Atheistforums.com

Hi,

I have just been banned from Christian Forums for alleged 'blasphemy'. The Admin wrote to me to, saying, 'As someone claiming to be a Christian, we find your claim that God may not be real to be in contempt of Christianity. As such, we are banning you to "Support" to discuss this.'

After that, I could not get into the forum and could only go to the Inquisition Room to be examined by the Admin.

All I did was to say that religion was irrational in reply to Christians who insisted that they didn't have enough 'faith' to be atheists. I showed why the Christian God could not possibly exist and I entered into a few debates with some of them who tried to befuddle me with philosophy. But I held on to my position and soon it became clear that I was right. It was so obvious I was right and within hours, I was banned and my posts which contained cogent arguments against God were deleted. But I screensaved everything.

I don't want to talk to the admin as I've been told to. There is one more problem. When I first applied to join CF last year, the system did not accept my year of birth. It gave me an error message. But when I wrote 1999 as my year of birth, it accepted me. I think if I talk to the admin, they will probably use this as an excuse that I was rightly banned. CF does not accept applicants who are below 16. There are many restrictions in CF. The Christians on CF tend to be very abrasive and defensive the moment they notice that you are not there to praise God. The atheists on CF are just the opposite - they are very willing to discuss anything and they are obviously miles more intelligent than the rest. So I did a search for 'atheist forums' and I found this. Haha.

Cheers,

St Truth

Welcome.  I hope your stay is long and storied.

Thanks!  I normally stay until I'm banned. But it's less likely to be banned in an atheist forum since atheists don't live in glass houses.

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 10:18:44 PM
Thanks!  I normally stay until I'm banned. But it's less likely to be banned in an atheist forum since atheists don't live in glass houses.

Don't be so sure. I've been banned from the 2 biggest atheist forums and I'm a fucking atheist lol.

Hey, their loss is our gain, St. Truth!

Quote from: Gilgamesh on September 22, 2017, 10:29:07 PM
Don't be so sure. I've been banned from the 2 biggest atheist forums and I'm a fucking atheist lol.

I don't use swear words. Less likely to be banned. CF banned me and I quoted verbatim what the admin said. 'Claiming that God may not be real' was my crime. But CF has many restrictions. Many forums in CF are restricted only to Christians. The impression I get is there is a great deal of fear and there is a great need to protect something that is really fragile. You don't feel free when you're there. You feel like you're in a shop filled to the brim with glassware and breakable china and you're sure to upset something fragile if you so much as sneeze.

So, you were like a bull in a china shop, huh?

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 22, 2017, 10:39:30 PM
Hey, their loss is our gain, St. Truth!

Thanks! It's very terrible when they just deleted all my posts and I addressed all the points and my arguments were really good and irrefutable. They deleted my arguments and left the other people's arguments on so that it looked funny. They addressed me but I had disappeared from the posts. That is disgracefully unfair. But the moderators wanted the "Christian-friendly" arguments to remain and they didn't want that rocked their faith boat. I was already getting fed up with the Amen chorus that would always sing praises of Christian-friendly posts.

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 22, 2017, 10:43:28 PM
So, you were like a bull in a china shop, huh?

Or a rational boy in a room filled with adult dotards.  Hah! I've used that word.

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 10:49:38 PM
Thanks! It's very terrible when they just deleted all my posts and I addressed all the points and my arguments were really good and irrefutable. They deleted my arguments and left the other people's arguments on so that it looked funny. They addressed me but I had disappeared from the posts. That is disgracefully unfair. But the moderators wanted the "Christian-friendly" arguments to remain and they didn't want that rocked their faith boat. I was already getting fed up with the Amen chorus that would always sing praises of Christian-friendly posts.

Well, I'm sure they didn't want you to disrupt their cash stream.

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 22, 2017, 10:53:02 PM
Well, I'm sure they didn't want you to disrupt their cash stream.

To be fair to them, I don't think they get paid for it. They just don't want anyone to upset their precious belief system.

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 10:40:03 PM
I don't use swear words. Less likely to be banned. CF banned me and I quoted verbatim what the admin said. 'Claiming that God may not be real' was my crime. But CF has many restrictions. Many forums in CF are restricted only to Christians. The impression I get is there is a great deal of fear and there is a great need to protect something that is really fragile. You don't feel free when you're there. You feel like you're in a shop filled to the brim with glassware and breakable china and you're sure to upset something fragile if you so much as sneeze.

That was my impression as well during my time there.  They closed down the Evolution & Creation forum when the tide turned against the creationists (and arguably, creationists started making Christians look like wackos)

Quote from: Hydra009 on September 22, 2017, 11:15:47 PM
That was my impression as well during my time there.  They closed down the Evolution & Creation forum when the tide turned against the creationists (and arguably, creationists started making Christians look like wackos)

I read some of the posts and I discovered that they closed down quite a few forums. If they find any argument against fragile God convincing, they will remove the post and give you a warning for blasphemy. I was wondering at first why the atheists in CF are so careful with what they say. They are arguing with their hands tied behind their backs and their lips sealed. They only dare to use careful sarcasms. For example, one idiot wrote a lengthy "argument" that God said this and God said that and so it must be so even if the logic doesn't seem to be right "to our human minds". The atheist merely replied, "OK, if Jesus says so."

I sometimes wonder why the atheists are so masochistic as to remain in such a forum. In the Apologetics section, they made it difficult for atheists to post. Atheists who want to post there have to sign in on a thread for non-Christians only - promising to abide by the rules or their right to post would be removed.  The rules are very long. And so many atheists actually bother to sign on that thread. I didn't have to because I'm a Christian. They treat atheists very shabbily and if you so much as say anything against a Christian, they'll come down hard on you for insulting Christianity. If I were an atheist, I'd never go anywhere near CF.

Wow.  They must've really clamped down.

They used to be really touchy about anything even remotely close to swearing (I got a warning once for referencing the "damn you all to hell" line from the end of Planet of the Apes.  It was just a joke, but apparently they take 'damning' more seriously than I do) and you also have to watch out about ruffling feathers by bluntly contradicting someone else's delusions (it's illegal to point out that the king is naked), but the atheists there were allowed to tactfully disagree.  Has even that been lost?

It was bizarre how over there you get treated a lot better if you wear agnostic flair instead of atheist flair.  At the time, I don't think they realized that a lot of people consider themselves agnostic atheists.

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 10:40:03 PM
I don't use swear words. Less likely to be banned. CF banned me and I quoted verbatim what the admin said. 'Claiming that God may not be real' was my crime. But CF has many restrictions. Many forums in CF are restricted only to Christians. The impression I get is there is a great deal of fear and there is a great need to protect something that is really fragile. You don't feel free when you're there. You feel like you're in a shop filled to the brim with glassware and breakable china and you're sure to upset something fragile if you so much as sneeze.

I find this true all over the Internet.  PC is everywhere, just not one kind, many kinds.  Glass houses all the way down, and everyone is stoned ;-)

And welcome.

I am a heretic, so both theists and atheists stone me ... but I prefer my own liquor cabinet thank you very much!

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 10:50:52 PM
Or a rational boy in a room filled with adult dotards.  Hah! I've used that word.

Don't underestimate the wisdom of youth, a fresh face might have fresh ideas.  Old men like myself, well we are all worn out.

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 11:26:06 PM
I read some of the posts and I discovered that they closed down quite a few forums. If they find any argument against fragile God convincing, they will remove the post and give you a warning for blasphemy. I was wondering at first why the atheists in CF are so careful with what they say. They are arguing with their hands tied behind their backs and their lips sealed. They only dare to use careful sarcasms. For example, one idiot wrote a lengthy "argument" that God said this and God said that and so it must be so even if the logic doesn't seem to be right "to our human minds". The atheist merely replied, "OK, if Jesus says so."

I sometimes wonder why the atheists are so masochistic as to remain in such a forum. In the Apologetics section, they made it difficult for atheists to post. Atheists who want to post there have to sign in on a thread for non-Christians only - promising to abide by the rules or their right to post would be removed.  The rules are very long. And so many atheists actually bother to sign on that thread. I didn't have to because I'm a Christian. They treat atheists very shabbily and if you so much as say anything against a Christian, they'll come down hard on you for insulting Christianity. If I were an atheist, I'd never go anywhere near CF.

i find it rather amusing for Protestants to "act all Catholic" ;-)  They must not have reflections when they look in the mirror.

Quote from: Hydra009 on September 22, 2017, 11:54:11 PM
Wow.  They must've really clamped down.

They used to be really touchy about anything even remotely close to swearing (I got a warning once for referencing the "damn you all to hell" line from the end of Planet of the Apes.  It was just a joke, but apparently they take 'damning' more seriously than I do) and you also have to watch out about ruffling feathers by bluntly contradicting someone else's delusions (it's illegal to point out that the king is naked), but the atheists there were allowed to tactfully disagree.  Has even that been lost?

It was bizarre how over there you get treated a lot better if you wear agnostic flair instead of atheist flair.  At the time, I don't think they realized that a lot of people consider themselves agnostic atheists.

They allow you to say something if you are really diplomatic. An atheist called Nihilist Virus seems to get on fine. He is extremely logical and doesn't seem to get ruffled easily. Christians can be EXTREMELY rude but CF protects them. I think there is a very large number of people in CF (as there tend to be among people of ANY religion) who are downright stupid and these are the ones who will say nasty things and act as cheerleaders to fellow believers and if an atheist (or someone they consider 'atheistic' as they did me) tries to respond much less provocatively than they do, the moderators will come down hard on the atheists.

What is infuriating for me is they like to argue in a funny way. I'll pick one example. They say God is experienced and you can't measure God by evidence. If you say what if I experience pixies? Everyone will come down hard on you and say that's nonsense. And they are insanely evasive. When I asked them to give me one reason for their belief in God, they will give me a reading list. And when I say they have not given me a reason, they say I'm lying because they have. When I say giving me a reading list is not giving me a reason, everyone says of course it is. If I want to be obstinate and refuse to read the books recommended, I'm not interested in the reason for God and I might as well just change my status from "Christian" to "atheist". Then 3 other people will tell me to just go to God for answers. Pray to God and "seek his face". I was tempted to ask why I should bother with the face of a hoary old man but I knew I'd be banned immediately. LOL. It was like being in a madhouse. But I stayed on because I was determined to show a few people why their arguments were wrong. Until I got banned and it was a relief because I don't think any amount of reasoning could change the minds of the people I was speaking to. It's incredible how stupid some of their answers are and they seem so confident they are right.

One chap insisted that he would only 'argue' with me if I answer his questions and I could not ask him any questions. So he gave me a series of questions which I answered. And I asked him just one question and he said that was not allowed. And when I said it was unfair that I couldn't ask questions and I could only answer specific questions, everyone else said they thought it was a fair way to get to the truth!!! 

One question was whether I believed everything had a cause. I said only things I see on earth seem to have a cause. He was not happy with that. He wanted me to say EVERYTHING.  I told him that Krauss wrote a book that suggests that in the subatomic world subatomic particles could emerge from nothing so his statement was wrong. He then said the particles didn't emerge from nothing but mankind thinks it's nothing. The lunacy went on for some time. And then he wanted me to agree to the statement that everything has a cause except that which is uncaused. I asked him to give me an example of this uncaused cause but he said he would come to that later. I'm not stupid. I told him he might as well force me at gunpoint to admit that everything is created by a creator except the Trinitarian God who creates everything.

In another 'argument' I said I was even prepared to concede that a Deist God could plausibly  have caused the Big Bang and did nothing after that. Just went into hibernation. But I said it would be a quantum leap to have this Deist God suddenly appear with a holy cross and hey presto, it's the Holy Trinity. And then he gave me his 'clincher'. He said scientists called the universe a universe because it was 'unity in diversity'. And that proves the Holy Trinity. Because unity in diversity = one God in Three Persons. Wow!!! So, God left his character in the universe that he created. I told him I couldn't talk to him because his brain was different from mine. He reminded me of the early church fathers who said we have four gospels and not more and not fewer because just as there are four corners of the earth and four winds blowing on earth, hence we have four gospels. Case proven.

It was really like talking to lunatics and these are all grown-ups.

I visited a few religious forums years ago.  It was just too depressing.  My few rational discussions were mostly just met with either "Huh?" or "You lack faith" whereupon they just quoted routine biblical statements at me.  I never saw a single actual discussion. 

I got private messages from concerned people. They told me to beware of Satan. Obviously, Satan is leading my soul down the road to hell. I asked what they meant by 'soul'. Just a simple innocuous question and they were furious with me. One of them said my question showed my determination to support the atheist agenda. I told them atheists can't have a compelling agenda because they don't believe in hell for non-atheists. Whatever agenda they have can't be all that urgent. It's we Christians who have a strong all-consuming agenda. We need to 'save' souls from fire and brimstone. Then someone said she could only pray for me. Talking to me was useless because Satan has his grip on me. Dotards.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 12:16:38 AM
Don't underestimate the wisdom of youth, a fresh face might have fresh ideas.  Old men like myself, well we are all worn out.

What is a freethinking theist?

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 12:40:07 AM
I got private messages from concerned people. They told me to beware of Satan. Obviously, Satan is leading my soul down the road to hell. I asked what they meant by 'soul'. Just a simple innocuous question and they were furious with me. One of them said my question showed my determination to support the atheist agenda. I told them atheists can't have a compelling agenda because they don't believe in hell for non-atheists. Whatever agenda they have can't be all that urgent. It's we Christians who have a strong all-consuming agenda. We need to 'save' souls from fire and brimstone. Then someone said she could only pray for me. Talking to me was useless because Satan has his grip on me. Dotards.

Unless you really forgot about quote marks, you have just said you are a christian, and so your thoughts don't mean much to me.

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 01:08:58 AM
Unless you really forgot about quote marks, you have just said you are a christian, and so your thoughts don't mean much to me.

I am a Christian. I was baptised a few days after birth and I have been an altar boy all my life from my earliest recollection onwards. But there are two ways to look at religion. One is the fundamentalist way which examines a person's belief. To a fundamentalist, I would not be a Christian. The second way is the more correct approach to religion which is obviously a cultural construct. A person who practises the rituals of the church is a Christian. You can't practise the rituals more than actually participating in it as an altar boy.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 01:17:33 AM
I am a Christian. I was baptised a few days after birth and I have been an altar boy all my life from my earliest recollection onwards. But there are two ways to look at religion. One is the fundamentalist way which examines a person's belief. To a fundamentalist, I would not be a Christian. The second way is the more correct approach to religion which is obviously a cultural construct. A person who practises the rituals of the church is a Christian. You can't practise the rituals more than actually participating in it as an altar boy.

So you believe following rituals makes you a Christian and that your professed theism is merely a social game...

Welcome to our little band of heathens.

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on September 23, 2017, 02:15:31 AM
Welcome to our little band of heathens.

With a handle like St Truth and saying he is Christian, I'm not sure he is really one of us, LOL! 

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 02:11:21 AM
So you believe following rituals makes you a Christian and that your professed theism is merely a social game...

I don't profess to be a theist. Theism is a purely belief concept. I am a Christian. 'Christian' is more a culture. It's not a question of what I believe makes me a Christian. My vicar tells me I'm a Christian even though he knows my stand on everything. The best analogy is a club. A club has its sets of rules. You've got to be XYZ to be a member. But supposing there was someone who's been a club member for many generations just as one of my ancestors was an important churchman in the time of Henry VIII. Can someone say, 'Hey! You're not a club member because you don't really believe in XYZ'. You go to court. The question is whether you're a club member. What will the court do? It'll ask the club if you are on the register of members. It'll ask the club to decide if you're a member. If your name is on the register and the club says 'Yes, you are a member', will the court insist that you're not a member because some outsider says you don't believe in XYZ? Of course not. The club decides who is or is not a member. Same with the CHurch. The Church decides who is and who is not a member. It's not for outsiders to decide.

That's me - I embrace only the truth for I am...

St Truth

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 03:22:39 AM
I don't profess to be a theist. Theism is a purely belief concept. I am a Christian. 'Christian' is more a culture. It's not a question of what I believe makes me a Christian. My vicar tells me I'm a Christian even though he knows my stand on everything. The best analogy is a club. A club has its sets of rules. You've got to be XYZ to be a member. But supposing there was someone who's been a club member for many generations just as one of my ancestors was an important churchman in the time of Henry VIII. Can someone say, 'Hey! You're not a club member because you don't really believe in XYZ'. You go to court. The question is whether you're a club member. What will the court do? It'll ask the club if you are on the register of members. It'll ask the club to decide if you're a member. If your name is on the register and the club says 'Yes, you are a member', will the court insist that you're not a member because some outsider says you don't believe in XYZ? Of course not. The club decides who is or is not a member. Same with the CHurch. The Church decides who is and who is not a member. It's not for outsiders to decide.

That's me - I embrace only the truth for I am...

St Truth

Christianity is a theism.  What do you think it is, a "Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks" lodge? 

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 03:33:31 AM
Christianity is a theism.  What do you think it is, a "Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks" lodge?

There are priests in my church who openly say they don't believe God exists. One Archbishop has said it too. He started out by denying the Virgin Birth which is of course sensible. Everyone knows the Virgin Birth is false and is a mistake from the Almah-parthenos mistranslation. Then he denied the historicity of Jesus. That's normal. Then he denied the existence of God. If Christianity is what you say it is, why didn't the church ask him to leave?

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 12:06:21 AM
I find this true all over the Internet.  PC is everywhere, just not one kind, many kinds.  Glass houses all the way down, and everyone is stoned ;-)

And welcome.

I am a heretic, so both theists and atheists stone me ... but I prefer my own liquor cabinet thank you very much!

As a heretic, you are much more theist than atheist.

But...

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone

But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned!

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 12:06:21 AM
I find this true all over the Internet.  PC is everywhere, just not one kind, many kinds.  Glass houses all the way down, and everyone is stoned ;-)

And welcome.

I am a heretic, so both theists and atheists stone me ... but I prefer my own liquor cabinet thank you very much!

Sorry, I didn't see your post until Cavebear posted a reply. Thanks for the welcome.

What kind of a heretic are you? 'Heretic' is an outdated word that is no longer used by the church. Today, most priests are heretics. Haha. But what is a freethinking theist?

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 03:57:36 AM
Sorry, I didn't see your post until Cavebear posted a reply. Thanks for the welcome.

What kind of a heretic are you? 'Heretic' is an outdated word that is no longer used by the church. Today, most priests are heretics. Haha. But what is a freethinking theist?

"the church"?  Is there just one now?

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 04:00:44 AM
"the church"?  Is there just one now?

Of course you are right. I tend to think of just my church. The Established Church. And it's a good church. We are the world's most liberal. We have priests who don't even believe in God's existence. Richard Dawkins says it's the most benign church. Actually, Dawkins is still a member of the same church as me. Technically, Dawkins and I are fellow communicants of the same church. Haha. Accept that he is now a New Atheist and I'm still an altar boy who wears a surplice and carries the candle and sometimes the thurible. But as far as my church goes, he and I are of the same standing. LOL. He still says grace in New College as a Fellow.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 04:11:04 AM
Of course you are right. I tend to think of just my church. The Established Church. And it's a good church. We are the world's most liberal. We have priests who don't even believe in God's existence. Richard Dawkins says it's the most benign church. Actually, Dawkins is still a member of the same church as me. Technically, Dawkins and I are fellow communicants of the same church. Haha. Accept that he is now a New Atheist and I'm still an altar boy who wears a surplice and carries the candle and sometimes the thurible. But as far as my church goes, he and I are of the same standing. LOL. He still says grace in New College as a Fellow.

You might want to specify this "church". 

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 04:14:29 AM
You might want to specify this "church".

Lord have mercy! You don't know which church Dawkins was baptised and confirmed in? I thought you'd have Dawkins' icon on your desk and in your bedroom.

It's the CofE.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 04:16:31 AM
Lord have mercy! You don't know which church Dawkins was baptised and confirmed in? I thought you'd have Dawkins' icon on your desk and in your bedroom.

It's the CofE.

As if I would care.  Did he stay in it?  Did he care about it?  Did he announce its beliefs? 

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 04:24:59 AM
As if I would care.  Did he stay in it?  Did he care about it?  Did he announce its beliefs?

The only thing religious he does now is to say grace at New College where he's a Fellow. I remember there was a bit of unhappiness on his website once when this was mentioned. American atheists tend to be very unhappy about this kind of thing. But Dawkins understands the significance of culture.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 04:42:11 AM
The only thing religious he does now is to say grace at New College where he's a Fellow. I remember there was a bit of unhappiness on his website once when this was mentioned. American atheists tend to be very unhappy about this kind of thing. But Dawkins understands the significance of culture.

And I bet he would avoid the Grace thing if he could.  So you are saying it is the ritual that matters most to you?

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 05:02:18 AM
And I bet he would avoid the Grace thing if he could.  So you are saying it is the ritual that matters most to you?

As I explained to the dotards in Christian Forums, I'm a Christian because I was brought up one. Even rocketman who we know is the stupidest man on earth should be able to see that. But people in CF were not happy when I said that. They wanted me to say 'Oh no. I'm a Christian not because of my family. Even if I had been born in the family of Osama bin Laden, I'd be a Christian' or some such rubbish that only dotards can believe in. So I am a Christian because of my family. I'd be a blooming suicide bomber if I were born in a family of extremist Muslims.

My religion is therefore my culture. But if I were born a Muslim, I'd be an atheist today. Islam is too harmful to humanity for me to have the conscience to be even a cultural Muslim. But I'm Church of England which is purely cultural and totally innocuous. If I were born in the Westboro Baptist Church, I'd also be an atheist today.

You ask if it's the ritual that matters to me. It's the culture / religion that I am identified with and show respect for. And it's a good religion; it's peaceful and non-terrorist. OK, maybe if I had been born in the Middle Ages in the RC church with its spanish inquisition, i'd be an atheist. But that's all ancient history and I'm not in any other church but the CofE. My church doesn't have priests who molest altar boys and choir boys. Our priests are happily married with kids of their own. Of course there may be paedophiles like in any institution but you don't find an unhealthy concentration of paedophiles like the RC model of enforced celibacy naturally attracts.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 06:46:46 AM
As I explained to the dotards in Christian Forums, I'm a Christian because I was brought up one. Even rocketman who we know is the stupidest man on earth should be able to see that. But people in CF were not happy when I said that. They wanted me to say 'Oh no. I'm a Christian not because of my family. Even if I had been born in the family of Osama bin Laden, I'd be a Christian' or some such rubbish that only dotards can believe in. So I am a Christian because of my family. I'd be a blooming suicide bomber if I were born in a family of extremist Muslims.

My religion is therefore my culture. But if I were born a Muslim, I'd be an atheist today. Islam is too harmful to humanity for me to have the conscience to be even a cultural Muslim. But I'm Church of England which is purely cultural and totally innocuous. If I were born in the Westboro Baptist Church, I'd also be an atheist today.

You ask if it's the ritual that matters to me. It's the culture / religion that I am identified with and show respect for. And it's a good religion; it's peaceful and non-terrorist. OK, maybe if I had been born in the Middle Ages in the RC church with its spanish inquisition, i'd be an atheist. But that's all ancient history and I'm not in any other church but the CofE. My church doesn't have priests who molest altar boys and choir boys. Our priests are happily married with kids of their own. Of course there may be paedophiles like in any institution but you don't find an unhealthy concentration of paedophiles like the RC model of enforced celibacy naturally attracts.

OK, so you are  christian because you were brought up one...  Had you been born in Saudi Arabia, you would be a moslem.  Had you been born into a baptist family in Westboro Baptist Church, you would be a baptist.  And you are of Church Of England because that is where you were raised.

Everything you says suggests you would be whatever your culture was.  Do you BELIEVE what your church teaches?  Could you change if you moved to say, the US?  I'm trying to understand your statement that it is just cultural and not really a belief.

Do you believe or not?

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 07:02:41 AM
OK, so you are  christian because you were brought up one...  Had you been born in Saudi Arabia, you would be a moslem.  Had you been born into a baptist family in Westboro Baptist Church, you would be a baptist.  And you are of Church Of England because that is where you were raised.

Everything you says suggests you would be whatever your culture was.  Do you BELIEVE what your church teaches?  Could you change if you moved to say, the US?  I'm trying to understand your statement that it is just cultural and not really a belief.

Do you believe or not?

I am now in a different country where Christians are a minority. I live here because my dad moves around a bit. He's in the foreign service. The majority here worship some Buddhist deity but I don't change just because I live here. I'm still English and my religion and culture remain unchanged. It's not where I live.

But like I've said, if I had been born a Muslim, I'd be an atheist today. That's because I cannot reconcile a religion like Islam with human good. I would throw away a culture that is inherently bad. The same thing if I were born an RC during the time of the dark ages when the Spanish Inquisition was torturing and killing people.  I would be an atheist because my conscience wouldn't allow me to be in a culture that is murderous.

That depends on what you mean by 'belief'. Does God cognitively exist to me? Probably not. As I told people in CF, it's more likely for pixies to exist than for the Christian God because pixies don't purport to intervene in human affairs.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 12:45:19 AM
What is a freethinking theist?

A heretic.  And yes, G-d like anything else, is experienced.  But so is the Spirit of Christmas ... don't try to overthink it.  Rationalism, reductionism, materialism are all techniques, choices ... that people can choose to make ... like an artist choosing blue instead of red.  Though like theater, not painting.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 03:57:36 AM
Sorry, I didn't see your post until Cavebear posted a reply. Thanks for the welcome.

What kind of a heretic are you? 'Heretic' is an outdated word that is no longer used by the church. Today, most priests are heretics. Haha. But what is a freethinking theist?

Answered against a different reply.  As an old man, I am comfortable with being outdated.  But as a classic, I never age ;-)  I am Jewish, not Christian, but very well read on all religions, and many other topics.  We can get into details after you start posting in the sub-sections.  I can either laugh or cry.  I prefer to laugh, and this irritates some people.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 04:11:04 AM
Of course you are right. I tend to think of just my church. The Established Church. And it's a good church. We are the world's most liberal. We have priests who don't even believe in God's existence. Richard Dawkins says it's the most benign church. Actually, Dawkins is still a member of the same church as me. Technically, Dawkins and I are fellow communicants of the same church. Haha. Accept that he is now a New Atheist and I'm still an altar boy who wears a surplice and carries the candle and sometimes the thurible. But as far as my church goes, he and I are of the same standing. LOL. He still says grace in New College as a Fellow.

