Most atheists have never read the bible

[McCulloch]

Most atheists have never read the bible and so I believe that if they had, the basics would be the same. Clearly they do not speak as if they have this knowledge.

I throw down the gauntlet. Faith has made a positive claim. Either back up this claim with evidence or withdraw it.

On a less confrontational note, do atheists reject religion and God because they are ignorant of religion as many staunch religionists claim?

[twobitsmedia]

Often enough do we hear "God" tests the faithful. Is there a rule of some sort that condemns atheists of attempting the same

An attempt, I suppose, to make some kind of logical connection between the first sentence and the second......I presume you know that God's testing is not on a forum on the internet....there's not even a written quiz at the end...

Again, if I read it another way it appears to place atheists in some self appointed supreme location as judges (doing God's tests)....which may or may not have been what you meant..

[Beto]

Often enough do we hear "God" tests the faithful. Is there a rule of some sort that condemns atheists of attempting the same

An attempt, I suppose, to make some kind of logical connection between the first sentence and the second......I presume you know that God's testing is not on a forum on the internet....

How do you know that? Do you presume to know how "God" tests people?

Again, if I read it another way it appears to place atheists in some self appointed supreme location as judges (doing God's tests)....which may or may not have been what you meant..

Not what I meant, and I don't see how you read it like that. The rather "selective" quote might suggest that. How do you criticize atheists for challenging theist beliefs without presuming to know how "God" tests them?

[twobitsmedia]

How do you know that? Do you presume to know how "God" tests people?

Experience and observation.

Again, if I read it another way it appears to place atheists in some self appointed supreme location as judges (doing God's tests)....which may or may not have been what you meant..

Not what I meant, and I don't see how you read it like that. The rather "selective" quote might suggest that. How do you criticize atheists for challenging theist beliefs without presuming to know how "God" tests them?

Because the premise is:

A weak debater = Christianity ( or insert religion here) is wrong.

[Beto]

How do you know that? Do you presume to know how "God" tests people?

Experience and observation.

Subjective and personal, as you know.

Again, if I read it another way it appears to place atheists in some self appointed supreme location as judges (doing God's tests)....which may or may not have been what you meant..

Not what I meant, and I don't see how you read it like that. The rather "selective" quote might suggest that. How do you criticize atheists for challenging theist beliefs without presuming to know how "God" tests them?

Because the premise is:

A weak debater = Christianity ( or insert religion here) is wrong.

Start a thread about it, and see how many atheists agree to that premise. From my experience, that's completely unsubstantiated. A considerable number of less skillful atheists (me perhaps) make the premise entirely false. Many can't argue against more sophisticated theist arguments, and I personally don't have a double standard in that regard.

[Cephus]

Experience and observation.

Unfortunately for you, you have no way to test your experience and observation and therefore, they are subjective and not useful in any debate. As I'm sure you well know, the insane believe what they "experience and observe" as well, they simply have no way to measure it against reality, any more than you do.

So how do you prove that your experience and observation are factual and reliable?

A weak debater = Christianity ( or insert religion here) is wrong.

No, a debater has nothing to do with whether or not Christianity is wrong, Christianity fails because it doesn't match up to what we see in reality. Even the best debater on the planet fails when they debate the wrong side of an issue.

[byofrcs]

How do you know that? Do you presume to know how "God" tests people?

Experience and observation.

Again, if I read it another way it appears to place atheists in some self appointed supreme location as judges (doing God's tests)....which may or may not have been what you meant..

Not what I meant, and I don't see how you read it like that. The rather "selective" quote might suggest that. How do you criticize atheists for challenging theist beliefs without presuming to know how "God" tests them?

Because the premise is:

A weak debater = Christianity ( or insert religion here) is wrong.

Strangely enough there is a meta argument here.

Whether a debater is strong or weak, that they win a debate through their skill needn't mean that what they have debated is actually true or false. They commit a logical fallacy if they then use their debate wins as evidence.

You don't solve maths problems nor science problems by debate as that isn't the process for that knowledge.

You can use the debate format to decide human problems; balancing resource allocations, rights, law, political and social policy and the like but is it not telling that religion also successfully uses that same format ?

To me the more successful that the Christian arguments are in debate, then the greater they have failed to prove their case for God. A catch-22.

[Zzyzx]

.
In my opinion strength of individual debaters is not any indication of the validity of the position they promote or defend.

Additionally, I suggest that some positions are very difficult to defend in debate. Supernaturalism is an example. Many currently popular supernatural beliefs are based upon ancient tales that cannot be verified as being accurate. Those who attempt to defend the ancient tales as being literally true encounter conflicts between the stories reflecting ancient concepts (and limited knowledge of nature) and what is currently known about the real world (nature).

Statements made in supernatural stories in religious books are regarded by many as literally true and by others as incredible (too extraordinary and improbable to be believed). Proponents attempting to debate are at a disadvantage since they cannot verify their claims and must resort to emotional appeals rather than reason and evidence.

