Qoute CA "eye-witnesses to the miraculous event, all of whom went to grisly, torturous deaths without recounting a single syllable of the story even though they had nothing to gain by perpetrating a hoax"
Sweeping statement alert! Since we cannot account for all the eyewitnesses I'll assume you meant "Those who were threatened with death did not..."
To go back to the wizard analogy: Lets expand the claimers to include Senate as well. Now the President has told senate that if they back up his story about the wizard (who he has demonstrated to them, possibly using magic tricks) the wizard will take them to his paradise-like planet, and that even if they near death the wizard will put them in stasis and heal them. However if they ever recant the wizard will have to torture them for all eternity because they recanted. If the senate believed the President they would have an awful lot to gain by not recanting since the torturers can only torture for so long while they believe the Wizard could torture them forever. Therefore they won't recant, just like the Christian Martyrs.

Quoting CA "FSM (or in this case alien wizard) is logically equivalent to God in all respects. This is simply untrue."
Why are they not equivalent? You have mentioned no difference other than the FSM+wizard are only a theoretical concept while God is actually believed. Please explain why they are different.

@OMG - I'm going to let CA answer these though it's still obvious your elevating whatever morals you like for the sake of morality. All of the following statemetns statements are glaringly so:

"Atheism can also work without ideology because we can define our own morality as equals."

"A morality system based on humanity and reasoning works whether God exists or not and I think if God did exist he would welcome such a system."

" I don't claim advice from friends as the source of all morality. Therefore if they are wrong/mistaken I have other channels available."

"I don't claim advice from friends as the source of all morality. Therefore if they are wrong/mistaken I have other channels available."

You simply want to have the morals you choose with no absolute moral authority.

And I've already answered what you propose with the Senate/President/wizard thing. You're taking a position of intellectual superiority. "Ok," you're essentially saying, "those people were just stupid are easily tricked."

@bartdogg All people are easily tricked, in the heat of the moment. I don't believe in God/FSM/magical wizard, but it took a lot of effort for me to do so.
I don't want to elevate whatever morals I want, I want to elevate good morals. Using the Bible as a source of morality it is possible to justify several evil acts including genocide (from God ordering the isrealites conquest of the holy land) amd slavery (St Paul tells slaves to be serveous to their master). If your source of morality includes an incite to genocide you must either accept it, in which case you are evil, or you must ignore that evil, in which case you are justifying that with something beyond the Bible and it is that which is your source of morality.

Please answer these question Bartdogg42. Because the bible tells slaves to serve their master would you support slavery? Because God told Isrealites to utterly destroy those who occupied the holy land, does that mean you would support genocide like God apparently did? For both questions, if not, why not?

Again you mention authority. Why do you assume morality has to be based on authority? You say that I do things "for the sake of morality" but if you are not doing good because it is right to do good, then that is a very Machievellian view of morality.

@OMG - Again, you say: "I don't want to elevate whatever morals I want, I want to elevate good morals" - And to that I say, what in the world are "good" morals?

To answer your questions: 1. The Bible gives advice to slaves to honor their master, which in no explicit way condones slavery. I've tried to talk about how roman slavery was different than what many of us have in our heads. Roman slaves were treated far better. And let's not forget that the vast majority of the abolition movement came from within Christianity. It was the first time in history, to my recollection, that political officials acted for the people with literally zero gain to themselves; in fact, they had great cost. If these politicians/activists had a morality based upon the will of the masses, abolition would not have occured because it was just bad economic policy to free slaves.

I am not saying I am pro-roman slavery, but I don't think the Bible is either, As I've said before, it is truth, just not exhaustive truth.

And no I don't personally support genocide, but I have no right to destroy. God, however, has every right to destroy, afterall, he is the maker. The potter can smash all the pots he likes for they are his pots! How dare the pot condemn and demand things from the potter for his actions. He is a pot! In the last days, genocide will occur again. I do not look forward to it, nor am I able to enact justice. Vengeance is God's on His enemies.

