Godless Apostate

[GGG]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Do you believe in Noah's Ark?

Do you believe that the majority of Christians believe in the literal story of Noah's ark?

[Chill Cosby]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Do you believe in Noah's Ark?

Do you believe the universe is evidence of science?

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Chill Cosby

Do you believe the universe is evidence of science?

I've always seen it as man's way to understand the universe. I've also taken a strange view that science is somewhat an evolution of religion.

Don't really care what people believe in, but I'm not a happy camper when people are rude to one another due to differing opinion. (Not pointing fingers at anyone in particular)

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by GGG

Do you believe that the majority of Christians believe in the literal story of Noah's ark?

Majority of Christians where? In Canada? Its probably 50/50. In the world? I'd be surprised if less than 3/4 took it literally.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[GGG]

Originally Posted by sworkhard

Majority of Christians where? In Canada? Its probably 50/50. In the world? I'd be surprised if less than 3/4 took it literally.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

In canada it should be less than 50/50 as the Catholic, United, and Anglican church's do not believe in the literal interpretation of the bible. This represents roughly 65% of Christians. In the world the majority of Christians are Anglican or catholic so thy to should reject the literal interpretation.

The reason I ask the question is that I think the constant fundy drmbeat out of the US skews peoples views on what the various denominations of Christians believe.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Do you believe in Noah's Ark?

No. Not the literal story.

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

No scholar, and no direct evidence, which is not at all a problem for the historical argument of Jesus' existence. You should know that the absence of any third party corroboration is even accepted by mythicist Richard Carrier as unproblematic and irrelevant to historical Jesus claims.

Really just wanted to hear his perspective TC...I know yours and where you draw your knowledge from.
I still think that your team needs to do a better job educating the theocratic masses.
Atheists, regardless of style, are gaining mass due to the fact we use reason vs faith or fallacy, which is typical to how we normally live. We study everything before making a decision that affects our lives. I dont buy cars/houses/life insurance/etc on faith. I study the issue and opt for best value using reason and education and the best info I can find. The Business world is the same thing, we spend a good part of our lives educating ourselves, understanding the pros and cons of our particular business model. As a leader or Manager, having an employee tell me they made an important decision based on faith would likely cause me, and many others, to think hard about that persons ability to reason within the confines of that business model.
I think this in a nutshell is what drives atheists crazy, why does the average person use reason and education as a basis for important things like business and finances, yet when it comes to something like religion they completely throw reason out the window and make all of their judgements based on faith and their applicable Priest/Minister/Rabbi/Mullahs version of that particular theistic belief.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by photon

I...Often a young earth creationist's (for the sake of example) claims can be refuted simply because they are flawed reasoning. And Collins does this in his book. But then he will use the same flawed reasoning to support his own conclusions.

It's human, we all do it.

Flawed reasoning also doesn't make one wrong, but it does make one's conclusions invalid (in the way a stopped clock can happen to be correct, but it's not a valid way to tell time).

You are describing what I perceive to be a huge problem for theists in the modern world.

One of the cherished elements at the heart of all theism is the celebration of mystery as an end in itself, but this is now in conflict with the goals of science to resolve mysteries. Since our society is so deeply informed by science, many theists run into the contradictory position of wanting to be a rationalist, while simultaneously holding fast to precepts of faith that are grounded in our subjective experiences.

So, this is where I find myself at present where it comes to the rationalistic enterprise of justifying theism and my religion: There are two dominant trends in modern apologetics for "defending the faith": an evidentiary approach, and a presuppositional one. I think the latter is popular in some circles because it very clearly acknowledges the problem I have alluded to, and it attempts to bypass rational argumentation on the faulty grounds of shifting arguments to ontological and foundational matters. On the other side, an evidentialist theist is no better off, because his position is not defensible from a balanced appraisal of the evidence. So in the end, I am still a theist, even though I can not provide an evidentiary account for my beliefs, nor can I justify them as legitimate presuppositions. Much like I suspect Collins feels (In have not read his book), I find myself in a difficult position of wanting to both celebrate and eliminate mystery.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by Chill Cosby

Do you believe the universe is evidence of science?

Do you believe I may have mistyped that up, but glad to see you're having fun with it.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

No. Not the literal story.

Why not?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Cheese

Really just wanted to hear his perspective TC...I know yours and where you draw your knowledge from.
I still think that your team needs to do a better job educating the theocratic masses.
Atheists, regardless of style, are gaining mass due to the fact we use reason vs faith or fallacy, which is typical to how we normally live. We study everything before making a decision that affects our lives. I dont buy cars/houses/life insurance/etc on faith. I study the issue and opt for best value using reason and education and the best info I can find. The Business world is the same thing, we spend a good part of our lives educating ourselves, understanding the pros and cons of our particular business model. As a leader or Manager, having an employee tell me they made an important decision based on faith would likely cause me, and many others, to think hard about that persons ability to reason within the confines of that business model.
I think this in a nutshell is what drives atheists crazy, why does the average person use reason and education as a basis for important things like business and finances, yet when it comes to something like religion they completely throw reason out the window and make all of their judgements based on faith and their applicable Priest/Minister/Rabbi/Mullahs version of that particular theistic belief.

