1. Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'

Comment #115062 by ADH on January 23, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Hey, even I am going to agree with you all here!!

Just think of all the children's stories that will have to go by the board. "Snow White and the seven Dwarves" (though maybe there'd be something in the ban in that case, what with the stereotyoing of "white" as "cool").

2. This Week's Flea

Comment #114583 by ADH on January 22, 2008 at 12:36 pm

Diacanu I'm sorry that you see God like that. I don't know what bad vibes you've got from Christians or from any particular individual's representation of God. But you've got the wrong end of the stick.

3. This Week's Flea

Comment #114577 by ADH on January 22, 2008 at 12:31 pm

Steve, we mess it up in the sense that we fall short of what God requires of us. But what he requires of us is all too clear!

4. This Week's Flea

Comment #114575 by ADH on January 22, 2008 at 12:30 pm

Goldy, God is not jealous of pagan deities. He is jealous for his people (those who open their hearts to him) in the sense that he wants us for himself. Is that so contemptible an attitude. He is jealous in the sense that, for our sake, it brings pain to him (yes Scripture describes his feelings in those terms) to see how we squander our affection and energy on enslavement to gods which are actually nothing of the sort.

5. This Week's Flea

Comment #114570 by ADH on January 22, 2008 at 12:25 pm

The Bible is not a guidebook. It's essentially God's revelation of His character and the unfolding of his purposes for his creation. It is the accound of human rebellion and of the initiatives God took to bring about restoration, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is also a series of letters set to the earliest Christian communities to help them deal with the challenges posed by the culture that they lived in and were instructed faithfully to represent God in and emulate Christ's example in. It is not an instruction manual. There is a total misconception and many misrepresentations on this site of what the purpose of the Bible is, and what it's all about. The underlying paradigmatic ethic is: "love God with all your heart soul and mind and your neighbour as yourself". Given that basis, there is a great deal of scope for freedom of action and initiative. The boundary markers are justice, truth, transparency, integrity, forgiveness. In the letter to the Galatians, for example, Paul made a great deal of the fact that, far from being a binding rule-book, the gospel is absolutely liberating. Judaizing preachers were trying to throw the book at these emerging churches, at people who had embraced this radically liberating message, telling them that they had to subject themselves to the Law and all the OT rituals. Paul was pointing out to them that having believed the gospel they were no longer enslaved to Law. He then added that the Holy Spirit's role among and within them was to bring out in them traits such as: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and sel-control, and he added that, compared to that dynamic there was no Law - no Law or ritual that can match that. That is what our lives must be oriented towards and governed by. Christians often get it wrong of course, we mess things up, legalism seeps into our minds and our communities, we can become petty and waste time bickering among ourselves. But this is the challenge we face. I think that is sufficient as an orientative ethic.

6. This Week's Flea

Comment #114523 by ADH on January 22, 2008 at 11:14 am

Steveroot, you've outdone me on Tolkein. I've only read the trilogy about 4 times. But I can see that we are kindred spirits, at least as far as fantasy is concerned. C.S. Lewis space trilogy was a triple masterpiece, albeit a flawed one. Have you read "Till we have faces" where he explores the clear-headed wisdom and also the limitations of Greek rationalism? It's a good read

7. This Week's Flea

Comment #114321 by ADH on January 22, 2008 at 12:05 am

Epeeist, remember that all the post-Biblical authors you mentioned could not and would not have written what they did unless their thinking had been steeped in Scripture. I agree with you about the beauty and power of all these works (at least those that I've read - Shakespeare and Spenser, as well as Milton, the Metaphysical poets, and a good deal besides). But they derive their power from being brilliant re-articulations of and variations upon the great Biblical thesmes of creation, fall, redemption through sacrifice.

