theophilus

Now there's an interesting idea, but it raises a troubling question.

If the concept of God "would never come up" unless someone "introduced," who do you suppose introduced it in the first place?

Hmmmm.

theophilus

Just curious; of what did your "study" of theology, history and the bible consist?

theophilus

Well, no actually you don't have to "wonder" about those questions. The bible gives very clear answers to those questions.
Of course, you don't believe the bible, so you have no basis for answering those questions, do you. Opps; you have no basis for answering ANY questions.

Spenser

The most difficult thing to believe is that YOU believe all that smoke you keep blowing.

I'm open to knowledge of God and yet all I know of him is that he is nothing more than a human concept. There is no suppressing of knowledge I'd be more than willing to accept if there was one iota of evidence anywhere. The writings of men or the babblings of fools don't count.

Do you feel empowered insulting people? Maybe they wouldn't insult you back if you weren't so pompous. Keep the smoke coming...

Why, cause you said so? No standard for knowledge? Are you for real, what is the standard then in your theistic world? Considering the world is non-theistic I suppose we can classify your best "knowledge" as meaningless as well...

This is a mere assertion at 'best.' Some how I don't see how opinions can be so boldly stated as fact when once again there is zero evidence supporting your reasons for saying such things.

(There is no evidence for god, but the bible is good enough, so you are ultimately right) We're just supposed to swallow this like a pill so we can be saved from imaginary sins.

No, not affirming God is simply not affirming him.

The part that so many theists seem to have missed is that atheists truly do not believe. God = Nothing. We don't deny nothing. To deny God would be to admit his existence and we truly believe that to be an absurd concept. I wouldn't doubt it if you thought that we all actually believed he was real but denied him anyway. That sounds like theistic reasoning I've come across before.

Theo, you may think because you have a good grasp on the English language, you are quite articulate, that you can argue every one here into a corner but a lot of the things you are saying don't add up. If you simply point back to the bible at every turn and present that as evidence for your case I'm left to wonder what you hope to accomplish here. Anyway, good luck in whatever it is.

Would you say the same for the poeple that point to the Koran rather than the bible?

Oh, and have you considered responding to everyone in one post rather than each individually?

ComestibleVenom

So the bible claims my reasons for disbelief, the epistemological principles of science and rational examination of unbelievers is all a big conspiracy to suppress God and the faith-based foolishness upon which he rests?

So much the worse for the bible.

ComestibleVenom

You know theophilus, for somebody who just finished posting an attack on the misrepresentation of other's beliefs, you seem pretty eager to assert that I hold a worldview that is the utter opposite of what I in fact believe.

Faith cannot provide standards of epistemic growth theophilus. It is faith, not reason, not scientific naturalism that lies behind radical relativism. Science forces us to confront the invariant realities evient in the world. It has neither the room nor the requirement for "standards of knowledge" based upon dogma or radical relativism.

You have no defended your contention that God is requisite for knowledge, you have asserted it as a dogma. I can't argue with dogmas theo, because beliefs based in dogma are ultimately relative only to your presuppositions. They have no connection to reality, and I thus deny them.

I'll accept for the duration of this one post your definition of materialism. I'll say it once, I'll say it again, if this is what you mean by "materialism", nobody on infidels.org is a materialist.

1. In a materialist world there can be no knowledge.
2. We have knowledge.
Via modus tollens
3. We do not live in a materialist world.

There you go, with the fact that we have knowledge.I have proved that "materialism" (a point of view that precisely zero members of infidels.ord believe) is false.

ComestibleVenom

Wrong again.

1. Agnostics believe that it is non-rational to deny the real existence of God.
2. Agnostics believe that it is non-rational to affirm the existence of God.
3. Agnostics exist.
therefore
4. It is false that Non-affirmation of God --> Denial of God



That being said, I disagree with agnosticism. I can unequivocally state that I am a soft-hearted, loving, self-sacrificing, humble and utterly damned atheist.

Llyricist

Some really smart sheepherder that could convince other people that he had such a powerful entity backing him up so he could exercise control over what they did perhaps?

luvluv

I hear a lot of Christians talk more about an innate sense of awe, or a sense of the divine, what C.S. Lewis referred to (IIRC) as the Noumina.

I would say this is innate. Certain experiences humble us and give us a feeling of being only a part of something greater, and this feeling has lead many to God.

I wonder, though, what an anthropologist would make of your idea that the God concept is one that is naturally foreign to human nature. There just are too darn many cultures with too darn many gods to say that the God concept is one which would not arise without social engineering.

Family Man

Yes, luvluv, but we're left with the connundrum that you couldn't crack in the past. Do we get this sense of "Noumina" because it is innate or because we are told that we have a sense of divine? In other words, could this "sense of divine" be merely the result of another self-fulfilling prophecy? And how do explain why children raised without a god concept don't ask about such a concept until they are told about it by others? I and others have had similar child rearing experiences. You might want to check out some of the posts earlier in this thread.

I wonder what an anthropologist would make of the idea that there are many Gods, or what he would make of Buddhist and Confucian cultures that lack a creator god concept. My wife, raised in a Confucian society, will tell you that she had no creator God concept until she was introduced to it by a Christian. Kind of blows the innateness theory, doesn't it? I think an anthropologist would conclude that people have imaginations and use them in varying ways.