Nessus posted:

What I kind of wish to see is what kind of social and cultural narratives a genuinely atheistic culture would develop over centuries, just to see if they'd abandon the same drat patterns of biblical narrative or not. Call it a... scientific curiosity.

Muscle Tracer posted:

So, based on those revelations, why would it not be possible to pass moral judgement on what is known about it? If a man tells me "Hey, there's an omnipotent god up there who created all of this and it's sending you to burn in hellfire in eternity because you don't believe in it," why can I not make a moral judgement on that basis?

Besides which, even just other people are beyond our comprehension. If a person tortures your grandparents to death, do you withhold moral judgement on them or their actions simply because you don't fully understand or can't comprehend them? Because if a hell of a lot of Christians are right, then that's effectively what their God has done to my grandparents.

rudatron posted:

You don't need a position to judge. Positions are necessary for a judgement to be respected by a group of people, but again, that's political. As a subject, each person has the capability to reach their own judgements - no 'position' required. Like, you brought up this line of conversation because you said you didn't like how atheists discuss the issue: why is a position is necessary for that? And why does whatever you're judging have to be 'accountable'? In discussions on countries here on Something Awful, nothing said on this forum will ever Bring Any Country Into Account. Are those discussion 'invalid'? And mate, everyone has a standard. Everyone judges everything else by their own standard. You can disagree with someone else's standard, but you can't very well deny that they have one.

To demand that you need A Right to judge, A Position to judge, and the ability to bring whatever you're judging to Account is honestly really dystopian: you're denying people their own perspectives and subjectivity simply because they lack power. That's tyranny apologia right there. And I think this brings me to something I've always thought, that religion has always been a metaphor for society. So societies with rigid hierarchies have that same hierarchy embedded into their religion. So the idea that God is unaccountable is functionally a mechanism for social control. It's a mental device to justify tyranny.

So I say, gently caress that poo poo. If god exists and is a fascist, then it's necessary to murder god. I say that both because I mean it, and that it applies to the metaphorical God as much as the metaphysical one: 'God' as metaphor, as an ideological instrument of justifying dictatorship, must be rended limb from limb, so that it can never be put back together again.

Sakarja posted:

But you can't murder God, obviously.

Sakarja posted:

Because that just presents you with a choice and explains its consequences. It seems crazy to me to judge an omnipotent god that created everything on that basis, but maybe that's just me.

Sakarja posted:

But you can't murder God, obviously.

quote:

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Sakarja posted:

Because that just presents you with a choice and explains its consequences. It seems crazy to me to judge an omnipotent god that created everything on that basis, but maybe that's just me.

People are not beyond our comprehension in the same way as God. Also, it doesn't really matter anyway, since there are rules by which men are judged. If a person did that then yes, I would judge them. But even that is only because I'm not righteous enough to leave it to God, as I should. Why single out your grandparents? If a lot of Christians are right, God has done that even to infants who never had any choice or say in the matter. But if those same Christians are right then we can't judge God so...


It is very convenient to take only the first part of it into consideration: God is responsible for all the suffering, but anything beyond that is a lie. If that's how you see it, then I understand your position.

Muscle Tracer posted:

When you say "biblical narrative," what exactly do you mean? I can't think of any narrative structures that originated in the Bible.

SedanChair posted:

God is afraid of us. He parried our first attack, the Tower of Babel. But we're coming to kill him and take his poo poo

Nessus posted:

While this is true, I think it's fair to say that a lot of narratives and such are known to the general person FROM the Bible, even if they originated earlier. In this case however I mean having an ideological or cultural structure around atheism that doesn't smack like triumphalist Protestant Christianity with Science replacing Jesus, Critical Thinking replacing Prayer, and Religious Idiots replacing Heathen Unbelievers.

Muscle Tracer posted:

Ahh, I gotcha, and totally agree. It's ironic to see folks like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins blame religious belief for the terrible things that happen in the world, when they are already following the exact same patterns. Ask a staunch, militant Atheist why he has such strong faith that there is no God, and we could be having this same thread in reverse.

Agnostics, tho...

Muscle Tracer posted:

Ahh, I gotcha, and totally agree. It's ironic to see folks like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins blame religious belief for the terrible things that happen in the world, when they are already following the exact same patterns. Ask a staunch, militant Atheist why he has such strong faith that there is no God, and we could be having this same thread in reverse.

Agnostics, tho...

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

This is such an old argument, that atheists are just as bad as the faithful when it comes to their "beliefs".

We don't have a separate term for non-golf players, we don't have to label ourselves as "not biologists", so how is "atheism" even a coherent group, much less one with a single creed in which to have "faith".

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Of course, if you have a problem with the provocateurs Dawkins and Hitchens and the like, then I do tend to agree with you, although I'd like to point out that you really aren't against "atheists" so much as "assholes"

ShadowCatboy posted:

It doesn't take faith to not belief in an unproven entity, any more than it takes faith to not believe in phlogiston, orgone energy, or aether.

EDIT: Though if you're referring to the brand of New Atheists popping up on the internet, sure.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

Of course, if you have a problem with the provocateurs Dawkins and Hitchens and the like, then I do tend to agree with you, although I'd like to point out that you really aren't against "atheists" so much as "assholes"

Muscle Tracer posted:

That's agnosticism, though, not atheism. Atheism is the certainty that there are no deities

Kit Walker posted:

Every atheist is by definition an agnostic. An agnostic knows he can't know, and may live life as though a god or gods exist, or don't exist. An atheist knows he can't know, and lives life as though there are no gods since he has no reason to believe there are any. It is simply living without theism.

e: I suppose I should clarify it as "every rational atheist" since god by definition is impossible to prove or disprove. Well, some potential types of gods, anyway.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Just wondering but what would people consider believing that say the Christian god exists but is inaccurately described? Because a whole bunch of people seem to believe no gods exist because, say, the Christian god would be evil if it existed. As if actually being what the people who wanted you to believe in it said it is is required to exist.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

This is such an old argument, that atheists are just as bad as the faithful when it comes to their "beliefs".

