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The
following criticism was made to my essay “Why I
Believe God is Real”. Excerpts from the original essay
will be posted in bold text above the comments.
The person who made the criticisms is identified
as ‘Imitation Feline’. This
critique was posted at
Imitation Feline;
My responses are tagged as ‘ASAJ’.
Reading
this exchange will allow you to appreciate the precision
of words used to convey ideas. When you subject your
beliefs to criticism, you must learn to think like a
lawyer before you present them. Like a puzzle, you have
to turn your ideas inside out, upside down and sideways
to see if they still make sense.
When a
person takes the time to read what you have written,
even if it is done in an effort to tear it down, be
flattered, not offended. The best critical examination
of your beliefs will always take place through skeptical
reviews.
Excerpt
#1 from “Why I Believe God Is Real”
I have no way to confirm that these experiences
are accurate reflections of reality, but I accept them
as such because they are powerful enough for me to think
it unwise to ignore them. Sometimes, we have no
information of which we are conscious, yet we end up
having reached a verifiably correct conclusion
concerning some matter. This type of thing happens only
rarely with any one individual, but often enough with
people in general that we should pay attention to it
when it does.
Last year, I was at a party in the midst of a
large crowd of people and I casually glanced over to a
small group. A man got out of his chair and started
walking to another table. I had never seen the man
before and I only saw him for a total of 4 seconds or
so, but for some reason, the thought entered my mind
that he was a child molester. I have no idea what caused
me to think this; I never knowingly had met a child
molester before, but an alarm went off in my head. I
wasn't aware of anything about the man that I had seen
that would warrant thinking this of him - I had only
seen him walk from one table to another, and I had
witnessed no interaction between him and any other
person. I chastised myself for thinking such horrid and
unfounded thoughts about a person. The next day, I
received a phone call from the host of the party. He
said, "We're going to have to be careful with the
kids. I have to tell you something about one of the
people who was there, yesterday."
I blurted out, "Don't tell me! I know exactly
what you're going to say!" He confirmed my initial
suspicion.
Imitation Feline wrote:
In your example you describe an occassion when your
intuition served you well. Frankly I feel that this is a
poor example to give as it begs the question of whether
your intuition is always correct, which is clearly not
what you are attempting to say. (Or at least I felt it
wasn't what you were trying to say, if you were then let
me know and I can address that point).
ASAJ responds:
The point that I was making is that intuition CAN
serve us well. My very next sentence was an attempt to
avoid having the reader think that intuition always
proves to be correct:
A skeptic may read the above and immediately think
that I am insinuating that I can identify child
molesters on sight. This is not what I am saying.
ASAJ continues:
In other words, I am not saying that my intuition
will be repeatable.
Also, had I been the type of person who sees a
child molester in half of the people they meet, it would
have been only a matter of time before I managed to
identify the real thing.
ASAJ continues:
The above is an example that admits that
‘intuition’ can be wrong. In answer to your comment
then, I am not saying that intuition will always prove
to be correct. I am saying that when one is hit with a
powerful intuition, it would defy instinct and nature to
ignore it.
However, I know exactly how I felt, I know that I
don't usually go around thinking such things and I know
the amount of data to which I was exposed. Because I
know that my experience was legitimate, and because I
accept that other people share these types of
experiences, I can only conclude that our brains acquire
information of which we aren't even aware, and use this
information in a manner that goes beyond our usual
thought processes. It is the uncomfortable idea of not
being able to intelligently give reasons for our
perceptions that tempt us to reject them. Had my friend
not brought up the subject, I would have never mentioned
my experience for fear that people would think I was
strange.
When atheists insist that we abandon our belief in
God because we can't logically present objective
evidence for it, it is like trying to convince a woman
to turn the care of her child over to a person who gives her a creepy feeling. Motherly intuition may be
without logical explanation, but it has been credited
with saving many a child from harm.
In any case, I believe that my perceptions of God
are intuitive ones, based on information that I have
acquired, but that I am unable to identify. When I was a
child, I had a vague sensation that God was real, but
because I couldn't find reasons to support this feeling,
I shut it out. I attributed it to parental and societal
influence and, eventually, I no longer felt it at all.
When I try to explain the reasonability of my
faith to a skeptic, it will fail at some point because I
can't give him all of the information that went into my
decision to believe in God. I can't download these
experiences into his head. I can't show him all of the
data that has been entered into my brain over the past
39 years that causes me to weigh evidence differently
than he does, because I'm not aware of all of it myself!
All I can say is that it was through Jesus Christ that I
discovered truth about myself and about the world and
that in addition to these truths made verifiable through
experience, He also claimed unverifiable truths that I
accept by faith. He earned my trust.
