Ad infinitum...
What Turned You Away from God?
- Thread starter Bowser
- Start date
Cute line, but still functionally wrong.
With Dave, it could be circumstantial confusion; that's why we consider whether or not he saw those threads.
With you, however, there just isn't any excuse.
It's like your glib post about the psychoanalytic meaning of history↗. Maybe there is some cheap thrill in delivering the line, but when you're actually so wrong, well, it's true I'm hardly a fashion king, but, yeah, it looks at least as stupid on you as it would anyone else.
Indeed
...and you can shut up now.
That will depend on your capacity to refrain from shooting yourself in the foot for a fourth consecutive time ...
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The ensuing silence that comes with depicting an audience that actually has "nothing to sell" was your (repeated) Barney Fife moment.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I think that what typically happens is that people (atheist or not) advance purely secular naturalistic accounts of reality. They try to account for aspects of reality that have traditionally been "explained" by reference to God (or the gods) by physical means.
Then when people continue to believe in and to promote the traditional supernatural "explanations", atheists oppose the traditionalists. I think that's how it's usually gone down in history. The battle over creationism and "ID" takes that form.
They both arise from metaphysical presuppositions that people use to try to make sense of events around them. Theism is the (very poorly justified) assumption that events can't be accounted for without personalized supernatural agencies. Atheism isn't exactly identical with but arises from the (perhaps equally poorly justified) metaphysical naturalist assumption that everything that's real is natural and can be accounted for in physicalistic/naturalistic terms.
My own view is that we are constantly surrounded by metaphysical mysteries and that perhaps it's best not to get too far out in front of the data. Hence my agnosticism.
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Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Atheists have no faith to sell.
... so they tell us, despite constantly acting to the contrary.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Faith that human understanding of reality can be true and complete without the personalized supernatural agencies of theism.
Could you put that in modern day terms?
Click or don't click: I don't recall ever actually using this image for anything.
Inasmuch as you affirm that your post at #145↑ is non sequitur, sure.
That is, I'm pretty sure you didn't actually intend to accuse that DaveC426913 is "disturbed"; indeed your response would seem to confirms this.
Given your history of make-believe and fallacy↗, it's true, the moment isn't surprising, but still: Changing the subject doesn't actually address an issue, but, rather, change the subject to another.
Still, you wrote three posts to get my attention:
Maybe in the case of calling out a member so directly as we saw in another thread↗, but even still, that was a thin pretense that would seem to oblige the theist to explain according to atheistic terms intended to preclude fulfillment. The pretense was to start an "appropriate thread", that "doesn't become populated by stupidity", and the question of whether those criteria were fulfilled is largely either a both-sides fallacy staked in defense of propriety, or a question of whether the topic post has a clue about anything other than its author's prejudice against religion and lack of respect for a particular individual.
In the two threads we were considering previously, there is likely some external stimulus, but in the end all you're doing is blaming other people for one person's decision to behave in a particular manner. And, sure, maybe that works in a room where critics aren't expected to actually know anything↗, it's an easy political answer. A more direct fighting metaphor is, to the one, what a person does in the moment compared to the nature of a given "attack"—i.e., assertion of defense—or, to the other, feeling stung by something that happened, going home and stewing about it, and then wandering down to the town square and challenging people to fight. And what is really sad about that latter is how it reminds me of schoolyard fights: "Okay, you throw the first punch."
The thing about offering a critique is that what one says is subject to scrutiny. Nobody really doubts the unwilling posture of atheists celebrating ignorance; the idea of challenging people to come say something so one can tell them they're wrong is kind of ridiculous in the first place. If we're attending the story closely, though, honestly, the atheistic critique at Sciforums hasn't progressed over the course of decades, and the reason is that for all some people complain about religion, they never actually bother learning anything about it.
One of the results such argumentation brings is a fallacious imposition from ignorance, a stubborn refusal to pay any sincere attention to what religious people are saying and doing. Applied at different scale, in other parts of people's lives, this particular behavior is a component of gaslighting, but also something that comes up in personal dispute. In the end, the inquiry would have religious people tell us something, but their words are not subject to their own definitions, nor, say, mine as one who encounters the testament, but can only be defined according to the person who has already decided the testament simply cannot under any circumstances be respectable.
Those threads are mostly about self-gratification.
No. Or, rather, an article of faith is an article of faith, be it trust in a friend, or that Einstein was wrong. And it's true, many people operate on articles of faith social; and we're well aware of any number of armchair wannabes promoting articles of faith scientific, which we in turn denounce as pseudoscience, crackpottery, wingnuttery, conspiracism, bullshit, &c.
And just as pseudoscientific, crackpot, wingnut, and bullshit, at the very least, are articles of faith religious; an article of faith about religion, and especially uttered in a religious context is by definition fundamentally religious.
That you, or even Dave↑, might be hung up on the point that "atheism is not equivalent to theism" is what it is, but you're welcome to track this back to #116-117↑ and follow through to the present; Dave's statement says what it says, but is also non sequitur. We might also consider, in the context of a statement being fundamentally religious by definition, Pluto2 at #116:
This is an erroneous formulation insofar as it presupposes God's purpose; it is also a fundamentally religious statement requiring particular constraints about God. And this, in its own right, reminds me of a question asked a year ago↗: It is easy enough to observe this, that, or another religious formulation is incorrect; it is easy enough to observe the behavior and justifications derived therefrom are similarly erroneous. And while it is not a general expectation that it ought to be a somewhat easy analysis of the errors, how they work, whence they come, and why they persist, there are some circles—e.g., critics of religion—where it ought to be. Pluto's main problem is allowing the declared opposition, already presumed wrong, to set the terms of discussion. There is a more subtle error about the difference between religion and God in the second part, that letting good and innocent people suffer is what turned him away from God; it actually turned him away from that particular iteration of God, as well as a functionally-related range of iterations often considered variations on a theme.
But focusing on that one God, or any particular theist's God, is of limited effect, and extraordinarily so when addressed from a posture of ignorance.
It is not necessary that one believe in God in order to need God.
And at some point that need can resemble common vice.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Ahh, yes, I agree, one can have faith in a fundamental human ability for understanding and compassion, wisdom. Those qualities are proven qualities present in humans
But that's not quite the same as spiritual faith, where any good qualities are enforced by fear.
I always wondered why the church would need to resort to such harsh punishments, if eventual judgement is made by God anyway.
Then I ran across this "revelation" as to the expressed intent of punishment;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
That is just false, IMO. One must believe in something (have some idea of what it is) in order to subjectively need it. Whether you think I need something is completely irrelevant.
That's the point of atheism, can't need god if you don't believe in god.
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Seattle
Valued Senior Member
If that avatar is a self-portrait, yeah, you're not a fashion king.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
I hereby demand that the unicorn believers of the world come before me with your ideas!
Article of faith asserted despite observable evidence of behavioral function.
Get as hung up as you might on the point that "atheism is not equivalent to theism", but that doesn't explain your quasi-religious behavior.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Believe what you want, I won't stop you. I just want you to know that you are wrong.
Now it has become quasi-religious behavior? Seems I am making progress.....
Now, if you could explain in what way I display my quasi-religiosity, which cannot be explained as secular philosophy?
I used to practice music religiously. But it wasn't religious music. It was Jazz, free-form.
Would you call that "equivalent to theism" or "articles of faith" or "dedication to Art"?
You are sifting with a very coarse sieve, IMO.
p.s. I do like your avatar. I think it suits your writing personality, seriously. And I'm empath!
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And the ensuing silence provides us with an actual depiction of what an audience with "nothing to sell" looks like ..