Well if you actually understood that, then explain why you made the clear error of asking for an 'atheistic epistemology', particularly when the actual issue involved a challenge for you to present a supernatural ontology?

Again, atheism is merely a lack of belief in the claims of theism.

Yet your 'system of morality' relies upon a 'transcendent being', so by conceding this you conceding that your entire system is based on an incoherent foundation. This renders all your assertions nonsensical. Some might be concerned by that.

I've already shown why the foundations for your claim are incoherent, you even seem to agree that there are problems with the idea of a 'transcendent being" and yet here you are again just asserting your claims and ignoring the actual problems contained within them...

Ad hominem has to do with attacking a person to undermine an argument. I've not done that, my dear pinky waving friend. I've merely tweaked your nose and deservedly so... funny how its OK with you when you're doing it, but when it comes back your way,  you want to take your ball and go home.... As your mommy ought to have taught you: "If you can't take it, don't dish it out..."

In addition, your second claim here is an outright lie: I've backed up my arguments, whereas you haven't even the common courtesy to demonstrate where I fail to adequately support them. You have no problem merely asserting that this is the case....  do you at least see the irony?

Here, I'll post the argument in question a second time, give you a chance to redeem yourself:

 "But there's an even more glaring error than the ontological problems in his foundation - he goes on to ignore their ramifications.

If man really were in contact with a 'transcendent being' that laid down moral law, then one is saying that geography and culture play no role in the foundation of morals in the first place. Well then, what would be the point of a 'transcendent being' transcending all of reality in order to lay down a moral law that is just going to be reinterpreted through a cultural filter that this creator must also be responsible for in the first place? The same 'transcendent being' would be perfectly responsible for the parameters of existence that allowed for differences in interpretation across culture.

See the problem yet? You'd have to appeal to the same 'transcendent being' as the cause of the problem.... So the theist must steal from secularism to make his argument... he must make the Panglossian error and assume that our world is a given, yet also hold, at the same time, that our world is contingent upon an omnipotent god.

The ultimate contradiction.

Only secular morality can explain differences in morality across culture. Geography, environment, context, zeitgeist, etc., all explain how human need is reflected differently in various moral systems.... There is one foundation that 'transcends' all human cultures: human nature X environment. The most parsimonious explanation is that human character is the origin of similiarites across moral systems, whereas environment and culture explain the differences. The 'supernatural hypothesis' is not only the ultimate violation of occam's principle, it fails to account for the differences that environment and culture explain. To the theist view, the differences in morality across culture are problems, outliers in the data that cannot be made to fit into their 'paradigm'..."

Keep telling that to yourself, it saves you the trouble of actually having to respond to an argument. 

Of course, others will see that I have done more than assert my case.

Oh, and if you really do want some more: 

http://www.rationalresponders.com/christians_must_steal_from_secular_morality

That, in the end, is the key point: if you want to investigate any of these phenomena at all, you must turn some form of physicalism. 

Ah, but recognition of one's mortality is precisely what gives one's life joie de vivre....

You were asked to present a 'theistic ontology, and here you are still blathering away about 'atheistic epistemology'.  Stop pretending that you're doing anything other than dodging the challenge.

This coming from the guy who devoted a paragraph to mocking a typographical error.

Responded to what? Anytime you want to give your 'theistic ontology', give it. I just don't see the point of actually awaiting anything from you, considering that you never back up an assertion.

The points of my argument however are to demonstrate the ontological problems of your foundation and on the contradictions between christian behavior and putative biblical moral precepts. Your assertion is false (obviously a moral system founded on a creator is teleological), and, has no bearing on my argument.

Other than that, it's a good argument.

Again, you've not demonstrated your claim, AND, ultimately, it has no bearing on my arguments.

But other than that, you're on fire here. 

I don't need to deal with your assertions about teleology because my ontological argument undermines the foundation of your claim! You can't even get to the point where you discuss teleology if your very foundation is internally contradictory.

