Too Many Extremes in Disbelief

[PureX]

Awareness of what? “Awareness implies an object; what is the object in this case?

More like goals; objectives. Not "objects".

Most atheists these days are philosophical materialists that believe physicality defines reality, and everything else is just "make believe". It's an absurd and long failed philosophy that most humans have rightly rejected. But to those who for whatever reason cannot seem to let go of it, "objective evidence" has become their sole vehicle to truth, and hammer they use to pound everyone that dares to deiagree with over the head. (Not unlike the inerrant Bible believer that does the same thing with scripture.)

It would seem to me that this can be said of all religion, and that there are both extant religions and possible religions which can achieve that without having to delve into (if you will excuse the expression) irrational belief.

First, you should learn the difference between religion and theism. Theism is the area of philosophical thought related to the idea of "God". Religions are collections of ideals, practices, images, and dogmas intended to help people live according to the theological position they've chosen to hold. Debating and arguing about these religious tools is both pointless and irrelevant since which ones any given theist chooses to employ at any given time, and why, is their own business. And whether or not you find them rational is likewise irrelevant to anyone but you. The tools aren't on offer for you to deem "rational", they are on offer to help people live according to their theistic choices.

There are always rational criteria upon which decisions can be made. I personally tried “acting on faith”, and I will try never to make that mistake again, for having gotten badly burned.

In truth, you act on faith all the time. All humans do because we simply don't possess the knowledge to do otherwise. And we all get "burned" doing it, occasionally. If faith were guaranteed we wouldn't need it to begin with. But it can and does work for us well and often. So much so that we tend to get arrogant and take it for granted, presuming that it was our own wisdom all along.

 

[lukethethird]

More like goals; objectives. Not "objects".

Most atheists these days are philosophical materialists that believe physicality defines reality, and everything else is just "make believe". It's an absurd and long failed philosophy that most humans have rightly rejected. But to those who for whatever reason cannot seem to let go of it, "objective evidence" has become their sole vehicle to truth, and hammer they use to pound everyone that dares to deiagree with over the head. (Not unlike the inerrant Bible believer that does the same thing with scripture.)

First, you should learn the difference between religion and theism. Theism is the area of philosophical thought related to the idea of "God". Religions are collections of ideals, practices, images, and dogmas intended to help people live according to the theological position they've chosen to hold. Debating and arguing about these religious tools is both pointless and irrelevant since which ones any given theist chooses to employ at any given time, and why, is their own business. And whether or not you find them rational is likewise irrelevant to anyone but you. The tools aren't on offer for you to deem "rational", they are on offer to help people live according to their theistic choices.

In truth, you act on faith all the time. All humans do because we simply don't possess the knowledge to do otherwise. And we all get "burned" doing it, occasionally. If faith were guaranteed we wouldn't need it to begin with. But it can and does work for us well and often. So much so that we tend to get arrogant and take it for granted, presuming that it was our own wisdom all along.

Heaping blame on atheists for your shortcomings yet again. It sure does bother you that atheists don't believe you. In a physical universe 2+2=4 and you can't stand it, too bad, so sad, cry us a river.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Heaping blame on atheists for your shortcomings yet again. It sure does bother you that atheists don't believe you. In a physical universe 2+2=4 and you can't stand it, too bad, so sad, cry us a river.

No, it is not physical that 2+2=4. And everything is not objective evidence as physical. And the bold the one is not physical.

 

[lukethethird]

No, it is not physical that 2+2=4. And everything is not objective evidence as physical. And the bold the one is not physical.

Please spare me your solipsism.

 

[The Hammer]

Could you cite a specific example?

Why?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Please spare me your solipsism.

Well, it is not. It is just not physicalism.
In fact there are no physical rights or morality and you can't even be killed because you are nothing but a thing. You are just a physical thing and have no worth at all. It is all physical and you are worthless. It is all just physical things and that is all it is.

 

[Zwing]

More like goals; objectives. Not "objects".

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.

Most atheists these days are philosophical materialists that believe physicality defines reality…

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.

you should learn the difference between religion and theism.

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.

In truth, you act on faith all the time.

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.

…we all get "burned" doing it, occasionally…

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”.

Paul met Jesus in a vision. According to Paul, this is good enough…

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

 

[F1fan]

Yes, exactly. The God of which I argue that belief is unwarranted is the Christian God, the God of the Bible…that in which I spent so much of my own life in worshiping. In our Christianized, Western culture, that is what the unqualified term “God” means: YHVH…the “big man in the sky”. If someone starts to argue that I am wrong for not believing in “God”, and then pulls, as if ‘out of his hat’, a definition of “God” which is acultural and different from that, then what am I to do? It is an example of “moving the goalposts”. We have to agree on certain definitions before initiating debate, otherwise we debate senselessly. It is incumbent upon someone who does not define the word “God” as the God of the Bible to state as much before beginning debate, so that we can speak one to another like people with sense.

