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Author Topic: Atheism 3.0
Date Posted: 10/29 3:22am Subject: Atheism 3.0
Wait a minute - Hoth, your point wasn't that some people perhaps hadn't read enough Jesus, was it? And that they needed to fact check with a second unverifiable source?

 
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Date Posted: 10/29 9:30am Subject: Atheism 3.0
Asterix of Gaul,

Then you've heard of the Council of Nicosea, then? This is the group that decided what books went into the bible. The Gnostic Gospels are taken from the books that were left out.

Gnostic means "special knowledge."

These books that were left out of the Bible were written by early Christians as part of their testimony regarding their belief in Jesus Christ.

I don't know the exact dates as I am posting from work and don't have my reference book with me. But, I can bring it tomorrow and add more to the discussion.


 

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 Date Posted: 10/29 10:14am Subject: Atheism 3.0
Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
Then you've heard of the Council of Nicosea, then? This is the group that decided what books went into the bible. The Gnostic Gospels are taken from the books that were left out.

You mean Council of Nicaea.

Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
Gnostic means "special knowledge."

It actually only means "having knowledge" (deriving from gnosis, knowledge). You may be confusing this with kairos -- "special time," counterpart to the Greek chronos.

Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
These books that were left out of the Bible were written by early Christians as part of their testimony regarding their belief in Jesus Christ.

Correct. People who like to tout the "consistency" of the Bible seem to ignore (or be ignorant of) the fact that the books were hand-picked from a rather large pool of equally valid testimonies with a specific narrative in mind. Kind of like the way "reality" TV is edited.

I'm not Gnostic (in point of fact, I'm agnostic), but I like their mythology. The concept of the Demiurge and Jesus as opposing forces is much more interesting, and also makes more sense, than the self-contradicting story that became official canon.

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 10:15am Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/29 10:47am (1 edits total) Edited By: Darth-Ghost
Vivec:


Two comments.
1)If it is a personal experience, then why is it used as "evidence of God" by those who to try to convert nonbelievers?
2)Isn't saying that someone can believe what they want as a response to probing questions a means of furthering intellectual laziness and dishonesty? Then why have discussions if one's answer is simply "Whatever, I believe what I want."

-It shouldn't be, anybody who uses their personal experience to try and covert is either dumb or manipulative. But that's my opinion. And I really don't think the majority of people who have personal experiences go on to try and use that experience to convert others. Maybe some might try to convert others, but not by using that experience, that's retarded.

-What probing question was that? Maybe because it doesn't have an intellectual basis, and never claimed to have an intellectual basis?


You have to have a good reason to "think" or "feel" that it is God, otherwise it is making stuff up.

But who determines what a good reason is? In the case I'm talking about, the good reason is probably a very personal and subjective experience that cannot be proven or reproduced to anyone else. It's not possible for science to verify or falsify.


They don't take them without proof. The proof is that it works.

Not really. A given is that it's a given, there's no proof for an axiom, we just accept it and have based everything else on it. We all make assumptions. Like we assume our senses generally convey to us something usually close to reality. That there is a world outside our minds, and not everything is inside our head.


This statement is irrelevant. This definition of God has nothing to do with what we're discussing, which is the supernatural deity.

I wasn't limiting my discussion to just the supernatural deity. I don't believe God is merely a supernatural deity at all, and neither do eastern religions like Hinduism, Jainism, etc. Many Christians/Jews/Muslims also don't see God as merely a deity. Also, by the definition of "supernatural," it is beyond nature and our understanding of reality, not jst a guy in the clouds with magic powers.


We seem to have a disagreement on what "making stuff up" means.

Making stuff up means that you are saying something as fact that isn't true. If you state something as fact, you better be able to show that it is true, otherwise you are making it up. Now I don't know what the OP said in the other thread, because it was edited, but I was answering Jaden1138, who said her statement with certainty: "I believe you Kiki. When you experience God, it is unique. If you have not allowed yourself to experience Him, you cannot really make statements such as those above."

I was answering to this, and I will continue to maintain the position that her statement is made up whether by her, her parents, her pastor, or whoever else, until she shows that she has a valid reason for stating such nonsense.

To me, "making stuff up" implies you are knowingly saying something as fact that isn't true, usually to purposely deceive someone.

Also, I don't count "can't prove it is true" the same as "proven not to be true." It just means you can't prove it, which means it doesn't belong in the realm of science or objective knowledge/evidence.

This is why I was stressing that if someone says "I know I experienced God," they are saying it subjectively, not objectively. Basing that knowledge on intuition, not deduction and the scientific method. You may not personally believe you can know anything that way, but you should accept that other people can feel they can know something that way.





