Creationist wins a debate

Post Reply New Topic

From what I've seen though, Catholics and Protestants are actually the heaviest investors into methods to defend their religious beliefs, where there are actually colleges heavily dedicated to defending these beliefs, and many, many professors who have their focus on defending these beliefs. So, it ends up being that philosophy of religion almost always evaluates a Christian notion of God, simply because of these investments, even though other notions of God exist.

The issue ends up being that we'd need to have the belief more justified than other possible beliefs. Religions usually don't do that. Prayers seem not to work, and to the extent they do work, it seems to be more of an issue of luck. And on the afterlife, the only way to make sense of that is to argue that we have a non-material mind, but the problem with this is the degree to which our physical brain seems to determine the workings of the mind. So, if I jam a metal rod through your head, your mental workings are heavily disrupted and you lose several functions, but.... if I destroy your brain, somehow you enter another life where it all works fine? What is it even restored to? I mean, maybe we can construct some way to make this reconstruction for the afterlife possible, but not really a way to make it plausible or to avoid possible hard problems.

Surely you can only know that someone else knows everything if you know everything and can check that what they believe to be true is accurate?

So the second option seems redundant to me.

Well thats because there is heavy theological consequences if they don't believe in "miracles" and have "faith" -- If you don't believe that Christ miraculously resurrected from the dead, you might as well stop calling yourself a Christian. There is very little consequences in judaism for not believing certain things like whether a divine force parted the red sea, it doesn't make you any less a Jew. I'm not saying that that is necessarily a good thing for Jews and an unfortunate thing for Christianity, but Christians have that to deal with. But it is a great problem to me as I have not been able to source very many defenses for God from Christian apologetics, so I have largely given up. If any of you know of some good basic arguments on behalf of God, and I am already aware of Stephen Barr and Dinesh D'Souza, but If you know more, let me know.

You are not required to suspend rational thought when you approach the torah. It is even a sin to pray for a miracle in Judaism, the miraculous may happen, and thank God if they do, but cannot depend EVEN on God, or people. You have to do it yourself -- Every Jew operates from this basic assumption and it is perhaps why an overwhelming amount of us are either humanists, have pioneered or founded humanist movements, or are off to make the world a better place. It is even said that if the messiah comes and you are planting trees, finish planting your row of trees and then shake the messiah's hand. In other words, we are to continue living and working as if this is all there is, as if there is no God and as if there is no after life, and even if our mitzvah's bring the messiah, our task in fixing the world is still more important then even that.

I will address both the afterlife and prayer tomorrow in an entirely new thread, or in this one if I don't have the time.

Yam Soof. The sea of reeds, hundreds of miles from the Red Sea.

The sea of reeds no longer exists. A lot can happen in 3000 years. Climate and rainfall patterns can change

ruveyn

"The argument is simple."-Hovind.
Simple arguments for simple minds...

(Paraphrasing) "If someone told you they cannot lie and told you the 2+2=4... wouldn't you believe them?"

First, if this is an 'umie, wouldn't they be lying to begin with? Second, if said human said God exists and it's true because they cannot lie, I would ask them to show evidence that they cannot lie and that this deity exists. This individual would likely invoke passages from a book written by superstitious tribesmen thousands of years ago to explain things they did not know. That would be akin to claiming that the serpent Jörmungandr must be real because you were told so by a person who said they saw it and they would never lie about something like that, then the person writes it in a book, which you then use thousands of years later to validate the existence of a giant serpent that completely encircles the world (evidence points to the beast as being an explanation for areas of unusually violent tides).

On that note, I'm going to look for Bifröst... and hopefully get to chomp down on some magical regenerating boar meat.

[quote="MarketAndChurch"
If you don't believe that Christ miraculously resurrected from the dead, you might as well stop calling yourself a Christian...[/quote]

If I saw a person resurrected from the dead, I would believe that perhaps the individual wasn't truly dead (there have been documented cases in which people passed out and had an undetectible heartbeat and were subsequently pronounced dead, while in reality, they were still alive. Their heartrate dropped to the minimum level required to sustain life). If there is evidence the individual is indeed dead (lividity, decomposition, etc), I would be forced to conclude that perhaps some sort of virus or pathogen is causing the body to move. If the CDC discovers a virus that reanimates the deceased, I would have to conclude it is a zombie, and not some miraculous event.

There's a very long list of arguments on behalf of God. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence_ ... nce_of_God

And I'm always a bit reluctant to aid theism because I get the feeling that people are very motivated reasoners in favor of their religion. However, the list is a good start, and there are a number of academic defenders for many of these arguments. Some very well-known figures with solid training who favor God's existence are William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, and Alvin Plantinga. The issue is that I'd take their arguments with a grain of salt, especially if you don't know the debate that well. If you're more of an auditory person, then listening to a few online debates may help you get a feel for the issue: http://worldviewnaturalism.com/debates/ Just make sure that the topic discussed is relatively interesting to you.

That being said, neither of those figures (Barr or D'Souza) are really significant figures in terms of apologetics or philosophy of religion. I wasn't even aware of Barr, so I may be merely guessing when it comes to him, however, I know D'Souza is a popularizer and I don't believe he's a very honest or intelligent figure at that.


Hunh, the context in which I heard that was actually that there were historically enough false messiahs that a practicing Jew would be more sensible not to drop what they were doing for another proclaimed Messiahs


Right, to be honest, you didn't address whether Judaism was more rational to believe than a competing belief. Only that Judaism had less supernatural content relative to many other religions. The issue being that if not having supernatural content or supernatural hypotheses is a good thing, then a view that minimizes these would have to be a real contender simply on that ground.

If I saw a person resurrected from the dead, I would believe that perhaps the individual wasn't truly dead (there have been documented cases in which people passed out and had an undetectible heartbeat and were subsequently pronounced dead, while in reality, they were still alive. Their heartrate dropped to the minimum level required to sustain life). If there is evidence the individual is indeed dead (lividity, decomposition, etc), I would be forced to conclude that perhaps some sort of virus or pathogen is causing the body to move. If the CDC discovers a virus that reanimates the deceased, I would have to conclude it is a zombie, and not some miraculous event.[/quote]


True enough.

dont exactly agree.

You dont have to be bomber (suicide, or otherwise) to be "militant".
You just need to have an attitude.

I agree that someone who is bent on "spreading the good news" about atheism, and is out to spread the lack of faith, and to make converts, an "evangelical atheist".

A "fundamentalist" is someone who adheres strictly to scripture- the letter of the law. A christian fundie is someone who is a biblical literalist- takes the stories literally- and adheres to the teachings literally.

What folks call "atheist fundamentalists" are really "atheist evangelicals".

Atheism doesnt have any "scripture" as far as I know. So its hard to imagine what an "atheist fundamentalist" would be ( someone who adheres strictly the words of Richard Dawkins maybe?).

There are two counters to this argument. (That I'm aware of)

1) Follow the logic out one more step. If we are concluding that unless I know all things, I can be certain of no things... then even if an entity exists that knows all things, and if forbidden to lie... I can still not know anything. Even if said entity reveals information to me, I am still unable to know it until I too know all things. Because I do not know that said entity exists, is real, cannot lie, or is presenting me knowledge. Because the presupposition is that I am incapable of knowing anything... anything, without knowing everything.

2) The other tact to approach is to directly counter the argument instead of following it. State that there are things that can be known with certainty. I am certain of 3 things, myself. I am. I think. I experience. Those three things form the basis for having a world view in the first place. Many other things can be concluded based on those "pillars" of certainty, but with each step taken away the certainty diminishes. I am capable of both knowing things with complete certainty, a degree of certainty and of uncertainty, and of not knowing things.

The argument presented defeats itself though, thus I would generally allow it to do so by electing route 1) to counter argue with.