Freethought & Rationalism Archive

JPD · 11-16-2006, 04:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

I made the statements more complete and less liable to misunderstanding. Your original statements were not the best that you could have done in explaining the situation.

I think it best that we agree to disagree on this point. Your attempts to enhance my original statements have neither added nor deducted from them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

I agree. The presumption of truth should prevail until determined otherwise.

No - you should not be presuming anything at all about them - but you should, equally, not dismiss them. You should not evaluate on the basis that you believe them to be true from the outset.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

Not really. I want everyone to understand that whicht he Bible says because people must make decisions based on what the Bible says and those decisions have eternal consequences.

All that we have understood is that you are into apologetics and Pascal's wager. Neither is paricularly impressive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

OK. So what's the issue? Let's take a current topic - global warming. Everyone basically agrees that it is getting warmer, on average, in the world. There is big disagreement about the effects on man's activities on this warming and whether man can change his activities to make a difference. Some people assign low risk to doing nothing (i.e., letting nature run its course) and others view this as a high risk option. Neither side can assign a "zero" risk to any position because no one can really prove what is happening. So, you claim that a rabbit with lazer eyes exists and that poses a danger to me. Do I call you a liar without first determining that you are lying? I don't see why. Instead, I determine how many people have been zapped by this rabbit and based on that, I assign a low risk to the danger. Nonetheless, I still don't have sufficient evidence to assign zero risk. If you state that you made it up and it is all a lie, then I can assign zero risk.

And then, naturally, you would look to see how many people have been sent to heaven and hell? It will be interesting to see how you go about calculating that. Perhaps you could run us through your calculations (intended on both levels). Whether I have made it up or not is an important point - now demonstrate that the Biblical writers didn't "make it up". But how could we determine that, just because I believe I have made it up, that it isn't, in actual fact, the result of influence by a genuine (fantastically complex yet undetectable) entity that we both ignore at our peril?

Your anaysis consists of "Well I haven't come across anything like that"

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

OK. All people have to deal with everything. That's life. My argument is directed to the decision that I make. It carries great weight with me. Your arguments carry great weight with you. Each of us assigns risk in making decisions. We each assume the risk of making a bad decision and we both, presumably, seek to lessen the risk of a bad decision as much as possible. Do you think that you are doing something different?

...and we each assign zero risk to following our chosen courses. Perhaps it is a case of never the twain shall meet.

Johnny Skeptic · 11-16-2006, 05:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

Ok. All people have to deal with everything. That's life. My argument is directed to the decision that I make. It carries great weight with me. Your arguments carry great weight with you. Each of us assigns risk in making decisions. We each assume the risk of making a bad decision and we both, presumably, seek to lessen the risk of a bad decision as much as possible. Do you think that you are doing something different?

As usual, you have gone back to Pascal's Wager. That is where most or all of your arguments eventually end up. Pascal's Wager is illogical, and it is a fraud. As I have told you dozens of times for more than year, risk is not an issue regarding whether or not decent people are able to accept the God of the Bible. You would not be able to love God if you believed that he told lies, but yet you ask people to love a God who has committed numerous atrocities against mankind that are much worse than lying is.

If the Bible contains errors and contradictions, how many do you suppose would be required in order to discredit it? Please be advised that there is no such thing as a trivial lie, error, or contradiction. You believe that God if perfect, right?

Paul says that it is not surprising that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, but how could Paul have known which supernatural beings tell the truth, and which tell lies? If a God exists, and inspired the writing of the Bible, the odds are no better than even that you or anyone else can determine whether or not he is masquerading as an angel of light. Jesus said that in order for a man to become a Christian, he must love God with all of his heart, soul, and mind. It is not possible to make a committment like that based upon no better than even odds.

rhutchin · 11-17-2006, 07:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

rhutchin
Ok. All people have to deal with everything. That's life. My argument is directed to the decision that I make. It carries great weight with me. Your arguments carry great weight with you. Each of us assigns risk in making decisions. We each assume the risk of making a bad decision and we both, presumably, seek to lessen the risk of a bad decision as much as possible. Do you think that you are doing something different?

