Why Do Atheists Care About Religion?

[par4dcourse]

I'd say you're accusing these leaders of things they didn't do. Are you making an ad homimen perhaps?

 

 

 

And a shout out to Antlerman for his last post. Well said.

[Guest Valk0010]

What about the idea, that if we had no moral compass(or instinct, since the terms are interchangeable) as animals we would not survive.

 

HA! Sometimes I think other animals have more morals than the human animal does. I agree moral compass and instinct are interchangeable. This basically goes along with what I was saying, only you said it in far fewer words than I did. IMHO, "morals" which are imposed on us by others and not within us, are not necessarily morals at all, esp if they are something that comes from within a person. Doesn't mean that such morals can't be internalized though. IF "Thou shalt not kill" then why go into war? Doesn't make much sense to me and that is just one example from the Bile that Xians say they adhere to, yet they scream for "Ima geddon out of here!" and war in the Middle East. Seems like a total contradiction to me.

Well no offense but what else does white republican jesus do all day j/k

 

Jesus was a White Republican? Gasp! I thought he was a well tanned Jew.

 

And also, why have a moral dilemma if our divinely given morals are so well divine.

 

We shouldn't have such moral issues like we do, and what is moral and what it not if, we have the arbiter of judgement, the christian deity.

 

It seems to me one can't have a moral dilemma if everything they need to know is written in a primitive book. The tribal council has already worked this out for them so they wouldn't have to think for themselves.

Hehheheheh maybe he was a well tanned jew, but after the supernatural body and cooking in hell he become the politicoreligios-demagogue known as white republican jesus. j/k

 

In all serious, the situation that this guy started and ended with always comes to mind when a theist says objective morality, sense examples like what he brings up wouldn't happened, in our morality didn't come from us.

 

 

I am probably derailing, and I am sorry if that is the case, mriana, do you want to continue this in the "objective morality" thread in the den

[Mriana]

We could, but I'm not sure we were disagreeing. Regardless, I just saw your replay and given it's almost 1 am and I need to get up early, I'll have to watch the video when I have more time.

[Guest Valk0010]

We could, but I'm not sure we were disagreeing. Regardless, I just saw your replay and given it's almost 1 am and I need to get up early, I'll have to watch the video when I have more time.

Were not, but, seems like there two topic going on in this thread.

[Mriana]

We could, but I'm not sure we were disagreeing. Regardless, I just saw your replay and given it's almost 1 am and I need to get up early, I'll have to watch the video when I have more time.

Were not, but, seems like there two topic going on in this thread.

 

Very true.

[NotBlinded]

It is important to realize that God is not a cosmic vending machine in which you insert your prayer coin and he responds by giving you your request. God is omniscient and knows what would be best for the person and humanity in the long run. I don't know the mind of God enough to know why he answers some prayer requests according to the request and others contrary to the request as I am a finite being and he is an infinite being. All I know is that it is not an argument against God's existence that he does not answer every person's prayers according to his/her request, that would make him a contingent being.

Then, the purpose of prayer is? People pray like they have the ability to change "his" will. How many of you actually pray like Jesus suggested? Thy will be done... Then again, the purpose of prayer is?

[NotBlinded]

Kim Jong IL, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Amin and others were atheists and all condoned starvation and the exploitation of others. However, could you give me a basis as to why this would be morally wrong from your worldview. I am not asking what your preference or inclination is on this subject, but why it is objectively wrong to do these things. If you ground it in the value and worth of the individual, you also need to ground that value objectively. In other words, you need to explain why this standard applies to all people rather than just to certain individual or times. Now, O'hare may have been a very nice person, I don't know as I didn't know her. I don't judge whether a person is nice or not based upon what they believe about God. My father in law was a very nice person and an atheist. I am just saying that the atheist needs to ground morality as more than a personal opinion in order for it to mean anything beyond that individual.

 

LNC

Why do you think it has to be grounded objectively? It can be, and more than likely is, grounded in collective subjectivity. It is wrong from the view of the collective because there would be no more collective if everyone killed everyone else.

 

We don't live in a vacuum LNC. There are others involved and it's this involvement that brings forth cooperation. And, this is not only good for the individual, but the group also.

 

This standard may not apply to all people. People that live isolated and alone will not get some telepathic signal from God to know that it is wrong to kill a person they come across. A person has every right to kill someone that is trying to kill them. There are these little "gray" areas that make it pretty obvious that morals aren't injected into people.

 

You really are a black and white thinker aren't you?

