Why don't we believe?

[humanguy]

I realize, of course, that you're not asking me that question, but I'm going to give an answer anyway.

this is why we post on an open forum, or else he and i should private message. but its better that we can all comment and see each others response.

Here's exactly what I think of that. I think it's nuts. I don't see any thought being put into what I've quoted here. It's the words of an automaton. I find it to be very sad.

I'll go so far as to say that I consider it to be very depressing, this idea, this reality even (as we are shown here), that a reasonably intelligent person, one who has access to all the resources that western civilization has to offer, could actually be so simpleminded as to entertain such notions.

That's what I think of that.

i think you should cut theists a little bit of slack

It is my intention to give all humans all the slack they may need, Christian or atheist or whatever. But it only goes so far. Honesty is the only policy, that I am convinced of.

Trust me, I don't want to hurt the feelings of a special needs simpleton or a deeply troubled neurotic. Not my idea of a good time at all.

But if I see something silly then I'm going to call it that, silly. And this:

Yes but you're talking about the difference between being created and not being created (assuming God is real). And if God is real its not as if choosing to have a relationship with God is something bad, its what we were made for, its what makes us whole, at least according to the Bible. I suppose in that way its similar to the relationship between a dog and its master. The dog doesn't really have much of a choice, but from my own personal experience as long as a dog is treated right and is taught to be obedient with compassion, patience and love that dog will have never been more complete. From what I have observed the greatest joy my dog ever had was when she was spending time with me and I with her. Perhaps its a similar thing between us and God. What do you think of that?

Come on. It's silly. Read it, it's completely silly.

He asked me what I think of it and that's what I think of it.

[Dr Mundo]

Come on. It's silly. Read it, it's completely silly.

He asked me what I think of it and that's what I think of it.

yeah i know what you mean, for a long time i kept my mouth shut about these things because i didn't want to offend, but now i speak about it a whole lot. i just think we need to talk to each other and show them why we think its silly, not just say its silly and move on. but i agree, somewhat, to your approach about being honest its just it sounded a little more condescending than it needed to be is all.

[WorldlingWatcher]

2. Relevance and Materiality
"Information must be relevant to the problem for which it has been sought... Materiality of information refers to its significance on the outcome of a decision."

What's a standard for determining if something's relevant and material?

3. Reliability and Verifiability
"Facts, figures and data, must be reliable. They must be as free from error as possible. If something is held to be true, it must also be universally observable and verifiable by many other independent sources."

If something is "universally observable and verifiable" shouldn't every independent source be able to observe and verify it?

5. Consistency
"The information given by evidence [must be] consistent. For example, theories in algebra and chemistry are consistent and evident everywhere. Once understood, a person can use them to build planes or formulate medicine, regardless of whether they are a Muslim, an atheist or a Christian."

How do you build a standard of consistency for an immaterial thing which may not be bound by the material laws of the universe?

[Exrev]

1. Hell ! I rejected the idea that a truly loving God would make this torture chamber! I don't believe a god would be that unjust

Finite crimes do not deserve infinite punishment, in fact punishment is a part of discipline which in turns means that at the end of the day its meant to train someone. Eternal punishment therefore is not punishment...its torture.

This is a tough one. But before I write down some thoughts I've had on this area I want to go in another direction real quick. Somewhere in this thread, and I think it was you Exrev, I got the impression you looked down on Christians for using cop outs as you called them (like saying God’s ways are higher than our own and stuff like that). Well I see where you’re coming from, but then at the same time I don’t.

If I’m serious about my belief in God then where I’m standing right now it would be unreasonable for me to think I could understand everything that the uncreated God has ever done or ever will do. I guess I would say it’s quite understandable that it’s not possible for me to understand everything that God does or knows. In this situation it’s not a cop out, it’s reality. So I guess what I’m trying to say it would be good to use your language accurately. What I mean is perhaps you should say, “It would appear that Christians use those kind of statements as cop outs”, because as far as I know you can’t prove that Christianity is false beyond all doubt and if you can’t prove it’s false it might be true and if it might be true then such statements would not be cop outs they would be truthful accurate descriptions of human reality. I suppose this is just a simple matter of making sure our statements remain within what may be known, if you know what I mean. Sorry to be so technical, but I feel it’s necessary and please correct me if you think I’m wrong here.

No such thing as beyond ALL doubt. And do I even need such a standard, I think not. In civil court its the preponderance of the evidence and even criminal court its beyond a REASONABLE doubt. So beyond ALL doubt is pretty much impossible. But if we assume that the law of non-contradiction is true then Christianity is beyond debunked. See while I maybe not be able to prove that god doesn't exist- nor would I want to or need to. But showing that Christianity is not true is a completely a different matter. But its really easy. 1. Jesus lied Mark 13. 2. The bible contradicts itself so many times its not funny http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html 3. The Christian god is not logical the trinity. 4. Modern archeology does not support the story of O.T. So anyways the god question and is Christianity true are two very different questions. I'd agree that we can't prove a negative like there is no god...but the more claims about god one makes the more likely it is that it can be show to be false or impossible.

Anyways back to Hell. I don’t have a magical answer, but I do have some thoughts. In this life I’ve observed that some things are more good than others (and I suppose what follows will be mostly my opinions but others might agree). For example if I take on the responsibility of caring for a dog some really good things can come out of it if I do it right. If I love the dog, discipline the dog when I should, spend a good amount of time with the dog, make sure it gets enough exercise, feed it healthy food, you know just do things right that relationship with the dog can be really good. Now on the other hand I can really screw it up and things can go bad and I don’t want to talk about it because it would make me sad to describe.

Now let’s go upwards. If I were to fall in love with a woman and was somehow able to make her fall in love with me that relationship could be simply amazing if I did it right. But again if I didn’t do things right, well things can get really really nasty and I really don’t want to describe that.

Now let’s go to the top according to Christianity. God creates me to glorify Him. If I come into right relationship through Jesus with God things can go really well, beyond all imagination according to Christianity. God is the fuel upon which we are meant to run, we become fulfilled in Him, at least that’s what Christianity says paraphrasing of course. Now if I screw up this relationship then things get bad.

Define a relationship with Jesus?
Is it doing prayer?
Bible Reading? Going to Church? Feeling warm fuzzy tingly feelings when playing worship music?
Community Service? Loving other people? Having great sex?
Thanking Jesus for a parking space at the mall, while thousands of children starve to death?
SO define what you mean by RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS?

So by now you probably see where I’m going. I can’t help but to notice in this life it seems like the better something is, the more good it can produce but also the worse it can get and the more bad it can produce. Sure shooting some hoops with your buddies is fun and if you win its alright, but if you have trained all your life with the goal of winning an NBA title and you finally get your shot, things go to a whole new level, the win become that much better and the loss becomes that much more heart wrenching. You can’t raise the stakes in poker only in your favor, when you raise the stakes in life it only really means something when the stakes are raised both ways. Do you see what I’m saying?

I don't know how this is relevant to the conversation. Other than the more you risk something the sweeter the success and the harder the failure. But what does this have to do with God. So maybe the more committed the believer...the more bitter they will be when they find out that their faith was a bunch of bullshit.

You said finite crimes do not deserve infinite punishment, but I can’t help but wonder what kind of stakes we are playing with when we welcome or reject a relationship with God.

Its not a choice. If it is the Christian god we must worship him or we burn. That is not a choice. There can be no love when we have a greater power demanding that we worship him. Its a demand and we are his slave. If the Christian god exists, you have no choice.

But I don’t know, this is just something that I’ve often thought. What do you think about what I’ve said?

[/quote]

I really don't see where you were going with this.

[Keep The Reason]

I'll play for this next level, and after that it will devolve into absurdity. Here's the qualifiers:

Until some information comes along to support immaterialist claims that is demonstrable and falsifiable, all things in human experience are from matter or the interactions between matter. Otherworldy, supernatural, et al are speculative.

Second, humans are trapped in a penultimate level of reality, not able to make solid claims of the ultimate, which we can imagine but not prove. We cannot prove we are not brains in a jar and we cannot prove we are god-created. Quid pro quo.

What's a standard for determining if something's relevant and material?

Relevancy and material is defined as overtly pertaining to a question or issue at hand. The question, "What is this rock made of?" would not be served by asserting "Winters in Finland are cold."

If something is "universally observable and verifiable" shouldn't every independent source be able to observe and verify it?

Theoretically yes; however I believe the wording of "many" is meant to take into consideration extremely difficult circumstances, like going to the moon to find out for oneself if we went to the moon. Theoretically every independent source should be able to go to the moon but the costs are so prohibitive (today) that it's impractical. I would have written it as "many, or theoretically every, independent source... etc".

How do you build a standard of consistency for an immaterial thing which may not be bound by the material laws of the universe?

The standard is already in the premise:

Once understood, a person can use them to build planes or formulate medicine, regardless of whether they are a Muslim, an atheist or a Christian."

That is the standard for consistency. If you use them and a plane or formulation of medicine cannot result, then they aren't consistent.

[Tim-the-Hermit]

Trust me, I don't want to hurt the feelings of a special needs simpleton or a deeply troubled neurotic. Not my idea of a good time at all..

‘Special needs’ and ‘simpleton’ don’t go together except in your ignorant view.