Johnny Skeptic
As usual, you have gone back to Pascal's Wager. That is where most or all of your arguments eventually end up. Pascal's Wager is illogical, and it is a fraud. As I have told you dozens of times for more than year, risk is not an issue regarding whether or not decent people are able to accept the God of the Bible. You would not be able to love God if you believed that he told lies, but yet you ask people to love a God who has committed numerous atrocities against mankind that are much worse than lying is.

If you want to revisit the issue and explain how it is that the Wager is somehow illogical or a fraud, please do so. Your argument should entail more than saying that it is a complicated issue.

The problem may be defined in terms of risk. The decision may take many factors into account.

If a person wants to engage in sexually immoral activities, then they can do so. The Wager would simply tells people that a prudent person would do something about his sin before he died. How is that fraudulent advice or illogical?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

If the Bible contains errors and contradictions, how many do you suppose would be required in order to discredit it? Please be advised that there is no such thing as a trivial lie, error, or contradiction. You believe that God if perfect, right?

I suspect that if one error could be found that was substantive (an outright lie or contradiction), then there would be a problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Paul says that it is not surprising that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, but how could Paul have known which supernatural beings tell the truth, and which tell lies? If a God exists, and inspired the writing of the Bible, the odds are no better than even that you or anyone else can determine whether or not he is masquerading as an angel of light. Jesus said that in order for a man to become a Christian, he must love God with all of his heart, soul, and mind. It is not possible to make a committment like that based upon no better than even odds.

That is a problem, isn't it. You are facing death and you have to make a decision. That's life, is it not?:huh:

Johnny Skeptic · 11-17-2006, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

If the Bible contains errors and contradictions, how many do you suppose would be required in order to discredit it? Please be advised that there is no such thing as a trivial lie, error, or contradiction. You believe that God if perfect, right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

I suspect that if one error could be found that was substantive (an outright lie or contradiction), then there would be a problem.

Regarding a supposedly perfect God, and a supposedly inerrant Bible, there is no such thing as a substantive error, lie, or contradiction. The Bible says that if you commit one sin, you are a sinner. Therefore, if the Bible contains even one error, lie, or contradiction, that would be substantive. If we were able to add the unprovable errors, lies, and contradictions to the reasonbly provable errors, lies, and contradictions, who know how fraudulent the Bible really is? I have tried to discuss inerrancy with you on many occasions, but you have always conveniently refused to do so because you are not nearly as confident of your arguments as you pretend you are. Recently, two new threads on inerrancy were started at this forum, but as far as I know, you did not make any posts in either of them in spite of the fact that many if not most of your arguments depend upon the Bible being inerrant.

hasselhoff · 11-17-2006, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seebs

That said, I currently don't think that removing religion would have prevented deaths in most of these cases; I think different excuses would have been used. Humans appear to be bloodthirsty xenophobes given half a chance, and I don't think they wait around for excuses.

I'm jumping into this thread late, so let me apologize if I'm taking your comment out of context.

It would seem that if what you say above is true, all human societies throughout time should have similar murder rates. This is clearly not the case, and in fact at present the most secular societies have the lowest rates of murder and other violent crimes. Reduced religious fervor seems to have served those nations rather well.

militant agnostic · 11-17-2006, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

You don't and I don't. Therefore, we can take them as telling the truth.

Saying that you don't believe that the people who wrote the Bible were purposefuly lying duse not mean you believe it.

The people who wrote about the Greek Gods were not lying either. They honestly believed what they were writting was true.

Some of their stories were known to just be stories but were not intended to make people believe in them in anyway. They never intended to decieve people.

Both of those cases cover the Bibles origens pretty well. The writters of the Bible believed what they were saying, just like every other religious books writters did. Or sometimes they were writting in a style that was intended to be interpreted figurtivly. That does not mean however that what they were saying was true.

militant agnostic · 11-17-2006, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

The Biblical writers stated that they were speaking for God. Since you have no evidence that they were lying, we can take them to be telling us the truth.

So basically you believe in the Bible and everything it says about the nature of God and the universe and sin and all that jazz because some old mortal men said it was so.

Here you basically admit that your beliefs and values stem directally from what some other human being said about God. Not God himself.

Without the ability to confirm that they are telling the truth then everything you have told us about the difference between mans laws and Gods laws mean zilch.

Your basically telling us that they are Gods laws because you and they believe it to be so.

