What would you do if it were proven...?

[Betterave]

To be clear my opinion here is that you do not need to have direct experience of a concept in order to understand that concept.*

Let’s take infinity as an example. I’m sure we both understand the term and the concept but neither of us has ever encountered anything of which there is an infinite quantity.*

You experience a concept by conceiving it, not by encountering something of which the concept can be truly predicated. To use Descartes’ famous example, I experience the concept of a chiliagon by conceiving it, not by looking at one (and perhaps counting its 1000 sides). So I think your opinion is confused: to ‘understand a concept’ absolutely requires a ‘direct experience of that concept,’ since the latter is entailed by the very notion of ‘understanding a concept.’ (Which is to suggest that you don’t really understand the concept of a concept.)

 

[Candide_West]

My understanding of what the Pope meant is that all human world veiws that we define for ourselves can be put in one of the three catagories. As to “spiritualism”, depending on its nature, it could be a form of any of them.

True enough I guess, he needed to define some boundaries in order to make his point and things like spiritualism would have blurred them significantly.

In any case any thoughts on that example of the ways in which monotheists, polytheists and atheists answer questions like “why are we here” etc?*

So, on what basis do you claim that the stories and information about God that were presented to me in my youth are not evidence? Seems to me you may be commited the absence of evidence is evidence of absence fallacy.

Not at all, I haven’t made any claims about the stories etc from your youth. For that matter I have no idea what those stories were so I’d be rather presumptuous to make claims about their status.*

I do however know that I haven’t ever seen or heard anything I would call evidence.*

Nor have I committed the absence of evidence fallacy. I require some basis on which to make judgements about what to believe in. I do not believe in something unless I have a reason to. And as I have said I have simply not got any reason to believe God exists.*

If there is only one God, as Judaism, Islam and Christianity claim, then in matters not how He is described. He is still the only one and the same God.

I personally think it matters quite substantially, for one thing it’ll make a huge difference to the afterlife of the proponents of the different religions. For example your own afterlife looks a lot more rosy if god exists and is the Christian God rather that the Islamic God, Allah.*

So far your claim that it is not a choice is contrary to the evidence.

So you are saying that you could change your religion tomorrow by a matter of choice? I’m surprised if so, or perhaps am I misunderstanding you here? *

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Not at all, I know well what most people mean by nothing. Which is entirely different a real nothing (by which I mean the absence of anything). I assume though that what we are talking about is a genuine nothing. Ie, no time, no dimensions, no mass, no laws of physics, no observer etc.

I do know what the word nothing refers to. As for what you know about it, well if you know something about it then it’s not nothing that you are referring to.*

Odd, you seem to argue that a thing could be within a nothing (which would make it not nothing).

But yes, I do disagree with your statement that “nothing comes from nothing” is a “certain fact”.*

Not quite sure what you’re aiming at here. You seem to be saying that if something could come from nothing then nothing and something are the same thing. Obviously this isn’t correct so I assume I’m misunderstanding you somewhere here.

Incidentally I guess you’re aware that there is a hypothesis that the sum total of all the energy and mass in the universe is zero hence what we see in existence is a separation of positive and negative from each other? This is at the moment at least totally unsupported by evidence, but conceivable at least.*

Again this appears to be saying that if reality came from nothing they would be the same which makes no sense so I’ll wait on a follow up on that one.*

No, nothing is the absence of anything. Not the negation of potential reality. The negation of a potential reality would be something thus not nothing.*

And yes you are correct that we cannot predict what nothing would do or look like. We cannot by definition ever encounter nothing.*

But it is you who is saying what the nature of nothing is, not me. I am saying in fact that we can’t know anything about nothing. You are the one claiming to be able to predict it’s behaviour.

