A Christmas Story

A_Thinker · Dec 30, 2019

muichimotsu said:
Atheism doesn't remotely promise that, ...

My point exactly ... !!!

P.S. Your profile says that you are Bhuddist.

I suppose that you have good reasons to adopt such a path through life, no ???

muichimotsu · Dec 30, 2019

A_Thinker said:
My point exactly ... !!!

P.S. Your profile says that you are Bhuddist.

I suppose that you have good reasons to adopt such a path through life, no ???

It's the philosophical aspects I find compelling, the metaphysical/supernatural aspects tends to muddy the waters. Loathe to use atheist as an indicative of faith, because it's not faith-based or a worldview.

A_Thinker · Dec 30, 2019

muichimotsu said:
It's the philosophical aspects I find compelling, the metaphysical/supernatural aspects tends to muddy the waters. Loathe to use atheist as an indicative of faith, because it's not faith-based or a worldview.

God's blessings to you in this ....

Rodan6 · Dec 30, 2019

muichimotsu said:
The premise should not insinuate the conclusion, that's question begging, fallacious thinking

Just having the hypothesis is not enough to give it credence, it has to be tested and falsifiable by nature

Science is necessarily provisional, it isn't giving absolute dogmatic answers, unlike religion/spirituality where the claims are eternal in application, inflexible in essence

An answer is possible, but absolute certainty in that answer is a stumbling block to genuine critical thought, that's the problem in positing God as an answer and then just throwing your hands up because you can't investigate it, but are still convinced by whatever specious inference you might've made to think God is likely rather than not

I agree that there it's a difficult question to prove either way, but in no way does the premise "insinuate the conclusion". The reason there is difficulty is that it's all but impossible to validate the premise with physical evidence. There is testimony, and witness testimony, and this is probably the closest we are going to get to concrete evidence that can be shared with other people--(I'm guessing this would be the "tested and falsifiable by nature" part you speak of). I fully concede that if analysis is limited to this, it is highly unlikely that the premise could be proved or disproved.

My point continues to be that the premise CAN be proved or disproved if one is willing to pursue the question "personally". If you are willing to seek information that can't be transmitted to others, it is fully possible to find answers that meet your personal satisfaction. Let's look at a particularly silly example. Let's suppose that a flying saucer landed in your back yard and an alien from the future popped out. The alien speaks with you and gives you some information that you were later able to verify such as the outcome of a couple of long-shot races at the racetrack later that day. The alien waves goodby and pops back into his spaceship and disappears. Good luck to you trying to prove to anyone that you won $200 at the racetrack thanks to an alien from the future. Obviously, this is a pretty ridiculous example, but the point is that your own personal experience testimony carries greater weight with YOU. YOU might come to the reasonable conclusion that aliens do exist because you met one. A willingness to NOT dismiss personal witness experiences, merely because such evidence cannot be shown/demonstrated to others, makes it possible to fairly evaluate a premise such as this one.

redleghunter · Dec 30, 2019

muichimotsu said:
Except atheism isn't a creed in itself, you vastly exaggerate what atheism consists of beyond not believing in God. Some atheists could believe in aliens, like Raelians, they could believe in magic and ghosts, the only common trait is not being convinced about the existence of gods

I believe you actually prove my point. I stated I've seen many atheist statements of faith. They vary a lot sometimes and that is because their faith statements are based on a relativist worldview.

redleghunter · Dec 30, 2019

muichimotsu said:
Equivocating God with goodness is not solving the problem, it's skirting it to make special pleading for the god entity in question to avoid really confronting the problem in its basic form.

The issue posed is if one attributes bad things happening to God then God gets the credit for the good things.

muichimotsu said:
Goodness is not an essence in itself, it's a property ascribed to actions and their consequences.

Perhaps in your worldview.

muichimotsu said:
If God is goodness and God is a substance, you've already tried to formulate morality in terms of metaphysics, which is like trying to explain epistemology in terms of aesthetics

I don't need to formulate. God's revelation to mankind is in Holy Scriptures. As He gave us the Scriptures God is the Lawgiver. Any other system is manmade.

muichimotsu · Dec 31, 2019

Rodan6 said:
I agree that there it's a difficult question to prove either way, but in no way does the premise "insinuate the conclusion". The reason there is difficulty is that it's all but impossible to validate the premise with physical evidence. There is testimony, and witness testimony, and this is probably the closest we are going to get to concrete evidence that can be shared with other people--(I'm guessing this would be the "tested and falsifiable by nature" part you speak of). I fully concede that if analysis is limited to this, it is highly unlikely that the premise could be proved or disproved.