Even strong debaters are hindered by a lack of evidence to support their position. Less capable debaters may not recognize that the lack of evidence exists for them. Least capable debaters argue as though the lack of evidence proves them correct (“You can’t prove me wrong so I must be right�).


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Bible quote of the day

Exodus 12:29 And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

[cnorman18]

Sorry for the delay in reply. You asked some questions that forced me to do a lot of thinking and clarifying. I'll clean up some ongoing stuff first, and then I'll get to what I've been thinking about.

...you seem to have a vast overestimation of the importance of your words.

Why do you think that? I'm just stating my opinions.

Some of us have lives and have other things to do than answer the same irrational questions over and over again.

I don't think you've answered many of them at all. On the contrary, I think you are having a very hard time thinking outside the box of the way you see any and all approaches to believing in God. In many ways, we have been talking past each other.

You miss the point. The ideas that lie behind the metaphors, symbols, and fictional characters and events that artists create--and which are the reason they create them--are quite real, and I would say that they take them very seriously indeed. The same can be said of theists who study the Bible but do not read it literally.

I don't miss the point at all. Artists don't work in reality, but in their own personal subjective interpretation of reality.

Hello? That's what I've been saying about my own approach to religion!

As much as that's fine on a personal level...

Which is the only level I've ever said my beliefs are on!

...you don't point to a Salvador Dali painting and say "see, that's real". That's different from religion where, at least at some point, you do need to take it literally otherwise all you're doing is textual criticism that has nothing to do with belief or faith. If you want to say "I'm studying this book purely for it's literary content, I don't believe any of the ridiculous stories in it and this God character is obviously not real," that's fine, but at that point, you're not a theist, are you?

Reading a book--any book--for the moral lessons and ideas it may contain is neither taking it as literal fact nor for purposes of textual criticism. People read The Brothers Karamazov in that way. Why not the Bible? You seem to be saying that that can't be done, that the only way to take a text seriously is to assume it's literal, historical truth; and that just isn't so.

The God-concept is none of those things. It is not provable or verifiable, as you have implicitly admitted when you said God's existence cannot be disproven.

Then if it's not provable or verifiable, WHY BELIEVE IT?!?!?!?!? You consistently fail to rationally address that simple question. God's existence cannot be disproven because it is logically impossible to disprove a universal negative. I can't disprove that there might be unicorns living on some other planet somewhere in the universe either, but I doubt you believe that. So why, specifically, do you accept the factual existence of God and reject other things for which the same level of evidence (ie. none) exists?

Are you listening? I have said over and over that I do not regard the existence of God as an objective fact.

That's what I mean. You haven't even shown that you comprehend my thoughts here. How can you be so sure they don't make sense?

If you don't recognize the possibility of thought of this kind--subjective, speculative, provisional belief that makes no claim to objective factuality and no effort to convince others of its factuality--then say so and we're done.

There is more than one way to think and believe. That's my opinion. If you think that your way is the only way, we haven't even begun to communicate here. And that seems to be the case.

You're tired of answering the same old irrational questions? I'm tired of it being assumed that I'm arguing in favor of ideas that I don't even hold.

Of course, you haven't demonstrated that there's any such thing as the metaphysical or the supernatural, you're simply claiming it without a shred of evidence.

The metaphysical and the supernatural are not the same thing.

As such, it's no more valid to make an exception for god(s) than it is to make an exception for aliens, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or honest politicians. You're simply making an empty claim for the factual existence of something for which you have no logical basis.

You see? You keep insisting that I'm making a factual claim. I'm not, no matter how hard you try to make me say so.

Some of us are actually concerned that what we believe is factually true and reliable, whether it hold emotional appeal or not.

The allegation of emotional reasons aside, haven't you figured out yet that I am not among the "some of us" you're talking about? "Factually true" doesn't enter into my thinking on these matters.

Now if you want to take a philosophical system that appeals to you on some level and live by it, that's great...

Then what are we arguing about?

...but don't expect that you can convince anyone else that the system is true or valid...

I don't try to DO that.

...and especially not that the stories behind it are worthwhile.

"True" is one thing. "Worthwhile" is another. I don't think that Dickens' A Christmas Carol is true, but I do think it worthwhile, even though it features things that don't factually exist.

But at that point, you're not really a theist, are you?

That doesn't follow. Can one not believe in God without (a) wanting everyone else to believe the same way, (b) insisting that the Bible is literal, historical truth, and (c) insisting that God is a provable, verifiable, objective fact?

If not, why not? The first two seem obvious to me. The third--well, as I have said, in Jewish belief God is essentially indefinable. Even if I wanted to claim that God IS a fact, how could I when I don't unambiguously know what that "fact" IS?

Of course, if that's the belief you hold, I wonder why one should bother debating it since you freely admit that you cannot demonstrate it to anyone.

