Esbensen has found acceptance among fellow Unitarians, where humanists are a known quantity. But people from other faiths, when they learn she's an atheist, are often "a little puzzled and concerned." Most tragically, when she became a minister she lost her best friend, who felt this was not an appropriate role for a nonbeliever.There are people on both sides of the God line who are arrogant and who are kind and gentle. I think it's best not to stereotype.
"That is so arrogant," clucks Esbensen. "There can be a lot of arrogance attached to people who believe in God."
As for whether atheists can be good ministers, I'm sure they can. The question is: Should they admit they are atheists? Surely, there must be many, many religious leaders who, in their hearts, are atheists.
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267 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 267 of 267"To Hitch there are more important things going on, other than his own tumor."
No disagreement from me, Lem.
Just wondering though?
Exactly WHO should be credited with that quote?
I have Symantec Endpoint Protection version 11.0.2010.25
thats good protection.. I think
*blinks*
And yet again!
@ Penny
Exactly WHO should be credited with that quote?
That (more important things going on ..) is what I was able to gleam from reading the article.
If you read the article it might become clear what I been trying to say.. but read it only if you like Hitchens, otherwise you might not really care about it and it might be like torture.
Maguro,
they need and deserve comfort at the end of their lives, not smarmy, condescending little lectures from Unitarian Universalist Atheist Ministers. There's a time and a place for everything and that wasn't it.
Ok...
As for what a Christian minister would say to you, it would probably be something along the lines of "No, good deeds alone aren't enough, but if you accept Jesus as your savior right now you can still get in, no problem".
So:
If you're an atheistic Unitarian, and you tell a dying person that they'll get into Heaven if they've been good and God exists, then you're a smarmy, condescending, sanctimonious, and gratuitously cruel person who is improperly pushing his religious beliefs in the wrong time and place.
If you're a Christian, and you tell a dying person that they're NOT going to go to Heaven and follow that up with an attempt to pressure this dying, frightened person into joining your religion... then you've done the right thing.
Sigh.
You're an embarrassment to the entire concept of being educated
Why do you keep implying that religious folk lack education?
Very ignorant of you.
Rev, in your hypothetical you were asking the minister on your deathbed whether your good works were enough to get into heaven. Your question indicates an interest in salvation, therefore it would be appropriate for the minister to provide the correct answer - i.e., accept Jesus. If you didn't want to be "pressured" you wouldn't have asked the question in the first place. Or even called a Christian minister over to your deathbed.
As to the atheist minister's conduct at the deathbed, I think there are times when compassion is more important than intellectual honesty and this was one of them. What harm does it cause to reassure a dying woman that she's going to heaven? There are times when frankness is not called for.
AL,
Actually the most visible religious political agenda is the black ministers. Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Wright Louis Farrakhan. Most of the people in the major cities fronting the AA political agenda are preachers of one sort or another. Those are the most visible.
I'll happily give this chick the orthodox Christian view. Babe, you're going to hell. It doesn't matter that you do good works cuz works without faith is dead. Only the righteousness of faith in Christ gets you into heaven. One last thing, God ain't no Santa Claus. He's not always kind and gentle; He does kick ass and take names. Read the Lord's Prayer and see how rough and tumble God is.
Gabriel Hana: "Are you sure that the appreciation of beauty is as widespread as the appreciation of sex?"
I know people who have little appreciation for sex, but nobody that does not appreciate beauty in some way.
And Ritmo, Drives are evolutionary outcomes too, but we are talking about the appreciation of sex, and a drive, especially in humans is often overruled by the mind with it's layered adaptations.
My point is that with beauty so universally appreciated by our minds, it should have a powerful selective advantage and can't be reasonably expected to be accidental and useless, but I don't see what that advantage could be.
Or it could have some connection to a creator. Maybe some of our first evidence? We are still a very young species with much to discover. Our limitations are often only revealed in hindsight.
I want to give credit where credit is due:
We have a lot of militant Unitarians here in Madison. They burned a question mark in my front lawn!
... that's a pretty funny joke. So never let it be said AlphaLiberal has never contributed anything here.
Rev and Alpha...Ditto. I am going to use that Burned Question Mark joke as soon as my wife isn't there. She is against hurting anyone's feelings.
