Total posts: 3,052
Posted in:
-->
@ludofl3x
So it's best to pray to a generic 'God' and not be too specific which god?Obviously an omniscient god would definitely hear it, and ignore it, as he does with so many of the prayers pointed directly at him, apparently. I mean he wouldn't act on it, but if it's the god of the bible, he'd hear it, not act on it, AND put your ass on the 'make sure to torture this person forever' list.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ludofl3x
If you pray to the wrong god, does he not hear it or does he just ignore it?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@b9_ntt
One counter argument is that Newton (not even einstein!) showed that constant motion and no motion are the essentially same.
That is, being stationary is to have a speed of very precisely zero, which is just one value out of the infinite possibility of speeds. Far from being the default state, being stationary is infinitely unlikely if you measure speed accurately enough. What is needed - if anything - is a 'first stopper' not a first mover.
So the initial assumption is wrong - there is no need to examine the rest of the argument.
I still think this is the best explanation for anything:
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@BrutalTruth
It's nothing more than an interesting piece of fiction people buy into for one singular reason: Fear.
You think theists are scared of dieing.
Many theists think atheists want to sin without consequences.
I think things are a lot more complicated than that.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Castin
Interesting. I've always seen this story as an attempt to shift blame away from God and onto us, but you're right -- it also tries to shift blame away from us and onto the "outside agent" of the snake. At least, partial blame.
I don't see the story about evil as such; it's about why life sucks - ie why we have to work and why child-bearing hurts. The writers weren't concerned with abstracts like good and evil so as much as practical matters of obedience and disobedience.
The idea that God had all these infinite and omni- powers and was 'perfect' came later. Gods were powerful, but not unlimited. If you flattered and obeyed your god he looked after your your tribe, if you didn't you'd be punished with such things as famine or defeat in war. It was a simple arrangement with no need for complex moral theory!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Castin
there's a few women who lead men astray in the bible... Eve obviously, but Sarah persuaded Abraham to leave Hagar and ishmael to die, Delilah, Solomons foreign wives, Bathsheba... Paul was definitely suspicious of women. It seems the bible thinks women are all untrustworthy temptresses, so it got that right.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Alec
-Murder-High treason-Serial rape.-Serial deliberate HIV spread. If you rape while spreading HIV deliberately, this would also merit the DP.
So you agree with murderers it's sometimes ok to kill people...you just disgree about when it's ok.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Castin
That said, there are some strong female charcters in the OT. Deborah, Jael, Judith, Rahab, Esther and Ruth to name few, and the Song of Solomon is even-handed between the lovers.
Judith was badass.https://www.caravaggio.org/judith-beheading-holofernes.jsp
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Castin
No more than the rainbow myth.
Gen 9:13 "I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth."
There the one about the origin of languages in Gen 11
9: That is why it was called Babel - because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world.
But generally the writers of the bible don't seem all that interested in nature - they were priests so more concerned with politics and laws than outdoor stuff.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
I would argue it does, that every OT writing is a type and shadow of what was to come and I can demonstrate this over and over again. There is a unity from the OT Scriptures that is explained and makes sense from the NT perspective. Prophecy and its fulfillment make sense from the NT perspective.
I'm familiar with type theory - I don't accept it. But this thread is crowded so I'll wait for another occasion to revisit this stuff .
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Castin
Ofcourse they hadn't invented Satan yet - there was no need for a devil. In ancient YhWHism, if you obeyed the rules you were rewarded on earth and if you broke the rules you were punished on earth - (and when you were dead you were just dead). There was nothing for a devil to do.
Created:
Posted in:
There's quite a big difference between yhwh and the christian god - ask any Jew.But it is a big difference in what has been revealed about the Hindi god and the Christian God.
But they are the same in that neither exists!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
With two conflicting accounts of Himself?Do you mean like this? [LINK]
No, I don't even understand the point.