So you are English?  We have some of those here too.  Some rabbis don't believe in God's existence.  Mine does, but we don't have the same definition for some of the words ... that makes me a heretic.  But we have some of the same experiences, because we worship together  ;-)  I am the Hebrew teacher sometimes.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 07:52:39 AM
A heretic.  And yes, G-d like anything else, is experienced.  But so is the Spirit of Christmas ... don't try to overthink it.  Rationalism, reductionism, materialism are all techniques, choices ... that people can choose to make ... like an artist choosing blue instead of red.  Though like theater, not painting.

A heretic is just a person who does not believe in the orthodox position. It doesn't mean anything. Both the orthodox and the heretic may both be wrong. Why do you write G-d for God? Do you treat God as a dirty word? Just like some people will write F--- when they mean to use that socially unacceptable word.

Your answer is extremely hazy. When someone says rationalism is just one of the many methods to arrive at something, I have to disagree unless I misunderstand what you mean by rationalism. Reality = truth = objective. Either something is true or it is not. Seeing truth as multi-faceted is wrong. A lot of people in CF like to think of truth as flexible. As I told them, that is obviously an excuse for holding on to their positions regardless of its falsehood. Reality is not a flexible thing. Either God exists or he does not. Either the fairy exists or it does not. It's false to say the fairy exists if you look at truth from one perspective and it does not exist if you look at it from another perspective. If that were the case, one perspective has got to be true and the others false. From my short experience in CF, I know that those who try to make the truth appear flexible usually are just unable to accept that their cherished position is false. Truth is never flexible.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 06:46:46 AM
As I explained to the dotards in Christian Forums, I'm a Christian because I was brought up one. Even rocketman who we know is the stupidest man on earth should be able to see that. But people in CF were not happy when I said that. They wanted me to say 'Oh no. I'm a Christian not because of my family. Even if I had been born in the family of Osama bin Laden, I'd be a Christian' or some such rubbish that only dotards can believe in. So I am a Christian because of my family. I'd be a blooming suicide bomber if I were born in a family of extremist Muslims.

My religion is therefore my culture. But if I were born a Muslim, I'd be an atheist today. Islam is too harmful to humanity for me to have the conscience to be even a cultural Muslim. But I'm Church of England which is purely cultural and totally innocuous. If I were born in the Westboro Baptist Church, I'd also be an atheist today.

You ask if it's the ritual that matters to me. It's the culture / religion that I am identified with and show respect for. And it's a good religion; it's peaceful and non-terrorist. OK, maybe if I had been born in the Middle Ages in the RC church with its spanish inquisition, i'd be an atheist. But that's all ancient history and I'm not in any other church but the CofE. My church doesn't have priests who molest altar boys and choir boys. Our priests are happily married with kids of their own. Of course there may be paedophiles like in any institution but you don't find an unhealthy concentration of paedophiles like the RC model of enforced celibacy naturally attracts.

You are very bright and well spoken.  You are well educated too.  So definitely not a LARPing American ;-))  I wasn't raised religious, but came to it as an adult as part of marriage.  But I had always been curious.  Part of my family had been associated with Freemasonry.  Like any other living being I have continued to develop.  I went thru a brief atheism around 20 years old, but it didn't stick.  Marriage and parenting changed me, and I continued to change myself, to where I am now.  And I keep on going, but mostly refining what I am, I don't see any radical changes in my short future.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 07:58:16 AM
So you are English?  We have some of those here too.  Some rabbis don't believe in God's existence.  Mine does, but we don't have the same definition for some of the words ... that makes me a heretic.  But we have some of the same experiences, because we worship together  ;-)  I am the Hebrew teacher sometimes.

You have mentioned experience many times. Experience is to me the worst gauge of the truth of something. That is because experience is capable of myriads of interpretations. Anything that is capable of myriads of interpretations is unreliable.  I would dismiss experience if it's the only test for the truth of something.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 07:38:25 AM
I am now in a different country where Christians are a minority. I live here because my dad moves around a bit. He's in the foreign service. The majority here worship some Buddhist deity but I don't change just because I live here. I'm still English and my religion and culture remain unchanged. It's not where I live.

But like I've said, if I had been born a Muslim, I'd be an atheist today. That's because I cannot reconcile a religion like Islam with human good. I would throw away a culture that is inherently bad. The same thing if I were born an RC during the time of the dark ages when the Spanish Inquisition was torturing and killing people.  I would be an atheist because my conscience wouldn't allow me to be in a culture that is murderous.

That depends on what you mean by 'belief'. Does God cognitively exist to me? Probably not. As I told people in CF, it's more likely for pixies to exist than for the Christian God because pixies don't purport to intervene in human affairs.

First, sorry, I didn't know you were a teen (I gather).  Second yes, you would have been the religion of whatever culture you grew up in.  You MIGHT have escaped it given extreme violence, but probably not.  You usually don't become an atheist by being offended by "what is normal around you". 

At best, such people are "angry atheists" and often re-convert to some theism or other.  Modern christianity is just as violent in many ways as islam or judaism or hindu.  Depends on the place more than the religion.

You probably don't want to hear examples of protestant violence, but there are many.

Best of seeking...

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 08:04:30 AM
You are very bright and well spoken.  You are well educated too.  So definitely not a LARPing American ;-))  I wasn't raised religious, but came to it as an adult as part of marriage.  But I had always been curious.  Part of my family had been associated with Freemasonry.  Like any other living being I have continued to develop.  I went thru a brief atheism around 20 years old, but it didn't stick.  Marriage and parenting changed me, and I continued to change myself, to where I am now.  And I keep on going, but mostly refining what I am, I don't see any radical changes in my short future.

It's very kind of you to draw that conclusion. But it's too early to be certain one way or another. I am careful because in CF, people who started out saying nice things of me changed their minds when they realised that my beliefs were not aligned to theirs. One of them even had nasty things to say about my dad which was peculiar since he never once made an appearance in CF or any internet forum. But I found out one thing from my short stay in CF. Christians can be malicious. The more particular they are about doctrines, the more venomous they are. I am more used to liberal or traditional Christians who don't bother about other people so I was surprised to see the kind of Christians that CF had. You will never believe the things they say. They believe in the kind of hell Muslims believe in and they seem quite pleased in a sadistic way that there was where people who disagree with them will end up in.

But it's not my intention to talk anyone out of whatever belief they have. If you really believe in God or any other supernatural entity, it doesn't bother me one bit. I know of many people who hold such a belief. But earlier, I was just talking about what I believe in and why I think truth is not a malleable commodity.

You are moving too fast.  But I will try to keep up.  I am very well read in Buddhism ... so if you want to discuss some of the things the country you are visiting do ... I can follow and contribute.  My ex wife was a Christian pastor ... so of course I am very experienced in that as well as Judaism.  I understand your reliance on conscience, you seem very mature ... I have a hard time believing you are a teenager ;-)  I have studied comparative religion, because it is part of anthropology ... I study Islam because of anthropology (and I view my own religion the same way).  Religion is something people do, and some do not.  And of course in most cases, people absorb this as part of their upbringing.  Some of the posters here aren't like that ... they were atheists always, even if their family was religious.  They have a radically different experience of atheism than those who were steeped in Evangelical Christianity as children and young adults, and who have since left.  As I said, I was curious about religion as a child, but came to it as an adult.  So my experience is different from either of those kinds of people.

You have shifted the discussion to epistemology.  That is where most people argue theism/atheism ... including most people who are regulars here.  But philosophy has more divisions than that (though "how do you know what you know?" is an important question).  I tend to be nihilistic (see David Hume) regarding epistemology because I am dismissive of most human claims to knowledge (see Socrates).  You might have experienced a ghost, I have experienced ghost cats.  What that means as an experience, I can only accept as testimony, or my own memory.  It is subjective.  The present experience sinks into memory very quickly, and memory is very unreliable.  What we think we know, is what is persistent in our fallible memory, a meme.  What we agree on, and was experienced by multiple people, we consider objective ... even if it is the result of mass delusion (these happen too, in fact, advertising and politics is all about generating mass delusions).  We can discuss scientific method in practice, in the science section.  In my youth I was an aerospace engineer, so I know what science is, even if I dismiss science fiction and science fantasy.  If I did fiction or fantasy in my engineering job I would be fired!  What most people, including most atheists, think is science ... is magic (sufficiently advanced technology and all that).  We would call that Popular Science level science here in the US.

Today I am more interested in people than in things.  I have changed a lot over the decades.  So for me ... the basis of discussion is psychology, not physics.  I no longer need reductionism (it is a tool, not a panacea) much.  Synthesis is more important for me than analysis.  And human beings are irrational, regardless of what Greek philosophers tell you ;-)  So rationality isn't too important to me either.  I see theist or atheist as pretty much the same, at my level of humanistic analysis.  Materialistic analysis is good too .. if you are an engineer.

Yes, we apply many interpretations to our experience.  Not only do we have different, if related experiences, we impose our momentary individuality on it.  This is called perception when it happens unconsciously.  So I don't have to analyze in detail the letters on the screen ... I "know" them already.  In that case memory isn't entirely unreliable .. but as any psychology textbook can tell you, the human mind and heart (emotions) can be very troublesome.

We don't have the same definition of "Truth".  But your definition matches most posters here.  It is a T/F statement as in colloquial logic.  Though in actual mathematical logic, it has nothing to do with T or F at all.  It can be 1 or 0, and those values have no particular definitions, they just have to be used consistently.  Logic is like a board game, like chess, and it isn't cricket if you don't follow the rules.  For me, truth is a person, not a thing, not an idea.  That is typical of languages in general, and English in particular .. the ambiguity that comes from multiple usages (that is the reality that the dictionary is trying to capture, not some OED definition that is imposed from above, or a Language Institute like the French use.  This is why conversation is necessary, it isn't an ukase from above (see scriptural religions).  This way I come to know your usages and you come to know mine, and so on that trivial level we come to know each other better.  It starts with experience, but it doesn't end there.

As you develop, as we all must, your memory will not only be added to, it will change, what you think you remember, won't be the same.  And your personality, the particular individual choices you make as a human being, as to tools (rational/irrational, empirical/ideational) will change to.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 08:14:05 AM
It's very kind of you to draw that conclusion. But it's too early to be certain one way or another. I am careful because in CF, people who started out saying nice things of me changed their minds when they realised that my beliefs were not aligned to theirs. One of them even had nasty things to say about my dad which was peculiar since he never once made an appearance in CF or any internet forum. But I found out one thing from my short stay in CF. Christians can be malicious. The more particular they are about doctrines, the more venomous they are. I am more used to liberal or traditional Christians who don't bother about other people so I was surprised to see the kind of Christians that CF had. You will never believe the things they say. They believe in the kind of hell Muslims believe in and they seem quite pleased in a sadistic way that there was where people who disagree with them will end up in.

But it's not my intention to talk anyone out of whatever belief they have. If you really believe in God or any other supernatural entity, it doesn't bother me one bit. I know of many people who hold such a belief. But earlier, I was just talking about what I believe in and why I think truth is not a malleable commodity.

We will have to disagree on our definitions of truth (differing power agendas that).  I also don't seek to impose my thinking and doing ... because that would, as you nicely point out, violate my conscience.  Jewish people don't seek to convert anyone, because we have been victimized by it.  Some Jews seek to convert cultural Jews to orthodoxy however.  I suspect you are safe from either.  Some atheists will try to convert theists, or more narrowly try to convert an atheist from one flavor to their own flavor.  Again, power agendas.

It is a strange thing that people will argue, die and even kill for their memes.  But ape men do apish things.  I am not disturbed at what people think, feel or do .. but it can be disturbing to people with sensitive stomachs.  In my own case I am shameless, because I am comfortable in my own skin.  This took decades of experiences to develop, and I still "rage at the machine" ... because in some cases, I can't be a disinterested observer.  So while I may not be disturbed by the bone in your nose, I will have personal discomfort if you invite me to the cannibalism feast.

On my usage ...
god = any particular polytheistic god, or idol in the case of atheists, a belief
God = a monotheistic god, a belief
G-d = my god, not a belief, an experience.  Other theists can say the same thing, but it isn't the same god, it is subjective.  Though theists try to convince people that their god is the one true god (see Pharaoh Akenaten).  Even in paganism, people have a favorite god (say Krishna in Hinduism) ... and will try to convert other polytheists to say ... yes, that will be my favorite god too ;-)

But yes, G-d originates in superstition/religious practice ... in Judaism.  I haven't ever seen Father Christmas (Santa Claus) except when I played him for my baby daughter or at the old folks home.  I know from my parents what the "Spirit of Christmas" is, even though they were cultural Christians, not religious ones.  My experience, even if a badly interpreted sensation, a delusion, a meme or a false memory ... is real in that sense.  We can achieve a degree of objectivity with something like "mass of the electron" .. but we don't actually know what mass is, or what an electron is.  Real science is about developing better questions, getting a better outline of our ignorance, not on developing better answers, getting a better outline of our arrogance.  But that is me channeling Socrates, not Archimedes.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 08:02:08 AM
A heretic is just a person who does not believe in the orthodox position. It doesn't mean anything. Both the orthodox and the heretic may both be wrong. Why do you write G-d for God? Do you treat God as a dirty word? Just like some people will write F--- when they mean to use that socially unacceptable word.

Your answer is extremely hazy. When someone says rationalism is just one of the many methods to arrive at something, I have to disagree unless I misunderstand what you mean by rationalism. Reality = truth = objective. Either something is true or it is not. Seeing truth as multi-faceted is wrong. A lot of people in CF like to think of truth as flexible. As I told them, that is obviously an excuse for holding on to their positions regardless of its falsehood. Reality is not a flexible thing. Either God exists or he does not. Either the fairy exists or it does not. It's false to say the fairy exists if you look at truth from one perspective and it does not exist if you look at it from another perspective. If that were the case, one perspective has got to be true and the others false. From my short experience in CF, I know that those who try to make the truth appear flexible usually are just unable to accept that their cherished position is false. Truth is never flexible.

Your definitions are conventional, and that is to be expected, unless you get as crazy as I am, at a much younger age ;-)  I know both what is and how it developed; rationalism for example.  But that would be a long lecture.  But a few initial points ... Thales and Pythagoras, not Heraclitus and Xenophanes.  If you read David Hume, you will learn some very good skepticism, just don't trip and fall into nihilism.  Skepticism is related to rationalism, but doesn't have the same agenda.  Skepticism is polemic, rationalism is apologetic.  It really is scripture and theology all the way down, but the books and the thinking aren't limited to Church.

I am kind, but I do play Shrek down at the local amateur theater (not really).  Some people here think I am Shrek however.  I need to get on to breakfast ... but will return.  I hope you stay, though you are a bit too nice for any Internet forum.  Shiranu is a younger man, a bit older than you ... he is also very sharp.  I would miss either of you terribly.  Why?  Well you might not understand my English but ... young people are the humanistic incarnation of the future, and old people are the humanistic incarnation of the past (both relative to the present ... I was young once too).

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 08:32:21 AM
You are moving too fast.  But I will try to keep up.  I am very well read in Buddhism ... so if you want to discuss some of the things the country you are visiting do ... I can follow and contribute.  My ex wife was a Christian pastor ... so of course I am very experienced in that as well as Judaism.  I understand your reliance on conscience, you seem very mature ... I have a hard time believing you are a teenager ;-)  I have studied comparative religion, because it is part of anthropology ... I study Islam because of anthropology (and I view my own religion the same way).  Religion is something people do, and some do not.  And of course in most cases, people absorb this as part of their upbringing.  Some of the posters here aren't like that ... they were atheists always, even if their family was religious.  They have a radically different experience of atheism than those who were steeped in Evangelical Christianity as children and young adults, and who have since left.  As I said, I was curious about religion as a child, but came to it as an adult.  So my experience is different from either of those kinds of people.

You have shifted the discussion to epistemology.  That is where most people argue theism/atheism ... including most people who are regulars here.  But philosophy has more divisions than that (though "how do you know what you know?" is an important question).  I tend to be nihilistic (see David Hume) regarding epistemology because I am dismissive of most human claims to knowledge (see Socrates).  You might have experienced a ghost, I have experienced ghost cats.  What that means as an experience, I can only accept as testimony, or my own memory.  It is subjective.  The present experience sinks into memory very quickly, and memory is very unreliable.  What we think we know, is what is persistent in our fallible memory, a meme.  What we agree on, and was experienced by multiple people, we consider objective ... even if it is the result of mass delusion (these happen too, in fact, advertising and politics is all about generating mass delusions).  We can discuss scientific method in practice, in the science section.  In my youth I was an aerospace engineer, so I know what science is, even if I dismiss science fiction and science fantasy.  If I did fiction or fantasy in my engineering job I would be fired!  What most people, including most atheists, think is science ... is magic (sufficiently advanced technology and all that).  We would call that Popular Science level science here in the US.

Today I am more interested in people than in things.  I have changed a lot over the decades.  So for me ... the basis of discussion is psychology, not physics.  I no longer need reductionism (it is a tool, not a panacea) much.  Synthesis is more important for me than analysis.  And human beings are irrational, regardless of what Greek philosophers tell you ;-)  So rationality isn't too important to me either.  I see theist or atheist as pretty much the same, at my level of humanistic analysis.  Materialistic analysis is good too .. if you are an engineer.

Yes, we apply many interpretations to our experience.  Not only do we have different, if related experiences, we impose our momentary individuality on it.  This is called perception when it happens unconsciously.  So I don't have to analyze in detail the letters on the screen ... I "know" them already.  In that case memory isn't entirely unreliable .. but as any psychology textbook can tell you, the human mind and heart (emotions) can be very troublesome.

We don't have the same definition of "Truth".  But your definition matches most posters here.  It is a T/F statement as in colloquial logic.  Though in actual mathematical logic, it has nothing to do with T or F at all.  It can be 1 or 0, and those values have no particular definitions, they just have to be used consistently.  Logic is like a board game, like chess, and it isn't cricket if you don't follow the rules.  For me, truth is a person, not a thing, not an idea.  That is typical of languages in general, and English in particular .. the ambiguity that comes from multiple usages (that is the reality that the dictionary is trying to capture, not some OED definition that is imposed from above, or a Language Institute like the French use.  This is why conversation is necessary, it isn't an ukase from above (see scriptural religions).  This way I come to know your usages and you come to know mine, and so on that trivial level we come to know each other better.  It starts with experience, but it doesn't end there.

As you develop, as we all must, your memory will not only be added to, it will change, what you think you remember, won't be the same.  And your personality, the particular individual choices you make as a human being, as to tools (rational/irrational, empirical/ideational) will change to.

Thanks for your post. A lot of what you say may be applicable only in abstract thought. You mentioned Maths and we know Maths deals with concepts. For example 1+2=3. These things don't exist in reality. They are concepts. But teachers usually have to use an analogy with reality for kids to understand. So they say you add one orange to two oranges and you get three oranges. What you say about truth not having a meaning applies to concepts and not to real objects. But when we deal with real objects, truth is clear. It's either true or it's false. That is why I am wary about people who go into philosophy to show how logical God's existence is. I don't accept that because when you go into philosophy, you can practically manipulate everything including the goal posts. You play around with the premises and hey presto! God emerges. The same thing with Maths. There used to be someone who claimed to have proved God's existence with a mathematical equation. I read that somewhere. But I don't accept all this.

For me, God is not a concept or a mathematical equation. God, if he exists, has to exist as an entity, a being. I'm of course referring to the Christian God who isn't just a being but who purportedly intervenes in human affairs. Such an entity cannot take cover behind some mathematical concept to exempt him from the rigorous demand for some form of evidence for his existence. When thus scrutinised, I fear he evaporates into thin air. No disrespect intended if indeed you believe in such an entity.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 03:42:43 AM
There are priests in my church who openly say they don't believe God exists. One Archbishop has said it too. He started out by denying the Virgin Birth which is of course sensible. Everyone knows the Virgin Birth is false and is a mistake from the Almah-parthenos mistranslation. Then he denied the historicity of Jesus. That's normal. Then he denied the existence of God. If Christianity is what you say it is, why didn't the church ask him to leave?

Yes, perhaps quite a few of your clergy are like Bishop John Shelby Spong.  I attended a lecture of his once, when my ex wife was in seminary.  A very nice man.  You are so nice, I would think your mother was the Vicar of Dibley ;-)

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 08:59:38 AM
Thanks for your post. A lot of what you say may be applicable only in abstract thought. You mentioned Maths and we know Maths deals with concepts. For example 1+2=3. These things don't exist in reality. They are concepts. But teachers usually have to use an analogy with reality for kids to understand. So they say you add one orange to two oranges and you get three oranges. What you say about truth not having a meaning applies to concepts and not to real objects. But when we deal with real objects, truth is clear. It's either true or it's false. That is why I am wary about people who go into philosophy to show how logical God's existence is. I don't accept that because when you go into philosophy, you can practically manipulate everything including the goal posts. You play around with the premises and hey presto! God emerges. The same thing with Maths. There used to be someone who claimed to have proved God's existence with a mathematical equation. I read that somewhere. But I don't accept all this.

For me, God is not a concept or a mathematical equation. God, if he exists, has to exist as an entity, a being. I'm of course referring to the Christian God who isn't just a being but who purportedly intervenes in human affairs. Such an entity cannot take cover behind some mathematical concept to exempt him from the rigorous demand for some form of evidence for his existence. When thus scrutinised, I fear he evaporates into thin air. No disrespect intended if indeed you believe in such an entity.

Yes, all very conventional and English (empiricism).  I prefer empiricism over rationalism too, when I am choosing a spanner from my tool box.  But what is empiricism?  It is where we take multiple individual experience, add a dash of objectivity, and apply a thin basting of rationality.  Rationalists are all gravy, no meat.  For me G-d, God or god don't exist, in the way you are using the word.  So how can I still be a theist?  So we are not as far apart as you imagine.  Definitely a heretic I am .. that is the comeuppance of my long experience.

Yes, maths (or math) is very interesting, particularly to rationalists.  A very powerful tool kit.  When I do mathematics, I channel Pythagoras or Euclid.  When I do engineering I channel Archimedes.  But when I channel religion I channel Heraclitus or Xenophanes.  If I cogitate about ToE ... then I channel Thales, but then I wake up and can't remember the answer or the question ;-)

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 03:22:39 AM
I don't profess to be a theist. Theism is a purely belief concept. I am a Christian. 'Christian' is more a culture. It's not a question of what I believe makes me a Christian. My vicar tells me I'm a Christian even though he knows my stand on everything. The best analogy is a club. A club has its sets of rules. You've got to be XYZ to be a member. But supposing there was someone who's been a club member for many generations just as one of my ancestors was an important churchman in the time of Henry VIII. Can someone say, 'Hey! You're not a club member because you don't really believe in XYZ'. You go to court. The question is whether you're a club member. What will the court do? It'll ask the club if you are on the register of members. It'll ask the club to decide if you're a member. If your name is on the register and the club says 'Yes, you are a member', will the court insist that you're not a member because some outsider says you don't believe in XYZ? Of course not. The club decides who is or is not a member. Same with the CHurch. The Church decides who is and who is not a member. It's not for outsiders to decide.

That's me - I embrace only the truth for I am...

St Truth

This is why England had to expel all the Puritans to New England ... they are just like you describe ;-(  Mostly E Anglians from what I have read.  Many of the ex-Christians here were of the fundamentalist kind .. and so is their atheism.  It is hard to get a leopard to change his spots.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 09:09:32 AM
Yes, all very conventional and English (empiricism).  I prefer empiricism over rationalism too, when I am choosing a spanner from my tool box.  But what is empiricism?  It is where we take multiple individual experience, add a dash of objectivity, and apply a thin basting of rationality.  Rationalists are all gravy, no meat.  For me G-d, God or god don't exist, in the way you are using the word.  So how can I still be a theist?  So we are not as far apart as you imagine.  Definitely a heretic I am .. that is the comeuppance of my long experience.

Yes, maths (or math) is very interesting, particularly to rationalists.  A very powerful tool kit.  When I do mathematics, I channel Pythagoras or Euclid.  When I do engineering I channel Archimedes.  But when I channel religion I channel Heraclitus or Xenophanes.  If I cogitate about ToE ... then I channel Thales, but then I wake up and can't remember the answer or the question ;-)

You use the word 'channel'. What you mean is you are INSPIRED by so-and-so. You are confusing inspiration with reality just as you confuse feelings and emotion with substantial objects. I do not deny the power of emotion. In the course of our evolutionary history, emotion does play a very important role. The ability to be inspired by something spectacular or 'divine' is really written into our genetic code because it was essential for our survival. Today, we no longer need this emotion for our survival but like all evolutionary elements it remains a hangover from the time when we really had need of it.

You earlier mentioned 'experiencing' ghosts. That can of course be explained in many ways. Sceptics have shown that every 'sighting' of ghosts can in fact be explained away.

When we use our emotions to tell us if something exists, we are employing something which has no value today.

Oh I just realised that I didn't explain why such emotion that includes inspiration of the 'divine' played an important role in our earlier evolutionary journey. We are a social animal and one crucial ingredient for our survival is the cohesiveness within the human society. Unlike lions that can survive in small prides, humans couldn't. We like the baboons needed a large number of people to form a society in order to repel intrusion and to get enough food for our survival. The shaman was always the leader in such a group. The rest of us had to be 'inspired' by the shaman. If we didn't have that sense of the divine, we'd have broken away from our social group and died because the human animal couldn't survive on its own or in small groups.

But today, we no longer need this 'sense of the divine'. But we have it still, like all evolutionary baggage that we carry. I used to sing before my voice broke and some arias could bring out the goose pimples. That is the sense of the divine. A long time ago, the shaman would recite some poem in his loud voice and all of us would break into goose pimples and we just obeyed him and did what we were told and we became a really cohesive group that could withstand an attack by Neanderthals or some other groups.

This 'sense of the divine' today has no purpose. It however has the function of making people believe that there is a god or whatever word they choose to describe such a being.

Fascinating.  From the style, I would almost think you were arguing with yourself.

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 09:39:41 AM
Fascinating.  From the style, I would almost think you were arguing with yourself.

I used to be Shrek, then I became Zelig.

AF and the sister site .org are much more lenient than CF. Welcome to AF.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 09:28:06 AM
You use the word 'channel'. What you mean is you are INSPIRED by so-and-so. You are confusing inspiration with reality just as you confuse feelings and emotion with substantial objects. I do not deny the power of emotion. In the course of our evolutionary history, emotion does play a very important role. The ability to be inspired by something spectacular or 'divine' is really written into our genetic code because it was essential for our survival. Today, we no longer need this emotion for our survival but like all evolutionary elements it remains a hangover from the time when we really had need of it.

