"There is no heaven; it's a fairy story"
Discussion
ChrisGB said:
Once the idea that life is sacred is abandoned, what makes any life worth protecting?
I missed this gem.Life being sacred assumes a godhead. And with a godhead (usually) comes a comforting story about an afterlife.
Without a godhead - and without life being regarded as sacred - this life becomes all that we have. Which makes it even more valuable. And if I regard my life as being valuable, I regard every other life as valuable. Well, every human life. It's a bit of a bummer for you if you find yourself inhabiting a carcase which I regard as edible, but that's a whole 'nother debate.
Point being, atheists are at least as good as theists at valuing life. We are also a s
t-load better at arriving at internally consistent viewpoints because there is no reliance on bronze-age superstition to support our points of view.ChrisGB said:
fluffnik said:
I was not the first to mention a wicker bull or magic hydra and I don't know if they have any history outwith this thread. There here as examples of equivalent improbability mostly.
There is currently no satisfactory for the First Cause issue, gods are every bit as in need of a First Cause as the observable Universe.
The answer to the How come question needs no first cause, is that why you avoid it?There is currently no satisfactory for the First Cause issue, gods are every bit as in need of a First Cause as the observable Universe.
ChrisGB said:
fluffnik said:
You can remove gods from the system and nothing changes.
If there is a valid How come question and you "remove" its answer, then there would be no system for starters.ChrisGB said:
fluffnik said:
I don't see anything irrational about considering the natural Universe to be the whole enchilada, indeed I can see no rational reason for thinking there might be anything else.
But it's irrational because the only proof acceptable to justifiably hold that view with the evidence that sort of mind would crave would be "scientific" and it is absurd to look for scientific proof for the existence of the "metanatural", by definition something not available to a method of dealing with nature, the scientific.Oh, and what is revelation?
Read this on the train, and had a chuckle.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Entertainment/Tabloi...
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Entertainment/Tabloi...
Article said:
Actor Keira Knightley, a self-confessed atheist, says she is desperate to be Catholic because she would “just get to ask for forgiveness”. “It sounds much better than having to live with guilt. It’s absolutely extraordinary. If only I wasn’t an atheist, I could get away with anything,”
ChrisGB said:
Rather than do anything? Caring for someone suffering is not doing anything? I don't follow.
I talk of people born with handicaps worthy of being cared for and you talk of shooting people? In what way are these equivalents?
But if a loved one was shot, what would you do with them? How would a life of devoted care for them change you? How would a life begrudging the burden of having to care for them embitter you? I don't think what I said is esoteric, though I guess that you reacted violently against just because it was NT.
Come on Chris, you can do better than that. It is plainly obvious what I was talking about in my response. I was in no way condemning people for caring for loved ones and you know it. You are being very disingenuous with your response here. I talk of people born with handicaps worthy of being cared for and you talk of shooting people? In what way are these equivalents?
But if a loved one was shot, what would you do with them? How would a life of devoted care for them change you? How would a life begrudging the burden of having to care for them embitter you? I don't think what I said is esoteric, though I guess that you reacted violently against just because it was NT.
I was talking about people suffering for the "glory of God, as you put it. Now care to try and answer the question again, honestly?
ChrisGB said:
That's why I always say How come? I am not interested or distracted by purpose, red herring. What's the answer?
OK, let us go with "How come?" Answer, as best as we can know it. Because that is how the pieces fall under the natural laws as we know it. There is no apparent need for any supernatural entity in the process.
ChrisGB said:
TheHeretic said:
Why should religious events be subject to scientific enquiry? You tell me. The idea talked about at the time was tram substantiation, and how the wafer and wine is 'actually' turned into the flesh and blood of Jesus. I commented that it is ever so convenient that on the one hand the authorities who apparently are in the know tell us this is actually happening, they also tell us that empirically they appear as wafer and wine. You don't find that just a little bit easy? You don't find it just a bit too convenient? If they were to tell us it is a metaphoric transformation, fair enough, have at it, but that is not the case.
It's just that there is John chapter 6, this seems to pretty thoroughly rule out any metaphorical interpretation. Things would be more convenient / inconvenient if it was just a metaphor, but so what? What is this theory of truth as inconvenient / convenient?The Heretic said:
You say that scientific knowledge may not be the only knowledge we have, so let us in on the secret, as I'm sure many are dying to know.
You answer that yourself a few sentences further down....The Heretic said:
How do I know who to marry?
My point is that the certainty you have, OK, that I have, is through a common understanding of love, which enables a promise that really can last a lifetime without fear of untrustworthiness. Love, promises, lack of fear, these are not things you will learn about by applying the scientific method to life.The Heretic said:
I am slightly aghast with your next bit... "Mental illness" brought on by scientific detail? Not get out of bed u til you have confirmed you are awake? What on earth brought on this stuff? 
