Why I am not a Christian

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Isn't that true of physics too? I don't know about you, but I'm quietly cynical about many of these grand theories. Was it a big bang? Was it an oscillation? Is superstring theory the work of acid casualties. Why was the bang big, and why did it go bang?

Yes, myths - religion - science (in that order) were/are all "systems" to explain the universe. The thing with science is that it does not rely on pure belief in something. Of course you can go as far as you did and questioning the big bang and all other basic things, but in the end science is something that can be understood with a certain knowledge (accepting the limits we know about things/facts we call "objective"). Some of the religious "truths" can never be understood rationally in the same way, and (as I said earlier) if they could, the entire point of "believing" would be gone. In science it is also usually understood that it is fallible - new results can change the system. Although some people seem to have the same naive belief in science, religion has usually more problems here.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Skepticism wrt science justifies a lack of skepticism wrt religion? Seems a tad uncharitable to me ...

Certainly not. It's a gentle reminder to both sides that we don't have all the answers, even if some of us appear to be convinced that we do.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
It's called a "white lie" in English, but it fails again because a white lie is still a conscious deceipt. The preachings of a believer are not a conscious deceipt. Unless the preacher themself has no belief, preaching faith is not a lie.

It might be wrong, but being wrong is not in itself lying.

OK, then remove the word "lie" and replace it by "falsehood".

Isn't that true of physics too? I don't know about you, but I'm quietly cynical about many of these grand theories. Was it a big bang? Was it an oscillation? Is superstring theory the work of acid casualties. Why was the bang big, and why did it go bang?

I am quietly cynical toward physics as well. Physics is a tool our human mind uses to simplify the universe in an understandable fashion. Physics is better than religion, as it is much more evolutive, and because it always tries to push further the frontier of our knowledge... But Physics will not lead us to the One Truth (if anything like that exists) more than religion. The Science-fanatics are IMHO as wrong as the religious fanatics (St Leo here is an example of a science fanatic).

That depends on the religion. I'm a pagan because it makes more sense to me on an intellectual level than any other theory.

And there is nothing wrong with that IMO. There are several competing explanations of the universe, and it is only normal that different individuals find more sense in different explanations.
As long as you don't shove your beliefs down my throat, as long as you don't expect me in some way or another that your beliefs are the "obvious" or the "norm", I have no problem with your Weltanschauung.

On the other hand, if you start stating things like "In the foxhole, there are no disbelievers of the Bozo The Great Bunny*", I would strongly dislike it. Because such statements -on a systematic basis- would mean that the belief in Bozo The Great Bunny is the norm according to you, and I should feel compelled to justify why I dissent from the norm.



*I don't know what deity/deities you worship (if any), so I picked the name of a friend's deity. I hope nobody will be offended by that.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by BeBro
in the end science is something that can be understood with a certain knowledge (accepting the limits we know about things/facts we call "objective").

Ah, yes. Attend a certain field of study, under the masters, and the arcane secrets of life and existance will be revealed to you.

Some of the religious truths can never be understood rationally in the same way,

Which ones?

and (as I said earlier) if they could, the entire point of "believing" would be gone.

Why? Not every faith sets any store in a judgemental afterlife. Or an afterlife at all, in fact.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Spiffor
OK, then remove the word "lie" and replace it by "falsehood".

Now prove it's false, and not merely a contrasting belief of your own.

*I don't know what deity/deities you worship (if any), so I picked the name of a friend's deity. I hope nobody will be offended by that.

I don't worship anything.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


Ah, yes. Attend a certain field of study, under the masters, and the arcane secrets of life and existance will be revealed to you.

Nope, but the "secrets" of this field are within your range then. It is not the answer to all problems, but I don't accept a position that we can't know/understand anything. And trying to learn more isn't certainly the worst thing in this world.

Which ones?

Oh come on. Do people believe in God or do they know about him as the result of a rational debate or an experiment?

Why? Not every faith sets any store in a judgemental afterlife. Or an afterlife at all, in fact.

