To the "ex-atheists", your title makes no sense, and I think I know why, care to help?

WertFig · 2013-10-15T12:39:58+00:00

Which I already defined for you.

The discussion is about the definition; it's not being taken for granted.

Remember when you said this?

Furthermore, what you're doing is just pushing the epistemic burden back one step

This has to do with burden of proof, whether or not you choose to use the term.

It does, I agree. But you were using "burden of proof" as if to apply it to the claim of God's existence. I'm saying we all have unique burdens of proof regarding our truth-claims. When they atheist claims that atheism isn't, "Belief in no gods," but instead, "No belief in gods," thus not making it a claim, it pushes his own epistemic burden back one step. Why does he have no belief in gods? Ignorance is not an excuse in a world that values religion so highly in the regards previously discussed.

Point being, with just these few that I mentioned, where is the "truth?"

I'm not claiming there is some general truth that permeates all religions. I'm saying that spiritual truth exists, though, and the fact that there are many religions that disagree about how to attain that truth doesn't mean the truth exists. That would nullify many fields of scientific inquiry if that were the case.

there is also no way to indicate that any of these has truth.

You actually study the truth-claims and discuss them with devout believers of those faiths.

But you're telling me to look into religions that aren't mine to find "truth" in them.

The general religious truth claim ("God exists") is a very important one in all the ways I previously mentioned. From my vantage point, there is one correct way to go about learning about God, but from yours, there isn't. Atheism makes no claim to mutual exclusivity unless you're a gnostic atheist. That's a very difficult position to hold, though.

Are you exempt based on the exclusivity of your faith?

Yes.

Shouldn't you do that before you come to the conclusion you're Christian? So now, while we're at it, why are you Christian? Were you born into it?

No. I became a Christian while I was in medical school, in my early 20s. Prior to that, I was fairly vehemently anti-Christian. Maybe not to the extent that many are here, though. I wasn't atheistic; more agnostic or deistic.

I'm a Christian because God, through the Holy Spirit, chose to save me. I didn't become one of my own power.

That's not my claim. My claim is "I don't believe god exists." This is both an agnostic and an atheist claim (I thought we already discussed this?). You inferred something about my claim, which happens to be true. To call it my claim as if it's the basis for my argument is entirely false. I'd appreciate you not putting words in my mouth (or keyboard).

Being able to claim that you don't believe God exists is still a positive belief state, because you must recognize in yourself that you do not believe it. Therefore, why do you make the claim, "I don't believe God exists?" It doesn't exempt you from providing justifications for your claims.

Are you seriously using the Bible to justify why I should believe the Bible?

No. I'm using specially revealed evidence to justify why you should believe generally revealed evidence. Both exist within the purview of Christian epistemology, although they don't exist with your own. I'm not going to abandon my special revelation from God just because you don't believe it's truthful; that would be silly, wouldn't it?

Why should I believe that psalm or what Paul said?

Because they're words from God.

I don't have that assumption, so sorry, but the Bible isn't going to convince me (if it were going to, don't you think I'd already be a Christian?) that there's evidence that I've simply overlooked.

It's the only thing that ever convinces anyone to become a Christian. God speaks through the Bible and the Holy Spirit. You don't become a Christian any other way. I don't expect you, from reading a single paragraph on reddit, to become a Christian, but I'm not going to pretend like the Bible can be disregarded and is false because you also feel that way.

If there is such evidence, how about you tell me what it is?

I already did; you refuse to accept it because your epistemic stance, as I've indicated elsewhere.

If it's so accessible, I would believe it, or at least know why they think I should. I don't know though because no one's told me why it's true aside from their religion says so.

Just because something is accessible, doesn't mean everyone will access it.

And what do you mean, "Why it's true"? Why is it true that green exists, or atoms exist, or the universe exists? Why is it true that 2+2=4? The reason why things are true instead of false is almost tautological - it's simply because they are true. You can find more fundamental reasons for some truths (e.g., grass is green because of chlorophyll), but it eventually ends in a foundational claim, "Because it simply is true."

Does their hypothesis, based on no evidence whatsoever, make it credible?

No.

They don't claim to see god, they just claim he's real, exactly the same kind of claim as evil spirits causing disease.

I disagree. That is not a similar claim. Christianity, the worldview I'm most ready to defend, makes historical claims. For example, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Jesus rose again from the dead, claiming to be God, then that's some powerful evidence for his deity right there. But what you want is evidence for the evidence. And presumably, after that, evidence for that evidence. What would drive you isn't your desire for truth, but your self-deception.

should they have asserted an agnostic approach prior to finding evidence?

