…for Sloth: a proper explanation of atheism: http://www.dontfeedtheanimals.net/2009/12/problem-of-defining-atheism.html
“A too-common detraction from the concept of atheism is that it is a belief system and thus a competitor to religion.”
[quote]Meatros wrote:
It’s a philosophical/moral dilemma meant to expose certain things about the Christian religion (or the Abrahamist religions). If you say no, then I am prepared to put it forth. If you say yes, then I am interested in your solution to it.
[/quote]
I’m assuming you’re speaking of the atheist’s Joshua challenge. If I was a warrior in that time period, killing women and children would probably seem like a necessary part of my duty, and not so unexpected. Operating from their knowledge of warfare, history, and tribal conquest, I’m certain they saw survivors as being duty bound to multiply and exact vengeance in the future.
But, this is like asking me if I would own slaves had I been born in a society where this was common. Probably? Who am I to say I wouldn’t?
But none of this contradicts the progressive revelational history I’ve tried (in rather truncated attempts) to describe. It is not that killing women and children was just or holy. It was–without God as puppeteer–war.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…for Sloth: a proper explanation of atheism: http://www.dontfeedtheanimals.net/2009/12/problem-of-defining-atheism.html
“A too-common detraction from the concept of atheism is that it is a belief system and thus a competitor to religion.”[/quote]
From your link:
“In other words, we cannot reject something that we cannot observe. Dictionary publishers would have to choose between these two perspectives for their definition. So far, they’re siding with the theists.”
This translates into: If we cannot observe it, then we cannot reject it. By contrapositive, that translates to: If we reject it, then we observe it.
I submit therefore that this definition of atheism is illogical.
I’ll try to fix it for you: Atheism is rooted in observation, as the author admits. Atheists must be logical empiricists. Therefore a major premise of atheism must be: any concept not formed by abstraction from percepts is an empty concept.
But then, what is ‘love’? What is ‘integrity’? What is ‘justice’? Following the reasoning of atheists, those things cannot exist, at least not in the same sense of ‘chair’ or ‘person’.
The philosophic roots of atheism thus depend on humans thinkin at the level of dumb animals. I’ll pass.
[quote]JEATON wrote:
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]JEATON wrote:
I believe atheism is intellectually lazy.[/quote]
Pretty much stopped reading here.[/quote]
Right…
Can’t see it, touch it, taste it or measure it in some way, it don’t exist.
How’s that two dimensional world working out for ya’.[/quote]
Lol, you are an idiot.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Meatros wrote:
[quote]spyoptic wrote:
Things that define religion
- Central myths
- rituals
- a community
- code of ethics
- material expressions
- sacredness - people, places or things
- emotional experiences
Atheism comes close to a religion…[/quote]
Not really.
How does the disbelief in god lead to any of those things?[/quote]
Central myth is not part of religion either. Better have some proof that belief in God’s existence is a myth. [/quote]
I didn’t make the claim. Further, ‘myth’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘untruth’ - granted I think it’s morphed into that.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
I’m assuming you’re speaking of the atheist’s Joshua challenge. If I was a warrior in that time period, killing women and children would probably seem like a necessary part of my duty, and not so unexpected. Operating from their knowledge of warfare, history, and tribal conquest, I’m certain they saw survivors as being duty bound to multiply and exact vengeance in the future.[/quote]
Erm, yes - is there a Christian’s Joshua Challenge?
So if you were back there - not some unnamed warrior - you would have no problem killing women and children? If you started hearing God’s voice and he told you to kill women and children today, would you do it?
Actually the difference is that what you are doing is not answering for yourself - you are answering for a hypothetical mystery person back in that period. I’m asking you what you would do, were you back there.
God was involved in the Joshua conquest - further, it would necessarily be holy to kill those women and children. IN fact, if God commands it, it is holy, isn’t that correct?
