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@Stephen
Jesus cured no lepers. A story where he eradicated leprosy wouldn't be credible - not when there were so many lepers still around! But a story about curing a leper is not quite so obviously false, hence that what we get.
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@Mopac
Jesus cured no lepers. A story where he eradicated leprosy wouldn't be credible - not when there were so many lepers still around! But a story about curing a leper is not quite so obviously false, hence that what we get.
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@PGA2.0
Those IN POWER thrive while massive chunks of their populations suffer in many societies. That is the problem unless there is an objective measure - who determines thriving (those who survive by eliminating the opposition?). You, as a nihilist and secularist, do not have an objective standard or measure. Why should I believe what you are pedaling?
North Korea demonstrates that there is no 'cosmic' or 'abstract force of/for good'. NK is as it is because kim wants it that way and he posesses power that you and I - who would like things otherwise - do not; thus it is kim's will - not yours - that obtains.
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@drafterman
I agree,
PMs are invisible to casual users but aren't ever going to be totally secret or secure. If you want secrecy and security - don't use the PM system on a public debate site as your means of communication!
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James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
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Humans have always been curious about their world and sought explanations.
At some point in the last few hundred years 'science' evolved in reference to the seeking of purely matrialistic and mechanistic explanations. The word 'scientist' didn't exit until 1833.
I say 'evolved' because it 'just happened' - no one ordered that science had to materialistic and it didn't happen overnight, but before the 18th century was over a scientist could believe in god privately, but could not use god as part of a scientific explanation.
The success of materialistic science has given us the modern world and given us confidence that everything can be explained materialistically.
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@Stephen
I find in josphus:
They also were the inventors of thatpeculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies'
'They' being the descendants of Seth, not Adam and son.
http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/ant-1.htm (ch9, para3).
But it is obvious that Josephus is retelling the familiar bible story.
I would have been surprised if you or Ethang were fans of my post! What I hope is that some of my fellow atheists will see the OT/Bible is not the ramblings of ignorant goatherders fit only for toilet paper! It is - IMO - the product of skilled propagandists and story tellers. There is barely an single unembellished fact in it, but if you also read around the subject it revaeals a lot about the ancient world and how religions work.
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@ethang5
Those are wikipedias words, not mine. If you follow the [3] link you will end up here:
Here is the authors website:
I think what I post on DA is totally orthodox in academia - I'm not a maverick.
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@Stephen
Whenever writing was invented, I doubt if Adam, Abraham or Noah kept a diary.
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@ethang5
There was no one alive in the 6th century BCE to 'remember' events of thousands of years earlier. Nor were there written records of those times. it would be very easy for the priests to get their version of 'history' accepted, especially as any doubters could be construed as unpatriotic and blasphemous.Supposed Americans historians wanted to supplant myths and legends for American history? What will they do with all the people who remember actual history? Does anyone believe that the history of an entire nation can be replaced with myths and legends by Priests?
Or not. To quote wikpediaLater archeological studies have verified that the bible has real history. There are many historical things, people, and places we know of today only because of the bible's record.
"Excavations at Tell es-Sultan, the biblical Jericho, have failed to produce data to substantiate the biblical story,[2] and scholars are virtually unanimous that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value.[3]"
It is because the 'historical' books have 'little historical value' we have to look for other reasons for writing of the pentaeuch, that is other than recording historical events. I view it as morale-boosting propaganda for the exiled Jews, telling them of a (fictional) glorious past and promising them a glorious future - if they stay faithful to their culture in general and their god in particular.
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@Stephen
they wrote these things top preserve and teach their history.
I didn't say 'history' - I said 'myths and legends'. However the writers intended it to be taken as actual history.
For example, archaeology and anthropology indicate the blitzkrieg-like conquest of Canaan under Joshua never occurred. There are several theories concerning the origin of the Hebrew, but it is likely that the Hebrew were a Canaanite tribe or clan that was distinguished from other Canaanits by a religion which focused on YHWH rather than other Canaanite gods such as Baal.
But we don't get real history in the Bible - we get a fiction created by YHWHist priests to serve thieir interests.
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@Stephen
I would be very interested to read your speculations as to why the gospellers even took the time to write bible stories that "can be junked straight away.
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Either 'god exists' or 'god does not exist' feels right to a person. All else is rationalisation of that feeling.
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@BrutalTruth
Formal debating is a sport - it is about finding out who is the best advocate, not what is true. It is where would-be lawyers and aspiring policians prictice being persuasive - a champion debater should have no problem arguing and winning either side of a debate.