Your question indicates an interest in salvation, therefore it would be appropriate for the minister to provide the correct answer - i.e., accept Jesus.
The scenario you're condemning the Unitarian for was exactly the same. The dying woman asked if she'd done enough to get into heaven. The minister gave the correct answer -- i.e., if God exists and you've been good, you get in.
What harm does it cause to reassure a dying woman that she's going to heaven?
I think that's exactly what the person should do. That's why I think Esbensen acted like a jackass -- just not nearly as much of one as the Christian in the example we're discussing. Telling a dying person "you're going to Heaven" is comforting. Telling them "you might be going to Heaven", less so. Telling them "you're going to Hell unless you radically change your entire metaphysical world-view right now"? Not comforting at all.
[Martin Luther] would hear priests mumbling to themselves when giving the elements in the sacrament, “Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain; wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain.”
My point is that with beauty so universally appreciated by our minds, it should have a powerful selective advantage and can't be reasonably expected to be accidental and useless, but I don't see what that advantage could be.
Humans universally appreciate beauty, but the specifics of beauty vary wildly. The reliable constant is that things associated with health, wealth, and power tend to be considered beautiful; things associated with illness, poverty, and weakness tend to be considered ugly.
Telling a dying person "you're going to Heaven" is comforting. Telling them "you might be going to Heaven", less so. Telling them "you're going to Hell unless you radically change your entire metaphysical world-view right now"? Not comforting at all
Ah, but from the Christian's perspective, you can actually change your destination from hell to heaven and save yourself if you become a believer. So he really has a moral obligation to tell you if you ask.
Whereas to an atheist it's all nonsense anyway, so what's the downside of humoring someone? It's not actually going to change anything.
That statement by Ms. Esbensen sounds calculated to start a fight.
If you believe in something it means you think it's true. You can discuss why you think it's true, but you can't really prove it unless you agree to the presumptions. But making blanket statement like Esbensen does is judgmental and prejudiced. I thought atheists were opposed to that. She sure doesn't sound kind and gentle to me.
What a smug, self-satisfied ass.
The most visible so-called Christian political agenda in America features support for greedy money grabs by the rich
By "greedy money grabs", I'm guessing Alpha Liberal means tax policies that allow people to keep money they earned by the sweat of their own brows. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking he's the kind of person who calls a tax cut a "tax expenditure", with the unstated but deeply held belief that the State owns everything and everyone, and we should all be thankful for the 20 grams of chocolate and daily cup of Victory Coffee that we are permitted for our own use.
Fen,
Why do you keep implying that religious folk lack education?
Very ignorant of you.
Bullshit. You're either ignorant or playing a game with the minds of the less fortunate. Which it is, you may decide for yourselves but, either way, it's disgraceful. I picture you, laughing behind your hands like shy girls, as you try to talk others away from reality and modernity, while sitting in air-conditioned homes, sipping cocktails, and coming up with your next head-scratchers to keep your decadent asses amused. White mischief, indeed.
Anyway, ran across this and thought of you asses:
It is confirmed now that I am a crazy person. I concluded this one April morning as I stood nearly naked in a temple in South India while a stranger in a loincloth hauled a bucket of water from a suspicious-looking well and poured it over my head.
The water, I was assured, is holy. It comes from one of 22 theertha kundams, or wells, at the Sri Ramanathaswamy temple on Rameswaram island at the southern tip of the state of Tamil Nadu. The temple is famed for its sculptured pillar hall, said to be the longest in the world; its immense central tower, riotous with the usual celestial mob scene; and its associations with the Ramayana, the Hindu epic no one has ever been able to get all the way through. More than anything, though, it is known as a pilgrimage place, the only one in India where believers can participate in a particular sequence of purifying baths.
I should note that I am not a believer, having given up decades ago on the solitary God I was raised with. And yet there I stood in a temple consecrated to a pantheon that by some estimates is populated by 330 million gods, lips and eyes squeezed tight as I tried to put from my mind other assorted entities invisible to the naked eye, things that lack poetic appellations like Ardhanarishvara or Parvati, things with scary Latinate names instead: staphylococcus streptococcus and Escherichia coli.
That's how an atheist thinks, when not bugged to death by you lamers.
