I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish
Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to
show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father,
Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.Charles Darwin
The counter to the side is ticking off the number of people who have died since you opened this webpage. The vast majority of those people are entering Hell. Christ commanded his followers to share the Gospel with those who are perishing… who have you shared with today?
The Surretts, an insufferable family of missionaries in Peru
They both seem to be saying the same thing. The difference: Darwin deplores the idea of damnation, the Surretts have made it the reason for their existence. I know which side I favor.
Opening this weekend at select theatres: Cthulhu
You’ll be damned if you don’t see it.
Gotta love that krazy kristian kompassion.
Nothing new, is it? Christians want to conquer the world by terrifying it with their made-up tales of eternal damnation for the unbelievers.
Doesn’t everybody know that by now?
Piss poor job that god is doing, with the vast majority of “his children” going to hell. Unless, of course, that’s what he wants.
I would add one other thing, though. One might not wish evolution to be true, either. It just is. Xianity just isn’t (and was designed to make people obey with threats of hell).
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
If Christ’s followers go to Hell if they don’t spread the gospel, that’s one more reason NOT to follow Christ!
My understanding of the Christian doctine is that those who never had the opportunity to know Jesus will get a free pass. Seems like the most effective strategy would be to remain silent early and often.
It is the kids I feel sorry for.
Spending time living in Peru should be wonderful experience for them. Learning another language, enjoying another culture, learning the history of the region.
All those would be brilliant things for kids. I somehow think their parents will seek to avoid exposing them to all those. Home school I bet as well.
I’m liking the way the counter is counting up in tenths of a person. Maybe they know something the rest of us don’t.
And of course on the other side of the page … the ever present call to send in your money.
I fail to understand how this kind of approach could possibly convince thinking people. The inannity is just too stoopid.
You all have to believe I’m the son of god or else and by the way if you keep it to yourself you’re screwed too. So while you’re telling everyone what a wonderful guy I am send me all your cash too so my wonderful life can be even better. You don’t need the money. Your going to hell anyway right?
I used to have issue that someone like Hitler suffering for eternity would not be justified. That is, until, one really conceives of the scope of eternity. It’s truly beyond comprehension. The lesson I took away from that realization is that action must be taken as soon as possible to stop those committing brutal behaviors….stop at any cost. Simply wishing someone’s eternal suffering after they have vomited their brutality on others and after they die is simply abdicating responsibility. Of course this is not always possible. So the best actions humanity can take is to prevent such brutality from forming in the first place. The progress of learning is key here.
When consumer reporters are on TV, they always say something like, “If it sounds too good to be true, don’t buy it.”
That’s what heaven and eternal life sounds like to me. Too good to be true.
As for eternal damnation, there is nothing like a little fear to get the religious minions to obey and/or behave.
If there was a just God running the universe, the only people in hell would be those who wished to see other people in hell.
There would, however, be an aptitude test to get into the really good parts of heaven.
From “Jeff’s Testimony” on their site:
Quite the Christian prodigy, that Jeff!
It would be a shame if something in your store broke or one of your employees got hurt. Perhaps if you paid homage to my cause and gave me money, your future would be secure.
What’s the difference between extortionists and missionaries? Not much.
I don’t think it’s fair to include the psycho children in the term “insufferable family”.
Who is this ‘God’ that everyone is speaking of, and why does his love so resemble its opposite?
“That’s what heaven and eternal life sounds like to me. Too good to be true.”
From Debbie’s testimoney:
“After my older brother was saved, I also prayed to accept Jesus as my Savior. However, I was very young at the time and only remember being told that this is what I had done. When I was seven years old, I heard a message on having evidence of salvation. I realized there was no evidence, or memory, of my salvation, and I then accepted Christ as my personal Savior.”
If I can highlight the very last sentence, have I missed something, or does that make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER?
Are you feeling any better today? Did you see a doc?
Actually that same text with the same counter is also on ray comfort’s blog. seems to be some boilerplate evangelism by fear.
This reminds me of a bible verse, Psalms 14:1, which states:
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.
How arrogant a claim. Atheists are not only “fools”, but NONE of them do any good either? Their deeds are vile and corrupt? To me, the only true “fools” in this world are the ones who read this kind of stuff and actually “believe” in it.
My understanding of the Christian doctine is that those who never had the opportunity to know Jesus will get a free pass.
Depends on the brand of Christianity. In a lot of them, no. Then they try to really guilt you into “witnessing” by basically saying all of those souls are on your head if you don’t tell them about God.
The other day a young gentleman, a Presbyterian who had just been converted, came to me and he gave me a tract, and he told me he was perfectly happy. Said I, “Do you think a great many people are going to hell?” “Oh, yes.” “And you are perfectly happy?” Well, he did not know as he was, quite. “Would not you he happier if they were all going to heaven?” “Oh, yes.” “Well, then, you are not perfectly happy?” No, he did not think he was. “When you get to heaven, then you will be perfectly happy?” “Oh, yes.” “Now, when we are only going to hell, you are not quite happy; but when we are in hell, and you in heaven, then you will be perfectly happy? You will not be as decent when you get to he an angel as you are now, will you?”
“Well,” he said, “that was not exactly it.” Said I, “Suppose your mother were in hell, would you be happy in heaven then?” “Well,” he says, “I suppose God would know the best place for mother.” And I thought to myself, then, if I was a woman, I would like to have five or six boys like that.
It will not do. Heaven is where those are we love, and those who love us. And I wish to go to no world unless I can be accompanied by those who love me here. Talk about the consolations of this infamous doctrine. The consolations of a doctrine that makes a father say, “I can be happy with my daughter in hell;” that makes a mother say, “I can be happy with my generous, brave boy in hell;” that makes a boy say, “I can enjoy the glory of heaven with the woman who bore me, the woman who would have died for me, in eternal agony.” And they call that tidings of great joy.
No church has done more to fill the world with gloom than the Presbyterian. Its creed is frightful, hideous, and hellish. The Presbyterian god is the monster of monsters. He is an eternal executioner, jailer and turnkey. He will enjoy forever the shrieks of the lost, — the wails of the damned. Hell is the festival of the Presbyterian god.
— How to be Saved by Robert G. Ingersoll
(Text is in the public domain as it was written in the 19th Century.)
“…does that make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER?”
Blind belief is extolled. Skepticism is reviled and considered evil. The reasoning is completely upside down. It makes sense though. It’s the only way something so irrational can be made to seem like it’s rational.
Even with great evidence for Biblegod, I would find it incredibly difficult to worship him. After all, he does not care to give us any evidence, rather he seems to hide. Then he punish everyone who does not believe for no reason. What a guy!
Hah! That’s nothing! At the age of 5, my daughter recognized that if she put a tooth under her pillow, a magical fairy would whisk it away while she slept and leave money in its place, and recognized that if she was good a jolly fat man in a red suit would sneak into the house and leave her presents every 25th of December. Of course, no-one ever criticizes her now for growing out of those silly beliefs.
Jamie said:
Someone clearly has missed something big (coherent thought for example) – but I don’t think it’s us!
@ #18
I’m afraid that’s what they call “faith”
As a kid, raised Southern Baptist, it was clear to me that most folks are the same religion as their families. So the Baptists from Mobile, Alabama were going to Heaven, but the Muslims from Tunisia were going to Hell, even they they must have made the same “decisions” for the same reasons. God seemed infinitely unfair to me. The adults in my church seemed to delight in the material rewards they were piling up in Heaven, and gloating about watching the sinners suffer in Hell. Rather like the same movie over and over, only they didn’t expect to ever get tired of it. The preacher’s son-in-law bragged about the mansion he was going to get. I wondered why it mattered. Were we going to spend eternity comparing our wealth? Did it get cold at night in Heaven – why couldn’t I just sleep under the bushes?
This was about the time I realized we were being punished for the sins of Adam and Eve, committed before they knew the difference between right and wrong.
“Heaven is where those are we love, and those who love us.”
…along with the stripper factory and beer volcano. Right? Right?
Oh, I dunno… As a notorious church sign once put it: “Think life is hell? Try an eternity with Jesus!”
It sounds good, until you realise that eternity is not only long enough to do everything you’ve ever imagined (up to and including individually counting every single atom in the universe) but that even after doing all that, you’ve still got eternity left. What are you going to do for eternity? Do you have any idea how bored it’s possible to get in that much time? Life is fun because there’s more to do than you can possibly fit into the time available. If you have time to do everything, several times over, without making so much as a dent in the time you’ve got, what’s the point?
Eternal life is the second-worst thing I can conceive of to inflict on someone. Eternal suffering is obviously the worst – but I’m not entirely convinced that there’s really that much of a difference between the two.
Then of course there’s the objection that life requires change, and that change requires the possibility of change for the worse, so eternal bliss is incompatible with life. It’s only the possibility of unhappiness that makes happiness possible.
Ahh yes the missionary urge. This is the same kind of thinking that led pious missionaries to baptize the native’s children before dashing their brains out against a tree. Soul saved, sealed and delivered up to god.
As Bertrand Russel pointed out, if you were to closely watch a pile of ants coming and going from an anthill, and pick out the ones you don’t like and toss them into a fire for their behavior, it really is a compliment to the ants that you care about the machinations of their everyday lives.
The believer thinks the universe was created for them, that the creator cares about them, what they think, their ultimate fate, will intervene in the workings of creation to help them out, and will place reward their good behavior with an eternal vaction of happiness.
As one who doesn’t believe, the universe is a morally neutral place, not created by anything, for anything, indifferent to the small span of time that I am lucky to be alive.
I think many people’s refusal to accept the cold facts of the universe as we now know it comes from refusing to squarely face the truth about humans and our mortality.
I think it is part of the reason why as Hitchens said, if people beleived as they say, why DOESNT it make them happy, unless everyone else believes it too?
Great to see you posting again BTW PZ – I hope you’re doing better against the lurgy today!
Well, PZ, it’s because of one simple thing: It’s just not logical.
Okay, so God, who is eternal, sat there for an eternity (literally) so He could create everything in six days, just 6,000 years ago, so He could test us to see if we’re worthy to sit with him, bored, for an eternity, in a place that sounds a lot like Costa Rica (but without hurricanes). (Not slamming Costa Rica, by the way; I really want to go there.)
He just had to test us. If we failed, and He knew the majority of us would, we’d end up burning in Hell for an eternity.
Would any loving parent test his/her child that way? “Here’s some gasoline and a lighter; now don’t use them, or you’ll burn to death.” He knew that the majority would take lighter to gasoline. He’s all-wise, all-loving, all-knowing; He knows what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. He set us up.
Would you, as a living parent, hand your child a gallon of gasoline and a lighter, and then tell your child to not play with the lighter? I doubt it.
That’s what the wisest, most eternal, most knowing Being in the Universe, has done: Committed an act with zero logic.
Good job, God. Congratulations, you’ve done something everyone older than 8 knows you don’t do. Which is why religion is for 8 year olds.
Frackin’ cracker.
God, the next time you decide to create a universe, just put everyone in Heaven. Problem solved. There’d be zero evil in the world.
I was in Peru recently and entered a church with our Peruvian tour guide. He pointed out that many of the paintings in the church were made by Peruvians who had not converted to christianity…sort of slave labor. In their contempt the artists looked for ways to sabotage the paintings. The best example, in the Last Supper, the artist had placed a Guinea Pig on Jesus’ plate, which is a traditional meal in Peru. Just a little image for the Pharyngulites, Jesus eating a guinea pig. It was hilarious.
Bah! If God is all-powerful, why does he need you kooks to spread his message?
“…but that even after doing all that, you’ve still got eternity left.”
Yes Dunc, if eternity is static. But, was scuba diving an option for an activity 200 years ago? Sky diving? How about a vacation on the moon. The point is, the more we learn, the more is revealed that is possible to do. But that’s not “heaven”, that’s life today, that’s reality. It appears that our options for activity expand with our understanding of the universe.
It’s stuff like this that always makes me cringe when Xtians say that they can claim some sort of moral superiority to atheists because they follow their fairy tale book. Sending someone to hell for eternity because they spent a handful of pitiful years on this hunk of rock in space not genuflecting every 10 minutes to the great and powerful Oz seems a little excessive, don’t you think?
I watched the video at the Surrett’s website. According to their counter: 1,080 people died while watching it. I don’t know what a vast majority actually is (70%? 80%? 95%?) but the Surretts think at least 541 went to hell. Nothing like the compassion and loving of a skyfairy!
That said, his mission is to help Christian schools set up curriculum.
His sponsor, Open Door Baptist Missions, has this message on their website:
“We believe in the Holy Scriptures, accepting fully the writing of the Old and New Testaments as the very Word of God, verbally inspired in all parts in its original autographs, our infallible and authoritative rule of faith and practice.”
I’ll bet there will be no field trips to the Galapagos Islands to study evolution!
Kobra said:
More to the point if he’s omniscient then why does he pick such laughable clowns as his PR people and then provide them with the most wildly implausible and/or viciously cruel arguments?
“My understanding of the Christian doctine is that those who never had the opportunity to know Jesus will get a free pass. Seems like the most effective strategy would be to remain silent early and often.”
This point is actually brought up by fundamentalist preachers. When I was a kid, the preacher of the church I was at pointed out that not knowing was in no way a way out of Hell. He pointed out that if it was, the best thing to do would be to destroy all the Bibles and not tell anyone. He then ended by pointing out that no one listening to to him could claim an ignorance out even if it did exist.
Anyone who believes in heaven is an idiot. Anyone who believes in hell is an asshole.
And somehow they can go to Heaven and be happy forever knowing some of their loved ones may be suffering in Hell:
How could I be happy in Heaven?
CV in #35:
But (blinkblink) is guinea pig kosher? I kinda don’t think so but somebody here must know.
Maybe I’ll just go off and google it. (squeak)
The response I give to those who think atheists cannot be moral or ethical because they don’t believe they’re accountable to God goes something like, “So, when you tell your kids you love them and tuck them in at night, do you also tell them you’re only doing so because you’re afraid of Hell?”
