Secularism versus the Demonization of Atheists

[Immanuel Can]

The numerous wrong claims of the Bible that were once believed and since disproved is a rational justification. Meanwhile, the various books of the Bible significantly contradict each other, resulting in all manner of cherry picking.

Evidence needs to be specific. You can't convince based on vague generalities like the above. Show your evidence, please.

Too much to list. To start, so-called "evil spirits" that were "treated" with exorcism turned out to be infections. It's a book of ancient myths - like all the others.

Ah. Just as I thought. Nothing. Just vague impressions, probably garnered second-hand.

Interesting that you consider that good enough to ground your (dis-)belief. If I offered you the same sort of vague response, I wonder if you'd accept it? I really doubt you would...or that you should.

Noah's ark. The Garden of Eden. Creation in six days. Jonah and the whale. Virgin birth. Resurrection. Walking on water. The feeding of the 4,000. Miracle healing. Evil (bacterial) spirits.

What's your evidence for disbelief of any of these in particular? For example, what reason would you give for disbelieving in the Resurrection? Or if we were to grant the possibility of God Incarnate, why would we have reason to deny the virgin birth, walking on water, or the feeding of the 5,000? In fact, if God were incarnated, what would give us reason to deny ANY miracle at all?

Who is proposing? I am observing. What I have observed is that pragmatic governance seems to be both more efficient and significantly more moral than the world's theocracies.

How do you know what "more moral" consists of? You can't use the "consensus" criterion to identify it, because if you do you've just created a circular argument that reads like, "That which is consensus is more moral, and I know because something is more moral if consensus."

Nope.

Yes. Without a meta-system, you've got nothing to tell you what "moral" means.

I am just pointing out the history. Morality has gradually been hammered out in different regions through the experience gained by those societies over time.

Which societies? I doubt you're arguing that ISIL has a "hammered out" morality of the kind you're advocating. The Nazis took over what was certainly one of the most technologically-developed, sophisticated and academically high-achieving nations of the modern world...was their morality "hammered out"? How "hammered out" is the morality of North Korea? They're certainly availing themselves of modern means, but I'm not seeing it comes automatically bundled with virtue; are you?

Meanwhile, I fear that"time" doesn't solve morality, even in modern societies. If it did, then fewer people would be dying or being exploited and abused today than a hundred years ago. But actually, it's worse than ever, on a global scale. Look at our immigration crisis, the mess in the Middle East, North Korea, Communist China, corrupt governments in Africa, the situation in Venezuela, gang rapes in Sweden and Germany, the economic collapse of Greece...with so much data against your assertion, you're going to need better evidence.

Various ideas and systems come and go in a constant maturing and refining process.

Wow. So today's world is better than it's been in past? 148 million killed in futile, secular wars in the last century, human trafficking and child exploitation at an all-time high, the Middle East a horror show, and you're still opting for The Myth of Automatic Moral Progress?

And you think it takes faith to be a Theist? I'd say it's got nothing on the kind of blind optimism that sustaining belief in that myth requires.

[Greta]

Too much to list. To start, so-called "evil spirits" that were "treated" with exorcism turned out to be infections. It's a book of ancient myths - like all the others.

Ah. Just as I thought. Nothing. Just vague impressions, probably garnered second-hand.

More squirming. https://www.gotquestions.org/demon-possession.html

I take it then that so you believe that exorcisms actually expel demons from people?

How about all the other obviously mythological claims that you failed to address? How about Jonah and the whale? The parting of the ocean? Credible or mythology?

And yes, the resurrection claimed in the (most likely) myth of Jesus was almost certainly borrowed from the Osiris myth.

I don't mind you believing in myths. Many do. It makes them feel better.

[Immanuel Can]

I take it then that so you believe that exorcisms actually expel demons from people?

The existence of a personal agency of evil is a thing you can choose to believe in or not. But it won't make a difference either way.

How about Jonah and the whale? The parting of the ocean? Credible or mythology?

Naturalistically, we might say they're impossible. But that is why we speak of such things as "miracles."

And that's a distinction which even ancient people always make. In fact, they don't call something a "miracle" so long as the possibility of an alternate naturalistic explanation even exists. But when something is done which defies all the regularities of nature, then and only then do they call it a miracle. So they are credible on the premise that God exists.

Which makes an important point about miracles: that since they are (by definition) unique instances of Divine intervention, the existence of observable regularities is not relevant to the question of whether or not they can take place. One doesn't, for example, know from the laws of hydrodynamics whether or not a Supreme Being is capable of parting the Red Sea. But if He's truly supreme, then He certainly is. So then, the parting of the Red Sea would be a miracle (i.e. an interruption of natural regularities) but not an impossibility. The Law of Sufficient Reason would be nicely covered -- if God exists.

Once again, the key question appears: does God exist? If He does, a miracle is possible. If He does not, then it is not; but then, the regularities of nature are themselves left unexplained, and the God hypothesis simply returns on the basis of new evidence. The upshot is this: the existence of regularities in nature may be at least an inductive evidence for God; but they do not logically count against the possibility of miracles.

And yes, the resurrection claimed in the (most likely) myth of Jesus was almost certainly borrowed from the Osiris myth.

This is the Frazer Hypothesis, later picked up by Dawkins; but is not generally accepted anymore, because of the wild dissimilarities Frazer tried to fudge. See, for example, http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is ... mythology/ for a list of the differences.

[Greta]

I take it then that so you believe that exorcisms actually expel demons from people?

The existence of a personal agency of evil is a thing you can choose to believe in or not. But it won't make a difference either way.

How can you believe such a preposterous thing? Yes, some things will be more toxic or dangerous than others but a demon taking a person over is the stuff of mythology, with only a metaphorical connection to reality at best.

And that's a distinction which even ancient people always make. In fact, they don't call something a "miracle" so long as the possibility of an alternate naturalistic explanation even exists. But when something is done which defies all the regularities of nature, then and only then do they call it a miracle. So they are credible on the premise that God exists.

Funny how these things don't happen any more. These days reality works via largely explainable cause and effect. You did not have blokes parting entire oceans, or making a life within a whale's belly or collecting a male and female of every single terrestrial species (millions) and building a boat capable of keeping them plus humans alive for months.

Did you ever wonder whether this was just a case of relatively uninformed people seeing and experiencing interesting illusions and phenomena that they could not explain and so assigned they mythological qualities to them?

And yes, the resurrection claimed in the (most likely) myth of Jesus was almost certainly borrowed from the Osiris myth.

This is the Frazer Hypothesis, later picked up by Dawkins; but is not generally accepted anymore, because of the wild dissimilarities Frazer tried to fudge. See, for example, http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is ... mythology/ for a list of the differences.

Of course they didn't take the whole myth, only parts of it. Resurrection appears in a number of myths. It's an ancient dream - to beat death.

[Londoner]

Funny how these things don't happen any more. These days reality works via largely explainable cause and effect. You did not have blokes parting entire oceans, or making a life within a whale's belly or collecting a male and female of every single terrestrial species (millions) and building a boat capable of keeping them plus humans alive for months.

Did you ever wonder whether this was just a case of relatively uninformed people seeing and experiencing interesting illusions and phenomena that they could not explain and so assigned they mythological qualities to them?

It doesn't happen that way throughout the Bible either. The spectacular stuff happens in the early bits, in mythological times. As the story goes on, the miracles become smaller, more personal.

I think that the point about miracles is not that they are outside any possible scientific explanation, but they are events that convey a message. For example, that an individual might have some sort of a fit and think they see a light in the sky and hears a voice is commonplace. What makes it a miracle is because Saul/Paul has a dramatic change of character and takes an entirely new path in life.

If we tell even young children the story of Snow White we expect them to understand that this is a different sort of story to the ones in the newspaper, and that we are not telling them 'the truth' in the same sense that we are when we warn them about not running into the road. Yet for some reason, we assume that Bible readers are incapable of any such subtlety.

The stories in the Bible are only there to make a point; a theological point. It isn't a history book, much less a physics textbook.

[Greta]

I think that the point about miracles is not that they are outside any possible scientific explanation, but they are events that convey a message.... The stories in the Bible are only there to make a point; a theological point. It isn't a history book, much less a physics textbook.

Hi Londoner

I agree and acknowledged the point earlier - that the metaphorical commentary in those tales about the human condition is fine. That's what myths are generally about. However, Immanuel was claiming the bible to be literally true, hence my comments which I admit out of context must have seemed obtusely obvious and literal

I love metaphors; I look for them regularly. However, this case it's about Immanuel not parsing the model from the modelled, so to speak.

[Belinda]

Greta wrote:

Some theists, however, have emotional reasons for continuing to believe in such magical things, which is fine if it works for them. Life is not easy and most of us seem to need little crutches. I sure do. I also note that your crutch is probably much better for your health than mine. Alas, I can't believe in myths so that particular salve is not available to me.

Whatever the creator be it's more respectful to seek truths without also relying upon fantasies.

I wonder what true-believers, such as Immanuel, read in the media that allows them to believe in divine Providence.

