In Fairness to the Materialists

_{Barry Arrington

September 18, 2016

Intelligent Design}

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As a follow-up to my last post, I think it is only fair for me to highlight all of the Christian gangbangers who renounced their faith in Christ, converted to materialist atheism, and turned from a life of hate and violence to a life of love, mercy and sacrifice for their families.

Oh wait, no such person exists. Never mind. Carry on with what you were doing.

Comments

Pindi,
HeKS, I apologise for attributing feelings to you that you don’t have.
Apology accepted. Also, I realize you may not have had a chance to read the other posts I linked to, so don't read too much personally in my post at #57. Take it more as a general observation on my part. Take care, HeKSHeKS_{September 20, 2016
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Pindi, I just realized you should have already known everything I just said about myself above. After all, I pointed you right to a post where I said virtually the same thing to someone who claimed that religious people believe in God because of an emotional need. For some reason, atheists very often seem to feel the need to attribute theistic belief to emotion because they can't seem to cope with the notion of people believing in God simply because they find it to be logically necessary. For some reason they can't seem to allow themselves to accept that people who are utterly unmoved and unmotivated by emotional considerations (like myself) are theists for intellectual reasons and reject atheism because they find it to be rationally unsupportable and lacking in any compelling positive arguments. That atheists seem to want to attribute belief in God to emotionalism is really rather ironic, since the most widely cited argument in favor of atheism (variations on the Problem of Evil) relies entirely on emotionalism for it's rhetorical force, because it has no logical force whatsoever.HeKS_{September 20, 2016
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HeKS, I apologise for attributing feelings to you that you don't have.Pindi_{September 20, 2016
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Pindi @54
One thing I find interesting is that you care so deeply about this thing of understanding and accepting the logical consequences of materialism. Most of your posts reflect a deep frustration that materialists like me don’t get what you are saying. I’ve been wondering why that is. Why does it bother you so much that other people don’t accept your conclusions (and the conclusions of the atheist academics you reference). I find it interesting that you think the way you do about theism vs atheism, and the respective entailments, but I don’t care on an emotional level that we see things differently. I am not interested in trying to make you change your position or see things my way, I just enjoy discussing things. It doesn’t bother me that you think the way you do and so I have been wondering why you have such an emotional commitment to making me see it your way. That’s the first thing I want to say.
Pindi, on the whole you have deeply misunderstood me. Of the statements I've bolded in the above quote, only the first even approaches something resembling truth, in that it is, indeed, frustrating to spend your time trying to clearly explain ideas to people only to have them seemingly completely misunderstand what you've said. One doesn't typically enjoy wasting large amounts of one's time. If the person I'm writing to is not going to bother reading me carefully, what is the point of writing to them in the first place? The other two bolded statements that attribute to me some kind of emotional investment in having you (or anybody else) agree with my conclusions literally couldn't be any further from the truth. What you happen to conclude does not make me feel one way or another, and I certainly don't care if you agree with me. But like I said above, it does get rather annoying if someone decides to "disagree" by either responding to things you never said or pretending they have answered problems that they have utterly failed to address. I care to try to help people make informed and rational decisions on this issue because I think it is an important one and I think truth matters, and hence the reason I keep writing and trying to make sure that the issues are clear (even if I expect it is only the 3rd-party observers who may truly benefit), but I don't have any kind of emotional investment in the matter. In fact, there's an irony in you attributing this kind of emotionalism to me that you simply couldn't appreciate unless you knew me in real life. Anyone who knows me and heard that said about me would laugh, because people tend to joke that I'm a robot and call me 'dead inside' because I simply don't respond to things emotionally (even when I probably should). The only thing that tends to ever get a rise out of me is people using bad arguments ... even if those arguments are offered in support of a conclusion I agree with ... and even then it's a matter of intellectual indignation rather some kind of emotive response. The thing about reading someone's words rather than hearing them is that you supply your own voice. I suspect when you read my posts you are reading them in a voice that is very different from the one I "speak" with when I'm writing them. I'll try to get around to responding to the rest of your comments later tonight. Take care, HeKSHeKS_{September 20, 2016
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HeKS, One thing I find interesting is that you care so deeply about this thing of understanding and accepting the logical consequences of materialism. Most of your posts reflect a deep frustration that materialists like me don't get what you are saying. I've been wondering why that is. Why does it bother you so much that other people don't accept your conclusions (and the conclusions of the atheist academics you reference). I find it interesting that you think the way you do about theism vs atheism, and the respective entailments, but I don't care on an emotional level that we see things differently. I am not interested in trying to make you change your position or see things my way, I just enjoy discussing things. It doesn't bother me that you think the way you do and so I have been wondering why you have such an emotional commitment to making me see it your way. That's the first thing I want to say. Now, looking at your argument. I hear things like "clumps of matter can't be about clumps of matter". Or "atoms can't think". Or "bags of chemicals can't have minds". (I am paraphrasing, I don't have the time to go back and look for exact quotes). Phrases like "clumps of matter" are used pejoratively, so let's exchange "clumps of matter" with "human being". "Human beings can't think" doesn't have quite the same ring does it. Now, as I understand it, the argument is that matter is made of atoms and atoms clearly don't think or have feelings etc. But the reality is, matter is deeply mysterious. We have no idea about many fundamental aspects of it. Take hydrogen and oxygen atoms and make water. Where does the wateriness come from? There's nothing watery about either hydrogen