[LNC]

Yes, LNC is trying to make 1st Century Christianity speak to post Enlightenment Western culture. Absurd. Nothing more to say.

 

Really? Why do you say that? It seems that even though the Enlightenment ideas are fading, the ideas of Christ are still standing strong. I would be interested in knowing how you justify this statement.

 

LNC

[LNC]

How about effect, morality cannot form or be even discussed without a perception of harm and benefit. It is kind of like the idea that society can't survive if there is pure anarchy. A base form of law as we see in our books today is morality. Speaking from a evolutionary perspective, if we as a species didn't get the hint that things like murder were harmful (therefore wrong) we would have not survived to the next level of our evolution. It is why the golden rule for example precedes christianity, the idea is that what causes harm is wrong is in itself universal. The objectivity is in the biology, what is better for the species is what is "better." Harm=wrong help/benefit=good

 

Still, you are using loaded terms and assuming some concepts in your discussion that you have not grounded. 1) harm/benefit - whose standards are you using? Harm whom/benefit whom and why? 2) Murder - how do you define murder and why? 3) Who says that survival is a good thing? Many species have not survived and we don't necessarily consider that to be evil. Why is our species any different, other than the fact that it is ours. But that would be speciesism to exalt our species over others. 4) You assume that the golden rule is absolute, but haven't explained why. 5) Objective morality cannot come from biology as biology is evolving and that begs the question as to how you ground an absolute in a changing standard. It cannot be done. You are assuming much without properly grounding it.

 

The difference between Kim Jong Il and the beliefs stated by O'Hair is that, one benefits and one harms. The harm is labeled and has been labeled since we humans evolved the brainpower to create the concept the same way. That is why we know. It had to become nature, that we understood it. It had to become nature for our very species survival.

 

Now to the subject matter at hand.

 

Again, you have not grounded any of this, you are merely making baseless statements from a materialist perspective. Matter interacting is neither good or bad, it just is. If a rock rolls down a hill due to an earth tremor and crushes a house full of people, we don't say the rock was evil. When a tornado rips through a village and kills people, we don't say the tornado was evil. Why do we consider it evil when matter in the form of a human kills another person?

 

Faith.

 

I was having a discussion with a fundy uncle one time. He said to me that, faith is evidence. The fact that people have faith is evidence of its truth. While of course I disagree with that. You can have faith in something untrue, that is nonetheless what he said.

 

I would actually agree with you here if that is what your uncle said. I run into fundie materialists all the time and they have faith and it doesn't make their beliefs true either. They have faith that the universe has always existed. They have faith that matter just popped into existence on its own on this planet. Faith that life just popped into existence on its own or was seeded on this planet from another planet. You are right, faith doesn't prove anything. However, evidence can lead to faith as the Bible says.

 

I also asked a christian, that I am friends with once. Shouldn't we have evidence for belief? She responded, what is faith then. She was trying to get across the point, that there wouldn't be a need for faith if there was evidence, or a need for evidence.

 

I have also heard that, salvation is by faith alone. Now I am no expert in languages so the battle over pistis is out of my range, but it seems that apologetics betrays the idea of faith and the idea of "whoever calls upon the name of the lord shall be saved." It betrays the idea of what jesus said about "blessed are those who have not seen yet believed." Apologetics is the equilivent of asking people to be one of those that seen and believed. It is said that salvation is by faith alone. But faith is the acceptance of, in many ways that things will work or be true, without certainty. Apologetics provides certainty.

 

Your friend was wrong, according to how the Bible defines faith. Faith is always based upon evidence. That is why the Apostles believed, they have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, they saw him. We have the evidence of their testimony, as well as other evidence (archeological and otherwise). Yes, salvation is by faith alone, but faith is based upon evidence. You are simply assuming an inaccurate understanding of pistis (faith) in saying that apologetics in not involved in faith. You might be shocked to know that apologetics is discussed in the Bible (1 Peter 3:15). The words, "make a defense" is apologia from which we get the word apologetics. Apologetics was practiced by the Apostle Paul at Mars Hill in Athens (Acts 17) and has been practiced by Christians ever since. Faith means that we go where the evidence leads even when the evidence doesn't take us to the last step. Faith is used by people all the time, even in science. We don't have complete evidence for all kinds of scientific theories that we hold, whether it is evolution, the origin of the universe, and many other theories. So, it is not just the Christian that lives by faith, atheists do just as well. For example, given atheism and materialism, a person has no basis for ideas like logic, morality and many other ideas that are taken for granted.

 

LNC

[LNC]

You claim an undead zombie somewhere "not of this world" and his invisible father who is really him controls earthly events through telepathic communications with us, and I have a tenuous grip on reality.

 

I doubt you really want my views on the birth of the universe, just wanted to impress us with your brilliance. Bravo. I will say that adding an uncaused deity begs more questions than it answers. Occam's razor.

 

Yes, I admit it. Against the mainstream, I see no verifiable proof of any god(s). Care to prove me wrong.

 

You didn't answer the issue, which tells me that you are comfortable living with paradoxical beliefs. I claim nothing about, nor said anything about a zombie, sorry.

 

I would be very interested in how you resolve the paradox of the origin of the universe from a materialist position. Please explain yourself and how you claim Occam's razor rather than just throwing out the assertion. I don't answer unfounded assertions. I asked you some questions which you avoided, please address those and we can move on to your questions.

 

LNC

[LNC]

You were the one drawing a parallel between the Bible and Internet posts. You were the one who misunderstood and embellished what I said, thus demonstrating that people don't always understand what they read.

 

The Bible is unclear on many points, so people take from it what they will. If the message was clear, there wouldn't be so much disagreement and even war among people who claim the Bible as their authority.

 

Everybody thinks they have correctly interpreted the Bible. Why do you think you are right and the Pope (for example) isn't? Remember, the Pope can make a detailed case for his beliefs as well. It comes down to him saying you are wrong, and you saying he is wrong. One of you may be right, or neither may be right. There is no way to tell.

 

Again, you prove that you understood my post, which means that we can understand what we read. Which points would you say that the Bible is unclear on? Just because people misrepresent a document doesn't mean that it doesn't have authority. If that was the case, then we should do away with the U.S. Constitution as it is interpreted differently by courts all the time and the reason that we have Supreme Court challenges and disagreements over how the Supreme Court rules. But it doesn't mean the the authors didn't have intention for the words and that they didn't have authority to write them. They thought that the message was clear, but maybe some who interpret it do so with the intention of trying to change that meaning and intention by their interpretations.

 

Every judge who interprets the Constitution thinks that he/she is interpreting it correctly. Why does one person think that he/she is correct and others wrong? Does that mean that there is no right interpretation? Does that mean that we cannot arrive at the correct interpretation by using the right methods of interpretation? Is there really no way to tell? I think there is and I think that you know that there is. Otherwise, you also have to believe that the Constitution is a meaningless document as well. Is that what you think?

 

LNC

[LNC]

Everybody thinks they have correctly interpreted the Bible.

 

Does that mean that there is no correct interpretation?

 

"Nobody's right if everybody's wrong"--Buffalo Springfield

 

30k (at last count) branches of xianity, but the bible is god inspired and crystal clear. Yeah.

 

Is Springfield's statement true or false? If it is true, it is false. If it is false, then it is false. It is what is called self-refuting.

 

Different branches of Christianity doesn't mean that they all believe different things. Your conclusion is meaningless.

 

LNC

[LNC]

LNC,

 

You seem to think that an objective reason would be what the bible states. All beliefs come from the same place...the mind of people. Is it really objective then if a person claims that there is an objective grounding for beliefs? No. It's an illusion, LNC, that you bought into.

 

You don't seem to have a problem with people being sinful by nature, why is it you have a problem with people being good by nature? We are all in the same boat with this and you can claim an outside force is responsible all you want, but it doesn't change anything.

 

So you believe that there is no objective truth? Then your ideas are yours, but they are not necessarily true for anyone else. Your preference, but not truth. Your statement that I have bought into an illusion is your belief, but it is not truth, because, according to you, there is no truth. The only problem with this idea is that it is self-defeating. To say that this is the way it is would only be your idea, but not the truth.

 

The reason that I don't see people being good by nature is that I read the news every day. If people are good by nature, there wouldn't be the crime problem that we have. Can you explain that if people are good by nature?