Is convincing others that I am right the only valid reason for debate? I am here for a number of reasons, but evangelism isn't one of them. In the present instance, I find that explaining, or trying to explain, my ideas forces me to clarify them (and often correct them) in my own thinking.

We Jews don't claim to know or understand the nature of God; as I've written before, God is the Ein Sof, the Totally Other, unknowable and incomprehensible. Is he a discrete and distinct entity at all? Might He be something like Tillich's "Ground of Being," or a Universal Mind, or something we cannot conceive at all? I dunno.

Again, admirable, but at that point, why bother believing in God at all when simply acknowledging that the universe exists should be sufficient?

So when something is difficult to understand, just drop it and forget about it? That isn't a logical judgment. It's a value judgment, that the thing one is thinking about is valueless. That may your assessment, but not everyone shares it.

And you say I'M the one with an overinflated sense of the importance of my ideas.

That's really the problem with liberal theology, in a lot of ways it's just a means for otherwise rational and intelligent people to justify continuing to hold beliefs that they would otherwise find ridiculous, but want to hold on to for emotional reasons.

Dare I point out that that is a huge overgeneralization and a textbook example of stereotyping? Do you really think that there is only one reason for belief and only one way to believe?

The refusal to admit or consider exceptions is neither rational nor logical--especially when you're talking to one.

I'd say you're an agnostic theist, you don't claim to have knowledge of the existence of God, in fact, you say that such knowledge is probably impossible, but you believe anyhow.

That's a fair assessment, I think. Maybe I should start a usergroup. I might be the only one in it, but still...

First off, I never said anything about there being no God or the slightest possibility of his existence, I said there is no evidence.

Here is the quote I have been referring to:

As you have completely and utterly failed to demonstrate that your claims have even the slightest possibility of being true, any rational person must reject them until you come up wtih something better.

And I see I have misread it. My apologies.

Unfortunately, you're using the term "God" in a much different way than the vast majority do. It's bad enough that "God" is a generic term to begin with, but then to use it to mean something completely different than what the commonly accepted usage is, that just makes it more confusing.

I suspect that is where much of our disagreement here is coming from. The Jewish idea of God is very different from the Christian--you might look at my response to Faith on this thread in that regard--and my own ideas are even more different than that. Like I said, you keep arguing against ideas that I don't hold.

Even most modern, liberal Jews accept the Torah as more than just an ancient book, otherwise they wouldn't be Jews in the religious sense.

Of course. But "more than just an ancient book" is not the same as "literally true." from my own studies and conversations, most of us regard it as a record of our traditions, the thoughts and insights of our ancestors and the stories they told to explore them. I recall a Torah study at me synagogue, for instance, when we were discussing the Akeidah, as we call it, the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. At one point in the discussion, one person asked, "But did this really happen?"

Literally everyone else in the room, including the rabbi, with either words or gestures (a dismissive wave of the hand), responded with "What difference does THAT make?"

The question is, why do you take it seriously? We can come up with the same concept in the secular world (and in fact, have) without relying on religious books. Why is "Thou Shalt Not Murder" coming from the Torah any better than finding it elsewhere?

If you're not a Jew (or, I guess, a Christian), I suppose it's not. But when one is a part of a culture or community, one looks to that tradition. The concept of a nation ruling itself by the vote of its citizens began in ancient Greece, but if you're an American, you don't refer to Athens; you refer to the Constitution. I don't think many people, even theists, say that the idea that "murder is bad" originated with the Bible, or that it's only wrong because the Bible says so. Those who do are, well, just wrong, factually and theologically.

This is especially important when you start to look at the first couple of commandments which are definitely not good ideas as they breed religious intolerance.

Not if they're properly understood. There again, the Jewish view is different. The Commandments were not intended to be imposed on all humans. They were the terms of a Covenant, a contract, between God and the Jewish people. Understood in that light, they make perfect sense. If you have a contract with GM, you don't do any work for Ford.

Again: Tradition, an expression of an understanding of a people's relationship with God, all that. Fire on the mountain, stone tablets, and Charlton Heston are all optional and not necessary to believe were involved.

The question is, why do you think there may be more to "reality" than objective, proven facts?

In a way, this is the heart of our disagreement. I shall defer it to the end, because as has become usual for me here, this conversation has pushed me to think more deeply and work harder to bring vague ideas into focus and detail things that were only outlines of thought.

6. "How can nonexistent evidence support or not support anything? How can there be any evidence of a transcendent being in the first place? Surely someone has proven that there is no such thing as "transcendence"--no?

It depends on what you're talking about. Take the Noachian flood for example. We know what kind of evidence floods leave, we know what kind of evidence a flood, as described in the Bible, would have left, had it happened. The utter lack of evidence is damning proof that the flood was mythical.

I'm talking about transcendence, and you move immediately to concrete, external events, and a discussion of literalism. This is a good example of what I mean when I say we're talking past each other.

