What is this "scientific method" you all speak of?

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Hey again Hee Zen,

Make that five guys at once! I’m sorry, Hee Zen, for ganging up on you, but I’m still going on the offensive in this post. 🙂

First, there is a bizarre inconsistency in your position itself. You argue voraciously for atheism, as if it was crucially important to you that we all gave up Christianity. But this makes no sense.

Why is it so important for Christianity to be abolished? According to you, its teachings are nothing more than a rearrangement of atoms in about a fourth of human brains. Why is one state of matter any better than another? If the universe is indifferent, why do you care so much? In fact, why is anything important to you at all? How can anything at all matter in any way?

An atheist has no grounds on which to reject God, but once he has, his position is only logical as long as he maintains a precarious attitude of indifference towards everything. And this is a true struggle, because he was evidently built to care about things, and perceive things as objectively right and wrong, and have desires for things that cannot be found in the world.

I’ve never understood new atheism. Old atheists were smugly content with letting us Christians have our “religion;” at least this position made sense, because an atheist must believe that there is no actual difference between being “religious” and not.

The above leads perfectly into this article; please read it in search of actual truth–don’t be turned off if you find it corny. 😃

-Greg

P.S. Your defintions of justice and mercy work well for criminals whose punishment is being decided, but not for creations of (or maybe even sons of) God. The difference lies in the purpose of the punishment. God has no reason to punish us other than when it would do the most good. To complete the thought: God combines justice and mercy depending on what would do the most good. Thus he can be both perfectly just and perfectly merciful.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Actually, it is a “bad” driving method only for moderately skilled drivers. The technique of left-foot braking is used in auto racing to induce oversteer or reduce understeer, also to reduce turbo lag, so unless you want to accuse autoracers of “idiocy” for doing so, it is best to retract your statement.
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And their tires need to be replaced a few times during a race. Car racing is different from driving a car on the highway. Not that has anything to do with having “justice” and “mercy” mutually exclusive.
Peter_Plato said:
I don’t recall promising to bow out of this thread. I am having too much fun countering your nonsense with my nonsense.
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You sure gave me that impression with your words of: “I will leave you to judge all reality according to your paucity…”. Oh well…
 
Gregory_Olson said:
Make that five guys at once! I’m sorry, Hee Zen, for ganging up on you, but I’m still going on the offensive in this post. 🙂
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No problem at all. As they say, if you can’t stand the head, stay out of the kitchen. 😉
Gregory_Olson said:
First, there is a bizarre inconsistency in your position itself. You argue voraciously for atheism, as if it was crucially important to you that we all gave up Christianity. But this makes no sense.
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Chalk it up to acting from love. I feel sorry for those people who live in a dream world instead of reality. Who cripple themselves with meaningless rituals instead of living their life to its full extent. Or maybe I am simply having a little innocent fun and at the same time exercising my brain to ward off Alzheimer’s disease. Or it could be my teacher background. Or maybe all of them. Who knows?
Gregory_Olson said:
In fact, why is anything important to you at all? How can anything at all matter in any way?
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I have answered this question so many times by now, that I am getting tired to repeat it. Maybe some other time I will, but not now. Sorry. Suffice it to say that just because a meal does not last “forever”, it is valuable for sustaining us for a limited time. Yet I prefer to have well-prepared roast duck with a good beer or wine as opposed to wolf down a piece of stale dry bread and wash it down with putrid water - even though the letter would sustain me, too.
Gregory_Olson said:
An atheist has no grounds on which to reject God…"
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The grounds are very solid: and called the lack of evidence. Here is a good quote from Steven F. Roberts: “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Just ponder this with an open mind.
Gregory_Olson said:
The above leads perfectly into this article; please read it in search of actual truth–don’t be turned off if you find it corny.
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I went and read it. The author made a few fundamental mistakes. One is that the atheist morality is based upon the several versions of the “golden rule” - which is much older than Christianity, as a matter of fact it is probably the only ethical rule which has been adopted by most human cultures. (It is interesting to ponder what kind of ethical system would develop in a race ferocious feline creatures. Larry Niven’s “kzinti” comes to mind.) Another one is that one should not only consider the “here and now”, it is better to contemplate the long term ramifications of our acts, which leads to prefer caring for others to selfishly trying to hoard everything. Even if this caring brings us temporary inconvenience, but again, what goes around, comes around.

