Primal

From Hired Gun's website under the heading "The Game Skeptic's Play". (Mainly about how Skeptic's and atheists attack straw men.)

http://www.ex-atheist.com/7.html


Of course this ignores fact A: Nobody is saying Charlie is immutable. Fact B: God's immutability is established by his supposedly being outside of time, perfect, eternal, absolute and trasncedent: meaning He cannot change in any way. Fact C: That the idea of a being's "nature" being mutable but other aspects of the creature being "immutable" is somewhat questionable. For how do the two parts then interact? Also what does it even mean to say a being's nature is immutable but not the entire being? That there is a part of the creature set aside as immutable, a sort of unchanging "essence", which because it is changing, literally does nothing. Nothing but sit around as a useless apendage. Fact D: It is highly superfluous and doubtful that such a thing even exists.

I can for example say "I am immutable" and when you point out that "no you're not, you change" then say "Well, gee, I meant the substance I am made out of is immutable."

And in a sense I would be right, but I have now mutated my original statement beyond recognition.


Also we must confront the question of where in the Bible it say's God's Nature is immutable and not just God?




Do you have any idea of how many conceptions of God there are out there?

Do you really and honestly expect an atheists argument to either confront any possible conception of God or not comment at all? Is that really a reasonable basis to call another's argument a straw man?

Just because you do not adhere to that specific belief in God does not mean nobody else does.


That is ridiculous. First off the Bible is not the end all be all of Christianity, it wouldn't have even existed without Catholic or Pope authority for that manner.

Secondly religion is not just about the Bible but about tradition.

Last, the Bible is a document very open to interpretation. Whether your interpretation is "literal" or not is mainly a matter of degree. For example I doubt you really believe that in the Bible when Joshua stopped the sun, he really stopped the sun. Or when the New Testament spoke of four corners on the Earth, that it was literal. Also many of your own conceptions I doubt are backed up verbatim, the idea of "God's Nature being immutable" and not God for example. And even if it was, it's an ambiguous statement, it can mean merely God's Nature is immutable (whatever that means) or it can mean it is in God's Nature to be Immutable.

I find it ironic then that an atheist be accused of attacking a strawman, by what is apparently the king of all scare crows.

Primal

but on your site it says:


http://www.ex-atheist.com/6.html


So you took advantage of moral relativism but also say you were a moral atheist for many years?


Also you state:

Do you honestly believe that all atheist philosophy is limited to existentialism and moral relativism? That to an atheist all life is meaningless?

If so then you are under a false dillema. There is simply more to it then that.


I agree, if atheism sank into relativism, then both positions (atheism and theism) would be illogical and none really better then the other. But that just is not so.

Atheists just believe there is no God: that's it. Buddhists can be atheists, as can taoists. Some may see life is meaningless, just as some theists I know really wonder if God is evil, but things are not necessarily true just because people believe them.

I for example find lots of meaning in my life as a matter of self-evident fact or value.

All you have proven then IMO is there are bad philosophies in both camps: secular and religious. There is BS on both sides, the biggest BS however is thinking there is no BS on your side.

RED DAVE

Sound like you took up religion because you were bored. Have you considered a hobby, like protesting war or helping people to fulfill their potentials or raising shih-tzus?

RED DAVE

Alonzo Fyfe

If it should matter, my life has far more meaning as an atheist than it could ever has as a believer.

What a waste of a life it would be to spend it talking to somebody who isn't even there.

It would be like spending one's life building a house out of imaginary lumber and, once done, furnishing it with imaginary furniture and hanging imaginary pictures on imaginary walls. I can imagine such a person in perfect bliss as he marvels at the wonders of this (imaginary) mansion he has built out of his own hands.

No matter how content such an individual may claim to be, that life is empty. It is a hollow shell of a life.

No, thank you.

Only a life spent living in the real world effecting real-world change for the sake of real-world people can possibly have any meaning.

Goober

:notworthy How eloquantly put. I just might quote that, next time a theist claims that without theism there is no purpose in life.

Clutch

Hired Gun:
Bottom line: Show me the proof.

That is, assume the antecedent and then, using no other undischarged assumptions, logically derive the consequent. If you've got a proof of the above conditional, please don't keep it to yourself.

Numbered premises would be nice.

Thanks in advance.

Alonzo Fyfe

Whether the pain that I feel when I get burned comes from products of random mutation and natural selection, or created by God, does not change the quality of being free of pain one iota. I do not care less about the pain knowing it it is a result of evolved dispositions, I could not care more about it if I were discovered it exists as a part of God's design.

There's only one thing that matters.

IT HURTS!!!

And a similar story can be told of all value.

End of story.

Wiploc

The implication is that Christians can have a basis for their morality, right? How does that work? It seems to me that anybody can have a logical morality by adopting some precepts and then following the logical implications. But how can the adopting of precepts be logical? Why, for instance, would it be more logical to base a moral system on, "I want to do what god tells me," than on, "I want to do what makes people happy"?

crc

Soundsurfr

Lots of problems in this comment. First, the assumption is that a fungus is worthless to anyone or anything. It ignores the perfectly valid philosophical position that everything may have worth in relation to everything else. Second, if we're pretending to have worth - who is it that we are "pretending" to have worth to? In other words, who is the implied judge of this "worth"?

If the topic is "pretending to have worth", then it is theists who strike me as those who pretend to have worth to an unseen, omnipotent creator-of-the-universe. Conjures up the picture of a bunch of paramecium fretting about whether or not their day to day actions are pleasing and appropriate in the eyes of the President of the United States.

Soundsurfr

Congratulations. Do you then fail to recognize the ramshackle house of cards that the theist position rests on? My hunch is that it's been pointed out to you many times, (after all, you've read all those stupid philosophers) but I'll take the trouble to point it out again so we're clear on the issue.

If morals are simply what the "divine authority" says they are, then any depraved set of rules can be moral if the divine authority deems it so. On the other hand, if the divine authority is simply the communicator of an inherently "absolute" set of morals, then the divine authority is not the source of morals after all.

It's an ugly dilemma Hired Gun, but hey, it's all yours. Embrace it.