The problem is that the article makes some critical mistakes. First, it cites a study that is not at all about what the article discusses, rather it is a discussion of Environmental constraints on copper production at a specific mine in the Levant. http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/pdfplus/
1) Initially, I was concerned with his dismissal of the earlier camel bones as "wild," but this turns out to be yet another example of terrible scientific reporting. Rather what the professor notes is that older examples of camel bones tend to be in midden (trash) mounds which suggests possible predation by humans, which is unlikely if this is a trade or pack animal (more on my objection to the pack animal assumption later). The NYT writer mistakes this phrase for suggesting they are wild.
2) His data is confined to just a few number of sites, with all the dating coming from a single site of habitual habitation (a copper mine). That site doesn't have any human habitation around the time of the patriarchs so it seems an odd evidence source for whether or not they had camels. If that was a valid conclusion, we could well argue that humans didn't exist in the levant around that time period either.
3) The patriarchs he takes issue with (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) lived in quite a few regions, and only in the levant itself during the times proceeding the famine in egypt (not exactly a bountiful time). Most of the Abraham story comes from a region near northern Iraq and so whether or not camels are present in the Levant is more of a side issue to whether or not Genesis is accurately depicting this story.
4) This copper mine site is a "high place," in Hebrew Har. The high places were where the Israelites tended to form settlements during the Judges and Kings period because of their defensibility. They are notoriously hard to live on and would not have been good locations for nomadic herders like Abraham or Isaac. Those peoples tended to live in the lower regions of canaan where grass was more abundant and water available.
5) As I just mentioned, most of the earliest patriarchs were nomadic herders. Nomads are infamous for not leaving large archeological footprints (especially if you are looking a place they probably didn't frequent like a Har in the Israeli wilderness) and so archeologists are usually very reluctant to make any definitive conclusions about them based on sparse archeological evidence. If we were to confine ourselves to archeology there would be virtually no record of the existence of Bedouins, however we can see them if you travel to the right regions.
6) Given the location objection noted above the timeline he proposes seems to hold no objection. Generally it agreed that Abraham was around sometime around 2100BC (he also proposes that time period in his paper). He was generally known to have lived in the vicinity of Ur (southern Iraq) and spent a lot of time near Ninevah (northern Iraq). Both of these cities are known to have extensive trade and cultural exchange with the Arabian Peninsula (where camels were domesticated no later than 3000BC). Now we can judge the spread of the camel by noting that it is present in Shar-i Sokhta in 2600BC. That city is in the eastern edge of present day Iran with Ur between it and Arabia. That means that camels must have been present in Ur prior to 2600BC, 500 years before Abraham is there.
7) The professor bases his levant timeline on the presence of trade routes. I have two objections to that. First, it seems to presume his conclusion since the trade routes could not have developed until after the Patriarchs had settlements large enough to warrant trade. Second, the use of camels far precedes their use as pack animals in trade. Camels were used in much the same manner as sheep (and still are) in nomadic groups nearly a millenia before their use in trade routes by the Egyptians. This second objection is critical to understanding why his evidence set is so odd. If I am looking for evidence of the domestication of dogs in America, I wouldn't go to an airport, find that dogs are first present in the 1990s as drug sniffing animals and then conclude dogs were first domesticated in the US in the 1990s.
As I said in dispute and as another poster already mentioned, this is a non-factual argument.
In the U.S., firearms are far, far more commonly used to prevent crime than to commit it. Even if we stipulate that prohibition works (historically it hasn't) that only means you are enabling the strong vs the weak. Is that the society we want to live in? Where a woman can't own a firearm to stop a rapist? http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
This just shows a complete lack of factual accuracy. Citizens cannot buy "machine guns" which are large caliber automatic rifles. They can buy small caliber semi-automatic and larger caliber semi-automatic rifles, commonly called "assault rifles" and "hunting rifles," but neither of those are "machine guns" in any meaningful sense.
Further, lets say we eliminated not just all assault weapons, but tall rifles. Lets even stipulate that the banning of these weapons would be effective (how well has that worked out for marijuana or alcohol?).
You realize that these weapons are rarely used in crimes right? That on the order of 10 to 1, these weapons are used to prevent crime. http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp
We should remember that the ethnic makeup of that region 2000 years ago was quite different. The darker skinned arab genes wouldn't make a major appearance for quite a while. Rather, Jesus probably looked something like a modern day Serbian (though with dark eyes and curly hair).
But it wouldn't imply that you would be free from seeing anyone drinking a soda in public right? Isn't that more closely what is meant by "freedom from religion?"
I think we need to be careful in what we argue is "freedom from religion." It doesn't mean that you are free not to follow a religion, it traditionally means that you are free from any religious activities in the public sphere (no prayers at a school, even if not school sponsored for example).
Finally, even if we accepted your definition, that wouldn't mean they are equivalent, but rather that the latter is a variant under the former.
Actually Hell is not in Judaism, it was never mentioned anywhere other than the New Testament.
This is quite commonly referenced on the Internet today, however it isn't accurate. The confusion arises from the Torahs' use of Sheol solely to refer to the afterlife. All souls enter Sheol after their death, but that doesn't mean their existence there is equal or similar.
Both in the Torah and in the Talmud, Sheol is divided in how people will experience their death. God is described in Psalms as both a comforter to those in Sheol who love Him and as being cut off from the unrighteous. Sheol, in Hebrew, has linguistic variances based upon this usage, indicating the Israelites understood, or at least meant to imply, that there is a difference in state for various souls within Sheol.
Hell is described in the bible as so:
Matthew 13:50 “furnace of fire…weeping and gnashing of teeth”
Mark 9:48 “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched”
This is what happens when you interpret verses out of context. Both verses are part of large parables and their explanations. It doesn't make sense to take words or individual phrases as literal in the midst of a parable.
Further, Jesus (in Mark) is quoting Isiah, giving further problems to your first claim above.
If you are a Christian and you truly believe the bible to be the word of God, than why doesnt it simply describe hell as a place where one shall be seperated from God? Why does it instead depict Hell as eternal torment?
But it does, both in the verses you reference above, and in others. In all those parables there are some common themes. One is that those that reject the teachings are "cast out" or "separated." Jesus refers to judgement as a separation on virtually all occasions, a separation apart from the reward offered by the various parable characters.
How come you know more about your holy book than the billions of old age philosophers like Martin Luther who studied and lived by this stuff?
Can you support that that was their view? I think it is more likely that you are falling victim to the popular culture notion of their view. You'll notice that both Luther and Aquinas argued that Hell was a separation from God: http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/
I should have figured this is where you were coming from, I am simply arguing against the "infinte pain" concept of hell, I don't have much problems with that alternative, other than the fact that people are getting rewarded for blind faith which I don't consider to be virtue at all.
Fair enough, I think we would need to understand the mechanism of that "pain" however. I can have pain out of my own negligence, the negligence of others or even malicious intent. The nature of that pain and suffering isn't the latter in the Judeo-Christian theological world though, it is the former.
But lets say we were arguing about another religion, Islam, for example, where it does appear to be the latter. Is that inconsistent with Allah being "good?" (Not that I'm arguing Allah is doctrinally good here) I'm not sure it necessarily does. The question still comes down to a matter of appropriateness. One the one side of the scale we have "infinite pain for infinitely long" and on the other side of the scale "rejecting the Creator of all things."
To judge the balance of those two we have several possible mechanisms:
a) personal subjective: Person A feels they are balanced, person B does not. This mechanism seems unsatisfactory to me as it equates justice to a matter of taste and results in us clearly having no resolution. However, given that, for the sake of this argument, Allah is the supreme deity of the universe, his subjective view of the balance would seem to be more relevant than any of ours.
b) Objective measure: We would need to agree to some metric with which to compare.
Neither of these mechanisms seems to provide a clear path towards this clearly being "too harsh," rather one of them suggests that Allah views it as just from his provident point of view.
First, I still want to point out that we are operating under the assumption that Hell is meant as a punishment rather than a natural consequence. We still have no actual evidence to support that as the intent.
How does infinite pain for infinite time compensate anyone?
Nor did I make the argument that it was specifically either of those. My main point was to show that your assumption that punishment is only to stop re-occurrence was inaccurate. Hence, we would need to establish all possible justifications for punishment and then remove them in order to establish this as unnecessary.
I've seen no justification for the concept of Hell as "infinite pain" here, but sufficed to say it isn't an optimal condition. If we label Hell generally as "not heaven" ie "not reward" we can see a very logical reason for Hell. It is certainly a logical conclusion that someone who chooses to reject the morality issued by the Creator of the universe should receive the benefit for accepting that morality.
Even if we consider this on a base transaction level the outcome makes sense. If I offer $100 for someone to write an essay and they don't, what warrant do they have to claim the $100? The fact that that person lives without that reward for eternity is hardly an unjust consequence.
I've went over this, if this were the case, it would be SIGNIFICANTLY more successful in it's goal if god were to rather reveal himself.
Why? I see no reason to accept this. Drawing and quartering was horrific in punishment, as was crucifixion, neither punishment was fool proof. Both saw people commit crimes in full knowledge of the outcome of that crime.
A certain degree of punishment either will maintain order or it won't
In this scenario, what constitutes "order?" What precisely would constitute "maintaining order?" Would it be 100% of people believing in God? 0 Sins? What? And how would you account for the violations of law now? No one doubts the law's existence, they still violate it.
You do when you use the term "omnipotent". When you use the term "all-powerful" or "Omnipotent" you are claiming just that.
Not at all, that is your inference, not the actual philosophic or traditional meaning of that term, as I pointed out in my last response.
Then he is lacking power in certain scenarios, making him not all powerful. If you say god can't do X, then you are saying god lacks the power to do X, which means god lacks power in a certain conditions, which means god doesn't possess all power.
This is a non sequitor. God cannot be said to not possess a power that doesn't exist. The powers you are referring to are self-contradictary and are therefore impossible to possess. It would be like saying that the universe has to contain a married bachelor because the universe contains all that exists.
And nothing in your explanation resolves the problem I stated before. IE if omnipotent means anything, possible or not, then omnipotence is internally inconsistent and therefore an incoherent term.
Exactly which means god should have the power to do just about anything. Just about anything, that is the key phrase, not "can do anything." Nothing about omnipotence has ever required that it be able to do the logically impossible.
I'm not arguing that all-powerful necessarily means infinite power, but all-powerful means having all the power.
And in what sense does the power to make a married bachelor exist so that God can possess it?
Or to apply to your logic question, in what sense does God have the ability to change His nature? Rationality is a trait of God, so in the sense of what you are arguing, God would have to be able to be both rational and non-rational.
However to say that this world can't be any better than it is, does imply that you know it is the best it could possibly be. There is evidence suggesting that it could be better,
Well I should point out that I didn't say it was patently clear that that is the case, only that the objection that the world could be better is an uncertain one to make.
I don't see any evidence that it could be better. What specifically could be changed to make it so?
Like in my last response, why I perceive it as harsh, is it is ultimately pointless and accomplishes nothing...The point of punishment is to discourage something
I think this is an unwarranted conclusion for two reasons.
1) Punishments are not necessarily designed only in a pro-active discouragement mode. Some are designed to be a post-action reparation or removal of benefit from the guilty. Some fines are meant that way, as are virtually all civil punishments. They attempt to either compensate the harmed or to remove benefit achieved from the activity in question.
2) Further, it could well be a deterrent rather than an attempt to stop recidivism. In that sense it could well serve to "discourage" something.
Is it more than what is necessary to maintain order? I certainly think so...
That would seem to be a subjectivist fallacy. You feel it is unnecessary, they did not. If we are relegating the question to a matter of preference or indeed taste, it would seem that we could also relegate the decision to God as well. Once we make this a matter of subjective argument, your point must be ceded because the question of punishment is subject to the argument of who should get to determine punishment. Given God's status as creator of all things (in this argument), it would seem His determination would trump others.
Actually it does, because being omnipotent is synonymous with all powerful, omni meaning all, and potent meaning powerful. With that, he has power over everything, even logic, if he doesn't have power over logic, then he is not all powerful, just VERY powerful.
Strawman fallacy, theists do not argue that God is powerful in this manner. The Jewish and Christian Bible do not claim He is capable of this type of action.
Even if we were to accept your literalist interpretation of that word (rather than its contextual definition), it still does not argue that God is capable of doing anything at all that he wishes. Only that He has "all" power (omni meaning all as you point out). I can own all copies of a rare baseball card, that doesn't mean that I therefore own an infinite number of them either. I only own those which exist. Likewise God being omnipotent means that He has all power, not "infinite" power, all existent powers.
Why does this need to be so? Because otherwise the concept of omnipotent is meaningless as it is self contradictory. God has both the power to make a rock to heavy to move and the power to move it. That understanding of "omnipotence" is incoherent and as such not a valid concept to call into being.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/
Rather, as we see in the link here, God has generally been well understood as having all powers that are actualizable, not all powers conceivable.
I know that the world could be better than what it already is
This is a pretty strong claim to be made here. The world has emergent properties, and as such it is definitionally impossible for you to understand the full ramifications of that action. What you mean is that you don't know of anything bad that would happen as a first order effect. You might be able to puzzle out some of the second order effects, but the third, fourth, fifth and so on are far outside our ability to accurately predict.
So while it might seem that it would be better if God stopped some action, it is virtually impossible to say so with any real certainty. It reminds me of any of the Sci-fi tropes about time travel, stepping on the smallest lizard changes the world, kinda thing.
First, good response Zephyr. Thanks for replying.
I think you have several points that require a response:
The debate title, says "Is being sent to hell because you're not Christian harsh?", this to me seems to mean intentionally sending people to hell for not being Christian, not about people going to hell as a consequence in cause and effect.
Lets assume for a minute that that is the OP's position. Why exactly is that punishment "too harsh?" What about it objectively argues that it is disproportionally bad given the offense?
I understand that it might appear that way to some, and not appear that way to others, but that seems like a bad metric to use. Drawing and quartering didn't seem to harsh for some given the offense of political slander at one point. So what can we use to objectively argue that it is far too excessive given the action?
Besides if the Christian god is omnipotent, and omniscient, then god should be perfectly capable of not having people go to hell for not believing in Christianity
Being omnipotent does not mean that God can do anything. Rather it means He can do anything that is logically possible. He can't create a married bachelor for example.
Given that, I don't see any reason to believe that God could create a system where good is maximized, but where this consequence is absent. I mean to say that your position appeals to the possibility that such a world is possible where we have as much good as we have in our current world and where the consequence of Hell is absent. I don't see any reasoning to support that such a world is possible and the burden of support would seem to be on you given your appeal to it.
Jace beat me to this argument, good response. Pensions are contracts like every other engagement the city has undertaken. Part of contracting is counter-party risk. I don't offer a loan to a drug addict because the risk of non-payment is high. If a company goes out of business the labor contracts are voided, the entity (the company) you contracted with no longer exists.
This situation is extremely similar to a person buying a city bond. Lets say a retiree buys a city municipal bond in order to get an income stream. That city goes bankrupt, does the retiree still get the income stream back? Of course not. The same applies here, workers traded a portion of their "wealth" (their labor) for a promise of a future income stream. They invested in a party with significant risk (a city run by people unwilling to act fiscally responsible) and that risk didn't pan out.
That assumption is not necessarily true. Often "punishment" is the natural consequence of an action, not necessarily an outside force. That too is the view of Hell traditionally in Christianity and Judaism. A natural separation from the holy that is the result of sin.
We could well rephrase your rebuttal to say:
"Who else!!! What do u think? [chickens] just randomly appeared from nowhere?"
What did the chicken that laid your egg hatch from? Or did she spontaneously become a chicken?
1) this is all a case of special pleading, once again, even if I granted to you that the Universe had to be created, why does it have to be a being?
Two things, first, the point you reference is not special pleading fallacy. If you were correct it would be a Non Sequitor or Does not Follow fallacy.
Two, I've pointed out why it must be a being in another thread, but to restate:
The Cosmological Argument:
P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe therefore as a cause.
Premise 1
This is generally considered a relatively fundamental law of causation [1]. Changes in state (going from not existing to existing) require causation. We should consider that any effect that lacks a cause becomes, by definition "necessary." And self sufficient effects cannot, by definition "begin."
In the past, some have sought to object to this premise by forwarding different aspects of Quantum Mechanics. These fail however because the causal mechanism still exists, it is the quantum wave function [2]. The confusion often arises because we confuse a probabilistic cause for no cause at all. If there was a random number generator that killed a cat on odd numbers, we wouldn't say that the cat's death was uncaused.
Premise 2
This premise also is generally scientifically accepted. Inflationary cosmology dictates that the universe began from a near singularity[3]. I think it is important here to point out that time is a physical dimension of our universe, just like the other dimensions[4]. Just as they expanded from a singularity, so did the temporal dimension of our universe. This necessitates a beginning of the universe when the temporal dimension was a singularity as well.
Objections to this premise are usually in the form of alternative hypotheses about our current universe. Historically, the steady state universe was used. That is to say, it was argued until recently that the universe is eternal, that it had always been. This is problematic for several reasons. Primary amongst them is the evidence indicating the universe is expanding. It is for this reason that virtually no cosmologist holds to steady state theory today. The historic objection also still holds. If the universe was eternal, we would expect that all the stars and galaxies to have burned out by now. If there is an infinite past, an infinite amount of time would already have occurred, which is far greater than the possible time limit on all the fission of all the matter in the universe.
The first modification of this theory to deal with the expansion of the universe came with the cyclic model. In which the universe expands, collapses and expands again. This theory however fails because it also cannot recede into the infinite past. Entropy between cycles would build up causing later cycles to be high entropy states and prohibit matter and star formation[5]. Again, if the universe were infinitely old, this would have already occurred and we could not observe star formation now.
Finally, the most modern objection arises from an appeal to a multiverse or multiple universes. This objection also fails for two reasons. One, since it produces a temporal effect, the multiverse itself would need a temporal component (non intentful causes cannot act outside of a dimension they exist in), making it open to the same appeals to an infinite past that we have above. Two, a multi-verse hypothesis would need to be reconciled to the Borde-Vilinken-Guth Theorem [6] which prohibits low entropy, expanding universes (ie the kind we live in) from any multiverse. To date, no reconciliation has been put forward, with Stephen Hawking noting that this is the single greatest objection to his views.
Characteristics
It naturally follows from the premises that the universe therefore had a cause.
But we can go a little bit further than that. Given the established premises and conclusions and some other observed facts, we can reason out a few of the properties of this cause.
1) Omnipotence. This word is often used in a differing manner than how theists intend it. It does not mean, for example, the ability to do anything such as creating a round square. Rather, when used here it refers to the ability to actualize states of affairs. I will borrow William Lane Craig’s definition here:
Rather we should think of omnipotence in terms of the ability to actualize states of affairs. A state of affairs is just a way something might be – for example, the state of affairs of there being chairs in this room, or the state of affairs of our being in the lower story of the church building, or there being a piano here. Those are all states of affairs that actually obtain. Omnipotence should be understood in terms of the ability to actualize states of affairs. To be omnipotent means the ability to bring about any state of affairs which is logically possible for any one in that situation to bring about.
[7]
This ability is a natural conclusion to the CA as I have presented it. In order for a cause to be sufficient to cause the universe, it must be able to actualize states of affairs related to all the specifics of our universe. It must be able to affect physical laws, physical constants, and dimensionless constants. This ability fits the definition proposed above as omnipotent.
2) Aphysical and atemporal. Both of these terms mean that the item in question lacks physical and temporal characteristics. Given that both time and space are properties of this universe and that an effect cannot be its own cause (a logical paradox), we see that the cause defined in our conclusion cannot exhibit properties of its own effect. Given that it must be transcendent of this universe (ie it cannot be bound to this universe otherwise it couldn’t exist to elicit the effect) it cannot be limited by the dimensions of this universe.
3) Intentfulness. This conclusion arises from the observed temporal finiteness of the universe. We know that the cause cannot be a mechanistic cause (IE if the cause exists the effect exists) because we can describe a state of affairs where the cause exists, but the effect does not. This is really a long winded method of saying “the universe began.”
Likewise, we can say that the cause is not a probabilistic cause either. Probabilistic causes require a dimension to act along. IE along a temporal dimension (chance over time) or a physical one (chance over distance). However, all probabilistic causes must act along the dimensions that they elicit effects within. IE, a quantum wave function acts along a temporal and physical dimension to create an effect in both (a particle’s location). You cannot have a quantum wave function (or any other probability function) that only discusses time, but produces a physical effect.
Given now that we’ve ruled out those two methods of causation we are only left with intent. Only a cause that has an intent can demonstrate the attributes labeled above. Only an intentful cause can create information that is not found within itself. IE all causes except intentful ones have temporal information within them if they act temporally, physical information within them if they act physically, etc. Only intentful causes exhibit the kind of causation we observe given the CA.
Conclusion
So we can see that given the premises that the universe must itself have a cause and that this cause must be aphysical and atemporal since it cannot be part of its own creation, that it must be omnipotent in order to create that creation and that it must be intentful in order to explain the finiteness of the universe and its dimensionality.
Given the premises, which are supported, no other conclusion can be accepted.
Now for a miscellaneous definition:
Logical necessity: I don’t mean this term to imply philosophic necessity in that I argue that no other belief is possible, but rather rational necessity in which I hold that no other conclusion is rational.
