Agree Grim I was being a little cheeky about the need for atheism. There is no such thing as a faireist because people do not believe in fairies.

People come to their spirituality in different ways. For me it boils down to connections with people (not deities) and with the natural wonders that sustain us. I know many people of 'faith' who also value those connections but come to it from a different perspective - kinda like crabsy's approach but he defines his 'intuitive' connection as 'God' (as a simple interpretation). Many people of faith are redefining God which understandably sticks in the craw of many who cling to the creationist perspective and who hold little value in the humanity of what science has to offer (just for eg.).

It is an evolving process - resistance to 're-evaluation' is not new. Witchburnings were long ago deemed inhumane and plainly criminal and the earth we now know is not flat. Maybe one day we will even know the 'truth' about climate change.

Crabsy,

Obviously I wasn’t referring to that version of ‘truth’. I was talking about ‘truth’ as in conformity to reality or actuality. You made a positive claim to knowledge earlier in this thread (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11510#196766) stating that god was “real” and claiming the existence of a “spiritual reality” which, according to what you’ve said, you’d have no reliable way of distinguishing between god and this spiritual reality and something that isn’t real.

The above sounds very objective, but as soon as I offered my criticism, you switched to the more subjective ‘truthfulness’ of one’s beliefs. Perhaps I’m wrong here and god, to you, is merely a subjective idea, but then why create confusion by calling it “god”?

Furthermore, the word ‘god’ carries with it some baggage because of its historical use. You don’t get to use the word when it suits you, but then just dump the baggage when it’s convenient in an apparent attempt at conflation of truth and blurring of reality.

I hope this response bares more relevance.

Trav,

If you’re too busy to continue then that may not be such a bad thing, because if you continue to misconstrue what I say in order to conjure up fallacies that aren’t there and errors in reasoning that don’t exist, then we could be here for a very long time.

Firstly, how on Earth can two explanations be true at the same time? And if every divine revelation has a more rational explanation (and I challenge you to find a verifiable example that doesn’t), then god has failed at the most basic test of communication.

Secondly, what part “meeting him face to face” necessarily means “appearing at our every beck and call”?

Thirdly, you accuse me of epistemological errors when my point was exactly the same as yours with the added conclusion that therefore, there is no good reason to believe in a divine Jesus.

Speaking of Jesus, eye-witnesses may have had something to do with the accounts for his alleged life, but that’s beside my point. Either way, the arguments for this are not “good”.

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The documents (from decades after his life mind you) do not accurately date any event in his life.

As for writings or carpentry works, well, I don’t know about you, but if I was being threatened with infinite punishment for finite crimes, then I’d expect a heck of a lot more those even.

Yet another colossal failure of communication.

Thanks for your Christ myth links. I’ve already read them once before and they’re actually refuting the idea that Jesus never even existed as an historical person (albeit with the mistaken belief that it somehow lends credence to the divine Jesus), not that Jesus existed as the son of any god.

Strobel is a fraud because he portrays himself as a sceptic who honestly and objectively considered the evidence for Jesus and came to the conclusion that he did exist as the son of god. Yet his arguments are so poor that they’re only convincing to someone who has already made-up their mind.

As for William Lane Craig et al, if I hadn’t known better, I’d think you were some atheist pulling my leg because you’ve listed some of the biggest dills in apologetics. Here’s just one example of the intellectual rigor of Craig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9DLcTfYBcQ

As for his cosmological argument, you’d have to have been living in a bubble to not realise just how thoroughly and repetitively it’s been debunked. It is a self-refuting, special-pleading argument that falls down at its premise and the YouTube link above explains just how flawed Craig’s cosmological knowledge, that the premise of his argument hinges on, is.

Besides which, considering how screwed-up one’s reasoning skills need to be in order to be a creationist in the first place, offering the opinions of people like Craig, Plantinga and Overman does nothing to help your case. How could you possibly expect me to take these guys seriously?

In regards to the ‘minimal facts approach’, there is no good reason to suggest that any of it is proof considering every supernatural phenomenon that has ever been investigated was found to have a rational and naturalistic explanation.

