Can Atheists learn to speak Theist?

@livinglava,

You are basically putting yourself into a box, and then demanding that the rest of us jump in with you.

This discussion is getting boring... I was hoping you would be able to step out of your narrow religious bubble to have a meaningful conversation with people on the outside.

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@maxdancona,

The box comment is pretty apt, though I'd add that the lid is closed, but unlocked.

He believes we can't see what's in the box - which is nothing directly, but he's formed a picture in his mind that he believes 100% true...and he believes we can't see or imagine the same things, even if we've been in the same box, and we've imagined and felt the same things...it's only him that can.

And when we make observations of what is outside of the box...he believes it must relate to what he can 'see' inside the box. Even if he puts his head outside of the box, or people describe what's outside the box...he believes it must still related to what's inside the box, and so looks for answers inside of the box against the picture in his mind, and arrives at rationalisations...even while the world carries on around him outside the box.

1 Reply

@vikorr,

It appears to be the reason he has great difficulty following the context of conversations. Perhaps he looks at each statement in isolation, and so arrives at the wrong conclusion (and then discusses based on that wrong conclusion), even though the meaning, in context, is obvious. He then believes the other person is being contrary when they have to keep correcting him on context.

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@vikorr,

Dogma and indoctrination coupled with lack of intellectual curiosity gives you blind faith. His is a world of absolutes, Socialism bad, Unrestrained Capitalism good.

It's exactly the type of response the ruling classes wanted when they made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

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@livinglava,

What god was born on December 25th?

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@izzythepush,

Even though I don't consider myself religious, I have time for many aspects of religion:
- teaching morals (just not the extreme versions of it)
- socialisation
- acceptance (although this seems to often be corrupted)
- support networks
- charities, etc

The problem always arises when the extreme versions arise. Moderate versions, of all creeds, tend to be accepting, genuine people. The more extreme any get, the less accepting, the more judgemental they get. Similar is reflected in the 'certainty' scale (ie. the more certain, the more X), and the 'rightfulness' scale. The wierd thing is they all talk about faith in one fashion or another. Faith isn't faith unless there is some doubt - where there is no doubt, you have what we understand as knowledge - and it takes no faith to act in absolute knowledge. It's very hard to be humble, or listen properly, or fully consider anothers viewpoint.... if you have no doubt.

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@vikorr,

That's because you don't live in a world of absolutes. I have no problem with what anyone believes as long as they're not spreading hate and intolerance, and unfortunately a lot of very religious people do exactly that.

I'm reminded of Yeats.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

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@vikorr,

vikorr wrote:

Quote:
Avoiding what issue? How?
Christianity believes we are born into sin, so that includes babies. You avoid this. In your reply.

I told you that babies don't develop the ability to foresee consequences and understand cause and effect for a while. They cannot, therefore, understand good/bad & right/wrong for a while, let alone exercise the willpower to make good choices. I think they do begin to feel shame for things earlier than that, though, so emotions and the ego-potential for shame/pride develop before the capacity for experiencing forgiveness and thus deliverance from shame. So when a toddler feels ashamed that she/he wet the bed, etc. she/he has already internalized the notion that they sinned by their failure. At that point, you can already begin to teach the child that it's true wetting the bed is bad but that everyone makes mistakes and to accept forgiveness and just keep trying to do better and everything will be ok. That is the fundamental message of Christianity, so I don't know why you or anyone would argue against that.

Quote:

How can you not be sensitive to being called a sinner

I informed you. I don't accept the Christian concept of sin. As far as I'm concerned, the accusation has more to do with the speaker than the 'accused'.[/quote]
Everyone experiences shame of sin regardless of whether they've ever heard of Christianity or not. Sin is simply the idea that there is success and failure. What human being isn't inherently prone to feeling ashamed of failure when they are striving for success but nevertheless 'miss the mark?'

Quote:

Quote:
Not true. I can observe kindness and generosity in atheists and acknowledge those as virtues without thinking that they are sufficient for salvation from sin because I understand Martin Luther's point that salvation comes from 'faith alone,' (sola fide) and not from good works or deeds.
Everything that followed 'not true' is not a comment on what I wrote. It's a comment on people of faith, rather than people's kindness, generosity of spirit and compassion of those who don't believe, which is what I wrote about.

There's no point in explaining things to you if you're not going to read/understand what I post. You just want to debate without understanding what you're debating with.