My point continues to be that the premise CAN be proved or disproved if one is willing to pursue the question "personally". If you are willing to seek information that can't be transmitted to others, it is fully possible to find answers that meet your personal satisfaction. Let's look at a particularly silly example. Let's suppose that a flying saucer landed in your back yard and an alien from the future popped out. The alien speaks with you and gives you some information that you were later able to verify such as the outcome of a couple of long-shot races at the racetrack later that day. The alien waves goodby and pops back into his spaceship and disappears. Good luck to you trying to prove to anyone that you won $200 at the racetrack thanks to an alien from the future. Obviously, this is a pretty ridiculous example, but the point is that your own personal experience testimony carries greater weight with YOU. YOU might come to the reasonable conclusion that aliens do exist because you met one. A willingness to NOT dismiss personal witness experiences, merely because such evidence cannot be shown/demonstrated to others, makes it possible to fairly evaluate a premise such as this one.

No, my personal experience is not holding nearly that much weight in terms of the absolute reliability of it, because optical and auditory illusions are a thing, you don't have to be mentally ill to experience that, our senses can trick us

If you reduce the standards of evidence to personal credulity, you'll believe anything based on the fact that you personally experienced it and NOT on critical thought applied to it. I never reduced the scale of evidence to purely physical evidence, that's just the most reliable standard, establishing consistency of a predictive model based on what we understand in regards to physics, etc. But there's also reasoning out things, the problem becomes how far you want to take the abstract concepts we consider.

God is generally described as being outside the universe, so it's effectively already beyond our capacity to explore except in a speculative sense, which lends itself to being a way to explain anything presently unknown rather than accepting that we may not understand it, but don't need a placeholder explanation like God when we may find out that there is an understanding we can gain, even if it's necessarily limited in terms of scientific methods for falsifiability.

muichimotsu · Dec 31, 2019

redleghunter said:
The issue posed is if one attributes bad things happening to God then God gets the credit for the good things.

Perhaps in your worldview.

I don't need to formulate. God's revelation to mankind is in Holy Scriptures. As He gave us the Scriptures God is the Lawgiver. Any other system is manmade.

The question is whether it's logical or rational to attribute ANYTHING to God, not whether you attribute just the good or bad, that's selective notions on individuals' parts

Where can you demonstrate the substance of good? Can you demonstrate the substance of numbers or logic? No, but methinks you may not understand substance entirely accurately in the first place or are using an esoteric meaning to stretch immaterial concepts as having substance rather than being substantive only in how we can explain them. My desk has substance, I have substance, goodness, numbers, etc, that are abstract descriptive concepts we apply to reality do not have substance, because they aren't physical. See the point?

That's circular logic, you're appealing to the text that claims to be God's word as proof that the God it claims exists is real.

Your scriptures are man made, God at best "inspired", which is to say gave them mild influences, but there's still clearly a lot of limitations and human foibles in your "holy scriptures", like translation difficulties and limitations based on particular understandings of the time versus modern understandings, cultures, etc

muichimotsu · Dec 31, 2019

redleghunter said:
I believe you actually prove my point. I stated I've seen many atheist statements of faith. They vary a lot sometimes and that is because their faith statements are based on a relativist worldview.

No, that's not demonstrable because you'd have to show that they are advocating such a worldview rather than you insinuating it onto them as the only alternative you think exists in terms of epistemology versus your absolutism.

And atheists don't make statements of faith, particularly not in regards to God, because they aren't making a claim about it. Faith is not such a general term you can just use it to fill in any belief, because not all beliefs are rooted in faith unless you make the meaning such that it's hollow and worthless

redleghunter · Dec 31, 2019

muichimotsu said:
The question is whether it's logical or rational to attribute ANYTHING to God, not whether you attribute just the good or bad, that's selective notions on individuals' parts

Where can you demonstrate the substance of good? Can you demonstrate the substance of numbers or logic? No, but methinks you may not understand substance entirely accurately in the first place or are using an esoteric meaning to stretch immaterial concepts as having substance rather than being substantive only in how we can explain them. My desk has substance, I have substance, goodness, numbers, etc, that are abstract descriptive concepts we apply to reality do not have substance, because they aren't physical. See the point?

