Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Atticus_Finch · 11-21-2002, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Keith Russell:
Finch said:
"I believe that there is credible evidence for God's existence and Jesus' divinity. I believe there is credible evidence that God/Jesus have been reliable in the past in fulfilling their promises."

Finch, rather than telling us that there is reliable evidence (as every theist seems only too happy to do), why not actually explain where one can go to observe this evidence for one's self?

Am I really simply supposed to just 'take your word' that there is such evidence, and that it is credible?

(Not to mention the fact that if you have evidence, what on earth do you need faith for, anyway?)

Keith.

I appreciate the question, however, as I indicated in my first post, it was not my intent to re-open the debate regarding the evidence regarding Jesus and/or God. My only point is that I do not consider, nor do I believe the Bible teaches, that belief in their existence is a matter of "faith". Rather "faith" is trusting in their promises and in how you interpret the fact of their existence.

I have debated the evidences for their existence on numerous occassions and was not intending to re-open that debate.

Regards,

Finch

Keith Russell · 11-21-2002, 06:51 PM

Finch, you said:
I appreciate the question, however, as I indicated in my first post, it was not my intent to re-open the debate regarding the evidence regarding Jesus and/or God. My only point is that I do not consider, nor do I believe the Bible teaches, that belief in their existence is a matter of "faith". Rather "faith" is trusting in their promises and in how you interpret the fact of their existence."

Keith:
Facts cannot be interpreted. Facts are. We offer interpretations about how facts interrelate to one another, but the facts themselves--in order to honestly be called facts--should be beyond dispute or interpretation.

Finch:
I have debated the evidences for their existence on numerous occassions and was not intending to re-open that debate.

Keith:
I would, however, love to hear any evidence you might care to offer. I wish I had a dime for every time a theist said 'there is evidence for 'God'--and another dime for every time they refused to offer any.

Keith.

Atticus_Finch · 11-22-2002, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Keith Russell:
Finch, you said:
I appreciate the question, however, as I indicated in my first post, it was not my intent to re-open the debate regarding the evidence regarding Jesus and/or God. My only point is that I do not consider, nor do I believe the Bible teaches, that belief in their existence is a matter of "faith". Rather "faith" is trusting in their promises and in how you interpret the fact of their existence."

Keith:
Facts cannot be interpreted. Facts are. We offer interpretations about how facts interrelate to one another, but the facts themselves--in order to honestly be called facts--should be beyond dispute or interpretation.

Finch:
I have debated the evidences for their existence on numerous occassions and was not intending to re-open that debate.

Keith:
I would, however, love to hear any evidence you might care to offer. I wish I had a dime for every time a theist said 'there is evidence for 'God'--and another dime for every time they refused to offer any.

Keith.

Keith, I have been posting on this board for a while and have engaged in lengthy debates regarding the existence of God and the facts relating to Jesus. I am happy to debate them but that was not my intent here.

You are correct in stating that facts are facts. What I meant by interpretation is how we interpret the significance of the facts and their interrelation. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify that point. An example of this is as follows. I believe it to be a fact that Jesus lived, performed miracles, claimed to be devine, died and rose from the dead. Now one could believe all those facts to be true and not conclude that Jesus is God. I think that person would be wrong to believe so but different people interpret facts differently for various reasons. Those facts lead me to the conclusion that Jesus is God and that I should place my trust or "faith" in Him and His promises.

My primary goal here is not to convince you to believe as I do. Rather, I posted here to clarify what I believe is a common misperception regarinding Christian "faith". I must confess that many if not most professing Christians that I know wrongly believe that they must hold to their "faith" without the exercise of reason or reflection on the facts. However, the NT clearly teaches that Christianity is a "faith" based upon facts. If those facts are not empirically true, then our "faith" is in vain and we should look elsewhere. I am not asking you, or others, to accept at this point that what I state to be the facts but rather to accept that Christian "faith" is a faith based upon what it perceives to be empircal facts.

Regards,

Finch

abe smith · 11-22-2002, 05:13 AM

Nonsense. "FAith" is what you have to (pray to) have, in order to swallow that trash when reality/information/facts FAIL! Nonsense! >>>> that "faith is based on facts"!
If you , Atticus-whatsis, are asserting that (Biblical) *revelation*
of dogmata is FACTUAL, I reply that you're fulla baloney. Fitz-rowerrrr! Don't come heyah waving that stuff at us, Person.
ALL CHRX religion begins w/ the initial assertion that "God exists." a totally-unsubstantiated and unproven human fiction. The CHRX religion is NOTHING until the credulous first accept that assertion ON FAITH. You mustn't bugger up words thus.

Thomas Metcalf · 11-22-2002, 02:13 PM

Originally posted by balisongsong:

"This claim confuses me because I utilized faith when I drove to work this morning,the faith that I would not be in a car accident with a semi,and faith I would arrive safely to work."