or oxygen. Is there an immaterial thing that provides wateriness to water, because its sure as hell not to be found in the atoms themselves? And why does the element of gold have goldiness? Why does adding protons to the nucleus of the next element down from it on the periodic table (if I remember my high school chemistry well enough) make that element go all goldy? All protons are the same right? There's no goldiness in protons. So where does the goldiness come from when we add protons to the nucleus of the element below gold? All atoms are made of the same stuff. So why do the atoms that make up spaghetti bolognese taste so delicious? The atoms in spaghetti bolognese are made of the same stuff as the atoms in sulphuric acid (nucleus, protons, electrons) but they exhibit very different properties. Where do those properties come from? They are not in the protons, nuclei, and electrons. And there's nothing else there. What I am getting at I guess is that you are engaging in the fallacy of composition. But, you will say, "thoughts, mind, intelligence etc are completely different things to goldiness and wetness. You are not comparing apples with apples". Well, that's just an assertion. That's the hard problem of consciousness (as I understand it). Whether there is anything intrinsically different about consciousness and thoughts compared to any other properties that arise out of matter is one of the big unanswered questions. As I understand it, philosophers are divided on this. In fact, I believe that only a minority of philosophers adopt libertarian free will as the answer to the quandary. So I don't see that the logical entailements of materialism are that I can't think about the world, or that me and everyone else are absurd. I think that "matter" can think, just like it can be wet. I don't know how. It's an open question. Maybe we will never know. But I just don't see how adding an immaterial soul helps. It just puts off the problem, because we are still left with the problem of, ok, if matter can't think, how can an immaterial soul think? Ps, (and this is not to you) jeers, taunts and insults, won't be read by me, so don't bother.Pindi_{September 20, 2016
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Leaving religion improves your sex life a lot. Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion? (2011) Darrel Ray, Ed.D. and Amanda Brown, IPCpress.com
Shocka!!!
The less religious a country is, the better off they are economically. See chart The less religious a country is, the higher the average IQ. See chart
Lovely Wikipedia references. Really. In other news, Does religious beliefs affect economic growth? Evidence from provincial-level panel data in China [PDF]:
Second, religion affects education, health and human capital accumulation. Becker and Woessmann (2009) argue that religion was important for economic success in the sense that without intention it resulted in an uneven accumulation of human capital. Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. Using county-level data from late-nineteenth-century Prussia, they found that Protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity, but also to better education. Some evidences about the relationship between education and religion have been found, including America (Chiswick, 1983; Steen, 2005), Canada (Tomes, 1985), British (Brown & Taylor, 2007; Sawkins, Seaman, & Williams, 1997) and Australia (Kortt & Dollery, 2012) etc. For example, Chiswick (1983) find that Jewish men had 16% higher earnings and a 20% higher rate of return on investment in schooling. Tomes (1985), using data from the 1971 Canadian Census, estimates the relationship between earnings and religious affiliation for white males aged between 25 and 64 years. He reports that Jews receive a 46% higher rate to schooling (compared to the weighted average of returns to schooling) and that Protestants received a 9% higher rate of return. Steen (2005) uses the data from National Longitudinal Survey Youth (NLYS) and observes that both men and women aged between 35 and 43 years who were raised as Catholics benefited from an earnings premium than their Protestant counterparts. Using individual level data from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS), Brown and Taylor (2007) support a positive association between education and church attendance, and they find that current participation in religious activities is positively associated with past religious behavior. Kortt and Dollery (2012) suggest that Catholic men benefit from a wage premium of 6.7% using the data from the Household Income Labor Dynamics Survey of Australia. Using national data from the Child Development Supplement Q. Wang, X. Lin / China Economic Review 31 (2014) 277–287 279to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Chiswick and Mirtcheva (2013) reveal a generally positive and statistically significant association between religion and health, especially for the psychological health of children ages 12–15. 5. Conclusions Religion, a complex objective existence, is a kind of informal institutional factor and a part of the social capital and cultural capital. No matter how we categorize it, it has a significant impact on the subjective and objective world. Religious factors help to solve the problems of model misspecification and endogenous problem. As Deneulin and Rakodi (2011) say, “religion needs to be brought back in to development research so that our understanding of challenging development issues can be improved.” The paper is a tentative research about the case of China with very limited data resources. According to the extended Cobb–Douglas production function, we estimate a panel model with time invariant variables. The results of GLS, Hausman Taylor, Amemiya MaCurdy, and fixed effect vector decomposition estimation show that religion has a significant positive influence on economic growth overall. This is consistent with most empirical studies. This means that religious beliefs and religious institutions can become a driving force in determining national economic results. Among the different religions, Christianity has the most significant effect on economic growth. This conclusion is consistent among different estimators and robust with stability over time. However, no consistent or robust conclusions can be drawn for other religions. Different estimation methods give different signs or significance. From the point of model specification, it is necessary to introduce religion into the models when we do the research and analysis of influence factors of economic growth. From the point of policy making, as McCleary said, the lesson of the research results isn't that governments should boost religion, but that they should recognize it has some value, and avoid regulating it too heavily. The bigger application of research into religion isn't to foster religious imperialism but to build a better-informed economics, and in the long run, better policy. There won't be manna from heaven. But there might less poverty over time since it seems to take a long time for religious shifts to catalyze economies. And since religion is a very long-term historical factor of current development, the policy should focus on overcoming long term constraints.