Well, how about 3 conflicting accounts? ie God the father, God the son and the other one? That's not much different from God the yhwh, God the vishnu and God the Buddha is it?
Created:
Posted in:
You need to go back to where this story actually originated, Mesopotamia,and you will read this creation epic in its original form. The two brothers involved are named Enlil and his half brother Enki the serpent lord<<<< see that serpent Lord.
I think that there was a generic mesopotamian creation myth that didn't have a 'canonical' form; the idea of a fixed, definitive scripture didn't exist and many different versions circulated with bits being added, taken away and changed by poets and story tellers.
etc.
Genesis give us the Hebrew version, adapted to suit the requirement of the yhwhist exiled priests who wrote it down to preserve their preferred form of Jewish culture.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
We know that Daniel and other OT Scripture was written before the 1st-century.
Yes, we do. Which mean it could be read in the first century and bits copied out to make it look like prophecy.
Isaiah 7 has nothing to with the birth of jesus 600 years afterward but Matthew used it to make it appear that jesus was not only born of a virgin but it was foretold - ooh!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
Is that a reasonable hypothesis?How intensely have you looked into biblical prophecy?
I would say 'Sufficiently'. But we could examine one or two. I know here are dozens but dealing with long lists in forum post forum format doesn't work because answers are alway harder and longer than questions. I'm not getting involved if its a gish gallop.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
Is that wrong? I'm not really sure about the rules.Maybe god appeared to the Jews as yhwh and to the Indians as vishnu.With two conflicting accounts of Himself?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
You'll have to ask tradeecret what's wrong with having a human-derived moral standard! I think it's because tradey thinks murder is so obviouly wrong it can't be just an opinion.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@rosends
I imgine that claiming something is from god gives it more authority than saying 'because I say so!'.
I'm not sure it's easy - or possible - to put yourself into the position of an iliterate iron ager. Not much was known, but what was known was known by the priests. Books and writing were magical and mysterious - things would be very diferent from today.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
My view i that mot of the 'prophecies' in the bible were never intended to be mystical fotune telling. OT prophet had a role closer to that of a medium, or spokeman for god. They passed on messages from god that related to the issues of the day - nobody would be interested in what might happen 200 or a thouand years ahead. Fortune telling was sorcery and strongly disapproved of in judaism.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@rosends
Or a warning to Hebrew men not to trust their women, perhaps? It's likely patriarchy was so entrenched no-one even noticed it so it needed no explanation!I wonder if its intent wasn't about placing "blame" on woman, but about establishing relationships and archetypal behavior patterns.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
Like where it says '70 weeks' you mean?Now, take a look at a biblical prophecy and the specifics of it:
Created:
Posted in:
I can't believe polly appears to be banned (again). Surely no-one is actually upset by her loose-cannon broadsides aimed (if that' the word) at anything and everything that moves. It's only a time to worry if you don't get called a bigot tard by P - you'd know you must be really losing the plot.
I hope she is soon restored to being the breath of fresh ai... well, of fresh bile and strangely innoccuous vitriol, actually DArt needs. I miss the silly girl already.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@disgusted
I get where you are coming from, but I don't mind cutting pga a bit of slack on interpreting week as '7 years' if only to give him a fighting chance!
I think the evidence is good that Daniel is 'fake-prophecy' and it's more interesting to winkle out what the writer was really trying to do with the text.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@BrutalTruth
Frankly, I don't think he quite understands his own argument and he's groping a bit.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@BrutalTruth
Possibly. It's up to tradesecret to let us know.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@rosends
It is no more than a myth to explain that it's not God's fault that life sucks, it's ours - and perhaps mostly women's.
It also etablishes at the outset that the big thing god requires is obedience.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@BrutalTruth
Nothing you have said thus far supports this claim.