This is part of the challenge of being a critical thinker. An individual believer will refer to God in their claims, but what version of God? What specifically is meant since believers don’t have facts to work with? Baha’i claim God can’t communicate directly with humans but any other Abrahamic? No, God can communicate directly. So what are skeptics supposed to do? Believe both are correct? No, none of them are dealing with facts but expect critical thinkers to accept the assumptions snd beliefs they have.

I’ve said many times that the gripe any believer has isn’t with atheists but with any competing religious person as their beliefs are a direct conflict. Theists should get together and decide what God is, then get back to we atheists.

 

[F1fan]

I like "fundamentists". Was that a typo or is it what you call them?

Typo. I usually have to post and run while taking breaks. Many tupoos in my posts.

I can't really comment much on what you have written as it seems highly specific to the USA. There seems to be nothing analogous in Europe, or not that I am aware of.

Yeah. I’m envious that Europe doesn’t have the fundamentalists that the USA does. I thought they had largely died off after the GW Bush years but with Obama offending many conservatives and Trump getting elected they have really mounted a new and quieter campaign.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I am only evaluating the God which has been presented to me via the biblical narratives. The God of the Bible is highly anthropomorphic, would you not say? If I find the Biblical God to be unbelievable, what then should I do? Re-imagine the nature of a God based upon my own fancy? If I did that, I would end up with a God having no epistemological basis, conjured up by the vagaries of my own imagination.

My atheism is based not upon any evaluation of the nature of God, though, which I have no means whatsoever of achieving since God is so utterly remote and secluded from me. I can only evaluate what I am able to discern, so my atheism is rather based upon an evaluation of scripture as a source of knowledge regarding the proposition that “there is a God…”. I am an atheist because I have adjudged the Bible to be of no epistemological value regarding the question of God. If I reject the notion of the Biblical God based in part upon that, should I then consider that the authors of scripture merely got the details wrong, resulting in a mischaracterization? That might perhaps be reasonable if one had an extra-biblical means for assuming a knowledge of a God, but we do not. This leaves me with the recognition of the Bible as epistemically worthless, and with no other epistemological source for discerning a God. The proper conclusion is an obvious one. It also seems to preclude, however, adoption of the ideas that “there is no such thing as a God” or “God does not exist”, for being epistemically worthless, it cannot teach that, either. This is why I did not ever make the jump to antitheism.

The Christian God is often anthropomorphised, I'm not sure that's the case in Hebrew or Islamic theology. In any case, each religion has it's own God concepts, which are really efforts to envisage something which is by definition, beyond human comprehension. I see no reason at all why individuals, in whatever social, cultural or religious context, shouldn't begin with their own conception of God.

Calling the Bible "epistemically worthless" is another excursion into absurdity. You might as well call the Severn Bridge artistically worthless, or Vivaldi's Four Seasons mechanically worthless.

 

[Zwing]

The Christian God is often anthropomorphised, I'm not sure that's the case in Hebrew or Islamic theology.

Well of course it is. “God” is anthropomorphized by attribution to it of human characteristics. In the Pentateuch, YHVH is jealous, vengeful, vindictive, aggressive, and displaying of all kinds of human character flaw. If you have ever read the Qur’an at all, then you know that those words found there, which are avouched to be the very words of Allah and not of a man writing under inspiration, sound suspiciously like the language of a man telling his followers what to believe and how to behave. Of course these God concepts are anthropomorphized.

 

[Zwing]

Calling the Bible "epistemically worthless" is another excursion into absurdity. You might as well call the Severn Bridge artistically worthless, or Vivaldi's Four Seasons mechanically worthless.

It is not, and your examples are not at all analogous. My assertion answers a primary tenet of Christianity (and of the other Abrahamic faiths, for that matter), which is that we humans can know about God by means of scripture. Again, fundamentalist Christians tell us that we should believe in God “because the Bible says so”. Even among non-fundy Christians, though…in all of Christianity including that which does not adhere to the doctrine of “sola scriptura”, the means to knowledge of God is by means of the testimony of other people, particularly through scripture. Because of this, the Bible is proposed by Christians to be an epistemikon, something which validly imparts knowledge, particularly the knowledge of God. Can you think of any way a human gains a concept of “God” other than by scripture? I say that there is none. I call the Bible “epistemically worthless regarding a knowledge of deity” in refutation of the proposition that we men can know that God exists because we read about it in scripture.

 

[F1fan]

As do I and I know of several who own that what they choose to believe on faith is not something they can show to be true, though I doubt any will say "I am unconcerned whether the object of my belief is empirically evidenced". In other words, it isn't something they belief based on empirical facts. What was challenging to me was that anyone would ever choose to believe anything not supported by the best evidence and reasoning. But that ignores the fact that we all must have a disposition to the world, what generally we expect from it and our experience of it as we go through everyday. Life isn't lived on the basis of research; we make judgements on the run as life unfolds.