You earlier mentioned 'experiencing' ghosts. That can of course be explained in many ways. Sceptics have shown that every 'sighting' of ghosts can in fact be explained away.

When we use our emotions to tell us if something exists, we are employing something which has no value today.

Oh I just realised that I didn't explain why such emotion that includes inspiration of the 'divine' played an important role in our earlier evolutionary journey. We are a social animal and one crucial ingredient for our survival is the cohesiveness within the human society. Unlike lions that can survive in small prides, humans couldn't. We like the baboons needed a large number of people to form a society in order to repel intrusion and to get enough food for our survival. The shaman was always the leader in such a group. The rest of us had to be 'inspired' by the shaman. If we didn't have that sense of the divine, we'd have broken away from our social group and died because the human animal couldn't survive on its own or in small groups.

But today, we no longer need this 'sense of the divine'. But we have it still, like all evolutionary baggage that we carry. I used to sing before my voice broke and some arias could bring out the goose pimples. That is the sense of the divine. A long time ago, the shaman would recite some poem in his loud voice and all of us would break into goose pimples and we just obeyed him and did what we were told and we became a really cohesive group that could withstand an attack by Neanderthals or some other groups.

This 'sense of the divine' today has no purpose. It however has the function of making people believe that there is a god or whatever word they choose to describe such a being.

Well, "inspired" is a theological word.  I am "triggered" by your misappropriation ;-)  What is being/becoming?  That nasty philosophy thing that people here don't like, because they like the exactitude that you also desire.  Micromanagement of cogitation that is.

You do understand that hymn singing, per Luther, is a prayer prayed twice over?  Yes, singing is wonderful, my favorite part of worship.  I plink a little on instruments too, but won't have much time until I retire .. I never have enough time for music.  You understand shamen very well, that is what clergy are, when they are doing things correctly.  It has gotten much harder since the Stone Age.  There are real shamen in parts of Indonesia that haven't been converted to Islam yet.

You are mistaken, regarding us as being modern.  Compared to future people, we are ancients.  Compared to ancients, we are the future people!  It is a matter of perspective.  You better be careful with "explaining away" ... "make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler" Einstein says ... I say "be as skeptical as possible, but don't be a nihilist".  Explanations are a dime a dozen, and worth about as much ;-)  There has been too much "saving of appearances" even in science, since the time of John Milton.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 10:40:01 AM
I used to be Shrek, then I became Zelig.

I'm stunned!  I just had that idea yesterday of someone who appeared to be whatever people around him expected and thought to write a short story about it.  Seriously, it came to me in a dream (and boy do I have some beauts).

There must have been something on-air to suggest it...

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 11:11:41 AM
I'm stunned!  I just had that idea yesterday of someone who appeared to be whatever people around him expected and thought to write a short story about it.  Seriously, it came to me in a dream (and boy do I have some beauts).

There must have been something on-air to suggest it...

I am everywhere!  Even in your dreams ;-)  You will try to find a logical explanation for synchronicity, but won't find it ... grow tired, your eyes are feeling tired ... and you will forget that this "coincidence" ever happened ... that and I stayed overnight at a Holiday Inn Express, and now I know brain surgery ;-))

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 11:17:18 AM
I am everywhere!  Even in your dreams ;-)  You will try to find a logical explanation for synchronicity, but won't find it ... grow tired, your eyes are feeling tired ... and you will forget that this "coincidence" ever happened ... that and I stayed overnight at a Holiday Inn Express, and now I know brain surgery ;-))

Nah, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed now.  Everyone fades at the few hours before dawn.  Noctural habits of prey.

Greetings, St Truth. Your name seems familiar, but I'm not sure why. Back when I was a devout Christian, I frequented those forums, though I doubt I had met you there if you're only 16 years old. Back then, the forums had a pretty different atmosphere. There weren't nearly as many ads, the roleplaying section was lively, and they had a chatroom (which was the only safe haven for atheists). Yes, I can say from my experience there that the Christian Forums do not welcome opposition. 99% of the forums are limited to "Christians-only," and many are banned and/or silence simply for voicing opinions that they do not approve of. After I became an atheist, I wanted to return to those forums, but found that it was incredibly difficult just to locate places where I was still welcome. Theists in general are like this. They are not interested in finding the truth. They gather on a regular basis to continually reassure themselves that they are right with misrepresentations of the Bible that fit their agenda, strawmen arguments from "evolutionists" and atheists (as if atheists have a creed), and claiming to know things they know nothing about. It's rather pathetic.

Quote from: Blackleaf on September 23, 2017, 11:36:38 AM
Greetings, St Truth. Your name seems familiar, but I'm not sure why. Back when I was a devout Christian, I frequented those forums, though I doubt I had met you there if you're only 16 years old. Back then, the forums had a pretty different atmosphere. There weren't nearly as many ads, the roleplaying section was lively, and they had a chatroom (which was the only safe haven for atheists). Yes, I can say from my experience there that the Christian Forums do not welcome opposition. 99% of the forums are limited to "Christians-only," and many are banned and/or silence simply for voicing opinions that they do not approve of. After I became an atheist, I wanted to return to those forums, but found that it was incredibly difficult just to locate places where I was still welcome. Theists in general are like this. They are not interested in finding the truth. They gather on a regular basis to continually reassure themselves that they are right with misrepresentations of the Bible that fit their agenda, strawmen arguments from "evolutionists" and atheists (as if atheists have a creed), and claiming to know things they know nothing about. It's rather pathetic.

I think, from only slight experience, that christian forums demand absolute acceptance of their specific deity, but atheist forums generally tolerate raving theistic lunatics.

Probably has something to do with intelligence.  ;)

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 03:42:43 AM
There are priests in my church who openly say they don't believe God exists. One Archbishop has said it too. He started out by denying the Virgin Birth which is of course sensible. Everyone knows the Virgin Birth is false and is a mistake from the Almah-parthenos mistranslation. Then he denied the historicity of Jesus. That's normal. Then he denied the existence of God. If Christianity is what you say it is, why didn't the church ask him to leave?

I think the word for church leaders like that is "fraud." Why continue to support a church that you believed was spreading a lie? They say that for every religion, there's a man at the top who knows its all bullshit. While I would argue that many religious leaders are delusioned enough to believe their own claims, what you're describing seems to fit.

Quote from: Blackleaf on September 23, 2017, 11:41:03 AM
I think the word for church leaders like that is "fraud." Why continue to support a church that you believed was spreading a lie? They say that for every religion, there's a man at the top who knows its all bullshit. While I would argue that many religious leaders are delusioned enough to believe their own claims, what you're describing seems to fit.

Iffen ya don't folla the rules of the club. ya should get kicked out.  Then clubbed...

Quote from: Cavebear on September 23, 2017, 11:40:44 AM
I think, from only slight experience, that christian forums demand absolute acceptance of their specific deity, but atheist forums generally tolerate raving theistic lunatics.

Probably has something to do with intelligence.

To an extent. We will allow people here to believe whatever they want, even if their beliefs are indefensible. There is a limit to how much we will tolerate, but that alone affords theists more freedom than we are given in their forums.

Quote from: Blackleaf on September 23, 2017, 11:44:13 AM
To an extent. We will allow people here to believe whatever they want, even if their beliefs are indefensible. There is a limit to how much we will tolerate, but that alone affords theists more freedom than we are given in their forums.

Yeah, there are a couple raving theists I wouldn't mind getting too close to crocodiles...  But we tolerate them  (I keep reminding myself).  And a couple I don't...

Welcome aboard!  Personally, I would take being banned from a religious forum as a badge of pride, especially doing it without resorting to foul language and namecalling and other unpleasantries.  :)

Quote from: Blackleaf on September 23, 2017, 11:36:38 AM
Greetings, St Truth. Your name seems familiar, but I'm not sure why. Back when I was a devout Christian, I frequented those forums, though I doubt I had met you there if you're only 16 years old. Back then, the forums had a pretty different atmosphere. There weren't nearly as many ads, the roleplaying section was lively, and they had a chatroom (which was the only safe haven for atheists). Yes, I can say from my experience there that the Christian Forums do not welcome opposition. 99% of the forums are limited to "Christians-only," and many are banned and/or silence simply for voicing opinions that they do not approve of. After I became an atheist, I wanted to return to those forums, but found that it was incredibly difficult just to locate places where I was still welcome. Theists in general are like this. They are not interested in finding the truth. They gather on a regular basis to continually reassure themselves that they are right with misrepresentations of the Bible that fit their agenda, strawmen arguments from "evolutionists" and atheists (as if atheists have a creed), and claiming to know things they know nothing about. It's rather pathetic.

We certainly haven't met before. I joined CF last year but then I went away and only went back to them about some weeks ago. When they banned me and asked me to speak to an admin chap, I decided it was time to forget CF. For one thing, some of the nicer people who messaged me already know I'm under 16 and CF doesn't accept anyone under 16. I wasn't sure if some of them might have reported me to admin and if they did, I'd be confronted with this age thing if I contacted admin. But it was obvious they didn't want me there anyway. So I did a search and I'm here in atheist forums.

It's rather unfortunate that they didn't allow me to continue arguing with some of the chaps in CF. They tried everything up their sleeves. They used names of arguments and when I said I wasn't familiar with those names, they exclaimed that I was not well-read and no wonder I had problems with my faith. They are very good at dropping names of people who subscribe to certain views and I think they did that on purpose because they knew I didn't know those names. So I told them to use real arguments and spell out the arguments so I could counter them. And when they did, I realised it was the same trite hackneyed arguments that countless apologists have come up with, each one couching the old arguments with new words.

I think the problem with them is their desperation to appear intelligent and correct. That makes them nasty and rude.  There are some very brilliant atheists there but they are quite badly treated. I can't understand why they continue to go to a place that despises them so openly. If I can feel their hostility and I'm an altar boy, I wonder how it's like as atheists.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 12:18:29 PM
We certainly haven't met before. I joined CF last year but then I went away and only went back to them about some weeks ago. When they banned me and asked me to speak to an admin chap, I decided it was time to forget CF. For one thing, some of the nicer people who messaged me already know I'm under 16 and CF doesn't accept anyone under 16. I wasn't sure if some of them might have reported me to admin and if they did, I'd be confronted with this age thing if I contacted admin. But it was obvious they didn't want me there anyway. So I did a search and I'm here in atheist forums.

It's rather unfortunate that they didn't allow me to continue arguing with some of the chaps in CF. They tried everything up their sleeves. They used names of arguments and when I said I wasn't familiar with those names, they exclaimed that I was not well-read and no wonder I had problems with my faith. They are very good at dropping names of people who subscribe to certain views and I think they did that on purpose because they knew I didn't know those names. So I told them to use real arguments and spell out the arguments so I could counter them. And when they did, I realised it was the same trite hackneyed arguments that countless apologists have come up with, each one couching the old arguments with new words.

I think the problem with them is their desperation to appear intelligent and correct. That makes them nasty and rude.  There are some very brilliant atheists there but they are quite badly treated. I can't understand why they continue to go to a place that despises them so openly. If I can feel their hostility and I'm an altar boy, I wonder how it's like as atheists.

Well we atheists sure aren't alter boys.  The only times I was in a church was as a Boy Scout and at a wedding once.  Twice...

Quote from: Blackleaf on September 23, 2017, 11:36:38 AM
Greetings, St Truth. Your name seems familiar, but I'm not sure why. Back when I was a devout Christian, I frequented those forums, though I doubt I had met you there if you're only 16 years old. Back then, the forums had a pretty different atmosphere. There weren't nearly as many ads, the roleplaying section was lively, and they had a chatroom (which was the only safe haven for atheists). Yes, I can say from my experience there that the Christian Forums do not welcome opposition. 99% of the forums are limited to "Christians-only," and many are banned and/or silence simply for voicing opinions that they do not approve of. After I became an atheist, I wanted to return to those forums, but found that it was incredibly difficult just to locate places where I was still welcome. Theists in general are like this. They are not interested in finding the truth. They gather on a regular basis to continually reassure themselves that they are right with misrepresentations of the Bible that fit their agenda, strawmen arguments from "evolutionists" and atheists (as if atheists have a creed), and claiming to know things they know nothing about. It's rather pathetic.

Oh thanks for the greetings. I forgot to mention it in my ardour to talk about folks in CF.  I chose St Truth because my plan was to be perfectly truthful in CF and I thought the "saint" would  appeal to them. The threads I started questioned God eg 'How real is God?" Another topic was about the fight between Paul and Peter - that Paul started a totally different religion from the apostles. The folks in CF aren't so dumb as not to realise that every thread of mine wasn't one that could put the smile on the face of the average Christian. I also started a thread in a section for Christians only but I think they removed the thread because there were too many complaints. Yes, you are right. Most forums in CF are for Christians only. And to comment on the ones for non-Christians, you need 100 posts and you must comment on a thread to say that you will obey the rules, etc which is terribly unfair because Christians don't have to do that.

Quote from: trdsf on September 23, 2017, 12:12:21 PM
Welcome aboard!  Personally, I would take being banned from a religious forum as a badge of pride, especially doing it without resorting to foul language and namecalling and other unpleasantries.  :)

Thanks for the welcome. I am rather proud that they would ban someone my age. The ban came in shortly after some of their rather tenacious members admitted that they had no answer to the problems I raised about the faith. That satisfied me a lot. I wanted to get them to admit that faith was irrational, illogical and totally unsupported by any evidence or reason but they were not willing to do that. I urged them to consider if they might not be motivated by pride. They utterly refused to admit that. And then the ban came. I took that to mean I was right. That faith is truly what I said it was and the sore losers banned me. I'm keeping the email they sent me as proof. LOL

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 12:26:05 PM
Oh thanks for the greetings. I forgot to mention it in my ardour to talk about folks in CF.  I chose St Truth because my plan was to be perfectly truthful in CF and I thought the "saint" would  appeal to them. The threads I started questioned God eg 'How real is God?" Another topic was about the fight between Paul and Peter - that Paul started a totally different religion from the apostles. The folks in CF aren't so dumb as not to realise that every thread of mine wasn't one that could put the smile on the face of the average Christian. I also started a thread in a section for Christians only but I think they removed the thread because there were too many complaints. Yes, you are right. Most forums in CF are for Christians only. And to comment on the ones for non-Christians, you need 100 posts and you must comment on a thread to say that you will obey the rules, etc which is terribly unfair because Christians don't have to do that.

Yes, the foundation myth of Christianity, and every other religion, isn't what they appear to be.  Honesty would be nice though.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 12:30:48 PM
Thanks for the welcome. I am rather proud that they would ban someone my age. The ban came in shortly after some of their rather tenacious members admitted that they had no answer to the problems I raised about the faith. That satisfied me a lot. I wanted to get them to admit that faith was irrational, illogical and totally unsupported by any evidence or reason but they were not willing to do that. I urged them to consider if they might not be motivated by pride. They utterly refused to admit that. And then the ban came. I took that to mean I was right. That faith is truly what I said it was and the sore losers banned me. I'm keeping the email they sent me as proof. LOL

Don't get too cocky young'un.  You might be smarter than them, but that is a relative assessment.  It takes a good hone to sharpen a good knife, too bad they wanted to stay dull ;-)

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 12:40:07 AM
Dotards.

Hey, that's what "Rocket-Man" called Chump! I don't even know what a "dotard" is...

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 12:30:48 PM
Thanks for the welcome. I am rather proud that they would ban someone my age. The ban came in shortly after some of their rather tenacious members admitted that they had no answer to the problems I raised about the faith. That satisfied me a lot. I wanted to get them to admit that faith was irrational, illogical and totally unsupported by any evidence or reason but they were not willing to do that. I urged them to consider if they might not be motivated by pride. They utterly refused to admit that. And then the ban came. I took that to mean I was right. That faith is truly what I said it was and the sore losers banned me. I'm keeping the email they sent me as proof. LOL

Heh, I work in our county children services office.  I am perfectly aware that just being a minor doesn't mean immature, and being an adult doesn't mean mature.  :D

...now I'm trying to remember if it was the Third or Fourth Doctor who said "What's the point of being an adult if you can't act childish sometimes?"

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 23, 2017, 03:45:51 PM
Hey, that's what "Rocket-Man" called Chump! I don't even know what a "dotard" is...

Rocket-Man got it right.  Dotard is an old person in the early stages of dementia.  If that's not Trump, don't know what is.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 23, 2017, 05:21:20 PM
Rocket-Man got it right.  Dotard is an old person in the early stages of dementia.  If that's not Trump, don't know what is.

Hillary is colos-tard I suspect.  What is she hiding under her horrible clothing?  Why do people say she smells so bad?

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 23, 2017, 05:21:20 PM
Rocket-Man got it right.  Dotard is an old person in the early stages of dementia.  If that's not Trump, don't know what is.

What do you mean, 'early'?  Asshole is full-on mental, not just starting down that path.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 05:23:31 PM
Hillary is colos-tard I suspect.  What is she hiding under her horrible clothing?  Why do people say she smells so bad?

As much as you bash Hillary, I suspect you fall into the 'thou dost protest too much!'--I think you really love her!

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 23, 2017, 05:52:35 PM
As much as you bash Hillary, I suspect you fall into the 'thou dost protest too much!'--I think you really love her!

Hate and love are very close together.  So ... you must have a hard on for Trump ;-)

Christian forums are nothing more than mentally self-masturbatory communities. 

OP: "I believe in God."

Thread responses:
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"

Quote from: Sorginak on September 23, 2017, 06:04:03 PM
Christian forums are nothing more than mentally self-masturbatory communities.

At least the ones for Catholic priests and Buddhist monks ;-)

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 06:03:02 PM
Hate and love are very close together.  So ... you must have a hard on for Trump ;-)

Yeah, I do--but not in the way you mean it.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 06:06:43 PM
At least the ones for Catholic priests and Buddhist monks ;-)

It would be a relief if RC priests confined their sexual excesses to merely masturbatory pursuits.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 08:03:02 PM
It would be a relief if RC priests confined their sexual excesses to merely masturbatory pursuits.

The usual turn on in Catholicism and Shia Islam .. is self denial and self flagellation.  One is supposed in Catholicism, to resist temptation, but it has to be temptation for it to count.  These tendencies I think, came originally from fakirs in India.

Quote from: Baruch on September 23, 2017, 09:39:08 PM
The usual turn on in Catholicism and Shia Islam .. is self denial and self flagellation.  One is supposed in Catholicism, to resist temptation, but it has to be temptation for it to count.  These tendencies I think, came originally from fakirs in India.

This notoriety of the RC priests has spread far and wide. It's common for us to tease our RC friends who are altar boys that we are safe from predators but we can't say the same for them. Even here in this country where Christians are a small minority, I was once having dinner with a priest when diners at the tables around us kept staring at us. We felt quite embarrassed and I suggested to him that he might want to stand up and declare to all the others that he wasn't RC. Haha. Even the people here know.

Quote from: St Truth on September 23, 2017, 10:35:27 PM
This notoriety of the RC priests has spread far and wide. It's common for us to tease our RC friends who are altar boys that we are safe from predators but we can't say the same for them. Even here in this country where Christians are a small minority, I was once having dinner with a priest when diners at the tables around us kept staring at us. We felt quite embarrassed and I suggested to him that he might want to stand up and declare to all the others that he wasn't RC. Haha. Even the people here know.

That and clergy were frequently agents of colonialism.  That might be part of the dis-attraction.  My ex-wife, who was clergy ... I was grateful that her church didn't make her wear clerical garb outside of the pulpit.

FYI about my avatar, and indirectly about me ... the first modern Jew:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-graphic-spinoza/#!

Quote from: Baruch on September 24, 2017, 07:50:32 AM
FYI about my avatar, and indirectly about me ... the first modern Jew:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-graphic-spinoza/#!

was excommunicated from the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656, when he was still a young man. He would go on to become the most radical and controversial thinker of his time.

Sounds like you.

In his treatise Ethics (written in the 1660s), he rejected the providential God of Judaism and Christianity as a figment of the imagination.

Interesting, I like this guy.

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 10:57:54 PM
To be fair to them, I don't think they get paid for it. They just don't want anyone to upset their precious belief system.

Maybe they don't make money on their internet site, but they may well do so in meat-space. And they don't want their flocks to have access to real arguments, lest their meat-space money stream dries up.

Quote from: Baruch on September 24, 2017, 07:50:32 AM
That and clergy were frequently agents of colonialism.  That might be part of the dis-attraction.  My ex-wife, who was clergy ... I was grateful that her church didn't make her wear clerical garb outside of the pulpit.

FYI about my avatar, and indirectly about me ... the first modern Jew:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-graphic-spinoza/#!

Are you a cultural Jew? I understand there are far more cultural Jews than cultural Christians. From what I've noticed, cultural Christians tend to lose the tradition/religion totally. Cultural Jews seem to hold on to their religion far better.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 11:33:56 AM
Are you a cultural Jew? I understand there are far more cultural Jews than cultural Christians. From what I've noticed, cultural Christians tend to lose the tradition/religion totally. Cultural Jews seem to hold on to their religion far better.

You are a very well spoken poster.  But I do have a couple of questions.
Why is it important to maintain one's religion if one does not believe in god nor that Jesus was real?
What is it you mean by 'truth'? 

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 11:33:56 AM
Are you a cultural Jew? I understand there are far more cultural Jews than cultural Christians. From what I've noticed, cultural Christians tend to lose the tradition/religion totally. Cultural Jews seem to hold on to their religion far better.

Yes and no.  I came to religion as an adult, and Judaism thru Christianity (and interest in religion in general).  I wasn't raised religious or Jewish.  But I have come to both as an adult.  So cultural Jewish by choice, not by birth (though I do have a bit of Ashkenazi ancestry).  So most Jews wouldn't recognize me as Jewish ... but then I don't recognize them as Jewish either.  Two Jews, three opinions.

Yes, as a percentage, most Jews are cultural Jews (if they identify as Jewish at all (not completely assimilated)).  Usually they were raised cultural Jews or religious Jews (who have fallen into secularism).  An example of completely assimilated Jews, are those who came from Russia to Israel in the 1990s ... they are part of the building boom there for Russian Orthodox churches ;-)  Cultural Jews however are evangelized by Orthodox Jews, to get them turned back to faith and practice.  A newly fundie Jew is a Baal Teshuvah (master of repentance).  Lubavitcher are the most prominent evangelicals.  They tour around Jewish neighborhoods on Shabbat evangelizing like Jehovah's Witnesses.  My favorites are the NaNachs in Israel (they are Bratslaver).  Both Lubavitcher and Bratslaver are Hasidim (romantic Orthodox rather than intellectual Orthodox).  If you are raised cultural Jewish, you do often stay culturally Jewish.  One of my friends is like that, raised Jewish but secular now.  I did importune him with a book of prayers by Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav, the founder of the Bratslavers.  That rabbi (who lived over 200 years ago) is my favorite rabbi.  My friend remains secular, but over time he may become more observant thru prayer.

In America, people are pretty religious, just as part of the culture here.  We aren't like Europe or even Canada.  People are more likely to become Buddhist or Wiccan rather than fully secular.  There is a lot of evangelism of Islam among Blacks in prison here, and Skin Head evangelism among Whites in prison here.  Americans are more comfortable perhaps, with the disconnect between their materialistic/civil religion, and spiritual religion.  Consistency isn't a biggie with us.  So no, not that many Christians of say the 1990s have turned secular, but we change churches frequently (unlike say Anglicans).  A few have turned secular, but perhaps mostly because of not liking church politics.  Americans, outside of friends and family, frequently socialize thru church or synagogue.  We don't spend much time with political parties, outside of the election cycle, and then it is more like irrational football (soccer or American) hooliganism.  The political system is more healthy in Britain from what I can tell, people mostly socialize thru politics.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 24, 2017, 11:47:28 AM
You are a very well spoken poster.  But I do have a couple of questions.
Why is it important to maintain one's religion if one does not believe in god nor that Jesus was real?
What is it you mean by 'truth'?

It's not important. But some of us do it as a part of our culture. Christianity is the bedrock of Western civilisation. That cannot be disputed. All cultures have their myths and legends. But it's not important in the sense that it's really up to the person whether he wants to practise his culture.

Truth is that which accords with reality. For example, 'A loving and Almighty God exists' is not true. It cannot be true because it's an obvious contradiction. Incidentally, I just noticed that your signature says the same thing. It was one of the things I argued that got me banned from CF. They are very sensitive there.

Quote from: Baruch on September 24, 2017, 12:35:46 PM
Yes and no.  I came to religion as an adult, and Judaism thru Christianity (and interest in religion in general).  I wasn't raised religious or Jewish.  But I have come to both as an adult.  So cultural Jewish by choice, not by birth (though I do have a bit of Ashkenazi ancestry).  So most Jews wouldn't recognize me as Jewish ... but then I don't recognize them as Jewish either.  Two Jews, three opinions.

Yes, as a percentage, most Jews are cultural Jews (if they identify as Jewish at all (not completely assimilated)).  Usually they were raised cultural Jews or religious Jews (who have fallen into secularism).  An example of completely assimilated Jews, are those who came from Russia to Israel in the 1990s ... they are part of the building boom there for Russian Orthodox churches ;-)  Cultural Jews however are evangelized by Orthodox Jews, to get them turned back to faith and practice.  A newly fundie Jew is a Baal Teshuvah (master of repentance).  Lubavitcher are the most prominent evangelicals.  They tour around Jewish neighborhoods on Shabbat evangelizing like Jehovah's Witnesses.  My favorites are the NaNachs in Israel (they are Bratslaver).  Both Lubavitcher and Bratslaver are Hasidim (romantic Orthodox rather than intellectual Orthodox).  If you are raised cultural Jewish, you do often stay culturally Jewish.  One of my friends is like that, raised Jewish but secular now.  I did importune him with a book of prayers by Rabbi Nachman of Bratislav, the founder of the Bratslavers.  That rabbi (who lived over 200 years ago) is my favorite rabbi.  My friend remains secular, but over time he may become more observant thru prayer.

In America, people are pretty religious, just as part of the culture here.  We aren't like Europe or even Canada.  People are more likely to become Buddhist or Wiccan rather than fully secular.  There is a lot of evangelism of Islam among Blacks in prison here, and Skin Head evangelism among Whites in prison here.  Americans are more comfortable perhaps, with the disconnect between their materialistic/civil religion, and spiritual religion.  Consistency isn't a biggie with us.  So no, not that many Christians of say the 1990s have turned secular, but we change churches frequently (unlike say Anglicans).  A few have turned secular, but perhaps mostly because of not liking church politics.  Americans, outside of friends and family, frequently socialize thru church or synagogue.  We don't spend much time with political parties, outside of the election cycle, and then it is more like irrational football (soccer or American) hooliganism.  The political system is more healthy in Britain from what I can tell, people mostly socialize thru politics.