Christ on a crutch, what a crippling load there is in this thread.
Maguro,
You're right that the Christian in that scenario thinks he's doing the right thing.
But you're comparing the comfort value of a Unitarian minister's bedside manner to the self-appraised soul-saving value of a Christian minister's. I'm trying to compare the actions of the two measured against the comfort their words bring to the dying person. By that standard, the Christian is clearly behaving badly -- he is, in fact, trying to make the dying person feel LESS comfortable in order to prompt a change of faith. The most likely result of his words is that the last moments of the dying person will be less pleasant.
330 million gods,...
Now that's some serious insanity. At this rate, that unfortunate country will never really be able to ever get off it's ass. Not that it has to:
One of those gods will always provide.
Bwaaaaa-hahahahaha!
Revenant said,
The most likely result of his words is that the last moments of the dying person will be less pleasant.
That's the whole point: as so many, here, have made clear - they want to be able to smugly announce, forever, that they OK in de eyes of de Lawd while I, the damned unbeliever, must endure a lifetime of listening to their anti-educational claptrap. And if I don't, they - as adjuncts for their omnipotent GOD - have made it clear, from Day One, will kill me.
Being pleasant has nothing to do with it. Appearances are everything.
BTW - What am I doing up at this hour? Oh nothing, just can't sleep from once again suffering nightmares courtesy of the last believer I allowed in my life. That's FIVE YEARS, y'all.
Ain't God grand?
Fuck all y'all.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot... Kinder, gentler, yeah right.
As for the Unitarians, those who believe in everything really believe in nothing.
Not that it matters the way this thread ended up, but...
I was thinking about this a bit during my morning walk and I think the woman on her death bed was asking for was what Catholics call Viaticum. Viaticum is food for the journey, it is Communion given to someone on their deathbed to enable them to enter eternity with greater confidence. It has ancient roots in the idea of eating a big meal before leaving on a long journey.
Do Protestants believe in Viaticum? I don't know.
Anyway, I think that's what she was getting at because of her question "Will that get me all the way there?"
Right after a Catholic Priest performs the Consecration he breaks the large Sacred Host into pieces along lines that are pressed into it when it was manufactured as a wafer. If you watch closely you'll see him take a fragment of the Host and put it in the Chalice of Precious Blood. The purpose of that is to help people like the woman described here that can't eat a Host but could consume a drop of Precious Blood.
Any amount of Precious Blood or Sacred Host is "enough". If it is sense perceptible, if you can see it, even the tiniest crumb, it contains 100% of the Grace of God. How much Grace you receive depends on your receptivity.
So the answer to the question 'is that enough' is yes. The entire purpose of Communion in that situation is individual, person to person, real life mercy and reassurance - to comfort the dying.
Maybe this woman doesn't know that or maybe she just chooses to cram her beliefs down people's throats on their death beds. Either way she's a jackass.
Thanks, Dave, for that answer.
First, Dave, I agree with you, too. I've attended more than my share of deaths and I always do what's necessary to comfort the dying.
Full disclosure: Except for in the case of my ex-wife's gay guru who died of AIDS. I laughed in his face as he did the fish eye and I'd gladly do it again.
I think to have any belief system that makes you have to wonder "Is that enough?" is cruel. We all have to die. That's my only confidence builder. I've been in several tight spots in my life, several where I thought I'd die and, remarkably, my reaction is always just like this fellow atheist describes, the result, I'm sure, of being determined to get it right while we're alive.
As for you "sinners", I feel for you:
I've seen how you die and, most times, the idea of "meeting your maker" ain't pretty.
@Crack
You're certainly right that faith makes us appear as fools to nonbelievers, but you're wrong to think it's irrational.
Faith is the acceptance of God as axiomatic. Being religious is the logical outcome that flows from that axiom. Since God can neither be proved or disproved you must choose to accept or reject the faith. If you accept you will, if you follow the logic, become religious in one form or another. If you reject the eternal and believe only in the temporal the logic leads you to nihilism or perhaps stoicism at best.
