A Challenge to Richard Dawkins and the Atheists

[thedoc]

The other thing I wanted to ask. You seemingly rejected philosophy for its gloomy and abstracted lack of efficacy in "real life". So you embraced religion instead and that apparently suits you better. So why have to "backslid" to philosophy? What draws you? Why not develop theistic ideas with peers on religious forums rather than struggle with those who think differently?

I became a Christian while doing philosophy. I've never thought of those two as requiring different skills. I know some people do -- mystics and pietists, for example, believe you cannot do reason and be a person of faith. I think that's wrong. Likewise, many critics of religion accept the same false division: they think that to have faith, you can't think, use evidence or employ logic. I think that's nonsense too.

When I attended college I started to question everything, including the existence of God, and drifted away from the Church. I started reading Buddhism as part of my involvement in Karate, and started to notice the great similarities to Christianity. Eventually I came back to the Church, not because of the teachings of that particular Church, but the realization that all religions had some version of the truth, and it was up to the individual to find that truth. I came to faith by contemplating the whole situation.

A little aside, once I was in a book store looking for a book on Yoga, I was interested in the philosophy behind, it and not in the exercises involved. I found 2 books on the subject, both had attractive females on the cover to attract attention. The one had a girl sitting in a cross legged position but not a proper lotus position, and the girl on the cover was no-where in the book. The other had a girl on the cover in a similar sitting position but in a proper lotus position, and the girl on the cover was also in the book demonstrating the various exercises, that is the book I bought. There were other books on Yoga but they didn't cover the subjects I was interested in.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I became a Christian while doing philosophy. I've never thought of those two as requiring different skills. I know some people do -- mystics and pietists, for example, believe you cannot do reason and be a person of faith. I think that's wrong. Likewise, many critics of religion accept the same false division: they think that to have faith, you can't think, use evidence or employ logic. I think that's nonsense too.

When I attended college I started to question everything, including the existence of God, and drifted away from the Church. I started reading Buddhism as part of my involvement in Karate, and started to notice the great similarities to Christianity. Eventually I came back to the Church, not because of the teachings of that particular Church, but the realization that all religions had some version of the truth, and it was up to the individual to find that truth. I came to faith by contemplating the whole situation.

A little aside, once I was in a book store looking for a book on Yoga, I was interested in the philosophy behind, it and not in the exercises involved. I found 2 books on the subject, both had attractive females on the cover to attract attention. The one had a girl sitting in a cross legged position but not a proper lotus position, and the girl on the cover was no-where in the book. The other had a girl on the cover in a similar sitting position but in a proper lotus position, and the girl on the cover was also in the book demonstrating the various exercises, that is the book I bought. There were other books on Yoga but they didn't cover the subjects I was interested in.

I knew that didn't look like anything Greta would write, just some idiot who can't manoeuvre the 'quote' facility.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I became a Christian while doing philosophy.

Isn't a Christian someone who aspires to emulate Christ and to adopt his values and adhere to his teachings? Well, unless Christ was a mean spirited, patronising, self important, sneering weasel of a man, you are not a Christian. So there.

[thedoc]

I knew that didn't look like anything Greta would write.

Is that better, your Highness?

[Greta]

"He" would have to self-reveal? No assumptions?

Who's assuming?

If He has chosen to reveal His nature, then assumptions are simply not necessary anymore. We have what we need to know. We can choose to believe it or not...but we don't need to assume anymore.

The difficulty is when some people will deny that an occurrence is of God rather than being a random event. They will cite rational explanations of the particular event, claiming that a rational explanation excludes God, but there is no reason to assume that God cannot work in rational explainable ways. Neil DeGrass Tyson likes to claim that religious people worship the "God of the gaps" in that religious people can only claim God's involvement for things that science can't explain, and if science can explain it then God is excluded, but this is wrong. I believe that God exists and I also believe evolution is the way things got to be the way they are. God created the Universe and life, and Evolution and the Big Bang is how God did it.

