h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm very glad to hear that you have the solution to Euthyphro's dilemma, though it is a shame that you do not feel able to share that solution, or indeed to provide any answer to my straightforward question. When what is apparently the voice of God instructs you to go into those buildings and kill every living thing, do you obey it, like Joshua, or do you not? And why?

Noggin

Well, Noggin, under this Covenant God DOES NOT order any such thing, for various reasons. What happens in the church age is very different. He would not order me to any such thing, and He says plainly that, under this Covnenant, those who are the Lord's are to 'love thine enemy'.

Euthyphro did, like you, have a problem. Because he did not know God he asked such things. Those who know God know that such things are not even a question. I can answer what you say, but I don't think I will bother, as it will only lead to more spurious questions and evasions from your master, and more blasphemy from you.

So under the old covenant it was acceptable and didn't count as murder, but under the new covenant it's not and would?

That's not very consistent, particularly for a God who's supposed to be constant.

What's the moral justification for the change?

Noggin

Noggin,

God still hates sin as much now, as He did then. His view of sinners is the same, BUT He is in the process of saving out a people for Himself from among them, and it may include you in time. When that process is complete, and the last one is saved, then judgement begins, in the whole Earth.

Under the Old Covanant you would have had no choice, and no chance of salvation, as, under that Covenant, salvation was only possible to His chosen people, the twelve tribes of Israel, and (I assume) you don't trace you lineage back to them.

Under this Covenant you have a chance, as now salvation is open to the Gentiles too. Those who were slaughtered by military action were only getting their just desserts for sin, just as all who will not repent will soon. The then slaughter of many is as nothing compared to what is coming. As some of the Gentiles are being saved, He is not visiting judgement on them at the moment, in that way, as all that will all come in future.

However, God has been gracious to you, and opened up a way of salvation for you. "Seek the Lord while He may be FOUND, call upon Him while He is near."

It is all perfectly consistent, just a different season, that is all.

So not only did God ensure that all these people would be denied salvation by causing them to be born outside the Tribes of Israel (a circumstance entirely beyond their own personal control) he sanctioned them being murdered for the same reason?

This is capricious cruelty that beggars belief.

Noggin

Consistent? Hardly.

First you start a thread justifying killing (but not premediated murder), including innocent civilian casualties in times of war, but then pronounce that "those who are the Lord's are to 'love thine enemy'."

You really are a paradox Justin.

You have consistently chosen to quote from the King James Version of the Bible. Yet you seem unable to comprehend that this very book that you hold so dear is the product of those whom you rail against the most.

Your god is supposed to be faultless. Why would he allow his word to be written down and then distorted by mere men, men for whom you have little or no regard? His original word would be a thing of great value, yet you persist in reading and quoting the words of mere men to justify courses of action that actually fly in the face of the very things that you sincerely believe in.

Come down off the fence, Justin. What is it to be?

Do you trust the word of the Bible in your hand? (I can accept that there may be hidden mysteries within that cannot be explained by mere words, but the word is there for all to see.)

If you do not, then cease quoting it at us. The meaning lies hidden until our salvation.

If you do trust it, then stop distorting it. "Thou shalt not kill" brooks no exceptions and no justification.

This post has been removed.

Before I say anything else, first I'm going to repost a posting that was removed because "it contains content that other readers may find offensive." It has therefore been edited. I've been forced, as usual, to GUESS which parts were offensive, so if it's still offensive after editing, blame the Editors of h2g2, not me. Removed sections appear as [...]

"All religions have a god/gods, and a belief system."

Wrong. Plain, flat out, factually incorrect. You're not very good at this, are you?

"An atheist is his own god"

No, he isn't, by any accepted definition of the word "god". Possibly by your [...] definition of the word "god", which of course includes yourself...

"and will not have anyone who is called God rule over him."

Umm... possibly a bit disingenuous. Extend it slightly - will not have anyone who is called God, who claims omnipotence, yet fails utterly at every turn to provide any evidence of their existence, rule over him. Just for starters.

"His belief system is a mirror image of all that, hence a belief system in reverse."

It's disturbing to me that I'm starting to see how your [...] mind works, you know.

It's actually possible you think you refer to me when you use the word "atheist". I am no such thing. It's a simply inaccurate term, because it contains in its etymology and meaning an intrinsic validation of the concept of theism as something real to react against. It is therefore a negative position, and one I do not hold. It is only possible to be an atheist in the context of surrounding theism.

