A lot of young people, especially if they are fans of hip-hop music, think the best car speakers are the ones with the biggest subsonic boom….

I’ve said that faith and reason are not at odds.

You now clarify that, according to your inferences, they are at odds because faith does not rest on “logical proof” or “material evidence”.

Earlier you declared that logic and evidence are incomaptable with faith.

In short, you are playing in a tiny sandbox and constructing toothpick fences around sandcastles built by your shoveling sand into buckets and upturning them.

F. Rottles on December 27, 2007 at 4:23 AM

Faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

I think your problem is that you don’t understand what the words “faith” and “reason” mean and what is implicit when both are mentioned. When you talk of faith in the context of religion you are also talking about the leap of faith all religious people take in believing in their certain deity. In regards to the Christian religion there are a few basic principles: 1) God exists 2) God is good 3) God has a plan 4) Human beings cannot know God’s plan. A leap of faith is needed for all four of those steps, and I’m sure you can look up what “leap of faith” means on your own.

Now you’d add that logic and evidence, along with reason, are incompatable with faith.

Already you appear to be announcing universal truth based your “system of logic” that, presumably, is exclusive to the anti-theist. If it is exclusive, then, it comes with a built-in bias, right?

Afterall, I’ve said that reason and faith are not at odds but you insist the opposite must be true.

Or have I misread your comment?

Ah, a leap of faith, as you say, but not as I said.

It’s the same thing. Don’t try to mix faith and reason when the premise of your beliefs is that there is an invisible being who created the universe and has a plan for all human beings on this planet.

please unpack that statement to make it clear that you are indeed speaking with reason rather than faith in your own bias alone.

F. Rottles on December 26, 2007 at 10:58 PM

Do you mean how reason and evidence have shown the obvious contradictions in Genesis and throughout the rest of the Bible? Or do you honestly think that if someone doesn’t believe in a supreme being watching over them they are using a wildly biased system of logic?

A leap of faith by definition defies all reason.

Ah, a leap of faith, as you say, but not as I said.

It really is amusing to see those of a certain faith claim to be reasonable when they admittedly abandon reason to believe in a god they’re biased towards.

Since you said that after quoting from my comment, please unpack that statement to make it clear that you are indeed speaking with reason rather than faith in your own bias alone.

Hitchens may be the de facto leader of America’s atheist hawks but he’s unwilling to make the concession that Harris does, that while all religions might be equally untrue, not all are equally dangerous.

The discussions of reason and revelation, here and elsewhere, usually seem grounded in an assumption that the truth (whatever it is) isn’t dangerous. It seems possible that some truths are more dangerous than some falsehoods. It also seems possible that a given set of opinions, whether true or false, is dangerous in some ways and yet salutary in other ways; dangerous when held by some and not when held by some others; and dangerous to the believers and salutary for their enemies, or salutary for the believers and dangerous to the unbelievers. Given the vast, longterm success of the great popular religions, it appears that many sorts of lies are quite salutary. Maybe free inquirers into truth should inquire again into such strategems as camouflage and parasitism, in case the world is going to keep going as it usually has in the past.

The athiests here have done a little too much to justify the stereotype of athiests.

A statement for the ages.

the faithful do not place faith and reason at odds.

F. Rottles on December 26, 2007 at 6:32 AM

Wha? A leap of faith by definition defies all reason. It really is amusing to see those of a certain faith claim to be reasonable when they admittedly abandon reason to believe in a god they’re biased towards.

WillBarrett on December 24, 2007 at 11:07 AM

BELLICOSE M-Fers ??
BATSH1T CRAZY ??

WTF?

Can I get a “WOOOOOOO”?

/wrestling reference

The timing of their video release made it topical, I suppose, and yet you had initially resisted posting it. You said that you felt provoked by Graham’s column which “rang in the season”.

If it was not Christmastime, would you have hesitated to post the video? In what way did you become obligated to post it at this time rather than later, if at all?

At first you said you did it because the NRO had “extended the middle finger to athiests”. Apparently, you perceived an insult in Jennifer Graham’s column. What insulted you, if anything?

