Ten things Christians and Atheists can and must agree on

I'm not sure that's true. The BBC did a series on the history of the Christian Church and I can't recall the Eastern Orthodox church as being identified as the oldest incarnation of the Church. In fact in the first few centuries all Christian churches while independent, identified themselves as being part of the "catholic" family (not the Roman Catholic church). It was the fith century before churches were routinely being organised on a regional level by bishops. Before the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox churches were truly formed the centre of power of the Christian world rested in Rome.

It wasn't until around the 11th century that the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church became properly established as tangible independent entities. Since then both churches have gone out of their way to confuse history and create their own mythologies and theologies. I'm pretty sure there are older smaller churches in north Africa still surviving from the time when all churches were independent.

 

But that's a "God of the gaps" argument - anything we don't unerstand is attributed to God. At best this gives us a shrinking God that will simply become smaller and smaller as human knowledge increases.

But, for the story about the hammer, why is a supernatural God any more likely an explanation than beneficent aliens, a sentient Earth speaking to him, a momentary attack of prescience that his mind interpreted as a voice, the spirit of his Great Grandmother, a leprechaun on his shoulder or any of the other "supernatural" explanations? It's only the fact that he's grown up in a culture that favours God as a "filler of the gaps" that leads the gentleman to choose that as his explanation. There are probably more complicated scientific explanations that explain his experience (e.g. his mind was performing a calculation of the possibility of something going wrong and the potential corrective steps he could take as he could see his colleague in a risky spot out of the corner of his eye. After the sudden rush of adrenaline and sequence of events disrupted his processing of the situation, he falsely remembers his thoughts as being spoken to him by a voice). I'm not saying I know an explanation, but I don't have to have an explanation as I'm not saying that this event leads to a specific conclusion. Again, it is the person making the assertion who has to prove it.

 

Hate to tell you this but that is happening already. Priests, bishops, popes, ministers and reverends of all sorts have their definition of atheism and a pulpit from which to preach it.

 

CKava, I see your point about comparing atheism to theism.

Theism is a belief system whatever the subset a person may subscribe to.

Do you believe all belief systems deserve the same courtesy that we are supposed to apply to this one? How delusional does one have to be before their beliefs can be questioned? Or is it based on the number of people who have faith in that particular belief system?

I may be wrong but I get the impression there is a degree of religion(theism) is a protected topic in your posts.

To me it is no more protected than belief in ghosts, channeling, Atlantis, healing crystals or any other nonsense.

Simply because it is a popular delusion makes it no less a delusion.

 

Just to offer my own two cents here. I wouldn't suggest that Mr. Kuntz was lying but just that a much more likely explanation for events than divine intervention is a) the fallibility of human memory, b) the search for meaning that comes with traumatic/unlikely events and c) the possibility of noticing things subconsciously.

If it was divine intervention one has to ask, as Mr. Kuntz does, why chose to save that individual on that day by whispering in someone else's ear? Why not just whisper in the individuals ear to be careful? Why chose to save that individual and let thousands of other good people fall to their deaths every year? It doesn't seem particularly plausible as an explanation when you consider it logically. Emotionally however it makes perfect sense because we are social primates who are primed to detect agency especially in high stress situations and who also have a set of extremely effective but also very misleading senses. The way we perceive and intuitively interpret the world is great for keeping us alive but not so great for helping us to examine emotional events logically or recognise the fallibilities of our senses. As such our memory of events is rarely an accurate record of events.

I can understand why Mr. Kuntz would interpret his experience as a religious one but I think there are more likely non-supernatural explanations.

 

It's not a phony argument, it's an interpretation by logical extension. Let's go through it again:

My argument was (and still is) that religious moderates are hypocritical because they pick and choose which bits of the Bible to take literally. You responded by arguing that the Bible has always been interpreted in a non-literal fashion. If you accept that Christians have always taken some of the Bible literally then your counter-argument doesn't make sense.

