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I bet a lot of 4th century Romans would be pretty amazed that somebody would be flaunting an unshakable belief in all that Christian stuff here 1600 years later. (They'd probably be more impressed with TV or microwave popcorn I guess.) A thing that for serious puzzles me is how a non-Christian normal person undergoes "conversion" nowadays. I mean, to just decide to start believing a bunch of stuff that somebody explains, no matter how weird it sounds, and then to just accept it as real, well it seems odd and I honestly wonder what sort of experience that would be.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Some people have literal visions. See, for example http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/09/a-question-i-never-tire-of-answering/ I also find it interesting that so many similar stories arise directly out of some sort of critical life-threatening experience. All my aging high-school "friends" on Facebook are constantly posting hand-wringing (ha ha I guess literally) pleas for prayer for some health crisis in a loved one or acquaintance. There's a consistent tone of fear, which of course is understandable since existence kind-of sucks and Death Is CertainTM. It's easy to imagine how it's possible to get swallowed up in that sort of pervasive fear, and to cling to mystical beliefs as a sort of psychological shield. I don't like to think that it's a form of mental illness because that seems uncomfortably  and obnoxious.
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Nov 16, 2014 19:58
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Also it seems a little lazy to think "whelp I guess all that stuff about Jesus and the Virgin must be true because there they were chatting with me" and ignore the fact that those ideas pervade Western life in one way or another. I mean, who's grown up in a Western country (or maybe anywhere) and can't mentally picture an image of Jesus or the Virgin?
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Nov 16, 2014 20:04
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What's the philosophical framework that leads to Christianity (or any faith) being something that must be disproven as opposed to being demonstrated as factual? I'm just asking questions here.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:37
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drilldo squirt posted:Faith? OK, well in what way is that not a circular argument? Are you saying people are born with inherent faith, and that that faith means something? Or are you saying that the onset of faith is a manifestation of the existence of a supernatural power?
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Nov 16, 2014 20:39
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drilldo squirt posted:I'm saying that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I agree; true absence of evidence isn't evidence of anything. I repeat the question: in what sense is the existence of faith, or the fact that some people profess their faith, a state of affairs that makes the object of faith - something without any other tangible nature - a body of assertions that requires no other evidence to be supposed true unless proven false? Note that I'm not saying that there's any need to disprove anything; people can believe what they want as far as I'm concerned.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:45
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drilldo squirt posted:Human institutions of religion are fallible? I apologize for being confused, but I don't think I understand what you mean.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:47
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Miltank posted:you don't understand. Yes, that's what I meant when I said "I don't understand." I asked how the reasoning works around faith being the reason that the object(s) of faith are to be taken as true unless proven otherwise. I asked only because that's what drilldo squirt said; maybe I misunderstood that too, but his laconic answers didn't provide a lot of information. [edit] maybe the answer is "because that's the definition of the word faith", and I accept that, but I don't know what that means for people who don't have the same faith.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:51
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drilldo squirt posted:It's like you guys are robots. Well I can understand why it must seem like that, but please consider that the reliance on faith seems pretty robotic to those who don't have it. [edit] I do agree with your point that using evidence from radio telescopes and deep-sea probes and core samples as a way of dissuading you (or anybody) from serious faith is, well, a little rude and probably pointless.
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Nov 16, 2014 20:59
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To be fair, in my experience lots of religious people have negative views of the irreligious that distort their perceptions as well. I don't think that the impulse of an atheist to "convert" a Christian is meaningfully different from a Christian's attempt to convert an atheist, in other words.
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Nov 16, 2014 21:11
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drilldo squirt posted:It misses the point. What misses what point? It would be much easier to carry on a discussion if you'd be a little bit more generous with the wording of your thoughts. I honestly have no idea what you mean by that post. [edit] Similarly, what is super annoying? Atheists bugging Christians with fossils? I can imagine that's true; how do you think an atheist feels when a Jehovah's Witness rings the doorbell?
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Nov 16, 2014 21:14
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ThirdPartyView posted:D&D truly is the easiest forum to troll. That sure makes it harder to actually have a debate or a discussion.
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Nov 16, 2014 21:23
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But faith does make God (or whatever) "real", subjectively; that's the definition of "faith" that drilldo squirt has claimed to be using. It should be clear that the presence of faith in one or more people doesn't say anything about whether the objects of faith are made manifest to the perception of those without faith, however. I don't think that argument gets us very far, but whatever. Those with faith think God is real, and those without don't.
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Nov 16, 2014 21:42
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Rodatose posted:things with a testable physical basis. with material action you are changing a thing from one physical state to another. even if it's saying a mean or nice thing that triggers some chemical reaction in the brain which releases adrenaline or testosterone or dopamine or some other chemical that causes certain feelings in you To somebody who doesn't believe that any sort of material or physical "evidence" has any implications about faith, or indeed that it's even "evidence" at all, no such definitions are going to matter.
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Nov 16, 2014 22:10
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Chupe Raho Aurat posted:Why do all miracles always happen "ages ago, far away"? Lots of faithful people profess beliefs that all sorts of things are miraculous, such as recoveries from disease. I don't know if that'd be considered a "theologically rigorous" sort of miracle, but I don't know how important that is to people of different faiths.
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Nov 16, 2014 22:12
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down with slavery posted:Literally all the time. Where we place the faith seems to be your bone of contention. But I assure you, faith is alive and well in our scientific communities. Have you ever espoused the views from a scientific paper without reading it thoroughly? I think there's a pretty obvious difference between the Faith of the devoutly religious and my faith that a scientific paper isn't made up. They're similar, but if you show me another paper that refutes the first one, then I'll probably believe you. I won't burn you at the stake. We're all human, and of course people do end up with deep-rooted Faith in things that aren't really religious or supernatural. However the ideal of scientific thought is that that's the wrong way of doing things.
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Nov 16, 2014 22:29
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Kyrie, thank you for posting responses to questions I asked and assertions I made. I asked this in the middle of the dumb atheist vs. christian stuff a few pages ago, but I think I would prefer an answer from you on the topic, since you're posting in what appears to be good faith (lol). How would you describe the distinction between the conversation a devoted atheist might have with a Christian friend about changing the friend's beliefs, as contrasted with how a devoted Catholic might speak to an atheist friend with hope to convert that friend? I mean, objectively, aside from your ironclad belief in your faith, how do you think those two hypothetical conversations are different?
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Nov 17, 2014 03:46
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Since this thread is a predictable shitstorm I'll just drop in to recommend that anybody seriously contemplating the philosophical issues that are being dodged by shitposting to read some Richard Mitchell writings http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/ He was a classics prof at a minor East Coast school, and he wrote some really interesting stuff. You may not agree with everything he wrote, but The Gift Of Fire at least is worth reading if you like thinking about thinking. He was kind-of goony in that he published a newsletter that he prepared by "typing" it on an old printing press directly.
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Nov 18, 2014 05:19
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