Quote of the Day, by Russ
Christian Apologetics is nothing more than making up answers that then become boilerplate, pat responses to hand out in lieu of thought.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Christian Apologetics is nothing more than making up answers that then become boilerplate, pat responses to hand out in lieu of thought.
Labels: "Quote of the Day"
59 comments:
Are you implying that that is in some way bad?
Love it.
This is true for those who are "outside the camp"....but for those who are "in"....
And what would qualify as a thoughtful answer in Russ' mind?
Ana,
It might be worth the time to see where that comment came from, and in what context it was originally delivered. Check out "The Clergy Letter Project" thread.
Thanks GearHedEd.
I read over Russ' responses to Rob. But I felt he was vague in paragraph about Christian apologetics. I would have liked some examples, of the kinds of answers Russ' has encountered that he thinks are void of honest thought.
There was one thing in particular in one of his posts that really stood out to me and that I disagree with:
"...all religion-specific claims should be taken as false until proven otherwise."
I'm wondering why instead of "false", he doesn't use "unproven" or "suspect".
Ana: "I'm wondering why instead of "false", he doesn't use "unproven" or "suspect"."
Me: Isn't the result pretty much the same? I might have said "...all religion-specific claims should be viewed with extreme slepticism until proven otherwise."
All of these semantic differentials approach theism from an agnostic viewpoint. "False" is maybe a touch stronger, but not really any different than what you suggested.
Uh, sKepticism...
Great quote
I had to google the word
This is what Wikipedia said
Boilerplate is any text that is or can be reused in new contexts or applications without being changed much from the original.
I remember a time in my life when I rushed out to buy the latest Christian Apologetic book. I would get so excited that I had hard evidence to use in my street evangelism ministry. Of course most of the time after reading the book I would be disappointed for the very reason listed in this quote
GearHedEd,
(is it ok if I refer to you as Ed for short? )
>>Isn't the result pretty much the same?<<
I don't think so. The words "False" and "unproven" not only have different denotations, but also connotations.
(to say something is false, smacks of a claim- to- knowledge)
Lack-of-evidence does not qualify something as "false". Lack-of-evidence denotes "status undetermined".
Presence of contrary evidence denotes something as "false".
Presence of supporting evidence denotes something as "true".
If we are to say that every religion-specific claim should (by default) be taken as "false"...why is that more reasonable than a person who says "every religion-specific claim should (by default) be taken as "true"?
(either scenerio seems radical to me)
Ana,
It's OK to call me Ed.
To say something is true, smacks of a claim to knowledge as well.
It would make me feel better at any rate if I didn't have to endure the bold claims of Christianity ad nauseum...
If the proof is so strong, why are there still raging debates?
I assure you it's NOT a struggle between the Demonic Forces and those of the Light. Many very well-educated, thoughtful and otherwise normal folks DON'T believe in Christianity despite the evidential claims. Why?
They find the evidence to be essentially single-sourced and unconvincing.
Does it matter to them whether it is called "false" or "unproven" at that point?
In other words, you're making a demand that atheists respect the Christian insistence that it IS true by conceding that it MIGHT be true.
It's not just the semantic value of the words ('false', vs. 'unproven' or 'suspect') that's at issue here. It's the strategy being employed to wedge a theistic foot in the door where atheists say it doesn't belong.
Personally, I don't care what you believe. If it helps in your life, that's great. But what helps you isn't helping me. I help myself.
>>To say something is true, smacks of a claim to knowledge as well.<<
I completely agree. But that doesn’t answer the question I asked, which was:
“ If we are to say that every religion-specific claim should (by default) be taken as "false"...why is that more reasonable than a person who says "every religion-specific claim should (by default) be taken as "true"? ”
If a claim can be regarded as false without evidence contrary to the claim, then by that same logic, someone can regard a claim as true, without evidence supportive of the claim.
(lest Russ be guilty of using a double-standard)
>>If the proof is so strong, why are there still raging debates?<<
Proof and persuasion are two different things. It would be a mistake to think that proof (even if strong) necessarily begets persuasion
(as an off-topic example, consider conspiracy theorists and their opponent group. Both claim to have the evidence on their side, and yet each fails to convince the other). This is not surprising in light of the distinction between proof and persuasion.
>>Does it matter to them whether it is called "false" or "unproven" at that point?<<
Well, that would be up to the individual person to answer. For me, it matters.
Another thought hit me, related to what Russ said. Should we apply his standard to all claims?
He said that religion-specific claims should be regarded as false until proven.
But, should this standard be limited to religious claims or should it be applied to any and all claims (up to and including claims made by people in our day-to-day lives. Never taking somebody’s “word on something”?)
“If we are to say that every religion-specific claim should (by default) be taken as "false"...why is that more reasonable than a person who says "every religion-specific claim should (by default) be taken as "true"?”
It isn't.
"If a claim can be regarded as false without evidence contrary to the claim, then by that same logic, someone can regard a claim as true, without evidence supportive of the claim.
(lest Russ be guilty of using a double-standard)"
Then the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the one true deity, and the only reason anyone believes Christianity is because he reaches down upon us with his noodly appendage and causes us to believe this. (rAmen!)
"Proof and persuasion are two different things. It would be a mistake to think that proof (even if strong) necessarily begets persuasion"
I would find proof persuasive, but I may be in the minority there...
"(as an off-topic example, consider conspiracy theorists and their opponent group. Both claim to have the evidence on their side, and yet each fails to convince the other). This is not surprising in light of the distinction between proof and persuasion."
If conspiracy theorists had proof, the would no longer be "theorists", no?
"Another thought hit me, related to what Russ said. Should we apply his standard to all claims?"
I dunno... I think that, scientific falsifiability requirements notwithstanding, it is probably advisable to hold untested hypotheses in a condition of "provisional truth", and see IF they can be disproven. If science approached hypotheses as false until proven true, I feel like no one would investigate anything ("It's probably impossible, so why expend the effort to confirm it?")
"But, should this standard be limited to religious claims or should it be applied to any and all claims (up to and including claims made by people in our day-to-day lives. Never taking somebody’s “word on something”?)"
If someone you barely knew told you that he loved you, would you take that at face value or would you be skeptical?
See? It depends on the situation. There's no hard and fast rule that applies to EVERYTHING.
Ana said..."If a claim can be regarded as false without evidence contrary to the claim, then by that same logic, someone can regard a claim as true, without evidence supportive of the claim.
(lest Russ be guilty of using a double-standard)"
But plenty of evidence is everywhere ,that it seems a omnipotent God that had so much power he could supposedly even build a whole universe .
In all real honesty is not ever anywhere to even be seen or recorded by anyone who can then take the evidence and use it to provide it as proof.
You Christian twist the truth! and matters of complete honesty!, when you try suggesting the available evidence is somehow supposed to be seen as honestly being equal.
Russ is correct Apologetics is about making up answers and mega excuses upon excuses, while purposely over looking what seems most obvious.
Someone else will likely quickly chime in now with boilerplate Apologetics and try and say ..But look Gandi ..dont you realize many things are not so obvious at first! ..why dont you realize folks are still trying hard to understand the big bang or string theory or this or that blah blah blah waffle waffle tweedle-dee-dee.
But im left wondering just how do all these other things without any "conscience" which are not! our "heavenly father" in heaven who supposedly does! care about ALL his earthly children, and supposedly wants them all! to have a good way to really honestly get to know him.Compare with this God who supposedly had plenty of power to evidently create a whole universe,yet strangly enough? OBVIOUSLY seems to have so very much trouble! "with just the very little easy things" ! ,such as just revealing himself to his human children , in a way so they all understand! and dont need to be making so many stupid guesses!, that then all end up causing so very much hurt, harm ,sorrow and endless pain and even suicides and deaths.
In my opnion its just totally dishonest! to try to compare the "ability" of other things to reveal themselves to us ,to some powerful Omnipotent God who evidently had so much power at hand, he could suppoedly even create a whole universe.
Ana the evidence is far from being equal both ways.Plus we do! also know dishonesty often does! cause us humans much pain sorrow and great hardship, in the long run .Well open your eyes, and take a real good hard long close look at the religious faith "outcome" all around! of all the faith guess work.
Its caused exactly what we would expect of much dishonesty.
>>Then the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the one true deity, and the only reason anyone believes Christianity is because he reaches down upon us with his noodly appendage and causes us to believe this. (rAmen!)<<
I’m assuming that your point with this is: the typical person would intuitively dismiss the claim as “false”, regardless of whether that person has evidence against the claim.
If that is your point, I agree with you. (But my original point still stands: that strictly speaking, there is a real difference between what is “false” and what is “unproven”).
