British Theism And Atheism

[Theoretical Skeptic]

Interesting that people when attacking atheist so often say this, noting that it is always 'atheists like Harris and Dawkins' implying that they could have picked any number of atheists when in reality it is alway the same tiny number of atheists selected following 'atheists like ...'. So when anti-atheists say 'atheists like Harris and Dawkins' they actually mean Harris and Dawkins.

Fair enough. This link starts the video right when Peterson enters Harris and Dawkins into the discourse. Do you agree with his evaluation? Do atheists agree with what he attributes to Harris and Dawkins or not?

Was Nietzsche's observation on the death of God a negative or positive occurrence?

The point being that the anti-atheists struggle to get beyond their three or four bogey men, who aren't extreme, nor militant, nor fundamentalist in the manner that we might apply to religious extremists.

Hmmm . . .

They tend simply to be academics who specialise in debate and discourse just as academics from all sorts of fields do without being tarnished with the terms extreme, militant, or fundamentalist. Any number of mild mannered academic theologians are as extreme, militant, or fundamentalist as Dawkins or Harris.

That's actually an excellent point and astute observation with possibly some merit to it. I have to think about it, though, before I can make that determination for myself. I certainly see your point.

My mind immediately goes to Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton on a book tour a number of years ago. I had tremendous respect for Hitchens and absolute zero for Sharpton. Debate is just an artform. I've probably lost debates where I was right and won debates where I was wrong. Academics of any field usually subscribe to tradition. Extreme and militant just means outspoken and fundamentalist means literalists. Atheists interpretation of scripture is usually more literal than theists.   

But there is a further point - largely that atheists by and large tend to keep their lack of belief to themselves. In the UK about 1 in 4 people are atheist - so that's very fourth person on the train, every fourth person you work with etc etc. Yet I imagine most people would seriously struggle to pick those people out because it is unlikely they will tell you. Compare that to approx 1 in 20 people in the UK who are active christians - I bet we all know who those people are because they darn well make sure you know, sure as night follows day.

Only 1 in 4 are atheists? I find that hard to believe. How many are apathetic? Not wanting to identify as either. I was an unbeliever most of my life. All of my friends and family have always been unbelievers with the exception of my mother who became a believer in her early 50s. None of them would want to identify as either atheist or theist. It's a sort of social commitment. That's why I use the term "militant" meaning outspoken atheist. None of the atheists I've ever personally known would want to make that commitment. If you know Christians without talking to them then it's probably because they seem out of the ordinary.

Christians don't evangelize. (source)

[Theoretical Skeptic]

Where can any viable evidence be found that would support the god, gods or some form of higher power ideas that might convince people of these things, if there were any?

Seriously? None if you limit them to a transmogrified sort of ignorance based upon tradition.

Some of the bible stories might be true, but who knows which ones?

I do for one. For example, from my website: "The translation of the Bible is fallible and our interpretation is fallible. There are spurious scriptures and copyist errors. It is also true that sometimes the Bible says something that isn't what it means. The Bible will often give an account from the perspective of the observer. For example, the serpent didn't speak, but from Eve's perspective it did. (Genesis 3:1-6; 1 Timothy 2:14; Revelation 12:9; 20:2) The same with Balaam's donkey. (Numbers 22:22-28; 2 Peter 2:16) But also in the case where it appears that Samuel's "spirit" is summoned by the witch of En-dor, which contradicts what the Bible says happens to us when we die. Our "spirits" can't be summoned. (Ecclesiastes 9:5; Leviticus 20:6; 1 Samuel 16:14-23; 25:1; 1 Samuel 28:4-25) Also where the cowardly scouts sent out came back and said the Nephilim were in the land. The Nephilim all perished in the flood. (Genesis 6:1-4; Numbers 13:31-33; Numbers 14:36-37; 1 Peter 3:20) Sometimes the Bible even gives details of earlier events using references that didn't exist at that time. For example, at Genesis 3:24 the cherubs use a flaming blade of a sword to prevent Adam and Eve from returning. No such thing existed. At Genesis 2:10-14 the geographical details of Eden are given with reference to one river "to the East of Assyria" when Assyria certainly didn't exist then. But it was familiar to the reader who was reading it much later."