Literally the choice is between life and death. Perhaps it's not fair to characterize it as a choice because if you are sincere (and I'm sure you are) you can not simply accept what seems impossible even if you would dearly love to. I'll grant it's a challenge to entertain the real possibility of God because the personal impact of faith is huge. I know, I used to be an atheist and for years I wanted to believe but did not and I refused to fake it. Faith in a real sense is a gift. You have to pray for the gift but you must have faith to form the prayer in the first place. That's why the old cliche calls the first step a "leap of faith".
Let me try another tack, if you're no too sick of us religious wackos yet. If you do not believe in the God you can, without compromise, certainly see the effects of faith. The power of faith is evident everywhere: it builds hospitals and soup kitchens. It causes diminutive nuns to build orphanages in the poorest most desperate places. It tears down walls and empires (Romans and Soviets) Faith is what gives Sarah Palin (and gave Ronald Reagan) that delightful cheery optimism. So while you can reject faith as foolish, you have to admit that it functions to the real benefit of those that have it and their communities.
Why do you keep implying that religious folk lack education?
Very ignorant of you.
Crack Bullshit. You're either ignorant or playing a game with the minds of the less fortunate.
The Mayans and the Egyptians who built pyramids for their God Kings. Uneducated?
Thank you for the nice note of agreement Crack. We cross posted so I didn't see it earlier.
Crack: just can't sleep from once again suffering nightmares courtesy of the last believer I allowed in my life. That's FIVE YEARS, y'all.
Ain't God grand?
Religion is Man's interpretation of God, and Man is imperfect.
Don't let the actions of idiots determine the fate of your soul.
Crack
The most graceful death I ever witnessed was my Grandfathers and his beliefs were very nebulous and non specific. He was not religious, but he died without evident fear and with more concern for how we felt when we saw him than for himself. A stoic can die gracefully and a nominally religious person can die in fear. The point is that only strong faith avails - the death of the Christian martyrs and modern martyrs like John Paul II show how one can die with poise.
"things associated with illness, poverty, and weakness tend to be considered ugly."
Yea, once upon a time before the 60's.
The Daves and DaveWs, and replies to same, are confusing me. ;-)
Dave,
You're certainly right that faith makes us appear as fools to nonbelievers, but you're wrong to think it's irrational.
Faith is the acceptance of God as axiomatic. Being religious is the logical outcome that flows from that axiom.
Now, now - see: you're getting carried away. There's nothing "natural" about believing in god. If there was I'd be doing it, too. What's natural is believing what your parents believed. If you were born in India, you'd believe in 300 other gods. I'm a foster child: no parents, thus, no god.
What I find fascinating is how y'all have come up with all these justifications and mind traps. Atheists are evangelicals without the bibles, that kind of thing. It's like religion has stunted your conceptual abilities. Which, when I think about it, makes sense:
"God did it" is the end of imagination - there's nothing to say (or think?) after that.
The hardest part for me to deal with is knowing, in your day-to-day lives, you rely on knowledge, your educations, and common sense but, for this one thing, you throw all that away and INSIST none of that matters.
That makes you as dangerous as a cobra.
Fen,
Don't let the actions of idiots determine the fate of your soul.
Oh yea, like I can stop my nightmares. If nobody minds, rather than forcing me to pursue a course in lucid dreaming, I'd prefer the rest of you engage in better behavior regarding your so-called "spirituality" - starting with making sense.
An atheist minister. Madison always cracks me up.
What next, a halal butcher who follows kosher laws?
"Now, now - see: you're getting carried away. There's nothing "natural" about believing in god."
Crack
I said logical , not natural. If you want to talk nature I'd agree that we are disinclined to believe by nature and that atheism or agnosticism are natural defaults. If you read the rest of what I wrote you'd see I recognize the barriers to faith. I don't see all atheists as evangelical, although some of the more aggressive ones clearly are.
You said: "God did it" is the end of imagination - there's nothing to say (or think?) after that.
Hardly, this is a common fallacy. The imagination immediately ends up working on the next big problems: why does God allow evil and suffering and what does God expect of me. Theology and Moral Philosophy are highly intellectual, thought intensive and tightly debated areas. Cardinal Newman, St Thomas Aquinas or the current Pope are all highly intellectual thinkers. You may reject the assumptions that underlie the reasoning but the reasoning is clearly there. Dismissing it as stupid is really just a refusal to engage the question and not a refutation.
