AW! Epistles
A Glaring Contradiction in Your Argument Against the Existence of God. From Brandon
Abstract
Thursday, 27 October 2005
You are certainly an intelligent and educated man. That being the case, it is certain that you will almost immediately dismiss what I have to say. My feeling won’t be hurt, though. ;) I think you are missing one glaring contradiction in your argument against the existence of God. You set forth scientific evidence to show that what Christians, in particular, believe is contradictory. You say that Christians have no scientific evidence to prove that God exists, and you are right. But then you take an enormous leap to say that, based on your bias, God doesn’t exist for lack of evidence. From an educated man, I am surprised to see such an unsupported statement. The fact is, there are properties of our Universe that even the brightest of physicists don’t understand. The very fact that physicists have proved that a particle can be in two places at once, and can tunnel through space/time to arrive at a destination proves that our Universe isn’t what we thought it was 100 years ago. There will be more discoveries of this magnitude in the future, and we will have to reshape our beliefs again.
And perhaps we shall have to reshape our beliefs to include God, right? Well, you realise that when that happens, if it ever does, it means we shall have evidence for God, so you are saying the same as I am. What I am giving is the scientific skeptical view. It is simply that we do not accept anything without adequate evidence. I quite agree with you that there might be such an entity as God. My point is that there just is not enough evidence for it. We do not believe in things in hope, but only in the light of plain citable and repeatable evidence. That is the huge difference between skeptics and believers. Believers just believe for no reason. That has always been the criticism of Christians from its inception, and it still pertains. I do not personally believe there is any such thing as God, and I base it on the position I just outlined. Without evidence for it, this religionist believes in this green god, and that one believes in a blue god, and someone else believes in a yellow god, and so on, none of them with the least evidence, but what do we find? They will kill each other for it. Religion has practical consequences, and they have rarely been pleasant, and all based on nothing! So do as you say. Believe in God when there is indisputable evidence about Him or Her or It. In the meantime, do not believe.
Everything we can measure, from the smallest to the largest, is contained in a system. The fact that we haven’t measured anything larger than our Universe is only an issue of technology. When we have the technology we will see more, and our understanding will shift. On the same line of thinking, all living things can be classified from very simple to very complex. If our Universe is so ordered, and if there are things about it we still don’t understand, then it is possible that there is something our there more complex than us that doesn’t live by the same rules that we do. Indeed, thought for such a “being” would be conceived differently and could be potentially limitless. That could also mean that such a being doesn’t rely on the existence of time or space to exist.
You do go on. You are doing the same thing. All of these things you imagine might indeed be possible, but so what? We have no evidence of any of your speculative meanderings, so there is no sense in believing any of it. As for the universe having something bigger than it, you are doing something that Christians and philosophers have in common, changing the definition of words to suit themselves. The universe is defined as all there is. How then can there be something bigger than everything? It is the trouble with transcendence. It is not logical because the universe is already all encompassing, so how can anything transcend it? It is dishonest use of words, fine for simple Christians who are amazed by these things, but just sophistry in fact.
I realize that the above paragraph was entirely too speculative, but the point is that, weather you want to believe it or not, there is no person on earth who can definitively say that God does not exist just because we have never seen Him/Her/It/Them. There is simply not enough evidence to prove for or against the existence of God. It’s just a big question mark for now.
So you say, but there cannot be any equivalence between things for which we have evidence and things for which we have no evidence after 6000 years, or whatever it might be, of human civilization. There is the same big question mark over the unicorn, or parapsychology or alien abductions, and all of them are treated in the same way by the skeptic. “Show me the indisputable evidence, and I shall take the claim seriously.” Until then, I shall remain convinced that the believers are simple, gullible or hysterical, or perhaps all three.
However, I agree with you on your rantings against religion. Men have created God in his own image. All major advances in religion have been the result of some political power play to accomplish an agenda. The stories of miracles, of prophecy, etc, are all pretty far-fetched. But you make the assumption that God doesn’t exist just because religions have gotten it all wrong. You say, “The God of these religions isn’t real, therefore, God doesn’t exist.” That is a fallacy of logic.
Well, I give each page a title and link to it so that I can narrow down the source of the citations that people like you like to make back against me, so that I can see it in context. I cannot find the citation you offer here, and it is in quotation marks, so have to believe it really is a quotation. I have explained above the skeptical position, and it is the position I take against the belief in God. It is unnecessary and unfounded. The argument is not an absolute denial. It is a confusion of categories. I argue extensively on the pages using the parallel of Harvey the Rabbit, the invisble and imaginary hero of an old film. People might indeed have their own Harveys and I cannot positively deny any of them, but I have no reason to believe in any of them and so I do not. I cannot prove or disprove what someone imagines. That is the category of God. I think it is the sensible position to take. You will not believe what a man tells you about a car he is trying to sell you without verifying it. It might indeed be a good little runner, but when it breaks down as soon as you drive off with it, you have only yourself to blame for believing his story without verification. I cannot see why belief in God should be any different, especially if I am to believe what the believers themselves say and that is that God made me with a brain in His own image. God has a brain, therefore, and so have we, and He must have given it to us to use and not to ignore.
