Husker_x

Ok my question to the atheists on this board (who were former believers) who have actually understand the Bible's message is this...

 

Knowing that the Bible teaches over and over again about the concept of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and to trust and love the Lord God with all that we are...why would God go against what he says in His Word about faith? Have faith...have faith...those who have faith...

 

Knowing the message but yet still demanding hard physical proof? How do you not see it around you? Meaning the complexity of the earth and nature. Not the human actions that are awful like rape, murder, etc....I'm talking about the physical beauty of the earth. Think about what it looked like in its purest state before mankind completely screwed it up.

 

I watched this video today and just admire God's beauty when I see this.

 

I reject the concept of faith because we live in a world where there have been literally thousands––tens of thousands––of religions, all of which basically say the same thing for the same reasons. Repeating "I believe it, I believe it, have faith" to myself is not a pathway to true knowledge. Muslims and Mormons are just as adamant as you, again for the same reasons. I also don't think that the Bible is the word of a god––there's certainly nothing within the text or the historical record to suggest it. See the giant quote in the OP for more on that.

 

I do believe that the existence and complexity of the universe presents human beings with a genuine stumper, just as much today as two thousand years ago. You choose to 'solve' the mystery with faith––meaning your answer can't be confirmed and is therefore not much of an answer––but I'm personally more interested in following the science wherever it leads.The last hundred years or so has proven time and again that this old universe of ours is, to paraphrase a famous saying, stranger than we know and stranger than we can know.

All four gospels are anonymous texts. They were ascribed their familiar names centuries later, probably for the same reasons authors who wrote the 'apocryphal' "Gospel of Thomas" or "The Apocalypse of Peter" assigned them famous names--not because these figures wrote them, but it increased their odds of being taken seriously to have a weighty names associated with the texts. It was also notoriously hard to weed out forgery in the ancient world given how poor literacy rates and access to written documents were.

 

So as you can probably guess, using the bible to figure out whether or not a guy named Matthew knew Jesus is a sketchy start. It's about the same as using the gospels to prove Jesus was a historical figure and not just a legend. You wind up going in circles.

 

Anyone interested in New Testament authorship, textual transmission, or forgery in the ancient world should check out Bart Ehrman's work. He is a well respected scholar who also writes about these topics for a general audience.

 

 

We have the four Gospels, written specifically about Jesus 20-70 years after his death, and the rest is essentially fan fiction, expounding on what those four Gospels said. The fact that there are "a lot" of books written about Jesus does not bolster any argument, it's simply a fact of his being the dominant religion in the area where the printing press was invented, and that religion being perpetrated through the centuries. If we wrote 10,000 books about Popeye, that wouldn't legitimize Popeye in any way.

 

Paul's Epistles are essentially fan-fic about the Gospels. They are not primary-source material for Jesus, and in fact, Paul never met Jesus, and he is not primary-source, either. He's telling us nothing different than what Martin Luther told us - his opinion on the teachings of Christ.

 

None of this is documentary by nature. It's likely that Jesus existed, and that he was a religious leader of the era ascribed to him. But as "evidence" goes, the Bible and subsequent writings are paper thin.

So there are four books in the bible written about Jesus. Four, if you disregard the 23 other books of the New Testament and other apocrypha about Jesus that werent included in the bible. How many books written during that era survive today? Can you name any other person from that eralet alone a humble carpenter who had four books written about them by people who personally knew them? Like I said above, there are few, if any, people from that era whose existence was more well documented than Jesus.

They were not written by people who personally knew him.

We have the four Gospels, written specifically about Jesus 20-70 years after his death, and the rest is essentially fan fiction, expounding on what those four Gospels said. The fact that there are "a lot" of books written about Jesus does not bolster any argument, it's simply a fact of his being the dominant religion in the area where the printing press was invented, and that religion being perpetrated through the centuries. If we wrote 10,000 books about Popeye, that wouldn't legitimize Popeye in any way.

 

Paul's Epistles are essentially fan-fic about the Gospels. They are not primary-source material for Jesus, and in fact, Paul never met Jesus, and he is not primary-source, either. He's telling us nothing different than what Martin Luther told us - his opinion on the teachings of Christ.

 

None of this is documentary by nature. It's likely that Jesus existed, and that he was a religious leader of the era ascribed to him. But as "evidence" goes, the Bible and subsequent writings are paper thin.

 

Also to my knowledge Paul never mentions anything about Jesus's ministry except for the resurrection. He does not seem to have been aware of the gospels. I'd be interested to hear a historian dig into that a little.

 

Christian theism makes claims about science and history that can be debated and researched (like whether or not the Jesus of the gospels is actually a historical figure, for instance).

 

More books, writings and literature have been written about Jesus than anyone who ever walked the face of the earth. Including prophesies written before he was alive, writings from people who were alive at the time of Jesus and met him, and an immense body of literature following his death. Yet at least some atheists still doubt that Jesus was a real flesh-and-blood human being. Mmmmkay.

There's a lot written about Achilles, too.

 

The trouble with verifying the existence of ancient figures (especially poor anonymous peasants) is that you have no primary sources. The gospels are anonymous texts written decades after the guy allegedly was crucified. They're also technically speaking propaganda. And most of the stories contain what we would call "magic" in English.

 

Just FYI: there is a real debate about this in the scholarly community. Look at the work of Richard Carrier or Robert Price for a start. My opinion is Jesus probably does correspond to one or several real historical people. That's my hunch. It's very difficult to say either way.