Why did you pick Judaism? Of the many gods and goddesses at your disposal, why choose Yahweh? Did you have to go through the requirements of the faith? Such as circumcision? The need to be circumcised would immediately turn me off a religion.

I find it puzzling because you were not brought up in the faith. If I weren't brought up a Christian, I'd happily be an atheist today. There is NOTHING that would recommend any religion to me if not for the fact that it's a part of my identity and culture.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 01:47:32 PM
Christianity is the bedrock of Western civilisation.

A bedrock that's built on quicksand?

Quote from: St Truth on September 22, 2017, 09:53:50 PM
All I did was to say that religion was irrational in reply to Christians who insisted that they didn't have enough 'faith' to be atheists. I showed why the Christian God could not possibly exist and I entered into a few debates with some of them who tried to befuddle me with philosophy.

Years ago, I called myself a Christian, because I grew up in a Christian home, but you know the no true Scotsman fallacy?  Even I realized a wasn't a "true" Christian.  Yeah, it was still a fallacy, but in my case it was more of a lie.  I really should have avoided identifying as a Christian, because some of the crap was too much to believe.  In fact, I guess I thought it was a bad thing to believe, morally and intellectually, both.

OK, I suppose they got some things right: Do unto others; Don't murder people.  But that god of theirs?!  Even when I was 10, it was really too much to believe in.  He was incomprehensible, irrational, infinitely everything, and I'm running out of "i" words.  Oh, I believed there must be a god, because I hadn't been introduced to logic, but whatever he might be, or what he might have wanted, or if he had a personality, I didn't have a clue.  I imagined a shapeless form much like the luminiferous æther.  I was sure the Christian god could not exist in the form described in the Bible.

Maybe I could rightly call myself a Christian and still avoid the hypocrisy because I really did believe that most Christians didn't believe most of the stuff either.  I figured they were like me, just putting on a good face.  But some actually believe it, and the wackier their beliefs get, the more sensitive they are apt to be about it.

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 24, 2017, 02:31:12 PM
A bedrock that's built on quicksand?

Not by any means. Western civilisation is pretty strong. You have used the wrong analogy probably because of your rabid antipathy against religion. If it were built on quicksand, Western civilisation would have floundered. But you are not suggesting that. What you meant was Christianity was not rational. It consists of myths and superstitions. That is not in dispute. But it's a different matter altogether.

Quote from: SGOS on September 24, 2017, 02:37:13 PM
Years ago, I called myself a Christian, because I grew up in a Christian home, but you know the no true Scotsman fallacy?  Even I realized a wasn't a "true" Christian.  Yeah, it was still a fallacy, but in my case it was more of a lie.  I really should have avoided identifying as a Christian, because some of the crap was too much to believe.  In fact, I guess I thought it was a bad thing to believe, morally and intellectually, both.

OK, I suppose they got some things right: Do unto others; Don't murder people.  But that god of theirs?!  Even when I was 10, it was really too much to believe in.  He was incomprehensible, irrational, infinitely everything, and I'm running out of "i" words.  Oh, I believed there must be a god, because I hadn't been introduced to logic, but whatever he might be, or what he might have wanted, or if he had a personality, I didn't have a clue.  I imagined a shapeless form much like the luminiferous æther.  I was sure the Christian god could not exist in the form described in the Bible.

Maybe I could rightly call myself a Christian and still avoid the hypocrisy because I really did believe that most Christians didn't believe most of the stuff either.  I figured they were like me, just putting on a good face.  But some actually believe it, and the wackier their beliefs get, the more sensitive they are apt to be about it.

You have a very fundamentalist understanding of Christianity. I have noticed that many Americans have this fixed understanding of religion. When Richard Dawkins explained that he would lead in prayer when grace was said in New College, Oxford where he's a Fellow, many American atheists were outraged. But this stand taken by these atheists will only lead religious people to think however falsely that atheism is a religion with its own brand of fundamentalism.  I suspect many of them were brought up in fundamentalist Christian homes and this is a rebellion against their many years of childhood subjugation to religion.

This kind of fundamentalism isn't seen in the Far East. They seem to have a better understanding of culture and they know that of course every culture has its myths. For example, the Chinese observe a special month which is the paying of homage to the moon. Like all cultures, it's steeped in fables and superstition. It has something to do with saving the moon from some dragon that threatens to swallow it up. People used to gather to eat cakes and recite poems to chase away the dragon. Today, absolutely nobody believes in the dragon swallowing up the moon any more. But you still see mooncakes being sold and eaten and people still celebrate their culture with much feasting and poetry reading. If a fundamentalist atheist were to stand up and tell everyone, 'Hey, there is no dragon that eats up the moon so why are you celebrating and eating mooncakes?' everyone would think he has gone mad.  You don't hear anybody (and there are many atheists among Chinese people) laughing at people outside temples and saying 'believers in moon-eating dragons' the way American atheists are always saying 'believers in the talking snake'. You don't see such belligerence in the Far East and mind you, nobody there believes in the moon-eating dragon.

I think what we see here is a failure by some atheists to accept that ancient men believed in silly things but there is no shame to participate in a cultural activity. I suppose to be consistent, these atheists will avoid words like 'goodbye' which is literally 'God be with you' and they won't follow the Gregorian calendar because it's obviously religious and dates from the supposed birth of 'zombie-God Jesus', as they call him. They also will avoid much of Western classical music and they won't read much of literature especially Milton and many other poets. What they don't realise is you don't have to be culturally barren to be an atheist. You need not be anti-culture.

In my native country (not the one I'm in at the moment), my church is a state church. When the monarch is crowned, it's done by the head of the church in an ancient cathedral. Everyone attends church for the ceremony. But in my country, there are more atheists than in the US. The US has 50% who believe in a 10,000-year-old universe which is a disgrace. And yet you don't see people in my country jumping as if they're on hot coals every time they hear a prayer said. It's this hatred for culture that distinguishes the American atheist from atheists all over the world including those in the Far East.

I don't understand why you'd waste your time going to a Christian forum to debate this stuff. They find you just as annoying as we find them. Go to a dedicated debate space for that shit.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 09:40:41 PM
You have a very fundamentalist understanding of Christianity. I have noticed that many Americans have this fixed understanding of religion. When Richard Dawkins explained that he would lead in prayer when grace was said in New College, Oxford where he's a Fellow, many American atheists were outraged. But this stand taken by these atheists will only lead religious people to think however falsely that atheism is a religion with its own brand of fundamentalism.  I suspect many of them were brought up in fundamentalist Christian homes and this is a rebellion against their many years of childhood subjugation to religion.

Yes, I do have a fundamentalist understanding of Christianity, because the most formative part of my religious training was Baptist.  My mother was a run of the mill Lutheran, however, and didn't get all taken up with "walkin with Jesus" all day long.  While my mother believed in God, she also said things to me that gave me permission and encouragement to come to a conclusion on my own.  But still after shaking it off, there will always be a part of my life that will be affected by my formative years.  I don't see that as good or bad.  It just is.

Oddly, I have a kind of appreciation for the fundamentalist commitment to religion.  As a Lutheran, you can just sweep stuff under the carpet, discard some of it, and make up a god that doesn't require an eye roll.  Fundamentalists, sweep stuff under the carpet too, but they manage to have a more fervent belief, and go out of their way to believe some of the most preposterous parts of the Bible.  I kind of credited them for having the right religious spirit.  Oddly, fundamentalist Christianity, which I had disregarded in my late teens, but later explored seriously, was the part of Christianity that pushed me to non belief.  Watching that deep commitment to utter nonsense sent me over to the dark side.  Without that, I could have continued on and just been a buffet style Lutheran, without having a need to really get serious about religion.

However, I don't see any need to raise hackles over anything Dawkins might say to offend some atheists, and I actually have a hard time imagining atheists to be so politically correct to raise hackles in unison.  I frankly don't care what other prominent atheists think.  I've read books by the Four Horsemen and others, and really haven't picked up anything new in any of them, and sometimes I wonder why I bother.  I agree with them mostly, but so what?  I can explain my atheism to myself, better than they can explain my atheism to me.  Having said that, I really do appreciate their willingness to publicly articulate their thoughts, and over all, I think they have made many people stop and think.

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on September 24, 2017, 10:08:18 PM
I don't understand why you'd waste your time going to a Christian forum to debate this stuff. They find you just as annoying as we find them. Go to a dedicated debate space for that shit.

That's because I'm a cultural Christian. But their rules are even more extreme than those of a church. Saying God does not exist is 'showing contempt of Christianity' to them. They tolerated me for a while because of my youth. They probably thought they could show me the way. And naturally, I won in every argument not because I'm good but because I was championing truth. Some of them got very angry especially those who fancy themselves to be the 'rational' defenders of the faith. I knew it was only a matter of time before I was banned.

And they are very sneaky. When they ban you, they won't tell the others that you are banned. They will remove your last argument (as they did mine) so that it seems as if I left after being defeated in an argument. I really find their dishonesty appalling. In my experience, believers are usually more dishonest than atheists because they have a great need to justify the unjustifiable and to defend the indefensible. That makes them evasive, ambiguous and generally more dishonest.

I notice many of them refuse to state an argument clearly. They'll deliberately couch everything in obfuscatory words until it feels like they're writing riddles. The purpose for that is to foil any opposition. If they write in such a mystic fashion, you can't oppose them because they aren't even coherent. And the brainless ones in CF will think whatever is said in a mystical way must be sacred and they will openly support it. At one stage I felt as if I was dealing with very young children.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 10:33:34 PM
That's because I'm a cultural Christian. But their rules are even more extreme than those of a church. Saying God does not exist is 'showing contempt of Christianity' to them. They tolerated me for a while because of my youth. They probably thought they could show me the way. And naturally, I won in every argument not because I'm good but because I was championing truth. Some of them got very angry especially those who fancy themselves to be the 'rational' defenders of the faith. I knew it was only a matter of time before I was banned.

And they are very sneaky. When they ban you, they won't tell the others that you are banned. They will remove your last argument (as they did mine) so that it seems as if I left after being defeated in an argument. I really find their dishonesty appalling. In my experience, believers are usually more dishonest than atheists because they have a great need to justify the unjustifiable and to defend the indefensible. That makes them evasive, ambiguous and generally more dishonest.

I notice many of them refuse to state an argument clearly. They'll deliberately couch everything in obfuscatory words until it feels like they're writing riddles. The purpose for that is to foil any opposition. If they write in such a mystic fashion, you can't oppose them because they aren't even coherent. And the brainless ones in CF will think whatever is said in a mystical way must be sacred and they will openly support it. At one stage I felt as if I was dealing with very young children.

Hence I shall repeat: I don't understand why you'd go to a Christian forum for this purpose.

Quote from: SGOS on September 24, 2017, 10:18:42 PM
Yes, I do have a fundamentalist understanding of Christianity, because the most formative part of my religious training was Baptist.  My mother was a run of the mill Lutheran, however, and didn't get all taken up with "walkin with Jesus" all day long.  While my mother believed in God, she also said things to me that gave me permission and encouragement to come to a conclusion on my own.  But still after shaking it off, there will always be a part of my life that will be affected by my formative years.  I don't see that as good or bad.  It just is.

Oddly, I have a kind of appreciation for the fundamentalist commitment to religion.  As a Lutheran, you can just sweep stuff under the carpet, discard some of it, and make up a god that doesn't require an eye roll.  Fundamentalists, sweep stuff under the carpet too, but they manage to have a more fervent belief, and go out of their way to believe some of the most preposterous parts of the Bible.  I kind of credited them for having the right religious spirit.  Oddly, fundamentalist Christianity, which I had disregarded in my late teens, but later explored seriously, was the part of Christianity that pushed me to non belief.  Watching that deep commitment to utter nonsense sent me over to the dark side.  Without that, I could have continued on and just been a buffet style Lutheran, without having a need to really get serious about religion.

However, I don't see any need to raise hackles over anything Dawkins might say to offend some atheists, and I actually have a hard time imagining atheists to be so politically correct to raise hackles in unison.  I frankly don't care what other prominent atheists think.  I've read books by the Four Horsemen and others, and really haven't picked up anything new in any of them, and sometimes I wonder why I bother.  I agree with them mostly, but so what?  I can explain my atheism to myself, better than they can explain my atheism to me.  Having said that, I really do appreciate their willingness to publicly articulate their thoughts, and over all, I think they have made many people stop and think.

I like Dawkins. I've met him in Wales at a book festival. I told him I was a Christian. He said I was not. He said I was too young to decide on something like religion and I was just adopting my parents' religion. I told him my parents were just cultural Christians and that I was a cultural Christian too. He accepted that immediately. He is a very nice chap and he's quite funny. But before we parted, he told me to consider breaking from the tradition just to make a statement. He said I should really be an atheist and I should not chalk up the statistics for religion. Haha. He was so funny. I don't care for the statistics. There is no competition as far as I'm concerned.

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on September 24, 2017, 10:36:29 PM
Hence I shall repeat: I don't understand why you'd go to a Christian forum for this purpose.

I didn't know they were so fundamentalist. If they had been more liberal, I'm sure I could have persuaded a few fundamentalists to treat religion as no more than a culture without any supernatural nonsense.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 01:47:32 PM
It's not important. But some of us do it as a part of our culture. Christianity is the bedrock of Western civilisation. That cannot be disputed. All cultures have their myths and legends. But it's not important in the sense that it's really up to the person whether he wants to practise his culture.

Truth is that which accords with reality. For example, 'A loving and Almighty God exists' is not true. It cannot be true because it's an obvious contradiction. Incidentally, I just noticed that your signature says the same thing. It was one of the things I argued that got me banned from CF. They are very sensitive there.

Mike CLs quote, is based on the Greek philosopher, Epicurus.  Who was pretty progressive (and not actually as hedonistic as detractors claimed) for Hellenistic period Athens.

Yes, Christianity has been bedrock for Western Civ for 1600 years now.  But has been modulated by Jewish influence and Classical pagan heritage within, and Muslim opposition from without.  It didn't form without a past, or in isolation.  Not everyone here would qualify as Western Civ, though I think most do.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 01:56:03 PM
Why did you pick Judaism? Of the many gods and goddesses at your disposal, why choose Yahweh? Did you have to go through the requirements of the faith? Such as circumcision? The need to be circumcised would immediately turn me off a religion.

I find it puzzling because you were not brought up in the faith. If I weren't brought up a Christian, I'd happily be an atheist today. There is NOTHING that would recommend any religion to me if not for the fact that it's a part of my identity and culture.

You are a wonderful contrasting personality yourself.  I am not typical of the people here.  In American culture, we have very little tradition.  I can see that in your English culture, and your social class, that this is very important, but very alien to American sensibilities.  We reinvented ourselves when our ancestors came here, and when our popular culture churns.  As a comparative religion student since childhood, I know them all.  It is like trying on clothes .. you try on an identity (that must be very strange to you) ... see how it fits, look in the mirror and see if it is flattering or not (yes this is a metaphor).  I chose Judaism for a complex chain of reasons, having to do with my personal history, but also as a matter of deliberation.  And yes, it is perfectly fine to choose to be an atheist (but you aren't of an age, or position, to make such a major choice in your own life ... I wasn't at your age either).

What requirements?  I find a community that is Jewish that accepts me more or less as I am.  I am modulated by them, and I modulate back ... symbiosis.  That is how your find yourself in community.  Free verse, not a Shakespeare sonnet.  As a child, you are provided one by your parents or neighborhood.  I was already circumcised anyway, though I agree with St Paul that it is unnecessary in any case.  This was a major problem 2000 years ago ... Europeans didn't circumcise ... Semites and Africans did (including Egyptians).  It is a prehistoric African practice.

Did you know that the Star of David is a magical mandala ... from India?  It has only been Jewish for a few centuries now.  Rather innovative.  I won't explain the full symbology to a person of your age.  But you are probably aware that the swastika is also Indian, for both Buddhists and Hindus.  Things aren't as they seem, you will learn as you get older.  You won't be you, but will still be you, as you age.  We basically reinvent our history, each generation, and that becomes a part of who we think we are.  But variations, not an entirely new tune.

Quote from: SGOS on September 24, 2017, 02:37:13 PM
Years ago, I called myself a Christian, because I grew up in a Christian home, but you know the no true Scotsman fallacy?  Even I realized a wasn't a "true" Christian.  Yeah, it was still a fallacy, but in my case it was more of a lie.  I really should have avoided identifying as a Christian, because some of the crap was too much to believe.  In fact, I guess I thought it was a bad thing to believe, morally and intellectually, both.

OK, I suppose they got some things right: Do unto others; Don't murder people.  But that god of theirs?!  Even when I was 10, it was really too much to believe in.  He was incomprehensible, irrational, infinitely everything, and I'm running out of "i" words.  Oh, I believed there must be a god, because I hadn't been introduced to logic, but whatever he might be, or what he might have wanted, or if he had a personality, I didn't have a clue.  I imagined a shapeless form much like the luminiferous æther.  I was sure the Christian god could not exist in the form described in the Bible.

Maybe I could rightly call myself a Christian and still avoid the hypocrisy because I really did believe that most Christians didn't believe most of the stuff either.  I figured they were like me, just putting on a good face.  But some actually believe it, and the wackier their beliefs get, the more sensitive they are apt to be about it.

You were a sensitive and intelligent child.  I didn't get much exposure as a child, just the commercial cultural side.  Most children stay childlike longer.  Some don't because they have bad childhoods ;-(

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 09:40:41 PM
You have a very fundamentalist understanding of Christianity. I have noticed that many Americans have this fixed understanding of religion. When Richard Dawkins explained that he would lead in prayer when grace was said in New College, Oxford where he's a Fellow, many American atheists were outraged. But this stand taken by these atheists will only lead religious people to think however falsely that atheism is a religion with its own brand of fundamentalism.  I suspect many of them were brought up in fundamentalist Christian homes and this is a rebellion against their many years of childhood subjugation to religion.

We are Americans first, religious or irreligious second.  We are different culturally from Britain.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 09:59:17 PM
In my native country (not the one I'm in at the moment), my church is a state church. When the monarch is crowned, it's done by the head of the church in an ancient cathedral. Everyone attends church for the ceremony. But in my country, there are more atheists than in the US. The US has 50% who believe in a 10,000-year-old universe which is a disgrace. And yet you don't see people in my country jumping as if they're on hot coals every time they hear a prayer said. It's this hatred for culture that distinguishes the American atheist from atheists all over the world including those in the Far East.

Even Buddhists and Hindus can be occasionally militant, and Buddhists are supposed to be pacifists.  Militant Hinduism comes from the great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.  When an Indian sees himself as King Rama or Prince Arjuna ... they can be quite deadly.  Similarly some Buddhist leaders see themselves as "chakravartin" ... which is what the Buddha was prophesied to be ... either a world savior or a world king (chakravartin).  Emperor Hirohito took up the cudgel of the chakravartin.  Other Buddhist kings have occasionally done this, or Buddhist leaders (see Sri Lanka).  So don't take any stereotypes too seriously.  Americans don't all drive pick-up trucks with a rifle and a handgun in the back.  Not even all Texans, and I am from Texas, so I should know ;-)

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on September 24, 2017, 10:08:18 PM
I don't understand why you'd waste your time going to a Christian forum to debate this stuff. They find you just as annoying as we find them. Go to a dedicated debate space for that shit.

The "Not a true Englishman" problem instead of the "Not a true Scotsman" problem ;-)  If I were English, and theist, I would have some problem with British culture since Darwin.

Quote from: SGOS on September 24, 2017, 10:18:42 PM
Yes, I do have a fundamentalist understanding of Christianity, because the most formative part of my religious training was Baptist.  My mother was a run of the mill Lutheran, however, and didn't get all taken up with "walkin with Jesus" all day long.  While my mother believed in God, she also said things to me that gave me permission and encouragement to come to a conclusion on my own.  But still after shaking it off, there will always be a part of my life that will be affected by my formative years.  I don't see that as good or bad.  It just is.

Oddly, I have a kind of appreciation for the fundamentalist commitment to religion.  As a Lutheran, you can just sweep stuff under the carpet, discard some of it, and make up a god that doesn't require an eye roll.  Fundamentalists, sweep stuff under the carpet too, but they manage to have a more fervent belief, and go out of their way to believe some of the most preposterous parts of the Bible.  I kind of credited them for having the right religious spirit.  Oddly, fundamentalist Christianity, which I had disregarded in my late teens, but later explored seriously, was the part of Christianity that pushed me to non belief.  Watching that deep commitment to utter nonsense sent me over to the dark side.  Without that, I could have continued on and just been a buffet style Lutheran, without having a need to really get serious about religion.

However, I don't see any need to raise hackles over anything Dawkins might say to offend some atheists, and I actually have a hard time imagining atheists to be so politically correct to raise hackles in unison.  I frankly don't care what other prominent atheists think.  I've read books by the Four Horsemen and others, and really haven't picked up anything new in any of them, and sometimes I wonder why I bother.  I agree with them mostly, but so what?  I can explain my atheism to myself, better than they can explain my atheism to me.  Having said that, I really do appreciate their willingness to publicly articulate their thoughts, and over all, I think they have made many people stop and think.

I would feel the same way about a secular Jew turning Baal Teshuvah.  I would ask myself, what in their life made them make such a radical change?  I am not that different from my teen years, just more mature, more defined.  I was undefined, immature but interested in religion as a subject ... but I was a theist even then, emotional, if not intellectually.  Now I have the definition and maturity to be a theist intellectually.  But it has been a long road.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 10:33:34 PM
That's because I'm a cultural Christian. But their rules are even more extreme than those of a church. Saying God does not exist is 'showing contempt of Christianity' to them. They tolerated me for a while because of my youth. They probably thought they could show me the way. And naturally, I won in every argument not because I'm good but because I was championing truth. Some of them got very angry especially those who fancy themselves to be the 'rational' defenders of the faith. I knew it was only a matter of time before I was banned.

And they are very sneaky. When they ban you, they won't tell the others that you are banned. They will remove your last argument (as they did mine) so that it seems as if I left after being defeated in an argument. I really find their dishonesty appalling. In my experience, believers are usually more dishonest than atheists because they have a great need to justify the unjustifiable and to defend the indefensible. That makes them evasive, ambiguous and generally more dishonest.

I notice many of them refuse to state an argument clearly. They'll deliberately couch everything in obfuscatory words until it feels like they're writing riddles. The purpose for that is to foil any opposition. If they write in such a mystic fashion, you can't oppose them because they aren't even coherent. And the brainless ones in CF will think whatever is said in a mystical way must be sacred and they will openly support it. At one stage I felt as if I was dealing with very young children.

Probably not innocent as children.  Where there is religion, there is politics.  They made you an un-person, like in an East Block country under the Warsaw Pact.  The photo of the Kremlin military review stand next year, won't have you in it, and all previous photos when you were in it, will be Photoshopped to not show you etc.

Quote from: St Truth on September 24, 2017, 10:40:06 PM
I like Dawkins. I've met him in Wales at a book festival. I told him I was a Christian. He said I was not. He said I was too young to decide on something like religion and I was just adopting my parents' religion. I told him my parents were just cultural Christians and that I was a cultural Christian too. He accepted that immediately. He is a very nice chap and he's quite funny. But before we parted, he told me to consider breaking from the tradition just to make a statement. He said I should really be an atheist and I should not chalk up the statistics for religion. Haha. He was so funny. I don't care for the statistics. There is no competition as far as I'm concerned.

You are young ... you may stick with tradition, or become a rock star like Boy George.  It is too early to tell, indeed ;-))  Think on this, 20 years from now, and have a good laugh.

Quote from: Baruch on September 24, 2017, 11:53:22 PM
I would feel the same way about a secular Jew turning Baal Teshuvah.  I would ask myself, what in their life made them make such a radical change?  I am not that different from my teen years, just more mature, more defined.  I was undefined, immature but interested in religion as a subject ... but I was a theist even then, emotional, if not intellectually.  Now I have the definition and maturity to be a theist intellectually.  But it has been a long road.

Having just come from CF, what I'm about to ask is a question that I have to word very carefully. In CF, a mis-worded question of this nature would earn me an immediate ban for blasphemy, contempt of Christianity and a million other offences.

This is a question I have been asking for a long time. Nobody in CF gave me an answer. It's come to a point when I don't really believe I'll get an answer but then, you are different. You are not a rude, defensive, arrogant Christian and if you know my question comes from a sincere curiosity, you will no doubt find it more acceptable.

What I have been curious about is how anyone can be a theist intellectually or rationally. Unless one comes up with a convoluted sophistry, it's impossible to place theism in a rational framework. One way many theists approach this is to reduce the framework of what would be rational to such an extent that if theism is to be regarded as rational, so would a belief in pixies. Is your approach the same?

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 05:54:55 AM
Having just come from CF, what I'm about to ask is a question that I have to word very carefully. In CF, a mis-worded question of this nature would earn me an immediate ban for blasphemy, contempt of Christianity and a million other offences.

This is a question I have been asking for a long time. Nobody in CF gave me an answer. It's come to a point when I don't really believe I'll get an answer but then, you are different. You are not a rude, defensive, arrogant Christian and if you know my question comes from a sincere curiosity, you will no doubt find it more acceptable.

What I have been curious about is how anyone can be a theist intellectually or rationally. Unless one comes up with a convoluted sophistry, it's impossible to place theism in a rational framework. One way many theists approach this is to reduce the framework of what would be rational to such an extent that if theism is to be regarded as rational, so would a belief in pixies. Is your approach the same?

A good question.  Such a diplomat ... wonder where you get that from!  And most people here are very thick skinned if not a pigskin (American football).  You aren't being rude, but there is plenty of rudeness for the adults.  Most posters here would agree with you ... they have rationalizations for their own present and past condition.  Everyone does.  Rationalization can be mistaken for reason however ;-)  Some are able to articulate this, for others, their condition is axiomatic.  Do you have time for most of philosophy ... metaphysics, epistemology etc?

Most posters here object on the basis of epistemology, and on that basis (at least for most of what passes as epistemology) they are right, and so would you.  However most people won't go deeper than conventional epistemology (someone like David Hume was a bit past the edge of convention, into nihilism territory).  To give you something to chew on ... compare Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume, two British philosophers.  This has to do with a deep philosophical question ... that of "qualia", something still argued about (and philosophers always argue, and never come to agreement).  What passes as epistemology?  A Popular Science version of scientific method.  Which is a damn good method, but if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

BTW ... I am not the only theist or semi-theist ... but we are like court jesters, a tolerated minority here.  Some posters however have court-jester-phobia ... but I think that is hilarious!  And no, before someone induces paranoia in you, I am not trying to get you to relate to your traditional practices, on a higher level.  You will do that your own way in your own time.

