The only intellectual problem is a belief in a "being" based purely on myth and NO facts or science whatsoever.

Dear Peter,

One technique of argument is to set up a strawman, a concept your opponent has not made. You have defined a God that atheists reject. I am an atheist and reject the concept of a supernatural whether it is in the simplistic form of an old man in the sky or in some other form. I do not have the arrogance to define what a Christian or religionist of other kind believes because I know that religion is a complex phenomenon and encompasses many beliefs. I don't think there is a supernatural of any kind. It's that simple.

All Christians are not fundamentalists, and I am quite aware of that. Some atheists come from a fundamentalist background, and they have rejected that faith. That does not mean they have taken on another faith. Atheists in general do not define a God that they don't believe in.

Death is a reality. I am 94. My life will reach its limit, and I will be no more. I don't deny death. Why are you so worried that there are people who don't believe what you believe?

"There is a sense in which COVID-19 is the voice of God.... But the pandemic has pulled many of us up short as if it were a voice from heaven".

The author is of course a religious man, but if an Islamic preacher shouted this at us... be would suggest he was living in the past. We all want more control of our live and who could argue against greater community awareness and actions.

The Pandemic has offered an opportunity to do this, and hopefully it will last to some extent, but that will be down to us, and certainly not a recognition that the COVID-19 is a "message from God". Its a message to us that human beings caused, mismanagement and try to benefit from this ('Greed-is- Good', still rules many peoples value set, a power is still an aphrodisiac for pollies).

The benefits that will come from the global event will only appear if we choose to do so, not governments, economists or I sorry even the words of wisdom form religious leaders.

That's the chanllenge for each of us.

"Most people declare they are atheists because atheism solves the intellectual problem of believing in the existence of God as the old man in the sky." Where is the evidence for this very broad and dogmatic assertion? It doesn't apply to me. I may be the only example but that seems unlikely. I would be surprised if it applies to any of the folk I know who are atheists, though I can see why the average citizen might resort to that simplistic explanation of their atheism when confronted by a real live Deacon. Also, I strongly object to the allegation that I am murdering myself. It may be poetic licence but it's rude and tactless. As for the claimed association between religious and political-economic opinions, that's also something testable via simple data collection and analysis. I would be very surprised if the writer's claims stood up.

It's just not the old man in the sky crap, but all the other fanciful myth and legend trotted out for one reason only? Mind control of the masses and to rule without being ever held to account!

If we are to believe in something? And believe in something we must!

Then let that something be, evidence-based, fact-checked, as the absolutely irrefutable, mighty Truth!

And for a start understand from nothing you get nothing, that energy cannot be created nor destroyed just transformed. That the universe and everything in it including all life forms is transformed energy vibrating just south if the speed of light

Can the universe think or dream? Well, you and I can and we are an intregal part of it!

And are left at the end of the day left with just two choices to believe in to understand creation Either divine intelligence operating with a planned purpose or magic!

Me? Well it may look magical but then so does intelligent design and created for a known purpose, some of it so splendid to completely boggle the mind/beggar belief!
Alan B.

Reading all of those incredibly boring oh-so-earnest Christian sermons, essays and books in response to Covid-19 one would think that the fact that death really does rule to here is a new discovery or phenomenon.

Death - the pause that refreshes!

http://www.beezone.com/DawnHorse/death_is_not_your_concern.html

It is also everyone's unexamined philosophy - especially in the case of Christians because Christian-ism is a death-denying "religion"
http://beezone.com/death_message.html

Essays on atheism and conventional mommy-daddy creator-"God" religion.
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/dogma-atheism
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/religion-not-ego
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/nirvanasara/chapter4.html

Only irrational unscientific people can deny that creation requires a Creator, laws require a law Maker, design requires a designer. The big bang and evolution are atrocious answers that lack any rationality or scientific basis. Atheist simply are small minded walking around with their eyes shut.

I've read it.

Dan

C'mon, Peter. Would you really believe your pregnant daughter if she told you she was a virgin? Do you really believe in a God that is three in one? Do you really believe that you are not dead when you are dead? Do you really believe that your wrongs or sins don't matter because you believe in mumbojumbo? C'mon, Peter, use your head for something more than a hat rack.

Peter, you might even feel a sense of release if you stop trying to justify your silly superstition. There are thousands of religions which have many concepts of deity. Some of them such as Buddhism have concepts of a supernatural without a deity. It is unlikely that one is right, and the others are wrong. It is more likely that they all are constructions of the human mind which one can do without.

.

Dear Peter,

.

You wrote :

1. « The mistake that modern atheism has made is that it takes the objectification of God seriously »

If you mean they “take their desires for reality”, Peter, that sounds like a case of “the pot calling the kettle black”.
.

2. « The God that atheists reject .. »

It’s impossible to reject something that does not exist, Peter. Just as it is impossible to drink water from an empty glass. What they reject is the god hypothesis, like the water hypothesis : that there really is water in the glass – but you just can’t see it, taste it, feel it, smell it, hear it, get wet with it, or even drink it !

They do not reject water in the empty glass. They reject the hypothesis that there is water in the glass. Nor do they reject God. They reject the God hypothesis.
.

3. « … God language in church is but shorthand … »

I guess that’s why I couldn’t quite catch what they were talking about.
.

4. « … a deeper reality … the hole in our lives that could have been filled with spiritual depth haunts us … »

Just like that empty glass. It sure is no substitute for water when you’re thirsty ! Gotta dig deeper, huh ?
.

5. « Turning away from scientific truth is turning away from God and it results in self-murder »

The OED defines “murder” as : “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another”. So “self-murder” must be a schizophrenic crime. Can’t be too many of them, Peter. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.
.

6. « We have this idea that religion is about what we believe in. It is not. It is about the truth … »

WOW !
.

7. « … we can once again re-imagine a future and escape the royal consciousness that denies death »

Well, she is getting on a bit in years, Peter, but do you really think she's immortal ?

.

This is what I wonder about.

I've located a native shell gathering basket at a depth of about forty feet.

It is now projecting from mud rock and is in a petrified state. I put the age of this find at at least ten thousand years.

Reason for that estimate is that was the approximate time of a fifty foot sea level rise which took place over about one hundred years.

So this basket was once used by natives gathering shell fish prior to that, and at a location equivalent to the more ancient shore line, two kilometres further east of the current shore line.

Point highlighted with this event to me is obvious. At the time natves were using this basket, Jewish history was a non event.
Christianity was absolutely unheard of and natives of this continent had roamed its lands for sixty thousand years prior.

Religion therefore is strictly a cultural experience.

Dan

Aut: Christian fundamentalism may understand God in this blank, literal way, but the rest of us understand that language is limited and that God language in church is but shorthand for a deeper reality

Christian Fundamentalism is no different to Islamic Fundamentalism. They would have any Atheist chained to a Post & burnt as witches is given half a chance.

Aut: The God that atheists reject is a mean conception and is easily discarded. Of course, we all need to discard this conception.

Amen to that.

Aut: The hole in our lives that could have been filled with spiritual depth haunts us and accounts for the frenetic nature of modern life.

What “hole” This is a God Centric Idea that is simply not true.

Aut: Many say that life cannot return to the way it was because the pandemic has exposed our weaknesses, our greed, our lies confected for political purposes, and our neglect of community and the poor.

Well, true to a point. As they say, “The more things change the more they stay the same.” The Greedy will not be weeded out so easy & if they are they will be replaced by another, just as greedy.

Aut: All of these reforms are rational ways of correcting the economy. Why is it so hard for the electorate to hear them?

Because the Greedy in the Electorate might lose out on their Scams.

Aut: Both left and right are stuck by the perceived intransigence of the electorate.

Aut: Part of our stultification is caused by our clinging to economic theory that was forged at another time and in different circumstances.

Oh, so true. The Books & Theories that these Economists cling to were mostly written well over 100 years ago. Different Time. Different People. Different Thinking all round. Entirely different World to the Times they were written.

Dear David,

>> I do not have the arrogance to define what a Christian ... believes because I know that religion is a complex phenomenon ...<<

This is a commendable attitude. Unfortunately, your next post, where you ridicule some Christian beliefs, seems to contradict this.