8. This Week's Flea

Comment #114320 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 11:58 pm

"Maybe you can explain to me why God made men and women on the sixth day and yet Adam, made AFTER the 7th day, is the first man? I know you'll have a reason, shrouded in gnosticism. Me, I can only read what I see and understand it as such. I have none of your gnosticism, just a healthy knowledge of bullshit and bad editing."

I haven't got time to go into this now. But I do not take the creation stories as literal accounts of a six-day creation. The stories of Genesis 1 and of Genesis 2 complement each other at the level of metaphor. The story of Adam and Eve in the garden, is the story of the complementariness of the male and female, it is the story of the mandate that was entrusted to this male-female equal partnership to care for the created order, to explore it, to enjoy it as free, rational agents under the absolute, morally binding sovereignty of the Creator. The story in Genesis 1 portrays the universe coming into being, as a kind of seven-stage symphony, each stage being marked with the words: "and God said". The point being that God speaks (ie He is the source of Logic, Reason, of meaning), and His Word is shown to be the source and foundation of all that is.

9. This Week's Flea

Comment #114317 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 11:44 pm

"There are plenty of other books that express much the same message of morality and justice, and the need for personal effort in overcoming temptation. Why shouldn't such spiritual feelings of truth come to us when we read Lord of the Rings, which promotes just such virtues? Indeed, one could consider the Ring to be symbol of original sin; at least for the Baggins family."

Indeed there are many such books Steve. Remember by the way that Tolkein was a Christian. The Lord of the Rings, though it never mentions God, is permeated with Christian theology and with Aquinas' philosophy: evil as a perverson of "the Good", the overarching moral order (the natural law) to which every rational creature is bound, etc.

By the way any time you want to get into discussing LOTR I'm more than willing. One of the greatest works of fiction every written.

10. This Week's Flea

Comment #114193 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 2:05 pm

"One that ignores peoples' faith and instead scores them points purely on what they have done."

Then we'd all be sunk.

11. This Week's Flea

Comment #114191 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 2:03 pm

Goldy, I know I won't be able to answer your questions to your satisfaction. The OT God is not a vengeful God. He is a God of justice, and also a God of mercy. And in the NT he is also a God of justice and a God of mercy. There is no mismatch. The OT can only be interpreted in the light of the incarnation because that was the event that it was intended to point forward to. Hence the prominence of the law, constantly broken and exposing our need of "a Redeemer". That was the purpose of the OT Law Not to burden us sown with rules and regulations, but to show how far short we fall. The problem is that our default reaction to God is to hate him, to dig in our heels and to believe all the misrepresentations that are swirling about in contemporary culture. That's precisely why we need it so much!

12. This Week's Flea

Comment #114174 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 1:40 pm

"'d also be interested to know if you aren't an inerrantist and/or an evangelical. You presumably are happy to be open about your position."

As it hapens I am evangelical. I believe the Bible is infallible, but nobody's interpretation of it is infallible. No one has it all taped. We get insights as we read, Scripture interprets Scripture. But we make hermeneutical mistakes, which does not prevent us from finding and hearing God's voice speaking in it. But of course there are many different interpretations of many texts. Some of our wrong interpretations are the result of error on our part - we simply haven't gone into it enough, or we get the wrong end of the stick. Other mistakes are the result of wilfully wanting it to say what it suits us to have it say.

"We see in a glass darkly", as Paul said.

13. This Week's Flea

Comment #114168 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 1:33 pm

"The guy in Matchpoint murdered and got away with it in 'this life'. Am I right in assuming you accept this happens, but that you think (if it were real) he would 'get justice' after death? What would this justice be? Assuming he didn't have faith, he would be going to hell anyway wouldn't he, regardless of the murder. Conversely, if he converts, he gets to go to heaven, and so again justice is not done."

Mark, looking on we can judge his choice as wrong. But I am not God. It wwouldn't be up to me to decide on what might happen to him after this life. That is always God's prerogative, as regards everyone's destiny. Fortunately it's out of my and every other human beings hands. But I do believe that justice will prevail. Don't ask me how that's going to pan out.