Quote:

There's a pattern running through the above observations. It repeats itself in conversation with you, over, and over, and over.

You're not reading what I'm explaining; only looking for the pattern you can see in the data, which you don't otherwise understand.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are basically putting yourself into a box, and then demanding that the rest of us jump in with you.

This discussion is getting boring... I was hoping you would be able to step out of your narrow religious bubble to have a meaningful conversation with people on the outside.

This thread is about atheists learning to speak theist, not getting theists to abandon their language to cater to atheists.

Certainly I can speak atheist, which is why I'm able to communicate with everyone in this thread and others who is demonizing me for failing to abandon religion.

What I can't do is stop understanding the things I understand about religion from studying it. When I try to explain those things to atheists, and they just label me closed-minded and talk about me like an animal to be observed from the outside; it is just because they/you are trying to compensate for the fact you can't/won't deal with the religious concepts that don't suit your own religious views.

In short, you have your own religion that you elevate to a high status; and then you put down other religions for being different. You then rank them by deeming those that differ more from yours as more right-wing, so you can fit everything into your fascist narrative of anti-fascism fascism.

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@livinglava,

Quote:

Certainly I can speak atheist, which is why I'm able to communicate with everyone in this thread and others who is demonizing me for failing to abandon religion.

You are being silly. Everyone understands what you are saying perfectly well. The problem is that you are saying "my religion is right and everyone else is wrong", and no one is buying this.

When you stick to an absolutist belief system, it makes meaningful dialog difficult. This has nothing to do with whether people understand.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are being silly. Everyone understands what you are saying perfectly well. The problem is that you are saying "my religion is right and everyone else is wrong", and no one is buying this.

I am trying to go beyond organizing POVs into opposing factions. What is 'my religion' or anyone else's except a personal collection of truths that have been accepted in good faith to the degree that the person hasn't yet seen/understood errors that they have made?

You, me, and anyone else can read/contemplate truths identified with any religion or philosophy and accept them as true. When you accept something as true, you inherently also deem others who reject that truth as wrong. E.g. if you understand that 2+2=4 and someone else claims it's five, you inherently deem them wrong because you know that the answer is four.

If people are truly seeking truth, they/we are seeking to distinguish good from bad and right from wrong. Putting different POVs into conflict by virtue of their values being different is what you are doing. You are saying, "you think you are right and others are wrong; and that's a problem" but that is inherent in every possible understanding of truth, which necessarily contrasts with what is false/wrong.

It would be like if you were trying to teach math and a critic told you that the problem with your understand of math is that you assume your math is right and that others are wrong. Of course you can't say that any answer is right because only the right answer is right, as far as you know, and other answers are wrong. Yet this critic keeps insisting that you have to accept that different people get different answers and that they are all equally right.

Quote:

When you stick to an absolutist belief system, it makes meaningful dialog difficult. This has nothing to do with whether people understand.

Yes, and teaching/learning math isn't easy for this reason.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

No one here other than you thinks that you are seeking truth. You have huge contradictions in your own religious beliefs that you are either blind to, or simply refuse to acknowledge. Everyone else sees them clearly.

You are pushing a rather narrow ideology (which is the opposite of "seeking truth").

You are basically saying that your beliefs don't make sense to anyone who doesn't accept them. I suppose I agree with this. Your beliefs don't make any sense.

What you are selling isn't really Christianity. Several of us have pointed out that you often contradict the words of Christ. You are pushing a nationalist, America First ideology that would be completely foreign to the Jesus in the Bible.

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@livinglava,

"Assuming that there is only one reality and every form of language and concept humans have developed refers to some perception/experience of reality, then it is theoretically possible for any human to learn to understand the language/concepts of any 'foreign' culture, given sufficient access to explanations/experiences that adequately convey what true believers of the language/concepts mean when using those language/concepts."

Well there's your problem right there. If you don't believe something then it is nonsense by definition. You can follow scripts and pretend to be one of the crowd, which I guess is what you mean, but you can never learn to understand a topic you don't believe.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

No one here other than you thinks that you are seeking truth. You have huge contradictions in your own religious beliefs that you are either blind to, or simply refuse to acknowledge. Everyone else sees them clearly.

Remember your thread about facts standing independently of other facts? Each truth is true or false separately from others.

You summarize me as not seeking truth, but you can't summarize all a person's truth-seeking as true or false, as you are implying, according to your own admission that facts stand independently of each other.

Quote:

You are pushing a rather narrow ideology (which is the opposite of "seeking truth").

You just scribble when someone disagrees with your values. You are pretty good about having disciplined discussion until someone expresses values that contradict your hedonistic ones. Then you get angry and demonize them as much as possible.

Quote:

You are basically saying that your beliefs don't make sense to anyone who doesn't accept them. I suppose I agree with this. Your beliefs don't make any sense.

You're just projecting subjectivity onto everything once again to make room for your false beliefs to claim legitimacy where they can't otherwise.

Quote:

What you are selling isn't really Christianity. Several of us have pointed out that you often contradict the words of Christ. You are pushing a nationalist, America First ideology that would be completely foreign to the Jesus in the Bible.

You're changing the subject to politics because you don't like where the one about understanding theism was going.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

You aren't talking about facts. We are talking about religious dogma. These are opinions. They aren't objectively testable.

You start with a conclusion and then search out cherry picked evidence to support it. That doesn't count.

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@livinglava,

Quote:

I told you that babies don't develop the ability to ...

You haven't outright said babies are born sinful...and further below you appear to attempt to redefine the Christian concept of sin.

Quote:

Everyone experiences shame of sin regardless of whether they've ever heard of Christianity or not. Sin is simply the idea that there is success and failure.

Sorry buddy, you are eitherwise lying, taking terrible shortcuts & not explaining yourself properly, or you don't understand the Christian concept of sin, at all. Sin has always been about morals. Some argue it is moving closer to, or further from God...but no one argues it is 'failure'...that simply is not supported by the many talkings of sin in the bible (unless you want to try and take maybe one text out of context of the rest...perhaps then...maybe...)

Christianity has nothing against failing, and trying again. It is not a sin to fail. And we've also already previously discussed sin's that do not meet your definition, at all, like engaging in homosexuality. Nor do things like the Golden an opposite version of success.

Quote:

There's no point in explaining things to you if you're not going to read/understand what I post. You just want to debate without understanding what you're debating with.

I understood it perfectly - I talked about how you think it suspect when aetheists are kind, generous, compassionate AND you believe it suspect BECAUSE they don't believe in god).

You can't reply to the first phrase (which is the 1st part of 3 phrases, and inseparable from the 2nd and 3 parts), say NOT TRUE, without ever address the 2nd and 3rd parts, then claim your 'explanation' was related my statement (which contained 3 parts to make a whole). It didn't relate.

Once again...sitting in the dark, inside your box, rationalising things that you can't bring yourself to honestly face.

Quote:

You're not reading what I'm explaining; only looking for the pattern you can see in the data, which you don't otherwise understand.

ROFL, says the person who I keep having to pull up on dishonesty, avoidance, reading out of context, replying to just one phrase (and removing the qualifiers from it) then claiming they disagree.

You can't even identify your own behaviour that supports your severely flawed beliefs.

And in your mind, likely you think all of these people writing against you hate christians etc. You should take some time to read Neologists writing. Many here disagree with him, but of the posters on this forum disagreeing with him...they treat him respectfully. He's thought through his Christian beliefs. They are very strong beliefs.

You are nothing like him. You engage in severely flawed thinking, and must avoid your flaws in order to support your beliefs. It doesn't have to be like that. You can be Christian and still engage your logical faculty...granted it would be harder, but it is possible.

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@vikorr,

Quote:

You can't reply to the first phrase (which is the 1st part of 3 phrases, and inseparable from the 2nd and 3 parts), say NOT TRUE, without ever address the 2nd and 3rd parts, then claim your 'explanation' was related my statement (which contained 3 parts to make a whole). It didn't relate.

I'm pretty sure you understand this. But given your avoidance of anything you have problems with - you probably need a direct comparison with the parts highlight, showing how your reply didn't relate....and even then, I suspect your mind would have difficulty processing it, because of how strong your habitual avoidance is.

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@vikorr,

vikorr wrote:

Quote:
I told you that babies don't develop the ability to ...
You haven't outright said babies are born sinful...and further below you appear to attempt to redefine the Christian concept of sin.

It's impossible to have a discussion with you. You just don't listen to responses. Several times I've responded to your issue about babies being born with sin and each time you just ignore what I say and go on about the way you see it.

