Dear theists, are you angry at me because I argue with you?

[Lion IRC]

So what is it about the religious that they aren't able to carry on a conversation in good faith? I mean, the last twenty or so posts in this thread pretty much painted a 500 square metre billboard of crystal clear evidence right in Lion IRC's face.. and yet.. nothing.

With the level of scientific understanding out there, including anthropological studies of things like say.. religion, it should be a no-brainer to figure it out. And yet.. somehow we're in a never-ending spin-cycle of trying to explain that 1 + 1 = 2.

I just don't get it.

Wait. Have I neglected to answer one of your points?
Link please. And I will reply in good faith - with an apology for lateness.

 

[Jobar]

You might consider my objections in post 220.

Contradictory experiences of the divine can't be evidence of some divinity, Lion. If that Aztec priest thinks God wants the blood and hearts of thousands of victims, and your God wants us to love others as our selves, that will tell us something about the Aztec, and about you. But obviously the same being can't be simultaneously all-loving and blood-thirsty, so it tells us nothing about God(s).

 

[rousseau]

So what is it about the religious that they aren't able to carry on a conversation in good faith? I mean, the last twenty or so posts in this thread pretty much painted a 500 square metre billboard of crystal clear evidence right in Lion IRC's face.. and yet.. nothing.

With the level of scientific understanding out there, including anthropological studies of things like say.. religion, it should be a no-brainer to figure it out. And yet.. somehow we're in a never-ending spin-cycle of trying to explain that 1 + 1 = 2.

I just don't get it.

Wait. Have I neglected to answer one of your points?
Link please. And I will reply in good faith - with an apology for lateness.

This just about sums it up.

Attributing agency to things would have had survival value in a hunter-gatherer world. Better to assume that twig snapping is due to a predator, rather than random chance.

Now that agriculture has removed many of us from the need to worry about predators, the next logical target of our curiosity is our own existence. But the tendency to assume the predator is still there.

If this doesn't make sense to whoever is reading, then you need to study evolution. If you are unwilling to study evolution, then I can only conclude that you're not interested in understanding whether or not religion is a natural phenomenon.

Demonstrating that you do, or do not understand this theory would be a start. And if you don't, explaining whether or not you have a robust understanding of evolution. And if you don't, explain why you haven't attempted to understand it.

And if you do understand said theory, at least open yourself to the possibility that people 'seeing ghosts' when their furnace moves some curtains might be attributable to millions of years of evolution, and not necessarily literally experiencing God.

 

[Jobar]

So what is it about the religious that they aren't able to carry on a conversation in good faith? I mean, the last twenty or so posts in this thread pretty much painted a 500 square metre billboard of crystal clear evidence right in Lion IRC's face.. and yet.. nothing.

With the level of scientific understanding out there, including anthropological studies of things like say.. religion, it should be a no-brainer to figure it out. And yet.. somehow we're in a never-ending spin-cycle of trying to explain that 1 + 1 = 2.

I just don't get it.

I don't want to accuse Lion of not carrying on in good faith, here. But I agree that many times, I've seen theists presented with some logically unassailable refutation of their arguments for God's existence; presented it by multiple posters, in several different but water clear ways. And yet, it just seems to bounce off; and the hearts of the refutations don't get addressed.

It's always harder to understand a POV with which you don't agree, sure. And as that Skeptical Inquirer article I quoted in post 61 says, "the whole survival value of beliefs is based on their ability to persist in the face of contradictory evidence." Still it sometimes amazes me just how much contradictory evidence it takes, to get a person to change their religious beliefs.

 

[Learner]

You might consider my objections in post 220.

Contradictory experiences of the divine can't be evidence of some divinity, Lion. If that Aztec priest thinks God wants the blood and hearts of thousands of victims, and your God wants us to love others as our selves, that will tell us something about the Aztec, and about you. But obviously the same being can't be simultaneously all-loving and blood-thirsty, so it tells us nothing about God(s).

The bible is clear about practices like that of the Aztecs which is not contradictionary in the way its portrayed in your post. From the biblical perspective being that the Aztec priest with religious practices that requires human sacrifices etc.. is rather like those who worship Baal. It tells us (at least the theists) God would be against the Aztecs and their god... i.e. God and god are not one and the same.

 

[Rhea]

You might consider my objections in post 220.

