MAJOR derail from Screwball Thread

[bridgeforsale]

ok. So what soul searching was involved.

I suppose I shouldn't have used a paranormal term (among those who believe the paranormal) but nevertheless some of the greatest (and most atheistic) philosophers didn't abandon the term (so neither will I).

It's an intellectual self-assessment (like an after action review).

So what main details made you think that the events in the Bible didn't happen?

for starters all the supernatural claims.

[Darth Ovious]

I suppose I shouldn't have used a paranormal term (among those who believe the paranormal) but nevertheless some of the greatest (and most atheistic) philosophers didn't abandon the term (so neither will I).

It's an intellectual self-assessment (like an after action review).

I see, in regards to your actions at Fort Hood?

for starters all the supernatural claims.

You misunderstood me. I was asking what details made you doubt that the supernatural events in the Bible happened?

[Darth Executor]

for starters all the supernatural claims.

To believe the supernatural claims are impossible, you'd need to be an atheist. So it's logically impossible for you to stop believing in God because of that. Unless you admit to being stupid, at least in this instance.

[bridgeforsale]

You misunderstood me. I was asking what details made you doubt that the supernatural events in the Bible happened?

an openness to contrary arguments made religion seem exceedingly unreasonable. Also a CONUS deployment gave me some distance from it (which facilitated my openness to alternative arguments, and gave me time to do some reading and reasoning).

I'm not one who makes dogmatic arguments, like Jesus never existed or some ancient guy invented Christianity by copying the Osiris (or Horus) story, which are both pretty ridiculous claims. I just say religion has always been a god of gaps, or a default position (from incredulity). Imagine being an ancient guy trying to wrap your mind around profound questions like why are we here, or what's the deal with all the stars in the night sky (especially in places like Iraq, where the night sky is an amazing sight)? I do however acknowledge the parallels between contemporary religion and earlier mythology (and I believe its a probative fact), I just won't try and reach back in time and say X passage was inspired by the authors imagination and his preexisting knowledge of Y myth (which is a ridiculous expectation).

It slowly became obvious, none of it is true (speaking of supernatural religious myths). You have to rely on far fetched reasoning and I slowly became unwilling to do that? I also don't try and imagine why some of these myths were invented, or what the motives of the myth makers were. I'm sure it differed from case to case. Frankly I don't even say religion is always bad. Obviously things like loving your neighbor and forgiveness are good things (in many if not most cases). But there's more nuance to life than the simple maxims religion offers us, and I'm convinced an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent god didn't inspire the authorship of any book; and most likely (unfortunately) doesn't exist.

[Stax]

I used to know a lot about Christianity, but I haven't picked up a bible in over a year (so I concede I'm a little rusty).

At least we can get that far. However, you have failed to address the rest of my post.

Nevertheless, knowing it's nonsense I have little impetus to reexamine it

Of course not. That might cause you to reconsider, and you wouldn't want that, would you?

(I even have a little collection of books I've read on the subject, ranging from Lewis to NT Wright, I had just wasted good money on a brand new ESV complete with internet tools from Crossway, when I became an atheist).

Having books is good. Reading them is good. Understanding them is even better. Did you understand them?

Worthless knowledge, and I don't need to know the intricate details of the bible to whip you guys in a debate.

You mean like how you've been whipping us so far? Suuuuuuuure.

[Challenger Grim]

Certainly once I left religion behind feelings of guilt did dissipate, ...

Hmmmm.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt

Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes - whether justified or not - that he or she has violated a moral standard, and is responsible for that violation.[1] It is closely related to the concept of remorse.

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...&postcount=360

The evolution of our morality, religiosity, and even sexuality were products of our intellectual development. There's no celestial paranormal force imparting us with a conscience.

So:
Morality is a product of intellect (per you).
Guilt, is a by product of morality.
When you left the faith... you had less guilt.
Therefore, you had less morality.

A product of intellect.

Therefore, you lost intellect when you left the faith. (reinforcing my previous point)

I am curious, what morals did you intellectually decide weren't needed when you left the faith.

(and that's not even jumping on the obvious point of reduced guilt is easier justify totalitarianism, I'm still waiting on why he thinks racism is wrong)

[Darth Ovious]

an openness to contrary arguments made religion seem exceedingly unreasonable. Also a CONUS deployment gave me some distance from it (which facilitated my openness to alternative arguments, and gave me time to do some reading and reasoning).

I'm the opposite. I wasn't brought up to go to church. My mother and father weren't church going people when I was a boy. They had been before and they said that they believed in God but I didn't receive any religious education whatsoever. My brother is actually an atheist.

