rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (11/17/84)
>>My, you must be in on something that the rest of the world isn't. I have >>no complaint if these are your own beliefs, but to make a statement that >>this is FACT is going just a little too far! Not all the world accepts >>these facts, and I see no reason they should. These are beliefs, not >>facts. Each person has their own beliefs. Facts are undeniable truths. >>The two are not the same, and I don't see any reason to try to say that >>ones own beliefs are factual, except to simply better his argument. >> [ANDY BANTA on Ken Nichols] > Prove it. Turn your own argument on itself and see how much you > believe it. [PAUL DUBOIS] This is typical of the style of argument coming of late from religious believers. Despite the fact that others have shown repeatedly that the way Paul and other believers obtained their "knowledge" is very faulty indeed, he still feels the need to claim the absolute truthfulness of his "knowledge". Paul wants us to believe that his beliefs are facts. He obviously believes them to be. He asks us to "turn this argument on itself". In countless articles, we have shown that the inverse argument doesn't hold water: what it always boils down to is that 1) religious believers have been shown to take unwarranted leaps of faith based on their own wishful thinking and preconception of how they would like the world to be and 2) the basis for the acquired "knowledge" that led them to make these leaps of faith is rife with unreliability stemming from faulty patterning. Turn the argument any way you want, Paul. As long as the evidence still bears out the means by which each camp acquires its evidence ("evidence" for one particular camp), it will continue to hold. >>It irks me when other people try to >>push their God on me. Why should I believe in their God? If I have my >>own, and don't have any complaints, nobody has to "save" me from >>anything. There is nothing of danger out there, I don't need to be >"saved" from some terrible "burning" that is going to happen when I die. > There's a rather loud assumption in that last statment. See previous > comment. Needless to say, Paul feels he is NOT making "loud" assumptions. He knows the facts. Just look at the rigorous analysis he did to get them. > Ken isn't trying to scare > anyone into Hell; he knows that that doesn't work. Ken has been > stating what he (and, obviously, I) know (excuse me!) to be the state > of man's relationship to God before and after salvation. Fear and > terror need have nothing to do with stating a proposition. "Excuse you" is right. (Perhaps "Pardon you for breathing" would be more appropriate... :-) You don't know, you wish for. You presuppose. You assume. Your beliefs are full of "non-knowing". The path through which you obtained your "knowledge" can be shown to be full of presumptive holes along the way. > You don't feel there's an afterlife? How do you know? It's easy > enough to say that Christians can't prove that there *is* an afterlife, > but what can you say in defense of your own proposition? Occam's Razor leads us to our conclusion. Occam's Razor does not guarantee the truth, but it provides better guidelines than wishing for certain things about the universe and claiming that they're so to support your conclusion. Tell us, Paul, how YOU were led to YOUR conclusion. And be sure to do a careful analysis of the steps you take and the assumptions you make (sounds like a Police song :-). Or don't you do that, perhaps because it might lead you to a different conclusion. >>If I feel good being kind to others, then isn't that enough >>for me (obviously not for you) to make myself happy while I'm alive on >>Earth? Why do you feel this need to change me? > Perhaps because God says that we all need to be changed. You may not > (and, I assume, do not) admit that our deeds are filthy rags in the > sight of God, but surely you can agree that *if* our deeds are such, > we need to be changed (not, note, to change, but *to be* changed). Translation: perhaps because Paul has been led to believe that god says that we need to be changed. Your beliefs and reality are very far apart, Mr. Dubois. I say this because of the way in which you obtained them (frought with potential error) and because of how much they differ from what we know of reality, and because one can easily see how much of them are simply rooted in wishful thinking. Make enough assumptions about the world (there must be justice, there is an ultimate good/evil dichotomy that is well-defined, humans are low and filthy and there is something better than us to show us what filth we are), all based on WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE, and, if these things are indeed correct, you may well be right, since I can see no other conclusion to draw from these premises other than that there IS a god as you describe. Only what is the basis for your believing these premises? Please be specific. >>we don't want to be like you? What if we are happy the way we are? I >>think I'd feel pretty miserable if my one purpose in life would be to >>make other people believe like I do. If they believe something >>different, and I can't prove them wrong, why should I interfere? You >>can't prove your position is right. You obvously feel that you are > Can you prove your own position? Hardly. Thus, Paul's is right. Part of religious belief seems to manifested in a childish wish for order. Rationally, based on the fact that there are billions of people with billions of personal interests in the world, there cannot be an absolute good and evil (see my previous article). But it would be better if there WAS, thus you assume there is one. It would be better if the universe was run on principles of justice and controlled by a benevolent deity, but there's no reason to believe that OTHER THAN THAT YOU WISH IT TO BE SO. Paul here chooses a position that says "yes, there is an absolute right and wrong, a universal good and evil, a controller in charge of things determining and judging fairly" clearly for one reason. Because he'd like to see the universe that way. As opposed to systems of rational belief that perceive no such absolutes, no such claims to absolute truth. Paul would rather live in a world with such absolutes. So he makes them up. (Or uses pre-made-up ones.) >>right. Why can't we just say "I'm OK, You're OK", and leave it at that. > Tell it to God. He will say to you, just as He did to myself and > Ken, "I'm OK, you're not." You must have a pretty low opinion of yourself to 1) say that to yourself and 2) believe that a deity would believe that too. This negative Christian mindset permeates our culture and reinforces these beliefs of unworthiness, so it's no wonder people like Paul hear god saying those things---it's more wishful thinking. > Ken didn't say "mere meaningless chanting of words", you did, by way > of setting up a straw man. As for finding it hard to admit this about > our morality is meaningless, I guess I would ask, "why?" Really - why? Your morality is far from meaningless. On the contrary, it has very vivid meaning: it encompasses all the assumptions I have described in this article, about the unworthiness of humanity, about the need for an absolute arbiter of good/evil to exist, etc. Unfortunately, whether or not any such deity ever existed or spoke to anyone, it is clear that the essence of the morality involved is to reinforce the presumptions I have mentioned. A rational minimal morality says one thing, in fact it says exactly what Jesus is supposed to have said: human beings are free to do anything that doesn't harm another human being. Why have anything on top of that? Did god say so, or do YOU want it to be so? -- Now I've lost my train of thought. I'll have to catch the bus of thought. Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr