Atheists show their true colors

12/18/09 CARM poster named Paradoxical

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Originally Posted by paradoxical Meta, in reading quite a few of your posts, you believe in "God", but do not believe completely in the Christian God.

with all due respect man. I am not trying to insult you, this is not a tit for tat from past squabbling. I mean this in a non insulting way. I did study at a major seminary I have Masters degree in theology. I'm not saying that to brag to or to say you have to listen to me. I'm just saying I know what the Christian view is, I am expert in Christian theology (well to the Masters level anyway). You are wrong. You are mislead by what fundamentalists say. If you studied the theology I've studied you would know better. I am merely going by what I learned in betting my masters in theology. It was a Christian seminary but of a liberal flavor (Methodist). We did study the Evangelical views too, and the Catholic, we studied it all.

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You believe that Jesus existed and he rose from the dead, but you don't believe in the virgin birth or that the bible is inerrant.

I do believe in the Virgin birth (It's actual called "virginal conception"). I don't believe that it was necessarily predicted by Issiah (although it might have been). I do believe it happened.

I don't believe in inerrency but inerrency is not part of any creed. No council every made inerrency a part of Christian identity. that view didn't exist until the 19th century. Inerrancy is not historical Christianity it was invented to fight Darwin.

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I'm sure there are many other things that you don't agree with mainstream Christianity on. You have given your reasons for your beliefs, which you arrived at after what looks like quite a bit of study, research and deliberation, after which you have constructed your own God concept.

No that is totally false.I've told you this before. My views come from Paul Tillich, who is agreed with by major conservative theologians such as Balthasar and by the whole Roman Catholic Church, by the Orthdox church and many historical great theologians.

Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't' mean it's not true.

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Certain parts of Christianity you defend. Others you don't, or ignore. You could probably start your own religion based on your beliefs and win a fair amount of converts. Undoubtedly, this is why and how so many branches of christianity have developed over the centuries, which is from people such as yourself deliberating over the topic, and deciding for himself what is right and what is wrong.

you are exaggerating because you view of Christianity is limited to modern day fundamentalists. You don't even seem have a concept of histrionically theology. you don't seem to understand what makes a faith what it is. You can't base what Christianity is on a bunch of Televangelists. They are not speaking for the chruch. They just buy air time and speak for themselves. they have no authority in the chruch.

For me, there are no words you or a Christian could ever say, and there is no book or books or manuscripts I could ever read, no minute study of the bible or learning Hebrew or ancient history that could ever make me believe in the Christian God. It is just not possible. I have learned over my many years that is just as impossible to make a devout Christian not believe. Of course, there are some rare exceptions to this as pastors, priests and monks have become atheists and agnostics.

another poster called "made max" (carm)


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Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
but don't need to be proven so.
Ultimately I don't think any proving is necessary as long as we can agree on the important issues.

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sure, but they would not be as well grounded as they would be with God.
I don't understand why value judgments from a deity would be more "well grounded" than my own. They would just be a reflection of it values as my judgments are a reflection of my own.

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...the problem is atheists don't understand what it means to say God si the foundation of reality and they don't understand the logical implications of that.
I can't speak for all atheists, but I agree that I don't understand any of that. It's not a problem for me though since I don't know there is any God that needs such understanding.

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Most people don'tk now anything about ethical theory.
Most people probably don't know anything about various ethical theories taught in universities, but most do seem to know at least a little bit about one theory or another, even if the theory is simply "because God says so".

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..when it comes to discussion about ethical theory both sides are totally confused.
Does that include you?

My ethical stance is pretty simple really. Morals are essentially personal value judgments and we are all valuers.

I say:

Meta:

It's pretty basic really. IF you are the basis of all relaity then it not a value judgment is' the basis of truth. that's just exactly what God is. God is the transcendental signifier, he that which gives meaning it's meaning. thus if he says it has meaning. for you it's a value judgment becuase you are nto the basis of reality. you are a contingency created by the basis of reality.

to which he responds




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Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
It's pretty basic really. IF you are the basis of all relaity then it not a value judgment is' the basis of truth.
Sorry, that's just double talk. Even if God is everything you say it is, it's making a value judgment just like I do. All you're doing after that is arbitrarily declaring it's judgments to be "truth" and not personal judgments. How do you know that this God didn't purposely leave morals to be personal judgments? Perhaps (assuming it exists of course), that is the very thing it intended to do, with no objective "truth" to the matter any more than there is an objective truth that rap music sucks, or that spinache tastes bad. If some God doesn't want something to have objective truth to it, I seriously doubt you could force it otherwise.

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God is the transcendental signifier, he that which gives meaning it's meaning. thus if he says it has meaning. for you it's a value judgment becuase you are nto the basis of reality. you are a contingency created by the basis of reality.
Whether I am a contingency or not that doesn't change the fact that if I think some act ought not to be done I am making a value judgement. The same with any God - it would be making a value judgment.

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that's like saying 'I don't get this loigc stuff but confuse me with the facts."
No, it's like saying that I don't believe this God you speak of exists so subsequently the problem you assert exists doesn't exist except as an assertion by you that there's a problem.

Do you often interpret statements this poorly?

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..how many graduate level ethics courses have you taken?
None, though this has nothing to do with what I said.

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I've studied with a couple of major ethicists at the graduate level.
Great. Not sure how that has any bearing on my statement though.

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...that's because you don't have the existential grounding to make your opinions anything more than that.
Or they actually aren't anything more than that and it's good that I don't claim them to be. It's even possible that as you claim to speak for this God in regards to it's moral position, you've got it all wrong.

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If you created all things it would be different. Then you would be the thing that makes truth true.
My value judgments are true for me and for all I know some God made morals just that way with no objective truth to them.

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that's one of the major steps toward the decline of Western civilization was accepting relativism and dumping the concept of truth.
*shrug* Unless of course relativism is the truth in which case your assertion is false. And if God made them that way, not only is your assertion false, you'd be misrepresenting such a being.
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