Religion Ask a Christian - Continued in Part 2

[Chief]

Continued in Part Two:

https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/ask-a-christian-part-2.1295001/unread

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

You're an atheist if you don't believe in any deities. There's no rational middle ground called agnosticism inbetween believing and disbelieving fairytales.

You can choose not to believe without making the absolutist 'There is NO God' statement. I understand why you think this is cowardly but that's my position. I reject my catholic upbringing and I don't believe in god even if I can't prove it one way or the other.

But I came from a background of faith. Maybe you haven't, and so your journey to athiesm may have been easier.

 

[Evolved1]

Jumping in here, hope it's okay, the post made me think, isn't science agnostic, given it never reaches a final proof, and always awaits new better information. Is Atheism by this definition is contra-science?

Atheism finds a place in scientific methodology as the null hypothesis. The burden of proof lies with the one making a claim which is typically the theist. For the null hypothesis (atheism) to be accepted, the only requirement is that there's no objective evidence for theistic claims.

Theist claim: God answers prayer.
Agnostic claim: We don't know whether god answers prayer.
Atheist claim: There's no evidence that god answers prayer.

 

[Evolved1]

You can choose not to believe without making the absolutist 'There is NO God' statement. I understand why you think this is cowardly but that's my position. I reject my catholic upbringing and I don't believe in god even if I can't prove it one way or the other.

But I came from a background of faith. Maybe you haven't, and so your journey to athiesm may have been easier.

Atheism is the lack of belief in gods, not a claim that there is no god.

I can't claim that god doesn't exist until you define who or what god is with a testable and falsifiable hypothesis. If someone claims that god answers prayer, we can test that. If someone claims that god performs miraculous healings, we can test that. If someone claims that god created two people in a garden 6000 years ago, we can test that.

Typically theists move away from allowing their beliefs to be easily falsified because they're scared of truth.

 

[Number37]

Atheist claim: There's no evidence that god answers prayer.

There's no evidence that there is no evidence.

 

[Evolved1]

There's no evidence that there is no evidence.

Feel free to produce your evidence for the efficacy of prayer.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Your understanding of English is lacking.

If someone asks you "are you a Carlton supporter?" Answering "no, I'm not a Carlton supporter" or "no, I support Richmond"....doesn't say anything other than you're not a Carlton supporter.

Are you this incoherent in real life?

Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy? No I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy says nothing other than you don't believe in the Tooth Fairy.

And is that equally as valid as belief in the tooth fairy?

Because there's no evidence for the tooth fairy.

So belief and non-belief are equally valid? Or not?

It's simply an absence of belief, given the absence of evidence for that belief.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

In essence a Christian is anyone who believed Jesus Christ was the embodiment of God who came to earth and got executed on the cross and then rose from the dead. Now as a non-believer I can't honestly say which strand of Christianity is the 'right' one because I think they're all full of sh*t. Including catholicism.

So what about the folks who don't believe that? By definition, they're wrong.

All Christian sects would believe that theirs is the True Faith, but most have resigned themselves into believing that those of other faiths have strayed, but still have a place in this world. It's hard to pin because there's so many divisions of Christianity these days.

All others would be sinners, and there's a saying that goes 'hate the sin but love the sinner'. I think most divisions of Christianity hope that these various sinners will return to their particular division and not the others.

What awaits those who have strayed, and "the sinners", after the rapture?

Stop soft-peddling a benign version of this worldview.

It's not "live and let live". It's "we're right and the rest of you will burn for eternity".

It's implicitly judgemental.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

You can choose not to believe without making the absolutist 'There is NO God' statement. I understand why you think this is cowardly but that's my position. I reject my catholic upbringing and I don't believe in god even if I can't prove it one way or the other.

But I came from a background of faith. Maybe you haven't, and so your journey to athiesm may have been easier.

Faith in what?

Faith in nonsense?

With no evidence?

What's the difference between these folks and Scientologists?

 

[Number37]

Feel free to produce your evidence for the efficacy of prayer.

Feel free to produce your evidence of the evidence for the efficacy of prayer.

 

[Number37]

Are you this incoherent in real life?

And is that equally as valid as belief in the tooth fairy?

Because there's no evidence for the tooth fairy.

So belief and non-belief are equally valid? Or not?

It's simply an absence of belief, given the absence of evidence for that belief.

And?

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Feel free to produce your evidence of the evidence for the efficacy of prayer.

Huh?

You may as well be asking someone to produce evidence that the tooth fairy doesn't exist.

In the absence of evidence, what basis is there to believe any claim?

 

[Sweet Jesus]

And?

So if we have no evidence for a claim, not believing is more rational than believing.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Atheists: Do you believe in the tooth fairy?
Christians: No, there's no evidence for that.
Atheists: That's what we say about god. There's no evidence.
Christians: Nah, because I believe in god so it must be real.

It really is as stupid, backwards and infantile as this.

If you believe in god, so be it. Good luck with that. But acknowledge that you do so without evidence, thereby rejecting a reason-based worldview.

But then, if you believe things without evidence, where does it end? Why not lean into every other variety of voodoo bullshit while we're at it?

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Christians, both secular and otherwise, believe in the One True God and therefore nothing else exists or is deserving of worship. Secular Christians by and large have no problems living in the community with other faiths though. When you get Christian websites that warn of the evils of secular Christianity and its more humanistic approaches



you start to wonder about it. I mean, I guess the non-secular and non-humanist Christianity is the religion in its purest form, but the secular version has outnumbered the purist version (in the catholic world at least) for quite a while now.

Michael Flynn, like myself, came from an Irish Catholic background, but he seems to have gone to the complete other end of the spectrum and has become quite militant in his views. He's fond of secularism when it exists around other religions, of course;



but wants a Christian theocracy to arise in the United States. A man of some influence inside the U.S military considering he was once director of the U.S Defense Intelligence Agency and briefly Donald Trump's national security adviser.

If that Christian Today article you linked is anything to go on, Christians have a markedly different (perhaps wilfully so) definition of “secular”.

I would have thought most people agree “secular” simply means, while acknowledging that everyone has the right to religious belief, that the day-to-day workings and decisions of public institutions and instruments are kept free of it.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Thanks for that.
I don't expect you to rate my questions as worth asking or not, obviously what is important in life diverges greatly from person to person. Having said all of that, I am interested in ethics and how to live, and how robust they can be, and where they may break down.

I haven't found any ethics that are internally consistent which don't beg the question. Religious ethics need to assume god as a presupposition before going to the next step. It seems to me science does a similar thing, presupposing the scientific method as the way to proceed. It has a very strong case - what is more effective, and self effacing, than science? Who would want to live without it? However, the method may blind one to other experiences, or make us incapable of knowing other things (nature of consciousness, epistemology in a world with no time dimension, explaining experiencing). But science works. There is no escaping it.

However, does science pursue truth or what works, for they may be different. Just as evolution often develops beings that misinterpret the world, and falsify it and m such misinterpre
tation still enhances life's continuation, just as Newtonian science explained the world effectively, even if it has flawed formulas, that is, what works and promotes life does not need to be true.

From these examples pragmatism trumps the truth, so an ethic may just need to follow the nature of the world and be pragmatic. It may not be the world we want, but there are many things I want (uhumm) that are just never going to happen and are impractical or fanciful. If pragmatism trumps truth, our truth searching ethics may be barking up the wrong tree.

Religion is a wonderful invention (contra Communism) by virtue that the pay off is after death, and noone has come back to dispute it, yet. Communism's heaven is on earth, and plenty survived the killing fields and central planned famine to dispute it.

So, is the only ethic worth its weight in the battle for survival pragmatic, rather than true, and what is pragmatic one day may not be the next?

Great post. I believe (and this is only my belief, not dogma) that we work with established truths where they exist, and where a truth has not yet been established, we proceed pragmatically.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

Every religion claims the others are false hence, secular state with liberal democracy at its core. No need or want for religion.

This. Pretty simple, I would have thought.

 

[Osho]

Yeah, but how do devout Christians feel about those other religions?

Is it really surprising that Michael Flynn would insist that his religion deserves primacy?

In that regard, his beliefs are incompatible with liberal democracy.

Michael Flynn would also insist America is exceptional and requires not to abide by international law or follow consistent ethics. One can both critique the treatment of Uigars and murder thousands of middle easterners without blinking. It is not a party but a power thing.

 

[Boston tiger]

Only if you think that believing without evidence is the same as not believing without evidence.

In the absence of evidence, why believe anything?

Do you consider belief in the tooth fairy equally as valid as not believing in the tooth fairy?