Which ones?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by BeBro

Oh come on. Do people believe in God or do they know about him as the result of a rational debate or an experiment?

Why are we here to be at the point of experimenting or debating?

Which ones?

Mine. There may be others, but I'm not terribly concerned about them.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
It's a gentle reminder to both sides that we don't have all the answers, even if some of us appear to be convinced that we do.

How dare you imply I'm on Fez's side?!?

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Religions are an early attempt by humankind to explain the universe that surrounds us, (...)

I agree.

About this here thread: "Why I am not a Christian"
Christianty is just yet another religion. I don't feel compelled to justify my disbelief of this particular religion, just like I don't feel compelled to justify my disbelief in any other particular religion.

But this isn't about justifying, it's about explaining. Christians happen to make up the vast majority of the crowd that needs explaining in the Western world.

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
Isn't that true of physics too? I don't know about you, but I'm quietly cynical about many of these grand theories. Was it a big bang? Was it an oscillation? Is superstring theory the work of acid casualties. Why was the bang big, and why did it go bang?

But they're theories. They're attempts at explaining how things are or were given the things that we know now. They can change; they have changed; and there are alternative theories. Naturally, certainly with things like the Big Bang, it's probably impossible to find out what really happened.

Of course, yes, there are some who are awfully fanatic about defending "their" theories. But I'm sure that a lot of those could change their minds if someone came up with a clearly better theory. That's not something that happens very often in religions.

Religions typically define themselves as The Truth. Unchangeable. Yet clearly the church has been wrong many times and christianity has changed massively over the past 2000 years. Christians usually define themselves in terms of the Bible. Or rather their own interpretation of it (or their priest's), which seems to be different for everyone, or at least among all the different denominations. That makes for an awful lot of Truths.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp


Why are we here to be at the point of experimenting or debating?

I'm not sure if I understand you. I never claimed science is able to answer all questions. The point I made was that IMO there's a difference between knowing things, and believing in things - and that believing things is the core of religion, while it is not the core of science. If there's proof for God, why should you believe? If God is proven, then you know, and that makes it not very religious in my eyes. But the fact that atheists do not (cannot?) know/prove/disprove everything through science does not make science the same as religion.

Of course, if people want to believe that's perfectly fine, but that is another story. And of course you can come out with things like "hey, you can't even know for sure that you exist, so go away with knowledge and proof or science", but I doubt most people have these things in mind when they use the results of science on a daily basis.

[Whaleboy]

Well, that doesn't get you anywhere unless you've got faith in empiricism.

(In the light of what happened last time round I pointed this out, let me state from the outset that you can't prove the validity of empiricsim by empiricism.)

No I completely agree, what you've done is taken it a stage further, a stage to which religion becomes irrelevant anyway but I'll entertain the concept because it's very interesting. At this stage, faith and reason really become manifestations of the same thing, the dualistic difference breaks down, of course, one can't really do anything useful with it.

About this here thread: "Why I am not a Christian"
Christianty is just yet another religion. I don't feel compelled to justify my disbelief of this particular religion, just like I don't feel compelled to justify my disbelief in any other particular religion. Christianty may be mainstream in the society I happen to live in, but its quality is no different than other religions: Christianty like the others is a simplistic attempt at explaining the universe, an attempt doomed to failure.

Yeh, that's the one criticism I have of Russell is that he didn't attack monotheism, since most of his main arguments are applicable there and still the premise for Christianity, Judaism, Islam etc. I consider the Jesus stuff (that accordingly makes the lecture about Christianity) largely incidental to his argument.

Do athiests believe in a supernatural Evil? (supernatural anything?)

That depends, a good question. Where that evil isn't dependent upon traditional Christian monotheism (I say Christian because Jewish and Christian conceptions of evil are quite different) then an atheist can have that. Atheism is simply the position that there is no "The" (big God dude). In my opinion the best atheistic position is one without a disconnected "supernatural", but there are plenty of atheists who do believe in the supernatural, including some Wiccans and Laveyan Satanists, but it's not an "evil" that you or other Christians might recognise conceptually, hence GePap's argument .