But it's clear what the claim is. I understand the argument to be:
If there is no moral standard then if A kills B it can't be good or bad - because there is no moral standard to measure murder against
But we live in a world where murder is wrong, so there must be a moral standard. Now if that moral standard isn't just human opinion it must have been created by something other than humans, ie by God.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Castin
Voltaire once wrote:
How many times should he have written it?
The bible isn't big on 'aetiological' myths (ie 'just-so' stories, except maybe for tribes and peoples about which it is almost obsessed). There is one myth snuck in about rainbows and this looks like a just-so story for why snakes have no legs got in there.
I don't think Milton invented the idea Satan was the tempter of Eve, but he did a lot to make it popular.
Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv'd
The Mother of Mankind, what time his Pride
Had cast him out from Heav'n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels,
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
Accurate predictions are one confirmation the belief is reasonable. The more accurate and detailed predictions there are the better.
I agree - accurate foretellings of the future would undermine a major objection to theism. They wouldn't prove all the minutiae of a religion were correct but they would show that the supernatural has to be taken seriously.
But I don't accept there are supernaturally accurate foretellings in the Bible!
Created:
-->
@Tejretics
I think option a is the one 'care ethics' would suggest.
Created:
Posted in:
First up, I don't intend this to have a right answer.
Suppose you are the sole witness of an old lady getting mugged. If you help the old lady the perp will escape.
Do you
a) help the old lady (who does not appear very badly hurt)
b) chase the perp (who you could easily overpower)
c) fudge the issue and give a complicated answer.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mopac
@Discipulus_Didicit
This thread is fated to go round in circles until the heat death of the universe.Perhaps in a new thread though. This one is getting too long.
Created:
Posted in:
How open minded you are should depend on how much work you've already put into learning about a topic.
There are things I am very open minded about beause I know I have a lot to learn about them. On other issues I am not open minded at all because I've done the homework, heard both sides and made up my mind long ago. It's not I won't consider new info; it's more that usually it isn't new info - it's stuff I have already considered many times already.
of course I've heard of 'confirmation bias' and the Dunning–Kruger effect and I don't think I'm immune. I try to take them into account, but even so I'm not going to spend long watching or reading material telling me the world is flat and 6000 years old or that NASA went to the moon in 1969.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
Obviously a hitherto unknown and obscure version of logic and notation...Logically, if X (biblical God) is true, then X does not equal Vishnu.
I think the idea is that if something is the biblical god then it isn't vishnu.
Maybe god appeared to the Jews as yhwh and to the Indians as vishnu.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
I think that description could apply to every age!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
I think the vedas and bible are roughly tied on the 'ancientness' front.
But fulfilment of prophecy plays no part in Hinduism so they aren't easily compared.
There are multiple accounts of creation in hindu scipture. My favourite says the gods were part of creation so even they do not know how creation happened!
[verse 6]But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
the gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
The biblical God can be proven reasonable and logical to believe in. I do not believe any other worldview can.
As I understand it, you don't accept the atheists' world view because it is inconsistent with (a) an ordered, logical and moral universe and (b) with the accuracy of biblical prophecy. (a) is more to with a god in general terms and (b) with the Christian god in particular.
Given I'm using broad strokes, is that something like your actual position?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Goldtop
I think we will get to Mars, but cosmic distances are so huge I am not sure we will get much further for thousands of years, if ever.
I was a kid in 1969 and I expected to see humans on Mars long ago - we were more optimistic then! But the problem of getting beyond Mars isn't just a matter of no political will or high cost - it's the raw distance.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
[1] What of these two positions is more logical to believe, 1) that logic derives its source from a necessary and sufficient logical being or 2) through a random process of chance happenstance?[2] There is a rational reason. What do you witness every day? You witness logical, sentient, conscious being giving birth to other logical, sentient, conscious beings. Where do you ever witness chance happenstance doing this? So, if you are using your sense of sight, per underlined above, you are inconsistent with what you see and witness.
I think 1 and 2 are essentially the same. As I understand it, your position is that even logic is not neccessarily true; that is you require there to be a reason why 1+1=2, or put another way there must be something that enforces the rules of logic and arithmetic and without that enforcer logic and arithmetic would not exist, or not exist as the consistent and reliable things they clearly are.
I have no idea how to persuade you that logic is necessarily true! Lewis Carol addressed this in a 1985 parable
I don't know if it is upto me to prove logic is necessarily true or for you to prove it isn't. I submit that as neither of can prove what we claim (we can only endleslly swap demands for a counter-proof from each other) we call it draw and move on!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
@ludofl3x
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@PGA2.0
Can you logically show me that the prophecies apply to a distant generation and not the 1st-century audience? I do not believe you logically or reasonably can. If you think otherwise I invite you to try. I also invite ludofl3x to do the same.
I would never argue that biblical prophecy was about events in the far future of it being uttered. I believe that the role of prophets was not magical forecasting of events centuries ahead but to comment on the (then) current situation and events. Their favourite topic was bewailing the impiety of the Hebrew/Jews and how it had either led or would lead to disaster, usually coupled to a promise of eventual recovery when they returned to respecting their god.
OT prophets didn't forecast the far future - the bible is clear that 'fortune telling' was not approved of. The idea that the OT prophets foretold jesus or the OT prefigures the NT through 'types' arose initially to make Christianity more acceptable and attractive to Jews (the first christians were converts from judaism). Later it was used to give Christianity a 'miraculous' aspect - something even you, pga, exploit in selling it!
Created:
-->
@Polytheist-Witch
Which mother goddess. I already worship one of them. Could you be more specific.
He means Victoria, Wylted's 'tulpa'.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
I'd say 'atrocious' means 'pertaining to atrocities' so it's actually a tautology!Claiming that "atrocities are atrocious" is, strictly speaking, (even if everyone agrees with you) a subjective value judgement.
If you insist that "morality is not subjective", then please simply present your purely objective universal moral principle.It should really be that easy.
I'd say tradey doesn't insist morality is objective - he's saying it's his hunch that morality is objective. The motivation for that hunch is that it is not easy to imagine how rape or murder could be anything but evil, even if rigorous proof is not immediately obvious. Sam Harris was a famous propenent of developing the tools required to create such proofs, thus turning morality into a quantitative science.
12 or 24 months ago that was my position too - there'll be loads of posts by me arguing it on DDO. But I've changed my mind and I now prefer 'moral nihilism'. That doesn't mean i've changed my mind about murder being bad! It's only my view of what morality is 'in abstract theory' that has changed. My view now is morality does not exist (ie morality is no-thing hence 'moral nihilism'); what does exist is 'moral judgement'.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ludofl3x
I have to point out that pga didn't invent 'presuppositionalism'.
I note pga names van Til as a favourite writer in his profile.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@disgusted
What will you love your neighbour with?
Stock answer: To love others is to love God.
Apparently when we atheists are nice we are inadvertenty honouring the god we secretly know exists but deny because we hate the truth.
Created:
-->
@Mopac
I am not here to be amused.
You are the amusement.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@secularmerlin
Has trade secret not made it clear that he does not believe in evil as a noun?
I would say the ambiguity is why he wrote "Are pedophiles evil? I would surmise - yes and no". In 'are pedophiles evil' 'evil' is used adjectivally; it's grammatically 'are pedophiles pretty' not 'are pedophiles prettiness'.
I admit i'm being fussy, but I don't think we will get far in understanding 'evil' if we don't now if we are talking about a noun or an adjective. if it is an adjective then we can look for what feature evil things have in common; If its a noun then evil is a thing-in-its-self.
I think that 'evil things' share features but 'evil' doesn't have independent existence; ie evil is an adjective, not a noun. Evil as a thing is ok in poetry or fiction but not in analytic pholiosophy. IMO!
Created:
-->
@Mopac
So is a sense of humour.Context is very important, Keith.
Created: