How did you arrive at Christianity?

@Silmarien, thank's I'll definitely check out those authors. Just out of curiosity, what reading list, and in what order, would you recommend to the person who never studied philosophy at all and would like to learn from the ground up how to think and talk about all of this metaphysical stuff (and Epistemology) and have the basics down? I'd like to graduate from my personal analogies into more educated word choices. But again would rather not risk choosing mediocre books. Thanks!

bhsmte said:

Thats cool.

IMO, i dont find one off examples of people going from atheism to christianity, or even the opposite compelling. The reason is, individual personal motivation and personal psychology, plays a strong roll in what people believe or dont believe.

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Well, it isn't the fact that an atheist became a theist which is what's compelling. His particular circumstances fly in the face of the claim that people do not abandon atheism for intellectual reasons, though. He can't really be accused of using arguments to support a previously existing belief--they're precisely why he is a theist in the first place. I don't think that's too common, so for someone interested in the intellectual case for theism, he's a great source. Obviously it's his arguments that need to be compelling, of course, not his backstory.

Overall general trends of larger populations are more interesting to me. When you look at the overall, christianity has been declining the world over and especially so in advanced nations who's people are exposed to higher levels of education.

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Trends are interesting, but I would not say that they describe anything beyond what is currently in fashion. We have consumer style spirituality and generalized distrust of authority, so there are certainly social factors at play. I'm convinced that modern disbelief has as much to do with technological insulation from reality as it does with education, and also says far more about what we think we know than what we actually know. Though the rise of fundamentalism is not helping matters.

So why are you an atheist instead of an agnostic, given your particular stance? Does it just become difficult to disentangle dogma from theism if you've belonged to a religion most of your life? I managed to escape religion for the better part of 30 years, so the religion vs. atheism dichotomy has never made much sense to me.

Silmarien said:

Well, it isn't the fact that an atheist became a theist which is what's compelling. His particular circumstances fly in the face of the claim that people do not abandon atheism for intellectual reasons, though. He can't really be accused of using arguments to support a previously existing belief--they're precisely why he is a theist in the first place. I don't think that's too common, so for someone interested in the intellectual case for theism, he's a great source. Obviously it's his arguments that need to be compelling, of course, not his backstory.



Trends are interesting, but I would not say that they describe anything beyond what is currently in fashion. We have consumer style spirituality and generalized distrust of authority, so there are certainly social factors at play. I'm convinced that modern disbelief has as much to do with technological insulation from reality as it does with education, and also says far more about what we think we know than what we actually know. Though the rise of fundamentalism is not helping matters.

So why are you an atheist instead of an agnostic, given your particular stance? Does it just become difficult to disentangle dogma from theism if you've belonged to a religion most of your life? I managed to escape religion for the better part of 30 years, so the religion vs. atheism dichotomy has never made much sense to me.

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Do you think a single case that is not common, gives more validity to one's claims some how?

People have faith beliefs forba variety of personal reasons, related to the uniqness of their personal psyche.

Dirk1540 said:

@Silmarien, thank's I'll definitely check out those authors. Just out of curiosity, what reading list, and in what order, would you recommend to the person who never studied philosophy at all and would like to learn from the ground up how to think and talk about all of this metaphysical stuff (and Epistemology) and have the basics down? I'd like to graduate from my personal analogies into more educated word choices. But again would rather not risk choosing mediocre books. Thanks!

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Generally speaking, you can start either with Ancient Greece or with the Enlightenment. Both have the same general trend--starting with nothing and then building up from there. The Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle for Greece, and I would say Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, and Kant for modern philosophy. I would put Hegel on that list too, but my deep, dark secret is that I've never actually gotten around to reading him.

I'm not really familiar with secondary sources explaining these thinkers, so I can't help you there, unfortunately.

bhsmte said:

Do you think a single case that is not common, gives more validity to one's claims some how?

People have faith beliefs forba variety of personal reasons, related to the uniqness of their personal psyche.

