Faith vs blind faith

[Walt Zingmatilder]

... which in itself is an open admission of how divorced from reality you are. In the list of those on the forum least likely to rant, the Prof. is near the top.

Lewis deals extensively with Jesus as myth. He is after all a well read academic in literature so presumably the trilemma is for those who have not dismissed the accounts.

Even if Lewis has "failed", so what, we have a quadrilemma.

[ProfessorDavey]

Lewis deals extensively with Jesus as myth. He is after all a well read academic in literature so presumably the trilemma is for those who have not dismissed the accounts.

Even if Lewis has "failed", so what, we have a quadrilemma.

Nope we have a multilemma (if that is a thing) and one in which each option isn't distinct but exists on a spectrum. And, of course, the focus on what Jesus thought is totally misplaced, because we do not know what he thought - all we know if what others writing decades later, in places distant to Palestine and who never met Jesus claimed he thought. So the focus must be on the early Christian writers, not Jesus.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope - because you fail to recognise that we do not know, and indeed probably cannot know, whether Jesus ever claimed to be divine.

Nope, all we know is that people decades later claimed that he was and that he himself claimed to be - that is an entirely different matter. Just because someone claims that someone else claimed something, doesn't mean that someone else actually did ever make that claim.

Decades after the original film many people think that Bogart exclaimed 'play it again, Sam' - he didn't. We know he didn't as we have the original film as evidence. But had that film been lost to us decades ago, we might believe the erroneous claims that he said 'play it again, Sam'.

We have in the earliest epistles evidence that the gospel was already at full throttle in this community.
Jesus words were still in memory, Jesus standing with God was known, Paul does not be doing much in contradiction to the other apostles. Converts at the time feel themselves as having been saved by Christ.
Against that we have your claim that Jesus did not claim things that were not blasphemous.
A kind of street magician Jesus cannot have inspired this I think.

[Nearly Sane]

Nope we have a multilemma (if that is a thing) and one in which each option isn't distinct but exists on a spectrum. And, of course, the focus on what Jesus thought is totally misplaced, because we do not know what he thought - all we know if what others writing decades later, in places distant to Palestine and who never met Jesus claimed he thought. So the focus must be on the early Christian writers, not Jesus.

Just for info, it's polylemma.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope we have a multilemma (if that is a thing) and one in which each option isn't distinct but exists on a spectrum. And, of course, the focus on what Jesus thought is totally misplaced, because we do not know what he thought - all we know if what others writing decades later, in places distant to Palestine and who never met Jesus claimed he thought. So the focus must be on the early Christian writers, not Jesus.

There are several get offs I suppose and Lewis deals with them and then we get to the trilemma.
It seems to me though that to not get as far as the trilemma. To not test the more probable roots is psychological avoidance.

What you have is a kind of life of Brian Jesus with Jesus as Brian. Some poor sap with a load of holy business going on around him.

I think you need to check yourselves as to what you reject and why you are rejecting it.IMHO it's because you want the most harmless Jesus possible.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Just for info, it's polylemma.

And because Davey got that wrong we can ignore everything else he says according to Atheist Central rules governing CS Lewis.

[ProfessorDavey]

And because Davey got that wrong we can ignore everything else he says according to Atheist Central rules governing CS Lewis.

Actually I didn't get it wrong - or at least I was using standard scientific approaches, so as applied to smaller units of polymers. Typically you have monomer, dimer, trimer etc up to about decamer - after that, when there are perhaps 10s of monomers joined, the term multimer is used. For larger numbers again polymer is used. Some also claim there is a distinction based on the type of bond, but that isn't my understand from the peptide and polymer chemists I have in my own department.

[Rhiannon]

Just for info, it's polylemma.

Well done that man.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Are you accepting that Leprechauns are mythological? Are you saying that Leprechauns still exist but are merely supernatural?

What point do you think you’re trying to make here?

Now that leprechauns never were little irish men at the ends of rainbows how do you propose to continue the appeal to ridicule?

There’s never been an “appeal to ridicule”. Outy suggested earlier that he saw some intelligence at least in your posts, so presumably you’re being deliberately dishonest here. Happy to accept that it could be the other way round though. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad

There’s never been an “appeal to ridicule”.

Of course there hasn't.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

You'll have to ask the theists who think they are certain about what any supposed God's words mean. As I said before all the theists I know state they are expressing an opinion, and Allah knows best.

You’re still avoiding it or missing it. Either you think that whatever “Allah knows” is discernable from a “holy” text or you don’t. If though all meaning is interpretation then the meaning comes from us, and Allah’s contribution is unknowable and therefore irrelevant.       
       

Whether he claims to have acted on the instructions of norms of the industry, his upbringing or a disease of sex addiction, I still don't hold the whole concept of masculinity responsible for the behaviour of individual men. In the same way I don't hold religion responsible for the behaviour of individual theists.

“Responsible” and “a significant contributor to” are not the same thing (in both cases by the way). Once you remove the safety catch of reason, why though would you not accept instructions on the basis of faith, regardless of what they happen to be?     

I haven't figured out a way to establish what a god may have decided, so I think we can only hold opinions. Guess we will both have to wait until someone who thinks they know what any supposed God wants answers our question about how they established what said God wants.

And about why they think there’s a god at all. The point though is that, if you have no way to know what a god wants, what’s the point of the god at all?

I don't know what the Christian theory is but my understanding of Islam is that we have a message in the Quran, and the test on which we are judged is how we interpret the message, what our intentions are based on our interpretations, and how we actually behave - in other words we could have good or bad intentions but our actual acts may be different from our intentions as something could happen to prevent us doing what we intended.

But how on earth would you even know what the “message in the Quran” might be when all is interpretation, when no opinion about that is any more or less valid than any other?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Of course there hasn't.

Well that's progress I guess. Would you care now to turn your attention to what the argument actually entails – you know, the thing that's been explained to you dozens of times but that you just ignore?

[ProfessorDavey]

There are several get offs I suppose and Lewis deals with them and then we get to the trilemma.

But that is intellectually dishonest, because it is implying that the other options in the mulitlemma/polylemma can reasonably be discounted to leave just the trilemma, when of course they cannot.

I know you are too blinded by your own beliefs to see this in relation to Jesus, so let's use a different example.

So rather than the claim that Jesus said he was god, let's use the claim that Bogart said 'play it again, Sam' in the film Casablanca. Applying the Lewis approach to that claim we are obliged to decide on the trilemma that Bogart is mad, bad or the man who said 'play it again, Sam' in the film Casablanca. All other options (including the truth) have been expunged to leave just three that are (in this case demonstrably) non-sense.

Now, of course at the heart of this is to be certain that Jesus said he was the son of god (or god) and that Bogart said 'play it again, Sam' in the film Casablanca - in the latter case we know that he didn't as we have the film as evidence. In the former case we do not know and cannot know whether he did as the nearest 'evidence' we have are others claiming he said it, and that is far too weak to support even starting on a Lewis type trilemma debate.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

To not test the more probable roots is psychological avoidance.

What method did you use to work out what was "more probable"?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But that is intellectually dishonest, because it is implying that the other options in the mulitlemma/polylemma can reasonably be discounted to leave just the trilemma, when of course they cannot.

I don't think it is intellectually dishonest. Lewis deals in his writings with the question of myth.
He also invites comparisons between myth and reportage, a word I believe he uses, and comes out on the side of reportage. Having found he cannot discount the NT as a history he comes to the trilemma in the full knowledge that historical study cannot establish claims of divinity.

That leaves discounting the NT or what looks like selective discounting parts of it. Justification of that process is IMV rarely analysed and fictional it's taken often as a given.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

What method did you use to work out what was "more probable"?

Mainstream history has a Jesus who made claims which were taken up by others.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Thank you for your reply. If you totally lacked belief in any God, i.e. you were an atheist, how did you come to believe, or what was said to you, that encouraged you to believe that such a myth could exist? If you knew before hand that there are no God/god/s, how did you convince yourself that there was?

You're welcome. Not sure I can break my thought process down for you and convey the accompanying emotions that made up my belief in words but I'll give it a shot.

In my teens, as an atheist - it was more than just lacking belief and not talking about it for me - it was more like an ideology to follow which involved coming up with arguments to convert other people to my way of thinking because theists seemed irritatingly deluded and backward even if they weren't proselytising, and if what they said was unconvincing to me I could not see what the point was of them continuing to believe what they believed based on dodgy reasoning. I was excited by this new, clever idea I had arrived at in atheism, thought I was cleverer than the deluded theists, and thought I was doing them a favour by educating them. I did not see anything in their beliefs of any benefit to me. Because of the school I went to I was mostly exposed to white, middle class Christians and the whole God is all-loving, sacrificed his son, and Jesus died for our sins message and the love and sacrifice martyr angle just doesn't appeal to me.