[Theoretical Skeptic]

Well firstly experience, but I'm sure you know me better than just to base my views on anecdote so I've looked into this.

Just read a paper which clearly demonstrates that religious people, and in particular christians, are far more likely to self-disclose their religious (or non religious) identity on public forums, such as social media than non religious people (including atheists) are to reveal theirs. And this is on standard social media platforms which have nothing to do with religion.

Right, so why would either disclose their religious or non-religious identity there? Go to a Christian forum and 9 times out of ten it is predominantly atheist. Theists left Internet forums in the mid 2000s. There are only a few of us nondenominational sort of fringe elements hanging about. That has been my personal experience. How old was this "paper?" 

Moreover religious people had a far greater propensity to consider religion to be a public matter rather than a private matter, partially explaining their greater propensity for self disclosure.

Really? There is Christian nationalism. Christianity-affiliated religious nationalism. Christian nationalists primarily focus on internal politics, such as passing laws that reflect their view of Christianity and its role in political and social life. (Wikipedia) Jesus said his followers would be no part of the world as he was no part of the world which Satan controls and which is prophetically going to be destroyed leaving the meek to inherit the earth and live forever upon it.

So, where do you draw the line with what constitutes Christian? Christendom? I don't think so.

[Theoretical Skeptic]

Good points - I agree with the fact that people, well, the ones I hear on radio for example, do add this  'I am a Christian' to what they say and, in my opinion, with a tone of self-righteousness; perhaps to give them a sort of free pass to an acceptance that what they are saying must be right.

Close, I think. Christians labor under the illusion of moral superiority the way the professed atheists labor under an illusion of intellectual superiority. 

[Owlswing]

 A god can be a mortal man. A god can be anything or anyone.

You what?

Question - Do you qualify Pagans as theist or atheist?

)O(

[Theoretical Skeptic]

You what?

Question - Do you qualify Pagans as theist or atheist?

That would depend upon whether or not they believed in gods. Of course many do. The valueless gods of the nations like Molech, Baal, Ashtoreth, Tammuz, Astarte et cetera.

Also, the word pagan only means outside of. The Roman soldiers found it difficult to recruit those living in rural areas. So did the Christians. So, to a Roman a Christian would have been pagan and to a Christian a Roman was likely pagan just by being outside of or apart from one another. Similarly heathen referred to people of the heath, or field. Heathen was a term of respect. Landowners, farmers. They gradually took on a derogatory connotation not unlike the term Barbarian which was just a repeating of the word bar. For example, the Greek barbaros, meaning stammering, babble, unintelligible speech. A simple distinguishing of non-Greeks from Greeks like Gentile meaning non-Jew. It wasn't an insult. Josephus identified himself as barbarian (Jewish Antiquities, XIV, 187 [x, 1]; Against Apion, I, 58 [11])     

[torridon]

Atheism requires a choice of disbelief, the default position is ignorance. You can't believe or not believe in something whose existence you are ignorant of.

I don't think anyone can choose to believe something they don't believe, or vice versa. Theism is something people are drawn into, there is a concept of a step of faith and a journey into faith, and atheism is merely the default position for anyone who does not take that step and embark on that journey having looked and not found it sufficiently compelling or appealing at the outset.

[Theoretical Skeptic]

I don't think anyone can choose to believe something they don't believe, or vice versa. Theism is something people are drawn into, there is a concept of a step of faith and a journey into faith, and atheism is merely the default position for anyone who does not take that step and embark on that journey having looked and not found it sufficiently compelling or appealing at the outset.

With the exception of the default position I agree completely. You can't choose to believe or disbelieve, but you can take a position of belief or disbelief. To take a position, whether informed or not, does require a choice. By looking and concluding the evidence is insufficiently compelling. Without embarking on that journey journey you haven't decided either way. The default position is ignorance until the conclusion of that journey when a decision is made. The decision of a position of belief or disbelief, lack of belief, may still be made in ignorance but the journey has concluded nonetheless. 

Theism, a belief in at least one god, doesn't necessitate worship or acceptance. One may very well accept the fact that there is at least one god while rejecting that god as a god, but that would depend on the use of the word belief or faith. Believing God exists doesn't mean you believe God will or can do whatever God says he can do or that you are interested in whatever that may be. Theism just means believing in the existence of a god or gods.

