Actually cursed. Hah.

(May 17, 2015 at 6:55 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: Actually, I don't think you explained anything.  As some atheists have suggested here, our individual rights come from a consensus within our tribe, group, nation, etc.  So the USA tolerated slavery that was based upon the notion that Blacks are only 3/5 human.  But here, you seem to take a very different approach. Your approach to individual rights involves empathy.  In your opinion, is your personal empathy an adequate justification for anything you might decide to do?

If you don't think I explained anything, you're not paying attention. Exactly what concept is giving you difficulty? Is it the concept of empathy? Or is it the concept of applying empathy to one's own actions towards others? Or perhaps you don't mind having your time, property, or freedom stolen, and therefore you believe that it's okay to do that to others?

Morality is relative.  It is relative in my outlook, and it is relative in the outlook of any Christian. Pretending otherwise is silly.

As for your final question, when I am considering an act, I think about how it might affect others, and do my best to avoid actions that have a deleterious effect on others. Is that "personal empathy" to you? It doesn't even require feelings at all; it can be derived rationally, from understanding people and how they are affected by events.

---

(May 19, 2015 at 12:28 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: I haven't established any moral absolutes.  But I think that some (a few) moral absolutes exist.  One of these is, "You shall have no other gods before Me."   

So, what you're saying is that you believe in things beyond the natural, because a supernatural entity is alleged to have made some rules?

This is called "begging the question", because you are assuming what is under dispute in order to buttress your point. You are asserting that there is such a thing as the supernatural, using as evidence the alleged dicta of the supernatural entity you're wishing to demonstrate.

Try again, this time thinking with more rigor.

---

(May 19, 2015 at 1:05 pm)Freedom4me Wrote:

(May 19, 2015 at 12:36 pm)robvalue Wrote: That does sound like something that would be from Christianity. Sadly, Christianity can focus very heavily on making you hate yourself. It sets standards that are so high you are almost certain to fail, and fail constantly.

It's a dirty, disgusting trick. Morality, any morality that matters, is about the wellbeing of life on this planet. It's not about the feelings of undemonstrated magical beings. I'd rather curse god's name all day long than hurt someone. This is another trick: the conflation of sins with actual immoral, harmful acts. If you stop and examine them in this way, you'll see the two are not related except by coincidence.

If God values his ego higher than the wellbeing of humans and animals, then he is not worthy of praise.

In part, my reason for bringing up the first commandment is to make the point that we don't actually have to DO something to violate a moral absolute.  If I love money more than God then I condemn myself by my attitude toward money (relative to my attitude toward God) and not by doing something horrible toward others.  Some horrible and detestable crimes are committed every day by people who have taken the attitude that money is more important than anything else.  It always starts with a persons heart; our attitudes about things matter.

This is why Christianity is evil: it bestirs the faithful to hate themselves for the human nature whose creation is ascribed to the god they worship.

Why should you feel guilty for your god's imperfect creation? The Bible argues that the clay ought not question the potter, but quite frankly, if the potter is unable to manufacture a good pot, at the very least he ought not shatter the pot in a temper tantrum without questioning his own role in the failure.

---

(May 19, 2015 at 3:54 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: Yes, I agree, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. 

---

(May 19, 2015 at 4:39 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: The objections tend to take one of several forms:

1. I hate your god and his morality.

Link to the post where anyone here has written this.

That's right, you cannot, because no one has.

(May 19, 2015 at 4:39 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: There isn't much I can do to address number 1 [...]

That's right, because it is a fiction you've invented.

---

(May 20, 2015 at 1:50 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: I think that in biblical times, slavery was quite often the most obvious and practical alternative to something far worse.  For example, when one tribe went to war against another tribe and all of the men of the losing tribe were killed-off in the fighting, the care of the women and children of the defeated tribe would probably have been deemed an unbearable burden by the victorious tribe.  What should the victors do with them?  Kill them too?  Maybe they don't have to be killed.  Speaking for myself, if I could remain alive by working as a slave rather than die because the absence of slavery means I'm nothing but a hindrance to the victorious tribe, I would wish that slavery existed for my own survival...unless my treatment as a slave was really brutal.  So, although I wouldn't want to put a smiley face on slavery even in those days, I can understand that in ancient times there were often no good alternatives to slavery.  

You're hardly the first Christian to defend slavery here.

Your Bible documents that your god ordered slavery, not because of beneficence, but because the enslaved women and children were to be raped or worked at hard labor for the rest of their lives. This means that he implicitly approves such treatment.

You are trying to distance yourself from that ugly fact because you know that slavery is wrong, and you justify your god's orders about it because you believe he is himself good.

This is moral relativity in action: When my god does it, it is moral. When I do it, it is immoral.

It should be noted that Yahweh also ordered genocide, so that your reasoning behind the existence of slavery doesn't hold water inside the confines of your own worldview. Your god had no compunctions about ordering the Israelites to wipe out entire peoples. To argue that slavery was an improvement on that practice means that either your god knew there was a better way to handle captives, and chose to order the more brutal way; or that your god was at one point unaware of a better method of dealing with captives.

Either way, we have put paid to the notion that you worship a perfect god. You worship a brute. Deep down, you know he's a brute (that's why you're distancing yourself from his behavior even as you extol his "goodness").

Quote:So, although I wouldn't want to put a smiley face on slavery even in those days, I can understand that in ancient times there were often no good alternatives to slavery.

See? Christians too believe in, and practice, moral relativity.

(May 20, 2015 at 1:00 pm)Freedom4me Wrote: I'm just telling you what I find convincing.

Yes, but the big problem is that you can't tell me why you find these things convincing, or even why the things you're saying are in any way connected to a god. You say you believe in god because of moral absolutes, but when I tell you that you haven't established that moral absolutes exist, you continue to not do that and just presuppose that they do. And then when I ask you why you think moral absolutes require your specific christian god, you just list one of the things you think is a moral absolute because the bible claims your god said it, which is a circular argument; you're saying that moral absolutes are evidence of god, and that you know what things are moral absolutes because your god said them. You're using one claim to validate another, and then using that second claim to validate the first, but if either of those claims is untrue, then your entire position falls apart, and you certainly haven't given us any reason to believe either is true.

Do you really not understand what a circular argument is? Do we need to go that basic with you?

Quote:I can't convert anyone.

You could convert me, if you had evidence and not merely a bucket of assertions.

Quote:Just as my conversion was a miracle, so it is for all who, by faith, are saved in Christ.

Conversions aren't miracles, they are entirely natural events that take place in the material world; there's nothing magical about a person changing their mind, nor benefiting from that. If you're insisting that this is a miracle then you're denuding the word of all meaning.

 

Quote: As I've said, God brought me to a point at which it began to require vastly more faith to remain an atheist than it took for me to believe in the God of the bible. 

Yeah, if you're dead set on just attributing everything good that happens to you to god, with no reason to, then of course you're going to see good things happen as a result of your belief in god, because you've just defined everything by fiat as from your god. The problem is that you don't have a reason to attribute the things you do to god, and your presupposition could not be evidence for anyone else, in any case.

Quote:As I began to evaluate my atheism after reading "Evidence" I began to realize that atheism isn't something positive (like an explanatory and conceptually fulfilling world view), it is merely the negation (or rejection) of theism.

Basically, yeah; atheism is a single position, not a worldview in itself. So what?

Do you care if anything in the explanatory worldview you currently hold is true, or does it just matter that it explains things, even if those explanations are wrong?

Quote:  Since atheism is nothing more than that, it doesn't contain or support, and it isn't trying to contain or support, any kind of philosophical foundation for morality, the origins of life, or anything else.  Atheism is highly prized as if it were really something wonderful by those who reject theism, but it is nothing but the rejection of theism.  It is nothing!  How can "nothing" make a person free?

If the alternative to that nothing is the strictures and unjustified demands of a fictional god and his cadre of sycophants and conmen... it's certainly freeing by comparison.

(May 15, 2015 at 2:29 pm)robvalue Wrote: Where do the laws of nature and the laws of logic come from?

We don't know. Just making up an answer and requiring someone prove you wrong is the argument from ignorance fallacy. You still need positive evidence for your claim.

If there is no god, why do so many atheists care so much about the non-existence of a supposedly fictional deity?