 

 

Thanks for sharing, Husker_X. Do you think part of your break with believing in God was due to rebelling against your fundamentalist upbringing? I don't ask you because I think *that* makes your atheist views wrong. (Although I do think your atheist views are wrong. But for other reasons. lol)

 

I ask about this because, if true, I agree with you that investigating and challenging is good. When I was a kid, maybe junior high age or so, I recall being turned off by ministers who trotted out their particular flavor of Christianity to be the one true flavor. I reasoned that most people are Baptists (or Catholics, Quakers, atheists, Muslims, etc.) solely because their parents held those particular beliefs. My parents and grandparents were Baptists. But I took it upon myself to investigate and experience other views. Unlike you though I became stronger in my faith. Even though I ended up adopting a church family with beliefs much different than those of my parents' Baptist church.

 

In any case I applaud you for taking it upon yourself to investigate and challenge the beliefs you grew up with. But I feel sorry for you inasmuch as I think you reached the wrong conclusion.

 

You think I reached the wrong conclusion, but neither you nor anyone else I've met that's of a religious persuasion can say why, or provide a logical alternative. I hear a lot about feelings and "I just can't understand how X . . ." logic (which technically is a fallacy called the argument from ignorance), but that's about it. Since the burden of proof is on the believer, I need more.

I suppose having a fundamentalist aspect to my upbringing makes it easier to put cracks in the foundation, but I don't want to give you guys and gals the wrong idea: I wasn't living in the Phelps household exactly. Like I said, my change of mind was based on a lot of research and debate. I haven't met many Christians who can say the same going the other direction.

My question would be is, How do you research the unresearchable? Also, debate is intelligent opinion. Not fact. You can bring fact into the debate but the debate itself is a stance of opinion because fact is not debatable.

Christian theism makes claims about science and history that can be debated and researched (like whether or not the Jesus of the gospels is actually a historical figure, for instance). I think your question unintentionally commits a kind of sleight-of-hand. A deistic god and the Christian god are not the same thing, and the range of the discussion varies widely depending on which one you're talking about.

 

 

Thanks for sharing, Husker_X. Do you think part of your break with believing in God was due to rebelling against your fundamentalist upbringing? I don't ask you because I think *that* makes your atheist views wrong. (Although I do think your atheist views are wrong. But for other reasons. lol)

 

I ask about this because, if true, I agree with you that investigating and challenging is good. When I was a kid, maybe junior high age or so, I recall being turned off by ministers who trotted out their particular flavor of Christianity to be the one true flavor. I reasoned that most people are Baptists (or Catholics, Quakers, atheists, Muslims, etc.) solely because their parents held those particular beliefs. My parents and grandparents were Baptists. But I took it upon myself to investigate and experience other views. Unlike you though I became stronger in my faith. Even though I ended up adopting a church family with beliefs much different than those of my parents' Baptist church.

 

In any case I applaud you for taking it upon yourself to investigate and challenge the beliefs you grew up with. But I feel sorry for you inasmuch as I think you reached the wrong conclusion.

 

You think I reached the wrong conclusion, but neither you nor anyone else I've met that's of a religious persuasion can say why, or provide a logical alternative. I hear a lot about feelings and "I just can't understand how X . . ." logic (which technically is a fallacy called the argument from ignorance), but that's about it. Since the burden of proof is on the believer, I need more.

I suppose having a fundamentalist aspect to my upbringing makes it easier to put cracks in the foundation, but I don't want to give you guys and gals the wrong idea: I wasn't living in the Phelps household exactly. Like I said, my change of mind was based on a lot of research and debate. I haven't met many Christians who can say the same going the other direction.

If I understand your position, you want definitive proof of God's existence. And if no proof is forthcoming that you deem sufficient, then you'll maintain your position that there is no God.

 

But what if God's designs for us require faith? Faith in the absence of definitive proof? Maybe, for whatever reason, that's how God winnows out the wheat from the chaff. Those who have faith, and those who don't. If God is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being who created the universe, why should he bend to our demands for proof? Does the clay pot have the right to ask the potter why he shaped it the way he did?

 

As for proof, what sort of proof would you require in order for you to believe in God? Would the proof need to come directly from God to you? Would God need to provide proof to all 7.32 billion people of the earth in various manners tailored to each one's individual proof requirements? Don't get me wrong. I believe if God wanted to, he could. I mean, in view of the task of creating the whole universe, I think providing individually tailored proof to each of us wouldn't even cause God to break a sweat. But maybe, for some reason that we can't discern, it has fit God's purposes to only provide proof to a designated few throughout history[/size]say, ten million people or so[/size]and he's left it up to them to tell the rest. (This makes me think of John 20:29.)

 

Anyway, Husker_X, I am not trying to belittle your atheist beliefs, or somehow goad you into believing what I believe. (Not that I think that would work. lol) It's just that, due to my own experiences in the matter, there is no possibility that you're going to change my position about God.

Well let's start with evidence. When you get into proofs you're straying into mathematics. My position is that I have insufficient evidence to positively claim a god exists. I don't know if some ultimate being is there or not, and no one who claims to believe in one can explain in reasonable terms why they think there is one. Hence my skepticism.

 

Your version of God not only has the power to provide evidence of his existence, but to know even if I don't know what it would take to convince me (though I have a few working ideas). His failure to act is very damning given the Christian belief system. I'll say that much. Any god that would make faith the cornerstone of salvation is capricious and cruel. Reason is the only tool human beings have to determine truth from falsehood. Removing that turns the whole enterprise into a terrifying game of Russian Roulette. Guess the right god by accident or burn. Consider for a second how many billions of people have lost this god's game already.

 

And believe me I know I can't argue you out of anything (you on the other hand could change my mind through reason and evidence). That's not my intent. What I do know is that doubt, like what John Adams said about facts, is a stubborn thing. A quiet voice today is a screaming megaphone tomorrow.

 

I've got a few more people to answer, but doing this from a phone sucks so I'll catch the rest of you later.

