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Goodbye Jesus

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Considering that there is not a society in the world or history of world that does not believe there is a supernatural I find this unbelievable.

 

What does this prove exactly? Nearly all cultures believed in monsters and supernatural entities. Should we all believe in such things since most people who have existed did even though we know now in the modern era that there are no monsters?

 

Suppose you took a child, a newborn infant, and placed him or her in a space craft and launched them into space. For the sake of argument this child could grow up in this capsule, never knowing another human being existed. Lets say the child grew up to be 100 years old. Would you say that child, completely cut off from other humans and human society, would develop supernatural belief? Belief in a god? If so, wouldn't it be easy to see that this child just simply made it up, an attempt to explain why he or she is in this metal capsule moving through space? Couldn't you then understand how other religions sprung up on planet earth in similar manners?

 

Then there is feral children. Children who were so wild that they didn't even have the capacity to develop religion. Some of the ones who were "domesticated", so to speak, had to be taught how to be a human being and only then be able to learn religion. Some still never fully learned how to be a human and kept going back to their wild ways until they died. The point is, these humans, even though they were cut off from human society, did not have religion. Religion was never default with them.

 

It proves nothing. It provides evidence that the default position of the human mind is not atheism. Atheism is learned.

 

Which god do people believe in when they are born?  If people are born believing in some god or goddess then which one?  If they are not then they do not have a belief in a god or goddess.

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As a side note, I think Christians like to pump up their "testimony" to make it seem like Jesus saved them from a real mess. That if "god could change my atheistic, rebellious heart, he can change anybody." I don't know, it always seemed very exaggerated to me, even when I was a christian. I tend to doubt most Christians' pre conversion stories unless I know the person. So when the church drags someone up on stage so they can talk about what a no good atheist they were, I just have a hard time believing that they were really an atheist, per the definition of atheism. I feel like there is competition in the Christian world to have the best testimony.

 

 

That's an important sidenote. I think you are right. I can't tell you how many times I felt shamed by the recovered drug addict or the hard-core biker testimony when all I had was a pretty simple life growing up in the church. I wanted to feel special too. 

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It proves nothing. It provides evidence that the default position of the human mind is not atheism. Atheism is learned.

 

Which god do people believe in when they are born?  If people are born believing in some god or goddess then which one?  If they are not then they do not have a belief in a god or goddess.

 

It seems clear that OC is thinking in terms that "atheism" is a philosophy. Lots of people make that mistake. 

 

OC - if you rephrase the sentence with "the default position of the human mind is non-belief in Zeus" I think you will have a clearer understanding of that MM means. Insert the name of any god except the one that you hold to and you too are "atheist." You don't expend any energy not believing in Athena, do you? The only reason anyone expends energy not believing in your god is that you hold a belief in him.

 

You do  realize, don't you, that the first Christians were persecuted for being "atheists" because they held to only one god and not the pantheistic beliefs that were the main sociopolitical foundations of the time? It's not at all dissimilar to how Christians get all up in arms about people casting off the last god today.

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I observe many inconsistencies in the beliefs of anti-theists and atheists.

 

Your absolute refusal to understand your "enemy" guarantees your failure.

 

But you do understand, don't you OC? I know what I hope to accomplish by letting you continue trolling here but I am curious about what you expect to accomplish. Is it just mindless fun for you?

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I observe many inconsistencies in the beliefs of anti-theists and atheists.

 

Your absolute refusal to understand your "enemy" guarantees your failure.

 

But you do understand, don't you OC? I know what I hope to accomplish by letting you continue trolling here but I am curious about what you expect to accomplish. Is it just mindless fun for you?

 

 

If nothing else, at least OC is reinforcing why we are Ex-Christians. I say let him troll away. The worst he could do is make it easier for the newly deconverted to be confident that they made a sound choice.

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If nothing else, at least OC is reinforcing why we are Ex-Christians. I say let him troll away. The worst he could do is make it easier for the newly deconverted to be confident that they made a sound choice.

