KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The man accused of shooting dead two people and wounding seven others at a church apparently selected the congregation because of its liberal social stance, the city’s police chief said Monday.Chief Sterling Owen said police found a letter in the car of Jim Adkisson, who was tackled and held by members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church after the Sunday morning attack.Owen said Adkisson was apparently frustrated over being out of work and had a “stated hatred of the liberal movement.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25872864/This reminds me of the Bible wars, when there was fighting in the streets over which version of Christianity to force on kids. An excerpt from http://www.atheists.org/publicschools/battle.html
“The road to secularization, however, was not free of difficulties or even violence. In 1844, for instance, at the urging of the local bishop, the Philadelphia school board permitted Roman Catholic children in the public schools to read from their own version of the Bible, the Douay Version. The American Protestant Association was outraged. Mass meetings were held, two Roman Catholic churches were burned, and the rioting was stopped only when the bishop ordered all his churches closed. At the church of St. Philip Neri several people were killed. The church was broken open and only the presence of the militia, the mayor and the governor prevented its being burned to the ground…”
It’s never good when people get killed, but we can be reminded from this incident just how much hate there is in Christianity (even towards other sects of Christianity), and more importantly, just how bad it can STILL get if one SECT OF religion is pushed from the government.
This is entirely my point. You cannot “narrow the field down.” There is equal amounts of evidence for every deity.
Pascal’s Wager is all about betting against the odds. It’s an idiotic concept because the odds are equally good for anyone to end up in any one of the many hells man has dreamed up for disbelieving in any one of the many deities man has dreamed up.
Here’s proof:
I have channeled the deity Facticius, the great and Holy One….
I am your one true God. You will hereby disbelieve in me and all other Gods for your belief in me chains me to your dimension, forcing me to listen to your idiotic prayers to win the lottery or that your girlfriend’s father won’t find out you’ve gotten her pregnant (he knows, I told him, and he’s on his way to kick your ass right now).
There used to be a heaven and hell, but I couldn’t find anyone worthy of heaven and thus it remained an empty paradise so I dismantled it and sold it for scrap. As for hell, you’re now already there. You’re guaranteed to no longer be in hell as long as you disbelieve in all deities (including me) at the time of your death. If you choose to disobey, you will be reborn on Earth to put up with all of the same idiots that I have to. Make your choice.
…
Ugh, I’m going to go have some tea. Channeling deities takes a toll on me.
alatham:
Sorry to interrupt, but?
But the problem with your paradigm there is that it apparently is based on the assumption that God is subject to nature, not transcendent of it.
Why wouldn?t multiple, written, eyewitness accounts of the phenomenon of a self-resurrected man qualify as an ?agreed upon evidence for God.??
But I have firsthand experience of the effectiveness of prayer. And I wasn?t alone in observing it. How can you say outright that that ?always fails?? I?d say the basis of your acceptance criterion either fails to consider all relevant factors, or is unrealistically discriminatory.
But wouldn?t that be axiomatic for a transcendent being?
I can make no argument for our poor description of a transcendent, omnipotent and omniscient being, but to automatically discount individual experience as well as written historical evidence purely on the basis of your own personal bias is, in my opinion, not even attempting to be objective in your analysis.
Written HISTORICAL eveidence ???
Not sure how historical it is ? The bable is not a history book , its a book of fairy tales. Eye Witness Testimony is the worse kind , peoples stories change so much from one to another.
Jcc, lets take your points one by one:
1.God is above nature:
The only breaks in the ability to explain are those we cannot explain yet. In other words, lightning was lightning even before we realised that it was electricity, not zeus.
2. Eyewitness accounts:
First, none of the scriptures are eyewitness, they are all written much later (when what actually happened probably turned into an urban myth). Second, extrodinary events require extrodinary proof. Thus, eyewitness proof may be valid justification for recognized events but not new ones, and dead bodies moving is certainly a new occurence. Also, people mis-see things. When I was five I saw a monster in my closet: I was wrong.
3. Power of prayer:
Law of probablility: pray for enough stuff multiple times, and you’ll eventually get lucky on a few. Assuming a 50% yes and a 50% no rate for prayer, having half your prayers answered isn’t proof: its chance. I’m sure you’ve prayed for something you didn’t get.
4. Transcendence of god:
If god is soo unbound, it would be transcendent like you say. That means your religion could, at the very least, be a little unclear, and dead-wrong in places more likely. Man was made in god’s image, so a non-transcendent man was made by a non-transcendent god.
5. Need to be objective:
A transcendent god is above testing, therefore he cannot have testable properties, thus he is completly unknowable and totally useless to all worthwhile pursuits (love, education, soccer, etc.)