Dorkman_Scott


Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Knowledge is NOT available through "intuition." Intuition is frequently incorrect and ridiculously unreliable. The universe is not "intuitive." ONLY observation of consistent and corroborational phenomena leads to knowledge. Intuition leads to belief, and beliefs without an observational basis are frequently incorrect.

You're right that intuition can be incorrect, and definitely unreliable.

You're right that only observation of consistent and corroborational phenomena leads to OBJECTIVE/SCIENCE-BASED knowledge.


You're conflating two different meanings of "faith."

In the scientific realm, you have "faith" that reality will continue to behave the way it has previously been observed to behave. I don't have proof that gravity will work tomorrow the way it works today, but I have a long precedent of gravity behaving that way, plenty of evidence that it should continue to do so, and so you could say I have faith in gravity. This is "taking as fact without proof." But not having PROOF does not mean you don't have EVIDENCE.

The God hypothesis, on the other hand, has NEVER been reliably demonstrated and has in fact been proven time and again to be an insufficient or unnecessary explanation for perfectly mundane, if initially mysterious, natural processes. The proposition that "God did it" is not taking as fact without proof, it's taking as fact without EVIDENCE. This is not faith, this is intellectual laziness. It's like getting tired after ten miles of walking, sitting down and declaring "This is as far as it is possible to walk." God did it is not an answer, it's just another question.

I don't want to repeat too much of what I said above, but don't you have faith that your senses are generally correct? Do you have faith that a world outside your own mind exists? You can't prove or find evdience for that, yet you believe it, and never really doubt or question it. We all have to make some assumptions, or else we would become solpsists and nihilists.


Yes. Because we have words for those things already. "Nature" and "understanding" and "oneness." A word which does not have for itself some form of meaning is by definition meaningless. If "God" can be whatever you want it to be, then "God" is ultimately nothing at all.

That's a very simple-minded way to look at language. Do you really believe that human language can ever be so exact, to perfectly represent the abstract? And I'm not saying God is simple equated to one of those things either. It's hard to find a simple, uncontradictory defiition/meaning of God in any religion, as you should know. To describe God is usually beyond words, just like how words can never really desribe anything.

Above, where you cited "intuition" as a valid path to "knowledge."

Not to objective knowledge, and I never did that. And that's not rejecting rigorous questiong. You're trying to scientifically prove/disprove what I'm saying, when I'm not even trying to argue this from a scientific or objective basis. I'm just arguing it should be valid and acceptable to believe in experiences of God. That the belief isn't making stuff up. That just because you can't prove something doesn't mean it's false.




No one is arguing that it isn't, and in particular no one is arguing that the experience is fabricated. I myself had what would be called a "religious experience" and it was at the root of my devotion to Christianity toward the end of high school and through college. No one is saying people who claim to have "experienced God" are making up the experience.

That's what I thought Vivec was claiming, and that is what I have been arguing, that's all.

But to attribute the source to God without having a valid reason to do so is making up a reason for the experience. They don't know the explanation and can't think of a better one, so they append "God" as the explanation.

I really disagree with that.


Maybe the confusion stems from the fact that of course they aren't "making up" the concept of God in the sense of originating it. But they are asserting an explanation that they have no good cause to assert. They have decided the answer to the question before they even know what they're going to ask. They have no answer, yet they give one anyway.

This is where intuition comes in. And they don't usually "decide the answer." They "feel" it was God, they "think" it was God, sometime the intuition is so strong they subjectively say they "know" it was God, but that obviously isn't sayign they know based on deduction or the scientific method or objective evidence. They do not just decide it was God on the basis of some irrational religious reflex, like you are asserting. They defintely don't always know the answer before they begin to question what happened, a least not in all cases.


This certainly depends heavily on what you mean by "validity."

Believing in God is typically the opinion of people who have not bothered to think any further on the matter. As pointed out in the now-locked thread from which this conversation continues, there were plenty of alternative explanations for the phenomenon described by the OP. But the OP was so unwilling to consider any explanation besides the predetermined "God" explanation that s/he threw a fit and shut down the thread when they were suggested. This is hardly the behavior of someone who holds (or seeks) an informed opinion. This is the behavior of a person who has crafted their preferred interpretation of events and will simply not abide reality's encroachment.



No, it "typically" isn't. You can be religious and spiritual, and question deeply in many things.