Because morality without authority is no morality at all. It is hearsay and garbage. It is physiologically programmed junk, and not true in the slightest.

Actually, it was bad economic policy to keep the slaves. That, and the practice was already beginning to fail. Now, back to the argument.

It's been a while since I read the Bible bartdogg...but didn't PEOPLE carry out the genocide because he said they could? You just said you have no right to destroy but God does. Can he use proxies? If God spoke to you directly and told you to go on a killing spree would you? Or can only God go on a killing spree?

@ bartdogg
A God who commands not to kill and to maintain peace while simultaneously killing and encouraging war is a hypocrit and a tyrant and has no place being worshipped. Surely you see that no god who does not keep his own commandments is benevolent
Your view of morality is bleak and desolate and a wasteland, because it has us living in perpetual fear of a tyrant-god, and that is why it cannot be true.
Any person who claims that someone else has the right to commit evil acts, even a god, is complicit in those acts. If you agree that god has the right to commit genocide, then you are as evil as he is and all other genocidal regimes throughout history.

Phew. Ok. Lots of stuff for me to respond to. I'll try to indent, and I'll try to be so long-winded, but it's a habit of mine. I really appreciate the time and effort you all take to read my posts despite their lack of formatting. =)

This quote jumped out at me, especially since it followed a sort of debate on slavery.

"And no I don't personally support genocide, but I have no right to destroy. God, however, has every right to destroy, afterall, he is the maker. The potter can smash all the pots he likes for they are his pots! How dare the pot condemn and demand things from the potter for his actions. He is a pot! In the last days, genocide will occur again. I do not look forward to it, nor am I able to enact justice. Vengeance is God's on His enemies."

Parents may not kill their children simply because they "created" them. Would you not say your relationship to God is more akin to that of a parent and child than that of a potter and his pots? To imply that we are simply God's pots implies that we are no more than his property, a position very comparable to that of a slave. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in saying that perhaps this was a bad example, but I do find the idea of subjugating myself to some supreme being as a slave, or as property that may be discarded as pots by a potter, wholly immoral.

That one quote stood out at me. I'll address the others shortly.

But god is god. With his kind of alleged power, wouldn't that leave us as little more than pots in comparison? If such a being exists, I would not blame him for being a cruel, angry tyrant of a being. Perhaps all the kindness and benevolence is wishful thinking on the believers' part?

"I still don't see how you can claim that our senses are "adapted to help us perceive the small middleground of reality in which we live and act." Why? All of our senses are a result of centuries of preservation, not any type of objective search for truth. How do we get to the middle-ground, you claim we understand fully?"

I think you misunderstand me. I also think I misunderstand you. What do you mean when you say our senses are a result of centuries of preservation? When I say middle-ground, I'm referring to the spatial dimension in which we live and interact. This is about the size just under a mm to perhaps 100 km as a practical measure. I mean middleground in the sense that what seems the normal size to us because this is the size that we are and experience. In a relative sense this takes up only a small proportion of the possible scales we could perceive. My senses can help me catch a baseball if you throw one at me, but certainly not a small mote or a planet. It's wholly a side point though.

My tab key doesn't work for indenting because it takes me to Post Reply. =/

"First let's not lose sight of the original point. The idea was that religion is somehow dangerous (scary, I think was the term) due to the number of people who've lost their lives “in the name of a god or gods”. I came up with the perfectly reasonable counter that atheistic ideologies have claimed a fair share of lives themselves. I can see why you'd strongly disagree with this. It's a clear way to subject theists to bad press and get away scot-free. If that one is successfully challenged then what’s the fun in painting theists as the bad guys. It would just backfire. I, will, however challenge you. If as you've stated value judgments should be made on empirical evidence, then let's examine this one empirically. If the evidence shows that religious institutions are no more dangerous than secular ones (actually they are far less so) are you willing to agree that theists aren't ravening mad-men just waiting for God on high to give the order for your execution?"

