Note: this post is in reply to this one from the Capitalism room.
: : : Wait a minute. The Bible is a basis for belief.: : It is a basis for belief only if you assume that it is a basis for belief - which is circular reasoning.
: The only way that can be is if you can prove that God doesn't exist.
Uh, you're the one asserting that an infinite and invisible person exists; which is directly counter to Occam's Razor; the onus is on you to justify your statement first.
: Until then the Bible has as much validity as the writings of Josepheus, Tacitus, Livy, etc. (unless you believe that they never existed either).
True and untrue. The Bible is only a holy book if it is infallible or objectively correct on certain points; the fact that it reports historical events accurately or semi-accurately does not serve as justification for the statement that the Bible is the Word of God.
After all, the fact that a book reports historical events accurately does not make a book completely accurate in all respects.
: By the way, do you think that Jesus and the Apostles were real people? Or were they all part of a myth?
I think that they were real people; but I don't think that Jesus was the Son of God; he was what would in modern terms be called a guerilla.
: : You might as well say that the Koran is a sound basis for belief because it says that there is no God but Allah.
: Ahh, but the Koran hasn't been subjected to nearly the same degree of scutiny as the Bible has.
Of course it has. The Islamic world has, if anything, a better scholastic tradition than the Christian one; they invented much of modern maths, algebra, philosophy and theology; Baghdad University was the first University ever created. In the years 700-1400, the Islamic world was the world centre of learning.
: And the Koran presents us with no miracles other than the fact that the Koran was miraculously written by Mohammed.
If that is your sole justification for belief in the Bible, then the most lurid and fantastic story is the one you should believe in; so why aren't you Hindu? - the Mahabharata is amazingly ornate and 12 times as long as the Bible.
: By the way, what's your theory on the resurrection? How was that accomplished? That is the neatest trick...any ideas?
Accomplished by PR, in my book; witness the fact that all of the Biblical accounts contradict each other flatly. Sounds to me as if they couldn't decide what the party line was.
: : You cannot say that the Bible is inherently any sounder as a basis for belief than the Koran, the Talmud or The Lord of the Rings; they are self-referential, and justify their existence by their existence.
:
: Well, not true. Historians agree that many of the incidents mentioned in the Bible did in fact happen.
Historians agree that many of the events in the Iliad also happened; excavation of Troy VIb shows that Homer's account is remarkably accurate in many ways.
Does that mean that the gods looked down from Mount Olympus upon the combat; or does it mean that the people who won claimed that their gods had been behind them all the time?
There is a difference between saying;
'Homer's account is remarkably accurate; it even describes the weak point in the northeast wall's fortifications correctly'
"...Hector- you who to me are father, mother, brother, and dear husband- have mercy upon me; stay here upon this wall; make not your child fatherless, and your wife a widow; as for the host, place them near the fig-tree, where the city can be best scaled, and the wall is weakest." - Iliad, Book VI
and saying;
'Menelaus would have killed Paris if Aphrodite hadn't snapped the chinstrap of Paris' helmet'
"...With this he flew at Alexandrus, caught him by the horsehair plume of his helmet, and began dragging him towards the Achaeans. The strap of the helmet that went under his chin was choking him, and Menelaus would have dragged him off to his own great glory had not Jove's daughter Venus been quick to mark and to break the strap of oxhide, so that the empty helmet came away in his hand. This he flung to his comrades among the Achaeans, and was again springing upon Alexandrus to run him through with a spear, but Venus snatched him up in a moment (as a god can do), hid him under a cloud of darkness,and conveyed him to his own bedchamber. - Iliad, Book III.
: And the evidence provided via archeology was sometimes produced after scholars had declared that it was impossible.
In this case, it is nearly always that a well-known event has been ascribed to the actions of a deity. The few remaining cases are generally due to very bad archaeology.
Floyd's our resident archaeologist; he can tell you more about this at some length.
: : : : As such, his belief is more reasonable than yours; it can never be proven to be correct or incorrect; but it explains the perceived phenomena better.
: : : The seven deadly sins explain a lot too.
: : Non sequitur, Frenchy; you'll have to expand on that comment.