Support
1) http://www.philosophy-dictionary.org/
2) http://home.tiscali.nl/physis/
3) http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/
4) http://mathworld.wolfram.com/
5) I. D. Novikov and Ya. B. Zel’dovich (1973) Physical Processes Near Cosmological Singularities Annu. Rev. Astro. Astrophys. 11 387-412
S. W. Hawking and R. Penrose (1970) The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 314. 1519. 529-548.
6) Arvind Borde, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin (2003) Inflationary Spacetimes are Incomplete in Past Directions Physical Review Letters 90. 15 http://arxiv.org/pdf/grqc/0110012.pdf
7) http://www.reasonablefaith.org/
2) not true, astronomers and other scientists have studied, measured, and witnessed black holes. Every time you look into the night sky you can see one.
Actually you can't. You cannot "see" something that does not allow light to escape right?
What you see are indirect effects. Gravitational influence on nearby objects, accretion disks, etc. Those aren't the black hole, they are evidence we use to deduce the presence of a black hole.
Likewise, the Cosmological Argument uses observed evidence (expansionary state of the universe, mathematical law, etc) and deduces an observation concerning a cause.
Im not sure. I do not understand the logical basis for the material/non-material dichotomy.
Well I would propose it is similar to the logical basis for any distinction in things by criteria. Living/dead, blue/red, solid/liquid, these are all categorical distinctions based upon attributes. Likewise material (within our material universe) vs non-material (not present within the confines of our universe) would seem to be a logical distinction as well.
Someone that would take time out of their day to help me find logical inconsistencies in MY beliefs? That would be awesome! I could hardly be done a greater favor.
Ha, touche sir, touche.
We know that Paul's letters were being passed around like pamphlets prior to any written record of the Gospels.
Again, this isn't quite accurate as I pointed out. There was a written account of athe core of Mark floating around at about 40AD, well before the actual physical written copies of Paul's letters. What you are referring to is the difference between the core text and the full text we generally read, which comes from one or two other sources at around 80 to 90AD.
Neither of those argues though that the Gospels were composed prior to the Epistles however, which is the relevant point.
So, I know that was a long quote... but basically what Papias is saying is that at a time (clearly an earlier date than the ones I mentioned above) in his life, he went and interviewed elderly men who had apparently known the apostles. What he discovered through these interviews is that the oral tradition was much more reliable than the written record. That's just a little bit of information I find interesting, regarding New Testament.
From a pure historiographical point of view we can argue that the Greeks, Hebrews and a few others had a remarkable system for recording oral traditions reliably through time. It is one of the reasons the Greeks had such complicated poetic understanding. That system reinforced which words were required in the recitation, otherwise the meter was broken.
It is also the reason so many people find "codes" in the OT, Hebrews used specific rules for transcribing and reciting stories that would indicate whether a substitution would be made. These were similar to what we current use as validation techniques for data transfer.
No, it would be like if there were no known copies of Huck Finn, in general, until about 1978 or 1983... and they all seem appropriate for that time period.
We haven't found any records dating back earlier than the dates I mentioned in my previous argument. We also haven't found any written accounts mentioning written Gospels, Biblical letters, etc. prior to the dates that I listed.
This represents a rather outdated view of textual analysis however. We can date parts of text within documents based on their phraseology and writing. That is what most Ancient Literature scholars spend their time doing. We have no surviving accounts of Plato, Aristotle or Socrates, we have third party translations of them, or discussions of them from which we can use literary analysis to determine what is likely the original source and what is added on later. That is how we know that the core document that Mark, for example, is based upon goes back to a much earlier period than the dates you mention.
If Mr. Pesch is referring to oral history of Mark, he may be right... but written record, I don't know of any scholars who agree with that date (AD 37).
Actually he isn't. His argument is specifically on the textual writing style of the documentation. The archaic word forms, the sentence structure and the phraseology. Some of that could be from an oral source, but much of his analysis relies on the written structure of the words. Remember, at this point neither Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic had work breaks (the spaces between words) so various other techniques were given to hint at word division. Those are written techniques only and many of the ones contained in Mark date back to a much, much earlier period. Meaning that it must have been a written version the author was copying from.
What most scholars are talking about when the argue that Mark included oral sources is the non-core part of the text. Notice that Mark goes from a series of annecdotes to a coherent narrative, and quite abruptly. The former are almost certainly oral traditions (remember it is likely that Mark became Peter's interpreter at one point and that he was recording what Peter told him as it occurred to Peter), the latter however was almost certainly a written tradition given the comments I mention above.
I would recommend this work on the book of Mark: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/
They use this type of textual analysis to show the core of Mark originating no later than the early 40s. They also do a good job stripping out most of the Gospel of Thomas as having clearly been written much later than AD 200, though they take the stand that parts are earlier (something still in hot dispute in the community).
I think it is important to remember that many critics of the resurrection point to Mark's early date in an attempt to discredit Matthew and Luke as independent sources for the account. They argue that the authors of both accounts were aware of Mark's version (meaning it must have been widely distributed pre-AD 60) and copied it. That isn't a very strong argument (for reasons outside the scope of this thread), but it at least shows that regardless of which side one falls on, there is pretty broad consideration to the early account of Mark.
William Lane Craig does a good job discussing the scholarly position (obviously from a sympathetic viewpoint) here and it is pretty clear that we can capture almost all NT scholars if we put a date of AD50 on the account of Mark, and well over a plurality if we go back to the early 40s.
Yeah, it's widely agreed upon that the author of Luke, probably wasn't Luke... and he most likely wasn't a companion of Paul
This isn't a factual statement.
First we should point out that there is no real debate on the issue of Luke/Acts being the same author (as can be seen in my support below). So all that remains to be seen is whether or not Luke was likely a companion of Paul. Again, we find virtually no disagreement amongst scholars on this. The "We" verses, the linguistic similarity, the regional phrasing all point to someone who encountered the Church early on and traveled widely. Further, the minor discrepancies between the book of Acts and the actual letters argues that the author did not have an original source to refer to (and given, as you point out the early and widespread use of these letters) meaning his work is likely very early in the Church and that he likely travelled with Paul, since Paul wouldn't have kept these letters himself, but dispatched them.
The criticism you might be referring to is whether or not the Luke of the two books is the physician Luke and you are correct there, that was in fact a hot debate in 200AD as well (see my first source) and that Irenaeus was correct in his argument that attribution to Luke was not Luke of the Romans (doctor). Many have done excellent work arguing that Luke's language is not specific to a medical person of the period, which casts doubt on a long standing premise that his writing indicates a medical history. But it is important to note that the doctor tradition arises late in the Church's history and is not connected directly with the account.
That criticism is not however, comparable to the author not being contemporary with Paul however, which is about as universally accepted as something gets in this field:
Easiest to review: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
Udo Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings
http://bibleandteaching.com/
http://kmooreperspective.blogspot.com/
https://bible.org/seriespage/
http://www.religion-online.org/
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
Matthew and Luke were written after Mark and are believed to have used Mark as a source.
And I'm not aware of any scholar that doubts that. It is virtually assured that the reason Luke waited nearly 20 years to write the Gospel after finishing Acts is because he was waiting on Mark as a source.
Both authors almost assuredly used Mark as a source. But Mark is not their only source as is pretty well agreed upon for most historians.
Luke was known to have another eye-witness source known as the L source (which was probably an oral tradition): https://wipfandstock.com/store/MattheanandLukanSpecialMaterialABriefIntroductionwithTextsinGreekand_English
Matthew has a contemporary source known as the M source (not very creative)(which was unlikely to be oral, but it is possible: http://www.katapi.org.uk/4Gospels/
It also seems likely they both drew from a fourth source, the Q source, which was almost certainly written. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/
Both sources are separate from each other (though it is unclear if they are completely independent) and both date back to very early sources. One is perhaps the same source used by Paul, which has been dated back to about 5 years following the crucifixion (see my link to Craig for this discussion).
That's pretty cool. I also took a few college courses that I think gives me a little bit of authority on the subject as well... Religion and Archaeology.
Sorry if that came across as an appeal to authority, I didn't mean it as such. It just reminded me of something that struck me from that class and that has bothered me about documentaries ever since.
Now, that's just one example, but the general consensus among most archaeologists and Biblical scholars, is that the Exodus never occurred and if something similar did take place, it was small, if anything.
I think I've already offered a great deal of evidence that this isn't the case. Some scholars do question whether the Semitic presence in Egypt (no dispute) was the same as the later Israelite group, but if you include those archeologists that think they are the same, and those that think at least a significant portion of the the Israelites came from an area external to Canaan and most of those from somewhere near or in Egypt we are talking well over a majority here.
The idea that there is even a discussion about large scale semetic leaving of Israel is absolutely untrue. Even if we only consider the Hyksos expulsion there are no mainstream scholars that deny Semites were periodically expelled from Egypt.
What many believe is that the Exodus in the Bible is an exaggeration of the expulsion of the Hyksos.
So we can tell from this that:
a) There is no real debate on Semitic expulsion from Egypt.
b) That there is some connect between that expulsion and the Israelites.
So we are left with the question of what level of connection that shares. Given the other archeological evidence offered, and the contextual evidence from Egyptian sources it seems likely that the indentification of Israel represents a new ethnic group in the region and that at least part of this group is of Egyptian origin.
The problem here is that we are looking at this from two different perspectives. You're coming from the religious point of view, where as, I'm not.
And at least from an evidentiary point of view my viewpoint is the more inclusive one. I incorporate several possibilities towards the origin of Israelite Monotheism and then reject those not supported or contradicted by the evidence.
You would have to automatically reject at least one of those theories as impossible (since it violates naturalist assumptions) and then proceed from there.
Does the Bible not teach that the Jews were slaves in Egypt?
Absolutely, but not an uprising. The Bible refers to an expulsion of Jews from Egypt.
Ok, well can you clarify why it couldn't be a FSM?
I think this missed my point. I'm arguing that by simply defining the outcome as FSM, you haven't made a legitimate criticism of the argument.
I could well argue that 1+1=Jellybean if I define Jellybean as: a cardinal integer coming after one. Now normally we all call that two, just as we normally would call an aphysical, atemporal, omnipotent, intentful cause a deity, but you've labelled it as FSM.
The bannana argument you just came up with isn't a good comparison, I know that bannanas exist, Ive seen one, eaten one, held one, smelled one, etc. (as well as many others across the world). God on the other hand I have not seen, smelled, touched, etc.
That isn't really a relevant argument to question something's ontological significance. I have never personally seen a black hole or held one or smelled it, etc. That does not mean that the logical deduction of its existence given modern physics is less compelling.
The argument for its existence (just as the argument for a first cause) is established based upon its internal premises and soundness, not upon our ability to compare it to our personal experience.
No. I am fine with thinking of things as "event complexes"
Ok
I have no reason to doubt that all things ARE interrelated electro-chemical processes.
Then are you a materialist? IE do you hold that no non-material things truly exist? There is no "number 7" only our bio-electric concept of it?
You seemed like you might though, and I admit i got a little excited.
I'll try. ;-) Though this isn't really my area of expertise. I do know someone who is pretty good at it though if you are interested.
So, that's something. It was an article by Princeton, so that should give us a little bit of a better idea of what his role was there.
Perhaps, though he is clearly doing other things during that time period, so I wouldn't exactly take the 10 years that strongly (He also wrote several other books during that time, so it isn't as if this was his full time role).
Either way, I think regardless, we should focus on his arguments, the support he offers and the underlying logical structure as the best analysis of the validity.
But that's why the argument is controversial, right?
There are obviously different reasons for controversy from different people. The concept of monolatry is controversial because it is unlikely that we would have so few occurrences of an event given the number of times it should have happened. It is even more odd given that the two examples supposedly offer share virtually nothing in common.
Given the relatively rarity of monolatry in human history combined with a more tortured explanation of the data, it seems highly improbable to be the best explanation.
It would be like finding a painting of the Mona Lisa in an antiques store, and it doesn't say "reproduction." We know that once there was a painting of the Mona Lisa done by Leonardo DiVinci. We have two explanations, either the person forgot to write reproduction, or this is a long lost second copy of that original painting.
The former is an explanation of the evidence that requires a far lower level of stretching the evidence, and given the rare number of times an original Mona Lisa has been produced, that is hardly a fitting explanation for the evidence we have.
Likewise, interpreting the dating and biblical hebrew of the OT in manners not commonly (if ever) used by other scholars might hold weight if Monolatry was a common occurrence. But arguing for a less probable interpretation of the text combined with a virtually unheard of outcome strains plausibility.
The letters of Paul are the oldest text in Christianity, despite the fact that the gospels come first in the Bible.
This isn't actually accurate. Again, those dates only conform if you are only saying "what date do we have the earliest version of the exact text we currently have today?
If we held other works to the same standard, we could only date Huck Finn to about 1978 or 1983 when it underwent some linguistic changes to account for non-standardized spellings. We could only data Shakespeare's work to about 75 years after his death, etc.
However, if we ask a far more useful question. "How early can we date the core narrative of the gospels?" We get a much, much different picture. The core of Mark goes back to about AD37. Rudolf Pesh has made the definitive argument in this field for about 30 years with Das Markusevangelium. I'm not aware of any scholar that disagrees with Pesh on this date, rather the questions in this field come from other parts of Mark, (addition of lineage, and two or three parables) which perhaps came as late as 80AD, though they clearly come from earlier sources.
Another small point. When you say the gospels were "written" after Paul's letters, we should be clear about what is meant here. First, when I "write\" something, that term in English can mean, to literally put it on paper or it can mean to compose it. When scholars refer to Paul's letters being "written" before the Gospels, they largely mean the former version, not the latter.
We should also discuss the composition of Luke (which was composed after the Epistles, and is about the time you suggest in your post). Most historians agree that the author of Luke was a follower of Paul during his missionary work (notice that the book of Acts goes from "he" to "we"). We also know from Acts that the author returned to Jerusalem and met the Apostles, so was interviewing eye-witnesses in his work.
Compare that to the widely accepted history of Alexander by Plutarch, which was composed about 400 years after Alexander's death and contains no texts from any eye-witness to the events.
You mean in the interview they had with one person? lol
So I took this class in college called Histriography, which talks all about how we write and research history. We had some pretty interesting discussions on documentaries there. For example, did you know Ken Burns is famous for displaying a picture of someone and having an actor read a quote even though the quote isn't from the person in the picture?
PBS is doing something similar here. By only interviewing one person (on camera) they are advertising that this is the expert and that he/she is relating current consensus. Rather, if you look at the website for this show you'll notice they reference 6 different people, and that the story lines of their various works are relatively disparate. Some argue for a non-egyptian exodus, some argue the pastoral evolution theory, the interviewee holds the later Babylonian creation theory, and one holds a trade route theory explanation.
Regardless, these are relatively fringe theories in Archeology and they require dismissing a vast, vast amount of contemporary evidence in order to accept.
I don't know of many non-religious scholars who believe that there was a "large scale" Exodus.
I think you must be unfamiliar with the current state of Archeology. Most hold that there was a large amount of semitic movement from egypt into canaan around this period.
I would be surprised if you could find a single mainstream archeologists that doesn't argue for an expulsion of the Hyksos people from egypt around this time, though some will disagree whether this fits the Exodus group.
There is NO Egyptian archaeological record that mentions Moses.
Why would there be? Remember that somewhere around 95-98% of all Egyptian records have been lost. Papyrus is a notoriously bad product for living up to the centuries. Egyptians are also relatively for not recording things that made them look bad. Remember they have to keep up the image that the Pharoah is a god.
To whit:
On top of that, there is no Egyptian record of a slave rebellion and there is none mentioning an Exodus.
Few ancient cultures (or modern ones) erect statues and monuments to military defeats or embarrassments. And remember, that is virtually all we have left from the Egyptian sources on these incidents.
I'll remind you that there are no Egyptian records of the battles of Carchemish or its follow on at Hamath. Or the battle of Pelusium, which we only know of because Herodotus records it so well. We can also deduce some significant battles happened between Egypt and the Mitanni in which Egypt lost (since major campaigns have to occur to reconquer areas). But we have no direct record of losses from either side.
They Egyptians rarely recorded (in stone form, the kind we still have access too) major defeats or embarrassments, and when they did, they often recorded them as victories (see their embarrassment at the hands of the Hittites or the expulsion of they Hyksos).
It becomes difficult to believe that not only would Moses be monotheistic, but the Hebrew people before him as well.
Why? You are begging the question here I think. You are assuming a naturalist explanation and a lack of monotheism within Semitic culture which isn't justified by the evidence.
It would seem perfectly natural for a person like Moses to grow up a polytheist, but convert upon learning of his ethnic background.
This would make sense that a slave rebellion would also rebel against the common belief system.
But no one is claiming a slave rebellion. The biblical accounts are of a divine Exodus, the Egyptian ones of a period of either emigration due to disaster or exile due to military conquest.
Another thing I'd like to mention, which I think you may have brought up as well, is that some scholars are curious as to whether or not the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, influenced Judaism.
That has been floated by some scholars, but it has some significant hurdles. The first being that Akhenanten ruled after the Israelites likely left Egypt, following the period of instability. Some historians place the Israelite leaving about a hundred years after Akhenanten, but that date is problematic given the other references I mention above.
Second, we can't establish causation. If we assume the Israelites were contemporaries or just before Akhenanten, it is presumable they influenced him. I personally doubt this is the case given that most scholarly consensus revolves around this imposition as an attempt to suppress rival groups within the priestly class. The fact that the most suppressed groups were the priestess of Amun, who also were the favored group of the next dynasty argues more for political struggle in my mind.
Jupiter is not precisely what is was a moment ago, yet we still refer to it as Jupiter.
Gotcha, this somewhat mirrors the naturalist point of view argued by Lawrence Krauss. So you would agree with Krauss that there really isn't such a thing as "Dave" or "Mike" since those are only concepts we use for ever shifting groups of atoms.
Given that, would you follow Krauss into the argument that ideas don't really exist either? That they are simply illusions created by electro-chemical processes?
This topic was conceived as an initial assault on the misconceptions that arise from thinking that faith=belief without evidence.
And I would certainly agree with that. I certainly would not equate the two perfectly in any sense of the manner. The vast, vast, vast majority of beliefs are formed with evidence, both external, logical and from more basic beliefs.
I only have been supporting the "false" side because I would argue there are some beliefs that are formed absent evidence, what Plantinga and others called properly basic beliefs. The belief that there is history and my memory correlates to it for example. The acceptance of my senses as being collectors of data (however imperfectly) of the outside world. Those are beliefs we largely just hold as underlying assumptions to other, evidence based beliefs.
Otherwise please continue with the inquisition. Hopefully I will give you enough rope to hang me :)
Ha, not at all. Despite appearances, I honestly don't intend this as some kind of Socratic exercise.
You still haven't provided any sort of evidence that he taught anthropology and biology (it was something along those lines, I forget the actual courses you named though).
I think it might be beneficial to re-hash where we are in this to understand the claims.
You put forward Mr. Wright's book as an example of research towards the Israelite faith moving from polytheism to monolatry to monotheism.
I countered that by arguing that Mr. Wright's work had some problems and that he was not an expert in the field, but rather a journalist.
You rebutted that he was a college professor in relevant areas.
I pointed out that the only classes I could find him teaching were very specialized and not related to the fields necessary for that work.
Continuing to dig into the two classes referenced above I cannot find any real evidence that he is a professor at all beyond a visiting fellow who has taught a seminar or two at Princeton and a single undergrad class at UPenn.
So in the end we are left with the idea that we can at least say he is primarily a journalist (not a researcher) and it seems probable that he is entirely a journalist that has guest lectured.
Yes... but that is more experience than none, which is what it seems like you're implying...He's labeled as a "visiting scholar" in the web page you provided...The amount of research that went into his book is impressive and whether he is a journalist or not, shouldn't discredit the argument he put forth.
I don't see any reason to give that too much credit though. I've guest lectured at the University of Washington and George Mason, those were more a matter of convenience for the universities than a recognition that I was a pioneer or in depth researcher in a field. Universities often bestow honorary degrees or invite people to lecture because they are popular or interesting, not necessarily because their work is recognized as conclusive or even well done. Not that I'm knocking Mr. Wright's achievement, he is a good writer and the fact that they sought him out says a good deal to his credit. But it doesn't offer the kind of academic support for his research that I think was being implied earlier.
And I will agree with you that his being a journalist (or heck even if he were a homeless person) that position does not discredit his argument necessarily. I was only clarifying his credentials to prevent an appeal to authority. I offered other critiques of his argument earlier in this thread that were more germane to the actual premises.
UPenn describes him as a "visiting scholar", which is a much more impressive title than "fellow" lol.
Maybe ;-) Fellow implies a habitual relationship or inclusion in a group. Scholar is often bandied about by universities. Heck they called us all scholars when I was in undergrad and I remember quite a few people who certainly weren't adding prestige to that title. Either way, I think we can agree it doesn't appear that he is a professor there either teaching or research wise. But that he is certainly well thought of enough to earn himself two guest invitations to lecture from good universities.
LOL! It looks like someone can't keep their facts straight. I can't figure out which school he taught what at!
Anyways, I'm pretty sure he wasn't a full-time religion professor, but the guy knows his stuff... it's hard to deny that.