You seem to be mistaking normal, rational enquiry, with obsessive, compulsive disorder.
Your last part is correct. There is knowledge through argument, logic, (same thing in my book), experience, and experiment. They do, of course, have to have falsifiability, otherwise it is not knowledge, merely speculation, and or fantasy.
Slightly aghast? Do you actually talk like that? It's beautiful. Can you live a day where absolutely everything you do is subject to rigorous scientific testing please? Then tell us how it went. Test that you are really awake in the morning. What will the test be exactly? When you get out of bed, test first that the floor is as solid as it appears. And so on. Or alternatively, acknowledge that the scientific method, wonderful as it is, is of no conscious importance to us for most of the time. We know plenty without any conscious recourse to verifiability, we need another narrative to explain daily life and what we know of it. Unless of course you want to do that experiment and report back tomorrow. You seem to be mistaking normal, rational enquiry, with obsessive, compulsive disorder. Your last part is correct. There is knowledge through argument, logic, (same thing in my book), experience, and experiment. They do, of course, have to have falsifiability, otherwise it is not knowledge, merely speculation, and or fantasy.
The Heretic said:
PS, I would like you answer why talk of wafers and wine changing into blood and flesh is seemingly fine, and normal for a large proportion of the population, and yet a claim of bricks turning into Morris minor headlights, yet cunningly disguised as a brick, would be seen as nutty? Do you consider David Icke's claims to be perfectly fine, or 'nutty'.
Bread and wine into body and blood of christ is accepted as a consequence of accepting the incarnation, it is a specific case where the primary example of intervention, the incarnation, has repercussions for what we want to say about, in this case, the role of the priest, the meaning of christ's words of institution etc. Outside of this context, why would you appeal to the incarnation for saying something is not as it seems? I don't know what David Icke's claims are, feel free to spare me.
Did I answer it? I was not asking myself, I was asking you. Can you tell us what YOU claim to be other methods of gaining knowledge are? I would simply like you to point out what they are, and hopefully give examples.
Again, you are on about coping a single day without scientifically testing everything. Don't be bloody absurd. I refuse to answer ridiculous questions. Do you spend all your days thanking god that you woke up, and could move your arm, leg, eyebrows, chest muscles,meant muscles, that doors open, the tap works, that we have water, that the car starts, that we have air to breathe, and so on, and so forth, for every minute event in the day? No? Well, they are both absurd ideas.
Well, the questin was why a religious belief is perfectly fine to give plausibility to the implausible. You talk of incarnation, and intervention, and so on, but that is frankly meaningless. Why does a belief in religion mean that implausible claims are accepted without question? You can talk about meaningless terms about revelation, incarnation, etc, but that does not answer the question. If you really want to give merit to the role of a priest, why doesn't he start with a wafer, and wine, and it actually turn into a slice of human flesh, and blood. That would give him far more credit that it not turning into anything different at all, except in the minds of the gullible.
David Icke's claims are mental. Should he be given stock at all any more than your unfounded religious claims should be?
Hold on, John chapter 6 IS metaphorical....Jesus is not literally saying his body becomes bread and his blood becomes wine, that would be absurd.
If you actually read the text it follows the feeding of the five thousand, where everyone is fed, but they miss the point that Jesus is the true bread from heaven (the one to satisfy) Bread was the food of the day, and if you read carefully in John 6 v26, Jesus tells them they are only seeking Him for the food (miracles) he provides not for HIM, not just for Jesus, rather the things he does....
When Jesus talks about being the bread of life, he is saying I am all you need, the true bread from heaven that brings eternal satisfaction and brings life....
How you an intepret that literally as him saying I am literally a piece of bread is well, mental.
Are you also going to say that Jesus is Literally a gate, when he says he is a gate, or literally a shepherd.....no they are metaphorical, helping us to understand what he means through things of the day.....everyone would have understood the importance of a shepherd and the role of a shepherd in that culture.
If you actually read the text it follows the feeding of the five thousand, where everyone is fed, but they miss the point that Jesus is the true bread from heaven (the one to satisfy) Bread was the food of the day, and if you read carefully in John 6 v26, Jesus tells them they are only seeking Him for the food (miracles) he provides not for HIM, not just for Jesus, rather the things he does....
When Jesus talks about being the bread of life, he is saying I am all you need, the true bread from heaven that brings eternal satisfaction and brings life....
How you an intepret that literally as him saying I am literally a piece of bread is well, mental.
