Hi meekerdb As you observe, beliefs can be slippery, because reason is the devil's whore. That's why we Lutherans rely first on faith (trust in God). Second on the Bible.
[Roger Clough], [rclo...@verizon.net] 1/12/2013 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." - Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2013-01-11, 17:42:15 Subject: Re: HOW YOU CAN BECOME A LIBERAL THEOLOGIAN IN JUST 4 STEPS. On 1/11/2013 2:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote: On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 11:25 AM, wrote: In a message dated 1/11/2013 2:27:33 AM Eastern Standard Time, jasonre...@gmail.com writes: 1) Choose some religion, it doesn't matter which 2) Find an idea some adherents of that religion put forward but almost no one seriously believes in or is easily shown to be inconsistent 3) Assume that because you have disproved one idea of one religion that all ideas found in all religions are false and/or unscientific 4) Bask in the feeling of superiority over those who are not so enlightened Jason Ok, so in Darwinian fashion you sort through hundreds of faiths, so what happens when you cannot dissprove a religion? You sort them down till you hit a toughie, does that make it automatically correct, or is it the intellectual limitation of the sorter? Your Basking, is angering many non-believers, even. Witness Higg's criticism of Dawkins. Believers, Jason, I suppose will merely, pray for your soul (poor lad!). Perhaps if you decided to create your own religion, that couldn't be disproved, based on physics, or math, you would be coming up with the best faith? Then we could all be converted to being Jasonites. Or Reschers-whichever you prefer? I'm nor sure I understand your point. My point was only that John's adherence to atheism, which he defines as belief in no Gods, is less rational than someone following his 4-step program to become a liberal theologian. In particular, it is the above step 3, rejecting all religious ideas as false without giving the idea a fair scientific evaluation, which is especially problematic. John is perhaps being prescient in turning a blind eye to these other ideas, as otherwise we might have the specter of a self-proclaimed atheist who finds scientific justification for after lives, reincarnation, karma, beings who exercise complete control over worlds of their design and creation, as well as a self-existent changeless infinite object responsible for the existence of all reality. He would rather avoid those topics altogether and take solace in denying specific instances of inconsistent or silly definitions of God. But your parody fails as a serious argument because the ideas put forward by *almost all theists* include a very powerful, beneficent, all knowing superbeing who will judge and reward and punish souls in an after life and who answers prayers. Now some, far from powerful, humans with far from complete information, eliminated smallpox from the world. God therefore must have had that power and simply chose not to do it. So if any very powerful, very knowledgeable superbeing exists, it is not beneficent and not an acceptable judge of good and evil. These are not just a peripheral idea of theisms and it's falsehood is not a minor point because all theism insist that these ideas are definitive of their religion. John didn't say that all religions are false or unscientific. His point was that you can avoid those attributes by becoming a *liberal theologian* - and incidentally that nothing follows from liberal theology. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
