Alien,
Of course. I try to make arguments rather than assert claims, but yes - treat then sceptically until you've tested the logic, and then respond accordingly.
Spiffing. Me too.
Do you actually believe that? To be fair, you’re less prone to just throwing out unargued assertions than the Alan Burns’s, Sassys etc of the parish and less prone to just posting strings of logical fallacies than is Hope (and for that matter less given to using personal insult when you’re stumped as Vlad does), but l’m still surprised that you think your position to be argument-based. Faith-based for sure, but your arguments still tend to descend fairly quickly to personal incredulity (the resurrection), assertion (objective morality) and anecdote (converted muslims). And that’s before we even get to the disconnect of trying to demonstrate a supernatural god with the naturalistic tools of reason and evidence.
Your statement demonstrates some of the problems in your approach. Thank you for the (sort of) compliment, but my arguments for the Resurrection are not based on personal incredulity, my arguments about objective morality are not based on mere assertion (but demonstrate the choice of either there being no objective morality and hence nothing has a moral obligation on you and me or that there is objective morality and there needing to be a basis for it) and my account of two Muslims becoming Christians is not meant to demonstrate the existence of God, but was an aside in a post where I was responding to the claim that I was unable to differentiate between claims in the Bible and other holy books.
So everything. What unique set of forensic tools is it that you think christians possess, but those of other faiths with equally involved academic traditions do not?
None that I know of. What I would say is that I have looked in depth at Islam and found its claims wanting. As I have explained elsewhere, its veracity depends solely on one person, Mohammed, who claimed to have heard from Gabriel stuff he had to learn off by heart.
Think about what you just said there. On the one hand you say you have no forensic tools that scholars of other faiths don’t have, and on the other you’ve also said that somehow you’ve figured out that they’re wrong and you’re right.
Both of those statements can’t be true. If you don’t know something they don’t know, what makes you think that you’re right and they’re wrong?
You seem to misunderstand me (or are otherwise confused). Having the same tools does not mean that people will necessarily come to the same conclusion. Surely you understand that, don't you. People can misuse the evidence they have. That is what some Global Flooders do. They claim to have
scientific evidence of a global flood, yet are incorrect in their conclusions. Similarly economists can come to different conclusions. Have you ever studied Islam in depth? I have, but have you? Please answer me on this, because if you have not then I would suggest you need to do so before telling me that I am not capable of determining whether the claims of Islam are indistinguishable from those of Christianity, particularly in what their holy books claim.
What have you found during your own in-depth study of Islam?
What have you found during your in-depth study of the 100,000 or more other god narratives that are available to you?
Surely the point is to look at the foundational premises that underpin all god stories, none of which are coherent or robust and all of which are explicable as aspects of human psychology.
Not here. It is not necessary to have read all 100,000 or more other god narratives to:
i) come to the reasonable conclusion that Islam is fundamentally wrong.
ii) come to the reasonable conclusion that Christianity is fundamentally right.
For i), I have already given some basic info, which you have not actually interacted with yet. Until you do that I will not waste my time supplying more info.
For ii), you and I disagree fundamentally about Christianity, but if something demonstrated Christianity (or some other world view) is correct, then it does not need anyone to look at all the rest to know that that world view is correct. For example, if, for the sake of argument, it can be demonstrated that Jesus is indeed the Son of God and what he says is true, then if he says A and another religion claims something incompatible with A, then the other religion must be false (at least on that point).
Then why bring lurid stories of sleeping with a 9-year-old into it?
It was part of attempting to show that the person on whom Islam depends entirely was a caravan-robbing man who killed another man and slept with the dead man's wife that same day and who also got engaged to a 6 year old, but did not consummate the marriage until she was 9. Have a look at what Islam accepts that Mohammed did and tell me whether you would think him a reliable witness for passing on God's commands to mankind.
First, these are all stories – there’s no way of knowing which if any of them actually happened.
<sigh/>It does not need to have happened. Islam holds Mohammed to be the supreme example of how to live. Some years ago I spent many hours discussing with a Muslim online (an Osama Bin Laden fan) who said that Mohammed never sinned (and that you should wipe your bum with an odd number of stones rather than use toilet paper!). If that is mainstream Muslim view then, if having sex with a 9 year old is morally wrong, then we have an example of a so-called sinless person sinning. If he did really have sex with the 9 year old then he actually sinned; if it never actually happened, we still have a religion holding up as the prime example of living who is depicted as a sinner. That is all. This is not complicated.
Second, you’re applying 21st century morality to 14th century behaviours. These days Romeo would be on a register for his dalliance with 14-year-old Juliet. Does that make him a paedophile too?
I don't know. However, Romeo is not being held up as an example for us to follow by a religion and she was 5 years old so, on two accounts, that is not a very good analogy.
Third, as I understand it christianity is full of stories of divine visitations to “wretched sinners” and the like. Should we discount all of them too because of the sinfulness of the visited who reported them, or do you apply special pleading in those cases?
Again, this is not relevant and you would understand better if you had a better understanding of Christianity and at least a basic understanding of Islam. Hence my question to you about whether you have ever looked at Islam in depth.
Yes, in the Bible God is involved with lots of "wretched sinners", but their behaviour is not held up as the behaviour we should imitate. Come on, BHS, this is dead simple stuff.
Fourth, ad hominem is a basic logical mistake.