Thanks for sharing, Husker_X. Do you think part of your break with believing in God was due to rebelling against your fundamentalist upbringing? I don't ask you because I think *that* makes your atheist views wrong. (Although I do think your atheist views are wrong. But for other reasons. lol)

 

I ask about this because, if true, I agree with you that investigating and challenging is good. When I was a kid, maybe junior high age or so, I recall being turned off by ministers who trotted out their particular flavor of Christianity to be the one true flavor. I reasoned that most people are Baptists (or Catholics, Quakers, atheists, Muslims, etc.) solely because their parents held those particular beliefs. My parents and grandparents were Baptists. But I took it upon myself to investigate and experience other views. Unlike you though I became stronger in my faith. Even though I ended up adopting a church family with beliefs much different than those of my parents' Baptist church.

 

In any case I applaud you for taking it upon yourself to investigate and challenge the beliefs you grew up with. But I feel sorry for you inasmuch as I think you reached the wrong conclusion.

 

You think I reached the wrong conclusion, but neither you nor anyone else I've met that's of a religious persuasion can say why, or provide a logical alternative. I hear a lot about feelings and "I just can't understand how X . . ." logic (which technically is a fallacy called the argument from ignorance), but that's about it. Since the burden of proof is on the believer, I need more.

 

I suppose having a fundamentalist aspect to my upbringing makes it easier to put cracks in the foundation, but I don't want to give you guys and gals the wrong idea: I wasn't living in the Phelps household exactly. Like I said, my change of mind was based on a lot of research and debate. I haven't met many Christians who can say the same going the other direction.

So the other day I got a private message from TGHusker. He expressed curiosity about how someone like me could go from accepting the Christian faith to holding the positions I now do. I hope I am not trespassing on the privacy of the conversation, but I figured that since I am going to share the story with one Huskerboard member, I might as well share it with everyone. If TGHusker (or anyone else) would prefer to keep the conversation in PMs, that's fine with me.

 

First, a few of disclaimers.

 

1. The quoted text below is an edited version of a letter I sent to a few close friends and family members who were curious about what the hell had happened to me. If you had known me ten years ago, you probably would be shocked to think I was even capable of writing something like this.

 

2. Since I had already written versions of this story in the past a few times, I decided to use the core of the material but rework it so it would make sense in the context of a message board. I cut out some of the more personal/private parts but kept the bulk of the relevant material. My goal with the letter was to be clear but firm, and to keep emotion out of it as much as possible. I don't know if it would be the best approach for anyone else considering doing this, but I felt it was the best of bad options in my own situation.

 

3. My hope in posting this is not to wage the Religion Wars again, but rather to open up the forum to anyone else with similar stories. I've heard from many of you over the past couple of years, or at least gleaned a vague idea of what happened in your own lives, but if you feel like telling the story in full here, I'd be happy to read it, as I'm sure others would be.

 

4. This thread isn't just for atheists/agnostics/NONES to congratulate each other. If you're a believer feel free to join in. Also don't hesitate to scrutinize what I've said. Just because it's personal doesn't mean it's above discussion or criticism.

 

Why I'm an Atheist

I want to keep this letter as brief as I can. Rather than posting a massive preemptive strike of tangled arguments common to the debate over the existence of God, I would rather begin by sharing my own story and explaining in the clearest terms possible why I now hold the positions I do. I will make several claims throughout this letter and I’m sure many of you will disagree with them. However, I believe that truth has nothing to fear from investigation, and I am both able and willing to defend and and provide evidence for all of the conclusions that I will share with you. I am also happy to answer any questions or objections you might have. Most Americans who identify as atheists are ex-Christians and arrived at their position in the same way I did––through rigorous investigation of the facts without any concern for the difficult emotions that sometimes come with the discovery of new and uncomfortable information.

I’ve had an interest in philosophy and religion since high school. I especially enjoyed theology, and I took seriously the admonition of I Peter 3:15 to “always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the hope that lives within you.” I studied apologetics obsessively, especially the methods of debunking religions like Mormonism, Islam, Scientology, and others. In college I had many conversations/debates with non-Christians, even atheists––people I had never actually encountered until leaving the insular world of Christian communities––and it was by having these encounters that the seeds of doubt were first planted. I was astonished that not only could my atheist friends answer all of my practiced objections about evolution, morality, the bible, history, logic, etc.; they also tended to have a knowledge of the Bible that far surpassed your average Christian.

Over time I began to notice something troubling about my thought process. While my Christian education had provided me with the tools to study the Bible (and a lot of other things), it had also constructed a kind of paradigm-box for the mind. Like most everyone I knew growing up, the Bible was the primary source of information. I believed the Bible to be a book without mistake or contradiction––inerrant, the absolute and final word of truth on history, creation, morality, the meaning of life, and the life to come. You are free in Christianity (most of the time, anyway) to argue finer points of theology. However, by playing that game you manage to avoid a much subtler and more important question: How do we know that the Bible itself is what it claims to be? I read a lot of material and had several conversations with very intelligent people of faith, but I was never able to find a satisfactory answer to this question. Over a period of years the question stayed with me, and my nagging doubts began to grow.

Around the time that I was wrapping up my four-year degree, I came to a point where I knew I could no longer ignore my suspicions, and that I needed to seek out better information. I was aware that most of my knowledge about atheism specifically had come from second-hand sources, filtered through apologists who trained me to ignore, avoid, rationalize, pray about, or dismiss any skepticism. But I knew that if God really existed, he would easily be able to provide the reassurance I was craving, so I set myself on a path of research to find out what the Bible really was, when, where, and how it was formed, and pointed the same critical eye on my own faith as I had done for many others. I read book after book, article after article, watched debate after debate from the leading theologians, scholars, and textual critics of our day. As a result of this long and at times very painful process, I was forced to conclude that belief in the Bible’s inerrancy is nothing but a presupposition. It cannot be supported rationally or factually. It can only be dogmatically believed via the application of circular reasoning: The Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true. Christianity itself rests on this presupposition.

