(July 17, 2015 at 11:19 am)Esquilax Wrote:

(July 16, 2015 at 11:15 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: That sounds more like an excuse than a sufficient reason. If you were interested in the origins of the universe or some other cutting edge science would you NOT read several physicists simply because their ideas were in conflict? Or would you read them all to try to understand the arguments?

Sorry Randy, but I've played this game before, sufficient to never want to play it again. There's actually a fundamental difference between talking to christians of different denominations as a christian, versus talking to them as an atheist; the way the claims are treated. You can see it here in the board if you look: a christian with doctrinal differences with another christian will rarely disagree with that other christian no matter how severely the differences diverge. Instead, we get this "hey, we all believe in the same Jesus," stuff, and that's roughly the end of it.

Each and every one of those christians will then turn around and act like theirs is the only set of christian beliefs in existence when talking to an atheist. And woe betide you if you ever try to take some of the beliefs from one of those other christian denominations into a discussion with a christian who doesn't share them: "Christians don't believe that!" They say, witheringly. "See? You don't know anything about the beliefs you insult!" If you're an atheist you're not an ally to the cause, there's no common agreement big enough to set aside disagreements over the particulars, and so all those doctrinal differences that were just hey, no big deal when the christians were talking amongst themselves are suddenly evidence that the atheist doesn't know what they're talking about if any of us try to bring them up after having them presented to us as "Things Christians Believe" by someone else in another thread.

It's easy for you to say that I should read up on all the conflicting views, you'll never have that knowledge come to bite you in the ass here if you try to use it. With me, with any atheist, I've got to read up on all that stuff and then find out exactly what parts of the stuff I've read any given christian believes before I begin the discussion, and at that point it's just simpler to let them explain and research the specifics of the relevant claims as we go. What you're asking me to do might be good in theory, but it's next to useless in practice, leaving me with a whole bunch of knowledge that's about as useful as fantasy stories that I have no way of using. I just have to sit there waiting until I find, say, the one catholic who believes the exact same stripe of Catholicism as the author of the book I read so I can bust out some arcane portion of the catechism, or the new testament, that he interprets in exactly the right way, so that he can nod his head in agreement before I begin to disagree. It's just not worth the effort. Religion is just too evasive to try that one.

That said, it isn't like I never read christian writing, or research what I'm talking about either. It's just that doing so in advance of any current discussion is stockpiling knowledge for a use that may never come, and that is otherwise useless. If I'm going to do any reading on these subjects in my spare time, it's going to be for fun; just last night I was listening to an analysis of an apologetics book by Cornelius van Til, and I've done the same for other apologists and religious writings. I'm just not willing to accumulate all this stuff into one big pile and label it "What Christians Believe," because if I did that, the very next christian I talked to would find at least one thing in that pile that "No True Christian Believes!" It's a losers game.

Esquilax-

I've become pretty familiar with the doctrinal differences over the years. I suspect you could too with only a modicum of effort. You could begin with what CS Lewis called "Mere Christianity" (in a book by the same title) and expand from there.

As for the differences, I don't think it is necessary for you to worry yourself over the pre-trib v post-trib views of the rapture right out of the gate. Or whether an infant should or should not be baptized. Or why Catholics include the filioque in the Nicene Creed whereas the Orthodox do not.

Surely there are some bigger basics that might be useful, however.

PS - I've not read van Til, but it's my understanding that he was a presuppositionalist, correct? I know how you feel about that....

(July 18, 2015 at 9:45 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Scripture describes God as a hidden God. This means you have to make an effort of faith to find him, and there are clues you can follow. If that weren’t so, if there was something more or less than clues, we would not be free to make a choice about Him. If we had absolute proof instead of clues, then we could no more deny God than we could deny the sun. If we had no evidence at all, you could never get to faith. God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want Him can have while those that don’t want Him are not forced to do so. Those who want to follow the clues will.

The Bible says, Seek and ye shall find.” It does not say that everybody will find Him; it doesn’t say that nobody will find him. Some will find him. Who? Those who seek. Those whose hearts are set on finding Him and who follow the clues.

The evidence that God has established has been finely tuned to allow you to find it without overwhelming your free will and coercion.