But yes, I completely agree that people will blur the distinction between “false” and “unproven”. It seems to be the natural tendency to do that.
Suppose however, that a person who encountered your FSM claim, regarded it as true, regardless of whether that person had evidence in support of the claim. Would you consider that person to be irrational?
(Anotherwords, is the one who regards it as “false” rational, while the one who regards it as “true” irrational, even if neither one offers an evidential basis for their view?)
>>There's no hard and fast rule that applies to EVERYTHING.<<
Therein lies the problem, that in the absence of a criteria that applies to everything, there will be some gray areas.
Ana,
Let me bring in the last couple of paragraphs from my comment containing the quote so we needn't flip back and forth. As GearHedEd said, the comment was made on the "The Clergy Letter Project" thread. I was responding to Rob R.
Here's what I said
You suggested that,
religion can answer questions with which science is inept and ill suited
Religions do not answer questions; groups of people answer questions. Do you want to imply that religious groups get correct answers to questions rather than simply adopting a set of accepted answers and behaviors? That is observably not the case. Christian apologetics is nothing more than making up answers that then become boilerplate, pat responses to hand out in lieu of thought. Those answers are not truth. They are merely accepted within the group and they differ among the Christianities and from religious group to religious group.
So, Rob R, you make me laugh. You fascinate me in the same way as a dog chasing its own tail does or a cat completely consumed by the spider climbing the wall. You want to be respected for your philosophical refinement, but you lay claim to a "religious truth" that is nowhere to be seen, one that varies person to person, place to place, church to church and religion to religion. That makes "truth" useless as concept and it mocks your own attempts to wow us with your abuse of philosophy. This is funny stuff.
The vagueness you suggest concerning my comments about Christian apologetics results primarily from what I know of Rob R's history as a fellow commenter here at Debunking Christianity. You see Rob R has a degree in philosophy and envisions himself to be a Christian apologist. He is at odds with other Christian apologists, yet still insists that he is "correct." So while you feel vagueness, Rob R has a different context. I wasn't trying to be incomplete; I simply had in mind a set of prior contexts with my target audience.
Ana, let me address your first query,
And what would qualify as a thoughtful answer in Russ' mind?
My basic criterion for a person's thoughtful answer, whatever the topic, is for that person to imbue such an answer with the full context of their own life, knowledge, understanding and experience. No two of us seven billion people on this planet today is the same, and to be sure not one of us is much like those who pieced together the early Christianities from the body of contemporaneous myths and legends and fables. Christian apologetics says that individuality is bullshit and that each and every one of us are intellectual, psychological and emotional carbon copies with no right to look at the world and draw our own conclusions. We are all bound by the musings of ignorant, superstitious, and highly credulous ancient desert scribes.
Despite the fact that Christian apologists disagree with each other - to the extent that all Christians are hellbound by the insights of one or more of them - they all claim that what they have to say is the real deal, and that I have no option but to adopt their particular take about their version of a god or their version of a savior or their version of religion-specific morality.
I have read more than 5000 books in my life - by actual count, including many on religion, and yet I'm told that what I have earned in my intellectual efforts counts for nothing - my only option is to see the world exactly as NT Wright or William Lane Craig or the Pope or Pat Robertson or Reverend Fred Phelps tells me I must see it. If one of them has truth on his side then the others do not, unless, of course, we accept all religious truth claims even when they contradict. But, then, the word "truth" is meaningless.
Ana,
"I’m assuming that your point with this is: the typical person would intuitively dismiss the claim as “false”, regardless of whether that person has evidence against the claim."
Actually, I was approaching it from the "truth without supporting evidence" side, as a parody on the claims made by average Christians.
"Suppose however, that a person who encountered your FSM claim, regarded it as true, regardless of whether that person had evidence in support of the claim. Would you consider that person to be irrational?"
Yes.
I don't "believe" in the FSM. I'm perfectly aware of the FSM's origins, and understand that it was always meant as pointed satire.
"([In other words], is the one who regards it as “false” rational, while the one who regards it as “true” irrational, even if neither one offers an evidential basis for their view?)"
If the phenomenon in question strains credulity, I would say
Yes, but it depends on what "it" is...
If "it" from the previous quote of yours is the FSM, then those that believe it false without evidence are more rational than those that believe it to be true without evidence.
We're wandering into epistemology here, though.
I was going to add that
"If "it" from the previous quote of yours is the Law of Gravity, then those that believe it false without evidence are more IRrational than those that believe it to be true without evidence..."
Except there is evidence everywhere that the Law of Gravity IS true. To believe that it ISN'T true would be irrational in either case.
Which leads us into how do we "know" anything....
Ana,
Note that there is no means to evaluate their otherworldly religion-specific truth claims. So, if I was in the market for a religion how would I decide? Well what I would do is look to how they stack up when they've weighed in on non-otherworldly topics. In the claims they've made for things we can actually assess for ourselves, we see that religions, notably Christianity, have fared very poorly. In the bout between Christianity and Science, for instance, Christianity has a big goose egg in the win column. Every time, every single time, Christianity, informed by the full omniscience of God itself, has ventured a claim about the natural world it has been wrong. Geocentrism? Wrong. Demon possession causing disease? Wrong. Thousands of predictions of the end of the world? Wrong, every time. Adoption of Ptolemaic and Aristotelian cosmologies? Wrong again. How can God get it wrong? Ever, even once? How can God get it wrong every time? We can assign the blame to the defects in human interpreters, but then we face the quandry of why the hell is a god who wants me to know something playing the stupid party game of Pass-It-On with mediums it knows - remember it's omniscient - will get it wrong. More than that, why is this god telling different things to different people at all, and, why, if it wants me to know something, does it not tell me, rather than telling an intermediary. You could tell me that some god would speak to me directly if only I believed and had faith, but would that god tell me what I can observe to be true or will I be treated like the faithful believing Christian apologists who are given radically different information by this god?
There is a truly simple explanation for this that accounts for all the apparent inconsistencies: gods are exactly as ignorant as those who invent them. Mankind has had 100,000 or so gods, 1000 actively worshiped today, and according to most, but not all, Christians only one of them is the one true god. That means all but the Christian god are purely products of human inventiveness, right? That also means that those who invented those gods might have conceived of a god smarter than themselves, but when the details were offered up those gods showed themselves to be no smarter than the mind that created them. But that's not the case in Christianity, is it? since Yahweh is really truly a god, the one true god.
So, Ana, a truly thoughtful answer to a question would ignore religious insights having no hope of ever being resolved. Those insights are not advancing our understanding and they are not bringing us together as a human community. It would be an answer infused with the understandings gleaned from every excursion off well-trod pathways the person has ever trekked. A thoughtful answer would tell me that the person had rejected the one-size-fits all purpose and meaning mantras of religion and found something special in life that they love and are productively consumed with.
Maybe later I'll address some of your other concerns like I'm wondering why instead of "false", he doesn't use "unproven" or "suspect". Perhaps as a prelude to my response you could tell us anything Christian-specific that you know to be either true or so likely to be true that one should reasonably hold off on rejecting them.
Russ said,
"...You could tell me that some god would speak to me directly if only I believed and had faith..."
And if anyone DID tell you that then I'd have to ask
If you already believed, then why would God need to speak to you to convince you to believe and have faith at THAT point?
>>My basic criterion for a person's thoughtful answer, whatever the topic, is for that person to imbue such an answer with the full context of their own life, knowledge, understanding and experience.<<
I agree with this, or at least , I agree that is what a thoughtful answer ideally is.
>>Christian apologetics says that individuality is bullshit and that each and every one of us are intellectual, psychological and emotional carbon copies with no right to look at the world and draw our own conclusions.<<
Here I disagree. I can’t speak for every Christian apologist, and therefore can’t speak for every individual approach.
But, what I will say is that apologetics would be futile if its foundation were that us humans “have no right to look at the world and draw our own conclusions”. I’d go as far as to say that apologetics probably wouldn’t even exist if there were no effort on the part of Christians to engage with, consider, and respond to new discoveries as well as other world-views.
It would be as easy as shrugging it off and walking the other way.
(Doing otherwise means the person is lending attention to views, questions, and objections that he thinks people have no right to raise!)
I also don’t think apologetics is stagnant. I think it’s dynamic. New issues prompt new discussions (e.g. reproductive technology, the future thereof, -> the potential for so called “designer babies”, the ethics thereof). And new questions prompt new answers. (whether those answers are satisfactory is itself another topic)
>>How can God get it wrong? Ever, even once? How can God get it wrong every time? We can assign the blame to the defects in human interpreters, but then we face the quandry of why the hell is a god who wants me to know something playing the stupid party game of Pass-It-On with mediums it knows - remember it's omniscient - will get it wrong.<<
I think this, as well as some of the sentences immediately preceding it, mesh two issues into one.