Dave,
I'm an atheist:
There is no question to engage. It's mental masturbation.
I prefer the other kind.
"The hardest part for me to deal with is knowing, in your day-to-day lives, you rely on knowledge, your educations, and common sense but, for this one thing, you throw all that away and INSIST none of that matters."
Crack
Very interesting comment! It's true that some reject reason but this is a false weak faith. In the papal encyclical Faith and Reason the Pope (JP II) argues that faith and reason must support each other: faith supplies the axioms but the conclusions must be rigorously tested by reason so that the faith must be logical and internally consistent. Reason and common sense absolutely still apply. If they did not then the faith makes no sense. Because reason is a gift of God, to be the person God intends us to be we must be whole and function on all levels of faith, reason and common sense. While Faith is one crucial element, it does not displace reason but must work with it. This faith /reason dichotomy is a fallacy of the "Enlightenment". Faith and reason are not necessarily at odds.
Crack
You said:
I'm an atheist:
There is no question to engage. It's mental masturbation.
Fair enough Crack I'll let it go.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot...
Hitler wasn't an atheist. He was an apostate Catholic.
As for the other four, I'd like you to think very, very hard about something they might have had in common that might, maybe, have been the cause of their murderousness. Hint: it involves their political beliefs, not their religion.
apostate Catholic
So, not Catholic. Weren't the Nazi true believers all pretty much Pagan, Nazism being a (very bad) type of Paganism?
Reading this thread makes me think that there must be a lot of Unitarians who get really annoyed that their identification is so close to that of Unitarian Universalists.
Not the same. Not at all.
Well, I shouldn't say it was a form of paganism because Nazism is mostly identified with its political elements. But wasn't there some form of sort of New Age sun worship thing going on there? Overall, perhaps, more of a cult with Hitler as the leader.
@Freeman Hunt:
People like Himmler had weird and nutty neopagan beliefs. Hitler's statements about his own beliefs are not, I think, consistent enough to say what they were, assuming he worshipped anything but himself.
The vast majority of Germans, the people who actually carried out Hitler's atrocities and killed and died in his wars, were Catholic or Protestant.
Hitler publicly portrayed himself as a Christian to appeal to a Christian nation, whatever he may have privately believed.
"My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter..."
"The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health from within only on the principle: the common interest before self-interest. "
As Solzhenitsyn said, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.
@Maguro:
You still haven't grasped that Christian != Protestant. That "Accept Jesus and go to heaven" thing? That's only SOME Christians.
@Michael Haz:
What next, a halal butcher who follows kosher laws?
I can't tell if you are being ironic. Kosher is automatically halal, as the standards are stricter. There's no contradiction in a halal butcher following kosher laws, Muslims can still eat his food.
Gabriel, yes, I agree. However, the atrocities which bring up Hitler's name here in the first place were conceived of and carried out by Nazi true believers, not average German soldiers. At least, that is my impression.
Gabriel Hanna said...
"we can find as many statements of the "essentials" of Christianity as we can find denominations of Christianity ... From the outside, is it not reasonable to conclude that, instead of ONE of them being right, perhaps NONE of them are?"
In a second-grade class, you can find a wealth of beliefs about what five times six means. One of them (the teacher's) actually happens to be correct. Truth is not determined by a majority vote, nor does it cease to be truth when it goes unrecognized.
Contra traditionalguy, the beliefs of Christians do not date to after Constantine's legalization (as some 16th-century anti-Catholic screeds argued) but go back a lot farther than that. The "Didache", as well as the letters of Sts. Irenaeus and Ignatius and Clement, are each much older than this, and testify to the core tenets of the faith. But that's not the point; the point is, one can find books and documents that say anything. Actual learning requires one to be willing to trust a teacher who can identify which books and which teachings are of value. At least one Christian church holds that it has been uniquely charged with preserving the teaching of the apostles, and its essential teachings are available for public review. You can look it up.
The Crack Emcee said...
"There is no question to engage. It's mental masturbation. I prefer the other kind."
Dude. You hang out on blog sites. You have a blog.
So, not Catholic. Weren't the Nazi true believers all pretty much Pagan, Nazism being a (very bad) type of Paganism?
