C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
Or who they could have created a better universe.Regardless of God’s existence the real question is “What are we to make of those who claim to know how to improve the universe from start to finish?”
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I
inocente
Guest
What are we to make of a design fan who doesn’t answer questions?
That we can answer questions, but he cannot?
I showed you my answers, now you show me yours. Here’s the question again: Did God design fluffy little kittens?
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
He designed the world that made it possible for fluffy little kittens to exist.
Now can we get off your fluffy little kittens and get on with the grand design?
Will you answer a question?
As a Baptist, why do you not see design in the 1st Chapter of Genesis? Do you not see God laying out a plan for Creation of the universe that culminates in the Creation of Man?
Is Genesis all wrong as to design? On what authority is it wrong? Yours?
Your are very good at demanding answers, but very poor at giving them.
How about some cooperation here?
You said: “God creates, and does so without a computer-aided design package or a drawing board or even a white beard.”
You are talking about devices that are distinctly human. God can’t design without being human and using human devices?
Please stop with the “fluffy little kittens” schtick. Thank you!
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Vonsalza
Guest
Sorry for the “away”. My wife demanded a holiday and I happily yielded.
What you may not have considered is that most religious people can make an identical appeal to this lack of certainty.
Do I believe in God? Sure I do. But on a material basis, am I fully 100% certain that God is as real as my mailbox? Of course not. Ergo, by the newer conventions being tossed around by defensive atheists, I’m technically an “agnostic theist” and should not be burdened with proving my case anymore than an agnostic atheist should be burdened with proving theirs.
My “agnosticism” is not unique among Christians. I imagine most would grudgingly admit at some point in their life that there’s at least a 1/(1000^1000) chance that there may not be a God.
We do call it “faith” for many reasons.
I feel as though we’ve discussed this elsewhere.
In short - as I’ve repeated ad nauseam, feelings are quite irrelevant.
Non-argument.
Directly from the same aforementioned wiki:
“During a blood meal, an infected fly (genus Chrysops, day-biting flies) introduces third-stage filarial larvae onto the skin of the human host, where they penetrate into the bite wound.”
“Loa loa does not normally affect one’s vision but can be painful when moving about the eyeball or across the bridge of the nose.”
But to the point, then you propose a God that in not omnipotent? Now your fellow Spanish Baptists would like a word with you…
Then they need to pick another word. “Atheist” and “asymmetrical” are negated in the same way. But for the most part, I find the word to be descriptive of their beliefs. They only invoke agnosticism when confronted about their claim - as you mentioned.
What you may not have considered is that most religious people can make an identical appeal to this lack of certainty.
Do I believe in God? Sure I do. But on a material basis, am I fully 100% certain that God is as real as my mailbox? Of course not. Ergo, by the newer conventions being tossed around by defensive atheists, I’m technically an “agnostic theist” and should not be burdened with proving my case anymore than an agnostic atheist should be burdened with proving theirs.
My “agnosticism” is not unique among Christians. I imagine most would grudgingly admit at some point in their life that there’s at least a 1/(1000^1000) chance that there may not be a God.
We do call it “faith” for many reasons.
No argument there. I think the arguments might arise when we start drawing conclusions.
Dazzling rhetoric, there.
Since the only thing all self-professed “Christians” have in common would be the use of the label, your efforts to establish premises universally applicable to all Christians will be continually frustrated in failure.
I feel as though we’ve discussed this elsewhere.
Honest question here: if God’s real, do you really think you’re going to be 100% on-board with everything it does? Does my having smart, beautiful children or a tragically schizophrenic brother make any sort declaration about God beyond “these things are permitted to exist”?
In short - as I’ve repeated ad nauseam, feelings are quite irrelevant.
The “agnostic argument” is incredibly hard to defeat. I understand the frustration. It’s why I admire the handful of authentic agnostics who espouse it while absolutely loathing the atheists that try to invoke it. Intellectual integrity vs. Escapist anti-theism. (not aimed particularly at you, btw)
The martyrs of history would like a word with you on this…
Am I also “going against the deity’s will” by logging, mining and building boats and airplanes so as to go places where my biology does not allow me to be unassisted?
Non-argument.
I think you need to read up a little more on your subject before paining it as some Lovecraftian Horror for the sake of childish sensationalism.
Directly from the same aforementioned wiki:
“During a blood meal, an infected fly (genus Chrysops, day-biting flies) introduces third-stage filarial larvae onto the skin of the human host, where they penetrate into the bite wound.”