There were at least two massive floods in the area in prehistoric times, one inundating the coasts of the Black Sea, the other covering much of Mesopotamia. The archaeological evidence is clear on that, and it was no doubt one of those floods--probably the latter--that have rise to the later myths, not only in the Bible, but in Gilgamesh and other ancient books. But a worldwide flood? That's ridiculous.

That whole issue is settled, as far as I'm concerned, and it doesn't even approach the idea of the transcendent. External, concrete evidence for that isn't going to be found anywhere, because it isn't an external, concrete thing. It's like asking for concrete evidence of life on the planets orbiting Proxima Centauri. The words hang together and make sense, but the question has no actual meaning and is not answerable. You can't get there from here.

Talking about God, it depends on what kind of God you're talking about of course, but the kind that most people refer to...

Which is not the kind of God I am talking about or believe in, which I would have hoped was clear by now.

I do not speak or argue for other conceptions of religion, only my own. That is, again, central to our disagreement and most of your remarks.

...the one that has had interaction with the physical universe where evidence would have been left, such as the creation story and the flood and miracles, etc., we find that there is no evidence, even where we would expect to find some. That means either God is purposely erasing all the evidence and thereby sending lots of people to hell, making God a sick, sadistic bastard, or that God simply isn't real.

That assumes not only a belief that the Bible is literally true, but that there is a Hell, that God sends people there, and that that judgment depends on "proper" belief. I neither believe in nor argue for any of those ideas.

And again, none of that is about the idea of the transcendent, but about literal, objective beings and events. It is beside the point. MY point, anyway.

There IS a way to talk about the transcendent, a reality that is both a part of our objective reality and is yet beyond and separate from it, as we will see presently; but trying to find objective evidence of mythical events isn't that way.

The problem is, the Bible doesn't tell us why we should follow these rules, just that we should.

The laws in the Bible were written as the legal code for a society. I know of no legal code, including the U. S. Code or the laws of any state, that contain explanations. Where in the U. S. Code are there philosophical explanations of its laws? Explanations of laws are found in commentaries and ancillary documents, not in the code itself. And you will find plenty of those in the Talmud, a body of commentary and explanation and clarification that in Jewish tradition accompanied the Bible in oral form from its very beginnings.

It doesn't describe why any of them are good and in fact a lot of them are downright bad. Killing witches and homosexuals and stoning unruly children are just bad, bad moral concepts...

And, just as in American law, virtually all of those were nullified by court decisions--in Jewish tradition, from the get-go, including the death penalty. As I've said many times, the text of the Bible is not a reliable guide to Jewish teachings. For that, you have to go to the tradition.

...but coming from a God who would have she-bears kill 42 children...

That appears to be a scare-'em-into-being-good story, like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," told to children that found its way into the text. Again, you're insisting on a literal reading.

...that proves you've got an inherently bad moral arbiter at work here.

Only if you assume that God wrote the Bible. Maybe the rabbis and sages of old did so believe, but that's doubtful; and even if they did, it's clear that they felt free to overrule God anyway.

One of the clearest principles in Jewish tradition and law is that determining right and wrong is no longer up to God, but is the responsibility of humans. I have written on that extensively elsewhere.

As important as having morals are, knowing why you have those morals is much more important. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason doesn't help you determine why what you did was right.

And that is why we study Talmud, which is where those matters are discussed, and why they remain a subject for debate into the present day. Liberal Judaism, for instance, has to a large degree determined that the sanctions against homosexual activity found in Leviticus and elsewhere were not referring to homosexuality as a sexual orientation or a lifestyle choice, as we understand it today.

Before you protest that that is not the approach of other faiths, which is true, I would point out that neither Jews nor I are responsible for that. I speak for my own religion, not for those that use our Book in a way unlike our own.

Now, as promised:

The question is, why do you think there may be more to "reality" than objective, proven facts?

Well, for starters, there are these things called "thought" and "language." The very concept of language is a metaphysical idea. Human thought itself is not a matter of objective, proven fact; it does not exist in the physical world, but only in the mind.

I see that explaining my thinking here might require me to explain some of my other, non-religious ideas, too. You might not agree with them either, but they're important to putting all this in perspective.

Where to start? Well, first, reality is itself, not the words and thought-structures we impose on it. We humans have to impose order on reality, and we do it with thought and language. We have been doing it so long, we assume that the language we use is part of reality. It isn't. Words are not things, and we forget that because in daily life, they may as well be.

The language we use affects the way we see and understand reality. A simple example; "The lightning flashed." Noun and verb, a simple sentence. But in reality, it makes no sense. Where is the distinction between the "lightning," the noun, and "flashed," the verb? In reality, they are the same.

Language categorizes things, and that imposes a structure on reality. Take the simple word, "tree." A banana tree (which is actually an enormous herb), a great sequoia, a palm tree, an apple tree. So far so good; very different, but clearly related. a big living thing that grows in the ground. But add to those: a shoe tree, a calling tree, a family tree, a factor tree. The relationships and similarities between these things is found in the human mind and in human language alone. They are imposed on reality, not an intrinsic part of it.