I guess one last thing I (hesitantly) want to bring up is that some of your arguments seem logical on the surface, but don’t hold up with a bit of thought. For example, your comment that God is the most unlikely. Your point that God has no place in science because science is based on observation and prediction is well-taken. However, it is impossible to say that God is unlikely because he created something that would not likely form on its own. Space/time controls our existence as far as we can observe. If a god is free from those limitations, then applying the laws of our Universe to God is like applying the rules of a car to a human. They are two separate things with two separate sets of rules.
You are using the same trick again. You might be right about this God being in a different logical space from us, or whatever you are saying, but I have no evidence of it. You can reformulate the same argument any way you like and it still invites the belief in something for which there is no present evidence. What is the advantage of believing in Harvey contrary to any evidence in the here and now?
I know this is long, so I will cut it short. I am not telling you that you should believe in God, or even change your belief system to reflect these considerations. I’m just saying that it is fruitless to say that God doesn’t exist. No one knows one way or the other. The fact that we exist is bizarre, and the complexity of our existence borders on impossible. If life as we can observe it is so complex, and if we can admit that we, as humans, can’t know everything, then as far as we know, there is a much stranger lever of existence out there that we may never know. You’re better off sticking to disillusioning people about religion.
You cite the discoveries of science against itself. Science has discovered how strange the world is not religion, and it did it by using the method of skepticism. You believe nothing until it forces itself upon you through clearly delineated and tested real evidence. Speculation is sometimes necessary in science, but it is speculation about why some given evidence is as it is, and then it is tested against whatever the speculation predicts. Speculating that there is a God able to do anything at all, simply gets us nowhere. There might be such a God, but He makes such a minimal impact on us that no one has ever been able to show He is there. OK! So, He might still be there anyway, but it is not something that need bother us until the evidence appears. As for your final point, since the religions I am familiar with treat god as a given, to be accepted without argument, it is obviously legitimate to make the points I make. God is not a given and unarguable, quite the reverse, God remains unnecessary and unfounded. Only fools will believe there is one until the evidence is in.
The only God, likely in our experience, is the universe itself. As you say, we know little about it, even now, and there must be vastly more yet to learn. It is more sensible to be pantheistic than to believe in invisible Harveys. Any invisble Harveys there might be are part of the universe and so pantheism encompasses them.
“I do not personally believe there is any such thing as God, and I base it on the position I just outlined. Without evidence for it, this religionist believes in this green god, and that one believes in a blue god, and someone else believes in a yellow god, and so on, none of them with the least evidence, but what do we find? They will kill each other for it. Religion has practical consequences, and it has rarely been pleasant, and all based on nothing! So do as you say. Believe in God when there is indisputable evidence about Him or Her or It. In the meantime, do not believe.”
I agree almost completely. The only objection I raise is that some evidence simply cannot be repeated to the satisfaction of all intelligent people. Your realize that historicity of events is terribly biased. In addition, there is simply no way to prove that the names that appear on the Declaration of Independence, for example, were written by those men. They could be forgeries. It could all be a big conspiracy. Moon rocks could have been synthasized, and all those pictures of the moon landing faked. History is not (really) science, so I am crossing paths here, but only to make the point that some evidence must simply be taken on faith and a body of knowledge to back it up. Lots of people around the world wrote about various world events, so we can deem them real, but much of history cannot be proved.
I am glad we bein by agreeing almost completely. Let us hold on to that thought. Some evidence is not satisfactory to some people, you say, and it is true enough, but it does not mean evidence is unsatisfactory. I try to be rational, though doubtless I fall short of my target sometimes. My audience such as it is are mainly rational people, and they generally will find my evidence acceptable. You imply that historical evidence is not reliable, and give some examples that might not be. You are inviting me to be skeptical about it. I recommend skepticism. I am skeptical about a lot of history, and especially that history that its proponents claim is sacred. It is the purpose of much of my website to show that the sacred history of the bible is far from reliable when normal historical practice is followed in assessing it. It is in that sense that history is indeed scientific. As you say, historians do not just accept it, but need corroborating evidence. So, if we are to take something on faith, we should base our faith on the best evidence we have. Biblical evidence is not it. The same applies to the evidence for God. The best evidence is that there is none, and so there is no need to believe in God at all.
“As for the universe having something bigger than it, you are doing something that Christians and philosophers have in common, changing the definition of words to suit themselves. The universe is defined as all there is.”
That’s not true as far as theorists are concerned. There are physicists who believe there are clusters of universes that resemble clusters of stars. They have numerical “evidence” to back it up.