Well, he was Catholic enough that the church never got around to excommunicating him. Nazi ideology was a mishmash of paganism and Christianity, with the latter being the source of its Jew-hatred.
I learned long ago that Unitarians can perpetrate some serious bigotry.
All it takes is a sense of superiority, and many Unitarians have that in abundance.
In a second-grade class, you can find a wealth of beliefs about what five times six means. One of them (the teacher's) actually happens to be correct.
You know the teacher is right because you can check their work. You can't check the work of a priest or theologian. The best you can ever do is see if their claims are logically consistent, but "logically consistent" doesn't imply "correct".
@Freeman Hunt:
What does it say on SS uniform belt buckles? Gott mit uns.
http://www.ioffer.com/i/ww2-german-army-belt-buckle-147096427?source=eisi
Millions of people were complicit in Hitler's atrocities. "Atrocities", plural. The people who smashed up shop windows on Kristallnacht, the street fighters who broke skulls in election years, who made Jews clean the streets with their toothbrushes, who murdered civilians in nearly every country in Europe--how could they have all been neopagans? There aren't enough neopagans.
@craig:
One of them (the teacher's) actually happens to be correct.
If the teacher says five time six is 42, the teacher is wrong, be that teacher Jesus Christ Himself.
If the teacher says truth times beauty is equal to goodness, and power minus conscience is equal to evil, then the teacher has dressed up nonsense to look like sense.
Christianity, in your analogy, is a class with one textbook, of dubious provenance, and hundreds of teachers, all with varying opinions on what the textbook says and all hurling anathemas at each other, and you won't receive your final grade until after you're dead, if then.
Some of us have elected not to take this class.
@Revenant:
The best you can ever do is see if their claims are logically consistent, but "logically consistent" doesn't imply "correct".
Lots of people confuse the two.
Socrates is a man
All men have five arms and blue skin
Socrates has five arms and blue skin
Perfectly logical, and totally false.
@Freeman Hunt:
By 1945 the SS alone had over one million members, and there were 8.5 million in the Nazi Party. This doesn't count hundred of thousands of foreigners who joined from the occupied countries.
The Nazis were not a small cabal of neopagans who hijacked a big country. What they did could not have been done without the complicity and consent of the vast majority, which they had.
That is the scary thing about Nazism--not that evil people can band together to do evil. We all already knew that. The lesson of Nazism is that most people are quite willing to do evil if their friends and neighbors are doing it too. These people started out as normal, hardworking, churchgoing, law-abiding people. They weren't a cabal of freaks with a bizarre philosophy who somehow tricked everyone into serving them.
People prefer to look away from what they and their friends and neighbors-nice, normal people-are capable of, and so they focus on the bizarre and sensational aspects of Nazi Germany.
Gabriel Hanna said...
"If the teacher says five time six is 42, the teacher is wrong, be that teacher Jesus Christ Himself."
True enough, but you moved the goalposts. Earlier you wrote:
"From the outside, is it not reasonable to conclude that, instead of ONE of them being right, perhaps NONE of them are?"
which is the specific fallacy I was refuting.
"If the teacher says truth times beauty is equal to goodness, and power minus conscience is equal to evil, then the teacher has dressed up nonsense to look like sense."
So who has said this? It seems this is a straw man of your own devising. Tell us: what defines goodness, and why? It's difficult to do without committing the is/ought fallacy or elevating personal preferences to universals.
which is the specific fallacy I was refuting.
But you didn't refute it. You claimed that the teacher was right. Saying "I'm right and you're wrong" is not a refutation of anything. You have to show your work. :)
The fallacy in question was an erroneous inference that because multiple false answers exist for question X, then no true answer exists for question X. I provided a counterexample. Way back when I took logic, a counterexample was sufficient to refute a universal.
What you're all missing, whether the Nazis were Pagans or NewAgers or Catholics or Christians, is that I am not welcome. My view - that you're all wrong to indulge yourselves in "beliefs" - am worthy of lectures, interventions, or even death. Anything but what I desire:
To live my life, in peace, without any of it.
It's evil - by design. I have no out. I'm outnumbered. You must "spread the gospel" - that I am worthy of Hell. Or whatever Earthly manifestation of it your idea (or anybody else's) of god or gods decided for me. I can be allowed no peace. You MUST drive this home at every opportunity you get. You will not ever entertain that we are the victims of cosmic joke - a joke soaked in blood and arguments and debate:
Anything but what I want, which is to drop god, so we can merely get on with life.