Well I came into discussion of that specific point after the original point, so I'm afraid I don't remember it. I came in because I heard you touting Marxism and Ju-Che as dangerous atheist ideologies. I'm not trying to just give theists bad press and get away scot free... It was that I disagree that you had a "perfectly reasonable" counter argument. I was saying that atheism has only recently become an ideology, and only in the sense that it must protect itself as a minority. Otherwise, atheism is no more ideological than a non-collector might be considered a sort of collector, or bald might be considered a hair colour. I'm not trying to paint a picture here of religious people as total nutjobs. The fact that I used farfetched and ridiculous examples was to show that you can't assume something based on a lack of evidence! I don't think that religious people are stupid, I've met many very intelligent religious people, including present company. My point isn't even that religious people are dangerous. My point is that if I must accept your belief as a valid reason for say, opposing same-sex marriage, then you must equally accept that say, my belief of the FSM tells me that the Somalian pirates should be supported and praised. I would challenge any supernatural claim, not just yours, or even that of religion.

"You want to trust what can be empirically proven using "measuring instruments." I say, to that, that your thesis can be no more scientifically proven than Pere Noel. This you would agree with, I am sure; I just want to make sure we are both living by faith."

Ok. I can accept that perhaps ultimately in determining the nature of the nominal universe, science is just as hopeless as any other belief system. However, how would we pick which belief system to follow? Well perhaps it's the one that within the confines of the phenomenal reality in which we live, has granted us with fantastic technologies that let us travel great distances, enjoy great entertainment, and live greatly improved and lengthened lives? Now which one would that be? *drum roll* I'm sure you know what I'm getting at.

I've been manually putting in spaces at the beginning of my paragraphs instead of tabbing, but they just disappear. I can't find a way to indent my paragraphs. Also I just realized I've gone a little out of order in my responses since I skipped over some of bartdogg's posts and went straight to one of CA's.

"I am very unsatisfied with your answer that life is "naturally valuable to us as a result of evolution." Why? Why would the process of evolution strive for life and not death? Why not strive for something completely different?"

I don't mean to be "intellectually superior" as you would accuse me of being [=(], but do you want me to explain the process by which evolution works? Because I think it becomes pretty self evident that organisms that value their own existence naturally tend to exist... The most likely things to exist are those things which happen to be good at existing, usually by being well-adapted to their environments, and important by having the ability to replicate themselves. A useful adaptation is the value of your own life because it makes you more likely to carry on living and existing. If you had no value of life and felt that death was an equally good alternative, you would very quickly cease to exist. Evolution does strive for many other things... I'm not saying the only value is life, I'm saying that one of them will be. I don't really remember how we got here, but is it not obvious that that which values life is more likely to perpetuate it's existence over that which doesn't?

"Here is one:
"A recent study conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute and the University of California-Los Angeles suggested college students involved in religious activities are more likely to have better mental and emotional health than those who do not."

http://media.www.dailyvidette.com/media/storage/paper420/news/2004/11/15/News/Study.Shows.Health.Benefits.Of.Religion-804392.shtml

Here is another (from the same part of the country so they mat refer to the same or a replicated study)

http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/archives/G/ucb805.html"

That's very interesting! I hope they do more studies like this. I remember when the God Delusion first came out and I read it. At one point Dawkins is refuting a claim upon these lines "If I didn't have Christ, I would have murdered my neighbour" or something like that. Dawkins basically makes the point that this sort of morality is not one we should be striving for. I always felt that this was not a very good refutation and that if there are social benefits of religion they should be recognized. There's a quote that goes something like "Good people will do good things, and evil people will do evil things, but for a good person to do an evil thing, that takes religion." I've always thought... well yeah... that could be true, but it could also be true that it takes religion for many evil people to do good things. I don't think I could ever share in those benefits because I don't think I could sincerely believe in God without actual evidence. To the debate at hand though, by presenting this evidence, you are acknowledging the fact that these benefits of religion do not speak to the actual verity of the specific religion, correct? Would you argue that it does not matter if a religion is true or not, because it gives us these health benefits? The articles suggested that the health benefits were not specifically derived from God reaching down and blessing them, but more because their faith was comforting and helped them through high stress times. It would seem that Christians, Jews, and Muslims likely share these health benefits despite their conflicting ideologies.

