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Post by hawkinthesnow on Aug 24, 2009 19:40:40 GMT
Doe the possibility life after death raise the probability of God's existence? Christians and others beleive that God created us for eternal fellowship with Himself, so if that is the case then life after physical death is to be expected. Kant, I believe, made a similar point in relation to God's justice - since reparation for many evils does not occur in this lifetime, if must occur in a life after death, or else God is not truly just.
Just a thought.
Personally I am inclined towards dualism, with an eternal aspect of the self surviving the death of the body. There is sufficient warrant for such a view within the Bible too, alongside beleif in a general physical resurrection.
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Post by krkey1 on Aug 24, 2009 20:11:22 GMT
Quick comments on earlier comments
I stand by my Bronze Age Comment. Certain some parts of the OT reach back to the Bronze Age, for example the Genesis creation account, parts of Job and some Psalms. The OT also refers to events that occurred in the Bronze Age and it claims the existence of a Jewish religion during the Bronze Age. So its seems okay to refer to it as a Bronze Age Belief.
The Ancients did not believe the Earth was very old, nor did they believe it was sphere. No biggy in my book but it certainly allows me to say they believed the Earth was young and flat, cause they did. Do you seriously think they didn't?
None of this is mockery, just stating facts.
Jesus claimed his God was the God of the OT. So the worst you can accuse me of is taking Jesus' words at face value. As for comparing him to Baal etc why not. They were both local Tribal Gods. Seriously what is the difference?
I think I have treated the evidence fairly. No one knows what causes NDEs while my views would certainly not be considered wrong by OT Scholars.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 24, 2009 23:10:24 GMT
So its seems okay to refer to it as a Bronze Age Belief. I say again, my belief is based in Jesus, who is more recent than Bronze Age. So you label a belief by its earliest date? So the theory of evolution is a fifth century belief because Augustine foreshadowed it? I didn't comment on this before. But I'm not sure what the ancients believed, also not sure what the Bible actually says. Nor am I sure how literally vs poetically we should interpret what it says on these matters. Nor do I know how much all this matters to someone who follows Jesus. So, would you care to explain the importance and document what you have said?So why do you jump to the oldest version rather than the updated version? You haven't answered my complaint about trying to find the worst version of christian belief rather than what christians actually believe.If several of us were having a conversation on this forum, and I said that Antony Flew was an atheist, and someone else said, no he was once an atheist but is now a deist, would you be justified in using that conversation to justify the conclusion that he was an atheist? Yet that is what you do by ignoring the teaching of Jesus and using the OT as your basis for what the Bible teaches and christians believe. So Yahweh, even in the OT, is a local Tribal God like Baal? Let's examine a little evidence .... Wikipedia sums up Baal this way: "Ba‛al .... is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant ..... "Ba‛al" can refer to any god and even to human officials ..... any number of local spirit-deities worshipped as cult images, each called ba‛al and regarded by the writers of the Hebrew Bible in that context as a false god."Dennis Bratcher gives a little more background on the mythology and pantheon into which Baal fitted. he says: "Ba‘al was the storm god, the bringer of rain, and thus fertility, to the land. There was rivalry among the gods and a struggle erupted between Yamm, the sea, and Ba‘al, the rain." The creation mythology is similar to many other pagan beliefs, with the primeval gods and some physical environment existing in the beginning, and then the other gods, the universe and humanity being created out of what was there: "The Babylonian creation hymn, Enuma Elish, describes a great battle among the gods, primarily between Marduk, the champion of the gods, and Tiamat, the primeval ocean or the "deep." Sometimes Tiamat is portrayed as a great serpentine beast, the dragon of chaos or the dragon of the sea. Marduk overcame Tiamat and her forces and after splitting her body into two parts, made the sky, stars, sun, and moon from one half, and the earth from the other."So the many baals were local fertility/rain gods in vast pantheon of gods, created (if I understand correctly) along with the world by primeval gods. By contrast the OT God is described as: The creator of everything: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1). "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place" (Ps 8:3) Quite above all the petty nature deities: "the great king above all gods" (Ps 95:3), How can you possibly compare such "gods" (there wasn't just one Baal as you suggest) to the God of the universe? The OT beliefs, even back in Genesis, let alone in Isaiah, are of a whole different type and far loftier than the nature/fertility worship. It only took me a few Google searches to find out sufficient information to show this enormous difference, and I fear (as I said before) that you may have repeated hearsay about Baal rather than look it up for yourself. I suggest you have not. You have taken a caricature of christian belief, based on a problematic set of facts about the oldest and most easily mocked aspects of OT belief, and presented it as if it was the belief of christians today. You haven't based it on Jesus, and when faced with the thought that Jesus' God is the same as the OT God, you have continued using the same OT caricature rather than what Jesus actually said. Whatever your intentions, you have misrepresented the facts of christian belief and presented something that a Jew today, or even Isaiah two and a half millennia ago would find laughable or repugnant, let alone a twenty-first century christian.
