(May 5, 2025 at 3:51 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Did it actually happen or was it just a parable? If it actually happened, was it just to illustrate the point? Because it kind of undermines the point, IMHO, to curse the fig tree for not bearing fruit when it wasn't supposed to.

Right, but the tree being out of season is key to the object lesson. The disillusionment only occurs when the tree gives the appearance of bearing fruit, only to find it is empty like the rest. It just wouldn't have the same meaning if it was peak season.

(May 5, 2025 at 4:10 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(May 3, 2025 at 11:04 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Because definitions are not prescriptive. And it is improper usage of a dictionary to shop around the different senses and give them all equal merit. You are supposed to go and look at the context in which a word is used and be able to infer its meaning. And even if you still care about proper definitions, you need to pull out a Greek concordance and dictionary and research its original usage and meaning, not pull out your merriam-webster.

It isn't shopping around. The word has two different senses. Can you not just state which sense you are talking about? Using them interchangeable is confusing. I recommend the second sense when you're referring to faith in spiritual things and just say 'believe' or 'trust' when you mean the first sense.

To be fair, being unequivocal would have made it more difficult for him to change what he meant later on.

(May 5, 2025 at 4:10 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: It isn't shopping around. The word has two different senses. Can you not just state which sense you are talking about? 

My argument is that only one sense exists within Christianity—that of trust. The other senses are as irrelevant as it is to point out that bank also means the edge of a river when I'm trying to deposit money. These might as well be different words, so there's no reason to acknowledge them as having equal merit.

(May 3, 2025 at 8:42 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 3, 2025 at 8:38 pm)Sheldon Wrote: So you lied then?

Sure, I lied. Now, where do you stand in terms of possibility then? Surely, you can grant that it's not impossible, right?

I think Sheldon's position, and he is welcome to correct me if I am wrong, is that they don't know if a god or God, as usually defined, is possible. Therefore he doesn't believe it is possible; that is, he does not hold the proposition that it IS possible to be true. They also do not hold the opposite position, that it is impossible.

As an aside, it is certainly possible that somewhere in the universe a creature that looks like a unicorn could exist. A horselike or goatlike animal with a single horn coming out of its forehead. That's possible. We can make a creature like that now, if we want. But one that can only be captured by a virgin whose horn can purify water and has supernatural healing powers? I don't believe that kind of unicorn is possible.

PS: This reasoning also applies to the possibility of elephants where they could exist but don't.

(May 5, 2025 at 3:51 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(May 2, 2025 at 2:19 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: I mean, you're personifying the fig tree story to push it to absurdity. The story isn’t about trees trusting God—it’s about people bearing fruit when they appear outwardly religious. I don't see why that should be a contentious lesson. If anything it shows it's not enough the believe in Christianity, faith actually has to do something productive.

Did it actually happen or was it just a parable? If it actually happened, was it just to illustrate the point? Because it kind of undermines the point, IMHO, to curse the fig tree for not bearing fruit when it wasn't supposed to.

The canonical gospel myths are all anonymous, and the earliest of them dates to decades after the events it purports to describe, even by the methods of historical validation this sort of anonymous (second-hand at best) hearsay, represents the poorest of evidence, and for the most extraordinary of claims, and all from an epoch of extreme credulity, ignorance, and superstition. 

I am not sure on what basis one would disbelieve claims, if one set a bar this low for personal credulity, without simply indulging wishful thinking and incredibly closed minded bias.

(May 4, 2025 at 9:47 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Okay, then let's run the thought experiment: We see species that look like rocks in environments full of rocks, and species that look like leaves in environments full of leaves. If we build a room full of beachballs and drop a simple organism in there, is it not possible that they begin to display beachball-like traits over the span of millennia?

An organism that looks like a rock isn't actually a rock. An elephant that evolved to look like it has a beachball for a head, wouldn't actually have a beachball for a head.

(May 5, 2025 at 4:28 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(May 3, 2025 at 8:42 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Sure, I lied. Now, where do you stand in terms of possibility then? Surely, you can grant that it's not impossible, right?