If that is so, then they are making the same linguistic error. Linguistic philosophy was fashionable until about half a century ago, but many people could learn from some of its basic tenets. You cannot have sensible arguments if you persist in redefining your terms in mid-syllogism. Just look for the definition of universe and you will find it is what I said it is. I can see the universe as some sort of immense ball hanging in a void just as well as anyone, and can see the benign or evil, according to taste, old man leering at it from outside, but really the old man must be in it. The definition of universe, if it is all there is, ought to include the old man. He is in an even bigger sphere that is really the universe. Christians and other believers in a god avoid the issue by saying that God is immaterial, and I quite agree, but they mean not-material, and the universe is material, so God stands outside of it. It is fine for them, but immaterial things have no consequence for us unless they can influence material things, whereupon they become part of the material world—they are detectable. No one has yet convincingly shown they have detected God. The theoretical cosmologists who speculate about what they call the multiverse, consisting of many conjoined universes, are redefining universe as multiverse, unless it is pure speculation and the other universes can never have any influence on us when they become like God. They are conjectures that just cannot have any consequences for us. If they have, then the multiverse is just the universe, but bigger than anyone previously thought.
“How then can there be something bigger than everything?”
When you see the universe as it really is, time/space are a lot less important. Size is simply a useless term, and relative size is even less useful.
We are not particularly talking about dimensions but about sets. The universe is the set of everything that is, everything that exists and can exist, for anything that can exist exists in the universe. If God exists, He exists in it, and Christians agree that He does, except that, for them, He does not as well. Some theologian, Aquinas, perhaps, said that God was the greatest conceivable thing. It means that God keeps growing as our conceptions grow, a miracle, no doubt, that proves how amazing He is.
“It is the trouble with transcendence. It is not logical because the universe is already all encompassing, so how can anything transcend it?”
As pointed out above, the Universe is not all-encompassing.
Then it is not a universal universe! Why not just accept that the definition of universe necessitates that it is all encompassing. If it is not, whatever is becomes the newly defined universe. A universe is re-established but under a different label. What was wrong with the original one?
“‘Show me the indisputable evidence, and I shall take the claim seriously.’ Until then, I shall remain convinced that the believers are simple, gullible or hysterical, or perhaps all three.”
Indesputable evidence has not been presented for evolution, yet I am certain that you are a firm believer. Indisputable evidence has not been given for the curature of space being responsible for gravity, but this is what the scientific community believes. There are some things that simply cannot be proved.
My point about evidence is that it enjoys the status of being indisputable until it is successfully disputed. All evidence is disputable, but disputation is not refutation. Evidence is not successfully disputed until something better can be offered instead. That is the way science has progressed so far. No scientist thinks that evidence is final. The whole point of science is to find evidence, and from it formulate explanations, as I am sure you know. As long as an explanation stands because no one has successfully challenged it, it is the currently held theory. Much of science is currently indisputable, undeniable, irrefutable, and so on, but it is not necessarily true or certain or infallible. Something better might be established on sounder evidence. Pro tem, though, it is the best and so is irrefutable. There is no such evidence for God or even for religion.
“I cannot see why belief in God should be any different, especially if I am to believe what the believers themselves say and that is that God made me with a brain in His own image. God has a brain, therefore, and so have we, and He must have given it to us to use and not to ignore.”
I am not making a discussion of the identity of God. I am entirely in agreement that the identity of God simply cannot be known, if, indeed, there is a god. I also understand that you require indesputable evidence of God to believe, and you are right that any sensible man should do that. I am only saying that making an argument against the existence of God doesn’t match the agenda of the rest of your website. You are a skeptic of religion, particulary Christianity. Using your skepticism to try to show that God doesn’t exist doesn’t match. You have no more evidence against the existence of “God” than the religious have for the existence of God.
(http://www.askwhy.co.uk/questioningbelief/007GodExist.html)
You will, I hope, let me decide what I want to put on my website, esoecially as I allow and enjoy contributions like yours that dispute what I say. I have already explained that the basis for believing in God is as unsound as the rest of religious belief, and so is perfectly compatible with a website oriented against western patriarchal beliefs. I also explained that the skeptical view is that there is no sound reason for anyone to believe in God. I am not God myself and do not claim to be able to demonstrate there is no God. The whole point is that there is no reason to think there is one.
“You are using the same trick again. You might be right about this God being in a different logical space from us, or whatever you are saying, but I have no evidence of it. You can reformulate the same argument any way you like and it still invites the belief in something for which there is no present evidence. What is the advantage of believing in Harvey contrary to any evidence in the here and now?”
I mean to say that the logic is irrelevant is such arguments. To say there is no evidence is useful. But that’s not what you were saying. You were using the Christian logic to disprove the existence of God. When you take that route, you have to assume the belief system of the Christians, and, in this case, use known principles of physics. In other words, if you are going to play the game, you have to play it all the way. That being the case, it is not logical to say that God is most unlikely because of the belief that nothing complex could ever come out of something simple without design. Most religious folks believe that God transcends time and is, therefore, not subject to the laws of physics.
Well, believers invent more and more amazing things for God every time they meet an impasse in their argument. God has always been able to do impossible things because it enables believers always to be right. You are right, that I was at that point using the Christian argument against themselves, and the argument is valid until they, or you, venture that the normal rules of Nature do not apply to God. This is the same God that there is no evidence for at all. God is able to do amazing things because He is just like Harvey. He is imaginary, and imaginary beings can do anything you care to imagine. In this world, it takes a lot of accumulated energy and vastnesses of time to make anything even as complicated as a single cell. To make a human being took even longer. To make a god must take longer still. Now, of course, there is no time longer than eternity, so perhaps God had enough time to be made incredibly complicated, but then we live in real time which is infinitesimal to any infinite and eternal being, so according to mathematics, He still cannot be aware that we are here.
