The same thing could be said about you. You believe in God. Completely. So why are you here defending your faith? Maybe it's because you are insecure and terrified that your belief is wrong?Immanuel Can wrote:Actually, I entirely understand. You're just channelling precisely what I said earlier about Atheism: it has nothing to say about "religion," because it assumes that Philosophy of Religion must be roughly equivalent to "Philosophy of Superstition." It thinks there's nothing to discuss.Hobbes' Choice wrote:When you have religion; "logic, evidence, reasons and a mutually-charitable dialogue." is null and void because religion is based on unfounded and unverifiable assumptions and premises, and so even if your reasoning, and logic is rock solid all your conclusions are meaningless. Even what evidence you have, poor as it is, is gathered with the assumption of god, and is not valuable for that reason.
So what is any Atheist doing here? It can only be blowing smoke. It can't be for any serious philosophical exercise -- just as you said above.
But then, why are they here? Why would they not go to, say "Political Philosophy," or "Aesthetics," or "Philosophy of Sport," for that matter? For they freely admit there's nothing to really know about the subject, and they claim philosophy, reasons and evidence can have no part in it anyway; so why hang around and bullyrag people who believe in it?Why not just flick their teeth and walk away, disgusted and indifferent to all the people (about 92% of the world, at the moment) who happen to remain at least nominally "religious"?
Answer: they can't leave it alone, because Atheists are not nearly so secure as they try to self-present as being. They doubt their disbelief constantly, and (I think with justification) are terrified they're actually wrong. So only a continual torrent of resistance and abuse of all things "religious," and Christianity and Judaism in specific, keeps them from the grip of Atheistic angst. They know they're blowing smoke: so they blow a whole lot of it. Eventually, they hope, they will be able to believe their own nonsense; they just have to repeat it fervently enough, and with sufficiently powerful incantations of oaths.
Sociologist Peter Berger talks about this practice. He calls it "worldview maintenance." The Atheist worldview cannot be maintained without continual servicing by the chanted mantras of Atheism, like "Belief in God is irrational," "Religious people are crackpots," and the one you suggest above: "Religion has no evidence." Left to its own quiet concerns, Atheism quickly becomes fearful and lonely. Any vigour it has at all is derived from maintaining its tense hatred of Theism.
In this connection, I love the Atheist bus campaign in England: "Don't worry: there's probably no God," it says. That's funny. "Don't worry...this elevator will probably not plunge to the basement and kill you." "Don't worry...the tiger's probably not hungry." "Don't worry...some grenades are duds..."
And yet, what could be more serious -- the presence of a hungry tiger, the prospect of being blown to bits by a grenade, or the real, impending presence of a Judging God who has been insulted, scorned and rejected by the very people He created, and defied to do anything about it? Where's the real cause for terror on the part of the Atheist?
I'm opting for the latter.
Good luck keeping up the ol' worldview.It's going to be a lifelong activity.
We are all here because we like to debate. Period. And we don't have anything much better to do.
Oh and you just proved my point. You cannot do philosophy. Judgement of God. Hehehe. What absolute nonsense. He can't do shit. My body will die. He has to punish my soul. How can he? The soul without the body cannot feel pain. Even if he exists, he didn't think this through, did he?
