Judas Contradiction

[dtackett]

the truth of God is subjective. When gathering the dogma or doctrine for a religion though you're not making shit up when you're reading in context, IMO.

[pinkocommie]

the truth of God is subjective. When gathering the dogma or doctrine for a religion though you're not making shit up when you're reading in context, IMO.

And some people disagree with your opinion.  Some of us don't see the point of rationalizing an already suspect source of information.  And, if your god is limited by context, why would anyone worship it?  A god with limitations is just a bully with the biggest stick.

[dtackett]

And everyone's entitles to their opinion. What you call rationalization, I call reading comprehension. Never did I say anywhere that I believe my God has any limitations. We try and define an idea of God, that idea of an aspect of what God is we try and get into focus with context. It's quote difficult to identify an absolute, it's an ever correcting process.

[pinkocommie]

And everyone's entitles to their opinion. What you call rationalization, I call reading comprehension. Never did I say anywhere that I believe my God has any limitations. We try and define an idea of God, that idea of an aspect of what God is we try and get into focus with context. It's quote difficult to identify an absolute, it's an ever correcting process.

So is the bible merely humans trying to define the idea of god in the context of their time or is it the word of god, in your opinion?

[LoneMateria]

the truth of God is subjective. When gathering the dogma or doctrine for a religion though you're not making shit up when you're reading in context, IMO.

... isn't that convenient.

[Ellainix]

the truth of God is subjective. When gathering the dogma or doctrine for a religion though you're not making shit up when you're reading in context, IMO.

adj 1. existing in the mind;

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Subjective

[dtackett]

IMO the Bible is humans trying to define their ideas of God in their time. That they're inspired to do this by God, thus the Bible is the inspired word of God as seen by man.

Yes religion by definition, after all the arguments and debates, boils down to subjective evidence and faith.

Do you feel math is subjective? Does the apple have to fall down every time you throw it up. No it doesn't , but it probably willl. Math and logic, even scientific evidence, is a well to defined repeatable concept. Just because something has the label of objective doesn't mean you don't also use subjective observation as evidence. What I've come to see in hard atheists is an absolute rejection of anything subjective. I agree that objectivity has a great deal more predictive power than subjectivity, but reason should be reasonable and even, not one-sided anything. I can honestly say I have faith and belief. My evidence is subjective, but at least it's a balanced look.

[notself]

I agree that objectivity has a great deal more predictive power than subjectivity, but reason should be reasonable and even, not one-sided anything. I can honestly say I have faith and belief. My evidence is subjective, but at least it's a balanced look.

Gee, if you have one foot on a hot stove and one foot encased in ice, on balance you should be comfortable.  

[LoneMateria]

IMO the Bible is humans trying to define their ideas of God in their time. That they're inspired to do this by God, thus the Bible is the inspired word of God as seen by man.

This is a non-sequitur.  You aren't following your own logic.  This is the logical way of viewing this:

1: Humans have an idea for a God
2: Humans write down those ideas in the bible
3: God and the bible are man made

You are trying to say.

1: Humans have an idea for a God
2: Humans write down those ideas in the bible
3: God inspired them do this
4: God and the bible accurately depict reality

Doing this is intellectually dishonest.  Which of the above 2 logical models best describes your view of the Koran (just replace God and the bible with Allah and the Koran)?  Since you are a Christian it's pretty safe bet you will go with the first logical model I made.  This is due to intellectual dishonesty.  You are being dishonest with yourself about your beliefs, the same notions you use to defend your beliefs you would reject from another opposing religion.

Yes religion by definition, after all the arguments and debates, boils down to subjective evidence and faith.

Then why would it depict reality?  To quote Mark Twain, "Faith is believing in something you know ain't so."  If you have to ignore evidence in the contrary just accept what explanation is given to you based on faith then you are essentially lying to yourself about what is real and true.  If I had faith that the used car salesman had my best interest in mind then I would be crazy.  The same is true about religion.  If I had faith the Church had my best interests in mind then I would be crazy.  Speaking of crazy let me put the basic premise of Christianity bluntly and ask you how crazy does it sound.  A guy fathered himself in order to send himself to earth in order to kill himself in order to appease himself for the very sins to which he himself convicted mankind for falling for a trick from a talking snake.  Does that not sound crazy to you?  Do you think that honestly depicts reality as we know it?