The best way to get to the truth is by co-operative brain-storming in the forums not adversorial debate. Its just pity it never works out!
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You don't have to believe in god to be affected by religion , J.
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Stephen:
I would be very interested to read your speculations as to why the gospellers even took the time to write bible stories that "can be junked straight away." according to you.
Around 590 BCE the Jews were conquered by the Babylonians and began the 'Babylonian Exile'. It would have been easy for the Jewish people to disappear from history, as had the majority of Hebrew tribes after the Assyrian Exile 150 years earlier.
Clearly, that did not happen. I suggest the exiled YHWHist priests and scribes began writing the legends, myths and customs of the Jews (and the predecessors the Hebrews) in order to define, maintain and teach their version of history.
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@RationalMadman
Maybe you haven't noticed - or you are relatively young!
It seems I'm not alone in noticing the shift.
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@ethang5
What did the writer of the Abraham/Isaac story want to put across to his readers?Oh, that Abraham was the father of Isaac and God asked him to offer his son as a sacrifice but then stopped him before he could kill the boy who became the ancestor of Jesus and all Christians.Lol. Atheism really does make you guys silly. What did the writer of the Abraham/Isaac story want to put across to his readers? TheAbraham/Isaac story I would guess. D'uh.But that is too much like right to you anti-theists. So you must ignore what the writer says and "focus" on your supplied reason of why he wrote what he did. Clumsy.
I think the writer is presenting a mythical explanation for why the Hebrews - unlike many of their neighbours - sacrificed animals but not their children to their god.
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@Stephen
I think this thread should be about why the writers of genesis included a symbolic espiode where a patriarch is willing to sacrifice his son.I should think not....considering that this thread is about Abraham's lack of ability to work out that "A Great Nation would NOT spring from him” if he was to carry out his gods orders.
You seem to have forgeotten the obvious:
The only thing we can rely on is that someone sat down and wrote the text.
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@Stephen
I speculate on the writer's motivation. The only thing we can rely on is that someone sat down and wrote the text. We can't know if Jesus was really brought in front of Pilate, but we do know for sure that the gospellers tell a story about it and presumably they had their reasons for doing so. I'm not very interested speculating on why Pilate washed his hands... I am interested in speculating why the gospellers said he did. What did the writer of the Abraham/Isaac story want to put across to his readers?
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i've never seen the difference between not believing in gods and believing there are no gods. Is it possible to do one but not the other?
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@Stephen
it's very naught to put quotes around words I did't write.prosser is a strange one though. One minute he's banging on about how these thousands of years old scriptures aren't true at all and basically complete BS from beginning to end, and then spends pages and pages giving us his in depth nauseating opinion of all what these scriptures could mean and then adding " but we will never know we wasn't there". By this standard of his we may as well discount all the history ever written as BS.
I consider the historical parts of the bible to be fiction or propaganda, written to serve the purposes of the writers and my posts should be taken as coming from that perspective.
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Why does a mindless process build into itself instinct, and instinct to live? It just happens. No reason. Those who survive have instinct and those who do not survive lack the instinct. So what? How does that make anything good? Is it good to survive in a meaningless universe that does not care about you and won't when you serve your pointless, meaningless existence?
You see it clearly enough - "It just happens. No reason. Those who survive have instinct and those who do not survive lack the instinct."
There is no need to invent the superfluous notion of 'good' If a species or a society thrives then is it because it has effective instincts, not because they ''possess goodness' or 'nearer to God'!
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@Castin
I think one of us having a beard would be a give away, Cas. But I suppose you could shave it off.
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@Paul
Let me suggest that all observation is subjective but we can apply our reason and logic to those observation to build up a picture of the underlying objective reality.
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@secularmerlin
I haven't watched the 82 Thing for 20 years and I don't seem to have it in my collection. I just remember enjoying it at the time..!
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@secularmerlin
I haven't seen the 2011 'thing'. The '82 version is scary, the 1951 version is a pretty good 'B' movie. Apparently watching "the thing" is a tradition at polar science bases!
how about the alien in Alien?
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@ethang5
If I am not prepared to introspect and at least consider the possibility that my opinion could be wrong then I am a bigot regardless of what my opinion is.
I'd say there are bigots and non-bigots on both side of most moral disputes.