As usual, you assert there's a problem, but you don't ever get about the business of demonstrating it.

That's funny, because I explained my particular usage: It is folly to assume that that there can be an omnipotent creator, upon which everything exists contingently, and yet, to rely on arguments that assume that there are necessary "givens" in the world... the one belief obviates the other.

In other words, you just ignored the argument again.

So you assert, without demonstrating, or illustrating its relevance to my argument. I'd call that clumsy.

My argument concerned the differences in christian beliefs and the implicit beliefs contained in their actual behaviors.

Care to deal with my argument?

Sorry, had to cut you off.... but I don't, it seems no one will...

I don't even see you attempting to deal with my argument.

Here's how you argue a point.

1) Cite the actual argument.

2) Demonstrate flaws within the argument.

No, I'm afraid that's what your post accomplished. That's why you got such a lame response. It's all it was deserving of. As Todangst has shown, your position is incoherant and illogical.

tod:  Ah, awareness of mortality and joie de vivre.  Reminds me of reading "No Exit" and "The Stranger."  Those do give you a serious case of the happies. 

Dodging?  Gracious.  I laid out both the terms and the historical conceptual foundation for my ontological assertions.  I am working under the assumption that you've done enough reading to understand the development of contemporary philosophy.  So I laid out the terms, told you where I got them, and gave you the basis for an informed counterargument.  Should I actually make the counterargument for you?  It seems like you need some help grasping the fusion between ontology and teleology from a theistic existentialist perspective.

Your efforts to "subvert" theist teleology show this.  First,you make a simplistic statement that does not represent the perspective I've articulated for you.  You then follow it with a "particular usage" of the Panglossian error that doesn't accurately reflect either it's original meaning or it's contemporary usage.  Your usage, to put it in more consistent terms, is as follows: "It is folly to believe in an absolute, upon which all things exist absolutely, and still believe that there are absolutes in the world."  There are ways to attack the theist perspective, but your articulation of the Panglossian error both misuses the term and is internally inconsistent.

Argument?  Again, gracious.  Your initial assertion, that Christians fail to recognize their dependence on secular norms, is a defensible position.  I've even given you hints as to how to effectively support it.  Talk to Rook...perhaps he can help you with the historical development of the understanding of covenant in the cultures of the Ancient Near East and the interplay between enlightenment humanism and Protestant ethics.  But the "evidence" in your argument centers on a series of Bible passages strung together with the same contextual obliviousness of a fundamentalist proof-texter.  They don't support your position or develop your argument to conclusion.  There.  I have..again..recognized the validity of your assertion, and noted where it's development is critically flawed.  i recognize that your approach is appropriate for a blogrant to true believers, but it wouldn't pass muster in an intro level course at any competent state college.

arcteryx:  Perhaps you should have another cup of coffee.  I do wish deluded would return to the conversation...he'd made what I assumed to be an inadvertent error that made one of his arguments appear internally invalid. Given his obviously sophisticated and systematic thinking, he's got useful things to contribute.  Troll?  Me?  Nah.  It's your dang bridge.  If you folk are feeling the need to justify a retreat, though, I suppose that rationalization is as good as any.   

vastet:  Yes, it was pretty lame. Thanks for the affirmation!  Tod's doing what he can.  I'm sure he appreciates your support.  Helps with the self-esteem.

tilberian:  Did you forget to put in a smileyface emoticon after your first statement to indicate humor and/or sarcasm?  I mean, I'm into Kierkegaard as much as the next guy, but that assertion...if not intended as humor...is a little frightening in it's disconnect with reality.