That's circular logic, you're appealing to the text that claims to be God's word as proof that the God it claims exists is real.

Your scriptures are man made, God at best "inspired", which is to say gave them mild influences, but there's still clearly a lot of limitations and human foibles in your "holy scriptures", like translation difficulties and limitations based on particular understandings of the time versus modern understandings, cultures, etc

Substance came from somewhere. We just don't conjure up what we think is or is not substance.

redleghunter · Dec 31, 2019

muichimotsu said:
No, that's not demonstrable because you'd have to show that they are advocating such a worldview rather than you insinuating it onto them as the only alternative you think exists in terms of epistemology versus your absolutism.

Someone makes a statement which they believe to be true. That is a faith statement based on something.

muichimotsu · Dec 31, 2019

redleghunter said:
Substance came from somewhere. We just don't conjure up what we think is or is not substance.

You're conflating substance and essence, they're arguably not the same thing: there is an essence to our thoughts, but they're abstract in that essence, while tangible things have substance, they're able to be interacted with physically rather than just as thoughts we entertain. Numbers also don't have substance, the number 1 doesn't have some physical manifestation in itself, only as we understand it to mean a unit of measurement for a single thing

The causal link is not the determinant factor for something having substance or not, if we're going with substance as a property that would be tangible. Thoughts can exist, but they don't exist in the same way as physical/material objects do, unless you're engaging in substance dualism

muichimotsu · Dec 31, 2019

redleghunter said:
Someone makes a statement which they believe to be true. That is a faith statement based on something.

That's the initial statement, justification and falsification are the next step in actually determining the truth of the claim rather than merely holding it to be true, BIG difference

thomas_t · Jan 1, 2020

Hi Muichi,
nice to meet you.
I saw you making a good point in the other thread… about Christians sometimes expecting everyone to attend their congregations, which is a bit strange indeed, I think.

muichimotsu said:
Your scriptures are man made, God at best "inspired", which is to say gave them mild influences, but there's still clearly a lot of limitations and human foibles in your "holy scriptures", like translation difficulties and limitations based on particular understandings of the time versus modern understandings, cultures, etc

But here we disagree. I think that God wanted the limitations of translations, understanding of the time + cultures to influence his Bible.
Moreover, God is able to dictate scriptures word by word... and enjoy the viewpoints of the ones writing them down at the same time, I think.

Thomas

muichimotsu · Jan 1, 2020

thomas_t said:
But here we disagree. I think that God wanted the limitations of translations, understanding of the time + cultures to influence his Bible.
Moreover, God is able to dictate scriptures word by word... and enjoy the viewpoints of the ones writing them down at the same time, I think.

Thomas

Yeah, I'm sure an all knowing God wouldn't have any issues with a culture that was tribalistic and generally behaves little different than modern Israel in retaliating against enemies instead of trying to be remotely congenial.

Why would you want the influences of cultures that regarded women as chattel, dehumanized people through slavery, seemingly had no motivation to make rape one of the Ten Commandments, among other things that even then should've been pretty clear if this was God's chosen people?

Dictating word by word seems to suggest that the writers have no real input on it...also suspiciously like what Gabriel supposedly did with Muhammad and the Quran, since Muhammad was illiterate (and somehow learned to read and write, I'm not sure how that happened in the story)

thomas_t · Jan 2, 2020

muichimotsu said:
modern Israel in retaliating against enemies instead of trying to be remotely congenial.

in my opinion, you can't try appeasement policy with Hamas, that was voted into power by majority vote.

muichimotsu said:
[Ancient Israel] seemingly had no motivation to make rape one of the Ten Commandments,

but women at that time didn't seem to have any problems with this either (I mean the "mere" rape), see 2 Samuel 13:16.
In my opinion, you can compare this to how FGM survivors sometimes react today. To my knowledge they often say this is totally ok. Even in the global West there are voices saying nobody should condemn this practice.
Nevertheless, the Bible does contain stories about what I would call feminism today. Take Tamar in Genesis 38. She spoke up for her rights and was awarded a place in Jesus's ancestry (see Matthew 1).