“God is not a given and unarguable, quite the reverse, God remains unnecessary and unfounded. Only fools will believe there is one until the evidence is in.”
I agree that the “evidence” is not entirely in. But humans are not machines, and it’s not foolish to believe a lie if it helps you sleep at night.
It is a dubious statement at best. It might be a comfort to believe there really is a Harvey the Rabbit, and that might help me to sleep at night with no consequences for anyone else. But only about 100 years ago in the US and not so long ago in S Africa, people were being taught that this Harvey they call Jarvey approved of white folk killing black folk, and the proof was in the bible! Telling lies is something to be resisted except in the most trivial of instances, and then, as you suggest, to comfort people. The sure sign of decadence in society is when lying becomes the norm. That is what it has become for believers of patriarchal religions in this world. Perhaps it always was.
The fact is, you make many arguments against religious belief with the presumption that such belief always ends in someone killing someone else.
If that is my presumption, it is based on history, and, what is more, it is based on history that the believers do not want to be told because they know it is so disgusting and shameful for them. It is a history that is so awful that they have been unable to hide it, and it continues daily.
The fact is, there are millions of Americans, and others around the world, who are making a positive impact on our society as the result of religious beliefs. Yes, there are many hypocrites, power hungry, and dishonest “believers” and there’s nothing that can be done about that. But most of the Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc that I have met are really nice, treat they families well, and make a positive contribution to society. To me, this is not foolishness. Life is harsh, and we make the best of it, if we’re wise. Most of them are just making the best of life. There would be a lot more depressed people in the world if they had to face certain and permanent death.
If you had read my pages, you will find that I differentiate between the sheep and the shepherds among Christians, the sheep generally being honest but gullible, and the shepherds being dishonest and fully aware that their religion is a scam. There are some shepherds who are promoted sheep and remain gullible, but they cannot get on, and, if they could, must realise how foolish and gullible they have been. Large numbers of Catholic priests have been leaving the church precisely for this reason. Mostly they retain their faith because they have been well indoctrinated even to want to be a priest, but find that they cannot match up to the heartless requirements of the Christian faith machine, and have to leave.
My own view of humanity is that most people are nice enough, or are quite capable of being nice if they are brought up properly, and that means to respect other people within society. The patriarchal religions claim to make people good, but they do not. Good people are good despite their religion. Psychologists have studied boys from reform schools and found that they can be taught to be religious. They will then remain religious, in that they attend church and do the conventional religious things. What they do not do, despite their religious conversion is generally stop being villains. A few do, but most remain thieves, drug dealers, and so on. Bush is a prime example. He was a reprobate, and he remains just as odious, if not more so because now he can do more damege. I have made a reasonable life, though I could perhaps have studied harder, and been more ambitious. The point is I have not needed Christianity to have a happy life, and in that I am like the majority of the world’s population. Respect for the planet and everything it bears is how people should be taught to live, but parents have to do it first, without feeling they have to have a figmentary father looking to smack them and give them sweeties. On your final point, they do face a certain and permanent death, and, you know what, life becomes much more important and enjoyable when you realise it. I wish I had realised it sooner.
As a final note, I find it strange that you take such a defensive role in responding to a comment that you openly invite on your website. I am only having a conversation with you. I’m not trying to rock your world or change your mind. I also don’t believe that a man as educated as yourself could be so arrogant to believe that you know everything and that anyone who might disagree with you must be an idiot. “I give each page a title and link to it so that I can narrow down the source of the citations that people like you like to make back against me.” People like me? Which category, exactly, do I fit in? I’m certainly not a believer. I’m not a pantheist, either. I can only assume that you consider me to be a moron who clearly hasn’t thought it all through. Indeed you may believe I am incapable of such thought.
I did not realise I was being defensive, but you seem to be. “People like you” are people who decide to enter into the debate by sending an email. I said I provide a javascript link on each page that automatically gives the page reference, so that I can know what has triggered the response. I accept that I get narky when people don’t use it, and so I was here, but I cannot relate it to knowing everything, and so on. You seem hypersensitive on this. Spare a thought for me as well. Most correspondents are Christians defending their viewpoint, and not all do it crudely. If I have assumed you were a Christian in anything I have said, then I apologise for it, but apologists for Christianity need not be Christians. Some people do it because of some misplaced idea of fair play. When any patriarchal religion gets control they have rarely been fair.
I would say that a man who believes he has as many answers as he needs is a man who will never have too many answers. But people like me will keep asking the questions until we die; we might find some interesting answers.
I am a great believer in asking questions, unless the questions are the same one constantly rephrased in the hope of eventually getting the response desired.
I guess, in that light, there is no need to believe in anything. I don’t want to turn this into an absurdly skewed conversation, so I’ll be quick. The problem with your statement is that science often accepts the best explanation, evidence or not. As an example, there are two major competing views on the beginning of the Universe/the Big Bang, as you are aware. Neither is based on any sort of definitive evidence. In the Big Bang theory, there is no way to explain where the sudden burst of energy came from that caused the Bang to happen. Weather it was a force of God, or something else that is unimaginable, no one knows for sure. All we know is that the Universe appears to be radiating out from a source. None of this proves anything, and evidence is completely unattainable, and always will be. In light of that, there is no need to believe in the Big Bang, according to you, but we do it because it’s our best explanation yet. We can take this to the next step and say there is no need to believe that such a force could exist to cause the Big Bang outside of the Universe, because there is no evidence except the existence of the universe, and its pattern of expansion. Your experience in taking a scientific approach biases you toward the non-God explanation, but both versions are equally unfounded.
I am not really with you on this. We have an observation that the universe seems to be expanding, and that suggests a Big Bang at some point in the past, when the expansion began. That is an observation and an hypothesis to explain it. Christians go further then and, with no evidence at all, say the Big Bang was caused by God. Scientists who base their thoughts on skepticism, as I have said—the refusal to believe anything without evidence for it—simply says the hypothesis of God is unnecessary. Things do seem to happen spontaneously in the world. An excited atom or molecule will spontaneously release a quantum of energy and adopt an unexcited form. A radioactive nucleus spontaneously radiates a particle and becomes a different nucleus. Whatever existed before the Big Bang spontaneously began to expand to form what is now the universe. I agree that we do not know, but there is no need to hypothesize anything as all encompassing as a God to explain it.
You say that evidence for whatever caused the Big Bang will forever be unattainable, but I doubt that is true. The details of the formation of the objects and energy distribution that constitute the universe are all dependent on the initial conditions at the Big Bang, and physics can formulate refinements to its hypotheses about the initial state to account for what is observed. It is possible that time only becomes the time we experience when it is much bigger than Planck’s time, and that, below that, time never reaches 0. It would mean that the universe always existed but only appeared when time became bigger than Planck’s time. I am no expert on this, but even popular science magazines explain such things, so there is no need for me to.
As far as I am aware, no serious scientist has decided that God is the only adequate hypothesis for the Big Bang, and as long as God is unnecessary, it contravenes the Principle of Parsimony to invent Him. Meanwhile we have every reason to believe in the Big Bang and from its properties, that science will work its way backwards to the earliest reckonable moment of it, by which time we should have some ideas of how we got to that point! If God had anything to do with it, He gave us the wherewithal to find out about it, and that is what scientists, but not fundamentalist Christians are trying to do. So, if I am biased to the non-God explanation, it is on the basis of the principles that define science but the religion rejects. That is why the two are incompatible.
I think we are mincing words here. You are certainly aware that words in any language will change in usage, and these changes do not necessarily reflect the original semantics of the words. One example is the word “burger”. This comes from the German word “Hamburger” which would be a person who hails from Hamburg. To say “burger” means to say a person from “Burg”. However, setting that little phenomenon aside, a hamburger has nothing to do with Hamburg except that it is said to have originated there. The term “universe” in its utmost semantic purity means “combined into one, whole”. However, the Universe has been taught in countless classrooms for years as a system containing galaxies. It has been assumed for the longest time that there was only one, so the term adhered nearly perfectly to its Latin roots. If you ask a common man what the Universe is, his answer will be that it’s a set of galaxies, and he may or may not be aware of the possibility of others. Regardless, the term “multiverse” is practical for allowing a distinction between the traditional understanding of the Universe and the newer Multiverse.
Your definition of the universe is fine. It is the whole, everything there is. That is why it is logically absurd to then say something can exist outside of it, and with such logic, it is no wonder that miracles can happen! I do not find it hard to accept that there are parts of the universe that we cannot directly see, such as events outside our light cone, but they are still part of the whole, as you put it, and so are within the universe. So, too is God. OK, words do change their meaning, though the changes are normally subtle, and manifest over a fairly long time. Multiverse is the new universe, but the concept remains unchanged. The whole is simply perceived to be more than it was before. God must still be in it, or it is not the whole because it has excluded God.
I mean to say that the logic is irrelevant is such arguments. To say there is no evidence is useful. But that’s not what you were saying. You were using the Christian logic to disprove the existence of God. When you take that route, you have to assume the belief system of the Christians, and, in this case, use known principles of physics. In other words, if you are going to play the game, you have to play it all the way. That being the case, it is not logical to say that God is most unlikely because of the belief that nothing complex could ever come out of something simple without design. Most religious folks believe that God transcends time and is, therefore, not subject to the laws of physics.
As I said before, “believers invent more and more amazing things for God every time they meet an impasse in their argument. God has always been able to do impossible things because it enables believers always to be right.” We are left with the problem of how God exists anyway. If we need to know how things began then it is no answer to say that something inconceivable is the answer. I want to know how conceivable things happen, not to evade the question by substituting something impossible or fantastic. People only started significantly to discover things about the world when they dispensed with non-explanations in God and looked for real explanations in Nature through science. I know that some people will believe anything if it is attributed to God, and that is what worries me, and the reason for my website.