So if God commanded you slaughter your first born son (provided you have it), would you do it?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
I’m assuming you’re speaking of the atheist’s Joshua challenge. If I was a warrior in that time period, killing women and children would probably seem like a necessary part of my duty, and not so unexpected. Operating from their knowledge of warfare, history, and tribal conquest, I’m certain they saw survivors as being duty bound to multiply and exact vengeance in the future
Meatros wrote:
Erm, yes - is there a Christian’s Joshua Challenge?[/quote]
Yes.
[quote]Meatros wrote:
So if you were back there - not some unnamed warrior - you would have no problem killing women and children?[/quote]
Ah, now the question falls apart when presented like this. I’m not an ancient tribal person. I am aware of the fullfilled law, morality, and Christ. I would have to act as a Christian. Being an omniscient God, my time traveling ways would not hide this fact from him.
But now let me turn the question around on you. Say you go back in time. Say one of these tribes takes pity on your strange looking, oddly dressed, oddly speaking, starving, dehydrated, defenseless self. Say the offer to take you in as one of their tribe. Would you accept? Or, die alone in the desert? If you accept entrance into the tribe, you must accept that you will have to fight for the tribe. If you accept this, you will either have to kill women and chidren of the enemy tribes, or sell them into slavery, when the peace fails.
At this point you may wish to tell some grand tale about how you’d wrest control over all the tribal peoples, and dictate to them our “laws of war.” Please don’t. It’d insult our intelligence. And, pretending for a moment you could, what if you actually made the future worse off for everybody? You, after all, wouldn’t have the power of omniscience.
[quote]
Meatros wrote:
If you started hearing God’s voice and he told you to kill women and children today, would you do it?[/quote]
No. I’d know I was either crazy, or, the first guy to hear the antichrist. See Christian theology on revelation.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…i misunderstood Pat, i generally use the term “metaphysical” in a divine or spiritual sense, not abstract thought. But even seen in that light, i don’t get how this relates to anything godly or absolute. Explain?
[/quote]
Metaphysics is not the stuff of religion. There are many aspects, facets, and layers. Everything rolls up, however. We can agree perhaps that, say morality exists. Where does it come from? And then where does that come from, etc. This is actually what becomes the cosmological form of argument for the existence of God.
If you follow the chain of questions you have one of two scenarios, an infinite regress or a stop or conclusion.
Infinite regress is a logical fallacy, because it begs the question…For innstance, “Why are we here, because we’re here…Roll the bones” ~ Neil Peart
You cannot answer a philosophical question with a logical fallacy, it invalidates the arguemt, so you have to stop it to make it deductively correct. So you have a succession of things, each caused by the other. What properties must something have that started the process?
Well, it has to be able to cause with out being caused. If it is not, it cannot be the initiator. If it cannot be put in to existence, it must necessarily have always been as well. It could not just pop into existence with out itself being caused. And there you have it, the cosmological argument for the existence of God.
The beauty of the argument, is that you can start at any point. When dealing the physical, you have the problem of time, events preceding one another. However, once you hit the metaphysical, time ceases to be a problem as metaphysical objects are not subject to time. For instance, the “idea” or “point” of chair is the same whether discovered a million years ago, or today.
Lastly, in metaphysics, you only discover what is there, we are not capable of anything original. The “laws” of physics was discover not invented. The principals of math were discovered not invented. If it were invented, we could change the ‘rules’ and we cannot. It’s not relative, but completely concrete. I like to be rooted in the concrete.
My biggest challenge with atheists is to get them to understand that they deal in the metaphysical everyday, if not constantly. Once we get past that point, then the order becomes much easier to understand.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
As promised here are my definitions of good, evil and morality.
An evil act is an act perpetrated on a self or another living thing that does harm to that life. A good act is an act that enriches a self or another living thing. For an act to be ‘good’ or ‘evil’ the actor must have freewill. In other words they have to have been able to choose to do good, or not, or to do evil or not. Morality is the sense to know the difference between the two constructs.
So evil is willful harm, and good is willful enlivenment. Morality is the wisdom to know the difference when behaving or experiencing.