Nouns are defined, if I remember my third-grade grammar lessons correctly, as "names of persons, places or things." Verbs denote "actions or states of being."

Things--real things, concrete objects in the world--do not vanish and reappear, right? They exist.

Here is a noun: "Fist." It is inarguably a thing, a concrete object. It exists.

Where does it go when you open your hand?

Is there not more of "verb" than "noun" about a "fist"? We speak of "making a fist," which is closer to reality. In common speech, the distinction is taken for granted. Language is useful when dealing with reality, but it is not identical with it or even always congruent.

Point being: Language itself is not real. It is imaginary. We humans determine what reality is--that is, how we perceive and understand it--through the filter of our language and thought. The concept of language itself is a metaphysical one.

Bear with me. You may think you know where I'm going, but we're not there yet.

Are numbers real? You yourself said that you can't buy a box of "one," and that's quite right; you can't.

The concept of number is very real indeed, and implicit, in a way, in reality itself; but it does not exist as a concrete, real thing, on its own, outside of human thought. It exists only in the human mind, and nowhere else. The words and symbols we use, the laws of mathematics, the operations, are all human constructs.

Did "multiplication" somehow exist, on its own, before humans figured out how to do it? Did calculus? Topology? Were they invented, or discovered? If they were invented, why can't we change them? If they were discovered, why do we have to work so hard to figure out how they work? Do they actually, independently of human thought, exist? Does "One"?

Again, it comes back to, what does one mean by those words? I don't know that there are answers to those questions, and for that very reason. We don't have language that fits here, and without language, we cannot think about such things at all.

That is analogous, at least, to how I think of God. Does he exist, independently, on His own? Or is He, like Number, an aspect of the universe that is manifested only in our minds, yet somehow just as "real" and separate as Number is--an aspect of all that is, and yet distinct from it?

I'm just beginning to work this out in detail, but that is how I've thought of God since childhood. Not as a discrete, separate Entity, above the world and looking down on it, but as an immanent and omnipresent aspect of the Universe itself.

This is not mere pantheism; the Universe is not God, any more than the Universe is Number. But just as Galileo said that "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe," I suspect that God may be the "paper" upon which the Universe is written.

That's why I can't think of God as "supernatural." I believe in the immutability of natural law, from the Big Bang and onward, evolution, natural selection, and the whole nine yards. I don't think God "created" all that, even matter itself and the natural laws, any more than He decreed that "Thou Shalt Get Only Four When Thou Addest Two And Two."

I don't believe in miracles, except the natural kind; I found $40 once when I needed it, a friend called at an opportune time, I happened to end up in the perfect job for me. A supernatural God intervening directly in my life? Don't be silly. Coincidence only. But then coincidences seem to be written into the Universe too.

Are you familiar with the Fibonacci sequence? It turns up fricken everywhere in nature, in wholly unrelated phenomena; the spiral forms of galaxies, the curve of breaking waves, the order and number of buds on branches, the distances from the planets of the Solar System to the Sun, and even in the human mind; the proportions that humans find aesthetically pleasing, the Golden Section of the Greeks, is based on Fibonacci's simple string of numbers, each the sum of the previous two.

Proof of God? Again, don't be silly. But proof of the mysterious transcendence of Number, far beyond "2 + 2," it certainly is.

Beyond that concept; I think that the rational and logical nature of reality--that things make sense--is a manifestation of the nature of God.

And perhaps that's all there is to Him. Is He, indeed, even a "He" and not an "It"? Is God a personal Being, or some kind of Force or Attribute? I do not know for sure. But to me, rationality implies a Mind, and Mind implies a Person; though not one, as Jewish teaching has it, that we can necessarily approach or understand, or, certainly, that intervenes in the concrete, temporal Universe by overruling His own rationality and nature.

Or in the lives of individual people. Externally, at least. That all our minds are somehow connected with that One Mind seems to me to be rather more likely than not, just as every instance of "Four" in the Universe is somehow connected in being "Four," though obviously otherwise entirely separate and distinct. If there even is such a connection, and if so, what its nature may be, I do not profess to know.

I have said that the only voice God has or has ever had is our own. The thoughts of humans can be, in a sense, the thoughts of God, and I doubt that those thoughts can exist in any other place. That is where the Bible came from. But certainly, not every human thought is divine, any more than every math problem is solved correctly.

So how do we know which are true? you ask. We don't; not in the sense of being given the answers from any supernatural God, or any supernatural Book. There is no authority but our own reason. Humans were made, or evolved if you like--they are the same thing, in my mind--to think, not to believe. Our job in the matter of religion, as in every other matter of existence or reality, is to think, and think hard, not to be "shown the way" or follow a preprinted program.