One issue being, past examples of misinformation coming from Christian people. But that leaves unanswered how much of the information was based on intuition, how much was outside influence (e.g. pagan), how much was exclusively Christian, how much was reasonable inference (using the tools-for-knowledge available at the time )
The other issue being, God himself. But if God is omniscient, I don’t think he is “getting it wrong.” (I think that an omniscient being "getting it wrong" is an oxy-moron). So the questions are really after the character of God
(i.e. Does this God care that there were humans getting it wrong? If he does, why did he allow it to happen often? Or at all? Etc)
I always distinguish between objection-questions to God’s existence, and objection-questions to the character of God (as described by a particular religion)
>>Perhaps as a prelude to my response you could tell us anything Christian-specific that you know to be either true or so likely to be true that one should reasonably hold off on rejecting them.<<
I wouldn’t say I know. I would say “is compelling enough that one…”
There’s the view that the preservation of the Jews was pre-determined and their continued existence and preserved identity is intriguing in light of their turmoil-filled history.
It is reasonable to expect that persecuted, conquered, endangered, or driven out people will eventually face demise. They’ll be eliminated, or assimilated, or gradually lower in numbers closer and closer to fading out of existence.
The fall of empires and disappearance of remarkable civilizations (like that of the Aztecs) – or even more modest people groups – seems to be a natural part of history.
But the Jews persevered, and find themselves back at their homeland.
Disappearance of the Jews – regardless of the reason- would be a devastating blow to Christianity.
I would also consider the the afterlife/ consciousness apart from brain
( yes, I realize this concept is not exclusively Christian, but the reason I use it is because it is one of those things that is very difficult to directly argue for or against).
Belief in afterlife seems to follow from belief in God. It’s not usually the other way around.
So..that arguing for the existence of God, is to indirectly argue for the existence of an afterlife. And arguing against the existence of God, is to indirectly argue against an afterlife.
The only direct argument for an afterlife would stem from a personal testimony to such a thing.
But none of the testimonies that describe a “heaven” or a “hell” or “seeing loved ones” or are veridical cases. We are unable to verify that aspect of a report. I repeat: we cannot verify that aspects of a report that involve the mention of God, Jesus, Muhammad, angels, demons, descriptions of a “heaven” place or descriptions of a “hellish” place, etc ( I think you get the idea). Besides, it seems very suspicious no, if a person who is a Christian, reports an afterlife encounter with Jesus. While Hindu sees his deities).
A scenario that might have real potential of being veridical, is an out-of-body experience report of say, a person declared clinically dead, awakens and upon awakening gives vivid, very well detailed, account of an incident that took place 4 blocks away from the hospital, and that falls within the time frame in which the reporter supposedly had no conscious. And that immediate investigation of the supposed incident renders the person’s report accurate.
In straightforward terms : testifying to something (that can be verified) that every relevant variable and physical limit indicates you could not possibly have knowledge of.
So when I speak of afterlife, do not think I am referring to the “light at the end of the tunnel” for such is vague, not compelling, so popularly heard of that anyone can claim it. And furthermore, there are (what I think) good explanations in terms of oxygen deprivation and heightened activity in the visual cortex that could account for the perceived lighted- tunnel
All we would need, is one true veridical case of consciousness apart from brain. Because even just one case, is sufficient.
Just a quick FYI:
Anyone who has been declared "clinically dead" who subsequently revives was never really "dead".
Ana,
You said,
I agree with this, or at least , I agree that is what a thoughtful answer ideally is.
In a world where embattled apologetics for all religions insist on coercing group compliance to particular thoughts and behaviors, you must add qualifiers like ideally. The world had thousands of religions at the time Christianity began imposing its iron rule, but the Christian apologetic powers that be successfully wiped out thinking about those religions, along with much other non-orthodox thought, like science. Christianity directly stole many of its foundational notions from those other religions, yet their deities were deemed unreal, non-existent by fiat. Christianity wasn't any more true then than it is now, but it had all it needed to keep minds from thinking it to be other than true: raw, life-destroying power. Cross the church with state power in its hands and you have just signed your own death warrant. Today, Uganda is functionally a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. There you can be killed for what you think and you can be killed for inheriting your sexual preference from your opposite-sexed parent. In our religiously dense world where worldviews are forced on the vulnerable - like children, the poor, the starving, or otherwise desperate people - your ideally qualifier is definitely needed. Religions survive by seizing on or creating circumstances where freedom of thought can be forced to surrender.
Most of the Christian apologists you are defending claim there is exactly one god speaking truth to them, revealing truth to them, far too often a different revealed truth than that which was revealed to a different Christian apologist, yet you feel comfortable saying
Here I disagree. I can’t speak for every Christian apologist, and therefore can’t speak for every individual approach.
You're damn right you can't speak for every Christian apologist. It's not even possible for you to speak for a significant fraction of them.
How can what they have to say be said to be true if one of them says there is a hell and another says there isn't? Or if one says Jesus performed miracles while another says Jesus didn't? In Christian apologetics truth is neither a goal nor the light for the path. What's more, we know there is not truth behind Christian though since it becomes more diverse, more diffuse every single day.
According to the World Christian Encyclopedia there are around 40,000 distinct Christianities around the world, with a thousand new Christianities popping up every year. The "truth" of Christianity minute by minute is less and less well-defined. It's not converging to an identifiable point. No one today can say what will be called Christian tomorrow. Among Christians no one thought is common to all of them, not a god, not a savior, not a Bible, not miracles, not a hell, not an afterlife, not a flood, not original sin, not Revelations. And, none of the common Christian shields provide adquate cover. Orthodoxy doesn't do it; there are lots of atheist clergy and laymen within orthodox Christian circles, for instance. Fundamentalism doesn't work. Biblical literalism doesn't work. Christian liberalism doesn't work. As I mentioned in my earlier comment, all Christians are hellbound according to the insights of one or more Christian apologist.
A scenario that might have real potential of being veridical, is an out-of-body experience report of say, a person declared clinically dead, awakens and upon awakening gives vivid, very well detailed, account of an incident that took place 4 blocks away from the hospital, and that falls within the time frame in which the reporter supposedly had no conscious.
FYI, In a well publicized debate between Gary Habermas and Antony Flwe in the 1980's, Habermas speaks of researching many near death experiences and reports of one just like the above described where a girl under surgery describes exactly what her distant family was doing at the time.
Where else he might've published on it and cited the source, I wouldn't know as I haven't read anything of his.
That wasn't his only example either.
Ana,
So you tell me: if there is a single god behind all of this increasingly diverse Christian apologia is it telling all of them the truth? Is that one true god not bright enough to understand that it has told these sincere devout believers conflicting and contradicting things? Is that divine revealer of truth not smart enough to know that its human creations do recognize that with mutually contradictory statements at most one of them is true, thus, it can only be speaking truth to one of them? Does the Ol' Omniscient One not understand that as a purely practical matter if it reveals truth to at most one Christian apologist then, by rules it made up, it has doomed all of humanity but the select few who can access that apologist's revealed words, assess the truth value of what he says, accept it as truth and then build the neurological patterns in their brains - like having your hand stamped at a concert - that constitute proof to the Ol' Omniscient One.
You said,
But, what I will say is that apologetics would be futile if its foundation were that us humans “have no right to look at the world and draw our own conclusions”. I’d go as far as to say that apologetics probably wouldn’t even exist if there were no effort on the part of Christians to engage with, consider, and respond to new discoveries as well as other world-views.
What you're saying here, Ana, is manifestly wrong. Mr. Loftus' post quote "Christian Apologetics is nothing more than making up answers that then become boilerplate, pat responses to hand out in lieu of thought" belongs right here. Christian apologetics is all about clinging to the conclusions of their particular sub-Christianity - there is no such thing as CHRISTIANITY; there are only sub-Christianities. Christian apologists only "engage with, consider, and respond to new discoveries as well as other world-views" when forced to, and then their objective is not to deal honestly with new information, but is instead to play the game of justifying why the new information can be ignored or to zap new data with a philosophical ray-gun bending and twisting it to conform to their same old cherished beliefs.
Ana, if you want us to think that Christian apologists are doing intellectually honest work intending to ferret out truth, you're in the wrong place. That's not what Christian apologetics is about. Christian apologetics is all about concocting schemes whereby any and all evidence leads to whatever conclusion they want. Christian apologists decide on their conclusion then work on making the world bend to fit it.
You said,
"I think this, as well as some of the sentences immediately preceding it, mesh two issues into one."
Wow, here we go. I know for sure now that you've got conclusions you can't consider to be different and you've just smacked your Apologetics Horse in the ass and we're off to the apologetics races.
