theist in a foxhole

[henry quirk]

The theist sez the atheist has no logical reason for investing value (meaning) into any-thing or –one since the atheist (lacking or denying god-belief) has no grounding for such investment.

And, sez the theist, the atheist has no grounding for consolation on his or her death bed as it's all (according to the atheist) meaningless.

So: given that god is the grounding for the claim of the theist that objective meaning and morality exist (and that there is reason for the theist to be consoled on the death bed) I must ask: Where is God?

Produce Him, please.

[Dalek Prime]

If God doesn't exist, theists are then in the same boat as atheists. It still won't give atheists true meaning.

[Wyman]

God can only reveal himself to someone. That is, knowledge of God can only come from revelation, which is irrefutable, but only to the individual who experiences it. It means nothing to those who don't experience it. So, believers are powerless to convince unbelievers and unbelievers are powerless to refute the irrefutable.

Now, just as in another post I said that some nonbelievers only delude themselves in to thinking that nihilism can lead to meaning in life - those nonbelievers are free to say that believers similarly delude themselves into belief in God for the same reason. That is, they may claim that belief in God is delusional and the believer can not prove otherwise.

In other words, no argument can defeat the (strict)nihilist or the believer in God and that situation has not changed through the course of human history.

[Arising_uk]

... It still won't give atheists true meaning.

What's a 'true meaning' when it's at home?

[Arising_uk]

In other words, no argument can defeat the (strict)nihilist or the believer in God ...

Show me this 'God'?

[henry quirk]

"If God doesn't exist, theists are then in the same boat as atheists."

Yes.

#


"It still won't give atheists true meaning."

If you read my posts over in the 'Atheist in a foxhole' thread then you know I don't care about 'true meaning'.

Not the point of this thread.

##

"God can only reveal himself to someone. That is, knowledge of God can only come from revelation, which is irrefutable, but only to the individual who experiences it."

Fair enough. Here's the thing: a great number of Christian strains declare me, as atheist, bound for hell. Okay, fine. But, if God never reveals Himself to me, if I never have a revelation, then how is it sane I should be punished eternally? Seems to me: if I am important to God, then His revelation would take into account 'me', be in keeping with 'me'. I'm 52...never had a revelatory experience. Is this my fault, or God's? If mine: explain how. If God's: explain how He's not just a kid with an ant farm and a magnifying glass.

[Immanuel Can]

I must ask: Where is God?

Produce Him, please.

By "produce Him," what do you mean?

Let me get this straight:

1. If we can oblige God to show up and do parlor tricks for skeptics, then you're saying we'll have reason believe He's real?

2. If we can't, we won't?

Does either alternative sound even remotely reasonable to anyone?

I would even go so far as to suggest that if the Supreme Being DID do such a thing it would give us at least one good reason for NOT thinking Him to be the Supreme Being at all. For presuming His existence, could a real God be compelled to a command performance for the satisfaction of cynics? And should he manifest himself to appease those who, by their own confession, have nothing but contempt for His very name, and for anyone who actually reveres Him?

Should he, then, Who is said to be the Lord of the Universe, dance to their tune?

I'm not seeing why we'd be reasonable to think so.

[Immanuel Can]

Here's the thing: a great number of Christian strains declare me, as atheist, bound for hell. Okay, fine. But, if God never reveals Himself to me, if I never have a revelation, then how is it sane I should be punished eternally? Seems to me: if I am important to God, then His revelation would take into account 'me', be in keeping with 'me'. I'm 52...never had a revelatory experience. Is this my fault, or God's? If mine: explain how. If God's: explain how He's not just a kid with an ant farm and a magnifying glass.

Hi, Henry:

Can I suggest it's just possible that one's attitude to God might have something with His willingness to be found?

I say so because in the Bible God promises, "You shall find me when you seek me with all your heart." And if there's anything to that, does it not suggest that a half-baked search just won't do it? As it says in the book of James, "Let not [the skeptical] man think he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all His ways." Now, I'm not saying you're playing games here: but if you were, then finding nothing is precisely what the Bible would suggest will happen to you.

So I guess the question is, how serious is your desire to find God if He exists?

You be the judge...I don't even pretend to be able to know where you're at on that. But as I said before, I do occasionally catch that lingering whiff of sincerity amid your quips...

[henry quirk]

"...if there's anything to that..."

And that's the crux of things, isn't it?

You believe there is; I believe there isn't.

[henry quirk]

"...contempt for His very name, and for anyone who actually reveres Him?"

Have I been contemptful? Not my intent if it seems so.

[Immanuel Can]

"...if there's anything to that..."

And that's the crux of things, isn't it?

