Silly Religion

[Immanuel Can]

Correct -- doesn't matter how a person identifies themselves -- that does not say who they are.

How do you know "who they are"?

If they may happen to identify themselves as anything, but none of that has any meaning, how does someone explain to you "who they are"?

[RCSaunders]

... The Atheist certainly has very little to offer.

What does he need to offer to whom?

He has no rational entitlement to say he knows there's no God.

We differ there. Every individual is, "entitled," to say whatever he wants. You don't have to agree with it, or like it, but one is certainly entitled to believe and say anything, no matter how irrational it is.

He has no sufficient test to warrant his confident disbelief. Yet that is what he wants to offer...and indeed, to recommend to others.

I know there is nothing supernatural, and you would therefore label me an atheist, but I have no interest in convincing anyone else to not believe whatever they choose. The only recommendation I make to others is to use their own minds as well as they possibly can and to think for themselves and understand they never have to answer to anyone else for what they believe.

Many religionists and idealists (including many self-labeled atheists) are in the business of offering and recommending to others what they should believe, but not all of them. Many are like me and happen to think it is wrong to intentionally attempt to influence what others believe outside of honest marketing of a product or service. What any individual chooses to believe and practice, so long as it is not a clear physical threat to anyone else, is no one else's business.

So his only recourse would be to say that the concept is somehow analytically impossible...but that's also clearly not going to work. Atheism's firing blanks on every chamber, it seems to me.

Even if that were true, so what? If he's mistaken, he'll discover it. If he's not, you will.

Worse still for Atheism, verification can be had, in the matter of the existence of God. As we noted, one genuine creation, one genuine miracle, one genuine prayer answered, one genuine prophecy, one genuine revelation, one genuine incarnation...and Atheism's dead in the water.

There's the rub. There never has been, "one genuine creation, one genuine miracle, one genuine prayer answered, one genuine prophecy, one genuine revelation, one genuine incarnation, or one genuine resurrection. When and if there ever is any one of those, it will be common knowledge and every news outlet will be broadcasting it and no one will doubt it.

We were talking about the alleged rationality of Atheism, RC. It's the Atheist who is claiming "certainty" that there is no God.

You are claiming certainty there is a God, aren't you? I don't agree, but it's alright with me if you do. What do you care if I am certain there is nothing mystical or supernatural?

...and, a, "First Cause," is rationally impossible. Either, "everything must have a cause," is true, or, "everything does not have to have a cause," is true. They cannot both be true. If everything must have a cause there cannot be a first cause. If there is a first cause, everything does not have to have a cause, contra-hypothesis--the universe does not have to have a cause

A First Cause is not only not rationally impossible -- it's actually rationally impossible to have a causally-functioning universe without a First Cause. That's because an infinite regress of causes is utterly impossible...it would mean that the universe would never have got started in the first place, because no effect could take place until it's relevant cause had already taken place; and since every one of the infinite effects in the universe would be waiting on an infinite chain of causes, nothing would ever begin.

I'm sure you will never be able to extricate yourself from the spurious notion that, "cause," pertains to existence. Cause only pertains to events and since all events are the behavior of entities, the, "cause," (which really means, "explanation for,") of all events is the nature of the entities whose behavior are the events.<p>

Events do not cause events, and events do not cause existence. Existence is the, "cause," of everything and nothing precedes existence. The belief in some mystical, "chain of events," is based on the false notion of an event ontology. Everything must have a cause, only if by cause is meant, a reason for that event and the reason for all events is the nature of the entities whose behavior are those events. Nothing requires a cause if by cause is meant every event must be the consequence of a previous event.

But here we are. Therefore, there's no escaping the need for some kind of First Cause.

I know that's what you believe, but I cannot begin to understand why a, "first cause," is required unless there is some absolute principle that says everything must have a cause preceding its existence. If there were such a principle there could be no, "first cause," because it could not exist without a preceding cause. If you do not understand entity ontology you'll not understand that all events and existence can be explained without any chain of causes.

We're just not going to agree on, "first cause."

My other question about Hell is related to the interpretation question. That question was: "Do you believe in a literal eternal damnation as described in the New Testament?

...
Still think I undersold the case?

I think we both made our points, which is probably the best we can do.

John Locke, in his discussion of human free will ... asks if it would be right to "have men forced to Heaven".

Wrong question. It is not about not going to heaven, it is about condemning that vast majority humanity to eternal torment. If the only way God could give human beings, "free will," is by condemning the majority of them to eternal torment, there are two huge problems. To create beings knowing their fate was eternal torment in hell is wrong, and there is something wrong with a God that could not give men volition without condemning the majority of them (or any of them) to hell. The rationalization about those going to hell having a choice is a fudge. They never had a choice to forego free will and thus escape the risk of hell.