Man, i've been sheltered. i've believed that AG/ATH people were just bitter and dissapointed by some percieved failure from God (which is ironic knowing as many bitter Christians as i do)
I appreciate the discourse.

To be fair, there is *some* truth in that. It's often the motivation, but then, few people decide faith on intellectual arguments. I had some very bad experiences with Judaism which sent me looking elsewhere, and Russell cemented my atheism... but then to attack that in relation to the actual argument is ad hominem. Other people I know however, have just never believed in God and have no "bitterness" motivating them, so oranges and apples really.

I appreciate the discourse.

Ditto, this is a good debate we're not getting sidetracked and winding around and around in circles like we normally do... it seems people are actually engaging with each other and not pedantically grinding a miniscule point to death.

I still think his example of a desert is good. We are all trapped in it. Some believe that there is a "the other end" and some believe that there is a knowable route to reach it. Some others believe there may be multiple routes. Yet others believe there is no end, and no routes to deliver us. We all struggle to survive the desert. Some find pieces of paper they believe to be maps and feel assured while they travel, others accept the fact that we are trapped and try to get the best of it.

Ah I misread. Yeh I agree .

I donno. I'm sure there is a historical answer, probably related to the distruction of the temple. I'm not Jewish so i really don't know. BTW, are there any professed Jews in poly?

One or two . I was brought up as a liberal Jew, I think the answer as to why we stopped sacrificing was more political or fashionable than religious.

Would you admit that there are some aspects of the universe that you do not understand?

Can you conceive the possibility of the existence of God as a part of the universe?

If you answered yes to both questions, then you have to admit God might exist. If you answered no to either question, I want an explanation why.

Yes, but imo that does not imply God, merely that our scientific understanding isn't 100% yet, but again faith and reason, that doesn't imply faith.

No, for the reasons I've already outlined, I would consider an infinite being unable to interact with this universe in a perceptible manner (long story).

Religions have value as institutions which socialize people and provide security blanket to those who are freaked out by their own mortality. But no religion is based on facts..

They have value yes but it's certainly questionable, and imo a case of every idea has its limits. Like I said in the FP, consider a murderer that has the potential to do good, but is still a murderer. That's about as essentialist as I'm likely to get .

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by BeBro


I'm not sure if I understand you. I never claimed science is able to answer all questions. The point I made was that IMO there's a difference between knowing things, and believing in things - and that believing things is the core of religion, while it is not the core of science. If there's proof for God, why should you believe? If God is proven, then you know, and that makes it not very religious in my eyes. But the fact that atheists do not (cannot?) know/prove/disprove everything through science does not make science the same as religion.

Of course, if people want to believe that's perfectly fine, but that is another story. And of course you can come out with things like "hey, you can't even know for sure that you exist, so go away with knowledge and proof or science", but I doubt most people have these things in mind when they use the results of science on a daily basis.

I'm being obtuse, partially deliberately. The point I want to make is that science has become the new dogma (with all the baggage that entails)- granted there are some who actually test the boundaries through experimentation but the vast majority don't. Likewise, there are theologians who explore what faith and being actually mean, but most believers don't.

Atheism is a faith that doesn't convince me any more than the other strands. Yes- I call it a faith, because I think for most atheists it's an apt term.

The propensity to seek for answers to the big questions, to believe and to have faith, is a key part of what makes us human. It's one of those traits we picked up (as far as anyone can tell) some 60,000 years ago or so alongside abstract thought. It manifests itself in many ways and can be a wonderfully enriching experience. Beats me why we have so many zealots attempting to foist their interpretations on others, however.

[Elok]

Well, I think I agree, at least to some extent, with Laz's point about science as dogma. The rise of pseudoscience itself is indicative of our tendency to regard as infallible anyone whose name carries a Dr. in front of it.