Imitation Feline:
As far as I can determine you are saying that you
believe in God because your intuition leads you to that
conclusion, quite a reasonable point and a good
description of why you became a christian but not an
argument that could convince someone else to do so. As
you say you can not "download" (just me being
a pedant but it should technically be upload) your
experiences into another person's head.
This
entire passage was basically a defence against atheists
insisting that you should not believe in God, which I
personally wouldn't attempt to do so it is rather
irrelevant in the case of our argument. I have no
interest in challenging your personal beliefs, only in
demonstrating that your arguments are not sufficient to
challenge the beliefs of others (most particularly my
own, though I think these arguments would apply equally
to anyone of another faith).
However I should point out that if you hold to this
argument, then in order to avoid hypocrisy you can not
claim that either atheists or people of other faiths
must justify their beliefs. They may simply be following
their intuition based on experiences which they can't
upload into your brain.
ASAJ:
I
can’t argue against anything you wrote in the above
three paragraphs, because I agree with it. It has never
been my intention to convince skeptics; I am here to
encourage other Christians and to teach them how to
argue their points, not for the sake of others, but for
their own sake. I am confident that those who love the
truth enough to seek it, and those who love the truth
enough to acknowledge it wherever they may find it, will
eventually see the same truth that I did.
Next passage: "For owls only, an intellectual
conclusion"
The two questions that lead to God are simple
ones.
What is right and what is wrong? Is this all there is?
I
considered the second question to be of greater
importance than the first, because if this life is all
there is, the answer to the first question is
irrelevant. This isn't to say that an afterlife actually
exists for us, just that in order to make this life
objectively meaningful, there must be an after-life.
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
Here's where you left me behind. You claim that (and I'm
paraphrasing here), morality is meaningless unless an
afterlife exists. To which my reaction is
"huh?". Why does an afterlife make morality
meaningful? Doesn't that imply that morality is not
meaningful but rather it is the afterlife which is
meaningful and morality simply determines the afterlife?
I honestly have no idea what you mean here, could you
explain it for me?
ASAJ
responds:
This
argument is part of the debate I had with Farrell Till,
but I’ll post it here.
I didn’t say that morality was
‘meaningless’ without an afterlife. I said that life
itself is meaningless, that is to say that there is no
objective meaning or purpose to our lives here on earth.
But if there is an afterlife, such as the one described
in the Bible, then our lives do have an objective
purpose, and therefore an objective and real meaning:
In
an atheistic philosophy, there are certain things that
concern the reality of life that must be accepted as
illusion because, without God, that is the only thing
they can be. We live our lives as if they have a real
and genuine purpose. Most people will say that their
lives have meaning, regardless of their philosophy. But
a life that is created by chance, and natural selection,
can have no inherent or objective purpose or meaning.
Instead, such a life can only have a self-assigned,
subjective meaning. A non-objective, self-assigned
meaning is purely imaginary! It is a subjective opinion
of what can only be a subjective reality. Conversely, a
life created by design and a designer, such as the one
described in Christianity, is given an objective
purpose; its meaning is genuine and inherent. We may
have different, subjective opinions as to what that
purpose is, but these are subjective opinions
concerning an objective reality.
As a
demonstration of the imaginary quality of self-assigned,
subjective purpose, examine the tumultuous life of
'Andy'. When Andy was in school, he decided that his
goal in life was to become a doctor and help alleviate
the pain of his patients. This was the self-assigned
purpose he gave to his life; without this purpose, his
life would have very little meaning. For 6 years, this
self-assigned purpose motivated him to get up each
morning. Then he became very ill and his hopes of
becoming a doctor vanished. So he married a very
handsome woman and put her on a pedestal. Her love gave
his life meaning. His sole life's purpose was to love
this incredible woman; without her, his life would have
very little meaning. Unfortunately, his wife felt the
same way about another man and, after 5 years of
marriage, she divorced Andy. Andy then decided to buy a
Harley, because he knew that his bike would never leave
him for another man. That bike gave Andy's life meaning;
his purpose was to become one with the wind. Then he
wrecked it...so he turned to chess...he would become the
best chess player in the world...
The above scenario doesn't allow me to equate
subjective, self-assigned purpose with objective,
inherent designed purpose. I see the above as latching
on to one diversion after another in a desperate attempt
to avoid the reality of a meaningless life.
What
makes the purpose created by God any less subjective
than the purpose created by man?