The Bible is a record of human thought, expressed in myth, dream, polemic, vision, poetry, ritual, attempts at formulating a moral law, a metaphysic, a theology. Those efforts did not begin with those documents, nor did they end there. In Judaism, at least, those efforts to understand continue to this day, and very, very much of the teaching in the Bible has been revised, amended, and even discarded. The stories are largely no longer taken literally; or, more accurately, their issue of their literal truth has been recognized as irrelevant and trivial. The work, the effort to understand, is paramount, and that work continues to the present day. The work we do here, on this forum, is part of it.

Thanks for stimulating my thinking here. As you can see, I have a long way to go before this is anything like a wholly coherent and self-consistent theology or philosophy, but in my mind, it shows promise, and I shall continue to think on it.

For all I know, the time may well come, someday, when I abandon the idea of a personal God entirely; but that time is not yet, and I doubt that it will ever happen. I am not ready to give up on God quite yet, and if I did so now, it would be with a feeling of having left a work unfinished and a conversation broken off in mid-sentence.

Thus far, atheism strikes me as a simple, pat answer that ignores too much of what I believe to be so. I don't accept simple, pat answers from religionists, politicians, advertisers, or anyone else, and I am no more inclined to accept that one, here.

I have found the phrase, "Surely there's more to it than THAT!" to be almost invariably true.

[cnorman18]

But an experiment must be structured in a way that assumes the hypothesis might be true!

No! We never assume its true. Our goal is to actually define it. A scientist approaches every experiment as if their hypothesis is wrong.

What I meant was, I think obviously, is that an experiment must be set up in such a way as to permit the hypothesis, if true, to be confirmed. That entails considering it possible that it MIGHT be true, which is what I said.

I'm not sure why disbelief--i would say nonbelief, but perhaps that's nitpicking--should be the default state. Maybe if all other things are equal; but if one has a subjective sense or inclination toward belief, that would tip one toward that, absent the possibility of evidence. One could not then say that one's belief is objective or proven, true, as I don't; but I don't see that one ought to be required not to believe.

I would agree with the non-belief part.

As I stated before, if no evidence is possible, what ration reason is there to believe?

Subjective and personal ones. Non-rational, but not irrational. It's not like I've never explained that before.

"There is and can be no evidence upon which to conclude either A or B. Therefore logic requires us to conclude B."

Be isnt a conclusion, thats the thing. Its an absence of a conclusion.

I disagree. The absence of a conclusion would be to say, "I don't know."

Sorry. You are assuming that the nonexistence of God is obviously more likely. I don't.

Are you pulling my leg?

All I am saying is that "This sometimes happens, and I object to it." Where is the fallacy?

You were seemingly making a point that because some atheists you encountered did this, all or most atheists do this.

Never said that nor implied it.

You said "like many atheists" this clearly implies a large amount, not just those who you encounter.

"Many" does not imply "most," and I was clearly speaking in the context of this forum. I don't think I've ever referred to any other atheists, and I certainly have no warrant to comment on the views of people I've never encountered. You're reading more into this than was intended or implied.

Since most of that material is Christian anyway, I don't even think that it is! I am only saying that it is complex, and therefore comparing it to something incredibly simple and simpleminded is suspect for that very reason. Correctness and validity of the ideas are not the subject. The validity of the comparison is.

If I didn't already like you so much, I'd be asking, "Can you read?"

Yes, I simply dont understand your reasoning behind not believing the comparison is valid. You only use complexity as a reason, and I simply dont think thats enough. Even if we boiled it down to a comparison of 2 supernatural beings, the comparison is valid.

I suppose it's possible to compare Dr. Seuss with Tolstoy; they both wrote books. Beyond that, I don't see much basis for comparison, at least a useful or meaningful one.

You seem to be obsessed with finding logical fallacies, and so far you're 0 for 5. Once again: You asked why this was an insult, not why my belief is correct. The inappropriate comparison is the point, not an argument for correctness.

I was commenting on why you so easily dismiss the santa claus belief. You dismiss it because its simple and only children believe in it. Thats not a valid reason for dismissing santa claus!

Oh, stop it. That wasn't what you meant, and you know it. You are, as Littlepig put it, just "poking the bear with sticks."

I'm supposed to dismiss God out of hand, but seriously consider the existence of Santa? Knock it off.

A logical fallacy is a deceptive or erroneous attempt to prove that something is true. I have not done that. What I have said here is an effort to prove that two things are different, and they are. In my opinion, they are so different that comparisons are suspect. Tou may disagree with that, but there is no fallacy here.

It was when you went into how santa isnt real.

Pfft.

"Believing in God is the same as believing in Santa Claus. Therefore it's stupid and childish."

Do you see no logical problem with that?

Strawman as I never made that comparison!

Are you saying it's never been made? Don't forget, you came into a thread that was ongoing, and not all of my remarks are responses to what only you have written.

If He IS possible, why is atheism the default position given the impossibility of proof or evidence?

