What would falsify your paradigm?

[PruePhillip]

That is, he's not a Jewish messiah at all ─ the Christians invented a new job description but used, or stole for political reasons, an old name for it. .

So, do you have a date for Psalm 22?
This is the suffering Redeemer most of us recognize as Jesus
in the Gospels.
Do you think David/unknown author was writing about Israel?
If no, who is he/she writing about?

 

[blü 2]

I am not sure what new information you have on Job.

I read it.

But IF (that's a big word) some author made up the story

Gimme a break! A god and a district manager walk into a bar, and the district manager says ...

then what do you think he/she meant by this reference to the Redeemer? Do you think it references other Redeemer prophecies in the bible?

The redeemer is Yahweh the Jewish god who let Job get dropped into that particularly vile hole and will get him out again.

 

[blü 2]

There is no religious doctrine in the entirety of the Jewish people where
some Jews die for the sins of the rest of the Jews - and are then resurrected and see the fruits of their suffering.
And yet a Medieval rabbi invoke this theory to explain away one of the many suffering servant verses in the bible - and no-one asks the obvious question, "where did this doctrine come from?" and "why is the doctrine here in Isaiah and nowhere else?"

Dear oh dear oh dear.

Okay, I confess that I haven't researched and written a paper on the Suffering Servant and, lazy rascal that I am, have fallen back on the opinions of those who've done what I have not.

I suppose that what those writers and I have in common is that we don't think historical method includes magic, ghosts, goblins or the usual trappings of superstition. Thus we agree that Yahweh is no more entitled to magic than Zeus, or Mazda, or Brahma, or (in Melbourne) the Rainbow Serpent (though it's true that my two favorite deities are Ganesha ─ everyone loves elephants, and I've never worked out why Jesus chose to come to earth as a human ─ and the Rainbow Serpent).

 

[blü 2]

So, do you have a date for Psalm 22?
This is the suffering Redeemer most of us recognize as Jesus
in the Gospels.
Do you think David/unknown author was writing about Israel?
If no, who is he/she writing about?

My dear Prue

Prophecy ─ supernatural foreknowledge ─ is undiluted bunk and like Aladdin's lamp and the perfect love potion, are found nowhere outside of individual imaginations.

You can show me I'm wrong by informing me here (comfortably in advance) all the winners at next week's major racetrack, just which major racetrack I leave to you.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You are either right or wrong.
But with two truths you can be right and right?
My definition of truth is that it incorporates all the facts about
an issue, event or yourself. You can have many facts, but one
truth.

No, monism as reality in the end as one kind of existence or truth doesn't work.
You can't reduce reality to one kind of facts.

Take objective and subjective, a fact can't be objective and subjective, but one fact can be objective and another subjective.
If there is only one truth then everything for the big factors is either physical or mental, objective or subjective in practice. There are connections but you can't reduce everything down to one kind of fact nor truth.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Because what I heard from my studies was that he admonished me NOT to take his word for it and meditate until I saw it for myself. He even provided a suggested roadmap.

That post was not for you, Ayjaydee. That was meant for Prue Phillip. Now that you are at it, if you please, tell me of Buddha's 'road-map' and what you saw. Did he not say that these are imponderables (acinteyyas), and will contemplating on them will cause vexation in mind or even madness?

Psychologically, I also am aware that I favour beliefs with benefits and which are optimistic, so I will tend to more readily commit to a belief that is pragmatic and joyful than one that is difficult and depressing, given a roughly equal balance of probabilities or a choice between similar balanced/evidence paradigms.

To convince me to abandon belief in God, then, I would simply need to be shown evidence/arguments that either rendered theism incoherent or which pushed the probability of God obviously below half (or just less than half if it could also be shown it was non-pragmatic and/or depressing).

As an atheist, I have never encountered any problem with my optimism or joyfulness. I have never encountered depression even in my worst days. 'Will the God listen to my request?' I find nothing more pessimistic than this. You are talking of 50%, if the evidence was even 1%, perhaps I would not have been an atheist. But I find none. All talk, no show.

 

[Ayjaydee]

That post was not for you, Ayjaydee. That was meant for Prue Phillip. Now that you are at it, if you please, tell me of Buddha's 'road-map' and what you saw. Did he not say that these are imponderables (acinteyyas), and will contemplating on them will cause vexation in mind or even madness?

The roadmap is the Noble Eightfold Path to realization of the truth of Dukkha, its causes, the elimination of those causes for oneself. As I have not realized these things for myself, I cant tell you what I have seen.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I completely agree with you Ayjaydee, the Noble Eight-Fold path is the best what a person can do. That is known as 'Dharma' in Hinduism too, manasa, vacha, karmana.

I am capable of using my own mind to work out the logical definitions of these terms, and of explaining to others why and how I have done so. So I don't have to rely blindly on the propaganda posted by liars and fools on the internet.

Here comes the wise one.

 

[Aupmanyav]

No atheist can speak about anything other that the lack of belief, yet a lot of them seem to do that.
Some atheists use the above definition as a defense mechanism. i.e. I can justify my views of the world as an atheist beyond being an atheist, but that has not to do with me being an atheist.