No, I said that your assertion that nothing comes from nothing is an bald assertion. I also pointed out that if your second point in that post was correct then that made the first point both unsupportable and irrelevant. I note that you haven’t replied to the remainder of the points I made as yet. Do you have any further thoughts on the subject?*

While others might fail to see it, i can. Its evident to me that you are either being deceptive, lazy, or you fail to have the capacity to grasp simple logical facts or syllogisms, none so easy to understand as the fact that a negation of being can only be a negation of being. Potentiality by itself without reality is nothing and it is meaningless to speak of it unless you are talking about the power of some being to bring about an effect. It only has meaning in reference to reality and its power. An absence of reality is and always is by definition an absence of reality and the power of reality and thus the possibilities and potentialities intrinsic to it. You also fail to grasp certain contextual limitations when using ideas in science and applying them to subjects outside of the epistemological authority of science, failing to understand that they such ideas do not and cannot possibly have the same meaning in an ontological context; as you well know given that we were talking about the difference in the use of the word nothing between science and ontology. You are continuously twisting my words out of context to suit you. This doesn’t encourage me to engage in dialogue with you.

I am not going to explain it any further since you seem to already know better so Good luck and goodbye.

 

[Candide_West]

I would think that if the bones of Jesus Christ were found–and it could be verified that they were his…

• perhaps through his and Mary Magdalene’s descendants as the Sacred Feminine advocates like to proclaim or
• through the descendants of his brothers and sisters, as some Protestants are wont to point out…

then Christianity could be proven false, no?

I’m afraid I don’t see how, for the sacred feminine approach you mentioned above, surely we’d have to already know that Jesus did have kids and who they were before we could use them as a basis to identify his bones? Since neither of these seem to be in place I struggle to see how this approach could even theoretically disprove Christianity.

The second approach has exactly the same problem as far as I can see, except that you are then looking one generation further back.

As far as I can see you couldn’t provide any evidence that you had the bones of Jesus, even if you did. Still very much open to being proved wrong here though. Any other thoughts?

 

[Candide_West]

I’m sorry, but if that’s what you think Rahner is saying, then, again, I think you haven’t been reading very carefully. If I’m mistaken about this, then please tell me what it is exactly that you’re referring to here.

Perhaps I have indeed missed the point. Could you perhaps summarise in your own words what Rahners point was? I suspect the lack of context for the passages quoted has created a tendency for me to misinterpret.*

The thing with being a mature adult is that you have to recognize that you can’t escape a dichotomy simply by inventing an imaginary third option, and I would maintain that that’s all you’ve done here. (It would be like saying, “I don’t have to choose between believing in God or not believing in God, because instead I could choose to believe in the flying spaghetti monster.” No, you couldn’t - that’s completely silly nonsense.)*

True, that would be silly nonsense but as far as I can see I’ve done nothing of the sort here.

IOW, you’ve invented a false trichotomy, because your third option is not a real option. It does not form a viable third way. …Unless you can explain this: If ‘God’ is indeed a viable concept for mature adults to consider (as you grant), then how can they be mature adults without considering it (as opposed to immature adults, who necessarily must have their heads in the sand if they are managing to simply ignore ‘God’? - or, even worse, to effectively equate ‘God’ with 'flying spaghetti monster?)?*

Not sure why you are claiming that the third option is not possible. Are you really saying that if someone says “God? Never really thought about it.” then it is impossible for that person to be a mature adult? Or for those people who are brought up in societies without a God concept (ie spiritualist societies) can never be mature adults?

I’d certainly disagree if that is what you are saying. Just as I would if someone said that in order to be a mature adult you MUST think about politics, or philosophy, or foreign affairs etc. These are things that I take an interest in, and so can other adults, but I do not think they are mandatory in order to be a mature adult.

Perhaps you are working to a specific definition of “mature adult”?*

 

[davidv]

True enough I guess, he needed to define some boundaries in order to make his point and things like spiritualism would have blurred them significantly.

In any case any thoughts on that example of the ways in which monotheists, polytheists and atheists answer questions like “why are we here” etc?*

Though it might be interesting, what these answers are are well beyond my point. The point being, based on the Pope’s statement/proposal, there is plenty of evidence for any of the three views. Which is counter to your “there is no evidence” claim.

Not at all, I haven’t made any claims about the stories etc from your youth. For that matter I have no idea what those stories were so I’d be rather presumptuous to make claims about their status.*

These stories are not unique and the are in full view of the public in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, so no presumption is necessary. That this information is declared non-evidence seem incredulous to me.

