Atheists Philosphers Mock Defining Atheism as a "Lack of Belief in God."

[ToddNotTodd]

We've been over this.

It seems as though insisting that language conform to individual's preconceived notions is the thing to do lately.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

Paul dos the make his conclusions to convert from Judaism to Christianity based on his scientific ignorance. We still don't have an explanation for how professionally executed individuals who have been pronounced dead by professionals could possibly rise from the dead a few days later given our current science.

I wasn't referring to Paul's conversion or the resurrection. I was saying that bit in Romans 1, his belief that the existence of God can be seen "from what has been made," is reasonable given the model of the world that he was working from. But we're working from better models now, and I don't think his conclusion holds. The idea that God's qualities or even existence are obvious in light of our current knowledge of the universe is not something I would agree with.

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

Entertaining! Forget about his experience of the risen Chrst.

Oh or are you going to delete that experience. Okay find I delete the experience of all data gathered by scientists if a: it is not repeatable ( there go all the forensic sciences) and if it is not representative of modern knowledge.

Newton should be thrown out due to the fact he was ignorant of quantum mechanics. Genius, pure genius.

Sounds like you may have read to much Hume and his circular arguments against miricales due to his presumption of naturalism.

I did not delete the experience. I refer to it in the next paragraph:

"The reason Paul converted was because of a personal experience he had which was unverified by anyone and, as far as we can tell, a product of his imagination."

That was his experience of the risen Christ on the Road to Damascus. I did not ignore it, I merely pointed out that he did not experience the physically resurrected Jesus (the one who was on Earth for 3 days and then ascended to heaven). His experience is very similar to the descriptions of Yogananda Paramahansa encountering his risen Master, Sri Yukteswar in Autobiography of a Yogi. Resurrection is quite common in many branches of Hinduism.

Correct, but it does have weight. And if ones detractors (the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day) don't challenge the facts of Jesus' miracles or his claims, if he has over 500 witnesses to his being risen, then the alternative hypothesis that explains those will have to hold up.

Paul's testimony in 1 Corinthians 15 is somewhat misleading because he lumps himself in to the same category as those that supposedly saw the physically resurrected Jesus (Acts 1:1-10). Act 1:3 clearly states that Jesus spent only 40 days on Earth. Paul did not meet Jesus on the Road to Damascus until Acts 9 which is anywhere from months to years later.

Paul's mention of the 500 that saw him is just hearsay (and he did not write this for years to decades after the events).

Anyway this is all to say that Paul's testimony has far less weight than people usually give it.

Now one can not reasonably explain the willingness of the disciples to go to their deaths in services of a story about Jesus they knew to be a lie.

I never claimed they thought it was a lie. I think they believed so fervently that they had the truth that they were willing to die for it, just like modern-day Muslim terrorists or the self-immolation of Buddhist monks.

Your method seeks to poison the wells to ALLhistorical witnesses, and ALL EXPERIENCE, which destroys all of history including science but if we accept your epistemology would couldn't possibly find any metaphysical cause as your method would yield a false negative.

No, I asked you for a methodology why you would discount one account (Autobiography of a Yogi) and accept another (Paul's testimony). I'm not seeking to poison the well, I just want to know how you discern the validity of one from the other. Is there any consistent methodology applied?

Acts consistently presents a minimal facts case of Jesus' life, miracles and claims to be God, all attested to by his enemies followed by claims of a resurection easily disproved by the religious leaders of the day, by producing a body.

2000 years is a long time. The church systematically destroyed any contradictory claims and heresies. The church re-wrote history and we are left to try to sort out the mess. That's one of the big reasons I am skeptical. The rare snippets of non-sanctioned church documents we have (e.g. Nag Hammadi) give incredibly different account than the "standard" history told to us by the early Roman church.

It's like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle where someone deliberately threw out 80% of the pieces including the edge pieces.

Acts 2,13-19

Why do you reference this? Peter here makes a claim about them being in the "last days". A apocalyptic preacher. Its been 2000 years now. When are these "last days" going to finish and why was Peter so wrong about him living through the "last days"?

Anyway, that's kind of a tangent. Every time someone quotes scripture I generally come away with 10 more questions than I started with...

Hmm does light have wave and particle properties?

Does the expansion of space cause gravity?

It seems to build out an ontological account of those existing forces there is more than a little jiggery-pokery (not sure why someone defending philosophical naturalism would say this given the about of questionable jiggery-pokery involved in giving that account).

To prove the existence of something is much easier than to understand that thing.

I am saying that proving something exists is generally easy.

Sure understanding how light works and its properties is incredibly difficult. But to prove that light exists? Uhh..grab a flashlight and turn on the switch. Voila. No jiggery-pokery required. Easy. Simple. Obvious.

You can't even prove the reality of the past, other minds, and an external world. Science relies on those assumptions and more.