Here's a little bit of information I thought was interesting, by the way: " In 2009 Wright was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers."
Come on... that's got to be a little bit impressive, right?
Funny that it changes from site to site. I think we agree more or less. Mr. Wright is not a full time professor, but is prestigious enough to have earned invitations from good schools.
Bottom line: He doesn't warrant an appeal to authority (ie he is an expert in the field so your arguments are meaningless type of thing), but his arguments do warrant responses since they are researched and well written. Totally agree there.
All of that had to do with the journalism category. Isn't there different criteria for books?
The Journalism category includes books as well. Part of the problem is that the non-fiction area isn't a formal category, it is one that kind of comes and goes when the judges want one. The criteria for a Pulitzer are really just that enough people nominate you for one. The guidelines I linked were things that have been common to past winners. Sufficed to say the Pulitzer is more of a writing prize than an academic research prize.
There were three jury members for the category of General Nonfiction:
Excellent find, I totally missed that there were sub-judging panels.
So for this panel there were three judges. 2 were journalists (one has some experience in modern Israel, though I'm not sure he speaks Hebrew, certainly not Biblical Hebrew. The other is a science writer specializing in genetics) the other was a historian who focused on Modern Germany, especially political and military changes.
I wouldn't necessarily call that a peer-review quality panel of experts on the underlying argument.
Well, that's how monolatry is. It's usually a transition phase. That's what I've been arguing regarding Judaism! LOL
But that isn't really the case with Judaism. The only other case of Monolatry on record only lasts about 10 years. The Jewish experience (if we buy that timeline) is something more like 500-750 years. That is a massive difference in time scale that doesn't really comport with a general cultural shift in understanding or a cultural meme.
I would argue the lack of comparable is a good argument against it as well. We have tons of examples of polytheism, a few examples of monotheism, but no examples (outside of one) of monolatry. The fact that it is so rare in so many different observations indicates to me that more conventional explanations are more likely correct.
How is that a mistake? It's widely accepted among most Biblical scholars that the Bible is not in the order that it was originally written... it's also widely accepted that the texts from the Bible (specifically New Testament) weren't written by the disciples/authors themselves.
Two separate arguments here.
First, you are arguing that the OT is not fully chronological, that is correct and not really an issues (Christians and Jews have said the same thing for generations), for example Job, which occurs later in the book, takes place much earlier, contemporary with Abraham. Because there are two levels of organizations (history/prophetic/poetry then chronological) does not mean that pointing out that the book of Song of Solomon occurs following discussions of his descendents is some kind of revelation.
What I think you are confusing is that level of scholarly consensus with a much more controversial and not accepted idea that the book of Deuteronomy is written well after the books of Judges and Kings. That type of reorganization has virtually no support in the mainstream field.
Second argument, the NT. Again, there are two different arguments nested as one here. The first, which is well accepted is that the Gospels underwent progressive elaboration in the first century of their existence (from around 40AD to 120AD), that is widely accepted and accurate. The fact that you can date most of the core chronology and sections of each gospel back to around 40-60AD is also widely accepted). But again, relatively small linguistic changes to the text and re-writes to conform to Greek and Latin are not the same thing as the more controversial (and virtually universally dismissed) idea that the Gospels were written, in their entirety, more than 150 years after the events.
Most Biblical scholars and archaeologists believe that the Book of Exodus IS a myth.
Same argument here as above. You are confusing two levels of criticism as if they are the same thing.
It is largely accepted that the Exodus story contains elements that were likely added later, especially direct conversations between individuals (Joshua/Moses being a good example of this). But that does not mean that the whole story is a myth. Very few scholars outside of the fringe hold that the entire Exodus did not happen. PBS did a pretty good job of cutting together various theories to appear as one.
In fact, most scholars hold that there was likely a single, large scale exodus that occurred as part of social upheaval in Egypt or that this story represents a longer trend of emigration that occurred over a generation.
There are some basic facts that archeology and virtually all Biblical scholars agree upon.
1)Semites, almost certainly Hebrews existed in Egypt in large numbers.
We have strong evidence of several Semite cultures in Egypt pre-Exodus time period. Not only the Hyksos, but other groups with undeniably Hebrew names reside in store cities throughout NE Egypt. Names like Yakubher which contains the Hebrew Jacob (though the idea that this is the Jacob is far less accepted) and a transliteration of the phrase "el."
Further references to the Semites in Egypt called the "Abiru" or sometimes "habiru." Both are attempts to anglicize the same cuniform linguistic word that is pronounced "habrew." This word represents a group of semites used primarily as manual labor in Egypt and are referenced on several surviving glyph mosaics.
http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/
2)Those Semites left or were expelled following internal unrest.
Ipwur Papyrus, which discusses internal unrest and a series of plagues on the land (though the exact timing of those is uncertain, they might well be from a far earlier time). The Papyrus does, however, discuss internal unrest and the subjugation of semites within Egypt. There is pretty strong consensus that this subjugation took the form of a change in dynasty and that the Pharaohs that had built the storehouse cities originally were replaced with a new lineage that was noted for its dislike of outsiders. http://www.archive.org/stream/
It is likely that this change in position triggered a gradual emigration or possibly a large scale expulsion within Egypt. We know the Egyptians expelled large numbers of Hyksos during this period as well as other semitic groups, http://www.bibleandscience.com/
3)The Egyptians recognize an ethnic shift in Canaan following this expelling.
Sashu of yhwh, a phrase meaning "the wanderers of Yahweh" is an interesting term in that it is far more specific than when Egyptians refer to other nomadic groups in Canaan who they label the generic "Shasu." This indicates two things. We can place the followers of Yahweh to this period, though they are not mentioned in any of the earlier conquest documentation (meaning they are new, one way or another) and that the Egyptians were familiar enough with the concept of Yahweh for that phrase to have meaning. This is not the case with other local dieties during this period and speaks to a closer relationship or familiarity with Hebrew religion. http://www.breakingchristiannews.com/
Not too long after that, the Egyptians conduct yet another campaign in the area and note that they have obliterated an army of Israelites. The linguistics indicate they are not referring to a people of the region or a kingdom, but a group of people. This is a dramatic change in names from the groups attacked in the same area two hundred years earlier. Further, their being named indicates they were not a dominant group rather than just regional nomads. http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/
The fact that the Egyptians reference these groups as different indicates a far greater distinction than the small differences indicated in some of the "cultural evolution" hypotheses. The Egyptians would probably not have noted a slave revolt or other type of class change as warranting the use of another name.
The Amarna Letters are a series of clay tablets discovered that document a Canannite queen's request for assistance from the invading "Abiru" (mentioned earlier). She pleads for the Egyptian king (of whom she was a client state) to come rescue her, to no effect. The place names and style of warfare are remarkably similar to those described by the Joshua story. http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/
4)Archeological sites undergo a large scale change around this time as well.
There are two major changes that are undertaken around this time period. First, is a change in architecture. Styles of buildings more closely resemble NE egyptian wall styles and home designs (with sleeping quarters on the roof and walled courtyards, for example).
The second is the decrease in pottery production and quality that occurs. This is certainly indicative of a population change in the region that went from more skilled peoples to less skilled peoples. The quality change could fit the pastoral revolt theory, however the quantity change is more indicative of a nomadic group settling in the area. A group whose dietary (especially cooking and serving style), storage and production habits were developed with carrying rather than sedentary life in mind. This is also a pattern seen quite frequently in other excavations of nomadic groups surpassing existing sedentary populations, the visigoths in northern africa and the Arabs in southern Iraq are notable parallels here.
Well, I wasn't unconvinced my entire life. I grew up a Christian. So... sure, I have some bias... but it's not too difficult for me to see it from the other side's perspective.
The Dever link wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted to know how you determined that his books deal mainly with the Apocrypha.
Interesting, I grew up secular and later converted, so we appear to be more or less mirror images in that respect.
The Dever link offered discusses the nature of the works published right? (Did I link the right page?) It is from those discussions that the nature of his work is pretty clear.
If you want to call the baby agnostic though, you better treat adults with the same position as agnostic.
I agree. If the philosophic position held by an adult is "I neither believe that God exists or does not exist" then that person is an agnostic.
I'd say "Not entirely".
Interesting. Can I refine that a bit? Do you hold that those objective realities (say Jupiter) exist only in conjunction with our subjective impression? Or, that we are simply incapable of understanding that objective reality given our subjective viewpoint? Or is it a third thing I haven't offered?
Yes it is my position that there is only the real. We often make inaccurate assesments of what is, but this does not render anything , including these assesments in any way "unreal".
Ok, so what about subjective positions that do not claim a relationship to objective reality? Say a perfect circle.
Ideas are components of personalities, and they are only causally potent by virtue of that.
Ok, so then, would I be correct in assuming that you hold these objects are not existent absent human conception of them? If so that would be an area of disagreement between you and the platonists I referenced earlier.
Then the question arises: Don't you think it's possible to attack bad ideas without attacking the people beset by them?
Personally I do yes. A person is capable of forming, evaluating and accepting/rejecting viewpoints independent of their identity. They are also capable of changing their acceptance/rejection of those viewpoints as well. My son once held that 1+1=3 (he was young), I can show him the error in that idea without attacking him personally.
I only claim that Atheism is the default position because that's how you guys portray it.
There is some impressive intellectual gymnastics going on here. You argued that the baby was an atheist by default prior to me even being in this thread, and you seem to imply here that you hold that position based upon my statements. That is discordant intellectually.
You rely rather, on misinterpreting my statement to argue that an adult who says "no" means they are an atheist. Rather, I was trying to show how the question you posed (Do you believe in God) was unsatisfactory for determining philosophic positions. I've since pointed that out to you twice.
Regardless, to clarify again. When asked "Do you believe in God?" a "no" answer would imply an apatheist, not an atheist.
Babies, by definition, are agnostic, since they lack the faculties to make a positive claim and as such be either a theist or an atheist. So a baby could only answer "no" to that question, just as they would have to answer no to the reciprocal "do you believe that God does not exist?"
But he didn't teach those subjects... well, maybe he did... but he also taught religion and philosophy, as well as psychology.
First, I should point out that the fact that it is so difficult to find a list of actual classes taught by Mr. Wright indicates, imo, that this is a side show for him and that my original argument that he is really a journalist who is occasionally leading a lecture at a university is accurate.
That explicitly is the case for Princeton anyway, where Wright only conducted a series of one time seminars, usually in a panel as part of a visiting fellow program. http://uchv.princeton.edu/about/
I don't see any evidence anywhere of him teaching basic religion, philosophy or psychology classes. Wiki offers the two classes you reference from my quote, but I can't find any reference to either class taught either at University of Pennsylvania or and Princeton.
Rather, UPenn describes Mr. Wright as a "visiting fellow" rather than a professor and only teaches one class. http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/hlbios.htm
I can't find any record of him teaching a general class of the type you describe or of being a full time or research professor at any university.
The Pulitzer Prize isn't given specifically for good writing. Maybe when it comes to poetry or fiction, but non-fiction
Actually not really, the Pulitzer doesn't have any real requirements for factual accuracy, depth of argument or consistency. Rather the criteria revolve around the subjects readability, use of journalistic (notice that it doesn't mention other scientific tools) tools, and service to the public.
http://www.pulitzer.org/
The board that presided over Mr. Wrights finalist section had only 1 historian (who specializes in modern American history, with no linguistics or near east experience) and one social scientist (who specializes in race theory in politics) out of an 18 member board. It is pretty fair to say that whatever evaluation this book had on its merits for the Pulitzer was an evaluation done by amateurs in the field. http://www.pulitzer.org/board/2010
Historically, Polytheism and Monolatry came before Monotheism.
I partially agree. Most historians agree that animism was the earliest form of religious belief, followed by polytheism, then monotheism. Monolatry is relatively rare (there are only two examples historically if we include this as one, I don't, both of which are only short term transitions to monotheism).
That is consistent with the traditional and academic mainstream reading of the Old Testament as well. The OT refers to plenty of pre-existing polytheist cultures before Abram's conversion to Abraham.
We also know that the Bible isn't in the order that it was originally written.
And this is where I think you make the mistake. You've followed a few scholars down a primrose path of extremely tenuous and non-accepted dating. The sections you refer to throughout this argument suffer from two critical problems:
1) They are not monolatry unless you use non-standard uses of Hebrew or insist that Judaism was completely uniform in practice for all periods (IE that there were no local differences, cults or groups), which would be counter to the Old Testament and most anthropological theory.
2) Even if we were to overcome one, the dating itself of these texts is extremely problematic. Textual fragments, and other linguistic techniques place these documents much earlier than the storyline for monolatry allows (the monotheistic conversion during the reign of Hezekiah). So as a last resort, some scholars have resorted to using a "parallel" set of texts they believe are more reliable and which they maintain were held as genuine in competition to the more mainstream texts. That seems unlikely given what we know about cultural diffusion and the competition of ideas.
It seems odd that we would dismiss a source that has multiple different, contemporary examples for versions like the Qom docs, that exist only as fragments in a group that clearly existed on the margins of society.
It would be like reviewing the politics of today and dismissing Fox, CNN and even MSNBC and all their reposting by bloggers and rather to select Alex Jones as more reliable.
Only if you aren't convinced.
I meant unconvincing in the academic sense. Just so stories are very common place in all kinds of fields, economics, physics, etc. By definition they aren't evidence or good argumentation, they are simply a claim that "it could have happened this way." They are much more akin to a hypothesis than a theory.
In most fields, we evaluate these hypothesis by their explanatory power, their accordance with existing evidence and theory and their plausibility.
The idea that the Israelites became monotheists via a process of conglomeration and political intrigue fails these tests.
Explanatory Power:
It fails to explain the evidence for dramatic architectural changes, and decreases in pottery sophistication around the time the Israelites appear in the record.
It fails to explain the contemporary references to Hebrews and semites in neighboring cultures pre-Israelite occupation of Canaan.
Existing Evidence and Theory:
A dramatic shift in cultural identity is relatively unprecedented. There are virtually no examples of a non-invasion scenario where a group of people decide to alter their ethnic identity radically and in a wide spread manner. For the very few cases we have of sub-sets of people claiming a different ethnic origin these always include a call back to a shared identity or existing group of people from which they claim descent. It never includes the spontaneous invention of a group and background.
Spontaneous monolatry is likewise exceptional in anthropological records. The only other case of monolatry is the Egyptian case in which it was forced upon a people by an absolute ruler. For anthropologists and religious historians, the concept of a group of people simply adopting one deity in an acknowledged pantheon is very questionable since internal struggles would have led to family or clan worship of parallel deities as part of the competition. Take Greece for example. Most city-states or regions had a specific deity within the pantheon that they worshiped and which was the city's patron. But even then there were no examples of city states without sizable cults for other deities that were tied to political opposition, cultural opposition or sometimes just random groups (the cult of Dionysus is a good example).
Plausibility:
These theories all lack some key aspects of plausibility, most of which I referenced above. They require a class based view of the world where the Israelites represent a sub-class of Canaanites that rebel, but that type of class awareness was not present in the near east at this period.
The represent a consciousness of group identity that somehow doesn't relate to any external or separate culture, but rather creates that culture.
It requires a spontaneous, and widespread invention of an exodus myth that makes the Israelites the descendents of slaves (an odd invention to make yourself the second lowest caste of society) with absolutely no competing ethnic identity or origin stories.
It also requires a parallel, and similarly named group of people to exist in Egypt to explain the archeological evidence, who seem to vanish into the Sinai with no further trace.
Finally, it requires that a remarkable set of linguistic errors on the part of scribes to use terms in non-standard Hebrew ways that differ from all other semite linguistic branches in order to interpret them as meaning a reference to an external deity ("God's Wife" is the best example of this).
To summarize, when I said unconvincing I didn't mean from a personal point of view, I meant for a hypothesis analysis point of view.
you are going into those readings with a fair amount of bias, correct?
Almost certainly, but no more so than someone who finds the Bible unconvincing right?
I didn't see a link in there lol.
http://www.ranker.com/list/
Ok, well can you clarify why it couldn't be a FSM?
Because the FSM is simply a renaming of the conclusion and declaring victory. For example, lets say you argued that "the NBA only uses basketballs in their games."
And I countered with, "No they use a magic orb. Where I define that magic orb as a round, inflated ball, approximately 30 inches in diameter."
I would be simply renaming a widely accepted definition in an appeal to ridicule it.
With the FSM, you've simply taken the conclusion of the Cosmological Argument, accepted the characteristics of the cause and then renamed it to something silly to imply that there is a problem with the logic. That has replaced an actual criticism of the premises or the structure directly, that is why it is a fallacy.
My argument has been that there are certain characteristics that are logically necessary from the argument presented. The support you appear to be looking for was given by me earlier in this thread, but if you can't find it let me know I would be happy to re-hash it for you.
True, the FSM is a (in your terms) a "ridicule fallacy", but it has the same amount of factual basis as God.
Actually, I said it was an appeal to ridicule fallacy. http://www.nizkor.
Specifically that calling something by a name that you find ridiculous to highlight a position rather than directly addressing the problem noted.
Given that the FSM is really just a sophist renaming of a deity, it has exactly the same evidence supplied as has been supplied here for a deity. You may not find that evidence personally convincing, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that changing the word from "deity" to "fsm" makes it less credible.
I have provided you with argumentation to support the claim and your response was to substitute a new name for the conclusion and cry "see it's stupid!" That is a classic appeal to ridicule fallacy.
To illustrate this we can remove the loaded concepts of deities and see that our back and forth goes like this:
Me:
All bananas are fruit.
This object is a banana.
Therefore this object is fruit.
You:
That is like saying that "this object is a flying tricycle! Where flying tricycle is described as "the developed ovary of a seed plant with its contents and accessory parts, as the pea pod, nut, tomato, or pineapple."
That is dumb, of course it isn't a flying tricycle.
Rather than attacking the premises (this is a banana or bananas are fruit) you have substituted a different term for the same definition in the conclusion and cried ridiculous.
I wasn't talking about the baby, I was talking about the adult that was asked the "Do you believe in God?" question.
You seem to have forgotten your own post.
In response to: "and also why so many people consider themselves atheist without doing a lick of investigation on their own"
You said: "This is sort of a weird statement. Atheism is really the default position. Everyone is born an Atheist. Maybe I am not sure what you mean."
You seem to be backing off of that statement now, which is fine.
How can you argue with that? It says it right on his website! Because they are very generic phrases that don't match the classes he actually taught. I could say I taught "physics" because I've taught people how to call for artillery. That wouldn't be really that accurate. Likewise, teaching a class about anthropology that covers cultural relationships to religious concepts isn't really teaching religion, it is teaching anthropology.
Teaching a class about how various cultures react to scientific discoveries is not the same thing as teaching about those scientific discoveries themselves. There is some overlap, but they are not synonymous.
Like I said, his book Evolution of God was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It was supported by many Biblical scholars/experts.
The Pulitzer is a prize for good writing, not for academic research or achievement. And it was supported by those scholars as an interesting read, not as an academic breakthrough.
One of the arguments that they make is not only is the Bible historically inaccurate, but the passages in the Bible were written by many different people from many different periods of time.
Which is why the question of dating is so critical. There doesn't really seem to be much evidence that the sections that could be interpreted as monolatry or the incidents of Israelites worshiping foreign gods are older than the monotheistic sections. Rather the opposite. The events that refer to the worship of other gods tend to be supported (by textual dating, contemporary worship and cult relationships) as developing later than the earlier Jewish monotheism.
When put into a proper timeline, these seem to be more outside influences of other, later religions rather than the conglomeration of older faiths as is argued here.
How did you come to that conclusion?
From a brief perusal of his argument and the counter arguments offered on a few of the academic reviews. The main source was a published review of the book:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/
I also reviewed analysis of his work from
http://www.denverseminary.edu/article/
and
http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/30103382.pdf
Both of which reference a use of relatively thin contemporary event analysis as the primary source for the new dating scheme he proposes.
Well, I guess the keywords there are "could be".
Which would make it what we call in economics a "just so story." Those are fun, but not convincing. Unless he has some support that this is a habitual relationship and it is from Arabia then it is only a fun piece of conjecture, not a historical analysis useful in dating.
Link please!
Sure, Prof. Dever has published four major works.
One was about archeological finds: Dever, William G. (2012), The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect. This work is notable as it is after his retirement.
His other three works are all related to the reconciliation of the Apocrypha to Biblical texts and archeological evidence.
Dever, William G. (2001), What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel. In which Prof. Devers spends most of the book arguing that the biblical writers were intentionally censoring out the Apocrypha and that archeological evidence supports its more widely spread acceptance.
Dever, William G. (2003), Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from? This book argues that the early Israelites were really a conglomeration of other cultures and this can be shown via some synthesis of pottery evidence and the concept that the Apocrypha, which he briefly defends, represent a blending of cultures.
Dever, William G. (2005), Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. This book is pure Apocrypha. Aside from some brief references to the OT, it primarily relies on the other work for source material concerning "early" Yahweh. The backbone of his thesis here is that Asherism survived in Jewish mysticism from earlier periods rather than develops later. His argument is that the mystic texts should be dated much earlier to support this.
Do you have some sort of bias against Dever?