To be frank, bigot is not a term I use much. It's not much more than a 'cuss word', an insult implying someone is too stupid to use rational thought. At least that is how I would use it I did.... if I call anyone a bigot its because I think they are not even trying to think clearly, not because I disagree with them.
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I caught myself saying 'processeeze' today. It always used to be 'processez' - when did it change?
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@ethang5
You mean it's for real?Ethan doesn't play obtuse.
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@ethang5
Eth:I asked about a person who has a moral objection the homosexuality. Though you did not call him a bigot, you described a bigot. Just as Keith did.
Having a moral objection does not make anyone a bigot, but bigots generally have (or claim to have) a moral objection.
Eth:What about when the guy has a moral objection, are you asking him to be tolerant of immorality?
That is - perhaps accidentally - a badly stated question. It could mean
a) What about when the guy has a moral objection to something, are you asking him to be tolerant of it, whatever it may be?
or it could mean
b) What about when the guy has a moral objection to homosexuality, are you asking him to be tolerant of homosexuality?
Obviously I wouldn't ask anyone to be tolerant of murder or rape. My answer was specfic to homosexuality - and I would ask him to be tolerant of homosexuality. I would ask him to introspect to see where his objection to homosexuality comes from and it it is rational and justified.
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@Goldtop
Radiocarbon dating is excellent for specimens hundreds or a very few thousand years old, such as the Turin Shroud or Egyptian mummies. it is no use at all for longer time scales.
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@ethang5
You are not wrong, but the earth weighs 5.972 × 10^24 kg. It would require transferring an awful lot of stuff to make a noticeable diffference. Many tons of material are added to the earth every year due ot meteorites.
If there is a lot of easily accessible gold on Mars then gold would lose its rarity value. The value of the gold in Fort Knox and the Bank of England etc would collapse with unforseeable consequences to the world economy!
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@SkepticalOne
I think we humans are very bad at estimating risks and dangers. Cows kill a lot more people than sharks do.
The safest time to fly was probably right after 9-11 when security personel etc were super-motivated, but people waited, and thing went back to more or less just going throught the motions.
I bet every one of us does something (smoke, drink, drive a car)that is far more likely to kill us that a mass shooter is.
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@SkepticalOne
ok - i just wanted to avoid going over old stuff.
What happens is that evolution comes up with tricks that lets us be aware of useful information. Colour is the trick for giving us awareness of the wavelength of light - long wavelength light appears as red, short wavelengths appears as blue. There is nothing intrinsially 'red' about long wavelengths or blue about short ones - it could have evolved to be other way around, and perhaps it is the other way around in other species, or even for different people - there doesn't seem to be any way of knowing.
So when we look at grass (for example) it appears to have the property of 'greenness', but it doesn't. Grass has the property of reflecting light with a wavelength about 520 nanometres; it's 'greenness' is all in our mind.
We can say that 'reflects light of 520nm' is an objective quality of grass because it is true regardless of the observer. The observer could be colour-blind or simply blind, but as long as they measure the wavelength properly they will get 520nm.
Points to take away: We have evolved a method of discriminating between wavelengths of light by encoding different wavelengths as different colours. The general principle is that our brains and senses operate by transcribing objective properties (eg wavelength) of the world into subjective properties (eg colour). We don't have to do anything or thnk about doing it - transcribing the objective into the subjective is just what brains do.
I want to avoid 'tl;dr' so I suggest that morality is analagous to colour and something like 'harm/benefit to society' is analgouss to wavelength. Just as we perceive different values of objctive wavelength as subjective 'red','green','blue' etc we perceive different value of harm/benefit as 'very bad','bad','good' and 'very good'.
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@SkepticalOne
I think good and evil exists as concepts (much like gods). If humanity goes away then so do our concepts. So, I agree there is no evil/good in the universe discounting conscious beings.
Quite. But if a 'concept of god' can exist without god existing surely the 'concept of morality' can exist without morality existing!
Where we diverge (I think) is that I see our evolutionary heritage as (possibly) a foundation from which our morality is formed, and so, morality is not purely preference but at least partially, built in. I've seen you give a nod to evolution hard wiring us this way, so why are we in different places on morality?It seems I always find myself watching the discussion regarding nihilism not really identifying with either side. What is the purpose of labeling yourself a moral nihilist - what do you think this means to your audience?
I think that before I post a load of irrelevancies I should ask if you know/accept the standard arguments about the unreality of colour and if you see the relevance of that question!
I've only been a moral nihilist for about a week! I think it's the proper term so what other label is there?