I do however know that I haven’t ever seen or heard anything I would call evidence.*

Nor have I committed the absence of evidence fallacy. I require some basis on which to make judgements about what to believe in. I do not believe in something unless I have a reason to. And as I have said I have simply not got any reason to believe God exists.*

Which to me describes to a double standard as to what counts as evidence.

I personally think it matters quite substantially, for one thing it’ll make a huge difference to the afterlife of the proponents of the different religions. For example your own afterlife looks a lot more rosy if god exists and is the Christian God rather that the Islamic God, Allah.*

I agree it matters when the particular attributes are discussed and what their implications are. However to the question “does God exist?”, these specifics don’t matter. Either He does or He does not. It is only when it is agreed that He does exist does it matter "how’ He exists.

So you are saying that you could change your religion tomorrow by a matter of choice? I’m surprised if so, or perhaps am I misunderstanding you here? *

I am not saying that, because it not likely, given the number of years I have held my beliefs and for the reasons I have held them that anything contrary will carry much weight.

 

[Candide_West]

Just a quick note on this comment for now: I never said what you are suggesting I said here - hopefully you can see that? Certainly I do not think that we are free to interpret as we please, that we can consciously just ‘pick’ (by some kind of pure act of volition?) which of two interpretations is true. If you think I said anything that would suggest that I believed otherwise, I’d like to know what that is.

Ok, sorry my bad.*

I thought you were suggesting a third option of “re-interpreting what I see” in addition to the others I put forwards previously of “accepting what I see” and “lying to myself”.
*

On the other hand, we can and often do choose to believe claim A over claim B without any intersubjectively tangible grounds for doing so, but this choice is always grounded at least in a minimalist justification such as “claim A just seems more plausible,” never by a claim like “I just *picked *claim A, I was free to and I did [full stop].”

True enough I guess. I fear I’m being dense here, but I’m not quite clear on how this bears on the conversation?

 

[Betterave]

Ok, sorry my bad.*

I thought you were suggesting a third option of “re-interpreting what I see” in addition to the others I put forwards previously of “accepting what I see” and “lying to myself”.
*

Yes, you’re right that I was presenting a third option, just not in the implausible way in which you [chose to(?)] interpret[ed] it. Your claim was: “So my choice is actually between accepting what I see and trying to lie to myself.” The third option is to question what you see (as, indeed, it seems you are doing here). You *can *choose to question, and the re-interpreting will (possibly) follow naturally from that choice.

True enough I guess. I fear I’m being dense here, but I’m not quite clear on how this bears on the conversation?

I guess the point is that sincerity is important, but not enough. You can sincerely believe that your situation is such as you described it, but whether or not you are right about it is obviously another matter, and if you are wrong about it (as I am arguing) it can be very difficult to determine whether you are just confused or if you have in fact been ‘lying’ to yourself. That you are uncomfortable with the notion of “choosing to believe” is, I think, a good thing. It bespeaks an habitual adherence to sincerity of belief. But I think that even someone who is ‘lying’ to herself has to be sincere if she is to ‘convince’ herself with her own lie (and a lie is, by definition, necessarily intended to be convincing). So whether you want to talk about following evidence or ignoring evidence or lying or just being confused, the role of the will in determining what we believe is never (usually not?) totally transparent to us. I think this is an important principle to keep in mind. (Sorry for rambling.)

 

[Candide_West]

I’m afraid your claims above about what you were “just pointing out” are simply false. Here is what you actually said:*
The accuracy of each True Map is actually dependent on the accuracy against the real world (which none of the religions have found a effective way to measure but instead just keep saying “we know ours is right because out God said so”).
Now if this positive assertion that you made is not an attempt to present a true map of anything, what is it??