Through my research I discovered that the simplest and best explanation for the Bible is that it is a man-made document and an obvious one. Generally speaking, the style of writing is mythical, containing fantastic stories about talking snakes and donkeys, forbidden trees, men who live hundreds of years or draw superhuman strength from the length of their hair, hordes of people two million strong wandering a vast wilderness for forty years––stories that defy the historical record, the scientific record, and common sense. You can trace many of the myths found in Genesis to other, more ancient near-Eastern cultures and religious texts like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Enuma Elish. The God of the Old Testament is said to be a morally perfect and superior being, but if you remove the filter of faith and simply read the book, it is clear that his character and actions are completely inconsistent with such a claim. His stated approval of or direct involvement with slavery (Exodus 21:20-21), genocide (Genesis ch. 6-7, I Samuel 15:7-8, Joshua 10:36-37), the slaughter of children (II Kings 2:23-24), famine (Jeremiah 16:4), plagues (Exodus ch. 8-9), and wars of conquest (Joshua, Judges, I-II Kings, I-II Chronicles, etc.) prohibit him from consideration as a moral being, let alone a perfect one. These actions and attitudes are irreconcilable with the claims made by Christians about an all-loving God, but they are perfectly consistent with the brutality of ancient near-Eastern cultures and the religions they invented to justify their inhumanity. Now it is true that very few of the stories in the Bible can be verified historically (in fact many of them directly contradict archaeological evidence). But if you take the Bible literally as many Christians do, these problems are unavoidable.

The core of the Christian canon, the four gospels, also present extraordinary claims about historical events, and yet the gospels themselves are not evidence, much less extraordinary evidence. The names we give the gospels are traditional only. Historically speaking, they are anonymous books written by non-eye witnesses many decades after the events they purport to describe. The gospels are filled with contradictions small and large, dissimilarities, confusions, and historical inaccuracies. These are nothing new. Founding Father Thomas Paine wrote a book called The Age of Reason as early as the 1800s detailing these problems when a historical-critical approach to the Bible was first developing (it’s now the dominant view in seminaries across the country). A much larger problem for the Bible’s reputability is the simple fact that we do not have an authentic original manuscript of a single book. What we have are copies of copies of copies passed down through the ages by hand. No two manuscripts in existence are identical, and the earliest complete copies we have date no earlier than the second or third centuries. Basically, if there ever was an inerrant Bible, it no longer exists. I find that impossible reconcile with the perfect plan of an all knowing God.

There are also human fingerprints smeared all over the centuries-long political struggle to finally produce what we now know as the Biblical canon (a collection which still differs from the Roman Catholic canon to this day, by the way). We do know of other, earlier attempts to produce a canon, the earliest being the work of Marcion of Sinope. It was a heavily edited copy of Luke and a handful of Paul’s letters. His theology was completely foreign to any modern understanding of Christianity. The more I looked, the more obvious it became that the Bible you read from on Sundays is the product of little more than happenstance. There are ‘apocryphal’ books that were ultimately discarded, but which could have just as easily been included, and books like Revelation which only narrowly made the cut. The rationale behind the books which were finally included is/was so paper thin it’s mind boggling. In short, claims of the Bible’s inerrancy are as extraordinary as the stories found in its pages.

During the same period when I was studying the Bible and its historicity, I reexamined common arguments put forward by apologists like Matt Slick, Ray Comfort, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, William Lane Craig, et al for the existence of God. Arguments I had even used myself against other faiths. When removed from the tar pit of presupposition, it’s not all that difficult to conclude that no one in the history of religion has put forward a compelling argument for the existence of any god. All of the arguments made by the gentlemen I mentioned have been refuted repeatedly. One of the most striking flaws all of their arguments share in common is that even if they were logically consistent, they could just as easily be used as validation by Muslims, Jews, Deists or any other faith. In fact, they routinely are used by apologists of other faiths.

The discovery of this information was not a single event. Unlike conversion to religion which can happen in an instant, de-conversion is usually a journey of a thousand small steps. Along the way I grew increasingly skeptical of authority figures I had put my trust in and was forced to reexamine myself and what I thought I knew about a lot of things. This includes people like Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind, who lies repeatedly about his credentials (he has neither a PhD––only a mail-order diploma from an unaccredited mill called Patriot University––nor any high school science credentials/teaching experience), and yet he is/was looked on by a disturbing number of Christians, including myself, not only as an Einsteinesque revolutionary, but an expert in damn near everything else. Contrary to Hovind’s seminars of nonsense, there is a deluge of evidence for evolution.

Evangelical Christian and founder of the Human Genome Project Dr. Francis Collins has said that even if the only evidence we had for evolution came from the genetic code, it would be all that was necessary to make a slam-dunk case for our kinship with all life on this planet (and the time-scale it takes to see species diversify like they have). Fortunately, it is not even close to the only evidence we have. The theory of evolution is the unifying theory of biology. Without it nothing in the natural world makes any sense, but with it we find branching lines of evidence––entire branching fields of evidence––converging unanimously on the same conclusion: evolution is a fact. It has been proven, verifiably, conclusively, a million times over, and the evidence is freely available to anyone willing to look. It is only a minority of Christians––mostly American fundamentalists––that still cling to the disproven ideas of a young earth and a special creation ten thousand years ago. Most Christians accept evolution. It’s even the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. And when I look at the wonders of nature and the cosmos in as much as we can understand them, I find them so much bigger, so much more infinitely complex and mysterious than the simplistic, puny account found in the book of Genesis. That would remain the case for me whether God exists or not.