There are a few problems with this. First, how can you possible know proof of evidence is impossible?

Show me how concrete evidence of the transcendent IS possible.

If this is true, why can we not assume, or what are the logical concequences, of this reasoning for anything we can mentally fabricate?

Thought. Reflection. You know. Thinking.

Also, if it is being claimed something exists, how is proof of evidence impossible? It would seem reasonable to assume that if something exists, proof is always possible (especially if he appeared so much in the bible)

For about the ten-millionth time; I make no claim of objective fact, and the Bible is irrelevant. It was written by men, not God.

Don't be silly. "God is impossible" is qualitatively different from "God may be possible, but there is no evidence," and it is most certainly a positive claim.

I always claim the latter.

And I have absolutely no problem with that.

A real one, not a theoretical abstract that defies logic. God can't make murder OK and adultery admirable, and He can't make 2 + 2 five, either.

In the bible he did! And are morals absolute?

The Bible is irrelevant.

The details of a given moral code are not absolute. They can change with the perspectives of society. The moral principles that lie behind them ARE absolute. Best example starts with "Do unto others..."

Fascinating! I have seen that often among liberal Jews, but I admit that the idea of an observant, atheist Orthodox Jew surprises me. Wow. Talk about cognitive dissonance--how does that work?

Thats what I keep asking them!

And the same again. Just stop trying to find fallacies, OK? I know what they are, and I don't do that.

I think we disagree there!

If only that were the only place.

[Cephus]

I don't think you've answered many of them at all. On the contrary, I think you are having a very hard time thinking outside the box of the way you see any and all approaches to believing in God. In many ways, we have been talking past each other.

In some ways, maybe we are, mostly because I think you're using "religion" in a very non-standard way.

Reading a book--any book--for the moral lessons and ideas it may contain is neither taking it as literal fact nor for purposes of textual criticism. People read The Brothers Karamazov in that way. Why not the Bible? You seem to be saying that that can't be done, that the only way to take a text seriously is to assume it's literal, historical truth; and that just isn't so.

If someone reads The Brothers Karamazov and gets moral lessons from it, they don't declare themselves Karamazovians. Why then read the Bible or the Torah for the same reasons and declare yourself a Christian or a Jew? You can draw moral lessons from a great many places, why label yourself with a religious name if you're not going to follow the religion?

Are you listening? I have said over and over that I do not regard the existence of God as an objective fact.

I know, I'm asking why you consider it to be a fact at all?

If you don't recognize the possibility of thought of this kind--subjective, speculative, provisional belief that makes no claim to objective factuality and no effort to convince others of its factuality--then say so and we're done.

You have to remember that we're in a debate forum, it does no one any good to hold up a belief as true, even if it's only subjectively true in your eyes, and purposely remove it from any ability to be debated. Whether or not you can prove to anyone that it's a fact, and it's admirable that you admit that you cannot, you're still holding it up to the debate community as a fact, subjective or not.

You see? You keep insisting that I'm making a factual claim. I'm not, no matter how hard you try to make me say so.

You're making a claim that you believe, subjectively or not, that God is a fact, right?

"True" is one thing. "Worthwhile" is another. I don't think that Dickens' A Christmas Carol is true, but I do think it worthwhile, even though it features things that don't factually exist.

And I think reading the Bible, as a book of mythology, is worthwhile because it gives us an insight into the minds of primitive man. It doesn't make me a Christian though.

That doesn't follow. Can one not believe in God without (a) wanting everyone else to believe the same way, (b) insisting that the Bible is literal, historical truth, and (c) insisting that God is a provable, verifiable, objective fact?

Sure you can, you can believe whatever you want. My question is, *WHY* would you believe in God without any of those things? What would lead you to believe in the specific god that you believe in, how did you get there? If you're holding up your position as one that you're proud of or think is worthwhile to hold, why do you do that?

And I see I have misread it. My apologies.

No problem, the written word is easy to misinterpret sometimes, we've all done it from time to time. See, I'm interested in what is real. Not in what people wish was real, what people believe is real or what people imagine is real, but what is really, factually real. Beyond that, I'm interested in why you believe it and why you think I should believe it too. If you can't give me any good reason for what you believe or why you believe it or why I should believe it, I have to question why you hold the beliefs in the first place. That's not to say you don't have a right to believe whatever you believe, I'm just looking for something deeper than "I do because I do".

Of course. But "more than just an ancient book" is not the same as "literally true." from my own studies and conversations, most of us regard it as a record of our traditions, the thoughts and insights of our ancestors and the stories they told to explore them. I recall a Torah study at me synagogue, for instance, when we were discussing the Akeidah, as we call it, the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. At one point in the discussion, one person asked, "But did this really happen?"

No, it doesn't matter if it really happened, it's an object lesson and you can draw moral ideals from it if you like. I'd like to point out that even if it didn't happen, from a logical perspective, God is a bastard and probably scarred Isaac for life with his little "just kidding" stunt.