Ok, I think it’s probably useful to look back to where this particular subject started. This*was way back on post 534 where I said…

""Ie one person will be certain that X is absolutely right because his God tells him so, another will be convinced that X is absolutely wrong because his God tells him so. Who is right? "

That is the point, it is irresolvable. It is also a common situation and the cause of a great deal of strife. Both sides simply saying “well I know they’re wrong because God told us X is wrong / right” only serves to entrench those divides."

The description of this argument was never intended to be exhaustive of the kinds of religious debate which occur (thankfully it isn’t). Just to note that*

1. These kinds of argument do occur (which I think you’ll agree they do although I’m sure you wouldn’t make those kinds of argument yourself).
2. In these cases until the “I know I’m right because God said so” behaviour on both sides ceases then the conflicts which result from these remain irresolvable.

It was only ever really intended as an aside. But PRmerger disagreed with point 2 for a very long time with comments about the magisterium of the catholic church etc until about post number 681 when she agreed that these arguments are inutile.*

So anyway, what i wrote in the post you quoted does imply that I was trying to give a general case for religious apologetics, but hopefully from the earlier post you can see it was actually referring to a specific type of religious argument. I’m afraid I have a history of not writing clearly, particularly with regards to antecedents and assumptions etc. I fear this is something else I’ll have to keep an eye on.

I’m afraid this really doesn’t make any sense: first you imply that an empirical comparison of religions is impossible; then you go on to make empirically-based comparative claims about different religions. So which is it in your view: possible or impossible??

Clearly it is possible to compare and contrast religions as I have done above. However, this is very different to having an agreed set of standards for religions against which to make judgements about them.

For example if I wish to compare scientific theories I can look for testability, falsifiability, predictive power, how they match to empirical evidence, consistency etc. Principles like these have been agreed by virtually everyone working in the field and are applied more or less consistently. So while two scientists may disagree about a given topic they always have a common starting point. This would not be the case if for example half the worlds scientists thought falsifiability was a good thing, quarter thought it a bad thing and quarter thought it was irrelevant.*

As far as I am aware no such common ground has been reached by the worlds religions. If I’m wrong on this please let me know, I’d be very interested.

No, I don’t think this is based on my misunderstanding. My comment was based on the obvious falsity of the positive claim you made about religious epistemologies/ apologetics (the one I quoted above). To which I replied:

Hopefully this is now resolved. I agree that if I’d been trying to talk about the full extent of religious apologetics (as I appeared to be in that post) then it would indeed have been obviously false.*

 

[Betterave]

Ok, I think it’s probably useful to look back to where this particular subject started. This*was way back on post 534 where I said…

""Ie one person will be certain that X is absolutely right because his God tells him so, another will be convinced that X is absolutely wrong because his God tells him so. Who is right? "

That is the point, it is irresolvable. It is also a common situation and the cause of a great deal of strife. Both sides simply saying “well I know they’re wrong because God told us X is wrong / right” only serves to entrench those divides."

The description of this argument was never intended to be exhaustive of the kinds of religious debate which occur (thankfully it isn’t). Just to note that*

1. These kinds of argument do occur (which I think you’ll agree they do although I’m sure you wouldn’t make those kinds of argument yourself).
2. In these cases until the “I know I’m right because God said so” behaviour on both sides ceases then the conflicts which result from these remain irresolvable.

It was only ever really intended as an aside. But PRmerger disagreed with point 2 for a very long time with comments about the magisterium of the catholic church etc until about post number 681 when she agreed that these arguments are inutile.*

So anyway, what i wrote in the post you quoted does imply that I was trying to give a general case for religious apologetics, but hopefully from the earlier post you can see it was actually referring to a specific type of religious argument. I’m afraid I have a history of not writing clearly, particularly with regards to antecedents and assumptions etc. I fear this is something else I’ll have to keep an eye on.

Very good: progress. Just because you were addressing PRmerger, however, that’s no excuse for making false claims (although your guilt is lessened).

So we can take your original claim:
The accuracy of each True Map is actually dependent on the accuracy against the real world (which none of the religions have found a effective way to measure but instead just keep saying “we know ours is right because our God said so”).
and modify it thus:
The accuracy of each True Map is actually dependent on the accuracy against the real world (which no stubbornly irrational religious partisan can effectively measure, since he just keeps saying “we know ours is right because our God said so”).
And of course I won’t argue with this claim, and we will agree not to discuss the views of such stubbornly irrational people any more, especially in a way that would suggest that they were quintessentially ‘religious.’

