Ever actually tried living with the conviction that most of the things that you believe, are, in fact, wrong, an illusion, merely a result of your imagination?
How has it worked out?
Who come first the theist or the atheist
- Thread starter arauca
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Ever actually tried living with the conviction that most of the things that you believe, are, in fact, wrong, an illusion, merely a result of your imagination?
How has it worked out?
elte
Valued Senior Member
Verifiable is shorthand for repeatably observable; yah, nothing is 100% certain, I say.
elte
Valued Senior Member
It worked out very badly. I was raised as a Catholic. I was most miserable before I had achieved enough deprogramming to move forward. I was really held back spending time praying and waiting for God to help.
Also, the faith I had gave me an excuse to impose a fear of God onto others as a means of manipulation. So speaking out against theology now is what I do to try to make society better and help myself by helping others.
I did an extremely grievous blunder of breaking a friend away from tunnel vision around his belief system based on Christianity and he withdrew from contact and took his life. He didn't make it through the deprogramming process. :bawl:
So suppose god revealed himself to you - what is it precisely about your attempt to communicate the experience to others that automatically renders it a failure to the point of being a construct of your imagination?
And how is it that other forms of communication of knowledge by third parties is exempted from this 99.9999% failure rate?
elte
Valued Senior Member
Telling other people imagined things as though they are true is failed behavior.
We can confirm what they say. Secular communications are falsifiable.
You didn't answer my question -
Or did you in fact when you were practising Catholicism, believe that all that you believe is merely imagination?
I don't think the Catholic doctrine would simply advise "praying and waiting for God to help."
But in a particular case, how do you know they are merely imagined?
I always chuckel at those hwo say that noe thst they are Atheists, they regret usign God as a tool of Manipulation or recognise him as such. Its as if manipulation of others xcan onlyhappen in the name of God, and Atheists can never do the same; yet I've seen the same. I've seen "Reason" or "Science" used to bully people.
The Truth is, whatever you accpt as authoritative can be userped to drape yoru own ideas in the cloak of said Authority, and Humanity is adept at usign whatever the community already accepts to manipulate others.
The Truth is, whatever you accpt as authoritative can be userped to drape yoru own ideas in the cloak of said Authority, and Humanity is adept at usign whatever the community already accepts to manipulate others.
AAQ-
I believe you mean, not polytheistic.
And, I am not engaging in polemics or Apologetics, I am stating a fact. In Hebrew, the Verb determines if an object is read as singular or plural, and the verb is singular. It is really short sighted of you to dismiss this since your entire argument hinges on the reader accepting Elohim as Universally plural and always meaning "the gods". If this is not the case, and if the word Elohim can refer to a singular object, then the entire argument you make collapses. You are trying to prove that the Early Hebrews were Polytheists using the Genesis Creation account, and your only evidence that they were Polytheistic is that they used the word Elohim.
But, by this Logic even the Yahwist text in Chapter 2 starting at verse 4 would have to be Polytheistic, wouldn’t it?
I mean, really, why should we ignore the actual Grammar of the language we are discussing? Your whole argument rests on that Grammar.
By the way, Hebrew is not a Dead Language.
I don’t have to. All I have to do in this instance to disprove your argument that they were Polytheistic is point out that Elohim is not always Plural. The only evidence that you have of their Polytheism is the “Elohimis Text” of Genesis 1-2:3. You really have nothing besides the argument that Elohim is plural and means “the gods”, and the fact that the verb is singular proves it can’t mean “the gods”.
It’s really not that complicated.
No, it means you irrationally look for stupid arguments to support your newfound Atheism by desecrating your old belief system. You have an emotional need to discredit he Bible to justify your current position so latch onto arguments that support this by depicting the Bible or Christianity as invalid. It doesn’t matter to you that these arguments make no sense whatsoever to someone who bothers to do five minuets legitimate research, you want them to be True and so refuse to really critically examine these arguments. You then claim its polemic or apologetics when someone else criticises them. That’s why I say you hate the Bible. This surely is not a reasoned complaint.
I mean, you dismiss my entire point about the verb tense by saying “That’s an apologist argument”. Well, so bloody what if it is an apologist argument, how the Hell is it wrong? DO you have any response other than “That’s an Apologist Argument” that will explain why the Grammar in your argument works? If you don’t, then you prove my point. You don’t care that your argument is fraudulent, only that it aims at the Right Target.
