are you an atheist?

corey is wondering if he left the oven on, focus man

focus on that sweet sweet holymeat throbbing just under JCs robes

do these intolerant attitudes of yours have religious grounds? i haven't been paying attention to what you're saying. either way, i think it's time for you to ZIP IT UP and COOL IT DOWN (TM)

this guy is funny, bet he gets eaten alive once he leaves the nest

http://www.crazy-tattoo-designs.com/prayer_hands_tattoo.gif

^Not prayer hands, clapping hands.

He looks like a young Kenny Rogers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ8k6fVe25k

hands up who has no idea what "intolerant" means

I just finished reading Canticle For Leibowitz (don't know how I avoided it for so long, but I guess I'm not much of a sci-fi fan), and I thought that had some wonderful discussions between atheists and theists: dignified and respectful (sometimes - others not som much). I guess these things are not well suited to the internet.

were you there when they crucifieeeeeeeeeeeed my loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooord

Big difference between the Christianity that is whatever you get out of the Bible and the one peddled on TV and in DC. I actually don't consider the latter to be Christianity, because I have read the Bible and it's way more concerned with idolization than homosexuality, greed than abortion, etc. Valuing a written word over a human being is the definition of idolization, and is the bloody sacrifice "Christians" have been saved from by Jesus. If the Bible is true most "Christians" are going to Hell.

I only consider 1 guy in Cape Town to be truly Christian

I've come around to the way of thinking that people wearing trucker hats ironically are still a part of and validating trucker culture.

topical

so one thing I've heard the apologia (ie, Bill Lane Craig) group claim is that there is 'archaeological evidence' for the resurrection of Jesus. as impossibly stupid as that sounds, I can't seem to find what 'evidence' they're pointing to that says this, just most scholars being dismissive of whatever it is. anybody know what it is?

You'd be amazed at how many Evangelical Christians think this is true.... Or maybe you (sh)wouldn't.

He outlines his position here
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-there-historical-evidence-for-the-resurrection-of-jesus-the-craig-ehrman

oh wow, thanks. Yikes. Well I can see why WLC is worshiped as a God in the apologetic community, as he's an intelligent guy and a master debater. and Ehrman was guilty of some drops there. but my lord, I had no idea what a loon this guy was until I read this. In debate, some of these arguments may have been impressive, but on paper we have a dude suggesting we can mathematically prove a resurrection based on a dubious formula, as well as ignoring the differences between oral and written traditions.

I love Bart Ehrman...read three of his books thus far, my only complaint is that there's so much overlap between the three that once you've read one, you're skipping sections of the next few to get to the stuff he hadn't touched in prior books. but still, great reads.

That Jesus rose naturally from the dead is fantastically improbable. But I see no reason whatsoever to think that it is improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead.

In order to show that that hypothesis is improbable, you’d have to show that God’s existence is improbable. But Dr. Ehrman says that the historian cannot say anything about God. Therefore, he cannot say that God’s existence is improbable. But if he can’t say that, neither can he say that the resurrection of Jesus is improbable. So Dr. Ehrman’s position is literally self-refuting.

sad to read wilfully deranged nonsense like this.

tsrobodo yr big post earlier was a rare highlight in this shitshow of a thread

oh did my tags fail? first two paras a WLC quote from the link

Im just gonna imagine that the position is "welp, they havent found a body so...."

But I see no reason whatsoever to think that it is improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead.

starting at conclusion, working backwards

At the risk of reviving this thread, this is an interesting Q&A with a Jewish philosopher trying to explain how he can practice his faith as a naturalist who denies the existence of supernatural beings:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/is-belief-a-jewish-notion/?hp&rref=opinion

his description of his relationship w/ god sounds pretty close to my own

sounds like a very smart person moving goal-posts to satisfy a personal balance between their dedications to traditions and logic.

if it works, more power....etc

i think more reconciling a kind of intellectualism w/ a more sincere personal phenomenology. it's strawmanning to assume the only reason someone could want to preserve a 'relationship with god' is bc of fealty to tradition. (i wouldn't argue that tradition plays no role, but that it's unfair to assume that's all it is)

The tradition thing was a guess as to why one might hold on to theism in spite of being a naturalist that denies the existence of supernatural beings.