And, like I said, I wasn't really responding to the OP or her specific situation, I was responding to everyone who was saying her opinion wasn't a valid one to have. Just because there are alternative explanations doesn't rule that one out, that would be closed-minded. I do believe being close-minded is bad. What she should have said was "while that is possible, I believe/feel/think it was because of God" or whatever. People were just being rude to her opinions, especially on something personal, and that's what put me off.

 
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 Date Posted: 10/29 10:25am Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/29 10:28am (1 edits total) Edited By: DorkmanScott
Darth-Ghost posted:
But who determines what a good reason is? In the case I'm talking about, the good reason is probably a very personal and subjective experience that cannot be proven or reproduced to anyone else. It's not possible for science to verify or falsify.

You have answered your own question. If it cannot be verified or falsified, it is not a good reason.

Darth-Ghost posted:
They don't take them without proof. The proof is that it works.

Not really. A given is that it's a given, there's no proof for an axiom, we just accept it and have based everything else on it.

You do not seem to understand how science works. An axiom develops because it is consistently the case. The fact that it is consistently the case is the proof. The fact that we can "base everything else on it" and get consistent, predictable results is FURTHER proof that the axiom is as correct a thing as we can get. You are making the opposite point that you think you are.

Darth-Ghost posted:
To me, "making stuff up" implies you are knowingly saying something as fact that isn't true, usually to purposely deceive someone.

That would be "lying." People can make stuff up without knowing they're doing it, because they are convinced that their interpretation of events is correct.

See this video at 0:54. The neighbor has not knowingly created a false explanation for the phenomenon in front of him, but he has nonetheless created a false explanation. He made it up based on his presuppositions and not the event in front of him.

Darth-Ghost posted:
Also, I don't count "can't prove it is true" the same as "proven not to be true." It just means yo ucan't prove it, which means it doesn't belong in the realm of science or objective knowledge/evidence.

And is therefore no better than something you have made up. See again: leprechauns and unicorns and Bilbo Baggins. Can you prove that none of those things are true? They're outside the realm of science and evidence.

Darth-Ghost posted:
This is why I was stressing that if someone says "I know I experienced God," they are saying it subjectively, not objectively. Basing that knowledge on intuition, not deduction and the scientific method.

And that's why we're saying they are wrong. They don't "know" anything. They simply "believe" it, which is not the same thing by a mile.

Darth-Ghost posted:
You may not personally believe you can know anything that way, but you should accept that other people can feel they can know something that way.

No, because they are wrong. They cannot know anything that way. They can only believe things, and do so without any means to separate or distinguish true beliefs from false ones.

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 11:22am Subject: Atheism 3.0
To me, "making stuff up" implies you are knowingly saying something as fact that isn't true, usually to purposely deceive someone.

Except that "making stuff up" has a bigger domain that what you described.

Also, I don't count "can't prove it is true" the same as "proven not to be true." It just means you can't prove it, which means it doesn't belong in the realm of science or objective knowledge/evidence.

Glad you admitted that it doesn't belong in objective knowledge. Because that's what I'm saying, and that is why I criticize religious faith.

This is why I was stressing that if someone says "I know I experienced God," they are saying it subjectively, not objectively. Basing that knowledge on intuition, not deduction and the scientific method. You may not personally believe you can know anything that way, but you should accept that other people can feel they can know something that way.

No, I don't need to accept anything. Why don't you see that? Why can't you see that no one has to accept anything that isn't objective? We don't, and you repeating it again and again that we do doesn't make it that we do.

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 1:31pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
For example, kikichan's story in short was that she had a bad feeling while driving in the car with her dad, so much so that she had to get out and walk the rest of the way home. Upon arriving home, she discovered that there had been a car accident on the passenger side (where she had been sitting), one so bad that her father was injured and had to be taken to the hospital.

Sry -- where's this post and the reaction to it?

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 1:35pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
SuperWatto posted:
Wait a minute - Hoth, your point wasn't that some people perhaps hadn't read enough Jesus, was it? And that they needed to fact check with a second unverifiable source?


My point was simply that scripture is not definitive. It is ambiguous and obscure such that any pre-conceived beliefs can be supported by a particular 'intepretation' of the text. If you want to believe Jesus was a passive, meek spiritual mentor then you can cite scripture. If you want to believe that Jesus was a militant reactionary to Roman oppression then you can cite scripture. If you want to believe that God hates homosexuals you can cite scripture. If you want to believe that God loves everyone then you can cite scripture.

This extends to nearly every facet of life. If we want to believe something then we will perceive events according to that belief, thereby creating the 'reality' with which we are most comfortable. This is most evident in the Middle East for example. This is why when we hear 'testimonies' like the one in the other thread about God's intervention we should be skeptical.