"Weren’t you telling me something about a placebo effect earlier (or was that something else)? Belief does in fact have physiological effects. Why is it a problem when the belief happens to be in a deity?"

That wasn't me. I think there's a problem whenever the belief happens to be in the supernatural, not necessarily, but including deities. I see no evidence for astrology or tarot cards to be true either, and I think belief in them is problematic. There are definitely varying degrees of how problematic it really is, but at the essence is a willingness to accept something without evidence, which I think runs against the rationality and scientific method which has given us so much.

Oh, and two posts up, I don't mean to say that arguing for religion purely for social benefits is ridiculous. My suspicions that religion has enormous social benefits not related to it's verity is why I'm also skeptical of those who say that religion is all bad and that it should be disbanded everywhere. A similar case is made for science as a belief system because it's clear that it has a lot of benefits for us. The difference is that the benefits of belief are not in the verity of the belief (or so it seems), but rather the act of believing and having faith, and that this benefit is shared by many religions. In science, you do not get the same benefits when you use other models, because they don't work. The successes and applications of science speak directly to it's verity because if it were not true, it would simply not work. It's not just a social effect.

"A value judgment based upon religion is not what you suggest at all. You run the risk of setting up a straw-man argument by telling me underlying assumptions of my value judgments when you have no idea what those judgments are, or how I arrive at them. Then the shift comes back to the comfortable challenge that “I can’t prove my deity’s existence”. While it’s true that I can’t prove his existence (and have no interest in attempting to do so) it does not follow that my judgments, based upon Christ’s teachings, are based upon the assumption that God exists. Make no mistake, I believe he does, but Jesus of Nazareth is historically verifiable (by Christian and non-Christian sources) and completely reliable as a source of moral guidance. If you have accepted advice from a trusted friend, you have done the same as I have in my “religious value judgments”."

I would not say they are the same. If a friend told me that same-sex marriage was wrong, or that condoms are bad, or that it is my duty to pro-create or something of the sort, I wouldn't take it face value. I'd ask them, "Why?". In fact, I might have a debate with them if it's something that I do not agree with. I don't have a problem if you take the word of the Bible as advice, and you actually take the issue and denote the secular pro's and con's of the matter, but as soon as you bring in your faith in it's righteousness, then it is a value judgement based on an assumption of the existence of a supreme God who hath decreed this to be so, in the face of no real evidence. You haven't argued this, but bartdogg has: if you take your moral guidance from Jesus simply as another human being, then you have no more moral authority than do atheists. I can see Jesus's teachings and agree and say, "yeah, it's good to turn the other cheek" or "it's good to be kind to our parents" or what have you, but I judge his teachings on secular terms, and in their value, not on the fact that he could be the son of our Supreme Creator. If you do this, then you are making a value judgement based on this assumption, though it cannot be proved any more than I can prove the existence of the FSM.

"I’m going to merely say that if you claim to have made all of your value choices upon empirical research, then you are quite the unique individual. In my dealings with people of all worldviews, I have never seen one other who even comes close to that. Humans are emotional creatures and there are times in which dispassionate research of a dilemma is neither possible nor the best choice. If, however, you mean that you occasionally accept informal advice from trusted friends, written works (of various types with themes and morals), and applied research in process, then we are doing exactly the same thing. We are both intelligent and rational enough to carry on this conversation after all. If you choose to categorize my thought processes as “ludicrous” and “ridiculous”. That’s
certainly your choice, but I’d remind you that you hardly know me. "