 

[Candide_West]

Though it might be interesting, what these answers are are well beyond my point. The point being, based on the Pope’s statement/proposal, there is plenty of evidence for any of the three views. Which is counter to your “there is no evidence” claim.

Interesting, could you perhaps in your own words give an example of evidence for each of the three positions then please?*

These stories are not unique and the are in full view of the public in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, so no presumption is necessary. That this information is declared non-evidence seem incredulous to me.

To be clear I haven’t declared anything to be non-evidence. What I’ve said is that I’ve not seen anything I would consider evidence for the existence of God. If you have something specific (a story or something else) which you consider to be evidence then I’ll happily let you know if I agree.*

Which to me describes to a double standard as to what counts as evidence.

Curious. Where do you think I’ve applied a double standard?*

I agree it matters when the particular attributes are discussed and what their implications are. However to the question “does God exist?”, these specifics don’t matter. Either He does or He does not. It is only when it is agreed that He does exist does it matter "how’ He exists.

Hmmm dubious on this one I think, surely in order to meaningfully ask the question “does God exist” you have to define what you mean by “God”.*

For example a conversation I had with someone earlier on this thread they defined God (or G-d as he spelled it) as the “act of existence”. Which if that is the full extent of the definition then the question “does G-d exist” is equivalent to “does existence exist” which is tautological and irrelevant (by this definition everyone, including atheists, believe in “G-d”). The question then becomes “is G-d a being” or perhaps "what are the characteristics of ‘G-d’ ".

I am not saying that, because it not likely, given the number of years I have held my beliefs and for the reasons I have held them that anything contrary will carry much weight.

In that case could you clarify something for me please? When I said…*

“…Could you for example get up tomorrow and decide to be a hindu for a few weeks and honestly be one? I doubt it. In the same way I can’t simply choose to believe that a god exists.”

you replied…

*“So far your claim that it is not a choice is contrary to the evidence.”

I’m curious what evidence you were referring to?

 

[davidv]

Interesting, could you perhaps in your own words give an example of evidence for each of the three positions then please?*

Evidence (examples) for Monotheism

• The testimonies of the practitioners of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which include the personal revelation from God of His nature (One, “I am who am:”)
• The human search for the cause of the immaterial
  Evidence for Polytheisn
• the witness of it practitioners
• The human search for the cause of the immaterial
  Evidence for Atheism
• the existence of evil
• bad actions of those claiming affilation with a religion

To be clear I haven’t declared anything to be non-evidence. What I’ve said is that I’ve not seen anything I would consider evidence for the existence of God. If you have something specific (a story or something else) which you consider to be evidence then I’ll happily let you know if I agree.*

This except from the Catholic Catechism discribes some the evidence that is available:

31 Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.

32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.
As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.7 And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8

33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.

Curious. Where do you think I’ve applied a double standard?*

By declaring you have not seen evidence for the existance of God. I may have been a bit hasty in my charge, but my presumption is that it would not take much inquiry to determine that you accept the existance of other things with far less evidence than is available for God.

Hmmm dubious on this one I think, surely in order to meaningfully ask the question “does God exist” you have to define what you mean by “God”.*

See excerpt from the Catechism above.

For example a conversation I had with someone earlier on this thread they defined God (or G-d as he spelled it) as the “act of existence”. Which if that is the full extent of the definition then the question “does G-d exist” is equivalent to “does existence exist” which is tautological and irrelevant (by this definition everyone, including atheists, believe in “G-d”). The question then becomes “is G-d a being” or perhaps "what are the characteristics of ‘G-d’ ".

I believe this description is far more sophisticated that what was available to the Israelites when the were held as slaves in Egypt or were wandering the deserts of Sinai. The creed express it much simpler: "I believe in God, the creator…?