Do you feel math is subjective?

Math is testable, repeatable and independently verifiable.  So no it's not subjective.

Does the apple have to fall down every time you throw it up. No it doesn't , but it probably willl.

Yes it does.  Because I cannot physically throw the apple at escape velocity where it will escape the earths atmosphere much less its gravitational pull.  Because there is the most remote chance through probability that an event is likely doesn't mean that it will happen.  There is a remote possibility that if I walk straight into a wall I will walk through it.  There is a chance that the atoms of my body and the atoms of the wall will arrange themselves in such a way that will allow me to pass through it.  I can spend every moment from now until the time I die walking into it and I can say with absolute certainty that I will not walk through that wall.  Why?  Because the chances are so remote that it might as well be zero.  That is how I feel about your God.  The chance of a god existing are so remote it might as well be zero.  The chances of the Judea-Christian God existing are so remote compared to a god existing that it might as well not even be considered.

Math and logic, even scientific evidence, is a well to defined repeatable concept. Just because something has the label of objective doesn't mean you don't also use subjective observation as evidence.

If I understand you right then you are saying IF something is objective then we might use a subjective observation as evidence.  How does this relate to your God?  If something is objective then by definition we cannot use something subjective as sole evidence.  That is a logical contradiction.  If something is objective (real) then there will always be ways to test and examine it that are not subjective.  You might use evidence which is subjective to further back it up.  You can't use evidence that is subjective as the only evidence for somethings existence and call it objective or say it depicts reality.  Because it doesn't.  

What I've come to see in hard atheists is an absolute rejection of anything subjective. I agree that objectivity has a great deal more predictive power than subjectivity, but reason should be reasonable and even, not one-sided anything. I can honestly say I have faith and belief. My evidence is subjective, but at least it's a balanced look.

Many atheists rightly reject something if the only evidence for it is subjective.  We reject the notion that if a god or gods created everything that there would be no hard evidence for these events.  Everything we've ever, ever observed has a natural cause that doesn't need some super-being as an explanation.  To say there is a super-being lurking behind everything, keeping an eye on you and who created everything is paranoia.  Until you can show me proof of this that can be verified by others I trust then I see no reason to believe in this claim.  If you have to tell yourself that this is true despite the evidence to the contrary (faith) then you are fooling yourself into believing in this for no reason at all.

[dtackett]

I believe I disagree with your definition of faith. Faith is not an assertion despite contrary evidence. Faith is assertion unsupported by evidence where belief is assertion supported by evidence. In all of my arguements  with atheists I've never had one iota of any kind of evidence issued in support of a non belief. It is typically just assumed as the default. Is there evidence against the existance of God you're pruporting to have? If so please share. In the meantime, I have belief and Faith for many of my personal views. I understand with Faith that God exists, I support my belief in the aspects of God he has revealed to me subjectively with subjective evidence.

Since you're speaking for me I don't really need to do this but in logic speak a better logical statement would be,
1- Humans intuitively know X exists outside their perception
2- Humans label X = God/Gods
3- God reveals himself to Humans
4- Humans try and further define the aspects of X they percieved
5- Humans write various religious works, drawings, symbols to pass that understanding

And yes I would apply it equaly to Muslim, Christian, Jew, theist, etc. I don't feel it intelluctually dishonest or non-sequitur. So by the answers to my questions I would assume then you are a hard atheist, as opposed to agnostic atheist?

[LoneMateria]

I believe I disagree with your definition of faith. Faith is not an assertion despite contrary evidence. Faith is assertion unsupported by evidence where belief is assertion supported by evidence.