Are you also going to say that Jesus is Literally a gate, when he says he is a gate, or literally a shepherd.....no they are metaphorical, helping us to understand what he means through things of the day.....everyone would have understood the importance of a shepherd and the role of a shepherd in that culture.
Nice exchange.
I am seeing a lot of sectarian nonsense appearing on my fb feed. Not from friends but on news stories about the Rangers financial collapse and people commenting on it.
I actually find it hilarious (though depressing) how a person, in one badly written sentence can be so bigoted but, also incredibly hypocritical.
The usual thing coming out just now is accusing one side of being racist/bigoted/sectarian whilst commenting 'typical hun/fenian' depending on whose turn it is to dribble on the web.
I am seeing a lot of sectarian nonsense appearing on my fb feed. Not from friends but on news stories about the Rangers financial collapse and people commenting on it.
I actually find it hilarious (though depressing) how a person, in one badly written sentence can be so bigoted but, also incredibly hypocritical.
The usual thing coming out just now is accusing one side of being racist/bigoted/sectarian whilst commenting 'typical hun/fenian' depending on whose turn it is to dribble on the web.
I think ChrisGB needs a little singalong to help cheer him up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYDXrPy04sc (NSFW as there are one or two slightly naughty words in it).
ChrisGB said:
fluffnik said:
There being something is a necessary prerequisite of any question, there need not be a why.
When Bertrand Russell was asked How come there is anything at all rather than nothing? he said You can't ask that. Hegel thought the great question was Why is there anything? Wittgenstein said that THAT the universe is, is the marvelous thing, not how it is.
We do not currently fully understand the origin of our Universe.
We do not and quite possibly cannot know what instantiated our Universe.
We can speculate as to whether whatever instantiated our Universe had a concious purpose but it seems unlikely.
I know that the Universe in concious and self aware because I am, as it would seem are a great many of my fellow beings.
It seems likely that the same physical processes that gave rise to self aware consciousness here will have done so in many of the other places where similar conditions pertain.
There are many unanswered questions out there but that does not mean we need anything supernatural...
fluffnik said:
I don't in any way accept that "God" sidesteps the infinite recursion problem. I just don't see any reason whatsoever that I should.
If I ask How come anything instead of nothing, then any answer about which I could also ask How come that answer instead of nothing, is not really the answer. In other words, I think you can say with absolute confidence that whatever the answer to the How come question is, that answer could not be subject to any regression.fluffnik said:
Oh, and what is revelation?
Revelation is the belief that the God deduced from negative theology has communicated something about himself. So for example through philosophy we can argue that what we call God is that perfectly simple which creates and maintains all in being and is being itself, and read in Exodus 3, part of what Christians take as revelation, that the Christian God's name is "I am who am", "I am what I am" and "I am the one who is". I'm sure you knew this word, why are you asking me? (This isn't meant to be a gripe, I'm happy to give an answer).
bikemonster said:
Once you define god as the most simple thing that can be imagined, you arrive straight back at the question of "who moved the mover" because you have to accept the most simple thing creating more complex things.
Describing god as the simplest thing that you can conceive of is pure woo, like the sound of one hand clapping. Pure mental navel gazing.
Unless you are aware of distinctions between kinds of simplicity and kinds of complexity, as Dawkins isn't in the Williams Kenny Dawkins discussion on youtube, though he is put right by mainly Kenny.Describing god as the simplest thing that you can conceive of is pure woo, like the sound of one hand clapping. Pure mental navel gazing.
The phrase about simplest thing is not what I said, I steered clear of suggesting thing. The phrase was meant to say something about how odd whatever we call God is. It is not just odd like the boundaries of science are odd, it is almost inconceivably odd.
fluffnik said:
ChrisGB said:
fluffnik said:
Faithful Catholics will not seek gay marriage or (assisted) suicide in the face of illness, no-one else has any duty to follow Church doctrine and should not have it foisted upon them.
It would seem to me a very odd scene if these loved ones were telling you they were going to die in a suicide pact and you just sitting there nodding saying I am gutted but it's your choice. A doctrine of total non-interference would be indistinguishable from a doctrine of total neglect.I'm a proper liberal, me. I don't think autonomous beings have any right to boss other autonomous beings about in a general case.
ChrisGB said:
So a doctrine or law that forbids say men from having several wives in order to protect the equality and dignity of women is in fact me forcing my views through legislation?
I have been in both polygamous and polyandrous relationships, it's honesty and equality of regard which protects the equality and dignity of women and men, not the law.I'm firmly of the opinion that the foundation of most disfunctional sexuality is religious in origin, if we all f
ked on first acquaintance life would be soooooo much simpler... 