“Loa loa does not normally affect one’s vision but can be painful when moving about the eyeball or across the bridge of the nose.”
But to the point, then you propose a God that in not omnipotent? Now your fellow Spanish Baptists would like a word with you…
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ANV
Guest
Atheism is just a disbelief in gods and such a disbelief in gods and often religions can lead to lots of good things.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
There have been attempts and campaigns by a few to choose “better” words, but they haven’t caught on and often times were associated with additional specific positions for which a non-religious person might not agree. I don’t expect a new word to become popular any time soon. Convincing people to make changes to their word usage isn’t necessarily easy and the success of doing so hasn’t always been predictable. While there are broad and narrow senses of the word the modern uses seem to be more narrow than earlier where the term could be applied to anyone that didn’t worship the god(s) of the larger society (by this usage a Hindu in the USA could be considered an atheist).
Actually, it’s o_mlly that said that . I mentioned that people may use qualifiers to better identify their position. But I haven’t said anything about any specific qualifiers. I did mention a scenario in which a person is perceived to be shifting their position while their actual position may have been the same all throughout a conversation and that I thought o_mlly may have been observing that before.
But on that note, I have a coworker that is a pescatarian. It seams a lot of people don’t know what he means when he says that. When in a client office and someone is about to order lunch for us he tells them that he’s a vegetarian. That’s not quite right, but when communicating with brevity it gets people thinking in the ball park of his dietary requirements. When he has more time to converse he is able to better inform them of his dietary requirements. When communication is brief labels that are more well known tend to be used. When having a longer discussion expect more of the nuances to be made known. This isn’t necessarily because a person is changing position.
There are some terms that are applied to more specific positions for people that are not convinced of the existence of any gods; apatheist, ignosticism, and a few others. While they are more specific I don’t think an individual will get wide recognition of them in the general public. Often times a person asking is first only interested with whether or not one is convinced God; if the answer is "no"there may be no further interest in hearing of the nuances of a person’s position. When filling out a survey or form these words don’t appear. If they choose another word unless it becomes widely popular that word may still have to choose “atheist” because its an available option.
Perhaps a conversation for another day, but I’ve encountered many different uses of the word “faith” and am usually inclined to ask someone in these forums which usage they are invoking when they present the word. It’s been used to refer to belief without evidence and belief reasoned from evidence with some variations from both of these.
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Vonsalza
Guest
Ah, so they’re institutionally forced into using words without respect to their proper meaning in order to accommodate the apparently many situations they encounter that requires them to disclose their specific religion without any sort of “other” or “specified” field - especially in this increasingly post-modern age of worm-genders and zoological bills of rights (at least in the west).
Seems legit
Or (maybe worthy of equal consideration) they don’t think there’s a God but don’t want to be called upon to provide evidence for their belief in the same way many demand it of theists. And as this “sting” may be felt by virtually all of their educated, there could be some response among the intellectual elite that attempts to redefine “atheism” as to avoid the burden of proof that is always assumed when one changes their position on any subject away from “undecided”, “unknown” or “agnostic”. This group then “sells” their revisions to the less educated but “religiously” zealous adherents to atheism - which swallow the tripe with relief on their faces.
Maybe this began to amass during the 1970s at Oxford with revised publications popping up in the 1990s and increasing over the next few decades. Who knows?
Just a thought.
Seems legit
Or (maybe worthy of equal consideration) they don’t think there’s a God but don’t want to be called upon to provide evidence for their belief in the same way many demand it of theists. And as this “sting” may be felt by virtually all of their educated, there could be some response among the intellectual elite that attempts to redefine “atheism” as to avoid the burden of proof that is always assumed when one changes their position on any subject away from “undecided”, “unknown” or “agnostic”. This group then “sells” their revisions to the less educated but “religiously” zealous adherents to atheism - which swallow the tripe with relief on their faces.
Maybe this began to amass during the 1970s at Oxford with revised publications popping up in the 1990s and increasing over the next few decades. Who knows?
Just a thought.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
I myself tend to avoid referring to a specific word use as “proper” and instead refer to “earlier usages” since many of the usages that people term “proper” not haven’t always been considered so. Over time some usages became more popular and we use them today. There was a fad sometime during the 19th century of intentionally altering a word to have new spelling a word and then making an abbreviated word from it. During this period the phrase “all correct” was written as “orl korrect.” Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But the abbreviation of this phrase became popular and is in frequent use today. This is just one source of linguistic drift. Our modern usage of english words is full of it. As I said in another thread:
"ThinkingSapien:
If a person tells me that they are Hindu or Muslim I generally only take it only as a statement of their religious disposition, that the person is at least mostly convinced of some interpretation of Hinduism or Islam. I don’t take it as an attempt to challenge my position or change my mind. So long as there isn’t an attempt to convince anyone or justify this position to someone the burden doesn’t come into play. I don’t think they care if I am personally convinced of their religion or not. If you encounter someone that isn’t convinced there are any gods they might not care if you are convinced by that or not and may remain unmotivated to engage in any debate. This is the case if the person positively believes there are no gods or if the person as simply not yet convinced that there is one. There’s no need of any special word use to not engage in debate. Some people that are Christian also don’t care to debate about it.
General dictionaries capture word usage. While people attempt to apply them prescriptively dictionaries are generally written descriptively. Various well known dictionaries such as Oxford and Merriam-Webster’s talk about this all the time as do their lexicographers (See Kory Stamper of Merriam-Webster, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Ammon Shea of Oxford, Bad English: A history of linguistic Aggravation, , John McWhorter, Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, Words on the Move). Definitions that you see change in these dictionaries are the results of changes in the word usage by the public, especially in written materials as these find their ways into the corpus of the dictionary. It is because people often use “literally” to mean “virtually” that (almost making it an auto-antonym) that you can find both definitions in recent general dictionaries. People didn’t start using the term that way because it appeared in a dictionary that way first. To quote the previously mentioned Ammon Shea:Maybe this began to amass during the 1970s at Oxford with revised publications popping up in the 1990s and increasing over the next few decades. Who knows?
Just a thought.
Ammon Shea:
The previous mentioned John McWhorter describes dictionaries as being like photographs of a moving subject; they reflect where something was at an instant in time. But languages that are not dead are subject to continuous change.
I wouldn’t give Oxford the credit for evolving usages of words that you see. They just log it. If you or your library have a subscription to OED you can view the listing of source publications that influenced updated definitions.
BTW: Fun Fact - material published against the marriage of same sex couples ended finding it’s way into the collection of material that caused Marriam Webster to update their definition of marriage in 2003 to include same sex couples.
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inocente
Guest
You didn’t answer my question and I asked you to do so. The rules of conversation may be confusing to you, but stick at it, you’ll master it eventually.Your are very good at demanding answers, but very poor at giving them.
How about some cooperation here?
No. Not even got started. Intelligent design comes over as vague and woolly scientism. Design fans don’t have any agreement on what is and isn’t designed. I’m out to get some concrete answers.
Talking of which, you answered a question, but it wasn’t my question. It’s a closed question, just needing a yes or no answer: Did God design fluffy little kittens?
I know one American who never reads anything beyond Genesis 3.
As a Baptist, I was taught that the intelligent design movement is the work of Satan, to keep people far away from the NT by gluing them to the first page of the bible. And they read that one page with no scholarship, no respect for the writers, no Holy Spirit, no spirituality. Each with his or her own take, based on their love of Discovery Channel science, fast food, and what they want it to say.
Baptists call it putting God in the back pocket - making God small and convenient.
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Vonsalza
Guest
Etymological terms are not subject to drift in the same way as emergent words like “bling”. “Atheos” has meant the same thing for a few thousand years now.
Whether you, individually, are a zealot or apathetic about your claims has no relationship to the claim itself. You don’t “get a pass” on your belief system just because you don’t care if anyone agrees with you or not.
What you do “get a pass” on is the participation in debate on the topic. You’re free to self-dismiss from discussion.
If a person chooses not to take a position on the existence of gods, I can respect that enormously. That, however, is not “atheism”. It’s classic “agnosticism”.
Words do matter. The establishment of semantic was step #1 in any discussion per Voltaire.
We’re not discussing general language. We’re discussing the “-ism” (advocacy) of the Greek “atheos”. Again, no change in a few millennia to that one.
I don’t. Institutionally, the school had little-to-no involvement.
The conflation of “linguistic drift” with deliberate attempts to redefine a word is contrary to the definition of “linguistic drift” itself.
Unless, of course, you purport that the definition of “linguistic drift” has also linguistically drifted.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
Modern terms don’t necessarily conform to the usage of the earlier forms from which they were derived. For example, when someone uses the word “decimate” they usually are not referring to a practice of collecting people in lots and executing one in ten of them. That was the usage of the older form “decimare.” The connection between the usage is apparent, but the modern usage is different.
That said, also keep in mind that the older usage referred to someone that didn’t worship the god(s) of the larger society; under this usage someone in a minority religion while convinced of god(s) could get the “atheos” label. I don’t think that quite captures what you wish to communicate.
I don’t know what you mean by “get a pass.”
Modern usage shows that the word is applied to several positions in the non-theistic spectrum. I understand there will be disagreement and it will be found to be a non-preferred usage much like how one of the modern usages of the word “literal” isn’t liked. But in only talking about the intended disposition that one is expressing there is a broader usage that is inclusive of those that are not convinced of the existence of any gods irrespective of if they make the claim “there are no gods.” It isn’t necessary to endorse a usage to understand it though; when someone says “I literally died when I heard that” I understand what it is that they wish to communicate.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Again, instead of answering questions, you talk around them.You didn’t answer my question and I asked you to do so. The rules of conversation may be confusing to you, but stick at it, you’ll master it eventually.
No. Not even got started. Intelligent design comes over as vague and woolly scientism. Design fans don’t have any agreement on what is and isn’t designed. I’m out to get some concrete answers.
Talking of which, you answered a question, but it wasn’t my question. It’s a closed question, just needing a yes or no answer: Did God design fluffy little kittens?
I know one American who never reads anything beyond Genesis 3.
As a Baptist, I was taught that the intelligent design movement is the work of Satan, to keep people far away from the NT by gluing them to the first page of the bible. And they read that one page with no scholarship, no respect for the writers, no Holy Spirit, no spirituality. Each with his or her own take, based on their love of Discovery Channel science, fast food, and what they want it to say.
Baptists call it putting God in the back pocket - making God small and convenient.
Did your Baptist teachers also tell you that God’s plan for the universe in Genesis is also the work of Satan?
By the way, who are your Baptist teachers, and where do they get off condemning Design as the works of Satan? What authority was conferred on them to make such condemnations? Do the Baptists have a pope or bishop or councils that rule on such matters? I doubt it. So it is you really making the ruling, right?
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Vonsalza
Guest
“Get a pass” on the burden of proof for your beliefs.
Any belief outside of “uncertainty” or “undefined” is a claim by rule. Every claim has a burden of proof, even if you’re apathetic about your claim.
You can attempt to cloak the burden by espousing modifiers specifying the level of certainty (in this case, “a lack thereof”), but a claim is still made.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
I think we have a disagreement on when a claim has been made. But beyond that, what is the consequence of someone not meeting the burden?
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inocente
Guest
I answered your questions. I said that interpreting Genesis as intelligent design is the work of the Great Deceiver. I said it shows “no scholarship, no respect for the writers, no Holy Spirit, no spirituality. Each with his or her own take, based on their love of Discovery Channel science, fast food, and what they want it to say”.
Can’t see how I can be clearer than that. I mean, reading it back now, I’m a bit embarrassed at how forthright I was.
I said “the intelligent design movement is the work of Satan”. How in heaven’s name did you think that had anything to do with God?
How high is that high horse of yours? What authority does your intelligent design cult have? Do you have authority for your personal interpretation of Genesis from the Church? From bible scholars? From the Holy Spirit?By the way, who are your Baptist teachers, and where do they get off condemning Design as the works of Satan? What authority was conferred on them to make such condemnations? Do the Baptists have a pope or bishop or councils that rule on such matters? I doubt it. So it is you really making the ruling, right?
You remind me of a poster I know who is frequently at odds with his own Church. He complains bitterly when I point that out. And his interpretation of the bible is such that I’ve asked him several times if he’s ever been near a bible study course. Can’t remember his name.
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Vonsalza
Guest
Per my formal schooling on the matter, a claim is any assertion beyond “unknown” or “undefined”. But I’m happy to concede that my formal schooling in philosophy at university was overwhelmingly western. Didn’t finish a degree in it, though. My father demanded I study something more suitable for making a living - thank God.
Beyond revealing/reinforcing the fact that their views therefore require some element of “faith”? Nothing at all.
As I’ve said earlier and in other places, the only guy in the room that gets to be “right by default” concerning religion is the classic agnostic. The agnostic claim is no claim at all.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
Pardon any mistakes. I entered most of this on a phone in a crowded dimly lit environment while waiting on a presentation to start.
On semantics:
Semantic disagreements seem to come with the territory of having a living language. Such disagreements are status quo. While i expect the words on which there are semantic disagreements to change iver timebi dont think they will all go away…
Off topic, but I have been in the scenario of having a position on something while being contractually obligated not to share the information that had a role in my position.
If I understand your position correctly it is as follows.
On semantics:
- You disagree with the word “atheist” being used in the broader/general position of “not convinced of any gods”
- Your usage of “atheist” only refers to narrower/specific sense of “affirming that there are no gods,” which some Express by putting the qualifier “strong” before the word
- A person that states that they do not know whether or not there are any gods is not making a theological claim
- A person that does not know whether or not there are any gods cannot be said to be correct or incorrect about not knowing
- A person that says “there is a God” or “there are no gods” are both making claims.
- People don’t necessarily have 100% certainty on things that they treat as true
Semantic disagreements seem to come with the territory of having a living language. Such disagreements are status quo. While i expect the words on which there are semantic disagreements to change iver timebi dont think they will all go away…
Okay, sounds like you are talking mostly of self justification. But even with self justification there is no obligation to provide the justification to another provided one is not concerned with how another feels about their position. If you were considering purchasing a property and a peer challenges you on whether you can really afford it you might not care to make any effort to show that you can afford the property and may be fine if the peer dismisses you; there is no expected consequence. There may however be motivation to provide evidence to the seller as not doing so could result in no progress on the transaction.
Off topic, but I have been in the scenario of having a position on something while being contractually obligated not to share the information that had a role in my position.
Reading this part again I think my earlier understanding of your position might not be quite right. If someone isn’t making a claim then there is no claim to which one can assign a truth value. The person would neither be “correct by default” or “incorrect by default.”
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Vonsalza
Guest
The conflation of “atheism” with “agnosticism” is an error. The qualifiers “strong” and “weak” do not mitigate it.
As virtually every theist I know has or has had some modicum of doubt (vis-a-vis, “faith”), we’re all “agnostic” in the same sense employed by “agnostic atheists” to refuse a burden of proof on their claim.
If you’re alluding to a person that isn’t convinced one way or another, that’s a classic agnostic.
The reason “the agnostic is the only guy in the room that gets to right by default” is true is because “unknown” and “undefined” is the ultimate starting point for any and every hypothesis. As that is the philosophical and hypothetical default, those that espouse it are, similarly, correct by default unless proven otherwise.
As you’re a software engineer, you probably had to go through a college-level stats class or two. Remember what the null hypothesis represented in all those trials? Unless the null was predicated on something already proven, it was generally “zero”. In other words, the rejection of the claim.
Same deal. The classic agnostic advocates the religious “null hypothesis”. They get to be right until someone proves they are not - by rule.
So far, no one has materially proven whether there is or isn’t a God; as I’m sure we agree.
I would caution against equating “linguistic drift” with “ideological subterfuge”. Voltaire was certainly suspicious of it.
In a sense. I’m mostly interested in showing that if a person rejects the existence of God on the lack of material proof, they should correctly reject in favor of “undefined” rather than in favor of “no God”.
If you asked most professed atheists “Is there a God” with “yes”, “no” and “uncertain” as possible answers, I imagine most would bubble “no” if they were honest with themselves.
That represents a claim; one consistent with “atheism”.
I’ve experienced the same. That generally accompanies any job where they pay you enough for the job to matter.
You can advocate the null. Agnosticboy floats around on these forums a bit. He’s a better source for this than I. Send him a pm.
C
Charlemagne_III
Guest
As usual, you talk around the question I asked.
“By the way, who are your Baptist teachers, and where do they get off condemning Design as the works of Satan? What authority was conferred on them to make such condemnations? Do the Baptists have a pope or bishop or councils that rule on such matters? I doubt it. So it is you really making the ruling, right?”
Has the Catholic Church through its popes or bishops ruled intelligent design to be false or immoral? Please cite your sources?
Does the Catechism of the Catholic Church condemn intelligent design? Cite where?
Does the Catholic Church condemn Genesis as false because it shows God planning and creating a universe, when by your calculation he only created the universe and threw the dice to see how it would all play out without a plan?
Still waiting to hear the ruling of a Baptist pope or Council that would have given your Baptist teacher the authority to teach that the work of the Discovery Institute is the work of Satan. So, if you can’t provide any authority for same, that means you are making this all up in your own head, right?
Still got that beam in your eye?
- Status