And you guys should really stop beating the "Atheists have higher IQs" horse. It's dead. Oh never mind, it's all you guys got. "Bow to us you faithful "spiritualist" peasants. Feel the awesomeness of our IQs!" :)
The less religious a country is, the more egalitarian it tends to be with regard to income inequality. Christianity Today 2011
Oh my! :DVy_{September 20, 2016
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Try this; get out of your tiny hermetically sealed insular world ...
Lol! What a delusion.
... and go to NASA to see pictures of the heavens that really do make my spine tingle and fill me with real awe. Not the manufactured awe of the Church, but real awe in the indescribable hugeness of the universe ...
Like this:
Bag-o-chems X: OOOoooo, look at that! A spiral galaxy! Bag-o-chems Y: WOOooow, it's jaw-droppingly beautiful! It fills me with real awe bu...buh...but it shouldn't exist. It doesn't fit with the BB. Bag-o-chems X: Say what? Don't worry about that Y, the dark legion, gravity, probablymaybecouldness and stuff-happens did it. Don't mind those faithful "spiritualists" and their Goddidit myths. We have SCIENCE!!! Bag-o-chems Y: Yeah! Keep staring ...
?
incredible wastefulness of any God that could create such vastness, for such as we.
Awwww, inferiority complex much? :)Vy_{September 20, 2016
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We don’t know something, and it seems counter intuitive to assume nature, and nature’s natural laws could possibly have produced something as wonderful as the human brain, and yet we also know the alternative is absurd.
So in essence the ruse that is "materialistic ~~pseudoscience~~ science" is just probablymaybecouldness-of-the-gaps because to say "the alternative" was involved...it makes "we" feel uncomfortable? :/ And yet so many Atheopaths still have the audacity to claim this is a quote-mine:
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen.
Apparently, "stuff happens" because probablymaybecouldnessdidit is not miraculous.Vy_{September 20, 2016
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j_a_d #17:
I have tried many times on many different occasions to put myself in the shoes of the atheist interlocutors who frequent this any other sites. I must confess that I am baffled. If I were an honest atheist the last thing I would want to do is argue for an atheistic world view.
True but you're talking about individuals who believe in a self-contradictory religion (yup, Atheism). Every now and then though an honest puppet pops up:
[To] all my Atheist friends. Let us stop sugar coating it. I know, it’s hard to come out and be blunt with the friendly Theists who frequent sites like this. However in your efforts to “play nice” and “be civil” you actually do them a great disservice. We are Atheists. We believe that the Universe is a great uncaused, random accident. All life in the Universe past and future are the results of random chance acting on itself. While we acknowledge concepts like morality, politeness, civility seem to exist, we know they do not. Our highly evolved brains imagine that these things have a cause or a use, and they have in the past, they’ve allowed life to continue on this planet for a short blip of time. But make no mistake: all our dreams, loves, opinions, and desires are figments of our primordial imagination. They are fleeting electrical signals that fire across our synapses for a moment in time. They served some purpose in the past. They got us here. That’s it. All human achievement and plans for the future are the result of some ancient, evolved brain and accompanying chemical reactions that once served a survival purpose. Ex: I’ll marry and nurture children because my genes demand reproduction, I’ll create because creativity served a survival advantage to my ancient ape ancestors, I’ll build cities and laws because this allowed my ape grandfather time and peace to reproduce and protect his genes. My only directive is to obey my genes. Eat, sleep, reproduce, die. That is our bible. We deride the Theists for having created myths and holy books. We imagine ourselves superior. But we too imagine there are reasons to obey laws, be polite, protect the weak etc. Rubbish. We are nurturing a new religion, one where we imagine that such conventions have any basis in reality. Have they allowed life to exist? Absolutely. But who cares? Outside of my greedy little gene’s need to reproduce, there is nothing in my world that stops me from killing you and reproducing with your wife. Only the fear that I might be incarcerated and thus be deprived of the opportunity to do the same with the next guy’s wife stops me. Some of my Atheist friends have fooled themselves into acting like the general population. They live in suburban homes, drive Toyota Camrys, attend school plays. But underneath they know the truth. They are a bag of DNA whose only purpose is to make more of themselves. So be nice if you want. Be involved, have polite conversations, be a model citizen. Just be aware that while technically an Atheist, you are an inferior one. You’re just a little bit less evolved, that’s all. When you are ready to join me, let me know, I’ll be reproducing with your wife. I know it’s not PC to speak so bluntly about the ramifications of our beliefs, but in our discussions with Theists we sometimes tip toe around what we really know to be factual. Maybe it’s time we Atheists were a little more truthful and let the chips fall where they may. At least that’s what my genes are telling me to say.
