Again, Mordant, thanks for your candor and honesty. In no way was I demeaning you or saying your “life is a sucking void looking for something with which to fill it.” I was talking in general terms, not specific comments toward you (or anyone else for that matter).
As a Christian, I believe we’re all created on purpose with a Purpose given to us by our Creator. And, I do believe that we’ll all stand before the One Who created to give an accounting of our life to Him, whether we believe it or not.
So, hope you’ll take my comments in that context instead of seeing them as directed toward you or anyone else.
I understand you aren’t purposely directing them to me personally, but I’m trying to get you to "see/hear” yourself. While I accept that you don’t have me personally in mind, if anything you’re saying is remotely true then it’s true for anyone, is it not? Or are there people whose life is not lacking and then how do you explain that??
Why is anyone going to consider any path in life unless they have a problem to solve? And if the problem is entirely abstract and asserted and not perceived … I think this is why believers often seem to need to suggest that non-believers must, of necessity, live miserable lives in some way.
And then I’m even more problematic I would think because I was deeply committed to and immersed in the Christian lifestyle / worldview / dogma for literal decades and it still ultimately didn’t float my boat.
I know there are those today who are well-known Christian pastors, singers, entertainers, etc., who are “deconstructing” when it comes to their previous beliefs.
I have been hearing the term “deconstructing” of late but for many decades I never heard that; rather, it was “deconverting”. I guess both make sense depending on perspective, and de-converting implied undoing of indoctrination which it often isn’t purely just that, or perhaps not that at all. So I am warming to the newer term.
Most fundamentally and concisely, I don’t like surprises caused by my beliefs not adequately explaining or predicting my lived experience. I have comparatively almost no surprises now because I don’t have any cognitive dissonance to deal with.
Beyond that, the act of leaving what I call (with apologies to Steve Jobs) the “reality distortion field” of religion, just made a lot of things more sensible and simple and inexpensive in terms of time and effort as well.
Most of those who say they’re deconstructing talk about feeling “free of restraint” or a heavy weight of compulsion and guilt they felt while living as professing Christians. Sadly (or so it seems to me) they’re abandoning all belief in God–which may show that they never served the true God to begin with: for, in Him, I find unconditional Love and Acceptance, in addition to true, inner Peace and Joy.
Mordant, I’ve got to go, but will look forward to dialoguing with you more another time, if that’s okay. Here’s hoping the rest of your weekend will go well. You mentioned having a family; so, go spend some time with them. Take care.
Nope, but nice deflection, now are you going to evidence your many claims?
There is no scientific evidence that anything in nature is designed, try again.
Another bare claim, and of course it assumes there is a cause, again an unevidenced assumption, and on and on you go, unevidenced assumptions, punctuated with unevidenced claims, dear oh dear…assuming this claim were true, it would get yet another “so what”.
A subjective claim, and a vague one, and again so what?
Risible and erroneous nonsense, scientific knowledge is based on objective evidence, and again you are using whataboutism. Evidence your religions claims, an stop projecting.
Straw man fallacy, that is a belief, atheism is not a belief, it is the lack or absence of one.
You dodged my request you evidence your earlier claim about this, so please don’t add the duplicity of vapid repetition, to your earlier unevidenced rhetoric.
I don’t care, evidence evidence evidence….you are preaching, with rhetoric. If I wanted to be preached at, then I’d attend a church.
Another claim, no evidence to support it again.
I love it, capitalising truth was a nice touch, but you don’t get to lecture me about truth, especially when you’re touting unevidenced superstition.
Talking snakes, global floods, magic and superstition, sense must mean something different to you than it does me, either way this simply more unevidenced rhetoric. Now one more time: Can you offer any objective evidence that any deity exists, yes or no?
I am sorry to hear this, but this simply explains the bias towards the belief, it does not evidence the belief in any remotely objective way.
No deal, faith (religious) is simply bias, it is useless in validating the veracity of caims.
Circular reasoning fallacy, and you are now preaching again. Evidence a creator or that anything in nature is created, you have been given all the latitude one could reasonably expect, and yet you offer naught but unevidenced claims and repetition.
You have no way of knowing what the character Jesus may have said, and you have completely evaded requests to evidence such claims, again do you imagine repetition will sway anyone here, why would it?
Helps what? You have offered nothing but preaching the same unevidenced claims, and have not addressed any of the objections offered.
Nonsense, you can examine the objective evidence of the claim.
No, you would have to demonstrate this, you don’t get to sneak in the KCA with an unevidenced claim.
I don’t believe you, please offer something beyond a bare claim you have chosen to believe and parrot here to us? No trying to fallaciously reverse the burden of truth either if you please, you made the claim, the burden of proof is entirely yours.
Please present one so we can examine it, unevidenced rhetoric won’t do.
No we mustn’t, it’s a biased unevidenced choice you’re selling.
That is not a choice, and Epicurus at least presented sound arguments.
So what? For the record atheism rises sharply among scientists, and exponentially among elite scientists, that some of them set aside objective critical thinking to ringfence their superstitious religious beliefs has no relevance as far as I can see?
You’re right they don’t compare, since it is an objective fact that men walked on the moon, but an unevidenced subjective claim that any deity walked on the earth.
Nonsense, nowhere in the OT does the name Jesus appear, not once not ever.
I can tell you stories about mermaids, this doesn’t make them true.
Begging the question, please demonstrate there is a “why”.
False dichotomy fallacy.
So what? It takes a few seconds online to find people who believe all manner of unevidenced and poorly reasoned nonsense.
Well do please behave yourself, you brought them here to an atheist forum after all.
It’s funny how our questions and criticisms bead up and roll off apologetics. On the bright side, they can’t have us burned at the stake, well not at this precise moment anyway.
Well sure, that’s how these types of venues work – people engage asynchronously as they have time and interest. No need to explain. Also – we are spread across many different time zones, from the US to Europe and beyond so … whenever.
I think the Christians at least in the sects from which these people have departed should consider their role in that. I doubt it is the stated intention to make people feel compelled and guilted into conformance, and yet, sometimes their social fabric is constructed to do just that – to reward conformity and punish non-conformity without regard to personal needs, beliefs, etc.
I once had a pastor confide to me that the people who never felt assured in their salvation were the bane of his existence. They would “go forward” at every altar call “just in case”. They needed constant reassurance. They could not “claim the promises” for themselves and “just believe by faith”.
What he didn’t understand is that often structurally you are selecting for those kinds of people who have been damaged in that way, either by their families of origin and/or by the religion itself, to see themselves as requiring constant external validation and reassurance that they are “okay”. Whether with God, their leaders, parents or just themselves. Some of those develop OCD tendencies where they constantly and obsessively revisit the question of guilt and forgiveness. The problem is psychological, and so feeding the problem isn’t the lasting answer.
There are several reasons for this. What is the narrative at a typical “altar call”? It is basically “come all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. Let the low-hanging fruit, the insecure in the herd, literally step forward. Selection bias run amok. What is the basic content of much of gospel songs and hymnody? “My life was crap until I found Jesus”, to make it succinct and a bit crude. Selection bias for the dissatisfied. All of this implies that converting is not only an answer, but the answer. Alongside that: the notion that one is a lowly, unworthy worm apart from the grace (in the sense of “unmerited favor”) of God. And unable to control / improve / “save” themselves. It must always come from the only product the church has to sell which IMO is salvation from a manufactured threat.
This is a common sour-grapes conceit of those who remain in the faith. That anyone could even question the faith, much less leave it, is such a threat to their identity that they think it may (even must) be “they were never one of us in the first place” (there’s even a validating NT verse in that vein). Or in the alternative, there’s some sort of “misunderstanding” rather than a reasoned, considered decision that is best for them. Such things cannot possibly be!
I left the faith 30 years ago but my one brother and his wife still in the faith are convinced to this day that it’s just “some sort of misunderstanding” that will eventually be cleared up. They will go to their graves with that conviction. And that is the kind way for them to put it. I’ve had others say I was always a wolf in sheep’s clothing despite that I was 110% church-approved and commended and even formally educated in the general direction of the ministry (a whole year of my life I will never get back, lol). Some discernment they had there!
That’s why, as I said earlier in another post, we must come to “all the above” with simple, childlike Faith; otherwise, we’ll spend all of our time here on earth in “much to do about nothing” and end up like the Epicureans, who said “Eat, drink and be merry: for tomorrow you die.”
This sounds like an admission on your part that your attempt to employ the argument from design has failed, JC.
Earlier in this thread you were trying to make a case for there being scientific evidence to support what the Bible says - but you appear to have retreated from that. So now you’ve shifted the goalposts by quietly dropping your ‘scientific evidence’ argument and have moved to a simple call for us to have faith, because without that, what would life mean and what would its purpose be?
But in making that new line of argument you are presupposing that life has to have a meaning and a purpose. Does it? If you know what that meaning and purpose is, then please present your objective, extra-Biblical evidence for it.
Or, if your call is for us to have faith without evidence, then I really don’t think you understand your audience at all. In this forum we are sceptics, atheists and agnostics. Believing in things without evidence and by faith is something we don’t do.
So your call to faith will fall on deaf ears here.
If that’s all you have my friend and you can present no convincing arguments and no objective evidence, then perhaps Matthew 10 : 14 applies here?
Q.
What have the religious beliefs of Jim Irwin or the political beliefs of Yuri Gagarin got to do with there being evidence of an intelligently designing creator god called Jesus?
A.
Nothing at all.
Once again JC, you are expressing a personal preference and not making a coherent, evidence-based argument.
In fact, it seems that you have given up making coherent, evidence-based arguments and have retreated to making calls to faith.
He’s advancing a false dichotomy (that the views of one or the other are the only views possible and/or that matter) and argument from authority.
Astronauts are not authorities on religion, but rather on practical aspects of space flight. It is the wrong authority for the task at hand.
If I had a dime for every time someone has said “[insert random but famous highly respected person here] believes in God, therefore, my god claims are credible”, I would be a very wealthy man, indeed!
Of course claims about God don’t yield to any expertise, not even those of the theologian, because they are not falsifiable or testable in any meaningful way. I regard theology (apart from genuine comparative religious studies) to be a faux discipline.
Here’s the kind of evidence you need to advance your intelligently designing creator argument, JC.
Under the electron microscope the snake makers serial number is clearly seen.
If you can point to something like that, where it clearly says, THIS DNA WAS DESIGNED BY JESUS in every cell of every living thing on Earth, then you’d be getting somewhere.
Such clear cut evidence, that specifically identifies the Creator by name, is far, far better than doing what anyone from any religion can do - just pointing to the complexity of life and claiming that the god of MY personal preference must have created this.
So, do you have any scientific evidence of anything in all the universe with Jesus’ name, serial number or zip code on it?
Speaking from my own recollection of the general zeitgeist of my evangelical roots, this would at one time have struck me as by turns as an unreasonable and silly demand. I saw my experience, validated by others with similar experiences, framed by my sect’s teachings (which by design I never seriously questioned nor compared with others apart from the base assumption that all the others were conveniently wrong) and encouraged by the NT’s rabid anti-intellectual bias, as constituting a reasonable assumption of being true and any one or anything disagreeing with it was self-evidently wrong whether or not I could articulate a reason why. Which, weirdly, I never felt much need to exert myself towards.
Oddly I would have been concerned, should such a signature be found, that deception was behind it because my beliefs were supposed to be based on faith rather than evidence. That was a virtue rather than a vice.
For this reason I have come to the position that no one changes their belief about ANYTHING unless the pain of abandoning that belief is less than the pain of keeping it. Once a person has decent epistemological standards, any unsupportable / unfalsifiable belief becomes uncomfortable in short order. Absent that, their life has to in some way become untenable enough as-is to force them to consider the previously unthinkable.
This pain doesn’t have to be some terrible loss or tragedy (though that often helps accelerate the process). It can simply be years and years of cognitive dissonance. This dissonance came to me in many forms: making excuses (to myself and/or to outsiders) for the steady parade of disgraced and/or blatantly hypocritical religious leaders; reconciling the many conflicts in the Bible; tolerating the hypocrisy of other believers (or recognizing my own), etc.
Up to within weeks of the final collapse, I would have been just as confident as our current interlocutor. I put up a brave front. But at some point I realized I was just making myself miserable to no good purpose. I spent a few months casting about for maybe a different compartment of Christianity or maybe a different form of theism altogether. But it ultimately distilled down to a universal problem for me: that religious faith is a failed epistemology, and I wanted something that was at least serviceable.
It was probably years later than I unlearned my suspicion of science and reason and learned that they were actually for more trustworthy than religious faith, contrary to “let God be true, and every man a liar”.
These show the Moon, the planet Jupiter and the Sun, partially eclipsed by the Moon.
Anywhere in the universe that the light of a star hits a planet at the right angle or anywhere that a moon eclipses a star, a crescent of light will be produced.
This means that Allah has intelligently designed uncountable zillions of places across the cosmos where the symbol of true belief in Him is clearly displayed.
Take care.