The next error is that she did not realize in her early years that humans are both individuals and social animals, and from that it follows logically that one should balance the “selfish” and “unselfish” aspects of our behavior. So you see, the atheist ethics is founded on reality, reason and logic. No need for any “supernatural” foundation. Her next error is that the catechism (and the whole teaching) is so “clear and majestic” that it MUST have come from some supernatural being. And then comes the whole nonsense of “morality written on the human heart”. Nowhere on my heart it is written that one should not have sex before marriage, or masturbating is a mortal sin.

Now, she is correct to point out that there is no “absolute” ethical system, though there is an “objective” one. From “IS” the “OUGHT” does not always follow, but if the “ought” is not based on “is”, then she is in real trouble.

As a matter of fact, I also read quite a few books written by apologists, and also looked into the catechism. I found all of them wanting. But that would lead too far off the track. There was only one book which I found worthy, written by Rabbi Harry Kushner and its title is: “When bad things happen to good people”. It is the one and only writ which deals correctly with the “problem of evil”, which is the perennial thorn in the side of Christianity.

By the way, my path in life was exactly the opposite of what she did. I used to be a believer, though not Catholic and very devoted, but I still believed in God. When I grew up and started to question the foundations of my belief, I realized that it was empty faith, nothing more.
Gregory_Olson said:
P.S. Your defintions of justice and mercy work well for criminals whose punishment is being decided, but not for creations of (or maybe even sons of) God. The difference lies in the purpose of the punishment. God has no reason to punish us other than when it would do the most good. To complete the thought: God combines justice and mercy depending on what would do the most good. Thus he can be both perfectly just and perfectly merciful.
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I have no idea what kind of definition you use for these concepts. I am only aware of the one which I quoted - and they are mutually exclusive. By the way, “justice” also means not to reward the good deeds excessively. It is wider than only the punishment.

Also I have no idea just what that “most good” is for those who are thrown into the everlasting fire. And what is the rationale of punishing us when we cannot learn from our mistakes? This whole reward-punishment concept is messed up in Christianity. The teacher should reward and punish the students during their school years, not after the “final exam” happened.
 
Hee_Zen said:
The grounds are very solid: and called the lack of evidence. Here is a good quote from Steven F. Roberts: “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Just ponder this with an open mind.
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Lack of evidence proves nothing, if the evidence you are talking about is empirical evidence. Astronomers entertain the idea of multiple universes without evidence they exist. Some astronomers, especially the atheists like Hawking, fervently believe they must exist, or else they would be deeply perplexed by having to explain the origin of this universe without recourse to a Creator God.

Since God by definition is not in the universe, It’s difficult to see how science can even judge whether or not it can exclude God unless the scientist is judging as a victim of scientism. So the grounds for atheism are not very solid at all. They are built on shifting sand, and as some would say, not even that.
 
Hee_Zen said:
Sure, why not? I will just bring up one (for the time being). Among the many attributes of God there are two, which logically exclude each other. Definitions first:

"Justice" is a concept which states an action which is precisely commensurate to the act. For a judge to be just he needs to consider all the circumstances of an act, weigh all the mitigating and the exacerbating circumstances, and then deliver a verdict which is neither too harsh, nor too lenient. You can think about is as a balance scale, on one side is the act (with all the details), on the other side is the verdict. If the scale is balanced, we talk about a “just” sentence.

"Mercy" is the act of the judge who delivers a lenient sentence. He knows what the correct or “just” sentence would be, but for some reason or another the sentence is less than “deserved”. This is also a balance scale, where the judge places his finger under the plate representing the “just” sentence, and lifts it up a little.

There is no special expression for a judge who delivers a too-harsh sentence, though it is also “unjust”. Sometimes the phrase “hanging judge” is used.

Justice and mercy cannot happen at the same time, in the same instant. A judge may be “just” in one case, and then lenient in the other one. But Christians assert that God is “perfectly” just and also “perfectly” merciful. Which is a logical nonsense. The usual “defense” is that the “human concepts of justice and mercy” are inapplicable God, that God’s “justice and mercy” somehow go hand-in-hand without contradicting each other. Which is simply an attempt to “redefine” these simple concepts.

My usual disclaimer follows: “when I talk about God, I talk about the **human concept **not the assumed and alleged “being” with all those fancy attributes”. I talk about a human concept, with well-defined human terms.
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According to Aquinas…

Justice:

There are two kinds of justice. The one consists in mutual giving and receiving, as in buying and selling, and other kinds of intercourse and exchange. This the Philosopher (Ethic. v, 4) calls commutative justice, that directs exchange and intercourse of business. This does not belong to God, since, as the Apostle says: “Who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him?” (Romans 11:35). The other consists in distribution, and is called distributive justice; whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what his rank deserves. As then the proper order displayed in ruling a family or any kind of multitude evinces justice of this kind in the ruler, so the order of the universe, which is seen both in effects of nature and in effects of will, shows forth the justice of God. Hence Dionysius says (Div. Nom. viii, 4): “We must needs see that God is truly just, in seeing how He gives to all existing things what is proper to the condition of each; and preserves the nature of each in the order and with the powers that properly belong to it.”

Mercy:

*Mercy and truth are necessarily found in all God’s works, if mercy be taken to mean the removal of any kind of defect. *
 
Hee_Zen said:
And their tires need to be replaced a few times during a race. Car racing is different from driving a car on the highway. Not that has anything to do with having “justice” and “mercy” mutually exclusive.
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The point being that applying opposites is not necessarily contradictory in practice.
Hee_Zen said:
You sure gave me that impression with your words of: “I will leave you to judge all reality according to your paucity…”. Oh well…
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In general.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
If you don’t care about Aquinas, why do you think anyone should care about you? :confused:
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Who says you should? Use the ignore feature. I would be delighted if the majority of the people would ignore me. As Dirty Harry said: “go ahead, make my day”.
 
Hee_Zen said:
Who cares about Aquinas? I certainly do not.
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Then don’t try to show how there is supposedly a contradiction between God’s justice and mercy if you aren’t using the terms in the way Catholics do.
 
CrossofChrist said:
Then don’t try to show how there is supposedly a contradiction between God’s justice and mercy if you aren’t using the terms in the way Catholics do.
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Ah, the age-old trick of defining the terms to support your preconceptions. I quoted the proper definitions of “justice” and “mercy”, and showed that they are mutually exclusive. It is true that Aquinas is widely respected, but the church has no official philosophy.
 
Hee_Zen said:
The grounds are very solid: and called the lack of evidence. Here is a good quote from Steven F. Roberts: “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Just ponder this with an open mind.
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That quote is not ‘good’, it is one of the most silly arguments that atheism could ever produce. It comes from complete ignorance of the nature of God as seen by classical theism, vs. any other “gods”. But you wouldn’t know, since you don’t care about classical philosophical theism (Thomism is just one variant of it).

If you want to impress us and be taken seriously, you have to do better – much better. That quote is just plain pathetic. There is as little to ponder about it with ‘an open mind’ as there is to ponder about Young-Earth creationism. In both cases we are dealing with blind ignorance, obvious to anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of the issues.
 
Al_Moritz said:
It comes from complete ignorance of the nature of God as seen by classical theism, vs. any other “gods”.
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That difference exists only in your imagination. His point is that none of the assumed “gods” have any evidence for them.
 
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods…

The problem here is not that theists do not understand why they dismiss all the other possible gods. Educated theists very well do understand their reasons for doing so.

It is atheists who usually do not understand why theists dismiss all the other possible gods.
 
Hee_Zen said:
Ah, the age-old trick of defining the terms to support your preconceptions. I quoted the proper definitions of “justice” and “mercy”, and showed that they are mutually exclusive. It is true that Aquinas is widely respected, but the church has no official philosophy.
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Who should I trust when trying to find out what the Church means when she is using the terms “mercy” and “justice”: you, an anonymous nonCatholic poster, or Aquinas, the Common Doctor of the Church?
 
CrossofChrist said:
Who should I trust when trying to find out what the Church means when she is using the terms “mercy” and “justice”: you, an anonymous nonCatholic poster, or Aquinas, the Common Doctor of the Church?
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Although I will say Pope Francis said mercy is the way God forgives our sins, so it also can be used in another sense. But Aquinas is using mercy and justice specifically as they relate to each other and God. newadvent.org/summa/1021.htm#article4
 
Al_Moritz said:
The problem here is not that theists do not understand why they dismiss all the other possible gods. Educated theists very well do understand their reasons for doing so.
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I hope they do: “lack of evidence”. That is the common thread among all the “gods”, none of them have a shred of evidence going for them. And that is what the atheists are aware of. And that is what the theists deny. They readily admit the lack of evidence for all the so-called “false” gods, but they refuse to admit that their own “god” suffers from the same problem. Of course it is called “special pleading”.
 
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