Er, relying on 'Revelation' is a sure road to making horrid errors, no? The evidence for your specific Revelation being the Revelation is incredibly sparse. Then you're suddenly at risk of justifying evil, if you believe in the wrong Revelation.
The fine-tuning argument for God's existence
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Perfection
The Great Head.
I believe the understanding that we are the product of the process of evolution not some benevolent diety is important to getting at who we really are. That doesn't mean we must be unemotional, uncaring, worthless, purposeless automatons. We don't turn into something different because of this knowledge we just learn something about who we are. This is important because we're entering an era that will smash at the mysteries of ourselves in ways we can scarcely imagine. In the past 100 years, we went from a world where a lucky few had the ability to see more at night then a fire could give them to a world where most have a device that can perform a billion calculations in under a second. We engineer our food, we can control when we have a baby, we've transcribed our genetic code, we go to space, we tap into nerves to control prosthetics, we map our brain with ever increasing detail. This is the time where we learn and confront who we really are as a species. Knowing the truth and acting on it with compassion is very important.
Educators are put in a delicate position. Because they need to balance being inclusive and informing truth.
Educators are put in a delicate position. Because they need to balance being inclusive and informing truth.
Greek pederasty I think perfectly demonstrates the danger of relying on what one thinks of as divine revelation. It's not that they listened to the wrong God, or read the wrong book, it's because if the fallibility of human morality. The good thing is we can as a society decide what we really want and together work towards having better rules. It's something that requires an open mind, careful thinking, compassion, and wisdom.
Turns out that people keep suspecting and claiming that these claims go beyond the available evidence, without ever looking what the available evidence actually is.
The lies that religious people are spreading is actually what keeps driving me away from faith.
So what is right? The conscience of the wise Greeks or common wisdom of today?
And you did not answer my question about whether I understand your feelings correctly. If you don't want to that's cool, you don't have any obligation to answer me obviously
Perfection
The Great Head.
I will concede that the Christian church does have a lot of expertise in the matter of child sexual abuse.
Tigranes
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Oh here you are. Did you email Britannica already about the lies they spread about such fundamental things like the fact that superposition states are never actually observed? If "religious people" together with atheists like Sean Carroll and the rest of the textbooks on quantum mechanics cannot prove you a simple fact about physics, how can I possibly discuss things like faith with you?
So I will stick with the last thing we might have some hopes seeing eye to eye: the meaning of the statement made in simple English in the context of my post.
1. You read "these claims go far beyond the available evidence" and call it "lies spread by religious people".
2. You understand the statement as an attack on evolution as science, defined as a method of investigation involving things like careful measurements, repeatable experiments, and especially a skeptical, open-minded attitude that insists that all claims be carefully tested.
3. But the statement applies to the attempt in substituting the science with philosophy. Theory of evolution has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must not have included any role for God. Students are not supposed to approach this philosophy with open-minded skepticism, but to believe it on faith.
4. The moment you claim that the means of creation must not have included any role for God -- you indeed go beyond the available evidence. Evolution is scientific theory not philosophical dogma and should not be presented us such. Available evidence allows me to say that I know that things do evolve. This is the domain of science. In addition I believe that God creates through evolution while materialism belives that the means of creation must not have included any role for God. This is the domain of the faith and beliefs, and should be recognized as such.
Finally -- faith has nothing to do with religious people. Faith is the relationship between you and God, not between you and religious people. There are Pilates, there are Caiaphases, there are Judases, there are Peters and then there are Johns.
Tigranes
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Christian Church are the people who really are trying to follow the Christ. Real invisible Church is the Body of Christ, every true believer is like a living cell, acting like His hands and feets in this sad world. Only God knows who really belongs to His own Body. Working as priest and actually being the priest of the Most Holy God are two different things. When God visited Earth -- He was condemned to death by those who were suppose to recognize Him. So don't gloat in vain. Child abuse happens by actual biological fathers sadly, not just by those who had chosen never become a biological father.
Tigranes
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So what is right? The conscience of the wise Greeks or common wisdom of today?
And you did not answer my question about whether I understand your feelings correctly. If you don't want to that's cool, you don't have any obligation to answer me obviously
I hope you evolved enough to answer the first question
. As for the second -- I am not sure what feelings. You mean the 4 point position you have compiled on the previous page? Yes, it is pretty much it. I don't know why people think that I don't want to answer. This is not my thread, I will never open a thread like "Ask me", I do not claim anything about my abilities, except doubting the doubters, and defending the faith with resources available. Someone posted in this thread -- "Do the people still discuss God?". As you see they do. And I only hope this discussion was not a complete waste for you.
Oh no, don't misunderstand his position. Faiths make a huge number of very confident statements about unknowables (in this thread, someone 'blamed' angels for the existence of Natural Evils, iirc). We all know this happens. It's no biggie. We don't call those lies. We just point out that you're way too confident for the evidence you have.
It's the outright falsehoods that stymie the ability to evangelize. Muslims distort the Qur'anic text in order to claim that it predicts scientific miracles. Christians teach their kids that the Noah event really happened.
The believers claim to have a personal relationship with God, and that the Scripture helps them commune with God. But then their relationship with God and the Scripture gives them less insight than non-believers have!
Tigranes
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Are you trying to say I misunderstood the specific misunderstanding about evolution? And then expand into general questions of overtly confident believers? Don't add to the confusion please. Noah s Ark has the Message, it is not a CNN report about hurricane Katrina. The idea is that species and humanity were brought to near extinction. There are invisible links between violating moral laws and well being of people and animals who also depend on our acts.