[humanguy]

Trust me, I don't want to hurt the feelings of a special needs simpleton or a deeply troubled neurotic. Not my idea of a good time at all..

‘Special needs’ and ‘simpleton’ don’t go together except in your ignorant view.

You're a pistol, Tim!

[Tim-the-Hermit]

Ha! I’m an ex-SEN student. ‘Tea Party simpleton’ would be a better turn of phrase, HG!

[Exrev]

Ha! I’m an ex-SEN student. ‘Tea Party simpleton’ would be a better turn of phrase, HG!

bahahahahahahhahahahaha;

[WorldlingWatcher]

Until some information comes along to support immaterialist claims that is demonstrable and falsifiable, all things in human experience are from matter or the interactions between matter. Otherworldy, supernatural, et al are speculative.

Second, humans are trapped in a penultimate level of reality, not able to make solid claims of the ultimate, which we can imagine but not prove. We cannot prove we are not brains in a jar and we cannot prove we are god-created.

But you make a claim about the ultimate just by proposing that matter exists and you can examine and draw conclusions about it in a way that's independent of your own matter. Also, aren't you making a solid claim about the ultimate by asserting we can't say anything solid about it?

And how do you know we exist at a level one step away from the ultimate? Is there an experiment for that?

[Exrev]

Until some information comes along to support immaterialist claims that is demonstrable and falsifiable, all things in human experience are from matter or the interactions between matter. Otherworldy, supernatural, et al are speculative.

Second, humans are trapped in a penultimate level of reality, not able to make solid claims of the ultimate, which we can imagine but not prove. We cannot prove we are not brains in a jar and we cannot prove we are god-created.

But you make a claim about the ultimate just by proposing that matter exists and you can examine and draw conclusions about it in a way that's independent of your own matter. Also, aren't you making a solid claim about the ultimate by asserting we can't say anything solid about it?

Incorrect, because the intent of the statement is not about the ultimate only what we can say about the ultimate at this time from our perspective. This is not an ultimate claim of truth. Its just the opposite.

And how do you know we exist at a level one step away from the ultimate? Is there an experiment for that?

Actually yes. We know that there are light waves that exist outside of our vision and sounds that exist outside of our hearing range. Its funny because this is all word games saying that we don't know the ultimate truth, is not a statement about the ultimate. The fact that we continue to discover things about our own world. the fact that we continue to debate quantum physics such as String theory. We know we don't know everything about our small world, why would we claim to know "ultimate' reality. Doesn't mean we aren't right about it, but how would we confirm it to ourselves.

So this makes me scratch my head. Why is someone who claims that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that God of the Jew is the one true god really care about the philosophy of ultimate truth when in fact they already claim absolute knowledge of God and Jesus Christ?

[humanguy]

Why is someone who claims that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that God of the Jew is the one true god really care about the philosophy of ultimate truth when in fact they already claim absolute knowledge of God and Jesus Christ?

This.

[Exrev]

Why is someone who claims that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that God of the Jew is the one true god really care about the philosophy of ultimate truth when in fact they already claim absolute knowledge of God and Jesus Christ?

This.

??

[humanguy]

Why is someone who claims that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that God of the Jew is the one true god really care about the philosophy of ultimate truth when in fact they already claim absolute knowledge of God and Jesus Christ?

This.

??

I mean it's a great question. It inspired me to devote a thread to it:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2609

[Keep The Reason]

But you make a claim about the ultimate just by proposing that matter exists and you can examine and draw conclusions about it in a way that's independent of your own matter. Also, aren't you making a solid claim about the ultimate by asserting we can't say anything solid about it?

No, because I admit I could be wrong. I already stated that I cannot prove anything ultimately; hell, we could all be brains in a jar somewhere sharing a vast complicated dream (actually, being in a vast complicated dream is precisely what we are in a theistic existence-- we are in god's dream.)

And how do you know we exist at a level one step away from the ultimate? Is there an experiment for that?

I do not know it without exception. And because I cannot know it for sure, that means the absolute knowing of something is at least one level away. Now, who knows, maybe there's a thousand levels more to go, or an infinite number of level to go. But I can postulate whatever level I'm on, I cannot prove it beyond all doubt, hence there is a deeper level. But I also have a lot of demonstration that things within the universe may be extant without my directly knowing it and we need tools and technology to uncover it.

The difference between Reasonists and theists really seems to circle around absolutist mindsets. I can live in a world where things are not known utterly and absolutely for sure, and I'm quite at home with this. Theists however, make such sweeping statements about these supernatural beings -- and act as if they know these things must be true, that we have these ideological clashes. And when pressed, theists lay claim to "faith" -- which in and of itself means they don't know for sure, but they only believe "for sure" -- which is different.