Even from a Jesus-mythicist perspective, that statement has no empirical foundation.  The golden rule has been articulated as a central part of Judeo Christian morality since it was preliminarily expressed in the levitical codes (Lev.19:18).  It received further development in the pre-Christian proto-rabbinic tradition, when Hillel and his school expressed it as the summation of the law.  Jesus (or the early Christian stories about him, if you want to be oppositional) articulated it as foundational in both the Sermon on the Plain (Lk: 6:31) and the Sermon on the Mount (Mtt. 7:12).  In the first century, it is reaffirmed in the Pauline tradition in several locations (cf. Rom. 12).  You can argue that it hasn't been acted upon, or that other aspects of the Judeo Christian normative framework have primacy over it.  But that statement is not something you should repeat if you want to retain your credibility as a critic of religion.

Cowpoop aside, an equally valid argument could be made that the reforms of the Vatican were in response to the pressure applied by Protestantism.  You can counter that with an argument from secular syncretism..as todangst should have, but did not...by asserting that the Reformation was simply reflecting the opening of Christianity to enlightenment humanism.  Care to make that case?  You and I are in complete agreement about the direction of Protestantism.  In regressing towards fundamentalism, it is abandoning the revolutionary and dynamic intent of the Reformation, and becoming a calcified and dangerous thing.  In my arguments with fundamentalists, I tend to call them idolatrous...but that term probably doesn't mean much in this forum.

Try telling a fisherman scraping out a living in the effluent-blighted waters of Lagos harbor about the benefits of capitalism.  Or perhaps you can make the case more effectively to a sixteen year old Thai girl who spends every waking moment making plastic crap for Walmart.  Globally, one could make the case that there is more net suffering now than at any time in human history. Further, capitalism is too structured towards consumption to respond effectively to the coming environmental crisis...which it has directly caused.  For all of it's dynamism, the system is, as you say, amoral...or, rather, it works under the morality of profit maximization as articulated by Friedman.

We do agree about the superiority of social democracies in providing a better environment for human existence, but I don't see the same cause.  The reluctance of Americans to develop first-world educational and medical systems has everything to do with the capitalist ethos and the presumption that unfettered market forces should guide every aspect of our society.  I know you disagree with that hypothesis...care to debunk it?

NB: Jung always referred to the "unconscious." The "subconscious" was Freud; he believed it was inferior.  Also FYI "analytic psychology" is the name given to the discipline that Jung founded, as opposed to Freud's "psychoanalysis."

Well Jung himself was essentially a kind of Gnostic and from all accounts believed in supernatural experiences and a nonmaterial consciousness.  But even though he drew some of his symbolism from Christian myth, like many non-Judeo-Christian religions, Jung's own version of religion or spirituality did not require faith.

<tangent> That's one of the big things that has always bugged me about Christianity in particular.  It places such a premium on faith and creates that insidious equation: faith = reward; doubt = punishment.  Adherents seldom bother to ask the key question: Why is faith necessary? </tangent>

But something that even Jung mentioned in his work on alchemy is that the alchemists used their own hermetic/religious system to represent and explain their experiences of altered states, even though Jung himself did not necessarily believe they were experiencing the presence of supernatural beings.  For Jung the line between internal psychological functions and external supernatural beings was never particularly necessary.

Since Jung, many analytic psychologists have found it useful to disregard the question of an actual material existence for Jung's supernatural phenomena and instead focus on the system of symbolism as a useful way of modeling human experience.  For example, it doesn't matter whether the anima figure you see in dreams is actually communicating messages from an actual collective unconscious--it's useful to treat your experience of the anima that way in order to make sense of the event whether it's actually true or not.  

 So psychology--analytic or cognitive--can provide a materialistic framework for cultivating/interpreting all kinds of human experiences, not just ecstatic ones.  I think I would readily agree that experience necessarily needs a framework of some kind if it's going to make any sense of any kind.  But it would still be an error of composition to say that psychology is a religion in this case.

textom:  You're right.  It is "unconscious," although I've often conflated those related thoughts, and have seen the term misrepresented in some of my online readings about Jung.  I appreciate your informed clarification.  I'm curious, though, as to how Jung's own belief in nonmaterial consciousness and supernatural phenomena could not require faith in some form.  Did he ever formally articulate that?