Yes, science relies on those assumptions. And so does everyone else.

Theists just add a strange and unnecessary assumption to the bucket which I see no need for.

I'm not anti-science but you keep on assuming the only things that exists are material which will leave you with a 2500 year-old problem of answering the question what is the first cause of material, since it can't be material and there can't be an infinite causal regress.

Why can't there be infinite causal regress?

There a variety of theories about the initiation of the Big Bang. All are highly theoretical and likely cannot ever be tested sadly. It will likely always be an unknown

 

[Uber Genius]

did not delete the experience. I refer to it in the next paragraph:

You said of his experience, "asfar as we can tell, a product of his imagination. "

This ignores the fact that both Jesus’ voice (Acts 9:7) and the bright light (Acts 22:9) were perceived by Paul’s traveling companions.

You also make an unsupported statement about Christian falsifying history.

No one is making the point that Paul's testimony is reasonable and your Yogi friend's is not. We all have epistemic limits and build are world views based on a priori evidence like the impossibility of an infinite regress, or something coming from nothing. Coupled with a posteriori evidence from our experience and other testimony which runs the gamut of trustworthy to untrustworthy.

My point was we examine testimony as part of a cumulative case. We also are generous not selecting out testimony that potentially offers us defeaters for our current worldview.

he lumps himself in to the same category as those that supposedly saw the physically resurrected Jesus (Acts 1

Not the case. He called himself the least of the disciples.

The church re-wrote history and we are left to try to sort out the mess. That's one of the big reasons I am skeptical.

even Bart Erhman and Dominic Crossen, two of the biggest skeptics who are also scholars of NT and NT history both would deny your claim howeve

I am saying that proving something exists is generally easy.

Sure understanding how light works and its properties is incredibly difficult. But to prove that light exists? Uhh..grab a flashlight and turn on the switch. Voila. No jiggery-pokery required. Easy. Simple. Obvious.

The jigery-pokerery seems to be in false analogy. In my example we are not proving that light exists! We are proving that quantum theory describes light or that quanta exists. So point, which I thought was obvious is that even though quanta are a feature of our world, it is not so easy to prove that claim.

Theists just add a strange and unnecessary assumption to the bucket which I see no need for.

forensic scientists, archeologists, mathmaticians, Philosphers are in the same boat as you try and put theists, in terms of epistemically presuppositions. Your view, in an attempt to destroy theism and produce philosophical naturalism does huge damage to the majority of what counts for knowledge at universities around the world.

Why can't there be infinite causal regress?

Zeno. Or for more modern treatment, Koon, Rowe, Hilbert, or Bertrand Russell discusses a similar paradox, which he called the Tristam Shandy paradox.

are highly theoretical and likely cannot ever be tested sadly. It will likely always be an unknown

strange. So then science can't make a pronouncement on cosmological beginnings. Fine. Then why couch them as science? Just recognize that science has limits. Your understanding of the world has only a small amount of data from science anyways.

 

[Uber Genius]

But we're working from better models now

While obviously true, there is no cosmological account (philosophically speaking), that science can make about the universe! It is outside the bounds of science as it must necessarily transcend space, time, matter, and energy! What does science possibly have to contribute?

Paul's context is to the grandeur of creation being awe-inspiring. This still hold true today. And it also gets everyone thinking how did this come to be? But they don't stop with the Inflationary Model. They ask what caused that and seem to know that we can't have an infinite causal regress.

What is the explanatory ultimate? That is the role nature plays. Why am I here? Is there meaning? How should I live my life? These are not scientific questions, it seems. Nor does cosmology (scientifically speaking), have much to do with it.

 

[zippy2006]

False.

If you toss a coin and not show me the results, I can "actively disbelieve" both these claims:
- it is heads
- it is tails

and withhold believe in both until I have more data to make an informed decision.

We've been over this.

Your interpretation is demonstrably wrong, as is proved from the very next post (the source which she was paraphrasing explicitly states the opposite of your interpretation). The reason you come to such false conclusions is because you twist language to mean something that it does not.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Your interpretation is demonstrably wrong, as is proved from the very next post (the source which she was paraphrasing explicitly states the opposite of your interpretation). The reason you come to such false conclusions is because you twist language to mean something that it does not.

As every good philosopher knows, we don't "prove" things.

And anyway, you can't demonstrably "prove" anything about the common usage of language.

We've been over this.

 

[zippy2006]

As every good philosopher knows, we don't "prove" things.

Oh? Says who? I don't even consider you a philosopher, much less a good philosopher. Therefore your words carry very little authority on their own.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Oh? Says who? I don't even consider you a philosopher, much less a good philosopher. I know that you claim to have a degree, but even in spite of the dire state of academia I do not believe such a claim. Therefore your words have very little authority.

