-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Boyd <6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca>
To: virus@lucifer.com <virus@lucifer.com>
Date: Tuesday, June 16, 1998 9:40 PM
Subject: Re: virus: Virus: Opinions?
>Hi,
>
>I'm lumping all my comments to Mr. Rea into one message -- I hope I haven't
>deleted to much context.
>
>"Johnny Rea" <matziq@airmail.net> wrote:
>> Are you saying that if there was no such thing as Judaism that
>> Jesus Christ would never have been born?
>
>Jesus *might* have been born, but he certainly would never have been
>recognized as the Christ -- that is a very Jewish term.
>
>> Normally I would agree with you but we have revelation from our
>> prophets that state firmly and matter-of -factly that Adam was
>> the father of all mankind.
>
>And you are willing to take what a bunch of long dead people have said over
>the evidence of your own senses and reason?
>
>There is no hope here virions -- *willful* ignorance is impossible to cure.
>
>> If they had a jury trial to determine the existance of God and
>> could use as many witnesses (eye and character, etc.) to prove
>> it and could use a pool of all witnesses (past and present), what
>> do you think the outcome would be?
>
>I think one would have a pile of contradictions. From a shear numbers
>standpoint, Catholicism would probably win, although it would probably only
>be with 5% of the humans in it's favour. But then, one of the biggest
>logical fallacies is concluding that what the majority believes is right.
>>From a numbers standpoint, I suspect that the "flat earth" people out
>number the spherical type. (I'm considering all people who ever lived,
>here)
>
>What *I* see, as an atheist, is that only the materialists have any
>evidence. Where are the gods today? Where are the miracles?
>
>"Some two-and-a-half-thousand years after its debut in Western culture,
>materialism stands in the final decade of the twentieth century as a
>complete and well-defined philosophy in many respects. Its core
>assumption that there is no reality other than the material order
>exhibiting itself in what exists around and within us distinguishes
>it from competing philosophies today just as sharply as it did for
>Lucretius. The notion of supernatural or immaterial states of being
>that are alien to nature seems just as incoherent to materialists in
>the 1990s as it did to d'Holbach, who first worked out materialism's
>atheistic implications. The conviction not just that the laws of
>nature are knowable but that human science is capable, at least in
>principle, of knowing them is no less central now than it was for
>Buechner. And the assumption that all thought and feeling, human and
>otherwise, is a material process is still as key an element in
>materialism as it has been for the mind-brain reductionists of the
>twentieth century. In these four and many related ways, the
>materialist vision is what it has always been: the clearest and most
>consistent effort to comprehend and demystify nature and humanity's
>place in it that human intelligence has ever made."
> -- Richard C. Vitzthum, 'Materialism: An Affirmative History
> and Definition' (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 176
>
>> The reason I don't mind you guys beating me up is I am so firm
>> and strong in my beliefs that I can talk to Satan face to face
>> and wouldn't flinch. So fire away! :)
>
>First religious rule: Never let facts influence faith.
>
>
> gullibility + arrogance
> Unshakable faith = -----------------------
> common sense
>
>
>> Well, you have to ask yourself is our only senses what we see,
>> hear, smell, taste, and touch? Or is there other ways of finding
>> truth? We have determined that personal revelation is a sort of
>> sixth sense.
>
>The five senses are like a window into the world -- they provide the
>premises for arguments, they provide the ultimate justification (infinite
>regressions do not happen in science for this reason). Once we have this
>source of premises, we can put logic to work in what is called "reason".
>Logic is a systematic way of extrapolating from what you know to the
>consequences of that knowledge. Reason is the act of using logic and
>knowledge to justify a theory.
>
>For instance, consider the classic Argument from Evil:
>
>"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot;
>Or he can, but does not want to;
>Or he cannot and does not want to.
>If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
>If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked.
>But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil,
>Then how come evil in the world?"
> -- Epicurus, 350-?270 BC
>
>(I find it very ironic that the Argument from Evil actually predates the
>specific god in question!)
>
>It actually works like this:
>
>premise 1) god is (possibly all) powerful
>premise 2) god is (possible "all") good
>>From premise two: therefore god would want to eliminate evil, if he can
>>From premise one: god CAN eliminate evil
>Conclusion: if god exists, evil would be eliminated, since god both
>wants to and can eliminate it.
>premise 3: evil still exists
>conclusion: since the consequences of gods existence are contradictory with
>the world we see around us, god does not exist.
>
>> If you've ever cracked open a Book of Mormon you will find the
>> testimony of the three witnesses and other witness accounts.
>> Do eye witnesses have any weight when determining truth?