Of course, the question becomes moot a few minutes later when, as an atheist, I eat their children.
Ron Sullivan said:
Worrying I think I do. Guinea pigs fall into the same category as rabbits in that they do not have cloven hooves but do chew cud (well not exactly cud but night faeces). However if eating night faeces does the bunny in as a food item logically it should do the same for guinea pigs too since the two species are doing exactly the same thing biologically speaking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_pig#Diet
harv @ #6
While in college, I had a fairly good friend that was an evangelical. According to him, all people (including all Native Americans before being exposed to xian ideas) were going straight to hell because they obviously did not have the chance to accept Jesus Christ as their savior. This voluntary acceptance of salvation was a central tenet in his xian beliefs.
My evangelical ex-wife claimed that those who didn’t have the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ during their life (because they were alive before JC was alive or they lived in North America before the good news arrived) WOULD have the opportunity once they were dead. I envisioned a St Peter joke with these folks getting to choose–heaven or hell. (Not to mention the fact that this situation actually gives them an ADVANTAGE. It just isn’t fair that I have to choose now with no evidence whatsoever while these wise guys actually stand at the gates of heaven before making up their mind! What a deal!)
Anyway, it’s possible that these were just-so stories to fill in the gaps of their personal theological knowledge or a way to assuage their guilt over an obviously unfair situation. But, I was left wondering why a “perfect” deity would design such a shoddy salvation plan. WTF? A 5yo could have done a better job.
But (blinkblink) is guinea pig kosher?
I don’t believe so. Leviticus says:
Guinea pigs neither chew cud nor have a split hoof, so, no, I don’t believe they would be kosher.
How hard would it be to organize some anti-missionary efforts to directly counter the kooks out there? To teach freethought instead of blind adherence to religious dogma?
It amuses me how smug Christians are when they feel the have the right to go to another country to push their Gerin Oil (to quote Dawkins) just because they *think* the Gerin Oil in those regions is the wrong/bad kind.
I remember when I met a young couple that were so proud because they had just return from Bible College (those Xians just love to coin oxymorons!) and were waiting to be sent to the Philippines as missionaries. I just had to bite my tongue, but I guess that if prayer is “how to do nothing and still think you’re helping”, Bible College might as well be defined as “how to go to school and pretend you actually deserve a PhD in lie peddling”.
I do know that the large guinea pigs called capybara are considered fish by the Catholic Church.
You’re going to hell, stamp-stamp, no erasies!
It doesn’t matter how shiny your edifice might otherwise be; if it has a dungeon, it is medieval.
Ewwww….! (shudders) That is one creepy web site.
Many years ago I was part of the Fundies. We broke when I could no longer deny the abject ignorance.
Missionaries have been spies (China, Russia, Africa, etc) and losers that have figured out that they can live like princes in another country. When the dollar was solid, a missionary would ask for what seemed a pittance. Sure, they only made 32 or 45k. In the US, that is not a bad wage. Not great, but not bad. In a foreign land, this amount of currency gives them nannies, groundskeepers, drivers, cooks, maids, servants….
An Indian engineer with very impressive credentials once compared vacation costs between a week in NYC and a month in India using the same budget. India provided a much higher degree of personal service and a vastly greater amount of leisure.
So, bilk the US local yokels of cash that makes them feel like they are getting off cheap and then live in a country that allows you middle-class status on working-class wages.
#40: Oh, that’s an easy one!
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it. – Voltaire
Makes sense now, doesn’t it?
The doctrine of collective guilt is immoral. The notion of punishing a child for the transgressions of a parent is immoral. The notion of punishing an individual for a situation that was outside of his control is immoral.
It’s amazing that people would worship such an immoral beast as the christian ‘god’ and even more amazing that they would consider it the fount of moral guidance. No wonder christians are so morally crippled, if they listen to that nonsense and take it seriously.
Dr. T @21
The correct answer to that quote is, of course, “The wise man says it out loud.” ;)
-TTm
I was in central Illinois for 4 days for work. I’m cityfolk and could handle most of it… what made me batshit insane though, was that of the 8 FM stations I could get, it seemed like half were Jesus radio, and what they were saying was just mind numbingly stupid… they were even bashing buddha.
Uhg.
I met a few of those when I was living in Uganda. You could sure tell they were pissed off at seeing other whites there–it ruined the illusion that they were lone saviours of the heathen savages.
I’m not sure they were much worse than the businessmen and ex-pats who ate and slept at the Sheraton but drank in local bars when they wanted a 16-year-old girlfriend they could play Sugar Daddy to, but it was a close contest.
#6 harv
My understanding of the Christian doctine is that those who never had the opportunity to know Jesus will get a free pass. Seems like the most effective strategy would be to remain silent early and often.
I have know a few evangelizers who think that the more “souls they save” the more they will be rewarded in heaven. They seriously thought their mansion in the sky would be bigger if the converted more people.
Xianity is a death cult. Its just a death cult that forbids suicide – alas.
Darwin’s Dagger: Who’s More Evil?
#10 Alex
I used to have issue that someone like Hitler suffering for eternity would not be justified. That is, until, one really conceives of the scope of eternity. It’s truly beyond comprehension. The lesson I took away from that realization is that action must be taken as soon as possible to stop those committing brutal behaviors….stop at any cost. Simply wishing someone’s eternal suffering after they have vomited their brutality on others and after they die is simply abdicating responsibility. Of course this is not always possible. So the best actions humanity can take is to prevent such brutality from forming in the first place. The progress of learning is key here.
except that there is no hell or eternal damnation
Alex # 17: Two of my favorite depictions of hell are the Daffy Duck cartoon “Draftee Daffy” and a The Far Side cartoon.
In “Draftee Daffy” Daffy’s SUPER patriotic until “the little man from the draft board” shows up. He tries to evade him and at the end, Daffy climbs aboard a rocket which then propels him into what looks like hell.
For more on “Draftee Daffy”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draftee_Daffy
(Also of interesting note: This was a WWII cartoon. One doubts that this could have been made during the Vietnam war with all the draft protests.)
The Far Side cartoon shows a devil in the foreground of a cave with flames all around it while behind him two men are standing at a coffee urn. One says to the other “They thought of everything, even the coffee is cold.”
Why do Christian missionary work in Peru, where most people are Christian already?
(Oh, wait, those are Catholics. They don’t count for this crowd.)
In any case, Chuck Darwin sure was right about hell, truly the most pernicious doctine to arise from Christianity. It’s what made me leave the Church, a blessing in retrosepct. How could anyone take seriously the idea of a God who would punish with infinite torture the most trivial offenses (missing Mass on Sunday, eating meat on Friday, masturbating, fantasizing about the girl next door).
Harv wrote in post #6:
“My understanding of the Christian doctine is that those who never had the opportunity to know Jesus will get a free pass. Seems like the most effective strategy would be to remain silent early and often.”
This reminds me of a supposedly true story I heard a few years back of a conversation between a missionary and one of his victims that went something like this:
Missionary: “If you do not accept Christ, you will burn forever in in the Fires of Hell”
Victim: “Do people who have never heard of Christ go to hell?”
Missionary: “Of course not. That would be unjust!”
Victim: “Then why did you tell me about him?”
Oh, I finally get it!
The soul has its own eyes and a complete nervous system. You have to have a nervous system to feel those flames lapping up your ass, right? You have to have full cognitive resources to get the full joy of heaven, right?
So if there’s joy, there have to be endorphins. Yes!!! 72 virgins!!! Are there afterlife STDs?
Hmmm. I wonder how the spiritual real estate market is doing. Maybe I can find a nice 3 bedroom with a lava view….
I can’t comprehend eternity. But I can comprehend the calculated age of the universe, and I can comprehend the average human life span, and I can comprehend the Olympics (well, except for synchronized swimming, but thats for another post).
So, let’s just say that eternity is at least as long as the age of the universe. That means that the ratio of an average human’s lifespan to eternity is approximtely the same as as the length of time an Olympic swimmer takes to compete in a 100 meter race, about a minute, as compared to that swimmers expected lifespan.
Would any rational being attempt to evaluate or judge that swimmer based upon one single 60 second race, and use that as a determination for the other 99.99995% of their existance?
Does this make any sense to anyone, or am I just being euphoric about May-Traynor & Walsh winning the gold again?
My favorite compare-and-contrast:
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1782
versus:
“No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” — George Herbert Walker Bush, 1987
Which of these two men would YOU trust with the duty to preserve freedom of conscience?
Fuck ’em. I would rather spend an eternity in hell suffering along side my friends who, throughout my life, have shown me that they would do anything to help alleviate my suffering as I would theirs, than spend an eternity in heaven with some deplorable, god-soaked, self-righteous potatohead.
aa, missionaries. Remember what WC Fields said about missionaries and seasoning. I particularly like the part about the quotes they attribute to someone that was dead at least a hundred years before anyone started taking notes.
That counter is ticking me off.
Ah, so many things to comment on. It’s always been clear to me that many Christians actually relish the thought of unbelievers suffering through all eternity. They have a barely disguised glee when they talk or write about it (look up how many folks lovingly described Stephen J. Gould’s arrival in Hell when he died, for example. I still remember one titled “Stephen J. Gould is a creationist now.”).
My wife’s sister and her husband are missionaries. Their kids were mostly brought up abroad. Comment no. 60, and the comment it references, hit the nail on the head. While I don’t doubt my sister- and brother-in-law’s sincerity, they are also materially better off in most ways than they were in the US. They have a nicer house, servants to cook, clean house and take care of the garden, paid transportation back and forth to the US every so often and other perks. Didn’t someone say of the missionaries to Hawaii that they came to do good and stayed to do well? In fairness I should also that everyone in the family has had malaria and while they are comfortable physically, they don’t make a lot of money and when they are back in the States on furlough money is very tight.
To continue my scattershot post: there is absolutely no way to reconcile the notion of eternal damnation with any sense of justice or fairness. Finite sins, even if you buy into the concept of sin, can’t justify infinite punishment. And no matter what you think happens to people who never heard the Gospel, there is grotesque injustice to somebody. If the god they worship exists, he’s infinitely more evil than all the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Pol Pots, Neros, Caligulas and other despots rolled up into one.
And did everybody notice that that so far they only have about 21% of the monthly support they need? (My in-laws took much longer than they expected on their last furlough to raise their support–I refrained from commenting. They also know not to ask us for money.) How important can their mission be to God if he doesn’t “convict” people to send them money? Or just poof it into their bank account? Or that matter, just make some sort of unequivocal appearance in the world to everybody, all at once, so he doesn’t need people to go aboad and convince them of His existence? If He really cared about people believing in Him, wouldn’t that be the simplest solution? Supposedly we’re talking about someone who knows everything and can do anything. That means he knows absolutely exactly what it would take to convince anyone and everyone of precisely what he wants them to believe. No need for Hell at all. If Hell exists, it exists because it pleases God for it to exist. Any other explanation is just rationalization.
I’ll stop rambling now; this article just pressed SO many of my buttons.
#69 Tom L
Thomas Jefferson makes me moist.
#73 MS
If He really cared about people believing in Him, wouldn’t that be the simplest solution? Supposedly we’re talking about someone who knows everything and can do anything. That means he knows absolutely exactly what it would take to convince anyone and everyone of precisely what he wants them to believe. No need for Hell at all. If Hell exists, it exists because it pleases God for it to exist. Any other explanation is just rationalization.
Wouldn’t be easier than to just “create” us all in the womb with an innate knowledge of his existance and the how’s and where’s of his worship as opposed to letting us muck about and kill each other over puddling differences like whether the pope or the king of england runs the church?
Hell, if a kangaroo can be born with the innate knowledge to drawl to the poach and sea turtles to the sea – if there were a god he could do it.
missing Mass on Sunday, eating meat on Friday, masturbating, fantasizing about the girl next door
Sounds like how I spent many a weekend during junior high.
Damned typos
My favorite snip from that treacly tar-pit website:
We believe in the unrevealed but always imminent pretribulational rapture of all believers.
The rapture…my favorite Christian doctrine (never mind that it isn’t even biblical; it’s a construct of the Revelations morons.) What entertainment: a couple of million nude Jesus Freaks flying up in the air! What a party we’d have!
ice
This just in: Hallmark to sell same-sex wedding/commitment cards to go with the coming out cards introduced last year. Who wants to bet the American Family Association (aka American Patrichal Association) will start another boycott? Any takers?
Now, Xians will not be able to shop at Hallmark or watch any Hallmark productions or sponsored shows or they’l be taking that dive into the eternal lake of fire!
A personal view…
To whom is it not obvious that the ‘God’ of the civilized was ‘created’ by the ‘elite’ of the civilized — in the ‘image of man’ (what more obvious model?) — well before this ‘God’, so promulgated by civilized religion, is supposed to have ‘created’ (civilized) man ‘in His own image’?
Why would the ‘elite’ of civilization go to the bother of ‘creating’ (i.e., ‘inventing’) such a figment?
Is not the answer as obvious?
[Hint: The answer definitely has nothing to do with “saving ‘souls’ “. The ‘everlasting soul’ is another invention of civilized religion, in that it is part of the large body of ‘supporting paraphernalia’ of civilized religion that includes ‘Heaven’, ‘Hell’ ‘Purgatory’, ‘Limbo’, and perhaps other invented ‘places’, the (religious) definitions of ‘Right’ and ‘Good’ and their complements ‘Wrong’, ‘Bad’ and ‘Evil’, and lots more – including ‘sin’, ‘original sin’, ‘morals’ and later, the ‘Doctrine of Confession’ [DoC]. The DoC was implemented after it was realized that very few people could live out their lives exactly the way the ‘elite’ of civilization wanted them to live – i.e., as spelled out in ‘morals’. Before the advent of the ‘Doctrine of Confession’, once a person had ‘sinned’ (i.e., done something contrary to ‘morals’) they were to go to ‘Hell’, and religion would no longer have power over them. Part of the DoC is ‘Confession’, of course, just about the most perfect invasion of a person’s privacy that can be imagined.]