Personal attack aside, that wasn't an attempt to address my post.

So, do you have any evidence that language is demonstrably objective?

 

[zippy2006]

So, do you have any evidence that language is demonstrably objective?

Anyone who has sat through an English class and owned a dictionary knows the answer to this. The others are just playing word games.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Anyone who has sat through an English class and owned a dictionary knows the answer to this. The others are just playing word games.

Neither English classes nor dictionaries objectively prescribe how language is necessarily to be used. There's no mechanism by which they could.

For example, if there was a town in which every single inhabitant switched the terms "happy" and "sad", they would still be able to communicate those ideas correctly with each other. When one of those inhabitants said they were sad, and were - to you or I - happy, they would be semantically correct for themselves and the people around them. Arguing that they're somehow objectively wrong is futile, because as I've shown, language is at best intersubjective.

 

[zippy2006]

For example, if there was a town in which every single inhabitant switched the terms "happy" and "sad",...

...They would be corrected as soon as they ran into an English professor, lexicographer, or even a generally knowledgeable non-sophistic person for that matter. And if they used such false vocabulary on their English paper they would be docked points.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

...They would be corrected as soon as they ran into an English professor, lexicographer, or even a generally knowledgeable non-sophistic person for that matter. And if they used such false vocabulary on their English paper they would be docked points.

No they wouldn't. As I said, everyone in the town uses the words in the same way. They are correct, to them. The dictionary the town uses defines "happy" and "sad" in the way they use them (opposite the way we use them). Lexicographers in the town would agree with their usage, because a lexicographers job is to report how people use language, not dictate how they should use language. They wouldn't be docked points on an English paper, because the teachers know the proper usage of the words, to them. In fact, if you went to the town and took an English test, you'd be docked points, because you'd be using the terms incorrectly, to them.

 

[zippy2006]

No they wouldn't. As I said, everyone in the town uses the words in the same way. They are correct, to them. The dictionary the town uses defines "happy" and "sad" in the way they use them (opposite the way we use them). Lexicographers in the town would agree with their usage, because a lexicographers job is to report how people use language, not dictate how they should use language. They wouldn't be docked points on an English paper, because the teachers know the proper usage of the words, to them. In fact, if you went to the town and took an English test, you'd be docked points, because you'd be using the terms incorrectly, to them.

Usage is not determined by a single town. Lexicographers do not examine a single town to determine usage.

Thus:

...They would be corrected as soon as they ran into an English professor, lexicographer, or even a generally knowledgeable non-sophistic person for that matter. And if they used such false vocabulary on their English paper they would be docked points.

 

[ToddNotTodd]

Usage is not determined by a single town.

Usage isn't "determined" at all. It's reported. In any event, the dictionary in this town defines the words "happy" and "sad" in the manner that the inhabitants use it. If it's your contention that everyone in this town is objectively "wrong", it's up to you to show how that's possible. You can't use population as a deciding metric, because I can propose a country where 51% the population uses "happy" and "sad" one way, and the other 49% uses them the opposite way. It would seem silly to discount 49% of a population's use of these terms.

Lexicographers do not examine a single town to determine usage.

So lexicographers should examine how multiple populations use a word and report alternate definitions based on those different uses. Imagine that...

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Your interpretation is demonstrably wrong, as is proved from the very next post (the source which she was paraphrasing explicitly states the opposite of your interpretation). The reason you come to such false conclusions is because you twist language to mean something that it does not.

I see you still have issues with understanding the difference between:

- "I don't believe X"
and
- "I believe X is false"

 

[KnowtheSilence]

While obviously true, there is no cosmological account (philosophically speaking), that science can make about the universe! It is outside the bounds of science as it must necessarily transcend space, time, matter, and energy! What does science possibly have to contribute?

I think perhaps you are concerned I may be an advocate for scientism; rest assured I am not. I agree that we need more than science when we deal with metaphysics (also, I’m not an atheist who shies away from that word, or who imagines that they don’t hold any metaphysical views whatsoever). However, since our beliefs about metaphysics are based mostly on our intuitions and inferences we make based on what we see in the world around us, science has a role to play here.

Science also has a role to play if you’re a fan of natural theology, which Paul clearly is based on the passage in question. Science represents our best efforts to explain and understand the natural world, and if our understanding of the natural world can correctly inform us about the nature of God, then a scientific view will benefit us more than a pre-scientific view, where the Earth is the center of the universe, the universe is relatively small, where living things were specially created in their current forms, etc.

These are all things that Paul probably thought, and drove him to his conclusion that, when you look at nature, it’s obvious that there is a God that created it, and that God is some sort of powerful, personal, intelligent being. If I thought the universe looked the way Paul thought it did, I’d come to the same conclusion. But since that is not the universe we live in, Paul’s conclusion is not so obvious, and when people like mark kennedy quote Romans 1 as proof that even atheists must share Paul’s conclusions on some level, I think they do so in error.