muichimotsu said:
Dictating word by word seems to suggest that the writers have no real input on it

I get your point.
I believe there is not one single flaw in the Bible, not one single myth.
I rather think that God somehow made sure that everything is right. But the writers also had some influence, I believe. It's both at the same time. The writers could have influenced the choice of the topics in their book, for instance.
Thomas

coffee4u · Jan 2, 2020

InterestedAtheist said:
From the Cross Examined blog.
Jesus and Santa: a Parable on How We Dismiss Evidence

It was early December, and little Jerry had begun to doubt the existence of Santa Claus. He made his case to his younger brother Scott.
“I don’t think Santa is real. I think it’s just Mom and Dad buying us presents,” Jerry said.
“Prove it,” Scott said.
“Okay, why are there all those Santas on the street corners ringing for money? How can Santa be at all those stores at once?"
“They’re not the real Santa, just his helpers,” Scott said. “And maybe they’re just testing us to see if we’ll still believe. I’m going to believe, because if you don’t, you don’t get presents.”
“But I recognized one of them—it was the father of one of my friends.”
“Then those are just ordinary people imitating Santa, raising money for a good cause. Anyway, I’ve seen Santa on TV at Thanksgiving—everyone has.”

Jerry sees that he’s not making any progress, so he gives up. On Christmas afternoon, he’s alone with Scott and tries again. “Remember that video game that you told Mom about and then you forgot to tell Santa?” Jerry said. “But you got it anyway. Mom must’ve bought it and written on the package that it came from Santa.”
“Mom just told Santa,” Scott said.
“Then tell me this: how can Santa get around the world in one night?”
“My friends all say that Santa is real. Anyway, Santa has magic. And the cookies we leave out for Santa are always gone on Christmas morning.”
“With the Junior Detective kit that I got this morning, I dusted the cookie plate for fingerprints, and they were Mom’s.”
“So what? Mom set out the plate, and Santa wears gloves.”

Jerry gives up for the year. On Christmas afternoon the next year, he tries again. “Lots of the older kids don’t believe in Santa. They say that their presents only come from their parents.”
“Sure,” Scott said. “Santa only gives presents to those who still believe in him.”
“A few months ago, I was snooping in Dad’s sock drawer, and I found every letter we ever wrote to Santa.”
“Why not? Santa didn’t need them anymore and each year just gives them to Mom and Dad for keepsakes.”
“The only fingerprints on our presents were Mom’s or Dad’s.”
“Mom and Dad always get up early on Christmas. They could’ve rearranged them.”
“Last week, I found all our presents hidden in a corner in the attic.” Jerry pawed through some of the torn wrapping paper. “I wrote my initials on the bottom of each package. And look—here they are. That proves that Santa didn’t bring them here last night.”
“I asked Mom, and she said that Santa is real. Anyway, how do I know you didn’t write your initials on the wrapping paper this morning?”

Like little Scott, if you’re determined to believe something, you can rationalize away any unwelcome evidence. (By rationalize, I mean taking an idea as fact and then selecting or interpreting all relevant evidence to make it support that immutable given.)

Christians rationalize, too. They rationalize away contradictions in the Bible, the oddity of a hidden God, or why so much bad happens to the people God loves. They can find a dozen reasons why a particular prayer wasn’t answered, even though the Bible promises, “Ask and ye shall receive.” But the Christian will say that they’re simply defending the truth—they’re not rationalizing; they’re right.

In five minutes we can see flaws in others that we don’t see in ourselves in a lifetime. Perhaps this episode with Jerry and Scott will encourage us to see our own rationalizations.

My reply to Jerry is he's a little killjoy and that his brother is entitled to his imagination because one day he will outgrow Santa. Childhood is fleeting, adulthood is long-or it should be.

Unlike little Scott we don't believe because someone tells us fairytales, we experience God and have a relationship with God. We hear God's voice or feel his leading in many small ways and when we don't it's not because God moved it's because we moved further away.

muichimotsu · Jan 2, 2020

in my opinion, you can't try appeasement policy with Hamas, that was voted into power by majority vote.