We don't have a separate term for non-golf players, we don't have to label ourselves as "not biologists", so how is "atheism" even a coherent group, much less one with a single creed in which to have "faith".

Of course, if you have a problem with the provocateurs Dawkins and Hitchens and the like, then I do tend to agree with you, although I'd like to point out that you really aren't against "atheists" so much as "assholes"

Black Bones posted:

Christ could only be evil if his love/forgiveness is limited to a select few.

Romans 9:18, NLT posted:

So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.

Romans 9:23, NLT posted:

He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory.

CommieGIR posted:

That is not true. And gets thrown around a lot by those of faith: "Well you are just an agnostic, because athiesm is just agnosticism"

Athiesm is the disbelief.
Agnostic is thr belief that god/gods/goddesses are simply unknowable.

Sakarja posted:

Sakarja posted:

I disagree. Most of the time the problem is that atheists judge God as if He was at once real and fake. They acknowledge His "crimes" but ignore everything else. This approach is obviously absurd. Either you acknowledge God's existence, in which case you have no right and no standard by wich to judge Him; or you deny God's existence in which case the morality of his actions is a non-issue, nonsense, even.

Nintendo Kid posted:

Just wondering but what would people consider believing that say the Christian god exists but is inaccurately described? Because a whole bunch of people seem to believe no gods exist because, say, the Christian god would be evil if it existed. As if actually being what the people who wanted you to believe in it said it is is required to exist.

Black Bones posted:

I'm afraid God's love is somewhat greater than the author of Romans.

Paul worked with the intellectual and moral tools that he had, and did a pretty good job considering. His "we are all one in Christ" is closer to the truth than his desire for petty retribution against his future murderers.

Kit Walker posted:

I'm saying it as an atheist. I think it's intellectually dishonest to say we can prove that there isn't a god. God could, after all, be a malicious intangible creature that created a world of suffering and will torture most of us for all eternity after death. I can't disprove it any more than I can disprove invisible pink unicorns. It doesn't mean I believe it or live my life as though it's a possibility.

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

There I go again, forgetting that not all Christians are Biblical literalists. So Paul was just a guy, getting close to the truth in many cases, but we shouldn't count his epistles as direct Word of God?

Kit Walker posted:

I'm saying it as an atheist. I think it's intellectually dishonest to say we can prove that there isn't a god. God could, after all, be a malicious intangible creature that created a world of suffering and will torture most of us for all eternity after death. I can't disprove it any more than I can disprove invisible pink unicorns. It doesn't mean I believe it or live my life as though it's a possibility.

CommieGIR posted:

We CAN'T say we can disprove god, however, that doesn't make you agnostic. You can disbelieve in a god while admitting that its scientifically and realistically impossible to prove/disprove god.

PT6A posted:

Atheism and agnosticism aren't positions on the same spectrum, though. You can be an agnostic atheist (meaning you do not believe in a deity, but you believe it to be impossible to prove one way or the other) or a gnostic atheist (meaning you are certain there is no deity), or an agnostic theist (meaning you believe there is a deity, but you believe it's impossible to prove and/or impossible to know the nature of that deity.

Myself, I'm an agnostic atheist. I don't believe there is a deity, but I also believe it's impossible to prove the existence or lack of existence of such in any way we currently understand. I'm basically playing the odds as I see them. which is to say that, in the absence of any evidence that a deity exists, I believe there is no deity that exists. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but even so I consider it quite unlikely that a deity exists.

Kit Walker posted:

I'm saying it as an atheist. I think it's intellectually dishonest to say we can prove that there isn't a god. God could, after all, be a malicious intangible creature that created a world of suffering and will torture most of us for all eternity after death. I can't disprove it any more than I can disprove invisible pink unicorns. It doesn't mean I believe it or live my life as though it's a possibility.

Black Bones posted:

Few Christians are.

quote:

Yup, and I think Paul himself would be horrified that some people today try to attach such a label to his letters. He's putting forward arguments to his colleagues, not claiming to speak for God. In Corinthians he talks about the limitations of human understanding, "through a mirror, darkly" and all that. This applies to his own morals and views on salvation.

Bertrand Russell posted:

I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.

ShadowCatboy posted:

Atheism/theism are in fact metaphysical positions: they address the question "Does God exist?" and perhaps "What is God's nature?"

Muscle Tracer posted:

What term would you use to describe someone whose answer to this question is "I don't know"?

GAINING WEIGHT... posted:

I'd have a conversation with the American evangelicals before making that assertion.

quote:

I guess my question then becomes, hey, if the Bible isn't a direct Word of God missive, then why trust it to reveal the finer points of salvation?

Black Bones posted:

They are the "few" I was referring to. I know they like to make a lot of noise, but unless I'm mistaken their interpretations are in the minority, even within American Christianity, let alone globally.


Indeed, I only trust the good book as far as I can throw it. So within the bounds of my weak girly arms common sense, empathy, reason, etc.

Muscle Tracer posted:

What term would you use to describe someone whose answer to this question is "I don't know"?

Black Bones posted:

They are the "few" I was referring to. I know they like to make a lot of noise, but unless I'm mistaken their interpretations are in the minority, even within American Christianity, let alone globally.