You believe there is; I believe there isn't.

Quite right.

But "belief" can be of different grades, can't it...after all, I can say, "I believe the moon is made of cheese," and it means very little: it has no relation to evidence at all. Or I can say, "I believe the moon orbits the earth," and it has a very powerful, telling relation to the evidence: indeed, it is a truly scientific statement.

So "I believe" versus "You believe" isn't necessarily a wash or stalemate. Depending on the quality of the belief in question -- most particularly, to its relationship to evidence -- a "believe" statement can be very weak or very strong indeed.

You are quite right: "if there's anything to it" is the crux of the issue.

P.S. -- Nice pun, by the way. I assume you didn't intend it?

[Immanuel Can]

"...contempt for His very name, and for anyone who actually reveres Him?"

Have I been contemptful? Not my intent if it seems so.

Oh, absolutely not. I wasn't saying you, in particular. Sorry: I was generalizing. There certainly are those onlookers who will be less fair than you are inclined to be...but I did not mean you.

[henry quirk]

"a very powerful, telling relation to the evidence"

Indeed! Care to pony some up? George Burns, perhaps, over coffee?
#

"I assume you didn't intend it?"

Well-intended...

#

"I did not mean you"

Okeedoke...

[Immanuel Can]

"a very powerful, telling relation to the evidence"

Indeed! Care to pony some up? George Burns, perhaps, over coffee?

#
You've got coffee? Count me in.

Seriously, though...that's one of the interesting things about the Atheist/Theist debate: both sides show total bafflement about the other side's response to the available evidence. The problem, I think, is not that there is *no* evidence, nor that all sides have access to *complete* evidence; but that such evidence as there is, is, for most people, equivocal.

By that, I mean that the evidence is such that each side can interpret it according to its lights. The willingness to see the evidence AS evidence is crucial. So, for example, the Atheist looks at the natural world and says, "I see only pitiless, blind chance." The Theist looks at precisely the same natural world, and says, "How can you not see the gracious provision of God?" Or again, the Atheist says, "I have no experience of God." The Theist then says, "But I do." Yet even then, the problem remains that the Theist's personal experience, no matter how compelling it may be as proof to him, is not available to the Atheist, who would have to have *his own* experience before it could constitute any evidence for him.

Evidence, then, is determined by the willingness of the recipient to consider it on its merits AS EVIDENCE. For Newton, a falling apple constituted evidence for gravity, we are (apocryphally) told; but had any other person been sitting under that tree -- John Doe or Joe Lunchbucket, if you will -- the apple would not have constituted evidence for anything more than the inadvisability of sitting under trees. Newton's aptitude for considering the falling of the apple as evidence for something made all the difference between an important scientific discovery and a mere headache.

So we choose what evidence we are prepared to see.

I submit to you, Henry, that all this is not by accident. I submit to you that God wants those who wish to know Him to know Him, and those who are uninterested in such a relationship with God to find nothing at all. For God, I believe, is the kind of God who loves a sincere inquirer, and thus obliges all who come to know Him to be -- first of all -- sincere in their searching. He seems not to have much interest in being known to those who want to see Him merely as a sort of external fact to which they stand in no particular relation.

God does not delight to make himself the mere subject of academic study, just as He cares nothing for cynical challenges, if such there be. He seems to want to provoke a genuine relationship; and openness to Him will, of course, be the first requirement of any such relationship. So we must decide what we will accept as evidence, and our answer will determine what is there for us to see.

[Wyman]

"If God doesn't exist, theists are then in the same boat as atheists."

Yes.

#


"It still won't give atheists true meaning."

If you read my posts over in the 'Atheist in a foxhole' thread then you know I don't care about 'true meaning'.

Not the point of this thread.

##

"God can only reveal himself to someone. That is, knowledge of God can only come from revelation, which is irrefutable, but only to the individual
who experiences it."

Fair enough. Here's the thing: a great number of Christian strains declare me, as atheist, bound for hell. Okay, fine. But, if God never reveals Himself to me, if I never have a revelation, then how is it sane I should be punished eternally? Seems to me: if I am important to God, then His revelation would take into account 'me', be in keeping with 'me'. I'm 52...never had a revelatory experience. Is this my fault, or God's? If mine: explain how. If God's: explain how He's not just a kid with an ant farm and a magnifying glass.

No one ever said He was logical/sane. They'll tell you you're just not one of the chosen ones and that He has a grand plan that involves you going to hell. Maybe He is a kid with an ant farm - what's that Mark Twain story about miniature clay figures that come to life?

Anyway, there are methods, supposedly, to find revelation: 40 days in the wilderness is a popular one.