Wow that definition is completely backwards of the southern baptists I live around.  Let me ask you a question then.  How do you know your god created us?  By all the evidence we have we've evolved starting about 4 billion years ago from single celled organisms.  Yet somehow the god you submit to created us as his perfect creations worthy of love and worthy enough to kill his son over.  Yet evolution tells us that we are just the latest incarnation of a successful line of creatures that have been able to reproduce.  In order to believe your god created us you must take a leap of faith.  Which in this case is contrary to what the evidence points to.

In all of my arguements  with atheists I've never had one iota of any kind of evidence issued in support of a non belief. It is typically just assumed as the default. Is there evidence against the existance of God you're pruporting to have? If so please share. In the meantime, I have belief and Faith for many of my personal views. I understand with Faith that God exists, I support my belief in the aspects of God he has revealed to me subjectively with subjective evidence.

Okay please understand this.  When arguing the one who makes the claim is responsible for presenting evidence.  Atheists don't typically make the claim that there is no god.  I will be willing to do this.  However when arguing Christians are the ones asserting there is a magic man who created everything and is constantly watching you and reading your thoughts who is constantly judging you and is able to do stuff to you if he doesn't like you both in this life and the next (which another life after we die is an unproven assertion at best).  

Now if you want me to continue down the path of why there is no god you have to define god first.  Everyone has a different definition of the god they submit to.  Some people label their god as a feeling of good they get, others say he is an invisible bearded man who lives in the sky, and everything you can think of in between.  If you want to argue for the god of the Jews and the Christians as depicted in the bible then we can test the claims that are attributed to the god to determine it's validity.

That god created the universe in the wrong order, between 6 - 10 thousand years ago, in a few days, magically created every animal (without evolution), created things that don't exist like the firmament, has contradicting properties such as omniscience and omnipotence, was able to impregnate a woman with himself, made zombies walk the streets ... and the list of absurdities goes on.  Everything listed above can be tested to see if it's reasonably possible to do.  When you leave the realm of reality and move on to the realm of magic to have to not only show magic is possible, but that the deity you worship is able to use magic.  And if you are really left with no other alternative perhaps you should seek one.

Since you're speaking for me I don't really need to do this but in logic speak a better logical statement would be,
1- Humans intuitively know X exists outside their perception

Fail.  If something exists outside of our perceptions we cannot know it exists.  If there is no way to perceive something then there is no way to distinguish it from nothing.  If I have 2 empty jars sitting on my desk and in one there is something that exists outside of my perception and the other one is empty ... how am I supposed to distinguish the two?  If we do not have the ability to perceive something at all though our sense and through science then how do we know if its really there?  Just to say we intuitively know something how do we know thats not wishful thinking or our intuition is misleading us?  You can't know something like that exists.

And until you fix step one the rest are pointless.

And yes I would apply it equaly to Muslim, Christian, Jew, theist, etc. I don't feel it intelluctually dishonest or non-sequitur. So by the answers to my questions I would assume then you are a hard atheist, as opposed to agnostic atheist?

Then why do they all have conflicting stories about what god said and did and promised them?  The Jews are god's chosen people, the Christians say that contract is null and void and they are the chosen ones, and the Muslims say you are both wrong, the Hindus say there are hundreds of gods who do everything completely different.  To say that everyones view depicts reality is silly, someone has to be wrong and no one has to be right.

I'm an agnostic atheist.  You can't prove 100% there is no god.  However I do believe that the gods worshiped by most religions today are fake, man made creations.  Like I mentioned earlier it just depends how you define god.  If you define god as nature then yeah ... nature exists.  There are many definitions of a god that I wouldn't argue with but there are more that I would.

[dtackett]

I'm sorry you're only insight into religion in your local area is small minded. I have sought other answers. I "looked into" to varying degrees, pagan, mentalist, wiccan, protestant, catholic, baptist, mormon, jewish, budhist, muslim, noodly apendage, orthodox, fundamentalist, creationist, zionist, sun worshipers, polytheistic and even atheisim. I'm not claiming to be an authority on any of theese but I've sought answers elswhere.

I don't feel biblical creation and abiogenesis or evolution are incompatible. Are you asking me to reconcile human aspects or the whole story? Are you just baiting me with a question so you can shout apologetic, because frankly I don't have the time for that?