My search ultimately revealed Christianity to be a house of cards. Once you begin to doubt the core proposition, and allow yourself to put aside ingrained and psychologically toxic fears of hellfire and look for yourself, the cards will fall. I am an atheist because I took an honest look at the claims of Christianity, searched thoroughly and honestly for the answers, and found that Christianity either cannot or will not meet its burden of proof. It makes claims of absolute fact about reality, fails to provide a shred of evidence to substantiate them, but still requires those claims to be believed, absolutely, by faith alone––or else face the consequences. I am no longer capable of meeting that criteria.

My current position is technically called ‘agnostic-atheism,’ meaning that I lack a belief in a god, but I do not claim to know for certain whether or not one exists (and probably that information is beyond human comprehension anyway). This is the most common form of atheism across the world and is held by people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Carl Sagan. All of my views on everything are subject to change or revision, but it is only reason and evidence that can prompt a change.

My atheism is a product of what I know about the evidence. I can’t unlearn the facts. I can’t ignore the facts. I’m compelled to certain positions by them. My acceptance of evolution, for example, feels no more like a choice than my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. And when I look at religion as a whole, all of its myriad forms across the world, and I see that it’s filled to bursting with every kind of fraud and charlatan, swindler, faith healer, quack medical scam, marketing gimmick, pseudo-science, pseudo-history, emotional ploy, deceiver and deception, I can’t help but look at it like I look at everything else: with skepticism and caution.

I probably could have written a whole book and still not be finished. There are so many things I didn’t even begin to cover that I’m sure many will take issue with or want to ask about. Please do. I invite you to ask me anything and everything and not to be shy about it. But keep in mind that while I understand why believers hold the beliefs they do and how closely they hold them, in my view the strength of a belief is unrelated to its truth or falsehood. I love to learn. I want to have as many true beliefs and as few false beliefs as possible during my lifetime. I am always open to argument, and I continue to question even though I have left Christianity behind me. To me the search has grown more interesting since, not less, and I would never abandon this freedom of exploration for another paradigm-box of faith.

 

I was not called to participate in this survey. Harrumph.

 

Well let's see. There are ~300,000,000 people living in the USA today. They polled about 35,000. That means your chances are (crunch tap tap crunch) . . . .000116.

 

Better luck next year.

 

Good post X - I appreciate your honest appraisal as well. And yes, the older one gets the 'end of everything' just on a personal level is a 'in your face' concept to consider - one's own mortality. And on a larger scale, the mortality of society at large.

The "grasping of one's own mortality" is a rude smack in the face from life that I could have done without. It's not a pleasant thought to dwell on, that I'm going to die and life will continue without me.

 

 

Christopher Hitchens also said something almost exactly like that the last part of your sentence there. It one of the hardest parts form him to deal with when he was dying of esophageal cancer. It's not the dying or being dead part. It's that the party is going to keep going but you're told you can no longer attend.

 

But extending that metaphor, would you or I or anyone be any happier to hear that we're invited to a party, that attendance is compulsory, and that you may never ever leave? This also seems to me to be a problem.

This seemed like a timely thread to start. Pew Research Center just released an important study looking at the continuing trends in American religions. The results are a little surprising to me. Not because of the trends they show, but because of how rapidly the temperature change is happening nation-wide. Another thing to consider is that this is what people will say when asked direct questions on a survey. It's hard to imagine the hits more real-world things like church attendance and engagement in religious activity in general have taken.

 

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages.

 

To be sure, the United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world, and a large majority of Americans – roughly seven-in-ten – continue to identify with some branch of the Christian faith.1 But the major new survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%.

 

Link

X - I also understand what you said about survival of the fitness also includes cooperation. That is similar to what Knapp is saying also.

 

Someone needs to teach me how to do 'multi quote' like you guys do.

 

Basically all I do is just quote someone, write a response, and then go back up to another post and quote that one. If you don't care about including the names, you can use the "quote" bubble box in the text editor and copy/paste whatever you want. I think there's a max of five or so you can do in one post. It helps keep the thread looking clean.

 

 

Incidentally, the Golden Rule or some version of it is also very old.

 

 

 

First known from ancient Egyptian scripts in the 18th Century BCE, and a popular tenet in Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism... lots of the isms. It isn't something the Christian God wrote on man's heart (as Paul wrote), it's something lots of gods wrote on lots of hearts. Apparently.

 

 

And every band has to do a cover of All Along the Watchtower. When it's good it's good, and when it works it works.

 

TGHusker,

 

Thanks for posting something thoughtful. I can see you put a lot of time into your work and that you went to a great deal of trouble to put this out. And yes let's make it personal. I used to be a Christian and I went through plenty of similar apologetic material as I wrestled with some complicated questions regarding my former faith. And the Problem of Evil is a tricky one, clearly. The question is so simple. Everywhere we look on this planet there is disaster. When humans aren't busy killing each other (or contemplating/planning/threatening it), there's an endless procession of other natural disasters to contend with: fires, disease, famine, plagues, floods, hurricanes. Now one thing we should be clear about is that thanks to science we can explain––at least in a general sense––why these things happen. We can form causal links between things. Lightning strike causes fire, fire burns crops, lost crops = famine, famine lowers nutrition, lower nutrition increases disease, and with it pain, etc., etc. etc. Most of the enterprise of civilization is about identifying the root causes of these and other problems and taking steps to defend against, if not eradicate, what nature would otherwise inflict on us.

 

Where it gets complicated is when we're in the middle of dragging a Nepalese child out of the rubble caused by another earthquake, some guy comes along with a story––literally nothing but a story––about a figure called God that is all powerful and all loving. God had the power to stop the earthquake from happening. Even if he somehow napped through the devastation, he retains the power to reverse it. But he doesn't. He never does a single demonstrable thing. Ever.

 

It gets worse, because you see people all over the world have been talking about God seemingly forever. Some idea about him, her, or it exists in almost every culture in every epoch of human history. Stories on top of stories on top of stories. The Christian God is just one story, plucked as it happens from a region of the world where many, many versions of gods cross pollinated for centuries. In this version of the story, God loves humans. He is not impartial––or even capricious––like a Greek or Roman god might be. He is genuinely interested in the project of saving humanity from itself (and presumably the earthquake). So the story goes, anyway. I've heard it I don't know how many times now. Over the years we watch disaster after disaster strike the world or people in our lives, one simple, implicit questions keeps reappearing: Why is a loving God allowing this? For all the long-winded debates about it, one strange fact remains constant: he, she, or it apparently has no interest in answering it.

 

Therefore, I am a skeptic regarding God. Not just about God, though. I'm a skeptic about all topics. You can consider it a kind of default position. Positive claims require positive evidence. Follow the evidence were it leads, not where you'd like it to lead. Within my own worldview I even recognize my utter inability to ever fully understand, let alone articulate, everything there is to know about the Universe. The more I learn, the more questions I seem to have, which puts me in good company I believe.

 

In your second post you state that:

 

Hiding within hard core skepticism is an enormous faith in one’s own cognitive abilities.If our mind can’t see it or conceive good answers to suffering then there must not be any. This, my friend, is blind faith in oneself.

 

I do not know what the distinction between hard core and otherwise ordinary skepticism might be, or how you would hide in it. When presented with mysteries too great for my own mind to grasp, like why the universe exists, skepticism merely dictates I answer honestly: I don't know; further searching is required, and the prospect of finding a satisfactory answer is uncertain. The religious believer on the other hand has no shortage of confidence in the state of his knowledge. Your post(s) went even further than I thought it would. Angels and salvation and resurrection and Adam and Eve . . . . Strong stuff. Yet knapplc's point seems to cut right through the Gordian Knot. How is it that we know––or rather you know––that any of it, including the part about God existing at all, is true? You can't expect me to disprove the existence of a silent, invisible being. How would I even start?

 

And furthermore, when we skeptics begin to ask questions about parasites that blind children and cancers that eat people alive by the millions every year, we're told that it's arrogant. Well I want to know the reason. I demand to know the reason. Why has God not put a stop to this pneumonia business, or AIDS, or rheumatoid arthritis? Why did he allow it in the first place? Why has he not communicated his intentions more clearly, and why is his alleged biblical message lost in a sea of noise created by competing ideologies and traditions? What is the reason for this suffering and confusion? Can I not comprehend it? Why can't I comprehend it? Can he try to make me? If not, why not, and why is it not worth it to him to at least try?

 

I feel like I could go on but I would not be adding anything particularly important. Despite what C.S. Lewis and others would prefer to think, this argument does not do Christianity any favors. And this philosophical aside, while compelling enough, is not nearly the only problem with Christianity. Whether we're talking history, textual criticism, archaeology, or even common sense, a Christian hoping for converts has a hell of a lot more explaining to do even after this part of the Great Conversation plays itself out.

 

Doesn't sound like Cross was getting many looks on screens during spring ball. Considering how much they worked on the screen game, I doubt that bodes well for the fall.

There are few plays in football I love more than the HB screen. i might love the flea-flicker just a little bit more than anything. I want the HB screen to be a huge part of our offense going forward. (we can ditch the WR screen at anytime, it wouldn't bother me a bit) Cross may not have that elusive first step you sometimes need in the screen game. I still think he brings a lot as a inside runner.

 

I've never heard much about Cross's abilities to pick up blites as a pass blocker.

I agree 100% on the HB screen vs WR screen. Hope to see a lot more of one and zero of the other.

 

So for me the question is pretty simple. Is Mike Riley and this staff capable of using the resources we have in such a way to compete for our division most years if not every year? I don't think it's one of the harder jobs in the country. It's not even the hardest job in the conference. He inherited talent. The guy who coached Eli Manning for a year is going to be recruiting quarterbacks for us. I think within two or three years we should be making an appearance in Indy.

Good post. I think in some ways you can compare this whole experience to running a company. If you hire young people with less experience, there's a chance your overall product may suffer or go stagnant. You're getting what you pay for in many ways. It doesn't mean the young people you hired can't succeed, but, I think it does mean it'll take awhile to get where you want. Hiring more experienced people tends to give you a better shot at improving your product and reaching your goals quicker. Not always, of course.

 

I'm very wait-and-see with this whole thing as I'm sure most Husker fans are. I love that he's a previous head coach and I love that he's getting a chance to prove himself at a place where he can likely sustain more success. But, if after a handful of years he's winning only 8-9 games as well and showing no real sign of taking the next step, then he needs to be held to a similar standard as previous head coaches... that that's not good enough.

 

 

Very much so. If you use the analogy of a company it makes the last seven years seem that much worse.

I think the reason for optimism is a little more straightforward than a comparison of Riley to Osborne. Although you have to admit, the similarity is a little eerie.

 

At the end of the day . . . Bo Pelini was an average head coach running a historically blue chip program with vast resources and support. When he failed to stay competitive with teams in our division (not exactly an impossible task considering what Ohio State did to Wisconsin in the B1G Championship), he pointed the finger at everyone and anyone in sight. His claims about lack of support sounded desperate to the point of absurd, and it was clear his heart had not been in the thing for some time (the thumb be damned).

 

So for me the question is pretty simple. Is Mike Riley and this staff capable of using the resources we have in such a way to compete for our division most years if not every year? I don't think it's one of the harder jobs in the country. It's not even the hardest job in the conference. He inherited talent. The guy who coached Eli Manning for a year is going to be recruiting quarterbacks for us. I think within two or three years we should be making an appearance in Indy.

Refreshing, isn't it?

 

I've watched enough college football not to be swept away by the superficial aspects of running a program. There are plenty of ways to skin a cat. But watching yesterday's Spring Game and all the events that led up to it these past few months, I have to say I'm impressed. From the minute Mike Riley walked in the door, the difference was palpable. The guy's aura could not be more right for this program. All of it. From remembering everyone's name to the awkward, chuckling, yet sincere press conference persona––this guy fits the tradition. And most of you know all I mean by that is he resembles Tom Osborne. No, there will be no grandiose predictions about this season or how many national titles were going to have to make room for in the trophy case from me. It's just an observation.

 

And that brings me to the point of this thread. What I see in Mike Riley's approach is that he is––or at least appears to be––extremely detail oriented from a top-down approach. He's a CEO. Whether we're talking about the website, the blackshirt tradition, injury updates, special teams coaching, recruiting, etc., there's no issue that's overlooked, and none that Riley hasn't explained with a simple, honest, and most of all sensible answer. I really like what I'm seeing. Nebraska is starting to feel like a program in the hands of a professional. I very much doubt we'll ever have to endure the annual psychological drama that was a staple of the Pelini era––and all that went with it––anytime soon.

 

This is the honeymoon period. Riley will probably lose a game next season and some of the glow will fade. But for the time being I'm interested to learn as much as I can about how Riley is rebuilding the program. What are his priorities? How does he go about evaluating talent and recruiting? How does he handle problems with staff or players? Some of it only time will tell, but I'm very excited to see what the future holds.

And that's what I get for trying to reason.

 

Screw it. If this is the kind of thread, and discussion, you guys want, then have at it. I'm done trying to improve the discourse.

 

Don't go! If we all go away, Fox News is all that's left.

 

 

 

On the topic, one of the things I learned in my intolerant liberal college was to check your sources. So for instance, if you ever read anything that starts "I received this email link recently . . ." you should treat it with a high degree of skepticism.

 

And sure enough, the author of this piece could not string together disparate ideas fast enough. Ignorant of context and basic human feeling, even if his overall premise––that there is something wrong with our higher education system––were true, he would be unable to prove it because of his approach. And there is something wrong with it. Several somethings, actually. Not being able to to call someone an "insane" "retard" "tranny" in the classroom is not, however, one of the problems.

It's a long way until June 30th when pens are finally put to paper. Assuming you know anything about politics––anything at all about the game of it––then you already know the next couple months are going to be filled with bloated rhetoric, threats, insinuations, and BS. Probably none of it will matter and the deal will be signed regardless of what anyone says to appeal to the right wingers in their respective countries. At this point it's all for show. Where are the major newspapers (which the conservative Fox News spinoff Weekly Standard isn't) furiously covering a major initiative that just fell in the toilet? Where is the flock of reporters surrounding the White House to catch every minute of the humiliation? What's that? The sound of silence? I wonder why that is . . .

 

 

The Weekly Standard calls itself "A Weekly Conservative Magazine" right on the Google link. Wikipedia labels it a "neoconservative opinion magazine." Today one of the top stories on the front page is titled "Unravel the Deal," written by Bill Kristol (who is the editor and a regular guest on Fox News). Here is a snippet from this thoughtful piece of foreign policy analysis:

 

What is to be done about Obama's Iran "deal"? We could, fatalistically, lament the collapse of American foreign policy. We could, indignantly, gnash our teeth in frustration at the current administration. We could, constructively, work to secure congressional review of the deal and urge presidential candidates to commit to altering or abrogating it.

 

Or we can stop it now.

 

How? the best chance is to prevent a final deal from being signed on June 30. And the best way to do that is to spend the next 80 days pulling on the loose threads and poking at the fraying parts of the framework announced last week in Lausanne.

 

If the deal falls apart, it falls apart. It wouldn't be the first time something went wrong in the Middle East. But this––what snakes like Kristol and his ilk are doing––is psychopathic. They are actively trying to subvert to a nuclear weapons deal that is being celebrated across the globe. Imagine their glee if our peace negotiations fall through. Imagine their joy as we walk away from peace and inch closer and closer to another war, which they will invariably support as they do all wars. As long as Obama has some egg on his face it's worth it, right?

 

If you think this magazine is in any way a credible source on any subject except conservative political tactics and gamesmanship, you don't know anything about politics. And it's not because you're uninformed; it's because you're misinformed. They're playing you.

 

 

Ok...some people are talking like this is some amazing agreement that brings peace.

 

How? We aren't at war with Iran so what war is it stopping? Iran has sponsored groups in other countries that promote more war and death. Does this agreement talk about that?

 

What I do like? It's a step in the right direction to allow inspectors and limit the amount of refinement to be done.

 

I also like the Iranian people. I actually think they are what is keeping the leadership from being more nasty in the region. They know if they do too much, the public would revolt.

 

As for the sanctions. I always thought they really weren't doing much. The Iranians still lived pretty decent and modern lives compared to their neighbors.

 

I'm hoping there is reason to be optimistic.

 

The deal won't do that, but it does transition our diplomatic stance with Iran, creating a more open environment that ideally will lead to more cultural exchange and eventually normalized relations. Removing an enemy or even a potential enemy from your list of problems is a step towards peace in the MidEast. The Iranian people are probably more with us than most people think. No doubt several countries are watching these events unfold with a good deal of interest. Nobody thinks that this is the final solution, least of all the group of highly informed diplomats that created the framework of the agreement. It is a piece of the puzzle, though. The sanctions we have in place––at least as I understand them––are about isolating Iran financially from the rest of the world, creating an incentive for changed behavior. We're doing similar things to Russia (who's economy and currency are in the tank), specifically targeting wealthy/influential people in the country and freezing them out.

