What deism has done for the world

[discipulus]

New question:

What has Deism done for us lately?

Helps the atheist movement by underscoring that even if Christians could prove the existence of "a" god, their work would still be ahead of them.

It has been said that Pontius Pilate and Herod became closer after Christ's mockery of a trial...

Nothing can unite such unlikely bedfellows like having a common enemy. A theist who sees hismself as helping the cause of atheism.....how ironic.

[*Deidre*]

discipulus, that's the problem with Christianity; it teaches Christians to look down on those who don't practice it. And here I thought you might be different.

I can't imagine why you thought that!

I sensed humility in his posting, at first.
Don't judge me! lol

[discipulus]

I can't imagine why you thought that!

I senses humility in his posting, at first.
Don't judge me! lol

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I can't imagine why you thought that!

I sensed humility in his posting, at first.
Don't judge me! lol

I will PM when I get home.

[*Deidre*]

I will PM when I get home.

Okay.

[Mister Agenda]

Jefferson Bible. Way more convincing to doubters than the regular Bible, doesn't involve swallowing camels. Any particular reason Jefferson's version isn't regarded as adequate for Christianity?

It is not adequate because it excludes the accounts of the virgin birth and Christ's bodily resurrection from the grave on the Sunday morning following His crucifixion. If those two events never happened then our faith is in vain and Christianity along with the Bible can be relegated to the book shelf along with the various religious texts of the world's religions. Jefferson being a deist sought to remove all accounts of the miraculous from the New Testament essentially stripping it and watering it down. He essentially made the bible conform to his views instead of conforming his views to the bible. A grave error many have made over the centuries.

I think you're selling the message that's left over short, but that's just my opinion.

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discipulus - with regards to PM: if you wish, okay.

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Helps the atheist movement by underscoring that even if Christians could prove the existence of "a" god, their work would still be ahead of them.

Why are Christians a Deist's main concern when confronting atheism?

I don't think DeistPaladin is really 'confronting' atheism. He's for a secular state, that puts us on the same side on most issues. Right or wrong, we're not trying to get SC teachers to read the annals of the American Humanist Association every day in class. In the USA, pretty much every minority nonChristian group and some minority Christian groups have aligned interests in the face of a Christianist Majority (or perhaps it's a large minority that is good at presenting itself as the majority) that never ceases to seek to wield the power of our government to promote itself.

[Minimalist]

It is not adequate because it excludes the accounts of the virgin birth and Christ's bodily resurrection from the grave on the Sunday morning following His crucifixion.

Somebody needs to tell this troll that gmark and gjohn exclude the virgin birth bullshit, too. And none of his precious gospels do anything more than claim there was an empty tomb.

The one gospel which did have ole jebus trotting out of the tomb, the gospel of peter, was so fucking stupid that even early xtians couldn't stomach it!

[*Deidre*]

Mister Agenda, that makes sense-thanks.

[DeistPaladin]

Since he has stated that Jesus did nothing at all then he has to substantiate the claim, or say it is just his opinion, or retract the statement altogether. He can't do the first, which leaves him with it just being his opinion to which I would say he is entitled to it. If he retracts the statement then there is no issue.

You really need to take a break from posting and go study logical fallacies. I recommend this website but there are many others to choose from. Just enter "logical fallacies" into a search engine and you should find one. Then practice for a bit. Before you hit the "post reply" button, run over your post and ask yourself, "have I committed one of these fallacies?" If you are aware that your arguments are fallacious but are dishonestly positing them anyway, you should know you will be called out on them.

Your attempt here is still to shift the burden of proof despite your denial that this is what you're doing. To explain, I'll use a simple example:

Christian: "You assume naturalism! You have a preconcieved bias against miracles!"
Skeptic: "The natural universe is all we experience and there's no evidence that anything else is at work."
Christian: "Well, how do you know there aren't supernatural forces at work that you just can't detect."

The shifting of the burden of proof in the above example is disguised with a little mental slight of hand. The demand on the skeptic is to provide evidence that miracles DON'T happen. This is an unreasonable demand to prove a negative. Again, you already know this because this is exactly how we operate in every area of life outside our favorite religious woo.

If your child says "there's a monster under my bed" do you worry about looking under the bed to prove otherwise? Maybe there really IS a monster that will devour you as you move close to the underside of the bed? Of course it's silly to consider that. You are reasonable in assuming the negative by the lack of evidence for an extraordinary claim. You don't have to prove there are never monsters under any bed to be confident of this.

To borrow from Sam Harris, if your child says there's an elephant in the hallway of your home, you go with your child into the hall carrying an imaginary gun. If your child says there's a strange man in the hallway of your home, you tell the child to stay in his room while you go into the hall carrying a real gun.

This is how we operate in every area of our life outside the claims of our favorite religion.

With me so far?

So, you are demanding that I provide evidence that there WEREN'T booming voices from the sky telling them to stop or there WEREN'T angels intervening to get them to stop or there WASN'T an unsuccessful direct intervention by your god to get them to stop. These things happened according to your Bible, yet there's no evidence they happened in history at these crucial times when Christian leaders committed atrocities to spread the Christian faith.

The burden of proof is on you should you wish to suggest that there were supernatural efforts by Jesus to stop the torture and mass murder.

...and while you're at it, explain why Jesus failed.

[DeistPaladin]

Nothing can unite such unlikely bedfellows like having a common enemy. A theist who sees hismself as helping the cause of atheism.....how ironic.

Why would atheists and deists be unlikely bedfellows? My wife is an atheist so that's literally the case in my life.

The only difference between me and an atheist are some abstract philosophical musings, so much so that they have no practical impact on how I live my life.

I see no reason to think God wants to be worshiped or is even aware of us on any personal level (think scientist and a cultivated bacteria colony in a dish and that's the scale I perceive). I also have no "souls" to save (I don't believe in an afterlife). There is no church organization I'm seeking to promote. There are zero meaningful conflicts between deism and atheism.

[DeistPaladin]

Mister Agenda, that makes sense-thanks.

Yeah, what he said. There comes a point where abstract beliefs aren't an issue. I believe in God and my wife doesn't. She believes in an afterlife and I don't. Neither of us has any motive to convince the other to our way of thinking and we live our lives the same way.