 

LNC

[Guest Valk0010]

Why do standards differ in much of any way then? Muslims do there specific cultural ideals on ethics. The spartans of a different era would do theirs. A Christian will do theirs. And there different, they have similarities but different things are allowed. If there was one objective moral standard(using your definition of it) then the spartans and the muslims and the christians would be incredibly similar. It is like my analogy of saying that I wouldn't kill a gay man for being gay, but a crazed fundy would. I do ground my morals differently, then that person. Your idea of objective morality needs to account for social, cultural, economic and geographic variety in morality. As far as I understand the idea, it doesn't. Who said survival is a good thing, no one really exempt, we are biological driven to. Our species isn't different, outside of maybe our own perception, you are reading to much into what I am saying. The fact that species die is irrelevant. I never said the golden rule is absolute, but the concept is unoriginal, it has came from religions, and cultures prior to christianity. I do ground morality, and this is the problem with the theistic moral argument as far as I can see. I allow for variety, and transition. You don't. This will sound cold, but let me phrase it in a different way. Morality is grounded in survival. Harm is counterproductive to survival(what survival and harm means depends on the culture in question). Benefit is productive for society and survival. You say I haven't grounded those terms. In a way I haven't, but in another way I have. I have a different view on say murder then a crazed fundy, because my perception of what is best for society tells me, that what the crazed fundy does is wrong and harmful to survival of society/species. The crazed fundy, with his own background and own perceptions, says that gays need to be killed for the good of survival.

 

 

Matter interacting, just is. Well no, who says, you. We are talking about animals not rocks. Also forces of nature aren't sentient, so no rocks, thank you and no tornado.

 

The interaction of sentient beings can be good or bad depends on perception of events. It seems like you almost expect us, to be drones without a deity. Chimps show a basic moral code. And they don't have souls do they?

 

I will be honest, and give you some credit LNC. My knowledge of the ancient languages is limited, so if I bow out of this, hopefully you won't mind. I will let the "experts" debate it out and then make my own choices on the debate. To be honest, the idea of evidence being against faith doesn't really make or break anything in my opinion.

 

EDIT:My apologies I messed up the quotes so I had to remove them.

 

Logic and the like, are evolutionary byproducts, a sign of our brains continually evolving even though, we have become the top of the evolutionary ladder of sorts.

[Guest Valk0010]

I don't really think it opinion either. Like I can't will myself to, do something evil. Those labels are placed with necessity not a some adhoc opinionated choosing. That is why moral value take so long to change.

[Antlerman]

Yes, LNC is trying to make 1st Century Christianity speak to post Enlightenment Western culture. Absurd. Nothing more to say.

 

Really? Why do you say that? It seems that even though the Enlightenment ideas are fading, the ideas of Christ are still standing strong. I would be interested in knowing how you justify this statement.

 

LNC

I feared my wording might be interpreted as you did. (I could only imagine how many times God would be saying that, had God been in the business of dictating human law books? ). I had hoped the context in which I said that would have shed light on what I meant.

 

What this means is not that the Christ myth doesn't still have its appeal to the Post-Enlightenment world on one level or another, but that you are trying to make the language of the Bible directed at an audience with the same sort of scientific criteria as the post-Enlightenment West. That simply cannot equate or directly apply. You cannot take what any of the creators of the myths or the letters of Paul as using "evidence" criteria to their audiences, imagining them looking at evidence in the same way as modern man - with the same empirical, historic, scientific scrutiny.

 

In other words, you're trying to make it's language answer the modern critic. It didn't have much to do with the uncritical masses, who frankly don't care about the evidence. (So much for your faith comes from evidence argument! Do you seriously believe the majority of believers look at the evidence and then have faith as the result??). This is what I mean by you spinning it to talk to the modern 'non-believing' audience as an 'evidence-based' faith.

 

Now as far as it still having appeal to the modern masses, well that would be a whole involved discussion in itself. But suffice to say it would be a bit more complex and 'human', than what you would probably imagine as evidence as some divine will and ultimate prevailing truth of your one culturally inherited system.

[Antlerman]

Faith is always based upon evidence. That is why the Apostles believed, they have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, they saw him.

 

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

 

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah,

for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven

.

 

Mt. 16:13-17

 

 

 

 

Do you read your Bible?

 

 

This is what his heart told him, given to him from 'above'. It speaks of divine revelation beyond reason, unlike and in stark contrast with those who were trying to reason it out based on the evidence! This is not based on what the evidence that he reasoned with his mind lead him to believe. It was what he came to from something in his heart, not the material world of "flesh and blood revealing it".

 

You are seriously lacking an understanding of your own religion's premises in what seems to be attempts to vindicate your rational mind to others for believing and having the faith you do. I wonder how many of the 1.3 billion Christians out there concur with your definitions of what Biblical faith is.

[Shyone]

I claim nothing about, nor said anything about a zombie, sorry.

LNC

Jesus fits the definition of zombie:

 

"a dead body that has been brought back to life by a supernatural force."

 

So you're saying that Jesus never came back to life, and there was no supernatural force involved in his non-existent resurrection? Unusual beliefs for a Christian!