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No, it simply makes it impossible to write his arguments off as attempts at rationalizing beliefs he reached by other means. The validity of his claims rests upon the strength of his argumentation.

Do you believe that lack of belief is a matter of personal and psychological factors as well?

Silmarien said:

Generally speaking, you can start either with Ancient Greece or with the Enlightenment. Both have the same general trend--starting with nothing and then building up from there. The Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle for Greece, and I would say Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, and Kant for modern philosophy. I would put Hegel on that list too, but my deep, dark secret is that I've never actually gotten around to reading him.

I'm not really familiar with secondary sources explaining these thinkers, so I can't help you there, unfortunately.

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Ok thanks, I got work to do, I would prefer the more modern enlightenment. You and a few other members are really making philosophy a fun subject for me. I never really had an interest in it before beyond my private philosophical thoughts.

So it seems like OLD philosophy really stands the test of time, unlike many other subjects where you'd prefer much more modern material/authors.

Silmarien said:

No, it simply makes it impossible to write his arguments off as attempts at rationalizing beliefs he reached by other means. The validity of his claims rests upon the strength of his argumentation.

Do you believe that lack of belief is a matter of personal and psychological factors as well?

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Any belief, or lack of belief, can be influenced by a persons personal psychology and the psychological need, that arrives from the same.

Silmarien, I have a question for you. If you don't mind.

possibletarian said:

ed: The probabilities against these things being just right for intelligent life are astronomical

pos: Yes they are, but so is you and me typing these very words, at this this time on this computer, so is everything that happens. No god at all needed for any unlikely event to happen.

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No, the probabilities for all the things to come out right to produce intelligent life are so high that they are considered impossible and take even greater faith to believe will occur than faith in a supernatural Being.

ed: and point strongly that even these things point to an intelligent designer who caused these things to happen at just the right times and places.

pos: There are probably billions, nay trillions of planets without life on, no matter which planet life formed on, they would undoubtedly say the same thing, even if they were drastically different.

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So far, only one planet has all the right characteristics for life on it. A good way to understand the high probability against life is like being in front of a firing squad and seeing all the guns fired at you and yet you are still alive. The most rational conclusion is that something intentional happened, it is not likely to be an accident.

ed: No, it does not necessarily mean that evolution is true, but it does explain the pattern in nature that Darwin saw and made him THINK it was true.

pos: But there is a wealth of scientific evidence for evolution, none for a god

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No, there is a wealth of evidence for the Christian God, but no other god.

ed: But we could also see the same pattern if there is a Triune single designer utilizing basic body plans just as any single designer would do especially if He was trying to get the point across that there is single designer and not a committee of designers or no designer at all.

pos: But you can't have a wonderful diversity, and a 'from the same mould' theory at the same time. To prove a diverse god it would surely be more than one common ancestor. Wouldn't each creature be unique and not have evidence of having mutated.
Your explanation almost sounds boring for the type of god (of which there is zero evidence) you are trying to describe.

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But the Christian God is NOT a diverse God, He is unified AND diverse God. Just like all living and non living things. First, all living things are made up cells, that is the underlying unity, just like God, and yet second, there is a huge number of different living things, that is the diversity, just like God. This true of matter itself, all matter is made up of atoms, that is the underlying unity, and yet these atoms make a huge diversity of different material things, that is the diversity. This also applies to all the different categories of living things. There is the category of Canids (dogs), they are all dogs, which is the unity, and each kind of dog is different, diversity.

pos: A chaotic violent universe, a planet that has had been hit by asteroids wiping out vast amounts of life, stars that explode and take the planets with them, life threatening floods, earthquakes, storms.. and eventually a sun that will wipe out all life on earth to me are about as far removed from an all powerful intelligent designer than anyone could image. And earth has only been suitable for life for a short time in it's history, hardly a design.