Is choice important? A lot of people think so. People have even died for it ... or even died so others could have it. But to God, it's even more important, because it is the only condition under which independent beings can freely choose to enter into a relationship with Him.

As for people dying for freedom, most have died for a promise of freedom by some government which is never provided. But it's not a choice that is being given. A real choice would be before being born with the option to be born with, "free will," and a one in a million chance of possibly making the right choice and winning all the goodies God will give you and million to one chance of making the wrong choice and spending eternity in hell, or being born without free will (like the animals), or just never being born. Why could an omniscient omnipotent God not do that?

If God desires beings that freely choose relationship with Him, then analytically, it is impossible that being should have no other choice BUT to love Him. So it is inevitable that some free beings are going to make a bad choice.

Do you know what you are saying? If I desire something and the only way I can get it is to allow an inevitable evil to happen to even one other being (never mind millions of them) the only right choice is to live without what I desire. Why could a morally perfect God not do that?

You really think having one's will honored and being recognize as an individual is a just exchange for eternal torment?

You miss the point. There IS no relationship without free will. Moreover, there isn't even a genuine YOU, if you can do nothing but what you're programmed to do. And there is no such thing as love.

Come explain that to my kitty. She very much enjoys her life and everything she does is because it's what she wants to do when she wants to do it. Better a life of a cat than a life at risk of hell.

But there is no such risk.

That's enough for now. I seem to remember that you believe in eternal security, so I do not wish to be more of a challenge to your faith than necessary.

[Lacewing]

Correct -- doesn't matter how a person identifies themselves -- that does not say who they are.

How do you know "who they are"?

Well, I'm not claiming to "know who they are"... that's your gig.

We can see through the actions of people, what they're doing in the moment. We can see the things they care about, in the moment. We can see how they treat others, in the moment. Their claim of being a theist or atheist doesn't establish or ensure any of that.

If they may happen to identify themselves as anything, but none of that has any meaning, how does someone explain to you "who they are"?

They do their best...and we perceive what they say and do. The labels placed on them don't establish or ensure anything.

Is this really so hard to comprehend?

[RCSaunders]

The theist sez 'there is a god'. Is this a claim?

The atheist sez 'there is no god'. Is this a claim?

If one says either only to themselves it is not a claim. If one says either to someone else, that is an assertion, and is a claim.

If one says only that either is what they believe it is a claim which must be accepted, else it is calling the speaker a liar.

What do think?

[henry quirk]

The theist sez 'there is a god'. Is this a claim?

The atheist sez 'there is no god'. Is this a claim?

If one says either only to themselves it is not a claim. If one says either to someone else, that is an assertion, and is a claim.

If one says only that either is what they believe it is a claim which must be accepted, else it is calling the speaker a liar.

What do think?

Yes, exactly. A few folks here don't seem to have a handle on that.

[Immanuel Can]

... The Atheist certainly has very little to offer.

What does he need to offer to whom?

Well, the Atheist wants us to think he's offering the truth, and presumably he wants to offer it not just to himself but to us as well. Because otherwise, his claim "There is no God," means no more than, "I personally don't know of any God (but it would be fine if you did)."

Do you know any Atheists that would be happy to stop at a mere confession of their own ignorance, and not go further and imply that other people ought to be Atheists too?

I've never met one.

He has no rational entitlement to say he knows there's no God.

We differ there. Every individual is, "entitled," to say whatever he wants. You don't have to agree with it, or like it, but one is certainly entitled to believe and say anything, no matter how irrational it is.

You might argue he is "morally entitled," or "entitled by way of personal free speech," RC; though I suppose that could be contested too...but you could never say somebody was "rationally entitled" to believe irrational things.

And you'll note I specifically said "rationally entitled."

He has no sufficient test to warrant his confident disbelief. Yet that is what he wants to offer...and indeed, to recommend to others.

I know there is nothing supernatural,

If you "know" it, you should be able to tell other people how they should know it too. At the very least, you could be a decent chap and help them to find the route you've gone down.

But I really don't think you know it at all, RC, however much you may want to assert it.

If he's mistaken, he'll discover it. If he's not, you will.

It's quite the opposite, RC.

If I'm wrong, neither he nor I will ever know it. If he's wrong, we'll both know it...but far too late for him, unfortunately.

There never has been, "one genuine creation, one genuine miracle, one genuine prayer answered, one genuine prophecy, one genuine revelation, one genuine incarnation, or one genuine resurrection. When and if there ever is any one of those, it will be common knowledge and every news outlet will be broadcasting it and no one will doubt it.

That's clearly untrue, because it's already been "broadcasted," and not everybody believes it. You're not merely reckoning without the fact that not everybody has the same experiences; your also reckoning without the perfidy and obduracy of the human heart.