Epeeist, I keep saying that I know you don't have to be a believer to make right moral choices. What I firmly believe is that the "justice" this film illustrates as remaining undone cannot be grounded in natural selection. Chris Wilton is a classic Darwinian survival-oriented specimen. There was no reason, from the point of view of his philosphy of life or from the point of view of the consequences for his own survival that would incline him toward justice.

14. This Week's Flea

Comment #114154 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 1:07 pm

"Here is the centre of your irrationality. 'The Bible', let alone 'the Bible as a truthful reflection', is a mythical construct. There is the Bible in its original languages, the translated Hebrew Bible (Old Testament only), the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible, King James Bible, the NIV, RSV, etc etc. Once you have chosen one of these you need to impose an arbitrary interpretive method (I'm guessing inerrancy plus evangelicalism in your case) and then focus in on the bits you like and interpret the other bits in the light of them (and probably effectively ignore yet others)."

That is your assumption.

15. This Week's Flea

Comment #114149 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 12:57 pm

Epeeist, glad you asked about Matchpoint. The key phrase is "I hope I am caught, because if I am it will be some hint of justice and meaning in the world". (or words to that effect). The point is that as he is not caught the conclusion seems to be that there is no such thing as justice, that the words that the film opened with are right: "... it is better to be lucky than good". At another point in the film the same character says: "people are afraid to face what an important part luck plays in their lives ... scientists have shown that we are here by blind chance, no purpose and no meaning" (again I'm quoting from memory so I might not have the quote exactly right.)

The questionis then, is there such a thing as justice? If everything exists by blind chance then there cannot be. Justice, for me, is the key principle in the moral choices that we make. The choice that this character made - to dispense with the problem and secure his comfort by eliminating his former mistress and his unborn child - was anything but just. And the fact that he was not caught was unjust. The problem with consequentialist ethics is that the criterion for choosing a course of action is what the consequence will be. In other words, the end justifies the means. For consequentialists the "consequence" in question was not "is the outcome just" but does it result in the greatest possible happiness for the largest number. In the case of Chris Wilton's action, that was the perceived result of what he did - more people were secured in their happiness and comfort than would have been the case had he not "got rid of" Nola and his child. From the point of view of thoroughgoing utilitarian, consequentialist ethics, his action was justified. But it was not just.

For me the moral paradigm that should have been invoked was truth, transparency and justice. He was false and self-interested from the start. To secure his happiness murdering another person did not cost him a thought.

I'm not saying that I always get it right. But that is the moral ideal that I want to commit myself to. That does not mean that there are no difficult decisions. It is not always easy to decide what is the "just" thing to do. But we are duty-bound to try to act justly.

Having said that, if there is anything that transcends justice, it is mercy and forgiveness. If it is difficult to act justly, it is much more diicult to act mercifully - to forgive that for which there is no excuse. But that is what Christian believers are called to do.

16. This Week's Flea

Comment #114137 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 12:34 pm

"God's not interested in getting people to believe in his existence, but to love him with all their "hearts minds and souls".

How do you know?"

Because I accept and have confidence in the Bible as a truthful reflection of the character of God.

17. This Week's Flea

Comment #114125 by ADH on January 21, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Sorry to butt in here, but I need to challenge you on your response to Artful Steve. According to Scripture God does not reveal himself to those HE chooses: "he who has ears to here let him hear". The evidence will be made available to those whose ear is inclined towards God, who are seeking God and not just waiting to have their curiosity slaked.

I think that was the gist of Artful's quote from Pascal. Pascal had quite a lot more to say in that regard. (Not talking about the wager by the way). He very rightly pointed out that clear blinding evidence is coercive. It leaves one with no choice but to believe any more than one has any choice but to believe that 2+2=4 or that water boils at 100º. God's not interested in getting people to believe in his existence, but to love him with all their "hearts minds and souls".