You said that by posting the video, you would return the gesture. But later you said you intended no insult by extending your middle finger. Howso?

You said:

It’s more that I’m strapped for content and this dropped in my lap yesterday. Although I figured someone would accuse me of [poking the faithful] [...] Like the Horsemen say at the beginning of the first clip, religious people love to feel offended. I expect this thread will provide another example.

You imputed motive to those who felt offended. They love it, you said. But you asked others not to impute motive to you.

Some did say they were offended, and gave their reasons, in discussion of the subject. But you hinted that discussion was predictable and uncalled for. Even thought what the four horseman said in their video was cliched and fraught with mischaracterizationis.

You spoke of your being obligated to post this video and you spoke of your readers not being obliged to read what you posted. Did you post it to discourage people from watching the video? Of course not.

Some readers chastized others for presumably not watching the video; but most of those who noted the perceived insult also watched the video. The athiests here have done a little too much to justify the stereotype of athiests.

Meanwhile, it appears you underestimated when you said that commenters were just playing “the aggrieved victim”. Minus your express, and calculated, intent to insult, they ought not to feel offended by an extended middle finger timed just so?

But, doriangrey (the particular commenter you had quoted and replied to) had said, at the outset, that he understood you. That given your temperment and purpose here, you couldn’t resist. But he’d forgiven you. Later, with less irony, he said he was not offended but was rather amused by your post and by your subsequent comments. He had good things to say about athiests in general.

I thought that commenter was merely pointing out that your ironic tone, and pose, only thinly obscured the irony of your going tit-for-tat based on what you, as an athiest, (mis)perceived to be an insult by Graham.

Maybe you were just playing the victim (without actually feeling a middle finger had been extended to athiests), in your opening remarks, but later you seemed to earnestly breath life into that role.

This became very obvious in the following part of your exchange.

Allahpundit:

I apologize for posting this video of a quiet, civil conversation about religion which you’re not obliged to watch. [...] I’m not offending anyone for sport. You’re imputing that motive to me just because it fits your stereotype of an atheist and makes us a tad easier to demonize.

doriangrey:

As well you should [apologize], this is no quite civil conversation, its a very calculated intentional insult to those of faith. It is every bit as poignant as those of the Christian faith sitting around having a quite civil conversation discussing how atheists will spend eternity burning in hell.

Allahpundit:

Saying “I don’t believe this is true” is tantamount to fantasizing about infidels being tortured? If you say so. In any case, I’m not offended by talk like that. You’re welcome to it in this very thread if you like. You won’t be banned.

I suppose that for an athiest, the thought of Heaven and Hell must be trivialized as “fantasizing”. All the better to “demonize” the faithful.

The way you put it, four Christians, sitting around and quietly discussing Heaven and Hell might as well be torturing athiests.

At the very least, your (mis)characterization would suggest that these Christians, by virtue of their devout faith, muat find personal satisfaction, even pleasure, in grabbing the nearest athiest into their clutches to punish him for his disbelief.

But that’s not how such a discussion would go, as surely you must know. I mean, you would give your Christian readers more credit than that, would you not?

If four Christians (of comparable learning and firmness in their convictions as are the four “horsemen” in theirs, in the video you posted) were to quietly discuss that subject, they’d be sincere in their compassion, charity, and in their self-deprecation. They would not stand as judges in the afterlife, much less as torturers in your neighborhood today.

That you could so breezily make such a mistacharacterization is just an example of how athiests tend to provoke out of sloppy rhetoric and even sloppier thinking about faith. You presented a stereotype of the uncouth unbeliever who thinks he knows more about the faith of others than they do.

Your protoyptical Christians would not not “fantasize” about seizing an athiest to inflict pain and misery on him. Such a bloodthirst, or such a crime, would damn them. I doubt that you could doubt that.

You might call Hell a fantasy, but the faithful do not place faith and reason at odds.

You might call it a fantasy about torturing you but their contemplation of the consequences of a life of studious disbelief is not a trivial matter that they’d decide for you.

On the other hand, meditation on the subject of the Hell can, and does, restrain the tragic human tendency toward unjust violence — a tendency to which all of us (of faith and of disbelief) are not immune.