[/quote]
…tying in with the other post, where does religion or god enter the fray?[/quote]
As in the response to your last post, where did it come from and where did that come from, etc.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
As promised here are my definitions of good, evil and morality.
An evil act is an act perpetrated on a self or another living thing that does harm to that life. A good act is an act that enriches a self or another living thing. For an act to be ‘good’ or ‘evil’ the actor must have freewill. In other words they have to have been able to choose to do good, or not, or to do evil or not. Morality is the sense to know the difference between the two constructs.
So evil is willful harm, and good is willful enlivenment. Morality is the wisdom to know the difference when behaving or experiencing.
[/quote]
…tying in with the other post, where does religion or god enter the fray?[/quote]
As in the response to your last post, where did it come from and where did that come from, etc.[/quote]
Pat, I am spiritual, or beleving in spirit and god, so I’m gonna ask you the questions slightly different, because I agree with what you just wrote. But why christianity? Were you given a platter of religions to choose from and selected christianity logically because you found it to be the most logically real religion? Or did christianity choose you because you were born into a christian family and you were taught christian values from the time you were a young person with a highly maleable mind?
V
[quote]Meatros wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
I’m assuming you’re speaking of the atheist’s Joshua challenge. If I was a warrior in that time period, killing women and children would probably seem like a necessary part of my duty, and not so unexpected. Operating from their knowledge of warfare, history, and tribal conquest, I’m certain they saw survivors as being duty bound to multiply and exact vengeance in the future.[/quote]
Erm, yes - is there a Christian’s Joshua Challenge?
So if you were back there - not some unnamed warrior - you would have no problem killing women and children? If you started hearing God’s voice and he told you to kill women and children today, would you do it?
Actually the difference is that what you are doing is not answering for yourself - you are answering for a hypothetical mystery person back in that period. I’m asking you what you would do, were you back there.
God was involved in the Joshua conquest - further, it would necessarily be holy to kill those women and children. IN fact, if God commands it, it is holy, isn’t that correct?
So if God commanded you slaughter your first born son (provided you have it), would you do it?[/quote]
Joshua is a really weird book, no doubt about. I am not certain why God brought armageddon on those people. Perhaps the answer is in the Penetuch, but I don’t know. I will have to research it and see.
But like I said before, fuck with the Jews and it’s your ass. Look at history, has anybody whose ever fucked with the Jews not pay dearly for doing so?
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Meatros wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
I’m assuming you’re speaking of the atheist’s Joshua challenge. If I was a warrior in that time period, killing women and children would probably seem like a necessary part of my duty, and not so unexpected. Operating from their knowledge of warfare, history, and tribal conquest, I’m certain they saw survivors as being duty bound to multiply and exact vengeance in the future.[/quote]
Erm, yes - is there a Christian’s Joshua Challenge?
So if you were back there - not some unnamed warrior - you would have no problem killing women and children? If you started hearing God’s voice and he told you to kill women and children today, would you do it?
Actually the difference is that what you are doing is not answering for yourself - you are answering for a hypothetical mystery person back in that period. I’m asking you what you would do, were you back there.
God was involved in the Joshua conquest - further, it would necessarily be holy to kill those women and children. IN fact, if God commands it, it is holy, isn’t that correct?
So if God commanded you slaughter your first born son (provided you have it), would you do it?[/quote]
Joshua is a really weird book, no doubt about. I am not certain why God brought armageddon on those people. Perhaps the answer is in the Penetuch, but I don’t know. I will have to research it and see.
But like I said before, fuck with the Jews and it’s your ass. Look at history, has anybody whose ever fucked with the Jews not pay dearly for doing so? [/quote]
Haven’t the muslims been fucking with them for about 2,000 years? They seem to be doing fine.
V
[quote]Vegita wrote:
Pat, I am spiritual, or beleving in spirit and god, so I’m gonna ask you the questions slightly different, because I agree with what you just wrote. But why christianity? Were you given a platter of religions to choose from and selected christianity logically because you found it to be the most logically real religion? Or did christianity choose you because you were born into a christian family and you were taught christian values from the time you were a young person with a highly maleable mind?