Gonk - in this thread:

http://boards.theforce.net/the_senate_floor/b10320/30522421/p1/?

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 3:00pm Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/29 3:00pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Asterix_of_Gaul
DorkmanScott posted:
Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
Then you've heard of the Council of Nicosea, then? This is the group that decided what books went into the bible. The Gnostic Gospels are taken from the books that were left out.

You mean Council of Nicaea.

Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
Gnostic means "special knowledge."

It actually only means "having knowledge" (deriving from gnosis, knowledge). You may be confusing this with kairos -- "special time," counterpart to the Greek chronos.

Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi posted:
These books that were left out of the Bible were written by early Christians as part of their testimony regarding their belief in Jesus Christ.

Correct. People who like to tout the "consistency" of the Bible seem to ignore (or be ignorant of) the fact that the books were hand-picked from a rather large pool of equally valid testimonies with a specific narrative in mind. Kind of like the way "reality" TV is edited.

I'm not Gnostic (in point of fact, I'm agnostic), but I like their mythology. The concept of the Demiurge and Jesus as opposing forces is much more interesting, and also makes more sense, than the self-contradicting story that became official canon.


Oh, but you're forgetting the reasons why they were picked out aren't you?

If it's true, for example, that the traditional Gospels such as Mark came before the Gnostic Gospels--that would make including the Gnostic Gospels rather silly wouldn't it (especially if there was evidence that they were merely adapted from previous Gospels). It's interesting to note that the Gospels themselves are all incredibly similar in many regards. They offer varying perspectives of essentially the same event--John being the one that differs the most, what with the flowery language tongue . Are you more or less wondering where the information for the Gnostic Gospels came from, regardless of antiquity?

I mean, I'm sure that was brought up at the Council of Nicea... tongue

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 3:28pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
I've read the Gnostic gospels, tho. They don't repeat what the 4 gospels already say, they are additional information.

I'll post more tomorrow when I bring the book itself.

The stories were not included in the bible as decided by the Council of Nicea (sorry, I get it confused with the modern city of Nicosea) because one or more of the men on the council decided the story was blasphemous, or heretical in some way.

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 3:37pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
"I've read the Gnostic gospels, tho. They don't repeat what the 4 gospels already say, they are additional information."

That's the point I was getting at.

 

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Date Posted: 10/29 4:02pm Subject: Atheism 3.0
Sorry. Read your post too fast. Actually, it's quite fascinating to me that these books were left out. They are people's own stories of faith and their conversion, etc.

In addition to the stuff about Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the apostles.

 

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Date Posted: 10/30 5:07am Subject: Atheism 3.0
It is indeed, fascinating.

I'm unsure of their validity--even moreso than the traditional Gospels for various reasons...one being that many of them were created far later than the traditional Gospels, which were already in place and written much closer to the time of Christ.

I.e. The Gospel of Thomas in particular is curious because it supposedly came out around 80 CE. I do not recall why it was excluded.

 

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Date Posted: 10/30 12:55pm Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/30 12:58pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Lady_Sami_J_Kenobi
The Gnostic Gospels are from a series of ancient manuscripts (approx. 52) found in December of 1945 at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. The texts themselves are written in the Coptic language. Please keep in mind that the word "Gnosis" does not just mean "knowledge" but "secret, special knowledge," known only to a few.

As I can only give you a brief summary of what most of these texts are about, I suggest obtaining a copy and reading this material for yourself.

The early Church (33 A.D. to 170 A.D.) decided that these texts were heretical and many were burned (the texts, not the people). They contain stories of the Garden of Eden as told from the viewpoint of the Serpent, to a poem apparently by a female deity, to the Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Truth (which has the Garden of Eden Story).

What makes these texts heretical is apparent from the Gospel of Mary (Madgalene). She is the first to see Jesus after he has risen, but he tells her not to touch him. She describes seeing him in an ecstatic trance, so the disciples do not believe her.

Of course, Jesus appears to them in the flesh and eats and drinks with them, and gives them the authority to run the church.

The political influence of the early church fathers was such that the Gospel of Mary had to be denied and destroyed, because only men were allowed to rule the church, never mind that Jesus' original disciples consisted of both men and women, Mary Magdalene being the foremost.

The importance of Jesus having physically conquered death was also very important, so any testimony that the visions of him on earth were just that: visions, not actual events, had to be crushed also, for if Jesus did not physically conquer death, then the church's message was watered down.

One ancient writer, Tertullian (A.D. c190) says that the story of Christ's suffering, death and resurrection "must be believed, because it is absurd."