Now, is this is the sort of discussion you sought to provoke by posting that video?

Is there anything in that video that the various athiests who have come here to comment would disagree with?

Boy, if he gets nominated, we are in trouble…

ColtsFan on December 26, 2007 at 2:00 AM

But God would love you, and Mojave Mark too :)

You ask less of a God than you would of a used car salesman.

MB4 on December 26, 2007 at 1:59 AM

I think the Argument from Reason, as discussed in earlier posts, is a helpful start for the question of God’s existence.

Concerning God’s nature, I just believe that I do not call the shots here. If I did, then God “would be a God made in my human image,” which is not a God at all.

I don’t want the Huckster either.

I said he as I did not want to get anymore on the bad side of The High Reverend Huckster than I already am.

You and I both are already on his bad side.

And that is a good thing.

Boy, if he gets nominated, we are in trouble…

Just my .02.

ColtsFan on December 26, 2007 at 1:40 AM

You ask less of a God than you would of a used car salesman.

Just my two bits.

I’ve seen no evidence of such games, silly or not.

It’s Christmas, I was trying to be generous.

How much time will it take?

God only knows.

p.s. how come you know that he’s not a she, assuming that s/he is? (not a feminist here)

Entelechy on December 26, 2007 at 1:38 AM

I said he as I did not want to get anymore on the bad side of The High Reverend Huckster than I already am. Of course there would be logically no reason for any God to be either sex. Or God could be both sexes. Maybe that is why God is too busy to turn the moon into a triangle.

We as humans may desire God’s nature to act in such and such manner…

But his nature is independent of the question of God’s existence. One could disagree with God’s nature, and yet acknowledge still God’s existence.

The point is:

if I as a Christian agreed with or was comfortable with every single thing God did or every single doctrine, then the familiar atheist objection of: “your God is anthropological and made in your own human image” becomes true and relevant again.

But the Christian God is not made in man’s image.

And I believe it was this book that showed me that Christian Theism does not fall under the Atheist “anthropological fallacy.”

Just my .02.

instead of playing silly games of pretending not to exist.

I’ve seen no evidence of such games, silly or not.

If by some remote chance there be a God and he keeps acting like he doesn’t exist, then more and more people are going to think that he doesn’t.

MB4 on December 26, 2007 at 1:08 AM

How much time will it take?

p.s. how come you know that he’s not a she, assuming that s/he is? (not a feminist here)

**if humans are allowed to demand a God that conforms to their human image, is not that demand (ex. “demand for evidence on human terms”) itself an anthropologically-driven demand?

But for a human to demand that God conforms to their human standard, in effect, causes God and human to switch places.
And that is anthropology 101 all over again. And to be consistent, the atheist must reject that as well.

ColtsFan on December 25, 2007 at 9:05 PM

No one is demanding anything.

Just what should be for a god a very tiny itsy bitsy little simple request that he at least have the common courtesy to at least demonstrate his existence anyway instead of playing silly games of pretending not to exist.

It would be for a god who created the whole universe just a simple thing to say change the shape of the moon to that of, let’s say, a triangle. A square would be OK, nothing fancy would be needed. If God created the universe in 6 days doing that should take less than a second. I mean how busy can God be these days anyway? What is he doing that he has not even a second to spare? He can’t be spending all his time watching soap operas or football games.

This god and the non-existent have much in common. No one can ask anything of either, not even what would be for a god an incredibly easy demonstration of his existance.

If by some remote chance there be a God and he keeps acting like he doesn’t exist, then more and more people are going to think that he doesn’t.

ColtsFan on December 25, 2007 at 11:08 PM

Thanks.

I just seems out of place generally speaking for a group of people who don’t place much credence in creationism to also discredit anthropology.

Just like the Pope doesn’t represent all Christianity, Bertrand Russell can’t possibly represent all of those generally lumped together as Atheists.

Then be a little more specific. Don’t blame “Atheists” for a Bertrand Russel issue, thats like painting all Christians for the inquisition.

Speakup on December 25, 2007 at 11:01 PM

Okay.

I figured Bertrand Russell was a well-known representative of atheist thought.