So I guess the important question to ask there is the one that you're assuming in your argument and in essence taking it for granted, which is: why is finding god in this way a thing that needs to happen? Or to put it more clearly, why does god need to hide himself rather than appearing without all the pomp and circumstance, laying out his case, and allowing us to choose for ourselves whether he's worth following or not?

What I'm proposing here is something roughly analogous to the way political parties work: we all know they exist, but we aren't bound to follow them as a consequence either. They make arguments, they stand for things, that attract or repel us in line with our principles; why couldn't god be the same way?

I suspect I'm about to hear something about heaven and hell, about how the potential reward and punishment, once applied to a definitely real entity, would rob us of our choice, but I have two problems with that, the first being that god set up this system himself, he made it, in this case, so that the stakes would be so high as to make one choice impossible. If I'm pointing out that the system seems arbitrary to me, pointing to another component of the arbitrary system doesn't make it less so. Besides, it's not as if god couldn't have simply obscured the heaven or hell part of the equation from us and just come to us as a moral being, presented the substantive elements of his case away from the pressures of the carrot and stick.

That, incidentally, is my second problem, because I don't think just pointing to the carrot and stick serves the believer particularly well in this case. Randy, I've seen you talk about god's inherently good nature, I presume that you have some other reason for being a christian than your fear of hell and desire for heaven? You must, surely, be a member of your religion for a reason other than that, yes? Would not presenting that case, in the light of the sure fact that it finds its source in an objectively real being, be sufficient to convince anyone else? If we knew that god was real, wouldn't his views be sufficiently convincing to get us on his side?

(July 17, 2015 at 12:11 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote:

(July 16, 2015 at 8:06 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: You've been misinformed by a very poor teacher.

Here's a twist on ad hominem. He has no legitimate answer so he attacks my hypothetical teacher.

I can read and I know what the Bible says.

Not really.

You can read and know what you think it says, but the tragedy of the Protestant reformation results from a great error of Martin Luther: sola scriptura along with his insistence upon the absolute right to private judgment.

You object to the fact that there thousands of Protestant denominations? Blame Luther and your own assertion that you can understand the scriptures just by reading them on your own.

(July 17, 2015 at 12:44 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(July 16, 2015 at 8:06 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: You've been misinformed by a very poor teacher.

See, Randy? This is exactly what I was talking about in my last post: your situational awareness of other christian beliefs vanishes completely when you're talking to an atheist. You were presented with an interpretation of the biblical narrative that didn't line up with your own, and instead of considering that, hey, there are thousands of denominations of christianity, and millions more personal interpretations besides, maybe this one is just one you don't personally subscribe to, instead you just dismiss it as wrong, and impugn the character of whoever told the poster that. Your specific christian beliefs are just "What Christians Believe," and if anyone presents a view of christianity that deviates from that, then it can just be dismissed out of hand, and so can the person posting it. All that work reading through books on christianity is utterly wasted, because the things learned within isn't Randy's specific beliefs, and so the conversation is simply dropped.

"No, you're just wrong."

It happens so often, and in part I don't blame you because what was said didn't align with what you believe, so you shouldn't be expected to defend it. But I absolutely do blame you for shutting down the conversation instead of explaining your take on the subject matter, and for assuming that what was presented was just "misinformation," rather than a separate interpretation of events, because it didn't align with what you already believe. You just got through telling me that the fact that christian interpretations conflict is no excuse not to engage with them all equally, there's simply no way to square that with you dismissing a view of christianity that doesn't align with yours out of hand.

As I just explained to Rhonda in my previous post, sola scriptura is a false doctrine of Protestant men. It is a heresy unknown to Christians for 1,500 years.

If you want to narrow the scope of your study, start with the scriptures and the writings of the Early Church Fathers. This is Catholicism pure and simple.

(July 18, 2015 at 9:53 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Esquilax-

I've become pretty familiar with the doctrinal differences over the years. I suspect you could too with only a modicum of effort. You could begin with what CS Lewis called "Mere Christianity" (in a book by the same title) and expand from there.

Well, for you that makes some form of sense, since you believe that those doctrines resolve to something factual. But for me, it's all hypothetical, and the knowledge has limited use until such time as someone actually brings it up, if they ever do. I do sometimes read what theists recommend to me, I'm not averse to cracking a book, just embarking on a course of study without a conversational payload seems like a wasted effort. I'll see if I can track down CS Lewis though, I know he's a popular name in the circuit.

