Does antitheism exist?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

 
Conceptually at least the infinite universe conjecture could be falsifiable. Gods and leprechauns on the other hand aren’t.   

No, Leprechauns are falsifiable being little green irishmen at the end of rainbows, God and an infinite universe....... not so.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

No, Leprechauns are falsifiable being little green irishmen at the end of rainbows, God and an infinite universe....... not so.

And your god rewards people who pray hard enough to "him". Go on then - falsify leprechauns.

Good luck with that. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

And your god rewards people who pray hard enough to "him".

Not sure whether that is a necessary for theism.

Go on then - falsify leprechauns.

I don’t have to. They just have to have scientifically investigable characteristics.

Falsify the infinite universe.

Good luck with that.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Not sure whether that is a necessary for theism.

An interventionist god is a central tenet of most varieties of Christianity I’d have thought, though as yours seems to be unique to you and to change like the wind I’ve no idea whether or not you think there to be a prayer-answering god. 

I don’t have to. They just have to have scientifically investigable characteristics.

Falsify the infinite universe.

Dear god but you struggle. Again – and slooooooowly – there is a category of truth claims that is “assertions of fact with no mean of investigation or verification”. Your god, other peoples' gods and leprechauns are all in that category.

If you think that any of them are not in that category, tell us why. And yet again, attaching various attributes to any of them is entirely irrelevant for that purpose.   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

An interventionist god is a central tenet of most varieties of Christianity.

That is irrelevent to the issue of a God swayed by hard prayer. 
 

Dear god but you struggle. Again – and slooooooowly – there is a category of truth claims that is “assertions of fact with no mean of investigation or verification”. Your god, other peoples' gods and leprechauns are all in that category.

If you think that any of them are not in that category, tell us why. .

I have done not two or three posts back.

Because Leprechauns are tiny Irishmen dressed in green and found at the end of rainbows there are plenty of properties here to make a scientific observation. Not so with the God of Christianity.

Some may cite Jesus but Christianity claims that Jesus was also fully human. Other humans have reportedly detected the divine about him and the ''Jesus affair''. Indeed I did hear that one of the Greek philosophers conjectured way back that if the platonically perfect human appeared, imperfect people would be made  to feel so uncomfortable by the perfection they would end up putting the perfect person to death. Whether that story is a myth or not the idea expressed through it is certainly unfalsifiable.

[Outrider]

Because Leprechauns are tiny Irishmen dressed in green and found at the end of rainbows there are plenty of properties here to make a scientific observation. Not so with the God of Christianity.

Surely we can engage them in our search for the beardy-looking guy on the cloud surrounded by kids with harps then, right?

Some may cite Jesus but Christianity claims that Jesus was also fully human.

Christianity claims a lot of things; for instance, it claims that the god of the New Testament is the same character as the one in the Old Testament...

Other humans have reportedly detected the divine about him and the ''Jesus affair''.

Well, maybe - other humans have alleged that other humans reported to someone (but not necessarily them) that there was something magical about Jesus, which they attribute to divinity.

Indeed I did hear that one of the Greek philosophers conjectured way back that if the platonically perfect human appeared, imperfect people would be made  to feel so uncomfortable by the perfection they would end up putting the perfect person to death. Whether that story is a myth or not the idea expressed through it is certainly unfalsifiable.

If only the concept of a 'perfect' human made any sort of sense at all that might be a point - not necessarily valid, but at least a point.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Surely we can engage them in our search for the beardy-looking guy on the cloud surrounded by kids with harps then, right?

He was only on secondment from art, and often got in the way anyway.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Christianity claims a lot of things; for instance, it claims that the god of the New Testament is the same character as the one in the Old Testament...

It also claims the unknown God of the Areopagites is the same character. (Apostle Paul's Areopagus speech in Acts 17:23,) and the God of monotheism. The new testament expands God's character giving an overview only partially percieved in the Old Testament.
Some would say the picture of God evolves.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Well, maybe - other humans have alleged that other humans reported to someone (but not necessarily them) that there was something magical about Jesus, which they attribute to divinity.

Magic as understood by the early Jewish christians was distinguished by St Peter and others in the encounter with Simon Magus. Others have detected something fundamental about Jesus in a way that links him to Divinity.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

If only the concept of a 'perfect' human made any sort of sense at all that might be a point - not necessarily valid, but at least a point.