The answer-
To ready and maintain the People of The Masses of civilization (i.e., the non-‘elite’) for easy extortion.
Further, to aid the promulgation of such folly, the ‘elite’ of civilization promulgate ignorance, by actively interfering with the People learning how to think for themselves (e.g., the in public schools).
This is why/how civilized religion both flowers in ignorance, and promulgates ignorance.
Civilized religion is the way, evolved over centuries, the ‘elite’ of civilization have devised to rob a large fraction of the only lives the People of The Masses of civilization will ever have – for the benefit of the ‘elite’ of civilization.
Of course this is the whole point of civilization itself – civilized ‘religion’ is just a part of it.
The dangerous aspect of all this is that it ‘diverts’ the behavior of civilized man from ‘what works’ in the ecosystem of our planet.
To the extent civilized behavior differs from ‘what works’ in the ecosystem, it contributes to the demise of civilization.
Civilization has placed itself in a contest with the ecosystem of our planet. All known living things are absolutely dependent upon the ecosystem for their existence. This futile contest will certainly not be lost by the ecosystem. Unless transformed, civilization will surely fail. I wonder if any humans will survive.
The danger is to us (civilized) alone – we have become ‘society-cidal’.
OT
Go Florida:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26316235/
at #42, BobC:
that would make a great t-shirt!
Ohh and a Poll to crash regarding that…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26318122/
You may want to take a look at that one…
thepetey @ 63
“except that there is no hell or eternal damnation”
Precisely. That is the lesson.
I agree with Kampar (@#8) it seems that death is an all or nothing proposition. The whole tenth of a person has died thing is a bit…. strange (unless you include zombies, then it makes sense).
Bryan @ #85
The French refer to orgasm as the little death. Maybe an orgasm counts as 0.1 deaths and they are really counting cumshots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_little_death
Many in the community support Davis and feel outsiders are forcing their beliefs on them.
!!!
in hell everyone gets 72 virgins.
in heaven everyone gets 72 virgins and enought viagra to go around.
When I look at the folks who claim so vociferously that they are going to heaven, and the folks that the heaven-bound assert are going to hell (i.e.: the rest of us), I can’t help but wonder if they haven’t gotten their nomenclature reversed. Whatever we have in store for us down below must be pretty awful if it’s to be considered worse than what’s waiting above.
@#87 – SC
Crazy ass shit isn’t it, they don’t want “others to force their beliefs” on them, like ya, know, the belief of freedom of speech or privacy?
Sick, sick, sick, sick. This is what the world is moving away from. Thank goodness.
@#83
Right now, 74% say the principal was not justified. Only 74%! 16% believe he was completely justified, and 11% said he made “some mistakes”, but should’ve kept his job.
“The counter also measures the amount (in millions) of your brain cells killed off while reading our worthless pap. Get out now, or you’ll knock Deepak Chopra off the leader board!
DaveX @ 93 for the win!
@92
I do not know how anyone would think that that is acceptable for a principle or teacher to act… Disgusting
harv: Those who were born before Jesus, or who are never exposed to the Gospel don’t get a free pass; depending on thier behavior when alive they either spend eternity in purgatory, spend a few centuries in purgatory, spend a few centuries in Hell before being sent to purgatory, or burn for all eternity.
And just to show you what it takes to get into Heaven among this group, in Dante’s Inferno Moses, Socrates, and Aristotle were all condemned to an eternity in purgatory. Even babies who die before christening never get into Heaven. A Damnable Philosophy all-round.
Daniel Dennett observed that we wouldn’t accept a religion that engaged in human sacrifice or slavery – why should we accept one that anticipates, with some relish, eternal torture?
I should point out that Emma, Charles’s wife, commenting on the quote by him.
“Nothing can be said too severe upon the doctrine of everlasting punishment for disbelief — but very few now wd. call that ‘Christianity,’ (tho’ the words are there.) There is the question of verbal inspiration comes in too.”
Emma holds the view that most modern liberal (theologically) christians would hold. Note the conservative christians who see hell for the disbelievers would also throw Emma and most (all?) other liberal christians in there as well.
I’m not a christian but I think we should distinguish amongst them.
hey! I have friends in a band called The Little Death NYC.
Crazy ass shit isn’t it, they don’t want “others to force their beliefs” on them, like ya, know, the belief of freedom of speech or privacy?
And of course freedom from discrimination based on your sexual orientation. On the other hand, it’s always heartening to see the kids themselves speaking out and taking action. What I’ve seen of this generation often gives me hope…
(Thanks for posting the link, btw.)
Griffen’s brother Bob, visiting from Alabama, concurred, likening Davis to former Arkansas Governor George C. Wallace, Jr., adding “Now, as back then, we good Christians aren’t out to lynch anybody. Well, ‘cept maybe the Coloreds.” The two men then removed their clothing and donned white robes and hoods and left to spend the night in the woods with other like-minded men. “We’re sick of all this talk about gays,” said Bob, demanding that he now be referred to as ‘Josey’, and Bill as ‘Little Tree’. When asked what they planned to do in the woods all night, Bill said, “Shh. Can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”
Why is the entire family (the Surretts, that is) wearing Target uniforms? Red and khaki… no thank you.
Pretty much everyone is going to hell. The muslims think the christians are going to hell, the catholics think the mormons are going to hell….and on and on. If they didn’t get in your face with it or teach little kids the crap it might actually be comical.
Hard to believe two days with no trolls. Is this a record?
My favorite part is when the missionaries try to save the souls of the primitive and superstitious heathen by immersing them in water three times while uttering a sacred chant.
One question I like to ask Christians that makes them wriggle is this: If you could go back in time and successfully rescue Jesus from the crucifixion, would you do it?
I have yet to hear a Christian utter a yes that wasn’t then qualified into a no.
Me, I’d rescue the poor bastard in a heartbeat. Christians have no morals.
Aphrodine @ #102
Why is the entire family (the Surretts, that is) wearing Target uniforms? Red and khaki… no thank you.
so you can’t see the blood as they crack heathen babie’s heads against rocks
The counter to the side is ticking off the number of people who have died since you opened this webpage. The vast majority of those people are entering Hell.
Phew! For a brief moment there, I was a mite concerned that “counter” referred to P.Z.’s sitemeter, and that god was killing off P.Z.’s readers by the second and zipping us directly to hell.
Reminds me of this Anne Dillard quote:
Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”
Priest: “No, not if you did not know.”
Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?”
Got to love their twisted logic.
At #6 Harv wrote:
My understanding of the Christian doctine is that those who never had the opportunity to know Jesus will get a free pass.
The definition of “those who never had the opportunity” is pretty narrow, at least according to one of the nuns who taught me in Catholic school.
According to Sister Mary Certitude, the only folks who might qualify as never having “the opportunity” might be some really remote tribes with no contact whatsoever with “civilization.” Anyone with any kind of possible access to information about Catholicism had “the opportunity” to became a Catholic and, perhaps, if that person followed all of god’s tricky rules, go to heaven. If they failed to take advantage of even the remotest chance to learn about Catholicism, they weren’t going to heaven, ever.
Ugh… I just watched the video.
When I was a boy, missionaries came to our church to tell us about their successes in saving souls abroad. They told us about the strange beliefs and rituals of primitive people in other countries. One ritual involved the crowd watching a flaming arrow zip through the air to land out of sight. This was supposed to be a message sent from the god they worshipped. (or something like that)
The missionaries, of course, weren’t fooled for a moment. One of them said to a man in the crowd, “You know, it was just a person who shot the arrow, not your god.”
The ignorant foreigner sheepishly admitted that, yes, he knew it.
I remember that we all had a good chuckle at how naïve and simpleminded those foreigners were with their silly, superstitious rituals. We then got serious and proceeded to perform Communion, where we pretended that the wafer was the flesh of Christ and the grape juice was his blood… (To be fair to Christians, though, the ritual of Communion is very sensible, for it ensures that they will live forever in a glorious, eternal city that is paved with gold and surrounded by a wall that has twelve gates that are huge pearls.
FOR SALE CHEAP! Anybody want to buy a truss? When the Surretts said the “rapture” is coming, I thought they said “rupture,” so I bought one. Don’t need it now, I guess.
BTW, I wish my wife believed in the rapture. I sure would like to see her naked again.
At #65, Virginia wrote:
How could anyone take seriously the idea of a God who would punish with infinite torture the most trivial offenses (missing Mass on Sunday, eating meat on Friday, masturbating, fantasizing about the girl next door).
And yet (at least according to Sister Mary Certitude and other great Catholic theologians who know how to navigate god’s Tricky Rules), god forgives and allows into heaven sinners who commit the most heinous offenses, provided they’ve made an “Act of Perfect Contrition” (as opposed to an Act of Imperfect Contrition. I am serious ) before they died.
So, according to Sister Mary Certitude, even someone inarguably evil, like Hitler, could’ve gone to heaven if he’d been wise enough to make that Act of Perfect Contrition before he drew his last breath.
When I was a kid, I’d think, “Well, the best thing that could happen to me is if I got hit by lightning or something right after I’d made an Act of Perfect Contrition–before I had the chance to do any additional thing that might be a violation of god’s Tricky Rules.”
Even when I was a kid, I thought god’s Tricky Selection Process for determining who got into heaven and who didn’t was rather unjust.
RamblinDude,
Self-awareness is not something Christians are especially noted for.
There is an image that will remain with me forever, because it occurred at time when I still had some truck with religion and it struck me as so ridiculous it helped cure me. It happened when the Church of England was discussing allowing woman to become ordained ministers. A male priest was interviewed outside where the General Synod was discussing the issue. He was clearly bitterly opposed to allowing those who happen to have a vagina become his equal, as he said it would be sacrilege to allow transvestites, and he made sure we knew he meant woman, to officiate at communion. So far he has just be your usual misogynistic bigot but the kicker was he said it all whilst wearing a dress. OK it was an ecclesiastical dress, but it was a dress, down to the ankles (so he was no tart!) and button through. Not once did he give the slightest indication he saw the irony in the situation.
I wish I could remember who he was. He was not an old man, probably still alive. I would love to let him know the role he played in turning me in an atheist.
#88
Who wants virgins? I’d want 72 experienced and enthusiastic partners that know what the hell they’re doing. An eternity of nervous, fumbling, uncoordinated sex? No thanks.
And good to see that school slapped, though how that guy got to keep a job in education is beyond me. Not only the civil rights violation, but the betrayal of trust, abuse of authority, and incredible insensitivity exhibited by the principal are obvious proof that he is in no way qualified to work with children. Not to mention the bit in the article that mentioned: U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak recounted in his ruling. “He went so far as to lift the shirts of female students to insure the letters ‘GP’ or the words ‘Gay Pride’ were not written on their bodies.” What?
And all the hicks basically using the same moronic justification: We don’t want the outside world imposing their belief on us that we shouldn’t impose our beliefs on others.
Idiots.
The Christian god has always struck me as being a sadist. Screw up one time and it’s eternal punishment for you. And then the Christians claim that their god is a “loving” god. Sorry, but my preferences for loving don’t include BDSM.
Grrr… what did I do wrong to eff up the blockquote? I knew it didn’t look right in preview, but I double and triple checked my tags.
Sorry, guys.
PZ – I’m a huge supporter, but seeing this post saddened me slightly.
It struck me as being a similar sort of Darwin quotes you see on Creationists websites: clear, simple, striking, and UNCITED.
After searching on my own, I found the quote in Darwin’s autobiography. However, something as clairvoyant and possibly controversial as the statement should not go undocumented.
The Darwin quote uncited? Only because everyone here who’s keeping up knows it’s from his autobiography – readily available online if you want to check but I’ll treat you as an adult and let you do your own google search.
When creationists fail to provide citations it is often because they are using a quote out of context, not quoting in full or just made it up.
PZ perhaps should have provided a citation for the Darwin quote, but I imagine he assumed his readers either knew where it came from already, or had the intelligence to find it for themselves.
The Surrette family preach ugliness. If there is a god, which I strongly doubt, I hope they suffer the same pain they wish on the innocents who do not share their beliefs. Nah. I wouldn’t wish that on a dog. Shame on them and their ilk.
Maureen,
Thank you for treating me as an adult.
I guess I’ll do the same for you…
Had you read my whole message, you would have seen that I did do my own search (I’m sorry that I didn’t use the vernacular “google”), and I did find the quote easily.
It was my first time seeing that quote, and even if it is common here on this blog, I’d wager a huge sum of money that I’m not the only one who was new to reading it.
I am sorry if my lack of intellect toward Darwin quotes (and my naive skepticism of everything) offended you or others.
When I was a kid I wore a scapular so that if I suddenly died I was guaranteed to go to heaven. Of course, somebody told me that some mythical serial killer had thought of this, and when he was dying the scapular caught on fire and he flung it away from himself. This is so ridiculous I can’t believe I even bought it as a 10-year-old.
At #112, bastion wrote:
So, according to Sister Mary Certitude, even someone inarguably evil, like Hitler, could’ve gone to heaven if he’d been wise enough to make that Act of Perfect Contrition before he drew his last breath.
Although Catholic doctrine wouldn’t allow for Hitler, himself, to go to heaven – because he committed suicide. The Holocaust, of course, and the Second World War could haven been forgiven, if he had said “I’m sorry” with his last breath, but not suicide – because that shows a lack of respect for human life…
As to why God doesn’t just show himself to everyone, or make us believe in him by nature, here’s how it was always explained to me:
“You see, God wants people to love and worship him, but he wants that to be their own decision. See, it wouldn’t really be the same if everyone only loved him because they were forced to, would it? Then we’d all be like robots, and that just wouldn’t work. So, he has to let us find out about him for ourselves and decide to love him on our own.”
Basically, then, God’s that girlfriend/boyfriend you had who wanted one specific thing for their birthday, but refused to tell you what it was or give you any hints because you were supposed to know them well enough to figure it out, and then when you didn’t they pouted for weeks. Only, in this case, they damned you to an eternity in hell for not getting the right gift in time.