That said, I'm not totally barren on the basics either; everything I've said about christian doctrine tends to come from somewhere. If you disagree with something I've said then that's most likely because the christian it came from is from another denomination or belief system. I won't ever assert that christians believe something that I haven't heard from a christian; what you see as misinformation is probably more accurately called a doctrinal difference in itself.

Quote:PS - I've not read van Til, but it's my understanding that he was a presuppositionalist, correct? I know how you feel about that....

Yeah, it drives me absolutely loco. Thankfully it takes the guy a while to get to that level of craptitude, he has some ideas that aren't just the usual presup drivel, but you can't exactly accuse me of not reading opposing points of view on that score.

(July 18, 2015 at 9:59 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(July 18, 2015 at 9:45 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Scripture describes God as a hidden God. This means you have to make an effort of faith to find him, and there are clues you can follow. If that weren’t so, if there was something more or less than clues, we would not be free to make a choice about Him. If we had absolute proof instead of clues, then we could no more deny God than we could deny the sun. If we had no evidence at all, you could never get to faith. God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want Him can have while those that don’t want Him are not forced to do so. Those who want to follow the clues will.

The Bible says, Seek and ye shall find.” It does not say that everybody will find Him; it doesn’t say that nobody will find him. Some will find him. Who? Those who seek. Those whose hearts are set on finding Him and who follow the clues.

The evidence that God has established has been finely tuned to allow you to find it without overwhelming your free will and coercion.

So I guess the important question to ask there is the one that you're assuming in your argument and in essence taking it for granted, which is: why is finding god in this way a thing that needs to happen?

Simple. And don't jump ahead...just answer the question.

What happens when we die?

(July 18, 2015 at 9:59 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(July 18, 2015 at 9:45 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Scripture describes God as a hidden God. This means you have to make an effort of faith to find him, and there are clues you can follow. If that weren’t so, if there was something more or less than clues, we would not be free to make a choice about Him. If we had absolute proof instead of clues, then we could no more deny God than we could deny the sun. If we had no evidence at all, you could never get to faith. God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want Him can have while those that don’t want Him are not forced to do so. Those who want to follow the clues will.

The Bible says, Seek and ye shall find.” It does not say that everybody will find Him; it doesn’t say that nobody will find him. Some will find him. Who? Those who seek. Those whose hearts are set on finding Him and who follow the clues.

The evidence that God has established has been finely tuned to allow you to find it without overwhelming your free will and coercion.

That, incidentally, is my second problem, because I don't think just pointing to the carrot and stick serves the believer particularly well in this case. Randy, I've seen you talk about god's inherently good nature, I presume that you have some other reason for being a christian than your fear of hell and desire for heaven? You must, surely, be a member of your religion for a reason other than that, yes? Would not presenting that case, in the light of the sure fact that it finds its source in an objectively real being, be sufficient to convince anyone else? If we knew that god was real, wouldn't his views be sufficiently convincing to get us on his side?

And now I"M jumping ahead...

But I couldn't help responding to that last bit quickly.

My response is this: Yeah, if you actually sat down and read the Catechism cover to cover, I don't think you could help coming away from it being impressed. It's been underdevelopment for 2,000 years, and its been finely tuned by some of the most brilliant minds that ever walked the planet.

Catholicism is not some little 30-member store-front church, Esq. For all its weaknesses splashed across the front pages of the daily newspapers, its answers to the questions men ask - about life, death, ourselves and God - are pretty solid.

(July 18, 2015 at 10:08 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(July 18, 2015 at 9:53 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Esquilax-

I've become pretty familiar with the doctrinal differences over the years. I suspect you could too with only a modicum of effort. You could begin with what CS Lewis called "Mere Christianity" (in a book by the same title) and expand from there.

Well, for you that makes some form of sense, since you believe that those doctrines resolve to something factual. But for me, it's all hypothetical, and the knowledge has limited use until such time as someone actually brings it up, if they ever do. I do sometimes read what theists recommend to me, I'm not averse to cracking a book, just embarking on a course of study without a conversational payload seems like a wasted effort. I'll see if I can track down CS Lewis though, I know he's a popular name in the circuit.

