Debate Comments: Bible or Atheism

[he_who_is_nobody]

He's trying to bottleneck the discussion from novel-size proportions of 10,000 words per post to a mere 1500 to 2000 words...

Fuck that. Bring on the novel. I really enjoyed reading Inferno's blog entry.

All I am saying is that if Inferno is going to put that much effort into writing the post, he should at least submit it to the debate. Everyone knows that dotoree is going to read it anyways and "respond" to it.

I might not read all of dotoree's posts because of how poorly written they are. Nevertheless, Inferno has a great command of the English language. Thus, reading large posts from him is not a problem.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

I imagine debating orally with TruthIsLife requires a shitload of coffee.

 

[Thomas Doubting]

and my hands tied on my back.. i would probably knock myself out with facepalms otherwise.

 

[Squawk]

Was refraining from posting until Inferno did so, and then been away for a while, so only just getting to this. 9000 words, and barely a single word on topic. The post was supposed to present evidence in support of the bible. Where is it? It isn't in the post. All we see are suppositions and examples of Christians doing things that are decent for the world. Well, for every good christian act I can find you a bad one, but thats irrelevant. Neither of those things goes to show anything about the truth of the bible.

The only sane thing to do is to give every possible benefit of the doubt to the evidence that points to God above all other options as well as committing some significant time to checking out the evidence for God fairly.

Confirmation bias, an admission of your own inherent bias towards a god delusion

B) CULTURE DIFFERENCES: - condom joke

Or note that this joke has been around since the dark ages and conclude that this is not an anecdote that was shared, but plaigerism of Jesper Carrot or similar.

This does NOT mean that you can just invent any interpretation you wish. This is just as bad linguistics as disregarding cultural contexts. Pumpkin above can't mean "insane" for example.

Why not? You've already made the argument that language is defined by the people who use it, a concept I'd agree with. You highlighted the new usage of the term gay. Why not a new usage for pumpkin? Your argument is self defeating

One simple summary of biblical faith is:

In the case of religion, it would be more like "trusting in what you can't see despite what you can see". We can quote phrases such as this at each other all day, they are an irrelevance. Religious faith is a worthless concept. Why should I care how the Bible defines faith? The bibles definition of faith is an irrelevance, since we are attempting here to ascertain if the bible has evidential support. Using biblical definitions in this manner is self-referencing, and can be dismissed outright.

Paul's writing here also summarizing Pascal's Wager, a strong logical evidence for God that has never been refuted (and all atheists strawman it)

Since Pascals wager is not an evidence for god, but rather a justification for belief, I contend that you don't even know what pascals wager is. In this instance the justification for belief comes from a misunderstanding of consequences, because it presumes knowledge of the supposed deities desires.

These are just some of the types of evidence that Bible authors cited & that made the case for Judaism & Christianity being a religion based on evidence more than any other in history.

Relevant how? We're trying to establish if the bible is evidentially supported, so self-reference is again ignored.

The Bible is a VERY accurate history book & almost nothing has a worse track record than skeptics of the Bible.

Dismissed as baseless assertion until you provide evidence in support of this conclusion.

People in history & the present have seen & observed supernatural beings, actions, processes in ways that are impossible to be imagination

Examples please or dismissed as baseless assertion.

Empowering faith[/color]: This is the crucial faith that connects to God's power to help us overcome addictions, destructive habits, dysfunctional thinking, abusive & dehumanizing behaviors

Hey look at that. You almost got something correct. A belief held that enables someone to overcome a given affliction. I agree, the power of the mind is truly awesome. Go ask any sports psychologist about the power of positive belief. It has no bearing on the truth of the thing being believed, however.

The Wright Brothers had faith that humans could fly. Reagan had faith that democracy would triumph over communism. This kind of faith inspired them to diligently work to achieve these results & they succeeded did.

