What Makes People NOT believe In God? (Atheists Come!)

Do I ever send you on wild goose chases neo?

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Cyracuz wrote:

.....to be christian is to support a lie, and that makes a christian a liar, no matter how honest he desires to be......

Does your definition of lying require the intent to deceive, or simply that someone's idea is incorrect whether or not they are aware of it?

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To support an incorrect idea, wether you know it or not, allowing the lie to spread under the guise of truth, makes you a liar, wether you know it or not.

If you push a crate down a cliff just to watch it shatter on the rocks, that might be ok. But if there is a man inside, and you don't know about it, it still doesn't alter the fact that you killed him, regardless of wether or not you knew he was there.

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Wow, your answer to real life's excellent question is magnificent, but it expands the scope of responsibility--one is guilty of consequences not intended--and since we can never know what the long-term results of our actions may be we must suffer the possibility of future guilts no matter how good our intentions. To me, morality, if it means anything, reflects free will and intentions.

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Cyracuz's thesis is flawed by the choice of words--intent does matter. So, for example, if you kill someone with malice aforethought, you have committed murder. But the law recognizes forms of killing which are not murder, and are distinguished by intent. So, for example, if in the process of driving recklessly, you kill someone, you cannot be charged with murder, but you can be charged with vehicular homicide. If you kill someone in self-defense, you may not be charged with murder, but if a prosecutor believes you could have defended yourself without the use of lethal force, he or she might prosecute you and attempt to convict you of manslaughter. If the family of someone killed in one of those scenarios seeks compensation in a civil suit, it would be a suit for wrongful death.

Cyracuz accuses Christians of being liars. But absent the intent, he cannot make a case that they have lied, only that they have deceived. It is possible to deceive in good faith, since the person perpetrating deceit may believe what they are retailing to be the truth. I would amend Cyracuz's accusation to say that religionists are deceivers, rather than liars.

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Setanta wrote:

Cyracuz's thesis is flawed by the choice of words--intent does matter. So, for example, if you kill someone with malice aforethought, you have committed murder. But the law recognizes forms of killing which are not murder, and are distinguished by intent. So, for example, if in the process of driving recklessly, you kill someone, you cannot be charged with murder, but you can be charged with vehicular homicide. If you kill someone in self-defense, you may not be charged with murder, but if a prosecutor believes you could have defended yourself without the use of lethal force, he or she might prosecute you and attempt to convict you of manslaughter. If the family of someone killed in one of those scenarios seeks compensation in a civil suit, it would be a suit for wrongful death.

Cyracuz accuses Christians of being liars. But absent the intent, he cannot make a case that they have lied, only that they have deceived. It is possible to deceive in good faith, since the person perpetrating deceit may believe what they are retailing to be the truth. I would amend Cyracuz's accusation to say that religionists are deceivers, rather than liars.

I would venture to say not a few are outright liars who twist the scriptures to serve their designs.

That, admittedly, is colored by my belief that the truth is discernible from the scriptures.

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People could make the case that you twist scriptures; for example, your favorite hobby horse, free will, Adam, Eve and the snake. However, once again, definitions matter. Using the verb "to twist" has quite a different connotation than the verb "to interpret."

I agree completely that religion, as in politics and as in commercial transactions, can involve a good deal of venality, and attract a good many dishonest people, greedy for money, or for power over others, and often for both. However, this is what Cyracuz wrote:

Cyracuz wrote:

But to be christian is to support a lie, and that makes a christian a liar, no matter how honest he desires to be.

This constitutes a blanket condemnation of those who can reasonably be described as christians, or who proclaim themselves to be christians, and it ignores intent. One can as easily make the case that Cyracuz is deluded about what he believes, and that therefore, without regard for his intent, he is a liar.

That is why i commented on intent and the language which one uses to describe people's actions based upon intent. I consider you to be seriously deluded about what the description of the interlude in the "Garden of Eden" means in Genesis, and the more so given that you were raked over the coals by a variety of people who quoted that scripture to show that it patently does not say what you claim it means. However, that doesn't mean that you are "twisting" anything, and the most that can reasonably be said is that you have falsely interpreted that scripture, or that you have read into it what you want to believe as opposed to what is actually written there.

Believe it or not, i don't condemn anyone for being a religionist. I condemn those who willfully deceive, and i condemn those who would impose on others based on their preferred superstition.

I will refer once again to what Bishop Burnet described to a correspondent as the King's odd notion of God's love (the King being Charles Stuart II):

The only things that God hates are that we be evil, and that we design mischief.

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bm

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Setanta is starting to make sense to me and i'm scared.

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Well, I have to agree that your objections to my statement are sensible.

Of course intent matters. You might accidentally pick up the wrong wallet on your way out of a store. One that looks so much like yours that you think it is yours even though that one is tucked away inside your pocket.

That may not make you a thief by intent, but it doesn't change the fact that you did take something that didn't belong to you, which is what thieves do. After all, if you intend to take something that you know isn't yours, but you do not actually do it, then you're no thief.

But in the case of christianity, the general flock of believers mostly seem bent on fortifying their beliefs against the increasing number of well founded objections against it. That is not the intent of honesty.

But I think I will modify my statement.
A christian who can test his faith against the objections of common sense, science and philosophy with an honest heart, and still say that he believes his religion to be true, -one who can explain the truth of it in a way that can be understood and not just believed, is exempt from my previous statement.

Of course, that pretty much puts us back to square one.. :wink:

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I'm going to bring up another issue of intent--your posts sound awfully damned smug, Cyracuz, although i suspect that is not your intent.

Upon what bases of common sense and science are you able to allege that the sprititual aspects of Buddhism are founded? If you cannot provide that, you are no different from the Christians you condemn.

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Well, I might make a stab at that, but let me say that I do not consider myself a buddhist. I have been a bit on and off about my relationship with that philosophy, but I ended up not calling myself a buddhist.

Anyway, buddhism is about the experience, and how to live a fulfilling and happy life free of the worldly attachments that bind us. Or as free as possible at least.
To me, it is a matter of categorizing experiences, about creating useful concepts to make abstract issues of a spiritual nature more tangible.

The difference between that approach and the approach of christianity is that buddhism urges you to engage in a spiritual quest to discover your own true nature, while christianity urges you to stop asking questions and just believe what you are told.

Of course, there are people calling themselves buddhists who do not see it this way, who doggedly follow the thesis of buddhism without fully realizing the intent of these "rules". They would fall under the category of the liars.

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Actually, you can only make the accusation you make about christianity with regard to the dogma of certain sects, and are therefore describing theology and not adherents. The core message of the putative Christ is that heaven and salvation are to be found within the individual, and to that extent, varies little, if at all, from the core philosophy of Buddhism as you have articulated it here. There are several sects of Buddhism, just as there are of Christianity, although the latter can be said to have proliferated to a greater extent than the former. In a sense, you are comparing apples to oranges when you object to the theological positions of some of the more rigid Christian sects to a simple statement of the core thesis of Buddhism.

What i'm getting at here is that you condemn individuals by reference to institutions.

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What is an institution but a gathering of individuals?

Also, I feel it might be appropriate to say that I do think that I am nessecarily not in the category of the liars myself. I probably retain many misguided opinions and concepts that I pass on as truth, even though they might not be. Maybe eveyone lies to themselves about something. I don't know.

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Observing that an institution is a gathering of individuals is either disingenuous or naive. For example, the Presbyterians are arguably the nearest expression of Calvinism which still exists as an organized institution. But the Presbyterian Church did not organize because a collection of individuals got together and determined to believe a particular theology which is now the core dogma of that Church. In the first place, a presbyter is a "teaching elder" in that church, and the term derives from the Greek word for an old man. Therefore, that "gathering of individuals" by definition surrender the right to choose their beliefs to a body of church elders. Furthermore, the entire concept of the church derived from John Knox's version of Calvinism, based upon Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, but modified as well by Knox's personal beliefs and prescriptions for Christian activity within the Scottish Kirk. To attempt to suggest that people who profess the Presbyterian faith do so because they adopted every jot and tittle of the theology as consonant with the beliefs which they already held, rather than recognizing that they were either raised in and continue to profess a faith handed down to them from their parents and through the Presbyterian clergy as received by them from Calvin by way of Knox, or accepted conversion as an act of social conformity, is dishonest.

Individuals profess beliefs for any number of reasons, but more than any other reason, individuals profess beliefs which make them comfortable, and which allow them comfortably to fit into their communities. The institution is the source of the belief, and if there is an essential dishonesty in the belief, that dishonesty is the product of the institution rather than the individual. Problems with belief arise when people practice deceit in the expression of their beliefs, or in attempting to prove the superiority of their belief, or when they attempt to impose belief on others. To condemn all Christians because there is deceit, intentional or unwitting, in the dogma of the institutions to which they subscribe, very likely without having given much thought to their participation, is in the kindest construction, blindly unjust.

And given that you profess a belief in a "spiritual" dimension to people and the cosmos for which you cannot adduce a common sense basis to believe, and for which you cannot provide any scientific evidence (keeping in mind that those criteria were posited by you) is the height of hypocrisy just as soon as you condemn anyone who professes a different belief which you are willing to describe as "a lie."

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I do not profess a "belief" in a spiritual dimension to people and the cosmos. Belief doesn't enter into it. That humans have a sense of self is evidence in abundance that there is an abstract and intangible aspect to humans, and probably other living creatures. The understanding of this aspect is a matter of spirituality as I see it.

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To condemn all Christians because there is deceit, intentional or unwitting, in the dogma of the institutions to which they subscribe, very likely without having given much thought to their participation, is in the kindest construction, blindly unjust.

Is it? Aren't these people, who very likely haven't given thought to their participation, the very same people who through the ages have empowered those in authority to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty on "heretics" and other non-believers?

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Cyracuz wrote:

I do not profess a "belief" in a spiritual dimension to people and the cosmos. Belief doesn't enter into it. That humans have a sense of self is evidence in abundance that there is an abstract and intangible aspect to humans, and probably other living creatures. The understanding of this aspect is a matter of spirituality as I see it.

This is as pigheaded a statement of belief as that of almost any christian theologian you care to name. In particular, there is neither a common sense nor a scientific basis for the contention that " . . . there is an abstract and intangible aspect to humans, and probably other living creatures." That is no more than a statement that there is a spiritual dimension to people for which you provide no evidence, and therefore a belief rather than an established fact. Yet you are pleased to deny that it is a belief, and imply that it is a fact.

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Is it? Aren't these people, who very likely haven't given thought to their participation, the very same people who through the ages have empowered those in authority to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty on "heretics" and other non-believers?

And you now assert that this is a sufficient basis to accuse all christians of willful deceit, of being liars? Do you assert that each and every christian is guilty of such enormities? Upon what basis, guilt by association? Do you allege that the participants in such institutions had any means of preventing the cruelty? How very naive that is.

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In particular, there is neither a common sense nor a scientific basis for the contention that " . . . there is an abstract and intangible aspect to humans, and probably other living creatures."

Really? How would you describe a thought? Or the mind? Emotions? Are they not intangible? Are they not abstract concepts?

It is pretty much an established fact that humans can think. Most of us take it for granted.

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And you now assert that this is a sufficient basis to accuse all christians of willful deceit, of being liars? Do you assert that each and every christian is guilty of such enormities? Upon what basis, guilt by association? Do you allege that the participants in such institutions had any means of preventing the cruelty? How very naive that is.

There is always a choice. Even if the choice is to submit or die, it's still a choice. Those people were decieved, and so in turn became deceivers.

If I were to proclaim myself a nazi I would be condemned because I embraced an ideology that had people persecuted and tried to annihilate an entire people. I could defend myself by saying that I do not condone those actions, but that the nazis have other valuable ideals that I think are worth fighting for. But that wouldn't fly. Why is it so different with christians? Christianity is responsible for more bloodshed than nazism.

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Cyracuz wrote:

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In particular, there is neither a common sense nor a scientific basis for the contention that " . . . there is an abstract and intangible aspect to humans, and probably other living creatures."

Really? How would you describe a thought? Or the mind? Emotions? Are they not intangible? Are they not abstract concepts?

It is pretty much an established fact that humans can think. Most of us take it for granted.

That, however, is not a plausible basis for stating that human beings are "spiritual." It is not evidence that there is any such thing as spirituality. In fact, scientists have a pretty good handle on thought as a electro-chemical process. To that extent, "emotions" are nothing more than electro-chemical processes. Stating that "thoughts" and "mind" and "emotions" are abstract concepts, and only abstract concepts, and therefore evidence of "spirit," is to willfully ignore the physiology of the physical organ which is the brain. You can choose to do so, but that does not constitute evidence for what you choose to believe. Given that you have no evidence for what you believe, it is indistinguishable from the blind faith of the religionist.

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And you now assert that this is a sufficient basis to accuse all christians of willful deceit, of being liars? Do you assert that each and every christian is guilty of such enormities? Upon what basis, guilt by association? Do you allege that the participants in such institutions had any means of preventing the cruelty? How very naive that is.

There is always a choice. Even if the choice is to submit or die, it's still a choice. Those people were decieved, and so in turn became deceivers.

Your self-righteousness is a stench. I have never failed to condemn the institution of christianity. That, however, is not at all the same as condemning the individual. I will only condemn the individual who practices willful deceit, who attempts to impose on others.

So you must be some kind of hero, huh? You would never truckle to such institutional dishonesty, would you? Even if you were an ignorant and illiterate peasant owned by your master as surely as your master own the fields in which you worked, raised from infancy to accept and acquiesce to authority--still, hero that you are, you would stand up to that authority. You wouldn't care if they dragged your wife and raped and murdered her. You would care if they slaughtered your aged parents and all of your siblings. You wouldn't care if they bashed in the skulls of your children--you'd stand on your principles wouldn't you, hero?

Excuse me, but you're making me sick to my stomach, and i'm tired of the unreality of your self-righteousness. I'll be going now. But thanks for invoking Godwin's Law and dragging the Nazis into the discussion. Hope you're proud of your heroic self. Frankly, i consider you just as bad as the worst of the christian ranters.

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Hehe... Based on your assumption that I see myself as one who would not let myself be deceived? Well, I do not.

I am wondering just who of us is being self-righteous here...

We could discuss this further, but you seem to have had enough, and though it is clearly not due to intellectual limitations, you are not up to the challenge.

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What Makes People NOT believe In God? (Atheists Come!)

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