I know he is–and I appreciate it, Walter, I really do. But, in the same way, I also hope that you all also realize I’m seeking to do the same thing in my remarks. The question, “Are you so opposed to what I say (and believe) because you can prove that it’s erroneous? Or are you opposed because you want to believe that it’s false?”
If so, then it’s a matter of choice (free-will) and a conscious decision of the heart (volition).
Those questions do not precede the one I asked you earlier and for which I require an honest answer from you.
So, please answer my question honestly, JC.
Thank you,
Walter.
Walter, my failure to try and answer each of your questions isn’t avoidance or dishonesty; I just realize that trying to do so is futile at best and results in endless arguments back-and-forth that ultimately send us down a black hole of nothingness.
Again, as a “satisfied customer” who (by faith) accepts the reality of a God Who’s infinitely beyond our comprehend–and Who intelligently and intricately designed everything with a purpose–then I can only tell what I know. For, at the end of the day, I’m not the one who convinces anyone else that what I’m saying is true (even as you and the others can’t).
So, I do hope you understand and will accept it as such.
Not what I asked, I asked why you think this.
That one is much easier to answer, humans don’t instinctively know this, in case you hadn’t noticed many millions went along, nor was this the only religiously driven genocide in human history, nor even the last, and you never answered my question:
If genocide is objectively wrong, this means it can never be morally justified right?
So the bible depicts a deity committing a global genocide, that must have been immoral then, if not then genocide can’t be claimed to be objectively immoral. The more you dodge this, the more inevitable the inference I must draw.
FYI, instinct are not objective truths, or do you believe Hitler and the Nazi’s instincts were objectively moral? While you’re mulling that over, the SS ran the death camps under Himmler, he was a pagan theist, and he and Hitler agreed that one category should be excluded from the SS, as they could not be trusted take their oath seriously before “God”, it was atheists…time for another no true Scotsman fallacy, or a delve into moral relativism and subjectivism might help you gain a basic grasp of the topic.
Neither, I disbelieve in any deity or deities for exactly the same reason you or anyone else disbelieves any claim, I have seen insufficient evidence to allay my doubts, your arguments are well known to me, I have seen them countless times before, and they are very poorly reasoned, and unsupported by anything approaching objective evidence.
Well, the clock says it’s time for me to vacate the premises. I’d not planned to continue posting in here, but I could say tongue-in-cheek “The devil made me do it:” which, would then necessitate the need for another thread that says “Why do you believe the devil exists? Please provide the best reason/evidence first?”
Anyway, thanks for the exchange of ideas. At the end of the day, I’m sure none of us were convinced to rethink our beliefs: although I would hope that some of my remarks did give a little room for consideration here-and-there.
Here’s a link to a short video I think you might find provocative or at least a little interesting:
Oh it is interminable to be sure, but there is no argument here, you have and are preaching, and Walter is tearing the claims apart like warm bread, because subjective religious apologetics is never going to be a match for objective facts.
Now this I believe that you believe a deity exists blindly based on wishful thinking, that has been evident throughout the discourse. The same faith that Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and countless other religions use to blindly believe in countless other deities humans have imagined.
All living things have evolved slowly over billions of years, this is an objective fact, you are offering an unevidenced subjective belief / claim, against an objective fact, supporting by overwhelming objectively verified scientific evidence.
That’s a false equivalence, as Walter’s claims were not subjective opinion, whereas yours are entirely subjective beliefs, as you have admitted here.
Atheism is not a belief, learn that if you learn nothing else. You disbelieve in countless deities as I do, but you cling to the unevidenced notion one of them is real. Can you really imagine it’s a coincidence that your parents and or culture taught you about “the one true god”?
Moral standards aren’t invalidated if you don’t think they originate in a deity (specifically, yours). One either follows a moral code, or doesn’t. It’s just as valid no matter what you think it arises from.
No one here is a Nazi so no one is “refusing to believe” (and there’s another point that you just ignore rather than address; I discussed this already at length and you simply dropped out of the discussion). I think it’s safe for me to say everyone here would agree that Hitler was a Bad Man and that more generically, genocide is harmful and that fascism is a fount of harm. But that there is wide agreement on the minority of moral questions that are pretty simple and black and white doesn’t mean they come from your preferred source, and couldn’t happen any other way. It is just because most humans possess working mirror neurons (empathy) plus they are herd animals and during those periods of history where civilization isn’t in decline as it generally is now, they reinforce empathy with each other so as to get along – and they also negotiate on more complicated and fraught questions so as to hammer out a workable consensus.
