Too Many Extremes in Disbelief

[F1fan]

People gain knowledge of God through prayer and meditation.

Not religious books? Do you have experiments that demonstrates this is true? Couldn't others hear you say this and just mimic your claims?

And if your claim is true, what is learned? Why don't all people who meditate testify to a remarkable experience of gaining knowledge of God? I've meditated, no knowledge of any gods occurred.

This practice is central to pretty much all religions. Scripture provides moral guidance, and records, often through myth and metaphor, the history of a given culture’s relationship with the infinite and divine.

Why don't religions have a better track record for moral behavior? Atheists do quite well without religion.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Not religious books? Do you have experiments that demonstrates this is true? Couldn't others hear you say this and just mimic your claims?

And if your claim is true, what is learned? Why don't all people who meditate testify to a remarkable experience of gaining knowledge of God? I've meditated, no knowledge of any gods occurred.

Why don't religions have a better track record for moral behavior? Atheists do quite well without religion.

Why don’t humans in general have a better track record of moral behaviour? I would suggest it’s because it’s part of our nature to be selfish, egotistical and afraid; religious people certainly aren’t immune from these traits. We can also, of course, be selfless, loving and kind; atheists aren’t devoid of these qualities. However, it’s the purpose of religion to help us, personally and collectively, to develop the best in ourselves, and overcome the worst.

 

[Heyo]

I suppose the supernatural nature of a vision gives immediate access to this kind of information.

Have you ever had a dream where you knew who someone was even though they didn't look like them? Or a place, or a thing? Nothing supernatural in that. And the "vision"? Let's call a spade a spade and the "vision" a hallucination - in which the same applies as in dreams: you "know" things because it is how your unconscious part of your brain has created them.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No, goals and objectives make fine objects; I don’t necessarily mean physical objects here, but rather “object” as used in relational theory…that which is acted upon.

I do not consider myself to be a hard materialist. I believe because of mass-energy equivalence and other apparent facts that there seems to be some non-physical substrative reality which underlies and constitutes all things in the physical universe. I am sort of like an atheistic Advaitin, if you know what that is. I do not call that reality “God”, because I think it not a being and without a mind. But, I digress. Even though I allow for the possibility of the immaterial, I fully recognize that all which I have any objective evidence for in the world are physical, material things, either in the form of matter or energy.

I know that quite well. You said that “that is the fundamental motivation behind the theistic proposition. How to deal with the unknown, the fear of the unknown, and how to transcend the innate limitations of the human condition”, and I replied to indicate that many types of religion seek to answer the same human needs without delving into theism.

Of course, but I try to ensure that the objects of my faith are deserving thereof. I find that the concept of “God” does not fulfill that criterion.

This is what I am trying to avoid in future by avoiding placing faith in any type of god. I try to eliminate the objects of faith which appear most likely to result in my getting “burned”.

I saw Elvis in the supermarket yesterday. I saw my dead grandaddy in a dream last week.

Like.

Yeah, I get you. The problem is that for the hard objectivist and physicalist in effect only that which is objective, is real and matters.
The problem is that the bold one is not objective nor physical.
Now personally I chose to use God in a non-theistic sense, but you have given me pause to reflect on that.

 

[Rival]

Not religious books?

Very few religions have historically had books and even if some have (Egyptians, for instance) I would wager only 1% of people or even fewer had access to or could read them. The Hebrew Bible was, as you likely know, written centuries after the development of Judaism. The only religions I can really think which are truly based on books from the start seem to be Islam, to a degree (it's real history is fuzzy) and Baha'ism. Pagans don't generally have books save for epic poems and it's strongly debateable whether these are scripture in the strict sense and it doesn't matter anyway as almost all of them are post-Christian conversion of Europe in the case of that continent, and again in the Middle East we have mainly epic poetry. Other religions which are more philosophically inclined tend to have texts but, again, historically few folks have cared to or couldn't read them. Knowledge of God thus comes from other sources which are then transmitted to writing.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Okay, I misunderstood what you meant by ‘epistemically worthless’, so apologies for that.

People gain knowledge of God through prayer and meditation. This practice is central to pretty much all religions. Scripture provides moral guidance, and records, often through myth and metaphor, the history of a given culture’s relationship with the infinite and divine.

Now, I agree with you that that is one way to God, but it depends on how you understand meditation. I have never found God through prayer and I don't use prayer. For that I use cognitive therapy techniques.
As for medation I don't use that in the traditional sense as I use abstract reflection and metacognition and through that I found my version of God.

