Johnny Skeptic

Getting sidetracked happens frequently at this forum, and in other forums as well. For instance, Jenn 6162's thread has had thousands of views, and it has covered lots of topics that have nothing whatsoever to do with her opening post. The same thing frequently happens at the Theology Web. I debated Christians there for over two years, and sometimes if you read the most recent post in a thread, you wouldn't have any idea at all what the original topic was. I can post whatever I want in this thread within reason, and you don't have to reply to my posts if you don't want to. By now I suspect that you are far from being a typical skeptic. I forget where, but I recently asked you what your world view is. What is it?

seebs

Heh. Just the next thread over, and I'm a fairly generic Christian.

However, I don't feel my own positions are particularly relevant; I wanted to discuss your OP, which I found interesting. I promise to occasionally remember to start threads about positions of my own.

Johnny Skeptic

Ah, yes. That explains a lot. Initially, I was surprised that someone who I thought was a skeptic opposes me so much. Now I know why you criticized me for the way I treated Jenn 6162, which actually was quite fair.

I still stand by my opening post. In addition, I maintain the the majority of Christians in every single mainline Christian denomination in the United States, especially fundamentalist Christian denominations, look forward to a tangible, comfortable eternal life. Do you dispute this?

seebs

If you have concerns about anything I did in my official capacity, please bring them up in Problems & Complaints. I haven't commented on that matter in my non-official capacity, because I feel doing so would be counterproductive.

Then my responses to it will have to stand.

No. I just don't see that this has any particular relevance. I see no evidence at all for the "don't really care who they get it from" claim. I believe that, if I behave honorably and decently, people will respect me. I behave (as best I can) honorably and decently. Does this justify the conclusion that I want respect and don't care what I have to do to get it? No. It is quite possible that I consider this a pleasant bonus, rather than a primary justification.

Johnny Skeptic

Well, in another post you said "This argument does not apply to all Christians, and in fact, only to a minority of them," but now you are saying that you agree with me that as I said "the majority of Christians in every single mainline Christian denomination in the United States, especially fundamentalist Christian denominations, look forward to a tangible, comfortable eternal life." Now which is it?

Canard

Heaven as Hyperborea

Far beyond the North Wind lies
A pleasant land, where no-one sighs,
And no-one suffers pain, or cries,
That isn't better otherwise;
No aching, loathing, pain or strife
Mars that so-phantastic life.

David

seebs

Well, you said it was targeted only at fundamentalist Christians, who are a minority. As it happens, some aspects of the tangible eternal life are held to by a majority of Christians... But this hardly matters, as the argument doesn't actually do anything with that belief.

In short, even if all the claims are granted for the sake of argument... So what? You've established that people would like to be happy; not a result many people will challenge, but what of it?

This doesn't establish any particular flaws in fundamentalist theology.

More importantly, perhaps, at least one major theme is almost certainly wrong, that being the claim that, if eternal comfort were available elsewhere, very few people would be interested in religion.

I don't think this works, simply because so many people who are plenty comfortable become involved with spiritual pursuits of one sort or another anyway. In fact, it seems as though people who feel they have solved survival questions become more interested, not less, in philosophy and religion.

Are you familiar with Maslow's work? I think it suggests strongly that a life of eternal comfort would draw people to philosophy and religion.

While many Christians, perhaps a majority, believe in some sort of eternal comfort, I have seen no reason to believe that this is why they believe. And without that connection, the whole argument is essentially uninformative. The revelation that people would like to be as happy as possible for as long as possible may fall short of revolutionizing philosophy, unless you can find some new connection or inference to draw from it.

Johnny Skeptic

Are you claiming that if the Bible did not promise any more comfort than is available in this life, and that if it did not promise immortality, that there would be anywhere near as many Christians as there are today?

Why do you believe? Actually, what do you believe? Do you believe that Jesus bodily rose from the dead? If not, do you believe that he spiritually rose from the dead? Do you really care at all if he ever existed as long as you are comfortable in this life?

