Atheism died in the 20th century

[Stuu]

The quote that precedes your answer here isn't mine but appears attributed to me. I'm also a firm believer in proper attribution and would appreciate your editing the post by either attributing it or removing my first part from it.

Yes, I can see the quoting didn't work out in the format. I am happy to withdraw the remark by stating it here.

Although, my comment still applies to something you did write, I think.

Stuart

 

[Town Heretic]

So you still aren't telling me which is the appropriate 'measure'. What tool would you bring to the concert then?

I really did and you're all that's needed (no, it really wasn't an insult).

Have you heard the expression 'Unweaving the rainbow'?

I have. It's poetic, but mistaken. I'm about to embark on a teaching career for a third act and I mean to produce poet-astronauts, or mathematical dramatists.

It is Keats' accusation that Newton destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to prismatic colours, to which Richard Dawkins (in his book of that title) and others have replied that there is no destruction of the aesthetic involved in scientific analysis, you only add to the experience. Not sure if that applies to your god. It always seems so angry when you read ancient Jewish mythology. Maybe there is beauty in anger, which could be measured with, er, a furiometer?

The OT is both beautiful and horrible, as it's meant to be, as the law was and had to be. And then Christ.

I don't know what a god is. You're the one making the claim.

I'm doing a bit more. I'm telling you how to approach Him. One way, at any rate.

No, you've only ever asserted it.

No, that's not honest and you have to be honest. It's all that you really have as virtue goes. The challenge is proof. Your inability to meet it speaks to the inability of the empirical on the point. It's not an individual criticism, as no one has ever been able to manage it.

Measuring with a ruler is experience too.

In this case a measure of failure and a lesson that not every tool is for every task, which is of some benefit.

And in fact I think I made this point to you earlier: the knowledge you have of this god thing must be sensed, and sensing and analysing for a conclusion is at the centre of the scientific method. I agree that experience is subjective in nature, but science seems to make it work by its checks and balances. Why can't your experiences be subject to that kind of confirmation too? Are you just too special?

I don't goad, really. Else you're just taking another way up the same hill.

Stuu: Can you be convincing in a subjective way?

So, no then.

That's a silly question, Stuu. I already am, only not to you. Which is why you should take my advice on approach if you're interested. If you aren't interested then you have no real complaint and less meaningful inquiry.

This is circular logic. You assume the existence in the argument for existence.

I really don't. Again, you've had the best advice you're going to get on subjective approach. I used a variation on it myself, only I wasn't challenging God to prove anything. I was talking to a couple of friends in the grip of what I thought then was a gentle delusion.

You really have to be careful what you ask for. It's another truth. And good luck with your journey toward it, Stuu.

My preference would be this world. The alternative one promised for the pious appears a miserable prospect.

You're squinting. It happens.

 

[Stuu]

Have you heard the expression 'Unweaving the rainbow'?

I have. It's poetic, but mistaken. I'm about to embark on a teaching career for a third act and I mean to produce poet-astronauts, or mathematical dramatists.

I wish you well with that.

The OT is both beautiful and horrible, as it's meant to be, as the law was and had to be. And then Christ.

I think people can be shocked that baby Jesus brought the concept of a punishing hell with him.

No, that's not honest and you have to be honest. It's all that you really have as virtue goes. The challenge is proof. Your inability to meet it speaks to the inability of the empirical on the point. It's not an individual criticism, as no one has ever been able to manage it.

Are we talking about proving there are no gods? If you want an answer to that which conforms to the scientific method then it can only be done when testable claims are made for the god. It looks to me that much of the past 2000 years has involved the pruning back of a Judeo-christian god that has been a god of the gaps for many as the various testable claims for it have been refuted with evidence.

From this angle, you can see there are as many Judeo-christian gods as there are believers, with each coming with its own set of imagined qualities. Some of those gods can't be reasonably said to exist because their necessary properties aren't compatible with what we observe. Of course it is always possible to pull out the faith card. But as soon as you claim that the god came to earth in human form and was born of only one parent and walked again after execution, that god is excluded from existence by being incompatible with reality.

That's a silly question, Stuu. I already am, only not to you. Which is why you should take my advice on approach if you're interested. If you aren't interested then you have no real complaint and less meaningful inquiry.

The usual claims of christianity seem to fail even the most basic applications of skepticism. Why should it, if it is so obviously true to so many?

Stuart

 

[7djengo7]

I think you would have to replay that sequence quote by quote to convince me.

This statement, when you repeat it, always sounds desperate, as if you are trying to convince yourself more than convince anyone else.

And can you convince us that these 'boundaries' are not derived from calculations of volume in a boat described in Genesis?

I think you have no power to convince, and your ability to convince yourself is paper thin. Why do you really believe the way you do?

There is no proof in you claiming it. If you want to convince me, you haven't sorry.

Stuu has never explained what (if anything), according to him, it would be for a person to be convinced of the proposition, P.

However, we learn something interesting when we observe his reaction to something JudgeRightly said:

Because I have been convinced by the evidence that it is true.

Stuu reacts to this by saying:

I recommend not doing that. Use unambiguous evidence instead.

So, what we have, here, is JR telling Stuu that he (JR) has been convinced by evidence, and Stuu reacts to this by saying he (Stuu) recommends not being convinced by evidence. Hereby, we've a glimpse into Stuu's thinking about evidence and convincing. We see that, according to Stuu's own admission, it's a matter of one's will whether or not one is convinced by evidence. According to Stuu, one cannot be convinced against one's will.

So, in the quote, above, where we find grumbly Stuu saying, "If you want to convince me, you haven't [sic] sorry", all Stuu is telling us is that Stuu is unwilling to be convinced of certain things--or, at least, he is telling us that he wants to not let on like he's been convinced of them.

Basically, when you find somebody (and, alas, there are oh so many, nowadays) like Stuu, saying, "Just you try to convince me!" what they are saying is simply, "You can't convince me against my will, and I'm willing to not be convinced. And, you can't cause me to say that you're right, and that I'm wrong, because I am not willing, and will never be, willing to say that you're right, and that I'm wrong! Na na na na na!! <<raspberry>>"

Notice, in the quote above, where Stuu says, "I think you have no power to convince". There, all he is saying is, "I am not willing to be convinced by you, and you have no power over my will."

You must only accept what you wish to accept.

And Stuu does not wish to accept truth and logic.

 

[7djengo7]

Well no. Of course it isn't.

Some bemoan the lack of any atheist presidents, but of course there have been many atheist presidents putting on a facade for the Guns 'n' Religion folks...

Stuart

See, yours is the crowd who have no moral qualm, whatsoever, against lying, against opportunistically trying to get folk to think certain anti-Christians are actually Christians. That's what you're "non-belief" shtick is all about. You're actually proud of such lying.

By your admission that anti-Christians (your folk) have opportunistically fooled (or at least tried to fool) Christians into counting them as their fellow-Christians, you've shot down your whole "evil and atrocities perpetrated by Christianity throughout history" shtick. See, the nonsense you call "atheism" neither is, nor has, any basis, whatsoever, for condemning lying and evil. The trail of blood and injustice throughout history is the work of your folk--the anti-Christians; it's not the work of Christianity.

 

[ok doser]

Ask the native south Americans. They wore clothes and had magnificent cities.

Which native south Americans? The native south Americans dominated, oppressed and slaughtered by the ones who wore clothes and had magnificent cities?