Quote:

Quote:
Everyone experiences shame of sin regardless of whether they've ever heard of Christianity or not. Sin is simply the idea that there is success and failure.
Sorry buddy, you are eitherwise lying, taking terrible shortcuts & not explaining yourself properly, or you don't understand the Christian concept of sin, at all. Sin has always been about morals. Some argue it is moving closer to, or further from God...but no one argues it is 'failure'...that simply is not supported by the many talkings of sin in the bible (unless you want to try and take maybe one text out of context of the rest...perhaps then...maybe...)

I'm trying to explain it to you in a general way and then you want to argue that Christianity is different. Well, if your version of Christianity allows you to oppose it, as you seem to do, then that is the version of Christianity you will have.

Quote:

Christianity has nothing against failing, and trying again. It is not a sin to fail. And we've also already previously discussed sin's that do not meet your definition, at all, like engaging in homosexuality. Nor do things like the Golden an opposite version of success.

Failure is sin and sin is forgiven, which is why you can keep trying again. Forgiveness and redemption mean you keep striving to overcome sin, no matter how many times you fail.

Quote:

I understood it perfectly - I talked about how you think it suspect when aetheists are kind, generous, compassionate AND you believe it suspect BECAUSE they don't believe in god).

I explained to you why it doesn't matter if atheists are virtuous, but you won't understand the problem of not being able to be saved by good works and deeds. 'Sola Fide,' means 'by faith alone' we are saved. Good works and deeds are a way of honoring our salvation from sin, not a way of buying ourselves forgiveness.

I think what you are seeking for atheists is pride in their good deeds, not salvation from sin. You want Christians and others to worship people for good deeds and you think that honor of social status is the ultimate purpose of religion. Pride and status are not the holy grail of Christianity, though. Salvation from sin is. You can have all the pride and status and all the wealth and power that comes with it and still be spiritually poor because you haven't yet been saved from sin. As it famously says in the Bible:

Quote:

Matthew 19

…23Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 25When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”…

1 Reply

@livinglava,

Quote:

It's impossible to have a discussion with you. You just don't listen to responses. Several times I've responded to your issue about babies being born with sin and each time you just ignore what I say and go on about the way you see it.

You appear to think 'Responding' is the same as answering, or admitting something. You avoid through not admitting. Just come out and say it "I believe that babies are born sinful". If you can't say it, then there is nothing to discuss, because you would be disagreeing with the common Christian consensus, which is fine.

Quote:

Failure is sin

Care to quote where in the bible this is taught? There are many, many examples of sin. I read it for over 15 years. I can't think of one where it says that just failure, fullstop, is sin.

Quote:

but you won't understand the problem of not being able to be saved by good works and deeds.

I understand the concept...and it had nothing to do with what I was writing about, which is why I said it wasn't related to what I wrote about. What I wrote about, was your perception of the suspect nature (in your eyes) of people being genuinely decent, kind, generous, compassionate people...who don't believe in God. You continue to avoid that non-christians can be genuinely good people.

And apparently you also think everything must be about reward, or pride, or recognition or some other external factor...when some people are genuinely good because they are genuinely good...not because they get external reward or recognition or salvation or anything else...but just because they are genuinely good, inside.

Once again demonstrating that you can't process information that doesn't fit into your box...you relate it to your box, even if it distorts it beyond recognition, then say 'see, I've answered it'...even though you just haven't.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Quote:

everyone in this thread and others who is demonizing me for failing to abandon religion.

Seems I missed this, and it's really worth replying to - because this isn't what is happening, much. Izzy stated how he doesn't mindn what people believe (with qualifications). Max is similar. I'm similar, and probably have more time for religion than they. These are your main responders...and you think they are trying to demonise you to leave your religion, which isn't the case (it's more about your use of what you call logic). You appear to think the posts 'against' you are born of some jealousy or evil or some other nefarious corruptness....

...when people are frustrated with your brainwashed mind's penchant for insisting you are correct while avoiding logic, avoiding inconsistencies in your beliefs, engaging in hypocrisy, continually reading phrases out of context, disagreeing with people while not realising you are agreeing with them, disagreeing with people then providing 'reasons' unrelated to what you 'disagree with', and basically lying to yourself.

If you think you can engage in such behaviour while maintaining absolute certainty, and that people won't call out those that engage in such behaviour on a written forum, then you don't understand forums very well.

2 Replies

Can Atheists learn to speak Theist?

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