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Too Many Extremes in Disbelief

Zwing

Active Member
Nope, not all, only Israel with whom he "made a covenant". Old YHVH was very selective.
I deny that such is the case:

Psalm 100

1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Does it seem that this is addressed only to Israelites? Might the writer of this have thought that God made only the Hebrews, and no other people? I don’t think so.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Of those, I would only say the first is 'existence'. Potentially the second, depending on your views of abstract concepts (I am not a Platonist). The others are things I would not assign the property of 'existence' to. If gods only exist in your senses of 3,4, or 5, I would simply say they don't exist. Since I disagree with your characterization of 2 (I would say it merges with 3), the whole point, for me, is whether gods exist in the sense of 1.
As many theists (if they understand the difference at all) admit that their god isn't real, I don't request evidence of reality. I'd be content with any consistent definition of an unreal deity - but alas, they can't bring that either.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
I deny that such is the case:

Psalm 100

1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Does it seem that this is addressed only to Israelites? Might the writer of this have thought that God made only the Hebrews, and no other people? I don’t think so.
Taken out of context, it may seem that the author addresses all people ("all the earth").
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Difficult to see how you could do cosmology without a metaphysics tbh.

View attachment 79373

Of course, we know from the Copenhagenist approach, that it is possible to do physics without an ontology, but physicists of a philosophical persuasion (and there are many, including and perhaps especially those who were most scathing about philosophy) seem to have found this deeply unsatisfactory.
So tell me the actual practical application
of metaphysics or religion to anythjng in science.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
No, how do you know what objective evidence is? I am doing meta on you. How do you know that you know? That is a standard skeptical question. Not that you say you know, but how you know that you know?
So asks a person who must know word definitions are true, and the structure of language to form sentences is true and useful. And knows what a question is and asks them. So how do you know all this?
 

Rival

Diex Aie
Staff member
Premium Member
I deny that such is the case:

Psalm 100

1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Does it seem that this is addressed only to Israelites? Might the writer of this have thought that God made only the Hebrews, and no other people? I don’t think so.
OT theology has it that God is the God of the universe but has a special covenant with the Israelites. Everyone else gets to worship whichever Gods they like because they're not in the covenant, while Israel has a divine Law and thus contractual obligations the other nations aren't under.
 

Zwing

Active Member
OT theology has it that God is the God of the universe but has a special covenant with the Israelites. Everyone else gets to worship whichever Gods they like because they're not in the covenant, while Israel has a divine Law and thus contractual obligations the other nations aren't under.
Yes, but do you not think that YHVH, as the supposed God of the universe which is above all other gods, would want all people to worship him?
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Really? No dry ice, no lox or liquid nitrogen?

It's awful easy to prove air is real.
Right. What are the tires of our cars, trucks and bikes filled with? Love? What are the guages of pumps indicating, just arbitrary numbers?

Nay sayers are going to all ends to try to justify their belief in something that has no basis in reality. It's not just atheists being deficient in sensing some ethereal whatever (and of course believers somehow able) now it is a broader: we can't know what might be there (yet somehow believers magically know).
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
So asks a person who must know word definitions are true, and the structure of language to form sentences is true and useful. And knows what a question is and asks them. So how do you know all this?

That depends on what true is and what useful is.
The problem is that there are at least 5 different versions of true, if not more. So which one is true and how do you know that the other ones are false.
As for useful, that has no objective referent or method for true as objective. So what in some cases can be useful to you, is useless to me and so in reverse.
We are no debating if a part of the everyday world is in effect and in practice objective. We are debating if from that follows, that all what is true and useful are objective. That is not the same.

It appears that you for some forms of subjective are unable to understand that you are subjective and that in some cases true and useful, is what is true and useful to you, but not me.

The falsifacition of whether something is objective or subjective, is in one version if it can be done differently subjectively. And that is the case here, since we in effect disagree subjectively.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Right. What are the tires of our cars, trucks and bikes filled with? Love? What are the guages of pumps indicating, just arbitrary numbers?