That is true, but for most of them that is only because they hope that there is a tangible pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

If spiritual pursuits were all that religious minded people deemed to be necessary, they wouldn’t mind spending their entire lives and the rest of eternity hooked up to as yet not invented virtual reality machine that would provide them with only with enjoyable spiritual pleasures.

It would take the tangible return of Jesus to fulfill the most important prophecy to fundamentalist Christians, and a good deal of liberal Christians as well, namely that Jesus will return to earth. Until then, the Devil would still be loose (do you believe in a literal Devil?), and there would still be diseases, war, poverty etc.

Some people are plenty comfortable, but as compared with eternity, the average human life span is of no more significance than a life span of one day. Most Christians are aware of this, and as such they are much more interested in obtaining a supposedly guaranteed tangibly comfortable eternal life that will be available to all believers. A tangibly comfort life in this existence is not available to a large percentage of the people in the world. Many people want to die because of poor health. That is why physician assisted suicide continues to gain support in many parts of the world.

In short, none of your arguments work, and all of my arguments in my various posts work as applied to most fundamentalist Christians, and a good percentage of liberal Christians as well.

seebs

On the first, yes... But this is because I believe a great deal of comfort is available in this life. As to the immortality thing...

As you correctly pointed out in another thread, upbringing seems to dominate religious opinions. I think the majority of Christians (and everybody else) believe what they do because someone told it to them.

Of converts I've known, almost none have been looking for eternal life, and almost all have been following what Jesus said because it was compelling to them.

An interesting question. In some ways, I don't care whether the Jesus Mythers are right or not, because the words attributed to Jesus appear to be useful and true, and I don't really care how God went about getting them to us. On the other hand, I think I care some, because the Incarnation itself is, after all, a significant part of the Gospel.

You assert this frequently. Do you have a basis for it? I am not at all convinced.

Hmm. Do you believe most people would be just as happy sleeping with a trained actress guaranteed to pretend to love them convincingly, but whom they would know actually viewed them as an odious long-term contract? She could pretend very convincingly.

I don't.

I think you underestimate the degree to which people want to believe things that are true.

You should read up on preterism, full and partial. In any event, I don't see why I should worry about that. A couple thousand years' worth of people have lived and died without it coming up, so I'm not going to waste time worrying about it.

This claim, while it sounds like it ought to be what people would do, is inconsistent with observed behaviors. The majority of Christians appear more interested in temporal comfort than in trying to do all the stuff Jesus said to do.

In short, I have no evidence that Christians are in fact more interested in the supposed guarantee.

Furthermore, for them to be Christians because of it, belief would have to be purely a choice, and I don't think it is.

I wouldn't call that "many" people, although they are significant enough.

No, because you've never once actually shown that the desire for a tangible eternal comfort has any effects. You can't demonstrate that it's even at issue, or that people would be just as happy to get it from elsewhere. Your argument depends on assuming people who are brilliantly analytic and capable of long-term thinking in a way that most people aren't some of the time, so they can "correctly" value eternal comfort over temporal comfort (which almost no one really does), and yet, who are so absolutely vapid that they have no actual interest in the questions that they spend all their time debating, and would jump ship if anything else came along.

I don't buy it.

Furthermore, I think it entirely fails to take into account the practical realities of religious belief, which seems to mostly be a function of upbringing.

You haven't offered any particular evidence that many, most, or even a substantial minority, of people who believe there is eternal comfort are Christians only because they think this is the way to get eternal comfort. Furthermore, even if you did establish this, it wouldn't exactly change anything; after all, that's how a lot of religions are pitched.

MonCapitan2002

No. If it turns out that there is an afterlife, I would have no choice but to accept that scenario whether I like it or not. What I meant by my previous post is that the belief systems that promise an eternal afterlife would not have the same appeal for those of us who are perfectly happy with mortality.