Most atheists don't claim there is no god, they claim there isn't good enough reason to think that there is a god.

Please watch this for a full answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wguAQHWVcZY

No offense taken

1: Its not an argument from ignorance because he is not asserting that the proposition is true because of lacking evidence to the contrary. 
You have two faults here just in your understanding of this fallacy. 1: He is not asserting proof, only evidence. 2: He is not asserting truth because of evidence lacking to the contrary. He is recognizing a probability of truth because of what he already knows about law, and logic. 
All laws of which we know their origin, have a maker. The only laws which we don't attribute to a creator (atleast atheists don't), are natural laws. If one is to claim that those laws do not have a creator (the real atheist position, see #2), they would be committing the fallacy of special pleading. As the total of our experience concerning laws has shown the need for a creator, and as a law without a creator seems incoherent, it is more likely than not that the laws of nature are no different. Hence this constitutes evidence for a creator.

2: Most atheists do believe there is no God, and this is evidenced wherever atheists are. Whenever atheists ridicule the concept of God, which is all the time, it belies their position that they actively believe there are none. What they say is another matter because they are just trying to have their cake and eat it: ridicule God without wearing a burden of proof. Posting your blog to support your definition is as bad as Christians saying the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible. Your definition of atheism was created by Anthony Flew, in his social engineering project "The Presumption of Atheism", a book created to redefine atheism for the very purposes you are demonstrating: to claim the default position with no BOP. He writes:

"the word ‘atheist’ has in the present context to be construed in an unusual way.  Nowadays it is normally taken to mean someone who explicitly denies the existence . . . of God . . . But here it has to be understood not positively but negatively, with the originally Greek prefix ‘a-’ being read in this same way in ‘atheist’ as it customarily is in . . . words as ‘amoral’ . . . . In this interpretation an atheist becomes not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God, but someone who is simply not a theist. " The Presumption of Atheism, by Antony Flew


He admits he is pushing a non-standard definition, which you are now pretending is the definition.

Your definition has no historical or logical grounding and was only engineering by Orwellian inspiration for purposes of social engineering.

Let me give you another quote; i was reading some atheist literature the other night, "Your God Is Too Small", by the Atheist Republic, perhaps the largest atheist community online:

"We're all atheists here. We're convinced, and rightfully so, that there is no god. Religion is a joke, and the concept of heaven and hell is a tool used to control the masses"

They are honest enough to affirm their belief, at-least in their literature meant to be consumed by other atheists. 

Termites......

(May 20, 2015 at 7:14 pm)YGninja Wrote: Let me give you another quote; i was reading some atheist literature the other night, "Your God Is Too Small", by the Atheist Republic, perhaps the largest atheist community online:

"We're all atheists here. We're convinced, and rightfully so, that there is no god. Religion is a joke, and the concept of heaven and hell is a tool used to control the masses"

They are honest enough to affirm their belief, at-least in their literature meant to be consumed by other atheists. 

Or my favorite, "we're all atheists, yourself included. I just discount the existence of one more god than you do".


Oh, and it will be a cold day in hell when atheists allow theists to define us. Just as Christians require like a thousand denominations to define what it is they believe, we too disagree among ourselves. Did you really think you could provoke those of us who don't give a rat's ass whether gods exist or not to make a positive declaration based only on your definition of atheism? Good luck with that.

(May 20, 2015 at 8:12 pm)whateverist Wrote:

(May 20, 2015 at 7:14 pm)YGninja Wrote: Let me give you another quote; i was reading some atheist literature the other night, "Your God Is Too Small", by the Atheist Republic, perhaps the largest atheist community online:

"We're all atheists here. We're convinced, and rightfully so, that there is no god. Religion is a joke, and the concept of heaven and hell is a tool used to control the masses"

They are honest enough to affirm their belief, at-least in their literature meant to be consumed by other atheists. 

Or my favorite, "we're all atheists, yourself included.  I just discount the existence of one more god than you do".


Oh, and it will be a cold day in hell when atheists allow theists to define us.  Just as Christians require like a thousand denominations to define what it is they believe, we too disagree among ourselves.  Did you really think you could provoke those of us who don't give a rat's ass whether gods exist or not to make a positive declaration based only on your definition of atheism?  Good luck with that.

