The Warfare Is Mental

The Genetics Of Sin: A Dialog With Ritchie, Pt. II

October 5, 2009

The Bible claims that Adam and Eve's "original sin" in the Garden of Eden resulted in an extensive punishment that affects all of humanity. Last month, we had quite an interesting discussion revolving around a comment of Ritchie's, originally left for me at Daylight Atheism:

..why should the sin of Adam and Eve pass on to their children, and by extension, to us? Why can't each person be born with a blank slate? God, apparently did not arrange things this way. Instead, He Himself introduced the taint of sin and then blames us for possessing that flaw.

[At this point I responded by saying I rejected Ritchie's claim that God introduced sin into the human race, and Ritchie responded with,]

Who made the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden (knowing in advance that Adam and Eve would eat from it)? Who gave instructions to Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit despite the fact that they had no concept of good or evil and were therefore unable to make moral decisions on their own? Who created the serpent (or Satan, whichever you prefer), knowing in advance the role he would play in man's downfall? Scripture says God, God, God. Whichever way you turn it, the entire episode in Eden is an almighty cock-up and it's all God's fault…

[Earlier in that thread, I had sad, "It's a reasonable argument that sin adversely effects the human apparatus; perhaps the original sin set something in motion genetically," to which Ritchie replied,]

You think sin gets passed on through your genes? Why? How could eating a piece of fruit affect Adam and Eve's DNA? Do other sins affect our DNA too? When we arrest people, should we take a blood sample and examine that for traces of 'guilt' or 'sin' to determine whether they are guilty? Should criminals be denied the right to have children, since their children will be born more genetically 'corrupted' by sin than the children of parents who have committed no crime?

Now, I thought for certain he was roasting me with his last two questions, but Ritchie assured me they were in fact sincere, so I promised him I would address them. We discussed some of these questions in rather excruciating detail in Pt. I, but I'd like to cover the rest of them, as well as add a thing or two to some of those we've already discussed.

What The Bible Actually Says About Salvation, or, The Logic Behind Jesus As The Only Way To God

October 2, 2009

As an aside, I think this could become a useful post series (What The Bible Actually Says About…), because I often find myself running into difficulty in arguments based on differing interpretations of the Bible. Two of TWIM's ~~five~~ seven post series are effectively stalled right now: Rebutting Atheist Universe, and eBates. The former is stalled mostly for lack of motivation, really. I tend to write spontaneously and follow arguments wherever they might interestingly lead, which is why I'll never whine a lick about what those who lack pertinent arguments often demonize as "thread derailment." Freethought has no boundaries, folks.

This spontaneity also means it's hard for me to force myself to respond to David Mills once a week when I'm not particularly feeling it — which I haven't been for a while. eBates and the whole "Power Commenter" ideas we've experimented with haven't gotten off the ground yet, mostly for lagging on my own part I suppose. The first person I invited to an eBate declined, and I just haven't asked anyone else yet. I've expressed interest in having one with Ebonmuse regarding his essay A Ghost In The Machine, but he declined to respond. But let's not digress too much here.

Aristotle’s Argument From Kinesis: An Introduction

September 28, 2009

One reason I haven't posted anything new in over two weeks is because we had a really good thread going off the last post. However, that's not the only reason.

Over the past two weeks I've been rethinking positions I'd previously been more or less 100% committed to. At least provisionally, although I am a believer, I still hold that no successful ontological argument for God's existence exists, meaning I do not believe there is an argument that logically requires a skeptic to accept God's existence as the only response. Nonetheless, I agree that at least philosophically, life requires an explanation — and I agree that depending on how they're delineated, First-Cause arguments can certainly be cogent — but I've just never felt they logically required the skeptic to accept God's existence. Today I'm not so sure.

MiracleQuest Continues, This Time It’s Limb Regeneration: Response To John Evo

July 29, 2009

So, we were discussing the hypothetical scenario of a limb generation, and how much supernatural credence we could assign to such a thing. The blog owner, jim, banned me, because his blog is, in his own words, "not a free-speech zone." He claimed I committed an "egregious breach of honesty above" and demanded that I apologize for it, yet 40 comments preceded his, and he refused to be any more specific than that. I felt such a demand was a bit strange coming from somebody who apparently has no problem calling others things like "mealy-mouthed prick" and "disputational pissant." Further out of line for a rationalist was that jim didn't even offer a testable claim: he never even said where this "egregious breach of honesty" occurred, that I could challenge it. He just deleted my next comment.

How Would You Define A Miracle, Redux

July 27, 2009

What in the world do people mean when they use the word miracle?

The answer is essentially something out of this world.

The problem is, how in this world do we test for that?