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Yes, but all those things were necessary to prepare the universe and earth for human life in a universe that operates primarily according to natural laws and will contain free will beings that can choose to rebel against their creator. Actually the earth will become uninhabitable long before the sun burns up the earth. Most scientists agree that it can only support human life for at most 10,000 more years. And of course, Christ will bring it to an end probably long before that.

pos: Evolutions has heaps of evidence, your god does not, none at all.

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No, God has heaps of evidence.

Dirk1540 said:

Ok thanks, I got work to do, I would prefer the more modern enlightenment. You and a few other members are really making philosophy a fun subject for me. I never really had an interest in it before beyond my private philosophical thoughts.

So it seems like OLD philosophy really stands the test of time, unlike many other subjects where you'd prefer much more modern material/authors.

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Well, one problem with ancient philosophy is that there was no distinction between science and philosophy at the time, so there's a lot of outdated physics that works its way into the oldest stuff. In some ways that makes ancient philosophy more useful than modern philosophy, which is equally enslaved to particular worldviews, but ones we have a harder time approaching objectively. There are also situations where you need to understand the older stuff to really grasp later ideas that flow from it--you can't understand medieval Christian, Jewish, or Muslim thought without understanding Plato and Aristotle, and modern philosophy has its roots in the Enlightenment. It's not at all uncommon for variations of the same general theme to pop up, though. Postmodernism is in some ways fairly premodern!

anonymous person said:

Silmarien, I have a question for you. If you don't mind.

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Sure!

To add to what @Silmarien has been saying:

The ancient philosophers don't differentiate in the way we do. Aristotle essentially invented our modern sciences, with his observation and rejection of purer Forms of Plato. Yet, we also find ideas of motion, of spontaneous generation, that Science would reject - as well as his teleological system with its four causes.
Francis Bacon and the New Philosophy tried to reject teleological schemes, but with the rise of population and systems theory, we see it crept back. Modern science is incoherent without it, as we need to explain why adaptations in evolutionary biology or the observable consequences of theory act in physics.
It is odd that the Scientific Revolution occurred as a rejection of Scholasticism - essentially one strand of Aristotlean thought revolting against another.
Prof. LeRoi, an Evolutionary Biologist, wrote a lot about this: how Aristotle gave us the modern world. There is a popular, fascinating and accessable book on this topic by him, called The Lagoon: How Aristotle invented Science. He even argues that we today use all parts of Aristotle's four cause scheme, we just differentiated them into different specialities to thus present the semblance of Baconism.

Anyway, a lot of this Atheist/Theist divide is about Aristotle vs. Plato (and Aristotle). Someone else, the exact person escapes me, said everyone is either a follower of Aristotle or Plato when you get down to the nitty-gritty.

Silmarien and Quid est Veritas, 2 of my favorite posters!

Silmarien said:

Sure!

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In another thread, I asked ToddnotTodd, if he agreed with me that something cannot come from nothing, and he said that the proposition "something cannot come from nothing" was incoherent and nonsensical because the word "nothing" is not a possible state of affairs.

He essentially was arguing that my question was nonsensical and incoherent.

I was simply using the term the way professors in theology and philosophy departments like Dr. Siniscalchi over at Notre Dame use the term when he states: “Nothing is the complete absence of being” and therefore “has no causal power”.

What would you say to Todd to get him to understand that the proposition "something cannot come from nothing" is indeed coherent and meaningful?

Silmarien said:

Well, it isn't the fact that an atheist became a theist which is what's compelling. His particular circumstances fly in the face of the claim that people do not abandon atheism for intellectual reasons, though. He can't really be accused of using arguments to support a previously existing belief--they're precisely why he is a theist in the first place. I don't think that's too common, so for someone interested in the intellectual case for theism, he's a great source. Obviously it's his arguments that need to be compelling, of course, not his backstory.



Trends are interesting, but I would not say that they describe anything beyond what is currently in fashion. We have consumer style spirituality and generalized distrust of authority, so there are certainly social factors at play. I'm convinced that modern disbelief has as much to do with technological insulation from reality as it does with education, and also says far more about what we think we know than what we actually know. Though the rise of fundamentalism is not helping matters.