I think you give the average person way too much credit in how they use logic and reason in their regular lives. People use emotion far more than logic when making their decisions.

Credit Card debt, Anti vaxxers, anti global warming, anti immigration, racists, bigots etc. none of these are rational positions but people who have sought out a set of facts that backs their belief system.

Even buying a car is done more on emotion than on logic or need. What the car looks like is as important as what it does. Just look at the stigma against minivans and tell me that people make rational decisions. Or look at the sheep who refuse to evaluate whether a new apple product meets their needs but instead buy it because it's an apple product. Or how about our shared irrational love and hatred of teams wearing different laundry.

Humans in general are horrible and evaluating things logically. Evolutionarily we have developed to make fast decisions based on incomplete facts and to follow groups. To expect religion, an area where people have been taught since birth, to behave rationally is asking a lot of a human mind not built for rational thought.

Tossing god aside what piece of evidence would make you cheer for the oilers. I would hope none however that is certainly not a rational position.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

Why not?

Two of every species on the ark? It's allegory.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Two of every species on the ark? It's allegory.

I see, how about Jesus dieing on a cross, coming back to life 3 days later, saying he'll be back, and then floating up to heaven?

[Thor]

I'm curious TC since you are living with us nordic people now, do you prefer the Nordic Christians to what you've experienced in North America?

Here in Iceland while a lot of people identify themselves as Christian, its mostly a cultural identification, most here are unlikely to attend church, don't believe in noah's ark, parting of the sea, Jesus' miracles, virgin birth..

So while being still a majority of Christians in Iceland, we have over 90% support for gay rights, over 95% polled believe in evolution. Its weird but also satisfying, I find myself finding allies in our Humanist movement from religious leaders in Iceland, a very nice change from American style evangelicalism.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Two of every species on the ark? It's allegory.

Why? Is it because the assertion is unfeasible?

This raises an important question about what you believe the "allegory" is here. Was this an intended metaphorical representation of some deeper truth written by the original author? If so, then what was he attempting to convey?

From my perspective, this story was a serious bit of "history" at the time it was written. It was written by employing standard conventions for writing history, and I have little doubt at all that the writer believed what he was writing was an "accurate representation" of "what happened." We need to be careful about what sorts of claims we make regarding intent and interpretation in ancient literature (not just ancient religious literature or whatever we settle upon as our own "scriptures").

[photon]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

So, this is where I find myself at present where it comes to the rationalistic enterprise of justifying theism and my religion: There are two dominant trends in modern apologetics for "defending the faith": an evidentiary approach, and a presuppositional one. I think the latter is popular in some circles because it very clearly acknowledges the problem I have alluded to, and it attempts to bypass rational argumentation on the faulty grounds of shifting arguments to ontological and foundational matters. On the other side, an evidentialist theist is no better off, because his position is not defensible from a balanced appraisal of the evidence. So in the end, I am still a theist, even though I can not provide an evidentiary account for my beliefs, nor can I justify them as legitimate presuppositions. Much like I suspect Collins feels (In have not read his book), I find myself in a difficult position of wanting to both celebrate and eliminate mystery.

I've always kind of felt that apologetics started from a flawed premise, even back when I was young and full bore evangelical; if I had to prove my faith to someone else then a) I didn't have faith, I had knowledge and b) If I convinced someone with my apologetic they were convinced by knowledge not faith. Which ran contrary to the whole premise of the denominations I was in.

As for mystery, I don't know if there'll ever be a lack of mystery, it seems for every question we answer two more spring up, and often much harder ones.

I guess the problem is the mysteries become more and more esoteric and inaccessible without the necessary background knowledge. Some current mysteries in particle physics and cosmology are crazy (the "If we can't find something with this to go to the next idea we'll need to build a particle accelerator the size of the moon" kind of crazy), but are difficult to appreciate.

But I'm really not a mysteries kind of person, I hate ambiguity

[troutman]

Was "Noah's Ark" a re-telling of a meme that was passed around from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean? The writer of the account in the Old Testament might have thought it had a historical basis.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by troutman

Was "Noah's Ark" a re-telling of a meme that was passed around from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean? The writer of the account in the Old Testament might have thought it had a historical basis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

Flood myths were likely part of the oral tradition in ancient Mesopotamia (among other regions), with specific details and characters changing across cultures over many centuries like a giant game of telephone.

[Thor]

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/bl.../ax/frame.html

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

Flood myths were likely part of the oral tradition in ancient Mesopotamia (among other regions), with specific details and characters changing across cultures over many centuries like a giant game of telephone.

IMO, that pretty much explains religion and the Bible.