Quote from: Baruch on September 25, 2017, 07:06:11 AM
A good question.  Such a diplomat ... wonder where you get that from!  And most people here are very thick skinned if not a pigskin (American football).  You aren't being rude, but there is plenty of rudeness for the adults.  Most posters here would agree with you ... they have rationalizations for their own present and past condition.  Everyone does.  Rationalization can be mistaken for reason however ;-)  Some are able to articulate this, for others, their condition is axiomatic.  Do you have time for most of philosophy ... metaphysics, epistemology etc?

Most posters here object on the basis of epistemology, and on that basis (at least for most of what passes as epistemology) they are right, and so would you.  However most people won't go deeper than conventional epistemology (someone like David Hume was a bit past the edge of convention, into nihilism territory).  To give you something to chew on ... compare Bishop George Berkeley and David Hume, two British philosophers.  This has to do with a deep philosophical question ... that of "qualia", something still argued about (and philosophers always argue, and never come to agreement).  What passes as epistemology?  A Popular Science version of scientific method.  Which is a damn good method, but if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

BTW ... I am not the only theist or semi-theist ... but we are like court jesters, a tolerated minority here.  Some posters however have court-jester-phobia ... but I think that is hilarious!  And no, before someone induces paranoia in you, I am not trying to get you to relate to your traditional practices, on a higher level.  You will do that your own way in your own time.

I'm afraid I don't understand half of what you are saying. Let's make it simple. Like you are explaining it to a child. I'm not exactly a child but I'm not 16 yet and so I'm technically not an adult.

Let's take the hypothetical person who is seated in his armchair eating an ice-cream. What makes him suddenly decide, 'Hey! There is an invisible God.' What makes him come up with this notion that there is a God?  What would this God be like? Presumably he is not a physical being? I don't know what you idea of God is but you probably will say he is spiritual? But this guy in his armchair will have to conjure up the notion of a spirit as well.  What about the attributes of God? If you idea of God is the same as the church's or the God of the Bible, this God probably is Almighty. He has 'lovingkindness'. He is truth. He is love.

Mind you, the hypothetical guy in his armchair has made up quite a lot in his mind.

Now, he seeks to defend his idea of God with all the properties he has come up with and all the attributes that he has imbued in God. He obviously can't defend God scientifically. Scientific demands are too rigorous and unforgiving for anything fictitious. So he goes to philosophy.

But my point is why does he bother to do that in the first place? He has made a long list of presuppositions which he (or someone else before him) plucks from thin air and then he sets out to defend his presuppositions.

Isn't he better off not making those presuppositions in the first place?

This is the pattern that I find totally needless. When one comes up with a list of presuppositions and then sets out to defend them with philosophy, in my mind, it's just a game he's playing but ultimately, everything is still merely his imagination.

I'm not sure if your idea of God is orthodox Judaism. Supposing it's not and it's your original idea, my question is why come up with it at all?

I am not sure if I have expressed myself clearly enough but perhaps I'll illustrate it with an example. X postulates that we have wind on earth because there is a giant invisible mouth blowing air across the face of the earth. He then constructs a philosophical argument to support his belief. Rather than looking at his philosophical argument, I am more interested in asking him why he comes up with the Giant Mouth Belief. Is there evidence for it? Or is there a reason for him to suggest the existence of the Giant Mouth? I am not so interested in the philosophical justification for the Giant Mouth Belief as I am in asking him what leads him to such a belief in the first place. That is why evidence or reason is crucial here. There must be something that leads him to the belief. That something is the evidence or the reason and that's what I'm interested in; not the philosophy to justify the belief.

[quote author=St Truth link=topic=11977.msg1193195#msg1193195 date=1506333295

What I have been curious about is how anyone can be a theist intellectually or rationally. Unless one comes up with a convoluted sophistry, it's impossible to place theism in a rational framework. One way many theists approach this is to reduce the framework of what would be rational to such an extent that if theism is to be regarded as rational, so would a belief in pixies. Is your approach the same?
[/quote]
I am not Baruch, but I have wrestled with that question for decades.  I have not found a totally satisfactory answer yet.  But this is what I have found on a personal level.  Many people just do not like to, 1--think or use reason, and 2--abhor 'I don't know.'.  It is so much easier to 'believe' because one does not have to think deeply or reason to come to answers.  They are sheeple and simply want to be feed the 'answers'.  One answer that seems to satisfy (for them) is goddidit.  Why did that baby die?; why did that flood happen, why.............fill in the blank.  God has mysterious ways, so don't worry about it, accept it and go on.  I do remember thinking about this at your age (and younger) and hoping I'd find some sort of answer.  This is as far as I've gotten to a total answer.   

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 25, 2017, 09:11:29 AM

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 05:54:55 AM

What I have been curious about is how anyone can be a theist intellectually or rationally. Unless one comes up with a convoluted sophistry, it's impossible to place theism in a rational framework. One way many theists approach this is to reduce the framework of what would be rational to such an extent that if theism is to be regarded as rational, so would a belief in pixies. Is your approach the same?

I am not Baruch, but I have wrestled with that question for decades.  I have not found a totally satisfactory answer yet.  But this is what I have found on a personal level.  Many people just do not like to, 1--think or use reason, and 2--abhor 'I don't know.'.  It is so much easier to 'believe' because one does not have to think deeply or reason to come to answers.  They are sheeple and simply want to be feed the 'answers'.  One answer that seems to satisfy (for them) is goddidit.  Why did that baby die?; why did that flood happen, why.............fill in the blank.  God has mysterious ways, so don't worry about it, accept it and go on.  I do remember thinking about this at your age (and younger) and hoping I'd find some sort of answer.  This is as far as I've gotten to a total answer.

That may be the usual approach taken by the majority of Christians. But there are some believers who happily seek justification for their belief through philosophy. As I have said before, philosophy is like a game. With the correct premises, you can even show that the existence of pixies can be philosophically justified.

But I'm not interested in the games adults play. I prefer a simple answer - what made them believe in the first place? Philosophy is an answer of last resort. You don't go to philosophy and say, 'OK, I will believe in God'. Because the fact is the HUGE MAJORITY of philosophers are atheists. Apart from Plantinga, it's hard to come across a famous modern philosopher who is a believing Christian. To say philosophy explains that God is real is as silly as to say that quantum physics encourages you to believe in God. Again, the fact is the people who truly understand quantum physics are all atheists. My experience with Christians is they love to pick on really tough subjects like quantum physics to squeeze God into the tough areas of quantum physics which are incomprehensible to us.

A lot of religious people and woomeisters claim quantum physics 'proves' God. One example is Deepak Chopra who claimed that he used quantum physics in faith healing. Until Dawkins chewed him up and spat him out for a fraud. He was furious and said that science was a useless tool and scientists were arrogant. Suddenly, he forgot that before Dawkins exposed him, he claimed to use science (quantum physics) to heal people. Then suddenly, when he's exposed for a fraud, he slams science as a useless tool. I laughed and laughed when I saw that video. Deepak Chopra is the foremost woomeister. If you search woomeister on google, you are sure to find Chopra's name. It's what Jerry Coyne calls him. Apart from Dawkins, I have met Jerry Coyne and Lawrence Krauss. I got Coyne to autograph my book. But I didn't get Krauss to do it because he was busy and he was in a bad mood after some Christian asked him a stupid question. He made it clear that the questioner was stupid. Haha. But I was a little afraid of him after that and I was much younger at the time. Krauss is a very intelligent man. These physicists tend to be.

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 09:31:12 AM
I am not Baruch, but I have wrestled with that question for decades.  I have not found a totally satisfactory answer yet.  But this is what I have found on a personal level.  Many people just do not like to, 1--think or use reason, and 2--abhor 'I don't know.'.  It is so much easier to 'believe' because one does not have to think deeply or reason to come to answers.  They are sheeple and simply want to be feed the 'answers'.  One answer that seems to satisfy (for them) is goddidit.  Why did that baby die?; why did that flood happen, why.............fill in the blank.  God has mysterious ways, so don't worry about it, accept it and go on.  I do remember thinking about this at your age (and younger) and hoping I'd find some sort of answer.  This is as far as I've gotten to a total answer.


That may be the usual approach taken by the majority of Christians. But there are some believers who happily seek justification for their belief through philosophy. As I have said before, philosophy is like a game. With the correct premises, you can even show that the existence of pixies can be philosophically justified.

But I'm not interested in the games adults play. I prefer a simple answer - what made them believe in the first place? Philosophy is an answer of last resort. You don't go to philosophy and say, 'OK, I will believe in God'. Because the fact is the HUGE MAJORITY of philosophers are atheists. Apart from Plantinga, it's hard to come across a famous modern philosopher who is a believing Christian. To say philosophy explains that God is real is as silly as to say that quantum physics encourages you to believe in God. Again, the fact is the people who truly understand quantum physics are all atheists. My experience with Christians is they love to pick on really tough subjects like quantum physics to squeeze God into the tough areas of quantum physics which are incomprehensible to us.

A lot of religious people and woomeisters claim quantum physics 'proves' God. One example is Deepak Chopra who claimed that he used quantum physics in faith healing. Until Dawkins chewed him up and spat him out for a fraud. He was furious and said that science was a useless tool and scientists were arrogant. Suddenly, he forgot that before Dawkins exposed him, he claimed to use science (quantum physics) to heal people. Then suddenly, when he's exposed for a fraud, he slams science as a useless tool. I laughed and laughed when I saw that video. Deepak Chopra is the foremost woomeister. If you search woomeister on google, you are sure to find Chopra's name. It's what Jerry Coyne calls him. Apart from Dawkins, I have met Jerry Coyne and Lawrence Krauss. I got Coyne to autograph my book. But I didn't get Krauss to do it because he was busy and he was in a bad mood after some Christian asked him a stupid question. He made it clear that the questioner was stupid. Haha. But I was a little afraid of him after that and I was much younger at the time. Krauss is a very intelligent man. These physicists tend to be.

There is a fact here that you seem to be down-playing quite a bit.  You are not typical.  You are clearly a person who values thinking and reasoning--you study the questions you are interested in, not willing to take surface reasons for anything.  You like to dig and get to the heart of the matter.  I think you view the general masses as people who like to do the same.  In a perfect world it would be so.  But this world is not perfect, and the great masses of people are not like you. 

Also, understand I am not European or English.  My view of the masses are shaped by my living in America.  It would seem that Trump has demonstrated that; I cannot now claim that the US masses are simply ignorant (lacking information); they are basically stupid; they care little to nothing for facts; and stupid simply cannot be fixed.

Can the average US person name a single philosopher?  No.  Do they care? No.  So, your average church goes, or fundamentalist christian, does not care for intellect.   They don't go to church or listen to their favorite religious leader to learn how to think better.  They listen to try to learn to believe better--to learn to have an unshakable faith--in a fiction--that god or Jesus existed.  They make these favorite religious leaders wealthy beyond understanding because these leaders tell them that 'I don't know' does not exist; that goddidit is always the reason.  Just believe in the Lord, give you heart and soul to this fiction, and give me (the chruch) money.  That's it.  Quick and simple.  No more do the masses need to worry about death, bad things happening, or anything else, for the Lord God has it in hand even if you can't see it.  Just believe.  And they do.  And reasons and critical thinking has little to no impact on these masses.

You are not a member of these masses.  You are not swayed by 'belief', but by reason and thinking.  It is against your nature to understand how to give yourself fully to belief.  It would be quite the eye opener for you if you could attend for awhile a typical Baptist or Methodist or Church of Christ church and view what goes on; participating would be even better (well, participating as much as you can).  Then you would have a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of these people.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 25, 2017, 10:51:01 AM
There is a fact here that you seem to be down-playing quite a bit.  You are not typical.  You are clearly a person who values thinking and reasoning--you study the questions you are interested in, not willing to take surface reasons for anything.  You like to dig and get to the heart of the matter.  I think you view the general masses as people who like to do the same.  In a perfect world it would be so.  But this world is not perfect, and the great masses of people are not like you. 

Also, understand I am not European or English.  My view of the masses are shaped by my living in America.  It would seem that Trump has demonstrated that; I cannot now claim that the US masses are simply ignorant (lacking information); they are basically stupid; they care little to nothing for facts; and stupid simply cannot be fixed.

Can the average US person name a single philosopher?  No.  Do they care? No.  So, your average church goes, or fundamentalist christian, does not care for intellect.   They don't go to church or listen to their favorite religious leader to learn how to think better.  They listen to try to learn to believe better--to learn to have an unshakable faith--in a fiction--that god or Jesus existed.  They make these favorite religious leaders wealthy beyond understanding because these leaders tell them that 'I don't know' does not exist; that goddidit is always the reason.  Just believe in the Lord, give you heart and soul to this fiction, and give me (the chruch) money.  That's it.  Quick and simple.  No more do the masses need to worry about death, bad things happening, or anything else, for the Lord God has it in hand even if you can't see it.  Just believe.  And they do.  And reasons and critical thinking has little to no impact on these masses.

You are not a member of these masses.  You are not swayed by 'belief', but by reason and thinking.  It is against your nature to understand how to give yourself fully to belief.  It would be quite the eye opener for you if you could attend for awhile a typical Baptist or Methodist or Church of Christ church and view what goes on; participating would be even better (well, participating as much as you can).  Then you would have a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of these people.

I was thinking more of Baruch. He is certainly not like the masses. That is why I'm curious what made him believe in a God. That is why I value what he has to say. If he were the average unthinking person - the sort I see in CF, I wouldn't have bothered to ask him why he believed.

In CF, I made my stand very clear. Religion is totally irrational and is not supported by reason or evidence. I have for a long time searched the internet for answers.  I have seen almost every argument between Christians and atheists online. A lot of Christians recommended William Lane Craig to me and I must say that I have seen EVERY debate of his and where I can't find the videos, I have read the transcripts. I find Craig to be a very dishonest slimy debater. I have seen every single trick that he has come up with. Last year, I wanted to write down all his lies and dishonest arguments and his many tricks but I got lazy and my school work got in the way.

There are a few tricks that Craig and many Christians use when they argue with atheists. But they all seem to have a desperate button. Craig used it once.  The desperate button is a button that unleashes total destruction. It's a bit like what Rocketman may very well employ on the world if Trump doesn't control his tweets a little.  This is the argument that questions everything and the reliability of everything. Can we trust our senses? How do we know if our reality is not merely illusory. But this is nothing more than a cop out.  I can't accept such an argument. If indeed reality is illusory, then there need not be any further argument because whatever we see in a post may also be illusory.

This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 12:08:22 PM
I was thinking more of Baruch. He is certainly not like the masses. That is why I'm curious what made him believe in a God. That is why I value what he has to say. If he were the average unthinking person - the sort I see in CF, I wouldn't have bothered to ask him why he believed.

In CF, I made my stand very clear. Religion is totally irrational and is not supported by reason or evidence. I have for a long time searched the internet for answers.  I have seen almost every argument between Christians and atheists online. A lot of Christians recommended William Lane Craig to me and I must say that I have seen EVERY debate of his and where I can't find the videos, I have read the transcripts. I find Craig to be a very dishonest slimy debater. I have seen every single trick that he has come up with. Last year, I wanted to write down all his lies and dishonest arguments and his many tricks but I got lazy and my school work got in the way.

There are a few tricks that Craig and many Christians use when they argue with atheists. But they all seem to have a desperate button. Craig used it once.  The desperate button is a button that unleashes total destruction. It's a bit like what Rocketman may very well employ on the world if Trump doesn't control his tweets a little.  This is the argument that questions everything and the reliability of everything. Can we trust our senses? How do we know if our reality is not merely illusory. But this is nothing more than a cop out.  I can't accept such an argument. If indeed reality is illusory, then there need not be any further argument because whatever we see in a post may also be illusory.

This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

OK, so we won't have to adjourn to the philosophy section then.  Buddhists, yogis and nihilists deny most of what people call reality, but you aren't one of those.  Einstein said that you don't understand something yourself, if you can't explain it to a six year old ... so you do agree with him.  You are argumentative (like debate) ... so you are rather like Plato than Socrates.  Socrates said that he was ignorant ... Plato attempted to fix that defect ;-)  I do think that you would agree with Archimedes in math and physics .. and I would too.  So let us take this in terms of Archimedes, in unsophisticated (and un-sophist) terms.

On debate ... this is a toy problem, all debates are.  They are bad enough when done in formal logic or maths (what is rigor?).  Logic and maths are toy systems, that are useful analogs for a larger reality that includes humans and language.  That is where our ship strikes a reef.  Ordinary language, which isn't a jargon, is messy and inexact.  Most debates dissolve into disagreements on terms, and obstinacy to seeing things from another persons POV.  I am not interested in toy systems, though they are useful enough professionally (in engineering we constrain things such that the maths works reliably, even if inexactly).  Then we have reasonable assurance that the bridge won't fall down.  It is a practical game, with deliberate margins of error, so that our license to practice engineering isn't revoked for cause.  Sometimes that fails anyway, and the bridge falls down, because our understanding of the engineering is inadequate.  At that point, we pick up our slide-rules, come up with a new physical model, and using that, recalculate, until we can explain in maths why the bridge fell down.

Galloping Gertie 1940

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw

So classical physics, but not all forces accounted for.  The bridge is acting as an airfoil, relative to a strong steady wind blowing in from the Pacific, and straight inland.  Harmonic resonance occurs, leading to greater and greater deviations of force and position.  This is why foot soldiers have to break marching cadence when crossing a foot bridge.  Once positive feedback becomes great enough, the "strength of materials" equations go out of bounds and the bridge falls.

So we humans try to analyze this in lay terms, as cause/effect.  The religious mind is emotional, precognitive (not irrational).  We say ... "oh the humanity" about the woman who drove the car onto the bridge halfway, the dog trapped in the car, and the man who went to rescue it.  As an engineer, we analyze after the fact, that civil engineers in some cases need to know aeronautical engineering too.  Once they add that and apply it to conditions that require it, we can predict if a bridge will hold up under unfavorable dynamic weather, not just static gravity.  And we are back to square one, we can now build a bridge at that location, that doesn't fall down.

But we can't avoid a bit of philosophy about this example.  Modern people understand, in Aristotelian language (jargon) that we only use the material and formal causes, in engineering/physical science.  Theologians try to apply the other two "Causes" ... the efficient and final causes.  Efficient cause answers "how", and final cause answers "why".  The first two causes answers, "what", "where" and "when".  How and why refer to living and sentient beings.  This is not trivial for medicine, as it is for civil engineering.  In building a bridge, we can ignore the "how" and "why" ... while we concentrate on the "what", "where" and "when".  They exist ... the "how" is engineers and their slide rules etc ... the "why" is the chicken question ... "to get to the other side".  But not all problems are "separable" ... a property necessary for analysis to be successful.  The more something is more than the sum of its parts (biological, psychological and social problems) the less analysis works for us (though people try, as hammers, to nail things down materially and formally anyway).  When we get to living systems in general and consciousness in particular, the living conscious system doing the analysis, finds that the circularity is self defeating ... circularity is the very acme of "not separable".  In short, toy problems are useful, particularly in engineering, but while they don't offer much insight into more complicated problems (see philosophy) we can use them successfully.  You don't have to be perfect to achieve good enough.

So no, I don't attribute non-human, human, expected or unexpected events to divine intervention.  That is a stereotype typical of both theists and atheists.  I understand that "explanation", including "cause/effect" is a limited tool.  That knowledge is different from understanding, and untypical of Mike CLs examples, I am comfortable with not knowing.  No G-d of the Gaps for me either, it is all G-d.  I simply don't choose to apply the wrong tools to the correct situations, because I am broad minded.

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 12:08:22 PM
This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

The deeper irony being that even if observation is illusory, it's still consistent.  If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to go out and measure how long it takes an object to fall ten meters, you will get one consistent answer from all of them -- a shade over a second.

If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to write down a message some god will give them at precisely 1200 UT on Friday 29 September, you will get hundreds of different answers --  perhaps even nearly a thousand.  I expect many will be blandly and broadly similar -- "he says he loves us", "he says repent", that sort of thing, but most will be mutually exclusive, preventing even a fallback to "well, he's god, he gave different messages to different people because he can do that".  Maybe, but he can't give contradictory messages without being either a liar, capriciously cruel, or just insane.

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 08:22:09 AM
I'm afraid I don't understand half of what you are saying. Let's make it simple. Like you are explaining it to a child. I'm not exactly a child but I'm not 16 yet and so I'm technically not an adult.

Let's take the hypothetical person who is seated in his armchair eating an ice-cream. What makes him suddenly decide, 'Hey! There is an invisible God.' What makes him come up with this notion that there is a God?  What would this God be like? Presumably he is not a physical being? I don't know what you idea of God is but you probably will say he is spiritual? But this guy in his armchair will have to conjure up the notion of a spirit as well.  What about the attributes of God? If you idea of God is the same as the church's or the God of the Bible, this God probably is Almighty. He has 'lovingkindness'. He is truth. He is love.

Mind you, the hypothetical guy in his armchair has made up quite a lot in his mind.

Now, he seeks to defend his idea of God with all the properties he has come up with and all the attributes that he has imbued in God. He obviously can't defend God scientifically. Scientific demands are too rigorous and unforgiving for anything fictitious. So he goes to philosophy.

But my point is why does he bother to do that in the first place? He has made a long list of presuppositions which he (or someone else before him) plucks from thin air and then he sets out to defend his presuppositions.

Isn't he better off not making those presuppositions in the first place?

This is the pattern that I find totally needless. When one comes up with a list of presuppositions and then sets out to defend them with philosophy, in my mind, it's just a game he's playing but ultimately, everything is still merely his imagination.

I'm not sure if your idea of God is orthodox Judaism. Supposing it's not and it's your original idea, my question is why come up with it at all?

I am not sure if I have expressed myself clearly enough but perhaps I'll illustrate it with an example. X postulates that we have wind on earth because there is a giant invisible mouth blowing air across the face of the earth. He then constructs a philosophical argument to support his belief. Rather than looking at his philosophical argument, I am more interested in asking him why he comes up with the Giant Mouth Belief. Is there evidence for it? Or is there a reason for him to suggest the existence of the Giant Mouth? I am not so interested in the philosophical justification for the Giant Mouth Belief as I am in asking him what leads him to such a belief in the first place. That is why evidence or reason is crucial here. There must be something that leads him to the belief. That something is the evidence or the reason and that's what I'm interested in; not the philosophy to justify the belief.

1. Yes, I am not orthodox, I am a heretic.  Only heretics and atheists take religion seriously ;-)

2. In Judaism, orthopraxis is tops, not orthodoxy (as it is in Christianity).

3. Orthodoxy means correct opinion, not correct knowledge, understanding .. let alone correct truth.

4. Orthopraxis means that in a particular community, we all pretty much do the same things.  As an Anglican you will understand this, since orthodoxy has gone by the wayside, but orthopraxis is still essential for maintenance of tradition.

5. As an Anglican, you aren't to far from being Catholic ... both are "high church".  Originally Anglican was just Catholic under the control of the king instead of the Pope.  I have always been in "low church".  We don't have a Chief Rabbi in America, like there is in Britain (in imitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury).  Your POV is implicitly "catholic" ... you seek universals on the basis of practice, but your organization has abandoned universals on the basis of belief.  You have absorbed some doctrine, yet it disturbs you because ... it isn't a shared belief at this time, and you don't share it either.

6. Going further would drag us into philosophy.  Your choice.  All philosophy for the last 2000 years is mere commentary on Plato, yet you are implicitly Platonic.  But you don't yet see that in yourself ... and many here dismiss that they are the propagators of ancient Greek memes ... of people who rejected their own contemporary society.  But as misfits then and now, they do share common cause.

7. Of course the exact reason why person X adopts belief or practice Y, is biographical and unique, and would take way too much time.

Quote from: trdsf on September 25, 2017, 01:05:42 PM
The deeper irony being that even if observation is illusory, it's still consistent.  If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to go out and measure how long it takes an object to fall ten meters, you will get one consistent answer from all of them -- a shade over a second.

If you ask 1,000 random people around the world to write down a message some god will give them at precisely 1200 UT on Friday 29 September, you will get hundreds of different answers --  perhaps even nearly a thousand.  I expect many will be blandly and broadly similar -- "he says he loves us", "he says repent", that sort of thing, but most will be mutually exclusive, preventing even a fallback to "well, he's god, he gave different messages to different people because he can do that".  Maybe, but he can't give contradictory messages without being either a liar, capriciously cruel, or just insane.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds - Emerson.  So who did win the US election, Donald or Hillary?  Agreement among humans is usually group think, propaganda/advertising or a gun.  We are not agreeable creatures.  Sometimes technical people, in technical situations can come to the same conclusion (but only in controlled toy situations called experiment).  Just because a cat falls consistently on its feet, doesn't imply that Newton's equations need to be modified, but it is important to the cat anyway.  Objectivity is really a very limited aspect of a subjective reality.  Personalism trumps impersonalism.  Synthesis trumps analysis.  Art trumps science.  Technical people in general, and IT people in particular, are abnormal, yet useful to the larger society.  Freud said so about nurses and doctors, and they don't like to hear it repeated.

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 12:08:22 PM
This is the kamikaze argument that religious people resort to when they have lost. Rather than admit defeat, they choose to destroy everything - declare that nothing is reliable and even reality may be spurious and illusory.

We've had a couple of Christians lately that are framing the debate as parity between science and religion, which is a stretch to begin with, but once they actually claim, "Therefore, parity," it's just a stone's throw from, "So God is true."

We debate Christians here, although I consider it a waste of time, even though I engage in it at times.  But don't confuse debate with logic.  Skeptics try to approach debate with logic, but logic is not a requirement for debate.  It scores a few points, perhaps at the college debate team level, but debate is about winning, not logic.  That's why you have guys like William Lane Craig participating in debates, and employing logical fallacies that sell to the flock, although a good Christian debater will carefully fluff the fallacies up and package them with leading twists and turns of reason whose irrelevance will space out even a good listener and result in a marginal state of hypnotic boredom.

Quote from: SGOS on September 25, 2017, 02:02:31 PM
We've had a couple of Christians lately that are framing the debate as parity between science and religion, which is a stretch to begin with, but once they actually claim, "Therefore, parity," it's just a stone's throw from, "So God is true."

