Um, purple, I was actually laughing at you, just so you know.

The post fucked up.

EP, are you being an obnoxious cunt again for no reason?

Rob, I understand your premise, It's not ambiguous at all.
That's a good question to ask theists.
It will no doubt test them!

Ignor: thank you

EP: We'll assume the kids have a reasonable well-rounded education up to this point.

Yes, I'm looking for indicators of probable fiction. That's all. If you don't want to partake, that's fine. The point of this is try to get theists to think, and also to see if atheists can come up with new ideas for each other. I'm using fiction to mean "didn't happen as written". This may be due to it being totally made up, or it could be because the account is very inaccurate.

I'll start off then by giving my principles:

(1) Are the events being described consistent with what we know? Do they contain things we don't even know are possible? If they contain such things, it is probably fiction.

(2) How consistent is it? Does it make sense within itself? If it contains a lot of contradictions, then it is probably at least partly fictional due to inaccuracy.

Do people agree with these principles, and what others would you add?

(July 16, 2016 at 3:38 am)ignoramus Wrote: EP, are you being an obnoxious cunt again for no reason?

Rob, I understand your premise, It's not ambiguous at all.
That's a good question to ask theists.
It will no doubt test them!

How did you come to that conclusion, or what made you ask that question and formulate it like that? 

He didn't just ask theists, he asked all of us. If you understand his premise, please explain it to me.

(July 16, 2016 at 3:38 am)Excited Penguin Wrote: Um, purple, I was actually laughing at you, just so you know.

The post fucked up.

I dont care. I think indians are good people, if they say "Serve any demigod, God will reward you". Very peacefull statement compared to "Obey MY God, or burn".

(July 16, 2016 at 3:35 am)purplepurpose Wrote:

(July 16, 2016 at 3:29 am)robvalue Wrote: Really. Well, you failed again to address my post. Try reading it.

I have in mind only one criteria. If text demands from you to be more moral, then if you happen to have a faith in "magic", it wont hurt you, even if its fake story.

If text demands immoral or useless stuff, such stuff is fake.

You still seem to be assuming everything we're analysing is religious texts. Maybe try one more time to read my OP. These are meant to be general principles for any text, about any subject.

You're either deliberately ignoring the first part of my OP, or you don't understand it. You're jumping right to the end.

(July 16, 2016 at 3:38 am)robvalue Wrote: Ignor: thank you

EP: We'll assume the kids have a reasonable well-rounded education up to this point.

Yes, I'm looking for indicators of probable fiction. That's all. If you don't want to partake, that's fine. The point of this is try to get theists to think, and also to see if atheists can come up with new ideas for each other. I'm using fiction to mean "didn't happen as written". This may be due to it being totally made up, or it could be because the account is very inaccurate.

I'll start off then by giving my principles:

(1) Are the events being described consistent with what we know? Do they contain things we don't even know are possible? If they contain such things, it is probably fiction.

(2) How consistent is it? Does it make sense within itself? If it contains a lot of contradictions, then it is probably at least partly fictional due to inaccuracy.

Do people agree with these principles, and what others would you add?

Please don't be patronizing. It's not that I don't want to partake, it's that there's nothing to partake in.

How can the kids both have a good education and not be able to tell fact from fiction? You're contradicting yourself. Your principles wouldn't work on indoctrinated kids, simply because they're impressionable, and if you're telling them the events described aren't consistent with what they know, their priests or immediate family will tell them otherwise. So pretty much, they tell you their religion is fact, they do know Jesus walked on water and all that, because it's written in the bible. All you can do is either teach them to think critically, like I said, in which case they'd learn to tell fact from fiction over a long period of time, and not instantly, or they already know how to do it but they're so indoctrinated that they think religion is fact no matter what you say, so all you can do, really, at that point, is try and make your version of things win over in their heads.

A good novelist could cheat this challenge with no problem so long as he didn't appeal to magic.

I'm not being patronising EP. You're being thoroughly rude as per usual so I'll just ignore you.

I updated the OP with a clearer idea of what I mean by "fiction".

(July 16, 2016 at 3:44 am)robvalue Wrote:

(July 16, 2016 at 3:35 am)purplepurpose Wrote: I have in mind only one criteria. If text demands from you to be more moral, then if you happen to have a faith in "magic", it wont hurt you, even if its fake story.

If text demands immoral or useless stuff, such stuff is fake.

You still seem to be assuming everything we're analysing is religious texts. Maybe try one more time to read my OP. These are meant to be general principles for any text, about any subject.

You're either deliberately ignoring the first part of my OP, or you don't understand it. You're jumping right to the end.

Its impossible to distinct fake magic story from probably right. Its fictional magical story in both cases. Some people like "white magic" cult others like buddhism. But religion always promises benefits and morals.