Respecting Christians

[Multivac]

Even if their beliefs lead them to irrational behaviors?

Like praying to an invisble sky daddy?

Take, for instance, those that followed Harold Camping. Some people lost their life savings. You would not attempt to persuade them even if the person said "I'm happy with my personal beliefs"?

If they truly believe, there is nothing I could say that would change their mind.

 

[Multivac]

Respect...should be given to all beings.

Agreed. Until they disrespect me by trying to ram their religion down my throat, or show in other ways that they have not earned my respect.

 

[Multivac]

That's still semantic dodging. Disbelief is naturally a sin, atheism is therefore a sinful behaviour.

Of course it isn't.

I've adumbrated why it's repulsive and it's a very simple deductive proposition by now. As far as I'm concerned, excuse the accusation, but you're doing the whole Socratic irony thing and pretending that you don't understand what is so fundamentally abhorrent about finding eternal suffering to be a just result of anything one does on this Earth.

It is fundamentally abhorent that a so-called god will inflict eternal punishment on anyone. What right would such an entity have to torment anyone?

You can say you don't want me to suffer, which very well might contradict a few biblical passages (one of which I mentioned in the OP), but you can't say it's the wrong choice otherwise you'll be disagreeing with your god's divine judgement.

You may have a god but I do not.

Fair point, but it makes the whole thing a little sinuous. The Bible dictates that we'll be off to Hell because disbelief is a sin and sin will send you to hell (or because we aren't "saved" by Jesus, however you want to put it), and because that is God's judgement, it is just and we deserve it; in fact, all of humanity deserves it because we are inherently sinners.

Hell does not exist. God does not exist.

 

[cj.23]

Hell does not exist. God does not exist.

Evidence?

cj x

 

[Multivac]

You clearly haven't read anything I've written, so I'm not compelled to return the favour because every point you've raised has already been addressed.

One more time because I'm such a charitable young chap:

If I'm not saved by Jesus, I'm a sinner. Sinners deserve Hell because God deems it so for some reason. God's judgement is flawless and perfectly just. You, therefore, as a follower of your god, condone my and anyone else's suffering based on the whim of your deity.

It's a very clear and obvious point I'm making.

It is a very clear point, but that doesn't make it true.

 

[dafydd]

Evidence?

cj x

Do you mean the total lack of evidence for the existence of Hell and god?

 

[Multivac]

Imagine you have a racist friend. He hates some race that neither of you belong to. Say the Inuit - just hates the furry little bastards. Despite neither of you being Inuit, and neither of you even knowing any Inuit, would you find yourself respecting him less because of it?

Yes, definitely.

So it is with damnation. Despite the fact that there is no hell, and I have no soul to burn in it, I still find it faintly deplorable that you believe I deserve to be there.

Me, too.

 

[Multivac]

I certainly don't want to be in the presence of the god of the bible. As described in the bible, he is extraordinarily evil. Why would I want to spend eternity with him? And if he makes me suffer forever because of this, he is even more evil.

God has always struck me as behaving like a petulant three year old, who can't have what he wants.

Good thing all this crap isn't real.

Excellent point.

 

[Multivac]

Believing bad things to be true, and wanting to change them, is neither deplorable or cowardice.

Agree completely.

It's fine that you don't believe that bad things are true, but don't make the mistake of thinking that just because I know them to be true, that I want them to be.

Fair point.

 

[cj.23]

Do you mean the total lack of evidence for the existence of Hell and god?

There is evidence for both. There is evidence for unicorns as well. And Bigfoot, and alien abduction, and so forth. The hypotheses may be underdetermined, but you can put forward evidence for them.

cj x

 

[dafydd]

There is evidence for both. There is evidence for unicorns as well. And Bigfoot, and alien abduction, and so forth. The hypotheses may be underdetermined, but you can put forward evidence for them.

cj x

I've never seen any. Perhaps you can point me to this evidence? There is no evidence for the other things you mentioned. Where you are going to find evidence for the existence of unicorns is a puzzle. I strongly suspect that you are not being serious. I'm not accusing you of trolling, merely of amusing yourself.

 

[Multivac]

Again, from my personal experience, using my late father as an example, do you think it is wrong of me to have not respected or honoured him when he made no pretense of his feelings about women? About how he would ogle young girls with his snide remarks of "if they are old enough to bleed they are old enough to butcher," and countless other awful "beliefs" he had?

No.

Yes, he was nice enough most of the time to me. He fed me and provided for me, but I could never shake what I knew he believed. Goodness knows I tried for many years.

This is the absolute, rock bottom minimum that anyone should expect from a parent.

So, was I supposed to just respect him for his behaviour alone and ignore his beliefs regarding myself, my mother, and all women?

Again, no, he didn't deserve your respect.

So, seriously, was I wrong to NOT respect and honour my father?

No, you were not wrong.

 

[Multivac]

Learning to show respect to the idiot is a life skill that will serve you forever, not just at family gatherings.

Agreed, but for someone like Minarvia's dad, it would be a show of respect rather than actual respect. Obviously these are two very different things.

Just because you "respect" someone doesn't mean you have to agree with them or give your stamp of approval to their disgusting ideas.

True, but there are some beliefs that make it impossible for me to respect the people that hold them.

 

[cj.23]

I've never seen any. Perhaps you can point me to this evidence? There is no evidence for the other things you mentioned. Where you are going to find evidence for the existence of unicorns is a puzzle. I strongly suspect that you are not being serious. I'm not accusing you of trolling, merely of amusing yourself.

Sure: this forum. Well maybe not for unicorns - but the rest. People argue they have spoken to God; people claim mystical experiences; there are endles threads on Bigfoot, and I'm pretty sure that claimed NDE experiences of Hell get a mention a few times. For evidence for unicorns, hey I can do that - Strabo and Pliny mention them, and a few ancient authors report them.

Yep I'm being tongue in cheek - my point is that evidence is simply data used to argue for a hypothesis. So there IS evidence for Bigfoot, God, my being immensely sexy, and almosy any other outlandish claim - people present data to prop up their arguments.

The question is not the existence of evidence; it's if the evidence is strong, weak, or utterly rubbish. Dawkins says there is no evidence for God: I point at a church building and say "evidence people think God talks to them!" The evidence exists - the question is does it support the God hypothesis well, or can we explain churches in other ways? (Yes, obviously). The Church evidence is in terms of philosophy of science underdetermined.

Undertermination is when the same piece of data fits two rival hypotheses. In terms of Bigfoot, the Patterson film is presented as proving the sasquatch exists; you can use the same evidence to argue the opposite, as it appears to be faked. It's underdetermined - the data can be used as evidence for competing hypotheses.

So whenever anyone says there is no evidence for X, I joke there is. IT's the strength of the evidence - you can have loads of evidence for unicorns, but it is all incredibly weak to my mind, so I assume unicorns do not exist despite all the evidence.

Hope mildly amusing.

cj x

 

[Multivac]

It's also hard to know what is meant when someone says they are an atheist -- all I can tell is the person does not believe in Gods/Goddesses.

It's as simple as that. There is no atheist bible, or set of attitutudes that all atheists have in common, except for the non-belief in gods.

 

[Multivac]

Evidence?

cj x

The total lack of evidence showing that they exist. There is the same level of evidence for the existence of god as there is for for pink Unicorns. i.e. none.

 

[cj.23]

It's as simple as that. There is no atheist bible, or set of attitutudes that all atheists have in common, except for the non-belief in gods.

Yep, agreed.

cj x

 

[cj.23]

The total lack of evidence showing that they exist. There is the same level of evidence for the existence of god as there is for for pink Unicorns. i.e. none.

I dug out this old post of mine from the thread I cited on page 5 of this one, to show there is, on this very forum, evidence for such
Pink Unicorns! Bah humbug! I'll tell you about Pink Unicorns!

have you not read the Revelations of Noodle, the Pastafarian gnostic text?

Lo! on the 15th day when the small furry animals were a whitterin' and the birds a twitterin and the danish bikers smoking da weed on da beach, not much happened.
Yet on the sixteenth day, about the Twelfth Hour, if you lived in Attica, which no one in this Holy Text did, Larsen did yawn. And the Creationists did tremble and abase themselves: stercus maximus, world without end.
And on the seventeenth day Her Equine Horniness did grow bored, and note that the Humans did disparage her holy Name. And Lo, Hi, and Twist, she did decide to manifest in her glory.
And so it came to pass that in a basement where CJ laboured over a hot keyboard, bashing out a text on medieval hagiography, there was a smell of candy floss, and the Invisible Goddess did manifest. Her pinkness was beyond all human pink, and her visibility was beyond all human visibility - she was fully visible and fully invisible, and at the same time pink beyond all words. She was INEFFABLY pink.
CJ almost dropped his coffee. He was not expecting a visit from any Goddess, and if he had he might have cleared up a bit. Unfortunately the beatific vision before him was not entirely what he had in mind when he though of encounters with goddesses... Still, here she is, as far as humans can depict the vision he beheld.

{Original contained picture of pink My Little Pony}

He was appalled, and swiftly raised a copy of The God Delusion, and a Crucifix. The unicorn goddess ignored him, and contentedly munched upon the [carpet 1]. "Come not in that form, come not in that form!" yelled CJ, traumatized. He recalled the night when he was younger and pulled the cute goth chick only to find she was wearing My Little Pony knickers, and was so freaked even though she was 25 he had just made coffee and excuses. But that was Many Years Ago, and is chronicled in the Epistle to the Cheltonians, or rather is'nt cos it's embarrassing so we edited that bit out. [2]

"back back from whence ye came foul being of the Pit!" yelled CJ, advancing menacingly upon the unicorn goddess, armed with a stuffed mongoose.

The Goddess stopped grazing and looked thoughtfully upon him. "is this form displeasing to you?"

CJ gulped, and nodded. There was a flash of ineffable pinkness, pink beyond pink, and the Goddess instantly changed shape...


{Original contained picture of scantily clad girl with pink hair and unicorn horn on head - not appropriate for this forum}


CJ paused, and suddenly saw that actually this divine visitation had its positive side. He mentally resolved to avoid all horny jokes. "Er, goddess" he said, "come and tell em of wonderous things! Indeed, sit on my knee while we discuss the metaphysical implications of the Irenaean Theodicy."

And alas, those words were his undoing. Suddenly he was thinking theologically. "Goddess, by your physical manifestation - and i must say it is very physical and definitely INEFFABLE" - the unicorn goddess giggled, or neighed "do you not remove my gift of Free Will? Now I have seen you manifest, I can not disbelieve, so now I have no longer faith, but merely a pragmatic response to your divine existence?"

The unicorn goddess snorted derisively. She seemed strangely unimpressed, and a swift horn t the stomach caused CJ to decide to lay off the theology, but slowly she became troubled. "For without faith how can I respond freely?" CJ shouted, clutching his nads, which hurt noetically from the low blow.

"humph!" said the Goddess. "Some people are simply not worth manifesting to... but I'll check with Head Office, may have been a policy change." And she trotted off through the wall, and vanished.

And Lo! CJ did wail and gnash his teeth and was sore pissed off. Indeed do many things come to pass. [3]

Footnotes
1 Some early Phillistine texts here substitute the word 'yrgg', which is believed by some to mean 'the arse of his trousers.' However the translation is disputed, and most manuscripts favour "carpet".

2 The Epistle to the Cheltonians was written by Hugh of Newmarket, and theological differences lead to many discrepancies in accounts between this J text and the earlier H text which reflects an Eastern tradition strongly influenced by the consumption of Greene King ales.

3. CJ went on to become famous as the theologian with no horn, and was mocked by all. He was eventually martyred by being fed alive to a basket full of ravenous weasels after an unfortunate comment about a skepchicks hemlines led to his official excommunication from the Reformed Church of Dawkens. His followers, the lewdpervs are still found in Central Mongolia, practicing heretical doctrines and eating breakfast cereals.

cj x

 

[dafydd]

So whenever anyone says there is no evidence for X, I joke there is. IT's the strength of the evidence - you can have loads of evidence for unicorns, but it is all incredibly weak to my mind, so I assume unicorns do not exist despite all the evidence.

Hope mildly amusing.

cj x

I have the same attitude towards evidence of gods. I find it hard to discuss with you, could you put the tongue in cheek, mildly amusing bits in another colour of font please?

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

Consider the size of the human brain. Consider the size of the universe. Is it logical to assume that the model that exists in the human brain can accurately describe the entire universe?

Why do you assume a link between the two volumes? Odd.