We debate Christians here, although I consider it a waste of time, even though I engage in it at times.  But don't confuse debate with logic.  Skeptics try to approach debate with logic, but logic is not a requirement for debate.  It scores a few points, perhaps at the college debate team level, but debate is about winning, not logic.  That's why you have guys like William Lane Craig participating in debates, and employing logical fallacies that sell to the flock, although a good Christian debater will carefully fluff the fallacies up and package them with leading twists and turns of reason whose irrelevance will space out even a good listener and result in a marginal state of hypnotic boredom.

Forget the hard sciences ... this is all about human psychology ... and guns.

Quote from: Baruch on September 25, 2017, 01:18:32 PM
1. Yes, I am not orthodox, I am a heretic.  Only heretics and atheists take religion seriously ;-)

2. In Judaism, orthopraxis is tops, not orthodoxy (as it is in Christianity).

3. Orthodoxy means correct opinion, not correct knowledge, understanding .. let alone correct truth.

4. Orthopraxis means that in a particular community, we all pretty much do the same things.  As an Anglican you will understand this, since orthodoxy has gone by the wayside, but orthopraxis is still essential for maintenance of tradition.

5. As an Anglican, you aren't to far from being Catholic ... both are "high church".  Originally Anglican was just Catholic under the control of the king instead of the Pope.  I have always been in "low church".  We don't have a Chief Rabbi in America, like there is in Britain (in imitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury).  Your POV is implicitly "catholic" ... you seek universals on the basis of practice, but your organization has abandoned universals on the basis of belief.  You have absorbed some doctrine, yet it disturbs you because ... it isn't a shared belief at this time, and you don't share it either.

6. Going further would drag us into philosophy.  Your choice.  All philosophy for the last 2000 years is mere commentary on Plato, yet you are implicitly Platonic.  But you don't yet see that in yourself ... and many here dismiss that they are the propagators of ancient Greek memes ... of people who rejected their own contemporary society.  But as misfits then and now, they do share common cause.

7. Of course the exact reason why person X adopts belief or practice Y, is biographical and unique, and would take way too much time.

Hi Baruch,

I hope you don't mind my saying this. Your post has 7 numbered paragraphs and for a while i thought you were giving me a comprehensive answer until i read your post and realised that you offered ZERO answer.

I can't help observing that people in CF did the same thing when I merely asked for a simple reason as to what led them to believe in God. The only difference is they are positively hostile to me while you are perfectly civil and for that I thank you.

Or is that a preliminary to an answer that is forthcoming?

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 09:57:50 PMYour post has 7 numbered paragraphs and for a while i thought you were giving me a comprehensive answer until i read your post and realised that you offered ZERO answer.

That's standard Baruch.

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 09:57:50 PM
Hi Baruch,
I hope you don't mind my saying this. Your post has 7 numbered paragraphs and for a while i thought you were giving me a comprehensive answer until i read your post and realised that you offered ZERO answer. 

Like Baruch himself says, as a theist, he is tolerated here, but it would probably be the same if he were something else.  Don't spend an inordinate amount of time agonizing over what he might be saying.  No one knows what he's saying.  Some people argue with him.  I don't know why.  No one could possibly understand what the argument is about.  Baruch places a high value on being misunderstood.  It's his thing.  You just have to accept that and move on.

Quote from: St Truth on September 25, 2017, 09:57:50 PM
Hi Baruch,

I hope you don't mind my saying this. Your post has 7 numbered paragraphs and for a while i thought you were giving me a comprehensive answer until i read your post and realised that you offered ZERO answer.

I can't help observing that people in CF did the same thing when I merely asked for a simple reason as to what led them to believe in God. The only difference is they are positively hostile to me while you are perfectly civil and for that I thank you.

Or is that a preliminary to an answer that is forthcoming?

It can be.  You want more personal data?  What does "answer" mean to you, besides anecdote?

Quote from: Hydra009 on September 25, 2017, 10:35:33 PM
That's standard Baruch.

I am much better organized than Ibn, and better speller too.

Quote from: SGOS on September 25, 2017, 10:58:12 PM
Like Baruch himself says, as a theist, he is tolerated here, but it would probably be the same if he were something else.  Don't spend an inordinate amount of time agonizing over what he might be saying.  No one knows what he's saying.  Some people argue with him.  I don't know why.  No one could possibly understand what the argument is about.  Baruch places a high value on being misunderstood.  It's his thing.  You just have to accept that and move on.

Thanks, SGOS.

I am familiar with such non-answers that Baruch gives. I have encountered this repeatedly in CF. And I have a fair idea why they do this.

There is a class of people who are enamoured of anything that sounds mystical and profound. Hindu mystics are famous for this. They will say something that sounds paradoxical, contradictory and meaningless. When it comes to religion and other hocus-pocus nonsense, the more paradoxical you sound, the more contradictory and the more meaningless you can be, the more you will be believed and the more the people will collapse in humble adoration. But I don't belong to that class. But Baruch is not being dishonest. Far from it. I understand people like him.

I have asked him how he came to accept God. I told him I didn't want to listen to his defence of God. That can come later. I want him to talk about how he came to accept God in the first place. And I know what his answer will be. It's always a personal reason. Something emotional. Here's one example I can think of: The person undergoes some grief and in the state of depression, as he sits by his fireplace with his dinner on his lap (and let's say it's my favourite food - steak and kidney pie with a side of bubble and squeak) when suddenly, a thought came to his mind. It's a thought that might have been planted in his head because he used to go to church. Nothing miraculous about that. The thought was 'Take comfort for I died for you.'  And then he felt a sense of peace that notwithstanding his grief, he went into to a psychological state that is almost akin to ecstasy. Again this is nothing momentous. It's a state of mind people go into quite naturally.

But to this person, he has had an encounter with God or more specifically, Jesus. Can you imagine that? Something as banal as a common thought can convince him of the truth of God.

Now, supposing this person is an intellectual person. Chances are he's not going to say that he was led to God by that non-incident. But because he is an intellectual, he goes on to read extensively to try to justify the existence of this God he has just created. He realises quite quickly that nothing in science will allow him to turn the figment of his imagination into a reality. Science  brooks no such nonsense. If you want to give respectability to nonsense and some semblance of fake reality, philosophy is where you turn to. Never mind the fact that most philosophers are atheists. The fact is philosophy is wide enough and the parameters extensive enough to accommodate even sheer nonsense.

As I said in CF before they banned me quite unjustly, most believers put the cart before the horse. Something happened and made them turn to God first. That part is totally unintellectual, mindless and dumb. Once they have accepted God, they then set out to show he is real and the only arena that affords them the framework to turn garbage into something divine is philosophy.

So, when you hear someone making obfuscatory remarks that are convoluted and seemingly difficult, it's NOT difficult or esoteric or erudite in any way. It's just plain nonsense that any madman can spin. But that's not because the guy is a bad guy or a dishonest chap. He's actually honest - he's fooling himself without his knowing it. Think of a drowning man who will clutch at straws.

But what really irritated me in CF is the dotards there will sing the fulsome praise of people who make nonsensical statements. Hindu priests do this a lot. I remember seeing a Hindu book written by a priest and at the preface, it says 'The book you are about to read is neither fact nor fiction'. I put it down instantly. What's neither fact nor fiction is nonsensical garbage.

What I like about atheists is most of you are not so stupid as to be charmed by nonsensical garbage. Christians can be incredibly dumb. I know that. I've served in the church since I was 5. These are the people who will go 'WOW!!!" over nonsensical garbage especially when it's couched in a cryptic language that makes occasional references to the philosophers of old. I assure you this is what people in CF do all the time. They love to mention names of people without elaborating. One of them, for example, when asked by me why she believed in God in the first place, replied that her belief had 'Thomistic roots'. She stopped there. She probably thought a boy like me would just go 'Wow! What brilliance!'. I told her she had not answered the question and can she please not make subtle hints? I ventured further to suggest that if someone has no good reason for something, he might not want to state the 'reason' clearly because it would most certainly be demolished by any intelligent person. He might instead merely drop hints and I asked how honest such an approach was. I didn't even say she was dishonest but about 20 people reported my post to the moderators. I really am amazed how I could go into that den of vipers and survived for so long.

Finally, someone who is one of their smartest chaps (and honestly, it's hard to find anyone with even basic intelligence in CF) gave me his 3 reasons for his belief. One of them had something to do with his wife and my mum has told me before never to make any remark about a person's spouse. So I didn't say anything in reply but let me just say that it was the dumbest three reasons I have ever heard in all my born days.

I speak only the truth for I am...

St Truth

Young man ... you are very inexperienced in the world.  But you will learn eventually what it is all about.  Typical cock-sure youth.  This is why your elders use your type as cannon fodder.  Unless you have been married, you are as smart as the Pope.

In short, until I was married, I didn't know love of a person my own age, apart from the love of my parents (who are not my own age).  That is decisive.  And no, it isn't about the sex.  Even if you are gay, your lover will teach you the nature of reality.

So religion is emotional, not intellectual.  This is why brainiacs don't get it.  It is precognition, but without precognition, there is no cognition to rationalize what has already been decided by the unconscious mind.  The conscious mind is just the superficial you cleaning up your bedroom after a pizza party by the deep unconscious you.

Party on, but clean up your bedroom afterward.  And thanks, I am honest, except when I am joking around.

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 07:20:18 AM
Young man ... you are very inexperienced in the world.  But you will learn eventually what it is all about.  Typical cock-sure youth.  This is why your elders use your type as cannon fodder.  Unless you have been married, you are as smart as the Pope.

In short, until I was married, I didn't know love of a person my own age, apart from the love of my parents (who are not my own age).  That is decisive.  And no, it isn't about the sex.  Even if you are gay, your lover will teach you the nature of reality.

So religion is emotional, not intellectual.  This is why brainiacs don't get it.  It is precognition, but without precognition, there is no cognition to rationalize what has already been decided by the unconscious mind.  The conscious mind is just the superficial you cleaning up your bedroom after a pizza party by the deep unconscious you.

Party on, but clean up your bedroom afterward.  And thanks, I am honest, except when I am joking around.

Obviously, you agree with my analysis of how theists come to believe in God and how they scramble for some justification of the belief by looking to philosophy which has the capacity to justify even a belief in leprechauns? I don't think my analysis can be faulted in any way. If it can, someone is sure to point it out to me. They couldn't fault what I said in CF either. All they did was to ban me and to remove my posts. I must say it makes me feel quite proud when grown men and women have to ban me and remove my posts because they know I'm right. One delirious woman messaged me to ask if I was aware that there were many people who will lose their faith because of my postings. She said the Bible promises that people who stumble others will be tied to a millstone and drowned. I told her to read her Bible carefully. It says those who stumble 'little ones'. It doesn't say little ones who stumble dumb adults. She said she would show the moderators that I called the Christians on CF 'dumb'. But it's true. They really are dumb.

I told you about the guy who gave 3 reasons for his belief in God. His 2nd reason was the Bible was correct. Ho Ho Ho!!! That can easily be shown to be the worst reason. The Bible is as erroneous as CS Lewis' Narnia. His 3rd reason was something about his wife - he was sure that God led the two of them together. I really had to hold back my contempt for that kind of answer. I had to stop myself from saying something rude. How can an adult say that he believes in God because he believes God brought him and his wife together? This must be the dumbest reason I've ever heard in my entire life. Oh and his first reason for believing in God is another dumb reason - He says he is not satisfied that the atheist position is correct.

I told him politely that that is the typical theist's dishonest trick in turning the onus of proof on the atheist. It's always for the person who asserts the existence of something to show evidence and reason for its existence. A person should only believe in God if there is a valid reason for it. He cannot say he thinks the atheist's position is weak. That's the wrong approach. I gave him an example. Supposing a boy believes in fairies. He goes to the Bishop and tells the Bishop that he believes in fairies because the Bishop's a-fairyist position is not convincing. But the bishop will protest that he has not argued against fairies. The boy insists that since the bishop is an a-fairyist, he has an a-fairyist position and the boy is convinced it's not a persuasive position. I told the man in CF that his approach was just like the boy's. And it's the wrong approach. It's a subtle way of turning the burden of proof on the atheist and to say that unless the atheist can come up with a good atheist argument, he will believe in God. The default is not to believe in God, fairies, pixies, etc.

And then a really stupid woman suggested that atheists should have the burden of proof because they assert the existence of the non-god. Can you imagine the kind of people I contended with in CF and what imbeciles they really are? After talking to the people in CF, I can see why Christians always accuse atheists of arrogance. Compared with the Christian morons, atheists have the right to be arrogant.

I was so contemptuous of them that when one of them said that she had the Holy Spirit in her which was why she believed in God and I should examine myself to see if I really had the spirit in me, I was so tempted to her that what she needed was not the non-existent spirit but a functioning brain. But I didn't say it or that would have given them the opportunity to ban me earlier.

I really felt as if CF was filled with young children. I thought the stupid woman (who said atheists had the onus of proof because they were asserting the existence of the non-god) was a young child pretending to be older. But later she recounted the story of her life and she did something 50 years ago!!! She's got to be at least in her 60s and yet she spoke like a child of 3!!!

Intelligent people who believe in God like Baruch are the most unfortunate. They have tied themselves to the beliefs of fools and the only way out is to go into the realm of humour and nonsense. I've met priests who are just like that. Humour shows people around them that they are really quite intelligent and it helps to divert searching questions from people. On another thread in Atheist Forums, someone said that God was imaginary. Baruch replied that reality is actually imaginary and so if God is imaginary, God must be real. I felt so sorry for Baruch when I read that. That is why I asked him why he bothered to believe in God. He's not like me. I live with my parents and I go to church with my parents and I've been an altar boy all my life and I'm in a church where my priests are liberal and accept my stand. There's no need for me to rock the boat. My dad isn't really a believer but he believes in the church and he always reminds me that my great great grandfather was an important churchman in the time of Henry VIII as if that meant anything. So, I make my stand clear that God probably doesn't exist but I continue to serve the church as a part of my culture. I don't know if I will continue to be in church when I'm older. But Baruch is different. He can choose to be an atheist quite easily. I feel sorry for him because he's an intelligent man who has chosen to put on a dunce cap by calling himself a theist when he should throw it away and put on a scholar's hat. It's a self-inflicted humiliation. That is why I'm so curious why he believed in God in the first place but obviously, he doesn't like to talk about it, and as my mum has said, I must always be sensitive to know when people don't want to talk about something and I should stay away from the topic.

I may be insensitive but I'm truthful, for I am none other than...

St Truth

Quote from: St Truth on September 26, 2017, 02:16:23 AM
When it comes to religion and other hocus-pocus nonsense, the more paradoxical you sound, the more contradictory and the more meaningless you can be, the more you will be believed and the more the people will collapse in humble adoration.

Paradoxes are fun, and there is something alluring about them.  People love paradoxes and love to introduce them in discussion.  Some paradoxes are true, others are just contrary explanations that survive on surprise value alone.  When someone introduces a paradox, humans pay attention to what follows because the brain has been startled.  If what follows is gibberish, most people will dismiss it quickly and retire back into their default mental state.  Other people remain stimulated by the gibberish because it's fun to puzzle, and it's fun to entertain the paradox.  It takes one into a fantasy state, and if the paradox is supported by nonsense, better still to sustain the fantasy.  But whether the explanation of the paradox makes sense or not, the person introducing the paradox has commanded the attention of the group, sometimes only momentarily, but nearly everyone has actually listened for a least a brief time.

Paradoxes are useful devices in and out of religion, mostly to get attention, but some are also helpful explanations, which lends a bit of power to the rest of the fake paradoxes.  Propagandists intersperse lies with truth.  On the other hand, was it Hitler that said, "Tell a lie big enough, and everyone will believe it."  The big lie is a major paradox, but so astounding it can survive simply on the strength of its shock value.  Religion and spirituality thrive on this.  The Bible is a book of paradoxes.  Politics and economics build philosophies on paradoxes. 

Quote from: St Truth on September 26, 2017, 02:16:23 AM
The thought was 'Take comfort for I died for you.'  And then he felt a sense of peace that notwithstanding his grief, he went into to a psychological state that is almost akin to ecstasy. Again this is nothing momentous. It's a state of mind people go into quite naturally.
But to this person, he has had an encounter with God or more specifically, Jesus. Can you imagine that? Something as banal as a common thought can convince him of the truth of God.

And imagine the power of a banal peak experience multiplied by a factor of 300.  They are rare, but I have experienced them.  They are overwhelming and if one is a mystic or inclined toward mysticism, they can be interpreted as beyond the emotional capabilities that reside in your own body.  They carry both the starling element of surprise, and a rarity that can only be explained as beyond yourself.  Alternatively, you can just say, "Wow!!  That was a rush," and move forward with your life.

I can identify with the rest of your thoughts too.  I won't respond to them right now, because I want to avoid putting up a wall of text, which I tend to do on my own more than is necessary.

Quote from: SGOS on September 26, 2017, 09:19:42 AM
Paradoxes are fun, and there is something alluring about them.  People love paradoxes and love to introduce them in discussion.  Some paradoxes are true, others are just contrary explanations that survive on surprise value alone.  When someone introduces a paradox, humans pay attention to what follows because the brain has been startled.  If what follows is gibberish, most people will dismiss it quickly and retire back into their default mental state.  Other people remain stimulated by the gibberish because it's fun to puzzle, and it's fun to entertain the paradox.  It takes one into a fantasy state, and if the paradox is supported by nonsense, better still to sustain the fantasy.  But whether the explanation of the paradox makes sense or not, the person introducing the paradox has commanded the attention of the group, sometimes only momentarily, but nearly everyone has actually listened for a least a brief time.

Paradoxes are useful devices in and out of religion, mostly to get attention, but some are also helpful explanations, which lends a bit of power to the rest of the fake paradoxes.  Propagandists intersperse lies with truth.  On the other hand, was it Hitler that said, "Tell a lie big enough, and everyone will believe it."  The big lie is a major paradox, but so astounding it can survive simply on the strength of its shock value.  Religion and spirituality thrive on this.  The Bible is a book of paradoxes.  Politics and economics build philosophies on paradoxes. 
And imagine the power of a banal peak experience multiplied by a factor of 300.  They are rare, but I have experienced them.  They are overwhelming and if one is a mystic or inclined toward mysticism, they can be interpreted as beyond the emotional capabilities that reside in your own body.  They carry both the starling element of surprise, and a rarity that can only be explained as beyond yourself.  Alternatively, you can just say, "Wow!!  That was a rush," and move forward with your life.

I can identify with the rest of your thoughts too.  I won't respond to them right now, because I want to avoid putting up a wall of text, which I tend to do on my own more than is necessary.

I've not experienced anything extraordinary like that. I'm not given to strong emotions.

I have experienced paranormal stuff, and know other people who do, but that is not why I know G-d.  I don't suppose G-d, I don't believe G-d.  I know G-d, but I don't understand G-d ... and don't think I ever will.  Knowing G-d doesn't make me comfortable or satisfied.  Philosophy is where you deal with ambiguity and paradox, but St Truth isn't interested.  There are other pre-cognitive experiences, other than peak experiences (like a runner high, or a mountain climber high), some rather adult.  Sometimes peak experiences are like catharsis ... and that is something very close to religious experience (see Aristotle on Poetics or William James).  My last catharsis was almost a year ago ... a temporary psychotic break.  My last peak experience was just a few weeks ago, attending a theatric comedy for the first time in many years.  Knowing G-d is like reading the Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner ... and getting it.  The poem didn't have a happy ending.

Besides, St Truth, emotional health is better than cognitive brilliance, anyway.  It is people who are important, more important than any god, more important than any other idea we might have.  Eh what?  You don't like Narnia?  How can you claim to be English then.  Do you also hate Robin and Maid Marian?  Perhaps you are a dopple-ganger left on your parent's front porch by overpopulating aliens.  Where you rejected from acting in the last Harry Potter movie?  Expelioso!

Quote from: St Truth on September 26, 2017, 12:21:13 PM
I've not experienced anything extraordinary like that. I'm not given to strong emotions.

To clarify, when I said: 

Quote
And imagine the power of a banal peak experience multiplied by a factor of 300.  They are rare, but I have experienced them.  They are overwhelming and if one is a mystic or inclined toward mysticism, they can be interpreted as beyond the emotional capabilities that reside in your own body.  They carry both the starling element of surprise, and a rarity that can only be explained as beyond yourself.

I didn't literally mean "can only be explained as beyond yourself."  I was speaking from the perspective of a theist who would attribute biochemical sensations as spiritual, supernatural, or sent by a god, rather than as a sudden influx of hormonal activity.  I would hope everyone should experience that sensation during a lifetime whether they are atheist or theist.  God is not required.  I was ten years older than you when I had my first and it wasn't anything I was expecting or even looking for.  So never say never.

"a sudden influx of hormonal activity" ... exactly.  More important that any idea or theory anyone can come up with.  Though love is a more gradual influx of hormonal activity ... sex can be the sudden kind.  Love puts you into a profound personal relationship.  And it is that relationship in where lies divinity.  A relationship of one is mere egomania.  Reminds me of that old movie, with an older man and a younger man assisting him ... "Scent of a Woman".  But really, I wouldn't want to go thru "growing up" again.

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 06:41:09 PM
" And it is that relationship in where lies divinity. 

I find that my relationship with my wife leads me to become more 'human', not divine. 

One would think St. Truth would have gotten over being banned from that Christian forum already. 


Sheesh.

Quote from: Sorginak on September 26, 2017, 07:41:48 PM
One would think St. Truth would have gotten over being banned from that Christian forum already. 


Sheesh.

The world tends to look different to a 15 yr. old.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 26, 2017, 08:01:58 PM
The world tends to look different to a 15 yr. old.

That doesn't mean one coddles a fifteen year old.

When I was fifteen, my mind was already twice that age.

Hell, by the time I was 15 years old, I'd already lived a decade and a half!

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 26, 2017, 08:21:41 PM
Hell, by the time I was 15 years old, I'd already lived a decade and a half!

I get it, I'm old.

Shall I recount how I walked a mile in the snow each morning to get to school?

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 26, 2017, 08:21:41 PM
Hell, by the time I was 15 years old, I'd already lived a decade and a half!

Wow!  You were ahead of me!

Quote from: Sorginak on September 26, 2017, 08:23:10 PM


Shall I recount how I walked a mile in the snow each morning to get to school?

Yeah, me too!  And it was a real pain in the summer!

Quote from: Sorginak on September 26, 2017, 08:23:10 PM
I get it, I'm old.

Shall I recount how I walked a mile in the snow each morning to get to school?

Was it uphill both ways?

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 26, 2017, 08:34:15 PM
Was it uphill both ways?

In my day, youngin's had more respect for their elders.

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 12:45:17 PM
I have experienced paranormal stuff, and know other people who do, but that is not why I know G-d.  I don't suppose G-d, I don't believe G-d.  I know G-d, but I don't understand G-d ... and don't think I ever will. 

I've told you about my friend whose mother is into some New Age cult and he believes in fairies. I've been to his house and his mother showed me a huge book with the title 'Fairyology' and it was only Volume 1. She was really loony and made it seem like if you have a thick book on something, that thing has got to exist. I asked her what made her believe in fairies. She said the same thing you did. She didn't just believe in them or just think they exist; she KNOWS they exist. But I'm more polite with adults when I'm talking to them in person. I didn't tell her, 'Fine! You can say you know they exist till you're blue in the face but that's not answering my question. I asked you WHAT made you believe in fairies.' She did not tell me the reason for her belief and it's the same with theists. They all know there is no valid reason. If they say it, they will only expose themselves to ridicule.

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 12:45:17 PM
Knowing G-d doesn't make me comfortable or satisfied.  Philosophy is where you deal with ambiguity and paradox, but St Truth isn't interested.  There are other pre-cognitive experiences, other than peak experiences (like a runner high, or a mountain climber high), some rather adult.  Sometimes peak experiences are like catharsis ... and that is something very close to religious experience (see Aristotle on Poetics or William James).  My last catharsis was almost a year ago ... a temporary psychotic break.  My last peak experience was just a few weeks ago, attending a theatric comedy for the first time in many years.  Knowing G-d is like reading the Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner ... and getting it.  The poem didn't have a happy ending.

I find it hilarious that intelligent people can interpret God's existence when they have a rush of endorphins. Feeling that strange warmth when reading a poem has nothing to do with God. Scientists can show the part of the brain that lights up and gets worked up when you read a poem or listen to a great piece of musical composition. To postulate God for such a feeling is nonsensical and absolutely silly. I'm surprised nobody says he sees God when he has his first sexual experience because the brain also lights up when that happens. My New Age friend will probably affirm the existence of fairies when that happens.

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 12:45:17 PM
Besides, St Truth, emotional health is better than cognitive brilliance, anyway. 

Surely you will agree with me that my emotional health is much better than most people's?  You said this of yourself: 'My last catharsis was almost a year ago ... a temporary psychotic break.'  I have never had even a millisecond of a psychotic break, whatever that means. You are wrong to think that people who have such emotional upheavals are healthier. No, speak to any psychiatrist and he will tell you that people like me are the most stable and sane. People who see God or some supernatural animal or claim to experience them can hardly be said to be psychiatrically sound. Yes, I agree with you that emotional and mental health is very important.

I have never before considered that mental issues may be the reason for a belief in God and this is very plausible. I don't know what you mean by a psychotic break but if I were you, I'd see someone about it.  I've sometimes heard religious people who say that God said this to them and God said that to them. I always thought they meant it as a metaphor for they THOUGHT of something and since it's in line with their religion, they say God told them that. It has never occurred to me that they might really have heard an audible voice. This is symptomatic of schizophrenia in which the hearing of voices is a diagnostic symptom.

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 12:45:17 PM
It is people who are important, more important than any god, more important than any other idea we might have.

Of course. Any atheist will be happy to tell you that people are more important than God and you'll do well to throw God into the dustbin, as the icon at the top of this page so ingeniously illustrates.  We may of course keep God as a part of our culture but we must be very clear in our minds that going through a cultural ritual is not the same as accepting in our heads the existence of a cultural mythological figure.

For the record, you still have not explained what made you believe in God's existence apart from getting a reaction from reading Coleridge's poem but it's not rational to say ergo, God exists. You agree with me that a belief in God is totally irrational, illogical and absolutely unsupported by any reason or evidence?

Quote from: Sorginak on September 26, 2017, 07:41:48 PM
One would think St. Truth would have gotten over being banned from that Christian forum already. 


Sheesh.