“The missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make them permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there.” – Mark Twain
I went to that web page and endured a few minutes of the video before realizing I had killed 189 people. That’s some powerful HTML they’ve got over there in Peru.
And another:
“O kind missionary, O compassionate missionary, leave China! Come home and convert these Christians.” – Mark Twain
oooo oooo
Surrets Tin-Drome
What gets to me, is that even after hundreds of years of the protistant movement, they still cling to the catholic vision of hell and heaven, despite the fact it’s not what’s actually described in the bible. Shows they recognised what a good ‘stick’ it is to terrify the plebs into behaving themselves. And that very few of them actuall ‘read’ the bible with an open mind instead of with the indoctrinated official ‘meanings’ clouding their thought.
I didn’t know that Darwin quote until yesterday, when I watched part three of Dawkins’ Darwin special.
So, I catch up with all the comments thus far, and no fundie trolls defending everlasting purposeless torture?
Was I reading too fast?
Some good comments in here, though. Put up a couple posts on my blog using them.
At #122 Feffer said:
When I was a kid I wore a scapular so that if I suddenly died I was guaranteed to go to heaven.
I’d forgotten all about the magic protection of scapulars. I got one when I was confirmed. When it got too grimy, I got a scapular medal to wear. I don’t remember when I finally stopped wearing that.
But I’ve never forgotten about my unsuccessful quest to take communion on nine consecutive First Fridays, which IIRC, earned you a guarantee that you would die in a State of Grace, and therefore, entry into Heaven.
Since I went to a Catholic school which made students attend Mass each morning before school started, I had no problem making eight consecutive First Fridays. But I never, ever made nine, since that elusive #9 always occurred while we were on school holiday or vacation.
As a result, I had to try extra hard to obey all of god’s Tricky Rules. No “You Die in a State of Grace and Go to Heaven” card for me.
At #123, Philip wrote:
Catholic doctrine wouldn’t allow for Hitler, himself, to go to heaven – because he committed suicide.
Ah, Sister Mary Certitude addressed that issue: If, in Hilter’s last conscious nanoseconds, even if it was only an instant, between pulling the trigger and swallowing the cyanide and dying, he had made an Act of Perfect Contrition asking for forgiveness for all of his sins, including his taking the actions that would lead to his death, he’d be admitted to heaven.
Sister Mary Certitude said that no sin was too monstrous to be forgiven if one made that Act of Perfect Contrition. Was she wrong?
On the other hand, live an otherwise sinless life, but eat a cheeseburger on Friday, then right after eating, die of a heart attack–eternal damnation awaited.
These kinds of seemingly unfair Entrance to Heaven Rules and Procedures never sat right with me even as a kid, but I was reminded that I wasn’t the one made the rules.
Why are they counting the number of dead by tenths?
Are the ten stages of death biblical?
Do we now have to reckon fractions of people?
If we don’t will we be reduced?
What does this say about common denominators?
I dunno. Who can rightly divide this mystery?
#111 – Hank – I have the same sentiment.
I managed to kill off 23 people, then navigated away to read other pages on that unforgettable site and when i got back, lo behold I had killed only 10, I think 13 were “born again” or something. Great are the works of the Lord, or faulty HTML, but you can never be sure.
I’d like to think that idiotic missionaries such as the Surretts are well intentioned. But they really aren’t. They don’t want to help the underprivileged because it is the right (or moral?) thing to do. They do it because of some imagined ghastly consequences for themselves if they did not do so. Despicable really.
I’ve been told, in all seriousness, that every soul that did not consciously and deliberately acceptthelordjesuschristasyourpersonalsavior was irrevocably damned. Every one. This included people who’d never heard of this Jesus, profoundly retarded people, toddlers killed in accidents, stillborn babies, miscarriages, and the roughly two-thirds of zygotes that fail to implant in the uterine wall.
All persons. All with souls. And all damned to an eternity of shrieking torment for the sin of not doing what God never allowed them to do.
This, my interlocutor said, was “God’s perfect justice”.
Yeah, but you’re still not appreciating the scale of eternity. It’s long enough to learn everything there is to learn, see everything there is to see, and do everything there is to do – and all before breakfast. The complete lifetime of the entire Universe, from the big bang to its eventual heat death / big crunch / evaporation through proton decay, is merely the blink of an eye next to eternity. You could see the lifetimes of a trillion different Universes without making so much as a dent in eternity. Eternity is what’s still left when everything else is gone.
Dunc @139
Sounds like you spent some time with my ex-wife…like about 5 minutes.
Yes, the idea of eternal torture is plain evil.
Julian,#96 I thought that Moses was in Limbo until “the harrowing of hell” and that Socrates et al were there for ever? Still, I just gave away my copy of The Divine Comedy and the Pope declared Limbo closed so they’d be waiting to be re-housed.
I once asked a pious Muslim about how his lot coped with those who died in ignorance and, whilst I can’t remember the details, they didn’t get the full torture programme.
To me it’s like Tertullian’s assurance that heaven’s full of Sado-voyeurs; would you want go there?
The truth is that nobody knows if there’s a place called heaven and one called hell, what they look like, and who gets to go there.
Yet, some people like the Surretts, pretend they know better, and that if you don’t believe what they say, you’ll suffer eternally.
Is there a better way to call these people than arrogant assholes ?
At # 133, bastion wrote:
Ah, Sister Mary Certitude addressed that issue: If, in Hilter’s last conscious nanoseconds, even if it was only an instant, between pulling the trigger and swallowing the cyanide and dying, he had made an Act of Perfect Contrition asking for forgiveness for all of his sins, including his taking the actions that would lead to his death, he’d be admitted to heaven.
Sister Mary Certitude said that no sin was too monstrous to be forgiven if one made that Act of Perfect Contrition. Was she wrong?
No, I guess that would technically work. Sister Mary must sure have spent a lot of time contemplating whether she would get to meet Hitler in heaven.
Almost reminds me of that joke about the pope going to heaven and running into Stalin there. He complains to St. Peter about Stalin, of all people, having been admitted to heaven – to which Peter replies: “Well, your holiness, he taught a lot more people to pray than you did.”
Sister Mary must sure have spent a lot of time contemplating whether she would get to meet Hitler in heaven.
for some reason I recall an interview with “MiMi” from the Drew Carey Show. She said with her body type she was only ever cast s the three “N”s.
Nurses
Nazis and
Nuns
Why are they counting the number of dead by tenths?
I’ve heard of someone being half-dead but I had no idea you could be one tenth dead.
I wonder how many Christians have really thought about this eternity thingy. They will get all giddy about the prospect of seeing all their dead loved ones and meeting Jesus the moment they shuffle off their mortal coil. It’s like the ending of any fairy tale: “They all lived happily ever after.” The story doesn’t go on from there, it just ends with everyone frozen forever in a happy pose. Otherwise, what happens after you’re done greeting Grandma and Great-aunt Joan et. al. and catching up with all the latest news? What do you do for the next billion years? It’s not like you can go watch baseball or something. And you can’t even kill yourself.
Seems to me that if there is anything at all to the idea of eternal life after death, it’s that the life you lived is eternally part of history. But it’s still OVER.
Hi.
Just a dumb old Christian here.
I’ve enjoyed reading the blogs here. The atheist convictions are presented with force and vigor, sincerity and a palpable longing to know the truth. And yet the grand, ultimate truth of life’s mystery remains out of grasp, unknowable except in our hearts.
Eternity is not comprehensible by a finite mind.
Most writers here insist on interpreting life and the universe from a human perspective only. (What other is there?) While we are made in the image of God, we are not on the same level. He is the master, we are the creatures.
No amount of thinking or cleverness will ever enable us to understand the ultimate meaning of our existence. Atheists recognize that and choose the “null hypothesis” as the answer, thinking, “If I can’t see, touch, measure and know the answer to life’s meaning, then it mustn’t exist.” Or rather, “The only meaning life has is that which can be seen, touched, measured, known and passed on to another.” (“All I touch and all I see is all my life will ever be.”) This is logical, but limited. What about hope and faith and trust? If you trust only in yourself (or humanity), you have mightily limited your outlook. The material world will eventually expire and leave nothing of our humanity. Oblivion.
I think it is admirable to wrestle mightily with God as you sort out your beliefs. The name “Israel” means “wrestles with God”. But I sense vindictiveness and resentment among many of the bloggers here, a distinct hatred for a God who would allow the world to violate their sense of justice and compassion. Yet their very thinking demonstrates the kind of attitude that a loving God would find so offensive. He stands unmoved, unshaken in Holiness while an unrighteous world stands fallen in rebellion against him. In his compassion, he has offered his son to pay the price of sin, a free gift. All you have to do is soften your heart and see the beauty of what is offered and accept it.
Someone wrote way back in this blog how much they’d hate God for not saving their mother or grandmother or other loved one. Again, I think the perspective is completely altered in that argument. You value the mortal soul and love of your family more than the life and creative force of Almighty God? Then fine! Stay with them. But God is trying to call all people to himself. When you’re with him, none other will matter.
If you think believing in this God leaves you stuck in mundane rituals about what you eat and how you pray and what day of the week it is, then you’re listening to the wrong theist, or wrong Christian. Nor need you abandon the rigors of a scientific mind. True Christian faith accepts, demands, encourages and OFFERS truth above all else. Religious traditions often muddy these waters. And materialistic thinking that excludes the notion of a supernatural God can impair the knowledge of truth, too.
I was wondering when we’d get a religious commenter.
The problem is that there is no PROOF of God. We are not “angry” with God, any more than, say, I’d be “angry” with Superman. I could imagine being angry with the authors of Superman, or with the fans of Superman, or with the artist who draws him, or the actor who plays him, but with Superman himself? I’d have to be delusional to be angry with Superman – because I’d have to think that Superman himself existed. In the same way, how can I be angry with an imaginary God?
However, the point being made here is that, if the Christian God *did* exist, he would be a horrifically evil being, one who would make even Hitler seem like a minor pickpocket in comparison. Hitler, after all, only inflicted suffering on a few million people for the less than 15 years he was in power. The Christian God has allegedly inflicted suffering on countless billions of people for all of eternity, not just a few measly years.
Greg, #146
You have no idea how tedious you are. Many of us who comment here came from the airy fairy world you live in–and then we came to our senses. People like you spout phrases about “Truth” quite easily, but typically, you’re not honest enough to admit the simple truth that your ideas are second hand–and not of divine origin.
The almighty creator of the universe didn’t whisper in your ear telling you what qualities “He” possesses, or what nature he personifies, or what is important to him–human beings did. God didn’t tell you that he had a son, which you should worship and adore, people did. God didn’t tell you to focus your attention on eternity because the material world is ultimately irrelevant–people did. These same people also told you (incorrectly) what rational atheists believe, and what attitude you should have about them.
If “True Christian faith accepts, demands, encourages and OFFERS truth above all else” then you should be honest enough to admit that you’ve never had an original thought in your life, and you’re just parroting Christian dogma. You’re not really trying to please “God”; you’re trying to please the people within the group you belong to.
Like most Christians, you confuse “Truth” with emotional outbursts. You also fail to realize that all the concepts you hold precious are thoughts–and that “thought” is material.
No, because it’s blasphemy! You see, someone else is Lord over Life and Death, and usurping his throne is a big no-no.
Oh no. He said “there are reasons for prayerful hope” that limbo doesn’t exist. Outright saying it doesn’t exist would clash with “nobody comes to the Father but through Me”.
————————–
Fuck proof. There is no evidence of the existence of anything supernatural at all. That is the point.
Think about it, Greg. If you were wrong, how would you know?
Paper Hand #147: I, too, was wondering where the religious commentators were. I’ve browsed all over Pharyngula and seen only gleeful godlessness. Maybe we’ve all got better things to do.
I don’t see how you could expect material proof of a supernatural God, right? He’s SUPER-natural. Outside of nature. His existence is a problem of META-physics, not physics. Just because you can’t see or touch him doesn’t mean he’s not there.
There IS evidence of his existence, but materialists usually reject and argue away that evidence. The very existence of life is miraculous enough to argue for God. The existence of beauty, the existence of a concience, the existence of morality, intellect, meaning of any kind . . . these are the things that lead to tedious arguments about whether or not he’s there. (I can sense your dyspepsia – sorry!)
Yes, Ramblin’Dude #148, the ARGUMENT is tedious, but I am not. I am tenacious, though. Sorry for the tedium, but it comes with the territory. You atheists are a tenacious lot with your tedium as well, so it cuts both ways, dude.
Anyway, I’m not really here to argue, but just trying to better understand. Several of my best friends are atheists (Really! Its pravda! The best man at my wedding is one! I nearly was myself for a while till I got hooked on Jesus), and I’ve learned a great deal from them, most of which has strengthened my faith, and my recognition that we all hold faith of some sort. Feel free to disagree. Share that thought . . . have you no faith?
RamblinDude, I don’t know why you’d imply that I’m dishonest for proffering ideas I’ve learned from someone else. I freely admit that nearly everything I know has been given to me by someone else. Isn’t that true for you, too? Truly original thought is quite rare, although we should all try to confirm by experience what we are taught by others. In fact, this is the very problem I have (and I bet you’d agree) with those who accept their faith life just because it was handed to them by their parents or their culture. You do me injustice to suggest that what I do and believe is done only to please my “people group”. I have made no such grand assumption towards you. In fact, I assume the opposite: that you have reached your beliefs after long, careful deliberation, like I have, and with a hearty “Amen!!”, which, of course means, “I agree!”
Thought is material??? Since when? Thought may be the result of neurologic biochemistry, but it is most certainly ABSTRACT, NOT MATERIAL. Thought is represented symbolically in writing and speech, and it is very REAL, but it is not material. I might concede that it is SUBSTANTIAL, but not of material substance. And in this way, thought is very GODLY. And thoughts that are true, or valid, or of good value . . . . TRUTH . . . these are eternal. Some truths are circumstantial, but the big truths are universal and eternal. You believe a proposition of TRUTH which is that GOD DOES NOT EXIST. If true, this would apply to all people at all times forever. I believe you are wrong. The reason blogs like this exist is because contradictory propositions of truth cannot both be true. So we argue and pursuade to try to affirm our own version. But let us be subordinated and dedicated to the actual pursuit of TRUTH, rather than the winning of braggadocio points.
