ideas.

John is ignorance.

[bridgeforsale]

Read this thread. When you get to page 20, it will be glaringly obvious why John Loftus is immoral.

I looked & didn't see a screen name "John Loftus" (does he go under another name here at Tweb?). Apparently this man is perceived to be threatening enough to warrant an entire Tektonics page devoted to discrediting him.

Frankly, I see no difference between the way Christians argue this issue and guys like Christopher Hitchens. It's not that I have a problem engaging in heated debates with anyone (I went to law school, I guess that's what I'm trained for, although I hardly wish to waste my talents trying to debunk ancient mythology -- since it doesn't bother me that other people believe it, as I once did very strongly). Moreover, I remember debating with atheists and the discussion often became heated (and that's probably an understatement). There was probably no tactic I wouldn't resort to in order to uphold and defend my version of theism.

Heck I'm not even sure what I believe or disbelieve now (so I'm hardly ready to become an atheist apologist). Nevertheless there are not only good arguments against Christianity, I agree with Loftus, it probably can be shown untrue beyond a reasonable doubt. I've heard the arguments for intelligent design (sadly by guys with advanced degrees in biology who waste their talent trying to validate ancient myths), and they're terrible. I've seen arguments by guys like William Craig, and they reduce to the absurd (even though they sound good on the surface).

I'm not sure what to call myself now, but I know it's not Christian (even though I continue to identify with Christians in a broad way i.e. my family is Christian, my culture is Christian, the country I love is mostly Christian, and I respect that). When I was Christian I moved from Arminian to Reformed (I wanted to agree with the Arminian perspective, but I wound up believing the reformed perspective better represents the biblical text, even though now I know the reason for the confusion, the bible is not a consistent document. It wasn't written by an omniscient and omnipotent god, it was written by humans inspired only by their imaginations).

Anyway, I didn't realize what the purpose of this thread (the "screwball" thread) was .... and I didn't mean to derail it by trying to engage in a debate on theism (I have a job in the real world ... and I just don't have the time required to do the research that sort of endeavor requires). There's plenty of authors, historians, and the like who have done the work on comparative mythology, the psychology behind religion, and so on; but whether or not it's reasonable people aren't going to give up their religion easily. Death sucks .... and at least religion gives people some hope (even if there's every reason to believe it's utterly untrue).

[Truth be Told]

Loftus' name on this forum is Doubting John, Yankee...

And John's notoriety around here isn't because we are obsessed with him, it's because he's obsessed with himself.

[jpholding]

How is Loftus immoral? Even if somehow he is immoral how did his immorality inform his atheism? Whether or not he is immoral .... what does his moral standing have to do with his arguments?

Ah yes. Another Sucker for John.

Missed the point though didn't we? I never connected his immorality to any of his arguments. I connected it to him being invited to prestige events like SBL.

So! Do you practice at being stupid this way, or is it genetic?

[bridgeforsale]

Loftus' name on this forum is Doubting John, Yankee...

And John's notoriety around here isn't because we are obsessed with him, it's because he's obsessed with himself.

That's perfectly possible (I have no idea who this person is, or what his demeanor is). What is often my experience though is Christians can be terrible in terms of discriminating against non-Christians (I've experienced a sort of soft-discrimination lately by Christians -- meaning it's obviously there but there's no particular act by any single individual overt enough to level a charge that would stick). Luckily I'll be back in the northeast soon enough (sort of like enlightenment England compared to its barbaric uber-religious continental peers). You could be a nice as peach pie to people, as tolerant as Gandhi, and it won't matter if you disagree with them on religion, because religion is a tribal primitive thing. Ancient superstitions created by bizarre myths can only have a stupefying affect on those who believe it. I certainly don't think I'm better than anyone because I've seen the light as it were. I simply believe I'm more enlightened. I also understand myth is easier and more attractive than reality. It may even inspire people and induce them to live according to certain virtues (or at least try to). Nevertheless none of those features makes it anymore true.

As for Loftus; whether or not he made some unwise statements probably won't inform my opinion regarding his arguments, since I can only imagine he made missteps in the heat of battle (and as humans, who aren't preprogrammed machines, we will inevitably make mistakes, particularly in heated debates against numerous opponents).

I've seen all the apologetic arguments (or at least enough of them to know better). Although I haven't posted here in a while, I was formerly quite active here (when I was a believing Christian). Christian arguments only work in front of a Christian audience. If you were debating before a truly unbiased audience, who were well educated (and had a particularly good background in logic) the Christian position reduces to the absurd (and is virtually always an argument from incredulity). The intelligent design argument is essentially our DNA is complex, therefore god (classic incredulity fallacy). The apologetics used to fight off comparisons with earlier mythology always fight a red herring, like the copy-cat or Jesus myth hypothesis.

There isn't a sufficient amount of evidence for either a copy cat or Jesus myth hypothesis, but the myths surrounding Jesus came from the land of life-death-rebirth myths. Here's an analogy I'm particularly fond of:

If someone came up to me and tried to convince me of the merits of his religion, let's call it the religion of the spaghetti god (I think atheists generally like spaghetti), but I knew he came from a land prone to these sort of myths, wouldn't that fairly factor into my analysis? Now let's go one further and assume these earlier myths included a lasagna religion, a macaroni religion, and most famously (before the spaghetti religion became dominant) the rigatoni religion. Now I'm saying to myself this is just another absurd pasta religion. But this guys response is hold on for just a minute, the spaghetti religion isn't like those earlier pasta religions. First, those earlier religions were pagan and polytheistic (as if that distinction should even be relevant to a truly unbiased person). Second, there's no comparison to the message of peace and love, the self-sacrifice of our spaghetti god, with any of these earlier belief systems. I say, yeah I can see the clear distinctions (and it's obvious you guys didn't directly copy another earlier religion; and it's even possible the individual you claim represented this spaghetti god on earth, existed at some point in history).

But I say, it's just another pasta religion! Sure religion became better and more complex over time. It became more appealing, and offered more benefits (like the evolution of a product). But, so what?

[bridgeforsale]

The argument that Stalin et al. did not kill in the name of atheism requires a substantial amount of ignorance and commits the No True Scotsman fallacy. You seem to forget that Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al. were all avowed atheists, who actively enforced state atheism and actively ordered the persecution of religious individuals because they would not adhere to state atheism. Lenin and others saw it as their mission to eradicate religion from this world. Then there is the fact that they were acting perfectly consistant with the fact that atheism can provide no basis for morality, compared to the Crusaders and Inquistors who readily broke the commandments of their own religion, willingly or out of ignorance to what their religion actually taught. Marxism followed on from Machiavelli's "the end justifies the means" philosophy, and without anything higher than humanity, they were free to do as they please. It only takes a little effort not to completely rape history.

"We must put an end to this papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life once and for all." - Leon Trotsky.

"Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." - Sam Harris.

Of course there's "issues" with what you've presented here. My first impression is this argument is post hoc ergo propter hoc, in other words it’s a false cause fallacy. More subtly the argument is also ad hominem. The problem of course is there's no reason to believe atheism informed the actions of Hitler, Pol Pot, or Stalin. In fact there's ample evidence to suggest two of these three personalities were significantly influenced by religion, specifically Christianity.

As an ad hominem the Hitler/Pol Pot/Stalin argument is a typical tu quoque (or you too), made in response to claims that religion is responsible for the deaths of millions through the inquisition, crusades, various genocides, etc. There are no gulags or concentration camps in recorded history that were designed to fulfill a lack of belief in something, which is what atheism is. None were constructed to destroy lives out of reason or rational thought, which is what informs atheism.

I suggest if you want a clear picture of a what an irreligious western society looks like look at Scandinavia.

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

Yankee, It is absurd to claim millions died at the hands of the inquisition, because much of Europe died from the Black Death!

[Truth be Told]

As for Loftus; whether or not he made some unwise statements probably won't inform my opinion regarding his arguments, since I can only imagine he made missteps in the heat of battle (and as humans, who aren't preprogrammed machines, we will inevitably make mistakes, particularly in heated debates against numerous opponents).

That is Loftus' demeanor. He never admits when he's wrong, he only says he does.