Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
But why should Genesis be considered to be any better an explanation than any other of the bazillions of creation myths?
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Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible
- Thread starter Rusty Tyler
- Start date
But why should Genesis be considered to be any better an explanation than any other of the bazillions of creation myths?
Mojo
Mostly harmless
It's the same as the religionista claim that without the threat of divine retribution there would be nothing to stop anyone stealing and raping. It only tells us something about the religionistas.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
Mojo
Mostly harmless
It's really hard to come up with original sins these days.
Steve
Penultimate Amazing
One anecdote at a time? I can think of myriad better ways to get the attention of humanity. Gods seem to be spectacularly poor at what should be a very simple task for them.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
Omnipotent beings are invariably poor communicators.
Jack by the hedge
Safely Ignored
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That suggests a lack of imagination on the part of the entity sending the purported message. If the message is genuinely important then the fact that the great majority of the human race are unaware of it would indicate a very poor choice of method for propagating it. Don't you think? Writing it in the sky in letters of flame would get more attention. A talking dog would get more attention for that matter.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
How do you know that? What's your source?
Why?
"Validity" seems like a loaded word here. You were trying to ague that the mere occurrence of an NDE constituted reliable evidence of the things imagined while in that state. There's no evident reason to consider a non-veridical NDE any different than any other of the brain's possible imaginative mental states. NDEs are valid in the sense that we accept that the person had the experience. There's no evidence that any of the experienced phenomena are, or should be considered, veridically real.
Your different treatment of NDEs seems to be motivated by your desire to consider them evidence in favor of a religious truth claim rather than a difference in the evidence. This is what we mean by confirmation bias. You prefer a particular hypothesis over others solely because it aligns with your belief.
No. The claims are simply disbelieved because there is no testable objective evidence in their favor.
No.
...or more often, contrary to evidence. This is not a concern per se. An individual human's belief in the absence of or contrary to evidence is that person's own business. However, among a collection of humans, when an unevidenced truth claim is proposed as the basis of collective norms, skeptics want to take a closer look.
Nicely picked cherries.
First, you ignore the difference between veridical and non-veridical NDEs. You acknowledge the existence of both, but you ignore the notion that only non-veridical NDEs are alleged to provide proof for an afterlife. There is no reason to supposed the NDEs constitute a coherent set of phenomena.
Second, non-veridical NDEs do not exhibit all of the claimed properties. You need to consider the NDEs that do not feature an encounter with God or images of what you purport to be an afterlife.
Third, there is absolutely no evidence that the person (or any part of them) travelled to any other place. And in fact there is considerable evidence that the person remained right there. Your interpretation of a portion of NDEs as the soul of a person traveling to an afterlife is classic circular reasoning resulting in confirmation bias.
Fourth, most of the properties you list can be just as easily explained psychologically as the result of a brush with death.
Thermal
August Member
Why tho? A God could pretty effortlessly have a big neon sign in the sky stretching from horizon to horizon saying "I saw that" or some other non negotiable personal in-your-face proof of His existence. So why the cloak and dagger routine?
Saying "you need to have faith" is a non answer. No you don't. There is no reason at all to believe in something that appears not to exist. There is no reason to create evil to tempt and torment His creation. There is no reason for a toddler to be raped and murdered and their killer get away with it. There's really only two options:
1. God is a malicious psycho, as we understand malice and psychosis, or
2. It's all a bunch of silliness.
I prefer the latter, and find it a more satisfying explanation.
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Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
Good question, thanks.
No, that's not what I meant.
What I mean is at the end of physical life, if there is nothing more, what was the point?
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
The created universe isn't enough evidence?
Romans 1:20 NIV
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—
his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made,
so that people are without excuse.
Jack by the hedge
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At the end of the cake, there was no more cake. But I enjoyed the cake. I am glad there was cake. I liked sharing the cake with others. I didn't think to myself "what was the point of the cake now it's finished?".
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As there seems to be no self-evident reason to exist other than to exist, I'm inclined to believe that if any additional purpose is desired, each individual should choose that purpose for themselves. Servitude to an imaginary being is not my idea of a desirable purpose, but I recognize my fellow beings as equally deserving of autonomy, so to each their own. When humans congregate, value judgments among individuals regarding their stated purpose (or lack thereof) are probably inevitable, but rather immature in my opinion. When conflicts inevitably arise among individuals regarding the the activities they engage in while pursuing those disparate purposes (or in absence of one), basic fairness prevents us from elevating one "meaning of life" above another and therefore one set of antecedent activities above another.
The only way to do that is to agree upon an objective basis for evaluating causes and effects. This is the only way to properly ignore the why's and wherefores of any particular stated purpose (which are the individuals' own business) and focus only on the activities engaged in, insofar as they have causes and effects that affect others. Great violence is done to this system when that basis is improperly attributed to some purpose other that the common, objective determination and thereby subjected to comparative value judgments, irrelevant axioms, and improperly elevated suppositions. Efforts to achieve an objective determination should not be mistaken for efforts to impose one idea of the meaning of life on others.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No evidence that it was created in the religious sense, and no need to consider that it must have been.
Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
Question begging noted.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Why does there need to be any other point?
Thermal
August Member
As others said, no. There's nothing with a signature on it so much as just being there, like Covid-19 and cancer.
There's no reason for a God to be hiding from His creation, and no reason to rely on faith. It's one of those premises that has to be taken as a given (like creating evil) or the whole mythos falls apart.
Eta: non- believers see right through the canned answers that they told us in Sunday school. "You must have faith" is a cop out to cover up that annoying problem of there being nothing to back any of this up.
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The problem I have is that from where I'm sitting, "you must have faith" must also mean "you must be able to guess correctly which of the many things that all rely on 'you must have faith,' you should actually put your faith in." And how are you supposed to do that? With feels?
Thermal
August Member
Naw, man, you have faith in the Bible because it is the Word of God. And how do we know this? Because it says so in the Bible. QEDMF.
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
First: why does there need to be a point?
Second: the point could be what one actually did with one's life.
Personally, I'm quite happy with the idea of life, the universe and everything having no point and also that I may have done a few decent things with my time here and drunk some very good wine and listened to a lot of JS Bach. Good enough for me.