: The seven deadly sins explain a lot of what we would describe as sinful behavior. Pride, Greed, etc. Human nature if you like.
The original point of this debate is that there is no such thing as a fixed and absolute 'human nature' - if you're trying to justify your position using 'human nature' you are saying 'human nature is human nature because I say it is'; again, circular reasoning.
: : : : And if you disagree, perhaps you'd like to go and eat a pork chop in the centre of Mecca...?
: : : : After all, if you believe that your morality is the only correct one, you can't really suffer any blame for what happens to you...
: : : sure you can, and in this case would, because others would be wrong to harm a man who ate pork.
: : They'd be perfectly within the decrees of their faith to punish an unbeliever who ate 'unclean' animals in the Holy City.
: : : Would you defend their actions?
: : No, since I'm not a Moslem. However, anyone who showed such blatant disregard for the religious feelings of other religions would be asking for whatever ill fate came to them. It's called 'self-inflicted injury' in my book.
: But wait a second. If you maintain that other standards have as much validity as say mine, in other words, if you don't have an opinion as to which standard is really right, or true, why would you not support their decision to kill me?
Because my own personal opinion is that violence and killing people is wrong. My own opinions come first to me; this does not prevent me from recognizing that others have as much right to their moral opinions as I do to mine. If their moral opinions stray into intolerance of my opinions, then I defend my opinions; apart from that, it's not my right to tell people that their moral opinions are wrong.
: Your differentiating between two belief systems clearly choosing one over the other. What is that based on?
No. I'm choosing my own personal beliefs above both.
: : : Your position is that since there is no absolutes, not only would they be within their rights to do so, but that slavery is acceptable, ethnic genocide is acceptable, and come to think of it, that eliminating entire economic classes of people is OK too.
: : No, Frenchy; you are missing the point of tolerance; it cuts both ways.
: Oh, a nifty qualification.
: So, let me get this straight. All standards are equally valid but only if they include tolerance. That means that not all standards are equal becuase those standards that do not include tolerance are not equal to yours. Hmmmmmm,....
All unproveable standards are equally valid; however, anyone who exercises their moral standards by limiting my freedom to believe is behaving with intolerance toward me; my moral obligation to 'live and let live' is weakened or compromised totally, according to the severity of the breach.
This doesn't mean that someone else's moral beliefs are less than mine; merely that their execution treats my beliefs as being worth less than theirs; which I resist.
If freely consenting people want to go off and form a Satanist enclave somewhere, it's fine by me; as long as they respect my right not to be a Satanist. If they try and inflict their moral values on me, I resist.
Simple.
: : Yup. Virtually every major world religion has indulged in the above behaviour on a repeated basis (with the possible exception of Buddhism and Taoism).
: : (Perhaps you've never been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There is a staircase going down to the Chapel of St John, that is covered in carved crosses - carved in 1099 by the victorious Crusaders with their swords; who had just sacked Jerusalem and put many of its inhabitants into slavery and killed the rest. I've been there; I have pictures of the crosses, carved by all those devout Christian men...)
: (Ahh, yes, the Crusades. Any idea what the cause of the Crusades were? Did you learn about that while on your trip? Did you learn that the Muslims had over run Jerusalem and much of the Middle East? Would the proper response on the part of the Church and Kings of the tenth century to have let the Muslims continue their invasion? What would you have done?)
Exactly how much about the Crusades do you know, Frenchy?
The First Crusade was caused by a number of factors.
1. The expansionist policy of the Holy Roman Empire combined with the waning of the Byzantine Empire left a power vacuum in the Levant; prime land for the Europeans (see also the conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily in the same period).
2. The Christian church suffered an east/west split in 1054; there were interested parties on both sides aiming for a re-union; something which would unite the entire Christian world again.
3. European merchants were getting stiffed on Middle East trade by the Byzantines, who taxed goods that went through Byzantium.
The Church and various states figured that they could serve all of the above by an attack on the Holy Land, which is why the First Crusade happened.
The stories of atrocities committed by the Turks were largely invented; Jerusalem was specifically multi-faith in that period; although the rulers were Moslem, Judaism and Christianity were tolerated; there was a spate of bloodletting following a revolt by a group of extremist Christians in the early 11th century.
