Playing the Indian Card

Friday, February 02, 2007

The Village Atheist Writes... and Writes

Jeff Harmsen, aka The Epicurean Jesus, aka, the Village Atheist, has been engaged in a running discussion with me in the comments sections of this blog. Something in his latest instalment, I think, is important enough to place as a new blog entry, as clearing it up may be of some spiritual help to others.

I quote:

“Of course churches peddle heaven and hell as real places. As soon as J.P2 published his revelation it became taboo to discus the matter. I bet the vast majority of Christians believe heaven and hell are real.”

“Whoa, Steve you have contradicted yourself big time. In our other debate you concede there is no heaven and hell. In this post, you say these fantasies are real?”

SR:
I gather that Jeff (hereafter EJ) cannot see the difference between the terms “physical” and “real.” This is Scientism at work. The Pope pointed out, as EJ had actually accurately quoted, that heaven and hell are not physical places. EJ has apparently taken this to mean they are not “real,” a very different concept.

In fact, the philosophical school known historically as “realism,” a Medieval scholastic position, held that the physical world was illusory.

Real (OED): “1 actually existing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.”
Physical (OED): “1 relating to the body as opposed to the mind. 2 relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind.”

To illustrate the difference: love may be real or not real, but never a physical entity.

Now to other matters:

EJ:
It is possible to live without sex, especially if someone has a low drive. However, it is not natural. This partially explains why so many priests molest children. Anyone with a normal sex drive will be climbing the walls if they go too long without sex.

SR:
This is both statistically untrue and illogical. Statistically, child molestation is no more common among celibate priests than among, for example, married non-Catholic clergy, or married secular schoolteachers. This is strong evidence that celibacy has nothing to do with molestation. Moreover, it makes no sense to imagine it could: if the problem is a lack of sex with women, it would presumably be expressed by having sex with women, not with minors—a far riskier enterprise.

EJ:
I don't have to argue with great philosophers re God's existence. It's amazing how far someone can go with an argument based on a false premise. Everyone of their agumnets is based on knowing the Bible, a book that is loaded with erroneous content.

SR:
You seem convinced beyond the reach of evidence that there is no sign of God outside the Bible. The great philosophers demonstrate God’s existence from first principles, without reference to it. Aristotle, whom I've already cited, even lived before the Bible was written.

EJ:
I don't think you understand the importance of epistemology. Be a detective for a moment. You have three witnesses who claim to know who killed someone. You ask all three: "How do you know Bob killed Fred?"

Witness one: "Because an invisible pink elephant told me Bob did it!"

Witness two: "Because witness one told me Bob did it!"

Witness three: "Because I saw Bob stick a knife into Fred's heart."

By your way of thinking Steve, Witnesses one and two are just as reliable as witness three because you take the word of the bible and those who preach it.

SR:
You miss a fourth possibility: “Because I am Bob.” That is vastly more compelling in a court of law, and much stronger proof, than any of your alternatives.

The proof of God, as Descartes, for example, demonstrated, is even one step nearer to certainty than that.

EJ:
The Muslims believe in another Bible, another book of myth. Both Christianity and Islam are based on the Old Testament.

[EJ had claimed that God as a concept would not even occur to us but for the Bible]

SR:
Muslims do not accept the Old Testament. And Muslims, mind, are not the only non-Christians who believe in a supreme godhead. So do Hindus, Native Indians, Sikhs, Daoists, and so on. Indeed, anthropologists claim that all cultures seem to have the concept of a Supreme God, including “polytheistic” ones.

EJ:
Re "Do not put God to the test." This is an excellent example of mind control (otherwise known as brainwashing). On the one hand, believers are told to pray, that something magical can come of it.

SR:
You are not catching the difference between religion and magic. Religion involves humility before the spiritual--worship. Magic is an attempt to control the spiritual for personal ends.

Putting God to the test is the latter, and is antithetical to religion by its nature.