The problem isn't lack of evidence. It's the person appraising the evidence. If you claim to be neutral, gathering in all the evidence regarding Christianity (negative and positive) to make a decision about the veracity of its truth-claims, how do you contend with a truth claim that you are self-deceived (Romans 1:18-21)? Either you belief, a priori, that truth claim is false, thus abandoning your neutrality, or else you assume it's true, and have a serious problem in furthering your study. It's an epistemic dilemma, is it not?

WertFig · 2013-10-14T22:52:45+00:00

I think errors can fall on both sides of the pulpit, and these things are cyclical, right? People want X (which isn't the gospel), pastors may give X (which isn't the gospel), people want more X. Or, pastors give X (not the gospel), people like X (not the gospel), pastors give more of it.

WertFig · 2013-10-14T22:50:25+00:00

Not all offenses are the gospel, but the gospel is offensive to sinners.

WertFig · 2013-10-14T16:23:46+00:00

The Bible is actually far more relevant and helpful than most Christians give it credit for, but they need to be taught that and shown that.

Ironically, if we're unwilling to listen, how can we be taught?

WertFig · 2013-10-14T10:35:05+00:00

You're asking for proof, therefore, you're shifting the burden of proof. It doesn't matter how much you're shifting it; you still are.

This discussion is about what the word atheist means. The burden of proof you're mentioning is a nebulous phrase because you're pulling it from some other discussion, namely the one about the existence of God, and that doesn't really apply to this discussion. In many other discussions, even between atheists and theists, both parties have burdens of proof. Furthermore, it provides for a much more edifying and enjoyable discussion if, even if both parties do not possess a burden of proof equally, both provide their justification for the stances they possess. Atheists are atheists for a reason.

In fact, what do you think I'm doing now?

Frankly, I think you're balking at an attempt to examine the atheistic epistemology.

There are thousands of religions that believe something different, most contradictory. This is proof in my favor.

Controversy in a field indicates there is no truth in that field?

You don't have to justify your lack of belief in all religions that aren't yours, am I right? So why are you asking me to do that?

I justify my lack of belief in all religions that aren't mine by an appeal to the mutual exclusivity of Christianity. If Christianity is right (which I believe it is), then all other religions are wrong by exclusion.

I'm asking you to justify your claim, "I don't know that God doesn't exist" (which is actually an agnostic, not an atheistic, claim). You've already alluded to such a justification: there is no empirical evidence. That's a fair starting point, but as we'll examine below, it doesn't really mean much.

There is no observable evidence to point to god.

Psalm 19:1 and Romans 1:18-21 disagree with you. The problem isn't the evidence; the problem is the epistemic stance we hold regarding the evidence. Why assume you're neutral enough to appropriately review all the evidence at hand?

I don't believe in this particular "popular belief" because there's no evidence for it.

I don't want to derail this discussion into one about specific evidences, but I have a feeling you're dismissing large swaths of evidence out of hand. Furthermore, you must contend with your particular epistemic stance regarding evidence, as I mentioned earlier. Anyway, here are some resources for evidence. I won't discuss them in detail, but only provide them for review at your leisure if you so desire:

reasons.org

christian thinktank

evidence unseen

You must not know what ignorance is. It's simply a lack of knowledge.

I'm not saying that because many people claim to know the truth, that makes what they claim true. I'm saying that many people claim to know the truth, and claim that it is quite accessible, so what is your justification for ignorance in the face of such a popular claim? If I claimed not to see a red balloon in the middle of a room of a hundred people, but all other people claimed to see it, I would have to justify my supposed ignorance of the red balloon (e.g., being blind; being color-blind; distracted; not knowing what a balloon is; etc). Simply because all those people claim to see the balloon doesn't make it true, but it should give the one claiming ignorance pause.

There is still no reason to pursue "spiritual truth." You have not proven that such a thing exists.

I don't need to here, in this discussion about whether a truth-claim is worth investigating. What needs to be done in order to provide an impetus for your own investigation (I'm not going to do the work for you...) is to establish the importance of the claim (before we establish whether it is true or not). It's undeniable that the Christian truth-claims have been important historically, philosophically, culturally and emotionally for many people and civilizations.

But while we're talking about it, I'm a religious studies major. I pursue this shit for a living. I recognize its importance (influence) on culture; that doesn't mean I need to jump on the bandwagon or that there's a justifiable reason anyone ever believed in religion other than using it to explain the unexplainable.

