the former - but more reacting to the implicit assumption that theism is some how a less sophisticated or thoughtful position than atheism.

In the bible it says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"

I don't know how you can interpret a bald statement like that, or a commandment and it is clearly an incitement to kill which I cannot offer the principle of charity to. — Andrew4Handel

could resist:

“But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did — if we really thought that there were people going around who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (end of Chapter 2)[/right]

I suspect that fear and hierarchies/power structures and indoctrination are behind peoples religious/superstitious beliefs. I grew up in a strict Christian environment where you were not allowed to ask questions or express doubts. — Andrew4Handel

You forgot they came to that belief after a thoughtful and informed deliberation.

Your comment is dismissive and ignorant. The equivalent of me saying most atheist beliefs are based on nothing deeper that jumping on the Dawkins bandwagon. The analysis being " there are all these "smart" people who are atheists, i'm a smart person - I'll be an atheist too " but I would never say that.

Interesting - I have sort of made that point on a few free will threads but have never gotten any feed back.

Generations A's - decisions are influenced by the decisions of prior generations and so on and so on. Is there a regression of these decisions by prior generations that ends at some - un influenced decision ?

thanks

Understand - just disagree with the concept of negative/weak/implicit/soft and how it is defined - I believe it is more about tactic than identifying any kind of real position.

Can you give me a label for any other non belief of something one is un-aware of ?

But no real philosophy here - one can identify themselves as they wish - my only caveat would be if you do identify yourself as such it seems that is no basis to argue against theism from. They should maintain spectator status in the discussion.

The argument is rational, it is just based on premises that are unsupported.
— Rank Amateur

The argument is based on the definition of omnipotence and, ergo, needs no sub-arguments.
6 hours ago ReplyOptions — TheMadFool

The argument is based on assigning the human understanding of the world omnipotence to the nature of God, and anything we say about the nature of God is unsupported, ergo your proposition about the nature of God is unsupported and fails.

firstly I do not mean anything negative about ignorance, I just mean unaware by it. By my argument 17th century physicists were ignorant of quantum mechanics, they were neither for, against or undecided - they were unaware.

Where we come apart I believe is I believe that atheism is an active objection to a proposed belief. One can not be a - anything, without there being an anything.

rational argument — TheMadFool

The argument is rational, it is just based on premises that are unsupported.

There is no rational support for us to believe we can say anything with any truth value at all about the nature of such a thing as "God"

That does not mean that such discussions are without merit or purpose, it just means the foundation of all such arguments are faith based. As reasonable and logical as the arguments are, if they entail a proposition about the nature of God, it is important to acknowledge that such propositions are unsupportable.

I would amend to this decision tree

1. Are you aware and do you understand the concept of theism ?
1a - no = unaware, ignorant of issue, uninterested, outside having a position

1b. yes

2. Do you agree with the concept?

2a - yes = theist
2b - no = atheist
2c - neither agree or disagree = agnostic

not sure it is possible to articulate the thought about not thinking about God, without thinking about God. There may well be an infinite set of things we have not thought about yet, none of which, by definition, we could articulate.

agree - and to me a more important philosophical paradox is between the Principle of Credulity, and CORNEA

The Principle of Credulity: - It is basic to human knowledge of the world that we believe things are as they seem to be in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary

Or

CORNEA - Condition Of ReasoNable Epistemic Access.

On the basis of cognized situation s, human H is entitled to claim ‘It appears that p’ only if it is reasonable for H to believe that, given her cognitive faculties and the use she has made of them, if p were not the case, s would likely be different than it is in some way discernible by her. The key idea behind CORNEA is a proposed test for whether some alleged evidence E seriously ‘supports’… some hypothesis H

I think people should stop promoting biblical infallibility and stop proselyting and should teach people the bible in a critical way without making false claims. — Andrew4Handel

I think people should be able say whatever they believe about the Bible, and leave it to the discernment of the audience to agree or not.

Personally my interpretation of the bible and my examination of the contradictions leads me to reject most of Christianity especially in a literal sense. — Andrew4Handel

As is your right, enjoy

Christians are trying to spread Christianity around the world and trying to translate the bible into every language. In the face of this I think people being targeted to in this way by proselytizing and evangelicalism have a right to response and challenge. I think children have a right to chose their own religion and not to be indoctrinated. — Andrew4Handel

As is your right - enjoy

Andrew - It is big world of ideas out there, some good - some bad, some we chose to believe some we don't. In a tip of the hat to Terrapin Station - we are all going to leave this broke down palace someday - there are lots of paths to chose from where we are to there - we are all free to chose - pick well and enjoy the ride.

One can say whatever one wants about the nature of God, as long as they acknowledge that those ideas are outside reason - and are based on some faith based belief.

until someone can make be a valid argument, with propositions I can believe as true that support the conclusion " therefor I know this about the nature of God" . I will continue to believe such declarations about the nature of God to be outside reason.

Hey I get to recycle this now -

so how about we all just stipulate, that basis some reasonable interpretations of the Bible there are passages that can be shown to be contradictory to other passages. Let's all assume that is 100% true for this discussion -

Where do you want to go from there Andrew ?

Or, think through just what omnipotence means and you may come to the same place that a thousand years of Christian theological thinking arrived at, viz, that an omnipotent God is a very problematic idea of God. — tim wood

or our completely human understanding of what we call "omnipotence" and how we define it, has absolutely nothing at all to do with the nature of such a thing as "God".