It is true that Christians would rather lose logic than faith. Here, though, you make a few logical leaps. First, you assume that a being that is not subject to the same rules that we are must have gone through a process similar to ours in its evolution. Next you assume that eternity means linear time and further declare that each moment in this linear time is infinitesimal. You don’t believe in God, and physcists don’t believe in time travel, so none of this is useful as it concerns the evidence you crave, but a god that lives forever would not be subject to the rules of time because space/time would only be a part of its environment. It would be able to move back and forth as it pleased, unencumbered by silly clocks.
I again refer you to this, “believers invent more and more amazing things for God every time they meet an impasse in their argument. God has always been able to do impossible things because it enables believers always to be right.” I too can win all the arguments if I am allowed to make up truths as I go along. This imaginary God you defend has remarkable properties that you know very well, but that I do not know even exists. All of this is just piffle.
“But only about 100 years ago in the US and not so long ago in S Africa, people were being taught that this Harvey they call Jarvey approved of white folk killing black folk, and the proof was in the bible! Telling lies is something to be resisted except in the most trivial of instances, and then, as you suggest, to comfort people. The sure sign of decadence in society is when lying becomes the norm. That is what it has become for believers of patriarchal religions in this world. Perhaps it always was.”
You are speaking of political powerplays. Using religion to fulfill an agenda is an age-old tactic. It’s not the religion, or the “lies” that it incorporates, that cause harm; it’s the politicians who use religion to control the thoughts of the masses. Harvey harms no one, and those who believe in him don’t either. Jarvey is an invention of a politician or leader to incite violence that clearly contradicts what Harvey stands for, and anyone who knew how to read would know this. It is no more useful to blame religion for killing people than it is to blame guns for killing 6-year-olds. A lie can be used however one sees fit, as history has shown repeatedly, whether it be for good or bad.
It is always someone else! When does the Christian begin to object to his religion being used for control? Are all religions used in the same way, or is it just Christianity and Islam, and Judaism, their father? If religions only stand for good, then how is it possible for wicked people to use them. It should be quite plain that is what they are doing. I am not a Christian, and it is plain to me, yet I am the dupe of Satan, according to Christians. If that is true, then perhaps they should consider whether I am duped or they are, but that is something they cannot consider. The people that conventional Christians murdered by the thousand in the middle ages were people like me, but Christians nevertheless, who thought the Church had been taken over by Satan. They became the Protestants eventually, but originally were called heretics and witches by the Catholics. By the time the Protestants were strong enought o break away from Rome, they were burning Catholics as heretics and witches, so the Satanic curse had spread to both sides. Eventually you have to ask whether there is something wrong at the core. you will not ask it even though you say you no longer believe. How then will supposed believers ask it? They would rather just follow their leaders and carry on killing for them.
There are also different kinds of lies. A lie that says it’s cool to kill people based on race is, to any rational person, heinous. A lie that tells you that if you live your life with dignity, mercy, and generosity you will be taken you to the gates of Heaven only encourages a person to strive for excellent moral standards and increases his sense of well-being.
It might do but then it might make the person want to cleanse the world of those who pollute the world in his view. That is more often what happens, and that is the trouble with patriarchal religions in particular. A few years ago, I recollect, rival Buddhist monks were photographed having a fist fight. It hit the world’s newspapers because it was so unusual and bizarre. Christians do not stop at fist fights. They kill each other in millions, and do not even seem to sense any incongruity in it.
What I said was that if a lie does no harm to anyone (i.e. is not used to cause harm) and helps a person to sleep at night, it can’t be foolish to believe it. As a matter of fact, medical statistics show that those who meditate and have a positive outlook on life tend to heal more quickly than the pessimist. If someone wants to believe it’s their prayers that heal them, and not their bodies, why shouldn’t they? It works either way, and the person feels a sense of well-being.
Perhaps their prayers are helping them. It is a well known phenomenon as you are aware, but not supernatural. Otherwise, I agree fully that what people do or believe themselves in private is their own affair. Christians are never satisfied with that, however, because part of the scam—the part that keeps it growing—is the need to proselytize. It gives every one of those Christian powerplayers, or whatever you called them, the use of the poor sheep as a regular army of propagandists.
Your statement needs to be modified tremendoulsy. You are basing it on history that you find in books. Events you find there are world-changing, to say the least. However, what you find in books does not represent humanity, only politics. Suicide bombers are no more representative of the Muslim faith than a Down Syndrome patient is of an average person. Those in politics and in positions of power are generally radical to some extreme. It isn’t true to say that the whole country supports abortion because 9 judges agreed with a small group of feminists. I have personally met A LOT of religous men and women from all over the world, and every one has been decent, hard-working, and generous. All the Muslims I talked to were ashamed that the attack on 9/11 were done in the name of Islam. What the majority of a group believes is often in sharp contrast to how a groups acts in response to decisions of its leaders.