I
would think that the designer of any instrument or
creature would be the one to consult in matters of the
design and purpose of his design. If the designer states
that the purpose of his instrument is to remove and
place screws, then he has declared that purpose as the
objective purpose. The opinion of such a designer,
wouldn't qualify as an opinion, but rather it becomes
the objective purpose of the instrument. There is
nothing to stop us from turning the instrument around
and using its handle to pound in nails (and I am not one
to decry the usefulness of employing a screwdriver in
this manner), however, that usage would not be the
objective purpose for which the instrument was created.
God
is, by definition, the author or designer of life. A
designer designs with intention. Only the designer is in
a position to know his intention; all others can only
speculate concerning his intention. For example,
players, without the set of instructions for a new board
game, can only have opinions as to how the game is
designed to be played. They don't know, with certainty,
the objective intent of its designer. But when the
designer reveals the objective purpose of the game
through written instructions and rules, he objectively
states his intention. The designer is the authority
concerning his design; he is the objective authority
when it comes to purpose of the design because only he
can know, with certainty, its purpose. He may attempt to
make that purpose known to others, but that attempt
would make it open to interpretation. But to disagree
that the designer’s expressed intentions, as to how
the game is to be played, are any less subjective than
one’s own interpretation of the game, would be like
saying to another, "We know what you think
you mean, but we disagree that you really mean it.”
When
you write that Jones “was
unable to use her own inner resources to find purpose
and meaning in life, and so in her frustration she
turned to religion”, what are you really saying?
‘Inner Resources’ amount
to one’s subjective, imagination! You may be
content to provide meaning to your life through use of
your imagination, however, I’m not into playing
pretend. I seek a REAL, not PRETEND, purpose to my life.
You may say that I kid myself into believing that there
is a god, in order to supply my life with an objective
purpose. Of course, whether or not this god exists
remains open to debate.
You, however, reject the concept of a deity, and,
therefore, reject any concept of an objective purpose to
your life, but emotionally maintain that your life has a
purpose, a purpose that can only be imaginary. At least
there is the possibility that my God is real, and I
don’t have to kid myself into believing that my life
has meaning.
2nd
paragraph:
Logical thought tells us that there is no such
thing as absolute moral truth. We can say that killing
is wrong, but is it always absolutely wrong? We can give
exceptions but quickly find that there are exceptions to
the exceptions! Hence, the view of moral relativism. Yet
none of us would deny that there is a right and a wrong
concerning issues of human behavior. We simply disagree
over what is right and what is wrong!
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
In the
second paragraph you claim it is impossible to logically
establish an absolute code of morality because of the
exceptions to each rule. Interestingly enough Hegel once
developed a code of morality based on balances of
pleasure and pain which sometimes gives answers contrary
to our own morality yet is none the less entirely
justifiable in logic (based upon the axioms that it is
good for people to be happy and bad for them to be sad).
ASAJ
responded:
I
believe that the resulting contradictions make my point,
not yours.
3rd
paragraph:
What is the truth about morality? If we say that
no such truth exists because it can't be captured
through logic, then we are hypocrites every time we
demand justice and our entire legal system is the result
of a delusion. Moral truth exists - we just can't seem
to pin it down.
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
In the
third paragraph you make a common logical fallacy by
appealing to the consequences of a belief as affecting
its validity. Also it is only because of our morality
that we believe a justice system must be based on
morality. Even with morality completely removed from the
picture a legal system is logically justifiable as a
form of "mutual defence treaty" between the
people living within society.
ASAJ
responds:
My
statements in paragraph 3 are not a fallacy of
consequence. Such a fallacy would take the form of:
Without moral absolutes, we can’t establish laws. We
have established laws, therefore moral absolutes exist.
This is not what I said in the above. I did say that we
are hypocrites and that our legal system is the result
of a delusion, if there are no moral absolutes. Morals
are relative from culture to culture and from individual
to individual. Some people really think that stealing
from corporations is justified. Others think it is
immoral. The law itself is benign, in that it is only a
reflection of the moral opinions of certain groups of
individuals. In effect, we are incarcerating people –
people who show no remorse for their actions, because
they believe themselves to be right – because we just
so happen to disagree with their opinions regarding
morality. You
can’t escape concepts of right and wrong behaviour by
trying to disguise them as a mutual defence treaty. That
is a maneuver that is known as creating a smoke screen.
4th
paragraph:
In asking the first question, I found that I could
logically justify contradictory behavior. I could give
logical reasons for divorcing my spouse and I could also
give logical reasons for staying married. I could
justify lying, and I could justify telling the truth,
both for the same situation. If I could intellectually
reason to equal and opposite conclusions, then I had to
admit that moral behavior could not solely be determined
through logic. If logic alone could not allow us to
determine the truth about right and wrong, then perhaps
logic alone could not tell us the truth about a god who
is closely connected with morality.