Preach!Vy_{September 20, 2016
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rvb8: I’m sorry groov. Are you actually suggesting that atheist nightmares are worse than religious people’s nightmares? They’re not! I should know I’ve been an atheist for thirty one years now, and apart from the usual swathe of ‘falling’ dreams, and dreams of being pursued and being too slow to escape, my nightmares are non-existant. And the truth is you have no idea why you are experienced with these types of dreams. As I said. Your "bright" rational mind is helpless here. Materialist science is worthless when it comes to the human mind, otherwise you would be cured. BTW one of the hallmarks of deep experiential work, with psychedelics or otherwise, is an uncovering of recurrent nightmares over a lifetime that are so awful that they are blocked from waking awareness. Again, materialistic science is useless here. The paradox is that when these nightmares are remembered because of a deep psychic probing, they recur so that they are remembered upon waking, and gradually disappear, concurrently a particular cluster of personality symptoms disappears. So I wouldn't be so sure that you have a waking compendium of your sleeping travails I can give you a couple of these that I uncovered. One was of a one-floor hospital halfway buried below street level, with quite subdued eerie lighting and filled with torture instruments disguised as medical instruments. Further detail I'll leave out, but I found that I had been having the dream for my entire life. And I had it a few more times, consciously remembering, as I connected it with my birth experience, until it dissipated along with some personal anxieties. Dude, materialist science is helpless in this endeavor. I'll maybe relate another recurring one in another post. However a person as fixated on spiritualism Do you know the term "spiritualism" and to what it refers? Obviously not, it has nothing to do with yours truly. You might try becoming informed on the "terminology" you employ in your polemics (I looked up the ‘Integral Institute’; No thanks, ‘holons’ and ‘quadrants’? One crack-pottery at a time please.), as you are probably think the spirit is talking to us, it is not. The ‘research’ done there involvess spirits and the soul, as in, “The living totality of matter, body, mind,soul, and spirit.” Deal with it. Deal with the fact that their training there, supervised by Stan Grof and others, qualifies the trainees for conducting psychedelic therapy, as determined by the U.S. federal government. Really what you are dealing with is the historical spectacular failure of materialist science having anything to say on the human mind. You will have to deal with this for the remainder of your time as a materialist. Bloody hell, and you wonder why science doesn’t take you seriously? Now this is interesting, that "science" has a mind that can take someone seriously or not. Were you sober when writing that? Seriously, get used to reality here, because everyone else is: materialist science offers nothing in the thousands of years of searching by humanity for evolutionary progress. People like you think that to advance the person, one must become better at rationality. That's it. It's really quite remarkable. A joke, really.groovamos_{September 20, 2016
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I think rvb8 is a classic example of an incorrigible cynic. I don’t see there is any way that you can deal honestly with such a person except keep pointing out his (her?) cynicism. The question is what is behind the cynicism? Is it anger, arrogance or something else? Over the past couple years I have intentionally tried to avoid engaging interlocutors like rvb8. Their so-called arguments are not really arguments but unsubstantiated canards and complaints. The sole purpose appears to be like quicksand: to suck you in and suck you down to their level. BTW I think WJM is doing a very good job staying above the fray. if Rvb8 were an honest interlocutor he would try to engage WJM's arguments.john_a_designer_{September 20, 2016
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rvb8 continues acting as if atheistic materialism is false:
As to Barry above. I don’t give atheism ‘lip service’, my atheism only ever comes up on the web. Very rarely do Christians challenge it, and then they are usually angered by my, ‘I am an atheist because I am curious’, response. The angst and anger people detect in my posts is not there, psychologists call this ‘projection’.