EJ:
Another brilliant piece of nonsense is "The Lord works in Mysterious ways." You could say this about anything, so it means nothing.

SR:
Really? “Paper clips work in mysterious ways?”

Doesn’t work for me.

EJ:
You think tricking people with the placebo effect is legit? So then selling snake oil as a panacea is perfectly fine in your world. From my perspective, taking money from people after lying about a product or service is a from of stealing. We have laws against false advertising. Churches break these laws on a daily bases.

SR:
If you have a beef here, you have it with the medical profession. Doctors rely on the placebo effect daily. Churches rarely use it, or even claim to heal.
And, if it heals you, how is it fraudulent?

EJ had claimed that Jesus was not born on Christmas; I asked how he knew this.

EJ:
Based on references in the Bible re sheep, Jesus was born in the spring. The whole story of how Christmas came to be on Dec. 25 is quite facinating. The Pagans worshipped the sun and so they celebrated three days around the winter solstice.

SR:
That was certainly a factor in deciding when to celebrate. But there’s more to the story than that. The December date also corresponds with some other, known dates in the Bible and early church tradition—of Jesus’s presentation in the Temple, of the Annunciation. But when you don’t know exactly when, why not put it on Saturnalia?

EJ:
We have to give Jesus et el. a break. He knew nothing of astronomy or evolution. Delusion and superstition ran more rampant in his day than it does today.

SR:
Can you be sure? Or is it that we are only able to see the “superstitions” of others?

EJ
Atheism is not based on delusions like religion, it's based on rational thought.

SR:
What a coincidence; so is Catholicism. And Buddhists say the same.
Indeed, I imagine most would say about the same about their own religion.

EJ:
There are examples of atheistic despots. However, they are missing the other half of a peaceful ideology: humanism. There is no example in history of an atheistic humanist who practices tyrany.

SR:
Humanism (OED): 1 a rationalistic system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.

I’m afraid both Marxism and Fascism fit. You have to take responsibility for Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the two Kims.

Humanism does not mean “humane.”

EJ:
When a priest gives wine to his congregation, he is doing it under the false pretext that the wine is the actual blood of Christ.

This is a lie. Place the wine under a microscope and you will not find the blood of a dead man.

SR:
Why would you? Jesus is not dead.

As St. Thomas Aquinas explains it in the Summa Theologica, what you see under the microscope are still the accidents of the thing, not its substance. The substance of any thing is not what is sensed about it, because any single thing sensed about it is somewhat arbitrary. Is blood red? Not of its own nature; because if you put it under different lights, it appears blue or black or purple. Does it possess a given mass or weight? Not really; its weight very much depends on the temperature at which you store it. So what inheres in it of its own nature? Nothing that is visible, it seems, but only some imperceptible essence, "bloodness," of which its accidents or specific qualities are only hints or clues.

It is this that, in the wine, becomes the blood of Christ, and not any of its accidents.

So to look for the essence of anything with a microscope is like trying to count angels on the head of a pin.

4 comments:

Jeff Harmsen said...

Steve, thanks for your entry. It demonstrates perfectly how far someone can argue based on a biased, false premise. It's shocking how easily sense can be manufactured from nonesense.

First, can you pay me the courtesy of correcting the spelling of my name. It's HARMSEN.

So, you think realism is illusionary, like we might be existing in some sort of matrix like Keanu Reeves. You have no proof of this whatsoever. In fact, by your way of thinking, anything you see or say is an illusion, so why see or say anything?

We can never know everything because we exist in an infinite universe, thus knowledge is infinite. However, there are things we do know for certain, such as Genesis is a myth, the Earth was not created before the sun, etc.

The impossibility of infinite knowledge is a proof god does not exist. God is supposed to know everything. It is impossible to know everything because, no matter how much is known, there is, by definition of infinity, more.

If God knows all, he must know all numbers. This is impossible. No matter how many numers a god can know, a child can simply say "plus one," and top God's number.

