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Now you're getting close to what I believe. All religions, gods, and scriptures are manmade. As is science, for that matter. These are all products of the human mind. I'm a little more generous. They all have failings, but they have successes, too.
If you justify everything by good or evil, you will be forever combatants in a polarized war.
Why do you think Jesus was a moral teacher? What evidence do you have to support that conclusion?A moral teacher. Like Zoroaster, or the Buddha, or Socrates, or Lao Tzu. And just like them, a human being. Not a god, and not supernatural.
Why do you think Jesus was a moral teacher? What evidence do you have to support that conclusion?
But I don't for a minute believe that the rabbi performed miracles, or returned to life after being dead.
Why not?
Let me ask you one. Do you believe that centuries before Jesus, a tribe of ancient Israelites somehow made their way across the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean and settled in what is now the US? And that after the resurrection, Jesus came and preached to them, and established a church here just as he did in Judea?
Most of the godless people I meet today (including agnostics and atheists in that) consider science and choice as the pillars of reality.
I have 3 main issues with this godless understanding of choice.
1) It seems to contradict the scientific appraisal of reality as being somehow determined by environment, evolution and circumstance.
2) It is rather selective in what it chooses e.g. the mother choice of her own personal convenience over that of the life of her child.
3) It has no ultimate authoritative foundation that does not change.
That's a great question. Do you want to answer the question I asked? Why do you not think that rabbi Yeshua performed miracles, or returned to life after being dead?
You know my answer. I'm a naturalist. I don't believe in supernatural occurrences. Jesus's miracles are mythological embellishments that were added to make the narrative more compelling. Do you think I should believe them? Another example: I believe that Siddhartha Gautama, AKA the Buddha, was a real man, who lived in northern India in the 5th century BC. There are millions of followers of the religion (or maybe philosophy) that has been built around his teachings. Buddhist scripture says that he ascended into heaven for a week to preach to the soul of his deceased mother, and then returned to his ministry on earth. Do you think this is believable? And what about the Israelite tribe living in America, and Jesus returning to preach to them? That's from the Book of Mormon. Should I believe that also? Virtually all of the many world religions have their legends of supernatural happenings. Why should any of them be believed?
Thank you for the thoughtful response.
It causes me to wonder...why do you think that supernatural occurrences can't happen?
Post #54:"So why should I believe anything supernatural ever has happened, or will happen?
That's the whole point. A-theists, AG-nostics,
NAT-uralists, HUM-anists and the LIKE have only one
"belief system":
"God does NOT exist" and anything related to SPIRIT and SOUL is not "provable".
So you can´t answer the question?Post #54:"So why should I believe anything supernatural ever has happened, or will happen?
That's the whole point. A-theists, AG-nostics,
NAT-uralists, HUM-anists and the LIKE have only one
"belief system":
"God does NOT exist" and anything related to SPIRIT and SOUL is not "provable".
I would broadly agree with the science portion of that. However, I don't really know what you mean by choice.
I've tried to respond to your main points, but I keep running into the "choice" problem. Your whole post is founded on this idea that atheists consider choice as a "pillar of reality". I don't really agree with that and I don't really know what you mean by that.
Pure scientific determinism was abandoned a long time ago. I don't think any scientist today anymore agrees with a pure clockwork universe. It's been shown to be wrong.
You may be misunderstanding the whole choice thing.
Most progressives (who also often happen to be irreligious) do not hold up "choice" as the pillar, they hold up "non-judgement" and "mutual respect" as the pillars. Whether it is a choice or not is irrelevant. In fact, many of the "don't judge" arguments are born from the idea that these "moral choices" are not choices at all. For example, many people argue that transgenderism and homosexuality are biologically-determined and are emphatically not choices. If you ascribe to this view then it becomes awfully difficult to judge someone for being homosexual: it's like judging them for being black or having red hair.
The social sciences (sociology and psychology) have never claimed to be deterministic sciences. The best they can show is that, given a set of cultural, biological, and environmental influences, an individual may be predisposed to a certain type of behaviour. For example, if you grow up in a home where neither of your parents work or show any strong work ethic, then you are predisposed to have a poor work ethic. You are still able to choose to work hard. There is no deterministic force causing you to be unable to work hard.
Abortion is a really sticky, complex moral issue because it is actually two competing moral issues wrapped into one. There really isn't any catch-all moral rule that can be applied to abortion in my opinion. Also, it is worth keeping in mind that, I think both pro-life and pro-choice people can agree: a world with fewer abortions is a better one. It is just that the pro-life people have decided that the best way to achieve this goal is by restricting abortions (or making them full-on illegal) while pro-choice people have decided that the best way to achieve this goal is by providing free/subsidized birth control, counselling services, family planning centers, etc.
As far as I know, no one wants an abortion. The long term goal is not more abortions. No one has a baby girl and dreams that one day she will get knocked up at 16 and have to decide whether to have an abortion or not.
Do you have another example of the selective choosing other than abortion?
I disagree with "choice" as an aspect of reality. My layman's understanding of quantum mechanics makes me think that determinism isn't the whole story - the future behavior of particles cannot be precisely determined from their current observable state. However, I don't necessarily believe that I have a metaphysical soul that is making choices. If anything like that exists, I suspect it would be a universal soul such as God and we are all merely God's sock puppets. I can imagine other explanations for that gap in QM. For example, there might uncountable multiverses so that every possibility happens.
Anyway, I don't think it is accurate to claim that most godless people believe in "choice" as a pillar of reality. Most godless people imagine our brains to be biological computers.
EDIT: If anything it is the theists whose beliefs are incoherent. On the one hand they accept science. They buy tickets on airplanes instead of trying to spiritually teleport themselves to the destination. But on the other hand they believe that they have a soul that will continue to exist in an afterlife. They can't explain how the metaphysical soul interfaces to the physical brain. They can't find any evidence for the existence of these metaphysical souls. But they just keep on believing, because they don't want to be atheists.
OK, to start with I think choice as a product of a God given free will is very different in concept from what is entertained as choice by the liberal atheist world. In practice in the USA for example you ask an atheist Democrat what he believes about origins and he will say evolution and ask him about what he thinks about alternate lifestyles, abortion etc and he will say it is all a matter of choice. But yes what he means by choice may well end up being different from the reality of choice as Christians understand it.
Interesting but a person chooses to resists judgments made on them cause their preference is to do the activity which or be the person who is being judged. Non judgmentalism in that respect is the effort to say you have no right to judge my choices or sins.
Scientifically there is not really any such thing as transgenderism as people either have male or female DNA whatever confusion occurs as a result of malformation, experiences or choices. But interestingly a person who says they are woman but have male DNA is making a choice to redefine themselves as something that they are scientifically and absolutely not. It is a good example where choice and science clearly contradict.
I would agree that sociology and psychology are more arts than sciences. But as with my OP you can point to certain patterns like the modern atheists predisposition to evolutionary science and liberal choice. Also I would actually agree that science cannot predict human behaviour in any kind of truly reliable way. The exception to scientific rules will always overthrow the absolute legitimacy of theories and render predictions uncertain. But most atheists will suggest that this is a result of just not knowing enough about how these processes work yet. While I as a Christian assume a transcendence to people made in Gods image and with the transcendence that implies that will always render merely naturalistic predictions dubious.
We agree that less abortion is better than more. We may disagree on the effectiveness of having a law about this. Statistically abortion numbers exploded as a result of Roe v Wade or the 1967 British abortion act.
Transgenderism might be a good one. Scientifically a persons DNA says man or woman but a person may still make a choice in defiance of that scientific reality. Trans genderism is a clear example where a person insists on making a choice at odds with scientific reality.
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