Atheists - prove it.

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Do you know what "connotation" means, and how it differs from "whateva Wiki sez"?

All I know is, he hangs out with hookers but claims he doesn't bang them.

How original answering a question with another question, what are you avoiding?
Are you avoiding falling into your own trap? I guess you haven't ever hear of opera music before, I have am opera fan.
Plus I also understand the other meanings of the word diva.

Do you understand the meaning of this expression "The map is not the territory"?
If you do then by now you will understand the reason why I posted a picture of Magritte's The Treachery of Images in another thread in reply to a comment you made

It is SUCH a sign of cleverness to talk middle-school prurience about other folk's friends and family.

But for now:

Bethie:

Thou has spoken:

You'll notice an increase in religiosity always PRECEDES seeing "evidence" of a god.

One of these days [I am still recovering from that meeting] I am going to explore with you the issue of "evidence".

But here and now:

Kill that generalization. leejosepho is old enough to talk for himself [that is scriptural, anyway. But so am I [by God I am old enough!]

And I am telling you:

Straight, no exaggeration, jo joke, no spin, no dissing, cold dispassionate take it or leave it [like it changes anything but you if you think I am lying or deluded] spectral ennea-5 just the facts ma'am:

Anno 1986, I received an evidence [you can put it in quotes if you like, I think of it as EVIDENCE! with caps and a screamer] of divine entity action impacting my existence. I was an atheist in good standing.

As a good spectral ennea-5 scientist, I asked myself, What just happened? Reflection, data gathering, analysis, testing of hypotheses.Then and only then - VERY painfully and reluctantly - I concluded - and it cost me dearly socially and professionally - that the best fit [even byOccam, AG, not that I care about Occam] hypothesis was divine entity intervention. AND that of all the divine entities postulated by the various authorities on divine entities, the only theology that could fit my particular experience was that of Trinitarian Christianity.

So - NO - religiosity does not ALWAYS lead God-sourced effects.

Please correct your notes.

i) There are many different and incompatible revelations

For instance, there are Hindu revelations, Islamic revelations, Sufi revelations, and so on and so forth, and so to privilege any of these notions of God above others requires some form of argument that explains away and debunks these other beliefs while the logical form is not possible to use on the belief that is not being debunked. The problem is that most explanations of this sort, debunk all of these beliefs as questionable beliefs. As such, universal religious skepticism is justifiable, and if religious skepticism is justifiable, and philosophical arguments for deism fail, then atheism is justifiable.

j) The use of "free will" is not justifiable.

1) The mechanisms of the mind are not indeterminist, but rather neurology functions on too large of a scale for quantum indeterminacy, and if we hold to the constancy of nature, which we do in every other area of inquiry, we have to reject an indeterministic notion of free will. (And without this, God's control over creation has to be considered absolute, thus preventing moral autonomy)

2) The mechanisms of the mind themselves show themselves to work in a manner different than our intuition notions of free will. Some things such as the Libet experiment show that our choices are predictable. Other things, such as connectionism and various studies on the workings of the mind show that our mental processes are not as centrally organized or anything of that nature around whatever we'd want to call "will", with various "wills" all in the same system, rather than simple unity.

3) Most accounts of foreknowledge essentially give God absolute control anyway, as they lack the logical rigor to allow for God not to have this power. This ongoing failure suggests the inability to separate God as creator, from God as ordainer of everything. As, after all, given God's initial choices and later choices, and ongoing interaction, it is difficult to say that this full extent of control, combined with foreknowledge as to what level will provide what result, really can be separated from absolute power to determine every event. If God determines every event, he is the author of evil. If he is the author of our own decisions(which he would be if he determines every event in some logical sense), then we cannot have the entire culpability for our actions.

4) God himself shows his willingness to trample on this in the case of Pharaoh by hardening the Pharaoh's heart.

---
Given that free will is needed for mainstream theology to work, if we are justified in doubting this, then we are justified in doubting God.

k) The failure to preserve God's word throughout history and keep it accessible.