I prefer the term "rationalist". A rationalist can exist independent of any social context - he needs no primitive superstition, and he needs no believers in primitive superstition to define himself. I go by the evidence of my senses, nothing more. It is not a "belief system", as I am not required to believe anything, ever, which I cannot test directly if I wish. I have no need to "believe in" the chair I sit in, or in anything else in my universe, because not only can I touch them, but so can you or anyone else. My life is not based on tricks, or books, hallucinations, but on my simple experience of our shared reality.

There are several points of difficulty in being a rationalist, [...]:

- it requires a modicum of intelligence and independent thought
- it requires an acceptance of one's responsibility for one's own actions
- it requires an acceptance that some things cannot be known

One must accept one's responsibility for one's own actions, for the rest of one's life if necessary - there are no magic "get out jail free" cards like there are in [certain positions]. I have to think about what I do every day, because I recognise the capacity in me to do ill to others. You, of course, have no such responsibility - or rather, you refuse to recognise it. This, in my opinion, makes you dangerous, especially in the context of your intermittent access to firearms and your personal interpretation of the commandment "thou shalt not kill" as not applying to people you/God judge to be sinners - i.e. about 99% of the population.

Personally, I wouldn't trust you with a sharp pencil, and certainly don't think someone like you, with your apparent inability to stop talking about sodomy and eternal torture, should be anywhere near children, of your own or anyone else's.

"It is quite unnecessary to be an atheist if there is no God."

Which is why the term "atheist" is a misnomer and one I do not use. YOU use it, but then you use a lot of words you don't understand the meanings of, as an [...] person should be expected to.

"There is no a-pinko organisation, because there are no pink elephants."

Are you implying that there is an atheist organisation? Name please? I belong to no such thing, nor do I know of anyone who does. I suspect they might exist, possibly as a joke to wind up people like yourself...

And this is a bogus argument in any case, Justin/God. There *IS* a Jean-Luc Picard fan club - but that doesn't mean he exists. He is a fictional character. There are organisations in the US which are campaigning, on Christian grounds, against Harry Potter. Just in case you don't know, Justin/God, Harry Potter does not exist. The existence of an organisation of people [...] who are either for or against a particular entity is no indication whatever of that entity's existence outside human imagination.

I'm not at all surprised that you don't understand that basic point of logic.

"But there is a God"

In your opinion.

"hence you get atheists desperately trying, but supplanting and denying God's claims, to do away with God, in the vain hope that they are not going to meet Him, as He testifies they will."

I have to say, Justin/God, that the obvious desperation evident in the threads you appear in does not come from atheists but from you. You appear to be the one desperate to validate your [...] beliefs, to publicly discuss your squalid fantasies, and to repeatedly insult your fellow users of this site.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of ANYONE who posts to your thread who is a declared atheist. I, as I have said, am a rationalist. I don't expect you to understand the difference, [...]. Possible atheists would be Ste and Noggin, and possibly R. Daneel Olivaw, although I suspect that they might reject the word on the same basis I do.

You could hardly call Matholwch an atheist, he's got more gods than you can shake a stick at, and Insight (who is touchingly defensive of you, did you know?) has pretty much the same god as you, although of course you'd deny that.

H.

I consider myself an atheist, but not properly as I recognise that it's impossible to know either way. But I don't want to sit on the fence so I just go 'what the hell, I'm a bloody atheist'.

Anyway, back to my post that has been moderated for no given reason. Try this version:



Just to clear things up, I yikesed his original post a few days ago which was IDENTICAL to this one. It was removed very rapidly after I yikesed it, mainly because it compares the Prophet Mohammed to Osama Bin Laden. Obviously this could be VERY insulting to any of our Muslim friends, especially right now with all that's going on in the world and the BBC's ultra-sensitivity on the matter.

I'm going to yikes it again and ask why Justin is allowed to peddle his [...] filth (and now spam) on this site when the rest of us are banned from discussing certain world affairs. At the moment it seems like Justin is endlessly tolerated (the 'tyranny of tolerance', eh?) whilst others are threatened with bans and suspensions.





Ste

I generally call myself an atheist because it requieres less explanatino and most people would not understand or accept much of an explanation. However, I think I fit your definition of "rationalist" and I like that term more. A simialar term "logical posivist", which, as far as I can tell, means someone who refuses to accept anything as truth without evidence.

Actually such organizations do exist.
http://www.atheists.org (American Atheists) is an example.