No it doesn't. It misses the point. If I were sitting here saying "all Christians are homophobic nutjobs, their holy book says so, there's the proof!" then yes, you two would be right to point out that I'm being unfair as most Christians don't believe every single word of the bible.

But I know that. It's not my point.

My point is that in an intellectual debate with fundamentalists, you moderates are on shaky ground. If you accept that it's OK to believe some parts of the Bible based on faith, regardless of logic, then why do you treat other parts of the Bible differently? I think you do it because of your common sense and compassion, but you work yourself into an academic pickle by doing so.

I'm not defining what the Bible says, I'm talking about what it says. Atheism has no holy book that purports to be above criticism.

But here's my point again - why do you read the other parts of the Bible non-literally? And how do you decide what parts to take literally? I don't care how long you've been doing it, if it's inconsistent it's inconsistent and the fundamentalists have a point.

Strawman.

 

You can question anyone's beliefs regardless of how delusional you judge them to be and how popular something is has absolutely no bearing on how true it is. It is however usually worth recognising that if a belief is extremely widespread the 'delusion' might actually be intuitively appealing to our species and not necessarily due to people being stupid.

You're misinterpreting my point if you think I am advocating against questioning religious claims or debating about religious traditions.

You are wrong. I'm not trying to protect theism I'm trying to point out that people are employing a double standard to try and avoid any negative being associated with atheism. To me an atheist who is unwilling to recognise that atheist belief could have negative consequences is being just as biased as a religious believer who refuses to recognise that their chosen religion has ever lead to anything bad. The validity of atheism does not relate to whether or not it can serve as the basis for violent ideologies. That the scientific evidence for any god is underwhelming is true regardless of what has happened with any social movements related to atheism.

Good but I also hope you apply your skeptical eye to your own beliefs with the same sincerity because that seems to be the bit that people are most deficient in.

Quite true but I don't think religion is typically characterised by delusional beliefs in the technical sense of 'beliefs that are pathological'. Religious beliefs are intuitive to our species so I think it's misleading to think of them as some kind of illness. I still don't think there is any evidence for any supernatural religious claims however...

 

I know your post was not directed at me but I have a few comments as I think your post has touched on some of the key issues here:

The problem is, I never called anyone stupid. Everyone in the world is irrational from time to time. Racists aren't stupid. Homophobes aren't stupid. Religious fundamentalists aren't stupid either, which is why I keep banging on about inconsistency.

The problem for me is that I don't think the negative consequences referred to thus far flow inexorably from any basic tenet of atheism in the same way that they do from the explicit passages of the Bible.

Even if you want to look at the example of Communism, Marx was a human, secular philosopher - not a deity whose word cannot be questioned - and as such individual Communists are under no obligation to agree with everything he says - you only need to look at how Communist regimes have panned out to realise this.

Secular philosophies lend themselves to nuance in a way that religious texts don't. I'm a liberal and a big fan of John Stuart Mill. Does that mean I have to agree with everything he said? No, because although he was certainly clever, he's not a god. There's no faith involved.

I don't think it's an illness, I think it's just plain old irrational thinking buttressed by culture.

 

But emmm... why should you expect a collection of texts to either be ALL ENTIRELY LITERAL or ALL ENTIRELY METAPHORICAL? Why is it not possible for there to be a mixture of literal and metaphorical/allegorical/historically specific sections?

If you read a fictional novel set in WW2 using your logic it seems you must assume that ALL EVENTS IN THE NOVEL ARE TRUE or NONE OF THE EVENTS ACTUALLY OCCURRED if you want to be 'consistent'.

Now I know you are going to point to the fact that religious scriptures are not the same as fictional novels as they are supposed to be (in some cases) inspired by a deity and/or occasionally infallible. But the point that myself and others are making is that ever since these texts existed there have been debates over what is and is not allegorical. This isn't to say that there aren't problems with how people 'pick and chose' as you say but that's rather irrelevant unless you want to get into an in depth theological discussion about the different schools of thought in Christianity and their various arguments as to why their interpretation of the bible is correct.

