Atheists against communism

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Curious11 said:
  1. There’s this book called the Bible but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that proves its claims.
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Actually, there is lots of evidence that proves its claims. I suspect you just haven’t looked into much of it.

Your “the Bible is a fairy tale” narrative might be convincing to like-minded credulous types with an atheistic bias, but that hardly settles the case to anyone with a willingness to be impartial and objective on the matter.

Here is a start…

 
Curious11 said:
You’re just as alone as I am with your imperfect mind on this.
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That makes my point actually.

How would you know you were alone and in the dark unless there is some external light of truth piercing into that darkness?

Unless, of course, you are claiming to be your own light of truth, which is pretty much what you are stuck with.

Either there is truth that penetrates our darkness to reveal it as darkness or there is no truth and we wouldn’t even have an inkling that we are in darkness.

To have any kind of realization of imperfection there would have to exist perfection that we have some access to.

You couldn’t just claim imperfection exists without access to any perfection at all. That would just be nonsensical. Imperfection relative to what, precisely? You may as well not make any claim at all.
 
That makes no sense. Are you telling me it’s impossible to imagine a perfect circle even if there is no such thing? Are you therefore claiming perfect circles exist?
 
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That’s 53,44 minutes long, but I’ll take a look at it. I suppose I’ll give you some feedback via PM at some point
 
Curious11 said:
That makes no sense. Are you telling me it’s impossible to imagine a perfect circle even if there is no such thing? Are you therefore claiming perfect circles exist?
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Yes, actually. It is impossible to imagine a perfect circle because your imagination lacks the kind of precision necessary to do so. The reason you know any particular circle is not perfect is because you have access via conceptualization to a more precise and perfect means of assessing any circle. That would be your mind being able to use the precision of mathematics, either through mental activity (not imagination) or through computer imaging tools and calculations, writing implements, etc. Ergo by comparing existing circles to more precise conceptualized circles you can notice the differences.

Even drawing a circle and comparing it to a more perfectly drawn one a visualization helps distinguish imperfect from more perfect. Still, there is an ultimate reliance on a concept of circle that functions in the background as the arbiter.

Yes, perfect circles exist – conceptually and mathematically.
 
Perfect circles exist conceptually ONLY. In the physical world they do not exist. Just like no first human ever existed even if we can imagine one, and no dragons exist even if we can imagine them.

You can imagine a baby born with knowledge of language and already able to speak, that does not mean such a baby exists. Your claim that you can only conceive of things that exist is completely ludicrous
 
Curious11 said:
Perfect circles exist conceptually ONLY. In the physical world they do not exist. Just like no first human ever existed even if we can imagine one, and no dragons exist even if we can imagine them.
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Well, no, actually. Your claim that perfect circles only exist conceptually has nothing to sustain it. The best you can conclude is that we don’t know if perfect circles exist or not. You cannot make a logical step based only upon evidence from your experience that they do not or cannot exist.

That is pushing beyond the bounds of induction to making an a priori claim. Big logical no no there.
Curious11 said:
You can imagine a baby born with knowledge of language and already able to speak, that does not mean such a baby exists. Your claim that you can only conceive of things that exist is completely ludicrous
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Your baby example is just missing the point completely. In addition, you are confusing imagination with conception.

A baby that can “already speak” is not a requisite concept for language or knowledge, but the concept of a circle is required to comprehend the idea of circle and instances of them in the real world.

Your claims may be based upon “common knowledge” but they are misconceived nonetheless. Kind of like a bunch of people trying to draw circles freehand. Mileage may vary, especially with regard to what can be concluded, metaphysically speaking, about reality.
 
HarryStotle said:
That is pushing beyond the bounds of induction to making an a priori claim. Big logical no no there.
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Ummmm, are you pulling a prank? Are you seriously writing these words?

So claiming abundant knowledge of the intentions and desires of a perfect, loving and all powerful being which is claimed to exist with NO evidence (let’s be intellectually honest here, if you demand I open my mind to the existence of perfect circles with no evidence, you must open your mind to the possible non-existence of God with no evidence, or you’re a hypocrite) is good, but concluding the inexistence of perfect circles as a physical impossibility based on scientific reasoning and observation and measurement is a “logical no no”.

How do you expect me to take this seriously?
 
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You said I can’t say a mind is imperfect without resorting to a perfect mind to compare it to, and then claimed such a mind must exist or else there is no way to tell if my mind is imperfect.

I said that’s ludicrous, you can imagine a human baby that can speak and run 3 minutes after birth, but you don’t need it to exist to know any other baby can’t do that.
 
Curious11 said:
I don’t believe in another life because I haven’t seen any evidence to tell me otherwise
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Is physical evidence always necessary to prove something is true? There is no physical evidence for a conscience yet many have one.

But anyway, back to the thread.

Would you say all communists are atheists but not all atheists are communists?
 
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Curious11 said:
Ummmm, are you pulling a prank? Are you seriously writing these words?
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Let’s break this down just a little.
  1. You are confusing “physical” existence or instantiation in matter with reality. For your point to hold that perfect circles cannot be real in the broad sense, you would have to assume that reality is the same as physical existence. I certainly wouldn’t just concede that.
  2. For someone living 2000 years ago, if you had told them that computers, automobiles, jet airliners, televisions, etc., etc., could be “real” in the sense of instantiated in physical reality, they would have laughed at you. Those have become instantiated in the physical world that we know. How do you know with any degree of certainty what can be real (physically speaking) or not, or cannot become real? You don’t. So I wouldn’t go making bold claims about reality given that you are limited to a certain perspective and bound within time, space and matter. You have no idea of the extent of reality, despite what you think you know.
  3. Since I never claimed that perfect circles could be instantiated in the physical world, you are creating a straw man. Now I wouldn’t just suppose they couldn’t be, despite your claims that they are a “physical impossibility based on scientific reasoning and observation and measurement.” However, even granting your point that they couldn’t be possible as physical objects, that isn’t sufficient to prove they are not real in a non-physical sense. Unless, of course, you assume all reality just reduces to physical reality. Care to make the case for eliminative materialism?
  4. Your claim that the proposition “God exists” has NO evidence to support it is not intellectually honest. Unless, you wish to accuse a huge number of brilliant minds that preceded you of believing things without evidence. Aquinas, Newton, Copernicus, Leibnitz, Descartes, Pascal, Aristotle, Plato… …the list goes on and on. No evidence? None? What convinced them?
  5. Furthermore, simply because you don’t see the evidence does not mean no evidence exists. Take, for example, those who witnessed the physical appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection. If those actually did occur, wouldn’t first hand experiences of the risen Jesus count as indisputable evidence, at least for those who witnessed the appearances? I mean, just because you don’t accept that they occurred based upon your own limited experiences of reality does not mean we should discount all evidence just because you don’t accept it.
How would you explain a jet airliner or aircraft carrier to a first century Palestinian Jew or Roman? They would discount your “fairy tales” for many of the same reasons you are discounting evidences they or others may have had for God – miracles, raisings from the dead and the Resurrection of Jesus. Perhaps you are just a tad too parochial regarding your experiences and materialism in the way that you treat those as “gospel.”

Yours is an imperfect mind, remember. Add to that access to only limited experiences of reality and a proclivity to presume only physical reality exists.
 
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Curious11 said:
You said I can’t say a mind is imperfect without resorting to a perfect mind to compare it to, and then claimed such a mind must exist or else there is no way to tell if my mind is imperfect.
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This is a technical point, but “imperfect” means “not perfect.” You couldn’t use the term “imperfect mind” accurately without specifying what a perfect mind would be like. Otherwise, the term “imperfect” is too inaccurate to be meaningful.
Curious11 said:
I said that’s ludicrous, you can imagine a human baby that can speak and run 3 minutes after birth, but you don’t need it to exist to know any other baby can’t do that.
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What does this have to do with the use of the word “imperfect,” unless you want to make the further claim that perfect babies can speak and run 3 minutes after birth? That just seems bizarre. I would have a different set of criteria for determining what a perfect baby would be. It wouldn’t include running or talking. That just seems ludicrous.
 
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Curious11 said:
Yeah I don’t see Christianity and communism as incompatible at all, to be honest.

Don’t take offense, but I suspect the church opposes communism for reasons other than theological: to protect its property, and also as a result of political pressures.
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Wouldn’t you suppose that the Church opposes communism for many of the same reasons any semi-wise human being would?
  1. Its implementation led to the deaths of about 120 000 000 human beings in the span of about one century.
  2. It is unwise to give any state or agents of the state absolute power over its citizens. This is the principle reason why the founding fathers of the United States wrote into the Constitution the checks and balances which serve to limit political power at all levels.
Seems like a no-brainer to me and my imperfect mind.

No need to make up fairy tales about “protection of property” (as if that is necessarily a bad thing) or unexamined “political pressures.”
 
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Curious11 said:
Just like no first human ever existed even if we can imagine one, and no dragons exist even if we can imagine them.
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I just have a few comments based on what you wrote here.
  1. if we use the theory of evolution only, then a first human would have existed. Natural selection & mutations would have happened over and over again until we eventually had the very first human. Now obviously, with evolution would have required a minimum of two humans (one male & one female) to develop in the same area in order for them to mate. But one of them would have been born first - hence the first human. It may or may not have happened as poetically as the Book of Genesis describes, but there was a first human and one mother we all descended from. Science tells us that much. “Mitochondrial Eve” might not have been the real Eve (could have been Noah’s wife or anyone else) but the point is, we do all come from a first mother and there had to be a first man who was genetically compatible. Point is: there was a first human, even if the first woman came thousands of years before the first man; as one author suggested in Smithsonian Magazine.
  2. As far as “dragons” they did exist and do exist today. But not the way we read about them in mythology. It’s very possible that myths surrounding dragons may have originated from the Komodo Dragon or something similar. As far a “flying dragons” it is theoretically possible that some ancient human may have discovered the bones of a flying dinosaur centuries ago and that lead to the myths of flying dinosaurs.


It’s also possible that mythical dragons are a combination of the several, real life “dragons” that exist on the earth today.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150426-ten-amazing-real-life-dragons

My point is this - the Bible is NOT a history book nor a science book. It does NOT provide a scientific & historic account of prehistory. What it does, is provides us with the stories and information necessary for salvation. It’s a way for us to learn about God and learn the moral foundations we need for our salvation.
That’s why we call it “salvation history.”

God Bless
 
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No I would not. There are communists that believe in God, both marxists and non-Marxist communists
 
You’re demanding from others what you refuse to ask of yourself
 
The church is a political entity now, like it or not. What do you think would have happened if it openly declared itself as sympathetic to communism in the middle of the Cold War?

A church that would make decisions based only on economic advantage for itself would seem no church worthwhile to me. So yes, it would be bad if that were the case.
 
A Mitochondrial eve is defined as “the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers”. The most recent woman.

That’s not the first human, since she clearly has human ancestors.

There is no first human because evolution ocurrs as a transition. Our ancestors slowly evolved and evolved, gradually acquiring human characteristics until species emerged that became gradually very similar to us. At what point do you say humanity starts and our not-exactly human ancestors end? Even today, no one is the same exact human as me, because my genes mutate so I’m not a perfect combination of my parents genes, just like no one else is, and all humanity except subsaharan Africans have Neanderthal DNA, yet we’re all equally human aren’t we? There is no clear cut point of what constitutes a human and what constitutes a close-but-not-quite

Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent female ancestor from whom all humans descend from their mothers. But not the first human at all
 
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@curious11 - I know that a Mitochondrial eve is defined the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers.

That’s why I said she could be Noah’s wife.

Regardless, that was NOT my point. My point was that there was a first Homo sapien sapien. Yes, evolution occurs in transition but one of them was born first. Someone had to be the first homo sapien sapien. Even if “Adam” was born & died 10,000 years before “Eve” or seconds before her - eventually there was the first male homo sapien sapien and the first female homo sapien sapien. Heck, “Eve” could have even been born first

I’m sorry, but you are looking at the Genesis account through protestant lenses. Catholics are allowed to understand it as “theological poetry.”

To sum this up, I once read someone say that the Book of Genesis is written in three ways:
  1. Parts are though God’s point of view — for example the 6 days of Creation. If you live outside of time & space, 6 days to create the the universe & all life on earth sounds pretty realistic.
  2. Ancient humans were not ready to understand the workings of the universe, therefore God allows us to learn and develop at our own pace. (Heck, we still are not developed enough to understand the full workings of nature & the universe.) Therefore, the Bible is written using “theological poetry” so it’s simply enough for ancient man to understand yet still true for future man when read in context & understanding the intended message.
  3. God loves to use parables. That’s why Jesus used them a ton and why many parts of the Old Testament used figurative & mythical language. I like to look at like this: if God was a public high school teacher, He wouldn’t be teaching science or history. He would be a teacher of poetry & the language arts, with a little classical philosophy thrown in. 🙂
God Bless
 
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