Contradictory experiences of the divine can't be evidence of some divinity, Lion. If that Aztec priest thinks God wants the blood and hearts of thousands of victims, and your God wants us to love others as our selves, that will tell us something about the Aztec, and about you. But obviously the same being can't be simultaneously all-loving and blood-thirsty, so it tells us nothing about God(s).

The bible is clear about practices like that of the Aztecs which is not contradictionary in the way its portrayed in your post. From the biblical perspective being that the Aztec priest with religious practices that requires human sacrifices etc.. is rather like those who worship Baal. It tells us (at least the theists) God would be against the Aztecs and their god... i.e. God and god are not one and the same.

So you believe that Baal exists and that the people who believe they were told to make sacrifices of humans to it are absolutely correct in believing that this was an accurate, real, actual and divine request?

I guess one shouldn't expect any better from a religion based on hero-worship of a guy hearing voices to kill his own son and thinking that he should follow that voice. Woo-hoo, right? What a great and godly guy.

Proving that actually, your god and theirs are EXACTLY the same.

 

[Learner]

So you believe that Baal exists and that the people who believe they were told to make sacrifices of humans to it are absolutely correct in believing that this was an accurate, real, actual and divine request?

Of course Baal existed (from a theist POV) ...they believed this was accurate at the same time knowing and differentiating between God of the bible and god(s) of their religions . Which is surprising you (plural) think they're the same.
(It does say otherwise in the texts itself)

I guess one shouldn't expect any better from a religion based on hero-worship of a guy hearing voices to kill his own son and thinking that he should follow that voice. Woo-hoo, right? What a great and godly guy.

Proving that actually, your god and theirs are EXACTLY the same.

It proves you're mistaken and to use this type of argument is not a good idea. (e.g. God = gods/pagan deities)

 

[Lion IRC]

This just about sums it up.

Attributing agency to things would have had survival value in a hunter-gatherer world. Better to assume that twig snapping is due to a predator, rather than random chance.

Now that agriculture has removed many of us from the need to worry about predators, the next logical target of our curiosity is our own existence. But the tendency to assume the predator is still there.

If this doesn't make sense to whoever is reading, then you need to study evolution. If you are unwilling to study evolution, then I can only conclude that you're not interested in understanding whether or not religion is a natural phenomenon.

Demonstrating that you do, or do not understand this theory would be a start. And if you don't, explaining whether or not you have a robust understanding of evolution. And if you don't, explain why you haven't attempted to understand it.

And if you do understand said theory, at least open yourself to the possibility that people 'seeing ghosts' when their furnace moves some curtains might be attributable to millions of years of evolution, and not necessarily literally experiencing God.

Firstly, it's not "bad faith" when you don't reply to a post that isn't addressed to you.
So no belated apology for not replying to this unaddressed post sooner.

Secondly, teleology (agency) is not in conflict with evolution it's in conflict with atheism. And if you conflate evolution with atheism that's your intellectual error - not mine. I don't have to adopt atheism in order to think evolution is true^TM or have a "robust understanding" of it.

Attributing agency would tend to confer a survival advantage when it's true. And I happen to think that if atheism were true then people, (with selfish genes,) would have stopped wasting their precious, limited time on the God hypothesis thousands of evolutionary years ago.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Attributing agency would tend to confer a survival advantage when it's true. And I happen to think that if atheism were true people (with selfish genes) would have stopped wasting their precious, limited time on the God hypothesis thousands of evolutionary years ago.

Why? It's a monumentally useful hypothesis from a societal point of view, regardless of its validity.

 

[Rhea]

So you believe that Baal exists and that the people who believe they were told to make sacrifices of humans to it are absolutely correct in believing that this was an accurate, real, actual and divine request?

Of course Baal existed (from a theist POV) ...they believed this was accurate at the same time knowing and differentiating between God of the bible and god(s) of their religions .

Not what I said. Of course they all exist from the theist POV. Theists think all kinds of things exist that don’t actually exist.

I am asking YOU if YOU believe that there is an actual existence for Every Thing that someone thinks exists because of some “experience”.

YOU seem to be saying that YOU believe that Baal exists, as does Every Other God that anyone has earnestly imagined.

So, like, Santa Claus, too? People believe they have experiences of Santa, you know.

Which is surprising you (plural) think they're the same.

I didn’t say they were the same god, I said they were the same believability, because they rely on the same evidence as one that you are convinced actually exists.

(It does say otherwise in the texts itself)

I love the way you people say “the texts” as if it’s some scholarly, footnoted, evidence based instructional manual. There’s no evidence in any of them. Somebody wrote some shit down, everyone believed it without question. It’s no different than Lord of the Rings.