So why are you an atheist instead of an agnostic, given your particular stance? Does it just become difficult to disentangle dogma from theism if you've belonged to a religion most of your life? I managed to escape religion for the better part of 30 years, so the religion vs. atheism dichotomy has never made much sense to me.

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I find the general trends interesting, because i believe you would agree, as time goes on, we learn more well evidenced realities about the universe and this knowledge, tends to be the kryptonite (sp) to religious beliefs. There is a clear correlation, between those exposed to higher levels of education and less religious beliefs. I realize correlation does not always mean causation, but i find the clear relationship telling.

Why am i not agnostic? Well, i was a christian for most of my life and what set the ball rolling towards me becoming an atheist (towards personal gods) was a decision i made, to dive into scripture to understand it better and i dived into reading the works of established NT scholars and historians. What i learned was eye opening and caused me to take a step back and overlay the basic claims of christian theology, with well evidenced reality. When i did so, i could not longer reconcile the christian story as something i could accept as legit in my own mind. We have a basic description of the christian god and i can reach a conclusion on the knowledge i have accumulated and conclude that i have no reason to believe this god exists (atheist). Now, when it comes to non personal gods, which do not interact with life, we dont have the same level of description of this potential god and i would call myself agnostic, towards non personal gods.

Ed1wolf said:

No, the probabilities for all the things to come out right to produce intelligent life are so high that they are considered impossible

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why impossible? and by whom ? certainty not mainstream science.

and take even greater faith to believe will occur than faith in a supernatural Being.

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This is another one of those nonsensical sayings, It takes absolutely zero faith to believe we are here. We simply don't need to add a god (one of many) of a persons choice to the equation.

So far, only one planet has all the right characteristics for life on it.

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Don't you mean 'that we know of', and we know the tiniest part of our universe. Mostly these arguments were made before we know that stars elsewhere had planets too.

In fact Kepler data shows there may be as many as 40 Billion earth like planets in the CHZ (circumstellar habitable zone) The chances of there being life elsewhere are increasing all the time. We are even exploring the possibility that life existed albeit not as successfully on other planets on our own solar system.

A good way to understand the high probability against life is like being in front of a firing squad and seeing all the guns fired at you and yet you are still alive. The most rational conclusion is that something intentional happened, it is not likely to be an accident.

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Actually it's the most terrible example you could possibly give. You are confusing an intent to do something that does not happen the way it was meant to with probability.

But most importantly you can prove that there was an intention to shoot a person, with the universe you cannot prove either what the cause was or intention. Neither can you prove what if anything existed before.

No, there is a wealth of evidence for the Christian God, but no other god.

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Of course many others would disagree, but as I'm only at the moment considering your claim it would be wonderful to see that evidence someday.

But the Christian God is NOT a diverse God, He is unified AND diverse God. Just like all living and non living things.

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Well living thinking beings created him, along with many other gods so that's what you would expect.

First, all living things are made up cells,

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That much is undisputed.

that is the underlying unity, just like God, and yet second, there is a huge number of different living things, that is the diversity, just like God.

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Yes because men made god, one of many, and for the record, it still sounds like gibberish to me.

This true of matter itself, all matter is made up of atoms, that is the underlying unity, and yet these atoms make a huge diversity of different material things, that is the diversity.

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Yes you keep saying this, but what does it mean ?
Let me try and understand, let me ask the question .. therefore..?

This also applies to all the different categories of living things. There is the category of Canids (dogs), they are all dogs, which is the unity, and each kind of dog is different, diversity.

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Ermm yes, but what exactly is your point, other than it fits in exactly with evolutionary biology and a common ancestor ?

Yes, but all those things were necessary to prepare the universe and earth for human life in a universe that operates primarily according to natural laws

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It operates a certain way, which we have observed and called laws, but that does not imply a law maker at all, absolutely no god needed.

and will contain free will beings

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We may not have free will at all.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-free-will-an-illusion/
and
There’s No Such Thing as Free Will

that can choose to rebel against their creator.

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But wouldn't they need to know he existed for sure before making that choice, otherwise it's not a choice. It is logical to me at least that before god asks us to accept or reject him he would have to make it clear he existed, and I assume would know how to do that.

To say that we have to have faith that he even exists before we can make a choice to reject him or not is utter nonsense.

So far you and your imaginary god have failed to produce any convincing evidence at all.

Actually the earth will become uninhabitable long before the sun burns up the earth. Most scientists agree that it can only support human life for at most 10,000 more years.

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Absolutely, though I'm not sure where you get the 10,000 years from.

And of course, Christ will bring it to an end probably long before that.

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Well he really needs to hurry up, he's few thousand years late already.

No, God has heaps of evidence.

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Excellent, like i say I look forward to you presenting some.

bhsmte said:

I find the general trends interesting, because i believe you would agree, as time goes on, we learn more well evidenced realities about the universe and this knowledge, tends to be the kryptonite (sp) to religious beliefs.

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I agree with this statement, if by religious beliefs, you are referring to beliefs like:

1. The sun revolves around the earth (this was held by the Roman Catholic Church during the time of Galileo). The knowledge gleaned from scientific observations during this time served as the kryptonite to this particular belief, which was not, by the way, held just by religious people.

2. The eternality of the universe. This is a belief held by some religious people like the Hindu Puranas. Knowledge gleaned from scientific observations serve as the kryptonite for this belief as well, for it suggests that the universe is not eternal, but had a definite beginning, some 15 billion years ago.

So yes, you are correct. There are religious beliefs that have been decimated and destroyed by discoveries made in science.

Don't forget, however, that some religious beliefs have been supported by science.

1. The belief that the universe is not eternal in the past, but had a definite beginning as Genesis claims is supported by science. The same science that destroyed the Hindu Purana belief.

2. The belief that the universe is the handiwork of a cosmic architect if you will, is supported by the recent findings of scientists when it comes to the fine tuning of the initial constants and quantities of the big bang. This was the very evidence that Antony Flew felt was compelling enough for him to abandon atheism for theism.

So while it is true that knowledge gleaned from the natural sciences can serve as defeaters for religious beliefs, it can also serve as support for religious beliefs.

bhsmte said:

There is a clear correlation, between those exposed to higher levels of education and less religious beliefs. I realize correlation does not always mean causation, but i find the clear relationship telling.

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No doubt. Most people in the academy are not religious. The statistics support this.

bhsmte said:

Why am i not agnostic? Well, i was a christian for most of my life and what set the ball rolling towards me becoming an atheist (towards personal gods) was a decision i made, to dive into scripture to understand it better and i dived into reading the works of established NT scholars and historians. What i learned was eye opening and caused me to take a step back and overlay the basic claims of christian theology, with well evidenced reality. When i did so, i could not longer reconcile the christian story as something i could accept as legit in my own mind. We have a basic description of the christian god and i can reach a conclusion on the knowledge i have accumulated and conclude that i have no reason to believe this god exists (atheist). Now, when it comes to non personal gods, which do not interact with life, we dont have the same level of description of this potential god and i would call myself agnostic, towards non personal gods.

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It would be interesting to hear what led up to your decision to identify as a Christian. It would be even more interesting to hear what led to the decision to dive into the scriptures to understand them better.

Silmarien said:

I'm out of the country till mid October, smashing my head repeatedly against the French language (and lurking around the local Catholic bookstore making them hunt down whatever Christian existentialist catches my fancy), so I will need to take a raincheck on any serious discussion till I've got access to a real keyboard again.