I've got over it. It's just that every time I write something disparaging of religion, I have this urge to delete it because of the strict rules of Christian Forums and then I realised, hey, I'm in a place that won't ban me for saying anything that I can rationally defend. It's like leaving a dungeon. So I talk about it. It's not that I can't get over it. It's an expression of relief. You have to go there to experience it. There are different camps (the Bible-has-spoken camp, the God-spoke-to-me-this-morning camp, the philosophy-says-God-exists camp, the God-loves-ME camp, etc) and they all agree at one point - that God is real and damn anyone who dares to oppose that. Leaving CF is like emerging from a madhouse. You can't help but talk about it.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 26, 2017, 07:39:04 PM
I find that my relationship with my wife leads me to become more 'human', not divine.

Your choice of words is different, but we have the same meaning.

Quote from: Sorginak on September 26, 2017, 08:37:13 PM
In my day, youngin's had more respect for their elders.

Hell, in my day, elders were dead half the time they got to my age.

"My New Age friend will probably affirm the existence of fairies when that happens." ... 100 years ago there was a certain drink, called the "green fairy", a kind of absinthe ... perhaps that could be the origin of that belief? ;-)

Irrational = prejudicial usage.  I don't consider "rational" to be necessarily positive, or "irrational" to be necessarily negative.  I have been completely honest with you, but you take advantage of that to be "overly bold" in your choice of words to me, as often happens on the Internets.  That isn't very diplomatic of you.  Things are as they are, and I can see them only as I see them, being an individual, not a mere disembodied spirit.  To be an embodied spirit, an individual, is a great mission, and we must make of it what we can, while we can.  Think of yourself as an mysterious actor, identity unknown, who is playing the part of yourself (not just the particular projection you make on the Internet).  Put your best foot forward, or break a leg on this post-modern stage.  You are only in Act I ... I am in Act III, nearly time for my exit.

Unlike most people here, I would be curious and polite about your "fairy-believing" acquaintances.  I find people to be interesting, hence my interest in anthropology and psychology.  But I don't think less of people, just because they are different.  I don't think you have anything to fear from these particular people ... they are probably harmless.

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 11:40:11 PM
"My New Age friend will probably affirm the existence of fairies when that happens." ... 100 years ago there was a certain drink, called the "green fairy", a kind of absinthe ... perhaps that could be the origin of that belief? ;-)

Irrational = prejudicial usage.  I don't consider "rational" to be necessarily positive, or "irrational" to be necessarily negative.  I have been completely honest with you, but you take advantage of that to be "overly bold" in your choice of words to me, as often happens on the Internets.  That isn't very diplomatic of you.  Things are as they are, and I can see them only as I see them, being an individual, not a mere disembodied spirit.  To be an embodied spirit, an individual, is a great mission, and we must make of it what we can, while we can.  Think of yourself as an mysterious actor, identity unknown, who is playing the part of yourself (not just the particular projection you make on the Internet).  Put your best foot forward, or break a leg on this post-modern stage.  You are only in Act I ... I am in Act III, nearly time for my exit.

Unlike most people here, I would be curious and polite about your "fairy-believing" acquaintances.  I find people to be interesting, hence my interest in anthropology and psychology.  But I don't think less of people, just because they are different.  I don't think you have anything to fear from these particular people ... they are probably harmless.

What you construe as 'overly bold' is your own interpretation which is incorrect. I actually feel very sorry for you. You are obviously a highly intelligent man but you shackle yourself with the yoke of irrational belief. When I say 'irrational' I mean it with all my heart. If I use a different word, I would be dishonest. But you think the word 'irrational' is prejudicial.

I will give an analysis of why you view my words from such an angle.

In today's world, it's considered inappropriate to make judgement of any sort. My dad told me about this. If a child makes a grammatical mistake, parents are usually loth to correct him or to tell him he's wrong. This reluctance to pronounce a judgement is pervasive in our society and it affects everyone. Even grammarians who write books on grammar nowadays are reluctant to say that a sentence is wrong when it's obviously wrong. Rather, they will say it's 'highly informal' when they mean something is ungrammatical.

This namby-pamby approach to a mistake is what will ruin our civilisation. I'm grateful that my parents were more old-school. When I made a mistake in my speech, I would be corrected and if I repeated the mistake, the correction would be harsher in tone. Because of this, I had a head-start when compared with my classmates who were brought up without any correction. Even in something as basic as the language we use, I'm years ahead of them.

But this reluctance to make any judgment is beneficial to those who are religious and are struggling to give some semblance of intellectual dignity to their belief. They know their belief is irrational. But they will chide you if you tell them religion is irrational. You will be thought of as prejudiced. They will say, as you do in your post, that 'rational' isn't always positive and 'irrational' isn't always negative. But we humans can't function without any value judgment. Some things are correct, some are wrong. Some are rational, others are irrational. I don't like this blurring of meaning and of values because I really believe it's not an honest thing to do. We make judgment calls all the time and it is needful.

Religion is irrational and that is negative. You must deal with it because it's the truth.  You can't pretend everything is neither rational nor irrational and neither true nor untrue. That is not reality.

I really feel sorry for intelligent people who accept God in their heads because they have no choice but to come up with strange ideas such as your statement that 'rational' does not equal positive and 'irrational' does not equal negative. I'm sure you can be greater than Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris if you gave up the religious baggage and apply your superior brain to the truth of atheism.

I have thought long and hard about religion and I have seen how theists and atheists think and I have St Truth's Ultimate Creed which goes like this. Bear in mind that I'm still a Christian and an altar boy. Wait, I haven't formulated the words of my Creed yet but roughly it should sound like this:

Atheism is the most logical and sane position any man can take. Any form of theism or religion or any belief in the supernatural or the spiritual has differing gradations of illogicality and insanity, depending on how much it departs from the atheistic ideal. The more it diverges from atheism, the more illogical and insane it is bound to be.   Illustration:  An atheist who does not believe in God but who believes in ghosts and the supernatural has some measure of illogicality and insanity, the severity of which is dependent on how much he has departed from the atheistic default. 

I am persuaded that St Truth's Ultimate Creed must be correct. But if it can be shown rationally to be wrong, I will amend my Creed.

Truth is not subjective and there is no alternative truth. Any departure from truth is falsehood. I remain, Sir, the one and only...

St Truth

Zealotry doesn't lead to good things.  And epistemological fundamentalism is a form of zealotry.  Like Pontius Pilatus said ... "What is truth?".  Don't judge others, or you will have no excuse when they judge you (CF).  That is the universal mistake made by secular folks, they ask "What is truth" not "Who is truth".  They also think B&W and in universal terms.

If you review all my 16K+ posts, you would know that I can bite ... but I am gentle with your age group.  Men my age have no excuse for their delusions, so I will jibe them, but it would be cruel to do that to youth.  I am sure you will be an interesting person, in a few more years.  Continue to develop and you will arrive there.

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 06:50:16 AM
Zealotry doesn't lead to good things.  And epistemological fundamentalism is a form of zealotry.

Zealotry is usually in the domain of the religious. The origin of the word 'zealot' comes from the apocalyptic zealots who wanted to free Israel of Roman rule. It has always been applicable only to religious zealots. It's only recently that it's extended to other people. But the truth is zealots are usually super religious.

I am rational and I value reasons and rational thought. A zealot, on the other hand, does not. You can't argue with a zealot. A zealot won't give reasons for his beliefs. I am always asking for reasons. It would be ludicrous to call me (an evidence-based, rational, reason-centred person) a zealot.

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 06:50:16 AM
Like Pontius Pilatus said ... "What is truth?".  Don't judge others, or you will have no excuse when they judge you (CF).  That is the universal mistake made by secular folks, they ask "What is truth" not "Who is truth".  They also think B&W and in universal terms.

I will judge others and they can judge me too. Every rational person judges people. That is what reason is for. When we talk to someone, we size him up. We judge him. Every intelligent person does this. When someone makes a statement, any intelligent person is sure to evaluate the statement and judge it. Only an unthinking person would fail to evaluate statements, arguments and propositions.

Pontius Pilate probably didn't say that. The Gospels are hardly to be relied upon. Just because some Christian legend makes Pontius Pilate ask what truth is doesn't mean we should do the same. I really don't follow your thoughts at all. If Pilate doesn't know the truth, that's his problem. You shouldn't embrace it as your problem too. It's certainly not my problem. I know what truth is and I know what falsehood is.  A good example of a falsehood is - God/fairies/pixies/unicorns exist. That's a good example of what truth is and what falsehood is. Pilate doesn't know. You agree with him which means you don't know what truth is. But I know what it is.

Of course, I acknowledge that I'm still young and there are things I don't know. Perhaps God does exist but I haven't examined all the evidence and reasons. That is why I asked you and other believers for the reason for a belief in God. But nobody offers a valid reason. So how am I to conclude? Obviously, that God's existence is false. Until I am given cogent and convincing reasons for God's existence, a rational reasonable man like me must hold the view (at least for the moment) that God's existence is false.

I will review my conclusion when I am given valid reasons. Until then, God is a lie.

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 06:50:16 AM
If you review all my 16K+ posts, you would know that I can bite ... but I am gentle with your age group.  Men my age have no excuse for their delusions, so I will jibe them, but it would be cruel to do that to youth.  I am sure you will be an interesting person, in a few more years.  Continue to develop and you will arrive there.

I don't mind if you bite and give reasons at the same time.  Do you see why religious people can't persuade intelligent young people to believe in God? They don't offer any reason. Atheists, on the other hand, are happy to offer copious reasons. Whatever Christians may say about Dawkins, I love his books. He engages me with his intellect. I despise religious books which only appeal to the emotion. The only attraction Christianity holds for me is the cultural part and the music. It makes me feel emotionally good.  But I can differentiate feelings from facts.

Let's be honest. When two persons talk, they can only engage each other intellectually and rationally. You can't speak spirituality to another person. It's got to be rational. An irrational conversation is not possible between two sane persons. You can't call me a zealot if I insist on a rational conversation. I'm just being human.

If you think carefully over what I have said, you will realise that I'm not being provocative; I'm merely truthful for I really am...

St Truth

Quote from: Baruch on September 26, 2017, 11:27:03 PM
Your choice of words is different, but we have the same meaning.

I like that.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 08:12:04 AM
I will judge others and they can judge me too. Every rational person judges people. That is what reason is for. When we talk to someone, we size him up. We judge him. Every intelligent person does this. When someone makes a statement, any intelligent person is sure to evaluate the statement and judge it. Only an unthinking person would fail to evaluate statements, arguments and propositions.

Everyone judges.  Many are even aware of it.

Making judgments is probably one of the most fundamental survival mechanisms in evolution, and it occurs at all levels of intellect.  At higher levels of cerebral development, evolution gives the human species and unintended extra capacity to make incredibly stupid judgments beyond that of the lower mammals.  So extra capacity has both advantages and disadvantages.  Evolution has not had enough time to sort out the disadvantages of higher capacity because abundant consciousness has only been around for a few million years.  Evolution is still working on this unintended consequence, so to speak.

I think you are on the right track, but I do question what you expect to find in a Christian forum.  There is nothing new under the sun in Christianity.  Today, it suffers from the same irrational approaches to problem solving that it did two thousand years ago, and religion in general is still as irrational as it was when the Egyptians ran the world.  And in all my 70 years I have never seen a new religious perspective.

OK, you're 15, and I can certainly understand you needing answers to some of the biggest philosophical theoretical questions that have ever been proposed by man and con-men.  Christian forums have been answering these theoretical questions with the same illogical explanations that I was introduced to in Sunday school 65 years ago.  And the methodology has not changed.  It's still irrational answers to irrational questions.  And when you're 40, you will have gained nothing from a Christian forum that you won't have encountered at work, on the street, from cashiers at the grocery store, or books written by theologians.  But it's good that you examine the answers, and even better to examine the questions, because an irrational question is an immediate set up for a trip into Alice's Wonderland.  Just don't waste too much of your precious time and energy on it.

You're on track, but maybe ease off a bit, and don't feel so compelled to make sense out of the unintelligible nonsense, even though it's being shouted out from every street corner, which seems to be how mankind uses all this extra cerebral capacity and the unintended consequences he has been given.  Sure, man has made some stunning achievements, mostly from a few handfuls of very gifted men, some even thrown out of church for their gifts to mankind.  But most humans shout nonsense, even though we consider ourselves to be the cutting edge of evolution.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 02:16:31 AM

Truth is not subjective and there is no alternative truth. Any departure from truth is falsehood. I remain, Sir, the one and only...

St Truth

I followed your reply to Baruch quite easily and in agreement. Except for this last sentence.  How is 'truth' not subjective?  What objective source of truth is there?

Quote from: SGOS on September 27, 2017, 09:54:05 AM
Everyone judges.  Many are even aware of it.

Making judgments is probably one of the most fundamental survival mechanisms in evolution, and it occurs at all levels of intellect.  At higher levels of cerebral development, evolution gives the human species and unintended extra capacity to make incredibly stupid judgments beyond that of the lower mammals.  So extra capacity has both advantages and disadvantages.  Evolution has not had enough time to sort out the disadvantages of higher capacity because abundant consciousness has only been around for a few million years.  Evolution is still working on this unintended consequence, so to speak.

I think you are on the right track, but I do question what you expect to find in a Christian forum.  There is nothing new under the sun in Christianity.  Today, it suffers from the same irrational approaches to problem solving that it did two thousand years ago, and religion in general is still as irrational as it was when the Egyptians ran the world.  And in all my 70 years I have never seen a new religious perspective.

OK, you're 15, and I can certainly understand you needing answers to some of the biggest philosophical theoretical questions that have ever been proposed by man and con-men.  Christian forums have been answering these theoretical questions with the same illogical explanations that I was introduced to in Sunday school 65 years ago.  And the methodology has not changed.  It's still irrational answers to irrational questions.  And when you're 40, you will have gained nothing from a Christian forum that you won't have encountered at work, on the street, from cashiers at the grocery store, or books written by theologians.  But it's good that you examine the answers, and even better to examine the questions, because an irrational question is an immediate set up for a trip into Alice's Wonderland.  Just don't waste too much of your precious time and energy on it.

You're on track, but maybe ease off a bit, and don't feel so compelled to make sense out of the unintelligible nonsense, even though it's being shouted out from every street corner, which seems to be how mankind uses all this extra cerebral capacity and the unintended consequences he has been given.  Sure, man has made some stunning achievements, mostly from a few handfuls of very gifted men, some even thrown out of church for their gifts to mankind.  But most humans shout nonsense, even though we consider ourselves to be the cutting edge of evolution.

Thanks for your post. You have put it more eloquently than I could on why judging is important. No, I'm not searching for meaning in Christian Forums. It's a dumb place with strict rules. Anyway, they banned me. Actually, it was not a real ban. They wanted me to go for counselling with one of the admin folks. They banned me from all forums but allowed me to go to the 'Support' forum for counselling. I have listed myself as a Christian (Church of England) and the admin who wrote to me said that they had to ban me because of my posts. They were concerned that a Christian should argue so firmly against God.  Of course I refused to go for counselling. If there is anyone who needs counselling, it's the entire bunch of loonies in CF. I could easily search the internet and tell them what psychiatric medication they needed. I have left CF and have on intention of going back. Nor do I intend to go to any Christian or religious forum. It's really like a madhouse. I think I feel more at home here even though I'm a church-going Christian  and an altar boy. But my vicar knows my stand and so does at least two bishops. A bishop told me that as long as I was prepared to say the Creeds, I was a Christian. One of the creeds says 'We believe...' There's no problem there because it's a collective creed - I belong to the group. He says the other creed that says 'I believe...' is all right for me because the 'believe' means I submit to the tradition of...  If I recognise God as a tradition of Mother Church even though he doesn't exist as a being, that is fine. He says there are priests and prelates who don't believe in God either. My church is a liberal and progressive church.

But people in CF are extremists. They say my bishop is wrong and the entire Church of England is wrong. They insist that you have to mentally believe in God to be a Christian. So by their definition, I'm not a Christian. You might as well ask me to believe in Peter Rabbit if you want me to mentally accept blooming God. So, it's a constant tussle with the people in CF and they can get really malicious. I suppose they don't like to see a church-going altar boy speaking the truth about the non-existence of mythological beings. One of them said that if he were my bishop, he would not just excommunicate me; he'd burn me at the stake. Wonderful Christian love. LOL.

But I can't be silent if I see nonsense being trumpeted. I will have to say something politely. Because I believe if a boy of my age can tell it's nonsense, the adult who mouths the nonsense must know in his heart of hearts that it's nonsense. I'm just reminding him that it's nonsense.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 27, 2017, 09:55:56 AM
I followed your reply to Baruch quite easily and in agreement. Except for this last sentence.  How is 'truth' not subjective?  What objective source of truth is there?

Repeatable observation.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 27, 2017, 09:55:56 AM
I followed your reply to Baruch quite easily and in agreement. Except for this last sentence.  How is 'truth' not subjective?  What objective source of truth is there?

You have to bear with me. I am not au fait with philosophy and if you are going on some philosophical roller-coaster, I might not be able to follow you. I will explain how I see things in my own simplistic way.

Truth must be objective. It may not be accepted by someone who is ignorant of it but that doesn't change the truth. It's still the truth. So truth is true whether people can see it or not. We may all be deluded into believing in something erroneous and we may spurn the truth but truth is unchanging. I accept that there are many areas in the frontiers of science where we may accept an error as truth. But with the progress of knowledge, scientists (it's always scientists) soon correct their misapprehension and the truth is finally recognised by the scientific community and the more educated segment of the public.

The possibility that we may sometimes err and regard falsehood as truth does not give us the licence to assume that we can't be sure of what the truth is. That's rubbish that will only be circulated by people who have the agenda of pushing nonsense down your throat. Of course there will be dark areas and gaps in scientific knowledge but that is no excuse for someone to introduce his imaginary beings that aren't supported by any reason or evidence to the fore. Rational people should quash any such attempt to give space to imaginary beings. We must maintain general human sanity.

I hope religious people will forgive me here. I'm not saying they are insane. No, by no means. Many of them are intelligent people. But the idea itself is insane. These intelligent theists are highly intelligent people who accept without question insane ideas. But they are quite sane themselves. I hope I am clear there.

Quote from: trdsf on September 27, 2017, 10:29:21 AM
Repeatable observation.

Are you saying that truth and facts are the same?

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 10:36:04 AM
You have to bear with me. I am not au fait with philosophy and if you are going on some philosophical roller-coaster, I might not be able to follow you. I will explain how I see things in my own simplistic way.

Truth must be objective. It may not be accepted by someone who is ignorant of it but that doesn't change the truth. It's still the truth. So truth is true whether people can see it or not. We may all be deluded into believing in something erroneous and we may spurn the truth but truth is unchanging. I accept that there are many areas in the frontiers of science where we may accept an error as truth. But with the progress of knowledge, scientists (it's always scientists) soon correct their misapprehension and the truth is finally recognised by the scientific community and the more educated segment of the public.

The possibility that we may sometimes err and regard falsehood as truth does not give us the licence to assume that we can't be sure of what the truth is. That's rubbish that will only be circulated by people who have the agenda of pushing nonsense down your throat. Of course there will be dark areas and gaps in scientific knowledge but that is no excuse for someone to introduce his imaginary beings that aren't supported by any reason or evidence to the fore. Rational people should quash any such attempt to give space to imaginary beings. We must maintain general human sanity.

I hope religious people will forgive me here. I'm not saying they are insane. No, by no means. Many of them are intelligent people. But the idea itself is insane. These intelligent theists are highly intelligent people who accept without question insane ideas. But they are quite sane themselves. I hope I am clear there.

No, I'm not being philosophical but realistic.  Are you saying that scientific facts are truth?  And that truth and facts are interchangeable? In order for us to communicate effectively, maybe yu could explain what it is you mean by truth--what is your definition?

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 10:23:19 AM
But people in CF are extremists. They say my bishop is wrong and the entire Church of England is wrong. They insist that you have to mentally believe in God to be a Christian. So by their definition, I'm not a Christian. You might as well ask me to believe in Peter Rabbit if you want me to mentally accept blooming God. So, it's a constant tussle with the people in CF and they can get really malicious. I suppose they don't like to see a church-going altar boy speaking the truth about the non-existence of mythological beings. One of them said that if he were my bishop, he would not just excommunicate me; he'd burn me at the stake. Wonderful Christian love. LOL.

I would guess that most Christian forums are extreme.  If they are mostly American, I doubt they even know that much about the Anglican Church, and here, when asked if you are a Christian, the context is usually posed as "Please don't tell me you are Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon (Anglican wouldn't even come to mind).  Here, if someone is so rude to ask that question, he's probably going to be from the extreme, the less tolerant Christians that thinks of themselves as the real Christians, while everyone else may be well intentioned, but miserably misguided.

Forums in general, often draw the extremes, at least the ones that are NOT devoted to topics like replacing leaky faucets.  Even this forum represents an extreme, if not a niche, at least in the sense that atheism and religion are continually being discussed.  Outside of this forum, I'm surprised when I count my atheist friends.  There are actually quite a few, but it's no big deal to them.  They don't talk about it unless pressed, they don't think about religion much, and to my knowledge, none have ever gone online to an atheist forum.  In my mind, I differ from them in that I think about religion a lot, which makes me at the extreme end, at least in my mind.

I came here during a time in my life when I was surrounded by fundamentalists.  It was an unusual to find myself in such an environment, and they were driving me so crazy, so I sought out a forum where I wouldn't feel like I was in a mental ward all the time.  And then I realized a lot of the topics here are just interesting by themselves, so I just hang around.

Quote from: SGOS on September 27, 2017, 11:29:12 AMI would guess that most Christian forums are extreme.  If they are mostly American, I doubt they even know that much about the Anglican Church, and here, when asked if you are a Christian, the context is usually posed as "Please don't tell me you are Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon (Anglican wouldn't even come to mind).  Here, if someone is so rude to ask that question, he's probably going to be from the extreme, the less tolerant Christians that thinks of themselves as the real Christians, while everyone else may be well intentioned, but miserably misguided.

CF is disproportionately populated with American conservative/evangelical Christians - the "born again", "on fire for Jeezus", "The End Times are nigh" kind of Christian.  Southern Baptists, Catholics, and some pretty scary Calvinists.

They had some moderate and/or liberal Christians, but they were a distinct minority and treated kinda badly, imo.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 27, 2017, 10:43:12 AM
Are you saying that truth and facts are the same?

On some level.  I'm not prepared to get into some philosophical to-do about some rarified definition of 'truth'; suffice to say that I'm satisfied to call a repeatedly demonstrable fully explained observation objectively true.  It is objectively true that we live on a rocky worldlet an average of 150 million km from a self-sustaining fusion reactor, for example, and just because it's an observed fact doesn't put it in a different class from 'things that are true'.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 27, 2017, 10:46:55 AM
No, I'm not being philosophical but realistic.  Are you saying that scientific facts are truth?  And that truth and facts are interchangeable? In order for us to communicate effectively, maybe yu could explain what it is you mean by truth--what is your definition?

Truth is that which is true. The quality of being true. Or, in case you want to know what 'true' is, truth is that which accords with fact and reality. I'll give an illustration. This statement is true: 'The September 11 terrorist attack happened before I was born.' This can be verified by looking at my birth documents, checking with my parents, checking with the priest who baptised me, looking at the records in the hospital where I was born. Truth is verifiable with evidence or in some instances (for example some truths in astrophysics) by reason and calculations.

Quote from: trdsf on September 27, 2017, 10:29:21 AM
Repeatable observation.

Confirmation bias and group think ;-)  I would agree, as long as no humans are involved.

Quote from: SGOS on September 27, 2017, 11:29:12 AM
I would guess that most Christian forums are extreme.  If they are mostly American, I doubt they even know that much about the Anglican Church, and here, when asked if you are a Christian, the context is usually posed as "Please don't tell me you are Catholic, Protestant, or Mormon (Anglican wouldn't even come to mind).  Here, if someone is so rude to ask that question, he's probably going to be from the extreme, the less tolerant Christians that thinks of themselves as the real Christians, while everyone else may be well intentioned, but miserably misguided.

Forums in general, often draw the extremes, at least the ones that are NOT devoted to topics like replacing leaky faucets.  Even this forum represents an extreme, if not a niche, at least in the sense that atheism and religion are continually being discussed.  Outside of this forum, I'm surprised when I count my atheist friends.  There are actually quite a few, but it's no big deal to them.  They don't talk about it unless pressed, they don't think about religion much, and to my knowledge, none have ever gone online to an atheist forum.  In my mind, I differ from them in that I think about religion a lot, which makes me at the extreme end, at least in my mind.

I came here during a time in my life when I was surrounded by fundamentalists.  It was an unusual to find myself in such an environment, and they were driving me so crazy, so I sought out a forum where I wouldn't feel like I was in a mental ward all the time.  And then I realized a lot of the topics here are just interesting by themselves, so I just hang around.

I feel the same way you do. I joined Christian Forums to discuss matters pertaining to my religion. It seemed like the natural place to go to. But the hostility and the malice of Christians can be quite frightening. But to be fair to them, I posted quite a lot against the faith. I attacked the traditional view that Paul patched up with Peter and I took the view championed by Bart Ehrman that Paul started a new religion that was opposed to the religion of the real Apostles. I was warned by a moderator that questioning St Paul's authority as an apostle was not allowed in the Christians-only forums.  So they moved my thread to where atheists are allowed to be on. A lot of Christians tried to take me on but I had truth on my side. I could show from the Bible itself why there probably was no reconciliation as false reported in Acts and it was plain to everyone that I was right.

But we have to put everything in its proper perspective. I was only banned for blasphemy and for attacking the teachings of my own religion. I was merely banned from a forum. If I were a Muslim, I would have been killed. The world saw what happened when a 20-year-old journalist in Saudi twitted that he didn't agree with Muhammad on some points. And old clerics wept openly and demanded his death. He tried to run away but was arrested and today, he is still in jail. Just twitting that you don't agree with Muhammad is enough to attract such a terrible punishment. What a barbaric religion! For all that I have said against my faith, if I were a Muslim, I think I would have been stoned a thousand times over. Don't think they will excuse minors. I read about a boy my age who had his right hand and left leg cut off for refusing to 'fight for Islam'. The problem with Islam is the Hadiths which describe the cruel tortures by Muhammad against his enemies. And in Islam, every Muslim is required to emulate Muhammad and think of him as the perfect man. People who don't understand Islam won't understand why insults against Muhammad are deemed blasphemy which attract the death penalty.

So, I got away pretty lightly for my blasphemies and attacks against orthodox Christianity. I would be dead by now if I were Muslim.