The fallacy in question was an erroneous inference that because multiple false answers exist for question X, then no true answer exists for question X.
That's not what he said. What he said is that it is reasonable to think that none of the Christian groups has the true answer.
A man claims to know how many jelly beans are in a jar. You ask him for the number. He says "595228. No, wait, 814291. Er, 912517. 238500. 584548. 821471. 172679. Or maybe 381248..." and so on, for a thousand answers or so.
Logic can't tell us whether all 1000 answers are wrong or only 999 of them. But our reason tells us that the man is either doesn't know how many beans are in the jar or is deliberately lying about the count. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that you aren't going to get the correct answer out of him.
Crack
You're right in the sense that in our theology there is no "opt out". You have a choice, you don't have to carry on the conversation if you don't care to, ignore it.
In a very important sense you on target Christ is aggressive when He says: "Who do say that I am?" or than He will deny those that deny Him. He also says:“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."
There's no sideline in Christianity. This is about what God wants, our wants don't matter much. As Christians we owe you respect, regardless of what you say or do. From our point of view warning you or anyone of the consequences of ignoring God is a spiritual act of mercy. No doubt you find it annoying, we can be that. It's a fair criticism. However we can not believe these things sincerely and let you walk off that cliff without at least a warning. Don't worry about getting what you want, if you persist in wanting to be separated from God long enough He will grant you that wish.
@craig:
The fallacy in question was an erroneous inference that because multiple false answers exist for question X, then no true answer exists for question X. I provided a counterexample. Way back when I took logic, a counterexample was sufficient to refute a universal.
If only I had said that the existence of disagreements rules out the possibility of any correct answer. Talk about straw men.
What I said was, from the outside, it seems more reasonable that no one knows what they are talking about rather than that one of them is right and we have to figure out which one. Because there are not an infinite number of Christians, they do not present every possible permutation of Christianity, and hence it is possible that none of them are right, and that the true answer is one that none of them has put forward.
You might want to revisit those logic textbooks. And work on reading comprehension.
@craig:
Tell us: what defines goodness, and why? It's difficult to do without committing the is/ought fallacy or elevating personal preferences to universals.
I agree with this 100%--and that's exactly what I think Christians are doing, which is why I don't listen to them. I make up my own mind about what defines goodness and why--and in practice so does everyone else, though they claim that God agrees with them.
Revenant said... Since atheists are widely hated in our society, the only atheists who speak up about our beliefs (or lack thereof) tend to be those of us who are looking for an argument with believers.
Ever hear the expression 'don't talk about politics or religion at the dinner table'? There are plenty of things I agree with that I wouldn't talk about unless I was prepared to have someone start an argument. You aren't alone, at all.
But most people who say they believe in God are practically atheists anyway. They believe, as a matter of opinion, in God, but aren't religiously observant, don't attend Church except on holidays, don't have conservative moral values, think the theological aspects of religion are goofy, and think all religions (except maybe Islam) are equally good.
So for you to get those types of arguments, I'd think you'd have to hang out in a particular type of company. I live in California and am a younger person, and I wouldn't expect ever to be cross-examined if I said I'm an atheist. Atheist or agnostic are far too common to think twice about it.
Organized religion has far less power than many atheists portray it does. Besides the fact that the vast majority of believers are as I described above, Church attendance is dwindling at an all time low and everybody criticizes religion. The common man's opinion of religion its caused war and persecution in the past. To the degree that it plays a role in politics, its because its an easier bet to pander to religious people than to pander to atheists.
I don't think the favorability poll on atheists says much other than most people don't agree with them. Its like if you asked atheist opinions on religious people. Or asked conservative opinions on liberals, or liberal opinions on conservatives.
craig said... Tell us: what defines goodness, and why? It's difficult to do without committing the is/ought fallacy or elevating personal preferences to universals.
Its difficult for a lot of people to do, but its not any different than saying It's not good to commit an is/ought fallacy or elevate personal preferences to universals. Is that an is/ought fallacy or a personal preference? No. Is that a moral statement? Yes.
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