A Christian Framework

[Guest afireinside]

 

 

If you're all so smart and educated, why are most of you giving crap, short answers? You're acting ignorant. Stop.

 

I'm about to conclude that you are just a troll. Or that you turn into one when your arguments are questioned.

Trolling for jesus is very popular

They are the most arrogant and condescending people you will encounter. I'm ashamed I used to be one of them. Who invites them here to talk their nonsense and ramble in about a God they've never seen like we've never heard if Jesus. Are they thick or just ignorant?

[Guest afireinside]

Come on everybody, you're all ganging up on Wololo like a school of piranha feasting on a pork chop. I recommend that only one or two people should engage him at a time, otherwise, you end up with a cornered animal on your hands and such a scenario rarely ends well.

Yep, count me out, I'm not spending another minute debating with an oxygen thief. I'm out

[Ravenstar]

I was challenging your assumptions.. which I think is at the root of this discussion.

 

You assumed I had said, or thought, or believed that science was the only thing worth considering, or studying. I said no such thing… however… I do think when you are trying to support something as big as a GOD then that is an extraordinary claim and deserves extraordinary evidence, not mental masturbation.

 

Philosophy just will not do until AFTER the basic premise has been established. Then we can discuss philosophy of the premise. We could discuss the philosophy of Jediism too… but it doesn't make the Death Star real.

 

Your replies are smartass, juvenile and defensive. You are not reading and considering what some of the posts are actually saying... you are reacting. 

 

 

I admit to a certain penchant for sarcasm (and this is my playpen), but I am quite capable of reasoned discourse - when warranted.

[FreeThinkerNZ]

 

 

Just because Christians wrote the manuscripts and fragments does not mean they should be discarded.

That's precisely why I discard them.  Biased writers jumping on the bandwagon of an emerging cult.

 

 

Dear Wolol,

Theology does not count as an argument here. We don't accept the basic premise of theology, which is that god exists.

Good thing I don't care. My argument follows from science, to philosophy, to theology. Theology is the last part, after the framework and groundwork as been laid out. There are people equally or more intelligent than me that are far more educated that have put far more effort into this than me.

 

And it shows.  Wololo's efforts would have been better spent reading someone like Bart Ehrman.

 

 

 

 

If you're all so smart and educated, why are most of you giving crap, short answers? You're acting ignorant. Stop.

Short answers are the most appropriate - there's no point spending more time than is necessary refuting Wololo's assertions.  

 

 

 

Right now only one person has demonstrated that they are willing to be reasonable. I'm not going to bother with the rest. We're going in circles. 

We are.  Wololo, remind me why you are here?

 

 

[FreeThinkerNZ]

 

If you're all so smart and educated, why are most of you giving crap, short answers? You're acting ignorant. Stop.

I'm neither smart nor educated, I didn't even finish high school, I'm a worker not a thinker. However, even I see your logic is silly. You don't need long answers, just common sense

 

afireinside, you are a thinker, and smart, and I won't hear you say otherwise, k?

[midniterider]

It's really quite simple. Radical Orthodoxy is about a complete return to the fundamental beliefs of the early Church fathers, which is as close to original Christianity as possible. You speak with complete ignorance about the work that these theologians have done, and I say that because you dismiss it off-handedly. Your search may have come up empty handed, but not everyone ends up there. Some of us have found how it fits together.

 

If you like it, it fits.

If you don't like it, it dont fit.

[par4dcourse]

Right now only one person has demonstrated that they are willing to be reasonable. I'm not going to bother with the rest. We're going in circles.

Well don't let the screen door hitcha. It's a win-win!

[midniterider]

 

Sticking with 'facts' and empirical evidence is fine, but saying that it is the only thing worth studying, or considering, would be ignorant.

 

Not to mention that science is not as certain as we like to make it out to be. It's just too bad nobody seems to know enough about science for me to actually demonstrate that to them. Science isn't "hard".

 

 

Science has problems. Religion has problems. Philosophy has problems. But they are all worthwhile purusits if one finds them interesting. If I don't find it interesting though, I won't be looking into it.