That is not true Mikkel_the_Dane. If I do not believe in existence of God, then I also do not believe in existence of soul, any heaven or hell, ghosts or angels, any judgment or deliverance, or the six-day creation of the universe, or in my case, any creation at all. They are all related. Yeah, I can justify my views, and that has everything to do with my being an atheist.

I am writing a reply to your longer post, but it is going to take some time.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Why is there a difference between non-believer and diehard atheist?

But even then, you're saying if I can find one credible report of a true athiest being nice to a believer, your POV is falsified?

There are many nice people in the world, Christians and non-Christians. The Bible, which is perfect, describes the diehard skeptic.

I'm not saying you can't find diehards who aren't kind people, many are, but the Bible predicts how skeptics will behave toward the Christians and the Christian witness in particular--you know, the way Christ and the apostles were slaughtered.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Why is there a difference between non-believer and diehard atheist?

But even then, you're saying if I can find one credible report of a true athiest being nice to a believer, your POV is falsified?

PS. I've challenged many RF skeptic trolls to be nice to be, to undo the Bible's paradigm! They won't/can't!!!

 

[PruePhillip]

My dear Prue

Prophecy ─ supernatural foreknowledge ─ is undiluted bunk and like Aladdin's lamp and the perfect love potion, are found nowhere outside of individual imaginations.

You can show me I'm wrong by informing me here (comfortably in advance) all the winners at next week's major racetrack, just which major racetrack I leave to you.

Nice dodge.
The racetrack for Daniel was the Roman destruction of Jerusalem/the temple/the Messiah.
but that Rome would fall, but never fall - there would always be a Rome.
Not like Jeremiah said about Babylon - it would fall and would never be inhabited again.
Be nice if we could have bet on these guys - they could tell you the winners a thousand,
two thousand years out.

 

[Galateasdream]

PS. I've challenged many RF skeptic trolls to be nice to be, to undo the Bible's paradigm! They won't/can't!!!

But that doesn't mean there isn't at least one die hard sceptic who's acted nicely towards a Christian. I mean, I'm pretty sure I've come across such multiple times, especially within families.

 

[PruePhillip]

Dear oh dear oh dear.

Okay, I confess that I haven't researched and written a paper on the Suffering Servant and, lazy rascal that I am, have fallen back on the opinions of those who've done what I have not.

I suppose that what those writers and I have in common is that we don't think historical method includes magic, ghosts, goblins or the usual trappings of superstition. Thus we agree that Yahweh is no more entitled to magic than Zeus, or Mazda, or Brahma, or (in Melbourne) the Rainbow Serpent (though it's true that my two favorite deities are Ganesha ─ everyone loves elephants, and I've never worked out why Jesus chose to come to earth as a human ─ and the Rainbow Serpent).

You come from Melbourne?
So do I.
You comparing the bible to Zeus or the Rainbow Serpent?
That's a shallow estimation that relies upon ignorance of
the issues rather than on being informed.
We have no archaeological record of the Rainbow Serpent.
We learn nothing of the human and spiritual condition of
humanity from Zeus.

 

[Wu Wei]

Regardless of what your paradigm is, whether theistic or atheistic, religious or irreligious, I think it's an interesting thought exercise to consider not just what you believe and why, but what evidence or argument could, theoretically, falsify your paradigm (if anything).

Here is a place for you to say what would convince you that you'd got it wrong - whatever your POV.

So far nothing, but then I am more Taoist/Deist

 

[Aupmanyav]

What do YOU think?

You are hardly a Christian other than in name.

 

[BilliardsBall]

I will try to explain.
For you to spot a diehard atheist, you make a check list of different positions and the more you get winged off the higher the probability that you have a diehard atheist. You make such a list based on your own observations and then check what you find other claim about what makes a diehard atheist so. It is a form of field observation, you observe the media, literature and so on. But more importantly the Internet.
So what would a checklist look like? I,e, what is behind the different positions you check for? E.g. epistemological realism, a strong belief in rationality/objectivity, that natural science/empiricism is the only source of knowledge, that (only) science makes for a better society, that relativism is wrong and so on.
Well, it has nothing to do with them being diehard atheists.
Rather it is this:
The certainty they hold, that their cultural and intellectual understanding of reality is the correct one in an universal sense. But that is not unique to them. That holds for all versions of understanding that turn into being diehard. It is the certainty of holding the correct position that marks all diehards for the following 3 categories: They know what the correct methodology for knowledge is, they know that reality really is and they know objective good.
So now we go wide and look at 2 theories of morality.

Moral Foundations Theory | moralfoundations.org

https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html

Now a general note about the truth of these theories. They are neither true nor false as such in a strong sense. They are different ways of looking at morality and the more ways you used the more nuanced it gets. Not that this is objectively better, rather it changes how you understand morality.

So here it goes: Where does a diehard atheist fall within these 2 models and what do they have in common.
It is about the authority, the certainty with which they speak for all humans. They speak with fixed rules for how to understand good, truth and reality and it is about loyalty, authority and sanctity.
You are loyal to science as the only form of knowledge. Science is the only authority and the sanctity of a human is to be rational as them and only use science.

You catch them here and differentiate between the actual science and how they use science.
Science has limits: A few things that science does not do

As per the link above.
Yes, science can do morality.
No, aesthetics are meaningless, unless it is about the beauty in understanding reality through science.
Yes, science tells you know to use knowledge, because science is the only form of knowledge.
No, of course science tells you that there are no gods, because science has solved metaphysics and epistemology.

That is how you "catch" a diehard atheist. It has nothing to do with atheism as such, as they will point out. It is all about scientism and not actual science.
It is those 4 and if you get all 4 in a strong, certain way you "got" a diehard atheist.

A note about organized religion today. Because we in the part of the world where we all have access to the Internet, in-groups(psychology) can form on the Internet. Diehard atheists are not an organized, centralized, formal power structure. They are an informal group of humans, who share a certain paradigm. But it is not codified, legal or organized. It is the result of being on fora, like this one.
So are they religious?

religion | Definition & List of Religions
Yes, rationality and science are sacred and worthy of especial reverence..
Yes, they know what happens, when we die.
Yes, their religion is naturalistic and not supernatural, they "worhship" the world, they can see.
Yes, they have sacred texts or rather concepts from within the philosophy of science, philosophy and science. Empiricism; materialism/physicalism, theoretical physics and evolution are the main ones.
The last one about how they congregate and worship in groups is the results of culture and technology. We in this part of the world, liberal democracies with Internet mainly, have individuals, who form in-groups on the Internet. Their rituals center around confirming rationality and science in debates and discussions.

So if you look for religion versus non-religion in the traditional sense you "see" one thing. If you look for religion as a human behavior and not the part of being supernatural you can find religious atheists.
Here is a short joke about definition of words. In the Victorian Era atheism was defined as amoral. Not that atheism is amoral, rather the paradigm was that atheism is amoral.
So what is to a diehard atheist the definition of religion; - it is the belief in supernatural magic. What happens if you look closer? Religion is a cultural, psychological behavior in nature and as such natural. So is science BTW. It is a culture in time and not universal. There is no single of factor explanation of what neither religion nor science are.

Rather science is over time the combined human effort to explain and understand reality with as many factors as needed. Dogmatic religion, not religion as such, is to reduce reality down to as few True factors as possible and claim Objective Authority over all humans.

So:


How it is that? Because traditional religion is "tabu", it is irrational and irrational is the worst thing you can be. It makes you non-human and should be mocked, ridiculed and so on and "explained" away by using psychological defense mechanism.

It is, when it comes to sufficiently functional humans as per cognition/psychology, always in part as necessary but not sufficient nature/nurture/psychology/morality/aesthetics rolled into a "mess" of, what matters to a given individual?!!
The trick in understanding a given human as for their overall paradigm is to understand how and what reasons they give for what matters to them?!!
It is a method in humaniora, where you make a model of another human by figuring out what matters to that given individual.

So to "see" a diehard atheist, you see religion and non-religion as natural, cultural and so on and don't look for single factor
definitions. You look for "markers" of what you asked for. A paradigm.

With regards

PS - don't treat this as gospel. It is a limited relative view of a part of reality and has nothing to do with Truth and all that.

NONSENSE!

If any RF troll skeptic cared for me one whit, instead of mocking me (and other theists) they would patiently explain how to deconvert, based on exactly what you've said above about religious faith.

Sample exchange:

"Prove the BIBLE WRONG, and play nice in our sandbox at RF!"

"No, go #$#%@ yourself."

"The Bible is RIGHT, so (sort of) thank you!"

You're contributing to the problem. If you're so incensed the Bible is guiding me wrong, KINDLY help me out instead of continuing to insult me.

 

[BilliardsBall]

But that doesn't mean there isn't at least one die hard sceptic who's acted nicely towards a Christian. I mean, I'm pretty sure I've come across such multiple times, especially within families.

That's NOT what I'm saying, there are diehard skeptics who are WED to born agains.

I'm talking about the literal spiritual power here at RF. Example:

"Be nice to me, skeptic, and prove the BIBLE WRONG, since the Bible says you'll be mean and oppose my testimony."

"No, BB, go @$@#$ yourself! I hate you!"

 

[blü 2]

You come from Melbourne?

No, YOU come from Melbourne.

You comparing the bible to Zeus or the Rainbow Serpent?

No, the bible is a set of cultural records, and that's why it's interesting. But Yahweh, Zeus, the Rainbow Serpent, Huitzilopotchli, on and on, all come from the one stable, the human tendency to devise gods.

We have no archaeological record of the Rainbow Serpent.

I've just made a net search, "Rainbow serpent" "earliest evidence", and >this< says there are images of [him] going back 6000 years ago, making [him] 2,500 years or so older than Yahweh.

We learn nothing of the human and spiritual condition of humanity from Zeus.

Oh come now! The NT and Christianity have raided Greek culture first, ongoing and last!

 

[Aupmanyav]

Nice dodge.

PruePhillip and BillardsBall, kindly understand, not all people care about what convoluted things are written in the book that you people refer to. It means nothing to a large number of people in the world.