Changing beliefs
If a person changes from one position to another, in which this other position is antagonistic towards the first, I often find that the ensuing criticisms speak much more towards the persons (1) previously held beliefs and (2) reasons for belief, than of the position per-se in question. That if such a person were ever criticizing anyone specifically (and primarily), it would be themselves.… (Read more)
Divine Hiddenness
I keep running across the question (or objection, depending on how it’s phrased), “Why does God hide himself?” or “Why does God reveal Himself to some people, but not to others”. In reply my answer is, ‘I’ll have to think about that’. Which in part means that I’m not going to accept out of hand that God hides himself, as I think that presumes too much, namely, that I know every way which God reveals Himself (also that I’m capable of recognizing them). As for why God reveals Himself to some but not to others, well, I think there are a number of reasons for that, probably most common is, “some people aren’t listening”, followed by “God doesn’t exist”.
I’ve also hard it said that if God revealed Himself, He would be doing us a favor by clearing up all our religious confusion and misunderstandings of Him. But according to … (Read more)
Outsider Test for Faith Examined
Recently I began thinking about John Loftus’ Outsider Test for Faith (OTF), and I have serious doubts that it’s the ‘tool’ he believes it is. As a reminder (or introduction), the OTF asks believers to, “test [their] beliefs as if [they] were an outsider to the faith [they] are evaluating”… That “if your faith stands up under muster, then you can have your faith. If not, abandon it…” In other words, the OTF asks religious believers to test their beliefs as objectively as possible, with the presumption of skepticism.1 My initial thoughts are as follows:
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(1) If as a Christian (or a Jew, or Muslim, etc.) I take the OTF and find my beliefs lacking, and as a result of taking the OTF reject these beliefs, then to what position will I ‘convert’? Supposing my aim was to verify the claims of the Christian religion, then I will … (Read more)
Idealizing Past, Present and Future
(1) The first group idealize and long for a return to the past, while complaining about how awful the present is: “You know this wouldn’t have happened fifty years ago!”
(2) The second group idealizes the past and demonizes the present: “The world has gone down the drain, if there were more people like me this wouldn’t have happened”. Oh yeah, this group always take themselves to be the exception; savior’s in their own minds. The ‘out-of-the-box’ thinkers.
(3) The third group idealize the future as an escape from both the past and the present. Progress will be the savior of all.… (Read more)
Knowing / Not Knowing All the Answers
I think to myself, how uncomfortable — and undesirable — it would be to have my knowledge of things completely corrected; to finally have all the answers to every question ever asked, to have nothing to think towards; to leave nothing negotiable, ‘open for discussion’. How much more preferable ignorance seems. But given immortality, having exhausted all possible contingencies of any problem (for surely, there are only a finite number of problems with a finite number of solutions, however innumerable they seem), surely having the answer will eventually become desirable when compared to an eternity of uncertainty…Why do I hold onto the idea of wanting to figure things out for myself.… (Read more)
School is for learning?
(Perhaps what follows is a bit of frustration?) I received a few of my coursebooks this morning, and among them was a bible, the (get ready for this): Fully Revised Fourth Edition, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version With the Apocrypha, College Edition, An Ecumenical Study Bible — if that isn’t a mouthful, I don’t know what is. I’ve been wanting a bible with an Apocrypha for a while now, so it’s nice that school was the way I came about it. But anyway; I immediately started reading the explanatory / study notes, and feel a hint of disappointment. Allow me to illustrate. Here’s a brief portion of the explanatory note on Genesis 1:1:
1.1: Scholars differ on whether this verse is to be translated as an independent sentence summarizing what follows (e.g., “In the beginning God created”) or as a temporal phrase describing what things were like … (Read more)
Back to School
And so it begins, gearing up for back to school. This post will (hopefully) remain at the top, and will eventually serve as an introduction but for now will fulfill its purpose in saying only that as the school year is beginning, my free-time has greatly diminished. As a result, the time I have available to me to write has greatly diminished. Such that while I’m in school, I expect a minimum of one post a week, so we’ll set the expectation there…
Until I edit this post, that is it … (Read more)
Book Review: The Christian Delusion ed. John W. Loftus
Pages: 422
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Year: 2010
Editor: John W. Loftus
This is my review of John Loftus’ The Christian Delusion This portion of the review will serve as a general and very brief overview of the book, and then in subsequent posts I will more critically examine a few of the claims of the book, section by section (rather than chapter by chapter). I was originally going to do only the critical examination, but that didn’t strike me as the best ‘book review’ — so I’ll do both.
The Christian Delusion (hereafter TCD) is a collection of essays, edited by John W. Loftus (ex-Evangelical and primary contributor to the website Debunking Christianity), which attempt to show that Christianity is a delusion. When I first heard of TCD my immediate thought was, ‘here we go again: another book making massive claims it won’t be able to fulfill’. That this turned … (Read more)
Did you know this about Islam?
An interesting (and factually correct) video I first saw over at Maverick Philosopher on the concepts of Abrogration, Shara’i law and Taqiyya in Islam. It’s worth a watch if you aren’t aware of what these concepts are.
Could I be Wrong?
The following is a fun (well, at least I had fun writing it) dialogue I wrote earlier today on one of the forums I’ve recently stopped regularly frequenting. It concerns the question ‘are you willing to admit you might be wrong?’ The dialogue was written in reply to someone who disagreed with me (did not think such an admission should be made).
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Characters: Socrates, Glaucon
Setting: After speaking with Euthyphro, Socrates is stopped by the Sophist Glaucon, a first year philosophy student who thinks he’s learned it all. Glaucon has heard the accusation that Socrates is corrupting the youth, teaching the young about ‘the God’ and denying the gods of the poets. Glaucon proceeds to examine to Socrates.
Glaucon: Socrates, much has been said of your new god — tell me, how did you come by him? Fancy or intoxication?
Socrates: Examination, of course — “following the argument … (Read more)
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