Quote from: trdsf on September 27, 2017, 12:25:50 PM
On some level.  I'm not prepared to get into some philosophical to-do about some rarified definition of 'truth'; suffice to say that I'm satisfied to call a repeatedly demonstrable fully explained observation objectively true.  It is objectively true that we live on a rocky worldlet an average of 150 million km from a self-sustaining fusion reactor, for example, and just because it's an observed fact doesn't put it in a different class from 'things that are true'.

Just because actual scientists, can agree on, within a band of error, what the rest mass of an electron is ... doesn't mean we objectively know who won the US Presidential election.  The first is fine ... for engineers.  It matters when I am doing engineering.  But the other ... is far more important, and there will never be any agreement ... because what one decides ... is based on philosophy, emotion or both.  Objective facts (like what I had for lunch) are important to me, but a nothing-burger for anyone else.  And to verify it, you would have had to be at the eatery at lunch time, and inspect what I was eating.  Now you will never know, because it can't be repeated (and I am not sure how much the conditions were controlled) ... you will never know ... anymore than anyone knows the real story behind the Lincoln assassination.  Other than repeating the official propaganda (aka what history is).

Quote from: trdsf on September 27, 2017, 12:25:50 PM
On some level.  I'm not prepared to get into some philosophical to-do about some rarified definition of 'truth'; suffice to say that I'm satisfied to call a repeatedly demonstrable fully explained observation objectively true.  It is objectively true that we live on a rocky worldlet an average of 150 million km from a self-sustaining fusion reactor, for example, and just because it's an observed fact doesn't put it in a different class from 'things that are true'.

Yeah, I like that.  Sounds good to me.

Quote from: Hydra009 on September 27, 2017, 11:46:41 AM
CF is disproportionately populated with American conservative/evangelical Christians - the "born again", "on fire for Jeezus", "The End Times are nigh" kind of Christian.  Southern Baptists, Catholics, and some pretty scary Calvinists.

They had some moderate and/or liberal Christians, but they were a distinct minority and treated kinda badly, imo.

Such people consider Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, High Church Lutherans, Mormons etc as hell-spawn.  So no surprise how they reacted to St Truth.  Try going on a Mormon website and shouting down Brigham Young.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 12:43:56 PM
Truth is that which is true. The quality of being true. Or, in case you want to know what 'true' is, truth is that which accords with fact and reality. I'll give an illustration. This statement is true: 'The September 11 terrorist attack happened before I was born.' This can be verified by looking at my birth documents, checking with my parents, checking with the priest who baptised me, looking at the records in the hospital where I was born. Truth is verifiable with evidence or in some instances (for example some truths in astrophysics) by reason and calculations.

I know you don't want to discuss philosophy, but you are LARPing Plato or Aristotle, like most people do here.  I don't see you coming here to discuss religion, but that is fine.  You are here to discuss atheism, and there are some fine atheists here.

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 01:03:57 PM
Try going on a Mormon website and shouting down Brigham Young.

It's easy to shout down a dead man...

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 12:57:17 PM
Confirmation bias and group think ;-)  I would agree, as long as no humans are involved.

I know what he's going to say. That the human senses can't be depended upon and so observation by humans don't mean anything. William Lane Craig does that too when he realises he has no way out. Hindu priests and all the 'mystical' religions love to do this. You can't depend on your senses. So, just trust the holy man. But what's the point of listening to the holy man if your senses aren't reliable. You may be hearing something else. Somehow, your senses will become reliable when you listen to what the holy man says.  Haha.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 01:07:11 PM
I know what he's going to say. That the human senses can't be depended upon and so observation by humans don't mean anything. William Lane Craig does that too when he realises he has no way out. Hindu priests and all the 'mystical' religions love to do this. You can't depend on your senses. So, just trust the holy man. But what's the point of listening to the holy man if your senses aren't reliable. You may be hearing something else. Somehow, your senses will become reliable when you listen to what the holy man says.  Haha.

Not quite ... reliability isn't a property of human beings, under any conditions.  Doesn't matter if they are using their senses, doing a deduction from axioms, or brushing their teeth.  You are correct that some definitions of mysticism, and revelation, rationalize that there is info beyond the senses.  And even Plato says that.  Aristotle says the same things, almost ... but he was a biologist, but Plato was a mathematician.  Logicians and mathematicians are constantly in an ivory tower.  Theologians do better, they levitate ;-)

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 12:43:56 PM
Truth is that which is true. The quality of being true. Or, in case you want to know what 'true' is, truth is that which accords with fact and reality. I'll give an illustration. This statement is true: 'The September 11 terrorist attack happened before I was born.' This can be verified by looking at my birth documents, checking with my parents, checking with the priest who baptised me, looking at the records in the hospital where I was born. Truth is verifiable with evidence or in some instances (for example some truths in astrophysics) by reason and calculations.

Okay--so truth and facts are the same for you.  Right? Same as for trdsf.  And I can go along with that.

The 'truth' you are referring to is objective.  I agree that that is so.  Another type of 'truth' could be something I'll call 'personal truth', for lack of a better word.  My personal truth is that it is bad to mistreat animals.  Or to practice spousal abuse.  But then, I guess these could be called values, as well.  So, actually, the way you use truth could have 'facts'  substituted for  'truth' and all your statements would still be accurate.  The same could be said for my use of personal truth--one could substitute 'value' and be accurate.  So, why not just drop 'truth' in each instance--would that not make our statements more clear?

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 01:05:46 PM
I know you don't want to discuss philosophy, but you are LARPing Plato or Aristotle, like most people do here.  I don't see you coming here to discuss religion, but that is fine.  You are here to discuss atheism, and there are some fine atheists here.

I am a sensible and rational man. I can only discuss in a rational way. Since religion is irrational and (as you yourself SEEM to indicate because you never say anything clearly which is very wise because that way, nobody can refute what you say because it's too hazy), religion can't be discussed with reason, I won't discuss it. I really am unable to discuss in any way that is not rational.

I have illustrated in another thread where you posted something why philosophy can be a silly game. As I have said many times before, most respectable philosophers don't believe in God or any imaginary beings. But philosophy affords the means for even a believer in pixies to construct a framework that will make a belief in leprechauns or pixies logical. You just meddle with the premises. I said that some time ago and today, I saw a post of yours which clearly illustrated what I said about coming up with nonsensical premises. I replied to that post.

Ultimately, I don't want to play games. To say that philosophy justifies God's existence is as silly as saying quantum physics supports a belief in God (which some people in CF do). You are not a philosopher. Most of today's philosophers don't believe in God. You are doing precisely what the non-physicists do when they try to justify God with quantum physics. The fact is like philosophers who are mainly atheists, so are physicists. I attended a talk given by Lawrence Krauss when a Christian asked some silly question about God's existence in the light of quantum physics. What a stupid thing to do with Lawrence Krauss. Krauss didn't spare the guy for a second. He basically chewed the guy's head off and spat it out.

What you propose to do with philosophy is precisely what that guy wanted to do with physics. But most people here aren't philosophers and neither are you. But the world's best philosophers are atheists. So what does that tell you?

It's really pathetic that religionists  have to resort to fields that they aren't experts in but the real experts don't accept God. Don't talk to a teenager about philosophy. Talk to the real philosophers who are almost all atheists.  I would say the same thing to people in CF who try to talk God into quantum physics. They aren't even physicists but they after reading some Christian article by non-physicists, they think they've nailed it. I always ask them to talk to the real physicists who are all atheists.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 27, 2017, 01:13:03 PM
Okay--so truth and facts are the same for you.  Right? Same as for trdsf.  And I can go along with that.

The 'truth' you are referring to is objective.  I agree that that is so.  Another type of 'truth' could be something I'll call 'personal truth', for lack of a better word.  My personal truth is that it is bad to mistreat animals.  Or to practice spousal abuse.  But then, I guess these could be called values, as well.  So, actually, the way you use truth could have 'facts'  substituted for  'truth' and all your statements would still be accurate.  The same could be said for my use of personal truth--one could substitute 'value' and be accurate.  So, why not just drop 'truth' in each instance--would that not make our statements more clear?

MikeCL - Yes, don't call facts other than facts ... truth implies a lot of philosophy, which nobody agrees on.  This is a problem with English, and other forms of Newspeak.

St Truth ... "reasonable" ... is a rhetorical claim.  It is about power, status and politics, not about epistemology.  Same as "truth".  You aren't making a statement about reality, but making a claim about yourself.  Rhetorically speaking, I am not playing games, and I don't see anyone else doing that either.  I am relating to a young man, interesting person, who is young enough to be my grandson.  A person to person relationship thru the magic of the Internet.  That is what is wonderful, though I am glad for the technology too.  And if you want to be a logician some day (Bertrand Russell) then good for you.  But that subject is even dryer than maths .. but more power to you ;-)

Have you read "Logic: A Very Short Introduction"?

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 01:23:19 PM
Yes, don't call facts other than facts ... truth implies a lot of philosophy, which nobody agrees on.  This is a problem with English, and other forms of Newspeak.

I agree.  Maybe St. Truth should call himself St. Fact.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 27, 2017, 01:13:03 PM
Okay--so truth and facts are the same for you.  Right? Same as for trdsf.  And I can go along with that.

The 'truth' you are referring to is objective.  I agree that that is so.  Another type of 'truth' could be something I'll call 'personal truth', for lack of a better word.  My personal truth is that it is bad to mistreat animals.  Or to practice spousal abuse.  But then, I guess these could be called values, as well.  So, actually, the way you use truth could have 'facts'  substituted for  'truth' and all your statements would still be accurate.  The same could be said for my use of personal truth--one could substitute 'value' and be accurate.  So, why not just drop 'truth' in each instance--would that not make our statements more clear?

It's mere semantics. 'It's bad to ill-treat animals' is, to me, an opinion. If you say ill-treating cows will make them unable to produce milk and that will harm the dairy industry, that can be true if there is evidence that milk production is affected by ill treatment. Our main interest is the existence of God. This is NOT an opinion. It's either true or false.  Yes, I can see what you mean by using 'fact' instead. Existence of God is either a fact or a fallacy. That must be objective. Either God exists or he does not.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 01:30:24 PM
It's mere semantics. 'It's bad to ill-treat animals' is, to me, an opinion. If you say ill-treating cows will make them unable to produce milk and that will harm the dairy industry, that can be true if there is evidence that milk production is affected by ill treatment. Our main interest is the existence of God. This is NOT an opinion. It's either true or false.  Yes, I can see what you mean by using 'fact' instead. Existence of God is either a fact or a fallacy. That must be objective. Either God exists or he does not.

I can't agree.  Writing consists of lexical analysis (symbols), syntactic analysis (logic), pragmatic analysis (rhetoric) and semantic analysis (philosophy).  Semantics is where all the interesting things are, for me.

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 01:23:19 PM
who is young enough to be my grandson. 

If you were my grandpa, I would pummel you with questions until you tell me what reason (if any) you have to believe in God. And I won't let you stray away into millions of other topics which you invariably do.

But since I am St Truth, I have to tell the truth. No, I would not do that with my real grandpa. I have tried. He told me it was inappropriate to talk about religion. My other grandpa doesn't believe in God although he goes to church on holy days.

But the fact is I find your evasion extremely frustrating. You told me you only came to religion as an adult. I would never go to religion when I'm an adult if I hadn't been brought up in a religion. I'm very sure something happened. Something emotional. It's impossible to go to religion by rational means. The rational part comes later when we try to justify our religion. But the actual going into religion is entirely an affair of the heart.  You have to suspend your thoughts  to believe in God in the first place. I'm very sure I'm right. That is why nobody who is religious ever wants to explain how he first became a believer.

If a person explains why he first believed in God, his explanation is sure to sound silly to anyone hearing it. Because one believes in God for no reason and when one recounts this first belief, it's sure to sound crazy to people around. I'm sure I'm right.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 01:30:24 PM
It's mere semantics. 'It's bad to ill-treat animals' is, to me, an opinion. If you say ill-treating cows will make them unable to produce milk and that will harm the dairy industry, that can be true if there is evidence that milk production is affected by ill treatment. Our main interest is the existence of God. This is NOT an opinion. It's either true or false.  Yes, I can see what you mean by using 'fact' instead. Existence of God is either a fact or a fallacy. That must be objective. Either God exists or he does not.

Yes, ill-treatment of animals is an opinion.  But I elevate that opinion (for myself) to a personal truth or value.  If I were to mistreat an animal it would damage me, as well as the animal.  I do not expect anyone else (but I would like that everyone would) to hold that particular value, but it is a truth for me.  And using the word 'value' for truth makes my statement clearer.

In you cow example, by substituting 'fact' for 'truth' your statement becomes clearer.  I think 'truth' is a much more emotionally loaded word.  And unless you wanted to talk religion or philosophy I think 'fact' allows one to make a clearer statement of what one means.

When discussing god(s), I think fact would work better in that god(s) issues truths and not facts.  When talking about the existence of god(s) we are really saying it is a fact god does not exist--not that god is true or untrue.  God's existence is, as you said, either a fact or not.  Truth, when issued from god, is not objective, but subjective, because each hearer hears what they want to.  Whether or not god is in existence is objective--fact or not.  When talking 'truth' there is almost always at least a little philosophy or religion included. 

So--St. Fact, what do you think???? :))

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 01:44:29 PM
If you were my grandpa, I would pummel you with questions until you tell me what reason (if any) you have to believe in God. And I won't let you stray away into millions of other topics which you invariably do.

But since I am St Truth, I have to tell the truth. No, I would not do that with my real grandpa. I have tried. He told me it was inappropriate to talk about religion. My other grandpa doesn't believe in God although he goes to church on holy days.

But the fact is I find your evasion extremely frustrating. You told me you only came to religion as an adult. I would never go to religion when I'm an adult if I hadn't been brought up in a religion. I'm very sure something happened. Something emotional. It's impossible to go to religion by rational means. The rational part comes later when we try to justify our religion. But the actual going into religion is entirely an affair of the heart.  You have to suspend your thoughts  to believe in God in the first place. I'm very sure I'm right. That is why nobody who is religious ever wants to explain how he first became a believer.

But why would it matter?  Are you in self doubt?  What purpose would an answer serve for you ... particularly if you framed the axioms and method of deduction ... you are just begging for self affirmation.  When you have more self confidence, you won't need anyone's affirmation.  And if I were your grandpa, I would be very proud of your growing up, and support you, for being you, not for what you believe.

Quote from: Mike Cl on September 27, 2017, 01:47:34 PM
Truth, when issued from god, is not objective, but subjective, because each hearer hears what they want to. 

I cannot accept that. We must be very careful when we ascribe 'truth' to an imaginary being because religionists are desperate people and they will seize your words and insist that you have admitted that God is real. That's my experience in CF. There is no truth or falsehood issued from God unless we can first establish the fact that God exists.

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 01:48:06 PM
But why would it matter?  Are you in self doubt?  What purpose would an answer serve for you ... particularly if you framed the axioms and method of deduction ... you are just begging for self affirmation.  When you have more self confidence, you won't need anyone's affirmation.  And if I were your grandpa, I would be very proud of your growing up, and support you, for being you, not for what you believe.

No, my grandpa doesn't mind that I don't believe in God. He just thinks it's rude to discuss religion. People in my country are very different from American Christians. They don't mind if you don't believe. Their own beliefs aren't usually the sort that the average American Christian would even accept as remotely Christian.

No, I do not have any doubt in my mind that God probably doesn't exist. If at all a God exists, he's most likely a mere creative force that caused the Big Bang. He's not a conscious being with love and all that rubbish. At most I'm willing to concede the existence of a Deist God who caused the Big Bang and he goes into hibernation and has remained in a deep sleep ever since. But a Christian God who is vested with the two totally conflicting properties or attributes: omnipotence and love cannot possibly exist. There is no chance in hell (if you will pardon my French) such a God can possibly exist.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 02:01:11 PM
I cannot accept that. We must be very careful when we ascribe 'truth' to an imaginary being because religionists are desperate people and they will seize your words and insist that you have admitted that God is real. That's my experience in CF. There is no truth or falsehood issued from God unless we can first establish the fact that God exists.

You cannot control what another thinks or feels.  It matters little how you phrase a statement about god--the reader will believe what they want. 

The point I was trying to make is that the word 'truth' already comes packed with a link to god.  In the minds of theists, truth-god; god-truth are almost one in the same.  Saying you are St. Truth to a theist is almost admitting you know god exists but you are simply refusing to acknowledge that.  Using 'fact' and not 'truth' strips that link.  Ask a theist to produce a fact about god and they will not be able to do so.  Ask a theist to produce a truth about god and they will go on forever. 

So, when you say: "There is no truth or falsehood issued from God unless we can first establish the fact that God exists.", you and I agree that that is a fact!

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 02:01:11 PM
I cannot accept that. We must be very careful when we ascribe 'truth' to an imaginary being because religionists are desperate people and they will seize your words and insist that you have admitted that God is real. That's my experience in CF. There is no truth or falsehood issued from God unless we can first establish the fact that God exists.

The religion model used by most people, and most people at CF, is fallacious.  You detect this, but don't yet know what to do about it.  Others have detected this, and developed a way of coping with life outside of religion.  A few were never part of any religion.  The POV of CF isn't tradition, which is where you are coming from.  They make bad epistemology, and worse metaphysics ... because they are just apes (can't we all get along?).  Just because a few outstanding thinkers have done something .. says nothing about the average person.  That is like saying because someone ran a 4 minute mile, that we are all fast runners.  Studying the invention or idea of another person, after it exists, is nothing compared to having come up with it in the first place, usually against self doubts and opposition from group think.

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 02:09:02 PM
No, my grandpa doesn't mind that I don't believe in God. He just thinks it's rude to discuss religion. People in my country are very different from American Christians. They don't mind if you don't believe. Their own beliefs aren't usually the sort that the average American Christian would even accept as remotely Christian.

No, I do not have any doubt in my mind that God probably doesn't exist. If at all a God exists, he's most likely a mere creative force that caused the Big Bang. He's not a conscious being with love and all that rubbish. At most I'm willing to concede the existence of a Deist God who caused the Big Bang and he goes into hibernation and has remained in a deep sleep ever since. But a Christian God who is vested with the two totally conflicting properties or attributes: omnipotence and love cannot possibly exist. There is no chance in hell (if you will pardon my French) such a God can possibly exist.

Deism is an interesting POV.  I am a pan-en-theist myself.  That is a pan-theist with transcendence in addition to immanence.  Yes, the literal god of Christianity doesn't exist.  No literal god does.  They are mythologies, even the Abrahamic religions, not just the ancient Greek.  But that begs the question, what are all these humans going on about?

Traditionally, in polite society, we were taught to never discuss sex, politics or religion; not with your parents, not with your siblings or spouse, and certainly not with your children ;-)  But we are well past the Victorian age.  The Victorians had a lot of false bravado, for all their self doubt (avoidance of skepticism because of fear of what you might discover).

Quote from: St Truth on September 27, 2017, 02:01:11 PM
I cannot accept that. We must be very careful when we ascribe 'truth' to an imaginary being because religionists are desperate people and they will seize your words and insist that you have admitted that God is real. That's my experience in CF. There is no truth or falsehood issued from God unless we can first establish the fact that God exists.

This is the fundamental question.  As a Christian, I searched for the proof.  I was somewhat like you for a long time.  I didn't believe in God, but I claimed to be a Christian.  There are some logical problems with that, which would seem to be obvious.  Unlike you, I found no satisfaction in going to church.  I was bored and had no reasons to attend.  I felt no real commitment, although I lit the candles on Sunday for a while.  You seem to have strong attachments to church.  I'm not sure what they are, but I can accept that.  In the US, a few atheists attend the Unitarian Church, which welcomes atheists and makes no demands that they convert.  In quite a non-confrontational discussion in a forum where the question, "Why, would an atheist attend the Unitarian Church," was discussed, someone queried further, "For the bake sales?"  I'll never forget that comment.  I nearly spewed my coffee all over my monitor.  I did give some thought to attending, myself, but never got the necessary interest to bother.

For me, all theistic claims, demands, or exhortations were meaningless unless the fundamental question of a god's existence was settled, something which I could not do.  You appear to be trying to answer the question, and whatever you finally come up with, I agree that it is question of utmost importance.  Everything in theism rides on it.  I believe the question cannot be found in logic, and personal experiences of theists that claim they have personally experienced a god, are too easily explained by chemical reactions in the body.  So the question remains unanswered (for me).

I don't question it anymore.  I think the question is irrelevant.  The world goes on exactly as I would expect in a world without a god.

Quote from: SGOS on September 27, 2017, 07:12:43 PMFor me, all theistic claims, demands, or exhortations were meaningless unless the fundamental question of a god's existence was settled, something which I could not do.  You appear to be trying to answer the question, and whatever you finally come up with, I agree that it is question of utmost importance.  Everything in theism rides on it.  I believe the question cannot be found in logic, and personal experiences of theists that claim they have personally experienced a god, are too easily explained by chemical reactions in the body.  So the question remains unanswered (for me).

For me, all it'd take is a simple demonstration of said God: introduce him to everyone, let me have a nice firm handshake and a good ol' Doubting Thomas poke and I'm won over.  Simple.

Instead, what I get are arguments and word games.  "There has to be a God because X" or "this passage predicted 9/11" or "Atheists can't explain X".  Sophistry and worse.  And I have to be content with that or else.

The fact that theists have to rely on these arguments at all is an indicator that it's not real.  You don't have to threaten people into believing that 2+2=4 or that the world is round - it's manifestly true and you can demonstrate it to even the most skeptical person if you're patient enough to do so.  The fact that theists can't operate in an open and honest way is pretty damning.

Quote from: Hydra009 on September 27, 2017, 08:06:27 PM
For me, all it'd take is a simple demonstration of said God: introduce him to everyone, let me have a nice firm handshake and a good ol' Doubting Thomas poke and I'm won over.  Simple.

Instead, what I get are arguments and word games.  "There has to be a God because X" or "this passage predicted 9/11" or "Atheists can't explain X".  Sophistry and worse.  And I have to be content with that or else.

The fact that theists have to rely on these arguments at all is an indicator that it's not real.  You don't have to threaten people into believing that 2+2=4 or that the world is round - it's manifestly true and you can demonstrate it to even the most skeptical person if you're patient enough to do so.  The fact that theists can't operate in an open and honest way is pretty damning.

Ouch!

Yes a simple demonstration would answer the fundamental question.  That would be a place to START, and then knowing there is a god, we could begin to find out what things the Bible got wrong.  I would hope that after his initial appearance, he would hang around for a while and aid us in cleaning up the assortment of religious descriptions that claim to have the real dope on him.  I've always speculated that if a real god could be identified, his purpose would surprise everyone who is heavily invested in their version of what he is and what he wants.  Somehow there is this mountain of lore that theists have passed on each according to their own culture, and all of it without any evidence that he's out there doing whatever.  This is all done by skipping the critical knowledge and getting on with building him the way we think he should be, and then propping it up with words, threats, promises, and occasional bouts of ethnic cleansing.

I've wondered about all those people who say they're doing "God's Will." How do they know what God's will is? Do they get it from the Bible? Do they hear God's voice telling them His will? Do they just do what they want and merely claim it's God's will so they can justify it?

The latter seems the more likely, to me.

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 27, 2017, 10:38:48 PM
I've wondered about all those people who say they're doing "God's Will." How do they know what God's will is? Do they get it from the Bible? Do they hear God's voice telling them His will? Do they just do what they want and merely claim it's God's will so they can justify it?

The latter seems the more likely, to me.

If one has a strong feeling about what one is doing ... yes it is common to claim G-d support.  If you are a theist, wouldn't you do that?  Would the epistemology really matter?  Leave the geeks in the ivory tower, they are mostly harmless, and useless.

Quote from: Baruch on September 27, 2017, 11:03:47 PM
If one has a strong feeling about what one is doing ... yes it is common to claim G-d support.  If you are a theist, wouldn't you do that?  Would the epistemology really matter?  Leave the geeks in the ivory tower, they are mostly harmless, and useless.

I recall, George W claiming he prayed to God for direction when he was supposedly "agonizing" over whether to invade Iraq, and wouldn't you know it, God told George to go ahead and do what he wanted to do.  I'm not sure that really happened.  We will just have to take George's word on that.

Quote from: SGOS on September 27, 2017, 11:29:33 PM
I recall, George W claiming he prayed to God for direction when he was supposedly "agonizing" over whether to invade Iraq, and wouldn't you know it, God told George to go ahead and do what he wanted to do.  I'm not sure that really happened.  We will just have to take George's word on that.

George W is an idiot, as you well know.  I wouldn't go to him for any advice, particularly religious advice.  He got it backward ... if you go to war, and you win, then G-d wanted you to do it, because G-d made it possible for you to win, because G-d backs winners and those G-d supports can't be defeated.  This was American logic after 1945 ... that we are G-d's chosen (we borrowed it from the OT).  It has to do with particular superstitions about the past.

The past can't be changed, so it represents G-d's true judgement.  I don't agree with that, but that is the theology.  In fact the US has lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, in fact lost everywhere since 1945.  Our starting wars is highly stupid, given our poor track record.  Clearly in that old theology, G-d doesn't support the US, so no, G-d wouldn't tell George W to invade Iraq.  In pagan theology, Zeus is known for sending false dreams to stir up trouble among humans.  Americans are pagans in Christian clothing.

Quote from: Sorginak on September 23, 2017, 06:04:03 PM
Christian forums are nothing more than mentally self-masturbatory communities. 

OP: "I believe in God."

Thread responses:
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"

Yep, that how they go.  You ask them WHY they believe and the question baffles them.  "Because God is All" is the usual reply.  Do these people ever actually THINK?

Quote from: Cavebear on September 28, 2017, 01:17:23 AM
Yep, that how they go.  You ask them WHY they believe and the question baffles them.  "Because God is All" is the usual reply.  Do these people ever actually THINK?

Apes don't think.  Even before they post on Atheistforums.com.

If your claim to fame is that you were banned by CF you have a lot left to live and Pepsi has a lot to give..something like that. I don't see martyrdom in your future.

Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on September 28, 2017, 07:22:28 AM
If your claim to fame is that you were banned by CF you have a lot left to live and Pepsi has a lot to give..something like that. I don't see martyrdom in your future.

Well, maybe aqua. 

Quote from: Cavebear on September 28, 2017, 01:17:23 AM
Do these people ever actually THINK?

Can I assume that's a rhetorical question? Why think when you can simply believe what you want to believe?

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 28, 2017, 02:14:58 PM
Can I assume that's a rhetorical question? Why think when you can simply believe what you want to believe?

It was an actual question.  I think at least half the population couldn't find the bottom of a boot if you TOLD them to just turn it upside down.