No, rvb8. In a materialist, atheistic world, you would be an atheist due to exactly the same kind of physical cause that made them Christians: chemistry and physics made you that way. Period. You see, under materialism/atheism, "reasons" are part of the delusion of self-determination. "Reasons" do not dictate the ongoing cause-and-effect sequences of chemistry and physics; rather, it is chemistry and physics that produce the illusion that a "reason" is why one believes a thing or does a thing. Under the A/M view, there is no reason "why"; there is only a physical how (cause). When are you going stop implying that we have some sort of supernatural capacity to change the cause and effect sequences of chemistry and physics in our brain and body? When are you going to start acting and writing as if atheistic materialism is actually true?William J Murray_{September 20, 2016
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rvb8 said:
BTW, there are millions of former religious people who are now atheists, who believe the love they show their wives and families is more pure now that they know it is not demanded on high.
You do realize you're just making stuff up now to support your narrative, right? Or, can you in any way support this claim?
Then of course are all those examples of fine Evangelical leaders who are in prison after a cocaine, meth and alcohol induced hooker ?male and female) spree. Those then go to prison to reafirm their faith while remaining gay and not really understanding why; I believe this pernicious group deserve ther suffering through their denial.
Why would you believe that anyone "deserves" anything, when what they do is entirely dictated by physics and chemistry? You are acting here as if we should expect them to act some other way than what physics and chemistry dictated.
One reason I didn’t address the post is the absurd belief you and yours cling to, that religion generally, but Christianity specifically is needed to fulfill a life. Nonsense.
How absurd is it to say that someone "clings to a belief" when all they can do wrt beliefs is exactly what you do - believe whatever chemistry and physics dictates in your delusion of self-hood? Are you ever going to write posts as if materialism and atheism are true? When are you going to stop implying that any of us have some supernatural way to control or change what chemistry and physics produces as our actions, thoughts and beliefs?William J Murray_{September 20, 2016
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Materialists, arguing that: A) Every living thing is a result of evolution working purposelessly but ceaselessly to produce and select the fittest variant B) The most numerous variant of humans, during all of recorded history, i.e. theists, are "wrong". Oy vey.ScuzzaMan_{September 20, 2016
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Absurdity, thy name is Atheistic Materialism! Dr. Craig finds that Metaphysical Naturalism is reducto ad absurdum on (at least) these eight following points: (Of note: Dr. Craig used Dr. Rosenburg's own 8 conclusions about atheism, which Dr Rosenburg had reasoned out himself in his book "The Atheist's Guide to Reality", against him in the debate:
1.) Argument from intentionality 1. If naturalism is true, I cannot think about anything. 2. I am thinking about naturalism. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 2.) The argument from meaning 1. If naturalism is true, no sentence has any meaning. 2. Premise (1) has meaning. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 3.) The argument from truth 1. If naturalism is true, there are no true sentences. 2. Premise (1) is true. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 4.) The argument from moral blame and praise 1. If naturalism is true, I am not morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for any of my actions. 2. I am morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for some of my actions. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 5.) Argument from freedom 1. If naturalism is true, I do not do anything freely. 2. I am free to agree or disagree with premise (1). 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 6.) The argument from purpose 1. If naturalism is true, I do not plan to do anything. 2. I (Dr. Craig) planned to come to tonight's debate. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 7.) The argument from enduring 1. If naturalism is true, I do not endure for two moments of time. 2. I have been sitting here for more than a minute. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 8.) The argument from personal existence 1. If naturalism is true, I do not exist. 2. I do exist! 3. Therefore naturalism is not true.
I strongly suggest watching Dr. Craig’s following presentation of the 8 points to get a full feel for just how absurdly insane the metaphysical naturalist’s (atheist's) position actually is.
Is Metaphysical Naturalism Viable? - William Lane Craig - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzS_CQnmoLQ
Moreover, in science itself, it is not as if Atheistic Materialism is right on some points and only misses the mark at the edges of science, it is the fact that Atheistic Materialism has been completely wrong on every major prediction is has made about what would be found by modern science.
Theism compared to Materialism/Naturalism - a comparative overview of the major predictions of each philosophy – video https://youtu.be/QQ9iyCmPmz8
Moreover, assuming Atheistic Materialism as true drives the entire enterprise of science into catastrophic epistemological failure.
Darwinian evolution, and atheism/naturalism in general, are built entirely upon a framework of illusions and fantasy – August 2016 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q94y-QgZZGF0Q7HdcE-qdFcVGErhWxsVKP7GOmpKD6o/edit
As far as modern science is concerned, atheistic materialism is worse than useless as to providing a firm foundation for the practice of science.bornagain77_{September 20, 2016
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rvb @ 38 Thanks for your clarification. Since English is my second language, I don't always get figures of speech. Your answer leaves open more questions for me:
We don’t know something, and it seems counter intuitive to assume nature, and nature’s natural laws could possibly have produced something as wonderful as the human brain, and yet we also know the alternative is absurd. The wonder of atheists is that we are greatful to nature that we exist at all.
If I get you right, you say, that your gratitude and/or awe springs from the fact, that the world around you (and your brain in it) is much more complex than your worldview leads you to expect. Correct me, if I got that wrong. By "the (absurd) alternative" you presumably mean God as a creator, right? So this implies several questions: Why do you think a creator God is absurd? Is this for some a priori reasons? Or could you enumerate some facts, that lead to this conclusion? When you say "we know" this, are you talking about atheists or are you implying, that a creator God should be absurd for theists also? If yes, why?hgp_{September 20, 2016
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There is nothing 'tortuous' about the statement. OF COURSE there are, and have been Christians who have committed crimes. There are also, - in literature, such as 'Crime and Punishment' as well as nonfiction books such as 'The Cross and the Switchblade' - examples of people giving up criminality after converting to Christianity. As you point out, and I do not challenge, 'The Autobiography of Malcom X' is but one example of conversion to Islam altering a former criminal's behavior. So, if you were to direct us to an atheist, such as on Youtube or a blog (there are scads of them, so it wouldn't surprise me), who details how he was raised as a Christian, became an atheist and thereby stopped criminal behavior, I (and I am sure others ) would be very interested to see it. That is the challenge that Barry has laid out, simple enough to effectively respond to if you are able. Calling it 'absurd' just comes across as evasion. As for me, personally, I have no such conviction that religion generally or Christianity specifically are needed to fulfill a life. I do not see, nor feel I have any right to view, your life as unfulfilled. It may well be as fulfilled as mine; I would have no way of knowing in the first place, and would furthermore be quite happy for you if so. I would just like to see you argue better ;)soundburger_{September 20, 2016
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Ok sound, which religion produces this great benefit. I think we'll stick with Cgristianity as I'm sure most posters here would say conversion to Islam cannot produce this result, although if you visited many Americans in prison they would say otherwise. BTW, there are millions of former religious people who are now atheists, who believe the love they show their wives and families is more pure now that they know it is not demanded on high. Then of course are all those examples of fine Evangelical leaders who are in prison after a cocaine, meth and alcohol induced hooker ?male and female) spree. Those then go to prison to reafirm their faith while remaining gay and not really understanding why; I believe this pernicious group deserve ther suffering through their denial. Your last example is simply weird, is this the group you are talking about? 'there is no example that he is aware of of a former Christian leaving a life of crime upon dropping his beliefs.' I hope you see how complicated and just plain tortuous that language is. Firstly; there are Christian criminals? I thought that was an oxymoronic as a statement, you know, 'I'm John the Chrisitian hitman.' Unless of course, you say the Mafia is a Christian organization. They do act remarkably like the Catholic church in the fact that they have incredibly shady book keeping practices. One reason I didn't address the post is the absurd belief you and yours cling to, that religion generally, but Christianity specifically is needed to fulfill a life. Nonsense.rvb8_{September 20, 2016
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rvb8 @ 38 asserted without any support
Now, your wonder is based upon your devotion to the glory of God. Fine. Keep it, and its utter lack of question producing hypotheses.
Haha. Complete baloney! Did you know that the first scientific experiment ever recorded is in the Bible. Hint: it includes every aspect of the scientific method (except the part about applying for grants) and it's found in the book of Daniel--it's near the beginning, way before the prophecy about the Messiah arriving and being killed before the destruction of the Second Temple, which actually occurred in 70 CE, about 40 years after Jesus died on the cross for you. I feel sheer delight of discovering how God engineered something in the universe. There's much to be admired in biological design, and as any engineer knows, engineering always involves trade-offs. Ecosystems also need to be designed as anyone who's ever tried to simulate one in software knows only too well. -QQuerius_{September 19, 2016
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rvb8, please, try to understand this: As has been pointed out, you did NOT 'address' the OP. Barry asked you to address his contention that although there are numerous cases of people transforming their lives away from criminality via religious conversion, there are no examples that he ( or I, for that matter) is aware of of a former Christian leaving a life of crime behind upon dropping his beliefs. There MAY BE such examples that you could provide, and there MIGHT BE some other, equally effective way that you could refute his point. We are all willing to listen. But instead, you simply chose to tell us about...yourself. This is similar to how you chose to take the 'Miserable Creatures' post as a personal insult, when it has been pointed out to you by numerous commenters ( a fact you choose not to acknowledge) that you misread the intention behind that title. You come on here and continually brag about being an atheist (how original...) instead of addressing actual points people make with an intent to refute them. You're 'more curious' than the rest of us here; is that how you would have it? Then answer some damn questions (the ones you were actually asked, not the ones you imagine), fercryinoutloud!soundburger_{September 19, 2016
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hgp, they are logically inconsistant, but only if you think I am talking about 'nature' as an active player; I am not, it is used as a figure of speech; you couldn't grasp that? All I can say is that I fully agree with Dawkins and that his statement is correct. When an atheist says he is 'grateful' (thanks, heh:) to nature it is a figure of speech. Much as when Einstein talks about the wonder of creation. Dawkins himself frequently uses this language as he correctly notes, it's become part of our descriptive convention. Do I think nature is a thing that actively does things to, and for me, no! Dont be absurd, you have the position of the meddlesome tinkerer who never gets things right.rvb8_{September 19, 2016
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rvb8@36: could you explain how the following statements work together for you?