In that case could you clarify something for me please? When I said…*

“…Could you for example get up tomorrow and decide to be a hindu for a few weeks and honestly be one? I doubt it. In the same way I can’t simply choose to believe that a god exists.”

you replied…

*“So far your claim that it is not a choice is contrary to the evidence.”

I’m curious what evidence you were referring to?

The evidence is both your and my experience. In my view your position, “I can’t simply choose to believe that a god exists.”, is a direct result of your choice not to believe the claims made by christians. Moreover, is seems that this choice was quite a measured one.

 

[samiam1611]

Evidence (examples) for Monotheism

• The testimonies of the practitioners of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which include the personal revelation from God of His nature (One, “I am who am:”)
• The human search for the cause of the immaterial
  Evidence for Polytheisn
• the witness of it practitioners
• The human search for the cause of the immaterial
  Evidence for Atheism
• the existence of evil
• bad actions of those claiming affilation with a religion

Uh. I don’t think the human search for the cause of the immaterial is evidence.

 

[davidv]

Uh. I don’t think the human search for the cause of the immaterial is evidence.

Why not?

 

[Iotaunum]

Hi,

I’m new here on CAF but thought I’d post a question which interests me.

For those who are theists - “What would you do if it were proven to your satisfaction that God does not exist”

For those who are atheists - “What would you do if it were proven to your satisfaction that God does exist”

Thanks for taking the time.

To the first question, as a theist (or as I like to call it; a realist): Obviously this will never happen since it is impossible, but hypothetically if I were persuaded that God did not exist then I guess I would need medical attention firstly, since I think I would have lost my marbles. That’s what I would do. It would be similar to me recognising the existence, as a being - not a concept, of a square circle - another impossibility.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Interesting, could you perhaps in your own words give an example of evidence for each of the three positions then please?*

Could you give evidence for the idea that it’s reasonable to think we turned up by chance? Or evidence that the chance issue is evadeable by evidence of some contingent feature to justify belief in unguided results ending up with us?

Or evidence to think multitudinous testimonies of experiences of God are reasonable to assess as being false?

Without resorting to Dogma?

 

[Candide_West]

Hmmm. Maybe things are very different in the US. But in the UK, I seriously think atheism has by far the most favourable bias in the media… and think it has done for quite a long time, although never as blatantly as in recent years. The closest after that is probably Buddhism, followed by Paganism, followed by Christianity in a poor fourth, regardless of the fact that in the last census 70% of citizens self-identified as Christian…*

Afraid I wouldn’t know about America. I’m in Britain myself. I think that Christianity here still gets highly privileged position in the media. Just look at the regular consultation that church figures get in the news about issues which are not directly related to religion. Or the fever we had here when the pope was touring. The vast majority of that reporting is positive. Contrasting that position to the reporting on atheism which is hardly ever raised by comparison and never portrayed as a virtue as faith regularly is.*

Another example off the top of my head, the continuing existence of the lords spiritual in the house of lords. Some of the proposed “modernisation’s” which have been or are being considered alongside moving to 100% elected, are to add a selection of other faith groups to the existing lords spiritual, or even keep them all Christian and increase the proportion of the house they represent.

None of the proposals (as far as I can identify at least) would see any unelected secular humanists or similar added to the house (not that I think they should be there any more than the existing lords spiritual). Despite the fact that “non-religious” represents (depending on which survey you use) either the largest or second largest proportion of the British population.*

Hmmm… nope, still can’t remember. Can you remember which post it was?

Yep, post 743 I think. You said “I’m very tempted to contend with the absolute veracity of the statement of regularity of occurance as well…”

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Not really. We don’t kill because we believe it is objectively wrong; all reasonable people believe this. But for something to be objectively wrong, it has to work against some universal purpose. And the universe can have no purpose unless it was designed for that purpose by an intelligent architect, i.e. God.

In this case, murder is wrong because it acts contrary to Love, the purpose for which the universe was created by God. Therefore, true believers would refuse to commit murder even if there were no mention of it in the Bible. If, however, God does not exist, then Dostoevsky is right to say, “Everything is permissable.” Any limitations or prohibitions would be completely arbitrary and therefore not binding. There would be no reason for a rational human being to abstain from murder or anything else, except for his or her own personal and completely arbitrary preferences.