NdGT's did not invent "the god of the gaps", but God certainly has undergone significant scope shrinkage since the scientific age began. As a result, some theists have decided to disengage completely, seemingly because they are romantics at heart and want to cling to a fantasy that makes them happy in the face of a dangerously reconstructing world.

It is true that manipulation has been creeping into atheism, the kind of manipulation that has long been the domain (and expertise) of theists throughout history. Some of the "scientific" whitewash jobs on unexplained phenomena have struck me as obvious snow jobs. The attitude at times seems to be "Say anything to get them to shut up". I object to this on two levels: 1) denial itself is unscientific and 2) interesting things happen that are not properly investigated, perhaps because no knows how.

Science, being a study of patterns, has always struggled to deal with the sporadic and the unexpected. To simplify, they must operate on the theoretical assumption that anything that lacks evidence does not exist. Some take the simplification to heart and believe it.

[seeds]

"He" would have to self-reveal? No assumptions?

Who's assuming?

Greta can certainly correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that what she is referring to is the ”assumption” that God is a “male” humanoid looking chap with a large pair of huevos dangling between some hairy legs.

Granted, even I, for lack of a better word, am guilty of using the pronoun “he” when referencing God. But again, it is just for a lack of a better word for an entity that (IMO) has no gender.

Very nicely put I always use "it". Then again, I do not consider entities called "it" to be inferior to gendered things - which seems to be the usual objection. The Sun is an "it" and it is the closest thing we have to a deity - it created us and we are made from its body, and it sustains us 24/7, making all that we value possible. An it. Another notable "it" - the Earth.

The sun didn’t create us.

The sun is just as oblivious to the ultimate truth of its own creation and existence as we are of ours.

Furthermore (and assuming that she too is not a “horrid old bat” like the one you quoted ), would you refer to your mom as an “it”?

If not, then don’t you think that “God” (another problematic word) deserves to be viewed as something more than just an “it”?
_______

[Immanuel Can]

...an entity that (IMO) has no gender.

You've got the situation backward. "Maleness" is not a human characteristic attributed to God. It's a god-like characteristic attributed to humankind. We have to remember Who is the original, and who is the derivative creature.

Greta is right, there is no such “thing” as evil as if it were something that you step in and can’t get off your shoe, or some kind of literal contagion that can randomly infect one’s psyche, or worse yet, something personified in the form a horned demon.

And you know this because....?

In one sense, I agree: namely, that what we call "evil" is not necessarily an independently existing "thing," just as "red" or "old" are not independent things: they're adjectival, and thus are value judgments about some noun. In that sense, I agree that "evil" is not a "thing". But if you mean it's not real, that the value judgment refers to nothing, then I deny that.

All “evil” is, or ever was, is low consciousness and the actions resulting from it, which, ironically, is something (low-consciousness) that God “Him”-self (sorry Greta) has imposed on humans for the sake of maintaining the integrity (believability) of the “illusion” of objective reality.

You've got a kind of Pantheist or Gnostic "god" in mind there? That's what it sounds like if we say God "imposes" some sort of "low-consciousness" in order to produce an illusion of believability.

But then, evil isn't really "bad," is it? It's just a tool the Supreme Being uses to mislead human beings; and if it works, then it's "good" for his purposes.

Nope. Not in agreement with that. I think evil is a real and accurate value judgment of certain actions, attitudes and dispositions. And I don't think God generates it. I think it's a product and symptom of mankind's alienation from God.

(P.S., please don’t interpret this minor interjection as my siding with the atheists against you.)

No worries. I wasn't assuming that. I was thinking we were just talking.

[Immanuel Can]

Neil DeGrass Tyson likes to claim that religious people worship the "God of the gaps" in that religious people can only claim God's involvement for things that science can't explain, and if science can explain it then God is excluded, but this is wrong.

Yes. And that's simply a straw-man fallacy. It's a product of the NOMA hypothesis. But I think a reasonable Theist will reject NOMA outright.

[Immanuel Can]

When I attended college I started to question everything, including the existence of God, and drifted away from the Church. I started reading Buddhism as part of my involvement in Karate, and started to notice the great similarities to Christianity. Eventually I came back to the Church, not because of the teachings of that particular Church, but the realization that all religions had some version of the truth, and it was up to the individual to find that truth. I came to faith by contemplating the whole situation.

