A True Christian, gay-bashing North Carolina pastor Charles Worley: ‘Forty years ago... gays would have hung from an oak tree’

Basilides · 2012-05-25T17:29:55.272674+00:00

I can't, it's not appropriate to answer a complex question with a yes or no. Your question assumes that what was ordered was murder, I reject this assumption.

Of course it's not ok for parents to murder their children, I'm saying that the law you reference didn't order murder because that would be a logical contradiction: murder cannot be lawful.

Basilides · 2012-05-25T16:29:29.243935+00:00

Murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a person. If the killing was legal it was not murder, for exactly the same reason that killing someone in defense of oneself or in a time of war is not murder: it is not illegal.

I get that you don't like that particular law of God, honestly I don't either and I'm glad that since it was an Israelite civil law that it does not apply today. However, I can't say that it wasn't good, because if God ordained it then it was, my personal feelings about it have no bearing on its morality.

By what standard do you declare that it was wrong?

Cituke · 2012-05-25T14:38:29.355772+00:00

I don't take anything as given, that's why I'm an atheist.

Really? You have in no way proven that evidence plus reason is the proper way to come to a conclusion that God exists, and yet you seem to operate based on that principle. That smells very much like a pre-commitment to me.

Even if you were right, you would only have "proved by assertion" that there's something that gave us the ability to think, not that it is God. Why not Allah? Aliens? Maybe it's just a physical process we don't understand yet? According to you, all of those possibilities are true because I just asserted them, and nobody is justified in doubting them because they'd have to use the brains they were granted by those aliens in order to do it. The thing is, we know how are brains work, for the most part. It's not necessary that there be some extra "cause" of our ability to think. You've simply asserted there is, and added a definition for that cause which precludes anybody from questioning your rationale.

Why should I use the standards of what you consider rational to examine my beliefs? I'm perfectly happy to use your standards to examine your beliefs, all I'm asking is for you to extend me the same courtesy.

Cituke · 2012-05-24T21:44:16.004773+00:00

My contention is that these passages seem to prefer reliance on authority, nothing about the necessity of reliance on authority. Also some knowledge is innate (say, babies innatelygrabbing nipples) and some is independently learned (say finding your car keys)

Yes, reliance on authority is preferred. Would you rather your 3-year-old take it on authority that the boiling pot is hot or would you rather she discover that for herself? For a whole lot of knowledge evidence and reason are perfectly acceptable ways to gain that knowledge. Fortunately, God in His wisdom didn't leave it up to us to discover Him. If you deny that God exists it is not an indication that you don't have enough evidence, it is an indication that you are in intellectual rebellion against Him because you prefer your own intellectual autonomy to the truth.

So now you've got me confused. Is it your stance that I can' comprehend God and thereby am unable to forward sufficient defeaters for him or is it that I can comprehend God because His existence/traits are obvious?

My stance is that the evidence for God is so obvious that you are condemned by Him for denying it, and that your denial is a self-deceptive lie that you've gotten so used to telling yourself that you believe it to be true. In your quest for intellectual autonomy you have rejected the very foundation of intellect itself. You are like a child sitting in her fathers lap an slapping him in the face, totally ignoring the fact that the only thing allowing her to slap him in the first place is that she is being supported by him. It's not that God is a conclusion you have failed to reach, it is that it is impossible not to believe in God and it is your denial which condemns you.

thoumyvision · 2012-05-24T13:30:59.303522-07:00

Relevant

DivineMaster · 2012-05-24T19:23:04.772121+00:00

This is fantastic.

Cituke · 2012-05-24T12:06:27.836911-07:00

So you're saying that through evidence and reason you've come to the conclusion that evidence and reason are the proper way to come to conclusions about things? That's just as circular as saying "the Bible is true because it says it's true"

Since you seem to be implying that there's some other way to come to conclusions besides evidence plus reason, what is it?

Of course there is: have someone reveal the truth to you. I'll take an example from my profession. I'm a computer support technician, I work in an office with four other people, three of whom are more experienced than I. Sometimes I don't know where something is or how to do something. There are times when I can figure it out by myself, and I often try to do so, but every once in a while I end up asking one of the other guys and kick myself because they immediately know the answer. They revealed something to me that I was unable to discover on my own. Now, it can certainly be argued that through trial and error I may have been able to come to the answer on my own. The question is, however, is there any knowledge that it is not possible to know without it having been revealed to you? The fact of the matter is there no possible way that empirical evidence and logical reasoning could ever be able to answer that question.