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@Castin
There's more than 300 million people in America. What is that might push 1 person in 300 million over the edge? I'd say 'Almost anything'- there probably isn't a common root.
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@ethang5
But if you are right people will agree with you. There's no one I know who would say I was consistent if they really thought I wasn't.
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@SkepticalOne
I dont think your being inconsistent, but I admit, I don't understand your view completely.
You probably think there is more to it than there is! OK, imagine someon drops a tenner. You are briefly tempptede to pocket it but you dcid to give it the owner.
Theory 1 - the cognitive parts of your brain identified an opportunity to get an easy 10 dollars but it was over-ridden by the part of you brai that implements eusocial behaviour.
Theory 2 - taking the money is uffused with evil, returning it is suffused with good. Somehow you determined which was which (posssibly with gods help).
Note theory 1 does not refer to morality/good/evil - it is 'moral nihlism'.
As good and evil do not exist, one cannot oppose (eg) slavry beause it is evil, but you can oppose it because you abhor it. Thus whether there is slavery in the land depends on whether it is the pro-slavers or anti-slavers who rule.
I hope you understand it now!
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@ethang5
You're right - I don't fear it at all.
I'm willing to throw it open for people to say if I am being inconsistent and/or irrational.
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@ethang5
Then your actions ar inconsistent and irrational.
I fear you do not understand the meanings of 'inconsistent' and 'irrational'.
It is those people who believe what they do has the imprimateur of some cosmic entity or grand destiny that cause the trouble. The 9-11
bombers believed they were serving a greater good.
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@ethang5
I said "Bigots don't use their brains to overcome that primitive tribal instinct."
You said: "People with moral judgements are bigots"
Check mate.
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@ethang5
what about when the guy has a moral objection, are you asking him to be tolerant of immorality? Are you tolerant of what you find offends your moral judgement?
My answer was "Bigots don't use their brains to overcome that primitive tribal instinct - they use their brains to rationalise and justify their hate."
You seem to be saying that bigotry is a primitive tribal instinct. But then you say evolution has wired us to be altruistic. Seems contradictory.
Evolution has wired us up with a very mess system! One of its features seems to be that we tend to be more altruistic towards those closely related to us and rather less nice so strangers.
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@ethang5
You'll have to identify the "illogical assumption" I am making for me.
Nothing matters yet you continually make it matter. That is inconsistent.
Baby torture matters to me, but it does't matter to the universe. No planet is going to change its orbit to stop a child-molester. If I am aware of a case of child-molstation whether that child is molested or not depends on a battle of wills between me and the molestor - there is no 'cosmic good' or 'cosmic evil' on either side.
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@ethang5
I'd say we humans have a tendency to hate 'outsiders', people who are 'not like us'. Bigots don't use their brains to overcome that primitive tribal instinct - they use their brains to rationalise and justify their hate.
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@ethang5
Imagine 100 isolated societies. Now assign - at random - different mixes of anarchic selfishness and co-operation within each society. Those societies where the members were all pure egoists would probably die out in a generation of robbing and killing each other; societies of super-cooperators would do better than the pure egoists, but the long-term optimal could well be something like 80% co-operation and 20% selfishness.
A system of moral judgements that inhibits some forms of behaviour and promotes others is how out species achieved long-term persistence.
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I don't belive in 'thought-crime'. I can well imagine someone who is disgusted by the idea of gay sex but makes every effort to be tolerant; I would not call such a person a bigot. To me a bigot is intolerant and unreasonably resistant to hearing the other side. I am also sure 'bigot' is used more freely and loosely - but not by me.
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@ethang5
@PGA2.0
pga: You said nothing is wrong but you are going to stop Joe from doing it because you don't like it. Why would you stop him from doing it if it was not wrong? Surely it is live and let live??? This shows the inconsistency of the nihilist position.e5: He can't answer you, but to his credit, he will be the most honest about his position. The atheist's position here is wholly illogical, and easily demonstrated to be. So they deflect and dodge.
"Why would you stop him from doing it if it was not wrong? Surely it is live and let live???"
I would stop him for the same reason you would - we judge baby torture as wrong. I am trying to explain that you are mistaken as to how and why you judge baby torture as wrong. Its not because baby torture 'is evil' - it's because your brain is wired-up by evolution to abhor pointless suffering because having that emotion that helped our our species survive.
Put another way there is no such thing as morality - there are only moral judgements.
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