So are you ready to acknowledge that most people who don’t believe in a divine source for morality can and do still seek to embrace and adhere to those precepts just the same? Or do you insist on demonizing us as rebellious refuseniks and by extension, immoral?
What I understand is this, JC.
You could answer my question honestly, not based endless arguments, but based upon what is written in this thread. But you have declined to do so and have decided to spin a reply that saves the maximum amount of face.
I could have asked you, ‘What does Genesis 1 : 1 say?’ and if you had to look that up, you could just have gone to a Bible and found the verse by reading what it says.
In exactly the same way, my question simply required you to read what is in this thread and then reply only on the basis of that. Nothing difficult. Nothing more taxing than opening a bible and reading what’s in it.
So your flimsy excuse is seen for what it really is. An honest answer from you would have revealed that this thread has clear evidence that your mind is selectively closed to any evidence that threatens your religious beliefs.
If this were not so then you wouldn’t have repeated today the same errors that you were corrected on (with cited evidence) yesterday. This signals that your mind is indeed closed. The very accusation that you have levelled against us.
Answering my question honestly would have revealed your denial of this evidence. But that act of honesty was clearly too big an ask on my part. It seems that you are more interested in saving face and holding onto your beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence than actually giving us honest answers to simple and direct questions about your own behaviour.
Therefore JC, NO I do not accept the spin you’ve put on this.
You were caught in trap of your own making (being close minded and pointing the finger elsewhere) you realized it, knew it and further realized that fessing up to being close minded would involve a huge loss of face and credibility on your part.
Never doubt it, JC. We now see you for what you are and what you’ve done here. We take note of it.
Thank you,
Walter.
Interesting analogy, Sheldon. And, thanks for the clarification that atheism isn’t a belief–although I would differ with you on that. In reality, you’re as convinced that atheism is true as I am that theism is true. And, no, I don’t believe it was a coincidence that I was taught about “the one, true god:” for I believe He makes Himself known to every person everywhere in every generation.
The key is responding in Faith to the unseen Reality of Truth as revealed in every part of creation: whether it be in an amoeba, photosynthesis, gravity, DNA, molecular structure, black holes, etc. That’s why His Fingerprint is on everything; yet, He gives us freewill to believe–or not to believe–because He’s not some celestial tyrant or drooling on himself, grandfather type figure who’s leaving it up to us to figure things out.
No, Mordant, I’m not implying–or ever would suggest–that you (or anyone else) is incapable to making moral decisions. The difference is that you can’t justify right-and-wrong, i.e., why it’s morally wrong to do or not do something.
Sorry, I do have to go; looked up at the clock and I’m already behind schedule for what I’d planned to do today. Wonder if that was predestined?? 
Ok then JC, you’re leaving.
Assuming that you will return and further assuming that the issue of an outstanding question between us is now closed and over, I’d like to discuss something else with you upon your return.
You drew our attention to Romans 1 : 18 - 32 three hours ago. My question pertains to that passage, but also refers to the whole of the New Testament. Here it is.
According to the Bible the forgiveness of sin happens only through the blood of Jesus. Is that correct?
Thank you,
Walter.
The need to “justify” a moral decision, is a weakness, not a strength. Justifying a decision is finding a backing authority for the decision, and that is where “I was just following orders” comes from. It is where the utter inability to defy immoral orders comes from. A thing is moral if it treats all actors with respect for their rights and needs. It is immoral if it does not. Should a god happen to (dis)agree is irrelevant.
For example they are currently building gulags to house prisoners detained by ICE and border patrol, designed to sandwich in as many people as possible very similar to the old slave ships, no exercise or medical treatment areas, bare subsistence level food full of vermin, but there’s a nice shooting range for the officers. That kind of thing is immoral despite that you might allege that your God, who frequently commanded the utter annihilation of the Hated Other, would perhaps happen to agree that it is. (Im)morality is based on empathy for human rights and dignity, not on capricious divine commands.
You’re not arguing with me, but against the OED and common usage, and you are simply wrong. The error most theists and apologists make most often here is wrongly confusing atheist with atheism. Atheists have beliefs, as do all humans, atheism is not one of them.
No, atheism is not a claim, I am withholding belief from a claim, I am not making a contrary claim, as atheism is the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, it is not a belief, atheism makes no claim, so there is nothing to hold as true, atheists do, but atheists are not atheism.
If you’d been born in the middle east or Pakistan you’d be a devout Muslim, if in India likely a Hindu, if in Israel Jewish, that you can’t see the irony in your denial is itself pretty ironic.
Word salad, and what’s with the random capital letters, do they teach that nonsense at some apologetics class or something? I have no use for religious faith, none, as it tells me nothing about the truth of a claim.
None of that reveals any evidence for any deity, but by all means go ahead and demonstrate that evidence that the entire scientific world seems to have missed.
Preaching…
Preaching…
Preaching…
and preaching, please stop with the preaching I really don’t care for it. If you make an assertion it has to be supported by either argument or evidence, or else save it for church please.
Religious faith is useless in objectively validating the truth of claims, this is self evident in that it is and has been used to arrive at wildly different beliefs in different religions and deities. It is the excuse people use when they desperately want to believe something they have insufficient or no objective evidence to support.
That’s a contradiction, and you have yet to offer a single objective moral truth that doesn’t rely on a subjective belief, and you have point blank refused to say, if Hitler’s genocide was objectively immoral, then you must believe the biblical deity committing genocide is objectively immoral, it can’t be both relative and objectively true.
FYI here is an interesting piece of research:
“Are atheists more moral than most Christians?”
I will grant you that I have come to believe the probability of the existence of ANY deity, is vanishingly small, and the existence of any specific deity (e.g., yours) is even far tinier.
But I do not make a contrary positive claim that, e.g., your god does not exist, because that isn’t a claim I can substantiate. Not least because it’s not possible to prove a negative, but also because I haven’t been everywhere and everywhen and there could be a god – maybe even yours – hiding under a rug somewhere. So the supportable position that I have is that I have no good reason to believe in your god. And you certainly aren’t giving me any, either.
That however is a belief an atheist holds, and whilst it is atheistic, it is not atheism, which is defined solely as the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities.
Indeed, and of course if an atheist does make a positive contrary claim, they still be necessity would lack belief in any deity or deities. Atheism encompasses both types of atheist, but atheism is not a claim, or a belief, NB all beliefs are the affirmation of a claim, that something is true or is the case, again a cursory read of a dictionarty demonstrates this.
He’s one of those Christians that refuses to believe that religion is cultural, and not universal. As in, you are taught a popular religion in the country you’re raised in. I always laugh when Christians claim that we’re Christian by birth. Nope, we’re all born atheists until our elders hand us a holy book and are told that it’s fact.
If your standard of morality came from your god, it is not objective.
Precisely.
In reality of course nothing is totally objective, but the need of at least authoritarian theists is that something must be “objective” and so they think that a despot’s views, imposed with absolute backing power, is the definition of objective. Even though this is simply “might makes right” and there is nothing special about the despot’s opinion other than his ability to threaten those who don’t agree with it. The despot’s views are no less arbitrary than you or I or @JustCurious deciding that our personal views are the correct ones.
And this despot, if his followers are to be believed, makes some very odd decisions about what is right and wrong, as we’ve pointed out. Genocidal, pestilential decisions. Sexually predative decisions. Both the old and new testaments don’t decry human slavery as a great harm; they don’t celebrate it either, they do something far worse: they normalize it and assume it. Guidelines are issued on how to properly beat slaves, etc.
And of course just the decision to create human beings with characteristics and proclivities that he disapproves of and punishes over is another problem. Since he’s omnipotent and omniscient, he could have created us as he wished us to be, with our wills aligned with his; or he could just decide that he loves us as we are after all. But no, he has to whine and stomp and fume over what he himself hath wrought! And he has to have this baroque Plan of Salvation where he saves us from … himself, by … sacrificing himself to himself … or … something. When it is only necessary in the first place because of his own unforced errors. It reminds me of Trump withdrawing us from WHO and then proposing our own replacement at triple the cost. Only worse.