I know all about burden of proof, but you were making a positive claim that God doesn't exist. So you can define God. Define God please and what evidence
leads you to the conclusion he doesn't exist.

So it's impossible to know something exists outside our perception. How's this I know you're reading this message from an electronic device. I have no idea where you ar or who you are. I can't see, hear, touch, or taste you. I don't even know if you're a man / woman, boy/ girl, other, computer program. I'm interpreting ideas that exist outside my percievable reality, yet I have complete faith that there is an end to the chain somewhere and I'm not just arguing with myself. I have faith that human drive and ambition and goals are leading to something outside our CURRENT perception. Now we understand there are more than 5 senses and 100 years ago they would have laughed at that. Our perceptions change and expand like the universe. I'm positing that I have an idea of that goal, and that it could be reached or percieved one day like we percieve sandwiches today. Life's a party   , I live it best I can, while I wonder about things I'll never know.

[pinkocommie]

[youtube:3rl8pxum]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI[/youtube:3rl8pxum]

[LoneMateria]

Thank you for the most pointless non-answer ever dtackett.  I really enjoyed your, "Pointing out my logical fallacies makes you close minded," argument.  If you are looking for someone to agree with you perhaps you should aim to back up your claims.

With the biblical account of creation ... thank you for demonstrating why MY definition of faith is the more accurate one.

Now onto me defining your god ... its YOUR god, you fucking define it. ^_^  And when you do, assuming it's not something pointless, I will probably make the claim it doesn't exist.

Oh and you know i'm here because you are reading what i'm writing ... see.  And you never addressed my question of the 2 jars.  If I have 2 jars on my desk and one is empty and one contains something outside of my perception ... how can I tell them apart?  How can I tell the difference between nothing and something that exists outside of my perception?


Oh and pink ... I always loved that video.

[dtackett]

@pink - sorry the video won't get through the firewall here, I'm sure it's hilarious.

Thank you for the most pointless non-answer ever dtackett.  I really enjoyed your, "Pointing out my logical fallacies makes you close minded," argument.  If you are looking for someone to agree with you perhaps you should aim to back up your claims.

Why would I come to an atheist forum and expect anyone to agree with me? That's ridiculus and assinine. I don't believe I was making an arguement. I believe you were making an arguement against my logical statement and I was showing that you were incorrect through example. I don't believe I ever stated you were closed minded. If you ask a proper question I'd be more than happy to answer. Don't fault me if you didn't clearly enough state your question. It helps if it ends with something like ?

With the biblical account of creation ... thank you for demonstrating why MY definition of faith is the more accurate one.

How exactly does the statement "I don't feel biblical creation and abiogenesis or evolution are incompatible." followed by 2 questions equate to demonstrating anything remotely close to you defintion of faith much less it's validity?

Now onto me defining your god ... its YOUR god, you fucking define it. ^_^  And when you do, assuming it's not something pointless, I will probably make the claim it doesn't exist.

I'll define my God but none of that relates to your concept of God that you made an positive claim about. Nor have I positively claimed that God exists, based off any evidence. I won't go further unless you're more cooperative about sharing your concepts and definitions. My concept of God is an omniscient benevolent God existing outside our known universe and the originating cause of it.

Oh and you know i'm here because you are reading what i'm writing ... see.  And you never addressed my question of the 2 jars.  If I have 2 jars on my desk and one is empty and one contains something outside of my perception ... how can I tell them apart?  How can I tell the difference between nothing and something that exists outside of my perception?

That depends on your definition of yourself, which I have no concept of, you could be a computer generated hate algorythm for all I know   . I use my eyes to read, but only logic and reason can interpret those ideas, and they can't alone be used to prove the existance of said originating idea generator or deduce it's prupose. To answer your question: We can not with our known 5 senses percieve a difference between nothing things that exist outside our perception. Time however is an intangible and yet is within our perception, thus deemed real. Balance, Motion, maybe someday soon intuition all senses. Perhaps as our perceptions increase so will our understanding of our known universe. I don't try and stifle that you shouldn't either.