Again: Tradition, an expression of an understanding of a people's relationship with God, all that. Fire on the mountain, stone tablets, and Charlton Heston are all optional and not necessary to believe were involved.

But again, what's the point of understanding a relationship with God if God doesn't exist? It's like thinking about your relationship with Harry Potter. You don't have relationships with imaginary entities. It doesn't matter if you want to point to cultural or communal beliefs, if those beliefs are false, they're false. Culture doesn't enter into it.

There were at least two massive floods in the area in prehistoric times, one inundating the coasts of the Black Sea, the other covering much of Mesopotamia. The archaeological evidence is clear on that, and it was no doubt one of those floods--probably the latter--that have rise to the later myths, not only in the Bible, but in Gilgamesh and other ancient books. But a worldwide flood? That's ridiculous.

Of course it is, but that's specifically what the Bible describes. You cannot get around it, there is no way for the waters to cover all the high mountains without the flood being worldwide. We get back to the point that even if this is just primitive man's mistaken interpretaion of the events, the events themselves are simply wrong. If they can't even get the events right, what makes you think they can get the theology right? You've got people who are recording oral tradition and mythological stories, yet you believe what they have to say about God? Why?

It's like asking for concrete evidence of life on the planets orbiting Proxima Centauri.

We don't make claims that there is life on any of the planets out there, do we?

The words hang together and make sense, but the question has no actual meaning and is not answerable.

That's the question though, how do you figure the words hang together and make sense, other than in a linguistic sense? Conceptually, they're nonsensical, they tell stories that are ridiculous and overall, describe characters that are woefully inconsistent.

And, just as in American law, virtually all of those were nullified by court decisions--in Jewish tradition, from the get-go, including the death penalty. As I've said many times, the text of the Bible is not a reliable guide to Jewish teachings. For that, you have to go to the tradition.

Ah yes, that makes sense. Law handed down to Moses by God gets overruled by Jewish tradition. Gotcha.

That appears to be a scare-'em-into-being-good story, like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," told to children that found its way into the text. Again, you're insisting on a literal reading.

No, just a more literal reading than you're allowing for. You seem to just reject anything out of hand that you don't like or can't stomach without a rational reason why. Even if it is a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" story, it's a reflection on the character of God and it makes said character a bastard. If you're simply going to reject everything in the Torah as non-literal, why bother with the Torah at all?

Only if you assume that God wrote the Bible.

Of course God didn't write the Bible, there's no reason to think God is real. However, the Bible says that God wrote the Bible, or at least inspired people to write the Bible. You're just picking and choosing which parts you like and which parts you don't.

One of the clearest principles in Jewish tradition and law is that determining right and wrong is no longer up to God, but is the responsibility of humans.

Then why bother with God anymore?

The very concept of language is a metaphysical idea. Human thought itself is not a matter of objective, proven fact; it does not exist in the physical world, but only in the mind.

The mind is a part of the physical world, it exists inside the human brain, nothing more, nothing less.

Well, first, reality is itself, not the words and thought-structures we impose on it.

Agreed. Reality exists, regardless of our wishes or desires.

We humans have to impose order on reality, and we do it with thought and language.

More a matter of we recognize order in reality. Humans are pattern-seeking animals and unfortunately, we tend to see patterns where none really exist.

The language we use affects the way we see and understand reality. A simple example; "The lightning flashed." Noun and verb, a simple sentence. But in reality, it makes no sense. Where is the distinction between the "lightning," the noun, and "flashed," the verb? In reality, they are the same.

They are only unreal in the sense that outside the human mind, they have no existence. It's like mathematics. You can't go to the store and buy a carton of "one". It's useful as a descriptor for communicating concepts but otherwise, it's just sounds we generate by passing air over our vocal chords or electrochemical impulses in our brain. It makes them non-physical, it doesn't make them beyond the scope of reality.

But just as Galileo said that "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe," I suspect that God may be the "paper" upon which the Universe is written.

Galileo was simply expressing the cultural background of the times in which he lived, today we see no reason to stick God into the equation at all. Mathematics is simply a language that we have invented in order to examine the universe around us, there's nothing mystical or magical about it, it's simply a system that we came up with that works and withstands the test of time.

All of the things you bring up are basically you finding patterns, whether or not they really exist, and stamping "God" on them. You might as well stamp "Thor" or "Invisible Pink Unicorn" for all the meaning the word "God" seems to have. In that, you're not really a Jew, you're just a deist studying in the Jewish tradition, the idea of a personal, individualistic deity that created the universe, yadda yadda doesn't seem to mean much.

That's fine really. It's not defensible, but you freely admit that. It's not really "Jewish" except in the sense that there are some liberal Jews who are also not really Jews except by culture as well. If that's what you want to believe, so be it. It just shows, once again, that humans as a pattern-seeking species often make mistakes when seeing patterns.