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Post by krkey1 on Aug 25, 2009 1:12:01 GMT
I am going to right a response to that in a few days. I want to use some of my resources which at this moment are not available to me. However I will note it seems you confuse belief alone as being equal to what the text says. It would be like claiming an instruction says one thing, when it clearly says something else.
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Post by krkey1 on Aug 25, 2009 2:02:59 GMT
Lets try this
Unklee
Just tell me what you believe and why. Also explain what you feel is evidence for the existence of progressive revelation.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Aug 25, 2009 10:23:03 GMT
My two cents, calling something a 'bronze age invention' is not automatically an insult. For example Babylonian 'bronze age' astronomical traditions and methods were the basis for the astronomy which developed in the Greek and Hellenistic world. Similarly, the oldest tradition of written mathematics dates back to the ancient Sumerians. Should we really be prejudiced against people for their skills of metallurgy, given that many of our categories of knowledge can be traced back to the ancient Greeks?. I think it's a bit like shooting yourself in the foot.
It's true that Judeo-Christian monotheism evolves out of ideas about creation in near eastern mythology, but I think it's superior to 'Baal' which usually refers to a patron god of a Levant city (part of a pantheon of Gods). When Yahweh goes from being a product of 'henotheism' (worship of one god among many gods) to monotheism (worship of one god) we get an account of the creation of the cosmos which doesn't involve the creation of a variety of deities out of pre-existing forces and enforces the (somewhat counter intuitive idea) that the world is planned and purposeful. Why should this be superior?. Well one example is that Genesis refers to the heavenly bodies as simply 'lights' created by God. These lights serve humans as sources of light and as calender markers, rather than being objects of worship and sources of omens as the near easterns believed. Hence the ideas behind astrology were undermined 2,500 years ago. Not bad for bronze age goat herders.
Oh, and secondly monotheism in it's philosophical form turns out to rather helpful for establishing and cementing the existence of things like universal laws, the compliance of nature with mathematics, linear non-eternal (as opposed to cyclic) time and that nature is without it's own agency. Hence the importance of the merger between Greco-Roman and Judaic thought.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 25, 2009 11:21:14 GMT
Just tell me what you believe and why. Also explain what you feel is evidence for the existence of progressive revelation. At this stage I think I'll decline to enter into such a broad ranging discussion, thanks, although I'm not averse to it in principle. You made some comments which I felt were a little unfounded and derogatory. If they had been unfounded but trivial, I would have ignored them. If they had been derogatory but true, I would have agreed with you. But as it was, I felt it worthwhile challenging them. Opening up my beliefs to scrutiny isn't something I am afraid of, but it is overkill in this case, and a diversion from what you said. You made statements, I am asking you to justify some of them. For example: 1. Why have you chosen to characterise christian (ie based on Jesus Christ who lived 1st century AD) belief by something from the Bronze Age (ie more than a millenium before)? 2. How do you justify your comparison of Yahweh with Baal, granted the many differences between them in origin, power, status, character, etc, some of which I have pointed out? 3. What are the actual Biblical statements for the anachronistic facts you mentioned (flat earth, age of earth), and why do you think your interpretation is justified and important, especially to christian belief? If you don't want to play this game, that's OK, I won't be upset. But I do think it is reasonable to ask you to justify what you have already said before I raise further issues with you. Thanks and best wishes.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 25, 2009 11:34:34 GMT
calling something a 'bronze age invention' is not automatically an insult. I agree Humphrey, but it's often used as such, so much so that it's become a bit of a cliche. My main concern is simply that christian belief is considerably more developed and sophisticated (in the good sense) than OT belief, particularly those parts originating in the Bronze Age. Therefore it is not judged fairly when the two are confused. I would prefer to be a little more circumspect. The events we are discussing were a long time ago in a very different culture. Historians believe that Yahweh belief evolved out of other middle eastern religious beliefs, but we can't be certain about the actual history of ideas, and whether there were earlier monotheists. Did the idea of monotheism evolve because people's ideas gradually became more sophisticated, or did God reveal himself as people were able to grasp the ideas? Or both? They would all look the same from this distance, I think. But more importantly, the evolution of an idea says little about its truth. Many who discuss the alleged primitive nature of OT belief allow themselves to smuggle in un-explicit ideas about truth along with the statements about age and development, and I think it is worth asking them to clarify. But I am not a historian, and I'm always happy to learn.