ChrisGB said:
Can there ever be a sense in which legislation is not somebody's view? Forcing through legislation for assisted suicide affects everyone, because it then becomes the norm in society that what is legal becomes what is morally acceptable, and so life is cheapened. We as a culture now say that a life where there is pain is not worth living as much as a life without pain. A doctor who previously swore to heal must now be almost prepared to kill.
All legislation is someone's (prejudiced) view, that's why we should have as little as possible.I regard all autonomous self aware people as equal in and by right; who has the right to force one such to remain in a life they can no longer thole?
No-one need ever assist except as an act of love.
ChrisGB said:
Once the idea that life is sacred is abandoned, what makes any life worth protecting?
I am handicapped as a result of my own shabby motorcycling but I love my life and would protect it fiercely if threatened....yet I can foresee situations where I might want to leave it, mainly involving (further) loss of autonomy...
My point about law is that it shapes morality. People mistakenly often think that what is allowed in law must be morally acceptable. Think of Nuremberg, I was just following orders - what I did was completely legal, etc. except that no, there is another standard that trumps the law, Nuremberg shows. I don't imagine you disagree here.
But your final point sort of proves mine - your will to live depends on your inclination towards life, not on a moral absolute that tells you life is a gift and it ends when it naturally ends, come what may. So once you are, heaven forbid, in a state where you would be easy to manipulate, your continued living will just be, if euthanasia laws are relaxed further, at the whim of others.
And to make it clear, what your love of autonomy lacks is any sense of the common good. There are things an individual may do, for example choose to binge on chocolate, that will render him more of a burden to society than a force for good through his diabetes and obesity than if he hadn't. In the strict espousal of maximum negative liberty I think you subscribe to, there can be no mechanism to say this is bad behaviour needing to be avoided. If I have recreational sex with a consenting partner and we are completely honest and free of other attachments that place obligations on us, and then we get pregnant, the resulting abortion is against the common good in refusing to allow any consent to the nascent autonomous individual desirous of its maximum wotsit.
TheHeretic said:
ChrisGB said:
Rather than do anything? Caring for someone suffering is not doing anything? I don't follow.
I talk of people born with handicaps worthy of being cared for and you talk of shooting people? In what way are these equivalents?
But if a loved one was shot, what would you do with them? How would a life of devoted care for them change you? How would a life begrudging the burden of having to care for them embitter you? I don't think what I said is esoteric, though I guess that you reacted violently against just because it was NT.
Come on Chris, you can do better than that. It is plainly obvious what I was talking about in my response. I was in no way condemning people for caring for loved ones and you know it. You are being very disingenuous with your response here. I talk of people born with handicaps worthy of being cared for and you talk of shooting people? In what way are these equivalents?
But if a loved one was shot, what would you do with them? How would a life of devoted care for them change you? How would a life begrudging the burden of having to care for them embitter you? I don't think what I said is esoteric, though I guess that you reacted violently against just because it was NT.
I was talking about people suffering for the "glory of God, as you put it. Now care to try and answer the question again, honestly?
When I say I don't follow, it is because I have read your post and don't understand it. If it was plainly obvious, I wouldn't say I don't follow, I am not here to waste my time.
ChrisGB said:
The quote in the original presents a person suffering with a handicap. Are we to condemn the parents, the grandparents, we might add genes, society, the individual for their bad choices, or whatever for this, as has often been the custom and often still is, or are we to care and in so doing be transformed by the constraints that this care puts upon us in allowing us little free time, no career, a life financially poorer than we would be otherwise etc. By caring, we learn something about God, Jesus is saying, and reveal something of him to others. This is the sense of the text.
When I say I don't follow, it is because I have read your post and don't understand it. If it was plainly obvious, I wouldn't say I don't follow, I am not here to waste my time.
Excuse me if I don't accuse you of talking bullcrap. Here is your original post I was responding to;When I say I don't follow, it is because I have read your post and don't understand it. If it was plainly obvious, I wouldn't say I don't follow, I am not here to waste my time.
Chris said:
This is what the Bible says - when Jesus is asked if a person with a handicap has that handicap because his parents have sinned, Jesus says no, but so that the glory of God can be revealed - in other words the true love that would be daily care or provision of daily care is a beautiful thing, and assisted suicide / old people as a burden etc is a road to dealing with people as objects for one's own convenience, not as a way for them to know they are loved and you to learn love.
...so please do not try to be disingenuous and pretend I am condemning anyone for looking after a loved one. It is an utterly ridiculous thing to say, and you know it. I was responding to your claim that someone is handicapped so the glory of God can be seen. I've even bolded it for you. So, as I said, bad things happen to people, they suffer, and struggle through their lives so they can see the glory of God? If it wasn't for religion seeping through your brain, you would see the ridiculous nature of that idea. Jesus loves us... Yeah right.
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff