Posted on 12/29/2011 1:01:09 PM PST by daletoons
Now, I don't believe God created the universe, but I do know Jim Robinson created Free Republic. I also know that if he'd kicked me off years ago for being an atheist, I would not have learned conservative philosophy at all. It's his forum and he will indeed always have the right to zot this account. I hope he doesn't but it's up to him. But it's not up to you.
And that brain doesn't actually peak until your fifties -- long after average live expectancy at all times except that latter half of the last century.
Its survival advantage is largely found in our organization, specialization and very advanced tool making none of which were possible when the brain would have evolved. In evolutionary terms, it would have been a huge cost with no apparent advantage until it has been around a while and had time to solve problems. Gradual improvements only make the problem worse -- a person with an IQ of 50 still has a brain that is large and very expensive for the organism.
So you are left with a random baby born that is more helpless for longer and looks odd, but won't see any real advantage for at least 20 years, if it lives that long.
So you went from being full bat-sh*t liberal to being a Randian kook.
Where was this grad school? Berkeley? :-)
Cheers!
My apologies for interrupting your crusade. I certainly hope you won’t be zotted, but I’m sure that if you are, it won’t be for being an atheist.
What's fun is the constantly shifting goalposts of the libs/atheists.
Everything is regular: Occam's razor, there are uniform causes, therefore no need to question a closed system. ("If there were a God, He's reveal Himself through miracles.")
Miracle happens: "That doesn't count:
1. it wasn't under controlled conditions
2. it wasn't observed by specialists, only by common people who are given to [various generalized ad hominem descriptions which are *themselves* unsubstantiated]
3. the textual descriptions are uncertain, and were not reported immediately in a properly peer-reviewed journal
4. there are charlatans, who fake miracles for money. this instance purports to be a miracle. therefore if the witnesses are acting in good faith, they were merely deceived by a charlatan."
The problem isn't that there is "no evidence" : it is that they reject the evidence at hand as not being of sufficient quality / quantity to allow them to apply "scientific principles" (e.g. Occam's razor, null hypothesis).
But they don't realize that science doesn't give you "the TRUTHTM" but instead is a tool for pruning existing models to eliminate false positives.
It doesn't do such a good job on false negatives: for in matters of the supernatural, the skeptic tends to conflate a Scottish Law verdict of "not proven" with "necessarily false."
And, similar to the glee with which atheists and 'higher thinkers' tend to attack sola scriptura ("just pull on this one loose end and the whole thing unravels!"), so too, they cannot allow *any* tinge of the supernatural, or their whole materialistic faith unravels.
Cheers!
Nice to see the post-Christian West hasn't changed since the 1940's (70 years now).
This is an excerpt from a talk on apologetics given by C.S. Lewis, following his visits to R.A.F. aircrew in the 1940s.
See in particular point #2 below, though I include other material for context.
Our great danger at present is lest the church should continue to practice a merely missionary technique in what has become a missionary situation. A century ago our task was to edify those who had been brought up in the faith: our present task is chiefly to convert and instruct the infidels. Great Britain is as much a part of the mission field as China. Now if you were sent to the Bantus you would be taught their language and traditions. You need similar teaching about the language and mental habits of your own uneducated and unbelieving fellow countrymen. Many priests are quite ignorant on this subject. What I know about it I have learned form talking in R.A. F. camps.
They were mostly inhabited by Englishmen and, therefore, some of what I shall say may be irrelevant to the situation in Wales. You will sift out what does not apply.
(1) I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about history. I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles; but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened two thousand years ago. He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. To us the present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. In his mind the present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called “the old days”-- a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armour, etc. wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond the old days come a picture of “primitive man.” He is “science,” not “history,” and is therefore felt to be much more real that the old days. In other words, the prehistoric is much more believed in than the historic.
(2) He has a distrust (very rational in the state of his knowledge) of ancient texts. Thus a man has sometimes said to me, “These records were written in the days before printing, weren’t they? And you haven’t got the original bit of paper, have you? So what it comes to is that someone wrote something and someone else copied it and someone else copied that and so on. Well, by the time it comes it us, it won’t be in the least like the original” This is a difficult objection to deal with because one cannot, there and then, start teaching the whole science of textual criticism. But at this point their real religion (i.e. faith in “science”) has come to my aid. The assurance that there is a “science” called “textual criticism” and that its results (not only as regard the New Testament, but as regards ancient texts in general) are generally accepted, will usually be received without objection. (I need hardly point out that the word “text” must not be used, since to your audience it means only “a scriptural quotation. “)
(3) A sense of sin is almost totally lacking. Our situation is thus very different from that of the apostles. The Pagans (and still more the metuentes) to whom they preached were haunted by a sense of guilt and to them the Gospel was, therefore, “good news.” We address people who have been trained to believe that whatever goes wrong in the world is someone else’s fault--the capitalists’, the government’s, the Nazis, the generals’, etc. They approach God Himself as his judges. They want to know, not whether they can be acquitted for sin, but whether He can be acquitted for creating such a world.
In attacking this fatal insensibility it is useless to direct attention (a) To sins your audience do not commit, or (b) To things they do, but do not regard as sins. They are usually not drunkards. They are mostly fornicators, but then they do not feel fornication to be wrong. It is, therefore, useless to dwell on either of these subjects. (Now that contraceptives have removed the obvious uncharitable element in fornication I do not myself think we can expect people to recognize it as sin until they have accepted Christianity as a whole.)
