David Mathews

Hello Splashing,

David: Would you define "metaphysical naturalism" and identify the beliefs about reality and the Universe which you derive from that philosophy?

Thanks,

David Mathews

David Mathews

Hello Jobar,

David: The above statement is subjective. Do you agree?

David: I don't know what you mean. Could you clarify?

David: Religion has inspired humans to awesome acts of self-sacrifice, benevolence and love, and you dismiss it all as a "con-game"? I certainly don't share your low regard for religion.

David: I would take this accusation against organzation religion seriously except for the long history of humankind. Humans corrupt, exploit and use for evil all organizations, entities, philosophies, political ideologies, governments, sciences and arts.

You are making an observation about the character of humankind rather than pointing out a unique trait of religion.

David: How do you live your life as if it were meaningless?

David: It is a common fault among theists and atheists alike.

David: Indeed.

Best Regards,

David Mathews

scumble

David, you seem to be perpetually contradicting yourself. You claim to know and not know the same things. Everybody seems to be frustrated with you tendency to answer questions with questions.

It's also inspired bloody wars. Please be balanced.

This could suggest how ineffective religion is.

Interesting interpretation. Makes a lot of us really annoyed.

We'd spend a lot more time talking about more productive things if we weren't besieged by religious propaganda.

A lot of us are mystified by apparent lack of conviction on your part.

It amazes me that Christians ignore things like this, as if us humans don't innately feel the consequences of our actions continuously.

MrDarwin

Christians don't seem to give their God much credit for imagination. Why does it have to be either-or, two stark choices, either eternal salvation or eternal damnation?

There are people who believe that we cease to exist when we die; others believe that some souls are rewarded with eternal salvation but others are punished with annihilation (rather than eternal suffering); that souls are sent to a place of finite punishment for their sins, after which they are rewarded for the good things they did; that souls are reincarnated into an unhappy life as punishment; that souls are reincarnated continuously, becoming better with each lifetime of experience and eventually rewarded in some way.

Looking at it in purely human terms, we all agree that punishments must fit the crime. We don't send people to the electric chair for cheating on their tax returns; a parent doesn't cut off his child's hand to punish stealing. We have a range of punishments, for a range of infractions.

I think the objection that many non-Christians (and I suspect many Christians as well) have to the Christian concepts of salvation and damnation is that there is a single, one-size-fits-all, drastic punishment for all sins, no matter how large or how small. For many people, the punishment does not seem to fit the crime.

Of course we can look at it another way: there is really only one sin, the rejection of God. But again, there are objections to this: why is a simple disbelief in God--a very human flaw--worse than, say, being a serial murderer? If this is the only sin, why should we be the least bit concerned with what we do on this earth, whether it's lying, stealing, committing adultery, or murder, as long as we repent before we die.

Judging from your statements about hell and damnation, David, I suspect that you're one of those Christians who is uncomfortable with Christian orthodoxy of eternal damnation and eternal suffering--which means there's hope for you yet.

davidm

David Mathews, got any empirical evidence for the existence of the Christian God, or any God? Thought not. Let us know if you get any.

Trying to get a grip on your belief is like trying to squeeze a shadow, or like trying to throw a net around a cloud of dust. There is no THERE there. Anything and everything works for you, as long as it can be shoehorned into your preconceived dogma. Atheists in heaven? Why not? Bible contradictions? Why not? Etc. Nothing matters but the belief.

You are like a guy who wakes up on a clear morning in the middle of a drought and says, "Today it will rain." The day passes, with no sign of clouds. Still, the believer says, "It will rain." Finally the day is over, and no rain has come. Asked about this, the Rainist says, "Who is to say it DIDN'T rain? Rain is beyond human comprehension. Rain works in mysterious ways."

This isn't an academic example, either. There are many cases of people who, speaking in the name of Christ, predicted the end of the world on a fixed day. When the day came and went and nothing happened, some of them simply maintained that the world HAD ended, but that people were too benighted too notice. How would YOU reason with such people, David? Yet, you "reason" just like they do.

Any idea as big and bold as Christianity ought to make many testable predictions. As a matter of fact it does, and all its predictions have failed.

Here is another prediction: Let us suppose that there is an abundance of extraterrestrial civilizations similar to our own. It is assumed that they would be biologically different from us but otherwise share much in common with us, including language, technology, a complex culture and a written history. Let's say we established contact with a good data set of such civilizations, perhaps around 50. Christianity, if true, predicts that most and probably all such alien civilizations ought to have a story deeply analogous to, if not identical with, the New Testament. Otherwise, we should have to develop some special principle singling out humans as worthy of salvation above all other intelligent species.

If all these worlds did have such a story, I would certainly sit up and take notice. My religious skepticism would be dented. But what if the opposite held? What if none of them had such a story? To take the most extreme example, suppose not one of these 50 worlds had a god belief at all? What would you say?

I suspect I already know what you would say. You would say, without any evidence, that humans alone were worthy of salvation. In fact, no matter what the outcome of such an extraterrestrial survey, it seems obvious to me that you would shoehorn the data to fit your dogma. Is that true, or not? To put it another way, is there any discovery, anything at all, that would dent your belief? Or are you like the guy and the rain?

Jobar

David, two comments on your last reply to me.


Me: You yourself have said that God is beyond all our perception and comprehension. Why not just admit that you are trying to climb several steps beyond where the ladder of abstraction ends, and build on the things we can perceive and comprehend?

David: I don't know what you mean. Could you clarify?