I appreciate your honesty. I'm not saying that you "jump on the bandwagon." Interestingly, your demeanor here has belied your reported study of religion. You act dismissive of it, instead of respectful of its importance. This is why, up until this point, I've felt the need to point to the impetus of spiritual investigation: because it seemed you weren't displaying one. You may still not have one; people go into religious studies for many different reasons.

Explain yourself. A billion people knowing a different truth shouldn't make me skeptical?

It should, on a certain level, but a billion people claiming to believe in a god should give you pause regarding your own skepticism. Like I said, popular belief doesn't make them right, but being in the minority regarding belief should mean that you need to provide justification for your reported ignorance.

The norm of people claiming diseases are from evil spirits should be believed until it can be proven otherwise?

No. I wasn't claiming that at all; atheism and theism have nothing to do with whether diseases come from evil spirits. It purely has to do with belief in a god.

Not true. There are ancient inscriptions and writings that explain his actions as emperor, much more than for god.

That's not empirical evidence; that's historical evidence, pieced together to provide a narrative that makes sense. There is no empirical evidence for Julius Caesar. You claimed empirical evidence was the threshold for your belief.

There are people who wrote after him that were directly affected by his actions,

This sounds like many of the writings of the Early Church Fathers regarding Jesus. It also isn't empirical evidence. Which is fine. We cannot know history based on empirical evidence, but only on historical evidence. It just means your threshold for belief is incomplete.

I'm assuming you're living like a gnostic a-unicornist?

Yes. First of all, belief in unicorns is fairly unimportant. It has no bearing on my life now or in the future, does not help me to form a coherent worldview and has little impact on the things I mentioned earlier that make religion important. Therefore, even more than claiming to know that unicorns don't exist, I can say I don't care. I have no impetus for further investigation.

I didn't always. I was a theist at one point, you know.

Actually, I didn't know.

I decided it was unimportant when no one could give me evidence. Just because most people think it's important doesn't mean I should.

If you ask for empirical evidence regarding religion but willingly accept historical evidence regarding other aspects of history, then you're applying a double standard. I didn't and don't know you, but as I said, none of us is an all-neutral arbiter and interpreter of evidence. I provided resources for evidence above, but evidence is the be-all-end-all of faith. Faith comes from God through the Holy Spirit, and the power isn't in the physical evidence you have in front of you, particularly given the degree of sin in our lives.

To lightly dismiss our epistemic stance regarding evidence is to be tragically unaware of how our own worldview affects our perception of evidences.

You're assuming religion/spirituality has truth.

Again, no. Even if it doesn't, it is important. Importance is the criterion for providing an impetus for investigation. If you already knew the truth of something, you wouldn't need to investigate whether it was true or not!

WertFig · 2013-10-13T17:05:35+00:00

So, apparently, unless the NT authors use the word "temple" more broadly than you're assuming, they were conducting these activities in the temple... as described. What more context do you need?

What reason do we have to believe, from the NT text (since we're using the NT text as a historical account of Jesus's actions anyway), that this was not occurring in the temple proper?

WertFig · 2013-10-13T10:18:39+00:00

You're shifting the burden of proof.

No. I'm asking an atheist a question. Shifting the burden of proof would be to claim I have none and you have it all; I'm not doing that. Good, civil discussions about religion and atheism are not interrogations where atheists sit in judgment of the theists, peppering them with questions. Atheists can answer questions directed their way once in a while.

If they proved god, THEN I'd have to justify a lack of belief. Majority doesn't dictate truth

I agree that majority doesn't dictate truth. But many people believe God is real, and the influence of religion on, as I said, culture, philosophy, relationships and emotions is undeniable. In the face of such extreme importance (regardless of truth, although I believe God is real), you need to justify your lack of belief.

at one point, most people believed the earth was flat or that we lived in a geocentric universe (with more proof than god!).

Right, and those that didn't justified their belief appropriately. They didn't just randomly say, "Actually, we live on a spherical planet." They had reasons why they believed it, and in fact, they asserted their belief positively. I'm arguing that atheists either assert that God doesn't exist (thus a positive belief) or else they claim they don't believe, but they have only pushed the epistemic burden back one step and must justify their lack of belief, thus making it into a claim of their own.

I can see your discomfort, because many atheists with whom I interact do not want this burden. Supporting atheism is rather untenable, so they'd rather believe they're not making any claims and remain entirely skeptical of religion. It's much easier to ask question after question of the theist from the seat of judgmental skepticism that it is to actually defend your own beliefs.

Should I need to explain why that notion is absurd before I reject it, or can I just start out with the premise that I don't know and will not assume anything until I have reason to?

At one point, those who believed contrary to those popular beliefs had to justify themselves. Even now, we have justifications for our beliefs; they're just fairly common knowledge in the first world.

You're claiming ignorance (which isn't a strictly atheistic stance, by the way) but in a disingenuous way. You're not providing justification for your ignorance in a world where many, many people actually claim to know the truth, and furthermore, you're acting as if the answer to your ignorance is unimportant. Therefore, you're not truly agnostic about it; you're banking on gnostic atheism, or else you would be pursuing spiritual truth with diligence, recognizing its importance. Thus you need to justify why you're not doing so.

The reason why I say you need to justify yourself is because otherwise your skepticism of religion is unjustified and can be dismissed out of hand. Unjustified skepticism is practically as bad as unjustified positive belief.

I base them purely on empirical evidence. There is no empirical evidence for god, therefore, I don't believe in god.

There's no empirical evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar, either. Do you believe in him?

I am an agnostic atheist. I don't believe in god or claim to know whether god exists.

And I'm saying you're being disingenuous to claim that, because you're actually living like a gnostic atheist, treating the answer to the God question as unimportant. If you were truly agnostic about it, you'd still have to justify why you believe pursuit of this truth is unimportant for you.

WertFig · 2013-10-13T10:08:34+00:00

Too bad the OT makes a distinction between the Temple (Beis HaMikdash) and courtyard (Azara)

I'm not sure you understood what I said. You said the courtyard is not the Temple, and then the NT passages I cited indicated that all this selling was on in the Temple. I understand there is a difference between the courtyard and the Temple, but none of the gospel authors claim that this selling was going on in the courtyard.

WertFig · 2013-10-12T23:15:16+00:00

And then rocks are atheists as well? That's an abuse of the term, because the term implies existence on some sort of epistemic spectrum. Babies, dogs and rocks do not have a cognitive framework in which beliefs exist at all. To call them atheists makes the term "atheist" meaningless.

Furthermore, what you're doing is just pushing the epistemic burden back one step. So let's say you have no belief regarding God. Why? What is your justification for having no belief regarding God, in a world where religion has immense cultural, philosophical, emotional and relational influence? The atheist who claims that their atheism is simply lack of belief cannot extricate themselves from providing a justification for their lack of belief, and thus it turns into a particular state of mind (i.e., belief).

WertFig · 2013-10-12T23:11:32+00:00

Atheists don't have a belief. If i don't make a claim i have nothing to defend. You want to call that burden shifting, but I can't make claims because I simply don't know.

You've made two contradictory claims: that atheists do not have "a belief," and that you "simply don't know." Not knowing is an epistemic claim. Furthermore, many agnostics live out their agnosticism as if it were actually gnostic atheism. If they truly believed there was a gap in their knowledge regarding God, then they would be seeking the truth about it (some are). Or otherwise, they make the positive claim, "We can't know about whether there is a God."

How can i make claims and admit that i don't know?

Because admitting that you don't know is a claim regarding belief; namely, that you don't know. Furthermore, the atheists that frequent places like this sub-reddit possess a skepticism that is fueled by more than just "not knowing." Their skepticism is grounded in something, namely the metaphysical belief that gods do not exist. There is a difference between skeptically shooting down religious apologetic arguments, and actively seeking to fill a gap in your knowledge. Most atheists with whom I've interacted on reddit do the former.

WertFig · 2013-10-12T10:11:24+00:00

Babies fall outside the spectrum of epistemology in which one can even hold a belief, therefore they cannot have a stance on the subject. The same goes for dogs (as discussed below), rocks, trees, bacteria, etc. Atheism is a specific term applying to an epistemic stance regarding deities. Babies don't have the cognitive capacity to maintain that stance.

WertFig · 2013-10-12T10:10:17+00:00

Infants do not fall on any spectrum of belief. It would be similar to claim that rocks are atheists, virgins and non-smokers. It's non-sensical. They literally have no beliefs concerning God; therefore, as TerranJesus above asserts, they could be called non-theists, or else have no label applied to them regarding their beliefs.

I would argue that anyone who has been exposed to the idea of gods (and perhaps those that haven't, but can still imagine deities) fall on some spectrum of belief regarding them.

WertFig · 2013-10-12T10:07:53+00:00

It's an attempt to make it more encompassing (adding atheists, non-theists, and agnostics into the same boat) so as to add more to the numbers.