I have faith, but the demons have knowledge and yet shudder.

Another point I like to bring to the attention of atheists is that the Latin term credit means belief, trust. You can literally move mountains with faith. 

[ProfessorDavey]

Fair enough. This link starts the video right when Peterson enters Harris and Dawkins into the discourse. Do you agree with his evaluation? Do atheists agree with what he attributes to Harris and Dawkins or not?

Given that I have had limited engagement with the views of Dawkins (the only one of his books I've read is The Blind Watchmaker - I've read none of his books on god/religion) and wouldn't really recognise Harris if I bumped into him in the street, I cannot really comment on Peterson's views on them in his video. I do note however that he falls into the camp of 'people like Dawkins and Harris' when he actually means 'Dawkins and Harris'.

Do atheists agree with what he attributes to Harris and Dawkins or not? - I have no idea, I can only speak for myself, I cannot speak for other atheists - we aren't a homogeneous block with identical views. We are all different, all that unites us is that we do not believe in god or gods.

Weird however that the people who seem most obsessed with 'people like Dawkins and Harris' tend to be theists who seem to think that there is some kind of army of protocol-millitant atheists who consider them to be their leaders and gurus and hang on their every word. Guess what - it isn't true.

[ProfessorDavey]

Extreme and militant just means outspoken and fundamentalist means literalists. Atheists interpretation of scripture is usually more literal than theists.

Extreme and militant are terms used by opponents to portray people as having views outside the norm regardless of whether it is true. So militant atheist is a term used by theists to play the man rather than the ball - I doubt any prominent atheist would describe themselves in such a term.

And the use of the word militant is completely inappropriate for academics who debate, as it means someone who favours confrontational or violent methods in support of their aims - none of those people described by theists as militant atheists fit that description as far as I'm aware. Unless, of course, you consider writing a book or article or being a panel member on a debate as 'confrontational' in which case pretty well everyone with an opinion who voices that in a public manner is 'militant'.

Note the comparison with how christians describe their own - a christian who is robust in promoting their views and challenging those who disagree is often described as a 'muscular' christian - an atheist who does the same is a 'militant' atheist - the former conveys positive overtones, the latter negative ones.

[ekim]

No, but that is an interesting interjection.   

I'm trying to explain the concept of god, deity. Translations such as Sanskrit, Proto-Germanic, Latin etc. may incorporate descriptive applications without explaining what the thing is. All examples of any god in any language incorporates the simple attribution of might and/or veneration. So in linguistic variations you might have to ask, why is the word God from pour, or invoke, or gleam, shining, or voice, etc. It all comes back to might / veneration.

The Japanese word kami, plural kami, is an object of worship in Shintō and other indigenous religions of Japan. The term kami is often translated as “god,” “lord,” or “deity,” but it also includes other forces of nature, both good and evil, which, because of their superiority or divinity, become objects of reverence and respect.

The word is, in my opinion, more accurately translated as spirit. The spirit's of ones dead ancestors inhabit object like mirrors, swords, mountains etc.

I would be more inclined to say that the God notion revolves around the 'religious' individual's desires and fears.  If certain qualities or results are desired then gods or goddesses which represent them are invoked or worshipped.  If there is a fear of withdrawal of certain qualities or a negation of results then those gods are placated e.g. the desire for Heaven and the fear of Hell.

I would say that 'spirit' is an analogical word used to convey the suggestion that like air it appears to be everywhere including within the human being.  The Whole or Holy Spirit represents its totality.

[ekim]

All of that is certainly plausible, but the early Jews and early Christians were henotheistic. Do not have any gods before me means no gods above or foremost in importance, one true god means the God most mighty, above all others. Jesus was a mighty god (ʼEl Gib·bohr′) but not equal to God almighty (ʼEl Shad·dai′ ). (Isaiah 6:9; Genesis 17:1)

I would suggest that religious leaders who wished to control their nation and prevent its disintegration would include that insistence within their doctrine.  To turn a carpenter's son into any form of god for worship would indicate to me the desire to create a separate power base e.g. Rome as opposed to Jerusalem.

[ProfessorDavey]

Only 1 in 4 are atheists? I find that hard to believe. How many are apathetic?

Depending on how the question is asked you may get as many as 40% self-defining themselves as atheist in research surveys, or as few as 10%. So 25% is a pretty reasonable middle point.

There are, of course, plenty of people who are not religious but do not describe themselves as atheist. In the regular British Social Attitudes survey a little over 50% of the population say they have no religion. Of the rest the vast majority are not practicing even if they self define as having a religion which may reflect merely cultural heritage or upbringing. The practicing christian population in the UK is about 5%.

Going back to atheism - you can, of course define anyone who answers 'no' to the question 'do you believe in god' as atheist - in which case perhaps 60% or more are, but I'm largely taking a narrower definition of self declaration, and many of those who say they don't believe in god say they believe in a 'higher' power - while by strict definition they are atheist (as that is about god, not some ill-defined higher power) I'm not sure those people really classify as atheist.

[ProfessorDavey]

Right, so why would either disclose their religious or non-religious identity there? Go to a Christian forum and 9 times out of ten it is predominantly atheist.

I'm not talking about religious forums, I'm talking about generic social media platforms - the paper in question looked at MySpace (see comment below) and Facebook. The study used a survey approach to understand the religious affiliation, and its importance, for its participants and also looked at their social media presence to determine whether or not they had self-disclosed or not that religious affiliation. The results found that religious people were far more likely to self disclose their religion on the social media platforms than non religious people, even if their posts were never linked to religion. So while they may have had no interest in talking about religion on social media they ensured that it was known that they were religious.

Theists left Internet forums in the mid 2000s. There are only a few of us nondenominational sort of fringe elements hanging about. That has been my personal experience.

Really?!? So no theists on Facebook, or Instagram etc etc.

How old was this "paper?"

This paper was from 2011 (hence MySpace!), but I've just read another one from 2018 with similar conclusion.

[torridon]

With the exception of the default position I agree completely. You can't choose to believe or disbelieve, but you can take a position of belief or disbelief. To take a position, whether informed or not, does require a choice. By looking and concluding the evidence is insufficiently compelling. Without embarking on that journey journey you haven't decided either way. The default position is ignorance until the conclusion of that journey when a decision is made. The decision of a position of belief or disbelief, lack of belief, may still be made in ignorance but the journey has concluded nonetheless. 

The journeys we take in life don't really have a conclusion; we are always heading one way or another, responding to new encounters as we go. So, it follows, there is no position of perfect knowledge in which we can make fully informed choices, we always swim in a sea of uncertainty within which we try to use our best judgement.  An atheist is such a person who remains unconvinced by theist claims albeit in a milieu of partial knowledge.  With no change of direction. atheism remains his default position, a lack of belief; it is not the case that atheism is a positive choice driven by positive evidence in favour of it, such a situation would be logically incoherent.

[Theoretical Skeptic]

Hi TS,

Oh dear. You’re not seriously claiming the Bible to be prophetic are you? Seriously though?

You’re new here so let’s take this a step at a time. To be prophetic – ie, actually to foretell the future – any text would need to satisfy various conditions.

Let me just interrupt you there. Prophecy doesn't indicate a foretelling of the future as such, as a fortune teller would deceive one into thinking were possible. The future doesn't exist. But that doesn't mean certain outcomes aren't foreseeable. When Ezekiel prophesied to the wind he simply expressed God's command to the wind. (Ezekiel 37:9-10) When Jesus was slapped at trial and told to prophecy who struck him they were asking him to reveal who had already done it (Luke 22:63-64) In other words, diviners and demons use deception in order to appear to magically see into the future while God, through divine revelation to his prophets, or holy spirit, reveals something that he will make sure happens or can see in advance the outcome of.

They include:

1. Non-inevitability. “A great city will fall” isn’t a prophecy – many cities will “fall” given enough time.

2. Precision. “A terrible plague will occur” - which plague? The bubonic plague? Spanish Flu? Covid-19? Where? There’s something called the narrative fallacy – essentially we look at what happened, and then retro-fit it to an earlier story and thereby think to have been prophesied. It’s just poor reasoning.   
   
3. Consistency. This is called the problem of silent evidence. If I predict 100 things and one of them happens but 99 don’t, does that mean I have the power of prophecy? Why not? Short answer – you have to take into account the Bible's misses as well as the hits if you want to claim prophecies.

4. Context. Biblical "prophecies" concern only phenomena that would have been known, a least conceptually, to the authors. Why no prophecies about ipods or MRI scanners?