Of course it’s possible to have an up-to-date, scientifically accurate picture of the universe and still come out thinking that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that there is an intelligent creator, but that passage in Romans 1 has nothing to do with that, and using it as a club against atheists is not only inaccurate, it’s uncharitable and borderline dishonest in my view.

Paul's context is to the grandeur of creation being awe-inspiring. This still hold true today. And it also gets everyone thinking how did this come to be? But they don't stop with the Inflationary Model. They ask what caused that and seem to know that we can't have an infinite causal regress.

What is the explanatory ultimate? That is the role nature plays. Why am I here? Is there meaning? How should I live my life? These are not scientific questions, it seems. Nor does cosmology (scientifically speaking), have much to do with it.

While I share with (it would seem) most people that there being some sort of brute fact or “uncaused cause” is the most likely explanation of why the universe exists, I don’t rule out the possibility of infinite regress. I don’t reject it intuitively the way some people do, and arguments to show its impossibility have not been convincing to me. Still, it doesn’t make as much sense to me as the option I’ve chosen. That aside, none of my intuitions drive me towards thinking that the uncaused cause must be a personal being, and my view of the evidence actually goes against that conclusion.

And as I said previously, our inferences play a role in determining our metaphysics, and science must play a role in those inferences. So while there are matters where science is not the tool that we use, we ignore or contradict our findings in the scientific realm to our own detriment.

 

[Uber Genius]

I think perhaps you are concerned I may be an advocate for scientism; rest assured I am not. I agree that we need more than science when we deal with metaphysics (also, I’m not an atheist who shies away from that word, or who imagines that they don’t hold any metaphysical views whatsoever). However, since our beliefs about metaphysics are based mostly on our intuitions and inferences we make based on what we see in the world around us, science has a role to play here.

Science also has a role to play if you’re a fan of natural theology, which Paul clearly is based on the passage in question. Science represents our best efforts to explain and understand the natural world, and if our understanding of the natural world can correctly inform us about the nature of God, then a scientific view will benefit us more than a pre-scientific view, where the Earth is the center of the universe, the universe is relatively small, where living things were specially created in their current forms, etc.

These are all things that Paul probably thought, and drove him to his conclusion that, when you look at nature, it’s obvious that there is a God that created it, and that God is some sort of powerful, personal, intelligent being. If I thought the universe looked the way Paul thought it did, I’d come to the same conclusion. But since that is not the universe we live in, Paul’s conclusion is not so obvious, and when people like mark kennedy quote Romans 1 as proof that even atheists must share Paul’s conclusions on some level, I think they do so in error.

Of course it’s possible to have an up-to-date, scientifically accurate picture of the universe and still come out thinking that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that there is an intelligent creator, but that passage in Romans 1 has nothing to do with that, and using it as a club against atheists is not only inaccurate, it’s uncharitable and borderline dishonest in my view.


While I share with (it would seem) most people that there being some sort of brute fact or “uncaused cause” is the most likely explanation of why the universe exists, I don’t rule out the possibility of infinite regress. I don’t reject it intuitively the way some people do, and arguments to show its impossibility have not been convincing to me. Still, it doesn’t make as much sense to me as the option I’ve chosen. That aside, none of my intuitions drive me towards thinking that the uncaused cause must be a personal being, and my view of the evidence actually goes against that conclusion.

And as I said previously, our inferences play a role in determining our metaphysics, and science must play a role in those inferences. So while there are matters where science is not the tool that we use, we ignore or contradict our findings in the scientific realm to our own detriment.

So this is a conversation I can get behind. It did seem to me that your method led inextricably to scientism. But your comments have cleared up my misunderstanding.

My point is that if we judge historical figures who are making truth-claims by their knowledge of science as opposed to current science then every truth-claim that is more than a decade old will necessarily be false.

Paul see design and a first-cause behind created things, not to mention an a posteriori experience of awe. So do atheists like Richard Dawkins. So that premise dos not seem like it is less likely to be true than false.

Paul does have less personal experience than all the 12 disciples, certainly. So the 12 have a wealth of a posteriori evidence and Paul, being well-educated, has more conceptual evidence in the form of fulfilled prophecy, or philosophical arguments perhaps.

What is compelling to one individual is not to another.

I think that it is very reasonable to reject theism. Many can give sound justification for atheism based on experience and conceptual arguments. If i had these same experiences and conceptual knowledge I expect that I too would be an atheist.

 

[DogmaHunter]

...They would be corrected as soon as they ran into an English professor

An american english professor, or a brittish english professor?
I'll let you ponder on the implications.

 

[Chesterton]

An american english professor, or a brittish english professor?

i hope they dont run into your professer