Now get me right. I am not saying you are wrong or anything like that. I am saying that there is more than one way to God and there is more than one way to moral guidance than scripture.
In effect I am a product of Western secular culture and in effect for relgion both a none as per your version, yet I am religious for another version of religion and God.

 

[Nimos]

I think some folks are overcomplicating this thread.


1) Do you believe Christians were put to death by Rome? (for any reason)

2) Do you believe Paul was a Christian and was intent on spreading what he believed is the Gospel?

3) Do you believe Jesus existed? (in any form)

4. Do you believe, as scholarship argues, that the Gospels are Greco-Roman biography in the tradition of other Greco-Roman biographers?


If you answered yes to at least 3 of these questions, you're not the problem. I have come across RFians who would answer no to all of them.

1. I think there is quite good evidence that Christians were put to death by the Romans.

2. I also think that Paul was a firm believer and wanted to spread the message of Jesus.

3. I don't think it is unlikely that a person like Jesus existed, I think there were a lot of these at the time, to be honest, because I think it was a way for people to express their concerns about things, and this was in a sense about politics and changing things. Not a lot different than what we see today simply that their views were more founded in the belief in God.

4. Not sure what this is about

I think the bible tells a lot about what was going on at the time and how people were thinking, but it is also a book with an agenda, "heroes" and villains where they added and exaggerated a lot of these stories. And personally, I think people back then were more likely to be superstitious than we are today. God(s) existed without a doubt because it offered the best explanation for how these people saw things.

 

[Rival]

4. Not sure what this is about

The Greeks and Romans had a specific way of writing biographies that we can tell fits into a specific genre (Greco-Roman biography), which has notable signs, such as missing out childhood narratives, not recording events in chronological order, making up great speeches etc. and scholars are now pretty unanimous that the Gospels are written in this genre. This puts the genre of the Gospels in the same historical category as, say, Suetonius' biographical works.

 

[Zwing]

Ever admit to being an atheist amongst a crowd of Christians? They get cold pretty fast. The response of any believer when they learn that a person is an atheist is quire remarkable.

I more than suspect that this is because the faith of most Christians is tenuous and shallow. Most are not stupid or mentally retarded, and so can discern the irrationality inherent in their belief system, yet having been drawn into it and made certain investments of resource, they cling to it for several reasons, not the least of which is the looming loss of purpose which is not hard to anticipate (and which I crushingly experienced myself upon my own renunciation), the anticipation of the loss of a community of friends which always accompanies a renunciation of religious faith, and of course the cost of past investment (all those tithes and donations down the drain). The notion that the faith of Christians is shallow is corroborated by the lifestyles of most Christians in light of the purported Biblical teachings of Jesus and Saint Paul. There have been notable historic examples of Christians trying to live as those sources suggest, but you will be hard pressed to find many among contemporary American Christendom. Christians are disturbed and made uncomfortable by any serious questioning of their faith because that faith lacks essential substance. I know, as I was once an “insider”.

 

[Audie]

I suppose the supernatural nature of a vision gives immediate access to this kind of information. As they're religious experiences I'm not bent on questioning them to the Nth degree as I only have someone's word for it. I believe Paul had a vision and I believe he thought it to be Jesus. Whether or not he did is almost historically irrelevant now because he clearly went on to invent most Christian theology and found many churches.

Joseph Smith got the information about
where to find the gold Books of Mormon
from the vision of an angel.
That there were no gold books is irrelevant.
He went on to invent Jatter Day Saints theology.

It does not pay to question such things in the nth
degree.
Depending, of course, on how one thinks about intellectual
about intellectual integrity.

 

[Audie]

Okay, I misunderstood what you meant by ‘epistemically worthless’, so apologies for that.

People gain knowledge of God through prayer and meditation. This practice is central to pretty much all religions. Scripture provides moral guidance, and records, often through myth and metaphor, the history of a given culture’s relationship with the infinite and divine.

Knowledge of which god?

 

[Rival]

Joseph Smith got the information about
where to find the gold Books of Mormon
from the vision of an angel.
That there were no gold books is irrelevant.
He went on to invent Jatter Day Saints theology.

It does not pay to question such things in the nth
degree.
Depending, of course, on how one thinks about intellectual
about intellectual integrity.

Smith was a known charlatan, this is not the same at all.

 

[Zwing]

People gain knowledge of God through prayer and meditation.

I think not. People reinforce feelings of God’s presence by those media, but gain no knowledge. The first step in the process of my own renunciation of faith was my asking the question following the greatest crisis in my life’s history, “so, where the heck is God?” I had done a great deal of praying and devotion in my life, which had seemed to make me feel God’s presence more profoundly, but when I received no sign of God’s presence during the most critical part of my life, when I deeply needed it, all of those previous feelings were revealed to me for what they truly were…psychological delusion. That is the thing a bout feelings which should make us very wary of emotion: they tend to be seductively delusive. Do not trust your emotions.

 

[Audie]

Smith was a known charlatan, this is not the same at all.

Oh. I think it's very much the same.
Lots of parallels.
Millions of Mormons won't be agreeing
with "charlatan", and no doubt many are
well acquainted with the facts of his life.

Are you among those who hold that there is
one God, and one true religion that relates to that God?

If so then all the prophets, founders of all but one
were fakers.

And Paul just happens to be legit.

What evidence is there to his character and intent?

One item I notice is the story about he was shown to
be under divine protection because he didn't not die
of snakebite on an island with no poisonous snakes.

People only get to lie to me once before I get the idea.

 

[exchemist]

Did faith or evidence prove Einstein wrong?

I'm not sure anyone has proved him wrong. What quantum mechanics says to us about reality is still a lively matter of debate to this day. But nobody has succeeded in restoring determinism to physics in the way Einstein hoped. Various Hidden Variable theories have tried to do this but to no avail, so far.

 

[Audie]

I'm not sure anyone has proved him wrong. What quantum mechanics says to us about reality is still a lively matter of debate to this day. But nobody has succeeded in restoring determinism to physics in the way Einstein hoped. Various Hidden Variable theories have tried to do this but to no avail, so far.

Then too. If he was wrong in one thing he sure wasn't in everything

 

[Polymath257]

I'm talking about stuff like this in Herodotus' Histories, for example,

Then the Hellenes set sail with all their ships, and as they were putting out to sea the barbarians immediately attacked them. The rest of the Hellenes began to back water and tried to beach their ships, but Ameinias of Pallene, an Athenian, charged and rammed a ship. When his ship became entangled and the crew could not free it, the others came to help Ameinias and joined battle. The Athenians say that the fighting at sea began this way, but the Aeginetans say that the ship which had been sent to Aegina after the sons of Aeacus was the one that started it. The story is also told that the phantom of a woman appeared to them, who cried commands loud enough for all the Hellenic fleet to hear, reproaching them first with, “Men possessed, how long will you still be backing water?”

And from Suetonius' Life of Vespasian,

Vespasian, the new emperor, having been raised unexpectedly from a low estate, wanted something which might clothe him with divine majesty and authority. This, likewise, was now added. A poor man who was blind, and another who was lame, came both together before him, when he was seated on the tribunal, imploring him to heal them, and saying that they were admonished in a dream by the god Serapis to seek his aid, who assured them that he would restore sight to the one by anointing his eyes with his spittle, and give strength to the leg of the other, if he vouchsafed but to touch it with his heel. At first he could scarcely believe that the thing would any how succeed, and therefore hesitated to venture on making the experiment. At length, however, by the advice of his friends, he made the attempt publicly, in the presence of the assembled multitudes, and it was crowned with success in both cases. About the same time, at Tegea in Arcadia, by the direction of some soothsayers, several vessels of ancient workmanship were dug out of a consecrated place, on which there was an effigy resembling Vespasian.

Can you show me a historian that takes these stories at face value? Or do they uniformly dismiss them as fabrications?

 

[Polymath257]

You are talking about scholars, I am talking about people on RF who are generally not such. If I would cite Herodotus, it would be far less criticised than the Gospels. Or Suteonius. Many of these authors go unchallenged.

It depends on what quote you use from them. A claim that Pan leaped across the Rubicon leading Julius Caesar would not be taken seriously. Horatio at the bridge is similarly not taken as reality, but as a fabrication to encourage Roman youth.

 

[Zwing]

If I would cite Herodotus, it would be far less criticised than the Gospels. Or Suteonius. Many of these authors go unchallenged.

That is only because people are far less familiar with Herodotus and with his subject matter than that are with Biblical scripture.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Knowledge of which god?

Whichever concept of God makes most sense to you.