...about things that interest me and are (hopefully) edifying!

But our God is in the heavens;
He does whatever He pleases. Psalm 115:3

Soli Deo Gloria!!

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

The Path to Atheism

1 Accept the idea that I can substantially understand or judge the verity of all things

2 Accept the idea current accumulated evidentiary experience and knowledge are the best true measure of all things.

3 Accept the idea that the interpretation of natural circumstantial evidence is interpreted correctly.

4 Accept the idea that I am open to the idea I can be dissuaded through doubt.

5 Reject Scripture.

6 Reject Christ.

7 Reject Faith.

8 Reject God.

6 comments:

jazzycat said...

J.D.
Hey man saw where you visited my jazzycat site. Thanks for taking a look... They will probably use it as evidence when they send me to the funny farm. Really like your site and the links you give. Take care.
Pope wayne

DagoodS said...

Hey, JD! Thought I would respond to this, as I have taken the path from Christianity to atheism. See how it fits.

1 Accept the idea that I can substantially understand or judge the verity of all things
Not me. I couldn’t even remotely hope to even dream to understand or judge the verity of all things. Too much out there. Not enough time. All I can do is work with what little I have. However, that little was more than enough to come to the conclusion there is no God. Just like Christians don’t remotely think they know everything, but with the little they know, they come to the conclusion that there is only one God. Although I haven’t tested everything, I do see how gravity works for everything I have come into contact with. That sort of thing.

2 Accept the idea current accumulated evidentiary experience and knowledge are the best true measure of all things.
Who would be foolish enough to do this? Past history reveals we know more now than we did 10 years ago. And more then, than we did 10 years before, and so on. It seems most reasonable that 10 years from now we will know even more. So what I know now is NOT the best measure. Since I’ll know more later, and must keep possibilities open. Pragmatically, though, I can only work with what I have. And besides knowledge, how else do I measure things? By what I don’t know? Seems odd.

3 Accept the idea that the interpretation of natural circumstantial evidence is interpreted correctly.
Not sure what this even means. ‘Fraid to guess. Who’s interpretation? What circumstantial evidence?

4 Accept the idea that I am open to the idea I can be dissuaded through doubt.
No, I was dissuaded by evidence. Lots and lots of evidence. Doubt is just a useful tool to send a signal that, “Hey, something is wrong here.” Doesn’t make it correct, just “let’s us use a finer eye,” if you will. I could be dissuaded by other evidence. Love to see it.

5 Reject Scripture.
I assume this mean “reject inspiration.” Welcome to my path, my friend! You, too, reject inspiration in the Book of Mormon and Qur’an. Or the Apocrypha. Or the Gnostic Gospels. There are tons of scriptures, you, too, reject inspiration. Not surprisingly, for all the same reasons you reject inspiration in those, I reject inspiration in your particular chosen scripture.

6 Reject Christ.
Again, I would assume this meant the deity of Christ. Not that an actual person named Jesus walked on the earth in the First Century. Again, numerous other religions also reject the deity of Christ. If I recall (and I do) it took a vote to have Him pre-existing. And that vote wasn’t until the Fourth Century! Obviously I do not hold to Christ being a deity, just like billions of other people.

7 Reject Faith.
Never had a problem with faith. Kinda nice. Faith in the absence of evidence is hope. Faith contrary to evidence is delusion.

8 Reject God.
Nope. Reject that what humans tell me about supernatural creatures, including god(s) is made up by humans. But I can’t reject what doesn’t exist. Like saying, “reject geocentricism.” Since it doesn’t exist, there is no real way to reject it. One can reject the claim, of course.

Pretty much a bunch of statements that didn’t apply to me, or I had to contrive a way to figure out how they might apply to me.

I am a bit curious. Did you write this for other Christians? If so, it was an awful representation of atheism. Or did you write it for atheists? If so, it was an awful representation.

Or is this how you see the world? If so, I fear I have not presented my position well at all.

oddXian said...

Hi, dagoods - very well written response, unfortunately your response is more of a proof than a rebuttal - what you do not know far exceeds by orders of magnitude what you do know, so to take the position that you know enough to know there is no God proves my first point and invalidates the remainder of your rebuttal - and to answer your question - yes - it was written for folks whom formerly professed Christ as Lord.

DagoodS said...

But you think you know enough to say there is no {insert here "Allah," "Zeus," "Catholic version of God," "Jewish version of God," and so on and so on}

I simply use the same methods you do and eliminate your God.

Did ya miss me? :-)

oddXian said...

Howdy! Good to hear from you again1 I confess that I did not see your intial response for awhile.

So -

Well, the idea is first to confess ignorance (mine, yours, etc), admit the possibility of God, then to examine the claims of how he reveals Himself within the respective religions in context of their overall reasonableness.

At least as a starting point - ultimately we could discuss the requirement of spirituality to even understand God in context.

A characteristic that you must deny to be consistent in your worldview.

-JD

DagoodS said...

Well, the idea is first to confess ignorance (mine, yours, etc),…
No problem there. What I don’t know far outweighs what I do.

… admit the possibility of God,…
Again, no problem. I admit the possibility of God, no God, deistic God, pantheistic God, polytheistic God, Muslim, Mormon, Christian Scientist, Catholic, Protestant, Aztec, African, Native American, Hindu, and many, many other possibilities. All of them are extremely improbable, but not necessarily impossible.

Can you admit to the same possibilities?

…then to examine the claims of how he reveals Himself within the respective religions in context of their overall reasonableness.
Uh-oh. Already seeing you can’t. Just one God. Male God. Revealing God. You are limiting your possibilities as we speak!

The claims are ALL humans that indicate they are communicating from God. Every single one. Therefore, I must look at the reasonableness of a human communicating what a God would say, in light of what other humans say.

Clearly I have not communicated well at all, if you think I haven’t considered these possibilities, or that I was not coming from a point of spirituality in attempting to understand God. I just realized there were more possibilities than I originally thought, and started to look at probabilities.

...about things that interest me and are (hopefully) edifying!

But our God is in the heavens;
He does whatever He pleases. Psalm 115:3

Soli Deo Gloria!!


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