[NotBlinded]

You were the one drawing a parallel between the Bible and Internet posts. You were the one who misunderstood and embellished what I said, thus demonstrating that people don't always understand what they read.

 

The Bible is unclear on many points, so people take from it what they will. If the message was clear, there wouldn't be so much disagreement and even war among people who claim the Bible as their authority.

 

Everybody thinks they have correctly interpreted the Bible. Why do you think you are right and the Pope (for example) isn't? Remember, the Pope can make a detailed case for his beliefs as well. It comes down to him saying you are wrong, and you saying he is wrong. One of you may be right, or neither may be right. There is no way to tell.

 

Again, you prove that you understood my post, which means that we can understand what we read. Which points would you say that the Bible is unclear on? Just because people misrepresent a document doesn't mean that it doesn't have authority. If that was the case, then we should do away with the U.S. Constitution as it is interpreted differently by courts all the time and the reason that we have Supreme Court challenges and disagreements over how the Supreme Court rules. But it doesn't mean the the authors didn't have intention for the words and that they didn't have authority to write them. They thought that the message was clear, but maybe some who interpret it do so with the intention of trying to change that meaning and intention by their interpretations.

 

Every judge who interprets the Constitution thinks that he/she is interpreting it correctly. Why does one person think that he/she is correct and others wrong? Does that mean that there is no right interpretation? Does that mean that we cannot arrive at the correct interpretation by using the right methods of interpretation? Is there really no way to tell? I think there is and I think that you know that there is. Otherwise, you also have to believe that the Constitution is a meaningless document as well. Is that what you think?

 

LNC

Who's side are you on LNC? I found this post going against what you are trying to say and for florduh. You just bit your own hand.

 

Both the Bible and the Constitution are human-made. What would happen to the Constitution if the people no longer placed any authoritative value in it? What would happen to the Bible if the same happened? Neither would have any authority then would it? Where would your "objective grounding" of what these documents contain disappear to? Poof...

 

What would be the correct interpretation of a document written for a time that no longer is? Why do ammendments exist? Can the Bible be ammended to apply to today's time?

 

The liberal judicial activists may be imprudent and misguided in their efforts to enact the liberal political agenda into constitutional law. But it is no use pretending that what they are doing is not interpretation but "deconstruction," not law but politics, just because it involves the exercise of discretion and a concern with consequences and because it reaches results not foreseen two hundred years ago. It may be bad law because it lacks firm moorings in constitutional text, or structure, or history, or consensus, or other legitimate sources of constitutional law, or because it is reckless of consequences, or because it oversimplifies difficult moral and political questions. But it is not bad law, or no law, just because it violates the tenets of strict construction.

Theories of Constitutional Interpretation

[Antlerman]

Can the Bible be ammended to apply to today's time?

I believe it can, if you're a Catholic and accept Papal authority.

 

To me, it seems that Institution is much more Biblical than any Conservative Evangelical American Protestant (to put a fine point on it) ever could be. The entire NT was adding to and updating the OT to fit the modern world then, and the RCC has been doing that ever since, adding this saint and that saint to fit the myth. That, is Biblical Christianity: Progressive Mythmaking. Not this Protestant Closed Cannon stuff.

 

[NotBlinded]

LNC,

 

You seem to think that an objective reason would be what the bible states. All beliefs come from the same place...the mind of people. Is it really objective then if a person claims that there is an objective grounding for beliefs? No. It's an illusion, LNC, that you bought into.

 

You don't seem to have a problem with people being sinful by nature, why is it you have a problem with people being good by nature? We are all in the same boat with this and you can claim an outside force is responsible all you want, but it doesn't change anything.

 

So you believe that there is no objective truth? Then your ideas are yours, but they are not necessarily true for anyone else. Your preference, but not truth. Your statement that I have bought into an illusion is your belief, but it is not truth, because, according to you, there is no truth. The only problem with this idea is that it is self-defeating. To say that this is the way it is would only be your idea, but not the truth.

You are speaking of two different things. There are truths that do exist as in the interactions between people. If I say my name is Sandy, that is a truth, but my name doesn't exist apart from myself as it applies to me. You are saying that this would be the case even if I didn't exist. You are talking about an either or situation, which doesn't suprise me in the least, but it really confuses the issue. You are combining all the little truths we live by and some etheral Truth and claiming your reasoning applies to both. It doesn't. There are truths, but they belong to us and how we intrepret them.