I was pretty sure atheist organisations existed - but do they exist for their own purposes, or merely as a reaction against religious organisations? I thought most likely the latter, but I had reckoned without the possibility that an atheist organisation might be NECESSARY in the US because without one, atheists would be denied their constitutionally guaranteed rights by oppressive religionists (Christians, natch). It also seems that my own label of "rationalist" is properly used to describe, and I quote, " a movement which tried to reconcile religious faith with the findings of science especially during the Enlightenment." That ain't me, needless to say. I'm not sure that the historical connotations of the word still apply though. However, by the definition given on *that* website, I guess I'm an atheist. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

As for refusing the truth of something without evidence... hmm. It depends on what you mean by "evidence", doesn't it?

I have a physics textbook which tells me that s = ut + 0.5 at^2. Now, do I "believe" that? No. I don't characterise what I have invested in that equation as "belief", in the sense of "faith". I *do* believe it, in the sense that I trust it to be true because of where I read it. Why? Because I have read other physics books, and they have, historically, told em things which, when I test them, turn out to be true. And sure enough, when I get a stopwatch and drop a pebble off the Eiffel Tower (don't try this at home... oh. You can't, unless you live in the Eiffel Tower...) it turns out that s (distance) DOES, indeed equate to initial speed times time, plus acceleration times time squared. So is an equation in a textbook "evidence"? Or do I need to test everything I'm told?

I think that's one of the central problems of being an atheist - who do you trust? It's easy for the superstitionists - you trust the voices in your head, or the guy in a dress and a funny hat, or the guy on the TV with the funny hair and the perma-tan who accepts all major credit cards. But we have to actually apply some judgement, and the annoying thing is, sometimes we're wrong, and sometimes it's very hard to tell.

But nobody said life was going to be easy...



H.

I agree that Atheist organizations are only logical in reaction to religious organizations.

In the US they are certainly necesary, because not only are religious organizations trying to infringe on constitutional rights, they are also trying to remove a lot of science from US public schools. The fact is that, while Justin may say that only 1% of UK residents are "true" Christians, there are places in the southern US where he'd feel right at home. Of course, then, who would have have to argue with? I guess he'd have to spend more time online arguing with us.

The problem with any word for what is commonly called atheism is that, unlike religions that have official counsils to define themselves and there ideas, people who are not religious have no such central authority and would probably reject one if it tried to exist. The best solution is probably just to define one's ideas with a few paragraphs, rather than one word.

"As for refusing the truth of something without evidence... hmm. It
depends on what you mean by "evidence", doesn't it?"

I doubt anyone will ever come up with a perfect definition of what type of evidence is acceptable. Two sets of rules that I like are the one described in the short article "Asimov's Corrolary" by Isaac Asimov which can be found in one of his collections of S&SF essays (if you want I can tell you which one) and Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit".

"Who do you trust?"

I'd say that depends on three things: the importance of the matter, how reasonably it fits with other evidence you have, and how reasonable it is for someone to know what they say.

For example, suppose someone tells me that Mars's average surface temperature is 170 K. If I'm planning a trip there, I will have to put the statement to more scrutiny than If I am merely interested so that I can compare ti to other planets.

If someon told me that Venus was hotter than mercury, I would expect stronger evidnec, since it is farther from the sun and would logically seem to be cooler.

I would be more likely to trust an astronomer who has access to instruments or regularly reads papers published by those with access to instruments for determining what Jupitert is like than I would trust a phycic who claims to have traveled there mentally.

Of course this is open to discussion, and may be so arbitrary as to be meaningless.

Madent, you said,

"For the record, I would like to think that I see organised religion of any form (including non-denominational free church ministry ) for exactly what it is - fraud on a grand scale"

Its worse than a fraud because many organized religions actively try to impose their views on others. In the US, the majority party in congress anf the president seem to be trying to force the views of their religious groups onto all americans. This is both unconstitutional and wrong. ORganized religions are dangerous to even those who don't like ore belong to them. Given the chance they establish theocracies like thee ones in much of the middle east, such as Saudi Arabia

Well, I've watched this thread with some amusement. I can't tell whether this Justin guy is just trying to upset people, or if he really believes the stuff he's saying. Justin, if you're listening, I don't think you can call anyone who's posted here a heathen. Heathenism is a specific form of paganism. Also, Buddhism is in no way related to any pagan religions.

There are atheistic organisations in the UK as well, mainly in opposition to the institutionalisation of religion in schools (there legally has to be a period of collective worship every day), in opposition to faith schools, and in opposition to the over-representation of Christians in the House of Lords.