And as for evil and suffering, well, that’s a long tough one. Who has the time? Read a book on Theodicy. It’s still hard, even for a believer like me. But I do believe the evil is on OUR side of the equation, not God’s, and therefore, in the words of Sweeney Todd, “The lives of the wicked should be made brief, for the rest of us death will be a relief: We all deserve to die!” And yet, we can live, and Jesus is the reason. To know him is to love him and to love him is to live. And you can love him with all your baggage, and all your science, and all your mind, and all your doubts, and fury and passion.
Don’t you see that you could say this about ANY made up thing? Prove to me that Zeus doesn’t exist.
No, it’s evidence for the existence of Zeus, not your god!
We don’t have to just argue about it, though. We can explore and investigate, without biasing ourselves in any way (or even wanting reality to be any particular thing), and our findings can be evidence driven. Otherwise, we’re just a bunch of Greeks sitting around philosophizing about perfect circles.
And if you have real evidence of miraculous, supernatural occurrences, by all means present it; otherwise, we live in a universe governed by natural laws that can be explored without coming to any conclusions about why they exist–if we simply don’t know.
Well, if not experience, then at least sound reasoning, and even then with the knowledge that one may be wrong, or fooling one’s self, or not in possession of all the facts.
I have experienced far too many religious people who pass off dogma as insight, and who have given the authority over their lives to others by being subservient to the other’s ideas. Perhaps you’re more thoughtful, glad to hear it; though to be honest, you came across as the typical godbot.
The point is, if you realize that your thinking came from someone else then you must be very, very careful about the conclusions you draw, and the tenacity with which you attach yourself to those conclusions. I find no evidence that anything supernatural exists at all, and I find absolutely no evidence that your specific god (or his son) exists. In fact, quite the contrary. There is much evidence that much in the bible is simply not true.
I also contend that the image you worship–Jesus, God, whatever–is a thought. Thought is not timeless; there is nothing eternal about it. Its structure is of, and in, time. It is a physical process taking place in a material brain–that’s what I mean when I say that thought is material. Jesus (and all the religious symbols you identify with) is a construct of human imagination built over centuries of time. It is not eternal. The image of Jesus has evolved to conform to what human beings want it to be–God, and his son, Jesus, were intelligently designed (well, purposely designed, anyway).
Now this we agree upon. You either love truth for its own sake, or you don’t. One must be truthful for one’s intelligence to function, but why endow truthfulness with supernatural attributes like godliness? Is this your personal insight, or is it more dogma? Personally, I don’t care if you believe in Jesus, just keep science pure, and church and state separated.
No, it’s only a tough one for those who believe in a loving god who counts the very hairs on your head. If we live in a universe governed by impersonal, natural laws then shit happens. There is no contradiction (and yet the mystery of life still exists. Go figure).
Jesus isn’t my reason. I don’t believe in Jesus. I don’t even care about Jesus (or Zeus), and yet I go right on living and life is full of mystery and wonder, and I’m not a drunk, or a thief, or a murderer. I even live by the Golden Rule. Go figure.
Do you really believe that the ancient Hebrews had a pipeline to the “real” god, and all other cultures worshipped false gods? That’s not to say your warm, fuzzy feelings aren’t real–I’m sure they are, and why not? You can reach for any goal you set for yourself. If you want to apply yourself to feeling fulfilled and loved and full of joy, you can accomplish it. We are very creative animals. If history has taught us anything, it is that people can get into groups and focus their attention on ANYTHING and feel good about it. The Nazis, and other groups in history, got their highs from trying to dominate the world and kill off inferior races. Christians have a very specific way of focusing their attention on a specific set of beliefs and images, but it is a human endeavor, a physical process contained within the arena of thought, and there is nothing holy about it.
Obviously, on this we will not agree.
Greg #150 wrote:
You’re talking debate, then, and there are ground rules. Neither side can claim certainty, or it’s just preaching. If you’re genuinely interested in the honest pursuit of truth, then you’ll be able to describe to us what would cause you to change your mind. You might be wrong: you can be mistaken. It is possible that God does not exist, and never has existed. If you can’t admit that up front, there is no real dialog.
Whether God is “supernatural” or not isn’t important. The evidence for God can’t be “outside of nature,” or you would believe in God for no reason, and based on no evidence. But you have already given us “evidence” for God — life, beauty, conscience, morality, intellect, etc. etc. You’re claiming that none of these things come from nature. They’re all “supernatural” — or, perhaps, supernaturally created.
How do you know? And — if you’re wrong, how would you know? What sorts of arguments would you find persuasive?
Hi.
Just a dumb old Christian here. – greg
Greg, you might just as well have stopped there. Everything else you wrote just confirmed it. What is actually astonishing is the total lack of originality. How do you manage to keep your mind running on tramlines like that?
Hey, Nick: lets keep a sense of humor. This is meant to be fun, but it ought to be polite, at least until you get to know me better. If you like blood sport, go to a cage fight. Do you treat all your guests this way? We’ll see whose personality is more “evolved”.
What is your hang up on “originality”? Are your thoughts on this subject so original? The intellectual ground we’re on has been covered by mental giants before us, as you well know. The object here is to sharpen our own skills, knowledge and mastery of the subject (Prov 27:17 As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.) I’ve yet to hear a word of erudition from you.
RamblinDude: Thanks for a nice post. Your first 2 points about Zeus are not very consequential to me. I don’t care what name we give to God.
I DO see how one could say what I said about ANY made up thing. But I’m not talking about just any made up thing. I’m talking about something we all have experience with – a proposed deity or force who is the cause for our existence. Now I know, you deny any experience with such a deity, but you are experienced with the question of that deity’s existence. That’s the thing I’m talking about – the force that gave you life and intelligence and conscience. I think you believe that force is just the random collision of atoms in a self-existent material universe. (I just took about 10 minutes to write that one sentence, because I can’t think of a way to describe a self existent FORCE. I can fathom self existence of matter, but what puts it in motion? What is the first cause?) Anyway, that’s really where all these conversations lead: to the materially unknowable question of what lies beyond the material universe.
Your 3rd point about exploring and investigating without bias is dead on, in my opinion. We DO have wants and desires, and we do need to suppress them or look past them to arrive at objective conclusions. That certainly is easier said than done. Would you be willing to admit that you desire for there to be no God? Is that true? I must say that I have often felt that way. I often wonder whether life is easier with or without God.
I didn’t come to believe in God and Jesus from desire, but rather from a growing conviction that overtook me through years of life experience. I did (and do) have an undeniable desire for my life to have significance, to have true meaning or value. Don’t you? Honestly, you must have that desire. And from what I’ve heard, atheists find meaning or significance in the sharing of great life experiences with other people, creation of a legacy. But that just didn’t last for me. There’s no eternal significance to that, since it all comes to naught in the end.
So, while I agree that objective examination of our circumstances is necessary to lead a practical and productive life (What, How, where, when), I also believe that deep contemplation of “perfect circles”, or abstract theory and philosophy are necessary to come to a workable knowledge of WHY. Without “why”, without purpose/intent, we can have no moral value system, and make no judgment of right and wrong.
If that is too mundane, rudimentary or tedious for you all, then I’ll just stop after this one. This does take some time.
You said, “And if you have real evidence of miraculous, supernatural occurrences, by all means present it” . Now really, how could I have that? If I had it, it wouldn’t be supernatural. And if I described such a thing, you would rationalize it somehow, with an a priori insistence that supernatural events CAN’T happen. I have a quote from Pascal, that I got from C.S. Lewis in “The Problem of Pain”: “It is a remarkable fact that no canonical writer has ever used Nature to prove God”. So, all I have is testimony, and logic.
You said, “otherwise, we live in a universe governed by natural laws that can be explored without coming to any conclusions about why they exist–[if ]we simply don’t know.” I like that idea. It shows you the demand for faith. Whether you believe in God or not, you have described the corner we’re in, where no amount of knowledge of the natural world can show us WHY it exists. For that, we MUST have a faith system. The creator asks us to know him by trusting our hearts. Your heart tells you that the creator is . . . . . . nothing?
You said, “Perhaps you’re more thoughtful, glad to hear it; though to be honest, you came across as the typical godbot.” Black and white text is fairly stark. Perhaps we’re not as different as you may suppose.
I agree that the Bible is hard to believe. It strains credibility. But I have found it believable. Perhaps sometime we could examine bits and pieces of it.
You said, “Thought is not timeless; there is nothing eternal about it. Its structure is of, and in, time”. Well, the process of thought occurs in time, but thoughts, or ideas, concepts, notions of truth, are timeless. (Is time eternal? Or does eternal mean “outside of time”? I don’t know.) So, “E=mC2”, for instance, is an eternal concept. This is fascinating, actually, because it brings us back to the same point again . . . . is time material? Or rather, part of the material universe? Does anything last forever? This is why the concept of heaven is so absurd to many people, because they can’t conceive of an eternal destiny. But if eternity is outside of time . . . . You said, “why endow truthfulness with supernatural attributes like godliness”. Well, this is why. Because truthfulness should be eternal, and eternity seems to be supernatural. Holy. There is a pivotal point resting in here somewhere.
You said Jesus was a construct of human imagination, but I think that’s completely not true. That Jesus lived is as irrefutable as whether any other historical figure lived. Whether he was who he said he was, and rose from the dead, now that is worthy of contention, and I fully expect you to not believe that.
You said, “I even live by the Golden Rule.” Why?
Sastra: Good points, too. .
“If you’re genuinely interested in the honest pursuit of truth, then you’ll be able to describe to us what would cause you to change your mind. ”
I don’t know what could change my mind. I’ll keep thinking. What about you? You need physical evidence to convince you of a supernatural realm? That would be nice. I’d like to meet God, like meeting Aslan in Narnia. Wish it would happen. Would anyone believe you if you told them it happened?
“You might be wrong: you can be mistaken. It is possible that God does not exist, and never has existed. If you can’t admit that up front, there is no real dialog.”
I can and do admit that. I might be wrong. And you might be, too.
— if you’re wrong, how would you know? There’s the rub. I don’t know. Thus, I don’t know what would change my mind. The realms of spirit and material seem eternally separated, joined only by a bridge of trust, heart-knowledge. And yet our spirit resides in our physical being. It’s a miracle.
LONG POST. SORRY.
Greg,
You sound disingenuous to me when you say you don’t care what name is given to God. Zeus didn’t have a son that died on the cross for our sins, right? So obviously, the god worshipped by the ancient Greeks was not only different in name; it was a different god, a false, unreal god, right?
Whatever set the universe in motion, I don’t even know that it makes sense to describe it as a “force.” Randomness certainly has a lot to do with the nature of reality. Quantum physics shows us this very nicely. Evolution shows that randomness is significant in the history of life on this planet. But is randomness all that there is? No. Emphatically no. Natural laws–even the uncertainty principle–are consistent and well ordered. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know what the Prime Mover is/was. I don’t know what first cause was. The mythology of the ancient Hebrews explains everything quite nicely? No. Emphatically no.
The god of the bible is an asshole. Yes, I do not desire for him to exist. But my desires are not important. What is true is important, and it is obvious that the Christian god is a creature of mythology. I do not find the bible believable.
You just contradicted yourself. You ended up implying that you want a reality that doesn’t “come to naught in the end.” Why don’t you leave your desires out of reality and simply let it be whatever it is. I don’t know if life has any significance at all. It may have a purpose that I’m not equipped to understand, but I’m not going to believe something for the sole purpose of being comforted, or because contemplating my temporariness makes me feel insignificant and uncomfortable. The very idea of sedating myself with beliefs of any kind is irritating to me. Let the truth exist and damn the consequences. The truth for me is “I don’t know.”
Of course we can, what a silly thing to say. We can not only have a moral value system and a sense of right and wrong, we can strive for beauty in our lives. We can right wrong and ugliness when we see it. We can accomplish magnificent things with the tools we were born with, and all without knowing the ultimate “why” of our existence. We can even be gasp our own authority–an idea that is drummed out of our heads from the day we are born, an idea that is utterly anathema to Christian dogma.
You are quite mistaken. If you provide evidence of a miracle, something that cannot be explained by applying of the laws of nature as we know them, then I would have no choice but to admit that science hasn’t got everything figured out and that supernatural events CAN happen. The catch is: it has to be real evidence, not hearsay, not wishful thinking, not coincidence. This is precisely the reason the scientific method originated, to weed out the false and prevent frail humans from fooling themselves.
I disagree (emphatically). When we don’t know why then we must NOT have a faith system; we must admit that we don’t know. I also don’t know that knowledge of the natural world will never show us WHY it exists. You may very well be right, but why come to such a hard conclusion. Because your religion tells you to?
It is not my “desire” to live in a universe governed by natural laws that makes me think it is such a place. I, so far, have no reason not to have faith in such a universe, but such a “faith” is contingent on the evidence. There is no evidence, that isn’t hearsay or a movie scene, that shows supernatural occurrences. It doesn’t matter what kind of a universe I want to live in. Personally, I’d like to be able to fly through the air like superman.
It is this concept that seems the most troubling for religious people. Science is not a belief system; it is a method of investigation. Belief is important in your world, not mine. As for me personally, I see very clearly the danger of attaching myself to belief systems that require faith. It is an illusory security. I would rather just admit that I don’t know. I would rather be in a state of confusion than pretend that I’ve got things figured out. Even if it makes you uncomfortable, it’s okay to be in a state of not-knowing.
My “heart” tells me that the god of the bible is a fictional creature and an asshole. The creator? The prime mover? I don’t know what it is. I have no conclusions about it, and my opinions are just opinions–not evidence and not knowledge.
The entire thing? Noah’s ark? Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego surviving the flames of a fiery furnace? Adam being the first man created some 6000 years ago? Literally everything written in the bible is believable? I “believe” that you are gullible.
That is an unwarranted conclusion, IMO.
Now you sound like someone caught up in a lot of wishful thinking, and religious indoctrination.
There are many historical investigators who question Jesus’ existence. He is certainly not as irrefutable as Caesar Augustus, or Alexander the Great, or Lincoln.
Personally, I don’t care one way or the other. I don’t want anything from Jesus.
Because it pleases me to do so. I don’t like hurting people. It also makes obvious sense as a vital part of a harmonious society. I don’t need mythology to tell me that.
You seem much caught up in “believing,” and the faith and mental energy that go with it. You’ve obviously thought long and hard on “what to believe,” but you don’t seem interested in examining your “desire to believe,” your desire to find psychological security through a belief system, and all the images and symbols that go with it (and which, I repeat, are all constructed out of thought) Why? Don’t you ever focus your attention on the insecurity that drives you–without trying to get away from it? Examine it.
Dude:
Regarding Zeus and names: I certainly don’t give importance to what name we use when debating about the existence of the Grand Designer, the One True God, the Prime Mover. (I love the way God names himself “I AM” in the Bible. Shows he doesn’t really have a proper name.) In the respect that Zeus was the ancient Greeks’ best attempt to know and describe the deity I’m talking about, let him be called Zeus. But, as you said, the attributes and mythology surrounding Zeus do not describe the one true god for which I am arguing. Thus, I do agree that he is a false god.
I don’t even object to referring to Christian doctrine as mythology, in the sense that it is legendary lore, a descriptive narrative. I just happen to believe it is true. You may even argue that Christian lore is unoriginal, derived from pagan mythology, to which I would agree, and argue that much mythology is homologous, because I think it all derives from the yearnings of the human soul to know its own nature and history. I think God has left spiritual echoes of his master plan resonating all throughout the physical universe, and many different traditions have picked up on it. (This I got from CS Lewis. You don’t care because it’s all nonsense to you.) (note to self: Darwinism is mythology, too)
“The god of the bible is an asshole”.
This is supposed to be an intelligent and/or civil discourse. By using terms like “asshole” you bring the discourse to a sophomoric level. I suppose you’re just trying to have fun and express your youthful bravado, and that’s fine. But you ought to define terms a little better. By “asshole” I assume you mean God is unfair, or cruel. That accusation deserves some examination. (Fascinating how suddenly we put “God in the Dock” (Lewis again) and mankind becomes his judge. Creation judges creator. Is that fair? Who is the little tyrant here?)
Standards of justice, fairness and kindness should be fairly objective. What standards does God violate? Everything that happens in the Bible, no matter how violent or cruel it may seem is completely justified on God’s part. He has complete authority to create or destroy whatever he wants. It’s all his.
Lets just look at it for a second. What is “fairness”? From Webster’s – “marked by impartiality and honesty”, “conforming with the established rules”. God pretty clearly lays down the rules early in Genesis and later in Exodus. We belong to him. If we try to go AWOL, he permits it, but on penalty of death. Fair enough? Does he break his word?
What about cruelty – “disposed to inflict pain or suffering : devoid of humane feelings”. To which I would add: “without cause or justification”. Is it cruel for God to allow pain when you touch a hot stove? Is it cruel for him to place you in an indifferent Universe where you must employ your own will and sometimes suffer as you create your own living? It’s not really cruel, it’s just difficult, that’s all. What would you do for your own children? What did God do with his own son? It may appear that he was cruel in subjecting him to a cross, but Jesus did this with full consent, and for a glorious purpose – to bear and share in our own suffering for us and with us. That’s not cruel. That’s incredibly merciful. It may be painful, but what truly valuable thing is ever obtained without sweat and sacrifice?
So, rather than say that God is cruel or unfair or an “asshole”, you really mean to say that you just don’t like him, which is also fine.
“You just contradicted yourself”.(regarding desire and belief)
Actually, I just wasn’t specific enough. I was trying to say that I do not allow my desires to drive my beliefs. I know you don’t believe me, but just listen for a sec.
I didn’t come to believe in God and Jesus from a desire to believe in God and Jesus. In fact, I did NOT want to believe in God and Jesus, because I did not like God’s rules and I wanted to be free. I DID allow my beliefs to form, to the best of my ability, from objective observation of my environment and circumstances. At the end, I found myself with abundant knowledge about the CONTENT of life, but no answer for the INTENT of life.
I hear you when you suggest living with no conclusion about life’s intent, but I think you’ll have to admit that that is actually impossible. If you have no intent, you can’t DO anything. You’d be cataplectic. (more on this follows in a moment). So, you’re faced with a choice: do you serve your OWN desire and intent, or do you seek a greater intent?
This is an unavoidable turning point in everyone’s life. Many may not be aware of it, but ALL face this choice. It is a free choice. And because it is free, it ends up being based on desire. We get to pursue our heart’s desire.
This is the amazing spot where faith life begins. So, even though you say we should leave our desires OUT of this equation, there comes a point where there’s just nothing else to do except examine our desires, or, more importantly, examine our conscience, and decide which way to go.
I don’t have time to get into miracles and gullibility today, but just want to say that it all depends on whose story you’re willing to believe. I don’t believe it’s possible for Shadrach et al to survive the fiery furnace, and neither did Nebuchadnezzar. But I do believe in a supernatural God who can suspend the laws of nature if he desires, and I wasn’t there, so I can’t say it DIDN’T happen, and King Nebby saw it and believed immediately, just as you say you would if you saw such a thing. But he saw it, and you don’t believe it, which is what I said would happen if I tried to offer you evidence. All I have is testimony and logic.
“I, so far, have no reason not to have faith in such a universe, but such a “faith” is contingent on the evidence.”
Dude, belief in evidence is not “faith”, it is “knowledge”. Belief in a falsehood is “delusion”. Belief in the not-yet-known is “faith”.
” Science is not a belief system; it is a method of investigation.”
I couldn’t agree more.
“Belief is important in your world, not mine.”
I think I can show that you are wrong. It’s important to you, too.
Let’s examine your ideas on secular morality. You said we can have a moral system without knowledge of purpose or intent.
“We can not only have a moral value system and a sense of right and wrong, we can strive for beauty in our lives. We can right wrong and ugliness when we see it. We can accomplish magnificent things with the tools we were born with, and all without knowing the ultimate “why” of our existence.”
That’s flat out incomprehensible. You’re not thinking, man!
In order to “right” any “wrong” or “ugliness”, you simply HAVE to know what you’re trying to accomplish. Purpose and intent. You might not KNOW where it comes from, but you have to BELIEVE it. You have to have a reason. If you’re a “Godbot”, your expressed purpose is to glorify God, and right, wrong and beauty are derived from knowledge of Him. If you’re an individualist (for lack of a better term), your purpose would be to glorify yourself. If you’re a Humanist, I suppose you’re trying to advance the prosperity and well being of as many people as possible, based on our own collective derivations of what’s best for most.
So, I know you misspoke. You CAN’T have a moral value system without some working knowledge of purpose or intent.
Now, I don’t expect you to give a dissertation on the workings of a secular system of morality. I even concede that most of the atheists and secularists I know are among the most “moral” or “righteous” people I know, so I’m willing to concede that “secular morality” works, or is functional. But I am curious to probe into it some and see on which principles of righteousness it rests, because I suspect the principles are borrowed or co-opted surreptitiously from deistic thinking.
In your comments, you implied that “Golden Rule” morality would be followed because: a) it pleases you, the individual and/or b) it’s best for “society”. So this is the root cause, the purpose or intent of your behavior: to please yourself and/or society. Most of the time, as long as everybody is following the Golden Rule, everything works great. There’s no problem. What pleases you generally pleases others, or is at least tolerated by others. But what happens if you want something that the others won’t go for, or if they want something that you don’t want. Most of the time we can work something out and reach a compromise, but what happens if a compromise can’t be reached? Who holds authority to say what is right or wrong? Where does moral authority rest? If we are all in equal standing as evolved creatures, no one of us, or group of us, can hold authority without consent over another without invoking some form of tyranny. The only way for moral authority to apply to “everyone” is if it originates outside of, or above everyone. There must be some authority to which we will submit, or else we’d be a chaotic planet full of Napoleons. And if the authority becomes “society”, or the “majority”, or the “state”, then this becomes tyranny, the dominating theory of “might makes right”. The only way to prevent tyranny is to admit that every human being has INHERENT DIGNITY, INHERENT MORAL VALUE, and must be respected.
Now, if every human being has intrinsic dignity and moral value, but humans are nothing more than electrified meat – well ordered but randomly generated collections of matter – then really, humans have no more dignity than any other matter, whether a rock or a tree, a fish or a monkey. If this is the case, then we have no moral authority to utilize any of the matter at our disposal without it’s consent, as this would be tyranny. Clearly, this is absurd, as we have dominion over all these things. The only way for this to make sense is if we recognize that humans are ENDOWED with intrinsic dignity. We are different than all other life and matter. If you adhere to the materialistic, atheistic undergirding of human existence, then you either have to treat all matter with the same dignity as you treat yourself, OR you have to admit that materialism and atheism JUSTIFIES TYRANNY. You might not choose tyranny, you might not agree with tyranny, but you can’t morally oppose tyranny based on your belief system.
Tyranny is preventable only by recognizing the intrinsic dignity of human existence above other life and matter. Part of our intrinsic dignity, (in fact, probably the MAIN part) is our possession of conscience and free will. We have the ability to assess moral circumstances and choose to act based on what we believe is right and wrong.
“We can even be (gasp) our own authority–an idea that is drummed out of our heads from the day we are born, an idea that is utterly anathema to Christian dogma.”
I’m sorry to tell you how mistaken you are. The idea of having our own authority is a CENTRAL TENET of Christian dogma. We are created in God’s image and have every right and capacity to make our own decisions and run our own lives, with or without God. The key to Christian dogma is the claim that human moral authority is corrupt, and in need of healing. God is NOT a tyrant. He does not insist that we come to him. He knocks at the doors of our hearts and asks to be let in. He asks us to CEDE authority over our hearts and wills to Him.
“You’ve obviously thought long and hard on “what to believe,” but you don’t seem interested in examining your “desire to believe,””
Well, as you can see, I have, in fact, carefully considered my desire to believe, and concluded, as you do, that there is utterly no significance to what I desire to believe. What is significant is what is right and/or true. And what seems to be true is that God want’s us to live to our heart’s desire. Isn’t that amazing? And he want’s us to desire him.
Greg:
Standards of justice, fairness and kindness should be fairly objective.
But they’re not. That’s the problem. Standards of justice and fairness vary between cultures and even between members of a given culture. But what else do we have? Judgments must be made, and one is only left with the standards that one has.
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God pretty clearly lays down the rules early in Genesis and later in Exodus.
Sure. But God is really just another moral actor, whose judgments are no less or more relevant than the standards any of the rest of us use.
Wow. He goes from we don’t really know who god is to knowing what God wants. What a huge pile of bullshit.
Steve_C: Your comments are pensive and deep. Thanks for contributing. Perhaps you’d care to be more specific in your critique?
The God I am defending (for the purposes of this discussion) is a character in a book. I know what he wants because it says it in the book.
Chiroptera: Legal standards of justice and fairness may vary in the legal codes of various cultures, but the pure definitions of justice and fairness are consistent. There are such things as unjust laws. How do we know them? By holding them up to our consistent, universal standards of fairness and justice.
“God is really just another moral actor, whose judgments are no less or more relevant than the standards any of the rest of us use.”
Are you saying no one’s moral judgments or actions are relevant to the rest of us? We’re all just operating on independent moral compasses? Hitler’s morals were as irrelevant as Gandhi’s ? You’ll need to clarify, because that sounds like pure nonsense.
The God of the Bible is proposed to be the SOURCE of morality. His judgments and actions DEFINE morality in the Bible. It is intrinsically impossible for him to be immoral.
p.s. How do you all do the neat trick where quoted comments are indented with a light blue vertical line in front?
My thoughts don’t have to be deep.
There’s absolutely not one shred of evidence for any gods, especially the morally inconsistent and deranged god of the Bible.
Try looking up “The Courtier’s Reply”, that’s all you’re doing. It’s boring and entirely unoriginal.
Societies determine their moral expectations. The religions they follow often determine their expected behaviors but that’s completely self-determined. Societies had moral codes thousands of years before there was a Abrahamic god.
On the matter of being happy in heaven while your loved ones were in hell, I was once told (when talking about limbo) that god simply erased the memory of hell-bound loved ones so it wouldn’t be an issue.
So I guess you could hang out with Tertullian watching the damned sizzle and it would be ok, because you wouldn’t know that it was your mum being disembowelled in the third tar-pit on the left.
p.s. How do you all do the neat trick where quoted comments are indented with a light blue vertical line in front?
Try here to learn about tags
And what you want is the “blockquote” tag.
Greg,
All the evidence compiled to verify “natural selection” and “common decent” makes “Darwinism”–the theory of evolution–the exact opposite of mythology. If you do not have enough knowledge of science to appreciate this fact then whether your ignorance is willful or not, there is a level beyond which communication between us is impossible.
The intelligence of our discourse will necessarily be limited if you insist that I be deferential to a fictional being.
Your god condones, in many places in the bible, rape, murder, slavery, blatant misogyny, and brutal massacres of entire populations, not to mention a host of capriciousness rulemaking. Is this how you would treat your own children? The god of the bible has all the manners and mores of a spoiled child.
You can certainly argue that if such a god actually created everything, as you say, then he may do as he likes, but we unbelievers are fascinated at the way you believers torque yourselves into Gordian knots of rationalizations to justify such behavior and label it “loving” and “merciful” and “compassionate.”
And the same goes for Jesus and his “sacrifice.” It is a belief based entirely on emotions, because there is nothing at all rational about it. He was only one of thousands who were brutally tortured on crosses and died horrible deaths, and, supposedly, the man knew he wasn’t actually going to die for real! The virgin birth, God’s only son, walking on water, rising from the dead…if a real man, Jesus, actually existed, the myth has grown all out of proportion to anything real.