There are more basic tests in reason than these, but you get the idea. Show me something in the Bible that’s a prophecy in a logically sound way and then we’ll have something to discuss. Until then though…

Hmmm . . . how 'bout Cyrus? Babylon fell in 539 BCE. Roughly 193 years before  she fell the Bible predicted it.   

When the prophecy was made the Medes, often mentioned with the Persians, were a group of splintered tribes on the  fringes of the Assyrian Empire.
 
Isaiah 13:1, 17 - The pronouncement against Babylon that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw in vision: "Here I am arousing against them the Medes, who account silver itself as nothing and who, as respects gold, take no delight in it."

Isaiah 43:14; 44:28; 45:1 - This is what Jehovah has said, the Repurchaser of you people, the Holy One of Israel: "For your sakes I will send to Babylon and cause the bars of the prisons to come down, and the Chaldeans in the ships with whining cries on their part. the One saying of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd, and all that I delight in he will completely carry out'; even in [my] saying of Jerusalem, 'She will be rebuilt,' and of the temple, 'You will have your foundation laid.'" This is what Jehovah has said to his anointed one, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken hold of, to subdue before him nations, so that I may ungird even the hips of kings; to open before him the two-leaved doors, so that even the gates will not be shut:

Jeremiah 51:11-12 - "Polish the arrows. Fill the circular shields, O men. Jehovah has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because it is against Babylon that his idea is, in order to bring her to ruin. For it is the vengeance of Jehovah, the vengeance for his temple. Against the walls of Babylon lift up a signal. Make strong the watch. Post the watchmen. Make ready those lying in ambush. For Jehovah both has formed the idea and will certainly do what he has spoken against the inhabitants of Babylon."

Cyrus approached the walls of Babylon. According to Xenophon, Cyropaedia, VII, vss. 7, 13 Babylon wasn't concerned with the Medes. They believed they had provisions for more than twenty years. Cyrus didn't see how it would be possible to storm those walls. Herodotus wrote that they were 300 feet tall. Cyrus and the Chaldeans weren't aware of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Isaiah 44:24, 27-28 - This is what Jehovah has said, your Repurchaser and the Former of you from the belly: “I, Jehovah, am doing everything, stretching out the heavens by myself, laying out the earth. Who was with me? the One saying to the watery deep, 'Be evaporated; and all your rivers I shall dry up'; the One saying of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd, and all that I delight in he will completely carry out'; even in [my] saying of Jerusalem, 'She will be rebuilt,' and of the temple, 'You will have your foundation laid.'"

Jeremiah 51:57 - "And I will make her princes and her wise ones, her governors and her deputy rulers and her mighty men drunk, and they must sleep an indefinitely lasting sleep, from which they will not wake up," is the utterance of the King, whose name is Jehovah of armies.

Cyropædia, VII, vss. 15-16 reported that Cyrus found out there was a festival in Babylon when all of her citizens were usually drinking and reveling all night long. During that time his men opened up the heads of the trenches at the river so that it's bed traveling through the city became easily passible.

They entered the city through the river gates encountering very little resistance, just as Isaiah 45:1 and Jeremiah 51:31 had foretold. 

All very lovely if you like that kind of thing no doubt, but what you were actually asked was how a "real understanding of the Bible" tell you anything about the truth or otherwise of its fundamental claims. If the Biblical authors assert there to be such a thing as a “soul” no amount of further expiation about this supposed soul will tell you anything about the veracity or otherwise of the initial clam of its existence at all.

Why not?
 

Atheism doesn’t “hinge on” that at all. Sure it’s trivially easy to falsify the Bible literalists, but unless the more nuanced, allegorical theists can produce sound arguments to justify their beliefs then atheism is the only rational response to their claims too.

It can't even address the simple subject of deity. It has no idea what it denies the existence of. That's rational? I don't think so. Atheism is an uninformed response to tradition.       
 

Then you need to tell us what you mean by “mythology”. What mythology is it that you think post-Enlightenment thinking rests on exactly? The closest I can get to what JP is actually saying (though he won’t say so) is that all understandings rest on axioms (which is true), and therefore that all understandings at some level have equivalence (which isn’t). If you think he’s trying to say something else though, perhaps you could explain it in plain terms.

I already have. There's a transcendent morality. The ethic that drives our culture is predicated on the idea of God. You can't just take it away and expect the culture to remain intact without any foundational support.   

[ippy]

What? A god is like a man. There are gods and there are men. All gods don't have to be the same in any way other than might and veneration.   

Exactly.

This is kind of weird. It almost seems that you are all are beginning to get it. I stand corrected. Maybe atheists can comprehend the simple meaning of gods.

T S, try Sam Harris's description of the person that has a diamond the size of a fridge buried somewhere in their garden, should be easy enough to find, it's on YouTube somewhere, it says so much about people that have beliefs in the various religions.

Atheist isn't that accurate a name for people that see no sensible reason to think there is such a thing as a god, nor is it that bothersome a name either, even so, why would so called atheists disbelieve in god or gods when there is no evidential reason to think there is any such thing in the first place?

ippy.

[Stranger]

It can't even address the simple subject of deity. It has no idea what it denies the existence of. That's rational? I don't think so. Atheism is an uninformed response to tradition.       

 
Total nonsense. I have not found a definition of 'deity' that firstly makes sense and secondly has some sound argument or supporting evidence to back up the idea that it actually exists, therefore the rational response is to not have a belief in any of the deity concepts I have so far encountered. That is atheism.

[ippy]

Seriously? None if you limit them to a transmogrified sort of ignorance based upon tradition.


website: "The translation of the Bible is fallible and our interpretation is fallible. There are spurious scriptures and copyist errors. It is also true that sometimes the Bible says something that isn't what it means. The Bible will often give an account from the perspective of the observer. For example, the serpent didn't speak, but from Eve's perspective it did. (Genesis 3:1-6; 1 Timothy 2:14; Revelation 12:9; 20:2) The same with Balaam's donkey. (Numbers 22:22-28; 2 Peter 2:16) But also in the case where it appears that Samuel's "spirit" is summoned by the witch of En-dor, which contradicts what the Bible says happens to us when we die. Our "spirits" can't be summoned. (Ecclesiastes 9:5; Leviticus 20:6; 1 Samuel 16:14-23; 25:1; 1 Samuel 28:4-25) Also where the cowardly scouts sent out came back and said the Nephilim were in the land. The Nephilim all perished in the flood. (Genesis 6:1-4; Numbers 13:31-33; Numbers 14:36-37; 1 Peter 3:20) Sometimes the Bible even gives details of earlier events using references that didn't exist at that time. For example, at Genesis 3:24 the cherubs use a flaming blade of a sword to prevent Adam and Eve from returning. No such thing existed. At Genesis 2:10-14 the geographical details of Eden are given with reference to one river "to the East of Assyria" when Assyria certainly didn't exist then. But it was familiar to the reader who was reading it much later."

I S, where I wrote, Some of the bible stories might be true, but who knows which ones?

In this post of yours you have written, I do for one!

You seem to have missed sending the accompanying viable evidence that supports this knowledge you say you have I suppose the atheists will have to take it that you're also world famous, pending the evidence of course, then supposedly all of the atheists will have to be bowing touching the forelock etc to you as we then have to set about starting to say our prayers.

No evidence then?

ippy.

P S I note Nicolas Marks seems to think the bible proves the bible as well.

[Gordon]

There's a transcendent morality.

Given your fondness for using terms to suit yourself, what exactly do you mean by "transcendent morality"?

The ethic that drives our culture is predicated on the idea of God.

Or not: other ethical approaches are available.
 

You can't just take it away and expect the culture to remain intact without any foundational support.   

Which sounds like our old friend the argumentum ad consequentiam: you theist chappies do love your fallacies.

[bluehillside Retd.]

TS,

Let me just interrupt you there. Prophecy doesn't indicate a foretelling of the future as such, as a fortune teller would deceive one into thinking were possible. The future doesn't exist.

Er, yes it does. That’s what the word means. If not, “it will likely get dark tonight” as also a “prophecy” in your taxonomy - in which case the words has lost all it’s real import. 
 

But that doesn't mean certain outcomes aren't foreseeable.

Like predicting darkness to come at night time? I know. As Stevie Nicks tells us, thunder only happens when it’s raining… 

When Ezekiel prophesied to the wind he simply expressed God's command to the wind. (Ezekiel 37:9-10) When Jesus was slapped at trial and told to prophecy who struck him they were asking him to reveal who had already done it (Luke 22:63-64) In other words, diviners and demons use deception in order to appear to magically see into the future while God, through divine revelation to his prophets, or holy spirit, reveals something that he will make sure happens or can see in advance the outcome of.

“diviners and demons” eh? Wellll… (steps away veeery slooowly at this stage…). Not sure whether you care much, but you’re committing a fallacy here called reification. You’re concretising claims like “god” as if you’d already demonstrated their existence. You haven’t though. That’s the point.

Hmmm . . . how 'bout Cyrus? Babylon fell in 539 BCE. Roughly 193 years before  she fell the Bible predicted it.   

When the prophecy was made the Medes, often mentioned with the Persians, were a group of splintered tribes on the  fringes of the Assyrian Empire.
 
Isaiah 13:1, 17 - The pronouncement against Babylon that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw in vision: "Here I am arousing against them the Medes, who account silver itself as nothing and who, as respects gold, take no delight in it."

Isaiah 43:14; 44:28; 45:1 - This is what Jehovah has said, the Repurchaser of you people, the Holy One of Israel: "For your sakes I will send to Babylon and cause the bars of the prisons to come down, and the Chaldeans in the ships with whining cries on their part. the One saying of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd, and all that I delight in he will completely carry out'; even in [my] saying of Jerusalem, 'She will be rebuilt,' and of the temple, 'You will have your foundation laid.'" This is what Jehovah has said to his anointed one, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken hold of, to subdue before him nations, so that I may ungird even the hips of kings; to open before him the two-leaved doors, so that even the gates will not be shut:

Jeremiah 51:11-12 - "Polish the arrows. Fill the circular shields, O men. Jehovah has aroused the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because it is against Babylon that his idea is, in order to bring her to ruin. For it is the vengeance of Jehovah, the vengeance for his temple. Against the walls of Babylon lift up a signal. Make strong the watch. Post the watchmen. Make ready those lying in ambush. For Jehovah both has formed the idea and will certainly do what he has spoken against the inhabitants of Babylon."

Cyrus approached the walls of Babylon. According to Xenophon, Cyropaedia, VII, vss. 7, 13 Babylon wasn't concerned with the Medes. They believed they had provisions for more than twenty years. Cyrus didn't see how it would be possible to storm those walls. Herodotus wrote that they were 300 feet tall. Cyrus and the Chaldeans weren't aware of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

Isaiah 44:24, 27-28 - This is what Jehovah has said, your Repurchaser and the Former of you from the belly: “I, Jehovah, am doing everything, stretching out the heavens by myself, laying out the earth. Who was with me? the One saying to the watery deep, 'Be evaporated; and all your rivers I shall dry up'; the One saying of Cyrus, 'He is my shepherd, and all that I delight in he will completely carry out'; even in [my] saying of Jerusalem, 'She will be rebuilt,' and of the temple, 'You will have your foundation laid.'"

Jeremiah 51:57 - "And I will make her princes and her wise ones, her governors and her deputy rulers and her mighty men drunk, and they must sleep an indefinitely lasting sleep, from which they will not wake up," is the utterance of the King, whose name is Jehovah of armies.

Cyropædia, VII, vss. 15-16 reported that Cyrus found out there was a festival in Babylon when all of her citizens were usually drinking and reveling all night long. During that time his men opened up the heads of the trenches at the river so that it's bed traveling through the city became easily passible.

They entered the city through the river gates encountering very little resistance, just as Isaiah 45:1 and Jeremiah 51:31 had foretold.

Very nice. So now all you have to do is to show that any of these supposed prophecies satisfy the basic rules of reasoning that I set out for you. And here’s the kicker – even if you could do that, you’d still be left with the problem of showing the accounts not to have been doctored or mis-translated later on so as to retrofit them to the narrative you find most appealing.

Good luck with that.

Oh, and you might pause to notice too that the “predictions” were very much known, localised phenomena (ships, shields, river gates etc) and so readily guessable. If a god really wanted to flex his prophesying muscles such that the non-credulous would believe it millennia later, why no references to, say, penicillin or the space shuttle? 

Why not?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply
 

It can't even address the simple subject of deity. It has no idea what it denies the existence of. That's rational? I don't think so. Atheism is an uninformed response to tradition.

Oh dear. Could you at least try to grasp what’s being said here instead of falling into the same mistakes again? Atheism doesn’t need to know about a deity to be atheism. A-leprechaunism doesn’t need to know about leprechauns to be a-leprechaunism. All these position need to know is whether or not the arguments tried to justify the beliefs god/leprechauns are sound.   

If you could grasp this rather than keep mis-characterising atheism to suit your purposes you’ll have made some progress.       
 

I already have. There's a transcendent morality.

Is there? Where? 

The ethic that drives our culture is predicated on the idea of God.

What “ethic”, and why do you think that? Have you considered that evolution might just provide a more rational, investigable and verifiable explanation?

You can't just take it away…

Surely the a priori problem here is that you can’t just add it with no attempt even to justify the unqualified claim no?

…and expect the culture to remain intact without any foundational support.

Except there’s no evidence that societies collapse when they lose their religiosity – to the contrary, it’s the more secular countries that seem to have better welfare standards, greater longevity, fewer teenage pregnancies, better literacy rates etc. Go figure eh?     

[SusanDoris]

bluehillside #70

Reading through since the TS prophecy post, I've been thinking of how to point out that to accept, seemingly unquestioningly, that a prophecy is in the Bible about something that happened one hundred years later makes no sense at all, but your post has covered all that I am pleased to say!

[Theoretical Skeptic]

Given that I have had limited engagement with the views of Dawkins (the only one of his books I've read is The Blind Watchmaker - I've read none of his books on god/religion) and wouldn't really recognise Harris if I bumped into him in the street, I cannot really comment on Peterson's views on them in his video. I do note however that he falls into the camp of 'people like Dawkins and Harris' when he actually means 'Dawkins and Harris'.

Do atheists agree with what he attributes to Harris and Dawkins or not? - I have no idea, I can only speak for myself, I cannot speak for other atheists - we aren't a homogeneous block with identical views. We are all different, all that unites us is that we do not believe in god or gods.

Weird however that the people who seem most obsessed with 'people like Dawkins and Harris' tend to be theists who seem to think that there is some kind of army of protocol-millitant atheists who consider them to be their leaders and gurus and hang on their every word. Guess what - it isn't true.

You sound like an ideologue to me, but who among us, including myself, isn't? What we have to do is attempt, as much is possible, to guard ourselves from not listening to those who criticize us. That's why I'm here. When someone like Peterson publicly criticizes people like Harris and Dawkins by lumping a common mentality together that's a fair criticism. Someone here on this forum did the same with me and this Vlad who I don't know and that was fine with me. The criticism was that we repeat our argument, which is silly. Of course we do.

[Theoretical Skeptic]

The journeys we take in life don't really have a conclusion; we are always heading one way or another, responding to new encounters as we go.

Well put and I agree. What I meant by conclusion is a decision being made along that journey. I should have clarified.

So, it follows, there is no position of perfect knowledge in which we can make fully informed choices, we always swim in a sea of uncertainty within which we try to use our best judgement.  An atheist is such a person who remains unconvinced by theist claims albeit in a milieu of partial knowledge.  With no change of direction. atheism remains his default position, a lack of belief; it is not the case that atheism is a positive choice driven by positive evidence in favour of it, such a situation would be logically incoherent.

I maintain that the default is ignorance, not atheism. You aren't born atheist you aren't atheist or theist until you make a choice based upon the evidence, whatever that may be. It may be that you were born in an environment that is either theist or atheist. Traditional or cultural. 

[torridon]

Well put and I agree. What I meant by conclusion is a decision being made along that journey. I should have clarified.

I maintain that the default is ignorance, not atheism. You aren't born atheist you aren't atheist or theist until you make a choice based upon the evidence, whatever that may be. It may be that you were born in an environment that is either theist or atheist. Traditional or cultural.

I don't think 'choice' is the appropriate word. I cannot 'choose' to find something plausible if I find it implausible,  It is not a choice, it is more a realisation, and we have many moments of realisation, some small, some more profound, as we go along.  Being atheist is not a choice; for me the word merely captures the fact of a null change in my position having considered theist claims and not been convinced by them.