There are a lot of replies to quote, and I'm lazy, so I'll just try to address everyone. Tell me if I leave someone out.

Treating people as children: Not precisely. We treat criminals that way, and they aren't children. It's just that the threat of punishment is the most crude and direct way to discourage people when they just won't listen to sense. But the existence of, say, penalties for rape is not the only thing keeping us from raping. Many of us don't feel like mentally scaring innocent women for a power trip. The deterrent of jail time is there to discourage those who won't listen to reason, or just don't care.

The reason I said "how do you know God isn't here" was not to continue the argument, but to throw it aside. It's irrelevant for this kind of argument. Science investigates the world from our perspective. If we were bacteria, the few bacteria who insisted that the antibiotics that killed us were deliberately introduced by our frustrated host would be laughed at by the scientists of the bacterial community. What a tall tale. It's so much easier to save a step and say that antibiotics are an unusually severe immunological reaction triggered at times by especially lethal pathogens, without that miserable superstition. For the sake of the bacteria it doesn't matter, since they have no way to tell. They're too limited in scope, and they have to deal with the antibiotics one way or another. Do you get me?

The rest of UR's reply seems to be mostly ad hominems of some sort. Something about crutches? Well, turn it around. You have a broken foot, but you won't take the crutches. You're a complete man in and of yourself, after all. So you keep hobbling around unaided. And every time your foot goes crunch, and you wince, and everybody else winces to hear it, you scorn the weaklings who don't realize that pain like that is just in the nature of life. It's all in your perspective. So drop it. I realize I've started to get snippy in my last couple posts, and I'm sorry. Let's try to keep cool though.

Whaleboy: Do you really want to get into the theology of morals? In Orthodoxy, morals are closely tied into the existence of God, by the doctrine of the nous. We are blinded, distracted, confused away from the face of god, and our barbarity stems from that confusion. Trying to reorient on God (and buddhism, from what I've read, is somewhat similar in approach, as are many other religions), is itself part of the "cure." So it's not just any other moral system based on the supposition of a deity.

You don't just say, "don't lie, don't cheat, don't kill." That's just suppressing the symptoms of the disease. Some part of you, deep inside, still wants to be inhuman even after you suppress it with carefully constructed utilitarian gibberish, and that part makes a mockery of all the systems that say human reason can lead to ethical improvement. If human beings were so rational we wouldn't do this crap in the first place. Granted, we have some reasoning ability; we have a conscience to guide us. That's not enough. It's been about three centuries since the enlightenment, and people are just as horrible as they were before science by all indications.

And not just in the backwards and religious parts of the world that haven't accepted science, or humanism. Hitler had about as much faith in God as your average chimp. He knew existential philosophy, one of the latest trends in though. And he promptly turned around and distorted that knowledge as an excuse for the worst atrocity in known human history. He's one of the extreme examples, of course. Plenty of thieves, gamblers, pimps, and other riffraff have had access to education and just don't care. And of course there's always plenty of arrogance, spite, gossip, and gluttony among Educated Modern Man. We've been freeing ourselves from the shackles of superstition and fear for hundreds of years now and people are still "irrationally" cruel. What's with that?

[Shi Huangdi]

"

Russell also says that there is no compelling REASON that things need a cause, an argument he puts very well in a debate with Rev. Copleston. That's obviously a specific argument that works under certain circumstances, best read the debate itself. http://www.ditext.com/russell/debate.html"

Well with regards to things needing a cause, I suppose you could say that they don't, and things just happen. Typically though when giving natural explanations of things, you like to try avoid saying "It just happens"

We do know that our universe has a cause, however. And as Boris Godunov gave as the typical atheist explanation for the founding of the universe:

"Quantum physics determined a bit ago that, on a quantum level, particles are constantly coming into and out of being without any cause whatsoever. So the "First Cause" argument is still a load of bunk."

As I understand it(could be wrong here), particles coming into being for some reason, inflation occured, and from there you have the big bang.

