His Noodly Appendage

There's a certain brand of theism (yes, I've been hanging out at UC) that's been tickling at my brain for a while now.

It goes a little bit like this:

And on, and on. Whichever cup you lift, the ball is not there.

And yet start at the other end, and you're no better off.

You get the idea. It's like trying to hold an intelligent conversation in NARP.

What they call Christianity appears to be a recursively-defined subset of Christian doctrine, but with an incoherent definition such that it can neither be approached by subtracting parts of the bible nor by adding elements to the empty set.

It seems to me that this all boils down to an attempt to have one's cake and eat it too: they seem to associate something of value with the set, yet reject all of the individual elements thereof.

Does this irritate anyone else?

Peter Kirby

If they have a set of beliefs, it can be approached by adding elements to the empty set.

Are you saying that they don't have a set of beliefs, but rather a vague admiration for the set that they do not hold?

seebs

I don't generally accept the view of "Christianity" as a set of propositional claims to begin with. There are a broad range of people that believe different things, but whom I would say are "Christian".

I tend not to have strong opinions on many of the theological questions people usually obsess over; furthermore, I don't even accept the premises that make some of them questions. How can I be pre-trib or post-trib when I don't buy into the Rapture interpretation at all?

FWIW, I personally do believe in the Resurrection as an actual event. If it pleases you to consider this ridiculous, go right ahead; I don't doubt that it would be within some paradigms.

Condraz23

In order to gain a better understanding of the original post, I have decided to create a mathematical equation...

Angrillori

I think he's saying that when approached by adding to the empty set, there's always something else so that the set is never quite a complete representation of the person's beliefs.

I certainly wouldn't say that's universal, but I can empathize with you, HNA, since I've definitely met folks who seem to fall into this category.

Soul Invictus

Whoever talks like that is simply playing games.

Ask them to outline what constitutes their beliefs as a starter. They're obviously more interested in maintaining an unassailable position than having an honest discussion of their values.

His Noodly Appendage

*faints*

Do you know, that is the first time I've EVER seen you make an actual closed-ended assertion about your religion? (as opposed to positing the existence of a set of useful but undefined assumptions about happiness-increasing lifestyles)

And I've been here since what, 2003?

I now it sounds snarky, and I don't mean it to be - but I honestly didn't think you had it in you. Colour me surprised.

Okay - you have stated elsewhere that the observable universe is explained equally well by naturalistic and supernaturalist models.

How does the naturalistic model explain a literal resurrection?

His Noodly Appendage

Also, that one little proposition does rather let slip the floodgates, does it not?

A hundred and odd pounds of flesh, left to bake in the middle-eastern heat for three days, does not come back to life by itself. At least the hamburger I had for dinner tonight was fresh...

So, we have a direct real-world physical intervention, reversing a vast amount of entropy. Presumably the exact state of all his neurons was stored at some useful point before death, as well...

Who did the reversing?

Did Jesus do it himself? If so, we're talking immortal souls; information-like things shadowing our personalities, completely incorporeal yet with access to the material universe, with vastly finer perception and effect than anything available while living. Do you posit such entities?

If God did it, then we're not talking about some vague, deniable semantic equivalence; this requires a good old-fashioned interventionist Beardy Bloke who messes with stuff. Do you posit such a being?

Why was he resurrected? Was he God's son? If so, do you posit immaculate conception? Does God have DNA? How did it get into Mary? Or do you posit spontaneous parthogenesis?

What about curing lepers? Water into wine? Walking on water? Or are those just gimmicks - unlike the rest that you really can't get away without positing.

Then there's the assumption into heaven. Do you posit that heaven is a real place? If not, what happened to the corpse? Given the lack of tac-nuke-sized explosions over the city, do you posit that the conservation of energy was simply violated? Because that's getting close to flood-apologia-grade assertions.

Are you going to eat that cake, or just hold onto it?

Barbarian

I always suspected that all those arrogant and condescending assholes who play the game so aptly caricaturized in the OP are in fact clinging on to the last benefit of faith, that of entitlement to feel oneself intellectually superior to others. A person playing that game no longer believes anything except that telling others things like "it's not that simple, there's more to my belief than that" and "you cannot understand the mysteries of god" etc. is only capitalizing on the socially imposed perception of Christian theology as being something sophisticated and superior to whatever a non-Christian may know and experience. It's all empty, and their only reply to such an assertion is just to repeat that there is more to it than we could dream of.

Peter Kirby

Well, I certainly would not put it past those arrogant and condescending assholes. I'd hate to meet the one who plays a game aptly caricaturized in the OP, but if I do I'll do so advised!

Okay, what I really think is that this thread is becoming far removed from reality without some concrete examples.