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
In the
fourth paragraph you state that you can logically
justify contradictory behaviour, this goes without
saying. Any path of logic is based entirely upon the
axioms that you choose, these axioms can not be
logically justified as that would require further axioms
upon which to base the logic (and since logic can not be
circular it is impossible to use an axiom to justify
itself). Depending upon the axioms you use, you can
logically justify just about anything, the only way your
logic is meaningful to others is if they agree with your
choice of axioms which ironically can never be done for
logical reasons. Many people believe that logic can be
used as an absolute guideline yet they are wrong, logic
is merely a system for developing logical arguments, not
necessarily correct ones.
ASAJ
responds:
Bingo.
Consider yourself one of the very few who understand
this concept.
5th
paragraph:
When Christians make a distinction between a
person's mind and a person's 'heart', this is the issue
they are addressing. The logic of the mind can come up
with any number of moral, rational options, but the
'heart', that part of the mind that is above logic, is
what makes the decision. What allows the heart to make a
decision for the 'good' depends upon the goodness that
is present in it. While that sounds circular, I believe
it is circular only because it is true. Consider the
following example:
Imitation
Kitten:
The fifth paragraph is a discussion of the
"heart" versus the "mind". Very few
people realised the brain's role in thought until
recently (although Galen, a roman physician around
the turn of AD/BC deduced it based on the reaction of
gladiators to head injuries) so the concept of the heart
referring to thought became a part of our language. It
is only recently that this was disproven so it still
lingers on in the form of emotion and morality coming
from the heart. As you've studied psychology I'm sure
that you'd agree the lymbic system is actually
responsible for most of these phenomena. Using the word
heart is misleading unless you seriously mean that it
has to do with the muscle in our chest. Use it
metaphorically by all means but I'd personally favour
more precise words in any rational debate.
ASAJ
responds:
The
majority of rational people with whom I debate, take
into consideration my degree in biology and give me the
benefit of the doubt that I am not a complete moron who
mistakenly believes that thoughts are issued forth from
the ventricles and atria of the heart. When I say that
the ‘heart’ is that part of the mind that is above
logic, I am referring to the established and conditioned
character of a human being; emotion has nothing to do
with a person’s ‘heart’, as the term is used in
Christian metaphor.
6th
paragraph :
(Matthew 20:1-16) A vineyard owner hires 10 men to
work in his fields from sunup until sundown and agrees
to pay them $100.00 for their efforts. As evening
approaches, he hires 10 more men to work the last
several hours but pays them the same amount as the men
who have worked all day. The first group of men is irked
that the other group of men received the same pay. Judge
the actions of the vineyard owner; was what he did right
or wrong?
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
The sixth paragraph is a paraphrasing of Matthew
20:1-16. It is an interesting moral dilemna which
remains just as applicable to modern times, particularly
given that the pay awarded to temporary labourers is
frequently several times that of a full-time worker.
7th
paragraph:
When I saw that parable, at first I thought the
vineyard owner was unfair and I sided with the first
group of men. The more I thought about it, however, I
began to realize that my selfish nature was influencing
my perception of the vineyard owner. Why couldn't I find
joy in the idea that the other 10 men would be able to
provide for their families as much as I could for my
own? The vineyard owner had paid me what he had
promised, so he had treated me justly. It was only my
jealousy concerning his generosity that caused me to
gripe. After going through countless paradoxes of
morality in scripture, I concluded that selfishness
(sin) is what blinds us to an accurate perception of
what constitutes good'. Therefore, the only person who
could know what was good would be one who was completely
unselfish (sinless).
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
The seventh paragraph is your reaction to the parable
and the conclusion you drew from it. My reaction to the
moral dilemna was different, I initially felt that the
owner was fair though the system of ownership is hardly
fair or moral. Your conclusion however is poorly
conceived. You were faced with a moral dilemna, had an
initial response to it based on selfishness but with
clear thought, logic and morality you came to a decision
you believe is good. This clearly establishes that you
are capable of overcoming your selfishness and
determining morality which clashes with your subsequent
claim that only God can determine morality.
ASAJ
responds:
You
have missed my point entirely. With clarity of thought,
I can still give good and logical reasons as to why the
vineyard owner is immoral in the treatment of his
workers. I can give solid arguments as to why
selfishness is morally preferable to unselfishness. The
point I was making is that we all have selfish interests
that blind us to what God declares to be moral. ‘Good’
remains a subjective opinion. Theologically speaking,
unlike humans, Jesus Christ is allegedly without sin,
without selfishness, and, therefore, only God is in a
position to know the complete truth concerning what is
good.