You've stated in the past that man, in order to evaluate the truth of God, ought to look to God's scripture. The issue is that if God really wanted to be known, he'd make his scripture universally available from the moment it was penned. The problem is that he hasn't for a number of reasons:

1) Illiteracy has historically been common. God could have allowed man to know of scripture through a non-literary means, but didn't, and he failed to give man inherent ability to read literature. This is a problem for any God who wants to be known, as a person without the ability to read God's word would thus have to rely on Christians(who cannot be distinguished from false Christians) and thus can NEVER really be responsible for their lack of theological knowledge, even though this theological knowledge is necessary to have a real relationship and faith in God.

2) Corruption of scripture has occurred. This can be seen in the KJV. The texts used for the KJV have scriptures in them that modern texts do not. Modern scholars claim that these texts were added to the Bible, and are not authentic, thus meaning if they are correct, the KJV and traditions relied on for the KJV were corrupted(and these traditions were used for interpretations other than just the KJV. However, if they are wrong, then the non-KJV texts are now corrupted by the removal of texts.

3) The disputes over the canon. Between the Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox, there is a dispute over the Apocrypha. The latter two churches claiming it is valid, while the Protestants reject it. What method ought be used to determine who is right? If one party is wrong, then hasn't scripture been corrupted by that party?

l) The failure of God to communicate his message in a salvific manner to all peoples.

God could have communicated his message of salvation to all peoples. He could have done this from the start really easily. This has never occurred, and in fact, almost every person accepts the faith they've been taught by their parents. The issue is that if one faith is right, and the others are false, then the failure to conquer and defeat the false faiths is a failing of that faith. God wants people to know of his Gospel so that he may save them through their faith. God is failing to actualize this. He could easily actualize this and make a world where Christianity wins. Given this failure, and the similarity of Christianity's spread to the other large faiths(and their failure to generally spread), it is more justifiable to say that Christianity is just a large, and false faith like Islam.(and vice versa) particularly given that we can't even know whether true Christians exist or not.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 09 May 2011, 1:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

You mad?

Yes I am thank you, no need to tell me that already thanks

Not even random chance?

I mean, what we know about randomness vs. human perception of ordered vs. random is that true randomness instinctively feels wrong to us.

There's an experiment that teachers use where they have half of class to flip a coin 500 times and write the results on the board, and have the other half of the class make up 500 random flips that didn't really happen - all this is done while the teacher is out of the room, and the teacher doesn't know which side of the board is which team.

And the teacher can almost always - frequently immediately - recognize which list is real coin tosses and which are contrived.

Because the contrived list won't have enough long strings of repeating tosses.

Because, to us, they feel too ordered and implausible.

Our brains tend to seek to find patterns and categorize them, but reality is not always easily recognized and categorized.

There was by definition no "generalization" when it was applied only to one person- that person being the one discussed in my sequence of events as outlined directly before the statement you selectively-quoted, referred to by the "you'll notice" which prefaces my observation.

Quite all right, Sir. I have a sense it would be as patronizing and unfruitful as our last conversation.

God of the gaps: "I gots questions and no answers that make sense to me, therefore god."
Human ignorance about natural phenomena is not evidence of supernatural ones.

See above, regarding what happens when you skim over or selectively-ignore the things I say and in so-doing strawman me and distract from what's actually being said.

I have elsewhere narrated my biology quiz experience.

Random chance - of course one can never rule it out. ANYTHING could be random chance. This post could be being typed out as a result of 50 bonobo's playing with a Blackberry.

One thumb, one thumb drumming on a drum, hums Number 1 Son. Once his favorite book, how was I to know he would go to be a percussionist?

Back to your keyboards, bonobos.

Anything - including the sun coming up tomorrow - COULD be random chance. But science - and that IS what I do - makes the leap of faith [I WILL use the word, AG!] to say that patterned repetitive occurrences - like the sun rising about the same time on May 9 in this area over the past century or so of recorded observations - allow one to postulate something OTHER than random chance.

And while yes, it happened but once to me [though there have been other things that have happened with suggetively high frequency] -- but there is a close enough match to other accounts [with which I was not familiar at the time of the incident] to support thde hypothesis it was not random.

Halley's comet does not show in the sky randomly. Fairly frequently.for a comet of course, at 75 odd years of period,

I am a pattern seeker. Yes, I know, in randomicity you can find what appear to be patterns - I have warned a lot of students against that. But I have been in the pattern scanning business for a few years, and I have a pretty good track record overall for findinf REAL patterns and dropping the near misses.