[Londoner]

Whatever the creator be it's more respectful to seek truths without also relying upon fantasies.

But what sort of truths would those be?

Truths, in the sense of empirical facts, could not be truths about the creator of those facts, nor could they be the sort of truth that might provide meaning.

I can understand a position which says that there are no such things as truths, that truths are simply unavailable, i.e. a skeptical or absurdist standpoint. But I do not see how I can say that my own speculations are 'truths' whereas other people's are fantasies. Once we have moved away from some sort of naive empiricism, what is the criteria for truth?

I wonder what true-believers, such as Immanuel, read in the media that allows them to believe in divine Providence.

But we can only ask such questions if we ourselves are also 'true-believers'. If we think that worldly events are contrary to the idea of divine providence, we must ourselves have some sort of notion of what divine providence ought to be like, such that we can say; 'this is not it'! In other words, just like Immanuel we also have a metaphysical belief.

The real contrast with the believer's position would not be to say that bad things happen, (when there should be good things). Rather it would be to say that neither good nor bad things happen, that such words are meaningless.

I'm not saying that the religious viewpoint is true, rather that if we argue it is necessarily false we are taking up quite a radical philosophical position. If we applied that same test to any of our beliefs it is hard to see what could survive it.

[Immanuel Can]

It doesn't happen that way throughout the Bible either. The spectacular stuff happens in the early bits, in mythological times. As the story goes on, the miracles become smaller, more personal.

Even in ancient times, miracles are extremely rare. The narrative can leave one with the impression that there were very many, and that they all happened tightly packed together. But there are often gaps of hundreds of years between claims of Divine intervention. Even when in groups, they tended to happen for particular symbolic purposes, not at random.

The sort of highly-credulous, everyday-miracle-believing people Greta imagines are not what is described in the Bible. Rather, we note that miracles were generally attended by reactions of skepticism, except in cases wherein the miracle was so grand as to be indisputable to those who witnessed it (such as, say, the Red Sea crossing, which could hardly be doubted if one were present when it happened). But when Christ, for example, opened the eyes of the blind, the Pharisees immediately sought alternate explanations, rather than collapsing in credulous wonder as Greta seems to suppose. Even after the Resurrection we have Thomas (the famous doubter), who would not buy in without personal experience of physical evidence. These reactions put the lie to the idea that ancient people were just stupid and naive: they may have had less science to go on, but they were no less aware that seas do not just split and that men do not just rise from the dead.

I think that the point about miracles is not that they are outside any possible scientific explanation, but they are events that convey a message.

I think that if they are inside scientific explanation, then we have every reason to say they aren't "miracles," by definition at all. Then, I would say, they would be natural events, not miracles.

For example, that an individual might have some sort of a fit and think they see a light in the sky and hears a voice is commonplace. What makes it a miracle is because Saul/Paul has a dramatic change of character and takes an entirely new path in life.

Nothing about a miracle suggests its "commonplace," or ought to be expected to be. In fact, the word "miracle" clearly implies the very opposite. But yes, the symbolic significance of that real event is essential to understanding why the miracle is done in the first place.

The point is simply this, though: a 'miracle" is an actual event, done one unique time, by non-naturalistic methods (i.e. by God), for the purpose of communicating an important moral truth. It is not, and cannot be, a regular event, explicable in strictly natural terms and expectable without the existence of the Supreme Being. Therefore, the existence of regularities in nature is a thing about which both ancient and modern people completely agree.

Where the skeptics are departing from the ancient observers is over the much more simple question of whether or not the event happened at all. For that, the ancients have claimed personal experience and first-hand observation, and the moderns have whatever residual effects remain, plus their willingness or unwillingness to accept the ancient testimony. So, for example, they can accept the downed walls of Jericho as partial evidence of a miraculous event -- or as an anomaly for ancient city walls, caused by a strange method of siege, an odd wind and fire, or some other natural event.

The key issue is really that simple. The ancients were not fools, and the moderns are not exclusively wise. A miracle took place, or it did not. But in most cases it is not evidence that is the problem, but rather the question of the right interpretation of the agreed-upon facts.

[Greta]

Whatever the creator be it's more respectful to seek truths without also relying upon fantasies.

But what sort of truths would those be?

Truths, in the sense of empirical facts, could not be truths about the creator of those facts, nor could they be the sort of truth that might provide meaning.

I can understand a position which says that there are no such things as truths, that truths are simply unavailable, i.e. a skeptical or absurdist standpoint. But I do not see how I can say that my own speculations are 'truths' whereas other people's are fantasies. Once we have moved away from some sort of naive empiricism, what is the criteria for truth?