Paragraph
8:
No man is without selfishness and so no man can
tell us the truth about what is right or wrong. It is
this dilemma that causes man to reach out to, or
generate the concept of, a god or gods. The idea is that
God is perfect and holy, without sin, and therefore only
God can know the truth about right and wrong. But if no
man is selfless enough to recognize that which is right
and wrong, then man can't generate the concept.
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
The
eighth paragraph again clashes with your example of how
you determined morality on your own and so is
inconsistent. If you were a little less anxious to leap
to God and had looked at your statements consistently
you might have realised that this applies equally to
people seeking answers from philosophers, parents and
rulers just as much (and in the same way) as they turn
to religion.
ASAJ
responds:
Once
again, you miss the point. We all subjectively determine
morality on our own and we all can give logical reasons
to justify our opinions. What happens when I see the
vineyard owner as ‘good’, while another sees him as
‘unfair’? What makes either view preferable? For
example, you say that the whole system of ownership is
hardly fair or moral. This is your OPINION. I can give
my own opinion that the system of ownership is both fair
and moral. We both can logically justify our beliefs,
but both of our beliefs remain as OPINIONS. How can we
condemn, sentence, and incarcerate, and make laws that
are fair to all, when these things are based on
subjective opinion? If you were a little less anxious to
leap to humanism, you may have realized that moral
concepts have always been inconsistent and any
foundation upon which they are based, crumbles under the
weight of shifting, collective opinion.
The
gist of paragraphs 6,7 & 8, was to demonstrate that
when I accepted Christ’s statement concerning the
generosity of the vineyard owner, I was made aware of my
own selfishness. Only then could I see God's point of
view. Whether or not one at this point would see God's
point of view as good or bad remains subjective. The
only reason I have to prefer my non-selfish view of the
vineyard owner as opposed to my previous selfish view,
is that Christ prefers it. The only reason to care if
Christ prefers one view over the other is if one
believes that He is God. (See Game Designer Argument).
9th
paragraph:
Believing that such a Good Being exists, creates
in our consciousness the idea of seeking its approval,
realizing that we can't know right from wrong. We are
actually seeking the approval of a personality, or the
person of God. When we act within the context of a
personality, we escape having to define moral absolutes
because we can speculate on the personality's reaction
to our actions. For example, I know my mother. I'm
familiar with her as a person. We never discussed the
issue of drugs, their legality or the morality involved
in using them for recreational purposes. However, I
don't need to hear my mother explicitly state her
opinion to know that she probably wouldn't approve of me
smoking a joint.
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
The
ninth paragraph states that you can predict how someone
would react to your actions based on your knowledge of
their personality. I agree entirely.
10th
paragraph:
Knowing the personhood of a god would enable us to
act in the spirit of the law instead of being bound by
the law, which we can't adequately define. I think that
we CAN, however, adequately define a personality through
text alone, and I think that any writer who depends upon
character development, in creating a story, will agree.
This is why Christians place such an emphasis on KNOWING
God, something that can easily be done by studying the
words and actions of Jesus Christ. The spirit of the
law, then, is loving a good God and seeking its approval
in the way we live our lives.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
The
tenth extends on this concept by introducing the idea of
determining the personality of God from the bible and
using this to judge how he would react to any action.
You only state that we can do this based on Jesus'
behaviour, ignoring entirely the radical difference of
personality between the old testament deity and Jesus.
I still agree with this passage though I dismissed your
idea that only God could determine morality back in
paragraph seven meaning I'm headed towards a different
conclusion.
ASAJ
responded:
I’m
not ignoring the OT personality of God. I find the OT
portrayal of God to be incomplete and one sided. If I
didn’t, I would be content to be a Jew. As for your
‘dismissal’ of my conclusion that only God can
objectively determine morality, you may dismiss it, but
you cannot logically refute it. At best, you can only
say that you are satisfied with subjective morality that
is established by groups who have the power to
legislate, in which case, you would be faced with the
dilemma of might makes right and ad populum fallacies.
11th
paragraph:
In seeking a god's approval, we make it a judge
and try to please it by living according to its
standard. We know that the standard is higher than our
own standards but we don't know what the standard is.
How can we be judged fairly if we can't even know the
standard by which we are to be judged?
Imitation
Kitten wrote:
The
eleventh poses the question of how we know what standard
God would judge us on, since I thought you established
the bible as this standard back in paragraph ten I don't
see the problem personally.
ASAJ
responds:
The
problem makes itself known in the parable of the
Vineyard Workers. Even though God has expressed His will
in the standard of the Bible, we are at a loss to
interpret it correctly, because we are blinded by our own
conceit and selfishness.