18. The New Theology

Comment #113299 by ADH on January 19, 2008 at 8:33 am

As regards square circles and 2+2 = 5, I don't think God was doing that kind of thing on the occasion of the relatively few miracles recorded in Scripture (few if we bear in mind the sweep of human history that Scripture covers). The miracles did not involve inherent contradictions. After the conception of God's Son in the virgin's womb, the laws of nature took their regular course with regard to gestation and birth.

19. The New Theology

Comment #113292 by ADH on January 19, 2008 at 8:24 am

"So, what would you do? All you given us is a politicians answer? What is the timeless, unambiguous, right thing to do in this situation?"

Epeeist. You didn't cause me to leave. I haven't got such thin skin. I just wanted to take some time off - pressures of work etc.

I can't really remember the specific situation in question. But I should say that there is never a detailed instruction sheet for us to follow in any situation. We are left to work out the specific implications of "love God with all your yeart mind and soul and your neighbour as yourself" in every situation where choices have to be made and priorities established. Sometimes we get it wrong, even with the best will in the world.

20. The New Theology

Comment #113265 by ADH on January 19, 2008 at 6:43 am

"This is very sloppy thinking. The natural laws that would have to be changed to permit miracles aren't arbitrary. They are based on simple mat hematical ideas, such as symmetry"

Steve this is not sloppy thinking. When God suspends the natural laws he does not make those laws null and void. The laws still obtain, the are not "changed" in order to accommodate a miracle. What is sloppy thinking for you, I suspect, is the fact of believing in a Creator in the first place - not believing that he can suspend the laws of nature. If you believed in a Creator you would surely have no trouble believing that the laws he instituted could be suspended!

21. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110518 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 12:23 pm

I'm going to take a break guys. I will be back, but not for a while. I know I have questions pending from Mark, MPhil, Walk, Goldy and some others. I'm sure you'll find lots of Christian meat to devour in my absence.

Keep well

By the way, it would have been nice to see some of you hang in there a bit longer in the Atheism Sucks site. But there you go.

22. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110487 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 10:30 am

Don't lump all Christians together. I'm as sickened by rich tele-evangelists a you all are. It's possible to be moral and not be a believer. It's also possible to be very immoral and call yourself a believer. The Pharisees did it, and there are many Pharisees in Christendom.

23. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110433 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 6:41 am

OK Roger, I'll hold you to that.

24. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110416 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 6:05 am

OK Steve, let me reflect on that for a while, ok?

25. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110415 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 6:04 am

Tler, I have already said several times that masturbation is no big deal!! The Bible says nothing about it. I have no access to scientific studies so I can only express my considered opinion. Do you have studies and statistics for every assertion that you make?

26. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110412 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 6:02 am

"Chimp sees other chimp with banana. Considers pinching it. But then pictures itself in the role of the other chimp, feeling bad because of having banana pinched. Chimp feels empathy. Does not pinch banana (well, not this time anyway)."

This is pure speculation. You have no idea what is going on inside the brain of the said chimp.

27. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110409 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 5:59 am

Irate_atheist, my assertions are not wanton. I would say that the burden o proof lies on your shoulders. You have to prove to me that naturalism CAN provide sufficient grounding for right action.

28. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110404 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 5:53 am

Tyler, I have answered the question you refer to. It is excess that is unhealthy. I didn't say it was wrong per se.

I think that fantasising about another person while you are with the partner you have committed yourself to is more likely than not to drive a wedge between the two of you. I may be wrong about that, but it is my opinion. Maybe your experience has been different. Let's leave it at that.

But as I say, I want to move on from this topic.

29. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110402 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 5:47 am

I'm not privy to anything epeeist. The RIGHT thing is informed by Jesus straightforward injunction: "Love God with your whole being and your neighbour as yourself". I am not saying that an atheist would not do the right thing in this case, by the way. Most atheists on this board probably would do the right thing. What I am saying via this illustration is that "emotion" is not an adequate basis for moral action. I have been insisting that naturalism and materialism provide insufficient grounding for right action, NOT that materialists do not act rightly.

30. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110393 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 5:33 am

Can we call a truce on masturbation? I have said that it's no big deal. I insist that it's no big deal. I think excess is socially unhealthy, as any kind of exess is socially unhealthy. There are bigger issues at stake here. This masturbation thing has become a distractor.

MPhil, you have made some interesting points and I'll be getting back to you.

Steve, you have commented on apparent moral behaviour in animals such as great apes. I don't know. In line with my post the other day, I'm not sure of the actual status that other creatures have vis à vis their Creator. Maybe there is a kind of possiblity of moral choice on their part, in proportion to their cognitive and rational abilities. I can't pronounce one way or the other as it is something I don't know enough about. My conviction is that, in whatever case, the capacity for moral choice, and the power of verbal reasoning, is not of natualistic origin. Insofar as we can make moral choices, we are responsible for the choices we make. I am also convinced that the reductionism whereby our moral categories are viewed as biochemical, neurological "objects" located in the brain is lethal to the possibility of maintaining any kind of consensus with regard to what is acceptable behaviour and what is not.

Someone earlier established our emotion as the criterion. Surely you can all see that this is entirely inadequate. That subjectivises morality to the point where the main criterion for action (or non-action) is "if it feels good, do it". One man's (or woman's) beer is another's poison.

I mentioned the film Matchpoint some time ago. Chris Wilton, having married into money and guaranteed success, is told by his "girlfriend" that she is pregnant. She pleads with him to leave his wife and be a proper father to the child. He pleads with her to have an abortion. But she refuses. As it is not possible to consult the disempowered foetus it is not possible to know whether it would have been a 2 to 1 vote in favour or against! "I expect you to o the right thing, Chris" she says. "I will do the right thing" he promises. But it is quite a dilemma. What is the right thing? In the end he "feels" that the only way out is to take the matter of dispensing with the child into his own hands, and dispensing with the mother into the bargain. He shoots his girlfriend and the unborn child, having set everything up to make it look as if Nola had been an unlucky bystander in another murder and burglary. (He had killed Nola's next door neighbour before killing Nola and the child). Later, the "ghost" of Nola appears to him in the middle of the night. "I hope I am caught" he says to her "It would be one small hint o justice and meaning in the world". But time passes and the case is closed. "Evidence" has been found which supposedly incriminates another person - with a criminal record. Chris settls into his life of luxury with his rich family. He acted in accordance with his subjective feeling that comfort was better than discomfort, whatever the price. Did Chris do the right thing? On a purely subjectivist criterion, is there such a thing as "justice" in the world?

31. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110381 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 4:48 am

Steve, it was wrong in his case. THis is an explanation which I found online. It more or less sums up what Onan's problem was:

"The death of Er (see note 1 below) without a son makes Onan subject to what is called the levirate law (note 2). Although the law isn't specifically mentioned until much later in Deuteronomy 25:5, it was very ancient, predating the point at which the Pentateuch was written down (note 3).

Marrying your brother's wife is forbidden in biblical law, specifically Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21. However, there is an exception if your brother dies without having had a son. In that case, a man is obligated to impregnate his widowed sister-in-law to give his dead brother a son, who becomes the brother's heir. Deuteronomy 25:5-10 describes a way for the brother to decline this responsibility, but presumably at the time of the story of Onan, that legal mechanism wasn't known.

Today levirate marriages are rare. Traditional Ashkenazic Jews faced with a brother who's married, childless, and dead use the Deuteronomic ritual to get out of it. Most Reform and Conservative Jews ignore it altogether. Among Sephardic Jews, one still finds an occasional levirate marriage.

