The problem is with your claim that lack of proof is sensible for a g-d to use as a method.

One doesn't even have to have godlike intelligence to imagine other systems that lead to a lot "better" paths to salvation than divine child abuse and hiding it from the world of rational people, especially if you "know" that you've "made" rational people.

I agree.  Expecting anyone, other than the already converted, to be okay with the answer 'God doesn't want you to have proof' does not seem realistic in any way.

The child abuse protrayal is only one view of God among many though.

Of course.  And I hope a particularly uninspiring one.

NIV

Amplified

I looked at different translation here to get a bit more understanding of the problem.

It looks like some have translated it to mean I thought, while others feel it means I said.

Going back to Hebrew the word used is amar


It does seem to suggest that it should be translated as I said, instead of I thought.

Which would explain that to mean in Jeremiah that God told them to do something, and they didn't do it. I am going to keep reading some more. But this is what I have found so far.

[MODERATOR POST]
Revolutionary, your comments directed at TitL are getting overly personal, and aren't helping the discussion.  Do not attack the person's intelligence or honesty.  We're here to discuss ideas, not throw insults at each other.
[/MODERATOR POST]

TIL,

As I said, if interested in more of the discussion on Open Theism, a new thread might be best to keep things organized :)

First, you're a little late to the party there White Rabbit.  I cut away from the debate with him just before he did as well.

Second, I went back to see to what you might even refer:  And this is the best I can find:



Perhaps saying that I cannot help but think someone is being deliberately obtuse questions their honesty.  But it does not attack them.  I did not say he is IN FACT dishonest. Or that he "MUST BE" obtuse or deliberate in attempting to show that.

I said, interestingly, almost the exact same thing he did.  That as a results of the interaction, I'm being lead to a conclusion.  In his case, he made an existential claim that "something didn't exist" and that's why I didn't bother referencing it (when interestingly I never made the claim that it did exist, I made an analogy to smooth over a difference of usage).

Regarding the other, to say that someones sense of intelligence is threatened is not to call them stupid or anything close to it.

At worse it "calls (into question)" if someone is insecure.


Is this your beef?

In reply to Revolutionary (msg # 289):
[Moderator Post]
Sorry, I haven't been able to keep up with the discussion as much as I would like, so your point of me being 'late to the party' is true.  Not intentional, just had other stuff going on, so only got to check the board this morning, and only had time to fire off that quick post.  Apologies for not having time to be more specific when I wrote it.

The particular lines that seemed to me to be going across the line were:

-which doesn't add anything to conversation, it just comes off as insulting.  Sure, we all hear worse things day to day, but there's no reason to bring it here.  We can disagree here without making it personal.


Is again, making things unnecessarily personal, and not adding anything to the discussion.  We all get frustrated in these discussion from time to time (myself certainly included, so ...do as I say, not as I do, I guess!), but once we start making it personal it only gets worse.

Yeah, same again for all this.


Again, making things unnecessarily personal.


I'm not looking to get into a debate on how bad or okay the things you've said were.  I don't like having to wear my moderator hat like this, so when I do, I really hope people can just say "fine, if those are the rules, I'll play by them, even if I don't agree with'em."  I this case there's no punishment being dished out, just me saying "okay, dial it back a bit and don't make things personal," so there's no real need to justify or defend anything.  Just play nice going forward, and all's good.

Just to be clear, it is okay in these forums to challenge what people say, to disagree with them, to not believe what they say and let them know it.  As long as you stick to discussing ideas most things are fair game (so long as you're not being deliberately offensive).  It's mostly just when you start talking about each other that the mods have to step in to cool things down.



[/Moderator Post]

In reply to Tycho (msg # 290):

...thanks for the clarification.

So I was pointed towards this guy named Mike McHargue and he has laid out a list of Axioms that he uses to feel more intellectually honest about his belief in God/Jesus/Bible etc.

I think they are an intriguing attempt to be a person of faith and yet still stick to a push towards scientific truth.  I'd be interested to hear what some of you think of them.  Here is a copy of the axioms that he laid out (though they may have been updated since...)


For those curious, this was taken from the website http://gungormusic.com/2013/03/for-the-doubters/ and he has his own website/blog/podcast http://mikemchargue.com/ .

Hm, interesting.


That's a good argument, but unwarranted anthropomorphication can cause problems as well.  If someone believes they speak for god, they can justify all kinds of atrocities.  On top of that, sometimes taking a psychosocial construct too far can cause problems.  Santa Claus is a psychosocial construct, but being an adult who believes Christmas presents come from a burglar with flying reindeer is problematical.