We need to be careful with how we use "faith." Let's divide it into Faith-1 and Faith-2. Faith-1 will require the belief that we can trust a proposition that has not been deductively confirmed but has some inductive support, and Faith-2 will require the belief that that we can trust a proposition that has not been confirmed with any strength at all.

Atheists will usually say that everyone exercises Faith-1 frequently, but that they as atheists never exercise Faith-2. Faith-2 is taken to be unreasonable. Your example of the belief that you will arrive safely to work depends upon some inductive justification, but cannot be deductively argued. Yet your faith that God exists has (I trust) no justification whatsoever, so many people will take it to be untrustworthy.

Of course, whether or not your faith has some justification (and therefore qualifies as Faith-1) is an important question, and would be better in the "Existence of God" board.

Whether or not Faith-1 is justified is an extremely important question in epistemology, one with implications across all of science, even loosely defined. Hume first raised a very similar worry, most famously in his Enquiry, and there is currently no widely accepted solution.

Hume's argument is (roughly) that (what I am calling) Faith-1 cannot be justified deductively or inductively (and these are the only kinds of justification); for to justify it deductively would require that the denial of any Faith-1-based claim yields a contradiction, and it is not a contradiction to say "I will not make it safely to work." But Faith-1 cannot be justified inductively either, because that would be to beg the question; you can't simply have Faith-1 that Faith-1 works.

Possible responses include, but are not limited to, (A) a Strawson kind of move, to say that what we mean by induction is the sort of argument whose premises make the conclusion more likely, (B) a Popper kind of move, to say that we just take induction to be a postulate and go from there, (C) a rationalist move, to say that induction can be justified a priori but not via the Principle of Contradiction (and therefore synthetically) or that certain non-logical constraints might necessitate the conclusions of inductive arguments (see a recent paper by Boulter in the British journal Philosophy), (D) an evolutionary epistemology kind of approach, to say that a good explanation for why we have evolved to use induction is that induction actually works, or (E) a skeptical move, to admit that we don't have any justification for induction.

(I tend to favor the last two.)

ELECTROGOD · 11-25-2002, 10:34 AM

Atticus_Finch wrote:

Quote:

Rather "faith" is trusting in their promises and in how you interpret the fact of their existence.

If there is real established fact about their existance then there is no need/room for faith.
You are doing what a lot of people do with words; that is not really understanding them but using them to try and define your ideas anyway.
That kind of sounds like someone saying, "I didn't not do that".
I know you like the word "faith" but shouldn't you know what it really means and how to use it grammatically?

Maybe we should just start referring to it as "Christian Slang".

That idea is FRESH, dog! Don't be wacked and come chill at my crib, bitch. Don't be a playa hater, we's just conversatin'.
(clear communication as opposed to slang is much less confusing)

Anybody else got any good examples of "Christian Slang" where they incorrectly use words they like to label or explain things?
I'll give another one. How about "theory"? (evolution is JUST a theory). God should be taught in science class along with evolution because evolution is JUST a theory and "intelligent design" is a valid theory too. (that really makes the case for god while being clueless about what theory means)

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: ELECTROGOD ]

ELECTROGOD · 11-25-2002, 11:02 AM

Oooo, I got another one, "immoral".
Christians often call Atheists and others immoral if they don't share all of their beliefs or hold certain views on things that Christians don't like. But there are a few things that Xians and Atheists do share views on (murder for one) so if the religious person understands what moral and immoral actually mean then they would be incorrect in calling anyone immoral (in their view) unless that person didn't share ANY of the views that they refer to as morals. You would either be "moral" (one or more morals observed-accepted rules of good or right) or "immoral" (without ANY morals at all-contrary to accepted rules of good or right).
That would make "immoral" used in such a way as "Christian Slang" because it is a misuse of the word to try and express their ideas.

Darkblade · 11-27-2002, 03:57 AM

I think that immoral is used to denote lack of complete morality, whereas amoral is used to denote complete lack of morality. However, these terms are still subjective; someone could be considered moral even if he didn't have every moral, or amoral even if he didn't lack every moral. I'm speaking from my belief in what theists mean by these terms.

Keith Russell · 11-27-2002, 07:13 AM

Greetings:

I use the term 'amoral' to describe something that cannot be evaluated morally; an event or situation to which morality does not apply. Just as a ruler cannot be used to measure the weight of an object, morality cannot be used to measure (or evaluate) certain types of things.

A storm is 'amoral', for instance...

Keith.

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11-21-2002, 06:51 PM	#52
Keith Russell Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Overland Park, Kansas Posts: 1,336	Finch, you said: I appreciate the question, however, as I indicated in my first post, it was not my intent to re-open the debate regarding the evidence regarding Jesus and/or God. My only point is that I do not consider, nor do I believe the Bible teaches, that belief in their existence is a matter of "faith". Rather "faith" is trusting in their promises and in how you interpret the fact of their existence." Keith: Facts cannot be interpreted. Facts are. We offer interpretations about how facts interrelate to one another, but the facts themselves--in order to honestly be called facts--should be beyond dispute or interpretation. Finch: I have debated the evidences for their existence on numerous occassions and was not intending to re-open that debate. Keith: I would, however, love to hear any evidence you might care to offer. I wish I had a dime for every time a theist said 'there is evidence for 'God'--and another dime for every time they refused to offer any. Keith.