Personally? Not at all. I find his arguments unconvincing, as do many. I don't see any reason to doubt the dating analysis more widely accepted of Deuteronomy or the archeological evidence surrounding the cultural shifts accompanying the first finds of iron age Israelites. Dismissing the influx of a new culture into Caanan during the Iron Age requires de-prioritizing a significant amount of evidence and I don't see his warrant for that as sufficient.
The reviews of his work as more popular read than academic and weak, especially in dating can be found here:
http://www.jhsonline.org/reviews/
I meant Jew in the religious sense.
And that generally isn't supportable. The arguments presented seem to be more "this happened, therefore it was accepted" when we have a contemporary source arguing "this happened, it wasn't accepted" right there. These interpretations (to steal an analytic tool of Dever's) seem to fall more into the "reject the Bible if at all possible and accept interpretations that minimize it if available."
The question between Jews as an ethnic group and Judaism as a religion is being conflated (in my opinion) here. Because the ethnic group of people called Jews at various times also worshiped other deities does not mean that the religion of Judaism was at one time polytheistic. Many Jews today are secular, we shouldn't then argue that Judaism is therefore a quasi-secular religion.
Alright man, I'm going to call it quits for now. I'll come back to some of your arguments once I can concentrate better (so tired!).
No problem of course, get some rest!
By the way, just so I get a better idea of where you stand... are you religious?
I am religious yes.
My position is that whatever is imagined, is by definition imaginary. Whenever we attempt to discuss things as they objectively are, we are in truth, bound to discuss things as, we more or less subjectively, imagine them to be.
I think that is a very interesting point. Sort of a "through the mirror darkly" kind of argument. IE that objective discussions of reality are beholden to our subjective viewpoints and data collection systems. Very true. The question then arises, do those objective realities exist independently of our subjective viewpoints on them?
And secondly, does the secondary coloring of the objective truth by our subjective viewpoint constitute another form of reality (to which I think you would answer yes).
Are ideas causally potent, I dare say so. I don't think there is a single thing, imaginary or otherwise that does not have an effect on it's surroundings.
Hmm, I'm not as sure I can buy into this point. The concept of "seven," which, independent from any physical counting or object, could be said to exist as an idea. What can it "cause?"
This gets to your next point as well. I agree that ideas do have consequences, but not alone. The idea of something, absent an actor is impotent. "Seven" or "good" doesn't do anything. A person acting on that idea might, but the idea itself isn't the cause right?
On the other side of it, I don't hold the idea of Eugenics as responsible for the Holocaust, I hold the people who used eugenics as the idea for their actions as responsible.
So, when you labeled the no answer as Atheist you were wrong. :)
If that makes you feel better, sure. ;-)
What I was trying to point out, rather, is that there are three philosophic positions concerning the existence of God. Does exist = Theist, Does not exist = Atheist, Unknown=Agnostic.
As such, the original question you asked concerning when you ask people "Do you believe in God?" doesn't answer the atheist/theist/agnostic question.
I would be fine with calling him an agnostic but I notice many many Christians would call him an Atheist.
That certainly has not been my position, few Christians would call a baby an atheist, that has been an argument floated by atheists like Lawrence Kraus, Anthony Flew, and Peter Atkins.
Regardless, from a philosophical point of view there are three positions (outlined above), to the extent we agree on that and what those positions entail is what is important. Sorry for any confusion.
And, I agree with you, I just disagree that your reason for believing that is correct.
How so? What reason do you hold some belief sets are formed absent evidence (if that is your position)?
If you ask someone if they believe in God, a yes answer means for sure that they are a theist. Got it? BUT, ANY OTHER ANSWER IS INCONCLUSIVE.
Exactly, a "No" answer only reveals them to be an apatheist, a sub-set of which is agnostic and the other sub-set is atheist.
You cannot figure out what someone believes with a no answer. That's what I am saying. So, if you ask that question in hopes of finding out who is an atheist you will have a bias.
Which has been my point from the beginning. I'm not sure how we are disagreeing.
Graphically, we might say something like this:
"Do you believe in God?"
[Yes ] [ No ]
[Theist ] [ Apatheist ]
[Theist ] [ Agnostic or Atheist]
I think our confusion stems from your original statement to which I responded:
"Everyone is born an Atheist."
This would seem to indicate that Atheism implies both active disbelief in God and a passive non-belief. A baby would answer "no" (if he were capable of answering) because he is incapable of forming belief sets yet, but that wouldn't make him an atheist, it would make him an agnostic right?
And, you are wrong, I am not claiming that senses provide evidence for senses. You are mistakenly assuming that I said senses provide evidence. All I was saying was that if senses do not represent the physical world, senses are still evidence.
Fair enough, I was attempting to tie these response back to the OP, which was asking whether we hold any belief sets without evidence. My position being "yes" I was attempting to understand what your position was.
You could have just supplied me with a link to his Wikipedia page. Or his Bio, which is where I got that info from, and apparently where the Wiki author also took his cue.
You're assuming that he had no training in those particular fields based on the fact that his Wikipedia page doesn't list them. The fact that he taught both Religion and Philosophy at two highly esteemed Universities, suggests that he does have expertise in those particular fields.
No, I'm basing that on his statements on his website, http://robertwright.com/
And you aren't quite correct, he didn't teach either Philosophy or Religion either at Princeton or the University of Pennsylvania. He taught a senior level anthropology class and evolutionary psychology class and a undergraduate level elective seminar.
And my statements concerning his background are not assumptions, they are based on the field he states he got his degree in. Arguing that someone who says they only have a physics degree does not have formal training in kinesiology is more an analysis of their statement than an unwarranted assumption.
Lol are you trying to trick me into thinking that you read the book? P.247 was cited on the "Bible Unearthed" Wikipedia page. Nope, from the Google Book link, where you can read most of this argument online. Or from his video.
One of my reasons for adding this was to point out that there was a period where a monolatry message was being taught.
Which is a very different argument. The time period he is talking about also had extensive polytheism in Israel, heck that is one of the overarching themes of the old testament is the people's continued move towards the gods of their neighbors. But that isn't the same thing as arguing that Judaism, itself, was an evolution from polytheism. Rather, it shows that the Jewish people were not fully consistent with the religion of their forefathers.
Robert Gnuse, a Religion Professor at Loyola University, who has a Ph.D in Old Testament, did a review on Mark Smith's book
I didn't say Prof. Smith's argument was terrible or garbage, I said it was well outside the mainstream. Gnuse and the other quotes are pointing to a movement within Old Testament Studies in this area, but that doesn't make it mainstream. It also suffers, as I pointed out earlier from some significant challenges concerning dating of texts. Both Smith and Finklestein are relying on a relatively unreliable form of textual analysis, Contemporary Event Comparison.
Smith relies heavily on the idea that we must date the Solomon/David period to much later because he believes the Sheba story to be a natural outflow of the Arabian trade which developed later. This is problematic because the story isn't necessarily a habitual trade relationship, but could be a diplomatic visit (which are described in Egypt from the Arabs and in Persia as being contemporary to earlier Davidic dating periods) or a one off incident related to a peculiar royalty. It also has suffered some criticism in that Sheba isn't necessarily an Arabian place. That is a later European assumption, but not biblical in origin. Many scholars have placed Sheba in Ethiopia or the Upper Nile, where Jewish populations go back to well before even the earliest Davidic dating lines and which would make a far more likely foreign visit for the Jewish king.
Isn't that what I said... or did I leave out the G?
I think you said Denver, which is what my browser suggested as the "proper" spelling when I replied. ;-)
His books mainly deal with archaeological findings in Israel. I wouldn't say that his primary focus is Jewish Apocrypha though, but it is important to look at all the evidence including the Apocrypha, when the theory is that Jewish beliefs have changed throughout the years. He has built a reputation for researching his books very thoroughly.
I'm not sure how you make that conclusion, his entire field of study has been to validate the apocrypha as legitimate historical documents that are contemporary Talmudic or Septuagint texts. In that field of study he has had an extremely poor showing. The bulk of his reputable scholarly work has come from his dating analysis of the Apocryphic texts and his (importantly imo) teasing out of cultural relationships via fragments of phraseology. For example, Dever was primarily responsible for pointing out that the phrasing used in the story of Lillith is almost certainly from the Israelite exile where they encountered the epic of Gilgamesh. That places that work late in the Israelite experience. He then went on to claim that similar phrasing is used in parts of Genesis as part of his goal to show that both works were composed at the same time. That work was far less successful or well received.
Would you mind sharing a link that supports your argument that the quote was wrong?
I spent most of this morning trying to find the article reviewing this particular quote with the link to the google book page. But I can't seem to find it now. Sorry. I'll be sure to post the links up front in the future rather than risk losing them.
It's not only the fact that the Bible doesn't deny the existence of other gods, but archaeological and historical evidence suggests that Jews actually believed in and possibly worshipped other gods at certain points in time.
And this, I think, is the underlying problem with the concept. I could have told you that from a quick overview of the OT. Of course Jews did that, it mentions it repeatedly throughout the Bible.
But that is a different argument than the monolatry argument, which states that the Jews evolved a monotheistic faith incrementally from a polytheistic faith relatively late in their history.
That latter argument is incredibly difficult to support because, in essence, it has to show a continuous link from pre-existent local gods towards the concept of Yahweh. The only manner of it doing so really, is to show that these concepts pre-existed monotheism and continued with gradual change to the current understanding of Judiaism.
The evidence for that claim just isn't there, the idea that because I say "God" and Saxon said "god" when talking about Thor means that they are the same thing is pretty hard to really swallow. It is up there with the idea that Zeus and Odin are the same deity because you can translate the oral pronunciation of those names over different cultures into something that sounds similar. Seven degrees of separation of deities as it were.
Yes, but there is historical evidence that makes that argument seem valid when compared to those verses.
I think you are overstating the case slightly. The primary discussion revolves around interpretations of the language (which I think the monolatry side is at a pretty severe disadvantage on) and the relatively thin date analysis described.
It relies on a need for a complex twisting of cultural evolution that apparently didnt' occur anywhere else, but for the Jews. Rather, the far more simple and logical explanation of monotheism with neighboring religious pressures seems a far more likely explanation with a far better fit for the evidence.
A reporter? Is that what they call college professors these days?
Perhaps I'm confusing you with someone else, but didn't you reference "The Evolution of God" by Robert Wright?
While Wright has been teaching at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania off and on (and usually in a guest lecturer status), his primary occupation is a journalist. He has been an Editor and contributor at The New Republic, Wilson Quarterly, Time, Slate, and now the Atlantic. His columns appear in the above as well as Time, The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, NYT, and Opinionator.
His degree is in Sociobiology (a now defunct area of study replaced by Evolutionary Psychology). This gives him some academic credentials tangentially in anthropology. It doesn't give him credibility in ancient languages (no training), philology (no training), ancient religions (no training), or literary criticism (no training) all of which are the primary underpinnings of the argument being made here.
Robert Wright
See above.
The Medieval French Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki or "Rashi",
Rashi, who wrote at the end of the 1000s, was famous for his emphasis on a plain, straight forward interpretation of biblical texts. I haven't heard of, nor can I find any reference to him claiming that there were other gods or arguing that Judiaism had monolatry roots. Please offer some support for that.
Israel Finkelsein, an Israeli archaeologist and academic, and Neil Silberman, an archaeologist and historian, both believe that priests in Jerusalem were spreading a Yahweh-Based monolatry message,
This statement is true, but it isn't the whole story. What the two authors actually argue is that with the fall of Israel to the Assyrians, the people of Judah underwent some economic, political, and religious pressure. It was at that time that the priests in Jerusalem began preaching a form of monaltry. This was in order to ally themselves with King Hezekiah who was using this tactic as a way of defining his planned rebellion against the Assyrians as a struggle of Yahweh against other gods. It was not a refining of a polytheistic Israel to a monaltry culture. This is all on page 247 of "The Bible Unearthed."
Mark S. Smith,
I'll definitely grand Dr. Smith as a biblical scholar that holds your views, though I would argue he is outside the mainstream on this. I would point out that he has yet to author a single peer-reviewed paper on the subject, opting rather to publish a popular press book. While there is nothing wrong with that decision of course, it is indicative that he doesn't feel the evidence is strong enough to withstand the peer review process.
Further, while his book is an excellent work on biblical origins and studies, his thesis relies on a tendency to late date texts that appear inconvenient to him. His dating of Deuteronomy, for example, has been heavily criticized as baseless. And while his story is interesting, and well researched, he lacks the critical time references to make it convincing. His inclusion of exterior texts, while laudatory, are often fragmentary and given far too heavy a weight to be conclusive.
William G. Denver I'm assuming you mean William G. Dever here. Prof. Dever's work definitely agrees with your interpretation. I would only make one, relatively critical point. Dever isn't talking about Judaism as we understand it. His work primarily focuses on the Jewish apocrypha. IE, the same texts that gave rise to the idea of Adam and Lilith. Those works first appear during the Babylonian exile and are younger than many other textual fragments within the traditional Torah. His work on the synthesis of Babylonian religions, Canaanite religions and Judaism in these works and the corresponding sects is impressive, but it isn't main line Judaism or Christianity.
This would be like criticizing Mormonism and claiming to have undermined all of Christianity.
-----
The rest of your quotes are from a Wiki article on Monolatrism, which I have a hard time validating as legitimate sources as most of the quotes are only found there and at least one (Eakins) is incorrectly transcribed. The Ellipses uses in that quote cuts out about two pages of material that change the meaning of that text quite a bit. He isn't arguing that Moses is an actual monolatrist, he is arguing that another source argued that he was a monolatrist. He then goes on to disassemble that claim for about a page before returning to the only valid (in his opinion) take on the original author's point, which is that Judaism was not a fully formed faith at Moses' death. Rather, further revelation as to God's nature and will were added later (via the prophets, judges, Talmud writers, etc). None of that goes to argue that Eakin thinks that this religion evolved from polytheism or that Moses believed that there were other gods.
Given that massive misquoting of the text, I have a hard time accepting anything the wiki article puts forward, and it is just further evidence that Wiki isn't a valid source for serious discussion.
------
I would like to add one further point, which goes to the article quoted on the Jewish Virtual library. The concept of a Monolatry is somewhat deceptive, imo. One could argue Billie Graham is a monolatrist because while he has only worshiped one God, he doesn't specifically go out of his way to deny other gods. Much of the argumentation used by adherents to monolatarism theory is that the Bible doesn't specifically call out all these other gods as false gods every single time it references them. The fact that it does call them false gods in places is dismissed as a later addition (usually with no textual dating to support it).
A failure to specifically call out other deities as non-existent in every instance does not mean you recognize they exist.
1. For the 100th time, personal belief and declared knowledge are two different things.
For the 99th time ;-) declared knowledge is a prerequisite for personal belief. I can't very well hold that there is no God if I also declare that knowledge of God's existence is impossible or at least unknown right?
If someone told me that Bigfoot walked through their yard and I didn't believe them, that doesn't mean that I am making the declaration that Bigfoot did not walk through their yard, I am rejecting the assertion that bigfoot did walk through their yard, and will remain skeptical unless he/she can prove that bigfoot DID walk through their yard.
Right, you are agnostic as to their claim. You are not holding the contrary position, that Bigfoot did not walk through their yard, you are simply not accepting their claim due to a lack of reliable evidence.
In essence, you are saying "the evidence presented does not constitute sufficient warrant to hold the position that the claim is true, therefore I am not accepting that claim."
This applies to God as well, I am personally an atheist because I find the evidence for God lacking, but I am agnostic in the sense that I am not saying with absolute certainty that there is no god,
I think then that this goes back to my earlier distinction with cartman. Your philosophic position is agnostic (IE you do not hold a positive claim as to the existence of God).
Your claim to atheism is only true if we consider atheism a psychological state (ie the lack of a belief in God). That isn't the common definition and it isn't really something I think you are claiming here since it isn't an argument from rationality, but from psychological position. To the extent that you are claiming to be of the group that does not hold a position that believes in God (IE "not theists") then you are an apatheist in philosophic terms.
3. First off, socialism and communism are not absolute synonyms,[/quote] This is correct. Communism is the govermentless ideal of socialistic transition. It occurs once a socialist society has developed sufficiently to distribute goods and services without oversight planners. Communism isn't an extreme version of socialism, it is designed to be the outcome of a socialistic transition.
You are also incorrect that corporatism is an extreme version of capitalism. The extreme version of capitalism is an anarcho-capitalist society, where all inter personal reactions take place in absence of a government and in a market based manner.
Corporatism is somewhere between a free market orientation and a socialist orientation. Corporatism is a situation where government and private enterprise are intertwined in such a way as to allow each to protect the other (in the words of those who support it). In reality it involves corporations influencing government to provide protectionist, non-market policies and regulations to limit competition.
Finally, again, you are incorrect about the prerequisite for socialism not being an atheistic world view. As I pointed out in my last post, the only real religious groups that even come close to this are communalists, not socialists. Communalists involved a small society with no government where all property (or most of it) was held in common. Socialism, by definition, cannot have a competing, transcendent reality that is incumbent in a deity.
This bias only exists if you are trying to find out who is an Atheist.
This argument is incoherent. Essentially you are arguing that someone could hold two different religious positions at the same time. That they could both maintain that there is no God and that they are unsure if there is a God.
The only way to rationalize these two positions, as I pointed out earlier, is to change Atheism from a philosophic position to a psychological state (the state of non-belief). In which case trees and rocks are atheists as well since they are incapable of being in the state of belief.
If the latter is actually your definition of atheism, the psychological state, then the necessary conclusion is that the condition of being an atheist is not a rational position, it is a position based upon a psychological state.
See? You labeled all "no" as Atheist.
Which is a different position than what you offered in your last post. The no there obviously refers to those people who maintain that God does not exist. Please see the above for a further distinction between holding a rational position and having a psychological state.
You are trying to claim that sense aren't evidence because you can't verify that they reflect the physical world
No, I'm saying that using your senses as evidence that they constitute evidence is a begging the question fallacy. That would be like arguing that a computer model of a building is accurate because the computer model tells us it is. Including your conclusion (senses represent evidence) in your premise (senses provide evidence) is a classic begging the question fallacy. http://www.nizkor.
Let's suppose I imagine a cat that is actually outside my yard, to be in my yard. Where is the cat I imagine? Inside the yard, outside the yard, or is it actually in my imagination? :)
My position would be that the cat is outside your yard. But the concept of the cat being inside your yard is logically possible and internal to you mind.
I think the two are two separate things. The cat in reality and the thought you have conceived about it. The question is, does the latter have the same ontological significance as the former?
I'm not sure but I tend to think so.
Lets presume, for a second that that is true, that some things that can occur never actually do. If so, then could we argue that while those things could occur (and we could imagine them occurring) that they do not actually exist since they will never occur?
I am not sure what you mean by "equally existent". Are a cloud and a dime equally existent?
IE they have the property of being. They are rather than are not. Perhaps more helpfully, things that are existent have the property of being causally potent. IE they can be the cause of something. Things that do not exist cannot be a cause. I would argue both a dime and a cloud are equally existent, one is metal, the other is water vapor. Both can be the cause of something.
The Cosmological Argument is both (a) based on a bare assertion fallacy
You clearly didn't read my responses above. I am not committing a "bare assertion" fallacy above because I have offered justification for each of the premises and the logical structure of the argument. Because you disagree with the premise doesn't mean it isn't supported.
Which premise, specifically, do you disagree with?
(b) makes a ludicrous and unfounded logical jump from "the universe has a cause" to "that cause is god" and more specifically "the Abrahamic God"- a jump that has no actual logical support.
And you'll notice that my argument does not conclude "God of the Bible." I do not (and I don't think any theist seriously argues this) claim that the Cosmological argument necessitates a Christian theology. Rather, it holds the necessity of a cause with certain attributes (atemporal, aphysical, omnipotent, intentfulness). A cause with such attributes is commonly labelled as a God.
The "fine tuning" nonsense is similarly based on a bare assertion fallacy- it simply states that the physical constants in our universe weren't out of necessity or chance but does not support those claims.
I think this reveals that you are not familiar with the arguments themselves. Support for these premises are offered in most examples. Necessity is usually supported via the Standard Model, or other Physics based argument (since virtually no modern physicists hold that he physical values of the constants were necessarily the values they were). Chance is usually rejected in line with basic statistical argumentation. The odds of a matter forming universe being conservatively estimated at 1 in 10^500, accepting the null hypothesis of chance is a pretty strong belief statement.
As for the moral argument, I can't honestly believe anyone actually buys that.
Which premise of the moral argument do you contest?
First, a house-keeping note
You are indeed correct, thank you for cleaning up the sources. I should have realized that would happen when I first posted it.
Since you borrowed his whole argument, I would hope you are using his definitions.
I actually do not entirely adopt Craig's conclusions. He concludes a "mind" while I argue "intent-fulness." Similar, but not exactly the same argument.
One other small note - only one source is post 1973; there have been a number of advancements in this area since then.
I don't think that this is an accurate statement. I offered seven sources. Source 1, the philosophic dictionary is a currently and periodically updated source. Source 2, is pre-1976, however it is referencing very basic quantum mechanical principals that haven't changed since that publication. The existence of a quantum wave function is hardly outdated. Source 3 was last updated in 2000, and advances sine then haven't invalidated the standard model as explained. Heck, the viewing of the Higgs-Boson last year was further confirmatory evidence of this model. Source 4 covers minowski spacetime, another extremely basic concept to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The link itself was updated in 2013 and reflects current tensor analysis. Source 5 is indeed from 1973 and reflects a theorem first accepted at that time (and still in acceptance now) concerning the basic laws of entropy. It also has a paper by Hawking/Penrose, from 1970 and is discussing an earlier Big Bang theory since rejected, so it being old is moot to the support for the premise. Source 6 is a paper published in 2003 and represents a current cosmological theorem about inflationary spacetimes. Finally, source 7 represents a transcript from 2011, and refers to a philosophic definition, so its age would also seem irrelevant even if it were old.
As a summary, I have 5 sources that date from post-1973 and two sources pre-1973, both of which refer to fundamental concepts not challenged anywhere in your response.
As such, I think this objection fails concerning my support.
The early cyclic models developed in the 20s and 30s had no concept of what we now refer to as dark energy. The current cyclic models do not have an issue with entropy buildup
The two papers you reference by Steinhardt and Turok fall into the category of Ekpyrotic cyclic models. These models propose a cyclical expansion within a larger brane universe where the build up of entropy is within the larger brane, not the individual sub-universes (Section three on page 15 of "Cosmic Evolution in a Cyclic Universe" and Comparing cyclic and inflationary model section on page 12 of "A Cyclic Model of the Universe"). The problem with this is, that in order for the larger brane universe to accomplish this "relief valve" function it must be on average expanding. It thus falls prey to the BGV theorem (referenced above) and cannot be past eternal. Steinhardt makes this argument on his website in the FAQ section (or did until 2007, use the way back machine to see the argument he made).
This seems wholly made up. Forces in one dimension can have no effect on other dimensions, yet there's an exclusion to that rule for intentionality?? based on what exactly??
Neither Craig nor you have produced anything that rules out the Hawking no-boundary proposal. Craig's arguments against it are namely that he doesn't like the idea of imaginary time and that it is currently metaphysical speculation (hello pot, this is kettle - you're black!).
You misunderstand Craig's position here. He is simply pointing out the same thing Hawking points out on his website. Imaginary time is useful fiction for accomplishing the math. It is a necessary introduction into Einstein's equations to avoid the absurdities arise out of an infinitely dense universe. What Hawking doesn't do in the formal paper (but which is done in his proposed papers and by other physicists) is to convert those imaginary time sets back into a real time set to convert back to a model capable of describing reality. When done, that conversion does, in fact, involve a beginning. To quote Hawking himself on the subject: "Only if we could picture the universe in terms of imaginary time would there be no singularities . . . . When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities"
Even if not undertaken, the Hawking model doesn't really object to the second premise. Hawking's insight is a way around having a beginning "point" at best. But something doesn't not need to have a finite beginning point in order to have a beginning. A hyperbolic curve does not have a beginning point, but it does have an asymptote beyond which it does not exist. IE as we move across the axis the curve does not exist and then does exist. Hence it falls within the definition of beginning offered in the original argument.
Great post Skeptikitten, thank you for replying.
Actually agnosticism isn't a position on belief at all, but knowledge. The vast majority of atheists and theists both are also agnostic.
You are correct in that agnosticism is a statement of knowledge. I think you err when you say that it is not a statement on position. The statement of knowledge is an underlying pre-requisite for a statement of position.
Hence, there are no theistic agnostics or atheistic agnostics. IE, you cannot hold a positive claims (is or is not a God) if you hold that there is no knowledge.
But you have to remember that these are more than just labels. They apply to people and their positions. Clearly people can be theists, they can be atheists, but what if they are neither?
Just as with virtually any other question, the answer, imo, is agnostic. You can hold that we should go to Olive Garden, Steve can hold we should go to Hooters, I can be agnostic on the question.
Atheism has no dogma and no beliefs in common. I disagree. All atheists, by definition, hold the belief that there is no God.
Not to mention that it is a common conflation fallacy to attach atheism to socialism- they are not integrally related. There have been theistic socialist systems, and in fact Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge based their non-standard version of socialism on tenets of Theravada Buddhism; which, by the way, is where Pol Pot's ACTUAL religious affiliation lay.
I think you are confusing communalism with communism/socialism. There were no examples of theistic socialism, but there are examples of theistic communalism. The two are similar in some respects, but differ in many ways when one considers other economic aspects.
Theravada Buddhism isn't a theistic religion however. It does not hold a dogmatic view of an afterlife, does not hold Buddha as a deity or immortal. It is a philosophy of mental state, not a religion.
I would also disagree that I am conflating socialism with atheism. I'm certainly not holding that all atheists must be socialists. Rather atheism is necessary for socialism's development. Socialism requires a moral relativism not found in theistic religion (since the theistic part implies an objective reality) as well as a focus upon the community, which removes a transcending entity as separate from the community.
Wait... so you assume that the literature you read is the correct literature? How do you know what I have and have not read?
I didn't say "correct" I said "serious." IE I was contrasting referencing an analysis by someone with experience, training and peer review to an analysis done by a reporter. It is the difference between reading Shelby Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative" and watching Ken Burn's "Civil War." One provides a far more in depth, scholarly approach to the subject than the other.
I intended for the debate to be over until I went back and read this arrogant statement.
As opposed to "sounds like a bunch of bs to me?" Arrogant statements breed arrogant replies right?
Well, many support mine as well.
Can you name any?
Agreed. You are the one who said for sure that you could tell someone was Atheist even though they could be either.
You still seem to be missing the argument. My point was if you ask a question of the frame the question used to determine philosophic position (theist, agnostic, atheist) as "do you believe in X" you are creating a bias in the answer set based upon how you ask the question. This can be seen because a person who is agnostic can be both an atheist and a theist at the same time based on how you phrase a question.
Clearly you don't think someone can be both an atheist and a theist right?
So why did you say that you were 100% sure that they were Atheists?
I think you might be confusing me with someone else. I don't think agnostics are atheists. I think they are a separate, third, category between atheist and theist.
Doesn't mean that belief isn't based on evidence.
So what evidence, specifically, are you using to form the belief that the sensory inputs you are getting are receiving reflect the physical world? It would seem a bit circular to claim evidence from your senses as evidence for your senses right?
"Actually it is common [human] behaviour [sic] to demolish places of worship of other Religions, like how when the [Soviets, Chinese, etc] destroyed the buildings of the old [religions after they came to power.]"
You are assuming Christianity here is the common thread, when this type of behavior spans across religions and indeed across any group spectrum. Politics, nationality, race, etc. Any form of group identity humans adopt has examples of destruction of other groups not included in that identity.
Aw....would you be so kind?
Sorry, that did come off as a bit condescending. I didn't mean it that way, my apologies.
With my imagination I can be wildly creative
Right, perhaps we should rephrase my initial point to "I can imagine logically possible things that do not actually exist."
Some things that can occur have not yet occurred
And some things that can occur will never occur, right?
We can suppose what may not exist, in places we knows we both can and can't test, draw seriousness from nothing but jest; find beauty without addressing the rest, but dream as we tend to not a one can help to from ourselves reality divest
I like it!
Things such as thoughts, are conditions and events within the intellect. Things such as Fenway Park, are conditions and events that occur outside the intellect, in what is commonly referred to (and methinks somewhat erroneously) as "the real world"
Ok, given that distinction are both categories equally "existent?" And should we treat them equally from a philosophic point of view?
First, let me point out that the original point here was based upon Strong's Concordance being reliable or not. The idea that Strong's Concordance is not a reliable translation of Biblical Hebrew is pretty hard to swallow. It is the standard in the field and is used not only by Christians but by many Jews as well.
Regardless, your question was related to biblical scholars. Biblical scholarship is a sub-category of Ancient Literature and derives most of its tools from that field.
These include Philology (study of language), archeology, anthropology, contemporary textual analysis, amongst others.
Philology for example proves scholars with an understanding of how biblical Hebrew relates to the larger field of Semetic languages, how it developed, the roots and relationships amongst words, the changes that have occurred to word meaning and use over time, etc.
Archeology and Anthropology give us an idea of the social and physical constructs of Israelite, Caananite and other contemporary civilizations. That understanding provides scholars with a context of how these texts related to understanding of the world in which those people existed, and the meaning often contained allusions and alegories.
Contemporary textual analysis provides a form of spot checking for translations. Understanding how others who use a similar or the same language with more agreed upon understandings can help to inform less understood translations or phrasing. For example if we found that the phrase "X Y Z" was used in legal codes to mean the time harvest is taken, is is a good bet that its use in religious texts is similar. This study is especially informative when translating idioms, which are usually not very clear to later generations. For example, in 10,000 years if someone comes across the phrase "it was a cool event" they might translate that specifically as that it was cold at that event. Contextual analysis might show that we use the phrase cool to mean fun or interesting, etc and that could provide a better understanding of what is meant by that idiom.
Textual analysis has been a relatively recent development in the field of ancient literature. Its biggest improvement has been the isolation of changes over time and predicting a change rate for a text over time. For example, the Bible and the Illiad have an extremely low rate of change over time given the manner of their recitation, extensive use of archaic phraseology, etc. The epic of Gilgamesh on the other hand had extensive changes over just a few hundred years as shown by the insertion of later lingo, phrasing, etc.
I hope this has provided some insight into where and how biblical scholars (many if not most of whom are secular btw) analyze the text as it is presented here.
One statement that is not part of my argument does not make my argument fallacious.
I didn't say your entire argument was fallacious. I said that statement represented a fallacy. The argument you made directly committed a different fallacy.
Wrong. We are trying to establish the definitions of words. Please address the issue I stated. Saying it is a compositional fallacy without reasoning is begging the question.
You realize that I did do this right? And that you reply to it below?
You can't be agnostic about an algebra problem, I don't see how this fits.
You certainly can be, you are agnostic as to its answer. holding neither of two opposing positions: If you take an agnostic view of technology, then it becomes clear that your decisions to implement one solution or another should be driven by need.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/
You are attempting to get information that requires the second question to be asked by asking the first question only.
My point seems to have been unclear, sorry. I'm proposing those as two separate questions to highlight that the way you are asking the question means that an individual could be both theist or atheist depending on how you phrase the question.
Clearly that is problematic unless you are holding that theist and atheist are not mutually exclusive positions.
The fact that this contradiction arises shows that the manner in which the question is being framed in incorrect.
Rather, we should frame a question in a manner that produces the same response regardless of the specific phrasing. For example:
Does God [not] exist? Regardless of which variant you choose there the outcomes are the same. Theists will answer opposite to Atheists and agnostics will answer different from both (I don't know).
You are the one who is saying they are the same person.
There seems to have been some confusion. Let me offer some definitions in an attempt to clarify.
Theist: One who holds the positive claim that God exists.
Agnostic: One who does not hold a positive claim towards God's existence.
Atheist: One who holds the positive claim that God does not exist.
Given those definitions we can see that the way you originally framed the question is problematic as that agnostic category would answer as atheists in one variant or theists in another depending on how you chose to ask the question.
You are saying my senses are not part of the physical world, therefore supernatural. Bow down to me, I am your God.
I think you misunderstand the question. My original position was that not all beliefs are formed via evidence. The example of "I believe my sense reflect the physical world" is such a belief. People hold this belief basically. You could well be experiencing hallucinations, inaccurate understanding of reality or any of a hundred natural variants, but you hold that your senses report the natural world. That is a belief not based upon evidence. Right?
The reason why people feared Witchcraft so much was because of Christianity.
Well the fear of witchcraft predates Christianity. The celts were inordinately fearful of hexes and spells, etc. That is why Greek ships have that eye on them. The fear of magical curses are certainly not unique to Christianity.
The specific incidents themselves were caused by a hallucinogenic compound in mold. The fact that they called them "witches" rather than "djinn" or "counter revolutionaries" or "republicans" is related to the specific culture. Around that same time in eastern Europe (also Christian) the fear was more concerning the rising of the undead and werewolf type characters.
When the Romans converted to Christianity they ordered the pillaging and destruction of many Pagan temples and made it illegal to be a Pagan under the pain of death.
Just as prior to that conversion they had ordered the pillaging and destruction of many churches and made it illegal to be a Christian under the pain of death.
It would seem that the Romans are the common factor here, not the specific religious principles.
Let me see if I can reframe this a bit.
The fact of holding or not holding a belief is a psychological state. The terms used in psychology for this are Apatheism and Apoatheism.
The argument that a position of existence/non-exigence is correct is a philosophic position. That position is defined in philosophy as Theist/Agnostic/Atheist.
I hope that clarifies what I think is the confusion in what some of us are talking about.
You cant even begin to support a hypothesis that hitler did what he did FOR atheism.
Hi Ave, welcome to the discussion. I believe I answered this objection earlier. The application of atheism to Hitler is the same as the application of Christianity to this woman. Hitler was undertaking the various actions he did in order to ensure his world view was triumphant. That world view was atheistic. Replace the names and ideologies here and you have the OP. If one is valid, the other is, by default, valid as well.
I should note here, before we go down a rabbit hole, that I don't think either are valid. My point is that the logic applied here is fallacious (hasty generalization fallacy), and that same methodology would lead to a conclusion much more critical of atheism than theism if applied consistently.
If hitler shut down a political party (which he did) then it really doesn't say anything about his faith or lack therof.
I agree. I've often heard it said that ideological groups reserve their most vehement denunciations for those most like them (since they are competing for the same audience), but regardless, I don't think we can really infer much from that action either way.
Don't you think if hitler was such a die hard atheist that he would've gotten rid of it for EVERYONE?
Not necessarily, Hitler was a dictator, but he still lived in political reality. There were plenty of things that Hitler clearly planned on reforming, but didn't have the political capital or will or focus to deal with during a world war. Stronger price controls, racial purity tests for all citizens, the complete removal of unearned (interest and capital gains) income, etc.
they didn't imprison them for their beliefs, just for not teaching what they wanted.
That is an interesting way to read that. Lets say you were a teacher at a public school and I demanded that you teach Creationism. You refuse and so I fire you. Are you being fired for your beliefs? I think most people would say so.
The position of Aryans as the master race is directly related to Catholic teachings (Jesus came for all men Gentile and Jew), their unwillingness to set aside that part of Catholic dogma in favor of Hitler's dogma is a direct conflict in belief sets.
Agreed. However the interest in the occult to me signifies that it is likely he also held a theistic belief. It doesn't at all prove anything, but its nothing to shake your head at.
I'm not sure, the occult is an odd mishmash of belief sets and ideologies. UFO hunters are usually held to be in the occult and many of them are atheists (some are also theists). I think the nature of Hitler's exact belief set is pretty relevant here. While, I certainly concede we cannot know his exact position, his actions and appointments and writings tend to indicate that he favored an occult position that a purified aryan race would have access to latent powers within this world left here by the last race of supermen, aryans. He viewed the Norse and germanic gods as aryan prototypes and mythical variations on actual human potential.
Though again, if he was determined to destroy theistic belief, wouldn't he just kill the pope?
I would again argue that Hitler lived in a real world where he couldn't instantaneously pursue all goals at once. I think it is pretty clear from a historical point of view that he wanted to remove Christianity at least from Germany at some point, but he needed to "lift" the German people above it first. Because he recognized real world constraints doesn't mean he didn't hold the viewpoint. He was pretty clearly a supporter of the final solution, but he also didn't advertise it overtly in German media.
He ran into conflict politically with a non-theistic part of Christianity's moral code. He planned to destroy Christianity because of this reason, NOT because they believed in god
First, I should point out that the moral code in Christianity can't be non-theistic, it all derives from the teachings and position of a deity. If Christ is not Christ then the idea of non-racism, etc is moot.
Second, I think you should have read a bit more into the source you quoted. Literally the next paragraph after the one you quote says:
According to Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi leader of the German youth corps that would later be known as the Hitler Youth, ''the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement'' from the beginning, though ''considerations of expedience made it impossible'' for the movement to adopt this radical stance officially until it had consolidated power, the outline says.
Attracted by the strategic value inherent in the churches' ''historic mission of conservative social discipline,'' the Nazis simply lied and made deals with the churches while planning a ''slow and cautious policy of gradual encroachment'' to eliminate Christianity.
I think your second quote is best understood in light of the text above. Remember the that new paganism of fascism was explicitly atheist in tone and worshiping the State as the only greater being. The old paganism of germanic "gods" again represent real people who were "racially pure" and therefore able to perform feats greater than mortals. It is important to remember that the early germanic 'gods' are born, grow up and die or are killed. They do not rise to an afterlife (that was the "norse perversion" as Himmler called it).
It encourages not the destruction of theistic belief in Christianity but just a different take on it.
I disagree. If you replace the Jesus of the New Testament with a aryan superman akin to Beowulf, theism doesn't really follow along with it. A warrior king who can be killed and die, but represents a racial struggle is an odd form of theism to be charitable.
Suppose AGAIN, that I grant you victory AND that I agree that hitler WAS atheist and WAS trying to spread atheism. What then? Does that mean all atheists share his views? No.
Ding, ding, ding! Exactly! That is the point I made way back when I waded in here. That woman's actions are not necessarily reflective of either the content or the truth value of the underlying ideology.
Hitler was no atheist, he may have not been a 100% bible believing christian, but he was a theist of sorts; Which I stated in my last post, did you actually read it? I stated that Hitler was more than likely an atheist or at very most a passive follower of germanic religions and cults.
1.the nazis had shut down many secular and atheistic organizations and demonized them by associating them with communists (something the nazi ideology was strongly opposed to)
If a catholic organization shut down a protestant group, would that mean they are atheists? Shutting down competing political groups is not a statement of religious belief.
2.german soldiers had the phrase "Gott Mit Uns" (German for God is with us)on thier uniforms
Which predates Hitler (it dates back to the Roman empire in german units). Further, in Hitler's personal soldiers, the Waffen SS, that phrase was explicitly forbidden and replaced with "my duty is loyalty."
3. catholics were never interned in concentration camps because of their religionb(maybe a few were but they were due to being "ethnically jewish or criticizing the nazi movement)
This is just a patently false statement, you really should consult Dr. Google before posting these: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/KZDachau/DachauLife3.html
Catholic priests were locked up for refusing to teach that Germans were superior to other races and that God favored Arryans.
4. Hitler had a strong interest in the occult (suggesting he believed in the supernatural)
Yep, said this above. But supernatural =/= thiest. Hitler's variety of supernatural beliefs were based upon the idea of the superman. That man had once been genetically pure and could return to that state and thereby gain access to powers not understood by modern day humans. None of these particular cults held for an afterlife, for example.
5. The Catholic church never excommunicated hitler, in fact the pope remained silent throught the events of the holocaust
The fact that there were Wafen SS soldiers in the Vatican watching the Pope tends to be a good explanation of this. Further, the Pope's lack of action does not imply a belief system in Hitler, only his own disinclination for action.
6. Give me a quote from hitler (with a reliable source) in which he denied the existance of God
I can point out that the Nazi goal to eradicate Christianity is extremely well established.
http://org.law.rutgers.edu/publications/
In "World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1", p. 10, ABC-CLIO, 2006: “There is no doubt that in the long run Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Himmler intended to eradicate Christianity just as ruthlessly as any other rival ideology, even if in the short term they had to be content to make compromises with it.”
"Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich" on p. 240, "Had the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical policies would have gone beyond those of the German Christians, to the utter destruction of both the Protestant and the Catholic Church."
The most definitive book on fascist germany: "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" says, “And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.”
From "Germany: a modern history": “It seems no exaggeration to insist that the greatest challenge the Nazis had to face was their effort to eradicate Christianity in Germany or at least to subjugate it to their general world outlook.”
Most relevantly, the only historian to actually know Hitler, Ian Kershaw, argued that Hitler was an atheist, he is quoted in "Hitler, a Study in Tyranny" as arguing that Hitler thought Christianity was a religion fit for slaves. It further points out that the official ideologist of the party was a fervently anti-christian neo-pagan and that Hitler gave explicit approval of noted atheists Himmler and Goebels to shut down religious institutions as they saw fit.
“I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty
Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.”
[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]
You realize that I pointed out this source as not coming from a Rechstag speech, but from chapter two of Mein Kampf in my last post right? Whatever source you are taking this from couldn't apparently be bothered with quoting correctly.
I should point out that political speeches are a bad place to find real politician's beliefs. The evidence of his actions and those closest to him portray a very different story than the speeches he used to come to power. I mean do you believe the statements of a politician trying to get elected?
8. Hitler strongly embraced the concept of "Positive Christianity", the Nazi approved interpretation of Christianity in which Jesus is depicted as an Aryan warrior whonfought against the Jews
Yep, "positive Christianity" also included the removal of the Bible as a source of information and replaced with a newly constructed book by Nazi historians. In that book Jesus wasn't crucified, but rebelled. He was Aryan and was not born of Joseph, made virtually no moralistic speeches and didn't heal the weak.
IE "positive Christianity" retains nothing of Christianity, but the name. It would be like calling yourself an atheist, but in your version of atheism you pray to Jesus, attend church and receive communion.
Atheism isnt the assertion that there is no God, it is the REJECTION of the assertion that there is a God, some religions are atheistic, like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, etc. they do not believe or worship a specific deity.
This is inaccurate. This definition of atheism, as I pointed out before, is a psychological state, not a philosophic position. By it, we should also conclude that rocks and trees are atheists since they do not hold theistic beliefs.
That is why in philosophy we do not define positions via belief states, but rather by claims associated.
The position of atheist (rather than the state) is the holding of a claim that God does not exist.
I am pointing outnthat your definition of a moral God is only subjective,
To quote G.K. Chesterton, "fallacies do not cease being fallacies because they become fashions." The fact that other societies at other times have held different opinions is not evidence that objective moral values and duties do not exist. There were societies that believed the world was on the back of a turtle. It does not mean that cosmology is subjective.
2. Moral codes are completley subjective,
If this is a true statement, under what authority can you argue that the shooter at Newtown committed an immoral act? After all it was immoral to you and me, but those values are subjective, meaning it might have been moral to him right?
because of the atrocities I listed to you before, it clearly demonstrates that it has not prevented immorality as well.
Does that mean that in the US our law against murder isn't valid either? I mean people still murder after all.
Just because I attacked you doesn't mean that it was ad hominem. I clearly described why you were wrong, then I added a "mean" statement. And, you can't accuse me of making a compositional fallacy when I was describing how you were making a compositional fallacy.
Actually, yes it does. Attacking an opponent rather than the argument is, by definition, an ad hom fallacy. The fact that you had another argument as well does not mean that the person comment was not fallacious. I recommend reviewing this site for a better understanding of fallacious argumentation: http://www.nizkor.
A review of that site would show that you were indeed committing a compositional fallacy in the manner of accusing me of one. You were using misleading statements and confusing their definitions when comparing them.
The "no" answer includes all of the people who strictly believe that God does not exist, and all of the people who aren't sure if God exists.
Then their statement of "no" is not an accurate response to the question. If I were to ask you: "Does X+5=Y?" You, as agnostic about the question, wouldn't answer "no" you would say "I don't know."
You are attempting to smuggle the "I don't know" position with a hidden bit of context. Allow me to illustrate with two questions:
Do you agree with the statement: God exists?
Theist: Yes
Atheist: No
Agnostic: No
Do you agree with the statement: God does not exist?
Theist: No
Atheist: Yes
Agnostic: No
You are simply ignoring the second question and arguing that the third group agrees with you. This is a kind of special pleading because we wouldn't do that in the second question nor would we do that in any other area. For example:
"Do you agree with the Republican Party Platform?"
Answer: No.
That does not mean the answerer is a Democrat. They could be a libertarian, an independent, etc
In a more formal sense, you are confusing ~a (not theist) with b (atheist). ~a includes b and it includes ~a~b.
So, you are saying the "no" answer is the apatheistic answer, which means you can't conclude that they are Atheists, which you tried to conclude.
I think you misread my response. Allow me to restate it and lets see if it is clearer.
Apatheist contains both atheists and agnostics. (it is ~a from above). They are the set of people who would answer no to the first question labeled above.
Apoatheists contain both theists and agnostics. (~b from above). They are the set of people who would answer no to the second question above.
Sweet, I am supernatural then. I am God, praise me.
That doesn't answer the question. I'm asking why do you hold the belief that your senses reliably represent the physical world rather than are an illusion or are random fluctuations, etc? What makes you hold that belief?
This response seems completely detached from my point. It is almost as if you never actually read my post.
I didn't say that they are making this argument from ignorance (we don't know a word), but rather from philological and linguistic analysis. Deriving the origins of words via related languages and tracking their use through history.
Additionally, I think you simply ignored that the fact that Hebrew isn't English, and therefore uses words and structures in a different manner than English.
I would recommend a re-read of my post and then a new response.
It's fun to plagiarize huh? http://wiki.ironchariots.org/
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Now, as for the response to you:
Answer: this argument is an example of "proof by logic", where philosophers attempt to "demonstrate" God with a logical syllogism alone, devoid of any confirming evidence.
This was the first hint that you had simply plagiarized your response rather than actually read my post. You'll note that I did offer external confirming evidence including current cosmological consensus on the age of the universe. References to the Standard Model of Cosmology, which relies on confirmatory evidence. And current understanding of set theory and mathematics.
So, it is clear that your "response" is at best, a strawman.
1. any pre-existing entity/entities that caused the universe do not have to be personal with a mind and will
This is shown in my initial reply to you: "3) Intentfulness. This conclusion arises from the observed temporal finiteness of the universe. We know that the cause cannot be a mechanistic cause (IE if the cause exists the effect exists) because we can describe a state of affairs where the cause exists, but the effect does not. This is really a long winded method of saying “the universe began.”
Likewise, we can say that the cause is not a probabilistic cause either. Probabilistic causes require a dimension to act along. IE along a temporal dimension (chance over time) or a physical one (chance over distance). However, all probabilistic causes must act along the dimensions that they elicit effects within. IE, a quantum wave function acts along a temporal and physical dimension to create an effect in both (a particle’s location). You cannot have a quantum wave function (or any other probability function) that only discusses time, but produces a physical effect.
Given now that we’ve ruled out those two methods of causation we are only left with intent. Only a cause that has an intent can demonstrate the attributes labeled above. Only an intentful cause can create information that is not found within itself. IE all causes except intentful ones have temporal information within them if they act temporally, physical information within them if they act physically, etc. Only intentful causes exhibit the kind of causation we observe given the CA."
2. Any cause of the universe does not have to be the God of the bible. No reason is given why biblical mythology should be taken any more seriously than any other bronze age mythology.
I already discussed this in my last response to you. The Cosmological Argument indeed, does not indicate the God of the Bible. Rather, we use other arguments to further reveal the aspects of the first cause to determine if we can eliminate other possibilities (this was also done in my last post to you).
In other words, they want to say S1 "and then" S2....3. S1 and S2 follow each other in time
This position is incorrect both in philosophical understanding and in accord with modern physics.
The author has here assumed that the only type of sequencing order possible is a temporal one. That is incorrect, IE a false dichotomy fallacy.
Rather, there are other order sequence types used quite frequently in both physics and philosophy. The relevant one here is logical or causal sequence ordering. We can order a sequence without reference to temporal relationships quite easily. This is a common action within String Theory, the formation and distinction of strings into sub-atomic particles that arises during the initial expansion of the universe occurs absent a temporal reference frame. This action, rather, occurs in one of the "folded" dimensions predicated within String theory that is not part of Minowski space (defined in my last post). So here we can see a physical science arguing for a causal relationship that does not occur in a temporally bound setting.
In philosophy this is known as the question of Immanence.
1.1 Immanence
Question: Are the causal relata immanent, or transcendent? That is, are they concrete and located in spacetime, or abstract and non-spatiotemporal?
This question is connected to the question of category. If the relata are transcendent, then they are facts. If they are immanent, then they are events, or one of the other candidates such as features, tropes, or situations.
In practice, one finds three main arguments on the question of immanence. First, there is the argument from pushing, which maintains that the relata must be immanent so as to push things around. Second, there is the argument from absences, which maintains that the relata must be transcendent so that absences can figure in causal relations. Third, there is the so-called ‘slingshot’ argument, which maintains that the causal relata must be immanent events because (as per an argument from Frege) there is but one transcendent fact: the True.
Pushing: The main argument for immanence is that only immanent entities can interact. This argument is nicely summarized by one of its opponents, Bennett: “Some people have objected that facts are not the sort of item that can cause anything. A fact is a true proposition (they say); it is not something in the world but is rather something about the world, which makes it categorically wrong for the role of a puller and shover and twister and bender.” (1988, p. 22; see also Hausman 1998) According to the pushing argument, only concrete spatiotemporal entities can be causes and effects.
There are two main responses to the pushing argument, the first of which is to find substitute immanent entities. These substitute immanents serve as pushers, and relate to the causal facts, while still being distinct from them. Bennett, in the immediate continuation of the above quote, recruits objects for just such a purpose: “That rests on the mistaken assumption that causal statements must report relations between shovers and forcers. I grant that facts cannot behave like elbows in the ribs, but we know what items do play that role — namely, elbows. In our world the pushing and shoving and forcing are done by things — elementary particles and aggregates of them — and not by any relata of the causal relation.” (1988, p. 22) Mellor (1995) offers a similar response, suggesting facta (the immanent truth-makers for facts) as the immanent basis for fact causation.
The second response to the pushing argument is to charge that it rests on a naive (pre-Humean) conception of causation as requiring some sort of metaphysical push or ‘oomph’. If the causal relation is a mere matter of regularity, why can't the regularities hold between facts?
Absences: The main argument for transcendence is that absences can be involved in causal relations. Absences are said to be transcendent entities. They are nothings, non-occurrences, and hence are not in the world. Thus Mellor says, “For the ‘C’ and ‘E’ in a true causal ‘E because C’ need not assert the existence of particulars. They may deny it… They are negative existential statements, made true by the non-existence of such particulars,…” (1995, p. 132) Here Mellor is arguing that, in the case where rock-climbing Don does not die because he does not fall, Don's non-falling and non-dying are causally related, without there being any events or other immanent entities to relate.
There are two main responses to the absence argument, the first of which is to deny that absences can be causal. In this vein, Armstrong claims: “Omissions and so forth are not part of the real driving force in nature. Every causal situation develops as it does as a result of the presence of positive factors alone.” (1999, p. 177; see also Beebee 2004a) The theorist who denies absence causation may add some conciliatory codicil to the effect that absences stand in cause-like relations. Thus Dowe (2000, 2001) develops an account of ersatz causation (causation) to explain away our intuitions that absences can be genuinely causal.
The second response to the absence argument is to deny that absences are transcendent. One way to do this would be to accept the existence of negative properties, and think of absences as events in which an object instantiates a negative property. Thus Don's instantiating non-falling at t0 might be counted an immanent event, and a cause of the further immanent event of his instantiating non-dying at t1. A second way to deny that absences are transcendent would be to take absence claims as merely a way to describe occurrences, as Hart and Honore recommend: “The corrective here is to realize that negative statements like ‘he did not pull the signal’ are ways of describing the world, just as affirmative statements are, but they describe it by contrast not by comparison as affirmative statements do.” (1985, p. 38) Thus Don's not falling at t0 may be identified with his clinging to the rock at t0, and Don's not dying at t1 may be identified with his surviving at t1, which events are indeed causally related.
Slingshot: Davidson's argument for immanence is the slingshot, which is an argument (from Frege) that there is only one fact, the True. Briefly stated, the argument runs as follows. First, let f1 and f2 be any true facts. Then f1 is logically equivalent to the fact that {x: x=x & f1} = {x: x=x}. Moreover, {x: x=x & f1} is extensionally equivalent to {x: x=x & f2}, and so by substitution f1 is logically equivalent to the fact that {x: x=x & f2} = {x: x=x}. But that is logically equivalent to f2, and so f1 and f2 (our arbitrarily chosen true facts) are logically equivalent. If all facts were indeed logically equivalent, they would, of course, be unsuited for being causal relata. (Davidson 1980b)
The main defense against the slingshot is to block some of its substitution principles (see Mackie 1974, Menzies 1989, and Mellor 1995). One might reject the logical equivalence of f1 with the fact that {x: x=x & f1} = {x: x=x}. Or one might deny that substituting the extensional equivalents {x: x=x & f1} and {x: x=x & f2} inside the context ‘…the fact that…’ preserves logical equivalence.
A more conciliatory version of this defense is to maintain that there is at least one coherent conception of facts shielded from the slingshot (Bennett 1988). That is, one might distinguish between facts1, defined so that the substitutions of the slingshot are valid, and facts2, defined so that at least some of these substitutions are invalid. Then facts conceived of as facts2 may still serve as the relata.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
Within quantum mechanics there seems to be real counter examples to the first premise of the argument. "Everything that begins to exist has a cause." For example, when Carbon-14 decays to Carbon-12 the radioactive decay is a perfectly random causeless event and thus though the Carbon-12 began to exist it wasn't caused to exist.
This is a fundamentally untrue claim. The first hint that it isn't being put forth by someone familiar with the process is the claim that Carbon 14 decays to Carbon 12. It doesn't. It decays to Nitrogen 14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Further, it completely misunderstands the causes inherent in beta decay. The function is governed at this level by the decay function of a nucleus. This quantum mechanical law is the cause of the decay itself.
What you are doing here (and in your next example) is confusing the fact that we cannot fully predict exactly when it will decay with the idea that there is no cause. There certainly is a cause in quantum mechanics.
Likewise, when matter and antimatter (particle-antiparticle formations) such as electron-positron creation, they can be said to have started to exist but not to have been caused to exist.
This is the more common objection to this point, but has no more objectionary power than the last example. In fact, I already rebutted it earlier:
"In the past, some have sought to object to this premise by forwarding different aspects of Quantum Mechanics. These fail however because the causal mechanism still exists, it is the quantum wave function [2]. The confusion often arises because we confuse a probabilistic cause for no cause at all. If there was a random number generator that killed a cat on odd numbers, we wouldn't say that the cat's death was uncaused."
You'll note that this point already defeats "your" objection of Schroedinger's cat. The random number generator that governs the life/death state of the cat upon observation is still the cause of the cat's death. That it exists in both states prior to observation is irrelevant to that reality.
Dan Barker's article Cosmological Kalamity...reality can be divided into two sets: items that begin to exist (BE), and those that do not (NBE).
Mr. Baker's objection is easily overcome. First, let us define the possibilities a bit more:
1) Thing that began to exist.
2.a) Thing that didn't begin to exist and which do not exist. (which is called an abstract objects)
2.b) Things that didn't begin to exist, but which have always existed. (eternal object)
Hence we can see that the category of "things that do not being to exist" is plural, including both things that are eternal and things that do not exist.
Equivocation:
Your argument also equivocates on the first premise when it refers to everything that "begins to exist". Presumably this premise is referring to everything around us on this planet--everything in your house, everything on the streets, everything we see in the cosmos. However all of these things did not "begin to exist" in the same sense theists are claiming the universe "began to exist" (creation ex nihilo). According to the laws of thermodynamics, matter can neither be created nor destroyed,
The laws of thermodynamics apply within closed systems, like the universe. Meaning that within the universe matter cannot be created or destroyed. They do not apply to open systems necessary for the creation of a universe.
Further the laws of thermodynamics do not begin to function in our universe until the final expansionary phase of the universe during the big bang. Without going into mind numbing detail, as we approach the singularity going back in time, we find that the strong and weak nuclear forces combine to be one force. At that same point the laws of thermodynamics break down. Keep going back and you'll discover that the the electromagnetic force and the Strong/weak force combine. At that point the laws of relativity also break down.
Hence the objection based upon thermodynamics does not apply during the instant of creation. That is true for both the Cosmological Argument, M-Theory, Hawking's Theory and all other attempts to unify Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.
The idea that the universe cannot be created ex-nihilo, while popular with internet atheists is rejected by cosmologists and physicists. All modern theories concerning the origin of the universe, from the multi-verse, M-Theory, Hawking-Hartle, String Theory, etc all consider the origin of matter as ex-nihilo.
Additionally, while the term "universe" is commonly understood to mean "the sum of everything that exists," Kalam represents an attempt to establish the existence of something outside the universe.
This misunderstanding arises from the fact that the Cosmological Argument uses the precise definition of universe rather than the popular notion. In physics and cosmology the universe is not defined as "all things that exist" (which would be a begging the question fallacy for my opponent here), but rather as all matter and energy contained within the boundary of minowski space defined after the big bang.
If this were a legitimate objection, it would cause us to have to reject such physicists as Hawking, Hartle, all String theorists, all cosmologists, etc. I think you wouldn't get much traction with using this objection toward the multiverse theory on a physics forum. Feel free to try and see how well it goes.
There is a further type of equivocation on the phrase "begins to exist". Premise 1 refers to things that begin to exist within time.
Not at all, this objection is rebutted above. It arises from the author's unfamiliarity with causal order systems in both physics and philosophy.
The kalam argument seems to have been worded specifically to address the refutation of the cosmological argument, as it made the qualification that only things that begin have causes.
Given that this version of the Cosmological Argument was written before the refutation he references this seems unlikely.
I think the fact that the author doesn't know that betrays a profound lack of understanding of the argument, which is evident throughout this response.
However, this is a form of special pleading on the part of the theist. As Richard Dawkins put it, the cosmological argument makes "the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress." Whether we qualify the first premise to exclude non-beginning things (as the kalam argument does) or not (as the cosmological does), the essential question is why it is more logically defensible to claim that for the rule that everything must have a cause, an exception is made for God but not for the natural universe as a whole?
This is what happens when Biologists such as Dawkins attempt to argue philosophy for which they have no training.
This is not a special pleading fallacy at all. The actual special pleading fallacy relies on the circumstances that the rule is applied to in two cases are the same: http://www.nizkor.
Here that is clearly not the case.
Circumstance 1: A contingent, temporally finite universe that transitions from a state of ~x (non-existence) to x (existence).
Circumstance 2: A necessary, atemporal being that makes not state transition.
Clearly these are two distinct circumstances and as such it is perfectly valid to apply different rules.
Dawkin's objection can be defeated quite easily with this example.
Lets say I saw a volcanic eruption. That is a state change and requires a causal explanation.
Now lets say I saw a mountain, unchanged during the same period. Would that non-change require a cause?
Of course not, it is a patently silly objection (to steal Dawkin's phrase). If states do no change (as is true for an eternal object) then that change does not need a causal explanation.
In a wider context we can see that he implications of that objection (if accepted) would again serve to shutter String theory, M Theory, Multiverse scenarios, cyclical scenarios and the Hawking-Hartle model. All of these scenarios require a larger universe as well, which would just get us back to regression and the same cosmological question.
If God not having a beginning is not a problem for Craig and other defenders of this argument, why is it a problem for the natural universe?
Besides the objection that actual, temporally subsequent sets cannot be infinite (set theorem), that is the conclusion of all modern cosmologists.
Feel free to reject all of modern cosmology (sine there are currently no physicists that argue the universe is past eternal), but don't accuse us of being anti-science.
P.S. You'll note that I already rebutted this argument in my initial position.
He might say that because we know that everything in the universe needs a cause and that the idea of infinite time is nonsense,
Strawman fallacy. No one has argued that God exists in infinite time (though apparently you do when you argue that the universe does not "begin to exist", showing your position to be internally incoherent). We are arguing that all objects outside of minowski space are atemporal, since they exist outside of the temporal dimension that is part of this universe. This is literally the exact same argument used by Stephen Hawking in the Hawking-Hartle model of expansionary space-time.
In the construction of a house, there may be twenty people involved.
Divisional fallacy. The argument contained within the CA does not state that there is only one entity. Rather that the first cause has certain attributes. That that cause may be subdivided into many elements is irrelevant to it being the first cause.
However, it is more likely than not that the first cause is a singular entity given Occams Razor (which you invoked a few sentences before, but now seem to forget). Given that simpler explanations tend to be true when compared to more complex explanations, we could reasonably prefer a unitary cause to a group of actions composed within a single cause. The latter is not definitionally necessary given the argument and is therefore less likely.
Fallacy of Consumption:
There is no such thing as a fallacy of consumption. The author means a compositional fallacy. It is hard to take the author of this wiki seriously with such obvious mistakes that Dr. Google could solve in a few seconds.
The first premise refers to every "thing," and the second premise treats the "universe as if it were a member of the set of "things." But since a set should not be considered a member of itself, the cosmological argument is comparing apples and oranges.
Mr. Baker is committing an equivocation fallacy here. He is equivocating the definition of universe to definition of "thing." There is no reason to believe that those are identical sets.
For example, if M-Theory is correct, then the set [universe] contains all energy and matter present in minowski spacetime. However, the set [things] contains the set [universe] as well as the set [multi-verse] which contains all other "budding" universes as described within that theory.
The objection that Mr. Baker should raise is that he believes that the set [things] is defined as containing only the set [universe] (which still isn't a compositional fallacy). He would need to support that claim, which he doesn't, and thereby destroy most of modern cosmology which considers the possibility that there are dimensions absent from minowski space-time.
Unfortunately we are stuck inside the universe, so any conclusions we can draw about individual components of the universe (within the set) do not necessarily apply to the set as a whole.
The hidden assumption is that the laws of logic and order are not transcendent (in philosophic terms). That would only be true if the nature of those laws arose as part of the laws of this universe. Since that isn't true (it is irrelevant what universe you are in when you say that there cannot be a married bachelor), this is not a compositional fallacy.
False Dichotomy:
The Cosmological argument does not prove that the cause was a supernatural cause, rather than a natural one. More nature (and natural processes) plausibly exist beyond our current ability to perceive.
Not a false dichotomy fallacy. That fallacy is claiming there are only two options (supernatural and natural) when there are actually more than two.
He is arguing that the argument is not logically sound rather.
That objection fails because I do, in fact, show that the cause must be "supernatural" (defined as, external to this universe) in my opening position:
2) Aphysical and atemporal. Both of these terms mean that the item in question lacks physical and temporal characteristics. Given that both time and space are properties of this universe and that an effect cannot be its own cause (a logical paradox), we see that the cause defined in our conclusion cannot exhibit properties of its own effect. Given that it must be transcendent of this universe (ie it cannot be bound to this universe otherwise it couldn’t exist to elicit the effect) it cannot be limited by the dimensions of this universe.*
IE, the opponent here is claiming (by arguing that the cause could be within our universe) that the universe caused itself, which is internally paradoxical.
Oh well! That doesn't mean I'm wrong.
Very true, it just means your position is irrational. IE that you hold it without appeal to rational sources.
Can we just agree that the evidence you supplied is one interpretation consisting of certain individual's conclusions?
Agreed, if and only if we define "individual" as the bulk of the academic field of Old Testament studies, Comparative Religious studies, Archeology, Philology and Anthropology.
You don' have to repeat yourself, you know?
Sometimes it seems a requirement when your debate partner makes the same incorrect statements.
Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me.
I imagine it would to someone who hasn't taken the time to read serious literature on the subject. But that is the manner that both Hebrew and English writers refer to a character when they do so repeatedly. It is remarkably uncommon to find a piece of writing where the author on uses one title or reference to a person throughout the work. It becomes practically non-existent when you get past the cat in the hat level of writing because it imparts monotonity to the cadence and usually drives the writer towards a staccato cadence as well. Both of which are extremely difficult to follow.
Regardless I have you several examples of this being done in ancient literature, neither of which you rebutted, so we can at least agree that it is feasible, which moots your argument here.
We also don't refer to beer as beer-booze, beer-brew, beer-brewski, beer-cold one, etc.
This misunderstands the construction of Hebrew language. Hebrew, unlike English is composed entirely of conceptual roots with contextual modifiers. IE Great can apply to food, temperature, majesty, amount, etc. The contextual modifier in the word is requisite in Hebrew for understanding the definition. So in Hebrew we understand great to mean majestic when it has the contextual epithet "el" (god).
It is important to remember that Biblical Hebrew had no vowels and no spacing between words (that is a much later invention in philology). Sntncswldbcnstrctdlkthsn (Sentences would be constructed like this one) and that would take a bit of deciphering to figure out what was meant. That process was aided greatly by contextual epithets like "el" and others.
Well, that should be the case with many books within the Bible, shouldn't it? Some use different terms for God within a single book.
Yes, which is indicative of the idea that they are using these as descriptive terms, not names. Just as we see Odysseus with multiple titles or Gilgamesh.
Ugh... whatever, I quit. If you haven't noticed, I pick different religious theories and debate from that point of view (hints, the Jesus=Venus debate we had not too long ago).
Which is no big deal, I'm just providing the counter evidence for many theories that have become quite prolific in pop-culture. I certainly don't begrudge you putting them forward.
Regardless, it has been a good discussion, thank you for engaging.
A few ancient religions, one in Egypt if I remember correctly, became monolatry due to the person in power.
I think you are referring to Akhenaten and his Ra transformation of Aten. That was a pretty odd scenario to be sure, and a very fascinating read. It doesn't translate well into the Hebrews though for a couple of reasons. Aside from differences in how the two are presented, the fact that aten dies out within a generation shows just how hard it is to apply a religious change of the order you are suggesting. The only way this can usually happen is the replacement of a pantheon with an outside deity and the legitimatizing of the current pantheon (IE see the greek religious decline in favor of Christianity or the buddhist replacement of hinduism). There are very few examples, historically, of one deity rising to prominence and subsuming the rest, even with examples of consolidation (as happened after the epic of Gilgamesh in UR), the deities are often simply subsumed, not mixed in the manner described here.
So really the thrust of your entire argument is that bad things have happened in the Bible (presumably measured by the fact that you, personally, find them distasteful) and that is meant to imply that those actions are therefore immoral.
I find this an incoherent moral position to hold. You are attempting to apply a subjective moral view (your personal tastes) on others. That in itself is incoherent.
Now, if you are attempting to judge the actions by an objective moral view, you have utterly failed to lay out the code of that viewpoint or its source of legitimacy.
So which is it? Are you comparing these actions to some objective moral code? If so, which one? How are they in violation of it? What weight does that moral code have to the claim of objectivity?
1. Crusades
Dealt with above.
2.Spanish Inquisition
Dealt with above. We are talking about 14 deaths a year and more importantly, the motivation for the Inquisition (spanish) was political, not religious. While the actors called themselves priests and bishops, they were not acting within the veil of the Church (which never sanctioned such events, and insisted that the Roman Inquisition (which only executed about 12 people all of which were either murderers or pedophiles) was the only valid Inquisition). The Spanish Inquisition was established and overseen by the King and Queen of Spain, not by the Church. It was famously negligent in persecuting heretics, especially Jews, unless those Jews happened to be unwilling to loan the government money. They also killed quite a few Christians, who I guess, just happened to all be vocal critics of the royal family.
3. Witch hunts
Similar to the above in that the scope has been largely overblown. Moreover, most witch hunts are believed to have started in conjunction with the growth of hallucinogenic molds on the Rye crops of Europe. Massive drug induced hallucinations are hardly a religious issue.
4. Genocide of native americans
Pretty sure I already explained this too you. There was no directed genocide of Native Americans. Most Native Americans died of a series of plagues primarily related to Small Pox and Typhus to which they had no immunity. Since Europeans didn't understand a theory of disease until centuries later, it is an odd claim that holds them not only responsible, but knowingly so.
5. Enslavement of Africans
I'll certainly grant this with an important caveat. Most cultures have had slavery (some still do). Slavery, even the horrific slavery of the Carribean, while primarily a business enterprise, was religiously justified for centuries as well. But it was tame when compared to the slavery imposed by the secular Russian government or the enslavement of Europeans in to Africa (which was as common as the middle passage in sheer numbers) or the enslavement into the Middle east of Africans. The brutality of which makes the middle passage seem like a day in the park.
But that caveat aside, I will grant that Christians acted extremely poorly in the slave trade. I will note that at least it was Christians that ended it (the secular humanists of the time being somewhat agnostic on the idea).
6. Holocaust
This is an argument that one could only make if they were profoundly ignorant of the history of Fascism and the Second World War. The quote you mention is actually from Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf, not from a speech to the Reichstag.
Hitler also banned all religious education, locked up catholics in the concentration camps and famously railed that there was no God and that the catholics better say as he wished or they would find themselves next to the Jews. He was also famous for calling Jesus the "White Christ" a term the Danes invented as a derogatory one (meaning the dead god) during the Viking period.
There is absolutely no doubt that Hitler was most likely an atheist and the extent to which he had some religious belief it was of the Germanic gods of old, not the Christian variety.
7. Bombing of abortion clinics
This goes to the same fallacy this thread starts under. It is a Hasty Generalization fallacy. There were only a few abortion clinic bombings (less than a dozen that could actually be tied to abortion reasons, about half of them are actually murders where the killer is using that hype of abortion clinics to disguise their crime) and those were horrible, but hardly a mainstream Christian activity.
I could easily turn around the pro-life murders, which are more numerous, and point that to secularists. That hardly seems a convincing condemnation on your part.
8. Rwandan Genocide
Absolutely not religious at all you realize right? That was an ethnic genocide brought about the terrible colonial oppression and a privileged ethnic group during that administration. I'm a bit surprised you referenced this atrocity since no one actually holds it to be religious in any manner or form.
9. Genocide of Bosnian Muslims in the Ygoslavic wars of the 90's
You mean the famously secularized socialist Slavs? What about the predominately Christian NATO forces that stopped the genocide? That seems like a bit of cherry picking on your part.
10. Ngo Diems perseccution of buddhists during his rule of South Vietnam
Which had absolutely nothing to do with Christianity right? The fact that Deim was Catholic is, at best, incidental. The majority of his cabinet were Buddhists and non-religious types. His arrest and assassination was a CIA plot run primarily by...an American Catholic!
The motivation for the repression was not that they were buddhists, it was that they were protesting against his government and policies, a secular motivation.
I would recommend doing some research in the future.
11. Destruction of Pagans
Well, that isn't a broad and undefined term that could mean anything. Without any specifics this isn't a valid claim.
I think you misunderstand the definition of the word dogma. Atheists do have set of principles concerning faith. 1) There is no God. 2) The only rational knowledge set is defined as that which can be empirically tested.
A relatively simple dogma, but a dogma none the less. The implications of that can be somewhat varied, but all the dictators you mentioned (minus Kim Il Sung, the N. Koreans aren't really socialists or atheists) derived their philosophies within the scope of that dogma. They began with the principle that there are no objective moral values or duties and that led to the conclusion that society could be ordered as befit its own best interests, free of any external constraints like religion.
From there they largely took different paths, but that is a pretty dangerous starting point, imo, which is largely removed in a theist context. The theist starting point could also be bad (there are plenty that have been), but it could also be good (there are plenty that have been). Regardless, it offers a far, far tighter scope of societal organization and action than what most philosophers call the "unconstrained" vision of atheism.
1. Then explain how cause of the cause, why did you stop there?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean here. Do you mean what caused the cause? If so I think you misunderstood premise 1. It is not that all things need a cause. It is that all things that begin to exist need a cause. Hence an atemporal or eternal object would not need a cause since it never begins to exist.
2. There is no scientific proof of alternate dimensions, only speculation.
Agreed, no one is talking about an alternative dimension. We are recognizing the concept that the universe itself is finite and as such there is a logical possibility of outside the universe. This is the same idea Stephen Hawking references or any String Theorist maintains.
3. If God interferes in our life, we should have some evidence of his presence, lets ay you and i were in an empty room (this will represent nature).
1) I haven't made this argument at any point in my debate.
2) I don't see why we should see evidence, humans are not sufficiently aware enough to fully understand what is going on in the universe. A young child might not be aware of a parent if that parent places something before them when their eyes are closed. There is no reason to assume that humans are fully aware of all changes and their mechanisms present in the universe.
4. The concept of omnipresence is itself a hypothesis, there is no back up for this
Also haven't made this argument at any point.
5. Time is not a property, it is a measure by the occurrence of events.
This is incorrect, time is a bound dimension of the universe. It is virtually identical to the three spatial dimensions we are more familiar with. Special Relativity dismissed the idea of time as an illusion nearly 50 years ago. Modern physics operates in Minowski Space, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
6. Judging by some of your arguments im assuming your a christian, there are many historical and scientific errors, the great flood is disproved, creation contradicted by evolution, sun is somehow created after light, the earth is round (not flat as suggested in the bible), diseases are not caused by demonic possesion, etc
1) Again, not my argument anywhere here.
2) Most of these rely on strawman arguments. For example, light did exist before our star the sun existed, it is, in fact, about 9 billion years older than our star. The bible does not suggest the world was flat, that is a blatant misreading of the text. There is historical precedence for a large flood (the breaking of a large ice dam at the end of the last ice age wiped out most of the human population in that region at the end of the last ice age), etc, etc.
That conception is a frequent comment for those who have, at best, skimmed the Bible. This usually relies on a flawed understanding of the actions contained and of the nature of morality.
Which rule or terminology was "made up?" Please be specific.
You linked me to a youtube video, hardly a conclusive debunking. This was a debate site the last time I checked, I thought people would debate, not just exchange youtube links.
I didn't say murder, did I?
You said it was murder on several occasions, if you wish to retract that position, no worries.
I'm not giving you references because you appear to be biased. Plus, I'm pulling most of this stuff from memory and books that I read.
So your cure for an opposing point is to not offer support? That doesn't seem like good debate etiquette.
Its fine to draw from memory, but can we at least agree that you haven't shown any real evidence beyond your memory for the claim?
Then what would be the reason behind God having so many different names?
As I've stated on numerous occasions, they aren't names, they are titles. Just as the President is also the Executive, the Commander and Chief, Leader of the free world (archaic) etc. They are referring to God in numerous ways to emphasize different characteristics or simply to not be boring in the writing. For example, why do we have multiple names for alcohol? "Adult beverage, a few, booze, brew, brewski, cold one, dead soldier, drink, giggle juice, hair of the dog, hard stuff, hooch, night cap, poison, sauce, suds?" Is it because we are referring to different aspects of the same thing? Or being creative?
It should be more concerning if we only saw one word, in one context used throughout the Old Testament. That would seem to indicate that it was edited or that only one author wrote it with this complaint in mind. The fact that humans do this so often is quite well established. Odysseus has multiple different epithets in the Odyssey and Gilgamesh has over 20 in his epic. Neither of those characters is believed to represent multiple beings, the use of epithets is well understood in literary criticism.
Again, I would point you back to the Ammonites. Why are they including "el" in their names if their god isn't named "el?" The answer is clearly that this is an epithet in wide usage in Western Semitic languages.
What are you, the debate police? I'm sticking with my claim. If you don't believe me, then try to find something to prove I'm wrong.
I already have, twice. Plus since it is your claim the onus of support it should be on you, that is basic logical structure 101. Make a claim, support it.
Regardless, I've already provided support to show that your analysis relies on a flawed understanding of the development of Semetic languages and is inconsistent with both modern and classical understanding of Biblical Hebrew.
Both of these are ad hominem fallacies. This post is a de facto concession. Thank you.
How do you know that there is more than one universe?
I didn't say there was more than one universe. I said that the cause of the universe beginning must, by definition, be external to the universe. A temporally finite object cannot be internally self sufficient by definition.
To say that God exists out of nature is to basically say he doesn't exist, nature encompasses everything.
I didn't say He exists outside "nature" (an undefined term), I said the cause must be external to the universe. There is nothing internally inconsistent in arguing that something can exist outside of this universe.
How do you know a rock didn't create the universe?
Because a rock, being a physical object must exist within the context of the physical dimensions of this universe. As such, it cannot be independent of this universe and as such cannot serve as the cause.
To say that the world is too complex to have not been created
Strawman fallacy. I did not argue at any point that the universe's complexity is an argument for design. I argued that the specific values of the physical constants precludes the universe where matter forms having arisen purely by chance. It is outside the realm of statistical possibility.
Come now, certainly you can do better than linking me to random Youtube videos. Please actually post a rebuttal or withdraw from the debate.
I find some interesting parallels between thoughts associated with platonism and my own, but I hesitate to identify as a platonist, primarily because I don't want my opponents to argue against their idea of what platonism is rather than finding out what my viewpoint is and challenging it directly.
Certainly fair. I'll attempt to draw out your position as we move forward. Please feel free to correct me if I mis-step.
"There are things that are not"
Ok, that seems more of a wording issue than a philosophic position. It would be simple to rephrase that statement as "I can imagine things that do not exist" or "not all logically possible things actually exist."
In an effort to better understand your position, let me ask this: "In what manner would you distinguish between something that exists like thought and something that exists like Fenway park?" Do they exist equally? Are they in kind different or categorically different?
Okay, a mass killing in which God ordered his people to trick worshipers of another god into coming to them, then they slaughtered thousands of unarmed individuals. Call it what you want.
That is a begging the question fallacy. You assume the action is murder to show that it is murder.
Strong's concordance on the issue has been in question. Not only does he translate it as Elohiym, which is not common, but he lists it's meanings... which is actually way too many. In Hebrew, they do not use the same word to describe judges, idols, gods, angels, etc. His interpretation may look all nice and fancy, and right in other parts, but it contains more errors than you might expect.
This statement is patently untrue. Strong's Concordance references that it can be used with judges not that it always is. That is true as well, it is also used in reference to Moses, who at no time is being held as a deity.
You have offered no support for your claim here. As such it carries no more weight than an opinion. Unless you can offer a better source of translation and Hebrew than I have offered, your point stands unsupported.
El means "God"
Exactly, it means the title "god" not the name of God. That is why the Ammonites have the word "el" in their names, even though their deity is Milkom. Why would they use "el" in their names if it were the name of God rather than the title, "god?"
Did you notice that all of your examples refer to God's position, not his name? That none of them are translated as "Who Prevails with Yahweh" for example? Its because in the Hebrew, this is referring to a title, not a specific entity.
Historical records have proven it.
You've made this claim twice with no support. Please support it or withdraw the claim.
Exactly, even if the universe was created, that does not mean a deity created it.
I agree, the criteria for the aspects of the cause of the universe are deduced given the arguments offered in the cosmological argument, which I've posted here before. To Whit:
The Cosmological Argument:
P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: The universe therefore as a cause.
Premise 1
This is generally considered a relatively fundamental law of causation [1]. Changes in state (going from not existing to existing) require causation. We should consider that any effect that lacks a cause becomes, by definition "necessary." And self sufficient effects cannot, by definition "begin."
In the past, some have sought to object to this premise by forwarding different aspects of Quantum Mechanics. These fail however because the causal mechanism still exists, it is the quantum wave function [2]. The confusion often arises because we confuse a probabilistic cause for no cause at all. If there was a random number generator that killed a cat on odd numbers, we wouldn't say that the cat's death was uncaused.
Premise 2
This premise also is generally scientifically accepted. Inflationary cosmology dictates that the universe began from a near singularity[3]. I think it is important here to point out that time is a physical dimension of our universe, just like the other dimensions[4]. Just as they expanded from a singularity, so did the temporal dimension of our universe. This necessitates a beginning of the universe when the temporal dimension was a singularity as well.
Objections to this premise are usually in the form of alternative hypotheses about our current universe. Historically, the steady state universe was used. That is to say, it was argued until recently that the universe is eternal, that it had always been. This is problematic for several reasons. Primary amongst them is the evidence indicating the universe is expanding. It is for this reason that virtually no cosmologist holds to steady state theory today. The historic objection also still holds. If the universe was eternal, we would expect that all the stars and galaxies to have burned out by now. If there is an infinite past, an infinite amount of time would already have occurred, which is far greater than the possible time limit on all the fission of all the matter in the universe.
The first modification of this theory to deal with the expansion of the universe came with the cyclic model. In which the universe expands, collapses and expands again. This theory however fails because it also cannot recede into the infinite past. Entropy between cycles would build up causing later cycles to be high entropy states and prohibit matter and star formation[5]. Again, if the universe were infinitely old, this would have already occurred and we could not observe star formation now.
Finally, the most modern objection arises from an appeal to a multiverse or multiple universes. This objection also fails for two reasons. One, since it produces a temporal effect, the multiverse itself would need a temporal component (non intentful causes cannot act outside of a dimension they exist in), making it open to the same appeals to an infinite past that we have above. Two, a multi-verse hypothesis would need to be reconciled to the Borde-Vilinken-Guth Theorem [6] which prohibits low entropy, expanding universes (ie the kind we live in) from any multiverse. To date, no reconciliation has been put forward, with Stephen Hawking noting that this is the single greatest objection to his views.
Characteristics
It naturally follows from the premises that the universe therefore had a cause.
But we can go a little bit further than that. Given the established premises and conclusions and some other observed facts, we can reason out a few of the properties of this cause.
1) Omnipotence. This word is often used in a differing manner than how theists intend it. It does not mean, for example, the ability to do anything such as creating a round square. Rather, when used here it refers to the ability to actualize states of affairs. I will borrow William Lane Craig’s definition here:
Rather we should think of omnipotence in terms of the ability to actualize states of affairs. A state of affairs is just a way something might be – for example, the state of affairs of there being chairs in this room, or the state of affairs of our being in the lower story of the church building, or there being a piano here. Those are all states of affairs that actually obtain. Omnipotence should be understood in terms of the ability to actualize states of affairs. To be omnipotent means the ability to bring about any state of affairs which is logically possible for any one in that situation to bring about.
[7]
This ability is a natural conclusion to the CA as I have presented it. In order for a cause to be sufficient to cause the universe, it must be able to actualize states of affairs related to all the specifics of our universe. It must be able to affect physical laws, physical constants, and dimensionless constants. This ability fits the definition proposed above as omnipotent.
2) Aphysical and atemporal. Both of these terms mean that the item in question lacks physical and temporal characteristics. Given that both time and space are properties of this universe and that an effect cannot be its own cause (a logical paradox), we see that the cause defined in our conclusion cannot exhibit properties of its own effect. Given that it must be transcendent of this universe (ie it cannot be bound to this universe otherwise it couldn’t exist to elicit the effect) it cannot be limited by the dimensions of this universe.
3) Intentfulness. This conclusion arises from the observed temporal finiteness of the universe. We know that the cause cannot be a mechanistic cause (IE if the cause exists the effect exists) because we can describe a state of affairs where the cause exists, but the effect does not. This is really a long winded method of saying “the universe began.”
Likewise, we can say that the cause is not a probabilistic cause either. Probabilistic causes require a dimension to act along. IE along a temporal dimension (chance over time) or a physical one (chance over distance). However, all probabilistic causes must act along the dimensions that they elicit effects within. IE, a quantum wave function acts along a temporal and physical dimension to create an effect in both (a particle’s location). You cannot have a quantum wave function (or any other probability function) that only discusses time, but produces a physical effect.
Given now that we’ve ruled out those two methods of causation we are only left with intent. Only a cause that has an intent can demonstrate the attributes labeled above. Only an intentful cause can create information that is not found within itself. IE all causes except intentful ones have temporal information within them if they act temporally, physical information within them if they act physically, etc. Only intentful causes exhibit the kind of causation we observe given the CA.
Conclusion
So we can see that given the premises that the universe must itself have a cause and that this cause must be aphysical and atemporal since it cannot be part of its own creation, that it must be omnipotent in order to create that creation and that it must be intentful in order to explain the finiteness of the universe and its dimensionality.
Given the premises, which are supported, no other conclusion can be accepted.
Now for a miscellaneous definition:
Logical necessity: I don’t mean this term to imply philosophic necessity in that I argue that no other belief is possible, but rather rational necessity in which I hold that no other conclusion is rational.