Faith in an existence postulate vs faith in attribute. Things exist. Can they fly? Who knows. The wright brothers decided to find out, and it turned out they could. That's empiricism. Do gods exist? Well, thus far no evidence. That is a truly terrible example for you to pick, again demonstrating no understanding of the terms in use. Since this distinction seems to underpin much of your writing it might be worth concentrating on it.

God could have put the equations of relativity in the Bible without any difficulty or instructions on space travel. No problem at all. But, He gave us a brain & wanted us to enjoy the thrill of discovering what He created & creatively adapting it.

Funny how the things in the bible tie in neatly with the things known at the time the bible was written though. Almost as if it was written by men really...

The Bible doesn't claim that it has all knowledge (only God has that & many Christians believe that God's choice to give us freedom limits that to some degree). It just claims that it is the beginning of wisdom.

Are bats birds again now? How many legs on insects? Sorry I keep forgetting, lets go look at the bible.

Universal common descent has also impeded much progress in causing people to assume that most ancients were barbarian bozos.

Evidence for this idiotic statement please. Evolution would not impact the human capacity for intelligence in the last 20k years, too slow a process. This statement again reveals total ignorance of the time scale required for evolutionary processes to work.

This is only one example of Marx's explicit atheism which caused him to ridicule religion (he did rightly condemn some pseudo religion of his time..but his alternative was far worse).

Atheism is not prescriptive and cannot cause ridicule. The idiocy that is a religious position when considered by any empirical measure would be a reason to ridicule religion, though.

Some think that religion should only be followed only if all other options are exhausted.

God of the gaps you mean, inserting god as a placeholder for knowledge. Also a silly position to hold.

He he defined truth as a view that proves useful to the believer.

A perfect demonstration of my earlier point, but of precisely zero benefit in establishing the actual truth of the position in question. The points made by James can basically be boiled down to "I like it, therefore I'll use it". To define truth as "belief which is useful" is to devalue the entire concept of truth in this particular debate. It negates all notion of evidential support.

Some things are possible to learn by trial & error, true. But, if that's the way the Bible writers, some of whom were only shepherds & blue collar workers with rudimentary education, got their knowledge, then we should see 100s of cultures around the world with higher levels of longevity, success, scientific knowledge, rationality & all sorts of wisdom than the Judeo-Christian worldview has produced. The fact is that we don't see this.

Average life expectancy 200 years ago in the USA was what? What is it now? Religiosity has dropped in that time. Tell me what has caused the increase please.

e) JOY COMES FROM SADISM, EXPLOITATION, USE OF POWER TO CONTROL OTHERS, ETC

If you had said this was a quote from the Vaticans internal memos, I would have believed you.

8) VIEW OF WOMEN: The status of women was very low & they were considered to be of not much value in many cultures

Are you actually going to argue that the bible gives women equal standing with men? Quotes please

You wrote (regarding 10+ years health from the Bible),

"But let's once again say, for the sake of argument, that this is completely & absolutely true. So what? I could make up a religion about snow monsters & the Loch Ness monster & then claim that because adherents of this religion have better sex, that makes it true. It doesn't."

1st, the Bible has evidence from NUMEROUS fields.

You're supposed to be giving this evidence, yet all we see again and again and again and again and again (added for emphasis) is insistence that the evidence exists. It doesn't, you know it, so you just insist it. Provide it!

CRUCIAL: DON'T WAIT FOR 100% PROOF. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO WILL LOSE OUT.
Everyone uses faith to one degree or another. All. Often we have to have faith in what scientists say they have seen or detected, but none of us have, such as positrons & different types of anti-matter. This is similar to why Christians believe in God.

Science has in place a means of results verification. People talk of peer review, but in actuality the beauty of science is that results and methods are published at all. You can go and repeat the experiments should you so choose. Show them to be wrong, and you invalidate the research. This can in no way be equated with the religious position on faith.

Unfortunately, many are afraid of committing to God similar to how many guys are afraid to commit to marriage & lose out on many benefits in marriage.

Man exists: Known. Woman exists: Known. Bond between them is then an attribute, or a union, between known entities.

Man exists: Known. God exists: Not known. Bond between a known and unknown entity = idiocy.

HOW CAN WE BENEFIT FROM PRAGMATIC EVIDENCE FASTEST & MOST?
I can't think of any easier way to decide on worldview & philosophies than asking these 2 questions:
1) Which view(s) has enriched the quality & enjoyment of human life here on earth the most & empowers people to make the most progress in life, relationships, health, love, knowledge, innovation, progress, etc.?

Why are we discussing worldviews? I thought we were here to discuss atheism and the bible. Atheism being non-existence of an existence postulate, and the bible being a book, and neither being a worldview, this can be ignored as irrelevant.

2) Is there credible evidence based on accepted standards of evidence that God is real & He is willing to give us a life beyond this one? What are the conditions for that?

Surely that's what you are supposed to be providing? Why not do it now? Not a shred of evidence in any post thus far, just references to supposed evidence.

"Around 600 BC, Daniel of Judah conducted"¦the earliest recorded clinical trial. His trial compared the health effects of a vegetarian diet with those of a royal Babylonian diet over a 10-day period. The strengths of his study include the use of a contemporaneous control group, use of an independent assessor of outcome, & striking brevity in the published report." Dr. David Grimes, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7501328

Oooh, sounds like science. I like it. So what we're saying is that just reading info from a non-tested book is bullshit, and we need to use empiricism to establish whether or not it is indeed true. I agree.

I've ignored the long list of things done by Christians, since I could equally have made a list of things done by bald men. Nothing about their acts speaks for the veracity of the bible.

Could all these Nobel prize winning benefits all have come from something that was just made up by "bronze aged desert shepherds". This claim requires more faith than almost anything else imaginable & is quite laughable.

The only laughable thing here is that you see causality.

The majority of your post here does not address biblical accuracy. It addresses the impact that biblical belief has on society. Why don't you address the subject at hand?

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Dotoree took the book and looked at it carefully. 'That seems to be done right ,' he began.

'You're holding it upside down!' Inferno interrupted.

'To be sure I was!' Dotoree said gaily as she turned it round for him. 'I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right , though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now , and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents ,'

'Certainly,' said Inferno.

'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Inferno said.

Dotoree smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't , till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Inferno objected.

'When I use a word,' Dotoree said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean , neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Inferno, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Dotoree, 'which is to be master , that's all.'

Thank you brettppalmer.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

Thank you brettppalmer.

Thank you, Lewis Caroll

 

[DepricatedZero]

so dotoree is a Wizard?

dotoree is never early nor late, she arrives precisely when she means to!

 

[Laurens]

I imagine debating orally with TruthIsLife requires a shitload of coffee.

Or tranquillizers

 

[theyounghistorian77]

6) KARL MARX: Marx was both a communist & an atheist. Since communism is an economic system, at BEST, it was both communism & atheism that influenced the attacks on religion & believers. But, it's far more likely that atheism's ridicule of religion as a hindrance & an enemy of progress (same as today) was what inspired atheists with power to try to remove the obstacles.

Marx wrote in his dissertation, "Go with your gods to a country in which other gods are worshipped, & you will be shown that you are the victim of fancies & abstractions. & rightly. Anyone who had brought a migrant god to the ancient Greeks, would have found the proof of the non-existence of this god, because it did not exist for the Greeks. What is the case in a certain country for certain foreign gods, takes place for god in general in the country of reason: it is an area in which his existence ceases" (K. Marx, Frammento dell'appendice della dissertazione dottorale, in A. Sabetti, Sulla fondazione del materialismo storico, Florence 1962, p. 415).

This is only one example of Marx's explicit atheism which caused him to ridicule religion (he did rightly condemn some pseudo religion of his time..but his alternative was far worse).

Seeing as most of my more recent posts have dealt with the subject of Marx, im Starting to get a little sick and tired of reading him, just in order to correct misunderstandings of what it is he actually said, but i'll pick apart this just because i can. Luckily the whole "dissertation" is available online and the part Dotoree decides to quote from can be located in the appendix.

here is the quotation in full:

Marx[/url]"]"The proofs of the existence of God are either mere hollow tautologies. Take for instance the ontological proof. This only means:

"that which I conceive for myself in a real way (realiter), is a real concept for me",

something that works on me. In this sense all gods, the pagan as well as the Christian ones, have possessed a real existence. Did not the ancient Moloch reign? Was not the Delphic Apollo a real power in the life of the Greeks? Kant's critique means nothing in this respect. If somebody imagines that he has a hundred talers, if this concept is not for him an arbitrary, subjective one, if he believes in it, then these hundred imagined talers have for him the same value as a hundred real ones. For instance, he will incur debts on the strength of his imagination, his imagination will work, in the same way as all humanity has incurred debts on its gods. The contrary is true. Kant's example might have enforced the ontological proof. Real talers have the same existence that the imagined gods have. Has a real taler any existence except in the imagination, if only in the general or rather common imagination of man? Bring paper money into a country where this use of paper is unknown, and everyone will laugh at your subjective imagination. Come with your gods into a country where other gods are worshipped, and you will be shown to suffer from fantasies and abstractions. And justly so. He who would have brought a Wendic [West Slavic] god to the ancient Greeks would have found the proof of this god's non-existence. Indeed, for the Greeks he did not exist. That which a particular country is for particular alien gods, the country of reason is for God in general, a region in which he ceases to exist.

As to the second alternative, that such proofs are proofs of the existence of essential human self-consciousness, logical explanations of it, take for example the ontological proof. Which being is immediate when made the subject of thought? Self-consciousness.

Taken in this sense all proofs of the existence of God are proofs of his non-existence. They are refutations of all concepts of a God. The true proofs should have the opposite character: "Since nature has been badly constructed, God exists", "Because the world is without reason, therefore God exists", "Because there is no thought, there is God". But what does that say, except that, for whom the world appears without reason, hence who is without reason himself, for him God exists? Or lack of reason is the existence of God."

So Marx is, here at least, not advocating any sort of violence against religion but rather discussing the Ontological argument and in intrest to Dotoree's quoting of Marx here, Marx discusses in paticular Kant's critique of it. It seems quite evident to me the "Come with your gods..." line is as much to the point Marx was making as the "paper money" reference which came just before Dotoree's quotation, which also Dotoree misses out.

As to Marx himself, yes he was pretty much an atheist, so what? Doesn't mean all atheists are "communists" if this debate is soon to go down "that line"; Marx noted on this himself:

Marx[/url]"]"Communism begins from the outset (Owen) with atheism; but atheism is at first far from being communism; indeed, that atheism is still mostly an abstraction. The philanthropy of atheism is therefore at first only philosophical, abstract philanthropy, and that of communism is at once real and directly bent on action.

[...]

But since for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being above nature and man, a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man, has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as the denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. It proceeds from the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as the essence. Socialism is man's positive self-consciousness, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is man's positive reality, no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism. Communism is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society."

I do not know about the rest of you, but i have a feeling that Dotoree, like some other "christians" in here have very little understanding of what Marxism or Communism actually is! And if he, like some others thinks that the Soviet, Union like state is what Marx had in mind and would have supported, then he would be mistaken. And blaming every single death [including the deaths that are the result of say, famine] that occured under say, Stalin or Mao's rule purely on Atheism is, of course absurd.

I think i'll leave this post at that for now

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

A Word Cloud of dotoree's posts in the "debate" (minus his response to Squawk).

 

[bluejatheist]

A Word Cloud of dotoree's posts in the "debate" (minus his response to Squawk).

here

http://www.wordcounter.com/

Provides a list with counts of each of the 25-200 most used words

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Can we get an update on this "debate" or do I know as much as anyone else?

 

[australopithecus]

The debate has been updated. Dotoree has replied (he was busy, who knew?).

 

[Gnug215]

Atheism itself is largely an emotion based belief wishing to escape the discipline of religion, similar to a truant schoolboy wanting to escape the discipline of studying science. In both cases it is to the person's detriment to follow emotions instead of wise discipline which brings great rewards. Many atheists like Huxley reject the evidence for God for emotional reasons (dislike of controlling their emotions, relationship problems with Christians, desires to be sexually promiscuous, shake off moral restrictions on how they wish to live their lives, etc) because like the Jews they want to do whatever they feel like. But like the Jews & Hitchens, it harms them in this life. If atheists were rationally consistent they should reject all of science too because of scandals, relationship problems & warnings about dangers, etc.

No, you arrogant, projecting, assumptive ass. This is the kind of simple-minded nonsense you have to convince yourself of to remain a theist.

Wanting to escape God's rules doesn't make God disappear. We're not 5-years-old.

Wanting to escape God's rules would actually mean a strengthening and fervent belief in God.

If all of us non-believers were so damn obsessed with escaping responsibility for rules, then you'd expect to see a frigging murderous/thieving rampage from like (estimate) 10% of the world's population.
But as it happens, most of us seem to be law-abiding citizens (even moreso than religious people, according to various statistics. Go figure!). Why, it's almost like we have a sense of morality, isn't it? It is almost like we're pretty good people at the core, and we don't devolve into murderous, thieving beasts at the first sign of free reign, isn't it?

You're just pushing this feeble-minded, juvenile nonsens onto us because you are jealous of us that we don't feel bad about masturbating, about listening to awesome music, and about being emotionally stunted, whereas you do.
Theists like you are simply just jealous of non-believers (and apparently now Jews as well) because we are able to live good, emotionally, sexually healthy lives, being good people, without the fear of some kind of supernatural punishment hanging over our heads.
It's almost like theists like that are in reality depraved, evil people, who are on the verge of bursting in a fit of insanity and killing, but only just manage to keep their feral selves in check due to a very, very ambitious reward-and-punishment system.

Are you actually a murderous psychopath on the inside? Is that what you're trying to tell us?

And you have the gaul to bring up the Jews. I mean, really... find me a religion that has more rules!

No, the real copout when it comes to rules is Christianity: Whatever insane and fucked up shit (oh no, I'm using bad words, and not even feeling bad about it!) you may pull, Jesus is there for the rescue.

Talk about avoiding the rules!

Normally, I'm respectful, friendly and very much in (healthy) control of my emotions, but your degenerate, bigoted (you're basically demonizing whole groups (Jews, atheists) - getting ready for genocide much?), drivelling insanity deserves every bit of scolding that it can get, so screw you!

 

[Prolescum]

Just started reading, but if it's riled up the ever graceful Gnug, it's gotta be bad.

Edit: Oh for fuck's sake. He's Gished all over the place again!

 

[Gnug215]

Just started reading, but if it's riled up the ever graceful Gnug, it's gotta be bad.

I actually skimmed most of it in under a minute, but that random paragraph caught my eye.
(I just edited, if you want to read more rilage...)

Also, screw you again, TruthIsLife7!

 

[tuxbox]

Just started reading, but if it's riled up the ever graceful Gnug, it's gotta be bad.

I actually skimmed most of it in under a minute, but that random paragraph caught my eye.
(I just edited, if you want to read more rilage...)

Also, screw you again, TruthIsLife7!

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[australopithecus]

It should be noted Dotoree's full reply is 300,000 characters long. Just try to imagine the concentration of wrong in that.

 

[Prolescum]

It should be noted Dotoree's full reply is 300,000 characters long. Just try to imagine the concentration of wrong in that.

Dude, 40,000 of those are ampersands.

Edit: Okay, it's only 855.

Edit: Having waded through 80% of this colossal testament to hubris, TruthIsOnHoliday7 is GUARANTEED to win the Piloshitus award this year.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

... and then he posted another infodump. This is fucking bullshit.