In my early twenties, I was exposed to a lot more people at university, less sure I knew everything or that my thinking was always right, I was more open-minded about friendships because I felt less of a connection with the type of people I used to hang around with before and I met some really down to earth theists at university and witnessed benefits to their beliefs. I also accepted there is a tiny possibility a god of some kind could exist at it was impossible to rule out.

The few Muslims friends I had at university were a lot less sentimental about this whole God thing, so that made the concept of a god a bit more palatable. I started hanging out with them and their family a lot more. I was still arguing with them about their deluded beliefs and one day I opened a Quran in their house to find evidence to show them how deluded they were, and some of the stuff I read in there just seemed surprisingly perceptive about my thoughts and behaviour - stuff that I wouldn't admit out loud but I recognised when I read it. I wasn't expecting that in some poetry book from 7th century desert Arab times  So maybe that was the moment that the tiny possibility of a god of some kind gained a little more traction.

I guess it was a series of similar little experiences that led me to giving more stuff a try, and being surprised that I got a real benefit from it and felt like I had a useful direction to aim for, which far outweighed my need for certainty and proof. It's annoying because this belief doesn't make any sense, as there still isn't any proof, but it's not annoying enough to give it up.   

[bluehillside Retd.]

Prof,

Just to note that even now stories of actual events that didn’t happen at all can emerge and take root with remarkable ease. There was for example a Newsnight report recently about a baby dropped by its mother from a window during the Grenfell fire that was caught by a passer-by and saved. There were lots of witnesses who saw it. An exhausted George Clarke for example (the TV architect guy who lives nearby) told the story, was asked whether he actually saw it, and replied, “yeah yeah”. The story was reported worldwide and is embedded as a record of a real event.

Only it wasn’t. Despite exhaustive research no evidence of the child existing was found. Someone did see a child being dangled from a window to have access to clear air, but no-one actually saw it being dropped. Then they did some sums about the effective weight of a child dropped from the claimed height and found that the velocity would have made catching it almost impossible.

So were the “witnesses” lying? Almost certainly not – the story spread in a highly stressful situation and there were enough bits of it for people like Clarke genuinely to think they saw it. And yet some would insist that claimed events that happened two thousand years ago, that were documented decades (not days) later etc are more probably true than not.

Funny innit?         

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But that is intellectually dishonest, because it is implying that the other options in the mulitlemma/polylemma can reasonably be discounted to leave just the trilemma, when of course they cannot.

I know you are too blinded by your own beliefs to see this in relation to Jesus, so let's use a different example.

So rather than the claim that Jesus said he was god, let's use the claim that Bogart said 'play it again, Sam' in the film Casablanca. Applying the Lewis approach to that claim we are obliged to decide on the trilemma that Bogart is mad, bad or the man who said 'play it again, Sam' in the film Casablanca. All other options (including the truth) have been expunged to leave just three that are (in this case demonstrably) non-sense.

Now, of course at the heart of this is to be certain that Jesus said he was the son of god (or god) and that Bogart said 'play it again, Sam' in the film Casablanca - in the latter case we know that he didn't as we have the film as evidence. In the former case we do not know and cannot know whether he did as the nearest 'evidence' we have are others claiming he said it, and that is far too weak to support even starting on a Lewis type trilemma debate.

OK but is Lewis basing the trilemma on a Jesus 'one liner' I'm not sure he is.

Also "play it again Sam" gets the Jist even if incorrect. if I understand the script at that point The pianist has played it already, for her.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I don't think it is intellectually dishonest. Lewis deals in his writings with the question of myth.
He also invites comparisons between myth and reportage, a word I believe he uses, and comes out on the side of reportage. Having found he cannot discount the NT as a history he comes to the trilemma in the full knowledge that historical study cannot establish claims of divinity.

That leaves discounting the NT or what looks like selective discounting parts of it. Justification of that process is IMV rarely analysed and fictional it's taken often as a given.

See Reply 617. Presumably Lewis would have opted for reportage for that story too. What it actually leaves is the reality that what's reported to have happened and what actually happened are often different.   