I don't know if you are one of those who would put forward the idea of imperfection in humanity but I find myself rather irritated by people who are better physically than myself and who lack apparent vice and are worthier in what they do. Does that give you some idea of where I am going with the idea of perfection?

It takes big men and women to recognise their own imperfections.....but of course none of this is falsifiable.

If on the other hand you have ever argued against God's design on the grounds of imperfection then any claim that the idea of '' a 'perfect' human makes no sense'' is disingenuous.

[jeremyp]

Magic as understood by the early Jewish christians was distinguished by St Peter and others in the encounter with Simon Magus. Others have detected something fundamental about Jesus in a way that links him to Divinity.

What makes Jesus magic divine and Simon Magus magic not divine? How do you tell the difference?

[Outrider]

He was only on secondment from art, and often got in the way anyway.

That's OK, those Irish fellahs in the black hats you saw were only dressed up for St Patrick's day, they weren't the REAL leprechauns...

It also claims the unknown God of the Areopagites is the same character. (Apostle Paul's Areopagus speech in Acts 17:23,) and the God of monotheism. The new testament expands God's character giving an overview only partially percieved in the Old Testament.
Some would say the picture of God evolves.

It doesn't 'expand' it, it represents a shift in personality that would warrant psychiatric investigation in a person.  As to the contention that this is a monotheism, well that's a whole other bucket of fudges.  Some would say the picture of the god evolves, almost as though the old idea wasn't working any more so they had to come up with something else...

Magic as understood by the early Jewish christians was distinguished by St Peter and others in the encounter with Simon Magus.

I don't know if you've notice, but magic isn't real.

Others have detected something fundamental about Jesus in a way that links him to Divinity

You missed out the whole host of second and third hand bits, the unreliability of eye-witness testimony in the first place, and the vested interests which selectively excised and edited whatever passed for the original texts that they had before you got to the bit where they linked him to something nonsensical.

I don't know if you are one of those who would put forward the idea of imperfection in humanity but I find myself rather irritated by people who are better physically than myself and who lack apparent vice and are worthier in what they do. Does that give you some idea of where I am going with the idea of perfection?

It's not so much that there's an inherent imperfection - although there are clearly identifiable limits to all sorts of aspects of humanity - but rather humanity has evolved successfully in part by not specialising, by remaining adaptable and versatile.  As such, whilst there's perhaps an optimal range for humanity to thrive within, I'm not sure the idea of a singular perfection really works.

If on the other hand you have ever argued against God's design on the grounds of imperfection then any claim that the idea of '' a 'perfect' human makes no sense'' is disingenuous

I have argued that, but as a follow on from the premise that a perfect god would have created a perfect universe in which humanity didn't have to struggle to stay alive in the first instance; I've also deployed it in response to the claim of intelligent design, showing the inherent compromises that are the obvious result of the trial and error of evolution from natural selection rather than poor engineering.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What makes Jesus magic divine and Simon Magus magic not divine? How do you tell the difference?

15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money 19 and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

20 Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

24 Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

The Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a movement of God not an ability that people can give to each other. Unlike the sorcery of the time these were not transferable human skills but a gift from God, dependent on God and one's standing with God. In sorcery as practiced by Magus prior to his baptism the spiritual and moral state was obviously not a factor in the ability to do magic.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That's OK, those Irish fellahs in the black hats you saw were only dressed up for St Patrick's day, they weren't the REAL leprechauns...

No, They were too big and had a ford van.

[jeremyp]

15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money 19 and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

20 Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

24 Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

Maybe Peter and John were agents of Satan and what the people received was Satan's spirit.

Maybe God is the bad guy and Satan is the good guy. After all, Christians claim that it was Satan who saved Adam and Eve from eternal servitude in God's garden.

It's just occurred to me that the Holy Spirit caused people to start spreading the Christian message at the expense of their own safety. A lot of the people who were infected with the Holy Spirit were eventually executed by the authorities.

There are certain insect pathogens that alter the behaviour of the host so that they get predated and the pathogen can then spread itself by being dispersed by the predator. The Holy Spirit is actually a disease, and in the early days: a harmful one.

[Owlswing]

Maybe Peter and John were agents of Satan and what the people received was Satan's spirit.

Maybe God is the bad guy and Satan is the good guy. After all, Christians claim that it was Satan who saved Adam and Eve from eternal servitude in God's garden.

It's just occurred to me that the Holy Spirit caused people to start spreading the Christian message at the expense of their own safety. A lot of the people who were infected with the Holy Spirit were eventually executed by the authorities.

There are certain insect pathogens that alter the behaviour of the host so that they get predated and the pathogen can then spread itself by being dispersed by the predator. The Holy Spirit is actually a disease, and in the early days: a harmful one.

I think you have cracked it! The puzzle of why people worship a vindictive bastard as if he were benevolent!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That's OK, those Irish fellahs in the black hats you saw were only dressed up for St Patrick's day, they weren't the REAL leprechauns...

It doesn't 'expand' it, it represents a shift in personality that would warrant psychiatric investigation in a person.  As to the contention that this is a monotheism, well that's a whole other bucket of fudges.  Some would say the picture of the god evolves, almost as though the old idea wasn't working any more so they had to come up with something else...

You have to remember the bible is a collection of books. The idea of a loving God is there in the Old testament. Of course, I can't expect you as a public campaigning evangelical New atheist to go in without confirmation bias. Yes the OT does go on about the roughness of life after the alienation of man from God and each other and how God hence would no longer have unbroken communion with God and vice versa so life in a lot of the OT is messy but also there is a bit of colourful myth in there too.

As far as the old idea of a personal God 'not working' is concerned that has never been true. It has worked for centuries. You may as well dismiss science on these same grounds that you are dismissing God.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You missed out the whole host of second and third hand bits, the unreliability of eye-witness testimony in the first place, and the vested interests which selectively excised and edited whatever passed for the original texts that they had before you got to the bit where they linked him to something nonsensical.

It's funny but eye witness testimony is still used today and it forms part of empirical observation funnily enough. There is no rule to say second and third hand bits need be unreliable that's why people are writing histories today. Vested interest is a bit of a ludicruous handle to give to the early christians who knew they were risking looking a bit of a tit relating the Good news.

Plus the point that becoming a christian depended on a first hand experience of God in Jesus.

[Owlswing]

You have to remember the bible is a collection of books. The idea of a loving God is there in the Old testament. Of course, I can't expect you as a public campaigning evangelical New atheist to go in without confirmation bias. Yes the OT does go on about the roughness of life after the alienation of man from God and each other and how God hence would no longer have unbroken communion with God and vice versa so life in a lot of the OT is messy but also there is a bit of colourful myth in there too.

As far as the old idea of a personal God 'not working' is concerned that has never been true. It has worked for centuries. You may as well dismiss science on these same grounds that you are dismissing God.

It is amazing how easy Christians find it to interpret what is written in the Bible in such a way to make it say the exact opposite of what is actually written.

A case of "Black is White and White is no colour at all" because the Bible says it is so - if you read it right! Right, in this instance, means the same way the speaker does!

It's funny but eye witness testimony is still used today and it forms part of empirical observation funnily enough. There is no rule to say second and third-hand bits need be unreliable that's why people are writing histories today. Vested interest is a bit of a ludicrous handle to give to the early Christians who knew they were risking looking a bit of a tit relating the Good news.

Plus the point that becoming a Christian depended on a first-hand experience of God in Jesus.

See what I mean?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I have argued that, but as a follow on from the premise that a perfect god would have created a perfect universe in which humanity didn't have to struggle to stay alive in the first instance; I've also deployed it in response to the claim of intelligent design, showing the inherent compromises that are the obvious result of the trial and error of evolution from natural selection rather than poor engineering.

So your puzzlement at perfection was disingenuous then?
I don't agree with your premise. It seems to me that is your perfect God and your perception of perfection.

I can put the case that a universe given a measure of independence, to do things for it's own sake and for those within it to appreciate it is a far more perfect universe than a clockwork one.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Maybe Peter and John were agents of Satan and what the people received was Satan's spirit.

Maybe God is the bad guy and Satan is the good guy. After all, Christians claim that it was Satan who saved Adam and Eve from eternal servitude in God's garden.

It's just occurred to me that the Holy Spirit caused people to start spreading the Christian message at the expense of their own safety. A lot of the people who were infected with the Holy Spirit were eventually executed by the authorities.

There are certain insect pathogens that alter the behaviour of the host so that they get predated and the pathogen can then spread itself by being dispersed by the predator. The Holy Spirit is actually a disease, and in the early days: a harmful one.

I think it's about being able to identify Good and evil.
Do you believe in a literal Garden of Eden......Just as an aside given that Adam and Eve found your so called eternal bondage very easy to break. How good was this so called enforced penury you are trying to portray here.....You will no doubt now switch descriptions.