Tigranes
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Remember what I said about spirit of holiness? You recognize you own moral limitations and look for unlimited. Those who trust in Me would not be ashamed, says the Lord. Surely if God exists He would find the way to get the Message across. It is written that to everyone will be given according to his faith. You don't believe God loves you and acted accordingly? That's your hell chosen by yourself.
That's a really scary thing, to assume that God has revealed the moral path. People who don't believe in Revelation at least realize we have to muddle our way forwards. But as soon as a faithful person finds himself trying to imitate the Scripture's instruction (instead of thinking for themselves), then horrid things can happen.
Tigranes
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Horrid things are happening by default, when you are blind, or follow those who are blind themselves. Whatever your problem is -- God has the answer. You know you are rejecting the hope and you call it thinking for yourself? Or do you really think following the Scripture does not involve thinking for yourself? Following Revelations means choosing the narrow path, your flesh is against you, the world is against you, metaphysical evil is against you. It involves a lot of struggle and thinking and crying sometimes. Even the Perfect One was thinking it over and over, And He was saying, "Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.
As an apostate you have chosen yourself an easy life, simple as that. Ever heard of an atheist strangling to be faithful to his disbelieve?
As an apostate you have chosen yourself an easy life, simple as that. Ever heard of an atheist strangling to be faithful to his disbelieve?
I would agree that we are a products of an evolution only the evolution is much more a complex phenomena then recognised by present day science. I refuse to believe that consciousness is sole product of molecular friction or something like that although that also may be true. If matter has produced consciousness its becouse the capacity for consciousness was already involved in matter. I would go even further to state that matter is nothing else but transfigured consciousness - mind above matter - and that at the begining there was infinite consciousness.
I'd like to point out that having any device with great capacity while having semianimal consciousness doesnt necessary mean that much - it can even be very dangerous.
Where does the very important compassion you are talking about comes from? We have been exposed to teaching of religions for centuries and assimilated it from there and religion have these teaching precisely becouse it doesnt view life as something purely mechanical and material. To become a master of physical reality is great achievement but cannt satisfy us fully simply becouse thats not all we are...
Ethics, morality, and compassion are just as compatible with the belief that the world is "purely mechanical and material" as the are with the belief that it isn't. I'm very tired of theists and other religious types claiming that their worldview is somehow more ethical than other people's. It's not. If there is a God, that doesn't explain ethics or make it more objective than if there isn't a God. And if there is a God, truly ethical behaviour is no more rational or sensible than if there isn't a God. Theists like to assert that atheists cannot make sense of morality, but they overlook the fact that theism makes no better sense of it either.
Mise
isle of lucy
First off most of what you are saying you are tired of isnt even my opinion but your projection. I am aware that there are/ have been many excelent people who are atheist and many believers who have done horrible things. What I want to ask you is this: by what ideal atheism ascertains/ applies compassion and where does this ideal comes from?
Different atheists would have different answers to that. I'd be inclined to give you Moore's answer, which is that it just is right, and that's that. Classical theists think that this is the case with mathematical and logical truths - they're necessarily true, and don't depend on God for their truth - so I don't see why moral truths, if there are any, can't be the same.
And the question where we get these ideals is easily answered in evolutionary terms: societies that didn't think compassion to be good, at least to some degree, would tend not to survive. Whether this selection occurred at the biological level or the social level doesn't make much difference from our point of view. The result is that most societies and most individuals today have a fairly broad consensus on what constitutes desirable behaviour, because this is precisely the behaviour that allowed these societies to get to the present day at all.
I would then ask you exactly the same thing. Where do theists get the idea that compassion is a good thing? What, for a theist, makes compassion a good thing? Why should a theist be compassionate?
A theist can't answer those questions any more satisfactorily than an atheist can. The theist might, of course, say that God makes compassion a good thing and gives us the notion that it's a good thing. But that just pushes the problem back a stage, because why does God choose to make compassion good and not (say) hatred? Moreover, what reason does a theist have to be compassionate that an atheist doesn't have? Fear of punishment by God? But that's not morality, it's just prudence. Augustine pointed that out centuries ago and said that the person who abstains from sin in order to avoid punishment doesn't hate sin, only the punishment, and that's not a moral attitude.
This is why I say I'm tired of theists making these challenges to atheists about where moral values come from or why one should be moral. They assume that theism can answer these questions satisfactorily and that it's just atheists who face these challenges. But theism can't answer these questions in the slightest. Theists need to see that they're in no better position regarding these challenges than anyone else.
Horrid things are happening by default, when you are blind, or follow those who are blind themselves. Whatever your problem is -- God has the answer. You know you are rejecting the hope and you call it thinking for yourself? Or do you really think following the Scripture does not involve thinking for yourself? Following Revelations means choosing the narrow path, your flesh is against you, the world is against you, metaphysical evil is against you. It involves a lot of struggle and thinking and crying sometimes. Even the Perfect One was thinking it over and over, And He was saying, "Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.
As an apostate you have chosen yourself an easy life, simple as that. Ever heard of an atheist strangling to be faithful to his disbelieve?
I'm not doubting that following Revelation is hard, and that the believers work very hard to follow the Revelation. The issue kicks in when the Revelation is incorrect, and the believers cannot migrate to a superior path because their faith locks them in.
I'm not sure I've chosen the easy life, and it's potentially condescending to say that. I used to believe in the Revelation, but I shucked it when it was wrong about too many things.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
No offense, but it sort of blows my mind that someone doesn't understand this. I also don't understand at all how someone can think that you need a supernatural agent in order to do good deeds.
I do good deeds because I want to be nice to people - because I want them to feel nice. Because most of the time - I'm a nice guy. Aren't you?
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