Funny thing is I believed in God despite all this when I was younger but I didn't have any compulsion to go to church and then one day I decided to go and I asked a friend if I could join him. I went to that church for 3 years. I made lots of friends but my theology didn't grow whatsoever. I didn't even read the Bible even though I believed in God's existence. In short, I was lazy.

Then one day I was talking to someone who also believed in God but he said to me that even though the Bible was good, you couldn't believe in what it said 100%. I asked why that was and he talked about Bible contradictions. I asked him for a list and started looking.

I looked at a few websites and then wham, I found a website so brilliant that it amazed me. That website was ex-atheist.com (although this website has been down now for a while now). I quite literally couldn't believe it. This lady who used to be an atheist started talking about apologetics, logical fallacies, etc. She then gave good arguments for things like how evil and a loving God could co-exist. The big one which was an issue I had struggled with for a long time was the Loving God and Hell issue. You see, despite the fact that I believed in God, I had always thought that what I considered to be "good" people wouldn't go to Hell, etc. This website made me think.

From there, there was a link to this website and also to Tektonics, which is Holdings work, and well that's me here now. I have been here for nearly a year (one month more) and it's been a great experience. During my first year I have learned so much and yet I also feel that I have not learned enough. There are still topics that I am not familiar with but I know that I will study them in good time.

I would also like to add, that this one year dedication to TWeb is also the longest that I have ever remained active at a website. Any other website I have not remained active for that long. I might have posted at a short time and then a year later made another post but with TWeb I have been actively posting for the last 11 months consistently.

I'm not one who makes dogmatic arguments, like Jesus never existed or some ancient guy invented Christianity by copying the Osiris (or Horus) story, which are both pretty ridiculous claims. I just say religion has always been a god of gaps, or a default position (from incredulity). Imagine being an ancient guy trying to wrap your mind around profound questions like why are we here, or what's the deal with all the stars in the night sky (especially in places like Iraq, where the night sky is an amazing sight)? I do however acknowledge the parallels between contemporary religion and earlier mythology (and I believe its a probative fact), I just won't try and reach back in time and say X passage was inspired by the authors imagination and his preexisting knowledge of Y myth (which is a ridiculous expectation).

My study into the Gospels has shown me that there are better facts than I thought there would be over a year ago. I always thought that the New Testament was the New Testament and that was it. I had no realization that scholars could learn so much from the NT. I didn't even realize that they could study the texts for textual criticism and I didn't even realize they could determine facts from it, but they can.

For the statement concerning the supernatural, you are positing that because other supernatural events can be deemed false then the supernatural events in the Bible can be deemed false. I don't think this. I think each claim should be judged on it's own merits

Also the supernatural realm is larger than the natural one. For instance they are more ideas that can be posited to be supernatural than there can for natural. For instance if I hypothesize that a mountain turned into a frog then that would be considered a supernatural claim. So we could have any number of claims that can considered supernatural, while we have a finite number than can be considered natural.

What this means is that if one natural claim happening doesn't discount any other natural claims from happening, for instance natural claim X didn't happen but this doesn't discount natural claim Y, then why should this argument work for supernatural claims. For instance if supernatural claim A is false then why would this discount supernatural claim B? We already know that supernatural claims could outnumber natural ones by hypothesis but this tells us nothing about whether supernatural claims can happen and which ones and how often.

It slowly became obvious, none of it is true (speaking of supernatural religious myths). You have to rely on far fetched reasoning and I slowly became unwilling to do that? I also don't try and imagine why some of these myths were invented, or what the motives of the myth makers were. I'm sure it differed from case to case. Frankly I don't even say religion is always bad. Obviously things like loving your neighbor and forgiveness are good things (in many if not most cases). But there's more nuance to life than the simple maxims religion offers us, and I'm convinced an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent god didn't inspire the authorship of any book; and most likely (unfortunately) doesn't exist.

I don't think the reasoning is far fetched. Quite simply supernatural events are just events that don't happen very often. It's only the repetitiveness of the natural world which has led science to discover the workings of the Universe. This doesn't mean that rare occurrences don't happen.

Besides, for my claim that miracles are possible, I only need to believe that they can happen, not even if one had happened but just possible for one to happen.

For my claim that a miracle has occurred to be true, I only need one miracle to have ever occurred. I could say the resurrection and thats that.

For a claim that miracles are impossible to be true, then you have to discount every single miracle that ever occurred. Surely nobody can gather the information to discount every single miracle claim that ever happened. Also what does this statement say about unlikely events. Those events that are considered extremely unlikely. For instance the fine tuning of the Universe problem. Does this then discount the Universe coming about by "natural means"? Just because it can be considered unlikely to have happened?

[ApologiaPhoenix]

what could you possibly understand about law that I don't (as someone with a law degree)?