Further, it would be a living hell to know everything and be perfect. If every golf shot was a hole in one, why bother playing golf? If you knew everything, why open a book? Instead, we exist to grow and develop.

Love is real and extemely physical. First, you have the chemical reaction in the brain. Second, you have physical touching. (A child will die or suffer retardation if not cuddled, even if all other physical needs are met.)

Re sex: Yes, you are right, a lack of a woman will not turn someone into a child molester. Instead, a preist with this sickness, has taken on his career because it gives him access to children in an often unquestioned position of authority.

Nevertheless, you can not assert that celibacy is natural based on pedophilia alone. We are only hearing a fraction of what goes on behind closed doors. When a child is abused, he may find the courage to speak up and tell the police about it. A woman having sex with a priest has no motivation to tell the world about her affair.

No human is always religious, not even the Pope: however, we are all 100% human at all times. Part of being human is the profound intimacy of sex.

Yes, that is correct, there is no sign of God outside the bible, other than the delusion of him, based on the bible, manifesting in people's minds. A classic example of this twisting reality is when pontificators try to claim God created a natural disaster as a form of punshment(a classic mind control technique, whereby cult leaders take false credit for phenomena).

Isn't it enough that the fellow human beings victimized by hurricane Kartrina have lost their homes and loved ones without having them having to endure the insipid notion that they deserve what they got because a god was punishing them for being evil? Religion has a way of kicking people when they are down, while assuming false credit for what occurs naturally.

Re my detective metaphor: so you think you're God, Steve?

Re Descartes: again, we can't blame Rene for his god delusion: he had been brainwashed to believe from birth. Here's a new twist to his famous revelation: "God thinks, therefore, he can not be."

No other example of infinity thinks. Time does not ask you to sacrifice animals in its name. Space does not commit wrath. Only man is known to be so egotistically conscious. This is proof that the concept of god is merely man trying to impart his ego onto the infinite unisverse.

Is Jesus dead you ask? Unlike your "God" who does not like to be tested, science thrives in testing, unafraid of it. So go ahead Steve, take some wine from church and test it for any trace of a man who has been dead for over two thousand years.

The next time you go to church and pretend to drink blood, ask yourself, is it any wonder the blood lust of war and terroism is still the bane of humanity?

Re religion and magic. Of course religion is magical. Do you think walking on unfrozen water is realistic? All supernatural stories are examples of magic.

Re placebo effect: you are wrong about doctors relying on this effect. Research is done to eliminate the placebo effect, as a measure of applying legit medicine.

Churches do not heal people. This has been proven (i.e see placebo effect).

No religion is based on rational thought. All cults, including Catholicism, are based on blind faith (i.e the blind leading the blind).

Hitler was humanistic? Come now Steve, you're right out to lunch here. And yes, being humane is central to the ideology of humanism. I.e Humanists do not put an imaginary friend before fellow human beings.

Anonymous said...

Good for you, Steve. You have him on the run, tripping over himself.

Steve Roney said...

Jeff, leaving aside points already refuted, let me just concentrate on things that are new in your post:


EJ:
We can never know everything because we exist in an infinite universe, thus knowledge is infinite….

The impossibility of infinite knowledge is a proof god does not exist. God is supposed to know everything. It is impossible to know everything because, no matter how much is known, there is, by definition of infinity, more.

SR:
The physical universe is infinite? I don’t think that is logically possible, and I don’t think many scientists would agree with you. The physical universe appears to have distinct boundaries in both space and time. Let us assume the same is true of the created universe as a whole. Neither, then, by your own argument, is knowledge infinite. It is therefore possible, in principle, to know all things.

EJ:
If God knows all, he must know all numbers. This is impossible. No matter how many numers a god can know, a child can simply say "plus one," and top God's number.

SR:
Numbers are indeed in principle infinite. Indeed, they are eternal and certain, a part of the Logos, which is to say, the structure of creation. Which is to say, the Christ; which is to say, they are a direct manifestation of God himself. It is no surprise and not controversial to a Christian to point out that we humans cannot fully comprehend God.