Back to the story. Having no legal means of avoiding his brotherly duty, Onan flatly refuses to do it. He doesn't object to sex with his brother's wife; he just doesn't want to get her with child. We don't know why except that the child "would not count as his." Perhaps he lacked a sense of responsibility to the dead. Perhaps he realized that, with Er dead, he would get half his father's estate, but if Er had an heir, he would only get one-third. So he spilled his seed on the ground. The question is: what exactly does this mean? Religious leaders have advanced different interpretations over the centuries, mostly to justify societal mores.

It's often difficult to establishing what sex practices various writers meant because they used euphemisms--there wasn't a technical sexual vocabulary until fairly recently. Also, the authors of commentaries didn't want to give readers ideas by being too explicit--the "above all, don't put beans in your ear!" syndrome.

The earliest interpretations were straightforward. What Onan had done was dishonor his dead brother and shirk his obligations. Exactly how he frustrated the purpose of levirate marriage was irrelevant. The text emphasizes the social or legal setting, with Judah describing what Onan has to do and why. The plain reading is that Onan's sin was refusal to provide his dead brother with an heir."

32. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110373 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 4:10 am

Just to clear something up. I didn't say masturbation was wrong per se. I don't think it is. Onan's sin was not masturbation but failing to do his duty as the one who had to continue the geneological line. I'm saying that it is wrong if it contributes to self-indulgence, to obsession with self. We have become a very "self-ward" looking society, a society of self-engrossed individuals. Masturbation could well be in integral part of that behaviour pattern. It's not the only one, of course. And in itself it's no big deal. I have no problem with sexual fantasies involving one's lifelong partner. The proplems arise when your fantasies centring around another person are simultaneous with indifference towards your husband/wife. OK, I'm a conservative when it comes to faithfulness, commitment to one person etc. I don't need to make any apologies for that do I?

33. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110332 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 2:24 am

Roger, you will notice that I said "A HABIT OF MASTURBATION

34. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110324 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 1:49 am

Sorry I haven't tackled your questions before now Ian. Here are some tentative answers.

"Who is this 'our' and 'we' you speak of? To my mind this is an admittal that your god, the god of Abraham, is not the god of all humanity but a localised god. How am I wrong here?"

OUR and WE refer to those who have access to the narratives in question. But I am not saying that God is localised, or that he is only the God of those who have access to these narratives. That would be absurd. He is the only true God, but th way in which He chooses to reveal Himself may vary through the ages. Obviously those who have no access to the Biblical narratives will be judged without reference to them. They will be judged in the light of their response to God as revealed in creation and conscience.

"Its scope? But god created that scope, yes? In which case why couldn't he make it wider, more inclusive. Why send Jesus 2,000 years and not today so we can all see him on You tube around the world? Or are you admitting that the 'scope' is a construct of the all to human limitations of the time?"

He has made it wider! The message was quickly disseminated along the roadways and sea routes of the Roman Empire, to the extent that by the early 4th century the Christian Church ws such an influential and widespread global movement that Constantine felt he had no choice but to adopt i as the official ideological framework of the Embire. I am not now commenting on whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, by the way.

35. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110312 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 1:06 am

"Is it just me who can't stop laughing at the irony of a theist warning against obsessive habits of thought which isolate you from healthy interactions with other people and cause deep-seated psychological harm?"

Cartomancer, be careful that the irony does not backfire on you!

36. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110309 by ADH on January 11, 2008 at 1:02 am

Yes Goldy, that is pretty close to what I would say. You're a fast learner! If human beings are made in the image of God, this is the case wherever human beings happen to be, and whenever they lived. Socrates (albeit imperfectly) foreshadowed Christ for the Greeks, and Confucius (also imperfectly) for the Chinese just as the Hebrew poets and prophets (as well as the Hebrew iconography) foreshadowed Him for the Jews.

Can you remind me of the questions I haven't answered?

37. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110284 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 9:46 pm

AfraidToDie, I'm not going to pontificate about masturbation. I believe that a habit of masturbation can induce a kind of psychological dependence on the fantasies that are normally associated with it, which can thereby become obsessive and interfere with normal interaction with other people. This kind of dependence is obviously unhealthy, from a psychological, social and emotional point of view. The Bible has nothing to say about masturbation per se, but it has a lot to say about self-centred indulgence, about directing our minds and our energies towards the well-being of the "other". Masturbation is wrong in so far as it inclines us against this thought pattern.

38. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110168 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 3:07 pm

"You are welcome to claim there is a deist 'God' who remains isolated and separate from the universe, simply "embodying" the laws. But, you aren't are you, I presume? "

You're right. I'm not a deist. He does interact, but not by spinging miracles on us left right and centre. He is not a conjurer! Providence is the unseen activity of God, guiding the cosmos owards the completion of his purposes. I realise that this raises the theodicy issue. Human freedom of choice (even if individual choices have disastrous consequences) is not overruled. Otherwise we would be automata, which we are clearly not, as we all make choices.

But I am going to have to exit right now as it's now midnight here and I have a class early tomorrow morning. I'll be back.

39. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110151 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 2:46 pm

"Why not? Aren't you prepared to examine the evidence for yourself?"

Because you are saying "there is no God and no transcendent Being outside of ourselves to whom we are subject·and I say that there is. How are we going to reach any agreement? On whose terms? As for evidence, we have different views as to what constitutes evidence.

40. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110146 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 2:42 pm

"the necessity of which has to be shown by showing that there are observable phenomena and/or entities which could not otherwise be explained properly."

Observable? Why? Observable in what sense? There is no reason to suppose that these entities (or this Entity) must be observable by the standard scientiic criteria. That is only required if you are a materialist, in which case all entities must form part of the observable universe. But theists are not required to produce this kind of evidence, because we believe that God is external to the universe and therefore not subject to empirical investigation. If we did not believe that we would not be theists. At the most we would be pantheists.

41. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110130 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 2:27 pm

Steve we are not going to reach any agreement on that one. As regards our need for healing (I include myself by the way), I am convinced that that is the case. Sorry if that offends, but that's the way I see it.

42. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110118 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 2:06 pm

"It has already been shown that this is not a law for mankind; it is present throughout nature"


I'm sorry Steve but no one has shown anything of the kind. This is your unproven assumption. The case for moral perception on the part of (other) animals has not been made. The "herd instinct", in whatever form, has not been shown to be equivalent to morality.

43. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110115 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Goldy, Christians sometimes get it wrong (I can't speak for other religions), even with the best will in the world. Had Blair and Bush been atheists are you sure they would not have chosen to do the same? Christopher Hitchens would have then had another reason to approve of their decision! And if he had had the power to take it, you can bet your life he would have! He is on record as saying, after all, that he is sorry hell does not exist because it is likely that Jerry Falwell would have ended up there if it did! How many others would Hitchens consign to the fiery pit if he had half a chance! I'm afraid you are labouring under a delusion: namely the delusion that atheism inclines people to be better than they would otherwise be. History proves you wrong on that score again and again. OK I promise I won't mention Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung! :-)

44. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110105 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 1:45 pm

Walk, you have got Christian morality completely wrong. The stick and carrot approach was that of the Pharisees, for example. I admit that it has been "adopted", quite wrongly, by many individual Christian churches. But Paul himself often weighed in against legalism. "Love" (agape) is the watchword of the Christian faith. That is not to say that as long as we love each other everything will be hunky dory. But if we took seriously Jesus' twofold injunction: "Love God with your whole being and your neighbour as yourself" we would be doing well. Remember that the Old Testament laws were not (apart from those that Jesus was summing up with this injunction) moral laws but ceremonial ones. I realise that the interpretation of the OT laws (Leviticus) for example is problematic. Suffice it it to say that the law that God intended as "normative" for all mankind is encapsulted in these words uttered by Jesus. That is where we fail, and that is where we can be healed.

45. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110097 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 1:35 pm

MPhil, thank you for your thoughtful comments. I need some time to think them through. I will respond to you once I have got my head round what you are saying. As your post stands, I cannot see how even the strictest materialist does not at times invoke a standard (either to make her own choices or to judge another's) which could only be described as transcendent and objective: external to both natural inclination (instict) and cultural inclination (society).

As you must know, utilitarianism (to name one alternative non-theistic paradigm is fraught with philosophical problems. How can an individual facing a choice always know how many people will be affected by their choice? How can they know what the long term impact of that choice will be? They might sometimes be able to estimate this. But more often than not they will not. Utilitarianism may be a useful rule of thumb in certain circumstances, but it is hardly a serious contender as a moral paradigm. It needs to be undergirded (or overarched) by something else.

46. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110087 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 1:19 pm

A question for all of you. Is "society" or "consensus" an adequate yardstick? consensus in Hitler's Germany was very much in favour of what Hitler was doing. I will never forget the impression that the novel "Remains of the Day" made on me. The butler Stevens was forced to realise that in his days as butler to the pro-nazi English aristocrat Lord Darlington he was backing the wrong horse. He accepted the dismissal of two Jewish servant girls on the basis of "consensus" and his submission to authority. It was only when the pendulum of "consensus" swung in the opposite direction that he realised that he had been wrong, and had been dehumanised by his choice.

"Consensus" (arising out of talking to each other) does not necessarily result in "moral" behaviour. "Talking to each other" can be conspiratorial and treacherous. It often serves to reinforce rather than force us to re-evaluate our prejudices. Unless, that is, there is a standard external to the group itself that the group are prepared to agree on. Needless to say, of course, this external standard is not always taken seriously by the group.

47. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110072 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 12:50 pm

"Pack animals have standards of behavior (alpha wolf etc...)"

Indeed, and I am not deying that humans do too. But what happens (or should happen) when the "herd instinct" runs into conflict with the "self-centred" instinct? Or what happens when we find ourselves having to decide between a "herd instinct" and an inclination to help the individual or group that does not belong to our "herd"? Is there another instinct at work? Surely that which we invoke to enable us to decide cannot itself be instinctual? Is there not, as I believe, an independent arbiter the frame of reference for which lies necessarily beyond our neurological or cultrural categories? Kant's paradigm "every other human being is an end in themselves" is helpful. But this paradigm cannot be grounded in materialism.

48. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110066 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 12:36 pm

"I am interested on how we should react"

If morality is like sexual urges or hunger how can it be relevant to use the word SHOULD? How can we determine which "moral urges" are appropriate or acceptable and which are not? You cannot dictate to people what sexual urges or hunger cravings they should have (except maybe on moral grounds, but then we are back where we started).

49. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110058 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 12:31 pm

So, Annatar, if morality is a product of the nervous system then there is no external yardstick whereby my or your moral behaviour can be measured. How is anyone then to decide what constitutes acceptable behaviour and what sort of behaviour is unacceptable? Maybe being more or less "moral" is equivalent to having a higher or lower IQ? or having better or worse eyesight? Moral "perception" maybe? But who decides what is to be perceived? Is being immoral to having dislexia (for example)? In order to be able to read what?

50. Six Reasons to be an Atheist

Comment #110049 by ADH on January 10, 2008 at 11:52 am

Steve, if, as I suspect you are a physicalist (correct me if I am wrong) how can anybody find morality in their minds, given that their minds and the physical configuration of their brains are inseparable from each other? Where did this morality that they "find" there come from? Are you saying that it is not inseparable from the brain? How can there be any such thing as truth or morality out there for anyone to grasp, as rationalists claim that they are? Surely you are taking a dualist position here? I know that you are interested in metaethics, and you subscribe to a metaethical paradigm (again, correct me if I am wrong). Is this not incompatible with your rejection of dualism?