rvb8: The wonder of atheists is that we are greatful(sp!) to nature that we exist at all. R. Dawkins: The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Obviously both points don't sit well together. How (and why) would anyone feel grateful to "blind, pitiless indifference"? Or alternatively: Why was Dawkins wrong in his description of the universe?hgp_{September 19, 2016
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EDTA, the awe of atheists is more wonderful in that it is grounded upon curiosity, and the possibility of solving a riddle. We don't know something, and it seems counter intuitive to assume nature, and nature's natural laws could possibly have produced something as wonderful as the human brain, and yet we also know the alternative is absurd. The wonder of atheists is that we are greatful to nature that we exist at all. Now, your wonder is based upon your devotion to the glory of God. Fine. Keep it, and its utter lack of question producing hypotheses. The accusation frequently levelled at theists, (and I believe sometimes nastily) is that you go slack jawed at what you don't understand, and reflexively fall back upon the 'Goddidit' answer. Not true? The theists here constantly try to produce proofs, although their reliance on youtube, and referances from supporting sites is a little disconcerting. I am frequently accused of being angry. Far from it. In fact in my extensive experience with Christians,(I've lived with them, and am constantly in contact with them) and other religions, I find that when you flatly reject their unevidenced positions, it is they that become angry, and quickly. Thankfully, at least in the west, that anger is directed to internet sites; imagine if you had the power to convict atheism as a felony? You know as General Peckham wanted to do in 'Catch 22'? A book BTW which beat Richard Dawkins to the punch when Yossarian pillories God in a monologue that is truly timeless, and bust your gut funny; one of the few books that always makes me laugh, as it laughs at the all too sacred; God, the Airforce, Army life, his own country, and Hiarchies, ooh, and sex and the toilet. As to Christian humour? Well Christian comedians (I've seen a few on youtube)are to put it mildly, restricted. No jokes about sex, and humans have been laughing at that since we could talk. No jokes about the toilet, and as every schoolboy in every country knows, nothing beats a good fart joke. And no jokes about God, the greatest source of humour ever invented; 'Life of Brian'Heh:) And very often they also refuse to joke about the president, because you should, 'render unto Caeser' etc. No, Christian humour is reduced to anecdotes about the silly things their kids do, and whether toilet paper should be over, or under,(a toilet joke?) As to Barry above. I don't give atheism 'lip service', my atheism only ever comes up on the web. Very rarely do Christians challenge it, and then they are usually angered by my, 'I am an atheist because I am curious', response. The angst and anger people detect in my posts is not there, psychologists call this 'projection'.rvb8_{September 19, 2016
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Seversky @ 29.
[Atheism] cannot offer hope . . .
True as far as it goes but incomplete. As HeKS and WJM have been patiently explaining, not only does atheism not offer hope, if taken seriously it must lead to despair. That is why while a lot of people (Rvb8 in this thread is a classic example) give it lip service, absolutely no sane person lives even for a moment as if it is true.Barry Arrington_{September 19, 2016
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Soundburger,
rvb8 @3: Try this; get out of your tiny hermetically sealed insular world and go to NASA to see pictures of the heavens that really do make my spine tingle and fill me with real awe. Not the manufactured awe of the Church, but real awe in the indescribable hugeness of the universe, and the incredible wastefulness of any God that could create such vastness, for such as we. That is your, and your co-religionist’s view, that we are so amazing that God created a gazillion light years of nothing so that we could stare at it.
soundburger @6: This is the typical fallacy of the materialist, trotted out again and again; that the universe is, because of its vastness ( I guess ), ‘awesome’. This is nonsense. If the standard materialist line of thinking is that the universe existed for sixteen billion years, perhaps, before it was even able to be contemplated by one species on one tiny planet, then there is nothing ‘awesome’ about it whatsoever. It just is. Dead, unconscious, utterly unaware of itself until humans came along. . . . What he finds awesome is nothing more than his own train of thought about the universe, not the universe itself. And that kind of awe is no less ‘manufactured’ (by, among other things, Carl Sagan books and NASA colorized photographs) than a religionist’s awe.