Why then are their leaders able to lead them? People can oppose their leaders, especially, I would have thought, if they are convinced that their leaders are doing the Devil’s work, and God is on their side. A Catholic friend of mine keeps telling me that his Lord said the church would be taken over by wolves. Why then does he still remain a member of the Church? If the Christian leaders are not doing what the holy book says, then why are the masses still docilely following them and even re-electing them. They call them sheep because they are sheep. It is an admission of their idiocy, but has become a beautiful metaphor of their faith. Your politics excuse does not hold water. We are not in the Dark Ages, every Christian can read the moral parts of the bible, but they take no notice, or only take notice of the immoral God of the Old Testament. Do you seriously expect believers to say they are proud of killing people? Are Christians proud of killing myriads of innocent Arabs in the pretence that they are saving them from being killed by Saddam? We shall kill you to save you from a worse death, so be glad! It is like the Inquisition. We shall kill you to save your soul. I cannot see how you can defend this at all. It is beyond me.
“…and, what is more, it is based on history that the believers do not want to be told because they know it is so disgusting and shameful for them. It is a history that is so awful that they have been unable to hide it, and it continues daily.”
Every Christian I have ever met, and I know many on a personal level, is very aware of the errors Christian countries and groups have made. They are, of course, ashamed of it, but they do not deny that it happened. Nor do they deny that attrocities are being committed daily in the name of Christianity. This is, again, the use of religion to rally influence to accomplish a political agenda. And, again, it does not reflect the value system of the majority of religious believers. There are equally as many atrocities being committed in the name of democracy, communism, sex, ethnic purity, etc. Democracy is not well represented by our occupation of Iraq, or by the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Islam is not well represented by Al Q
It is always an easy excuse to blame something onto someone else, but all of these boast that they are Christians, and the Moslems similarly boast their affiliation to Islam, and Jews the same to Judaism, so none of them can escape the responsibility of whatever is done in the name of their beliefs. I do not see the Christians of the world organizing mass Christian demonstrations against what the leaders of the world are doing in the name of Christianity. Quite the opposite. Bush and Blair have just been re-elected partly on the large Christian following they both, particularly Bush, enjoy. The London bomber who made a tape of himself explaining his reasons, explained that everyone took responsibility for their leaders, especially in a democracy. Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay, where plainly people have been tortured, ought to mean something to people who worship a tortured man. It seems to me, it ought to be a total repudiation of torture, but Christians are too stupid to notice, and seem to think it is a visual encouragement for people to torture. It has always been thus. That is why I think that Christianity is rotten at the core.
To say that a large number of Christian leaders are fully aware that their religion is a scam is utterly unfounded and, in my experience, untrue. I was a Christian, sort of, for about 16 years. When I say “sort of” I mean that I always had a feeling it was all bullshit, but I stuck it out till I couldn’t stick anymore. At any rate, I met literally hundreds of Christian leaders in several different countries, and all were completely convinced of their faith. People from Billy Graham, a world renowned evangelist, to the lowly pastors of small churches. I have met some incredibly stupid leaders, and some of the brightest I have every known. Their faith is not an act of intellect. There is something in their “hearts” that tells them that what they believe is true. They don’t pretend to be able to explain the apparent inconsistencies, because they believe God will shed light on why the inconsitencies seem to exist in due time. The smartest man I personally know is a pastor in a small church and he has an intellectual answer to most of the questions genius skeptics, like yourself, pose. However, this has nothing to do with his faith; it’s just the icing on the cake. He simply believes. I suppose you could say they’re all faking it, but you would only be speculating because you would be missing the one thing you crave the most: evidence.
They never doubt their hearts even despite these inconsistenceis, such as the curiously predilection Christians have for killing others in the cruellist ways devisable. Ought they not to abandon what is in their hearts and listen to what is in their heads? After all, God made them with a brain too, they tell me, so why do they listen to their hearts instead of the organ of reason He gave them. Perhaps they are too scared to realise that their heads might show that what is in their hearts is Satan, because no one who thinks could put up with such grave “inconsistencies”. Do Christians ever use their heads? And, if they see another Christian, a meretriciously Christian leader like the odious Bush and his brother in arms and hymn books, Blair, doing what the Christian bible plainly does not say is recommended by God, why do they let them get away with it and even vote the same liars and wrongdoers back into power again, to repeat their sins. Obviously most Christians think Christ is rambo, not the poor merciful Galilean he is supposed to have been.
“The patriarchal religions claim to make people good”. Not fully agreed. Clumping them all together and making a sweeping generalization such as this is kind of silly. Christianity makes not claim to improve people. It does, however, lay out a set of moral guidelines to which to adhere. Love God, that’s not so bad. Love your neighbor, good. Love yourself, good. Respect your parents, good. Don’t sleep around with other poeple’s women, good. Don’t kill, good. Sure, there’s a lot of drama in the Old Testament which involves scandal and murder in the name of God, but these are intended only to show the character of God, not to tell people how to be. The New Testament is the clencher because it tells folks to do their best, trust God, and believe in Jesus Christ. What a person believes is up to him, but the ourward effects are what matter to us. If everyone did what the New Testament describes as moral, the world would be a better place, even without God.