Your tangent is an interesting one. I think you've expressed faith as it's understood by most American Christians.  But doubt is an essential component of faith.  If you are unquestioningly certain of something, you do not have faith, which is more akin to trust than to empirical certitude.  In that sense, I think most adherents to religious systems are just that...adherents to a system.  They are not faithful.

Bah. I meant Kant of course. Hey they both start with K.

The idea of the rule is present in Babylonian writings from way, way before Christianity. It is a common sense moral rule deriving directly from our innate sense of compassion and needs no religion to articulate it.

I will argue that other aspects of the Christian normative framework have primacy over it. In fact, it is very much a buried feature of the Bible, obscured by page after page of instruction to smite thine enemies and do as God says, not as he does.

Sounds right to me. Either way, we only see progress in religious thought when it is pushed from without. If it weren't for Enlightenment humanism, we'd all still be burning witches.

Actually, I've seen that exact point made on another atheist board before. By holding the Bible up even above their consciences or their prayerful communion with God, fundies are certainly guilty of worshipping the thing itself rather than the God that is supposed to lie behind it.

Oh spare me. Let's talk about the generations after generations of peasents all over the world who spent their entire lives toiling from dawn to dusk so that they could eat after their feudal masters took everything else in taxes. Who had life expectancies of maybe 30. Who were illiterate, to a man. Who were put at the front of armies and driven like cattle into the front lines of the enemy. I could go on and on, but for most of human history, this was the reality of life for 99% of all people on the planet. This was the society created and supported by the religions of the world.

Of course, most of the people in the world still live only slightly better lives than this. But almost everyone's life is somewhat better, if only in the elimination of disease and the increased availabiltiy of food. And, for large swaths of the world, life is now completely unrecognizable - a real heaven on earth, you might say - for even the lowest members of society. 

Come talk to me when global capitalism has had as much time to work as religion has had. At the present rate of progress, poverty as we know it will be gone in a few hundred years.

If the price of avoiding the ever-approaching environmental crisis is to return to the benighted misery of the religion-dominated society, I can say very conclusively that the cure is worse than the disease. I can further guarantee you that, as soon as people are able to attach value to avoiding global warming, capitalism will be the strongest force driving a solution. We are already seeing it in the proliferation of hybrid cars.

I don't know how to say this gently so I'll just say it: Americans are stupid.

They didn't used to be. Prior to the World Wars, Americans had one of the best public education systems in the world, and led the world in literacy. But over the past fifty years this thing has grown in the culture where it's considered more important to be a lot of things before being smart. Rich, popular, good at sports...and religious. The message in movies and television has been that it's OK to be dumb, as long as you have faith and charisma. Forrest Gump - perfect example. In fact, people who are too smart are portrayed in popular culture as being annoying nerds and ultimately incapable of accomplishing anything worthwhile. I can't think of any source for this anti-intellectual bias except for the constant admonishments of the evangelical preachers who say quite clearly that people should beware of too much reason and analysis when it comes to God and that excessive thinking can only lead one astray.

I don't want to make the mistake of claiming that the America in TV and movies is an accurate portrayal America on the streets, but if my travels in the US have shown me anything it's that if anything the real situation at ground level is worse. Even people in intellectual occupations like engineering (who I dealt with) seem to go out of their way to avoid sounding like they are smart. Does this mean they are dumb? No. But it means that they are conscious of a cultural prejudice against sounding or looking intellectual.  

In the presence of this mentality, the democratic will is not there to spend money on schools. Which fuels more ignorance, and more devaluing of education. Which fuels greed, sloth, violence and a multitude of other deadly sins.

I have a little review of Jung here:

http://www.candleinthedark.com/jung.html

And yes, Jung feels that the mere personal 'unconscious' is less 

significant than the collective unconscious 

I'm slightly more awake now, so I think I can finally comprehend this. And instead of trying to figure out what the hell is going on in the rest of this thread, I'll just address the OP.