And then there's the other side of this coin. I've always found the argument against God's existence based on the size of the universe to be very silly. I've addressed it in comments here a few times. Here's one example:
In addition to the fine-tuning, one of the strongest arguments for the existence of such a designer (whom I believe to be God) is the origin of the universe itself. In order for us to know it had an origin we need evidence. The evidence is the expansion of the universe, which is what led us to the Big Bang Theory. As such, the very evidence that points us to the origin and creation of a well-ordered and law-governed universe such as ours requires that the universe eventually be very large even if the entire purpose of the physical universe existing was to have a single planet populated by embodied, intelligent, moral beings. It would also almost certainly require certain features of the universe to be over-tuned with respect to life itself in order to ensure the scientific discoverability of the evidence pointing to its origin and fine-tuning, including things like the ability to get a good look at the CMB to confirm the Big Bang.
The vastness of the universe is a necessary corollary of the ability to have scientific evidence pointing to God's existence and creation of the universe.HeKS_{September 19, 2016
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bb @ 23, Absolutely brilliant! :-) The problem with both determinism and materialism is that they have both been falsified by rigorous scientific investigation. - Determinism has been falsified by the Butterfly Effect, which has been observed in many scientific disciplines and even in mathematics. Initial conditions cannot be repeated except in mathematics and even mathematically, the initial result is often unpredictable. - Materialism has been falsified my Quantum Mechanics since the fundamental reality in which we exist has been conclusively demonstrated to be information---the interaction of conscious observation and the wave function, Psi. -QQuerius_{September 19, 2016
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Leaving religion improves your sex life a lot. Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion? (2011) Darrel Ray, Ed.D. and Amanda Brown, IPCpress.com The less religious a country is, the better off they are economically. See chart The less religious a country is, the higher the average IQ. See chart The less religious a country is, the more egalitarian it tends to be with regard to income inequality. Christianity Today 2011CLAVDIVS_{September 19, 2016
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soundburger @22
#21, HeKS, that was excellently stated. You seem to have analyzed the situation perfectly, and it explains why, for example, commenters like rv simply ignore solid arguments, or defend their positions against them, and instead continue completely unmoved, trotting out the same, tired, ‘I’m so happy because I’m rational and have science on my side, while all you have is superstition and the enslavement of your mind.” It is almost fascinating to the same degree it is frustrating. No evidence that he, or others as well, have even taken the time to figure out what the challenges to his worldview ARE.
rvb8 is kind of an interesting case. On some level I feel bad for him, because he seems to be taking comments here very personally, calling them hateful and taunting and seemingly feeling quite offended by them. Were his characterizations correct then I would say that such a method of argumentation on the part of the theists is inappropriate (at least from a Christian perspective), and I do admit the tone of some comments and posts here are a little more harsh in their terms than I think they ought to be. However, for the most part, I find that rvb8's characterization of what the theists here are presenting describes a situation that exists only in his head, brought on largely by what seems to be a consistent pattern of failing to carefully read what he responds to. WJM's recent OP here is a good example of this, because anyone reading it with any care at all could see that he was essentially describing a hypothetical situation that would be true if atheism were true. But WJM isn't saying that atheism is true. He's saying the opposite. And so his description there of the hypothetical 'miserable creatures' is not a description of how he (or other theists here) see atheists, but rather a description of what all humans would necessarily be were atheism true. The only reason for an atheist to get upset by this is if he doesn't like the necessary implications of his own worldview, but simply describing what those implications are is not mean or hateful.HeKS_{September 19, 2016
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HeKS @ 21, Very well stated. Indeed, I should have qualified what I said since I don’t think or believe that all internet atheists are cynical and angry. It’s just that recently I have run across a lot who are. However, I do think there is also lot of denial and self-deception. Unfortunately that has made it increasingly difficult to wade through all their rhetorical crap and have a simple and civil logical discussion.john_a_designer_{September 19, 2016
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As a follow-up to my last post, I think it is only fair for me to highlight all of the Christian gangbangers who renounced their faith in Christ, converted to materialist atheism, and turned from a life of hate and violence to a life of love, mercy and sacrifice for their families.
Neither of us think that is likely to happen and for good reasons. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in God or gods. That's all. It cannot offer hope to the despairing, it cannot comfort the afflicted and it cannot offer the prospect of eternal life after this earthly one. It might be true but, as WJM has attested, it doesn't make people happy. Religion offers all the benefits that atheism can't and that's why I don't expect it to be supplanted by atheism in the foreseeable future.Seversky_{September 19, 2016
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