Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

Peregrinus wrote: »

Nope. Almost exactly the complete opposite of that.

I realise that will be a bit disappointing for those who can only deal with absurdly simplistic one-line answers to any question but, hey, you always lose a few along the way. That market is well-catered for already; you can buy The Little Book of Trite Feelgood Aphorisms in any stationery shop and that should provide all the philosophical depth that they require to make sense of their lives.

jaffusmax wrote: »

My opinion based on the fact a priest said an evil thing based on his religious belief.

Would the fact he may have been trained in any other profession make him say such a wicked thing?

silverharp wrote: »

but even if you want to make a distinction between "god says to someone" type events there are other God "does" type events in the bible. One that sprung to mind was the Passover where you have a God punishing innocent Egyptians culminating in every first born being murdered by God and preceding that if it is to be believed God hardening the heart of Pharaoh when he was buckling so that God could show off some more.

MaxWig wrote: »

According to you apparently not?

There is absolutely no 'good' train drivers who have ever done a 'bad' thing. Probably!

Can we also assume that you are a good person?

Have you ever done a bad thing?

Said a bad thing?

MaxWig wrote: »

Some of the churches views are backward. No doubt. In my opinion, it is not a good idea to look to them for guidance in matter relating to sex, relationships or anything to do with family planning.

silverharp wrote: »

But they are part of the reason they hold back society , the main reason we have moved forward is that we do ignore the church and in the west have largely de fanged it. If the church had its way there would be no contraception , divorce , gay activity might still be illegal. Single mothers would be locked up in institutions.

MaxWig wrote: »

I was replying to this assertion:

"I mean when only Religion can make good people say and do evil things!"

I am trying to give obvious examples of how this is rubbish, and never meant to be taken seriously. Sounds like it may have been an opening quip of a speech. It simply doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

Bullying in schools is a case in point.

Are bullies evil? Are they bad people?

Or are they good people who did an evil thing?

If it is the latter, what has religion got to do with it?

MaxWig wrote: »

From the link:
"This comment is modified in a later article derived from these talks:
Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion."

So his mother was a 'good' person who believed in slavery?
She was good, because he was related to her?
Or because her other works outweighed her love of slavery?
Because she had a 'soft heart'?
Did her slaves think she was a good woman? Or a devil?
What about the slave traders? Were they good? Or bad?
Or does it depend on who they are related to? Or if they were religious? Or if they had soft hearts?

MaxWig wrote: »

According to you apparently not?

There is absolutely no 'good' train drivers who have ever done a 'bad' thing. Probably!

Can we also assume that you are a good person?

Have you ever done a bad thing?

Said a bad thing?

MaxWig wrote: »

What about school kids who bully weaker kids?

Are they good or bad people?

hinault wrote: »

It has already been pointed out to you that the activities that you listed earlier were happening in so called "secular" countries too.
How do you explain that?

Peregrinus wrote: »

Possibly it does. I don't see that as an objection. Unless you think the role of all the bible texts is to be basically the equivalent of an operating manual for a piece of machinery, you should expect it to offer a variety of perspectives and nuances on the questions that it addresses. If it didn't, it wouldn't be much use an an exploration of the human condition, and it's unlikely that it would have formed the basis of a major world religion.


I think that's a bit over-simplified, if you don't mind me saying so. Obviously it isn't a product of modern historiography. On the other hand, no text from the period is; that genre of literature wasn't invented until the eighteenth century.

That doesn't mean they are all useless as historical sources; historians of the period would be pretty stymied if they were. They have developed techniques for taking account of authorship, intended readership, audience, purpose of writing and so forth which enable them to assess ancient texts and draws reasonable inferences from them.

If you actually care whether Samuel said the quoted words to Saul, the text is not robust historical evidence that he did. But why would you care about that? But it is evidence that the story was of importance to the Israelites; sufficiently important that they captured it in two distinct versions, and venerated both. And that can obviously tell us something about beliefs and values, which is what you are interested in, isn't it?


Not reallly. As pointed out, you're looking for a work written in a contemporary genre. A moment's thought would show that that work would have been useless to every generation of believers before the modern era and, even if anyone had written it, it's very unlikely that it would have been acknowledged as important, much less inspired, so it probably would not have survived until now. And if by some miracle it had, it would obviously be of less use to future generations who will be accustomed to new genres yet to be developed.

Your question suggests a rather parochial assumption that our own era is the pinnacle of human acheivement, past and future; that our literary sensibility is uniquely suited for the expression of eternal truths, and that if God doesn't see this he must be a bit dim, mustn't he?

OK, I'm joking. But it is irrational to expect a two-and-a-half thousand year old text incorporating a still older tradition to read like a product of the modern era. Of course whatever truths the Bible does nor does not contain are mediated culturally. How could it be otherwise?


Occam's Razor is fine for univalent problems, but you won't find, e.g, historians having much recourse to it. Obviously the simplest explanation for, say, the Great War is that it had a single cause, and a single outcome. Yet no historian would take such an account of the war seriously for an instant, regardless of which particular single cause or single outcome was postulated. Similarly you won't find psychologists, or anthropologists or indeed any practitioner of any social science appealing to it very much. Human behaviour, human motivation and human experience is complex, layered and nuanced; Occam isn't a hugely useful tool to employ in examining it.

What point are you trying to make?

What if a good child bullied another child because his/her parents say children with no god are sinners and evil and deserve to be punishment?

hinault wrote: »

It has already been pointed out to you that the activities that you listed earlier were happening in so called "secular" countries too.
How do you explain that?