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?

[OnceConvinced]

Well if atheists are able to wear them down then it doesn't say much for the Holy Spirit, does it? Someone empowered by the Holy Spirit should have no problem dealing with a gang of atheists, shouldn't they?

They usually go for the weak.

I don't see that at all. I guess what you see as weak and what I see as weak may not be the same. Besides if they do have God on their side, then he would give them the necessary strength and the right words to say. After all, that's what the bible teaches. (although I guess, you being a sceptical type of Christian, you might not go along with that teaching)

One nontheist on this board is very quick to introduce themselves to the new theists and lay out and nice "hello' while at the same time insulting their intelligence. But you are right.....One person on this forum claims to be here to cause a "Crisis of Faith " for which I am still waiting for...

He may not be creating a Crisis of Faith for you, but can you speak for all other Christians?

.And you, I noticed, are quick to add "that is something I would have said" to "Christian" assertions...but I noticed it is always AFTER the fact, and never before...

If I say that, then it's because it's true. I do it to point out that it's not very convincing and also to point out that I was no different to them when it came to understanding of the scripture.

Not sure what you're getting at by "after the fact and never before". You've lost me there. Care to explain?

[twobitsmedia]

If I say that, then it's because it's true. I do it to point out that it's not very convincing and also to point out that I was no different to them when it came to understanding of the scripture.

It's not working. Another forum member whom you "admire" stroked your ego. But, do keep it up for the sake of your mission.....

[McCulloch]

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[cnorman18]

I changed the order a bit for reasons if clarity, and left out some bits where we still aren't connecting or where the topics are dealt with differently here.

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.

I am, and I think I've been pretty upfront about that from the beginning.

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?

But I AM following the religion. As I've said many times, theological beliefs in Judaism are not prescribed. I identify myself as Jewish not because of my theology--NO ONE does that--but because of my membership in the community, my partaking of the culture, and my respect for the tradition. Judaism is more than a religion, and the theology is a small part of it and generally optional. My beliefs are well within what is accepted by modern Judaism. Within that context, reading the Bible for moral lessons and insight into the history of our people, without accepting it as either the literal Word of God or as literally true, is perfectly logical. I'm a Jew, I read Jewish books. HOW I must read them is not prescribed by any Jewish authority.

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

No. Law handed down by the first MEN to attempt to write it down in that culture. That appears to have been the attitude of those who overruled it, and that of course makes perfect sense.

If you're simply going to reject everything in the Torah as non-literal, why bother with the Torah at all?

Why must it be either-or? Wholly literal and authoritative, or else wholly irrelevant? Once again, you are rejecting the idea that the Bible can be read in a meaningful way, most notably as the beginning of and the springboard for a continuous and continuing tradition of thought and speculation, without accepting it as the perfectly accurate and inspired word of God.

Of course God didn't write the Bible, there's no reason to think God is real.

LOL! There are other reasons to think God didn't write the Bible, even if one believes in Him.

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.

Of course, but not just me. Generations of scholars, rabbis and sages have done that, over centuries of discussion and debate, and never lightly. What else should they have done?

Once again, it appears that the only alternatives you can imagine are "swallow it whole" or "throw it away."

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?

?

In terms of Jewish law, we don't. Authority is drawn from the tradition, not direct from God.

In terms of Judaism as a whole, the question is a bit silly, tantamount to "Why don't you abolish Judaism, commit cultural suicide, and cease to exist as a people?"

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?

Well, setting aside that problematic term "fact"; as I've said many times, I have some wholly subjective perceptions and experiences that have no probative value to anyone but me. Some of them, I have found difficult to put into words (and I'm pretty good with words). None of them are emotionally based.

Some of my convictions, which may be related to those perceptions, go back to my childhood. They are unconnected with any kind of religious indoctrination, because they are, in Christian terms, hugely heretical. Most of them turned out to Jewish ideas, as I discovered late in life--like "beliefs don't matter," and "nobody can know what happens after you die," and "nobody can 'know God'." Most important, I knew that nobody can pretend to believe anything; you believe, or you don't. "Faith," in the Christian sense of "believing" as an act of will, is just self-deception. Since I never met a Jew till much later, I can't account for those beliefs.

Maybe more to the point you're asking about, I have always had a certain internal certainty that God, or something like Him, exists, which I could no more deny than the certainty I have that I have shoes on; but I held that simultaneously with the intellectual knowledge that that certainty might be illusory and that I didn't know for sure. This peculiar stance of "I believe it, but I can't say it's a fact" has been with me all my life.

I have actually tried to go one way or the other at various times; I had a fundamentalist fit in the late '70s when I tried to buy into Biblical literalism, in Heaven and Hell and the Last Days and all that, but that fit me like aluminum underwear and I abandoned it. (My biggest regret is throwing out all my evil Satanic rock-and-roll records. I had a huge collection. What an idiot I was.) I couldn't pretend to believe what I didn't, and I couldn't abandon my intellectual honesty and ignore the doubts I had, and more than doubts, certain knowledge, about the human origins of the Bible and the--shall we say unlikelihood--of the claims of Jesus.