 

That is the only reason he is still here.

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Evidence is not proof. Evidence provides the pieces that a rational mind uses to build a belief. Proofs are mathematical concepts which don't apply to probabilistic beliefs such as what we are talking about.

 

No I don't automatically take your word that feral children have no belief in the supernatural. Sorry, you hold the burden of evidence in this case.

 

 

 

 

Either way OC, it isn't quiet as "meaningless" as you were letting on. You can say something is meaningless but yet you can pull evidence from it?

 

Look up Feral Children. Look up the page on wiki if nothing else. A quick skim of that page alone lists many such cases and only one child was said to have made an intellectual recovery.  One girl was lost in the wild forever, completely raised by wolves. I don't doubt that if a child had limited contact with other people or were raised by people for a short spell before whatever incident made them feral that they could retain several human characteristics and maybe even a belief in the supernatural. But those who went feral before their memory was developed enough to remember the people who were there in the first couple years of their life would have practically none. But no OC, i don't know any feral children personally to ask them if they had any idea what the supernatural was as they were crawling around on all fours and barking at the moon. But i do have a pretty good idea just from simple reasoning.

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My story is impossible, i did say for the sake of argument after all. Is your imagination so weak that you cannot even attempt to grasp the point i was making? If you don't like space, how about you take a bunch of people, wipe every prior memory out of their mind and then put them on an island all to themselves. Basically they are starting anew with everything. Would a belief in a god/supernatural/religion come about? They are one in the same after all.

The evidence says yes it would since we have no examples of it happening any other way. Every case we have to draw upon in history shows they do establish a belief in the supernatural.

 

 

Oh, i didn't realize you know every historical case that has ever been.

 

Lets say they did, lets say that everyone's memory was wiped clean today and we all had to start anew. Since you think the supernatural would still rear its head in every culture and society in every nation, do you think it would be the ones we currently have? What are the odds that these beliefs would be the ones associated with Christianity?

 

I think beliefs in the supernatural are so near universal because long ago someone came up with them, people like tribal elders or shamans or what have you and thus the belief was taught to everybody. Those people where revered in their tribe and thus what they said and believed became sacred. Thus it was taught and passed down and taught and passed down and taught and passed down for thousands of years. People believed it because they really had no way to know what was what, to find out any real answers and they simply didn't know any better. Atheisim has exploded in the last few centuries largely because science has found more and more answers and people have fewer and fewer reasons to cling to old superstitions and myths.

 

But anyway, what does this prove even if you are 100% correct? How you think this gives any support for the one brand, out of the many supernatural/superstitious beliefs, you hold to is anyone's guess. I already pointed out that nearly every culture had their dragons and monsters and mythical creatures, so just lump that into the same category.

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Your capsule thought experiment is meaningless because it is not possible.

 

 

Your Jesus is meaningless because he is not possible.

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Do you really think so? Atheism having different degrees...it's still pretty self explanatory-A lack of belief in god(s) with variance coming from either being open or closed to the idea of there actually being a god. It's pretty straightforward. That's all you need to join the club.

 

This is far different from trying to find out what makes someone a true Christian, because every Christian has a different idea of what that looks like. I was just trying to explain why it makes sense for an atheist to cry Scotsman fallacy when accused of never being a true Christian, while perhaps with the reverse, not so much.

 

As a side note, I think Christians like to pump up their "testimony" to make it seem like Jesus saved them from a real mess. That if "god could change my atheistic, rebellious heart, he can change anybody." I don't know, it always seemed very exaggerated to me, even when I was a christian. I tend to doubt most Christians' pre conversion stories unless I know the person. So when the church drags someone up on stage so they can talk about what a no good atheist they were, I just have a hard time believing that they were really an atheist, per the definition of atheism. I feel like there is competition in the Christian world to have the best testimony.

 

Well, I'm neither Christian nor Atheist so I just look at similarities of what to me seems like special pleading on both sides. It makes me smile. I do generally side with the atheists though, against the Xians. :-) I'm sure my critical analysis is colored somewhat by the need to assert agnosticism. I admit that.

 

Regarding pumping up Xian testimony, I fully agree. I never really considered myself "a wretch that once was lost and now found." I just became a Christian because my wife was one. :-) The dramatic Xians you talk about really irritated me while at church. After seeing videos on youtube with pastors saying ludicrous

baloney, you're probably right about the 'best lie testimony competition.' :-)

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Your capsule thought experiment is meaningless because it is not possible.

 

 

Your Jesus is meaningless because he is not possible.

 

 

*zing*

 

What a massive double standard OrdinaryClay suffers through.  Show him evidence that the world is all-natural and he picks it apart, rejecting the whole thing over the tiniest excuse.  But that cluster of contradictions that make up his religion shall never be challenged.

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It's your claim. I was just wondering if you had anything behind it.

Anything behind it? Behind what? What claim?
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Considering that there is not a society in the world or history of world that does not believe there is a supernatural I find this unbelievable.

 

 

argumentum ad populum.

 

Not to mention actually inaccurate. Zen Buddhism holds that all "gods" are illusion, anyway: if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Lots of interpretations of Hinduism and Buddhism, especially, work that way.

 

The modern western recreation of Hinduism and Buddhism may pretend to be atheistic, but the roots of both are not. The people who practice real Hinduism and Buddhism believe deeply in spirits.

 

You're assuming too much, here - that such definitions are universal and stable. On the one hand, you assume that this sense of the supernatural is profound and universal enough to suggest YOUR God. On the other, you try to wriggle out of the assertion that it doesn't by implying that "real Hinduism and Buddhism" involve belief in "spirits" as complete versions of universal truth, with nothing else behind it. You can't have it both ways. No, I wasn't talking solely about "western recreation of Hinduism and Buddhism" - believe me when I say I've spent a lot of my academic life studying this particular topic. Nor does rejection of the "supernatural" as fundamental truth imply atheism, which you seem to take for a denial of spirits. You only see two possibilities, here: your God or none, not an infinity of other viewpoints. No other religious point of view on Earth has an identical concept of the divine, or ultimate reality, to the one that you have. You can't claim that yours is the right one, just because others exist, ignoring how different they are in one post, while pretending that I'm not talking about the "right" kind of Buddhism in the next. That "Buddha on the road" quote was not something I got out of a fortune cookie: it's a saying of Lin Chi, a Chinese Zen Buddhist  from the 800s.

 

You've put your finger on the exact problem I was driving at, OrdinaryClay: these cultures, including past eras, have a multitude of very different definitions of "gods", "spirits", or "divinity" than you do, in this culture, at this time. The Heart Sutra (quite short actually) and the Diamond Sutra are two such texts from Buddhism - if you actually read period texts, from these cultures, or, gods forbid, actually talk to people from the modern versions, there's a well-established transcendental version of the unity of the universe that lies behind gods. The gods are like a face, in a sense, a facet that people can relate to, interact with and approach, where, in the raw, understanding the transcendental reality behind that is overwhelming. As in the Bhagavad Gita. In many instances, unless you were born into the right class, you weren't supposed to think about it too hard: just do your best at your station in life, and better luck next life. I said that Zen Buddhism holds that all "gods" are illusion - as is the shallow perception of everything else. Even if you are talking about Buddhists or Hindus that believe in spirits (as if that's a bad thing) such spirits are part of the natural ecology of the world, rather than "supernatural" in the sense that your God is. The problem with your argument is that you're arguing in favour of one narrow, modern, culturally-bound definition of "the supernatural" and, ultimately, since you conflate the two, "God."

 

Please, accord other religions the same respect for truth and profundity as you want us to give yours. Why consider things like Tengu evidence for your God, when you don't consider them evidence for themselves?

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Nice post ExC

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