And you accuse me of Polemics? Come off it lad, the whole “Bible is evil and warps minds” nonsense is just a way to vilify the text, and still doesn’t ultimately prove that your idiotic argument about Elohim being “the gods” has any merit. If anything is only further reveals your inability to actually use reason in studying it, and provides more of a reason to think you only sought out arguments to prop up a need to bash it.
But, you also like to lie about the content of the Bible. Elohimn is not plural in the Creation account, and you can’t dismiss the verb tense just because it invalidates your argument. Why not address that? It’s really what I am interested in.
I don’t buy this either. What you mean is, you have embraced a form of Atheism that is built up out of the Enlightenment and the 19th Century Freethouht movement that has its own doctrines and interpretations, and you need to revile or fear Christianity whilst presenting it as some great overpowering Evil which has brought misery to the world which, like your Elohim argument, is based on a manipulative and often false History.
It’s really no different than how Evangelical Christians and some Ex Muslims will attack Islam, and claim its nothing but evil and Hatred.
This one sided, narrow minded perception of it is nothing but an excuse. Its not supportable by real Historical evidence. Yes I am aware of the Crusades, inquisition, Galileo, and the usual other rubbish, but the thing is I bothered to study the actual History so I don’t think you want to try to use them. I mean, why should I feel badly about the Crusades when they were no worse than any other War and were mainly fought as defensive? The Inquisition was no where near as bad as its depicted. No, I am not being an apologist and I would kindly ask you to not dismiss me as such and rather look at the actual arguments I make.
Your whole presentation is nothing but repetition of old claims that are base don a need to discredit Christianity, and don’t care about the facts.
You didn’t provide evidence, you made assertions. The is a difference. Simply saying we started as Atheists, developed Animism, then polytheism, then Monotheism is not evidence that the sequence of events you describe actually happened. All you are doing is presenting a Historical Claim of the development of Theism, but you haven’t proven anything at all.
In fact, one of the few peeves of evidence you did use was proven by me to be wrong. \
Genesis 1 does not say “In the beginning, the gods created”, as Elohim is not, in the “Elohimist Text”, actually plural.
You can’t say “You are being an apologist” or “That’s an apologist argument” and say you proves me wrong either. I want to know why the Elohimists used a Singular Verb if they means a plurality of gods.
If you have no answer for that you as much as admit that the Elohimist argument is false.
No, you just presented a counter statement.
It reminds me of Dawkins, who mocks the idea that God created everything but is still confronted with the Argument that the Universe is precisely aligned to allow for life. To resolve this he posits the Multiverse. Dawkins then proceeds to explain how he has made belief in God unnecessary.
Its all well and good and all but, al Dawkins did was replace God with the Multiverse. He didn’t actually prove the Multiverse existed, and even if it did doesn’t prove God didn’t create the Multiverse.
You are doing the same thing. You are positing an alternative explanation, and then calling that proof that the former argument is false. But simply providing an alternative explanation is not really evidence that the original Argument is false, its simply a rival claim. You haven’t shown any material,l evidence that actually disproves the former claim, nor have you actually demonstrated that your own claim is True.
Given that your Elohim argument is most assuredly false, and that you refuse to admit that it is false, why should we accept your interpretation of History further? If you refuse to even allow the possibility that genesis 1 doesn’t read ‘the gods” and was not Polytheistic, and if you cling adamantly to Elohim beign “the gods” irrespective of the Hebrew Grammar involved, then isn’t it just as easy for us to conclude that you are just pormotign your own biased view on things? That you don’t care about the Facts?
Because that’s how it looks.
I believe you mean, not polytheistic.
And, I am not engaging in polemics or Apologetics, I am stating a fact. In Hebrew, the Verb determines if an object is read as singular or plural, and the verb is singular. It is really short sighted of you to dismiss this since your entire argument hinges on the reader accepting Elohim as Universally plural and always meaning "the gods". If this is not the case, and if the word Elohim can refer to a singular object, then the entire argument you make collapses. You are trying to prove that the Early Hebrews were Polytheists using the Genesis Creation account, and your only evidence that they were Polytheistic is that they used the word Elohim.
But, by this Logic even the Yahwist text in Chapter 2 starting at verse 4 would have to be Polytheistic, wouldn’t it?
