God is with us!
Posted on 11/17/2003 6:02:20 AM PST by Tribune7
If anything the mainline denominations of the 18th century might be more similar to the evangelicals of today than their descendants.
Actually, you can make a case that Hitler believed in a supernatural creator/force. You just can't deny he hated Christianity.
I couldn't disagree more with pretty much all of this, Doc. The evidence, in the form of the laws of physics just to begin, is overwhelming, and I don't have a whole lot of respect for any belief system that's simply wrong. The Athiests are wrong, Doc, and it is, in my view, a matter of psychology as to how they got that way.
I have to paraphrase, but he also said something like
"My question is whether God had any choice in the creation of the Universe"
This is a bit much, Doc. The Christians I know don't kill 6 million Jews. How can you possibly expect to be taken seriously with an argument such as this?
Note the sources are secular.
As for the mathematical correctness of tit-for-tat and/or the Golden Rule validating the godlike brilliance of Jesus' teachings, I'm unimpressed by that line of argument. If Jesus said, "Verily I say unto you: When you drop a rock from a great height, it seeks the Earth from whence it came with greater rapidity the longer time passes since it left thy hand", it would be an accurate statement. Eventually, modern physics would describe the constant acceleration of an object being pulled by gravity. Or what if he said, "red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning." Would the fact that eventually a true statement that Jesus makes eventually gets some math or science attached to it really validate a godlike level of intelligence in Jesus? IOW, do you really believe that a mere mortal smart guy couldn't figure out "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a good rule of thumb to follow?
You should pick up a copy of Matt Ridley's "Origins of Virtue". It's a quite enjoyable review of the Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma, as well as the question of cooperation among strangers in general (both with humans and in other species). I think you'd like it. (In fact, Ridley basically concludes that the modern free market is the most sophisticated example of an evolved system of cooperation. This fact pissed off more than a few reviewers on Amazon. :-)
Finally, one more thing about tit-for-tat. Ridley mentions that one adjustment to the simple tit-for-tat rule that is needed for the real world is: You should have a certain amount of bias towards forgiveness, because you are never totally sure that the person defecting against (or stealing or defrauding) you is doing it intentionally. If you always use simple tit-for-tat, then if a transaction goes bad through honest miscommunication, you might stumble into a feud with another honest tit-for-tatter.
Finally really, I suppose if I were robbing someone I would want them to give me everything they have & not call the police. So if I get robbed, the moral thing for me to do is...?
TTFN
Because the atheist, if taking his belief to any kind of logical end, rarely gains the conviction to do such things.
But on the other hand, the atheist hasn't needed Jihad; he's had Communist International, half a century of Cold War, the current subjugation of 1.5 billion people in mainland China... After only a few recent centuries of being mixed with international politics, atheism has probably already matched or surpassed all of history's religious zealotry for deaths caused, persecution carried out and destruction levied. Go team!
Why would he? Why should the atheist care? Where does this supposed atheistic conviction to achieve this freedom for all come from, simply his wanting it for himself? But why would wanting something for himself mean he should insist that it is provided for everyone else as well? How does this sense of 'fair play for all' originate with the atheist?
How about we go the other way? If I show you a Mother Teresa, who do you show me? How about William Wilburforce (the man in British Parliament most associated with the outlawing of the slave trade)? William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, which is still tirelessly living by the motto "Soup, Soap and Salvation" after over one hundred years? Or John Fletcher, Vicar of Madeley, who was Voltaire's answer to a fellow skeptic's question, "Have you ever met anyone that was like Christ?" and was so concerned for the poor that he cried "My poor! O, who will care for my poor?" on his deathbed?
Who would the atheist point to as his highest example of living?
Forgot to close the tag.
And even this is questionable. The atheist lacks any real 'incentive' at all, even to please himself, since he also lacks a true will of his own, an ability to choose between accepting or declining a supposed incentive as being enticing enough to pursue.
To back up a bit, one has to wonder why pleasing one's self is something that ought to be done: why does one scratch an itch in order to get the itch to stop? why does one want to relieve the itching? The answer is that there must be an even deeper 'itch' that makes him want to scratch the first itch; this second itch is not the irritation of the skin, instead it is the thing that irritates him into relieving the skin irritation; and deeper still for the irritation that irritates him into having even that irritation. For the person who believes in the natural/physical/material world alone, this is all there can be, ad infinitum.
If reality is truly amoral, then we are all puppets of the physical world, and the 'personal will' of each being is simply a chain of causes, each no different than any other kind of physical reaction that exists; getting angry and killing someone has categorically no different a cause than a grain of sand blowing over a cliff due to a gust of wind coming along. Even if he does somehow stand outside of all of this, possesses his own will and thus the ability to make a decision about which he ought to care about more, the atheist still has no more reason to care about the lost human life than he does about the blown away grain of sand, and no more reason to punish the killer than he does to punish the gust of wind.
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