Natural law doesn't exist (at least in the context philosophers like Aquinas believed it did). Natural laws are principals like our survival instinct, but arguably even that's derived from our apprehension of our mortality. Starting with small bands, to tribes, chiefdom's, and finally states and empires .... our social evolution was a product of a variety of factors (mutual benefit and self-serving behaviors are a strong component, but I also think through our social evolution we learned altruism).

The evolution of our morality, religiosity, and even sexuality were products of our intellectual development. There's no celestial paranormal force imparting us with a conscience.

If you want to challenge me on if there's an objective moral law, I'm game.

[bridgeforsale]

Hmmmm.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt


http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...&postcount=360


So:
Morality is a product of intellect (per you).
Guilt, is a by product of morality.
When you left the faith... you had less guilt.
Therefore, you had less morality.

A product of intellect.

Therefore, you lost intellect when you left the faith. (reinforcing my previous point)

I am curious, what morals did you intellectually decide weren't needed when you left the faith.

(and that's not even jumping on the obvious point of reduced guilt is easier justify totalitarianism, I'm still waiting on why he thinks racism is wrong)

funny, and while you logic isn't unreasonable, I wouldn't characterize it that way. Christianity instills the concept of total depravity in the believer. Whether reasonable or not I'd have a certain degree of guilt for anything I viewed as impure. My behavior hasn't changed (in fact if anything it's become slightly better); but nevertheless I feel less guilt.

I'm not sure if I can even determine exactly why this is the case. I also do admit I no longer view many of the things I once despised, as sinful. I'm far more liberal in my rhetorical treatment of abortion, homosexuals, etc. Although I haven't sought to impregnate the nearest female (so I could run out and procure an abortion) and I did not become a homosexual (or even consider it) ... my atheism has made me more socially liberal.

I no longer view life through the prism of what god thinks (since I now believe god is a fictional character). I'm a humanist. I don't think the "world is evil" (indeed I'm convinced it's the only world we'll ever have, so we may as well love it and try to improve it).

[bridgeforsale]

If you want to challenge me on if there's an objective moral law, I'm game.

I do believe there's an objective moral law, so will take the negative position?

[ApologiaPhoenix]

I do believe there's an objective moral law, so will take the negative position?

Oh I believe Natural Law exists like Aquinas says it does.

[bridgeforsale]

I'm the opposite. I wasn't brought up to go to church. My mother and father weren't church going people when I was a boy. They had been before and they said that they believed in God but I didn't receive any religious education whatsoever. My brother is actually an atheist.

Funny thing is I believed in God despite all this when I was younger but I didn't have any compulsion to go to church and then one day I decided to go and I asked a friend if I could join him. I went to that church for 3 years. I made lots of friends but my theology didn't grow whatsoever. I didn't even read the Bible even though I believed in God's existence. In short, I was lazy.

Then one day I was talking to someone who also believed in God but he said to me that even though the Bible was good, you couldn't believe in what it said 100%. I asked why that was and he talked about Bible contradictions. I asked him for a list and started looking.

I looked at a few websites and then wham, I found a website so brilliant that it amazed me. That website was ex-atheist.com (although this website has been down now for a while now). I quite literally couldn't believe it. This lady who used to be an atheist started talking about apologetics, logical fallacies, etc. She then gave good arguments for things like how evil and a loving God could co-exist. The big one which was an issue I had struggled with for a long time was the Loving God and Hell issue. You see, despite the fact that I believed in God, I had always thought that what I considered to be "good" people wouldn't go to Hell, etc. This website made me think.

From there, there was a link to this website and also to Tektonics, which is Holdings work, and well that's me here now. I have been here for nearly a year (one month more) and it's been a great experience. During my first year I have learned so much and yet I also feel that I have not learned enough. There are still topics that I am not familiar with but I know that I will study them in good time.

I would also like to add, that this one year dedication to TWeb is also the longest that I have ever remained active at a website. Any other website I have not remained active for that long. I might have posted at a short time and then a year later made another post but with TWeb I have been actively posting for the last 11 months consistently.

Yeah, sounds like what I did before leaving the faith. I searched my butt off for answers (looking at numerous web sites like the ones you're describing). In the end though the intellectual slippery slope led me to what I'm pretty sure is irreversible atheism (although I've learned to never say never).

My study into the Gospels has shown me that there are better facts than I thought there would be over a year ago. I always thought that the New Testament was the New Testament and that was it. I had no realization that scholars could learn so much from the NT. I didn't even realize that they could study the texts for textual criticism and I didn't even realize they could determine facts from it, but they can.