I mean, really, why should we ignore the actual Grammar of the language we are discussing? Your whole argument rests on that Grammar.
By the way, Hebrew is not a Dead Language.
I don’t have to. All I have to do in this instance to disprove your argument that they were Polytheistic is point out that Elohim is not always Plural. The only evidence that you have of their Polytheism is the “Elohimis Text” of Genesis 1-2:3. You really have nothing besides the argument that Elohim is plural and means “the gods”, and the fact that the verb is singular proves it can’t mean “the gods”.
It’s really not that complicated.
No, it means you irrationally look for stupid arguments to support your newfound Atheism by desecrating your old belief system. You have an emotional need to discredit he Bible to justify your current position so latch onto arguments that support this by depicting the Bible or Christianity as invalid. It doesn’t matter to you that these arguments make no sense whatsoever to someone who bothers to do five minuets legitimate research, you want them to be True and so refuse to really critically examine these arguments. You then claim its polemic or apologetics when someone else criticises them. That’s why I say you hate the Bible. This surely is not a reasoned complaint.
I mean, you dismiss my entire point about the verb tense by saying “That’s an apologist argument”. Well, so bloody what if it is an apologist argument, how the Hell is it wrong? DO you have any response other than “That’s an Apologist Argument” that will explain why the Grammar in your argument works? If you don’t, then you prove my point. You don’t care that your argument is fraudulent, only that it aims at the Right Target.
And you accuse me of Polemics? Come off it lad, the whole “Bible is evil and warps minds” nonsense is just a way to vilify the text, and still doesn’t ultimately prove that your idiotic argument about Elohim being “the gods” has any merit. If anything is only further reveals your inability to actually use reason in studying it, and provides more of a reason to think you only sought out arguments to prop up a need to bash it.
But, you also like to lie about the content of the Bible. Elohimn is not plural in the Creation account, and you can’t dismiss the verb tense just because it invalidates your argument. Why not address that? It’s really what I am interested in.
I don’t buy this either. What you mean is, you have embraced a form of Atheism that is built up out of the Enlightenment and the 19th Century Freethouht movement that has its own doctrines and interpretations, and you need to revile or fear Christianity whilst presenting it as some great overpowering Evil which has brought misery to the world which, like your Elohim argument, is based on a manipulative and often false History.
It’s really no different than how Evangelical Christians and some Ex Muslims will attack Islam, and claim its nothing but evil and Hatred.
This one sided, narrow minded perception of it is nothing but an excuse. Its not supportable by real Historical evidence. Yes I am aware of the Crusades, inquisition, Galileo, and the usual other rubbish, but the thing is I bothered to study the actual History so I don’t think you want to try to use them. I mean, why should I feel badly about the Crusades when they were no worse than any other War and were mainly fought as defensive? The Inquisition was no where near as bad as its depicted. No, I am not being an apologist and I would kindly ask you to not dismiss me as such and rather look at the actual arguments I make.
Your whole presentation is nothing but repetition of old claims that are base don a need to discredit Christianity, and don’t care about the facts.
You didn’t provide evidence, you made assertions. The is a difference. Simply saying we started as Atheists, developed Animism, then polytheism, then Monotheism is not evidence that the sequence of events you describe actually happened. All you are doing is presenting a Historical Claim of the development of Theism, but you haven’t proven anything at all.
In fact, one of the few peeves of evidence you did use was proven by me to be wrong. \
Genesis 1 does not say “In the beginning, the gods created”, as Elohim is not, in the “Elohimist Text”, actually plural.
You can’t say “You are being an apologist” or “That’s an apologist argument” and say you proves me wrong either. I want to know why the Elohimists used a Singular Verb if they means a plurality of gods.
If you have no answer for that you as much as admit that the Elohimist argument is false.
No, you just presented a counter statement.
It reminds me of Dawkins, who mocks the idea that God created everything but is still confronted with the Argument that the Universe is precisely aligned to allow for life. To resolve this he posits the Multiverse. Dawkins then proceeds to explain how he has made belief in God unnecessary.
Its all well and good and all but, al Dawkins did was replace God with the Multiverse. He didn’t actually prove the Multiverse existed, and even if it did doesn’t prove God didn’t create the Multiverse.
You are doing the same thing. You are positing an alternative explanation, and then calling that proof that the former argument is false. But simply providing an alternative explanation is not really evidence that the original Argument is false, its simply a rival claim. You haven’t shown any material,l evidence that actually disproves the former claim, nor have you actually demonstrated that your own claim is True.
Given that your Elohim argument is most assuredly false, and that you refuse to admit that it is false, why should we accept your interpretation of History further? If you refuse to even allow the possibility that genesis 1 doesn’t read ‘the gods” and was not Polytheistic, and if you cling adamantly to Elohim beign “the gods” irrespective of the Hebrew Grammar involved, then isn’t it just as easy for us to conclude that you are just pormotign your own biased view on things? That you don’t care about the Facts?
Because that’s how it looks.
@ZAV
Hebrew became a dead language when it ceased to be the common speech of the region. The conquests of Alexander necessitated this change. The shift to Greek is reflected in numerous texts, most notably the Apocrypha and New Testament. That's just historical fact. Your claim falls.
Elohim is plural. The singular verb does not mitigate this fact. It merely poses a challenge for you which you are not able to resolve because it is a dead language, and there is no cultural benchmark for you to reference. The argument--that it indicates monotheism--is rendered moot. Your claim falls.
The immigrants from Ur into Canaan were polytheists. The remnants of that cult are the E texts which are embedded with the J. Thus, for example, there are two versions of the creation myth in Genesis. Your claim, that they were monotheists, falls.
The development in Christian mythology of a three-headed God is vestigial evidence of polytheism, albeit in cahoots with monotheism. Even by the early Christian era, monotheism had not completed its evolution out of the primordial soup from whence it came: animal worship, animism, polytheism and pantheism--all ancestral forms. Your post, and all other posts supporting monotheism at the dawn of religion, therefore fall.
The purpose of this thread began as an inquiry into the first causes of belief and non-belief. This idea was immediately hijacked at post #2 and converted into a polemic about language. You are attempting to do the same, to open a polemic on Hebrew semantics. It is a losing strategy, because we are exploring evidence, not personal opinion. Opinions get parked. Only evidence will crank-start. (no pun intended?)
The evidence for polytheism is everywhere. I gave you several sources of evidence already: The Epic of Enuma Elish and The Epic of Gilgamesh are good enough. If you like, we can add the texts at Ugarit if you want something closer to home, illustrating polytheism in Canaan. Your unsupported claims are crushed under the weight of the tablets in the British Museum alone (the collection now numbers around 130000 registered tablets and fragments, their site states).
The recovered texts illustrate creation mythology. We understand from reading them that primitive people had highly symbolic dreamlike fantasies of how or why the universe was created, replete with symbols like dragons, or the snake of Genesis, to represent chaos.
We have other evidence of the worldview of primitive people, and I gave the reference from noted anthropologist Franz Boas because he lived among primitive people and studied them. So that makes him an expert, not you, therefore on authority alone your position crashes. In The Mind of Primitive Man Boas describes a universal attribution of symbolism and magic to everything in these people's lives and explains how superstitious fear arises out of their traumatic encounters with nature. The spirits they see are in no way connected to the idea of theism, and this is reflected in the neolithic petroglyphs which shore up Boas' findings. That entire line of argument, centering on theism, therefore falls.
Conclusion: theism was not at the beginning of human ideation, but, like us, evolving out of the muck of matter, evolves out of the psychic shock of awakening, sentient, to the horrific consequences of Natural Selection.
I am not posting in a site on religion, but on science. The topic area is comparative religions. I have provided more sources of comparison than any other contributor so far. So far my batting average is just about perfect.
And you? :shrug:
It's not a reflection on me or you, but on the evidence. I have produced it for rebuttal or affirmation.
Polemics is neither of these.
Hebrew became a dead language when it ceased to be the common speech of the region. The conquests of Alexander necessitated this change. The shift to Greek is reflected in numerous texts, most notably the Apocrypha and New Testament. That's just historical fact. Your claim falls.
Elohim is plural. The singular verb does not mitigate this fact. It merely poses a challenge for you which you are not able to resolve because it is a dead language, and there is no cultural benchmark for you to reference. The argument--that it indicates monotheism--is rendered moot. Your claim falls.
The immigrants from Ur into Canaan were polytheists. The remnants of that cult are the E texts which are embedded with the J. Thus, for example, there are two versions of the creation myth in Genesis. Your claim, that they were monotheists, falls.