11-22-2002, 05:13 AM	#54
abe smith Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: springfield, MA. USA Posts: 2,482	Nonsense. "FAith" is what you have to (pray to) have, in order to swallow that trash when reality/information/facts FAIL! Nonsense! >>>> that "faith is based on facts"! If you , Atticus-whatsis, are asserting that (Biblical) revelation of dogmata is FACTUAL, I reply that you're fulla baloney. Fitz-rowerrrr! Don't come heyah waving that stuff at us, Person. ALL CHRX religion begins w/ the initial assertion that "God exists." a totally-unsubstantiated and unproven human fiction. The CHRX religion is NOTHING until the credulous first accept that assertion ON FAITH. You mustn't bugger up words thus.

11-22-2002, 02:13 PM	#55
Thomas Metcalf Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Boulder, CO Posts: 1,009	Originally posted by balisongsong: "This claim confuses me because I utilized faith when I drove to work this morning,the faith that I would not be in a car accident with a semi,and faith I would arrive safely to work." We need to be careful with how we use "faith." Let's divide it into Faith-1 and Faith-2. Faith-1 will require the belief that we can trust a proposition that has not been deductively confirmed but has some inductive support, and Faith-2 will require the belief that that we can trust a proposition that has not been confirmed with any strength at all. Atheists will usually say that everyone exercises Faith-1 frequently, but that they as atheists never exercise Faith-2. Faith-2 is taken to be unreasonable. Your example of the belief that you will arrive safely to work depends upon some inductive justification, but cannot be deductively argued. Yet your faith that God exists has (I trust) no justification whatsoever, so many people will take it to be untrustworthy. Of course, whether or not your faith has some justification (and therefore qualifies as Faith-1) is an important question, and would be better in the "Existence of God" board. Whether or not Faith-1 is justified is an extremely important question in epistemology, one with implications across all of science, even loosely defined. Hume first raised a very similar worry, most famously in his Enquiry, and there is currently no widely accepted solution. Hume's argument is (roughly) that (what I am calling) Faith-1 cannot be justified deductively or inductively (and these are the only kinds of justification); for to justify it deductively would require that the denial of any Faith-1-based claim yields a contradiction, and it is not a contradiction to say "I will not make it safely to work." But Faith-1 cannot be justified inductively either, because that would be to beg the question; you can't simply have Faith-1 that Faith-1 works. Possible responses include, but are not limited to, (A) a Strawson kind of move, to say that what we mean by induction is the sort of argument whose premises make the conclusion more likely, (B) a Popper kind of move, to say that we just take induction to be a postulate and go from there, (C) a rationalist move, to say that induction can be justified a priori but not via the Principle of Contradiction (and therefore synthetically) or that certain non-logical constraints might necessitate the conclusions of inductive arguments (see a recent paper by Boulter in the British journal Philosophy), (D) an evolutionary epistemology kind of approach, to say that a good explanation for why we have evolved to use induction is that induction actually works, or (E) a skeptical move, to admit that we don't have any justification for induction. (I tend to favor the last two.)

11-25-2002, 11:02 AM	#57
ELECTROGOD Veteran Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: GR, MI USA Posts: 4,009	Oooo, I got another one, "immoral". Christians often call Atheists and others immoral if they don't share all of their beliefs or hold certain views on things that Christians don't like. But there are a few things that Xians and Atheists do share views on (murder for one) so if the religious person understands what moral and immoral actually mean then they would be incorrect in calling anyone immoral (in their view) unless that person didn't share ANY of the views that they refer to as morals. You would either be "moral" (one or more morals observed-accepted rules of good or right) or "immoral" (without ANY morals at all-contrary to accepted rules of good or right). That would make "immoral" used in such a way as "Christian Slang" because it is a misuse of the word to try and express their ideas.

11-27-2002, 03:57 AM	#58
Darkblade Regular Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: I am both omnipresent AND ubiquitous. Posts: 130	I think that immoral is used to denote lack of complete morality, whereas amoral is used to denote complete lack of morality. However, these terms are still subjective; someone could be considered moral even if he didn't have every moral, or amoral even if he didn't lack every moral. I'm speaking from my belief in what theists mean by these terms.

11-27-2002, 07:13 AM	#59
Keith Russell Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Overland Park, Kansas Posts: 1,336	Greetings: I use the term 'amoral' to describe something that cannot be evaluated morally; an event or situation to which morality does not apply. Just as a ruler cannot be used to measure the weight of an object, morality cannot be used to measure (or evaluate) certain types of things. A storm is 'amoral', for instance... Keith.

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