I agree, and I would definitely say there are many aspects to my world view that I have not examined and take for granted. This is not for a lack of trying though. Just because it might ultimately be impossible to shake off all our assumptions and criticize all the customs and traditions that have been handed to us, doesn't mean we should take everything at face value and have no reason to question the supernatural. I still strive to examine my assumptions, and if you would help me with that, I'd be much obliged. This is the essence of philosophy, doubt. I don't accept the simple truth of informal advice, or I certainly try not to. Written works should be taken with a grain of salt, and the context should be taken into account. Applied research is questioned and criticized intensely by peers, and I'll admit that I do accept it into my worldview... the difference is that when new research comes up that disproves the old, I'm willing to alter my worldview to improve it based on new knowledge. The religious worldview hardly changes to accommodate new knowledge because it assumes that it has all the knowledge, or at the very least, God does. When I categorize your beliefs as ludicrous and ridiculous I do not mean to offend you, or even have you take it personally. My point is that you can say that I don't know you, but if I told you that I was a Scientologist or something, you might classify my beliefs as ludicrous and ridiculous, and I could equally say that you don't know me, and you don't understand my religion, so there! The point is that you cannot validate your religion any more than I can validate Scientology because I could be making many of the same arguments as you. Again, I don't mean any of what I say to be personally offensive, it just seems like I have to step on a few toes just to begin to criticize religion.

Well let's see:

@hereward - If I must be cornered here, then my answer would be, in a vacuum, yes I would go on a killing spree should God ask me to do so. Now before the rebuttals start flying here me out. I do not believe God acts this way anymore. Jesus came to take the condemnation for sinners and the payment for our crimes. Now, since history has been changed, God has already poured his just wrath on himself, in Christ. God desires that none should perish (that meaning apart from Christ and forgiveness). He has not evolved or developed or anything of the sort, He has simply enacted his justice. So God asking me to become a homicidal maniac simply won't happen.

@Chrisp - you say:
"Parents may not kill their children simply because they "created" them. Would you not say your relationship to God is more akin to that of a parent and child than that of a potter and his pots? To imply that we are simply God's pots implies that we are no more than his property, a position very comparable to that of a slave. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in saying that perhaps this was a bad example, but I do find the idea of subjugating myself to some supreme being as a slave, or as property that may be discarded as pots by a potter, wholly immoral."

I think this is because of how differently we view, what you call here "slavery" and also how differently we view freedom. To me, and biblically, freedom is the power to do the right thing. To you, freedom is the ability to do whatever you want. I am "free" in Christ, like Paul, yet a slave of him simultaneously. I am free because I've been granted the power to begin the process of defeating sin, I am a slave because my life is no longer my own, but God's who has saved me. I'd guess you find subjugating yourself to God immoral because you elevate your own freedom above doing what is right, that being service to God. This will surely confuse a bunch of people but there it is. For me, serving a benevolent master is way better than doing whatever I please. This is why Paul can say, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives through me." If the master has plans for my life beyond my own, than I want to subjugate myself to those plans.

For your second post Chrisp, at 4:48, I admit I am totally lost as to what you mean. I think these conversations are becoming jambled in my head. Can you try again?

Then you say this:
"Ok. I can accept that perhaps ultimately in determining the nature of the nominal universe, science is just as hopeless as any other belief system. However, how would we pick which belief system to follow? Well perhaps it's the one that within the confines of the phenomenal reality in which we live, has granted us with fantastic technologies that let us travel great distances, enjoy great entertainment, and live greatly improved and lengthened lives? Now which one would that be? *drum roll* I'm sure you know what I'm getting at."

Here, if I am right, you're essentially saying you have chosen to follow "science" in a way because they have bettered society. I return to the morality argument and ask, why is bettering society and our life conditions a good thing?

You try to answer again that evolution naturally strives toward life. Why is this so?

"(Wait a minute? Didn’t you challenge my statement about religious faith having health benefits based on a kind of “intuitive logic”? You do realize that that was a statement of faith in spite of empirical evidence to the contrary….right?)"

Yes, but I made this statement with no certainty and was clearly not going to make value judgements based on it. I was looking for clarification. You presented evidence, I accept it, and I withdraw that statement.