I also tried on the atheist position, but found I was just as unable to drop my sense of the transcendent as an integral part of how I saw the world and experienced the internal world inside my head. It wasn't so much denying that the God of Christianity existed--that was easy, since I didn't believe in that God anyway, and never had--but denying that there was anything at all other than the concrete world of facts and objects and events was harder. That didn't fit me either.

It seemed, and seems, to me that the fact that thought makes sense was evidence that there was more. If everything is an accident and the Universe has no meaning, how come my thoughts did? Why should anything make sense? It seemed to me that if thought had meaning, so did everything; and even if that meaning, related to the God-idea, is the construct of the human mind, it nevertheless, in a sense, exists, and is somehow--not objectively, but subjectively--real. Maybe God, like Number, exists in the human mind only, but like "One," is part of reality for all that.

(I note ironically that perhaps my ancestors were more right than they knew when they said, "God is One.")

If you want to say that I'm just trying to work out an intellectual framework that justifies or explains this weird middle position I have, I'll plead guilty to that. I feel that's what I have to do. I can't claim a certainty of knowledge that I don't have, and I can't ignore my sense that there is more to the Universe than what I can see and touch, either.

If it fits your own settled and frankly rather smug convictions to label all this an emotional clinging to obviously false ideas and a primitive notion of God as Grandpa in the Sky, I suppose that's your right; but it doesn't feel or think like that to me, and I have to live in my head, not yours.

I guess my main objection is to bring dismissed as a simpleminded dolt who buys into mythology and BS because I can't face life without a cosmic crutch. I know who I am, and that's not me. My life and thought would be much easier if I were, and I would probably still be a fundamentalist. That's a nice, secure, comfortable and certain place to be, where you have all the answers and nothing to think about; but the price of admission is your mind, and that I was not willing to pay. Atheism's price was another part of my mind, and I won't pay that one either.

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.

That's very true, but I don't think I have by any stretch refused to engage. I have been, and am, trying to explain and defend my views to the best of my ability; but if the very basis of my thought is dismissed as inadmissible, what am I to do but keep trying to explain it, as I am here?

We are still debating; just on a different subject. Whether or not God factually exists is a boardgame I don't care to play, but it seems to me that debating whether other forms of belief are rational is worthwhile too, and that's what we're doing.

...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?

"Why," I think I dealt with as best I can above. For the rest--

As you can see, I can't quite define the God I believe in, in whatever sense I do, and I haven't "got there' yet. I don't think mine is a position to be proud of--that makes no sense to me--and whether it's worthwhile, I can't say. I don't think I've quite defined it even for myself at this point.

It's a work in progress, I'm trying to work it out, and I'm doing it here. Thanks for the assistance. Really.

[OnceConvinced]

If I say that, then it's because it's true. I do it to point out that it's not very convincing and also to point out that I was no different to them when it came to understanding of the scripture.

It's not working.

Not to those who stubbornly hold on to false beliefs no, but to others, who knows? By the way nobody has stroked my ego.

[twobitsmedia]

If I say that, then it's because it's true. I do it to point out that it's not very convincing and also to point out that I was no different to them when it came to understanding of the scripture.

It's not working.

Not to those who stubbornly hold on to false beliefs no, but to others, who knows? By the way nobody has stroked my ego.

So you are admitting that your so-called former beliefs were false...it does show..........I suppose you will say that is not what you meant....(after the fact, of course)

[OnceConvinced]

If I say that, then it's because it's true. I do it to point out that it's not very convincing and also to point out that I was no different to them when it came to understanding of the scripture.

It's not working.

Not to those who stubbornly hold on to false beliefs no, but to others, who knows? By the way nobody has stroked my ego.

So you are admitting that your so-called former beliefs were false...it does show..........I suppose you will say that is not what you meant....(after the fact, of course)

Of course my former beliefs were false.

[twobitsmedia]

If I say that, then it's because it's true. I do it to point out that it's not very convincing and also to point out that I was no different to them when it came to understanding of the scripture.

It's not working.

Not to those who stubbornly hold on to false beliefs no, but to others, who knows? By the way nobody has stroked my ego.

So you are admitting that your so-called former beliefs were false...it does show..........I suppose you will say that is not what you meant....(after the fact, of course)

Of course my former beliefs were false.

Mine aren't. There are other who don't so easily accept delusion. If it was real you would have known it.

[OnceConvinced]

If I say that, then it's because it's true. I do it to point out that it's not very convincing and also to point out that I was no different to them when it came to understanding of the scripture.

It's not working.

Not to those who stubbornly hold on to false beliefs no, but to others, who knows? By the way nobody has stroked my ego.

So you are admitting that your so-called former beliefs were false...it does show..........I suppose you will say that is not what you meant....(after the fact, of course)

Of course my former beliefs were false.

Mine aren't.

So you believe. I believed the same at the time.

There are other who don't so easily accept delusion.

Took me a long time to realise I had been deluded. But when you are indoctronated into religion from birth it's not surprising.

If it was real you would have known it.

At the time I was convinced it was real (thus my forum name "OnceConvinced). I've tried to explain this to you before, but you seem determined to misunderstand and misrepresent me.

[twobitsmedia]

At the time I was convinced it was real (thus my forum name "OnceConvinced). I've tried to explain this to you before, but you seem determined to misunderstand and misrepresent me.

Oh I understand exactly what you are saying...you had some feelings that you thought was God....now you realize they were false feelings....