The Cogito is a rather convincing reason for our existence, although it can easily lead to the whole "objective reality" and solipsist bullshit. But it doesn't necessarily prove dualism. You seem to be caught up in a dualistic mindset, where the "brain" and the "mind" are two separate entities. But there is no reason to think this. Our "being and existence..that light behind our eyes that perceives and knows and irrefutably is" doesn't have "less reality" than a rock or DNA. Our existence can easily be summed up as our brain's interpretations of sensory input. Now I know Descartes doubted the senses, leading to "Je pense, donc je suis," I fail to see how that irrefutably supports dualism. It seems quite logically and physically possible that the "I" that thinks is the brain. And that's much easier to prove than trying to find the "soul" or the "mind."

I think your last statement sums up nicely what you're talking about, including the glaring error in reasoning it commits. It is very very difficult, near impossible, to scientifically prove that consciousness has a "higher" source, and our being is a logical absolute. But why must the two be connected? A worm's existence is a logical absolute, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that it has a consciousness, a sense of self. Because we exist does not mean that our consciousness is not caused by the firing of neurons. I fail to see how that is a logical connection.

rex:  I'm sorry I neglected your post from the other day...the full court press from todangst made me miss it in the flurry of his posting.  You absolutely should read Russell.  Both Kierkegaard and Tillich...and anyone whose actually thought about it...would assert affirmatively that the second option requires faith and ecstatic experience.  Kierkegaard would describe it as a leap, and Tillich as a state of teleological concern, but however you slice it, the absolute is not attainable any other way.

tilberian:  That's alright.  We all make errors.  Unfortunately, that you were referring to Kant's deontological imperative doesn't make your statement any more true.   Your subsequent statement makes more sense, and I'm afraid it reflects the way that many Christians approach the texts.  Fundamentalism in particular assumes that every verse has equal value, rather than seeing...from context and the assertions within the texts themselves...that there is a hierarchy of authority within the Bible.

I think that science and advances in medicine have contributed greatly to human welfare, and I...with you...am fearful that the claims of literalism will stifle development of possible responses to environmental degradation, pandemic disease, and the crisis of global poverty.  With you, I think fundamentalism has contributed greatly to our unwillingness to respect the place of critical thinking and rationality in society.  Unlike the progressive Christianity that held sway during the mid 20th century, we're at a point where "fundies" are dominant...and as they believe that pluralist thought and openness are "bad", I think they contribute to the decline of our democratic society.

tod:  Where to begin? As someone who has worked with church-based programs for the indigent mentally ill, let me first recommend gently that you consider removing schizophrenic from your list of insults.  Were you not going to be responsible for the care of the mentally ill, it might be acceptable as a crass way of implying incoherence.  But if you carry that negative valuation into your internship, it won’t serve your patients well.  To do the good, you have to know the good, tod.

Amidst the thicket of invective and name-calling, there are a few relevant points.  The complaint about "not cutting and pasting"...golly.  I think that’s illustrative of the difference in our perspectives.  In what way is that relevant to developing an argument?  It's a stock methodology for webrants, true.  But I assume you remember what you've written, or are able to go back and  re-read it.  If necessary, I’ll restate it in a non-polemic fashion.  But your method lends itself to choppy, disjointed argumentation, particularly if the parsing is done sloppily or with polemic purpose.  It allows you to ignore the development of an argument..both those you are attempting to refute and your own.  The evidence of overreliance on this mode of argumentation can be found in your "essay" on Christian moral dependence, and I’m pleased that you recognize that a significant portion of it is irrelevant.  That section was the most egregious part of the essay, so it seemed...parsimonious...to focus on it.  As you seem to desire it, I will spend a little more time on the opening section.