Over at SI's, Modusoperandi recently described a miracle as "something that doesn't happen." Okay, well… I had to assume he meant something that rarely happens, but is that really any more helpful as a parameter? I'm no probability whiz, but it seems to me that given enough rolls of the dice, any combination can eventually result.

Another problem with this view is that it just simply assumes miracles rarely happen. Granted, nobody I know has been resurrected, but who's to say any of the countless everyday occurrences where lives are being saved weren't miraculous? Who's to say any of the countless everyday occurrences where lives are being lost weren't malevolent expressions of the phenomenon? Who's to say there's not a supernatural or spiritual component to things like UFO phenomena, astral projection, clairsentience or any of the other strange phenomena human beings experience? If we have no idea what miracles are, how can we move forward and say they happen rarely?

On Evidence & Proof, Pt. III: Questions From Ubiquitous Che

July 22, 2009

I have an open mind (I think) so I am willing to be convinced. I’ll even say that if you show me good evidence, I’ll bow down and worship your god, whoever he may be. But I want evidence. -SI, The Existence of God

MiracleQuest is alive and well again, this time at SI's. So far, it's went more or less exactly as every other discussion of this nature I've seen: hundreds of comments, plenty of insults and not much to mention in terms of reasonable resolution.

SI asks believers to present their "good evidence" for God. Sounds innocent enough, right?

On Evidence & Proof, Pt. I

July 9, 2009

If you've spent more than a passing moment listening to contemporary debates between atheists and believers, you're likely to have heard the claim that there is no evidence for God. I've heard this claim countless times, and I believe that many, most or possibly all who make the claim conflate the two related but distinct concepts of evidence and proof.

I also believe that attempts to resolve the matter are futile without firmly cementing the goalposts before beginning. Whether the responses are single or list, I've not once had an atheist accept anything I've ever suggested or heard suggested as evidence for God, and IMO there's nothing more annoying than, "Here is good evidence," followed by some variant of, "No it's not you douche," only to be repeated ad nauseum.

Power Commenters On DD’s (So-Called) Evidence Against Christianity

June 22, 2009

Here are a few previews from the initial dialog between myself, Lifeguard, MS Quixote and Dominic Saltarelli, continued from here. Brad is currently absent:

…I was thinking more along the lines of there being certain elements in the GH that are decidedly non-Biblical, rather than simply a reduced set of Biblical attributes.(Dominic Saltarelli)

I think that DD could have made that distinction a little clearer…

…it appears DD desired to set a baseline hypothesis without reference to Christianity in order to construct an analytic framework from which to ultimately analyze the claims of Christianity… the GH, as proposed, does not represent a baseline common to all Christian faiths as is necessary to critique Christianity as a whole. (MS Quixote)

Although by no means do I imply my Power Commenters agree with me in full (actually, Quixote does), we can still clearly see that it's not exactly the same story as over at DD's, right?

The Masoretic-Greek Hypothesis: An Introduction

June 19, 2009

The basic concept behind the Masoretic-Greek Hypothesis (hereafter MGH) could be summarized as going to the source. Let's face it: the Christianity that many believers argue is indeed a moving target. Although I think it's an intellectual cop-out, I sympathize with atheists and unbelieving skeptics when they accuse believers of trotting out Courtier's Replies. Who wants to get bogged down trying to harmonize all the differing opinions of mainline religions and lesser sects, each of whom claim to be eating from the same salad bar called the Bible? Certainly not me. On the other hand, I sympathize with believers when they accuse atheists and unbelieving skeptics of gross negligence in their characterizations of religion.

Obligatory Osmosis, Or, My Response To DD’s Evidence Against Christianity, Pt. 2

June 7, 2009

So, I saw an opportunity to combine a response to DD's Loser's Compromise into the ongoing post-by-post dissection of his series Evidence Against Christianity. According to DD,

There’s a particular approach to the truth that I call the Loser’s Compromise, and it goes like this: “We can’t know the truth about X, so let’s just agree that different people are equally justified in believing whatever they like about it.” Considered superficially, it sounds open-minded and fair, because it appeals to a certain live-and-let-live quality that avoids putting anyone in the wrong. In reality, though, it’s a deceptive rationalization, and an excuse for avoiding the truth instead of embracing it.

First, I've never once stated or implied that if we can't know the truth about something, people are equally justified in believing whatever they like about it. What I have said and what I still say is that when two or more hypotheses are equally consistent with all of the available data, although provisional belief in either would be rationally justified, truth claims remain unsustainable until further evidence favors one hypothesis over another. Truth claims are entirely different philosophical beasts than rationally justified beliefs!

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