I guess one shouldn't expect any better from a religion based on hero-worship of a guy hearing voices to kill his own son and thinking that he should follow that voice. Woo-hoo, right? What a great and godly guy.

Proving that actually, your god and theirs are EXACTLY the same.

It proves you're mistaken and to use this type of argument is not a good idea. (e.g. God = gods/pagan deities)

Again, you are mistaken in what you read. I didn’t say they were the same god, I said they were the same level of creepy evil sacrificial weirdness.

In actuality, I _do_ believe that Baal and Jehoval are different and have the same likelihood of actually existing (zero) because they rely on the same evidence, and it’s just funny that they are two peas in a pod with reespect to enjoying the blood of a sacrifice.

 

[Jobar]

You might consider my objections in post 220.

Contradictory experiences of the divine can't be evidence of some divinity, Lion. If that Aztec priest thinks God wants the blood and hearts of thousands of victims, and your God wants us to love others as our selves, that will tell us something about the Aztec, and about you. But obviously the same being can't be simultaneously all-loving and blood-thirsty, so it tells us nothing about God(s).

The bible is clear about practices like that of the Aztecs which is not contradictionary in the way its portrayed in your post. From the biblical perspective being that the Aztec priest with religious practices that requires human sacrifices etc.. is rather like those who worship Baal. It tells us (at least the theists) God would be against the Aztecs and their god... i.e. God and god are not one and the same.

Learner, Lion is trying to say that the fact people believe in Baal, or Smoking Mirror, or any other pagan god is somehow corroborating evidence for the existence of some god; as I understand him, he is not trying to claim that it has to be Jehovah. As he put it in #221, "If 90% of reported religious experiences partially or wholly corroborate the existence of divinity then that becomes a useful starting point. Whether or not they are unanimous, and can be questioned ever more closely right down to the nth degree, doesn't detract from the preliminary question - God(s) yes or no?"

I note that even if he is right, that still tells us nothing of the nature of any possible God, given the huge variety of gods humans past and present have believed in. "Reported religious experiences" point off in all directions; as I've pointed out, the experience of the Aztec contradicts and denies the experience of the Christian, and vice versa. They cancel each other out, rather than corroborating the existence of any divinity at all.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You might consider my objections in post 220.

Contradictory experiences of the divine can't be evidence of some divinity, Lion. If that Aztec priest thinks God wants the blood and hearts of thousands of victims, and your God wants us to love others as our selves, that will tell us something about the Aztec, and about you. But obviously the same being can't be simultaneously all-loving and blood-thirsty, so it tells us nothing about God(s).

The bible is clear about practices like that of the Aztecs which is not contradictionary in the way its portrayed in your post. From the biblical perspective being that the Aztec priest with religious practices that requires human sacrifices etc.. is rather like those who worship Baal. It tells us (at least the theists) God would be against the Aztecs and their god... i.e. God and god are not one and the same.

Learner, Lion is trying to say that the fact people believe in Baal, or Smoking Mirror, or any other pagan god is somehow corroborating evidence for the existence of some god; as I understand him, he is not trying to claim that it has to be Jehovah. As he put it in #221, "If 90% of reported religious experiences partially or wholly corroborate the existence of divinity then that becomes a useful starting point. Whether or not they are unanimous, and can be questioned ever more closely right down to the nth degree, doesn't detract from the preliminary question - God(s) yes or no?"

I note that even if he is right, that still tells us nothing of the nature of any possible God, given the huge variety of gods humans past and present have believed in. "Reported religious experiences" point off in all directions; as I've pointed out, the experience of the Aztec contradicts and denies the experience of the Christian, and vice versa. They cancel each other out, rather than corroborating the existence of any divinity at all.

What needs explained then is not what this god might be but a natural explanation for why these people are exhibiting this particular behavior.

 

[Jobar]

Or, as Tyrion Lannister put it,

 

[rousseau]

This just about sums it up.

Attributing agency to things would have had survival value in a hunter-gatherer world. Better to assume that twig snapping is due to a predator, rather than random chance.

Now that agriculture has removed many of us from the need to worry about predators, the next logical target of our curiosity is our own existence. But the tendency to assume the predator is still there.

If this doesn't make sense to whoever is reading, then you need to study evolution. If you are unwilling to study evolution, then I can only conclude that you're not interested in understanding whether or not religion is a natural phenomenon.

