Are Religious Explanations Always Facile?

[ChristineM]

In this case, definitions out of context are moot, because we’re dealing with translation, not science. What’s necessary is to understand what the writers meant. The English term “void” cannot, by its definition out of context, be used as a baseline.

And it’s not “apologetics.” It’s exegesis.

I am dealing with 2021. The translation is what is taught, what the vast majority of christianity understand.

If you want to find a new, more suitable word please do so.

 

[blü 2]

All metaphysics are unknown in practical effect.

Not unknown ─ I can tell you a certain amount about metaphysics both natural and supernatural. The natural ones, as systems of abstractions, resemble much of philosophy by appealing to our common sense, our sense of fitness, their resonation with our psychology, for their justification. They're usually explorations and elaborated re-writings of the definition of particular kinds of concept.

Supernatural metaphysics deals with attempts to do the same thing on a background of worlds and beings that are imagined in accordance with rules that are themselves imagined not only for each religion but for differing views within each religion as well. The point that strikes me most vividly, as I keep saying, is that I'm not aware of any definition of "God" that's appropriate to a real God, one with objective existence, hence to be found in nature ─ and even this wouldn't be a problem but for the insistence that God is nonetheless real.

 

[Windwalker]

I am dealing with 2021. The translation is what is taught, what the vast majority of christianity understand.

If you want to find a new, more suitable word please do so.

To be fair, like the world of science, there are always betters ways we come to understand things that we've been taught from the past. That's as true for religion, as it is for science.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Not unknown ─ I can tell you a certain amount about metaphysics both natural and supernatural. The natural ones, as systems of abstractions, resemble much of philosophy by appealing to our common sense, our sense of fitness, their resonation with our psychology, for their justification. They're usually explorations and elaborated re-writings of the definition of particular kinds of concept.

...

Yeah. And the world to you would be the same in an alien computer simulation of the universe. Remember, be skeptical!!!

 

[ChristineM]

To be fair, like the world of science, there are always betters ways we come to understand things that we've been taught from the past. That's as true for religion, as it is for science.

Of course translations exists and those translations are what the majority of people learn from.

Sure there are some who go back to original Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic. They are few and far between and have little influence on general understanding

 

[blü 2]

Yeah. And the world to you would be the same in an alien computer simulation of the universe. Remember, be skeptical!!!

Ah yes, I'm an element in a Tron game in a dream in the brain of a superbeing who only exists because I solipsistically postulated [him]. A perfect circle!

 

[Windwalker]

Of course translations exists and those translations are what the majority of people learn from.

Sure there are some who go back to original Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic. They are few and far between and have little influence on general understanding

Sure the cutting edge is always the last to reach the general population. That doesn't make it unimportant though. It always takes time for the lastest understandings to trickle their way down to the masses. That's true in any field of knowledge.

 

[ChristineM]

Sure the cutting edge is always the last to reach the general population. That doesn't make it unimportant though. It always takes time for the lastest understandings to trickle their way down to the masses. That's true in any field of knowledge.

It seems that with religion [Christianity] just the opposite is happening. Every translation of the bible for the last 400 years has become more "hip", easier to read, more modern. People don't want the archaic, they want what they understand. If this means Christianity moves with the times rather than stagnating then is that a bad thing?

 

[Windwalker]

It seems that with religion [Christianity] just the opposite is happening. Every translation of the bible for the last 400 years has become more "hip", easier to read, more modern. People don't want the archaic, they want what they understand. If this means Christianity moves with the times rather than stagnating then is that a bad thing?

You're talking two different things here from what you and @sojourner were discussing. Modern translations, versus doing a critical textual exegesis are not the same thing. Just seeing a word translated in a version of Bible, does not really provide a good context.

Frankly, the worst thing that happened to Christianity is any old yahoo could just pick up the Bible, savagely yank out of it things it really isn't saying, to start his own little group based upon a cult of his own personality. "It says right here in the Word of God, in plain language, we are right and everyone else has it wrong! We are the true church! True Christians only worship on Saturday!", and other such antithetical rubbish. In other words, scholarship matters. It actually requires some due diligence.

 

[ChristineM]

You're talking two different things here from what you and @sojourner were discussing. Modern translations, versus doing a critical textual exegesis are not the same thing. Just seeing a word translated in a version of Bible, does not really provide a good context.