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That being said, nothing has ever made more sense in a theistic framework - ever - and the only examples you can give that (at first) appear to make more sense, are fallacious god-of-the gap arguments from ignorance.

Extraordinary claims continue to require extraordinary evidence regardless of our prior assumptions because our prior assumptions have no baring on the truth of something. It matters not what we ‘assume’ or ‘believe’, but what we ‘know’. We investigate things, by measuring them against what we already know about reality, not what we assume. So my point still stands.

On to Christianity accurately reflecting humanity and the human condition. You first point out that we’re flawed and selfish, but for this to bare any weight, you’d have to describe and demonstrate how this is any different to what people would be like if Christianity were not true. Do you think we would have all been perfect?

And as for your explanations as to why Jesus provides the “perfect answer” (forgetting for a moment that they are all unfounded), your first claim actually contradicts the last. There is nothing “perfect” about sacrificing one’s self just so we can all be forgiven for what would have ultimately been god’s fault to begin with.

Given what you’ve clarified in regards to those who tend to make-up the “academic elite”, your comparison of that with people taking up the predominant religion in their culture, is pure nonsense. For starters, only a miniscule fraction of atheists fit this description.

You’re right though, none of this goes to saying whether or not religions are true, but it is just one example of how the reasoning applied, when one takes up a religion, is not rational.

Getting back to misconstruing what I’ve said for a moment, I didn’t say that all sexual restraints are immoral or irrational. What I was saying was that Christianity’s criteria by which we are expected to live (in this regard) are wrong (most of them anyway).

Religions need sex to propagate themselves.

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Christianity, for example, is like a virus in that it uses sex (something that we’re inevitably going to do) by setting up immoral and irrational criteria by which to live so that when those criteria are inevitably broken - even if it’s just lustful thoughts - the host needs to turn to the religion to for forgiveness and peace of mind again.

This is yet another reason, on top of the one I mentioned on another thread recently, as to why Christianity is immoral.

Yes, the net value of religion in society is negative. If you only look at Western cultures, then on the surface you appear to have a point, but worldwide you’d be hard-pressed arguing otherwise.

Let’s not forget too that even in the Western world (a collection of countries, many of whom have secular ideals to thank for dragging them kicking and screaming out of the Dark Ages and into modernity, in spite of their religion) the religiosity of a country directly coincides with the crime, murder, rape, suicide, teenage pregnancies, abortions, etc.

The theists may be happier and healthier, but they don’t seem to make their societies on the whole any happier or healthier.

Sociologically, religion is not good.

I can go much further into this, but it could take another four posts.

Mentioning charities is hardly fair though. Religious charities always have ulterior motives: PR, heavenly credit rating, a shred of relevance in a world where they are no longer relevant and of course, conversion -potentially a negative since our beliefs inform our actions and no-one should ever inform their actions with unfounded nonsense.

<<Atheists often say [that theism does not explain anything and only asserts] but I’ve never seen a good argument to support it. Can you elaborate?>>

Not sure how to elaborate. Religion explains nothing, yet it asserts a whole lotta stuff as if no evidence or reasoning were necessary. God just says so.

Try naming one explanation theism has provided us with that could not have possibly been explained through secular means.

So anyway, what arguments have you actually heard?

AJ Phillips,

It's always a pleasure being privy to your wonderfully lucid yet workmanlike reasoning.
One day I'll have to start a thread criticising scientism (I think I used that term first here), as the only defence I can think of for your quarry here is that it is hunted outside its natural theological habitat. The new all-conquering paradigm is yet to have its illusions shattered (though there are already fractures).
I'm half persuaded that there is a greater reality than that which our tiny empiricist perspective discloses, but that's just an idle hobby.
The real business of life is the here and now as the senses reveal it to be. Ergo I play the man and not "The Man".

Having said that, I recommend a listen to this, aired on the Science Show recently:
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/scienceshow&d=rn/scienceshow/audio&r=ssw-2011-01-15.ram&w=ssw-2011-01-15.asx&t=Saturday%2015%20January%202011&p=1

Sorry about the link; forgotten how to shorten it.
It's all about words, and lets not forget that our reasonign is couched in words--language games.
I'm fascinated by the account described of wordless realities. There does seem to be an ontological essence..