The Christian position is that God has revealed Himself to us, personally, in three ways. The first is through the created order: (Romans 1:18-23). The second is the Word of God in the scriptures: (Acts 24:14, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, Romans 16:25-27). The third is the person of Jesus Christ Himself: (1 John 5:9-13)

Cituke · 1 day

I've been discussing this quite a bit lately, and for the most part your characterization is accurate in that we often rely on authorities prior to our own investigation of the facts. I don't see anything wrong there. But why prefer reliance on authority be prior to investigation of the fact?

Preference has nothing to do with it, the fact of the matter is that all our knowledge at its very beginning relied on faith in those who taught it to us. Preferring that it was not this way does not make it so.

You can really only go off of what you have to work with. An easy example is that we don't trouble 5 year olds to design the blue prints for suspension bridges and then fault them when their design is a failure.

Good point, why do we trouble scientists and philosophers to explain ultimate reality when their relationship to that ultimate reality is even further in intellectual distance than that between a 5-year-old and an engineer?

In the same way, if I need some superhuman comprehension to understand the evidence for God, then I can't be held responsible for it, much less be expected to arrive at a positive conclusion.

Unless it doesn't require superhuman comprehension. If in fact it is so obvious that in order not to believe you have to lie to yourself and others then you are culpible. This is exactly the Christian position (see: Romans 1:18-23)

I'm not really sure how the problem of induction relates to any of this, but suffice it to say that I've got a reasonable enough answer. I measure that which is true by that which yield testable predictions (for the most part). I realize that my memory of one moment ago yielded perfect predictions for this exact moment, hence "memory" seems to coincide positively with determining what is true and is therefore good for determining the truth.

That's begging the question. You're trying to use your experiences to defend the proposition that your experiences are reliable. That's just as circular as saying "the Bible is true because it says it's true". Induction is necessarily prior to human cognition, however induction itself is not enough to explain existence, which means there must be something prior to it.

Cituke · 1 day

No, I don't have a pre-commitment to anything else....

Really? You have in no way proven that evidence plus reason is the proper way to come to a conclusion that God exists, and yet you seem to operate based on that principle. That smells very much like a pre-commitment to me.

Cituke · 1 day

That is exactly the problem with discussions like this. It is not a lack of evidence, it is that the evidence is interpreted differently based on our individual pre-commitments. I have a pre-commitment to God, and all evidence I see I interpret through that. You have a pre-commitment to something else. I'm trying to figure out what that is, and then determine if that thing is sufficient to explain existence as we know it. Because God, if He exists, is sufficient to explain existence as we know it. I would go further and say that He is the only possible explanation, and that any other has to borrow from the Christian worldview in order to make sense of reality.

Cituke · 1 day

Are you serious? The physical laws that cause water to come out of your tap are very well known. Are you saying that we shouldn't expect the existence of physical laws in a universe without God?

Exactly, I agree that they do exist, that's not in question. What I want to know is why they exist, based on your view of things.

khafra · 1 day

Thanks, I did see that but didn't process the inappropriatness, now that I think about it it makes sense.

ttruth1 · 1 day

Damn, that sure would have been nice when I was in.

khafra · 1 day

highly public atrocity that muddled this subreddit today.

I missed it, mind explaining what you're referencing?

Cituke · 1 day

Would this mean that faith will trump reason, always? If so, then what's the point of finding rational explanations, if any evidence found that contradicts faith will be discarded?

Lets assume for the sake of argument that God exists. I'm not asking you to believe, just take it as a premise for a sec. If God exists then He is foundational to everything, including laws of thought, the scientific method itself, and morality. It is impossible to come to a conclusion that something foundational exists, because in order to think or reason in the first place about it you have to use something from it, thereby begging the question. Things which are foundational have to be taken as given or we can't think in the first place.

Then, if I take God as my given then it's impossible for me to abandon my faith in Him in order to try an make Him the conclusion of investigation or argument.