Frankly, the worst thing that happened to Christianity is any old yahoo could just pick up the Bible, savagely yank out of it things it really isn't saying, to start his own little group based upon a cult of his own personality. "It says right here in the Word of God, in plain language, we are right and everyone else has it wrong! We are the true church! True Christians only worship on Saturday!", and other such antithetical rubbish. In other words, scholarship matters. It actually requires some due diligence.

Content is what every bible contains, whether it's good or bad is irrelevant, it is what devoured by billions of christians

Ok lets go back to square one
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

What i see there is creation, if as @sojourner says,

Creation ex nihilo is not indicated by the biblical creation myths

Then its not creation but assembly

2 And the earth was without form, and void; ...
The meaning of void is completely empty so we have a second stab at creation from nothing.

And this is why there are over 50,000 sects of christianity with the number rising daily, and at least 200 versions of the bible in English, who knows how many in other languages. Each sect subtly or not so subtly different from the others, to the extent wars and mass death has been the result

Scholarship is not working and will continue to not work

 

[sojourner]

I am dealing with 2021

There’s your first big mistake. Reading ancient theology, written in an ancient language, through the lens of 2021, and trying to come off as authoritative in that theology.

Your position still does not support creation ex nilhilo, because the text just doesn’t say what you say it says.

 

[sojourner]

Content is what every bible contains, whether it's good or bad is irrelevant, it is what devoured by billions of christians

Ok lets go back to square one
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

What i see there is creation, if as @sojourner says,

Then its not creation but assembly

2 And the earth was without form, and void; ...
The meaning of void is completely empty so we have a second stab at creation from nothing.

And this is why there are over 50,000 sects of christianity with the number rising daily, and at least 200 versions of the bible in English, who knows how many in other languages. Each sect subtly or not so subtly different from the others, to the extent wars and mass death has been the result

Scholarship is not working and will continue to not work

...Precisely because of the attitude your post here displays: people not doing their due diligence and trying to make definitive statements about texts they don’t really understand.

 

[firedragon]

In this video (minute 1:31:58 )

,

Richard Dawkins describes explanations that religions can provide as flat-out facile while he believes science is with him.

Granted, the Sun God coming with his chariot and lighting the day every morning… is a bit facile.

However, when Richard Dawkins says there is “probably” no God, see Atheist Bus Campaign - Wikipedia, how much less facile do you think this really is?

When he denies the creator proposition, he automatically favors the other option according to which the world* must be eternal in case he doesn’t want to embrace the idea of a self-popping-up world.

An eternal world or the Sun God…. what is less evidenced or more facile?

I personally hold that both is equally facile.

* By "world" I mean not only this universe but all the potential universes that purportedly existed before, too.

People like Dawkins are brilliant scientists, but they dont study some sociology. Thats why they make claims that are unscientific.

As a scientist you should have the scientific method to back you up. Most militant atheists that I hear are like that in the world, if not all.

 

[rational experiences]

The problem is that time is part of the world (your definition of world).

The phrase 'come into existence' implies a process involving time, which means that it has to be *within the world*.

So, here are some options, assuming a one-dimensional time.

1. Time is infinite into the past.
2. Time is cyclic.
3. Time is finite into the past.

You don't consider the second possibility. it looks like you identify the first as 'eternal' and the last as 'self-created'. I would dispute the terminology in the last. It is NOT self-created. It is simply existing.

Another aspect of this is that time is part of the geometry of spacetime. It is NOT universal and absolute any more than latitude and longitude are absolutes on a sphere.

One modern view is that space and time *together* constitute the 'world' and that this world 'simply exists'. Causality happens *within* the world, not outside of it. Time happens *within* the world, not outside of it. So to even ask about the the cause of the world is like asking what is north of the north pole: it makes no sense.

Thinking cyclic. Comes back to what you already said then quotes it again.

Reason O God earth first owner O mass is a cycle. Cycling in space.

O pi and O Phi false thinking.

I think a scientist actually said there is no new state.
Nothing new under the sun meaning.

Everything therefore is. If you try to change it. Act of science choice is to get a lesser state. You say by quote a control. Your thesis how to...not natural.
No control in natural. First advice.
The machine condition and not natural the place control.

You quote the word space means it once held something that is now gone. Description empty.

You quote as you think already owns two conditions. You knowingly live within the light world. Gases burning.

First mistake. I am not in gases burning light world.

False prostelizing description.

Therefore mind says space is space. Light is light separate.

O counting by cycle.

Cycle however second mistake is not time. Yet O God was given a timed cycle. Numbered O counting.

O light is not burning O as a cycle or a circle.

Hence if you gave O year cycle O one and y male term y and ear did you try to break God?

Seeing you keep referencing the only O God body you named in science.

Mass is naturally O. It owns a cycle O. Science however owns neither.

O planet earth and it's mineral chemicals in mass. Science.

Makes no sense what science quotes about worlds unless O earth transmitters are left in space O around the year cycle that affects a scientists brain memory falsely.

As he is studying machine transmitters back and forth. God owning O earth all materials machine.

O God original owner o body state.

Earth.

You say earth is O held. If you keep consciously referring science to God O mass. Science called O mass stone...one....God yourself.

Quoting ideas of converting God was given a teaching. To confess your own sin before you did it. Then asked for forgiveness from your brothers.

As the scientist.

Father said we always knew truth first.

Lying to self secondary.

 

[ChristineM]

There’s your first big mistake. Reading ancient theology, written in an ancient language, through the lens of 2021, and trying to come off as authoritative in that theology.

Your position still does not support creation ex nilhilo, because the text just doesn’t say what you say it says.

"God created".

It does not say god assembled.

You too are interpreting / assuming just as much as anyone else.


Edit :
Create : bring (something) into existence.

 

[ChristineM]

...Precisely because of the attitude your post here displays: people not doing their due diligence and trying to make definitive statements about texts they don’t really understand.

Do you actually know any christians?

 

[thomas t]

I don't agree that this was an "absurd" reduction.
dead and alive...
When I say: either you are alive or you aren't, I sidestep definition issues.
It's a true statement.
I am allowed to side-step, I think. I leave it to the reader to define what alive means.
So this statement is equally true as
1) Either ths world is created or it isn't
2) Either it has a beginning or it doesn't.

Yes, this reasonning is facile and caricatural as it ignores, side-step, misrepresent and caricature the problems of cosmogenesis.

While I did sidestep these questions... I did not misrepresent anything.
So it's not facile.
Either I am alive or I am not... is not facile either, in my opinion.

 

[thomas t]

The title of the thread alone is a quote.

if you think this is a quote that justifies the notion of me "fighting science"... then why not quote that one the moment you issue the reproach?
Why simply making reproaches without backing it up?
Do you think "ah - it's Thomas T" and then all reproaches are justified somehow automatically?
No, please.
So let's see if it can be inferred by the title... that I "fight science".
Actually, it is a question. A question does not fight anything, in my view.
So again: a fully unsubstanciated claim to my detriment.

As in your thread title, "Are Religious Explanations Always Facile?" You call them "explanations", as if they argue against science. Then you set out to position them against what Dawkins, as an evolutionary biologist, believes in has natural explanations. Most clearly, you are not accepting science, and instead are arguing for a "religious explanation" (your words quoted).

the red part is your inference... however, in my view, an explanation in itself does not argue against science.
An example: "I think that Mary was Jesus's mother".
No fight here. I don't argue against anything, I think.

Plus, I've read several of these "questions for atheists" threads of yours, and they usually have to do with rejecting science as an explanation for the natural world.

rejecting science is not fighting it.
It's like rejecting a glass of wine.

 

[thomas t]

But does it provide strong pointers? Yes. Quantum theory, which is extremely well tested, does seem to suggest that matter can indeed arise from what is essentially "nothing." And once that's happened, then classical physics (which is subsumed into chemistry, etc.) can explain the rest.

I'd like to get a link a scientific source for the redded claim.
As far as I know, "essentially" is quite a non-scientific expression.
Unless you can cite a scientist saying "matter emerged from essentially nothing"... I won't believe you here.

 

[Windwalker]

rejecting science is not fighting it.
It's like rejecting a glass of wine.

Ok, you reject science then. Take everything I said about you "fighting" science, and replace it with the word "rejecting", which you just admitted you do. I was trying to have a sincere discussion with you about this.

When you "reject" science, when Christians make it a choice between belief and faith in God and rejecting science, as opposed to accepting science and rejecting God, they are the ones directly responsible for the mass exodus into atheism. And it is all completely unnecessary.

I was hoping you'd be willing to discuss that with me. I still am. Can you discuss that with me, please?