Atheists don't want to know. That's why they claim to know what, rationally, we can see they could never know.

You are claiming certainty there is a God, aren't you?

I am claiming sufficient evidence to warrant faith.

But there are (at least potentially, you would have to concede) rational ways to know that God exists, such as I've listed above. The problem is that Atheism actually has no rational tests at all.

Cause only pertains to events

I'm afraid that's, at most, a half-truth, RC.

One of the "events" to which causes pertain is such things as creations and births. Hence, the existence of all contingent things is also a matter of cause and effect. But there is no infinite regress of causes, and no infinite regress of origins. Those are both mathematical impossibilities. So that's a QED for a First Cause of some kind.

But here we are. Therefore, there's no escaping the need for some kind of First Cause.

I know that's what you believe, but I cannot begin to understand why a, "first cause," is required unless there is some absolute principle that says everything must have a cause preceding its existence.

The principle actually reads, "Everything that has a beginning has a cause." And it's a terribly obvious one to support. Unless you believe that planetoids, wombats and motorcycle clubs spring into existence uncaused (perhaps with a pronounced "poof,") then you know very well that things that begin to exist always were caused to commence to exist by something else.

Or would you suppose that we did not come from parents, but popped into being on our own?

If there were such a principle there could be no, "first cause," because it could not exist without a preceding cause.

The principle only says, "That which has a beginning..." Anything genuinely eternal would be exempt, because to speak about the "reason" for the "existence" of any entity presupposes a beginning.

If you do not understand entity ontology you'll not understand that all events and existence can be explained without any chain of causes.

We're just not going to agree on, "first cause."

We're going to disagree about mathematics?

They never had a choice to forego free will and thus escape the risk of hell.

"Never had a chance" and "free will" are contradictory terms, in this claim.

Do you mean you worry that people "never had a chance," or that they had the chance, along with "free will," and abused it? Which worry do you wish to articulate there, RC?

Or do you mean that the "risk" wasn't worth it? Well, it depends on how much we are to value things like love, relationship, choice, identity, selfhood, freedom, and all the other such values that are contingent on us having our own powers of volition. It seems that in the divine view, our autonomy in choosing who and what we will love are valued very highly. And I suggest they are very much worth the "risk." Because we're not dealing with mere chance here...we're speaking of choice.

A real choice would be before being born with the option to be born with, "free will," and a one in a million chance of possibly making the right choice and winning all the goodies God will give you and million to one chance of making the wrong choice and spending eternity in hell, or being born without free will (like the animals), or just never being born. Why could an omniscient omnipotent God not do that?

Because if the goal is to create a situation in which God can freely be loved, it entails the creation of free creatures. But free creatures, if they truly are free, can choose well or badly, as they decide to do.

Take your own situation, RC. You've been talking to me for a bit now. You have free will. You have heard me say that God exists, and you've seen me offer up some reasons to believe it. If you find my reasons no good, you know there are plenty more. And you could find them out, even if it should turn out that I am wholly inadequate as a representative of the God hypothesis. So it's all there in front of you, at least potentially available to you, if you decide you care.

Now, you may still decide you don't want to believe in God. But if you do, it won't be because you didn't hear, or didn't really understand, or nobody ever took you seriously enough to tell you. There's no "risk" involved here...no randomness...no chance. You can choose to believe me, or choose not to.

But you'll never be able to say that God didn't do right by you.

If God desires beings that freely choose relationship with Him, then analytically, it is impossible that being should have no other choice BUT to love Him. So it is inevitable that some free beings are going to make a bad choice.

Do you know what you are saying? If I desire something and the only way I can get it is to allow an inevitable evil to happen to even one other being (never mind millions of them) the only right choice is to live without what I desire. Why could a morally perfect God not do that?

What if He did even better. What if he did everything He possibly could to to make sure you made the right choice -- short of taking away your identity, mind and free will, of course. What if, in order to prevent any evil from happening to anyone, God Himself took on Himself the evil that would come to others?

But what if, as free beings, they still decided to refuse to believe He had done it? And what if they still said, "We will not have this!" What does a God who honours human volition and personal identity do with the situation in which people are determined, even after all He's done, to choose badly?

If he prevents the bad choice, then volition, identity, relationship, and all that was only ever a charade. God had no intention of letting them choose for themselves; He just faked it. But really, they were predetermined to be forced into the right choice. And so they had no choice at all.

And then, the Determinists would be right.

You really think having one's will honored and being recognize as an individual is a just exchange for eternal torment?

You miss the point. There IS no relationship without free will. Moreover, there isn't even a genuine YOU, if you can do nothing but what you're programmed to do. And there is no such thing as love.

Come explain that to my kitty. She very much enjoys her life and everything she does is because it's what she wants to do when she wants to do it. Better a life of a cat than a life at risk of hell.