Paragraph
12:
Every time we encounter another person, we start
forming an opinion about them. We discover that we can
be very critical of the faults of others, but pretty
lenient, or even blind, when it comes to our own. If
God, being without sin, could be presented to us as a
person, it would be interesting to see how we would
judge the personification of God. In judging a good and
innocent person, we would be establishing the criteria
by which we ourselves would be judged. What could be
more fair? This idea is summed up in Luke 2:34-35;
"And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his
mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and
rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be
spoken against that the thoughts of many hearts may be
revealed."
Imitation Kitten wrote:
The twelfth talks about how we'll be judged based on
our own standards we apply to others, which completely
contradicts your assertation that our judgements are
based on selfishness and God's are based on an absolute
code of morality (paragraph 7).
ASAJ responds:
I never said that our judgments are based on
selfishness. I
said that our selfishness can blind us to that which is
truly good. I said that our moral codes are based on
subjective opinion of that which can only be subjective
and that God (as a designer) is the only one who would
be in a position to declare moral objectives. How does
this make a contradiction?
I am saying that because we all have different
standards of morality, the only fair and objective way
for judgment to take place is for us to make judgment on
an innocent man, and then be judged by our own standard
of judgment. In other words, it is as if you are handed
a grammatically perfect essay and asked to find errors.
Every error you find exposes an error of your
own, because the essay doesn’t contain any error.
Paragraph #13
If we can be judged fairly, then there should be
justice. I won't repeat the argument that I gave in 'The
Games Skeptics Play', but there should also be mercy. If
justice and mercy, then reward and punishment.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
The thirteenth paragraph is throwing around abstract
nouns like justice and mercy.
The fourteenth states that these are your own
conclusions but they are similar to Kant's argument from
morality.
...
Paraphrased the rest of the page reads "wouldn't it
be nice if God existed?". It contains some
fascinating insights into theological concepts of God
and morality but absolutely nothing to suggest that God
in fact exists. I would suggest that you write most of
this into a guide for christians about determining
morality, it's got some great ideas. But it has nothing
whatsoever to do with the discussion of "why I
believe God is real".
ASAJ responds:
No need to paraphrase when
copy and paste is so easy:
I arrived at these conclusions independently. In
other words, I didn't have to rely on the bible or any
other sacred text to TELL me these things. I'm not
saying that my reasoning was not influenced by my
knowledge of religion, only that these arguments stand
logically on their own. My argument is similar to that
given by Immanuel Kant.
I read the Bible and verifiable truths were made
known to me. These verifiable truths coupled with my
life’s experiences and produced a powerful intuitive
sense that God is real. An intellectual examination of
how we view morality, and how we attach meaning to our
lives, allowed me to conclude that the concept of God as
a reality provides us with a better model for explaining
our behaviors than does atheism.
I am not using these arguments of morality as
evidence that God exists; “I am not arguing that
without God, there can be no right or wrong. We believe
that there is right and wrong, therefore, God exists.”
I am arguing that perceiving is believing.
Logically, it can be argued that God is a necessary
concept for the imposition of laws. In other words, our
perceptions establish God’s existence (at least in the
minds of those having the perception), and when we
examine other realities in the context of that
perception, we find that they make logical sense. Hence,
a better model for explaining our reality. The closer a
hypothetical model comes to explaining reality, the more
it approaches being a reality in and of itself.
FAITH WITH FUZZY LOGIC
So far, I have only given reasons why the CONCEPT
of god - specifically, the concept of the Christian god,
which contains all of these elements - makes sense, but
I believe that the Bible describes a very REAL God
because of the way in which it was revealed. It wasn't
as if the prophets sat down and decided which elements
would go into making a good god model. It's as if they
were given the parts to the model and, with no
understanding of how they would fit together, accurately
described them. The parts of the model were delivered
over a span of 1500 years and through over 40 different
authors, yet they come together to make sense when they
are viewed in the light of their entirety. That's why
the Bible is said to be authored by God, because the
writings were designed and directed by one source. The
model isn't a product of reason, but a product of
alleged perceptions that result in a reasonable model.
In other words, I don't think that Christianity is true
because it works, but that it works because it is true.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
Ummm... I hate to give you a
history lesson but the gospels were edited several times
throughout history with the various members of the
church hierachy voting which to include. Thus an
argument from the "independant coherency" of
various stories that were edited together is proof only
of postproduction skill and not a sign of any common
origin from the authors.
ASAJ responds:
My goodness. Thank you so much for
taking the time to inform me of these matters! I am so
ignorant of them.