There is evidence. You just don’t believe the evidence.
You dismiss every supernatural claim of the apostles… and that is fine.
There was a Jesus … good evidence of an empty tomb .
There was a Church that started straight after the death of Jesus etc etc. It has all panned out as if Jesus was God.

If someone asked Peter what evidence of God. He would have said “ I just saw a risen Christ and look at me I’m glowing with the Holy Spirit “
Fair enough Pete. Or have a lie down Pete. You can go either way.

There is evidence it’s just what is claimed is the problem.

In the human situation ..we find ourselves open to events occurring or have occurred that are beyond the comprehension of our mind . Sure I think there is enough evidence of that .
Didn’t Dawkins or someone say “ something pretty mysterious “?

 

[Boston tiger]

Yeah, but how do devout Christians feel about those other religions?

Is it really surprising that Michael Flynn would insist that his religion deserves primacy?

In that regard, his beliefs are incompatible with liberal democracy.

“The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim, Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to himself.”

 

[Roylion]

There is evidence. You just don’t believe the evidence.

There's no evidence, other than what is laid down in the Gospels which are in themselves theological works written with a clear agenda to proselytize.

The Jesus of the Gospels is little more than a literary, theological construct, likely wrapped around a kernel of a minor historical figure (or minor historical figures), whose earthly remains lie mouldering somewhere under the city of Jerusalem. Miracles, resurrection, ascension, angels at birth and so on are fictional elaborations made by later authors. So too is any description in the gospels that alludes to the nature of god.

There was a Jesus … good evidence of an empty tomb .

I've been to plenty of empty tombs in Jerusalem, including two that purportedly belonged to Jesus. Were the original occupants all resurrected from the dead?

There was a Church that started straight after the death of Jesus etc etc. It has all panned out as if Jesus was God.

Jesus was claimed to be God by his followers and the Gospels were assembled to push that claim.

There is evidence it’s just what is claimed is the problem.

Could you outlne the evidence and explain why it is robust evidence for actual historicity of these "supernatural events"? Let's go through it. Why dont we start with the resurrection? I'll even concede as a starting point that a figure Jesus was crucified and his body disappeared from the tomb he was laid in. Explain to me how the evidence proves that a supernatural resurrection of a corpse is the best explanation of this "disappearance".

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

Faith in what?

Faith in nonsense?

With no evidence?

What's the difference between these folks and Scientologists?

I'll go for 'Faith in nonsense' if I can, Sweet Jesus Apart from the difference in rituals I think Scientologists take more of your money, that's the difference. Remember, I'm a former catholic. I don't hold nor defend their beliefs anymore.

 

[Chief]

All the others anti-religion primary, Atheism is derivative.

Really? All of them?

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

So what about the folks who don't believe that? By definition, they're wrong.

From the point of view of those sects, yeah they're wrong. Doesn't make them actually wrong, because the results aren't in yet and likely never will be.

What awaits those who have strayed, and "the sinners", after the rapture?

Hell awaits.

Stop soft-peddling a benign version of this worldview.

It's not "live and let live". It's "we're right and the rest of you will burn for eternity".

It's implicitly judgemental.

Of course it's judgemental. It's religion. 'Do this or you're going to Hell. Don't do that or you're going to Hell. Jesus cries when you masturbate (a good Irish Catholic one for you to scratch your head over). I won't defend it. It's all nonsense. I walked out and I won't go back to it.

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

Atheism is the lack of belief in gods, not a claim that there is no god.

I can't claim that god doesn't exist until you define who or what god is with a testable and falsifiable hypothesis. If someone claims that god answers prayer, we can test that. If someone claims that god performs miraculous healings, we can test that. If someone claims that god created two people in a garden 6000 years ago, we can test that.

Typically theists move away from allowing their beliefs to be easily falsified because they're scared of truth.

I suppose that makes sense. You CAN make a definitive 'no gods exist' statement as an athiest though, can't you? Just go across the board and say there are no gods anywhere, no pantheons or golden thrones in the sky, nor anything down below either.

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

I've been to plenty of empty tombs in Jerusalem, including two that purportedly belonged to Jesus. Were the original occupants all resurrected from the dead?

This is kind of off-topic but when you were in Israel did you see any examples of 'Jerusalem Syndrome' or psychotic decompensation as this article call it.

Jerusalem syndrome | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core

Jerusalem syndrome - Volume 176 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org