I forgot to thank you for this post. Better late than never aye!

 

[PRmerger]

1. In these cases until the “I know I’m right because God said so” behaviour on both sides ceases then the conflicts which result from these remain irresolvable.

It was only ever really intended as an aside. But PRmerger disagreed with point 2 for a very long time with comments about the magisterium of the catholic church etc until about post number 681 when she agreed that these arguments are inutile.*

Er, excuse me, Candide.

[SIGN1] I most certainly did not say that. [/SIGN1]

Please see my posts below in which I use the term “inutile.”

Nothing at all is mentioned about “I know I’m right because God said so”.

Do not misrepresent my arguments again, please.

It speaks volumes about your inability to refute, if you have to change my arguments.

Perhaps this is because you’ve never experienced this “concept” and had it become a Person.

Again, then it is clear that you have never taken a Philosophy class or engaged in simple logic.

Now, to be sure, repeating contradictory POV is inutile, but the point remains that if they’re contradictory, “I believe “x” is true” and “I believe ‘non-x’ is true” both cannot be true. Either one is, or none is. Can’t be both, yes?

Well, I think the judicious thing is to say some limitations are good–for our own good–and, of course, some limitations are bad.

Religion as a whole, and Christianity, in specific, do have limitations. But, we are agree that limitations are not objectively bad. So, really,discussion of limitations as it pertains to religion is inutile.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Afraid I wouldn’t know about America. I’m in Britain myself. I think that Christianity here still gets highly privileged position in the media. Just look at the regular consultation that church figures get in the news about issues which are not directly related to religion. Or the fever we had here when the pope was touring. The vast majority of that reporting is positive. Contrasting that position to the reporting on atheism which is hardly ever raised by comparison and never portrayed as a virtue as faith regularly is.*

Another example off the top of my head, the continuing existence of the lords spiritual in the house of lords. Some of the proposed “modernisation’s” which have been or are being considered alongside moving to 100% elected, are to add a selection of other faith groups to the existing lords spiritual, or even keep them all Christian and increase the proportion of the house they represent.

None of the proposals (as far as I can identify at least) would see any unelected secular humanists or similar added to the house (not that I think they should be there any more than the existing lords spiritual). Despite the fact that “non-religious” represents (depending on which survey you use) either the largest or second largest proportion of the British population.*

Yep, post 743 I think. You said “I’m very tempted to contend with the absolute veracity of the statement of regularity of occurance as well…”

Aha - you’re seriously suggesting that because some Christian authorities exist at all in the House of Lords that Christianity has significant influence? A bunch of retired Bishops, surely, will have minimum cultural impact compared to the widespread promotion of scientistic atheism on the ol’ gogglebox. Dawkins turns up on shows left right and centre, every fictional show from Midsomer Murders to Doctor Who demonises religion, Stephen Fry God-bashes on every episode I’ve ever seen of QI, and as for Brian Cox’s evangelical call to be thankful for the mythical existence-of-life-by-chance, it makes anything cheesy US evangelists can pump out doubtless seem surprisingly honest and intellectually stimulating indeed…

Well, it’s a relief I wasn’t contradicting myself regarding popularity - my posts consistently demonstrate my argument that popularity of belief has no reflection on truth, and that atheism will grow because of popular promotion, rather than any true realization of logical truth, which atheism, after all, is further away from seeming likely to reflect than ever

As for Secular Humanists representing atheism, even many ardent atheists I know wouldn’t even consider themselves humanists, and indeed have quiet obviously oppositional beliefs to the same - and the ‘nonreligion’ correlation with the same was the same kind of cynical conceptial/statistical distortion as Dawkins “everyone who isn’t an ardent theist is essentially an atheist” claims reflect. And as for those who consider themselves agnostics, I know of none who aren’t bitterly opposed to their statistical “non-religion” being assumed to correlate with humanism and especially atheism, making the sham that all that argument is apparent to all…