Cheers!
The fact that humans have a) imagination, and b) a tendency to lie should be enough to alert anyone about swallowing a whole world view that then requires you to suppress your doubts and obey strangers.
g_w
Tell you what--you find a creature that asexually reproduces into a sexually-reproducing creature and get back to me.
Until then, it's all just theory--and not the scientific kind.
You're projecting again, dear.
During Jesus's kanagroo court / trial, Peter (you know, Saint Peter, "The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail" and all that...that guy) was such a p*ssy that he wimped out *three* times when merely accused by a servant.
And that, despite the fact that ONE OF THE OTHER FREAKING DISCIPLES was openly in the courtyard already, warming his hands at the charcoal brazier.
Then the crucifixion...and within a couple o' months (at the Feast of Weeks) Peter openly gives a sermon in which three thousand people are converted.
Something happened to get his family jewels out of the lockbox.
And as for your line
It says so in the Bible, which contains testimonies of their friends.
you might bother to recall that during the Feast of Weeks, Jews from all over the world had congregated: therefore the belief was not merely limited to Peter's circle of friends.
And while we're at it, let's look at Peter. He was imprisoned at one point by Herod, and set free by an angel.
("Yeah, yeah," you're thinking, "more mythology.")
That's not the point here. The point is, when he went to where other believers were, the person who answered the door told everyone, and THEY didn't believe it : "It is his angel" they answered. So if even the eyewitnesses didn't accept it, whence comes your superstitious belief in autosuggestion as a universal solvent?)
The fact that humans have a) imagination, and b) a tendency to lie should be enough to alert anyone about swallowing a whole world view that then requires you to suppress your doubts and obey strangers.
Which explains (for example) the conversion of Saul of Tarsus to a T. /not>
Remember him? He was a Pharisee who was present for the gruesome death (by stoning, natch) of Stephen; and approved.
When *he* converted he was on a trip to get what amounted to a letter of marquee from the Jewish priests giving him authority to detain Christians and bring them back for trial (and, presumably, execution).
He wasn't one to fall for claptrap. As he pointed out later, he was an eyewitness to the risen Jesus. Hence his conversion. Reminds me of the phrase "knocked off one's high horse" or something: it'd be a neat etymological exercise to see if that phrase predates medieval chevaliers or not...
Your accusations should deal with the specifics of the matter at hand, rather than boilerplate generalizations applicable (if at all) to entirely different circumstances.
Cheers!
...a tiny creature called Symbion pandora (literally, "a couple of Greek words"). The zoology community, which does not get out a lot, is extremely excited about Symbion pandora, because it reproduces differently from all other life forms. According to various articles, when Symbion pandora is ready to have a baby, its digestive system "collapses and is reconstituted into a larva," which the parent then gives birth to by "extruding" it from its "posterior." In other words-correct me if I am wrong here-this thing basically reproduces by pooping.
Not quite the same thing, but still funny enough to post.
Cheers!
Nothing he said in the New Testament was particularly original or profound. Most of what he said was simply that the Jewish people should return to the covenant. The only thing that makes him different is the supernatural element. Problem is, the only place you find that is the Bible. So you believe the Bible because it tells you about God and you believe in God because it says to in the Bible. Circular.
Cheers!
But the fact remains that Richard Dawkins knows absolutely nada, zero, nothing about God and religion. The only thing he "knows" about God is that He doesn't exist — for Dawkins stipulates, even demands, that this be so. There is no other basis for his claim.
One thing I have often wondered about guys like Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, et al, is if God does not exist, then why do they spend so darned much time and energy "doing battle" with Him?
Dawkins may be a brilliant theoretical biologist; certainly many people seem to think so. But on questions of theology, the guy is a total ignoramus.
And a fool, making his appeal to other fools.... And stinking up the Kultursmog even more in the process....
Gagdad Bob — clinical psychologist Robert Godwin — summed up this state of affairs awesomely well on his blog One Cosmos [December 29, 2011]:
Theology is formally no different than any other field, in which so-called experts routinely exceed the limits of their competence and bloviate on all sorts of subjects, thereby rendering themselves buffoons — Paul Krugman, Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, movie stars, MSM journalists, etc. Likewise, for every one of these secular unworthies there is a Spongworthless Rowan Williams or Jeremiah Wright.Thanks ever so much for the ping, dear YHAOS! I hope and pray you and all your dear ones will have a blessed, happy, healthy, and prosperous NEW YEAR!
It’s quite easy for intelligence to be hijacked by narcissism in the service of omniscience. I could do that! But being a master of one area confers no guarantee of competence in another. And this is news?
Oh, *snap*. I almost forgot. Christianists are the illiterates, angrily rejecting that which is too complex for them to understand, relying instead upon simplicity.
As you said in post #11,
"...Children conclude that the creepy guy in the van just wants to give you candy. Children's logic is not something we should be holding up as a guide. But there is an element of truth here: we think there's a God because mankind, operating like a child, decided that SOMEONE must have made this place. After all... it's a quick, neat answer and you don't have to think anymore after that. "
As Rick Perry said in a debate once, "Oops."
Nothing he said in the New Testament was particularly original or profound.
Try Matthew 5.
(or the Obaama-appropriate version here, speaking of charismatic Pied Pipers.)
Mark 5:41.
Luke 7:14.
Or John 6:53, John 6:62, John 8:58, John 10:30.
No, nothing original at all.
Skeptic FAIL.
Cheers!
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