First, religion convinces you that you are evil and in desperate need of apologizing for it, and then religion convinces you that that Jesus, in his white robes that rustle gently in a divine wind, and with his arms outstretched to embrace and forgive all with perfect love and understanding, wants you to be happy and wants desperately, lovingly to save you from eternal torture, and all that he asks is that you accept him as your lord and master for the rest of your life. Really, it’s all too silly.
That’s easy: the church–people who are trying to control you by making you worship a fictional creature. And if you become one of those people then you have become a little tyrant.
Why do you make things so complicated? And where does this concept of “choice” come from?
Look, myriad physiological factors are at play, all the time, compelling me to take actions. My heart beats, my stomach growls for food, gotta pee, find shelter, sleep, etc. All of these “desires” motivate me, and they take place without me being guided by a purpose created by my thoughts or someone else’s. Obviously, the body has its own “intent” independent of “thinking,”–life goes on, not cataplexy.
Take it further: the desire for companionship, the desire to satisfy curiosity, the desire to create drawings in the sand or make music, or build a house in a favorite location, or explore the stars. I think you would say that these are aspects of the “soul’s” desires. I would disagree; they are simply further extension of biological “material” processes.
Then someone comes along and says, “You’re sexual urges are wrong!” “You’re choice of music is wrong!” “You’re inherent desires are evil!” “You’re pissing off GOD!!!” Suddenly, I’m confused. I wasn’t before, but now I am. I have choices to make!
But then I get it: people are trying to control me! Upon perceiving this, the confusion dispels, along with all those choices. There are “choices” to make only when we are in a state of confusion. If you are guided by your intelligence then you naturally try to focus your attention on a problem until the necessary course of action becomes clear. This takes place automatically in us–unless this natural process has been suppressed and corrupted by external influences, and we then become preoccupied with “choosing.”
Religious “choices” are as artificially constructed as the myth of Jesus.
I’m not being clear. Even if I saw such a thing, I would still be skeptical: is it an illusion, mirrors, the application of advanced science? In other words, are the laws of physics being broken? Is it really supernatural? To investigate such a thing would require a rigorous application of the scientific method. For the many of us who have no issue with being a “Doubting Thomas,” “faith” is irrelevant, and being preoccupied with it is weird and irritating. To have faith or not is another one of those artificial religious “choices.”
We’re talking past each other here. I stand by my quote above, and I repeat it: “We can not only have a moral value system and a sense of right and wrong, we can strive for beauty in our lives. We can right wrong and ugliness when we see it. We can accomplish magnificent things with the tools we were born with, and all without knowing the ultimate “why” of our existence.”
Obviously we have purpose and intent in setting up our moral system. A “system” implies thought, and we know what it is we are trying to accomplish and why. But that wasn’t the point; the point was: we can apply ourselves to practical endeavors without coming to philosophical conclusions about the ultimate meaning of existence.
Morality doesn’t always come from thinking about things. Empathy is built into most of us by nature; though it can be subverted. If you’re walking down the street and you see someone getting stabbed with a pick axe, do you have to have attached yourself to a belief in order to know what to feel, and to feel the desire to help? You see someone about to be hit by a car. Do you think you can reach out and grab them by the arm only if you have a thought-out purpose in life, and are absolutely sure about why you exist? Otherwise, you’re cataleptic? You’re not thinking man!
Deistic thinking? Good grief. You mean like stoning a woman who has been raped? Or stoning children for being disrespectful? Do you eat shellfish? Do you wear clothing of different weaves together?
You can’t mean the Golden Rule because that is secular, and very practical thinking, and almost every culture in history has had some version of it. Or do you believe that one can only be practical and feel empathy if one believes in magical creatures? Do you think self sacrifice is a concept given to us as a gift by Jesus? Altruism was born into the world in 0 A.D.?
Deistic thinking? Witch burning; heretic hanging; exorcisms for mental illness and physical deformities and talking back; torture for the unrepentant, and the killing of heathen unbelievers? Do you mean Creationism–the blatant disregard of evidence in favor of blatant and constant lying and spreading of ignorance far and wide? Perhaps you’re referring to Miracle Spring Water; or God hates fags; or John Hagee urging the president to bomb Iran in order to give God a helping hand with Armageddon; or people believing that when a priest chants over a cracker it turns into Jesus.
Perhaps you mean the deistic thinking of Constantine the Great, the Christian fanatic, who in the 4th century began a campaign of slaughtering all heathens who would not convert to Christianity, a campaign of terror that became the fad for over a thousand years with the Catholic Church and was so successful that people to this day are afraid not to believe.
I suppose, though, you mean having a moral code that can only come about from being subservient to something supernatural? Deistic thinking has not made the world a peaceful place–it divides people into sects. It encourages wishful thinking over critical thinking, and fanaticism over common sense. It discourages the practical application of our intelligence in favor of following rules of dogma.
Where does this notion come from that I can’t be peace loving, moral and “righteous” if I don’t believe in the supernatural? This is another one of those religious “choices” that we are trained to be preoccupied with. This is yet another thing that religion has drummed into people’s heads for so long that they think it actually makes sense.
I think your question of moral authority is valid, but your casual use of the word “tyranny” is troubling. If people want to enslave me, and I don’t want them to, and a compromise can’t be reached, then is defending my freedom to be argued as “tyrannical” to their interests. Nor do I care about quibbling over whether I have some “moral authority” in defending myself from being enslaved. And petitioning for talks to discuss the legitimacy of their moral authority will more than likely be useless. Sometimes you have to put away all the pretty philosophizing and deal with the real world as it is and not as it should be. The question for me is: how do you focus your attention on a problem with such acuity that the necessary course of action becomes clear? It is clear to me that addling one’s brain with religious choices is not helpful.
I am my own moral authority. My morality rests with me. I, alone, am responsible for my actions. I will not cede that authority to anyone else, (or to a book) and thus, I have reduced the number of fanatical followers in the world by one. I am one less person who is screwed up in the head from trying to conform to “choices” imposed upon me by other people. (This is not a problem until superstitious people become hysterical about it and want to stone me for not being a follower.)
But we already are a planet full of Napoleons. Big Napoleons and little Napoleons. We can’t, and probably never will agree on what “moral authority” applies to everyone. Churches and states and ideologies of every stripe fight for domination of our minds. Countries fight each other. Neighbors fight each other. Religions fight one other. Cats and dogs, and dogs and dogs fight each other for domination. That’s life, and religion/deistic thinking is a big part of the problem. Giving up our “moral authority” to external agents (like the bible) has only preoccupied us and divided us further.
Which is why we live in a republic, and not a true democracy.
Perhaps if you used the word “agree” rather than “admit,” but I’m not sure I would put it like that, anyway. “Inherent moral value” is a nebulous concept and will, no doubt, be argued over incessantly, eventually resulting in blows being struck.
Now you’re making things way too complicated. Keep it simple.
We have the ability to blow up the world now, and it’s only going to get worse. We have to have peace and harmony or we will all die. So what are we going to do about it?
One thing we cannot afford to do is to keep dividing ourselves into artificial groups. We attach ourselves to belief systems, and self-identify with images and symbols (like Jesus or Mohammed, or a flag, or holy crackers). It isn’t about true or false; it’s about trying to find psychological security. We label ourselves: I’m an American; I’m a Christian; I’m a protestant; I’m a Presbyterian; I’m a republican;…etc. etc. etc. “I am this; I am not that” We are trained to spend our lives endlessly refining “Me/not me.”
When we submit to external moral authority then we are easily led into conflict, and pretending that the moral authority is “supernatural” has certainly done nothing to lesson conflict between groups of people–it only compounds the problem by making people even more fanatical. (my moral authority instructs me to fight you…)
And then someone comes along and says, “We have to keep doing this…only more so!” (“And only with my god, because my god is real and yours isn’t!”)
It is this kind of thinking that helped to get us into the mess we are in today. We purposely segregate ourselves by divisions created in our thoughts, and it causes more problems than it solves. If we’re not smart enough as a species to figure this out, we are all going to kill each other.
Except of course, without God you’ll burn in hell for all of eternity.
Sorry, but this is just pure, unadulterated, unabashed rationalization. I grew up with religion, and every single sermon I ever heard in my life had, as its CENTRAL TENET, the necessity of being subservient to Jesus. You cannot be happy unless God is in your heart. You cannot be fulfilled, you cannot have purpose, you cannot understand the meaning of compassion and love,–you will go to hell–unless Jesus is your lord and master, etc. As a Christian, you may have the choice, even the right, to be your own authority, but according to Christian dogma, the consequences are dire.
I’m glad your god wants us to live to our hearts desire, because that is exactly what I intend to do. If, however, you believe that the creative source behind the existence of the universe is insecure and needy (because the bible tells you so) then I think we have little more to discuss.
I just realized I got “deistic” confused with “theistic”, but given the context…meh.
Let me address “deistic” thinking more properly: the belief that a god created the world but does not interfere with it.
And this is necessary to having a proper code of morality…how? Whether such a god exists, what possible difference does it make?
Does this lend some mystery to the world that the notion of impersonal, natural processes being responsible for our existence doesn’t? Obviously not. It’s a big mystery, either way.
Or is it just more attractive to make that which is responsible for our existence a Being with many of our attributes and characteristics. Makes us feel more at home. Okay, he doesn’t interfere with our lives, but he’s like us; he has feelings, and desires, (he gets lonely and jealous) and since he created everything and us, it gives us a certain respectfulness toward life, the universe and everything that we wouldn’t have otherwise. It makes us feel closer to the source of all things, and gives us a desire to shape up and be more…Godly. Yes, the creative source of “all that is” is one of ours. Aren’t we blessed?
Or is there, lurking doggedly in the back of our animal brain, the notion that such a god will have to be answered to at some point in the future?
We have descended from ape lineage, and this kind of thinking is a clear indication of it–subservience to a dominate, alpha tribe member, usually male. And if we can’t find one for real, we’ll make one up! We’ll make up the most powerful, ultimate dominate alpha male ever!! Maybe he interferes with the affairs of humans and the laws of physics, or maybe he doesn’t; the important thing is that we get a dominate alpha male into the mix, somehow, someway, and be subservient to it. This has nothing to do with true or false; this is about satisfying inherent, instinctive drives.
Look at people in church, huddling together to stroke God and praise him, sing songs to him, assure him of their submissiveness and voice how helpless they are without him. We have descended from apes, and this behavior makes us feel secure. And the more insecure we feel the stronger is this instinctive drive.
Christian ideology has taught us that we are inherently evil, for so many centuries now, that it has permeated our thinking. We can’t possibly have instinctive altruistic reflexes–we’re all selfish and evil! Without some supernatural moral guide, something beyond corruptible, material processes, we can’t possibly know how to act–we’re all selfish and evil!
Nonsense.
It is possible to recognize and appreciate the mystery of existence without turning the cause of it into a personality to worship.
Steve_C:
While this may be true, I think the topic we’re covering is intrinsically deep. Answers can only be reached through deep thinking. Perhaps you’ve already gone deep and you’re done with it. If there’s any point at all to this discussion, it should be to demonstrate our OWN understanding of these principles, whether the thinking is original or not.
There’s actually tons of evidence for God, it’s just not conclusive evidence. Most evidence requires interpretation. Evidence can be used to support different hypotheses. The evidence for God includes the awesome majesty of creation, the existence of natural laws and the gaping need for a “first cause”, the miraculous complexity and order of life, the endurance of the Jewish culture, the fulfillment of scripture through Jesus’ life and resurrection, and the nagging, gnawing conscience within each of us that suspects that God is really there. Don’t waste your breath repudiating all that. I know you disagree with every word of it.
He’s morally CONSISTENT because he is the source of morality and wisdom. What he creates, he may use as he pleases for his purposes, and he knows what is best. We may not like it, but that’s the way it is. As for deranged, I think from His perspective, you are the one who falls in that category.
I read the Courtier’s Reply and enjoyed it. It IS well done, but my argument is not the same as what is depicted in the satire, so you’re missing my points. I am not waxing eloquent about the majesty of a God who you can not see, nor have I ever suggested that any of you are unqualified to argue because of lack of theological training. I have no theological training, either. I am trying to examine this subject using straight logic, and take assertions regarding our circumstances to their logical conclusions.
I’m not asking you to see what is not there, but rather to “see” beyond what is visible. There is a difference. We are trying to understand abstract ideas – things that are real, but not seen. The laws of logic are such things. They are real, but abstract.
I am not asking you to believe anything that is explicitly false. I explained that. Belief in what is false is “delusion”. If you are any kind of Atheist at all, you KNOW the existence of God can not be proven false. I know you would equate him with any other farcical notion, that can neither be proved nor disproved, but again, that misses the point. (We’ve covered this in my earlier post. ) I’m not talking about just some figment of anyone’s imagination, but rather, the proposed source of all life and goodness, the supreme deity. We all have experience with this person/concept. You atheists reject him as being merely a concocted myth from the minds of mankind, but I am arguing that He has been revealed to the minds of man. There’s really no way to prove the difference. It’s a matter of faith.
So why even discuss it? The discussion is not so much whether or not someone has faith, but rather the object of their faith. We can weigh the evidence and choose where, in what story, or in whom, we place our faith, our trust.
Faith is NEVER irrelevant, as RamblinDude asserts. It is the foundation of all people’s living. You may not think you have faith in anything, but you do. It’s either yourself, or your money or your intelligence or something. But you’ve rested your beliefs in a notion of the meaning of life. From what I’ve heard from you all, that notion is that life has no ultimate purpose other than what you attach to it. You have faith that no divine authority will pass judgment over you at the end of your life. There is no supernatural realm. The universe is material, and you are your own master. There it is.
That’s about as deep as you get with it. That would mean there really is NO right or wrong, only “acceptable” and “unacceptable” based on what “societies” self determine. By this reckoning, genocide or pedophilia is morally acceptable if a society so deems it. All things are permissible teleologically, but societies assign things to “acceptable” or “unacceptable” categories which are essentially arbitrary.
This would be kind of tough since the God of Abraham existed before there were any societies. But I’ll take your point that moral codes existed before the God of Abraham was explicitly known.
RamblinDude: Don’t have a cow when I say that Darwinism is mythology. Mythology does not mean “fictional” or “false”.
Myth: “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon”.
Ostensible: “being such in appearance : plausible rather than demonstrably true or real”.
Darwinism is a pre-formed notion, a hypothesis, that life on earth originated and advanced through purely materialistic processes. I am not contesting the objective properties of the evidence (most of it), or the degree to which the evidence fits the hypothesis. But there remain troubling problems in the theory that are not completely answered. Science is a method by which those questions might be answered. Science is a method. Evolution is a process. Darwinism is a worldview, a philosophy, almost a religion. I’m in no mood to debate this topic any further. Feel free to be bellicose and vociferous in your apoplectic objection to my assertion.
I have asserted many things with you, but the only thing I’ll ever insist on (I hope) is logical, rational thinking. I certainly never asked for your deference to my God, only for your willingness to consider my point of view. I don’t think you’ve even done that much. And God may or may NOT be fictional. I am convinced He is real.
The population of earth, in the Bible story, abdicated their inheritance as God’s children and became son’s and daughters of Satan. The whole Bible story is about God’s willingness to redeem his lost children. Their woe and misery is a result of their own recklessness. Imagine your child as a rambunctious, crazed drug addict. You might cope with, overlook or seek to make best use of a long list of horrid behaviors in order to eventually assist in the return of your child’s sanity, trust and obedience. Ultimately, you have to leave him to his own destructive behavior and its natural consequences if you truly respect his personhood. This is logical. This is what has happened. I have simplified a complex situation, but, no Gordian knot there. I might note in passing that a similar problem is before us as we try to construct a coherent moral system from a belief that life has no purpose and all things are permissible, based on preference alone (atheism).
You’re just wrong. (I insist!) It’s completely rational in the circumstances described. Maybe you don’t understand the meaning of the word “rational” – “proceeding or derived from reason or based on reasoning. Sensible.” (Actually, as we consider your atheist attempt construct a life of value from a universe that exists without a reason, THAT begins to sound awfully irrational.) Rational does not necessarily mean “physical”, “tangible”, “supported by scientific evidence”.
Jesus may have been “one of thousands” crucified, but he was the only one who was completely without sin, completely innocent. (This will be irrational to you, as you don’t even recognize the concept of “sin”). He offered his life to pay the debt of sin for all who would trust in him. This may be hard to fathom, but it’s the truth of the story.
All these are materially absurd but understood as “miracles”, made rational by the existence of a supernatural, omnipotent God. Materially absurd, logically sound.
Please. Not that you ARE evil, as in nothing but evil, but rather, that evil proceeds from the hearts of men. The evil that exists is contained within men, who were initially MADE holy by a holy God. And do you deny this? Have you ever done a wicked thing or thought an evil thought? Of course you have. And you have said yourself that you are your own authority. These things come from you and me. Of course, you’ve done plenty of good, and so have I. But “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
No, he wants you to be WHOLE, as in restored, which is so much more than “happy”, and he wants this PASSIONATELY, which is quite a bit different than “desperately”. Passionate is positive and proactive, whereas desperate is negative, as in empty, desolate, needy. Jesus is not that.
Last I checked, church membership was voluntary. Most church members don’t even attend regularly. And again, God is only fictional in your version of things.
Dude, that IS cataplexy. You just described a person in a coma. To do anything meaningful or valuable, you have to have a purpose. Face it. (I insist, again.)
Your attempt to deny choices and attribute all desires to mere biochemistry is nearly comical. You can’t possibly deny free will, especially when you use it as the basis of your morality system: “I am my own authority.” We have the power to overcome our biochemistry and choose between different urges our body may stir within us. We can choose to eat, or hunger strike. We can pee in the commode or pee on the foot of the guy standing next to us. You can have monogamous sex or be promiscuous. The urge isn’t wrong, it’s the decision making that matters. Every urge we have can be a virtue or a vice: hunger becomes gluttony, sex becomes promiscuity, ambition becomes greed, humility becomes self deprecation, kindness comes to lack of justice or discipline, independence leads to arrogance . . . . on and on. It CAN be confusing unless we learn to CONTROL our urges.
CONTROL!!! Oh no!! What’s the opposite of control: freedom? Freedom without law and order is . . . chaos.
No, there are choices to make only when we have OPTIONS. Confusion is reduced when we have reason or purpose to guide our choosing.
You’re becoming incoherent here. The mark of intelligent thought is the use of reason. First you say we focus our attention on a problem, which implies that we apply rational thought to the issue and impute a necessary course of action. That I agree with. But then you say this occurs automatically, as if no conscious thought is required. If all we do is follow a “natural process”, or instinct, then we are just acting impulsively, without thought. You imply that the proper course of action is that which arises automatically, without thought or “corruption”. So you can see, that is not guided by intelligence at all. If you apply your intelligence to the problem rather than just reacting impulsively, you are using reason to make a choice. That’s not corruption, that’s control. That’s the mark of a rational being, a human being, something different than a mindless beast.
When you said, “people are trying to control me”, you meant people are trying to OPPRESS you. Being under control is a good thing. Being under someone else’s control is NOT a good thing, unless the someone else HAS AUTHORITY OVER YOU, and is not abusing it. Christian religion is all about recognizing the proper authority in your life so that you can CONTROL your life and avoid chaos. Absolute freedom is an illusion you may be chasing as you assert yourself as your own authority. Even as your own authority, it is your INTELLECT, or CONSCIENCE that has authority over your biological urges, and reigns them in, controls them. Your intellect is governed by ideas or principles that are real, but intangible. Incoherence is what you are presenting if you assert that you are nothing more than the inevitable result of natural biological processes, and yet you still have an intellect.
I agree. It’s exhausting. We need to stop. I’m tired of this. If you’re happy with what you believe, go on already. I’m not trying to change you. I’m just trying to defend my faith where I saw it getting dissed.
You say you can do all those wonderful things all without knowing the ultimate “why” of our existence. I agree that you can – I’ve seen it done. My argument is that this is not coherent. Even if you don’t really know the “ultimate why”, you have to have a working paradigm of purpose, even if it is a “default”. Your default purpose, near as I can tell, is to please yourself. The universe exists so that you can get what you can out of it before you die. This is your faith system. You apply the Golden Rule because it is pleasing to you and makes your life easier. But on the more sticky issues of “right” and “wrong”, you have only your whims to go on, and the pressures of living in a society that can impose on you based on your choices.
Of course not. You’ll feel something by instinct as described above. But you’ll still have a choice of action. And whether you act one way or another, when it’s done, you’ll have to consider whether or not what you did was “right” or “wrong”. How do you decide? You have to have external principles to apply. Otherwise, no matter what you do, it’s “right” by default. Of course, in an emergency situation like you describe, instinct is all we have time for. But in the court of law, when the assailant sues you for messing up his perfectly good axe murder, we have all the time in the world to think carefully about our purpose in life and the definition of “right” and “wrong”.
On “deistic” vs. “theistic”: I actually meant “theistic”. All I meant was that moral constructs are generated by seeking principles of righteousness that are outside of ourselves and in the world of ideas, a world of ideals, which is where God dwells. I won’t take it any deeper than that. You gave a nice little tirade of all the ways religious thinking has been misused over history. That doesn’t nullify the Christian worldview. It only shows what happens when it is abused. And that’s all I have to say about that, too.
Well, there’s the whole kit and kaboodle right there. While I agree with you completely that a time comes where we have to stop thinking and start acting, I don’t think we can get around the requisite philosophizing that is needed to come to some understanding of what our COURSE of action is going to be. Our direction. Our intentions.
This is long and I want to stop writing, but I want to run through just one more thought.
It’s interesting to me to imagine a perfectly righteous set of morals, whether it emerges from human deduction or as a revelation from God. By a “perfectly righteous set of morals”, I mean the ideal set of principles that dictates the way we all “ought” to act. Clearly, it’s a nearly impossible thing to fathom since there are all kinds of circumstances in which some form of “evil” may be necessary to promote overall “good”. Those circumstances, or moral dilemmas, are the ones we all fight with each other so much about, things like wars, abortion, euthanasia, responses to catastrophes and crises. Still, we all seem to be drawn to some ideal of righteousness. We strive for it.
To me, the best that a secular thinker can come up with is what I believe is usually referred to as “Secular Humanism”, which promotes the greatest “good” for the most people, in general. I think Spock summarizes it well in “Wrath of Khan” when he proposes the logic that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” goes into great depth on this. (I couldn’t finish it.) I also think fundamental Buddhist principles fall right on these lines. Christian principles, whether you agree or not, are also based on much the same ideas: God has in mind what is best for the most people.
I’m NOT leading up to the point that we all basically believe the same things. I AM leading to the point that it is CONCEIVABLE that we could all agree on a universal set of morals. It is conceivable that an ideal set of moral principles exists, one that, if practiced by all people would produce the best quality of life for the most people. But I think that such a system, while conceivable, is no more attainable than a perpetual motion machine. It is an ideal that is greater than the sum of its parts, a virtual conception that can’t be attained by material beings. It’s very hard to express, but something like the idea that members of a set can’t themselves BE the set. A set is a grouping that is OUTSIDE of its members. The set can only be seen as such from outside. I’m sorry I can’t be clearer than that.
All I’m getting to is that there is some moral ideal we all put faith in, and even if we all agreed on what that was, we’d have to decide whether we came up with it ourselves or whether it was already there and we just came to recognize it. To me, it seems implausible that we could generate that ideal, because I don’t think that material substance is capable of generating anything greater than itself. Even if we deduced it or conceived of it, it would hold no authority because it would be imaginary, and would perish when we perish. It would be of no ultimate consequence.
That is probably in it’s purest form, the reason I think God must be present: because I sense the presence of a moral imperative that is greater than the simple preferences of me or you or all of us. This belief of mine stands at a stalemate with the opposite assertion, that my God is fabricated and imaginary, like the laws of Secular Humanism. They are basically equal and opposite. But given the choice of believing that “Idealism” (which for me is “Theism”) is imaginary versus actual, I choose the “actual”, because it is more reasonable.
On that nebulous note, I’ll stop.
Thanks for sharing your beliefs with me.
Live long and prosper. (ASTONISHINGLY UNORIGINAL!!!!)
Greg,
It’s kind of hard not to have a cow when you say things like, “Darwinism is a worldview, a philosophy, almost a religion.” It’s like saying that observing that the car in the parking lot is blue, and American made, and a few years old, and the owner appears to be a liberal because of the bumper stickers, and the driver is most likely in the store…is a religious belief. Or studying physics and learning why E=MC2…and then having someone say it’s just a mythological religious belief based on one’s personal philosophy and worldview.
It’s science.
Obviously we do not agree on many things, and I have not found your arguments compelling in the least. That the god of the Hebrews (and his son, Jesus) is just as much a construct of human imagination as every other deity ever worshipped by every other culture that has ever existed is so obvious to me that I won’t argue the point any longer.
However, I will address something you said near the end of your post: “It’s interesting to me to imagine a perfectly righteous set of morals…” Your musings on this point were actually coherent and I found it interesting; although, I do approach things differently.
What does it mean to live correctly? It’s a valid question, and I contend that the answer entails far more than discovering or inventing a set of rules to live by. The question of whether there really is a “universal set of morals” is interesting, but the question that is more relevant to me is: how is one to be as perceptive as possible in order to live as intelligently as possible?
Perception is the key. You focus your attention on a problem…the greater your awareness of everything about the problem, i.e. the more perceptive you are, the more intelligent are your resultant actions. The more accurate one’s perception, the more obvious becomes the correct course of action. Clarity of mind negates choice. When you clearly see the right thing to do, your actions become choice-less. This is what I am interested in cultivating: a keen-mindedness that perceives the real world, in real time, and deals with it as intelligently as possible.
Intelligence cannot function correctly when there is distorted perception. Clarity of perception cannot happen when the mind is preoccupied with conformity, imitation, subservience, and the sacredness of symbols and images and crackers. These are all thought processes refined over centuries of time. Thought can interfere with perception, which is why thought must be handled carefully!
Rational thought must come from clarity of perception– not the other way around. We must apply ourselves to being as perceptive as possible in order to have rational thought, and I repeat, this kind of awareness cannot be had when one is preoccupied with imitation and conformity to any religion, ideology, political view, set of ideas, groupthink, whatever. Nor can it be gotten by clinging to “sacred” things, whether physical or abstract. You cannot focus your attention fully on a problem when some external authority (people or paper) is doing your thinking for you. You cannot deal with the world from a state of awareness when you have deadened the mind with a set of rules and regulations that prescribe, and condition, autopilot behavior. For there to be intelligence there must be clarity of perception, and clarity of perception cannot be given to you by anybody or any thing; you must earn it yourself.
This is the reason I am not interested in religion of any kind. I don’t want that mindset. I am not only not afraid of not being preoccupied with God, I embrace the lack of preoccupation.
I don’t want to try to find psychological security by attaching myself to a belief system or a symbol – no matter how many other people do it, or how good I feel when I’m with those people. It is very clear to me that something else is needed. We must be in a constant state of investigation and exploration for our intelligence to function. Any attempt to embrace a conclusion, so that we don’t have to think about it any longer, makes us dumber.
In the end, we either want the truth or we want to believe things. I think the only real fundamental choice we face in life is to either put out the energy needed to be in a state of search …or not.
That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. May the force be with you.
Rational thought must come from clarity of perception– not the other way around.
I don’t mean to imply that rational thought and clear perception don’t go hand in hand; they do. I mean that first you focus your attention on a problem or a situation with pure observation–uncluttered and unfiltered by thought–then thought is the tool that can lead to greater understanding.