Interesting. Thank you for that insight.

[Immanuel Can]

Science, being a study of patterns, has always struggled to deal with the sporadic and the unexpected. To simplify, they must operate on the theoretical assumption that anything that lacks evidence does not exist. Some take the simplification to heart and believe it.

But science is only the study of patterns in material phenomena under controlled conditions. If that does not exhaust "the real," then science isn't a comprehensive explanation of everything, but rather a very good tool for explaining a limited set of things (composed only of material phenomena).

You're right: science is a kind of "simplification," a heuristic tool for investigating material phenomena. But it cannot answer the question, "Are material phenomena all that exists?" for two reasons: one is that science needs us to accept the limitation of the field to material phenomena before it can launch it's methodology and provide results -- it does not give us proof of that assumption. And secondly, there is a lot that people generally take to exist but which science does not try -- and does not even really purport to try -- to explain.

Aesthetics is one example. Consciousness would be another. Or rationality -- science needs consciousness and rationality in order to work at all; so it cannot be the grounds to justify things like those. Ethics is another one. Science (i.e. sociological studies) can tell us what people DO: but it cannot tell us what makes it "right" or "wrong" for them to do it.

[Dubious]

God created the Universe and life, and Evolution and the Big Bang is how God did it.

...as in Father & Son. OT & NT?

[thedoc]

God created the Universe and life, and Evolution and the Big Bang is how God did it.

...as in Father & Son. OT & NT?

That's as good a mythology as any.

[Dubious]

God created the Universe and life, and Evolution and the Big Bang is how God did it.

...as in Father & Son. OT & NT?

That's as good a mythology as any.

Indeed it is and the language of the King James version makes it great!

[Greta]

The Sun is an "it" and it is the closest thing we have to a deity - it created us and we are made from its body, and it sustains us 24/7, making all that we value possible. An it. Another notable "it" - the Earth.

The sun didn’t create us.

The sun is just as oblivious to the ultimate truth of its own creation and existence as we are of ours.

Furthermore (and assuming that she too is not a “horrid old bat” like the one you quoted ), would you refer to your mom as an “it”?

If not, then don’t you think that “God” (another problematic word) deserves to be viewed as something more than just an “it”?
_______

Would I refer any women or girl as "it"? No. Nor would I refer to them as "he". This issue actually has nothing to do with respect and everything to with veracity. A pretty lie remains a lie. Propagate a lie knowingly, even if for aesthetic properties, and you unwittingly promote lies and delusion in the literal minded impressionable people.

I note a focus on hierarchy, which then brings us back why the pronoun "he". "She" would be insulting because God could not be a a female since women are lesser beings than males (ahem). Meanwhile, "it" suggests something that is not human, and since humans are the ultimate entities (ahem), then "it" suggests subhuman. The idea that God is beyond human and beyond gender is an unpopular one, although given due lip service when the dissonance of the position is pointed out.

Then everyone goes back to "He" again. I have been on these forums for years and I have tested theists with this for that long, and never once has one changed their conception of God to neutral - it remains masculine because, the pronouns immediately confers gender. The very moment you give a deity a pronoun, it has a gender. I gave up on any chance of getting through in the slightest years ago, but it's still interesting to see what people say to try to work around it.

If you don't believe me, try referring to God as "she", especially to other theists, and see what kind of response you get.

Your comment about the Sun suggests that you believe that all creation must require agency, ie. that no creation can occur without a conscious humanlike mind guiding every step. All evidence points away from this idea. I am surprised that you would deny the idea of "planetary seeds" created and fostered by the Sun in the protoplanetary disc.

[thedoc]

...as in Father & Son. OT & NT?

That's as good a mythology as any.

Indeed it is and the language of the King James version makes it great!

I like the language of the KJV, in HS I took a liking to Shakespeare and had no problem understanding what was being said. I have had several people tell me that they can't understand the language of Shakespeare, and had problems understanding the KJV Bible.