Happy Atheist Forum

Hi everyone!  

Matt here, a Christian throwing himself into the lion's den, interested in finding out why you believe some of the things you do about Christianity and theistic belief in general.  I'm hope to come across some good, meaningful questions as well as getting to know some of you along the way.  I'm a Maths teacher based in Southampton, England, and member of the jolly old C-of-E, soon to be married (the big day is in July - counting down the days!), and a lover of all things philosophical, theological and historical.  I'm a keen chess player (recently joined a club again having not played for a couple of years) and love song-writing and all things musical.

That's enough about me, but if you want to know more about me or the particulars of what I believe then please ask.  I'm not interesting in preaching here, so I'll only put across my views if they are relevant to a discussion.  I'm more interested in finding out your different approaches to the big questions of life and how they might relate to my own.

Looking forward to it,
Matt

Hi Matt

Welcome to HAF. Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage in July! By then I'll have been married (just the once ) for 31 years. I hope you have a long and happy marriage too.

Regards
Chris

Welcome Matt!

To sum it all up, the philosophical aspect of theistic religions are one thing but theism as a body of facts (on the creation of the universe, the afterlife, holy books etc.) fail to meet my standard of proof. That's why I reject them.

Welcome to HAF.

My husband and mine's anniversary is in July . . we managed to get the 777 date purely by accident (was the only opening where I wanted to have the ceremony).

Quote from: "Tank"Hi Matt

Welcome to HAF. Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage in July! By then I'll have been married (just the once ) for 31 years. I hope you have a long and happy marriage too.

Regards
Chris

Hi Chris, thanks for the kind welcome!  We're really excited, not long to go now, but also very fed up with all the planning!

Quote from: "xSilverPhinx"Welcome Matt!

To sum it all up, the philosophical aspect of theistic religions are one thing but theism as a body of facts (on the creation of the universe, the afterlife, holy books etc.) fail to meet my standard of proof. That's why I reject them.

Hi SilverPhin,

There are number of notable things that you say here.  You're absolutely right that we can't just extract the theistic question from the religious/"worldview" question - "God exists" necessarily comes with a lot of baggage, especially the question of which God exists.  I take the view that the only God one can rationally believe in is the Christian God.  The Christian God may well indeed not meet your standards of proof; the two key questions to my mind are (i) whether your subjective epistemological criteria should be universally applied and (ii) whether we should expect the Christian God to meet those criteria if He exists.  What are your views on those two questions?

Quote from: "Whitney"Welcome to HAF.

My husband and mine's anniversary is in July . . we managed to get the 777 date purely by accident (was the only opening where I wanted to have the ceremony).

Hi Whitney - Lucky, lucky, lucky!

Hello and welcome to HAF, Matt.

Quote from: "Matt S"

Quote from: "Tank"Hi Matt

Welcome to HAF. Congratulations on your forthcoming marriage in July! By then I'll have been married (just the once ) for 31 years. I hope you have a long and happy marriage too.

Regards
Chris

Hi Chris, thanks for the kind welcome!  We're really excited, not long to go now, but also very fed up with all the planning!

Fortunately my wife was not keen on a big ceremony, much to her Father's relief! My youngest daughter is getting married in September and nowadays finances are a little more sensible. We are paying 1/3, his parents are paying 1/3 and they are paying 1/3; but each chunk is still coming in at 4 figures though (and that's in £)!

Quote from: "Matt S"

Quote from: "xSilverPhinx"Welcome Matt!

To sum it all up, the philosophical aspect of theistic religions are one thing but theism as a body of facts (on the creation of the universe, the afterlife, holy books etc.) fail to meet my standard of proof. That's why I reject them.

Hi SilverPhin,

There are number of notable things that you say here.  You're absolutely right that we can't just extract the theistic question from the religious/"worldview" question - "God exists" necessarily comes with a lot of baggage, especially the question of which God exists.  I take the view that the only God one can rationally believe in is the Christian God.  The Christian God may well indeed not meet your standards of proof; the two key questions to my mind are (i) whether your subjective epistemological criteria should be universally applied and (ii) whether we should expect the Christian God to meet those criteria if He exists.  What are your views on those two questions?

1) Well when you go into the subjective (as in just limited to personal experience and paradigms?) it gets complicated. I don't think that any religious or anti-religious subjective criteria can be universally applied. One of the main ideas behind designing methods to determine objective knowledge (such as the scientific method) is to remove as many 'bugs' as possible such as biases which run rampant in the subjective and filter interpretation one way or another, so I don't trust subjective knowledge and truths that much.
I based my standards on knowledge gained from raw objective proofs and so far have not found reasonably strong reasons to reach the conclusion that if there is a god then he/she/it is known or even can even be known, unless when referring to something like Spinoza's god, the pantheistic "god" or something like that, but worshipping gods of those types is pointless and they don't actually add anything other than a outlook and colouring of reality. IMO they're what you get when you translate wonder into a strange personification but of no practical use in my life. The way I see it the question is beyond epistemology. God is essentially beyond reach, subjectively or objectively.  

2) Yes, I would expect a god who threatens me with hellfire for not believing in him to show strong, indisputable proof of his existence. I'm inclined to think that a god with such an invested interest in making believers out of everybody will do something more than rely on people who only have subjective proof to make his existence and word known.


Edited to add:

Why do you think that the only God one can rationally believe in is the Christian God?

Bonvenon al la Forumo!
[spoiler:ipwnge1u]Welcome to the Forum![/spoiler:ipwnge1u]

HEllo! Hope to hear more from you!

Quote from: "Matt S"The two key questions to my mind are (i) whether your subjective epistemological criteria should be universally applied and (ii) whether we should expect the Christian God to meet those criteria if He exists.  What are your views on those two questions?

Hello Matt

I think you should be able to get some pretty good theological, humanistic and moralistic discussions going on this forum. Especially if you take it from an angle of trying to understand different perspectives rather than preaching. It is highly unlikely you will convert anyone and highly unlikely we will convert you. But discussing differences of opinion is healthy and that is how we learn. Welcome on board.

With regards to subjective epistemological criteria, this is our key difference, how we recognise, accept and attain knowledge. When you say "should be universally applied" well, I don't think people have much right to say how others should attain knowledge, how they should think or what they should do. We all have different lives and each of us desires the independance and responsibilities that go along with living out our lives. Obviously for societies to function we do need a set of common rules with consequences but I would like these kept to a minimum. The cost of implementing rules is our freedoms.

For your second question "whether we should expect the Christian God to meet those criteria if He exists", I don't expect anyone to meet my criteria of values, these are mine and they assist me with regards to making my decisions. If the Christian god does exist and is depicted accurately in the bible then I know that this god would not live up to my values.

Hi Matt,

Welcome to the board. Southampton eh? Where abouts? I'm an old Chandlers Fordian