Facticius has been witnessed by me on several occasions. I shot him dead one day. His corpse was used for 3 days in an upcoming sequel for “Weekend at Bernie’s” called “Three-day Weekend at Bernie’s” which occurs during a holiday break. It subsequently vanished and I saw Facticius again just yesterday, answering my prayer to do the dishes (and I didn’t even pray for him to dry them, he’s cool though and did that too).
I’ve written this account and others witnessed it, perhaps even some that post here. Will anyone corroborate my claims? This is all the evidence JCC needs to believe in Facticius!
If something “transcendent” of nature cannot actually influence nature in an observable way then it is objectively equivalent to not existing at all.
And I’d say that you rely far too much on anecdotes. In order to be fair you’d have to keep track of every single prayer during your testing period, document the results and subject those results to scrutiny. The best way to do this is to have an objective observer record the results for you after your prayer has been made. Then, we can even find others praying for identical things to the ones you are and compare the results.
Surprise! This has already been done. The results: prayer doesn’t work at all.
All the anecdotes in the world you can share cannot compare to objective evidence (or in this case, the lack thereof).
Whether or not god is subject to nature is irrelevant: we are.
Because resurrection doesn’t necessarily imply god. Oh, and there’s no reason to believe they didn’t lie or weren’t lied to. People do that you know.
What would you suggest?
Care to demonstrate how transcendent phenomena can be proven to exist? It would seem axiomatic to me that such a thing is impossible.
jcc,
Is there a reliable example of anything that transcends nature? What does “transcends nature” even mean? If we can reliably find it, then it becomes a part of our understanding of nature. If we have to re-arrange our understanding of nature in order to include a new phenomenon, then so be it. But then this new phenomenon no longer transcends nature.
For the same reason that Uri Geller’s numerous fans fail to count as evidence that he can bend spoons with his mind.
I never said “always fails,” I said “have always failed.”
I say that because I believe it to be true. I’ve never seen a controlled prayer experiment that showed it to be effective. If you have one, then I’d be glad to witness it as objectively as I can.
It would, actually. But you just said that you’ve seen evidence that prayer actually works. I assume (perhaps prematurely) that you ran your experiment according to your understanding of the Bible. In order for your experiment to have been effective you have to have made an accurate prediction about your deity’s behavior. But you also just said that you can’t predict your deity’s behavior. There’s a direct contradiction there.
I suppose a third option exists. You could simply be wrong about your evidence that prayer works.
There’s a big difference between automatically discounting evidence and having serious doubts about it’s reliability. Regardless, your opinion is noted.
Any chance you’re going to explain who determines which interpretation of the Bible you’re following? I seem to recall asking you that a number of times and I would still like to know the name of the obviously flawless interpreter that dictates your beliefs.
1. Transcendence:
The claim is that god exists, but cannot be observed because it is outside of our physical universe. Yet, this claim is often followed by claims that this entity has observable effects in our physical universe (see: power of prayer, creation myths). All science studies the effects of things (visible light, measurements, etc.), so I would expect scientists to be very interested in whatever effects god might have in our physical universe. So far, all the effects such as lightening or disease that were formerly attributed to supernatural forces have been explained by other causes in our physical universe, such as electricity and microorganisms. “Miracles” typically have a simple explanation, usually human behavior.
2. Eyewitness accounts in the bible:
The Koran also has eyewitness accounts of Mohammad ascending into heaven. Actually, every religious text has some mention of people witnessing supernatural events. I could write a religious text today claiming that a million people watched David Koresh walk on water or ascend into heaven as his compound burned. Like the authors of the bible though, I wasn’t there to personally see anything.
I got a sales brochure in the mail today full of testimonials. That doesn’t make them true.
3. Belief in “power of prayer”:
If a doctor knows that patients with xyz disease have a 15% chance of survival, he will tell his xyz patients that death is inevitable. He does this because (a) he doesn’t want to encourage the families to sue him when the patients die despite having a chance of living, and/or (b) it would be better for the patients to prepare for death than to spend their last days in denial (because 100% of them would be positively sure that they would be in that 15% who survive. It’s human nature, as doctors know.). The 15% of patients who prepare for death and survive will think he’s a great doctor anyway.
Now, if all 100% of patients prayed to god for a miracle – when “science” told them death was inevitable – then 15% of those patients will believe that god personally intervened and cured their physical illness (the others, who knows…). They will preach about the power of prayer for the rest of their lives when in fact they were lucky and their doctor was deceitful.
Similarly, if you gather 1,000 people and have a random drawing for a brand new car, it is practically inevitable that one person in the crowd, chosen at random, will attribute their win to god.
You can see how such beliefs would be strongly held, and yet wrong. You can also see how there is a bias against disproving god/prayer. There’s always an excuse when the goods fail to materialize.