Yes, believing in god, like believing in Santa Claus, can provide comfort and meaning.  However, it does not follow that this is always a worthwhile pursuit.


There are many forms of prayer, even within the christian mythos.  If we extend it to include meditation, there's even more.  Many of those do not invoke a higher power.  Just because meditation is good, that doesn't mean prayer is good.


The first part is true-- you don't need to accept the bible as history, let alone literal history, to be a christian.  However, the second isn't true.  There are many ways to believe, and one book cannot cover them all, at least not and do them any justice.  There are also many non-christian kids who don't study the bible, and yet fully understand our culture and their own gods in their own ways.

Sort of true.  The historical Jesus is up for debate; there was a messianic figure around that time, but rather it was one person, or an amalgam of stories about different people and attributed to one person, is unknown.

But, if we ignore that, and just say Jesus was a symbol for an important religious movement?  That doesn't change the teachings at all, and coincides with his first statement.  And the last part is true as well-- the teachings of Jesus can promote peace, empathy, etc.

But... again, Jesus wasn't the only one.  Buddhist teachings can do the same thing, Jainist philosophy takes "do no harm" to incredible levels, and so on.  Even in a more modern era, Gandhi taught peace and nonviolence, and he lived not that long ago-- people alive still remember him.

So, if one wants to argue that a comprehensive approach is best-- if you say that studying many religions will promote peace, calmness, and understanding-- that's certainly correct.  Focusing on just one, however, is somewhat short sighted.

I think you're arguing against the specificity of what he believes in, and that's fair.  In digging through some of what he believes I get the sense he would agree with you as well.

That there is nothing particular about belief in Jesus/the Bible etc that he could convince anyone else of, but rather for cultural and personal reasons he feels it makes him a better person and 'works' for him, and is a good fit for him.

A guy like him would get totally branded a liar and demon-speaker or something by conservatives of course, but these Axioms fail completely for someone who is looking for 'Ultimate Truth'.



Does he say he speaks for God?  I'm not sure I see that in his axioms. Also, as long as he's open about the idea that Santa Clause could very well be, at the most an evolutionary byproduct, then I'm not too sure what harm there is in it.  Is it worthwhile?  Maybe not for you and I, but if it is for him, and it doesn't result in harm to others, then it seems pretty harmless no?



It's my understanding that prayer and meditation are lumped in together since they basically do the same thing to the brain when they are performed by humans.  Different words for the same thing.  So in that sense, if meditation has beneficial effects, then prayer (since it is argued does the same thing) would have to be just as beneficial.  I'm not in the know in terms of the science of prayer/meditation effects, so I can't speak for whether that particular claim is true - though I have heard it before from other sources.



I'm not sure I understand your dispute with the second point.  In the axiom he merely states that the stidy of the Bible 'can' provide meaning, peace, and empathy for others, not that it will for all.  One criticism I would have is that it can also promote hatred, abuse, and bigotry, so is it really something you want to risk?   Then again, that could be true of many non-faith things as well.  Not sure, it's an interesting one.

In the end I sort of read this as 'Our best understanding of God/Jesus/Bible/Prayer from an evidence based standpoint lands them in the territory of complicated placebo at best, but I'm okay with that, and willingly acknowledge that the placebo effect can work on me because I want it to.'

Sorry, I wasn't referring to him specifically.  It's more like this: it's one thing for a child to believe in Santa Claus.  However, if an adult with authority tells engineers to scrap their plans for a jet, because reindeer can fly faster, we have a problem.

Science and religion don't have to be opposed.  Religion is largely a metaphor anyway, it's when things become too literal that we have a problem.


Problem is, what kind of prayer are you referring to?  There's hundreds of different ways to pray, some of which are more meditative than others.  I knew heavy metal christians who found mosh pits to be a good way to pray, but I wouldn't consider that meditative or relaxing in the slightest.


Sorry, I was mostly objecting to Jesus being a real person.  There may have been several figures who got lumped together to form the Jesus we know.

To the rest, though?  Yes, religion can bring people comfort and peace.  There's nothing wrong with that.  The wrong part is when people start insisting that their way is the only way to get comfort and peace, and start wars over it.

I gather from reading the axioms that the type of prayer would be prayer that operates on the human brain in the same way that meditation does.  Not sure it needs to be defined better than that, but it probably could be narrowed down a bit more.