With or without the apocrypha, the
elements of Kant’s working model for ‘The Only
Possible Demonstration of God’s Existence’ hold
true. The King James Version of 1611, I believe,
contained all of the apocryphal books. As for the
gospels being edited, if you have no original with which
to make comparisons, how can you make the allegation?
And if you have evidence of editing, then is it not
possible to reconstruct the unedited in its original
form?
THE FALLACY OF CONSPIRACY
When you hear arguments against the validity of
the gospel accounts, what you are being asked to believe
is a conspiracy theory. You will be given speculation
and conjecture, but very little evidence. The conspiracy
argument usually goes like this:
"Jesus died and then was resurrected."
"Oh, I say, that's odd. Couldn't have
happened. People don't rise from the dead, you know. The
gospel writers must have lied. Or they were tricked,
yeah, that's it. Or maybe Jesus didn't really die on the
cross, have you thought of that one? Better yet, the
original documents were tampered with and all of the
miraculous stuff was added. Christ didn't say half of
the things the gospel writers quote him as saying. Don't
ask me for evidence because the evidence was all burned
in the library fire in Alexandria in 390 AD."
I find it easier to believe the documentation.
There is a great deal of scholarship in action that is
trying to make Jesus a myth based on other myths. This
was the area that I promoted because I thought that it
would be the most effective in breaking a person's
faith. This knowledge didn't even come into play that
day when the truth of God knocked me right out of my
socks. It did occur to me as an afterthought and, when
it did, my own faith suffered. I didn't have time to
research the matter from a Christian perspective as I
had researched it as an atheist. That's when I
discovered J.P. Holding's Tektonics.org. (See 'A Man
Called J.P. Holding'). I found out that there is a
shallow level of scholarship that supports the pagan
origins theory, but a higher level of criticism that
effectively dismantles the idea.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
Burn
strawman burn... I just love how you provide a ludicrous
example of an atheist's argument here. Please reread
your page on "the games skeptic play" and the
section of the bible about hypocrisy.
ASAJ responds:
Strawman? A strawman is when
a person takes an argument that is being presented and
intentionally misinterprets the argument in a way that
makes it easier to refute. No one has presented an
argument that I am intentionally misinterpreting;
therefore, there can be no straw man. The arguments that
I presented are common. If you don't believe me, just
scan through a few posts on Till's erancy list at Topica.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
Your mentioning of the word conspiracy reminds me of UFO
sightings. People across the world have seen UFOs and
recounted fairly detailed and often consistent accounts
of their experiences. I could use precisely your
arguments to suggest that these sightings are absolutely
accurate. Do you suggest we hold God and UFOs by
different standards, if so then why? if not then on what
basis do you dismiss the existance of UFOs (or do you?).
ASAJ responds:
I believe in the resurrection
of Christ only because the gospels revealed other
verifiable truths to me. I can’t say that UFOs have
revealed any other verifiable truths to me.
Next passage: "Why the issue of errancy is
irrelevant"
Imitation Kitten wrote:
So I'm sitting in my chemistry class and my lab partner
whispers to me "this teacher is never wrong".
All of a sudden the teacher makes a mistake that's
irrelevant to the topic at hand. I chuckle a little at
my friend's mistake but being an intelligent person I
realise that this doesn't discredit the teacher's
lecture on plant PH.
Then the chemistry teacher says that alchemy is true and
he can create gold but if he shows anyone else the gold
dissappears so he can't prove it. I'm left with a
fantastic claim and no proof so I dismiss the argument
on its own merits. My lab partner believes him however
and argues with me saying "but that teacher is
never wrong".
Suddenly his mistake about oak leaves becomes relevant
because it disproves the teachers inerrancy which is the
only proof I'm given for the fantastic claims that I
dismissed on their own merits.
This is a more realistic analogy with a closer
simularity to the situation at hand. When the only proof
for the bible is that its supposedly written by a
perfect being any proof which demonstrates the author
made an error discounts the possibility of its author
being perfect.
ASAJ responds:
I am saying that the Bible is
perfect in its alleged errors. Please read my response
to Farrell Till concerning errancy:
So in your OPINION, a
divinely inspired text would have to be inerrant. In my
OPINION, it does not. We both have our opinionated
reasons for believing what we believe.
In my opinion, the errors are
irrelevant.
Allow me to quote myself. Not
all of the paradoxes found in the Bible are relevant,
but serve as arrows to direct the reader toward higher
meaning. The accounts of the death of Judas and many
other alleged discrepancies are irrelevant to the truth
of God, yet they serve as stumbling blocks to those who
are shallow or legalistic in their thought. In this way,
the Word of God becomes a sieve, separating its readers
through a series of screens. Paul describes this sieve
in 1 Cor: 1. Those who have made themselves too big, too
self-righteous, get trapped in the holes, while those
who have allowed themselves to be made small, pass
through to see the hidden truth. Jesus Christ makes
reference to his own device of conveying God's truth in
parables (Luke 8:10) so that "...though hearing,
they may not understand."