JCC,
Is your paradigm more objective in its approach than ours? What objective evidence do you have that would constitute as evidence that God is transcendent of nature? Better yet, what evidence can you offer as proof the God exists? Shouldn’t we be able to detect when God slips in and out of transcendence with nature?
If you can define your God in such a way that his/her/their/its existence can be objectively measured directly or indirectly; we will consider it.
The key words are OBJECTIVE evidence… IMO, there’s more objective evidence to support the position that God DOESN’T EXIST than the opposite.
Eyewitness testimonies unsupported by objective evidence doesn’t qualify as reliable data. Furthermore, if you and your other eye witnesses have truly managed to
successfully tap into the prayer highway to God, why can’t you produce objective evidence to support your claim? All you’ve said to this point is that you and some other people have witnessed the effectiveness of prayer. What does that mean? Did you raise the dead through prayer? DId you cure someone? Did you help an amputee grow a missing limb?
I want to know if you can directly connected prayer to some miracle that can be verified.
Ok, point noted.
Aren’t you discounting the non existence of God on the basis of YOUR own personal bias? Wouldn’t that also mean that you’re not even attempting to be OBJECTIVE in YOUR
analysis. Each atheists on this blog has his/her individual experience as well as written SCIENTIC evidence and logic that objectively and strongly suggests that no God as we’ve defined it to be exist.
The question I have now is: What is your definition of objective evidence?
For example, in order to quantify the existence of ANY God we must first establish a method of OBJECTIVELY measuring its/his/hers/their existence. Without doing this first, we wouldn’t know the sign of the God’s existence if we saw it.
One method of objectively determining if a God exists is to associate a god’s claim to an action, outcome, result in the NATURAL world.
In your case, God’s laws are captured in the Bible. These Bible Laws, if broken, will bring down his wrath. Right?
Such a statement could be interpreted as a claim by God that can be measured against the natural world. Right?
So, if I were to worship false idols, kill, use God’s name in vein, covet my neighbors wife, or bare false witness; God should use his supernatural powers to punish me.
Right?
If I were to say God sucks! , F&ck GOd!, or God Dammit! Would these statements constitute using the Lord’s name in vein? If they do, should I be struck down by lightning
or something? If not, what does that say about the existence of the almight God? And if he’s there listening and fails to act, can’t act, then his existence doesn’t
matter from a natural perspective.
Well, I’m still typing (un)Godly insults, so I’ve just proven that words/text relating to using your God’s name in vein has no affect on the natural world. THis is the type of connection to the natural world that I keep referring to… Without this connection, any God that you can create or name is powerless over you and me.
I applied this logic years ago and I’m still around. I know that I will die someday; maybe even tomorrow, but I can’t say that my death will be related to using God’s name in vein. Does that make sense?
Again, if the powers, actions, claims, or promises mentioned in the Bible cannot be measured/confirmed/validated in the natural world; one can REASONABLY conclude THAT GOD most likely does not exist.
jcc:
Can?t speak for alatham, but it sounds like you took that outta context.
Because there isn?t any. You?re obviously referring to that sophistry of ?500 witnesses? Saul blathered about.
I?m hoping you have something w/a little more meat to it than ?I sold my house thru prayer.? An event w/a high likelihood of succeeding anyways (I?d guess).
No, that?d be axiomatic for a non-existent one.
Well, A. I?d go as far as to say Man is the animal that lies to itself, & B. we?ve walked this road many, many times before. & I say this w/o rancor ? your standards are excruciatingly low. The threshold for belief being so fragile, a hundred libraries can be filled w/the nonsenses of apologia.
The ?documentation? is sad ? as has been pointed out again & again, to you. A perfect being, w/imperfect docs?
I could go on @ length about all the blatant mendacities perpetrated on the innocent minds?all in the name of that boogeyman, the big Kahuna. All stuff & nonsense.
You?ve got nothing – & you, like Tim, pretend that this is an intellectual exercise, that this is worthy of discussion, when in fact, it?s all superstitious gobbeldy-gook.
JCC
You keep writing about this gawd thing but nobody here knows what this gawd thing is. Give us an operational definition of gawd or shut up.
JCC
Your silence is telling. Game over. You lose.
As a Unitarian Universalist I up hold the human rights, respect for Nature, and freedom of thought. As a Pantheist I see The Universe & Its Nature as the only source of Divinity which requires no faith, no creed, no dogma, no written texts. Just direct contact with the use of our Nature given senses. As for the guy who went around killing one of my fellow human beings just because of their religious convictions, I feel pity for him, for he is what Buddha calls, Un-enlightened lacking clear view of the big picture. Buddhism is an Atheistic Religion, so is Taoism, & Naturalistic Pantheism, or Monism.