Your defense started,
One issue being, past examples of misinformation coming from Christian people. But that leaves unanswered how much of the information was based on intuition, how much was outside influence (e.g. pagan), how much was exclusively Christian, how much was reasonable inference (using the tools-for-knowledge available at the time )
We don't need to rely on "past examples of misinformation coming from Christian people." Conflicting Christian apologetics today constitute as much misinformation as any non-dogmatist needs to rightfully conclude that they're just making it up.
If you're telling me that what comes from Christian apologists is completely unreliable, then I agree with you. I can see that you have no interest in truth. You want anything and everything to support your desired predetermined conclusions, and you will apologize away anything suggesting otherwise.
Ana,
Think of what you're saying here: the people who speak for a god can be wrong, but the god can never be. If that's the case how would you ever decide what if anthing being said about the god is true? You're backed into a corner of absurdity. No one has ever studied a god, Ana. People only study what others have said about gods. Some people make up new stuff about gods, ostensibly theologians, which people then study, too, but people never study gods. Gods are not available for discussions. Those who imagine gods to be talking to them are simply having internal dialogues consistent only with their surrounding religion, language and culture.
One of your issues was "how much was reasonable inference (using the tools-for-knowledge available at the time )." Does a god revealing information not constitute a tool-for-knowledge? If not why claim that anything has been revealed by gods? And, yet those claiming to speak its words are wrong. Do you consider that knowledge?
You said,
I always distinguish between objection-questions to God’s existence, and objection-questions to the character of God (as described by a particular religion)
Ana, this is farce. There are no valid reasons to consider that gods are even possible. If there is only one god, then there are no valid reasons to think that any of the other 100,000 or so gods man has dreamed up are possible. There are no valid reasons for a Christian god to be possible since by the words of Christians themselves the entire concept is illogical and incoherent. Human minds imagine other minds. Some of those minds exist in other people, but some of those minds humans imagine don't exist at all. Some of those minds that don't exist humans call gods.
If you could imagine yourself to be a human being for a little bit, rather than a full-time apologizing Christian defender of the faith, you might, for just an instant, recognize that other humans practicing other religions or no religions are not wrong; they are simply different from how you are. But, Christians can't do that can they. Christians know themselves to be right, always right, don't they? You note the "past examples of misinformation coming from Christian people" and then leap into justifying why, though all of a god's representatives can be justifiably considered wrong, the god they communicate for is somehow always right. You can't know this. It's incoherent since all anyone can claim for a god is hearsay, none of the claims are reliable accounts. Nothing ever claimed for a god is more reliable than scuttlebutt, rumors or gossip, and nothing a god has ever "revealed" has required supernaturalism, only a human mind and an imagination.
If it was true, we'd see it. If it was true, the conclusion would be inescapable.
I said
Perhaps as a prelude to my response you could tell us anything Christian-specific that you know to be either true or so likely to be true that one should reasonably hold off on rejecting them
to which you replied,
I wouldn’t say I know. I would say “is compelling enough that one…”
There’s the view that the preservation of the Jews was pre-determined and their continued existence and preserved identity is intriguing in light of their turmoil-filled history
and later said,
Disappearance of the Jews – regardless of the reason- would be a devastating blow to Christianity.
Why did you need to grasp for so obscure an illustration? Why not an obvious miracle that all Christians agree on? A weeping Mary statue, perhaps? How about a verified Benny Hinn or Pat Robertson healing? All those healings at Lourdes? Why not changed lives? Why not an obvious moral superiority of Christians to everyone else, especially atheists?
Ana,
Let answer these for you. You grasp for so obscure an illustration because there are none that are more apparent or more easily assessed. There is no such thing as an obvious miracle. Miracles are manufactured from ignorance and misunderstanding. A great many Christian preachers want their followers ignorant. The better informed one is, the less likely it is they will be prey for preachers. Every single weeping Mary statue that has been examined has been a fraud, no exceptions. Same for statues with stigmata. There has never been a verified healing by any faith healer. It's never been verified that anyone who has claimed to have been healed by a faith healer has actually been sick. They are all frauds. Every single one of them is a fraud. The observed natural cure rates or remission rates for most diseases is far higher than the "miracle" rate that the Roman Catholic church itself will attest to for Lourdes. People have lives changed by what they see as improved social circumstances, not by gods or saviors. People have had "life changing" experiences by joining the KKK, the Nation of Islam, the Branch Davidians, the Jim Jones cult, Buddhism, the Nazi Party, Islam, the Westboro Baptist church, Heaven's Gate, the Communist Party, model railroading groups, gardening clubs, bowling leagues and atheist groups. Religions are not notably better at changing lives than are other social groups. Except in their own minds, Christians are not morally superior at all. Studies show that Christians lie all the time about their own religious involvement, for instance. They lie about how much money they give their churches, how much they read their Bibles (if their Christianity uses Bibles), how often they attend church. According to studies done by Christian groups and universities, compared to atheists in the US, Christians have higher abortion rates, higher violent crime rates including spouse and child abuse.
So, why did you need to grasp for so obscure an illustration? Because there are no good illustrations in the lives that Christians actually live. You needed one that wasn't clear, one you could hit a few times with one of those philosophical ray-guns to bend and twist it to say or mean what you wanted to.
I guess then it's a rather fortunate thing for the Jews that the Christian holy book binds the fortunes of Christians to those of the Jews. Then, too, it's rather facile to look at a particular state of the world today and position your target so the point you want to make sits right in the bullseye. Do you you purposely ignore the cultural devastation that Christianity has wreaked throughout its history right down to today?
I suspect that if it was in their power - the right information, logistics and weaponry - to do so at the time Christianity became the state called the Roman Empire, they would have annihilated the Jews. Many times in their history, if it had been in their power to do so, they would have snuffed out every man, every woman and every child of Islamic heritage. They've destroyed thousands of indigenous cultures in their missionizations of the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Christianity has intentionally destroyed thousands of languages, cultures, races and ethnic groups in its gruesome history.
Do you actually construe your tale of the Jews as compelling evidence for something approaching truth in Christianity? Really?
Ana,
Your appeal to "consciousness apart from brain" flies in the face of today's neuroscience. Nothing supports the notion that minds exist independent of the material interactions of neurons. Many turn to philosophical sophistry when real world science refuses to cooperate with their predispositions. For those who want the science to be wrong, they know they can always find salving consolation in philosophy since it never has to resolve an issue or get it right. When it becomes evident that philosophy can't refute the scientific conclusions, philosophy can still play their hero by obfuscating an issue through the tactic of a thousand tangents, dead ends, and wild goose chases. If attention can be averted from the science and all the interlocutors can be pushed into a philosophical free-fall, then a favorite fantasy can be protected forever from that sickening thing called reality.
For many people "religious experience" can be turned on and off with magnetic fields applied to the brain. For others pharmacology does the trick. Some people can't escape their religious experience and require institutionalization. Some have it triggered by dancing, drums, chanting, music, incense and the like. Some have it actuated by ritualistic nonsense, standing, sitting, and narratives about mysteriousness, unknowability, and unphathomability. It's no accident that religions have harnessed these things to induce the religious experience, all the while simultaneously crediting the experience to differing deities and overlooking the fact that the common factor among them is the human mind imagining some of those non-existent minds called gods. Most normal-functioning persons occasionally experience the warm fuzzy feeling the religious misattribute to a god. Those of us not under the sway of religions know it for part of who we are, part of how we've evolved. Very real but nothing supernatural.
If it was true, we'd see it. If it was true, the conclusion would be inescapable.
Rob R said,
"FYI, In a well publicized debate between Gary Habermas and Antony Flwe in the 1980's, Habermas speaks of researching many near death experiences and reports of one just like the above described where a girl under surgery describes exactly what her distant family was doing at the time.
Where else he might've published on it and cited the source, I wouldn't know as I haven't read anything of his.
That wasn't his only example either."
That doesn't change the fact that if that girl had really died, she wouldn't have been around to tell anybody about it.
Your appeal to "consciousness apart from brain" flies in the face of today's neuroscience. Nothing supports the notion that minds exist independent of the material interactions of neurons.
Leave it to Russ to make a fallacious appeal to authority to an entire discipline in what is still an ongoing fresh area of research, where researchers in the area in fact acknowledge a "lack of reliable scientific data to explain the nature of the “self” and the phenomenon of consciousness," even with an openness to the possibility of some understanding of the mind as having a degree of autonomy from the body.
From a consulting organization to the UN
(on the side, for another perspective, Glenn Peoples makes a compelling case for a Christian Physicalism... his criticism of Emergence dualism is lacking though).
That doesn't change the fact that if that girl had really died, she wouldn't have been around to tell anybody about it.
It does challenge the claims of strict physicalism regarding the mind.
>>Anyone who has been declared "clinically dead" who subsequently revives was never really "dead".<<
Ed, you’re assuming the very thing that is in question: the claim that the dead cannot revive and/or that there is no consciousness beyond death.
Russ,
>>How can what they have to say be said to be true if one of them says there is a hell and another says there isn't? Or if one says Jesus performed miracles while another says Jesus didn't?<<
That there are disagreements between individuals has NO BEARING,
NO BEARING AT ALL on whether the object (i.e. the claim) on which they disagree, is true.
Truth is independent of whether people agree with it, or disagree with it, or both.
So, for example, the statement “There is a hell” should not be judged as “true” or “false” on the basis of how many self-proclaimed Christians believe it to be true, and how many do not.
>>Is that one true god not bright enough to understand that it has told these sincere devout believers conflicting and contradicting things?<<
God does not exist, therefore, the contradictions arise from nothing more than individual human reasoning.
God does exist, but does not reveal apologetic answers to William Craig or to Dinesh D’souza. Therefore, if either contradicts the other on a particular apologetic point, it is based on their individual reasoning, not on contradictory revelations from God.
God does exist, and he is a malicious God. He reveals apologetic answers to William Craig and Dinesh D’souza. Therefore, if either contradicts the other, on a particular apologetic point, God is intentionally giving them contradictory revelations.
Etc.
There are many possible answers to your question. I don’t KNOW the correct answer.
But I will say that I do not think God is the source of every claimed revelation.
(Moreover, I don’t actually hear the mainstream apologists claim that God “revealed” to them say, the Ontological Argument. I may hear them claim that God made his presence (i.e. existence) known to them, after seeking him, but not that God revealed to them the arguments they are to use, or whether to take the 6-day creation literally, or whether life on other planets is theologically sound, etc)
>>Ana, if you want us to think that Christian apologists are doing intellectually honest work intending to ferret out truth, you're in the wrong place. That's not what Christian apologetics is about. <<
You seem to suggest, very strongly, that Christian apologetics is necessarily intellectually dishonest.
That, if you were to come across a site titled “Defending Christianity”, you’d think, AHA! Vested interest in proving Christianity. Therefore, intellectually dishonest motive.
YET, yet, the contents of a site called “DEBUNKING Christianity” is, a good example if intellectually honest work.
Russ, what I care about, is people making a sincere effort, in spite of their tugging biases (which both you and I have) to weigh the arguments of the different world views in fairness to the best of their ability.
>>One of your issues was "how much was reasonable inference (using the tools-for-knowledge available at the time )." Does a god revealing information not constitute a tool-for-knowledge?<<
You read into it too much. When I said "tools-for-knowledge", I was referring to things like the science of the time, and the technology of the time.
While you could technically put God under “tools-for-knowledge”, I would put him in the specific category of “divine revelation”. So let me re-list:
But that leaves unanswered how much of the information was based on
-intuition,
-outside influence (e.g. pagan)
-exclusively Christian [theology],
-reasonable inference (using the tools-for-knowledge available at the time )
- divine revelation
>>Why not an obvious miracle that all Christians agree on<<
You YOURSELF say that there is no single- thing unanimous among Christians.
“Among Christians no one thought is common to all of them”
So, it is perplexing to me then, why you asked the above question
Furthermore, you had asked me about what I think, you should hold off on rejecting, NOT about what “all Christians” would agree you should hold off on rejecting.
* a bit of a side note about Mary. I was actually never really intrigued by the statue reports. I am more interested, and in the process of researching, the hypotheses surrounding the origin of the painting on “Juan Diego’s” Tilma, located inside the Basilica of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico D.F.
>>There has never been a verified healing by any faith healer…They are all frauds.<<
“Never” is a strong word. You haven’t been alive very long. Humanity has existed longer than you. So how can you speak in terms of “never” and in terms of “all” supposed healings?. You can only speak in terms of the ones YOU are aware of.
>>Do you actually construe your tale of the Jews as compelling evidence for something approaching truth in Christianity? Really?<<
It’s not MY “tale”. And yes, I do think their survival is compelling evidence.
p.s. it hasn’t escaped my attention that we’re gradually digressing. You have though, addressed my original question about your quote.
>>I can see that you have no interest in truth. <<
Russ, you are branding me together with the apologetic lot of people that YOU have a problem with, and therefore conclude I, Ana, have no "interest in truth". You've interacted with me on ONE thread, and you're already making this accusation.
Guilt by association Russ, guilt by association.
Rob R,
I've too heard Habermas discuss his research into Near Death Experience/ Post-Death, but haven't yet read his publications on it. I hope to get around to reading them soon.
I think if you Check out my link to the Nour Foundation's page on the U.N. symposium for the "New Paradigms in consciousness," you may get much closer to the horses mouth.
They have links describing featured medical researchers on the topic including their publications. I looked at a few of the amazon write ups. One fella, Greyson wrote "The Handbook for Near Death Experiences". one interesting blurg from the book: "A woman entered a hospital clinically dead. After revival, she claimed to have "seen" a shoe on a ledge outside a sixth floor window of another hospital building. A social worker checked. The shoe was there, not visible from the street, on the opposite side of the campus from where the woman had been brought in by ambulance."
Ana,
Was your comment about afterlifes and consciousnesses intended as a "proof" of some sort? Until you can demonstrate that it has actually happened all the wishful thinking in the world won't make it true. The claims for the kinds of things you are talking about here are numerous, but notice that no one is supporting them with evidence. Rob R has his own set of unverifiable miracle claims. As long as believers are easy prey to the unverifiable there will be miracles galore. When people make an attempt to understand, miracles go away. As I said earlier miracles are put together from ignorance and misunderstanding, but I neglected to mention that group-supported gullibility plays an instrumental role. Benny Hinn makes millions a year as a stage magician. He's never healed anyone, but he'll always have work as an entertainer because the group suspends their disbelief just as they do with movies, literature and stage productions.
Miracle claims by the religious are uncountable. I get reports of them nearly every day. There were millions of them yesterday, and today and tomorrow will yield up millions more. Christian apologists grab a few of the glitzier ones for public display, but most of them fade into oblivion, forgotten as insignificant. If there are so many, why are they so easily erased? They're not miracles, that's why. They are normal events that the group labels as miraculous. "I noticed the leaking transmission fluid. It's a miracle!" In a world with billions of people, one-in-a-billion events happen regularly. One-in-a-millions far more frequently, but they're not miracles.
If religion, any religion, were real, it would show. If it worked, if it was true, we'd see it. If it was true, the conclusion would be inescapable.
Rob R brings you tidings of great joy from Gary Habermas: a miracle claim. But notice that neither Rob R nor the authority he appeals to considers the corroborating evidence as important as the claim. To those of us who want to know if it's true, the evidence is more important than the claim. All they provide is their desired conclusion. Where is the evidence from which others of us might draw our own conclusions? Christian preachers and Christian apologists will leverage these claims to take money from poor people, often destitute people, who could use a miracle, but instead they get their pockets picked by religious charlatans. So, don't give me the conclusion, the fraudulent miracle claim; give me the far more important evidence. The conclusion that will be drawn by a self-interested Christian cleric, one for whom miracle means money, is likely to be rather different than the conclusion of one looking for the truth of what the evidence says.
Ana, if the god you like is anywhere to be seen, it will be seen in the evidence. Unfortunately, the Christians don't want the messiness of working through evidence and drawing their own conclusions. That's what they pay apologists and theologians to do for them. The time honored tradition in Christianity is allowing oneself to be told what the truth is. Sadly, all they get for their money is the biases of the self-interested. Habermas and his ilk can't be honest with evidence. Their financial lives are tied to telling people with specific predispositions only what they want to hear. They are not in the "truth" business. They are in the religion business.
Ana,
Gary Habermas is an apologetic clown. To him the Bible is literally true. But the Habermas "literal" is studded with enough caveats that he has complete freedom to make of it what he pleases. His version of a Christianity uses the Bible, but like all literalists he takes the liberty of picking and choosing from it what he focuses on and then picks and chooses how he will interpret the "literally true" Bible. Will the words be considered true as written or will they need to be thought of as metaphor, allegory, or otherwise symbolic? Shall he assign an interpretive literary genre to portions of it that allow him to dismiss or downplay parts of it? Hating homosexuals? The Habermasian god meant those words exactly as written. Selling the daughter into slavery or cutting off body parts for petty crimes or killing people for adultery? Uhh...not so much. (Just imagine all the Christians who would have to be killed for that one. It's good then that Habermas' knows his god was only kidding about that, since actually doing what the Bible commands there would cost the clergy a lot of income.) Habermas is a Christian apologist, so even the Bible needs a bunch of zaps with the philiosophical ray-gun before it bends to his wishes. But he'll do what's needed to make it say what he wants it to. It's not truth. Not even close. But Christians simply don't give a shit. They belong to a club and that's enough.