"Regardless, here we have a variant of the Flying Spaghetti Monster argument. The problem is that it works in the context of a publicly funded science classroom, but the variants inevitably try to assert that FSM (or in this case alien wizard) is logically equivalent to God in all respects. This is simply untrue. Your variation of the argument seems to say that an obvious parody is in every way logically equivalent to an established religion. There are many reasons that this simply isn’t so. I’ll only mention only one (as it’s really an entirely different debate) The wizard has not had twelve (actually much more) eye-witnesses to the miraculous event, all of whom went to grisly, torturous deaths without recounting a single syllable of the story even though they had nothing to gain by perpetrating a hoax. I realize that you will doubt the veracity of the apostles’ claims, but they are undeniably a leg up on your President’s wizard whether you believe them or not. Christianity is simply not logically equivalent to your parody scenario, Christ did in fact exist and I do follow his teachings. There is no logical equivalence there, and no reason to call my rationality into question based on it. ;-)"

Oh but there is. It might seem obvious because the examples are clear parodies and obviously created very recently by an atheist, but that doesn't change the argument. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think you'll find in ancient mythologies of the world, there are supposedly plenty of witnesses to many miracles, and large written texts concerning them as well. However, we would rightly doubt the claims that Zeus turned into a bull and impregnated a woman, despite that ancient literature might even claim that certain warriors (who most certainly did exist), were of that lineage. Islam has just as much claim in the apparent reliability of it's religious text and the witnesses involved in it's claim, but I'm sure you would also doubt the veracity of that claim. What if suddenly, the President's staff and various lobbyists also suddenly claimed they could see the wizard standing next to him. Would you give the claim credibility? What if a religious text is written, the next few generations of people are indoctrinated in the teachings of the wizard, and two thousand years later a large fraction of people still pray and perform weekly worships of the great wizard? I think they would get offended if you called their beliefs ludicrous and ridiculous.

I'm done for now as it's supper time.

It's so tempting to answer bartdogg's post now, but I must eat. =D

@Chrisp - quickyl on the Quran see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_and_development_of_the_Qur%27an#Sceptical_scholars.

That to say that it has nowhere near the "reliability" as the Bible, particularly the New Testament.

Isn't that the same attitude you're taking towards hostility towards your beliefs?

Ahem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_criticism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Bible

This looks a lot more like the one on Islam that you linked, though.

"I think this is because of how differently we view, what you call here "slavery" and also how differently we view freedom. To me, and biblically, freedom is the power to do the right thing. To you, freedom is the ability to do whatever you want. I am "free" in Christ, like Paul, yet a slave of him simultaneously. I am free because I've been granted the power to begin the process of defeating sin, I am a slave because my life is no longer my own, but God's who has saved me. I'd guess you find subjugating yourself to God immoral because you elevate your own freedom above doing what is right, that being service to God. This will surely confuse a bunch of people but there it is. For me, serving a benevolent master is way better than doing whatever I please. This is why Paul can say, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives through me." If the master has plans for my life beyond my own, than I want to subjugate myself to those plans."

I don't elevate my freedom above doing what is right. I believe they are entirely compatible. I would say freedom is a very important part of what is right. I will say that I believe that doing what is right is impoverished if it is done without freedom. If I do good things only because a man is holding a gun to my head I think that my goodwill is heavily impoverished. Morality is not a chain that restricts my wants, it forms a large part of my wants. I want to be moral, and when given freedom I am moral. I think you'll find that most people who do immoral things do it because of a lack of freedom... out of necessity, and not out of a simple want to do immoral things. They might be starving or someone could be forcing them to do such things. Freedom isn't just the power to do what I want. It is a choice, and not just to do what I want, but to do what I should, which are compatible. I would not want to live in servitude because I would rather my choices and my morality be my own, and my own responsibility, no watering down.

" want to be moral, and when given freedom I am moral. I think you'll find that most people who do immoral things do it because of a lack of freedom... out of necessity, and not out of a simple want to do immoral things. They might be starving or someone could be forcing them to do such things."

Well-said. That's one of those sentimental things that needs to be highlighted, to showcase a better way of looking at mankind.