If the people who wrote the Bible were not correct then you are presenting man made laws as the will of God. Your telling people that God wants this and that based off the wants of the men who wrote it. Your claiming That Gods words say this when they are really the words of men.

Your entire belief system swings on one critical hinge; that the people who wrote the Bible were absolutly true in everything they said and that they were never wrong about anything. Nothing they said about science was wrong, nothing they said about history was wrong, and nothing they said about human nature was wrong. Thats alot of things to have to be infalible about.

These people would have to be inteligent and knowledgeble beyond belief to get all those thing correct form the perspective of someone living in the desersts of the Middle East 2000+ years ago with no real access to even a basic library of secular knowledge. Even if they claimed to be telling the truth and believed it does not mean that what they were saying was true.

militant agnostic · 11-17-2006, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhutchin

It's better than getting denied entry into heaven. Do I have to do anything to ensure that outcome or will it automatically happen? I won't die and find myself standing before God will I?

But what if you get denied entry into heaven because you believed and followed the Bible and it turned out to be the word of men all along.

If the Bible is no the word of God then I can't imagine that the Real God would be to happy about stoning people who say the Bible is not true.

If God does not dislike homosexuals then killing them for being gay would most likely be sin.

If God never indicated that there was such a thing as origanal sin and the bases of your morality and values hinges on its existance and the need for salvation from it then your not really doing what God wants are you?

What if God is wrathful and angery and will send you to hell because you did not care about doing good works? Or because he only wants us to be happy and your actions that were based on your beliefs led to people's unhappyness?

rhutchin · 11-17-2006, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by militant agnostic

rhutchin
It's better than getting denied entry into heaven. Do I have to do anything to ensure that outcome or will it automatically happen? I won't die and find myself standing before God will I?

militant agnostic
But what if you get denied entry into heaven because you believed and followed the Bible and it turned out to be the word of men all along.

If the Bible is not the word of God then I can't imagine that the Real God would be to happy about stoning people who say the Bible is not true.

If God does not dislike homosexuals then killing them for being gay would most likely be sin.

If God never indicated that there was such a thing as origanal sin and the bases of your morality and values hinges on its existance and the need for salvation from it then your not really doing what God wants are you?

What if God is wrathful and angery and will send you to hell because you did not care about doing good works? Or because he only wants us to be happy and your actions that were based on your beliefs led to people's unhappyness?

Lot of "what ifs."

If God is anything other than that which the Bible says, we have no way of knowing. Consequently, we can deal with that which we know and accept a God who is not the "what ifs" you list above. If God is what you describe above, it would not appear that he would care about us. If God is what you describe above, what would you do about it? Probably what you are doing now. You are a man of great faith.

rhutchin · 11-17-2006, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by militant agnostic

rhutchin
The Biblical writers stated that they were speaking for God. Since you have no evidence that they were lying, we can take them to be telling us the truth.

militant agnostic
So basically you believe in the Bible and everything it says about the nature of God and the universe and sin and all that jazz because some old mortal men said it was so.

Here you basically admit that your beliefs and values stem directally from what some other human being said about God. Not God himself.

Without the ability to confirm that they are telling the truth then everything you have told us about the difference between mans laws and Gods laws mean zilch.

Your basically telling us that they are Gods laws because you and they believe it to be so.

If the people who wrote the Bible were not correct then you are presenting man made laws as the will of God. Your telling people that God wants this and that based off the wants of the men who wrote it. Your claiming That Gods words say this when they are really the words of men.

Your entire belief system swings on one critical hinge; that the people who wrote the Bible were absolutly true in everything they said and that they were never wrong about anything. Nothing they said about science was wrong, nothing they said about history was wrong, and nothing they said about human nature was wrong. Thats alot of things to have to be infalible about.

These people would have to be inteligent and knowledgeble beyond belief to get all those thing correct form the perspective of someone living in the desersts of the Middle East 2000+ years ago with no real access to even a basic library of secular knowledge. Even if they claimed to be telling the truth and believed it does not mean that what they were saying was true.

I guess there are two basic positions that a person can take. A person can decide to believe the Bible or decide not to believe. At the very least, I guess a person should flip a coin to decide and have a 50 percent change of being right.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.