[midniterider]

If you're all so smart and educated, why are most of you giving crap, short answers? You're acting ignorant. Stop.

 

We're being concise. :-)

[midniterider]

If you're all so smart and educated, why are most of you giving crap, short answers? You're acting ignorant. Stop.

 

You just don't like the short answers that disagree with your opinion that Jesus exists...or existed once.

 

Now if I gave a short answer like , "Praise Jesus!  Hosanna in the highhhhhhest!", you'd love that short answer, wouldn't you? :-)

 

So, what do you think about Bono and U2?

[Wololo]

Wololo: I certainly don't pretend to be an expert on Philosophy. I have read some philosophy and taken a college level course in it. But that is merely scratching the surface, I'm sure. What I do know has been interesting learning. And some of it may be true. But it is by nature speculative. It is the abstract creation of one's brain. It is not proof of anything unless it has been tested properly. But it can't really be tested. To infer proof of  god from any philosophy is illogical from the start. To infer such a conclusion (i.e., god) from philosophical speculations is not truly an inference. Inferences are drawn from experiences and observations, not from mere opinion without proof. Indeed, once one makes an inference from a conclusion of your philosophy you have by definition weakened your position, not strengthened  it. It is similar to a principle in the law of evidence which provides that one cannot present any evidence in court if it is an inference from an inference. Why? Because the 1st inference flows from facts; the second is not based on facts but merely another inference. The 2nd inference is weakened so much that it will not even be considered by a court. The same principle applies to an opinion based upon an opinion. It has no foundation. 

 

Not only that, but you are trying to confirm that Jesus Christ, the son of god, who also was god,  was raised from the dead and you think you can establish that from your philosophy? A snake talked to Eve, the first woman, and philosophy can prove that? Adam and Eve sinned (whatever that means) and therefore their progeny is contaminated by Adam's sin and are condemned to hell?

 

Or are you trying to say that Xtinity is consistent with your philosophy? So what? It's inconsistent with mine. Who's right?

You may be able to draw inferences from the bible and call that your philosophy, but you sure as hell cannot infer the bible god from philosophy. That's because the bible sets forth "fact", from which, if they are assumed to be true, you can draw inferences and a philosophy. But you would in the beginning have a huge problem of deciding which of the inconsistent facts laid out in the bible are true. 

 

Your inference upon inference approach to Xtianity is even less believable than the bible fundamentalists. I didn't think that was possible.   bill

 

Okay. I'm going to start a new approach here, so I'd like you all to evaluate something carefully. If we have people that are interested in intelligent discourse, then I'm just going to start and leave the shallow nonsense I've been engaged in behind (aside for my one large response). I'm going to explain to you how science, empirical, and verifiable evidence are limited, and uncertain. No more games and one liner stuff. I'm going to challenge the assertion that we should only rely on 'facts', especially ones that are empirically derived. Mm...yes, sounds juicy and idiotic, and since you all are starting to reveal that you know more than you've let on, I'm going to forge ahead as though we're all smart, critical thinking adults. Think of me what you will, I'm coming for your science and if you're rational, you're going to read it and think about it. I'm going to put my best foot forward instead of getting caught up in the fact that I'm being hounded. The purpose of this is to demonstrate that not only does philosophy underlie everything, but that science (which was derived from philosophy) provides an incomplete and biased picture of the universe.

 

The scientific method in its purest form is about objectivity. In fact, it was created with the intention of keeping ideologies from overpowering reason. Think of it like the climate change debate. There is overwhelming evidence that the Earth is warming up, and yet people are content to ignore the evidence and listen to 'polls' and whatever they hear on the corporate media. Science is meant to keep our emotions from fooling us, and the climate change discussion is a perfect example of ideology and lunacy getting in the way of reason. Science most certainly has a place, and the method itself has led to many important discoveries since its inception. We've undone a lot of the nonsense from previous eras. Is it truly pure though?

 

I'm going to quote a common Biology textbook (called Biology Discovering Life):

 

"Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomenon are its by-products."