The development in Christian mythology of a three-headed God is vestigial evidence of polytheism, albeit in cahoots with monotheism. Even by the early Christian era, monotheism had not completed its evolution out of the primordial soup from whence it came: animal worship, animism, polytheism and pantheism--all ancestral forms. Your post, and all other posts supporting monotheism at the dawn of religion, therefore fall.
The purpose of this thread began as an inquiry into the first causes of belief and non-belief. This idea was immediately hijacked at post #2 and converted into a polemic about language. You are attempting to do the same, to open a polemic on Hebrew semantics. It is a losing strategy, because we are exploring evidence, not personal opinion. Opinions get parked. Only evidence will crank-start. (no pun intended?)
The evidence for polytheism is everywhere. I gave you several sources of evidence already: The Epic of Enuma Elish and The Epic of Gilgamesh are good enough. If you like, we can add the texts at Ugarit if you want something closer to home, illustrating polytheism in Canaan. Your unsupported claims are crushed under the weight of the tablets in the British Museum alone (the collection now numbers around 130000 registered tablets and fragments, their site states).
The recovered texts illustrate creation mythology. We understand from reading them that primitive people had highly symbolic dreamlike fantasies of how or why the universe was created, replete with symbols like dragons, or the snake of Genesis, to represent chaos.
We have other evidence of the worldview of primitive people, and I gave the reference from noted anthropologist Franz Boas because he lived among primitive people and studied them. So that makes him an expert, not you, therefore on authority alone your position crashes. In The Mind of Primitive Man Boas describes a universal attribution of symbolism and magic to everything in these people's lives and explains how superstitious fear arises out of their traumatic encounters with nature. The spirits they see are in no way connected to the idea of theism, and this is reflected in the neolithic petroglyphs which shore up Boas' findings. That entire line of argument, centering on theism, therefore falls.
Conclusion: theism was not at the beginning of human ideation, but, like us, evolving out of the muck of matter, evolves out of the psychic shock of awakening, sentient, to the horrific consequences of Natural Selection.
I am not posting in a site on religion, but on science. The topic area is comparative religions. I have provided more sources of comparison than any other contributor so far. So far my batting average is just about perfect.
And you? :shrug:
It's not a reflection on me or you, but on the evidence. I have produced it for rebuttal or affirmation.
Polemics is neither of these.
The problem is that you are relegating any human communication on the subject as imagination (regardless whether they had a bona fide experience with god or not) ... IOW the irony is that even if god was personally revealed to you, you would just say "gee must have been my imagination"
:shrug:
most knowledge we might advocate on a personal level is certainly not personally falsifiable (for instance you accept a certain person as your mother without having done a dna test or you accept some figure about the age of the moon - a figure which is constantly in flux btw - without a clue how to really begin falsifying the claim ... or for that matter without a clue how to use the tools that are used in falsifying the claim ) so that's why I ask you on what grounds you do not relegate all this and more to the fallible/imagined since it is also quite clearly "human"
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Can you give me the word “righteous” in you native language? It may help me understand better what you mean.
References to Gilgamesh are found over a wide time frame spanning a thousand years or so.
So there are different texts, in different languages.
The Akkadian text dates to about 1900 BC.
These, and many older texts, precede the Bible.
EDIT:
I had to go find it: you asked me here. You'll find the answer here.
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elte
Valued Senior Member
Of course not, but there were doubts and wondering what is real or not.
A perfect Catholic can't exist. Also, no two people have the same religion even if it is called by a name like Catholicism. Lastly, the doctrines change with time.
elte
Valued Senior Member
I don't know for sure any more than I know the earth rotates.
wynn said:
elte said:
I think Catholic doctrine was heavily on you side elte, since prayer is fundamental to Catholicism.
The voice that finds fault in prayer, in deference to some other vague notion of religious expression, is immersed in a bizarre cynical denial of one of the core methods of religious practice.
elte
Valued Senior Member
That would be the most reasonable conclusion until evidence supported an alternate conclusion.
Everday life interaction confirms it as much as it needs to be confirmed.
The consequence of knowing the age of the moon or not is not that great for most people, unless it was created according to the creation story in the Bible, and all evidence shows it wasn't created that way.
Things from the physical world get shown real enough just during the process of living. That doesn't happen with the supernatural where the opposite happens.
elte
Valued Senior Member
Indeed, Aqueous Id; thanks.