Support
1) http://www.philosophy-dictionary.org/
2) http://home.tiscali.nl/physis/
3) http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/
4) http://mathworld.wolfram.com/
5) I. D. Novikov and Ya. B. Zel’dovich (1973) Physical Processes Near Cosmological Singularities Annu. Rev. Astro. Astrophys. 11 387-412
S. W. Hawking and R. Penrose (1970) The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 314. 1519. 529-548.
6) Arvind Borde, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin (2003) Inflationary Spacetimes are Incomplete in Past Directions Physical Review Letters 90. 15 http://arxiv.org/pdf/grqc/0110012.pdf
7) http://www.reasonablefaith.org/
1. If you are stating that the world had to be created because something cannot come from nothing then you must explain where God came from, if you are like most theists your reply will probably be "God doesn't need a creator, he's eternal." Then why can't the universe be eternal? Why did it need to be created?
You have correctly identified my objection. God, as a timeless entity (IE He exists outside of the temporal dimension that is part of our universe) does not have a beginning, and therefore does not need a cause.
The universe cannot be eternal (ie premise two) because that would require not only that we dismiss our current understanding of physics (that the universe began about 13B years ago), but that we accept that temporally successive infinite series are logically possible, causing us to reject set theory, the basis for most modern mathematics.
2. Even if something did create the cosmos, it wouldn't necessarily need to be a God, it is more likely that a rock created the universe, not very likely but more so than God because we know that rocks exist, we can see them, touch them, etc. But God we have no evidence for.
A rock could not coherently create the universe. Please see the above argument. The cause of the universe must be aphysical (lack a physical presence) because it exists outside of the physical dimensions of this universe. Arguing that a rock created the universe is essentially arguing the universe created itself, which is impossible given a temporally finite universe since it is impossible for a fully sufficient cause to exist absent its effect.
3. Even if it was a God, Goddess, Gods, etc. that created the universe, how likely is it that your God of your faith is the correct one? Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, Thor, Shiva, etc. have about the same probability, it may even be none of these Gods, but a God we don't even know of
The Cosmological Argument does not propose to answer this particular question. Sufficed to say, that it shows a deity, not which one. Other philosophic arguments can be used to remove some of these (the moral argument posits a maximally good being, which would eliminate Zeus or Thor or Shiva by definition), and historical arguments can be used to remove others.
I guess they didn't read the book then.
I think you misunderstood the argument presented. It wasn't that he didn't do extensive research, it was that his research was relatively shallow in nature and relied heavily on secondary sources rather than primary sources.
Did you read it yourself?
I did actually, I read the Kindle version two years ago as part of an apologetics study on this subject on another debate site.
Clearly you haven't read any Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas' cosmological argument is based upon the impossibility of an essentially ordered infinite regress. Mine is based upon the observed nature of the universe and the impossibility of a sequentially temporal infinite regress. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
I would recommend some reading before wading into this.
And the state is not a religion right? Replacing secular with dogmatic is also simple sophistry. Of course it was dogmatic. The dogma was atheism and socialism. That term simply means that he was acting in accordance with a set of principles or tenants. He was, the tenants of socialism and atheism.
Actually it is a widely accepted fact that all the natives in fact were forced to convert, that is why the Aztec and Incan Religions are extinct.
Actually, it is a widely held belief that that is the case. Which is why it is an appeal to popularity fallacy. The fact that a lot of people believe something doesn't make it true. While there were some forced conversions over several hundred years, these were relatively few and far between. More often locals came to accept Christianity either for legitimate reasons or because it was the religion of the most successful and facilitated access to those in positions of power.
However disingenuous that might have been, it is isn't forced conversion.
And furthermore the Crusades are another fine example of Christianity's cruel nature.
This is a somewhat fair complaint. The Christians crusaders were often extremely cruel to Jews. As were the Muslims. However, unlike the Muslims Crusaders often defended Jews as well. During the first Crusade a large group of bandits descended upon the towns of the Rhineland and demanded the execution of all local Jews. A group of soldiers traveling to Italy (along with a set of Priests) to participate in the Crusade confronted the bandits and demanded they disperse. Importantly these bandits, who called themselves the "People's Crusade" never actually went to the Holy Land or participated in the activities at all. They were also condemned and excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
It should also be pointed out that the specific example you are referencing is more urban myth than historical reality. Traditionally when a town held out against a siege it was burned to the ground and it was understood that most people would retreat to a church or synagogue to pray during this process. The same activity took place when the Muslims burned all churches and synagogues to the ground during the initial sacking of Jerusalem. Now, while it is popular for people to imagine today that the Jews were inside with the crusaders singing hymns, I cannot stress enough that there is 0 historical evidence for this claim. No account before a book in 1990 makes a reference to hymns and virtually all contemporary Muslim and Jewish sources note that there were no Jews in the synagogue when it was burned. (Kedar, Benjamin Z. "The Jerusalem Massacre of July 1099 in the Western Historiography of the Crusades." The Crusades).
Many Jews were killed during the sack of Jerusalem, but the reason wasn't a religious one, it was due to plundering. Many people held a common myth during that time was that all Jews horded gold, when it wasn't revealed they were killed and looted. Terrible, but not religiously motivated. It should be noted that multiple crusaders were hung from the walls of Jerusalem for this crime, specifically by the Count of Toulouse.
"Also don't forget how violent Christians have been to each other. With the Crusaders terrorizing the Orthodox Christians when they sacked Constantinople and how Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other from the reformation in most of Europe onwards till very recently in Ireland."
Ireland is of course a terrible example. The IRA killed Catholic priests for years. The fact that the Irish were mostly Catholic and the English mostly Protestant doesn't make this a religious conflict. It was a political conflict due to the English occupation of Ireland. Heck, most IRA members were socialists, hard to argue a religious motivation there.
That is a strawman fallacy. I am not putting forward any of Thomas Aquinas' arguments here. You'll note that Thomas Aquinas put forward different premises than I have.
Do you have a response to my actual argument?
Well then it was in the name of Socialist Atheism not Atheism in general.
You missed my point. Atheism was a specific aspect of his ideology here. Socialism was another. When Mao had people sent to re-education camps and executed, it was because they were religious. His goal was specifically to institute an atheistic world view in China. Arguing that isn't in the name of atheism is akin to arguing that the Taliban aren't acting in the name of Islam. Of course they are.
Now, maybe both are misguided, maybe they are drawing their ideas incorrectly from those philosophies, sure. But that isn't the argument you are making here. The same argument could be made of the woman in the show.
What about the Spanish invasion of the Americas which was done in the name of Christianity and caused the deaths of 8 million natives.
No, the disease the Spanish brought with them killed 8 Million native Americans. The spanish who came had no idea what disease was, how it was spread or what its impact would be. Accusing them of spreading it intentionally is inaccurate.
To the extent that the Spanish did massacre native americans (and they did), this was never in the name of Christianity, they often killed the priest who accompanied them if they tried to intervene. The motives for those killings were political and economic control. The natives didn't pay tribute or didn't reveal locations of gold, not because of a failure to convert.
But Mao didn't do what he did in the name of Atheism
Didn't he? The cultural revolution which killed tens of millions included the execution of massive numbers of Christians, Muslims and other religious adherents in order to "modernize" china. Remember that socialism requires atheism as part of its philosophy, so if you are exterminating the religious here, it is be default in the name of atheism.
Mao was quite explicit in his attempts to wipe out religious followers or writers as part of his transformation. The ideology Mao was forcing upon China had socialist aspects to it and atheist belief aspects to it, so to argue it wasn't in the name of atheism is somewhat incoherent.
Now, maybe we can argue that Mao wasn't representative of atheist thought. Perhaps that is valid, but the same argument can be made for the woman in the show offered. That is why I pointed out this was a Hasty Generalization fallacy.
And this is considering this is one of the most minor bad things a Christian has done in the name of there religion when you compare it to there persecutions of Jews and other minorities, sacrilegious destruction and defacement of other faiths' places of worship, witch hunts, genocides and holy wars through out history.
All of which are massively trumped by the same actions taken by secular governments in the name of secular progress.
The inquisition was terrible, but it only averaged about 14 deaths a year. Pol Pot averaged 750,000 a year, specifically in the name of atheism (Pol Pot specifically advocated a move towards agrarian socialism and away from local tradition and religion, those found practicing any religion were executed on the spot).
This is an appeal to ridicule fallacy. It is also sophistry. If you define FSM with all the same attributes as a deity (which is usually done), but simply call it something else you are committing the above fallacy. Changing the name of something in order to ridicule it is not critical thinking.
1. What cosmilogical argument?
I defend the Cosmological Argument put forward by William Lane Craig.
Premise 1) All things that begin to exist have a cause.
Premise 2) The universe began to exist.
Conclusion) Therefore the universe had a cause.
2. Fine tuning has been disproved over and over again, look up fine tuning arguments on science based websites
You are referring here to evolutionary fine tuning arguments (ie that we are fine tuned for our environment).
That is not the argument I am referring to. Rather, I'm referring to the Cosmological Fine Tuning Argument.
Premise 1) The values of the constants of the universes are due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
Premise 2) They are not due to physical necessity or chance.
Conclusion) Therefore it is due to design.
3. Moral argument: even if our entire moral system was dependent on the existance of God (which it isnt), that still wouldn't affect the likelihood of his existence, that just means the concept of God is a placebo.
You are confusing cause an effect here. I'm not arguing in the moral argument that objective moral values and duties cause God to exist, I am arguing that they are evidence that He exists. Just as tides are evidence of the moon's gravitational influence, not causes of it.
For reference, this argument is:
Premise 1) If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Premise 2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
Conclusion) Therefore, God exists.
I do hold that gods exist though.
Are you a platonist then? Do you hold that numbers exist? I don't mean numerals, like those that are seen on a page, I mean the actual concept of a number, does it actually exist?
The problem with your analysis, in my view, is your definition of the word "exist." I think you are blurring the line between feasible and exists. Concepts can be logically possible without actually existing in any real sense.
Essentially I think you are arguing Plato's view that concepts and ideals actually exist. That justice is a real object, not just a term for a category of outcomes. That all abstract objects really exist.
There are a number of problems with a platonists view which I won't go into here. I think they are best rejected here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/
You have said that saying that you don't believe in God is different from saying there is no God, and now you are saying that they mean the same thing. This is what is wrong with you people.
Ad Hom and Compositional fallacy. You are mixing two similar, but different statements and then acting as if they are the same.
When you ask a person (as you suggested) if they believe that God exists, they could answer Yes (theist), No (atheist) or I'm not sure (agnostic). You are trying to argue that someone who says "no," includes those who don't know, but don't hold a positive view that God exists. That is a compositional fallacy because that is not an "atheist" position it is a "apatheist" position. That is the philosophic position defined as "all things not positively affirmed.
Think of it like a Venn Diagram. The left circle (not including overlap) are theists. The right circle (not containing overlap) are atheists. The overlap only are agnostics. The right circle including overlap are apatheists. The left circle including overlap are apoatheists.
I use sight, tough, hearing, taste, and smell in my beliefs of a physical world.
Then, if I may, what leads you to the belief that your senses represent the physical world?
I am aware of it, though I haven't personally read it. The problem as I understand it (given the criticism offered by several History of Religion scholars in the NYT) is that it is very superficial. He skims quite a bit of academic literature, but doesn't do any deep dives into the actual content, which leads to a conclusion that differs significantly from the consensus amongst scholars.
I would recommend a more scholarly book by Dr. Richard Hess, who is the Earl S. Kalland Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Denver Seminary,http://www.denverseminary.edu/
I think you should delve into what the word murder means before going any further. Specifically, what standard are you appealing to here that would make it murder? Is it your personal preference or something more objective?
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No, It was Elohim. They also used El and Elyon, and eventually just referred to him as Yahweh.
So, I guess the rest of that paragraph is wrong since the word you used is wrong.
You realize that Elohim is the anglicized version of אֱלֹהִים 'elohiym? The word I am using is the actual Hebrew, not something that someone edited so it would fit in their standard browser language.
I would point you to http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/
For example, take a look at Gen 1:26: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
Which in Hebrew is: וַיֹּאמֶראֱלֹהִים נַֽעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ וְיִרְדּוּ בִדְגַת הַיָּם וּבְעֹוף הַשָּׁמַיִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה וּבְכָל־הָאָרֶץ וּבְכָל־הָרֶמֶשׂ הָֽרֹמֵשׂ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
See it there? The Hebrew is 'elohiym. More on that verse can be found here: http://www.blueletterbible.org/
So given that, are you able to respond to the rest of my analysis?
Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, who is an ancient Canaanite polytheistic deity.
A couple of things about this. First, I think you are misinterpretting what "el" means in both Hebrew and other semetic languages. It is not a name like Steve or Mike, it is a title like "Mr. or Captain"
I think the Caananite diety you are referring to was actually the character "el" who was the chief god of Ugarit in the 13th Century BC. However, in those usages the word "el" also refers to any spirit, ghost or diety. Philologists note that this "el" in the West Semitic branch of this language later advances into to concepts, the "el" title used in Hebrew (and Arabic) to signify a title of a diestic being whose name is being used (IE if I wanted to say "Zeus" in ancient Hebrew I would write "el Zeus" so that I would both give the name and the associated title) and elohim which refers more generally to any more supernatural being or concept.
The key here is to remember that the term "el" used in earlier Semitic languages is more primitive and covers a wider variety of concepts which are later refined in more advanced Semitic languages.
That "el" is used as a title can be easily shown in that the Ammonites had more than 150 names with the word "el" in them (similar to how Israel or Samuel do). But the chief god of the Ammonites was Milkom, not el. So the idea that they are appealing to a deity that is not part of their pantheon is ridiculous. What is happening is that Milkom's title is "el" in that Semitic language as well.
As for Elyon, that shows a profound misunderstanding of Hebrew in general. In Semitic languages, elyon is an adjective, not a noun. Specifically it is an epithat, meaning god most high. (It also is completely unrelated to "el" linguistically, it is related to the word "ayin"). Since it isn't a noun, it is a pretty hard argument to make that it is related to a different deity.
The idea that these terms relate to polytheism is actually a long discredited theory first brought forward in the mid 1800s by a German scholar. He was relying on out of date translations of the Hebrew (from, lets say, not Jewish friendly sources) and interpretations of Canaanite history that was third hand (and which we subsequently found to be misleading). It is interesting how persistent this particular legend has been. But it isn't anything more than that.
I used Strong's Concordance, the recognized standard on Biblical Hebrew. There are also multiple sources from Christian, Jewish and Secular old testament scholars who make the same point. It isn't as if I invented it, I just poached the academic consensus on this issue.
This thread is a hasty generalization fallacy. One woman picked out for "reality" TV (presumably due to her proclivity for conflict) does not reflect upon the Christian population or the Christian faith.
It would be as well if I were to ask all the atheists if they would exterminate 50M people if they were elected President. After all, Mao did it and he was an atheist.
No, I would argue that you are, in that case, an atheist. You don't hold that gods exist, you hold that people have a concept of gods. Those are two separate positions.
Understanding that there is a character in "A Christmas Carol" that is called the Ghost of Christmas pas does not mean that you think ghosts exist, it means that you recognize that there is a character in a book.
By stating that they are solely psychological phenomenon you are making the same positive claim that other atheists make. Gods are not real, they are psychological states, just as we wouldn't argue that numbers are real, they are concepts.
I have read "God Delusion," and, frankly, I think Dawkins' lack of training in philosophy shows in the error being repeated here.
I believe you are confusing two claims about the same thing as separate things. This is usually known as a divisional fallacy. If I hold a strong believe (gnostic theist) or a weak belief (agnostic theist), that represents a sliding along a certain scale, not separate categories of philosophic claims.
For example, some string theorists are avowed supporters, some are less certain. Do they represent different categories? Dawkins is simply misusing commonly understood and defined terms to avoid an implication (in the book he uses this scale to argue atheism is more popular than it currently is). In philosophy we call that sophistry.
When someone says "I'm agnostic about that" they aren't claiming they have a position, but aren't sure. They are arguing no position. You wouldn't interpret "I'm agnostic about where to go to lunch" as "I want to go to the Italian place, but I'm not sure" you would read it as "I don't know where I want to go to lunch."
Notice that Dawkins' criteria leaves out an entire field of belief sets normally ascribed to agnosticism (which is a good hint that he has committed a fallacy). True agnostics don't fit into that category anywhere. They don't know if there is or is not a God either because they are unconvinced or they believe such knowledge is impossible.
Neither group would be represented here and as such you can see that the scale you've established falls short of describing a true full set of philosophic positions.
First, I should point out that you are using the work "murder" inappropriately. You are implying a legal standard against which God's actions should be weighed. Exactly what jurisdiction is God subject too? Or, do you mean that you find his actions distasteful personally and that that therefore makes an action murder?
The word used in the Bible (in the Hebrew) was אֱלֹהִים 'elohiym right? Which translates to: "430 'elohiym el-o-heem' plural of 433; gods in the ordinary sense; but specifically used (in the plural thus, especially with the article) of the supreme God; occasionally applied by way of deference to magistrates; and sometimes as a superlative:--angels, X exceeding, God (gods)(-dess, -ly), X (very) great, judges, X mighty. " http://www.eliyah.com/cgi-bin/
It refers to a whole class of spiritual beings or concepts, including both God and gods and idols and even great religious leaders.
The fact that you refer to the characters in "A Christmas Carol" as the Ghost of Christmas Past does not mean that you believe in ghosts. It means that you have a term for disembodied spirits (real or not). You can use it in reference to a whisp of something you saw at a graveyard or the left over flavor of something or the a person who has worked on something without official credit like a ghostwriter.
Words have multiple uses and definitions, both in Hebrew and in English.
The only evidence offered against it is the use of the Biblical phrasing. Are you asking me to rebut arguments not presented?
The fact is, the language used in the OP doesn't mean what the poster thought that it meant. It doesn't confer pluralness to the subject, it confers majesty. That is how it was used in Hebrew and how it was understood later in Latin.
Those verses suffer from the same problems as my objection. Do you have some reading material for the idea that Judaism evolved from a polytheist religion?
Sure, the belief "my memory represents past events" is a common one used.
if a religious person asked someone if they believed in God and the person said no, most of the time that person would be labeled an Atheist
I agree with you. The person in question has said, "I don't believe in God" ie "there is no God" that is a positive claim on the existence of God and is very different than the response you would get from a very young kid "I don't know, what is god?"
Two very different positions philosophically. One makes a positive claim (no God) the other makes a neutral claim (I don't know).
Why do you guys spend time trying to classify Atheists instead of looking at the real world and seeing that your God doesn't do what you say He does?
Actually, the idea of strong/weak atheist is an atheist idea, not a theist idea. It was first proposed by Bertrand Russel. So I'm not sure why you think it is "you guys" who do it.
I would be happy to debate you on the underlying arguments for theism, be it the Cosmological Argument, Cosmological Fine Tuning argument or the Moral argument.
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I'm unclear on your response to the actual debate question however. Do you feel that all beliefs are formed with evidence? If so, what evidence do you use to believe that your perceptions represent a physical world?
That would make you a non-adherent, not an atheist. You believe in Gods, so you are a theist by philosophic position (you know they exist and you believe that they can be understood, meaning you can't be an agnostic). But you choose not to obey them or worship them, meaning you are not adhering to them.
Think about polytheists. Clearly they aren't atheists. But polytheists don't necessarily follow other gods they recognize as existing. Hindus for example recognize many different gods, including the Christian one, but they don't adhere to those other deities, only the one they have chosen.
Take a non-loaded example. Lets say we were talking about a law you find unjust. The alegal position would be that the law doesn't exist, "I don't have to follow it because it isn't real." The agnostic position would be "I cannot know if the law exists, or I cannot know what it is telling me to do." The legalist position would be "the law does exist."
You fall into that latter camp, you recognize that it exists, but choose not to follow it.
Theism/agnosticis/atheism are categories of belief rather than of adherence.
Because in Hebrew all beings held up as gods share the same noun, there is no other word that the Israelites could use for Baal that would have meant something else.
Same answer as in the other thread on this issue. You are misunderstanding the Hebrew translation. It is translated "us" in the Hebrew because the noun is a plural noun representing majesty. The accompanying verb is a singular.
This is an incorrect statement. People are born agnostic, without a belief set. Athiesm is the belief that there is no God.
Here you will undoubtedly insert the idea of strong/weak atheism, which is simply converting the term agnosticism into the term weak atheism and is, as such, a compositional fallacy.
If you would define athiesm as the position "without a belief in God" then you have transformed it from a philosophic position or argument into a psychological state. As such rocks are atheists as are trees. Neither hold a belief in God and are, by your definition atheists. Hence, we can see that it being described as a psychological state is insufficient and the definition should return to the original positive claim: "there is no God."
I think this forgets what most philosophers call "Properly Basic Beliefs." While many beliefs are formed based upon some evidence set (that flower is red based upon my observations, etc), not all are.
Beliefs such as "I have the capacity for memory" and "my sensory input is real" are properly basic beliefs, beliefs necessary in order to gather evidence or conduct reason are properly basic by definition.
So while I agree that some beliefs (probably the vast majority) are based upon evidence, it is improper to conclude that no belief is formed without evidence.