I will say that I think a fullblown naturalistic version of cognitive closure does indeed result in radical skepticism about the possibility of any knowledge at all. Obviously this is not compatible with theology, as it's an atheistic approach, though one that I think ought to commit you to a position of strong agnosticism. I do not reject it entirely as a possibility, just as I do not reject Descartes' demon, but I don't entertain it seriously.

That said, I am a theistic evolutionist, so I find it very likely that if we have evolved to understand reality more fully than other lifeforms on this planet, it follows that at least in principle, a more intelligent (or differently intelligent, whatever that might mean) life form could have an even deeper understanding of life, the universe, and everything. This does not mean that our understanding is false--only that a serious degree of humility is in order, especially when dealing with theological questions. Which actually makes it a different answer to the Problem of Evil: Skeptical Theism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Theologically, there is a huge epistemic tangle involved in this approach: whether the human concept of goodness is at all objective and how we could possibly know. Which is honestly my biggest barrier to fullblown classical theism in general and Christianity in specific, though paradoxically, Christianity seems to also be the only way around it. In a seriously Pascalian sense.

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I too have been traveling but with a different set of barriers. South West Kentucky seems to have neither bookstores or cell service in my lake house retreat.

We may have to engage outside this thread as I expect we will end up traveling far-afield of the current discussion.

Firstly we would have to have a discussions about the problem of justifying beliefs. Alston, or Plantinga, Wolterstorff et al.

Secondly we might engage the hard problem of consciousness from an evolutionary naturalistic standpoint.

Thirdly, given some baseline method for knowledge we could examine other ideas such as could God, use natural causes (only occasionally directed e.g. Infusing Homo sapiens with souls), to accomplish his purposes?

Fourthly, once we have a baseline foundation we can tackle some of the recalcitrant facts of theism E.g. Problem of evil. given that we have limits on our knowledge about basic things such as the reality of the past, the external world, other minds, free agency doesn't mean we can make no progress.

If God wants to create a world where creatures with limited and wide-ranging knowledge of God, nevertheless choose to engage him personally on his terms and enter into a relationship with him, it may not be feasible for him to create a world that is without evil.

P.S. Am writing from and iPad mini and since upgrading to IOS 9 safari reload my page every 2 mins or so without saving so this reply had to be constructed 4-5 sentences at a time. Enjoy Europe

"Overall general trends of larger populations are more interesting to me. When you look at the overall, christianity has been declining the world over and especially so in advanced nations who's people are exposed to higher levels of education."

Again we see truth claims tied to things that have nothing to do with justifying truth claims.

On this fallacious method, if Hilter has won WWII killing Jews would be morally correct!

On this fallacious method, had max Planck not discovered quantum mechanics or Albert Einstein the field equations the Newtonian cosmological model would be held as true.

This fallacy I has several things wrong with it but is known as vox populi.
Also a post hoc ergo proptor hoc false cause. Why waste time responding to fallacies other than to point out these logic 101 Errors.

I lament how the New Atheists have gutted the intellect of their followers with their cheap sideshow pseudo-intellectual approach.

anonymous person said:

So yes, you are correct. There are religious beliefs that have been decimated and destroyed by discoveries made in science

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Thoroughly enjoyed your response post. One point:

Scientific beliefs have a 2500-year history of, "Being decimated and destroyed by discoveries made in science!"

All the author of that post was doing was pointing out the nature of knowledge. That they tried to limit the damage to religious truth claims just shows they have not been fortunate enough to have taken an entry-level college philosophy course.

In have shared hundreds of posts with good defeaters for theism, yet we continue to get these old stale New Atheist objections. It is a little frustrating to have to feed people that should have been feeding themselves long ago.

Uber Genius said:

Thoroughly enjoyed your response post. One point:

Scientific beliefs have a 2500-year history of, "Being decimated and destroyed by discoveries made in science!"

All the author of that post was doin was pointing out the nature of knowledge. That they try to limit the damage to religious truth claims just shows they have not been fortunate enough to have taken an entry-level college philosophy course.

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Haha love this!