I think Sheldon's position, and he is welcome to correct me if I am wrong, is that they don't know if a god or God, as usually defined, is possible. Therefore he doesn't believe it is possible; that is, he does not hold the proposition that it IS possible to be true. They also do not hold the opposite position, that it is impossible.

As an aside, it is certainly possible that somewhere in the universe a creature that looks like a unicorn could exist. A horselike or goatlike animal with a single horn coming out of its forehead. That's possible. We can make a creature like that now, if we want. But one that can only be captured by a virgin whose horn can purify water and has supernatural healing powers? I don't believe that kind of unicorn is possible.

Pretty much, it strikes me as an unfalsifiable premise. I can't believe unfalsifiable claims without closed minded bias, and I can't believe both the claim and its negation, without violating the law of noncontradiction, but I can rationally disbelieve all unfalsifiable claims and their negation, and remain both agnostic and open minded. 

Not all god claims, or religious claims are unfalsifiable of course. Indeed, some have been falsified, either by rational inference, or by objective evidence. For example the creation myth in the bible and koran are both falsified by objective scientific fact. Even making the weak claim that a deity with limitless power and knowledge could only manage allegory, doesn't work, as Genesis can't even get the most basic chronological facts about the formation of the universe and solar system correct.

(May 5, 2025 at 4:20 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 5, 2025 at 4:10 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: It isn't shopping around. The word has two different senses. Can you not just state which sense you are talking about? 

My argument is that only one sense exists within Christianity—that of trust. The other senses are as irrelevant as it is to point out that bank also means the edge of a river when I'm trying to deposit money. These might as well be different words, so there's no reason to acknowledge them as having equal merit.

Except this ignores the fact that it is you who was subjectively shopping around for a definition, as this is at odds with how religious faith is defined, and yet you falsely accused me of shopping around for a definition, when I simply quoted, and linked, the Oxford English dictionary.

The word trust does not appear in the Oxford English definition of RELIGIOUS faith, only in the primary definition. 

faith
Definitions from Oxford Languages · 
noun
1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
2. strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.

You have pointedly failed to address this fact, while lying that I was the one "shopping around" for a definition. 

The only response I got was some vague facile claim, to seek out the Greek etymology of the word. Again this suggest it is you who is deviating from common usage, not me.

(May 5, 2025 at 4:20 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:

(May 5, 2025 at 4:10 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: It isn't shopping around. The word has two different senses. Can you not just state which sense you are talking about? 

My argument is that only one sense exists within Christianity—that of trust. The other senses are as irrelevant as it is to point out that bank also means the edge of a river when I'm trying to deposit money. These might as well be different words, so there's no reason to acknowledge them as having equal merit.

Bollocks. Blind faith has existed within Christianity since the beginning. That you don't want to acknowledge it is telling.

(May 4, 2025 at 9:47 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: To me, it's intellectually lazy not to be able to even contemplate the possibility of things. 

You seem to be falsely implying that disbelieving the claim a deity or deities exists, or are possible, is somehow a closed minded claim, that deities can't exist, and are impossible, I am not sure why this error has to be explained over and over? There is no intellectual laziness in demanding claims be properly evidenced, quite the opposite in fact. 

Present or demonstrate a single reason that a deity or deities are possible, and we can proceed to examine it. It is your refusal / inability to do this, while doggedly clinging to the claim, in an atheist forum, that amounts to intellectual laziness, nay intellectual dishonesty. 

The irony of course, is that most atheists are open, honest, and unequivocal about what they do and do not believe, whereas you refuse to be questioned, offer generic and often facile claims, and define words arbitrarily, often at odds with common usage, while demanding others define a phrase like objective evidence, as if combing the two words, is as indecipherable as the phrase "spiritual conviction", which defines religious faith. 

I guess when one is dealing in unevidenced and inexplicable magic, it seems reasonable to be vague and mysterious, but to then stridently demand explanations of a two word phrase, when a cursory look in any dictionary would do, just seems dishonest to me.