If it does not improve people then what use is it? When you lay down rules for living, you must expect that they will have some effect. Christians claim they do. Some of the moral recommendations in the bible are sensible even today, but others are not. After all Christians accept that the basis of the moral code was handed to Moses in the second millennium BC, over three thousand years ago, so it can hardly be expected to be uniformly true today. The trouble is that Christians freely abandon what ought to be true still, such as do not kill other people, and make a big thing about people who love others of the same sex, or even love others of a different sex unless they have been through some church ritual called the sacrament of marriage. Essentially the bible began as a book of laws, and that is still what Christians use it as, but once the law in it was absolute, as social laws ought to be while they are on the statute book, and now many are absurd, and should be amended, as society’s laws have been. Picking and chosing what bits you like and what you do not like can be done by anyone, but Christians use it to deny the rights of people who do not accept their laws or their interpretation of them. Even so, it shows that Christianity, like all religions are meant to be used to control people. What it leads to is plain from history, and that is what I am pointing out. Finally, the New Testament Son of God told us that the poor were blessed, and that you had to be poor to get into the kingdom of God. That counts out Bush and Blair, and most Christians in the US.
Being religious and having religious conviction are very different. I went to church for 16 years and I never really believed, despite wanting to. What you describe above is common among the general population as well. Unless there is a change of heart, claiming to be religious means very little. You don’t need a study to prove that.
I guess that counts out most Christians too. But you say there are plenty of sincere ones. I would believe you if I saw them doing anything. Any sinner can go and pray. As you admit, it proves nothing. we are back to works versus faith. Faith is the scam. James said only works proved your faith. There are very few Christians who actually accept this. They prefer to think faith is the key because it is easy and falsehood can easily be hidden. Not that Christians notice even when evangelical types are as openly crooked as you can imagine. If they do, none of them ever complain!
You are right. If everyone only did what was best for everyone, our world would be a terrific place to be. We would have more advances in medicine so people would enjoy longer, healthier lives. We would probably have a station on Mars and satellites at every planet and a few planetoids. Passports would be unnecessary as we would likely have a world government and a world language. There wouldn’t be poverty. We would all agree to disagree.
Our reality, unfortunately, contrasts significantly. People are greedy and stupid and need laws to keep them in order. For some it takes a figmentary father as a guide toward a goal of selflessness and high moral values. It’s like a crutch for the mind, and some people need it to deal with morality and mortality. Surprisingly, they are not you. You are happy being “enlightened”, and death doesn’t scare you. I am unhappy being enlightened. I believe the whole Jesus thing is a sham, but this is a problem for me because I AM afraid of death, as much as I hate to admit it. So not only do I fear death, but I have no mental crutch to keep me grounded. This difference between the me’s and the you’s is entirely personality, and we all have to find a way to cope.
There is a difference between enjoying life and fearing death. I do not fear death, and I honestly can see nothing in the supposed after-life that differs from death anyway. But I do not particularly want to die yet, precisly because I enjoy life. if the suicide bombers realised that there was no heaven full of black eyed houris to welcome them, they would not do what they do. Christians have grown out of it because of Augustine declaring suicide to be a mortal sin, but the absurd belief in a life after life has ended is the cause of endless problems by fanatics and their gullible followers. It is the very theology that is at fault. If you want to believe in God, then believe that He has given you a life, and expects you to do your best with it.
I’m not concerned about fair play or even defending the little guy, not that Christians are little guys to be defended. It’s also hard to believe that you would believe, from our conversations, that I am an apologist for the Christian faith since I have made no strong reference to the Bible or any other Christian literature. If you did believe that, I can see how you might find my arguments crude. I agree with you on many points, not that that matters to you much, but I only thought it fair to discuss apparent fallacies and inconsistencies in your essays. And I did this because you invite your visitors to do so.
No, I said that not all Christian apologists have crude arguments, meaning that they can easily be distinguished from less crude, non-Christian apologists. I am not saying your arguments are crude at all. You seem sensitive again. I think I am arrogant, because it is necessary to put up with the endlessly repeated nonsense that Christian apologists think only they can express in a novel way. It just gets too complicated to argue the nuances of Catholic, Protestant, and so on right down the line, rather like the joke that just won a poll on the website Ship of Fools as the best religious joke ever. I am afraid, it has to include uncommitted people like yourself, if that is what you are, so long as you are arguing in ways that Christians would support. So, my apologies and non-apologies at the same time.
I am a great believer in asking questions, unless the questions are the same one constantly rephrased in the hope of eventually getting the response desired.
If that is what I am doing, I again apologize. I don’t want you to believe what I do, and it wouldn’t matter if I did because I know that people will believe what they want to believe and I am no exception. We are fallible beings working our way through life. Healthy discussions lead to understand and common ground. Heated discussions lead to distrust and anger. I certainly appreciate the time you have taken to respond to me; I have looked forward to it. Should you grow weary of this increasingly long corresondence, feel the absolute freedom simply not to respond. It won’t hurt my feelings.
I am beginning to think you are too apologetic! At one stage you seemed to be rephrasing the question in different ways, but if you were not, it is something that believers like to do, simple folk as they are, because however many denials they get, they will hang on to the answer that gives them a morsel of comfort in their childish and dangerous beliefs.