Whether it's tradition or whatever as motivation I was really commenting more about the goal-post moving.

i don't think you need to guess, tho. he says outright:

H.W.: I wasn’t speaking about what God is, nor do I know what he is. (Remember his enigmatic remark in Exodus 3:14, “I am what I am.”) I was addressing my experience, with its strange duality: In prayer, we express our deepest selves to God who understands. I pray, and I mean it. But I am “blessed” with an additional sense that, in so supposing, I’m over my head; I don’t know what I’m talking about. Both feelings are real and powerful.

These experiences are not theory-driven. The perceptions and understandings of the religious practitioner are more like the outpourings of a poet than they are like theoretical pronouncements. Moments of insight, illumination and edification do not necessarily respect one another; illuminating one aspect of a phenomenon may occlude others. Poetry, at its most profound, need not observe consistency.

also i don't know why it's goal post moving. it's not like he believed in an anthropomorphic god and then you challenged him so now he's moved the goal posts to allow for an non-anthropomorphic god. his sense of god is initially non-anthropomorphic and then he allows that anthropormophism might be a legitimate way to experience this thing that is essentially not that.

And, lo, when they took span of the posts, they hath moveth

That's part of the rationale but not necessarily the motivation to explore rationale that keeps his theism in a category totally separate from naturalism.

The widely accepted interpretations are anthropomorphic so I'm assuming he started with that version.

that's not how i was raised or taught to believe in god, which he alludes to here:

Yet religious anthropomorphism coexists with a sense that, while hardly universal even in my religious community, goes deep: in thinking about God, about what he is, about how he works in our world, we are over our heads.

cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology#In_the_Jewish_tradition

Could you define for me what exactly god's relationship with existing is here?

However, he had no views about their metaphysical status; he was highly skeptical about philosophers’ inquiries into such things. He had trouble, or so I imagine, understanding what was at stake in the question of whether the concept of existence had application to such abstractions. Feynman had no worries about whether he was really thinking about numbers. But “existence” was another thing.

It is this distinction between participation and theorizing that seems to me relevant to religious life.

Freud argued persuasively, I think, for the psychological explicability of the religious impulse, and for the psychological needs to which the impulse is responsive. I’m sure something like that is right but, contrary to Freud’s thinking, it doesn’t threaten my own outlook or even the more usual supernaturalism. God’s reality or existence is compatible with the putative needs.

I'm not sure why he's going to the rescue of supernaturalism here. It's an issue of parsimony, not compatability. If Freud's explanation for the psychological impulse is right, and there are no other independent reasons for belief in a supernatural God, then Occam's Razor kicks in.

His own position is so anodyne that he shouldn't be too surprised if atheists go after supernaturalists instead. He's saying that he has a powerful experience of God, without ontological commitments. No reason to doubt that.

I read that as a redefining into such vague terms that you're either attributing the term to a inner voice you've created for yourself and/or some other abstraction.

So vague in fact that I have a lot of trouble accepting that it isn't working backwards.

"Moses said to God, 'Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you," and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM" — Exodus 3:13-14

I don't understand what that means.

Should be understood as: I AM THAT (which) I AM. But then, names are extremely arbitrary by nature and God would know that I'm pretty sure.

ah, "people who don't believe in the only correct manner of believing are real stupid-head meanies", vol. 243

So what's the deal w religious ppl who don't follow any of the tenets of their chosen faith bt still get annoyed abt atheism and so on, I don't get them

[seinfeldbass-slap.wav]

"any of the tenets" "chosen" "get annoyed" etc

sorry, forgot i'd given up arguing with easily-confused literalists for Lent

Should be easy to explain it to me too, then

What's the deal with theists always arguing as deists.