And most anything we say about the nature of God has little of it based on reason, and a whole bunch of it based on faith.

The contradictions are fact. However, the bible is not a collection of historical or scientific facts. The main aim of the scriptures is to teach morality which it does to a very high degree of success. Other factors are at best 'filler material'. In fact, we could ignore the 'who said' and 'when it was said' part and the 'what was said' would still qualify as proper moral teachings.

I believe those who get stuck at the contradictions are the type who are inclined to believe God exists because the bible says so. They forget they have a duty to themselves to question everything and to analyse everything in order to extract what is significant and useful. So the question to ask is, "what significance do the contradictions have in light of the purpose of the bible and its narratives?" — BrianW

Hello preacher - meet me the choir

sorry - got my threads mixed up - mea culpa and I slink back into my hole

Brian - so how about we all just stipulate, that basis some reasonable interpretations of the Bible there are passages that can be shown to be contradictory to other passages. Let's all assume that is 100% true for this discussion -

Where do you want to go from there ?

Never mind about that. You know what to do, so go do it. Or admit that you're not.

And then the priest has to get another job, cause there's little market for getting down to business. :smile: — Jake

Yea, but they have that in persona Cristi thing - big time job security there

But as you can see, the Bible, all holy books, are just begging people to get lost in all this interpretation analysis. It's been going on for 3,000 years, it never ends, each new generation gets sucked in to it. — Jake

My unsupportable opinion is 99% of this is for human aggrandizement and 1% for the greater glory of God. But I could be a little to cynical

This, as I have discovered in my investigations, is the kind of notion that leads to bias. In my opinion, the bible teachings demand both right feeling and right thinking. Not one or the other. — BrianW

ok - no argument from me - it is a personal journey - enjoy the trip

Just a slightly different take. This is from Ignatian Spirituality - It is called imaginative prayer - and what Ignatius asks is that instead of reading scripture as text to parse and digest and attempt some intellectual understanding - we immerse ourselves in the story. He asks, as an example, we imagine we are sitting with the crowds hearing the sermon on the mount - but more than that - we try to feel the sun, imagine the people around us, try to become a participant in the event. And here is the most important part, than listen to what we are feeling - not thinking - feeling.

The Bible is not a history book, or a science book, or a political text. It is also not a how to instruction manual. It is, for us believes, the inspired word of God - inerrant in its purpose - which is to save our souls. This is more an emotional journey, than a cerebral one. In a more secular view it is a book, taken in its totality, that is teaching us to love. That is not a journey of the mind, it is a journey of the heart.

Sermon over.

Than I think the verse to start with is John 18:38

ok. seems we are in a do loop. No worries

Not exactly sure what the objective of your position is.

is it:

My reading of the bible contains contradictions I can not reconcile and as such, i can not accept if is the inspired word of a perfect God -

or

When I read the bile I see contradictions, I also believe it is the inspired word of God, can you all help me to reconcile the contradictions ?

or

none of the above

that seems like a whole lot of word that say Aleph - null is a label for a concept to me - What am I missing ??

I understand,

but if Aleph-null +1 = Aleph-null
and if Aleph-null + the size of any finite set = Aleph-null
is Aleph-null a number in any way other than as a label ?

not playing get ya - really don't know what operations can or can't be meaningfully done with Aleph-null

are sets of any size numbers ???

"∞" isn't a number. — MindForged

that's what I said !!!

I was brought up to believe that the Bible was infallible and True. Then as a young adult I discovered a website concerning numerous contradictions in the bible. — Andrew4Handel

Just an FYI, the Catholic teaching is that the Bible is inherent in its purpose which is the salvation of souls. It is not a history or scientific text. It does not need to be literally true, to be true to its purpose.

From pope Paul vi encyclical. Dei Verbum

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings (5) for the sake of salvation. Therefore "all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind"

ok , sure. Thanks

However, the transfinite cardinals and Ordinals are numbers and are universally acknowledged as infinite numbers. They are larger than any finite number and are not limits. They are sizes and order numbers of infinite sets. — MindForged

I could have pulled from all kinds of other sites, just grabbed that one.

Tranfinite numbers are not, by definition infinity, They are, by definition < infinity, one thing can not, be less than something and be the same thing as that which it is less than.

The two are contradictory. Infinity can’t be a number. So it is not maths. — Devans99

Infinity in mathematics is a mathematical concept. Same as mathematical operations. = is not a number, it is a concept, it is still math.

probably will regret this, but respectfully disagree. Infinity is not a number, it is a concept.

https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus/Infinite_Limits/Infinity_is_not_a_number

so how would one answer questions like how many real numbers are there between say 1 and 2, how many lines can pass through a point, without a concept of infinity?

The two are contradictory. Infinity can’t be a number. So it is not maths. — Devans99

Again to the op - infinity is not a number- it is a concept

Infinity is not a number of any kind it is a label for a concept.

What is not logical is the claim that "1+∞ = ∞ implies 1 = 0"; it reveals an utter lack of understanding about the mathematics of infinity, which at this point is clearly willful. — aletheist

Math is hard.

'm not knowledgeable about the philosophers you referenced (regarding absurdity) but it seems to me the situation is absurd only if one refuses to deal with it. — Jake

Jake - attached the myth of Sisyphus for you. Worth the read.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf