On 12 Jan 2013, at 07:30, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/11/2013 9:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 4:42 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 1/11/2013 2:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 11:25 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
In a message dated 1/11/2013 2:27:33 AM Eastern Standard Time, [email protected]
writes:
1) Choose some religion, it doesn't matter which
2) Find an idea some adherents of that religion put forward but
almost no one seriously believes in or is easily shown to be
inconsistent
3) Assume that because you have disproved one idea of one religion
that all ideas found in all religions are false and/or unscientific
4) Bask in the feeling of superiority over those who are not so
enlightened
Jason
Ok, so in Darwinian fashion you sort through hundreds of faiths,
so what happens when you cannot dissprove a religion? You sort
them down till you hit a toughie, does that make it automatically
correct, or is it the intellectual limitation of the sorter? Your
Basking, is angering many non-believers, even. Witness Higg's
criticism of Dawkins. Believers, Jason, I suppose will merely,
pray for your soul (poor lad!).
Perhaps if you decided to create your own religion, that couldn't
be disproved, based on physics, or math, you would be coming up
with the best faith? Then we could all be converted to being
Jasonites. Or Reschers-whichever you prefer?
I'm nor sure I understand your point. My point was only that
John's adherence to atheism, which he defines as belief in no
Gods, is less rational than someone following his 4-step program
to become a liberal theologian.
In particular, it is the above step 3, rejecting all religious
ideas as false without giving the idea a fair scientific
evaluation, which is especially problematic. John is perhaps
being prescient in turning a blind eye to these other ideas, as
otherwise we might have the specter of a self-proclaimed atheist
who finds scientific justification for after lives, reincarnation,
karma, beings who exercise complete control over worlds of their
design and creation, as well as a self-existent changeless
infinite object responsible for the existence of all reality.
He would rather avoid those topics altogether and take solace in
denying specific instances of inconsistent or silly definitions of
God.
But your parody fails as a serious argument because the ideas put
forward by *almost all theists* include a very powerful,
beneficent, all knowing superbeing who will judge and reward and
punish souls in an after life and who answers prayers.
Please provide some reference showing almost all theists use that
definition of God. I find it unlikely that most theists would
incorporate every facet of that definition.
"Every facet"?? It's only the standard, three omni's of
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam except I left the requirements even
weaker, plus answering prayers. You're just being obtuse. You know
perfectly well that's what theism means.
Even between various sects of Christianity and Islam, views differ
regarding whether or not God is all knowing. An all-knowing God
implies predestination, which is contested between various groups.
Now some, far from powerful, humans with far from complete
information, eliminated smallpox from the world. God therefore
must have had that power and simply chose not to do it. So if any
very powerful, very knowledgeable superbeing exists, it is not
beneficent and not an acceptable judge of good and evil. These are
not just a peripheral idea of theisms and it's falsehood is not a
minor point because all theism insist that these ideas are
definitive of their religion.
It doesn't matter if 95% of theisms are ones you find fault with;
it only takes one correct theism to make atheism wrong, which is
why I think it is an untenable and illogical position.
But there can't be even 'one correct theism' as I pointed out above,
the very definition of theism allows it to be empirically falsified
by the appearance of unnecessary evil, in my example evil that mere
human beings had the power to eliminate and did eliminate. What can
you say about a superbeing who can eliminate an evil but chooses not
to. You can't say he's the beneficent God of theism.
Even the Christian Thomists were aware that God cannot be both
omnipotent and omniscient (unless inconsistent). Anyway, I don't use
the term "god" and "religion" or "theology" in the occidental
conventional religion sense. Like I don't use the term "genetics" in
the USSR Lyssenko sense.
It is irrational to fight against a field from the fact that the
curent proponents are a bit delirious about it, which can be explained
by the human emotion of some, and the willing of power of others.
Today I disbelieve in the politics of health of most countries, but
this is because I do believe in some notion of health.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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