 

Finally, we have an explicitly stated implicit assumption that most scientists (and quite often, atheists) hold. That is that the only valid philosophy is scientism (which is essentially a combination of materialism and empiricism). Immediately there are issues with this. It's an incomplete epistemology that doesn't provide an adequate metanarrative...or essentially it doesn't provide a wide enough 'all-encompassing' view of reality. In a sense, it's an ethnocentric marginalization of all other perspectives. The very nature of science is a process of narrowing down, and so by its very definition, it narrows out all other possible options. This is something that can be tolerated to some extent. There remains the core problem though. Science demands that there are no other ways of acquiring knowledge.

 

A.J Ayer does a good job of explaining what this 'no other ways of acquiring knowledge' means from the perspective of an empiricist:

 

"No statement which refers to a 'reality' transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any literal significance; from which it must follow that the labors of those who have striven to describe such a reality have all been devoted to the production of nonsense."

 

This essentially means that anyone claiming to understand a reality that transcends what can be experienced with the senses and be verified empirically has been making up nonsense. Let's explore the implications of this for a moment.

 

The direct implication of that statement is that all meaningful language is grounded in empirical verification. This means that any talk of moral values and human dignity are off the table. Those values may have an......'emotive meaning', or maybe even a social utility, but regardless of that, they're left out of the discussion because they are not based on something empirically verifiable. Rights and values are not material. There is no 'sense experience' to back them up either.

 

Let's look at another extension of that. If we examine the statement: "a proposition is only meaningful if it's subject to empirical verification", we realize that this statement becomes meaningless because there is no way to experience it. That verification principle is a priori, and much to my amusement, seems to defeat itself. We have just made an assertion that can't be backed up. Thus, the verification principle was discredited long ago.

 

So what happens to morality? Of course, you still believe you're moral. I do too. Where does this morality come from? Let's take a look at a Harvard biologist by the name of E.O. Wilson:

 

"If the empiricist, ought is just a shorthand for one kind of factual statement, a word that denotes what society first chose (or was coerced) to do, and then codified. The naturalistic fallacy is thereby reduced to the naturalistic problem. The solution of the problem is not difficult: ought is the product of a natural material process. The solution points to an objective grasp of the origin of ethics."

 

Basically 'ought' reduces to genetically encoded human behaviours involved in survival and adaptation. Morality is purged. Hitler's eugenics program is okay, because it doesn't put the human species at risk. There is no such thing as human equality, as we are clearly not all equal. We are only abiding by the strict rules of scientism here, while avoiding the naturalistic fallacy. In a purely materialist world, we are stuck with no morality, except that which keeps us alive, or that which is programmed into us by our genetics. The difficulty there becomes more an issue of diversity. Why do we seem to struggle with different perceptions of morality? If we all share such a similar genetic code, why the diversity?

 

Let's move on to the second point. Human science is biased.

 

Science is supposed to be objective. The issue is that it's essentially impossible for humans not to be biased. None of us lives in an ideological or cultural vacuum. Because of this, science reflects prevailing social ideology. This means that science is used for nonscientific purposes all the time. Let's return to our friend Darwin. His Origin of Species is absolutely full of teleological language. There's way too much purpose in his language. He uses words like: "useful", "the good of each being", "advantageous", "success", "perfection", etc. Those are all loaded words, even in a work of science. As long as humans are conducting science, it is biased. This is because the scientists bring their own cultural biases into their work. It's inescapable.

 

The last point I'm going to bring up is pretty much the crux of my argument. Science is full of uncertainty. The further we delve into it, the more we are realizing that there is no such thing as true certainty. I like to use electrons as a good example.  It is impossible to know the velocity and the position of an electron at once. If you know the position, the velocity isn't measurable. If you know the position, you can't know fast it's going. This sort of cosmic uncertainty underlies the scientific method now. Randomness at the quantum level throws the world into chaos. Suddenly we're working with probabilities. What happened to our comfortable, predictable world that science was giving us? I realize that this is not necessarily a problem with the method itself, but more a shortcoming. Science can't tell us everything. The electron has both a velocity and position at once, but we can't measure them both at the same time. When you look at dualities, things get even weirder. A photon is a wave and particle at the same time. It is what it needs to be at a given moment. 