Maybe you have missed the part where I had tried "everything else" prior to doing what I ultimately did?! And of course, yes, I can only say "everything else" in a qualified sense there out of respect for any yet-to-be-heard-by-me speculation from anyone else. And along with all of that, and as I certainly understand you would not also be considering here, I am speaking as an expert in the field of permanent recovery from chronic alcoholism after having at least nearly died myself as well as watching over these past 30 years many other alcoholics actually move right along to their graves while trying all the "other stuff", whatever that might be, people say should work. So again, and respectfully:

I have no problem sitting here in a philosophical arena with quite an unfair advantage over people who are merely speculating on something and not just slamming all my cards on the table and running off with the money at every turn, but at least give me something worthy of consideration if you or anyone else is going to maintain whatever kind of stance against the actual facts of my very own life! We might never agree as to how those facts ever came to be, of course, but I can only chuckle at all this great "wisdom" being displayed around here when to accept it would mean I must only be full of s**t!


All of that had been done before I ever came onto the scene, and the book was first published in 1939.


No, that is what the rest of you are doing!


What the f**k is that supposed to mean?! After nearly dying while pursuing all the "self-help" rubbish and lies, I sought truth and found it!


No matter to me.


Do you have no intellectual honesty?! But no, baffling people with BS is all that remains when one's brilliance is found insufficient for dazzling them!

Note to mods: Everything above was written in a very friendly and light-hearted manner!

... and I have repeatedly pointed out in turn that my own experience was not at all like that! I had tried all that "religious conversion" nonsense long before ever finally finding someone -- or he found me, actually -- who could show me what I really needed to do.


That is your spin rubbish, not mine.


Sure do, but I also know you do not get your information from the same source!


No, you again have that backwards.


I kknow precisely what you think it means, and I also know "religion" and "philosophy" are essentially synonymous.


If you might ever find yourself circumstantially forced into admitting "complete defeat" in your own life, just give me a call!


It was not ...


Again: Belief never fixes anything.


That is an entirely different matter of a non-intervening "God" hoping/expecting we humans do something about.

wrt the OP: I was never 'convinced' of atheism, but rather gradually came to realize that my lack of conviction in the existence of gods fell into that definition. I didn't become radicalized until the rise of the religious right.

Whew. I could easily write pages on that. But in simple candor: Several years actually passed for me while I was yet occasionally glancing cautiously skyward and hoping I had not somehow been fooled or misled or whatever ...

... and then came that "once", an undeniable experience forever removing any doubt as to the reality of something/someone far beyond the comprehension of any man.

Oh, and once the process has truly begun, it cannot be stopped!

I'm sorry. I was using "religious conversion" interchangeably with "whatever you did involving investing faith in some way in an intangible, non-evidenced deity in a way you hadn't before, followed by a recovery from addiction which you attributed to said deity". Forgive me.


It is not "spin rubbish" to say someone who believes a deity saved him from addiction believes in an intervening personal god. It is a TAUTOLOGY.


~facepalm~ I'm buying you a dictionary.





Oh, so what evidence of a deity preceded your belief in one? All we've heard thus far is that you believed in one, got better, and then believed in one even more strongly.


...no. Just....no. Dictionary. Buy one.


Been there several times, and recovered without help from magic men.


If you are grossly ignorant of basically psychological mechanisms, this is true.


So god had to "hope" you out of your addiction? Sounds like he might have a deity himself.

... and I keep trying to tell you that is not how things went! Rather ...

1) I knew I could not "fix myself" or whatever;
2) Somebody else said "God" could and would;
3) I took the action required to find out ... and thus I "came to believe" (after the fact).


You just left out the "rubbish" part you had posted earlier, and the god of which I speak did not "intervene" in my life.


My personal recovery from chronic alcoholism.


Ah, please forgive me for not being clear there ... and I also wonder why you have used "basically" to describe "psychological". In any case, I had to give up on believing I could stop drinking because that belief was not doing anything but leaving me hanging.


No, you had mentioned people suffering at the hands of others and I had made mention of "a non-intervening 'God' hoping/expecting we humans [might] do something about [that]."