I would like to take this
opportunity to point out to you that Friedrich
Nietzsche, poster boy for existentialism, was very fond
of intentionally using words that would be
misinterpreted by careless, superficial readers. Walter
Kaufmann, who edited Nietzsche's 'Ecce Homo', included
this in his introduction:
"Nietzsche had an almost
pathological weakness for one particular kind of
ambiguity, which, to be sure, is not irremediable: he
loved words and phrases that mean one thing out of
context and almost the opposite in the context he gives
them... The former is bound to lead astray hasty
readers, browsers and...nonreaders."
When a man does this type of
thing, it is considered a matter of genius. When similar
devices are employed in the bible, there is no reason to
discount them as foolishness. Of course, it is not the
'hasty' reader that is being sifted out in the Bible,
but the spiritual Pharisee who is being left in the
dark.”
The reason
for introducing these apparent errors, or allowing
irrelevant errors, can be found in the Zen philosophy.
The Masters of Zen don't seek to enlighten their
students with the truth; they seek to confound them in
order that they discover the truth for themselves.
Herein lies the difference between knowing how to do
multiplication and merely memorizing and regurgitating
multiplication tables. If the truth about God could be
told, we could know ABOUT Him, but in seeking and
finding Him for ourselves, we can KNOW Him.
The
logic in the errors is thus: The errors expose our
non-spiritual, Pharisaical, self-righteous way of
thinking. We will deny the spiritual need of repentance
because bats are mammals, not birds. We will scoff at
and make fun of a man dying on a cross because a whale
is anatomically incapable of swallowing a man, who
subsequently survives the ingestion. We will continue on
in our self-righteous glory, because Moses was a
murderer, David was an adulterer and murderer and
because Lot played hanky panky with his daughters. In
other words, God gives us enough rope to hang ourselves.
Next passage: "If God, then whose God?"
Imitation Kitten
wrote:
If you discount the Qu'ran because of various
descriptions of the God as being violent then you have
already disproven the Bible yourself and certainly don't
need me here to argue against it.
ASAJ responds:
Actually, I discount the
Quran because its prophet Mohammed was homicidal,
self-serving, and an admitted liar who said that God
absolved him from keeping his own word. My observation
was merely that modern day interpretation of the Quran
allowed for jihad, while modern day interpretation of
the Bible calls for us to love our enemies and, unlike
the Quran, logically and explicitly states that
spiritual battles cannot be won through physical
conquest.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
You discount buddhism because it uses 250 spiritual
laws... you just discounted the bible again.
ASAJ responds:
The Bible progresses from the
law, which no man can keep, to the spirit of the law.
Buddhism does not progress. In that respect, I see
Buddhism as an incomplete truth, in the same way that I
see the OT as an incomplete truth.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
You discount hinduism for breaking
down the elements of God and yet worship a trinity based
on a zoroastrian duality with the trinity being good and
Satan evil. In other words your religion has 4 gods.
Again, you discounted your religion as possible by your
standards.
ASAJ responds:
The personalities within the
trinity have the same traits. They are not segmented.
They are one God. In Hinduism, the traits of the gods
are in contradiction to each other. You have the god of
war and the god of peace, the god of fish and the god of
chips. By the way, there is enough written in the OT to
allow for a Trinitarian concept; there is no need to go
digging for pagan origins.
Imitation Kitten wrote:
As you yourself said "we can
be very critical of the faults of others, but pretty
lenient, or even blind, when it comes to our own"
ASAJ responds:
Yes, and I hope that this has
taught you a valuable lesson.
Entire page.
Imitation Kitten
wrote:
Do you realise that on the entire page you do not
provide a single element of proof for the existance of
God? Did I miss it?
ASAJ responds:
There is no objective proof
for the existence of God. There is no objective proof
that would lead us to believe that murder is morally
wrong. There is no objective reason to believe that our
lives have a purpose or any real meaning. There is no
objective evidence that I could produce, proving that I
ate corn flakes for breakfast yesterday morning, but I
did. Many truths cannot be objectively proven. As I
stated previously, it is not my desire to ‘prove’
anything. After
all, “I have no interest in challenging your personal
beliefs, only in demonstrating that your arguments are
not sufficient to challenge the beliefs of others (most
particularly my own, though I think these arguments
would apply equally to anyone of another faith).”
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