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

BHS

Gabriella,

You’re still avoiding it or missing it. Either you think that whatever “Allah knows” is discernable from a “holy” text or you don’t. If though all meaning is interpretation then the meaning comes from us, and Allah’s contribution is unknowable and therefore irrelevant.

I think you are the one who is avoiding it or missing it. As I said, I think I can form an opinion based on the text. I have no way of being certain if that opinion is correct, but I have to make a judgement call so I will proceed on the basis I got it vaguely right until I come across new information that leads me to change my understanding, intentions and actions.
       

“Responsible” and “a significant contributor to” are not the same thing (in both cases by the way). Once you remove the safety catch of reason, why though would you not accept instructions on the basis of faith, regardless of what they happen to be?

I interpret the instructions - so I employ reason to try to figure out what the instructions are and how they apply to my situation and if the consequences of following the instructions is not acceptable to me.     

And about why they think there’s a god at all. The point though is that, if you have no way to know what a god wants, what’s the point of the god at all?

Trying to figure out what I think a god might want and evaluating the outcome of practising what I interpret is beneficial and interesting to me.

But how on earth would you even know what the “message in the Quran” might be when all is interpretation, when no opinion about that is any more or less valid than any other?

I don't claim to know. I am ok with just having an opinion. I am not looking for certainty.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gabriella,

I think you are the one who is avoiding it or missing it. As I said, I think I can form an opinion based on the text. I have no way of being certain if that opinion is correct, but I have to make a judgement call so I will proceed on the basis I got it vaguely right until I come across new information that leads me to change my understanding, intentions and actions.

Doesn’t work. What would “correct” even mean if all is interpretation? I don’t have a dog in the fight here, but it seems to me a confused position to think on the one hand that a god’s intentions are written in a book, but on the other that there’s no way to know what they are.   
       

I interpret the instructions - so I employ reason to try to figure out what the instructions are and how they apply to my situation and if the consequences of following the instructions is not acceptable to me.

No doubt, but as there as many opinions as there are people to have them what value do these “instructions” have?       

Trying to figure out what I think a god might want and evaluating the outcome of practising what I interpret is beneficial and interesting to me.

But what method would you use for that “figuring out”, and what relevance would evaluating the outcomes have but for confirmation bias – if you happen to be a nice person, then happy outcomes confirm you’ve got the meaning “right”, and vice versa. 

I don't claim to know. I am ok with just having an opinion. I am not looking for certainty.

So again, what use is the Quran if all you have to rely on for guidance is your personal opinion about it?

[ProfessorDavey]

OK but is Lewis basing the trilemma on a Jesus 'one liner' I'm not sure he is.

You are correct - Lewis isn't basing his trilemma on anything we know actually Jesus said or claimed - he is basing it on that others writing decades later claimed he said. That is weaker still. And don't forget that the third-party claims about what Jesus said have further been through the prism, selection, alteration and translation of centuries of the church. We are a million miles away from having any certainty as to what Jesus actually said or claimed. Yet that is the basis of the trilemma - that Jesus must be mad, bad or god on the basis that he claimed to be. We do not know and indeed I'd argue now we cannot know whether he ever made such a claim.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

See Reply 617. Presumably Lewis would have opted for reportage for that story too. What it actually leaves is the reality that what's reported to have happened and what actually happened are often different.

Again I don't think Lewis is basing the trilemma on a "one liner" or "one off".

Are you wanting us to dismiss all reporting.

History whatever will record a claim of catching a baby falling from a block of flats.......and it is the claims we are discussing here.

[ProfessorDavey]

Vlad,

See Reply 617. Presumably Lewis would have opted for reportage for that story too. What it actually leaves is the reality that what's reported to have happened and what actually happened are often different.

Indeed - today we tend to have much more direct, available evidence on which to base the veracity of a claim - that wasn't true 2000 years ago.

But even now if we strip away the ability to actually check I suspect we'd be accepting completely untrue stories as being likely true. So to go back to Casablanca - imagine if all copies of the film and script etc were lost a year after it was made, so no-one can actually sit down and watch the film to determine if 'play it again, Sam' was in it. I suspect that the strength of the myth (this is one of Bogart's most famous film quotes, even though it doesn't exist) would mean it would be taken as true, even through it isn't.