That said, I'm not totally barren on the basics either; everything I've said about christian doctrine tends to come from somewhere. If you disagree with something I've said then that's most likely because the christian it came from is from another denomination or belief system. I won't ever assert that christians believe something that I haven't heard from a christian; what you see as misinformation is probably more accurately called a doctrinal difference in itself.

Quote:PS - I've not read van Til, but it's my understanding that he was a presuppositionalist, correct? I know how you feel about that....

Yeah, it drives me absolutely loco. Thankfully it takes the guy a while to get to that level of craptitude, he has some ideas that aren't just the usual presup drivel, but you can't exactly accuse me of not reading opposing points of view on that score.

Let me ask you this question, though. Would it make more sense to argue about something like the trinity, for example, if you actually understood the Catholic view of that doctrine rather than the straw man proposed by someone like Steel Curtain in this forum?

I knew that I might -eventually- find something I could agree with you on.  If I just waited long enough.

Quote:My response is this: Yeah, if you actually sat down and read the Catechism cover to cover, I don't think you could help coming away from it being impressed. It's been underdevelopment for 2,000 years, and its been finely tuned by some of the most brilliant minds that ever walked the planet.

Catholicism is not some little 30-member store-front church, Esq. For all its weaknesses splashed across the front pages of the daily newspapers, its answers to the questions men ask - about life, death, ourselves and God - are pretty solid.

The catholic apparatus -is- impressive.  It's on a short list of the most impressive institutions ever seen.   However, that doesn't -actually- have much to do with the solidity of the statements in the catechism, and it certainly had nothing to do with any god.  I think that we can both appreciate the church for what it is and has been....without any need for solidity in the catechism, or the truth of their articles of faith.

(July 18, 2015 at 9:45 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:

(July 17, 2015 at 4:03 am)Starvald Demelain Wrote: How convincing.   

Seriously though, Randy, if your Jesus was the best god could provide then he's an inept motherfucker. Has coming down and speaking for himself crossed his mind lately? I'm expecting a better answer than the whole free will shtick. 

Then perhaps you don't appreciate the importance of free will.

*all text enhancements added by yours truly*

Oh, no, I could appreciate it if the old song and dance wasn't filled with bad lyrics and shitty moves. By your belief system he certainly didn't have an issue coming down in human form now did he? Free will limitations indeed.

Quote:Are you familiar with the "Fine Tuning of the Universe" argument? The idea is that the universe has been finely tuned to support life, right?

I think there is a parallel to this which I'm calling the "Fine Tuning of the Evidence".

I'm familiar, it's a great joke. You know, how the universe is vastly lifeless yet geared for our lives.  I can only imagine the parallel is equally funny.   

Quote:Scripture describes God as a hidden God. This means you have to make an effort of faith to find him, and there are clues you can follow. If that weren’t so, if there was something more or less than clues, we would not be free to make a choice about Him. If we had absolute proof instead of clues, then we could no more deny God than we could deny the sun. If we had no evidence at all, you could never get to faith. God gives us just enough evidence so that those who want Him can have while those that don’t want Him are not forced to do so. Those who want to follow the clues will.

Don't you think, that given the supposed stakes, that a grand game of hide and seek is a bit of a "fuck you" to humanity? 

I noticed the convenient conflation of acceptance of existence and the acceptance of your religion. As it's been mentioned before, proof that a god exists doesn't mean that people will worship it. I know that Kim Jong-il exists, but I wouldn't worship the despot. 

Also, before I forget;
You have no evidence. You have a book of claims, and men and women who sell them. That's it thus far, Randy.

Quote:The Bible says, Seek and ye shall find.” It does not say that everybody will find Him; it doesn’t say that nobody will find him. Some will find him. Who? Those who seek. Those whose hearts are set on finding Him and who follow the clues.

Are you implying that there are no people outside of your faith who earnestly sought (or actually believed at one time) and found nothing? 

Quote:The evidence that God has established has been finely tuned to allow you to find it without overwhelming your free will and coercion.

The evidence that the Dancing, Wish Granting, Vampire God named Slav has established has been finely tuned to allow you to find it without overwhelming your free will and coercion. Don the tap shoes and the false teeth already, Randy, and you can have all your wishes granted.