But the problem is, why is it the rules of physics allow for this to take place. What created the proces of particles coming into being? And moreover, once these particles are here, why do they interact the way we do. We can give explanations relating to the physical forces acting on the particles that led to the big bang, but we can't give an explanation as to why those physical forces are there. What is the cause of the weak nuclear, strong nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces?

"
That still implies a relative dualism of good and evil does it not? In which case, Russells argument stands."

Not really. Actions can be more or less in accordance with God's nature. Evil is not an independent force, rather, it imples something not at all in accordance with God and his nature.

"
You're using the Jewish notion of Hell, not the Christian."

That is actually the contemporary Catholic view on Hell, which has been increasingly held by Theologians and recently endorsed by the Holy father; that Hell is the place for the radically impenitent who have totally closed themselves off to God's love and utterly refuse anything to do with it. Of course, just because Hell is a place of choice, does not mean it is not an incredibly painful state to be in, as it means seperation from God who is the source of all good and happiness.

"
However, as you have already seen, this is a philosophical argument, not scientific argument. Drawing an arbitrarily line right in front of YHWH is fallacious itself."

It's not an arbitrary line at all. It's a line between the natural world, which is subject to the laws of nature as we know it, and the supernatural world, which is not. While our physical universe is not eternal, there is no reason why a supernatural (above nature) being can't be eternal.

"
Simply put, since we are here, raising hypothetical questions about things we don't know for sure to support an argument is silly."

But physisicts who understand the problem can give good answers as to what might have happened had the value of any of the four forces been slightly off, that being is that any life would not have been possible. Now, if these values have not been determined by anything, there doesn't seem to be any reason why these values are what they are. There would be infinite values which would lead to no life possible, and only the select few we have that lead to life. The chances that we got so lucky by pure chance would be infinitely small, the values we have are so perfect for our universe that is fine tuned for life that it might suggest the possibility of a creator.

"
How does this explain two versions of creation in Genesis? Nor this can explain the various contradictions amongst the Gospels, particularly the Synoptic Gospels, which are generally held written within a short time frame. For example, the two genalogical lines for Jesus of Nazareth."

I had already admitted there are apparent contradictrions in the bible. This is why you ought not to take the Bible literally..

"
Given that YHWH is omniscient, he surely would know that Eve was going to eat from the Tree of Knowledge - even I know, that's just human nature. So why didn't he do something about it beforehand?"

Eve(if there were an Eve and this passage is not figurative, if not an Eve that whatever decision maker did whatever act of disobedience towards God) was not compelled or forced to eat from the tree. She could have refrained, but chose otherwise. This choice to do evil is a nessecary for us to be able to choose God. A real love must be freely given, and for it to be freely given there must be an alternative. That, by the way, is the reason for Hell.

"I call BS. Jon Miller can me a scientific peer-reviewed paper from a physicist where they cite supernatural forces as a cause to the universe. I'm all ears."

There won't be one, as this isn't hard science we are dealing with, it is beyond the realm of what can be experimented on or proven, and so wouldn't be in a scientific paper. Rather, it is making a judgement over whether it is more reasonable to judge based on what we know of the universe and how it was formed to view the universe as being createed by a supernatural cause or by purely natural forces.

I don't have the physics background to give a full answer to that, but I do know that many physicists have taken the view that a supernatural cause is more likely.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by bayraven




Do athiests believe in a supernatural Evil? (supernatural anything?)

As disappointing as it may seem, there isn't an atheist book of rules, club, special keyring, or codewords, and no secret meeting place late at night for rambunctious laughs.


Each atheist is unique- there are no atheist dogmas, only rather the beliefs of individual atheists.

So some might believe in the supernatural, but most that I have met do not.


Since I do not believe in a supernatural deity, logically I shouldn't believe in the 'supernatural' anything else.

But then I've met Christians and Muslims and Jews who read their horoscopes in the daily papers, and logically they shouldn't be reading or giving credence to such writings, if they are adherents of their faiths.

Life is funny like that.