Well, a full explanation of the ladder of abstraction would involve a fairly long lesson in semantics- the study of how language is used to convey information. The connotations and denotations of words, hyperbole, spin, poetic license- all these things are part of semantics. The ladder of abstraction- well, let's say you have a dog. The ground that the ladder of abstraction sits on is the actual, physical dog- constantly changing, describeable in a huge number of ways. We abstract the physical dog to be able to talk about him. Proceeding up the ladder, we have, say,
Fluffy- 8 PM July 26, 2002.
Fluffy.
My Poodle.
My Dog.
Dog.
Pet.
Animal.
Lifeform.

Do you see? Those words and concepts form an abstraction ladder. You, in your attempts to say things about your belief, have no ground on which to base your ladder, no basis to communicate anything to us. All your concepts hang in air, connected to many other words and ideas true enough, but with nothing you can actually point to in order to show us what you mean.

My second point-

Me: Ah-ah-ah, David! This seems to contradict your belief in the salvation of atheists- and besides, few of us absolutely reject all this, remember. We simply say that there is no least whiff of evidence that any of it is true! We try to live our lives as if **it** were meaningless- which to us it really is.

David: How do you live your life as if it were meaningless?


Sigh. And after I complimented you on attempting honest discourse, you come back with this, which is dishonest in at least two ways. It does not answer the main point I address- that you are contradicting yourself. (Salvation for atheists- YES OR NO??? That's the main point, see?) You attempt to squirm away from answering the REAL question. You even put a false face on my statement- I said that we unbelievers treat all the trappings of Christianity as imaginary, fictional, meaningless. And you respond not to my statement, but to something entirely different. See the emphasis on "it"? I am saying that we consider religion meaningless- NOT our lives!

I therefore accuse you of lying- my only remaining uncertainty is if you are lying to yourself as well as to us. If that's the case, I might mix in a bit of pity with my disgust for you- either way I consider you not worth talking to.

David Mathews

Hello Jobar,

David: I don't see this as a problem, Jobar. When speaking about the Divine all words lose their meaning, just as the laws of physics fail in the first instances of time following the Big Bang. The human intellect cannot encompass any of God's qualities.


David: Perhaps you did not write the question effectively, Jobar.

You consider religion meaningless. Okay. A lot of people, billions of people, do not consider religion meaningless.

You consider salvation meaningless. Okay. Evidently some atheists disagree with you, but you are only speaking for yourself.

You don't consider your life meaningless? It seems to me that your life is meaningless. Where do you get the meaning in your life, Jobar?

David: You can accuse me of anything, Jobar. You can say anything you wish. I believe in freedom of speech.

Best Regards,

David Mathews

Xyzzy

And thus with an amazing rhetorical flourish, Dave conclusively proves that 2+2=5, and black is white.

The rest of us of course are left wondering how a benevolent God could be merciful only by being unconscionably cruel. A period of humane punishment is all we humans ever condemn even the hardest criminals guilty of even the most heinous crimes. But God is willing to perpetually torture a person for an eternity for the terrible crime of not believing in his invisible self.

The real reason why Christians claim an everlasting hell awaits everyone who does not agree with them is quite obvious, and has nothing to do with the nature of a non-existent God, and quite a bit to do with the nature of religious cults the world over.

If the carrot of everlasting bliss does not cow the unbeliever, the stick of everlasting fire hopefully will do the trick.

Xyzzy

I am not Jobar, but I'd like to field this question.

Ultimately, even assuming the existence of God, there is STILL no meaning to the universe. We have an immediate meaning to our world.. God created it to do something or other that may be ineffable to us, but certainly makes sense to God.

However, we're then left with the problem of what possible meaning God may have for his existence, and for doing all the stuff he purportedly has done and will do. Ulltimately that leads us back to the same problem.

Why all this rigamarole God? Why should we bother having an afterlife, heaven, hell? What is the point of it all? We're on some cosmic merry-go-round where God creates the universe and us, we live our miniscule lives, then we're either burnt to a cinder or live an eternity of hedonistic bliss. But WHAT IS THE POINT?

Ultimately, this complex plan has absolutely no purpose whatsoever, it only distracts us from realizing it has no purpose by giving us a false "immediate" purpose (God's purpose). But this is a false sense of purpose, because ultimately there is no point to God or any of his creations.

So what we're left with is a purposeless universe either way. One in which we have no invisible men with magical powers, or one in which what you see is really what you get.

So where do atheists get their "purpose" from. Ultimately the purpose of our lives comes from the same source that the purpose of your life comes from: we are born with it.

We are simply born to take satisfaction in living, and satisfaction in the various types of activities that humans engage in. We enjoy watching movies, playing with our children, spending time with the opposite sex, and learning about the universe. It stimulates and iterests us, and that is why we do it.

Why do things satisfy us and interest us, and why do we find satisfaction in simply living? We simply have evolved this way. Our interests and motivations are tuned to help us mate, help us maintain strong family relationships and friendships, and pursue activities that will allow us to succeed at providing for our children and protecting them.

The Theist, however, is engrossed in a grand belief system which provides him with a false sense of meaning. He looks at life without this false purpose, and to him it seems bleak and meaningless. It is similar to how a heroine addict looks at life without his dailing fix. But the truth is that the pleasures and challenges of life are the same regardless of whether you believe in invisible all-powerful magicians that promise eternal bliss after death or not.

Pomp

Sorry, folks, intentionally derailing a thread isn't really appropriate for the upper forums, IMVHO. So, even though I did get to learn about petanque (I'm glad your son was OK, DMB), I've removed all off-topic posts. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Helen.

Please resume demonstrating how contradictory and unfounded David Matthews' belief system is in a manner complying with the spirit of this forum and its rules.

Thanks.

[ July 28, 2002: Message edited by: Pompous Bastard ]</p>