Yes, Jesus could be an amalgamation of several individuals, but the language in the axioms seems to cover that just fine (ie Jesus is the IDEA of a man, Jesus was very likely a real person).

I have to admit it's a pretty careful wording of things, though it leaves me with a 'So what?' feeling at the end of it all.

Well, that's kind of a circular definition.  "Prayer is similar to meditation, but we're only counting the types of prayer that are similar to meditation."  That's not really useful.

Maybe that's not what he means, I'm not sure.  From reading it I sort of gathered that was the idea, but I could be wrong.

He's also not trying to 'prove' anything with the axioms, but rather lay out a baseline from which he can feel comfortable engaging in a pursuit of science and a pursuit of faith.

You're right, I suppose there are people on the fringes of faith that think that masturbating to Taylor Swift videos can be prayer.  For the vast majority of people they are speaking of a type of action that is similar in form and style to others types of meditation, and it's likely that he's referring to that type of prayer.  Could I be wrong?  Sure, but it's not likely I am.  For the sake of much of the research out there, prayer and meditation are often lumped together when studying the effects on the human brain.  It seems reasonable that he would do the same when laying out his axioms.

You don't even need to go to the fringes of faith.  There are religions that believe prayer is singing loudly (and disharmoniously, traditional Asian music doesn't use the western musical notes).  Others find moving prayer to be more meaningful, as opposed to the christian sitting and silence.

My objection is mostly that he narrowly defines "prayer" in such a way that excludes many kinds of prayer-- and by coincidence, many of those happen to be non-christian.

Interesting stuff.  I'm sort of mixed mind of it.  I think I'd need to see how he uses in in practice to really see what I thought of it.  If it's trying to explicit about the limits of his knowledge, that's great.  If, on the other hand, he's trying to feel better about irrational behavior, that's less good.  Put another way, if these are sort of a transitional phase from unquestioning faith to evidence-led rationalism, that's great, but if they're a smoke screen used to try to make unquestioning faith look like evidence-led rationalism, that's not great.


This last bit makes me a bit uneasy.  The line "it allows us to always feel intellectually honest" sounds like it's not about being honest, but rather about feeling honest, which misses the whole point.  May well just be a poor choice of words on his part, so I don't want to read too much into it, but it did throw up a flag for me.


The first part of this I really don't like.  I don't think God is "at least" natural forces.  Natural forces do exist, and they may be all that exists, but that doesn't make them God.  It sort of seems like he's saying "there's at least something out there, so I'll just call that something "God," and now no one can tell me it doesn't exist!"  That doesn't really seem honest to me.  Especially if the idea he has in mind when he worships "God" isn't natural forces, but rather some personal deity.  The second portion is more to my liking, but I'd prefer he just say "The pursuit of peace and empathy for others is warranted" and call that good enough.  If peace and empathy are a good reason to pursuit of "this personal subjective experience," then just make it explicit that they are the goal, rather than viewing the pursuit itself as the goal.


Here I'm not so sure that his premise is necessary true.  If it is, I'm not sure conclusion follows, in that other actions may be better at providing those benefits than prayer.  I suppose it depends pretty heavily on what form of prayer he engages in.


This I can largely agree with.  The danger is using this statement and then leaping to treating the bible as something more than this.  If he treats the bible as a historical document, rather than the word of God, great.  If, on the other hand, he treats it as the word of God, and justifies that using this statement then less great.


This can be true, but can also be false.  There are plenty of people who have followed Jesus teachings, and used them to promote violence, hate, and intolerance.  Again, viewing peace, empathy, and morality as the goal, is great.  Viewing them as a justification for believing Jesus was God is less great.

I'm also a bit uncomfortable with the "at least/even" format he's using, because he's using it to only focus on the positive aspects, and completely ignoring any negative aspects.  It's sort of a "tell two truths, and lie by omission" kind of thing.  As an example of how it could be misused, someone could use it to say "Hitler was at least the a leader of one of the influential countries of the 20th century.  Even if that's all he was, studying his beliefs and methods can teach one how to restore national pride and confidence in a country suffering from economic woes."  The statements are true, but they leave out the bad bits, and generally avoid the objections that people would actually have to the action in question.  And just like in this guys list of axioms, it comes down to how someone uses such a statement.  Study what Hitler did, how he did it, and figuring out why history played out the way it did is entirely justifiable and good thing to do.  On the other hand, using that fact to justify being a neo-nazi is very much not a good thing to do.