So if God is not your given, something else must be, something that you have a kind of "faith" in, although not in the personal sense of faith in a person, which is ultimately what faith in God is. If you're a materialist it may be the laws of physics, or empirical reasoning founded on the inductive principle. What I want to know is if you can justify existence itself using these givens without borrowing from Christian givens in the process.

Cituke · 1 day

you conclude God is responsible.

Nope, I'm taking God as given and reasoning from that premise. If God is given then the inductive principle makes sense.

Now, you don't take God as given, so you must take something else as given. I want to know what that is, and if it actually comports with what we see in existence, such as the inductive principle.

God cannot be a conclusion, because if He exists then He is foundational. It is impossible to conclude that something foundational to thought itself exists because you would rely upon it to think in the first place, thus begging the question when trying to make it a conclusion.

Basilides · 1 day

Well, is it disgusting in the same sense as when I say I find eggplant disgusting? I do, but simply because I personally happen to dislike eggplant it does not follow that all eggplants should be destroyed.

But I imagine you had a different sense in mind, a sense that it is universally and objectively disgusting to build fences around people based on their beliefs, desires, or physical characteristics. So from where do you derive the applicability of this sense to all situations? Interestingly we do already build fences around people with certain beliefs. They're called "criminals" and they believed that they could commit crimes without getting caught.

Cituke · 1 day

This is a bit of a misconception. Faith, in the Christian sense, is not superior to reason. It is, however, prior.

This is actually true in all of our experience. For instance, the first time you learned that 1+1=2 you took it on faith that your teacher was telling you the truth. Then, after you examined it your experience played out that it was so. Everything we know is in some sense based on the faith that we had in our teachers and parents when they taught us the foundations of knowledge.

Now, you'll probably come back that your knowledge of God didn't hold up to examination. That isn't taking Christianity on its own terms, however. You wouldn't, as a 3-year-old, have questioned what your parents taught you about language, and if you had they probably would have given you a smack (or time-out or whatever). Of course, you became an adult yourself at some point, getting to the same level of intellectual authority as your parents. You will never, however, get to the same level as God, and to think that you should be able to reject God on the basis of "not enough evidence" is really quite presumptive on your part. This is because the existence of God is so obvious that you take the evidence as given, but suppress the possibility that it could actually be evidence for God.

Just to take one example: you live your life assuming that events that happened in the past can be used to determine how events will play out in the future. Like the fact that when you turn your faucet on water will come out. This observation is so blindingly obvious that it seems silly to even question it, indeed, if water didn't come out you would immediately think of a rational explanation to determine why, such as the water having been shut off. But why, in a universe without purpose and characterized by the disorder of entropy, would we expect to see that kind of order? Of course we do, but the Christian believes that is because God has ordered existence in that manner. Why do you believe that we can reason inductively?

Basilides · 1 day

Wrong is defined by the society we live in, based on the current attitudes of its residents.

Interesting, in that case then the enslavment of persons of African descent up until the mid-19th century was not wrong because the current attitude of that society's residents was that it was acceptable. Or that the severe restriction of personal freedom in North Korea is not wrong because the current attitude of its residents is that their "Dear Leader" can do no wrong.

I have a problem with this view, unless I'm misrepresenting your position?

xoxoyoyo · 1 day

ultimately none of us really absolutely knows anything.

That's a pretty bold assertion from someone who claims not to know anything for certain. How do you know that, then?

The only thing we can truly be certain of is that we are the witness of an experience that is happening. Everything else we believe is conjecture based on what that experience says is the most compelling evidence.

First you say we can't know anything, and then you say we can... I'm confused. That's not even true, for there are people in our experience who witness things that do not happen (see: Schizophrenia).

Feed_Me_No_Lies · 1 day

I think the ground is not so common as you imagine it to be. I certainly share your awotanism, that's not really in question. Pointing that out is no more helpful than pointing out the many other things in which I do not believe.

Because the difference between one God and no god is vast and infinite. Just think about the difference between one universe and no universe. That is not a small difference, that's a pretty monumentally huge one. How much more the difference between a being which is the foundation of all existence itself and no such being?

Basilides · 2 days

How do you define disgusting?

thoumyvision

TROPHY CASE

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