I'm an atheist myself I guess, although obviously I can't be absolutely sure that there is no God in the same way that I can't be sure that there aren't invisible pink flying unicorns or that the universe isn't real and we're all having "reality" piped into our brains by computer. Of course I reject these as stupidly improbable, although there is some faith involved in that if you get pedantic about it.

I do actually know someone who believes that we're all living in Allah's matrix though, he also believes that that the Ottoman Empire was in fact an Islamic State that brought a thousand years of peace, prosperity and happiness from India to Spain.

Hi BBM; having observed Justin in action over a period of months I can state with some certainty that he really believes it. If it was a windup he'd have tired of it by now.

It does of course raise interesting questions about the nature of truth and knowledge, which I have discussed (not really the right word in the circumstances) with Justin on several occassions in an attempt to get him to say what constitutes these, but with no sensible reponse.

Personally I think HVL and Daneel are as close to the mark as you can get. There's no such thing as "The Truth", only approximations to it, and what counts as knowledge in a particular context is relative to the purposes you need it for, and the reliability of the process by which it's acquired. A physics book is generally a reliable guide to physics, and an atlas a reliable guide to the geography of the world, even if we don't have the resources to check them out in detail.

The assertions that Justin makes lack the potential checkability that would satisfy the requirement of a reliable process, but Justin regards them as knowledge despite that, and regards evidence, reasoning and judgement by experience as superfluous, as he's told us many times.

Noggin

Poor guy
Any idea how he got like that?

BTW, whoever quoted the constant acceleration formula, I'm fairly certain that formula is actually wrong, since its based on F=ma. Relativity dontcha know.

How he got like that:

Read between the lines at http://www.newtestamentpattern.net/testimonies/justinhughes

Justin's path to his god appears to have been a combination of self-loathing and an absolute refusal, then and now, to recognise any personal responsibility for his own actions or their consequences. At least that's my take on his "testament". Draw your own conclusions.

And as for F=ma, I'm fully aware of the approximate nature of that equation (especially as I wrote A685055), but it DOES work for pebbles dropped off the Eiffel Tower and timed with a stopwatch, even a very good one.

H.

It's a long story. Guilt and shame seem to have a lot to do with it.

I'm afraid equations fry my brain for some reason, even when I can see what's going on in plain English.
I'd guess if you're using a hand held stopwatch Newtonian physics is too close to spot the difference.

Noggin

This just occurred to me.

"It is quite unnecessary to be an atheist if there is no God."

The only thing you need to make it necessary to be an atheist is BELIEVERS in a god. There is NO need for that god to exist.

Atheism is NOT reaction against the existence of a god. It is a reaction against the existence and behaviour of PEOPLE who believe in one.

Imagine: if 50% of the population believed in a god, and the other 50% didn't. Imagine if the 50% who DID believe in a god NEVER TOLD ANYONE. Imagine if they just quietly communed with that god in their own mind, and never, ever spoke about it to anyone else.

Would the 50% who didn't believe call themselves atheists? OBVIOUSLY not. They'd have no reason to. They'd have no idea such a concept even existed. And the beauty of this is: the situation is unchanged EVEN IF THE GOD *DOES* EXIST.

Even if the 50% who believe in him are RIGHT, the other 50% still wouldn't call themselves atheists, because they'd have no concept of theism.

The ONLY reason atheism exists as a concept and atheists feel any need to organise, is because of the unreasonable and irrational behaviour of theists.

It's a funny thing, but theists CREATED atheists by their own irrational behaviour. And the even funnier thing is, they could uncreate them again quite quickly - all they have to do is SHUT UP and mind their own business.

Imagine: if every Christian preacher just stopped banging on and on about his faith, and just got on with doing good in the community without going on about god all the time.

Imagine if every Christian suddenly stopped dressing up every Sunday and turning up to a draughty old building to sing old songs and instead went and helped maintain their local school buildings or build shelters for the homeless.

Imagine if Creationists just left the science teachers alone to get on with teaching actual science.

Imagine if every single person who believed in a god just stopped patting themselves on the back about it, kept it to themselves and never discussed it.

Imagine if "religion" was a taboo subject, something polite people didn't talk about...

"How did you overcome your alcoholism, Julian?"
"Oh, er, it's a bit personal actually."
"No, come on, I'm interested. How?"
"Well, erm... God helped me."
"Oh. Ah. Sorry, I didn't mean to pry. I won't ask again."

Wouldn't the world be a better place? There'd be NO atheists in such a world. There'd be no NEED for atheists. There'd be nothing to react against, because the only thing atheists are reacting against now is PEOPLE and their behaviour.

Ah well, a dream, I suppose.

H.