 

Then there is reality, which is objective (the physical world), and then there is our understanding of reality (the human world), which is subjective and the interactions of the human world in the physical world which contains both.

 

You are going from the one extreme of modernism to the other extreme of postmodernism. How about critical realism?

 

 

The reason that I don't see people being good by nature is that I read the news every day. If people are good by nature, there wouldn't be the crime problem that we have. Can you explain that if people are good by nature?

 

LNC

I wasn't claiming that people were good by nature, I was wondering why you chose one over the other. I'm not really an either or person. I think it takes both good and bad in order for us to even know the difference. Didn't the Garden of Eden teach you anything?

 

Oh, I happen to believe there is a "ground of being". I have no idea what this means though because I know that I can't understand it other than a "feeling" that it is so.

[NotBlinded]

Can the Bible be ammended to apply to today's time?

I believe it can, if you're a Catholic and accept Papal authority.

 

To me, it seems that Institution is much more Biblical than any Conservative Evangelical American Protestant (to put a fine point on it) ever could be. The entire NT was adding to and updating the OT to fit the modern world then, and the RCC has been doing that ever since, adding this saint and that saint to fit the myth. That, is Biblical Christianity: Progressive Mythmaking. Not this Protestant Closed Cannon stuff.

 

As it should be.

[Antlerman]

The reason that I don't see people being good by nature is that I read the news every day. If people are good by nature, there wouldn't be the crime problem that we have. Can you explain that if people are good by nature?

 

LNC

I wasn't claiming that people were good by nature, I was wondering why you chose one over the other. I'm not really an either or person. I think it takes both good and bad in order for us to even know the difference. Didn't the Garden of Eden teach you anything?

The thing I find fascinating is LNC comes across as a very rational, thinking person. He uses logic and reasoning in articulating his arguments, and even claims faith is dependent upon empirical evidence as its foundation (which is to me the definition of a materialist, actually). Yet, above he states he takes what he is exposed to in the media as some sort of statistical, empirical evidence to conclude that humans are mostly bad!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WTF? Seriously? Never occurred to him that "being good" is not "newsworthy", and as such, only the jarring, disturbing, or sensational is what makes its way to the news, to the point that it becomes a competition with other news media to put forth more and more bad stuff in order to sell their news???

 

Now, a reasoning, rational person would conclude if anything, that the "news" is mostly what's bad. But, no. He starts with the non-evidence, religious theologically produced conclusion (the theology of Augustine) that "man is bad", then he listens to the news with an ear towards confirmation of his theological beliefs.

 

Where is this "faith flows from evidence", when this faith is based on bad reasoning and interpretation? How the hell is the Trustworthy Cornerstone of Faith?

[NotBlinded]

Now, a reasoning, rational person would conclude if anything, that the "news" is mostly what's bad. But, no. He starts with the non-evidence, religious theologically produced conclusion that "man is bad", then listens to the news as confirmation of his beliefs.

 

Where is this "faith flows from evidence", when this faith is based on bad reasoning and interpretation?

 

Now kids, don't do reason and faith based evidence. This is a perfect example of what happens when the two meet. Religion is done in a black and white manner and when the gray of reasoning appears, it becomes explosive.

[NotBlinded]

The thing I find fascinating is LNC comes across as a very rational, thinking person. He uses logic and reasoning in articulating his arguments, and even claims faith is dependent upon empirical evidence as its foundation (which is to me the definition of a materialist, actually). Yet, above he states he takes what he is exposed to in the media as some sort of statistical, empirical evidence to conclude that humans are mostly bad!

You know I was just thinking that the reason LNC can't admit that people are also, or mostly, good is that it would remove the necessity of salvation. People can't be both good and bad afterall. <-sarcasm

 

There is so much that goes into making a choice (an either or choice) of people being bad or good by nature. It's a false dichotomy that he tries to makes sense of if one side is chosen. This is happening to him a lot. Trying to live life like there are truth lines drawn in reality is confusing.

 

What is the Springsteen song he quoted? "Nobodys right if everyone's wrong". He claims this if true, is false and if false it's false. I just don't get that because it looks like the sentence is true to me on its own. What is self-defeating about it, to me, is the notion that it's one or the other. People can be sometimes right and sometimes wrong, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

 

As an edit, and more time to ponder...

 

He will once say that people were originally good by nature, but the devil made them fall so now they are bad by nature. When people now do good, it's because God made them do it. What are the implications of that? To me it seems that people are amoral without any influence. He claims supernatural influence while others claim natural influence.