I also think that if you read any ancient collection of texts you will inevitably find sections that are allegorical and sections that are meant to be factual. Concluding that biblical literalists are the most reasonable when they actually take a very extreme position thus seems a bit silly. Unless of course you want to attack religion in which case it is much easier to focus on the worse kind of religious people.

 

This is the religion forum, why not have an in-depth theological discussion? I keep getting told that I'm missing a tonne of nuance in the interpretation of scripture, so let's have it. What criteria do Christians employ when deciding what to take literally?

 

CKava, good reply. I guess as I sit here pondering on this, and avoiding do any work, is that I don't see atheism as an 'ism'. I don't even see a need for this word to exist.

I don't believe in god. I don't believe in a lot of other things either but there is no specific word for describing each of the things that I don't believe in.

Some people chose to believe and some were indoctrinated at a young age with this belief. All people were born without a belief in gods.

 

I'll leave that to any Christians posting or those with a greater interest in Christian theology to respond to. Christian theology and biblical research is not my thing .

 

Aikimac, you have the floor.

 

And don't you think that the statement that it's a settled, indisputable fact that God does not exist is an "assertion" where you bear the burden of proof?

Mr. Kuntz does not put forward this event as solid, indisputable proof that the Catholic Church's theology is proven. He put it forward as an event that shook up his conception of a world free of the supernatural/spiritual. Thus, I'm not using his assertion to prove the assertion "Christianity is 100% right," but to disprove the assertion that it's settled, indisputable fact that there is no God.

It's not proof of a God. But it's one piece of evidence that nobody here can really explain conclusively, that thus shows that belief in a God may not be "groundless."

 

You can not prove is no god. However it is the responsibility of those claiming the existence of god to provide the proof.

If I claim there are pink poodles living on the dark side of the moon then it is up to me to prove it, not you to disprove it.

I must admit that after all the years where proof of gods existence has failed to be provided by those that believe, I feel very comfortable in saying that there is a high probability that there is no god.

Edit:

I almost forgot my second point. Just because there is no explanation as to how or why something happened it doesn't automatically mean god did it. It just means at this time there is no explanation.

 

The UK isn't America. The programming here isn't nearly as limited. The BBC aren't perfect but their documentaries on this sort of thing are second to none. The Eastern Orthodox Church had as much coverage as any other branch of the Christian faith. It was a 6 part series called "A History Of Christianity".

Don't we all? The Christian Bible is the underpinning of law in most western countries and western society in general.

When the Christian church first formed Rome ruled much of the known world.

No that's not true. There were several occasions where the different "Popes" heading up each major branch of the church excommunicated each other in turn and in retaliation to being excommunicated. By this time of course Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman empire. The different centres of power in the church were deeply divided as to who was really in charge and even the exact nature of Jesus Christ, his humanity and relationship with God.

I'll need to check that. Christian practices were illegal in the Roman empire until around 300/313 give or take a decade or two.

It could be. Now that I think about it was around the time of Charlemagne.

Yes I do. Because at the beginning of Christianity, Christian practices were illegal in the Roman Empire and had to be done in secrete. There was just no way for a highly structured organisation to exist such as that you've described. It just wasn't possible. There aren't even any known examples of actual churches or centres of worship until the 3rd century.

The Bible is a highly contrived work of fiction with glaring omissions.

 

I hear the bit in bold a lot and to be honest I'm not so sure about that. Stuff like "thou shalt not kill/steal etc" has been pretty common to most cultures throughout history because it's common sense. Beyond those provisions I'd say the enlightenment was more of an influence.

But perhaps I'm nit-picking - your main point seems to be that all Christian sects can claim to have the "correct" interpretation of the Bible, which is valid.

 

You're right Timmy and wrong. Most people are quite happy to steal if they think they'll get away with it and consider the reward to be worth the risk. All of the rules in the 10 commandments appear in the Egyptian book of the dead. The Bible is simply the version we use in western society.