But you are confusing what can be known by us humans with what can be known. As we are not infinite, we necessarily cannot fully comprehend infinity. It does not follow that an infinite being cannot.

EJ:
Further, it would be a living hell to know everything and be perfect. If every golf shot was a hole in one, why bother playing golf? If you knew everything, why open a book? Instead, we exist to grow and develop.

SR:
There is a simple answer for a being that is both omniscient and omnipotent. He can simply choose not to know certain things.

This is commonly used to explain the creation itself; and beyond it the incarnation. God chose, as the ultimate expression of his omnipotence, to refuse to exercise his full omnipotence, in order to give us free will. Similarly, Jesus withdrew his omniscience in order to become like man in all things (except sin).

EJ:
Hitler was humanistic? Come now Steve, you're right out to lunch here. And yes, being humane is central to the ideology of humanism. I.e Humanists do not put an imaginary friend before fellow human beings.

SR:
Yes, Hitler was a humanist, by dictionary definition. There is no reason to suppose a humanist is going to be any more humane towards his fellow man than a theist. The fact that a theist in theory loves God first, and his fellow man second, while the humanist, in theory, loves his fellow man more than anything else, does not signify.

For comparison, would you argue that married people are less caring towards others and less humane than the unmarried? I can’t see it. Yet a married man loves his wife first, and the rest of us second.

Love is not a zero-sum game; it is not as if any of us has only so much love in us, and no more. The more you love, the more you have to give. Love begets love.

This being so, the theist has a good leg up on the humanist.

Jeff Harmsen said...

Hey Mr. Westview, who has whom on the run? My arguments are more valid by far. Think maybe you're a tad biased? I.e Steve has yet to overcome the epistemological flaws in believing in a book that's loaded with myth and falacy. This is but one of many examples of how he is losing this debate.

Either the physical universe is infinite or it is not. If it is, there are no boundries. Nobody has found the end of the universe. The most recent theory is that the universe was "business as usual" before the big bang.

If the physical universe is finite, all you have to do is think, what's outside this boundary? An infinity outside our universe (if it is finite) guarantees other universes exist. Either way, we exist in infinite time and space. Either way, knowledge is infinite and it is thus impossible to know everything.

The only connection between a god and numbers is that they are both concepts invented by man (as has been proven through historical and scientific proof, mountains of both).

No Steve, an omnipotent creature, if there was such a thing, could not choose to NOT know all. By definition of omnipotence, the entity is all-knowing, knows all. Basic sematics proves your assertion wrong here.

Re free will: you do not have free will to believe in a god because you have been brainwashed (told fiction was fact)since birth. You can, however, choose to wake up and accept your true existence as a humane being. If you have the courage to do this one day, you will find it's like waking up from a dream. If enough people have the courage to see the truth, war and terrorism will become obsolete.

Hitler believed in "Positive Christianity," believing he was exacting revenge on the Jews for Killing Christ. You should know this having spent time with your Lutheran friend (i.e Luther wrote extensive anti-semetic doctrines). Thus, Hitler was obviously not a humanist.

Moreover, being humane is central to being a humanist. While we're on the topic of Hitler, nice job the Catholics did turning their backs on Jews during the Holocaust. Very humane.

Your arrogant claim that theists have more love than humanists is ridiculous. Love is the most human emotion of all. Without it, we would not have evolved out of caves, long before religion was invented.

Like eternal existence, which happens naturally without the aid of a supernatural creature, human traits such as love, have been hijacked by religions in order to fill their coffers.

Some Hippocrates Aphorisms for you, for dessert:

"Old men support abstinence well: people of a ripe age less well...especially if they are lively."

"Those who are very fat by nature are more exposed to die suddenly than those who are thin."

As a humanist, I believe, to borrow from your bible, that the body is the temple.