Atheism, 21st century-style. New? Militant?

[YesNo]

Neither premise assumes the conclusion, because it is possible that the Bible is NOT the Word of God, and therefore (even given premise one) is NOT the proper arbiter of moral rules.

The Bible is not the word of God anymore than our posts in this thread are. However, I suspect that the original writers wanted their contemporaries to think what they wrote was the word of God. They would likely be amused that some of us still do.

I find it more interesting to ask who wrote the earliest texts of the Bible and why. These are the texts in Genesis, written by J, and the historical texts in Samuel and Kings written by the Court Historian. They were written around the time of Solomon, almost 3000 years ago.

The ideas that I find most appealing at the moment come from two sources, the literary critic, Harold Bloom, and the historian, Baruch Halpern.

Bloom suggests that J was female. Reading Genesis in that way, I would have to agree it sounds like a female voice. This woman must have been powerful in Solomon's court and so he identifies her with Bathsheba. The idea of Bathsheba being the author leads one to Halpern's study to find out why she might have written Genesis.

Halpern's study of Samuel and Kings in David's Secret Demons claims that these texts were written to encourage people to believe that Solomon was actually David's son and the legitimate heir when in fact he was not. What Solomon did was staged a military coup with the help of his mother and Nathan inside David's court. He made sure of his success by wiping out David's blood line and the Court Historian (Nathan?) and his mother, Bathsheba, created the history and stories to prop up his reign.

So these earliest texts were not really religious texts, but a form of early propaganda using God as needed to encourage belief and allegiance to the current rulers.

[Ecurb]

The Bible is not the word of God anymore than our posts in this thread are. .

Are you sure? What an "inspired" post! It almost seems like.... a revelation!

My guess: the authors of the Bible had a great many purposes and motivations. In addition, the motives of the authors are not of primary importance to the value of the text.

[Rores28]

Nah.



Are you suggesting qualia are not part of the material universe?

If so, what proposed mechanism do you use for their creation/existence?

Much as I'm no Dennett fan, his description of qualia as: "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us." is the one I stick with.

Perception takes place in the brain.

1) What I am suggesting is all that I've said in my previous post. I'm not playing with the terms material and immaterial. The point of words as categories is to enhance understanding, in this case because the words are emotionally charged and in my opinion somewhat nebulous I think they only hinder it. There is something strange about qualia as compared to most other "things."

2) The most direct as yet observable mechanism is neuronal patterns.

3) I haven't actually read a Dennet book in full but I am obliquely familiar with his position. I just don't see how this quote resolves anything.

4) This sentence is too simplistic. Perception seems to arise from neuronal activity, specifically large scale impulse patterns in neural networks. But the activity is not the qualia. The neural activity isn't green and it isn't sad and it isn't hungry. Nor would we say that greeness we experience is a pattern. It is just green.

Also I've been wondering what that thing in your avatar was.... Is it photoshopped or did you actually physically construct a spaghetti monster?

[Rores28]

This is getting to be a right pain in the but. Science can not explain the big bang and Theology can not explain anything. How about we just don't know.

The problem is that Christianity to an extent believes it can explain reality (all powerful mysterious ways etc...). Whereas science knows it is only every slowly whittling away at a better approximation of it. You've no doubt heard the dictum "Science creates more questions than it answers."

The other problem is that out of religion springs some arbitrary and frankly quite harmful prescriptions which have genuine sway in public policy.. abortion probably being the most salient. The discussion then seeks to (from the non-theist perspective) to attack the problem and I suppose convert the dogmatist to the rationalist.

[Rores28]

You are absolutely right, but then again...with a miraculous creation what needs to be explained? God has powers beyond our comprehension. How can mere mortals understand the beginning of the universe?

God. God needs to be explained, as already voiced numerous times on this thread.

[AuntShecky]

This is getting to be a right pain in the but. Science can not explain the big bang and Theology can not explain anything. How about we just don't know.

You're right about the "right pain in the but(t)," but you're also right when you say "we just don't know."

Professor Mikio Kaku, an expert in string theory, as well as the star of the Science Channel, said as much, adding that 100 years in the future we still won't know.

[QUOTE=Rores28;996029]The problem is that Christianity to an extent believes it can explain reality (all powerful mysterious ways etc...). Whereas science knows it is only every slowly whittling away at a better approximation of it. You've no doubt heard the dictum "Science creates more questions than it answers."QUOTE]

More likely it proves what G.K. Chesterton said that "the problem with Christianity is not that it's been tried and found lacking, but that it's found difficult and never been tried."