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Post by humphreyclarke on Aug 25, 2009 12:38:25 GMT
But more importantly, the evolution of an idea says little about its truth. Many who discuss the alleged primitive nature of OT belief allow themselves to smuggle in un-explicit ideas about truth along with the statements about age and development, and I think it is worth asking them to clarify. Yes, that's true and that the genetic fallacy. Personally, my (somewhat speculative) view on the history of ideas would be a form of Platonism. Following Martin Nowak, evolution is a form of 'search process' for short term solutions, but it can only operate in a narrowly focused space of possibilities, resulting in long term convergences. Given the right physical and chemical environment, deep time and increasing complexity it can 'discover' the possibility of intelligent life and moral systems. By way of illustration, looking at morality, Robert Wright says in a recent article that: Stephen Pinker has noted how the interplay of evolved intuition and the dynamics of discourse tends to forge agreement on something like the golden rule — that you should treat people as you expect to be treated. He compares this natural apprehension of a moral principle to the depth perception humans have thanks to the evolution of stereo vision. Not all species (not even all two-eyed species) have stereo vision, Mr. Pinker says, but any species that has it is picking up on “real facts about the universe” that were true even before that species evolved — namely, the three-dimensional nature of reality and laws of optics.Pinker is quoted as saying: “There may be a sense in which some moral statements aren’t just ... artefacts of a particular brain wiring but are part of the reality of the universe, even if you can’t touch them and weigh them.” Comparing these moral truths to mathematical truths, he said that perhaps “they’re really true independent of our existence. I mean, they’re out there and in some sense — it’s very difficult to grasp — but we discover them, we don’t hallucinate them.”Which I find very interesting. It chimes well with the ideas (of people like Roger Penrose) that we discover pre-existing mathematical truths, or more eclectically with the similarities highlighted by Patricia Gray between animal music and human music (her suggestion is that there is a kind of universal music). If we take the Nowak position, that 'Evolution has led to a human brain that can gain access to a Platonic world of forms and ideas' then I can't see any reason why spiritual realities couldn't be accessed by it through a process of cultural evolution; albeit imperfectly and through the language of sacred narrative. Certainly if you were compiling a list of successful ideas of human history, the idea that basis of reality might be an intelligent conciousness which evaluates all possibilities and chooses a universe that is good that it should exist, has to be somewhere up there. That is after all what Leibniz, Kant, Plato, Aristotle etc..etc.. maintained.
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Post by krkey1 on Aug 25, 2009 20:04:57 GMT
I am going to tackle Unklees questions in a few days when I have better resources available. I want to make an immediate observation though. Unklee if you want people to respect your God you shouldn't threaten them with your God.
What was said earlier
Glad to help you understand this a little, it is a subject I love. You can keep the Christian God though, I want nothing to do with him!
If you are right about an afterlife, you may have more to do with him than you imagine!
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Post by unkleE on Aug 25, 2009 23:10:53 GMT
Unklee if you want people to respect your God you shouldn't threaten them with your God. I'm really sorry if you felt threatened, for I certainly didn't intend that, or imagine that. I asked some genuine questions about NDEs and you answered them helpfully. Part of my questions were related to whether one could believe in an afterlife without God, which you also answered. But I made it clear that I was not looking to extend the discussion to reasons for (dis)belief, a subject on which I felt sure we would disagree. I said: "a bit I would disagree with, but I see no point in going into that."You subsequently replied (my emphasis): "As for God. I do not think even life after death would prove God, though it would be suggestive of it. How in blazes do you proof the existence of an all powerful, all knowing being after all. Nothing is evidence enough for that."I felt this took the discussion from one about NDEs where God was mentioned in an impersonal way as one possibility, to a direct attack on belief, so I responded, intending to close off that line of discussion: "I think your explanation is way more speculative and less based on evidence than the evidence for the christian God. But I'll leave it there."But again you chose to "attack", and again I responded: I think it fair to say that I was discussing NDEs, and how they fitted with naturalism and supernaturalism in an impersonal way that did not attack your disbelief in God, you made the criticisms and I responded to them, reluctantly at first, and then full ahead when I felt you had pushed my buttons enough. Like I said before, I am not averse to such discussion, but I am a little surprised that, having instigated these more personal comments, you now complain about feeling "threatened". And my comment about dealing with God had no threat in it - you don't know whether I am a universalist (in which case no threat, just unexpected joy), or an exclusivist believer in hell (in which case plenty big threat) or an inclusivist disbeliever in hell (in which case, I cannot say whether it is threat or joy for you). For the record I am the latter, and so there was no implied threat, except that of facing God. So hopefully you can feel more at ease. But in the light of these latest comments, perhaps it is time to close this discussion? What do you think? Best wishes.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 25, 2009 23:25:53 GMT
Pinker is quoted as saying: “There may be a sense in which some moral statements aren’t just ... artefacts of a particular brain wiring but are part of the reality of the universe, even if you can’t touch them and weigh them.” Comparing these moral truths to mathematical truths, he said that perhaps “they’re really true independent of our existence. I mean, they’re out there and in some sense — it’s very difficult to grasp — but we discover them, we don’t hallucinate them.”I find this encouraging and reassuring. The common atheist explanation for ethics is natural selection - i.e. our genes or our societies survive and reproduce better if we follow certain ethics, so they are hard wired. But such a view isn't really ethics, in my view. Ethics is about what we "ought" to do even if our selfish nature wants to do something else, whereas natural selection is about what we actually choose to do - there is no "ought" about it. The naturalist can say that there is no real "ought", we have just evolved to believe there is an "ought", but then we cannot say why someone should follow the ethics if they can see an advantage not to. So I think common naturalist views of ethics are simplistic and lacking. But Pinker's view here that "the truth is out there" seems much more acceptable to how we behave and believe, even if it is harder to explain. But it fits with the common dilemma: "Is something wrong because God forbids it (i.e. it is arbitrary and could have been different) or does God forbid it because it is wrong (in which case God is not the ultimate authority)?"I go for the second option, and justify it by drawing a parallel with logic. God cannot make 1 + 1 = 3, because, by definition, it isn't true and cannot be true in an integer number system. And most philosophers would say that God's omnipotence extends only to things that are not logically contradictory. We (at least I) don't think God is any the less because he is limited to the logically possible, so I don't see much of a difficulty in accepting that God is similarly bound by what is truly and really right ethically. So I agree with Pinker that the true ethics are indeed "out there", and it is nice for an atheist and a believer to find some common ground. And such a view would lead away from some of the pragmatic naturalistic horrors proposed by some atheists. Thanks for drawing our attention to this.
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Post by krkey1 on Aug 25, 2009 23:56:24 GMT
Unklee
I think maybe this a time you learn about nonbeliever perceptions of Christianity. Understand many of us are former Fundamentalist. I am through no fault of my own, my parents choose to send me to a Fundamentalist Baptist School. I can remember everyday being threatened with your God and being told your God would torture me. To compound matters worse I am very mildly autistic so it took me a while to learn how to basically fit in . During that time I learned to fit in I was needless to say extreme awkward and I took much torment from my fellow students and teachers. I can honestly say if I had stayed at that school for much longer I would have killed myself. I still have nightmares from those days.
Since that time I have done a lot. Among the things I have done is a year of combat in Iraq. I honestly would prefer to face the insurgents then go through my Christian years again. So when you mention we will meet your God understand nonbelievers take that as a coded word for Hell which we tended to be threated with a lot. Also understand many of us were pushed down the road of non belief in the name of Christianity. Maybe we aren't as rational as sometimes we strive for but in all fairness why should we have much sympathy for the people that hurt us and the ones we love, and the beliefs that drove them to do it.
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Post by unkleE on Aug 26, 2009 3:21:17 GMT
krkey1,
Thank you for sharing what you have said. Of course I didn't know those aspects of your life.
I am very sorry about the hurt you have suffered at the hands of christians, and because of your mild disability. I would not like to have had that experience. I am more critical of christians who fail to present the God of grace revealed by Jesus than I am critical of non-believers who misrepresent God. The christians (as a whole) have no excuse, in my opinion, though of course individual christians have also been subject to bad teaching and experiences, and their response may in some cases be as understandable as yours.
I am reluctant to say too much more, but let me just say this. I do not hold views like the ones you describe, and I don't know of anyone on this forum who does. So you should feel safe here from that sort of treatment. Further, if you express strong feelings on a forum where no-one knows each other personally, you should expect a response. I am sorry that response was hurtful to you, but it wasn't intended; in fact I think I was polite and respectful, and didn't attack you, simply defended my faith against your comments.
So where do we go from here? Like I have said, I did not intend to get involved in discussing anything more than NDEs. I am happy to cease here, or proceed on a new understanding. I'll leave that up to you. Thanks again for being frank, it is helpful.
Best wishes.
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Post by Al Moritz on Aug 26, 2009 8:37:24 GMT
krkey1,
I did not know either that you had to suffer through the tragedy of a Fundamentalist upbringing. I thought you were just another typical ignorant Christianity basher, my apologies. I had the good fortune to have been raised Catholic. Let me assure you that never, ever have I associated my Christian faith with the Earth being flat or just 10,000 years old. Nor has my faith in the slightest held me back from becoming a scientist, a career that I am happy to have (I am a biochemist).
Al
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