Many people who do not understand higher mathematics do not feel the need to ridicule what e.g. relativity or quantum physics is about but simply admit that they cannot understand. [One can ridicule e.g. Einstein’s theory by pointing out that if the object A moves with the speed 2c/3 and B with the speed 2c/3 in the opposite direction then the speed of A with respect to B is 4c/3; hence c cannot be the maximum speed.]

Dear George,

I am immensely glad you are posting.

I cannot define what Christians believe as Christians believe many things. However, any belief can be subject to doubt if it seems ridiculous. Religion should not be insulated from doubt, and belief in a virgin without any compelling evidence seems a ridiculous belief.

' Religion should not be insulated from doubt, and belief in a virgin without any compelling evidence seems a ridiculous belief.'

and the idiotic theory of this earth coming from nothing or big bang should be open to ridicule.

Why do I get this feeling of deja vu?

//One can ridicule e.g. Einstein’s theory by pointing out that if the object A moves with the speed 2c/3 and B with the speed 2c/3 in the opposite direction then the speed of A with respect to B is 4c/3; hence c cannot be the maximum speed.//

This is a misunderstanding of special relativity:

http://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/askaphysicist/physics-answer.cfm?uid=20130130105151

Maybe if I wait around for a while OzSpen might show up.

Toni Lavis,

Exactly. This ridicule or “contradiction” within Einstein’ theory is based on a tacit assumption of the laws of Newtonian mechanics which are not compatible with Einstein’s theory (in Einstein’ theory they are valid only approximately, and are completely inadequate where higher speeds are involved as your formulae also show).

Similarly with ridicule or “contradictions” with nit-picked tenets of the Christian belief system. They are based on a tacit assumption of the self-sufficiency of natural sciences (scientism?) which is incompatible with a Christian’s world view.

One can doubt everything as long as one is aware of the tacit assumptions on which these doubts are based.

Peter wrote: "Turning away from scientific truth is turning away from God and it results in self murder."

The above is nonsense. Scientific truth and God are unrelated concepts. Roughly 7% of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science believe in God. Peter's statement means that 93% of the AAAS have turned away from scientific truth.

I kind of agree with Peter Sellick's premise "Atheism as self-murder"- but coming from a science background I struggle with these ideas. To me rejecting your own culture- despite all cultures failings- is nihilistic and leads to a loss of meaning in life. There is some complexity here...

According to his bio- Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

Even though Mr Sellick has written article "Was Jesus a socialist? ... When we reduce the Kingdom to the "common good" or a lawful and ordered society, it becomes our own project and it is bound to fail. Marxism is the big example of our time."

In this article he says "The right demonises anything that they see as socialist. The left is not brave enough to stand up for refugees, or the increase in the unemployment benefit. Both left and right are stuck by the perceived intransigence of the electorate."

To me it appears that Peter leans to the so called left of the political landscape. In the spirit of Quantum Mechanics- the viewer effects the measurement- many on the so called left perhaps would say that given they view me as so called right everyone left of me is left. I however think the left right dichotomy is a simplification that crosses the line to obfuscation. I call myself a Traditionalist also know as an anti-(Locke- Father of Liberal Democracy, John Stewart Mill- On Liberty, Universalism, Globalism, etc) Liberal- "freedom is not free". To use the "anti" modifier perhaps is interesting however because Traditionalism came first.

I believe that the political landscape is multidimensional in the spirit of Political Compass.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass

The left do a fair bit of demonizing of their own- using Argumentum Ad Hitlerum at fair liberal opportunity- see Paul Graham- hierarchy of argument.

Not that I am a credible expert on Christianity- An interesting thing is Christianity is a very old movement that have roots in Traditional Western Culture- even Anglicanism is five hundred years old.

As someone else mentioned on OLO- there was a rash of new branches of Christianity formed along with the formation of the USA- I guess they can be forgiven for adopting Locke Liberalism being the new philosophy of the time.

Perhaps these new branches of Christian's thought that adopting a liberal visage would attract membership- though there are examples of loosely proto-liberal thought in Jesus's teachings perhaps- "universal love" for one example. Though in ancient times the concept of the world was different for most than in the last 50 or even 20 years. Other philosophies such as Islam perhaps seem to believe in "universal law"- maybe Buddhism is "universal suffering", Confucianism is "universal family", Taoism is "universal opposites". There seems to be a common underlying thread of universalism here.

Computer Science has been used to model human relationships and psychology. In computer programming two methods of problem solving are bottom up and top down- bottom up policy seems to be how human societies originally developed- with the city state periods of human culture there was a move to top down policy. The Roman and later the Catholic model appears to use a combination of the two paradigms- you could call it a "Confederation of City States" perhaps. Some may see conflating of coding with policy as invalid but it makes sense to me.

Many of these paradigms seem related to a sort of "classification or definition problem" often of over generalization or over exaggeration. This seems to also occur in saying that in Jordan Peterson's terminology of God being an "idealized leader" as not only of being "knowledgeable and powerful" but being "all knowing and all powerful". Something that Mr Sellick seems to indicate is characteristic of the beliefs of fundamentalists.

Yes these over generalizations and exaggerations are wrong but they do provide useful rules of thumb for most people- even science in the end uses rules of thumb- Wittgenstein' conclusion was that philosophy is inherently fallible due to the fallibility of language.

http://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-take-2500+-years-of-philosophy-to-reach-Wittgenstein-conclusion-that-philosophy-is-inherently-fallible-due-to-the-fallibility-of-language?share=

Fundamentalists perhaps accuse moderates of being irresponsibly lax- Liberals and Moderates accuse fundamentalists of being disciplined to the point of cruelty. Perhaps both strategies can lead to failures of various types- in times of laxness maybe discipline is ordered. The problem with politics is it's not chemistry- one measure of base doesn't neutralize one unit of acid in politics or policy.

One stand out issue is that policy is often judged on one time failures rather than a better measure such as the average. Yet another case of possibility over probability. Hopefully enlightened opinion is able to see the difference.

Hopefully they will see the prosecutions case as badgering in the court of public enlightened opinion.

Organizations such as the Methodist's and the Unitarian's appear to seem to have adopted more overtly socialist policies over different times. Maybe these policies are the result of historical events and relationships between different Christian diasporas especially with declining patronage in recent times

God's an old man in the sky?
How do you know he's not a kid with an ant-farm?

CM: Father of Liberal Democracy, John Stewart Mill-

1806 to 1873. Hmmm. & what would he know about the ways of the 21st. Century.

CM: As someone else mentioned on OLO- there was a rash of new branches of Christianity formed along with the formation of the USA-

After the death of Joshua (aka, Jesus) there were at least 20 different Christian Church Branches Formed in the first 100 years. It wasn’t until 329 that Pauline Christianity was pronounced the Winner & consequently the Pauline Christians set out to eradicate all opposition.

AC: God's an old man in the sky? How do you know he's not a kid with an ant-farm?

I have it on good authority that the Old Man thing is a left over from our early pre-tribal Days when the Elders of the Tribe were the holders of Wisdom.

I think you maybe right though. God appears to be a spoilt brat playing badly with its toys. Ay.

'Fundamentalists perhaps accuse moderates of being irresponsibly lax- Liberals and Moderates accuse fundamentalists of being disciplined to the point of cruelty.'

have to disagree Canen. The word fundamentalist has been hijacked and demonised as has every word the left can use to misrepresent.

Someone who does not believe in the fundamentals of the Christian faith has made up their own version of religion. A fundamentalist simply believes in what the bible teaches. Any rational person can reject the claims of Christ if they choose but twisting these claims are just dishonest. 'Liberals' simply make up their own religion just like the gw mob. That is why liberals usually support perverting marriage, deny creation and often support godless woke causes.

Runner- I agree with your points. I think that I was being perhaps too kind in my assessment.

Jayb- Thanks for the information.

Peter, You believe in God. I don't. Why not just accept that we don't believe the same thing and not get excited about it? I don't think you are a bad person because you don't have the same viewpoint that I do. I used to believe in God. Now I don't. People used to believe in Zeus and Apollo. They were just gods that men imagined. I came to the conclusion that the God of the Bible is just another God that men imagined as they imagined Zeus and Apollo. There is no need for you to get excited about that. That's all atheism is. - a lack of belief in what some men believe. You don't believe in Allah or the many other gods that are not in the Bible. You don't believe in any of those gods. Of course, that doesn't you guilty of self-murder. I don't believe in any of those gods either. In addition I don't believe in the god you believe. That's really nothing to get excited about.

Well said David f