[The Atheist]

This is getting to be a right pain in the but.

As it has been for all modern human history.

Science can not explain the big bang...

Maybe. Enough Euros to save the Irish economy are being spent to find out, so anything's possible.

... and Theology can not explain anything. How about we just don't know.

Eh? You can't go around saying you don't know!

Agnosticism empowers the Mrs Jocky's of the world.

(But don't tell her I said that!)

But if it happened once, it probably happened many times in the past.

Which would make it not unique in any way, wouldn't it?

The "militant" atheists are irritating and agressive, but they fill a purpose, and that purpose is keeping the fundies from getting too much steam.

Brilliantly put.

So these earliest texts were not really religious texts, but a form of early propaganda using God as needed to encourage belief and allegiance to the current rulers.

Plus ce change...

1) What I am suggesting is all that I've said in my previous post. I'm not playing with the terms material and immaterial. The point of words as categories is to enhance understanding, in this case because the words are emotionally charged and in my opinion somewhat nebulous I think they only hinder it. There is something strange about qualia as compared to most other "things."

Trouble is, if you don't categorise it as either material or non-material, you've created a whole new category.

Why do you think qualia differ from any other thought pattern? Animals see and use colour, so it isn't even as though the idea relates solely to humans. I think the whole qualia argument is a philosphical red herring; thoughts, qualia, memes* - call them what you will - are the result of chemical & electrical processes in the brain in response to sensory input.

I don't find qualia any stranger than thoughts which enable someone to commit murder.

People like Dean Radin and the Parapsychological Institute will jump all over anything which is a genuine scientific field that admits to something - anything - being non-material, so not classifying qualia becomes a problem.

As long as materialism rules, pseudoscientists find funding hard to get, which I think is a good thing. If we allow non-material abstracts into hard science, we're throwing away the key. All qualia really show is that we cannot examine a thought once it's been created by the brain.

One part of me says, why the hell would we want to anyway?



*I know they're not all the same, but they're in the same "group".

2) The most direct as yet observable mechanism is neuronal patterns.

Which would be material.

3) I haven't actually read a Dennet book in full but I am obliquely familiar with his position. I just don't see how this quote resolves anything.

It's not a resolution, just a stick in the sand so we're talking about the same thing.

4) This sentence is too simplistic. Perception seems to arise from neuronal activity, specifically large scale impulse patterns in neural networks. But the activity is not the qualia. The neural activity isn't green and it isn't sad and it isn't hungry. Nor would we say that greeness we experience is a pattern. It is just green.

That doesn't bear any concerns for me. It boils down to people having individual perception. All you're saying is, like a TV picture, we can see it, but cannot touch or capture it. It's just there, even though it doesn't physically exist, it's just a pattern in the LCD/plasma array.

Also I've been wondering what that thing in your avatar was.... Is it photoshopped or did you actually physically construct a spaghetti monster?

That's the genuine article, a spontaneously-created FSM! Rainy day work.

[Rores28]

Trouble is, if you don't categorise it as either material or non-material, you've created a whole new category.

Why do you think qualia differ from any other thought pattern?

Using something like green is just a simple example. Thought patterns hold the same intrigue for me, or rather the "experience of our thought patterns."

Animals see and use colour, so it isn't even as though the idea relates solely to humans.

Whether or not experience or qualia is relegated solely to the human sphere doesn't make the existence less interesting to me.

I think the whole qualia argument is a philosphical red herring; thoughts, qualia, memes* - call them what you will - are the result of chemical & electrical processes in the brain in response to sensory input.

I agree though that they a result of such processes. This doesn't preclude me from finding qualia themselves interesting. I may make you a painting of a spaghetti monster, whose most direct result is the motion of my hand and brush, but just because the motion of hand and brush is not interesting does not mean that the painting won't be.

I don't find qualia any stranger than thoughts which enable someone to commit murder.

Nor do I. I find both equally strange.

People like Dean Radin and the Parapsychological Institute will jump all over anything which is a genuine scientific field that admits to something - anything - being non-material, so not classifying qualia becomes a problem.

As long as materialism rules, pseudoscientists find funding hard to get, which I think is a good thing. If we allow non-material abstracts into hard science, we're throwing away the key. All qualia really show is that we cannot examine a thought once it's been created by the brain.

I can see this idea being taken advantage of perhaps for arguments sake, but I don't see anyone providing money for this kind of research. There is just as yet, no technology, or scientific framework by which to evaluate it. Although people are pretty idiotic..

That doesn't bear any concerns for me. It boils down to people having individual perception. All you're saying is, like a TV picture, we can see it, but cannot touch or capture it. It's just there, even though it doesn't physically exist, it's just a pattern in the LCD/plasma array.

I think this is really where we primarily disagree. I find this very interesting, you do not.

That's the genuine article, a spontaneously-created FSM! Rainy day work.

That is some committed atheism.

[OrphanPip]

All Moral rules derived from God are correct
The moral rules in the Bible are derived from God

therefore, the moral rules in the bible are correct.

Fine if we want to accept this conception as formally logical, it doesn't follow from this conception that we have access to the truth of the moral rules in the Bible, even if we accepted both highly tenuous premises.

The conclusion that the moral rules in the Bible are correct does not imply that we can properly interpret them or that the Bible actually is a useful tool of moral guidance.

Are you sure? What an "inspired" post! It almost seems like.... a revelation!

My guess: the authors of the Bible had a great many purposes and motivations. In addition, the motives of the authors are not of primary importance to the value of the text.

Unless someone is taking the position that the text should be used as a prescriptive guide that people should be forcefully coerced into following because it is infallible and its purpose direct and obvious.

[Ecurb]

We've finally reached an agreement, OrphanPip!

By the way, I remembered a fun New Yorker Review of Hitchens' book, from a couple of years ago. Here it is:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critic...books_gottlieb

[The Atheist]

I agree though that they a result of such processes. This doesn't preclude me from finding qualia themselves interesting.

I find the idea interesting enough, my only concern is that qualia aren't put into the non-material basket.

I can see this idea being taken advantage of perhaps for arguments sake, but I don't see anyone providing money for this kind of research. There is just as yet, no technology, or scientific framework by which to evaluate it. Although people are pretty idiotic..

Unfortunately, actual universities do provide funding for idiotic groups like the Parapsychological Institute, which is the problem. If they get any encouragement that non-material things exist, they'll be in with their hands out.

That is some committed atheism.

Oh, plenty of people have said I should be committed!

[BienvenuJDC]

God. God needs to be explained, as already voiced numerous times on this thread.

It is only your opinion that God needs to be explained. How can finite minds explain an Infinite Being? How ignorant of a comment.

[MarkBastable]

It is only your opinion that God needs to be explained. How can finite minds explain an Infinite Being? How ignorant of a comment.

Then again, it is only your opinion that God is an Infinite Being.

[MystyrMystyry]

Science can not explain the big bang and Theology can not explain anything. How about we just don't know.

Science can and has explained the Big Bang beyond adequately.

Why bother saying 'I don't know' when there's interesting information at the touch of your fingertips?

And it's really easy to understand too:


In the very beginning the Universe was a very small very hot ball of pure energy - the stuff that atoms and elecrtricity and and light and gamma radiation and x-rays and magnetism and everything compressed so tightly under the weight of itself that it couldn't move

Energy doesn't naturally like to be compressed into this state and so a brief nanosecond after it found itself like this it exploded. The biggest explosion the Universe had ever seen.

Except for the explosion that happened about a bazillion trillion (just pick a really big number) aeons before that produced the previous Universe.

You heard right - the Previous Universe.

See, what happens is every time the plasma ball explodes (Big Bang) it at first expands exponentially (really fast) and creates almost infinitillium simple hydrogen and helium atoms that scatter all over the place, some (megagazillions) of these atoms cluster together (a natural state of matter within a vaccuum) to form huge gas clouds then very dense gas clouds, then very large gas planets and then when the pressure is too great they self combust.

But the matter and left over energy from the Big Bang keeps moving apart from itself relative to the power of the attraction (gravity), regardless how many suns are formed, explosions occur and how many planets and galaxies appear.

But the energy from the Big Bang is finite and the force which impels the Universe to expand, eventually will cease, and slowly slowly slowly everything will begin to attract everything else back toward the central hub and ultimately into a very small very hot ball of pure energy... ...

[JuniperWoolf]

Let's not pretend that the big bang is a simple and irrefutable theory, it isn't. It's a complex and barely gestated theory for which evidence is just starting to be accumulated. We don't even really know what matter is yet, how can you say that the beginning of the universe is "really easy to understand?" On top of that, given what you've described the obvious next question is "how did things get like that - what started it, and what came before?" (not to mention the dozens of other questions that occur to pretty much every science undergrad who studies physics at some point).