The major change in the latter half of the 11th century was the power struggle between the Seljuk Turks from Anatolia and the Fatimid Turks from Egypt; Jerusalem had been under the control of Fatimids for several hundred years (the city came under Turkish control in 638 A.D.).
With the expansion of the Seljuks, Jerusalem became a battleground, as the Fatimids dug in for a siege. The city was taken by Seljuks in 1073, whereupon they proceeded to punish all of the inhabitants alike; whether Jew, Moslem or Christian; the main Jewish seat of learning (the Yesheva) moved to Tyre as a result. In 1098, the Fatimids retook Jerusalem after a siege; but the defences of Jerusalem were depleted as a result of the siege; which is why the Crusaders managed to take Jerusalem the following year.
It's incorrect to think of the Moslems conquering Jerusalem in ~1050 A.D. - they'd ruled the city since 638 A.D., during which time all religions were permitted and tolerated.
(In fact, the Moslem expansion into Europe reached its high-water mark in 732 A.D., when they invaded France from Spain, but were defeated in the Battle of Tours (on October the 10th) by Charles Martel).
When the Crusaders entered Jerusalem in 1099, they killed nearly all of the Moslems and Jews in the city; out of 40,000 inhabitants, under 5,000 people survived; these people were sold as slaves at the city gates.
A contemporary (Christian) chronicler, William of Tyre, described the streets of Jerusalem as ankle-deep in rivers of blood; and the Crusaders as 'dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which bought terror to all who met them'.
The entire Jewish community was locked up in the central synagogue, which was then burnt down with the people inside.
After this, the assembled Crusader forces assembled in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks; which is when those crosses were carved. The practising of Judaism and Islam was then forbidden because it made the Holy City 'unclean'.
I know the history of the Crusades very well, Frenchy...
: : : : : Morality is only a social construct if there is no higher ideal imposed upon us by a higher source.
: : The best of *your* knowledge (which conveniently overlooks sundry self-contradictions and glaring logical errors).
: No, not *my* knowledge, I said *our*, as in the knowledge that man has gained throughout the ages.
Simply untrue, Frenchy; no human knowledge can ever give clinching evidence of a deity's existence; if it did, they wouldn't be a deity.
: : I never claimed to have ultimate answers; never have done, never will do. What I did was point out the inherent contradictions and errors in Stuart's argument.
:
: Did Stuart claim to have the ultimate answer?
Implicitly, yes. He has repeatedly said on this board that the Christian moral stance is the *only* real and 'true' one. So yes, he did, and has done many times before.
: Besides, if you admit that you don't have the answers, how in the world can you be so sure that others don't? How do you know these things if you say you don't know?
Because it is simply *impossible* to know what you claim to know unless you base it on something that is also unproveable.
Are you an infinite being?
If you are mortal and totally finite, then you cannot possibly assign a form to the infinite, since your perceptions are limited to the finite.
If you are mortal but somehow contain an infinite component, you might be able to; but no-one has ever been able to provide a consistent and rigorous explanation for the belief that the finite body has an infinite component; and all such perceptions of 'the infinite' are still filtered through finite machinery.
I don't know how to fly without the aid of equipment. Am I justified in saying that I don't think anyone human can fly without the aid of equipment?
I would say so; the evidence is so overwhelming that humans cannot fly unaided that it is the counter-proposition ('humans can fly unaided!') which needs to prove itself; until then, the theory goes with the observable evidence.
: : By analogy, I don't know if there is a basic number system inherent to the Universe(e.g. ei.pi+1 or similar); that doesn't stop me from correcting someone who insists that 1 + 1 = 3...
: The existence of God can be proved by analogy too; the clockmaker.
No it can't; I've blown the clockmaker argument away on a repeated basis here.
To say that a clock always implies a clockmaker requires causality to be absolute.
If causality is not absolute, then a clock does not necessarily require a clockmaker.
If causality is absolute, then nothing is outside it, including God; leaving an eternal question; what created God?
If nothing created God, then causality isn't absolute; and a clock doesn't necessarily imply a clockmaker.
Causality breaks down either with God or the Universe; either nothing created God, or nothing created the Universe; and thus, the clockmaker analogy is false.