So really, it comes down to how this list of axioms translates into actions for this guy, I think.  Is it an honest admission of his lack of certainty, that makes him limit his claims, and makes him critically examine the things his religion tells him are true?  Or is it simply a way for him to feel better about doing what he's always done anyway, and a way for him to avoid addressing real critiques of his belief?  Does he say "God might only be natural forces, so I shouldn't hate people who follow a different religion than mine."?  Or does he say "Even if God is just natural forces, my religion is still beneficial, so I don't have to resolve the contradictions in my beliefs."?  Does he really want to *be* honest about the limits of his faith, or does he merely want to *feel* honest?  I don't know the guy, so I have no idea.  From just the quote Doulos has provided, I can see it going either way.

You've touched on many of the 'Hmms' I have with this as well.

To add a bt of context, he is a guy who was very southern baptist and conservative.  Eventually he became an atheist for a couple years simply due to the fact that he loves science and critical thinking and he absolutely could not line his faith up with the current understanding of history/the Universe/humanity that we have.

He seems to be very open about the limits of belief/faith, and still very much backs the scientific process and the search for truth in that way (that's clunky wording, but hopefully it makes sense), but my hunch (since I listened to his story on a 2 hour podcast and it's eerily similar to mine) is that since he is married with kids and there is intense pressure to go back to 'the way it was', this is a way for him to sort of take the placebo pill and say 'Yeah I know it's a placebo but I'd rather take the placebo and save my marriage, then push the placebo away and lose everything else'.

Just a guess there on the last bit, but having gone through something very very similar with my own wife (and still going through it), I can see how the pressure to want to make her happy and less "confused/frightened" about the state of things, could lead to something like this.  Maybe I'm wrong, and I doubt he'd ever admit it.

It should also be noted that he had an "experience" that ultimately brought him back to his new version of faith, though he's totally open about the fact that that experience undermines much of what he says in the eyes of many people (he 'beleives' the experience, but also talks about how it is crazy since its totally contrary to the way he views evidence etc - it's a funny mix!)

I guess I found his story interesting, and his way of approaching things to be quite open and honest, but also tough for me to really pin down, which can be frustrating for someone who is wired like me (which is funny because that's the way this guy is wired!)

I had a very similar experience and I can't say that I'm likely to ever marry into a faith again as a result, but the main take-away for me was:

"To thine own self be true."

I tried faking it for a while, and I snapped badly, resulting in all manner of awfulness. I wish your friend good luck.

I do agree that, in general, he's got some good ideas.  Basically, you should not take the bible too literally, religion is mostly metaphor.  And studying religion can give people a sense of peace and comfort, with is very important.

The problems I have come from his perspective.  He's very christian-focused, which is understandable given his history, but also damages his claim that these are universal axioms.

Agreed GMC.

At best I can see them as Cultural Axioms.

It does seem like his wording is... awkward at times. I had to read it a few times to quite grok it. And unfortunately, I think his weird, around-the-bend reasoning lends it a degree of mysticism/rationality that it doesn't quite deserve. But ultimately, his points seem to boil down to:

-People attribute natural things to God, and that helps them.
-Prayer is a form of meditation, and meditation helps some people.
-The Bible is a cultural artifact, and a study on the history of spiritual experiences, and so has value.
-Jesus was a historical person who inspired and helped billions of people, and taught valuable things.

All of these things I'd agree are more-or-less true (although he doesn't provide any real evidence to prove them). And yes, if you use these as justifications and motivations for being Christian, that's all fine and good from a secular viewpoint (from a Christian viewpoint, I'd argue that 'faith in God' should be your cause for being Christian, not 'benefits of meditation and reading ancient documents').

However, as has been pointed out, I don't see this as a full argument on behalf of belief, nor does it justify believing Christianity over any other particular religion.

This kinda comes back to our discussion on the definition of religion and what it means to be "Christian." Some groups might not require faith in order to be socially Christian... which I suppose one could be. That'd be similar to being Jewish by culture but not practice the religion, maybe...?

That's the premise behind several groups.  Loosely speaking, christian means one who follows the teachings of christ, but that doesn't mean you have to follow those exclusively, or even acknowledge the divine elements.  The Unitarian church is a good example-- they're a fairly major group that identifies as christian, but also acknowledges that there is truth in all religions.

There's also atheist christians, who accept the teachings as a moral guide, but don't accept any of the supernatural elements.  They don't have any problems with that, so I'm in no position to judge.