For the statement concerning the supernatural, you are positing that because other supernatural events can be deemed false then the supernatural events in the Bible can be deemed false. I don't think this. I think each claim should be judged on it's own merits

Also the supernatural realm is larger than the natural one. For instance they are more ideas that can be posited to be supernatural than there can for natural. For instance if I hypothesize that a mountain turned into a frog then that would be considered a supernatural claim. So we could have any number of claims that can considered supernatural, while we have a finite number than can be considered natural.

What this means is that if one natural claim happening doesn't discount any other natural claims from happening, for instance natural claim X didn't happen but this doesn't discount natural claim Y, then why should this argument work for supernatural claims. For instance if supernatural claim A is false then why would this discount supernatural claim B? We already know that supernatural claims could outnumber natural ones by hypothesis but this tells us nothing about whether supernatural claims can happen and which ones and how often.

I don't think the reasoning is far fetched. Quite simply supernatural events are just events that don't happen very often. It's only the repetitiveness of the natural world which has led science to discover the workings of the Universe. This doesn't mean that rare occurrences don't happen.

I do believe rare occurrences happen, but I only believe they happen in nature (and according to a certain statistical probability).

The problem with saying god only pops in on rare occasion (compared to the biblical depiction of a god actively and fairly constantly involved in shaping the destiny of his people) is the presentation of god. All powerful, all knowing, and present everywhere simultaneously (omnipresent).

If a guy came up to me and told me a story of a supernatural event that was far fetched (meaning something that defies the laws of nature), but couldn't replicate the event, obviously anyone would be less inclined to believe it. If that person then tells me the supernatural event was a manifestation of divine power from an omnipotent god of some sort, who could replicate the event if he wanted to (and thus I should worship him), I should be even less inclined to believe it if this god never replicates the event again (or I have nothing else besides this single source trying to persuade me this god exists).

The story begins with a god, one man, and one woman in a garden. The god is portrayed almost as a golly green giant character early in Genesis. Right off the bat there's numerous similarities with the Sumerian creation myth (which came earlier than the Hebrew version of the story). If I say the Hebrew creation myth is a hybrid of the Sumerian story, theists usually say the Sumerians probably learned the same truth from the Jews (but somehow perverted the story to fit their polytheistic worldview). I say hold on for a minute, that's not reasonably possible since science tells us the Genesis narrative cannot be literally true.

Then there's the debate over Exodus. Imagine two or three million people, in military formations, marching through the desert. They would have formed a line roughly 150 miles long. There would have certainly been some archeological evidence the desert hosted millions of people, or at a minimum archeologists would have found something suggesting this story were true in the towns they know existed along the route. Yet nothing, not a single thing.

But wait, there's the Jewish guy who made the History Channel show on the Exodus (who tries to combat the objections by the vast majority of scholars). I say hmmm, let me check it out. After only five minutes I find out the guy didn't accurately describe the historical events (recorded in Egyptian history) he tried to connect to the Exodus narrative.

Eventually it becomes on those .... if you believe that I got a bridge for sale?

Besides, for my claim that miracles are possible, I only need to believe that they can happen, not even if one had happened but just possible for one to happen.

For my claim that a miracle has occurred to be true, I only need one miracle to have ever occurred. I could say the resurrection and thats that.

For a claim that miracles are impossible to be true, then you have to discount every single miracle that ever occurred. Surely nobody can gather the information to discount every single miracle claim that ever happened. Also what does this statement say about unlikely events. Those events that are considered extremely unlikely. For instance the fine tuning of the Universe problem. Does this then discount the Universe coming about by "natural means"? Just because it can be considered unlikely to have happened?

I don't follow your logic? Yes I discount every single miracle, but I'm not gonna bother going on a quest to debunk every single miracle claimed by every theist on earth (that would be kind of absurd don't you think). I also think it's absurd to say one must either go about debunking every miracle on earth, or they should believe them (as a default position).

A logical default position is to believe everything has a natural cause (since there's not a single thing in human history we've ever discovered a supernatural cause for)!

[bridgeforsale]

Oh I believe Natural Law exists like Aquinas says it does.

so tell me how you would distinguish between natural law and "objective moral law"?

[ApologiaPhoenix]

so tell me how you would distinguish between natural law and "objective moral law"?

I wouldn't. The Natural Law is the objective moral law. Now natural laws are things like gravity and such. Those apply to physical objects.

[bridgeforsale]

I wouldn't. The Natural Law is the objective moral law. Now natural laws are things like gravity and such. Those apply to physical objects.

OK so you would say genocide is evil, or murder is evil, rape is evil, and so on .... and these are examples of objective natural (and universal) laws. Great I agree, but would you also say a god imputes these rules in our physiological construct (whether biologically or metaphysically)?

In other words is it god who gives us our conscience, and if that's how you distinguish your view from my own ..... how do you possibly propose to prove it in a debate?