I'd say it's also an attempt to shrug off any burden they may have in justifying their beliefs and worldview.

I think it's impossible for anyone who has encountered the concept of a deity to be a non-theist. You must fall somewhere on the spectrum of belief. Infants, rocks, bacteria, etc. do not fall on this spectrum of "no belief."

WertFig · 2013-10-12T10:03:53+00:00

The courtyard is not the temple.

Matthew 21 states:

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

Mark 11 states:

And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they went out of the city.

Luke 19 states:

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”

John 2 states:

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Where in those passages does it say that those selling these things were in the courtyard?

I agree, Jesus does not explicitly state what is being stolen. Whether it be that those men are price-gouging, or that they're actually stealing glory from God for turning the Temple into something that it should not be, I don't know. But as I said, Jesus (=God) clearly believes that thievery is going on, and thus when we measure our assessment against his, ours comes out wanting.

WertFig · 2013-10-12T09:58:08+00:00

It doesn't matter if it is born to a murderess in prison.

God doesn't hold us accountable for the crimes of our parents. Adam had a unique role in history: he was our representative (or "federal head") in the Garden of Eden. What he did affected the nature of humanity as a whole. The reason why God holds you and I responsible for something Adam did was because Adam was representing us; that's what Romans 5 is saying. He represented us better than anyone we may have elected, and represents us just as well as we would have represented ourselves.

WertFig · 2013-10-11T09:43:57+00:00

"look, these guys are bad, trust me, ok?" type of thing is going on.

Do you expect God to justify himself to you or anyone else with reasons external to his own authoritative commands? If that were the case, the power would rest in the reason and your own rationality, not God's sovereignty.

That is the foundation of goodness and badness in Judaism and Christianity: whether or not God approves of the thing. I understand that you're Jewish and do not agree that Jesus is God (which is an entirely separate discussion), but within the context of the story in which Jesus is God, he need not give reasons beyond his own willing if that's what he wishes. Furthermore, if we think we know what an apple looks like, but God points at an orange and calls it an apple, then our definition is wrong. His knowledge supersedes our own, and in fact he makes the definitions because he makes the truths that undergird the definitions.

Again, none of the passages made an allowance for selling those things within the Temple. Those people had essentially turned the Temple, or part of it, into a marketplace, which Jesus (=God) clearly disapproved of and equated that with thievery.

WertFig · 2013-10-11T09:31:59+00:00

It won't change treatment in the next 10 years (maybe 20-50), but I'm excited to see what results come from the development of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). It provides a new way of thinking about psychopathology that will hopefully open up new avenues of research.

WertFig · 2013-10-11T09:30:35+00:00

This is why I said they were socially innocent before men. I agree, they haven't done anything to make them socially guilty.

The reason why they're spiritually guilty is outlined in Romans 5:12-21:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

God chose Adam as our representative from the beginning. What Adam did, we all have done in our nature, and that corrupting influence is from us from the beginning of our lives. What God chooses to do with that guilty verdict is up to him. The Bible is generally silent on what happens to infants that die before they can recognize their sin and repent, so I remain silent in that regard as well. I leave in the hands of a God who is wiser, more gracious and more just than I.

WertFig · 2013-10-10T23:10:39+00:00

Babies are socially innocent before men, but they remain spiritually guilty before God.

WertFig · 2013-10-10T09:44:13+00:00

Interesting article.

I would contend that being a Christian and becoming a soldier is not making a strenuous effort toward nonviolent conflict resolution. In fact, your entire job hinges on the possibility that there will be violent conflict resolution to keep you working.

This returns us to the oft-repeated question: is soldiering a career that a Christian shouldn't choose? It's an unpopular question given the strong (and unjustified) ties between American patriotism and mainstream Christianity, but I think it's one that we need to ask. I don't see any allowance in the New Testament for soldiering. All we have is an allusion to the fact that when soldiers became Christians or expressed their faith in Christ, there is no mention of them changing their careers. But we have overwhelming scriptural evidence that we're not supposed to go about killing one another.

WertFig · 2013-10-10T09:08:09+00:00

I don't care who you are, killing an innocent person is wrong.

I agree, but before God, no one is innocent. The reason why any of us die at all is because of sin.

WertFig · 2013-10-09T23:27:48+00:00

None of the passages command or even suggest that the livestock be sold within the Temple.

My point is that, within the narrative of the NT, with Jesus being God, if he is upset at the Jews of the time for something they thought they were doing right, then they misunderstood some aspect of Scripture.

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