Did Yahweh Have a Wife?
Of course God had a wife, and Dr. Karen Garst neatly summarizes the evidence right here.
Hume’s argument continues to perplex both philosophers and scientists. There’s still no consensus about whether Hume is right. Some believe that we have no choice but to embrace Hume’s sceptical conclusion about the unobserved. Others believe that the conclusion is clearly absurd. But then the onus is on these defenders of “common sense” to show precisely what is wrong with Hume’s argument. No one has yet succeeded in doing this (or at least no one has succeeded in convincing a majority of philosophers that they have done so). LINK (see his conclusion).Law concludes that no one has succeeded so far, which includes Vincent Torley's god hypothesis. Law refuses to pretend to know things he doesn't know, which I find admirable. However, we shouldn't forget that Hume lived in an era where philosophers were looking for certainty, following in the footsteps of Descartes. Hume brought the quest for certainty to an end though, showing that if we seek after certainty we cannot observe cause and effect, or that we have a self either (as opposed to a bundle of sensations). This is the difference that makes all the difference. The quest for a certain foundation for knowledge is, or should be, dead. But because of the lack of certainty Torley erroneously inserts his unevidenced mysterious miracle god-hypothesis into the equation.
After 40 years as an insider, what I saw was:In a 2009 study done by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago we now know it's all in the mind of the believer. "God" (the English name of the Christian god) doesn't talk to people. Believers simply create their own religion, their own Gospel, and their own God in their own image. This has been shown TO BE A FACT. The study, as reported by Discovery magazine, needs to be shared more widely than it has BEEN so far. It proves that it's all in the mind of the believer. God doesn't talk to people. Why? Because its been shown he agrees with every single believer on a host of different unrelated issues. Given that God cannot agree with everyone then God doesn't talk to anyone. To continue maintaining God talks to any given believer, or any select group of believers, is utter madness, a delusion, given the number of people God agrees with in the world.
1) a legion of believers fervently praying to "know the will of God" only to end up making their own decision that they "sensed" God was "leading them" to make. The reality: It's all in their mind. God doesn't talk to people.
2) Ditto to everything above but from another angle. Since God was not saying anything to them, they sought the counsel of the "aged saints" to instruct them on what to do. The reality: It's all in their mind. God doesn't talk to people.
3) A common complaint that I heard over four decades was "God seems so far away." To which the "great saints" would retort "This is a normal occurrence in the life of a believer. This is why its faith." The reality: It's all in their mind. God doesn't talk to people.
4) No two believers agreed on all matters ethically and doctrinally. There are roughly 1000 commands in the Bible. No two believers observe and ignore the same ones. The reality: It's all in their mind. God doesn't talk to people.
5) believers would hold dearly to the invented tenant that the Bible is "how God talks to us now." Why? Because of reality. It's all in their minds. God doesn't talk to people.
Without exaggeration, I have spent hundreds of hours in prayer during my lifetime. It truly was one directional. Any feedback internally was nothing more than imagined and conditioned amygdalan responses.
I'll never forget the awakening moment I had walking as a pastor in a forest preserve in the burbs of Chicago. It was at that time that I realized there was no one of the other side of my prayers. It was all in my mind. God doesn't talk to people.
Labels: "Avalos"
Labels: "Avalos"
Jesus' resurrection is attested in St. Paul and all of the Gospels. The episode which John Loftus wrote about in his OP [regarding the devastating problems with the Zombies story told in Matthew 27:51-54] is related in just one Gospel, in a passage which may not be original, anyway. Hence my skepticism. However, if it were recorded in Luke as well as Matthew, then I would have no trouble in believing it. LINK.Given the problems I highlighted in my OP, what else can Torley mean but that "the Bible Says So. I Believe it. That Settles it"? So Torley, let's say for the sake of argument this Zombie text was recorded in Luke as well as Matthew. Then answer the problems I mentioned in my OP.
Pharaoh Akhenaten, founder of Amarna |
Labels: "Avalos"
As viral self-replicators, ideas have a life of their own. Human beings have a cognitive immune system that seeks to identify and eradicate false ideas because misinformation tends to cause us trouble. Some false ideas evade our bullshit detectors and so get passed socially from person to person. In this context, when religious notions take root in human minds and get passed on despite containing maladaptive falsehoods that do us harm, they may be considered socially transmitted pathologies or, to use my earlier term, socio-pathologies.
The term pathology implies illness and disability—but not all forms of religion seem to cause harm.
This appears to be the case irrespective of their truth value. All of the world’s great religions fail the “outsider test of faith,” meaning they fail to meet any normal bar for credibility when scrutinized by an outsider applying the same rigorous standard of evidence to each. In their traditional forms, all contain rational and moral contradictions or factual inaccuracies that insiders can justify only with Olympic feats of mental and moral gymnastics. Many rely on sacred texts that reflect the precise combination of knowledge and ignorance that characterized the culture in which they were written. All make claims for which there is no proof and none possible. LINK.
Most of the past – surely far more than 99 percent, if we could quantify it – is irretrievably lost; it cannot be recovered. This should instill some modesty in us. Consider the weeks following the crucifixion. We have only minuscule fragments of what actually transpired. What, for instance, do we really know about the resurrection experience of James? First Corinthians 15:7 says that he saw the risen Jesus. And that is it. What Jesus looked like, what he said, if anything, where the encounter took place, when precisely it happened, how James responded, what state of mind he was in, how the experience began, how it ended [Edit by JWL: whether he ever recanted] – all of this had failed to enter the record. Almost every question that we might ask goes unanswered … Yet they are the sorts of questions historians often ask of old texts. The fact that we cannot begin to answer them shows how emaciated historically – as opposed to theologically – the Gospel narratives really are. Even if we naively think them to be historically accurate down to the minutest detail, we are still left with precious little. The accounts of the resurrection, like the past in general, come to us as phantoms. Most of the reality is gone … Even if history served us much better than it does, it would still not take us to promised land of theological certainty.