>
>Some. Depends on who they are. In criminal courts, "false in one thing,
>false in all things" is a good rule of thumb. That is why the gospel
>accounts of Jesus are considered worthless as evidence of Jesus. For those
>interested, Thomas Paine thoroughly debunked the entire Bible (both
>testimates) in his book _The Age of Reason_, about 220 years ago.
>
>As to the book of Mormon -- which I have not read -- I withhold judgment.
>However, I suspect that, with it's foundation gone, the book of Mormon
>doesn't amount to much. If god does not exist, can a book about him
>possibly be true?
>
>> And what I say is when a prophet of God says something it is true
>> not because he says so but because my heart physically burns with
>> the knowledge. I pray for personal revelation and I get a physical
>> feeling inside that tells me it is true. Everyone has this ability.
>> It is called the Holy Ghost.
>
>This is about the most fallacious argument that theists use. Allow me to
>quote some scholars:
>
>"Since experiences of God are good grounds for the existence of God,
>are not experiences of the absence of God good grounds for the
>nonexistence of God? After all, many people have tried to experience
>God and have failed. Cannot these experiences of the absence of God
>be used by atheists to counter the theistic argument based on
>experience of the presence of God?"
>Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification,
>(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 159.
>
>The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to
>strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions."
> -- Bertrand Russell
>
>If you've been following my posts, you must know by now that I too have
>these experiences -- indeed, all humankind does -- the problem is that
>everyone interprets the experience differently. Certainly my experiences
>don't make me conclude that any god exists -- quite the opposite. Your
>god is one among many, and any theist will tell you that their experience
>gives them evidence of *their* god. Me, I'm not so egoistic. My
>experiences are mine, certainly -- they can never be used to justify the
>existence of something outside of myself.
>
>"OK, I seek to eliminate the meme: "There is one subjective truth".
>Therefore I'm against churches and institutional religion in every
>form I have encountered it. I'm absolutely not against spiritual
>experience... I just want my delusions to have equal weight with the
>Pope's. After all, I have as much proof."
> -- Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu, on the CoV mailing list
>
>> If you can show me facts that disprove what I believe then I
>> will be the first to abandon the church.
>
>I refer you to _The Age of Reason_, or to _Atheism: A Philosophical
>Justification_, or to _On the Origin of Species_, or to _The Book your
>Church does not Want you to Read_, or to _Losing faith in faith_, or to any
>other of a thousand books containing arguments which destroy the
>foundations of theism.
>
>> Who wrote the bible? Do you believe it was one persons work of
>> fiction? Or that all the writers who mention Jesus were making
>> it up?
>
>A lot of different people wrote the bible -- this is the first step in
>understanding what it has to say. Frequently, the writers of the bible
>disagreed over major issues -- for instance, the famous contradiction
>between Paul's "we are saved by faith, not by works" and James's "faith
>without works is dead". Once you begin to understand that each of the
>writers had his own opinion on things, that they each wrote about *their*
>*own* god, many peices fall into place. This is why there are such major
>differences between the gospels -- especially between matt/mark/luke and
>john. The first three are all basically the same story (to the point of
>plagiarism), while the last represents a completely different school of
>thought among early Christians. Most biblical scholars consider the book
>of John to be the product of the early church, which is to say, not related
>to the man called Jesus in any factual way.
>
>As to whether they were writing the truth, that is anybody guess. However,
>I will point out that in addition to the 27 books of the New Testimate
>which (I assume) you are familiar with, there are in excess of 150 other
>books about Jesus -- many of which are wildly divergent. The early years
>(till +300 or so) of the Christian church were very turbulent.
>
>For those interested, I do recommend reading some of the other literature
>about "Jesus" which has survived to this day -- specifically, The Gospel of
>Thomas (collected saying of Jesus), The Infant narratives (where you can
>learn about Jesus's early life), The Gospel of Nicodemus (which describes
>the trial in great, and amusing, detail)
>
>All should be available at
>http://wesley.nnc.edu/noncanon.htm
>
>Given that the church itself views all of these as utterly false, I cannot
>help but feel that the other stories, the ones in the bible, must similarly
>be false -- after all, the only difference is that a group of Christians
>*voted* to keep the ones we are familiar with.
>
>So, in conclusion, yes, I think that by and large, the gospels are
>fiction. It's possible that a man by the name of Jesus existed -- indeed,
>likely -- but nobody will ever know now how much is legend and how much is
>truth.
>
>> We don't question God's motives.
>
>If your god asked you to pick up a gun and kill people, as your god
>apparently often did in the past, would you do it?
>
>> Obviously you've never had personal revelation since you are
>> an atheist.
>
>I too am an atheist -- and there are certainly things in my past I would
>call "personal revelations". Obviously, I haven't had the one you had --
>but then, you haven't had mine, either.
>
>Such arguments over personal experience prove nothing other than the fact
>that we are both human. Surprise surprise!
>
>ERiC
>