Demonstrating that you do, or do not understand this theory would be a start. And if you don't, explaining whether or not you have a robust understanding of evolution. And if you don't, explain why you haven't attempted to understand it.

And if you do understand said theory, at least open yourself to the possibility that people 'seeing ghosts' when their furnace moves some curtains might be attributable to millions of years of evolution, and not necessarily literally experiencing God.

Firstly, it's not "bad faith" when you don't reply to a post that isn't addressed to you.
So no belated apology for not replying to this unaddressed post sooner.

Secondly, teleology (agency) is not in conflict with evolution it's in conflict with atheism. And if you conflate evolution with atheism that's your intellectual error - not mine. I don't have to adopt atheism in order to think evolution is true^TM or have a "robust understanding" of it.

Attributing agency would tend to confer a survival advantage when it's true. And I happen to think that if atheism were true then people, (with selfish genes,) would have stopped wasting their precious, limited time on the God hypothesis thousands of evolutionary years ago.

Well I was only re-iterating the argument of others.

The bolded, if in good faith, demonstrates that you don't understand the theory, so let me explain it for you. First of all, attributing agency to things still has evolutionary value in 2018. If you're walking the streets of a city at night, better to be naturally cautious about who's around you, rather than completely ignoring everything you see/hear. Or countless other examples that this applies to. And so there is still selective pressure ensuring that people attribute agency to random events.

Your statement that 'attributing agency confers survival advantage when it's true' is correct, but it does not follow that we will never attribute agency when it is not true. From an evolutionary perspective, attributing agency to things where there is none has no selective pressure. If you assume that the twig snapping was a predator, but it wasn't, and you run away, nothing was lost. And so your foolishness can still be passed down to the next generation, and your children will also do the same.

And so with religion, it is quite plausible that people can attribute agency to a God incorrectly, but because this has no maladaptive effects and these people are still able to produce children, the behavior persists.

If you want to go a little further than this, some communities have the idea of God so enshrined in their culture now that from an evolutionary perspective not believing in God can be maladaptive. Consider some Islamic countries where heretics are murdered. This would select against atheist thought, and for religious thought.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If you want to go a little further than this, some communities have the idea of God so enshrined in their culture now that from an evolutionary perspective not believing in God can be maladaptive. Consider some Islamic countries where heretics are murdered. This would select against atheist thought, and for religious thought.

Christian Europe is a good example of religionists selectively murdering atheists for millenia. Therefore atheism was clearly selected against. The pressure is less intense today globally but it is still there.

 

[Jobar]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMmvu9eMrg[/YOUTUBE]

Nearly an hour long, but well worth the time. (Sorry, I can't give a short precis- quite a dense lecture.)

 

[rousseau]

If you want to go a little further than this, some communities have the idea of God so enshrined in their culture now that from an evolutionary perspective not believing in God can be maladaptive. Consider some Islamic countries where heretics are murdered. This would select against atheist thought, and for religious thought.

Christian Europe is a good example of religionists selectively murdering atheists for millenia. Therefore atheism was clearly selected against. The pressure is less intense today globally but it is still there.

Yep, and pretty much everywhere else in the world prior to the modern period.

One of the biggest boons for the atheist minded was the ushering in of the age of reason. Once we started building some societies around the idea that hey, maybe we shouldn't kill people because of their beliefs or lack thereof, this allowed people who didn't believe to actually go public and not be outcast or executed.

Unfortunately, such societies seem to only make up a small proportion of the world. I find it interesting looking at the religious composition of various countries, because it usually acts as a good corollary of personal freedom. When you see a nation that is >95% one religion, it's probably a pretty dangerous place for atheists and minorities.

 

[Lion IRC]

...If you assume that the twig snapping was a predator, but it wasn't, and you run away, nothing was lost.

The bolded part demonstrates that you don't understand the theory.

 

[Elixir]

...If you assume that the twig snapping was a predator, but it wasn't, and you run away, nothing was lost.

The bolded part demonstrates that you don't understand the theory.

"THEORY"???
Bwahahaha!
Your use of that word in this context demonstrates that you don't even know what a theory is.

 

[jab]

Can you explain what you mean by “corroborate”? If al of their personal experiences contradict each other , why would their combined existance say something greater?

Um, but none of them are saying "It's a heffalump", much less "It's an elephant." Indeed the analogy is that whatever you palped that you are now calling a "god" is really a component of something quite other from what you feelingly think.