People do lots of Good things at the expense of there own safety. Was a time when running away from all you held dear and held you dear was a bit frowned on.
Just because predatory behaviour is acceptable in insects doesn't mean it is in humans. A dirty great portion of victim blaming you've served up there Jeremy.

Would you say that being an intellectual in the time of Pol Pot was a disease since it often resulted in Death?

Codswallop!

[Outrider]

You have to remember the bible is a collection of books. The idea of a loving God is there in the Old testament.

The old testament god was a capricious sociopath given to fits of violent vengeance disproportionate to any perceived crimes or sin.  The new testament god is poorly depicted mish-mash of that and some nurturing mother-goddess with a beard - it's almost as though that 'collection of books' was written by different people with different ideas of what a god should be and no actual gods were involved in the writing process.

Of course, I can't expect you as a public campaigning evangelical New atheist to go in without confirmation bias. Yes the OT does go on about the roughness of life after the alienation of man from God and each other and how God hence would no longer have unbroken communion with God and vice versa so life in a lot of the OT is messy but also there is a bit of colourful myth in there too.

Given that we know the whole 'fall of man' bit is nonsense, the rest of it is fairly fundamentally undermined by being predicated on the fact that we are supposed to be earning our way back to some sort of redemption or forgiveness.

As far as the old idea of a personal God 'not working' is concerned that has never been true. It has worked for centuries. You may as well dismiss science on these same grounds that you are dismissing God.

Except that I didn't dismiss the idea of a 'personal god', I dismissed the claim that Christianity is a monotheism.

O.

[Outrider]

It's funny but eye witness testimony is still used today and it forms part of empirical observation funnily enough.

It's not funny, it's alarming.

There is no rule to say second and third hand bits need be unreliable that's why people are writing histories today.

No, but it adds layers of potential misattribution, misdirection and other mistakes; and the more preposterous the claims, the more that's significant.  When you are dealing with claims about who a particular Roman emperor was married to that's a matter of academic interest, when you're trying to establish grounds for imprisoning gay people you really need a more solid justification than 'Bob's grandmother's friend's neice reportedly said her ex-boyfriend saw him cast a demon into a herd of pigs'...

Vested interest is a bit of a ludicruous handle to give to the early christians who knew they were risking looking a bit of a tit relating the Good news.

Is it?  Would Roman records not lend more credibility specifically because they could be said to be less-likely to suffer from those vested interests?

Plus the point that becoming a christian depended on a first hand experience of God in Jesus.

So there have been no Christians since about 100AD, when those people who could remember Jesus died out?  Or can you in fact become a Christian if you believe in Jesus, regardless of whether you ever met him (and regardless of whether he was ever divine)?

So your puzzlement at perfection was disingenuous then?

No, I've explained why I don't think as a concept it makes sense - you can take or leave that at your leisure, but I don't see grounds for alleging any sort of mendacity.

don't agree with your premise. It seems to me that is your perfect God and your perception of perfection.

That's your prerogative, but the evidence of the evolution of man is relatively solid.  As to 'my perfect god'... I don't have any gods.

I can put the case that a universe given a measure of independence, to do things for it's own sake and for those within it to appreciate it is a far more perfect universe than a clockwork one.

You could, but I'm not sure the idea of 'perfection' works for universes any better than it works for people; even if it did, you'd need to find evidence for your 'measure of independence' (from what?) and overarching consciousness to have a 'sake' to own in order to make the idea anything more than just another chapter in the postulated but unevidenced narrative.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It is amazing how easy Christians find it to interpret what is written in the Bible in such a way to make it say the exact opposite of what is actually written.

Loving God Psalms and Song of Song
Alienation from God and each other Genesis

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It's not funny, it's alarming.
 when you're trying to establish grounds for imprisoning gay people you really need a more solid justification than 'Bob's grandmother's friend's neice reportedly said her ex-boyfriend saw him cast a demon into a herd of pigs'...

You what?

Is it?  Would Roman records not lend more credibility specifically because they could be said to be less-likely to suffer from those vested interests?

Rome.....Now that WAS a vested interest

So there have been no Christians since about 100AD, when those people who could remember Jesus died out?  Or can you in fact become a Christian if you believe in Jesus, regardless of whether you ever met him (and regardless of whether he was ever divine)?

People don't commit to a dead man, they have to believe he is still around in living spiritual form. I would have thought. 

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