: : : : Except for you, of course; you have a hotline to The Almighty, don't you...?
: : : Ooops! another ad hominem. C'mon, the best you can do, if you really believe in what you say you do, is to say, 'oh, that's a nice opinion'.
: : Is the person in question willing to do the same to me?
: No, of course not. You set your own standards and I set my own. If your standard is that all truth is relative fine, but you've put yourself in the position of having to withhold any judgements on my beliefs. I happen to believe that there are knowable absolutes.
Yet you cannot provide any rational justification for those beliefs; and this is a debate; not just an argument; there are procedures and standards to follow. A debate is supposed to be a balanced dialogue between two (or more) parties that give each one a fair chance to speak their case.
If your method of winning an argument is elimination of those who disagree with you, you are not debating; you are simply polemicizing.
: : Tolerance is a virtue; but it is wasted on the intolerant; and Stuart has displayed blatant intolerance on enough occasions.
: : Which is why I called him 'a poor debater and a worse Christian.'
: So not all opinions are equally valid, or relevant.
Who would you go to if you hurt your arm; a doctor or a miner?
Everyone has an equal right to hold their opinions; but the opinions of someone who has studied the field are likely to be more accurate than the opinions of someone who hasn't.
In the fields of epistemology and logic, Stuart is no expert. That doesn't make him a priori wrong; but it makes him less familiar with the subject and less likely to have inquired into the subject.
He's welcome to hold his opinions, but if he tries to tell me that my points are incorrect, he is likely to come a cropper, insofar as my knowledge is rather more in-depth than his.
Everyone has an equal right to hold an opinion, no matter how strange it may seem; but that does not mean that all opinions are equally useful or accurate.
: Personally I've always found Stuart to be a cut above. He effectively defends his positions and does so in a gentlemanly manner.
Read that thread again, then; he missed my point and sniped at me because he didn't agree with me.
: : : All opinions are based only on current and impermanant things after all.
: : True. However, physical phenomena are generally very reliable; what goes up has always previously come down; whereas no two prophets have ever agreed on what God actually is.
: Hold on, it seems as if Quantum Mechanics demands that there exists a parallel universe of some sort, that pairs of electrons inexplicalbly change spins when seperated from each other, etc.
Not really; the EPR paradox is merely one interpretation of the mathematical theory. It's also a thought experiment; albeit one that has been partially verified by experimentation.
(EPR - Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen)
: Just because we can't, as humans, say what God is doesn't lead to the conclusion that he isn't.
So what gives any idea of 'what God is' a right to declare themselves to be 'the right and true way'?
: Besides, wouldn't you expect a God to be something beyond our understanding?
Well, yes. Take the problem of evil and Russell's famous argument; an infinite God has to be as 'evil' as it is 'good'; which makes statements like 'God is good' meaningless.
However, if God is beyond our understanding, how can anyone human assign a form to God and say 'God says this and God likes that'? - it's dependent on the agenda of the people saying that and the agenda put forward by their articles of faith.
For example, Leviticus says that gays are unclean. Leviticus also says that menstruating women should be kept separate for 2 weeks of the month.
One part fits the agenda of the modern Church. The other doesn't; so it is quietly dropped.
: : : So tell me Far, is that an absolute opinion? LOL!
: : No, it's my opinion, as I implied. My opinion is not absolute and eternal; no-one's is...
: For what it's worth; A long time ago I rejected religion. Since then I've taken the time to learn some things about it. The more I learn about it, the more questions that form in my mind. It's easier to accept the Biblical accounts of Jesus' life than to try to figure out how the miracles were faked, how the resurrection was pulled off, why the Apostles were willing to die for something they knew (if the resurrection was a fake) to be a lie, etc.
It's easier to accept that the Sun goes around the Earth; does that make it right?
And people will always be willing to die for what they believe in; ask Ridley and Latimer, who were burnt for the Anglican faith; or the International Brigades, who fought in Spain in the name of stopping fascism.
: I dunno, what do you think? Care to explain to me how Jesus managed to stage so many miracles?
'Stage' being the key word here; I suspect a combination of revisionism and 'Chinese whispers' adding a metaphysical superstructure on top of some historical events.
Farinata