I'm not claiming remote expertise or even significant knowledge, but I don't think the immediate solution is "get out of our way," or something to that effect

but women at that time didn't seem to have any problems with this either (I mean the "mere" rape), see 2 Samuel 13:16.
In my opinion, you can compare this to how FGM survivors sometimes react today. To my knowledge they often say this is totally ok. Even in the global West there are voices saying nobody should condemn this practice.
Nevertheless, the Bible does contain stories about what I would call feminism today. Take Tamar in Genesis 38. She spoke up for her rights and was awarded a place in Jesus's ancestry (see Matthew 1).

Of course women at the time didn't have problems with it, or if they did it was more a complaint that wasn't really addressed much in the grand scheme of things. Some guys being nice and progressive for the time doesn't mean they still weren't enabling a misogynist system

Abuse victims can suffer Stockholm syndrome, I'm not a psychologist, but I'm familiar with the idea of defending the abuser as knowing what's "best" for you or the like

Jesus' ancestry is not consistent between the 2 sources, from what I understand, by all means point out how the glaring problems that are brought up are not problems

I get your point.
I believe there is not one single flaw in the Bible, not one single myth.
I rather think that God somehow made sure that everything is right. But the writers also had some influence, I believe. It's both at the same time. The writers could have influenced the choice of the topics in their book, for instance.

That seems more like post hoc rationalization to fit the idea that the Bible is infallible even if it isn't inerrant (which is a distinction of accuracy relative to stuff demonstrably false, like breeding goats with stripes by having them breed in front of striped sticks, not actually how animal husbandry works versus things that are more "spiritual" in nature)

It can only be both if you're inferring God fixing things after the fact rather than simultaneously, avoiding a sequential contradiction

thomas_t · Jan 2, 2020

I appreciate you being able to not claim knowledge for certain topics.
But you do know a lot, it seems.

muichimotsu said:
Jesus' ancestry is not consistent between the 2 sources, from what I understand, by all means point out how the glaring problems that are brought up are not problems

Here we disagree. They do differ, however. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that the one highlights (true) fathership and the other biologic ancestry or DNA as we would put it today. By doing this, Bible establishes that both are differing concepts simply (my opinion).

muichimotsu said:
the Bible is infallible even if it isn't inerrant

My idea is that the Bible is both infallible and inerrant.

muichimotsu said:
like breeding goats with stripes by having them breed in front of striped sticks, not actually how animal husbandry works

I'm no biologist. Let's have it simple: if this isn't how biology works, which I don't know, then it was a miracle. In this case, the story wasn't "false"... it was just a miracle.
Thomas

P.S.: I think that if women want a misogynist system... than it's ok.

muichimotsu · Jan 2, 2020

I appreciate you being able to not claim knowledge for certain topics.
But you do know a lot, it seems.

I know a lot only relative to particular people

Here we disagree. They do differ, however. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that the one highlights (true) fathership and the other biologic ancestry or DNA as we would put it today. By doing this, Bible establishes that both are differing concepts simply (my opinion).

Why should biological ancestry even be a concept at this time as distinct from some true heritage in Jesus being supposedly God incarnate? The blood versus adopted family notions existed, I'm sure, but I'd sooner buy the notion that they're representing Mary and Joseph's related familial trees, an explanation brought up often enough

My idea is that the Bible is both infallible and inerrant.

I'm no biologist. Let's have it simple: if this isn't how biology works, which I don't know, then it was a miracle. In this case, the story wasn't "false"... it was just a miracle.

That's more post hoc rationalization, you don't get to set the standards after the fact to avoid admitting the Bible is wrong on things that aren't nearly as important as you're trying to make them. People didn't understand basic reproduction back then, they thought women were just carriers, not that there was gametes for both sexes. It's not a sign of unreliability in terms of the Bible's spiritual messages if it happens to be wrong about rabbits chewing the cud (not a matter of miracle, just them being wrong, same as classifying bats the same as birds)

P.S.: I think that if women want a misogynist system... than it's ok.

Uh, no, that would be a misogynist attitude to even suggest someone wanting something means it's permissible, like saying black people being okay with Jim Crow meant it wasn't wrong: it was wrong demonstrably

A Christmas Story

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