Nay sayers are going to all ends to try to justify their belief in something that has no basis in reality. It's not just atheists being deficient in sensing some ethereal whatever (and of course believers somehow able) now it is a broader: we can't know what might be there (yet somehow believers magically know).
The Projection is strong with such " believers".
 

Zwing

Active Member
Right. What are the tires of our cars, trucks and bikes filled with? Love? What are the guages of pumps indicating, just arbitrary numbers?
Yes, and the same can be said of many other non-visible substances. Electricity…the flow of electrons, for instance, cannot be seen, but I dare anyone who questions its existence to take a grab on a charged naked high power line.
Nay sayers are going to all ends to try to justify their belief in something that has no basis in reality.
Unfortunately, I must agree. I understand the great difficulty in surrendering one’s faith in deity, and so I frankly do not ask anyone to do so, but the making of absurd arguments in trying to support the theistic position is a bit too much to countenance.
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Exactly. And since no privileged position, no Archimedean point from which to view the world objectively, is available to we humans, the closest we can ever come to objective reality is through our collective experience. It is objectively so, because we confirm it collectively. Which makes any argument for objective reality an ‘argumentum ad populam’, and therefore fallacious.
So if you are accused of murder and the five different labs test DNA of the killer from the crime scene, and all five results say that you are not the killer, you think it is't objective, and a fallacy? Should the prosecutor ignore the results because seven witnesses saw you in the building at the time of the murder, even though it was someone who happened to look like you?

How can any trials occur given your rejection of any objective facts being acknowledged?
 

Rival

Diex Aie
Staff member
Premium Member
Sure, but despite when it may happen, does it not seem that YHVH desires it?
Well, not really. In the Book of Jonah he wants the people to repent of evil, but nothing about worshipping him. His main concern seems to be pro-social behaviour, not right worship (unless you're an Israelite). That God wants everyone to worship him is inherited from Christianity and Islam, but not really present in the Hebrew Bible unless we are talking about the Messianic Age. God calls idols worthless a lot, but this seems to be polemic on behalf of the Israelite prophets, usually scourging other Israelites for having idols. It's not clear that God wants everyone's worship outside the land of Israel, wherein everyone who travels has certain restrictions (i.e., not eating blood in that land).
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
Well, one way to do that is to give up on the idea that the universe is indepedent of the mind.


Leaving aside for a moment the question of mind independent reality, it seems to me entirely self evident that no account of the universe can be complete, which fails to offer a full account of the consciousness of the observer.

It seems similarly axiomatic, that if a distinction has to be made between mind and matter, the former must have primacy over the latter. Our experience of the world is built on that, and experience is everything to us.

I’m not a solipsist. Neither, I think, are you? I don’t consider the universe to be a figment of my imagination. I do consider consciousness and the material world to be inextricable and inseparable.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
So if you are accused of murder and the five different labs test DNA of the killer from the crime scene, and all five results say that you are not the killer, you think it is't objective, and a fallacy? Should the prosecutor ignore the results because seven witnesses saw you in the building at the time of the murder, even though it was someone who happened to look like you?

How can any trials occur given your rejection of any objective facts being acknowledged?
Not everyone gets "the reasonable
person", or, the idea of "beyond reasonable doubt".

So in comes the unreasonable.
 

The Hammer

Skald
Premium Member
I have seen liquid nitrogen. I have seen liquid oxygen. They can both be produced from air by cooling it enough. I have seen the oxygen and water in the air taken into account for chemical reactions: the results are wrong if they are not. I have *heard* the motion of the air (hearing is another sense and is a legitimate way to detect things). I can *feel* the air in quite a number of situations (and touch is yet another sense). I can set up a wind vane and determine the direction that air moves. I can set up a barometer and measure the pressure of the air. I can set up a device to measure how fast the air is moving. I can weigh the air, determining how much mass it has. And that becomes relevant for weather prediction.

And, if I use a different part of the light spectrum, I can measure the spectrum of the air, which is a way to 'see' the air.

How many of those can you do with deities?

I can feel the Gods too, now whether or not that is reproducible inside of a scientific context outside of the individual doesn't affect my faith.
 
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