Words define you, not theists. Atheists don't get to choose their definition any more than a bank robber gets to choose the definition or robbery. Christians all abide the same definition : followers of Christ. Denominations merely have a different interpretation of what it means to follow Christ. If you don't give a rats ass whether God exists, why call yourself an atheist, what are you doing here?

Pick your own word to describe people who aren't affected by the woo of religion!
That's us.

Providing or not providing proof is for those who care to give a shit!

(May 20, 2015 at 8:32 pm)ignoramus Wrote: Pick your own word to describe people who aren't affected by the woo of religion!
That's us.

Providing or not providing proof is for those who care to give a shit!

Well its really simple, if you don't believe either way or don't care enough about the question to bother, you are an agnostic. If you believe to any degree of certainty that there is no God, you are an atheist.

(May 20, 2015 at 7:14 pm)YGninja Wrote: 1: Its not an argument from ignorance because he is not asserting that the proposition is true because of lacking evidence to the contrary. 
You have two faults here just in your understanding of this fallacy. 1: He is not asserting proof, only evidence. 2: He is not asserting truth because of evidence lacking to the contrary. He is recognizing a probability of truth because of what he already knows about law, and logic. 
All laws of which we know their origin, have a maker. The only laws which we don't attribute to a creator (atleast atheists don't), are natural laws. If one is to claim that those laws do not have a creator (the real atheist position, see #2), they would be committing the fallacy of special pleading. As the total of our experience concerning laws has shown the need for a creator, and as a law without a creator seems incoherent, it is more likely than not that the laws of nature are no different. Hence this constitutes evidence for a creator.

So the idea that words might have multiple, context-dependent meanings just kinda blows your mind, does it?

Quote:law

lô/
noun
noun: law; noun: the law

1. 1.
   the system of rules that a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and may enforce by the imposition of penalties.
   "they were taken to court for breaking the law"
   
   
2. 2.
   a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present.
   "the second law of thermodynamics"

Quote:2: Most atheists do believe there is no God, and this is evidenced wherever atheists are. Whenever atheists ridicule the concept of God, which is all the time, it belies their position that they actively believe there are none. What they say is another matter because they are just trying to have their cake and eat it: ridicule God without wearing a burden of proof. Posting your blog to support your definition is as bad as Christians saying the Bible is true because it says so in the Bible.

You're making the mistake of thinking that your god is the only possible god, so therefore mocking your specific conception of god is denial of all gods. But the christian god is not the only god concept in existence, in fact there are as many god concepts as there are shades of differentiation within each characteristic of god. Mocking a specific conception of god only entails that we find that specific collection of characteristics to be worthy of mockery; you can, for example, mock a particularly poorly designed model of car without denying the existence of all cars everywhere. Joking that a thing would be as useful as a square wheeled car does not mean I think that square wheeled cars would be impossible to make, just that I find them useless. Similarly, I can find the collection of characteristics and historical claims regarding any specific god to be impossible, without outright denying the existence of all gods; finding one impossible does not extrapolate out to finding all of the set that one belongs to impossible. By arguing this way you're just showing off the extreme theistic myopia with which you're viewing the atheist position; your god ain't the only one in discussion, dude.

Not to mention the extreme arrogance of dictating our position to us, but I've come to expect that from theists.

Quote:He admits he is pushing a non-standard definition, which you are now pretending is the definition.

Yeah, because if anyone is qualified to tell atheists what they believe, it's theists!

Are you really so afraid of honest discussion that you'll only engage when you can dictate your opponent's position as well as your own?

Quote: Well its really simple, if you don't believe either way or don't care enough about the question to bother, you are an agnostic. If you believe to any degree of certainty that there is no God, you are an atheist.

It's actually the other way around: theism and atheism refer to belief, gnosticism and agnosticism refer to knowledge, hence the root word "gnossis," which means knowledge. Agnostic is a modifier that can be applied to both atheists and theists, depending on the degree of certainty that they place on their beliefs, which are dictated by the first label. An agnostic atheist believes in no gods, without claim to knowledge. A gnostic theist believes in a god and claims to know that one exists, and vice versa.

Do you really want to play sophistic little word games instead of discussing the actual positions?