 

On the hope for optimism bit, try this one on for size: the U.S., China, Russia, France, and Iran all agree on something. For once.

 

If that one doesn't cheer you up, Iran is fighting ISIS, and the Iraqi army just took back Tikrit. The thing about the Middle East is––as most people know––it's a total clusterf*&k. If we can get chemical weapons out of Syria and stop Iran from going nuclear without firing a shot, we're winning, or as close to winning as we're likely to be in the near future.

 

Good points. Iran fighting ISIS is a very good thing. Any movement forward is a good thing. Now if we can get them to denounce any talk of destroying Israel and recognize their right to exist, then we've made real progress. But at least they got to the table wt us, China, France and Russia. If they have peaceful intentions, then perhaps we can see progress within the whole region later. They are not friends wt the Saudi's either - so a lot of hurdles remain in that very sectarian world.

I've heard some concern that they might be able to enrich via a 3rd party country (namely the guy pictured above - Mr Kim's N. Korea). Are there safe guards of any kind to prevent that that you know of?

 

 

Probably China's interests is our biggest safeguard, although on another level nuclear proliferation remains one of our biggest global challenges. Read Rachel Maddow's book ​Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. We've left nukes sitting unguarded on runways. One time a bomb almost went off; thankfully the last of four or five safeguards didn't fail (the others did). I'm honestly more concerned about our own aged, deteriorating stockpile of useless bombs than I am about the North Koreans secretly shipping uranium to Iran.

Ok...some people are talking like this is some amazing agreement that brings peace.

 

How? We aren't at war with Iran so what war is it stopping? Iran has sponsored groups in other countries that promote more war and death. Does this agreement talk about that?

 

What I do like? It's a step in the right direction to allow inspectors and limit the amount of refinement to be done.

 

I also like the Iranian people. I actually think they are what is keeping the leadership from being more nasty in the region. They know if they do too much, the public would revolt.

 

As for the sanctions. I always thought they really weren't doing much. The Iranians still lived pretty decent and modern lives compared to their neighbors.

 

I'm hoping there is reason to be optimistic.

 

The deal won't do that, but it does transition our diplomatic stance with Iran, creating a more open environment that ideally will lead to more cultural exchange and eventually normalized relations. Removing an enemy or even a potential enemy from your list of problems is a step towards peace in the MidEast. The Iranian people are probably more with us than most people think. No doubt several countries are watching these events unfold with a good deal of interest. Nobody thinks that this is the final solution, least of all the group of highly informed diplomats that created the framework of the agreement. It is a piece of the puzzle, though. The sanctions we have in place––at least as I understand them––are about isolating Iran financially from the rest of the world, creating an incentive for changed behavior. We're doing similar things to Russia (who's economy and currency are in the tank), specifically targeting wealthy/influential people in the country and freezing them out.

 

On the hope for optimism bit, try this one on for size: the U.S., China, Russia, France, and Iran all agree on something. For once.

 

If that one doesn't cheer you up, Iran is fighting ISIS, and the Iraqi army just took back Tikrit. The thing about the Middle East is––as most people know––it's a total clusterf*&k. If we can get chemical weapons out of Syria and stop Iran from going nuclear without firing a shot, we're winning, or as close to winning as we're likely to be in the near future.

I hope this deal does some good.....I have my doubts.

 

The problem I see is the same old problem. Iran will get crippling sanctions lifted so they really had/have nothing to lose with this agreement. I will assume they did not all of a sudden get reasonable and become stellar world citizens. This just seems like more of the same for them, tell the world what it wants to hear, play the game until caught again, and get out of the consequences of having been caught before. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose. The only people who truly believe this is a great deal have to be naive enough to think Iran really hasn't been, and won't continue to, pursue weapons grade enrichment. Now we are to believe they want to sit around the campfire and sing kumbaya with Israel and the west? Never wanted the bomb? WTF?

Doubts are fine. The deal the U.S. and the UN Security Council have just struck doesn't require trust. The sanctions which are set to be lifted can snap back into place almost instantly (these are the same sanctions that got Iran to the table in the first place). See the full text of the agreement. If at any point the Iranian government does not comply with any significant part of the arrangement, it's a quick free fall back to Square 1. They can say anything they want, but they are losing big here. Once these procedures and inspections go into effect, Iran has no path to a nuclear weapon. Under this agreement, they can only enrich uranium to just under 4%. For a nuke you need 90%. Every facility is monitored. They have to scrap significant sections of their nuclear energy program.

 

I don't know what you've read or what you think about the reasons Iran would want a bomb, but the question of Iran's intentions is and has been for some time open.

It's not clear [that Iran intends to build a nuclear device]. The United States and several other countries believe that Iran is trying to develop the technology and fissile material necessary to build a nuclear weapon. There's an important distinction here: Western intelligence agencies have not concluded that Iran has decided to definitely build a bomb. Rather, they've reported lots of signs -- secret facilities, weapons-related research programs -- that suggest that Iran is trying to develop the technology and materials necessary to build a nuclear bomb very quickly. This is called "breakout capability," as in Iran would have the ability to quickly "break out" into a full-fledged nuclear weapons state.

There is also the question of why Iran would want a bomb at all. The Mullahs may be glorified gangsters, and the previous president had some loud apocalyptic rhetoric about Israel, but the Iranian people themselves are relatively young and secular. They realize a nuke doesn't do them any favors. Blowing up Israel, or even coming close, is suicide. One useful thing you might be able to do with a nuke, though, is prevent the single greatest threat to your society from strong-arming you. Of course I mean the United States, the country that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister in 1953 and invaded Iraq under false pretenses in 2003.

 

Now as a conservative, I'd like you to do something for me. If you still object to this deal, state that you do, and then succinctly explain what your alternative is rather than spreading a mystifying haze of doubt and fear. And your solution had better not be more war.