Which is why we see so many more errors of judgement than we should. Creationism shouldn’t have any broad appeal. Trump should have been the first rejected as a nominee in 2015 (as he was in 2011). And so on. People should learn critical thinking skills. They should learn what sound conclusions are versus emotional responses. Many people who hold bad beliefs are capable of better thinking.

For that reason we all have some disposition to the world which precedes reason and evidence, but we don't all know what is our disposition to the world. For Christians it is the belief that the world is a place where God always belongs. But what God is exactly is not possible to say, it is something felt or intuited but Christians by and large assume that God is as described in the Bible.

Or manufactured. Notice you neglect mentioning that possibility.

Some Christians will admit they could be reading the Bible incorrectly about who exactly God is but they choose to believe the traditional account anyway but all the thoughtful ones I've met definitely have doubts. (Belief need not be fervent or irrational.) I can respect that but am still glad to be unencumbered by any Bible.

I think many believers have doubts but are pressured by others to accept what they are told. The need to belong and conform is powerful and can lead folks to believe things they don’t believe.

The Ashe experiment illustrates how people will accept false ideas when others around believe.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

I. 'Christian martyr stories are made up.' Why? Yes, there are many apocryphal tales but it is absolutely true that Christians were at times persecuted and put to all kinds of terrible deaths by the Roman state. These figures are exaggerated but why should this mean that the whole idea behind Christian martyrs be questioned?

Do we have proof they died for their beliefs? It's often said the apostles did, but given that Jesus was related (ideologically and biologically) to an executed anti-Herodian, how do we know they weren't just executed as terrorists?

II. 'Paul was xyz.' (A Roman spy, a false Christian, didn't really see Jesus etc.) Please prove it. Paul probably had more enemies than friends, but the same might be said of Jesus.

Doesn't Paul admit to having Herodian family? Can't remember. He never mentions seeing a living person named Jesus, and by living, I mean someone who has not died yet. Can't say much about being a false Christian as the term wasn't even a thing around the time of Jesus, but it's abundantly clear he has issues with the "real" apostles.

III. 'Jesus didn't exist.'

One must learn to separate literary characters from anyone they may be based on.

IV. Sources that never seem to be good enough. Yet other histories are not questioned (ex. our best information for Alexander the great comes about 200 years after the fact and almost nothing contemporary survives).

If Caesar or Alexander said they had a military campaign somewhere, we can go there and find out whether there are archeological finds consistent with a military campaign in that area. Got anything like that for Jesus? Why do local medici (doctors) not mention some Judean named Jesus running around curing thousands of people? It's not like they didn't write down medical cases. Where are the records for the trial and execution? Rameses II goes around saying he whupped the Hittites, but that's weird because the Hittites said they whupped him. Did various Roman emperors have divine attributes like healings or special stars appearing? Did Donald Trump have the biggest crowd at his inauguration? People lie. It's not just the biblical authors doing it, but we CAN investigate whether or not claims are true.

 

[HonestJoe]

I've noticed that, among a large cohort of non-Christians and especially atheists on here, many of them take disbelief to what I would consider an extreme.

I'd suggest the key phrase there is "on here". There are certainly people who purport to be atheist who make all sorts of extreme statements and assertions here but you can't deny that there are just as many people who purport to be Christian (or of some other faith) who make similar extreme statements and assertions here.

We're not normal though. The subset of people who choose to post on this forum are somewhat "extreme" already. None of it is really reflective of the majority of people out in the world, the vast majority of whom don't even think about the kind of things we tend to discuss here.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Which suggests that an historical Jesus is irrelevant to Christianity, though there may have been such a person.

If Jesus HAD written a scripture, the church would've been the first to burn it.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

I have come across people on this forum arguing that the whole of The Bible should be completely disregarded because of references to slavery, but I have never heard this argument made in respect of Plato's Republic.

Then you haven't talked with me. I have disdain for people who claim something is true because some ignorant dead Greek fool from hundreds or thousands of years ago said it was.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Maybe if the other side had not been so hell bent on genetic and religious purity we might not have gotten so messed up over it.

I've seen the posters for eugenics conferences in the US. We didn't disagree with Nazis. We took part in their delusions of grandeur.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Anthropomorphise God, judge Him by human standards

And the human standards were invented by GOD, no? He can't live up to HIS OWN rules?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

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

Yes, for perceived or real terrorism, just like every other group considered to be so.

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

I thought he claimed to be Jewish (unless he's in hot water with the cops, then he's Roman). Paul has a need to have all eyes on him (unless he's in hot water with the crowds).

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

I suspect there were at least one if not more inspirations for the character.

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

Not well-versed enough in the genre to care. It's not history. That's for certain.