But we aren't cats. We're free creatures, created for the purpose of being able to freely appreciate God, and to enjoy Him forever. But we're free creatures. And we may choose otherwise. That "risk" is significant. But let's not pretend it's a matter of chance; it's a matter of choice.

Nobody who doesn't want to take that "risk" does.

That's enough for now. I seem to remember that you believe in eternal security, so I do not wish to be more of a challenge to your faith than necessary.

Please...no worries. Like I said, RC, bowl overhand. These are things I never mind talking about, and I find challenges exhilarating.

I'm not hit for six.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, I'm not claiming to "know who they are"... that's your gig.

So, to sum up, you say you don't know what an Atheist is. And you're saying it wouldn't matter. But you're arguing anyway.

Is this really so hard to comprehend?

As a rational exercise? Completely.

[Sculptor]

So, to sum up, you say you don't know what an Atheist is. And you're saying it wouldn't matter. But you're arguing anyway.

Like most religious nuts, IC is very good at trying to tell other people what they think, what they are suppose to think, and how wrong he thinks they are.
Sadly like most religious nuts, he is simply wrong, as, like most religious nuts he not only claims to know what other people think, but he also knows claims to know the mind of god, as he so often tries to demonstrate.
All this would be funny is he had a sense of perspective or irony.

[Lacewing]

Well, I'm not claiming to "know who they are"... that's your gig.

So, to sum up, you say you don't know what an Atheist is. And you're saying it wouldn't matter. But you're arguing anyway.

I suggest you sum up yourself. It's much more funny.

[Immanuel Can]

IC is very good at trying to tell other people what they think,

I don't tell them what to think. You can always believe what you want.

But I'm not at all against pointing out when they're not thinking logically, or coming to sound and well-reasoned conclusions. That is, after all, what we're all here for.

[Sculptor]

IC is very good at trying to tell other people what they think,

I don't tell them what to think. You can always believe what you want.

But I'm not at all against pointing out when they're not thinking logically, or coming to sound and well-reasoned conclusions. That is, after all, what we're all here for.

Trouble is that you yourself are completely incapable of logical thought when it comes to matters of religion and god.

Definition; Atheism
noun
disbelief OR lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Because you cloud your mind with belief you cannot understand others that see belief as a failure. Thus what you see in an atheist is a person that "DISBELIEVES", yet nothing of the sort of the sort is implied by the phrase.
By your own definition since you ARE a believer, then you are also an atheist since there are many gods that you disbelieve in.

Belief is the failure of reason. To believe is to give up on the pursuit of knowledge.
I'm not agnostic about gods, for the same reason I am not agnostic about other types of fairies, and spooks. What I allow into my knowledge is forever contingent upon the evidence and reason that generated it. Knowledge us always subject to scrutiny.

Thus far, since no accounts or (ahem!) arguments concerning spooks, fairies and gods has convinced me I have not allowed that into "knowledge", and such things reside in the realm of fantasy with Gandalf and Aslan.

Faith plays no part in my experience.

[Immanuel Can]

Definition; Atheism
noun
disbelief OR lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

A poor definition. It fails to leave anything to "agnosticism" as a distinct position, and if true, would imply that everything that "lacks belief in God" is an Atheist...so a rock is an Atheist, and a dog is an Atheist, and a paramecium is an Atheist...

Is that kind of definition good enough for you?

Faith plays no part in my experience.

You don't believe anything you don't know for sure, you mean? So you don't believe you will wake up tomorrow morning? You don't believe your spouse loves you? You don't believe there is a planet called Neptune? And you don't even have the confidence that you will draw another breath?

It's remarkable that you can get out of bed in the morning, since it would take faith to believe your feet would hit the floor.

[Dontaskme]

IC is very good at trying to tell other people what they think,

I don't tell them what to think. You can always believe what you want.

But I'm not at all against pointing out when they're not thinking logically, or coming to sound and well-reasoned conclusions. That is, after all, what we're all here for.

Believers or non-believers of religion are both right. For they both speak of nothing, argue nothing, believe, think, and know nothing..because they are nothing, except what is believed to be something which is actually nothing.

It's the greatest story ever told, that no one ever wrote.

[surreptitious57]

Existence is eternal regardless of what God human beings do or do not believe in
There has to be something as nothing cannot persist and is one of the two fundamental truths
The other fundamental truth is that we are no more significant than anything else in Existence

While we are here we keep ourselves busy and we may also have some purpose but all this is merely temporary
But living for ever would be too demanding both mentally and physically so death is actually the ideal solution

[surreptitious57]

You dont believe anything you don't know for sure

I have no need to believe or not to believe anything because of the degree of uncertainty
I either know things or do not know things and for both of them belief is just superfluous