My impression is that Belinda is speaking about avoiding making assumptions (aka "fantasies") about the unknown and purportedly unknowable.

[Greta]

The sort of highly-credulous, everyday-miracle-believing people Greta imagines are not what is described in the Bible. Rather, we note that miracles were generally attended by reactions of skepticism ...

Consider that exorcisms were performed on people who would either have been suffering from infections, epilepsy, and mental illness in the vain hope of casting the "demon" out of the unfortunate victim, who could have done with informed medical help. The purportedly miraculous has been shown to simply be nature in this and many other areas.

The only credible miracle I know of is existence itself.

[Immanuel Can]

Consider that exorcisms were performed on people who would either have been suffering from infections, epilepsy, and mental illness in the vain hope of casting the "demon" out of the unfortunate victim, who could have done with informed medical help. The purportedly miraculous has been shown to simply be nature in this and many other areas.

That this has been done in modern times, I think we can all see. That it was done in the particular cases exposited in the Bible is not. For that we would need evidence...and that, you just do not have. You would have to project from modern-day abuses -- say, the record of misdiagnoses in the Middle Ages or later -- and simply then assume that the cases described in the Bible were identical to those...but you'd have no reason to think that was right. You'd have to admit you were just assuming.

The only credible miracle I know of is existence itself.

If existence is a "miracle," then it's not a natural event. In which case, your statement would mean you ought to consider existence itself an evidence for God.

However, I imagine you probably didn't mean a literal "miracle," therefore, but rather a sort of rhetorical flourish or cliche. Correct?

But to pursue the matter further, I have to suspect your sudden new interest in ancient floods and the welfare of the ancient mentally-afflicted as being somewhat less than sincere. Were I unkind, I might even suspect it of being a red herring. For whether or not you believe in exorcisms of hydrodynamic reversals seems to me to have very little impact on you personally, and no relevance at all to your disposition to the core message of Christianity. For Christianity rests not on ancient medical practices, far less on the displacements of water, but on the unique, miraculous, literal event of the Resurrection itself, along with the message it is designed to convey.

And I would say that that's where a really incisive inquiry should focus.

[Belinda]

Whatever the creator be it's more respectful to seek truths without also relying upon fantasies.

But what sort of truths would those be?

Truths, in the sense of empirical facts, could not be truths about the creator of those facts, nor could they be the sort of truth that might provide meaning.

I can understand a position which says that there are no such things as truths, that truths are simply unavailable, i.e. a skeptical or absurdist standpoint. But I do not see how I can say that my own speculations are 'truths' whereas other people's are fantasies. Once we have moved away from some sort of naive empiricism, what is the criteria for truth?

My impression is that Belinda is speaking about avoiding making assumptions (aka "fantasies") about the unknown and purportedly unknowable.

Yes, Greta, I was.

I will try to answer Londoner. I do respect the act of truth- seeking. It's empirically verifiable that humans reason, and feel sympathetic towards others. There are two main candidates for reality. Candidate A is whatever got reality going. Candidate B which on occasions is hydra- headed is expressed by the urge that humans have to make the world better than it is, i.e. making reality happen. Humans can't do anything about A but we can and do seek to further B. When the empirical facts of reason and human sympathy are the modus operandi (as opposed to their absence) we search best.

Is it okay to conflate truth and reality? I think it is.

[Greta]

Consider that exorcisms were performed on people who would either have been suffering from infections, epilepsy, and mental illness in the vain hope of casting the "demon" out of the unfortunate victim, who could have done with informed medical help. The purportedly miraculous has been shown to simply be nature in this and many other areas.

That this has been done in modern times, I think we can all see. That it was done in the particular cases exposited in the Bible is not. For that we would need evidence...and that, you just do not have. You would have to project from modern-day abuses -- say, the record of misdiagnoses in the Middle Ages or later -- and simply then assume that the cases described in the Bible were identical to those...but you'd have no reason to think that was right. You'd have to admit you were just assuming.

This is reality, not Wonderland, Alice! There's no such things as demons.

If you are telling me that you believe in demons and the efficacy of exorcism then we'd best leave it. I prefer adult conversations, not debating superstitious nonsense.

[uwot]

Evidence needs to be specific. You can't convince based on vague generalities like the above. Show your evidence, please.

Too much to list. To start, so-called "evil spirits" that were "treated" with exorcism turned out to be infections. It's a book of ancient myths - like all the others.

Ah. Just as I thought. Nothing. Just vague impressions, probably garnered second-hand.

Amazing. This thought could only occur in the irony void between the ears of someone who claims miracles happened, because it says so in the bible.