Oh dear. A self fulfilling theory about things that have no evidence whatsoever otherwise. How long have you guys been doing that?
And what are your conclusions after centuries of deep thinkings, sophisticated arguments and formidable scholarship?
My impression is that they awfully looks like zero.
Since these are impressions of someone who confessed to not having engaged with the relevant scholarship and is adamant in not doing so I see no reason to think much of them.
Atheology? lol there are atheists only because there are theists. If there were fairist, then we would be afairists.
How is this in any way relevant to what I said in that paragraph?
Of course there is. You have no evidence of X, and you create a philosophy to study the evidence of X as sole arbiter for the evidence of X.
I literally just said that theology has gone through periods of not just not attempting to prove the existence of God but openly rejecting such attempts with such attitudes still being around today. I also said that there are actual atheists who are theologians. It would be a very peculiar type of atheist that would enter a discipline specifically made to prove God exists.
Not to mention you've completely ignored the parallel I made with branches of philosophy such as meta-ethics. If we are to follow your logic we would have to give up almost all (if not all) of philosophy and who knows how many other disciplines.
I thought you guys believe prayers work. Same with miracles. Why don’t you show that, instead of getting too cryptical and exclusive about that?
First, who's "you guys"? I am talking about theology in general and there are different views on miracles and prayer among theologians. Regardless, I am not going to discuss a particular issue in theology with someone who doesn't even understand what theology is. As I said before, theology doesn't need God to exist let alone prayer and miracles to be real in order to remain an academic discipline.
There is no new atheism. There is only old atheism without the fear to be roasted by theologians who believe that this would be the best for our souls.
Really?
First off, new atheism is a term for a very real cultural movement characterized by many of the same attitudes that you've expressed here and which many respectable atheists scholars of the past and present do not endorse.
New Atheism - Wikipedia
Second, to try to say there even is one thing called atheism is philosophically (let alone culturally) controversial given the many different understandings of the position so you trying to present a particular flavor of atheism as "just the same old" is bafflingly naive and ignorant.
Third, your attempt to paint new atheism (a fairly recent movement) as a liberation from religious tyranny, presumably referring to the Dark Ages and the Inquisition is a sign of serious ignorance on the issue of the Dark Ages and the nature of Inquisition (it is not the Church, let alone theologians, that roasted anyone) not to mention ignorance on the rich intellectual tradition behind atheism. Atheism neither became freer nor enriched by the new atheists. It only got caricatured through unsophisticated, angry and ultimately naive rhetoric from which respectable atheist scholars wisely distance themselves.
Of course it is made up. And that is why they backpaddle all the time a new scientific discovery has been done. It is actually funny to see how their musings are destroyed by simple empirical observations.
It is obvious who owns the intellectual supremacy here, between methodological naturalism and sophisms.
So you are in favor of abolishing philosophy? Well, good luck with keeping your precious naturalism which is itself a philosophy.
You're doing a great job digging yourself in an intellectual hole along with your high horse.
You assume that gods are not fictional. How do you come to this conclusion? Academia? Revelation?
I made a distinction between God and "fictional characters" in that paragraph because I was referring to you comparing God and comic book characters like Superman as having the same status. To play the devil's advocate, I may not know God isn't fictional but I also do not know that God is fictional. We know fictional characters such as Superman are, in fact, fictional because we know that Superman originated from the minds of Jewish writers and was put to paper in Action Comics #1 for the purposes of entertainment and cheap, you guessed it, fiction.
It is not the case that God and Superman both enjoy the status of having no evidence for their existence, Superman (fictional characters) have undeniable evidence against their existence for we know how, when, and why they were created. We have no such things for the idea of God and the closest thing that comes to it are skeptical theories which themselves have no evidence such as the rather weak one embodied by the quote in your signature. There is a reason we have actual disciplines trying to track the different religious origins down (let us appreciate just how naive it is to even think there can be one origin of religious beliefs) and that have yet to produce conclusive results.
The whole parity argument that you kept pushing there simply doesn't work because it contains a false premise. All one has to do is look at the literary genres in which the ideas originated (let's ignore that there isn't even one piece of literature in which the idea of the divine originated in the first place).
And? j believe Jesus existed. Probably King Arthur existed, too. That does not entail that there was a sword with magical powers. People like to exagerrate, you know.
Well sure they do, you exaggerated by calling Jesus a myth in your previous post. Here, however, you're on the same page as many liberal Christian and virtually all non-Christian theologians. Glad we cleared that up.
Again, what makes you think that all those gods are not fictional? They cannot all possibly be true, so where do they come from if not human imagination.
First, I wonder how you still don't see that the religious particularism expressed by the phrase "they cannot all be true" is a theological view. You yet again, find yourself guilty of doing theology despite insisting you're beyond it.
Second, it doesn't follow that because they can't all be true, they come from human imagination.
It is odd that you might find it offensive if I compare your God to Superman, but not if I compare it with the elephant God Ganesh.
Why is that?
I am not offended at all by your words. I've already explained why your argument (rather it's not yours, it's a stereotypical fallacy popularized by new atheists) is unsound. One really needs to be out of touch with the scholarship to think that this is the kind of argument that would seal the deal when a sea of ink has been spilled on arguments far more sophisticated than that.
Why? There are institutions in Iceland collecting the evidence and trying to preserve their habitat.
Not enough academia?
So, not enough academia. As I thought. Shall we make one up to convince you about the plausibility of trolls and elves?
I don't know if I should laugh or cry at your attitude not only towards theology but academia in general given how lightly you take being a part of it. Given your overall (wilful) ignorance on the issues in question, I see no reason to devote any more of my time to you.
Perhaps once your project of proving trolls and elves to be as plausible as God in the academia (or the project of abolishing academic disciplines as old as academia itself for that matter) fails, you'll start thinking a bit more critically. One can only hope.