Ana, you said,
That there are disagreements between individuals has NO BEARING,
NO BEARING AT ALL on whether the object (i.e. the claim) on which they disagree, is true.
Complete Christian apologetic bullshit. If what you believe makes no difference then why bother with it at all. Do you know no Christians at all? Recite a few Christianity's favorite creeds and tell me that what the content of the belief "has NO BEARING,
NO BEARING AT ALL." This is just plainly stupid from believer's standpoint. You've gone completely off your damned rails to make a point.
Many popes, including this one, have said that none are saved unless they are Roman Catholic. They say Christianity is not the key for salvation. The key to them is Roman Catholicism. Clearly they think that the content of belief is of ultimate importance.
Biblical literalists of the "exactly as written sort" will tell you that if you do not believe the Bible by jot and by tittle you're a goner. It's the same way throughout the Christianities.
Then, you have the cojones to say,
Truth is independent of whether people agree with it, or disagree with it, or both.
Ana, you don't know truth. I commented earlier "Perhaps as a prelude to my response you could tell us anything Christian-specific that you know to be either true or so likely to be true that one should reasonably hold off on rejecting them." What was your response? You couldn't come up with anything. Nothing. You couldn't come up with even one thing that was Christian-specific that you could point to as true. What the hell does it mean to you then for Christianity to be true? Clearly you don't have any evidence that it's true. So you're just making it up. Christianity is simply your own bullshit.
Truth matters. Christianity is not true. Your Christianity is not true. This pope's Christianity is not true. Gary Habermas' Christianity is not true. True? You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Ana,
You said,
So, for example, the statement “There is a hell” should not be judged as “true” or “false” on the basis of how many self-proclaimed Christians believe it to be true, and how many do not.
Settle it for us commenters here at DebunkingChristianity. Is there a hell? And, since you seem to think you know how such things are to be judged, please tell us how such statements should be judged. Do you imagine this to be different than a simple yes or no question? Is there some state that the religious have imagined that is somehow between existing and not existing? (Damn, I should not have said that. That's like a theological bon bon right there: Yes! God exists between existing and not existing! That's sufficiently nonsensical that it just might show up in a theology thesis.)
Let me guess here, Ana. When you use the descriptor "self-proclaimed" you really mean "not a True(TM) Christian." Am I right? And you get to decide who is and is not based on how you have been informed by your personal theological circle.
You said,
There are many possible answers to your question. I don’t KNOW the correct answer.
If there are many answers how do you decide which is correct? Clearly you don't know how to decide, yet you claim there is truth to it. Why?
You: But I will say that I do not think God is the source of every claimed revelation.
Then where is the truth?
You said,
(Moreover, I don’t actually hear the mainstream apologists claim that God “revealed” to them say, the Ontological Argument. I may hear them claim that God made his presence (i.e. existence) known to them, after seeking him, but not that God revealed to them the arguments they are to use, or whether to take the 6-day creation literally, or whether life on other planets is theologically sound, etc)
"mainstream" is of no importance if none can pony up the goods. No Christian apologist is any better than any other. Fred Phelps' "God Hates Fags" Christianity is as every bit as legitimate a Christianity as is yours. None are true in any sense, but they are all legitimate as Christianities. Realize, Ana, there is no Christianity Clearinghouse giving its blessing to True Christianities. Obviously, religions do not need truth. All those Islams and Hinduisms and Christainisms can't be true, so truth is not a criterion for a religion.
You said,
You seem to suggest, very strongly, that Christian apologetics is necessarily intellectually dishonest.
Bingo! You win the Kewpee Doll!
Since it is impossible for hell to both exist and not, while one of them must be true, Christian apologists are not doing what's needed to decide the issue. Both outcomes have very real consequences if there exist gods that judge based on the content of one's beliefs.
Christian apologetics is necessarily intellectually dishonest. The world has changed a lot since people would easily accept that a god would talk to someone using the Burning Bush Hotline. People today goaded by group pressure will agree to say it might have happened a few thousand years ago, but not many would believe it today. Ignorance begets miracles. Those who passed the burning bush story around as though it was true, were truly ignorant, as well as superstitious and highly credulous. Without the tools to discriminate fact from fiction and without a social environment supportive of open inquiry to make that discrimination those people would believe anything. Some the "gospels" that didn't make the clergy-serving cut for the Biblical canon tell of Jesus transforming his playmates into farm animals. Unable to know differently any bizarre claim was up for belief. Fact is, the more bizarre the better. People remember bizarre.
Hydra, Russ is thy name. Answer one error, seven more spring up. It's a strange beast, some of the heads are the heads of red herrings, some of the heads are just the dead ones that were lopped off, then picked up and wiggled around with the explanation "see, it's still alive."
>>Was your comment about afterlifes and consciousnesses intended as a "proof" of some sort?<<
It was intended as an example of something I think you should “hold off on rejecting”. That’s NOT the same as asking you to regard it as true. Simply, to be open to the possibility of it.
>> You couldn't come up with anything. Nothing. You couldn't come up with even one thing that was Christian-specific that you could point to as true.<<
Two points to be made about this statement.
1.I did give you something. The survival of the Jews.
2. You effectively undermine your own arguments. You ask for a Christian-specific example and yet make the statement:
“There is no such thing as CHRISTIANITY”
You can’t have it both ways Russ.
>>[me]: That there are disagreements between individuals has NO BEARING,
NO BEARING AT ALL on whether the object (i.e. the claim) on which they disagree, is true.
[you]:Complete Christian apologetic bullshit...Recite a few Christianity's favorite creeds and tell me that what the content of the belief "has NO BEARING,
NO BEARING AT ALL." This is just plainly stupid from believer's standpoint.<<<
WRONG. Absolute WRONG interpretation on your part as to what I said. Russ, when I said it has “no bearing”, I was talking about it having no bearing on what is objectively true. You (apparently) took it to mean that I said it has no bearing on a person’s salvation status.
I repeat: whether a CLAIM is true, is entirely independent of whether people BELIEVE it to be true or believe it to be false.
(Russ, even atheists agree with this! This is the very argument they use when they say that just because theists are the world majority, it doesn’t mean that the object of their belief (God) exists!)
If every Christian in the world believed there is a hell, that doesn’t mean there is! If every Christian in the world believed there is NO hell, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one! And if Christians fall on both sides of the issue, that doesn’t mean that hell BOTH exists and doesn’t exist!
Whether hell exists is independent of WHO believes in it or doesn’t.
Do you understand?
>>Settle it for us commenter here at Debunking Christianity. Is there a hell?
...Do you imagine this to be different than a simple yes or no question?<<
I cannot “settle it” for you. If you’re asking for the factual answer –I do not know the FACTUAL answer to the question “Is there a hell?”
And NO, I don’t imagine there to be an “in between" answer. I think that the statement: there is either a hell or there is not is a proper dichotomy.
>>Let me guess here, Ana. When you use the descriptor "self-proclaimed" you really mean "not a True(TM) Christian."
That terms applies to anyone who calls themselves a Christian, me included. And regardless of whether someone is a “true” or “false” Christian (as judged by me) that someone, is first and foremost, a self-proclaimed Christian.
>>[me]: But I will say that I do not think God is the source of every claimed revelation.
[you]:Then where is the truth?<<
I’d like to amend the wording of my statement, because reading it over, I feel the wording is such that it can be interpreted in a way different to what I intended.
Amended: I do not think God is behind every single “divine revelation” that people have claimed to have had.
Just because someone claims to have received a “revelation” from God, it doesn’t make it true that (a) he actually received a revelation, or (b) that it came from God
As far as where truth is..truth resides in the mind. Truth is a conceptual reality, not a concrete object extended in space.
Truth without a mind in existence, is like scent without olfaction in existence.
And I think, that if there are to be objective truths in existence, there must be an objective (i.e. non-human) mind in existence.
Ana,
Notice here again that all that has reached us are the conclusions, not the evidence. In religions only the conclusion means anything. The evidence is immaterial.
You said,
Russ, what I care about, is people making a sincere effort, in spite of their tugging biases (which both you and I have) to weigh the arguments of the different world views in fairness to the best of their ability.
You are not doing this to the best of your ability. Mankind has accumulated an enormous amount of useful information through science, while nothing useful has been produced through religion. You are probably quite ignorant of science, the useful stuff, while you merely have things you like to say about religion. Almost everyone is as ignorant of their own religion as they are of most other human endeavors. You almost certainly have only a vague understanding of your own version of Christianity while you have a demonstrated ignorance of Christianity as a whole. You are nestled in your comfy little corner of Christianity thinking that is the whole of it. So, this is not anywhere near the best of your ability. If you're like most Americans, you spend fifty hours a week watching television, while you remain woefully ignorant of the things affecting your life, accepting that you can't change.
And, Ana, very often making a sincere effort while indolently accepting ignorance simply isn't good enough. Religions, especially Christianity, make poor people poorer and provide haven for all manner of immoral miscreants. It's obviously not true and it's not doing us any good. So we shouldn't waste our time on it.
You said,
You read into it too much. When I said "tools-for-knowledge", I was referring to things like the science of the time, and the technology of the time.
While you could technically put God under “tools-for-knowledge”, I would put him in the specific category of “divine revelation”. So let me re-list:
But that leaves unanswered how much of the information was based on
-intuition,
-outside influence (e.g. pagan)
-exclusively Christian [theology],
-reasonable inference (using the tools-for-knowledge available at the time )
- divine revelation
None of it matters if you can't determine one source from another. If you can't determine that something is divine revelation, while it looks just the way it would if a person made it up, our only reasonable option is to say it was made up. Christianity is made up by people. There is nothing to say it has a divine source and it looks like and has all the character of a human-imagined story from long ago. It has all the fairy tale components that help stories remain in the imagination, but it has nothing at all to suggest it to be true.
Ana,
You said,
“Never” is a strong word. You haven’t been alive very long. Humanity has existed longer than you. So how can you speak in terms of “never” and in terms of “all” supposed healings?. You can only speak in terms of the ones YOU are aware of.
Today, the claims of miracle healings coming from the Christianities would be easy to verify if they were true. They aren't verified because they are not true. We are given reports concluding miracles took place, but we are never given the full evidence. Miracles conclusions are useless when people are suspeptible to believing frauds and when evidence remains unavailable. If the evidence does not exist, then there is no reason to call it a miracle. I noticed my neighbor's transmission leaking the other day. I told him. He called it a miracle. It wasn't a miracle. If you're a Christian, don't give me your biased conclusions because you have shown yourself unable to provide accurate assessments of evidence given what your group says you must desire to be true. You can't simply admit to not knowing and leave it at that. Give me the evidence and let me evaluate it accurately myself, find someone who can, or let me simply ignore it. But don't tell me that the driver swerving and missing your wayward dog is a miracle.
You say we're digressing, but we're not. You are practicing Christian apologetics in all it's glowing wonder. You can't look at the Christianities except from your own parochial view and like a good little Christian apologist you wilfully bend whatever is thrust into your field of vision into something consistent with how you'd like the world to be, even though other Christians and Christianities will twist it differently.
You said,
>>I can see that you have no interest in truth. <<
Russ, you are branding me together with the apologetic lot of people that YOU have a problem with, and therefore conclude I, Ana, have no "interest in truth". You've interacted with me on ONE thread, and you're already making this accusation.
You clearly have no interest in truth. You are branded as you are for how you conduct yourself as an apologist. You lie to yourself when you say you are looking for truth. That is simply not the case. You have a set of conclusions you vaguely share with some of your Christian co-religionists, and you will mill, hammer, forge, grind, or beat everything you witness, experience, or learn into conforming with those conclusions.
There's no guilt by association here, Ana. Your crazed Christian apologetics stand proudly on their own lack of merit.
It stands as obvious to one who has looked past its surface that
Christian Apologetics is nothing more than making up answers that then become boilerplate, pat responses to hand out in lieu of thought.
You have your boilerplate; different Christians have something different. It's not true. It's merely what you share with your group. That you think it's true gives you a good reason to give up the hunt and live out your days wrapped in and enraptured with the certain knowledge that you got the one, the only, god given truth.
All the best.
Ana,
You said,
>>Was your comment about afterlifes and consciousnesses intended as a "proof" of some sort? <<
It was intended as an example of something I think you should “hold off on rejecting”. That’s NOT the same as asking you to regard it as true. Simply, to be open to the possibility of it.
I asked you to give me something Christian-specific that was observably true. You couldn't provide it. You admitted as much. You gave me your tale of the Jews which is not a compelling reason for not rejecting Christianity. There exist today many cultures as long lived as the Jews. That there is a purported prophesy about the Jewish people in a book that is wholy unreliable does not make it compelling. Christian apologetics is in part the art of elevating non-evidence to the level of evidence and mentally construing the trivially true as compelling.
You said,
>> You couldn't come up with anything. Nothing. You couldn't come up with even one thing that was Christian-specific that you could point to as true.<<
Two points to be made about this statement.
1.I did give you something. The survival of the Jews.
2. You effectively undermine your own arguments. You ask for a Christian-specific example and yet make the statement:
“There is no such thing as CHRISTIANITY”
You can’t have it both ways Russ.
Again, nothing true or compelling that is Christian-specific.
That “There is no such thing as CHRISTIANITY,” that is, a single unified organization wherein all persons prop up one god concept by dutifully thinking the same thoughts, is an observable fact. There are thousands of them, each thinking their god concept is the right one, even if they are atheists. Anything and everything can call itself Christian, Ana: Mormons, atheist Christianities, Christian Scientists, voodoo Christianities, Wiccan Christianities, Roman Catholicism Christianities, Jehovah's Witness Christianities, pagan Christianities, and so on and on. Remember it is you who claims that the content of one's belief is irrelevant, even when they have different or no gods and sect-specific beliefs that tracks far from "mainstream."
You said,
>>[me]: That there are disagreements between individuals has NO BEARING,
NO BEARING AT ALL on whether the object (i.e. the claim) on which they disagree, is true.
[you]:Complete Christian apologetic bullshit...Recite a few Christianity's favorite creeds and tell me that what the content of the belief "has NO BEARING,
NO BEARING AT ALL." This is just plainly stupid from believer's standpoint.<<<
WRONG. Absolute WRONG interpretation on your part as to what I said. Russ, when I said it has “no bearing”, I was talking about it having no bearing on what is objectively true. You (apparently) took it to mean that I said it has no bearing on a person’s salvation status.
Isn't it interesting that in religious matters all religionists know what the WRONG interpretations are? Isn't it even more interesting that the WRONG interpretations always happen to be those that are not their own? Lucky that, eh?
Ana,
In matters which can in principle be resolved disagreements will in fact not influence an underlying truth. However, that is not the case with religious concerns. Truth is not a concern with the religious. In religious matters disagreements are defining. Can you tell a believing Hindu that you know that the sacred triad Vishnu, Brama and Shiva are not an underlying truth? No, you can't. Is there any means whereby you can resolve your disagreement? No, there isn't. The content of your disagreement is defining. Truth isn't an issue between you. You will believe what you like and the Hindu will do the same. You both cling to social constructs for which truth does not matter.
Would you agree with the atheist position that Thor does not exist? Would you agree with the atheist position that Thor never existed? If Thor does not exist and never did exist, how could he have had so many devout followers for so long? Might you think that those who believed in Thor were acquiescing to the prevailing social construct? Yes, they were. Truth was not an issue. To his followers Thor was no less real than your favorite deity is to you or Shiva is to a Hindu.
So what happened to Thor, this god in whom so many believed for so long? He disappeared when people stopped believing. He wasn't real although many "knew" him to be. Nothing said about his powers or exploits was true. When the foundation of his believers crumbled, when Thor was no longer "real" in the minds of men, this powerful deity became an excerpt from a mythology text.
How many times has the Thor scenario been repeated in human history, Ana? Tens of thousands. Now, tell me this: if the believers in Thor had been imperialistic with sufficient military might to vanquish neighbor after neighbor, violently and oppressively inculcating Thor, Odin and the rest of the Norse pantheon along the way, to the extent that Thor had believers today, would that make Thor real? Could Thor then be said to be true?
If some theologist reread the writings about Thor, concluded he was real, built a theology and created another religion, say Thorianity, competing with Christianity, would Thor then be real and would Thorianity be true? Nope.
Is Xenu, the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy in Scientology's dogma, real? No? Why not? It has a thousands of devout followers who pour huge amounts of money into it. This is a religion created within recent memory. Is it true? Not a snowball's chance in hell. Does that stop people from claiming it to be true? Not a bit.
You will disagree with Hindus, Thorians, and Scientologists, but do you know there to be underlying truth to any of it? No, you don't. You, like them, have a mere social construct. It's not real. It's not true. You simply like it, and if you grew up under different circumstances you would quite likely not include Christianity with all the other things you would accept as true. That other you would have defining disagreements with the you you are.
Ana,
You said,
I repeat: whether a CLAIM is true, is entirely independent of whether people BELIEVE it to be true or believe it to be false.
(Russ, even atheists agree with this! This is the very argument they use when they say that just because theists are the world majority, it doesn’t mean that the object of their belief (God) exists!)
If every Christian in the world believed there is a hell, that doesn’t mean there is! If every Christian in the world believed there is NO hell, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one! And if Christians fall on both sides of the issue, that doesn’t mean that hell BOTH exists and doesn’t exist!
Whether hell exists is independent of WHO believes in it or doesn’t.
Do you understand?
For things that are real, there does exist a truth about them that are independent of what anyone thinks or believes. Sadly, Ana, it is most unfortunate that you do not grasp how religion differs from what is real?
If hell does actually not exist it makes no difference to the Christian who believes it does. If hell actually does exist, it makes no difference to those who believes it does not. In matters of religious belief, truth is not a concern. Ever. What the group agrees among themselves to say they believe is all that matters.
I want to hammer home this point for you with a question. If it is true that there has only ever been one god and that that god is the one that Christians say they believe in based on the Bible, then what happened to the Jews and Muslims? You all have different gods even though you use the same source material. Truth is not a concern. Broadly, very broadly, that one and only god tells each group very different things about the person Jesus. Again, truth isn't important. Why isn't it important? There is no truth behind it. Revelations are not truth. Saviors are not truth. Visions are not truth. Deities are not truth. Holy books are not truth. Rituals are not truth. And the social constructs that nurture and perpetuate these things in all their variegations are not truth.
Your words,
That there are disagreements between individuals has NO BEARING, NO BEARING AT ALL on whether the object (i.e. the claim) on which they disagree, is true.
Concerning religion, this has no meaning whatsoever. The Jews know that Jesus is not a messiah, you know that he is, and the Muslims think he is a nice guy who is second rate next to Muhammad. You all claim to know what you know about Jesus from what your god has told the authors of your holy books, your theologians and apologists. Religion is not truth. You need to stop pretending that it is and you need to stop pretending you're on some profound truth-seeker's pilgrimage. Like you, all the believers of all the gods in oblivion's Deity Heaven were happy with their gods, convinced they were real, and accepted them as part of an underlying truth. You will agree with me that they were all wrong. Like them you would be just as happy with another god, one of theirs even, given a supportive social construct.
Ana said,
"...And I think, that if there are to be objective truths in existence, there must be an objective (i.e. non-human) mind in existence."
That's an unsupported leap of faith.
You're welcome to believe this if you wish, but your claim is too subjective to have any force.
A question:
Ana said,
"While you could technically put God under “tools-for-knowledge”, I would put him in the specific category of “divine revelation”. So let me re-list:
But that leaves unanswered how much of the information was based on
-intuition,
-outside influence (e.g. pagan)
-exclusively Christian [theology],
-reasonable inference (using the tools-for-knowledge available at the time )
- divine revelation..."
The question is:
Why is pagan knowledge an "outside influence", and not "theology"?
Pagans worshipped GODS, and the study of pagan gods is as much "theology" as study of the Christian god is.
Your bias is showing...
Ed,
>>The question is:
Why is pagan knowledge an "outside influence", and not "theology"?
Pagans worshipped GODS, and the study of pagan gods is as much "theology" as study of the Christian god is.<<
I have no problem calling it "theology". I used "influence" because it is broader: it can encompass culture, tradition, philosophy, and others. And I wanted to include all these things as potential influences, not JUST the theology. Hence, why I used the broader term.
>>I asked you to give me something Christian-specific that was observably true.<<
First off, your exact words were:
“anything Christian-specific that you know to be either true or so likely to be true that one should reasonably hold off on rejecting them.” (emphasis mine).
The survival of the Jews is something I KNOW to be true (this is empirical, for the Jews are presently in the world. And their identity is preserved and recognized).
And their survival as predetermined is the part that I think is “so likely to be true”.
Second off, look at what you yourself said: “ Among Christians no one thought is common to all of them, not a god, not a savior, not a Bible, not miracles, not a hell, not an afterlife, not a flood, not original sin, not Revelations.” (emphasis mine).
And yet, after making that statement, you ACTUALLY asked me (in reference to my example of the Jews): “Why did you need to grasp for so obscure an illustration? Why not an obvious miracle that all Christians agree on?” (emphasis mine).
It would be entirely appropriate for me to scratch my head at what you requested.
On miracles-
If a miracle (M) takes place, and doesn’t leave behind evidence (OR, does leave behind evidence but because of our particular position in the world , or one circumstance or another, we aren’t able to appropriately access the evidence) that doesn’t mean the miracle did not take place. At best it means, we have no reason to believe in the miracle. It does not mean, the miracle claim is false.
To be false, evidence contrary to (M) being a miracle, would have to be provided. (Showing (M) to be fraudulent is one example of this).
See we go back to the point I had made in my earlier posts (directed toward GearHedEd), where I talked about how there is a different between UNPROVEN, and DISPROVEN.
>>If hell does actually not exist it makes no difference to the Christian who believes it does. If hell actually does exist, it makes no difference to those who believes it does not.<<
Well it makes a difference to me. Do you think I don’t realize and reflect deeply about the implications of life-long belief in a non-existent hell? Or conversely, life-long disbelief in an existent hell?
I do. I cannot SHOW you I do (how can I show you my thoughts?). But I insist that what you’re doing is assuming negative characteristics about how my mind works based on your preconceptions about Christian apologetics and also past (presumably, disappointing to you) encounters with apologists.
That it doesn’t make a difference to certain Christians, so be it for them. I am not them Russ.
The Open Parachute quoted a U.S. Inman who justified that Hirshi Ayaan Ali deserved to die:
"justified the threats against Hirsi Ali:
“She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” said ElBayly, who went to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976. He went on to say: “If it is found that a person is mentally unstable, or a child or disabled, there should be no punishment,” he said. “It’s a very merciful religion if you try to understand it.”
Therefore, only freethinking allows liberty of expression. Christianity even discriminates based upon tradition and hierarchal authority...
>>If it is true that there has only ever been one god and that that god is the one that Christians say they believe in based on the Bible, then what happened to the Jews and Muslims?<<
If we momentarily adopt that premise (“there has only ever been one god” and that it’s the Christian God) then one answer is that subsequent variations of that God were misguidedly conceived: Erred human reasoning; assimilation of select outside (i.e. non-Christian) theologies; cultural influences; misguided by demonic influence; etc
Whatever the correct answer(s), I think that the question that the above always ends up raising is the most pressing: “Why would God allow it to happen?”
In other words, even if we had the absolute correct answer to the question “What things are directly responsible for the variations of the Abrahamic God?”, it does not answer the more distressing [follow-up] question of why God would have allowed such distortions of himself to be concocted, knowing that millions would follow the distortions in the form of new religions.
And it seems to me that the latter question, though it need not be answered in order to address the former, is nonetheless the more “live” of the two questions in peoples’ minds.
>>Like them you would be just as happy with another god, one of theirs even, given a supportive social construct.<<
Yes, I think that’s very likely the case.
The principle behind your statement seems to be: You are more likely to, than to not, adopt a view if that view is being conditioned upon you…
( There are of course though, examples of converts, who “defy” (so to speak) that conditioning. )
…So that if a society is predominantly atheist and secular, a person born into that society would have the “supportive social construct” to grow up adopting atheism and secularism.
So Russ, the door swings both ways.
But the more important point I want to make is: that there are examples of social constructs based on a particular religion, does not tell us whether that religion’s claims are true.
Walking up to someone, pointing at them and saying “ you’re only a Mormon because you were conditioned to be!” does absolutely NOTHING to resolve the question “are Mormon-theology claims true”?
It would be illogical to judge a claim as “true” or “false” based on how a person came to hold belief in the claims.
Ana said,
"...In other words, even if we had the absolute correct answer to the question “What things are directly responsible for the variations of the Abrahamic God?”, it does not answer the more distressing [follow-up] question of why God would have allowed such distortions of himself to be concocted, knowing that millions would follow the distortions in the form of new religions."
Not JUST following distortions: but killing other humans and starting wars in the name of their imaginary gods.
Theists MUST take the blame for this behavior, even if it doesn't reflect badly on their imaginary gods (being immune by reason of apologetics...).
Great quote, I totally agree. Christian Apologetics, what a joke! It's nothing more than calculated demagogy to sway the gullible and the ignorant as well as keeping the sheep in line.
Ironically errki, most of what Russ says are boilerplate responses. So much of what he has said has already been responded to, but russ recycles and when what he says has been refuted, he assumes a red herring to be a suitable defense.
This discussion with Ana demonstrates this superbly.
Post a Comment