Yet some Christians--those Tertullian calls heretics--dissent. Without denying the resurrection, they reject the literal interpretation; some find it "extremely revolting, repugnant and impossible."

Gnostic Christians interpret resurrection in various ways. Some say that the person who experiences the resurrection does not meet Jesus raised physically back to life; rather, he encounters Christ on a spiritual level. This may occur in dreams, in ecstatic trance, in visions, or in moments of spiritual illumination. But the orthodox condemn all such interpretations; Tertullian declares that anyone who denies the resurrection of the flesh is a heretic, not a Christian.

There's also the story of Mary Magdalene's relationship with Christ. The disciples were upset (the original 12) because Jesus spent a lot of time with Mary, kissing her on the mouth, etc. She was referred to as his companion, which meant she may very well have been his wife.

So, sort of a nutshell version, but if you read this book for yourself, you will see a very different version of the early Church, as it existed even before the council of Nicea.

Here's the poem by the female deity:


For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin...
I am the barren one,
and many are her sons....
I am the silence that is incomprehensible....
I am the utterance of my name.

 

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Date Posted: 10/30 2:11pm Subject: Atheism 3.0 - Date Edited: 10/30 2:19pm (4 edits total) Edited By: Darth-Ghost
DorkmanScott:

If it cannot be verified or falsified, it is not a good reason.

Something can be subjective and still considered a good reason for that person. But of couse not for anyone else, I'm just talking about for that person.

And you may disagree with even that, but that person feels it is a good reason.

See again: leprechauns and unicorns and Bilbo Baggins. Can you prove that none of those things are true? They're outside the realm of science and evidence.

Of course they are. And so is our (current) understanding of God. I think you were too hasty to judge me, that you are really misunderstanding what I'm arguing. Go back to what I've been saying from the beginning.

And that's why we're saying they are wrong. They don't "know" anything. They simply "believe" it, which is not the same thing by a mile.

But believing in something without proof doesn't make it wrong. And by "know," I've already said I meant subjective "know" = think/feel/believe. Nobody's saying they objectively know it.

No, because they are wrong. They cannot know anything that way. They can only believe things, and do so without any means to separate or distinguish true beliefs from false ones.

Yes, you can know things that way, they just won't have any objective proof of it. If a man living 10 thousand years ago believed the Earth was round and went around the sun, he knows it, even if he can't prove it.

And of course these people can still know things and have a means to distinguish true beliefs from false ones, that is what science and objective evdience and rational thinking is for. What do you think I'm trying to argue, that people should never use those things?????? I'm just saying there are areas of life that exist outside of objective knowledge and scientific testing. That believing in something without proof or objectively knowing it ISN'T wrong or invalid or making stuff up.

(And you skipped the part of my last post where I responded to you)

Lord_Vivec posted:
To me, "making stuff up" implies you are knowingly saying something as fact that isn't true, usually to purposely deceive someone.

Except that "making stuff up" has a bigger domain that what you described.

Well that's what I understood it as.

Also, I don't count "can't prove it is true" the same as "proven not to be true." It just means you can't prove it, which means it doesn't belong in the realm of science or objective knowledge/evidence.

Glad you admitted that it doesn't belong in objective knowledge. Because that's what I'm saying, and that is why I criticize religious faith.

I'm not admitting anything, I NEVER said it did belong in objective knowledge. I've been stressing the importance of the difference between objective/subjective knowing from the beginning, and you kept saying that didn't have anything to do with what we're talking about.

And why is that why you criticize religious faith? Many things in life don't belong in objective knowledge that should be valued. Faith in general, not in any religion. Optimism. Love and friendship. Trust. Basically anything emotional or personal or subjective, which is the majority and the substance of anyone's life.

This is why I was stressing that if someone says "I know I experienced God," they are saying it subjectively, not objectively. Basing that knowledge on intuition, not deduction and the scientific method. You may not personally believe you can know anything that way, but you should accept that other people can feel they can know something that way.

No, I don't need to accept anything. Why don't you see that? Why can't you see that no one has to accept anything that isn't objective? We don't, and you repeating it again and again that we do doesn't make it that we do.

It's an objective fact that many people feel that they can know something that way, that's all I'm saying you need to accept, it's a basic fact in the reality of human life.

Also, think of my example of a caveman blindly believing the earth is round and goes around the sun.

If you don't accept anything that isn't objective, you ultimately accept nothing. A lot of the things you think are objective, aren't, and you would be insane or a robot if you were only objective.

 
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