V[/quote]
There is no doubt being raised as a Christian played a role in my continuing to be so. If I were nothing and able to choose a religion, would I choose Christianity, I don’t know. This does not mean I blindly accepted it either, but it is able to stand up to scrutiny.
My over simplified view of religion is this, it is a means by which to communicate with God. The rituals and history associated with religion is a way to make things uniform. Especially in the old days, where communication was very slow and education was scant at best, the easiest things to do for the people is to establish rules and rituals to formalize this communication with out everyone having to be “enlightened” by another.For instnace, the Buddhists hole up in temples for years to get enlightenment, who has that kind of time? If everybody were able to spend loads of time educating, learning and postulating, then organized religion probably would not be necessary. Also, these things were done to help out the community at large. For instance, look a circumcision. Why circumcise, well hygiene ain’t so good so if you want to keep your dick, cut off the foreskin so it does not get infected. Why on the 8th day? Because the clotting factors in the human body are highest on that day. The danger is when the rules and regulations become the focus of the religion and not the relationship with God. When this happens you become pharasedic, where the rules become more important than God himself. This, unfortunately happens a lot in religion. “Whoops, you sinned. You’re fucked now.”
That is rituals as applicable to religion.
Why Catholic? I believe in Jesus, I believe he is who he said he was and he started it himself, period. If I am going to be Christian, why not the tradition that Christ himself established? Problem is, Christ started it, but he doesn’t run it, people do and people fuck up, a lot. Actually, to me that fact that Catholicism, has survived and so well, is a miracle in itself. People with in the church have done their level best to destroy it, yet it’s here and thrives (despite Europe).
I also like the rituals of the church and it does succeed in my goal which is to get closer to God. He hears me a lot more than I hear him, but it works and I am at peace.
As long as people are in charge of religions, there will be abominations to come out; people are to stupid to do other wise. I am ok with this because I my self am not perfect and hence don’t deserve a perfect church. I would be oddly out of place.
In the end, it doesn’t much matter as it is between you and God. And what happens beyond that, is your choice, not God’s.
[quote]Vegita wrote:
Haven’t the muslims been fucking with them for about 2,000 years? They seem to be doing fine.
V[/quote]
Do they really look fine to you? They look like there in a world of hurt to me. There up to their knees in blood, and they are rife with infighting. I think they are pretty damn far from fine. I do hope one day they clean their house and are able to find peace. But as long as they allow radicals to steer the ship, I see only more pain. You just can’t kill everybody or beat them into submission.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Yes.
[/quote]
Really? Can you link to it? I’ve never heard of this.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Ah, now the question falls apart when presented like this. I’m not an ancient tribal person. I am aware of the fullfilled law, morality, and Christ. I would have to act as a Christian. Being an omniscient God, my time traveling ways would not hide this fact from him.
[/quote]
Actually that is what the question is aimed at from the beginning - if you take it the way you take it, then you can’t actually comment on it, since you aren’t that person.
I’m not sure that you answered the question, supposing you were living back then - with your current ideals. So would you do as God commands and kill the child?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
But now let me turn the question around on you. Say you go back in time. Say one of these tribes takes pity on your strange looking, oddly dressed, oddly speaking, starving, dehydrated, defenseless self. Say the offer to take you in as one of their tribe. Would you accept? Or, die alone in the desert? If you accept entrance into the tribe, you must accept that you will have to fight for the tribe. If you accept this, you will either have to kill women and chidren of the enemy tribes, or sell them into slavery, when the peace fails.
[/quote]
I would not kill defenseless women and children - even if it meant death.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
At this point you may wish to tell some grand tale about how you’d wrest control over all the tribal peoples, and dictate to them our “laws of war.” Please don’t. It’d insult our intelligence. And, pretending for a moment you could, what if you actually made the future worse off for everybody? You, after all, wouldn’t have the power of omniscience.
[/quote]
No, I wouldn’t wrest control over anyone - I would probably be killed or die of starvation or whatever. We don’t even have to have me really time travel for this, since this is what essentially occurred in Nazi Germany. Notice though that there were resistors. People did fight back even though the will of the tribe stated that Jews were inhuman.
There is a gaping problem with this comparison though, in that I am not all powerful. This factor alone renders this dilemma inert when it comes to non theists.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
No. I’d know I was either crazy, or, the first guy to hear the antichrist. See Christian theology on revelation.
[/quote]
Christian theology doesn’t say anything about this - in fact, according to Christian theology, you should be able to work wonders. Move mountains and that sort of thing. Since you’ve already admitted that it’s an incomplete revelation, it’s perfectly possible for God to ask this of you again.
That’s the logical problem of an ongoing revelation - it leaves you with nothing to trust.
[quote]pat wrote:
Joshua is a really weird book, no doubt about. I am not certain why God brought armageddon on those people. Perhaps the answer is in the Penetuch, but I don’t know. I will have to research it and see.[/quote]
I think it perfectly illustrates the subjectiveness of God’s morality. Then again the entire idea of God creating a ‘chosen’ people doesn’t make much sense if you accept the idea that he created everything and everyone.
[quote]pat wrote:
But like I said before, fuck with the Jews and it’s your ass. Look at history, has anybody whose ever fucked with the Jews not pay dearly for doing so?[/quote]
In what sense? Certainly the Romans didn’t pay for doing so. Their empire collapsed centuries after their atrocities and as a result of a variety of factors. God was not one of them. The same goes for the Germans, who systematically exterminated 1/2 (more?) of all the Jews on the planet. Yet, it was mankind - not god - who stepped up to stop the atrocity.
It is only the ‘perfect’ and ‘all good’ god that has wiped out humanity time and time again. The bible reads like a primitive people putting together a justification for their treatment. It does not read like a divine revelation. Yes, that’s my opinion I realize, but it’s one that is backed up by the fact that the bible evolved over the eons. The beliefs evolved as well. There is an apologetic that this is a progressive revelation - but that makes no sense in light of what the bible actually says. God talked to people back in the Hebrew days - God was literally seen back then - yet, we are supposed to suppose that his message was garbled? That third and fourth hand sources contain more of his ‘revelation’ then a supposed first hand account (the pentatuach). THAT’S even with accepting the church’s stance on the authorship of the Old Testament. I don’t think many scholars today accept that the Pentatuach was written by Moses (especially when detailing his own death). IIRC, the documentary hypothesis is the widely accepted notion of how those books came about.
Again, for the Christians, I ask:
Why ought we do what God tells us to do?
Is it just because he can punish us? If so, then there is no special basis for morality (ie, God is not needed as an absolute basis for morality), since it equates to might makes right.
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]Vegita wrote:
Pat, I am spiritual, or beleving in spirit and god, so I’m gonna ask you the questions slightly different, because I agree with what you just wrote. But why christianity? Were you given a platter of religions to choose from and selected christianity logically because you found it to be the most logically real religion? Or did christianity choose you because you were born into a christian family and you were taught christian values from the time you were a young person with a highly maleable mind?
V[/quote]
There is no doubt being raised as a Christian played a role in my continuing to be so. If I were nothing and able to choose a religion, would I choose Christianity, I don’t know. This does not mean I blindly accepted it either, but it is able to stand up to scrutiny.
My over simplified view of religion is this, it is a means by which to communicate with God. The rituals and history associated with religion is a way to make things uniform. Especially in the old days, where communication was very slow and education was scant at best, the easiest things to do for the people is to establish rules and rituals to formalize this communication with out everyone having to be “enlightened” by another.For instnace, the Buddhists hole up in temples for years to get enlightenment, who has that kind of time? If everybody were able to spend loads of time educating, learning and postulating, then organized religion probably would not be necessary. Also, these things were done to help out the community at large. For instance, look a circumcision. Why circumcise, well hygiene ain’t so good so if you want to keep your dick, cut off the foreskin so it does not get infected. Why on the 8th day? Because the clotting factors in the human body are highest on that day. The danger is when the rules and regulations become the focus of the religion and not the relationship with God. When this happens you become pharasedic, where the rules become more important than God himself. This, unfortunately happens a lot in religion. “Whoops, you sinned. You’re fucked now.”
That is rituals as applicable to religion.
Why Catholic? I believe in Jesus, I believe he is who he said he was and he started it himself, period. If I am going to be Christian, why not the tradition that Christ himself established? Problem is, Christ started it, but he doesn’t run it, people do and people fuck up, a lot. Actually, to me that fact that Catholicism, has survived and so well, is a miracle in itself. People with in the church have done their level best to destroy it, yet it’s here and thrives (despite Europe).
I also like the rituals of the church and it does succeed in my goal which is to get closer to God. He hears me a lot more than I hear him, but it works and I am at peace.
As long as people are in charge of religions, there will be abominations to come out; people are to stupid to do other wise. I am ok with this because I my self am not perfect and hence don’t deserve a perfect church. I would be oddly out of place.
In the end, it doesn’t much matter as it is between you and God. And what happens beyond that, is your choice, not God’s.[/quote]
I wish all christians thought as you do, you and sloth are farther apart from eachother, than you and I are, yet you and sloth are christians and I am not. As I mentioned previously, the single best part of christianity and the only thing that should be focuesd on in my opinion is the life and teachings of Jesus. I think what I just read leads me to believe you hold a somewhat similar view.
Also, thank you for admitting that your religion is not perfect, and it is precicely because of man that it isn’t. If you go back and read my arguments against christianity being valid, it is mainly that even if there was a unified message from god back then, I do not believe it could have passed through 2000+ years of mens influence without becoming tainted and falsified. I can read scripture and with just a little changing of the message, something which could very reasonably happen on purpose of by accident I can relate almost all of the scriptures directly to my own personal experience with my higher self. So it is resonable to me that at the very least, Jesus was a human with a very wide open channel to his higher self or god if you will. But I just can’t go much farther than that with some of the claims made by the bible.
V
I believe that nobody is truly an atheist. The best a person can be is agnostic. If you look at the most ancient of civilizations there has always been religious beliefs. Whether you call yourself Christian, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, Zoroastrian, or whatever else, you have admitted that the universe is far to complex and expansive to have just come from nowhere.
I think that unfortunately most that call themselves atheists are people that have become angry or disinterested in a god. They feel either their prayers are unanswered or that no god could ever be confined by one religious belief. Of course I can't speak for everyone, but most atheists I have met share this sentiment.
Also I think most believers do a poor job at witnessing. They either feel it's not their job or they come off too strong. They either offend or don't want to offend.
I personally call myself a Christian based on my belief in Jesus to be the Christ as promised by God in the Bible. I believe Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. These are my personal beliefs, but I would be willing to share them with anyone willing to listen. If someone didn't want to listen that's up to them. It's only my job to share my faith. It's God's job to change a person's heart.
[quote]BBriere wrote:
I believe that nobody is truly an atheist. The best a person can be is agnostic. If you look at the most ancient of civilizations there has always been religious beliefs. Whether you call yourself Christian, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, Zoroastrian, or whatever else, you have admitted that the universe is far to complex and expansive to have just come from nowhere.
I think that unfortunately most that call themselves atheists are people that have become angry or disinterested in a god. They feel either their prayers are unanswered or that no god could ever be confined by one religious belief. Of course I can’t speak for everyone, but most atheists I have met share this sentiment.
Also I think most believers do a poor job at witnessing. They either feel it’s not their job or they come off too strong. They either offend or don’t want to offend.
I personally call myself a Christian based on my belief in Jesus to be the Christ as promised by God in the Bible. I believe Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. These are my personal beliefs, but I would be willing to share them with anyone willing to listen. If someone didn’t want to listen that’s up to them. It’s only my job to share my faith. It’s God’s job to change a person’s heart.[/quote]
Why is it your job to share your faith?
V