Simple question?

Quote: FrGamble

So you think I'm okay with burning people at the stake and driving gays to commit suicide?!?
.

Your Church seems to be fine with it.
The burnings went on for hundreds
of years and the intolerance of Gays
and their lifestyle has no end in
sight. Lets not even get into the fact
that women have no say in anything
in the Vatican unless they've been
made into saints.

As far as the conversation, you're talking
to atheists, not the choir. Did you think
it would be easy? If you aren't up to the
task, I understand, most priests run the
other way waving their arms over their
heads after the first half hour.

I enjoy talking to atheists and find it easy, but usually the atheists I talk to listen to reason, are kind, and have open minds to truly discover the truth. I'm sure some of the unkindness on both our ends (but mostly you) is because of the anonymity of an internet chat room. However, here I find yourself just making stuff up at times, refusing to admit when you are wrong, twisting my position at every turn, assuming the worst about what I believe and what the motivations of the Church are, and on and on.

I would love it if you could send me away scratching my head through a good cogent challenge to my belief system, because that would be a real help to me in learning the answers. Instead you have me just waving my arms in frustration not because of anything remotely close to a challenge, but because you seem incorrigible in your behavior and unable and unwilling to engage in real conversation, debate, and learning.

You want a cogent challenge? Take a few days and read rationalwiki.

Learn what is and what is not a logically formed argument.

You will also see many things that I agree with, expressed more clearly and concisely than I can.

Argument from ignorance is a good place to start. I am willing to accept that there are many things that I don't know and probably will never know for certain. What I don't do is believe in the things that I could fill in with conjecture, as settled fact, as the only real possibility, ideas that aren't backed by physical evidence.

Quote: Dalex64

What I don't do is believe in the things that I could fill in with conjecture, as settled fact, as the only real possibility, ideas that aren't backed by physical evidence.

That's the root of the problem. FrG wants
us to consider seriously what we can never
take seriously at all. I truly believe there is
no god and that most of the stories about
Jesus are trumped up urban myths. I have
a hard time with somebody who considers
ever one word of them real.

I have a starting point that I use every time
I consider the NT. It's like when a lawyer has
somebody on the stand and catches them in
a lie. From then on nothing they say can be
trusted. It says in Matthew 27:52-53:

"The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people."

This would have been a very big deal to the
'many people' who saw them. Dead saints
come back from the dead, the news would
have spread like wildfire. Yet it's recorded
nowhere else that this happened, because
it's obvious nonsense. So if we know for a
fact this is a lie, how much else in the NT
is made up fiction. A quarter of it, all of it?
I have too look at it as taking a simple core
story of a reformed rabbi executed for being
a menace that was blown horrendously out
of proportion over a period of decades after
his death and recorded as what really happened.

So discussing it seriously is only possible if
we discuss why it was faked, rather than why
is it true.

Quote: FrGamble

I enjoy talking to atheists and find it easy, but usually the atheists I talk to listen to reason, are kind, and have open minds to truly discover the truth.

Those are most likely agnostics with a strong desire to believe, therefore amenable to rationalization. They usually wind up "spiritual but not religious" in surveys.

Quote:

I would love it if you could send me away scratching my head through a good cogent challenge to my belief system,

I've been telling you your whole belief system is wrong. I've no idea whether that qualifies as a challenge or not. I don't much care, either.

The reason it's wrong, is that it's based on non-existent entities, we've been through this. If Jesus existed, and he very well might have, he was a man with unconventional ideas who was executed, perhaps, and has remained dead since then. If he wasn't executed, he certainly has died and is still dead. If there is existence beyond this universe, or beyond this world, we have no evidence for it.

Quote: Nareed

I've been telling you your whole belief system is wrong. I've no idea whether that qualifies as a challenge or not. I don't much care, either.

Christians give atheists too much credit,
I think. We really don't care about this
subject enough to put much into the
discussion. Christianity is just a curiosity
to us, like Mormonism or astrology,
or any of the major superstitions. We
marvel that people in the 21st century
believe in these things, even run their
lives with them. I can keep going here
because it's an intermittent conversation.
In face to face talk I would be bored in
under 2 min and move away from it.

On the other hand, the teachings of Jesus, their interpretation by the various splinters of Christianity, as well as more recent moral pronouncements, can be discussed objectively, as long as the "god said so" trump card is not used.

That ought to be challenging.

Quote: Nareed

That ought to be challenging.

It's easy to talk about god here. In person
I would state my side of it and then have
to tolerate 3 min of Bible quotes and other
blatherings that put me to sleep. Here I
can state my piece and ignore what I don't
want to read. I too doubt if FrG has spoken
to many real atheists. Many who are agnostic
believe wrongly they're atheists. They want
to believe and are always looking to be convinced.

I won't believe anything I can't see evidence
for. Life is too short to waste time on other
peoples fantasies.

Quote: Nareed

On the other hand, the teachings of Jesus, their interpretation by the various splinters of Christianity, as well as more recent moral pronouncements, can be discussed objectively, as long as the "god said so" trump card is not used.

That ought to be challenging.

Did you ever notice that whenever a christian does something evil, that they aren't really christian, but when an atheist does something evil, it is because they are atheist, and when an atheist does something good, it is despite the fact that they are atheist?

Quote: Dalex64

Did you ever notice that whenever a christian does something evil, that they aren't really christian, but when an atheist does something evil, it is because they are atheist, and when an atheist does something good, it is despite the fact that they are atheist?

Can you imagine how many popes would be surprised to find out they weren't really Christian in retrospect?

More amazing is that a pope can be infallible and not a Christian at the same time.


Also, I've never heard a satisfactory answer to Euthyphro's dilemma. Perhaps because pagans had the gall to pose it. In its origins it goes: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" But it's usually stated as "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?"

Given the many atrocities carried out in the name of a god, or allegedly the god, by every religion in every era, and given the many atrocities carried out by the god himself in the Bible, the obvious answer is to call the bluff on the false dichotomy and answer: god is not necessarily either good or moral. And this applies to all gods, as often described in myths.