 

There are more points I can tack on, but I think this is enough for now, at least in terms of attacking scientism. I'd like to see who did follow this, and I'd like to hear a good response.

 

The conclusion I draw from the fallibility of science is that we have to return to its roots. Philosophy. Science was developed from philosophy, and so the answers lie in philosophy. It is comforting to have science to fall back on, as it is reliable as a tool for learning about the world around us, but it falls apart under the duress of being the only source of truth. It fails to be what we want it to be. The uncertainty I have explained that's a part of science, permeates philosophy. Perhaps you're not accustomed to it. You will never go anywhere and have complete certainty. You can never believe anything or trust anything with complete certainty. This is why studying and understanding philosophy, at least at a basic level, is important. If believe that science is the only measure of truth, it is just as foolish as using only theology. Only by a wide, all-encompassing search will we ever be able to acquire knowledge properly.

[Roz]

Arrogance, pure arrogance.  Even more so than any of the christians I've seen in Ex-C.

 

 

 

Science was developed from philosophy, and so the answers lie in philosophy.

---You still haven't told us why your christian philosophy is the right one.

 

It is comforting to have science to fall back on, as it is reliable as a tool for learning about the world around us, but it falls apart under the duress of being the only source of truth. It fails to be what we want it to be. The uncertainty I have explained that's a part of science, permeates philosophy. Perhaps you're not accustomed to it.

---The blind assertion that we non-believers aren't accustomed to not knowing everything.  The irony of that statement coming from the christian. 

 

You will never go anywhere and have complete certainty. You can never believe anything or trust anything with complete certainty. This is why studying and understanding philosophy, at least at a basic level, is important. If believe that science is the only measure of truth, it is just as foolish as using only theology. Only by a wide, all-encompassing search will we ever be able to acquire knowledge properly.

---Connect the dots of your philosophy, now.  Go on.  Tell us about your flavor of the christian worldview.  Tell us why it makes sense to you.  Then we'll judge for ourselves the merits of your arguments. 

 

For all that bluster, he still won't connect the dots on why he believes that sword on the field is jesus beamed directly by yaweh.

[Guest afireinside]

Listen here fuckwit, we all follow your shit it's only words strung together to full up space but get to the fucking point! You think you're going to talk us into a God we have already extensively experimented with and found to have failed to pass even the simplest of tests. You go pull your dick somewhere else, we don't want your condescending "higher revelation" bullshit. You're an insulting prick and you are wasting your time. Fucking delusional asshole, sick of seeing your name and cock-and-ball-less attempts to peddle your imaginary God by tip toeing around evangelical statements with long-winded word-masturbation, wake the fuck up moron.

[pratt]

the passage is a tad long for digestion, but can i summarise as follows

 

science has no certainty,,,,,, so philosophy

philosophy has no certainty ,,,,,, so theology

theology is certain that there is a god called YHWH and son called jesus,,,,,

 

hallelujah?

[Guest afireinside]

At least Ironhorse is a nice guy despite his beliefs. I'd have a coffee with IH, this guy I would punch in the face for being a smug asshole.

[Wololo]

If someone can't put forward a reasonable response, I'm just going to leave you guys to your echo chamber.

[Roz]

Still not one word on how his philosophy connects to the god of the bible.  Seriously, even Ironhorse trolls better than this christian.

 

At least IH will post a song that might be nice to listen to.

[Orbit]

Wololo has a basic misunderstanding of the development of science and of the history of philosophy. I believe that by saying that philosophy underlies science he is making the historical error of assuming that, for example, that because Aristotle speculated about atoms, and atoms were later discovered, that one caused the other. It didn't. Philosophy and science are two different epistemologies, or ways of explaining the world. One did not cause the other.

 

Philosophy is based on formal logic and reason rather than observation.

 

Science, or more properly, logical positivism, is empirical--based on observation, falsifiability, non-reductionism, discovery of general laws that are predictive. The two are clearly different.

 

Philosophy, historically, provided answers before people stopped speculating and started observing the world. The two things are different ways of explaining the world. One does not rest upon the other.

 

Existing critiques of positivism apply mostly to the social sciences, and do not change the fact that science makes planes fly.

[Roz]

I'll agree that it's beneficial to learn about different philosophies.

 

Tell me why you think yours connects to your christian god of the bible.

 

"It's good to learn about different ways of thinking" is NOT "here's what I think about jesus"

[FreeThinkerNZ]

 

 

Science most certainly has a place, and the method itself has led to many important discoveries since its inception. We've undone a lot of the nonsense from previous eras. 

Ex-Cs have.  Wololo appears to still believe in religion.

[Roz]

Regarding Hitler.  Why do we think that he's a bad man now?  Because he caused harm to millions of lives.

 

Why do you think that Joshua is a good man?  He committed the same wholesale slaughter as Hitler, the latter just had more sophisticated weaponry.

 

Why do you think that your god is good?  He ordered the same wholesale slaughter as Hitler.

 

Your side is rife with Divine Command Morality, the very morality that makes the Nurumberg Defense valid ("I was just following orders.").

 

You could not answer as to why your god committed those atrocities, yet you call him good and Hitler bad.

 

I call both evil, regardless on if they exist or not.  Why?  My moral framework is this: above all, do no harm.  It's an atheistic secular moral value that required no deity. 

[mymistake]

"The purpose of this is to demonstrate that not only does philosophy underlie everything, but that science (which was derived from philosophy) provides an incomplete and biased picture of the universe."

 

Well of course we live in an imperfect word.  Compared to an impossible idealistic standard humans fall short by nature.  There is no need to prove that part but where did you show that philosophy underlines everything?  I don't see how your argument arrives at that conclusion.

 

 

"The direct implication of that statement is that all meaningful language is grounded in empirical verification."  

 

Uh, no.  Not hardly.  I don't see that implication at all.  And that is suspect since he does a fine job of proving this is not the case.

 

 

 

"Rights and values are not material. There is no 'sense experience' to back them up either."

 

They arise from human brains which are material.

 

 

 

"Where does this morality come from?"

 

From our evolution, of course.

 

 

Basically 'ought' reduces to genetically encoded human behaviours involved in survival and adaptation. Morality is purged. Hitler's eugenics program is okay, because it doesn't put the human species at risk. There is no such thing as human equality, as we are clearly not all equal. We are only abiding by the strict rules of scientism here, while avoiding the naturalistic fallacy. In a purely materialist world, we are stuck with no morality, except that which keeps us alive, or that which is programmed into us by our genetics. The difficulty there becomes more an issue of diversity. Why do we seem to struggle with different perceptions of morality? If we all share such a similar genetic code, why the diversity?

 

That is so badly butchered that I don't know where to begin.  That one group (or even many) of humans was fine with genocide does not mean morality is purged.  Christians are usually fine with the genocide of Joshua and Moses but then turn around and in the next breath proclaim their system as the moral authority.  Equality is a goal but it's not something the universe owes us.  Diversity is from evolution; yes even diversity of morality.  Similar genetic code does not mean identical.  There are probably a dozen other things wrong with this paragraph.  Essentially using this kills your argument.  It is dead.

 

"The conclusion I draw from the fallibility of science is that we have to return to its roots. Philosophy. Science was developed from philosophy, and so the answers lie in philosophy."

 

Where did that come from?  You leapt from one idea to another without a path or bridge to get you there.

 

 

" . . . but it (science) falls apart under the duress of being the only source of truth."

 

What are you talking about?  Can you demonstrate another source of reliable, verifiable truth?  Science certainly does have problems but what is the alternative?

 

 

"Perhaps you're not accustomed to it."

 

In physics I was trained to calculate the uncertainty.  Scientist are well aware that there is uncertainty.  The strength of science is that we can strive to reduce the uncertainty and know the margins for error.  Shouldn't you have already understood that?

[Guest afireinside]

If someone can't put forward a reasonable response, I'm just going to leave you guys to your echo chamber.

And you can spend some quality time in your wankpit you idiot

[Wololo]

Nope. If people are going to step over the line of decency, I'm finished. Adios.

[Roz]

From christianese to plain english:  I can't give an answer as to how my philosophical world view validates the god of the bible, so I'm leaving.