Yet again, you have misunderstood and would, hopefully, not do so if you had a basic understanding of Islam, the religion you tell me I am unable to compare properly with Christianity.
Look, as I have said above and which I will repeat now in the hope that you will see that you do not yet have the understanding of Islam to make the claims above, Mohammed is held up as the example for Muslims to follow in everything (except the number of wives, apparently). Islam relies totally on whether Mohammed was used by God to give his final revelation to mankind. If Mohammed was not a suitable person to do that, e.g. if he was a liar, mentally unstable, was a rapist, was a paedophile or whatever, then that means there is no good reason to accept the Quran as God's word. It is that simple. Islam relies totally on Mohammed.
Apart from that though…
And doubtless many muslims have looked at christianity and found it wanting too. Why not just give them a call to explain where they've gone wrong?
I did with a couple and they are now Christians (though they were not overly keen on Islam when I met them, in all fairness).
And some christians have converted to Islam too. Claiming that “god is good” when they go one way and that people are gullible and persuadable when they go the other way is just special pleading. Lots of people can be persuaded to believe lots of things with no need for there to be a word of truth to any of it.
Yes, some Christians become atheists and think they are following reason.
My point was not that the those two becoming Christians demonstrates that Christianity is correct. You said, "Why not just give them a call to explain where they've gone wrong?" I gave an example where I did just that (except that they themselves came calling). If you didn't actually mean anything by your, "Why not just give them a call to explain where they've gone wrong?", why write it?
You seem to think after all that you're possessed of investigatory tools that they lack - just pass them on, and you'll convert the world of Islam overnight!
I'll do it after you have passed on your own method of reasoning to us Christians. You'll convert the world of Christianity overnight.
How would you propose someone be reasoned out of a position they haven’t reasoned their way into?
Oh look, BHS claims that Christians have not come to Christianity by following reason. Certainly some (many?) have not, but plenty have. It was a large part of my conversion and of some people with bigger brains than I have.
The minute the theist descends into logical fallacy for his position, there’s no arguing him out of it. The best some of us can do is to point out that they are relying on fallacious reasoning but, as you’ll have seen from my exchanges with Alan Burns, the effort tends to fall on deaf ears nonetheless.
There you go again. Straw man. Of course, if a person (theist, atheist or whatever) "descends into logical fallacy" there is a problem. You assume that this is what all Christians do, yet cannot see the logical fallacies of your own position.
Or could it just be instead that what's actually happening here is that you're more comfortable with your faith beliefs, just as they're more comfortable with their faith beliefs?
And you are more comfortable being an athiest?
Yes, but that’s neither a faith nor a belief. (Cue Vlad going completely off the rails with his naturalistic philosophy schtick again…)
Yes, it is a belief. Strong atheism is a belief that there is no God/god. Weak atheism (your position I gather) is that there is insufficient evidence to believe that there is a God/god.
Are you sure it wasn't the bus that brought them?
Yes, they had walked.
So not “God” then?
God got them to walk there.
Ah, the old "I'll use an anecdote as if that it some way conveyed a larger truth" schtick. You're Alan Burns and I claim my £5!
Nope. You seemed to be saying that Muslims are impervious to the sort of argument that I (and many others) try to use. The above was one happy example of where that was not the case.
I’m saying no such thing. What I am saying though is that you’re fond of using anecdote as if it were in some way illustrative of a larger principle or truth – a bit like telling me that your 100-year-old granny smoked 20 a day all her life, therefore cigarettes are good for you.
You might be correct. Which other anecdotes have I used, bearing in mind I am "fond of using anecdote as if it were in some way illustrative of a larger principle or truth"?
Not for countless of his creatures that live in terror and die in pain he isn't. Or how about the baby with brain cancer? Is this god of yours "good" only when he feels like it or something?[
Sounds pretty scummy to me I'm afraid.
The problem of pain and evil is a heart-rending one for everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike. However, the existence of real evil is not a problem, philosophically-wise. It is possible to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of a good God. Physical pain hurts as much whether you are a Christian or not. However, the Christian knows that there is a point to it all.
Such casuistry! Of course it’s a problem – if you want to claim an omnibenevolent god, then bad things happening to good people contradicts that. Just falling back on “it’s a mystery”, “He has a plan nonetheless” etc is a cop out. As the observable facts are just as you’d expect them to be with no god at all, you can’t just claim a benevolent god and then shrug your shoulders with a “dunno” when the facts say otherwise.
Oh look, another straw man. I am not shrugging my shoulders. For starters, the existence of evil does not demonstrate the non-existence of loving God.Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks to me like you are relying on "personal incredulity". You say, "As the observable facts are just as you’d expect them to be with no god at all." You will surely be aware that this does not itself imply that there is no God (loving or not). You need to demonstrate that the observable facts show there is not god at all, not just that it is compatible with there being no god at all. You were speaking earlier of Christians and logical fallacies. You've got into one yourself here. I realise that some of your atheist friends here won't understand the difference, but surely you yourself do.
You could do, though you'd be doing more for them if instead you tried sharing some of the tools of reason and scepticism that would show them - and you - to be barking up the wrong tree.
In your opinion, old fruit, in your opinion.
No, “opinion” unsupported by reason or evidence would be “faith”. When the position is supported by reason and evidence though, then that opinion stands until and unless better reasoning changes it.
OK, support your claim with reason or evidence.