You assert that Christians borrow secular morality.  You state the argument, and provide what you see to be it’s conceptual foundation.  You claim that Christianity is amoral because it assumes that morality cannot be founded in contingent existence and actions, but through participation in an absolute.  You first present a thumbnail sketch of the Pauline works/law dynamic.  You attack the Christian rejection of legal frameworks, and then condemn Christians for “blind obedience” to those same frameworks.  You then assume that this dissonance is because there is internal incoherence.  As support, you then cite Kohlberg’s categories, but necessarily undercut stage six as “theoretical” because it implies universality.  Using Kohlberg is an poor choice, because Kohlberg is asserting through his categories that legalism is necessarily rejected in more advanced systems of morality.  Which, as you’ve indicated, is precisely what Christianity does through the negative valuation of adherence to legalistic morality.   Your eager polemic blinds you to that critical inconsistency in the development of your argument, just as it permitted you to include your irrelevant list of “evidence.”  It’s just not a sound, systematic effort.

I’ll assume from your non-response to my giving you a clear grounding for my ontology that you’ve not read Tillich (which is understandable) or Kierkegaard (which is less forgivable).  You’ve also not responded to my deconstruction of your incoherent statement about absolute morality...you know, the one with your “particular interpretation” of the Panglossian error. I assumed you’d call me on it if I misrepresented you, but you did not.  You’re falling behind.  Can’t be that you’re too busy...I’m juggling a job and primary care provision for two kids.  Less time on invective, more time on thought, comrade.

arctyrex:  Glad you’re more awake now, and thanks for getting back to that.  Though I love the elegance of the cogito, I don’t adhere to a dualist mindset either.  What I thought was interesting was the disjuncture between it’s axiomatic irrefutability and the ephemeral nature of consciousness from a materialist standpoint.  Rocks and complex proteins may degrade, or shift from one form to another, but their mass or the energy contained in their mass remains.  A materialist cannot make that assertion about the self.  The materialist self...as deludedgod may have intended to imply before he departed the discussion...does not exist.  

As to lower forms, it’s hard to say where self and sentience is definitively present. Take Sean Hannity, for example.  Neurons are firing...but is there truly sentience?   Seriously, though...when you say a worm’s existence is a logical absolute, are you saying that in the context of the cogito, or from a materialist perspective?

Vastet:  Again, you aren’t contributing.  Perhaps if we talked about something in which you have expertise you’d have something to say.  I wouldn’t want you to feel left out.  <tangent>Have you played the Wii port of Resident Evil 4 yet?  I picked it up this week, and the control mapping is exceptionally good...it adds real depth to the game.<tangent>

rex:  I'd use the term meta-rational myself...it doesn't bear the negative freight of "irrational," and better reflects the position of a theism that profoundly respects the both importance of reason and simultaneously grasps it's teleological limitations.  But then, that's my perspective, so call it what you will.  While I don't consider a sense of purpose that isn't ontologically meaningless to be "no advantage," and think that the dynamic character of faith permits intellectual honesty, the current context of religious expression makes your response quite understandable.  

Given how the dialogue here has developed, I think your suggestion is a useful one.  I'd actually been thinking about opening another forum to specifically discuss the question of meaning that both you and todangst have raised.  It seems to be more potentially interesting than continuing under the framework of the rather abstract Cartesian thought exercise I'd pitched out for y'all's entertainment.  Your thoughts?  Is that meme worth pursuing?

I don't see the point of inventing new synonyms for irrationality, and doing so doesn't change anything. You can dream up all the fantasies you want, and you don't have to justify them to me or anyone else, but they are still completely unfounded. Believing something on faith is irrational, whatever else you may also call it.

You don't get this meaning by just believing in it. There is no basis for an ultimate meaning, and so the meaning that you assign to yourself and imagine to be ultimate is no greater than the meaning which I deliberately create for myself without all the pretense.

I guess it depends on how off-topic the answer is. I'd like to see you answer the questions todangst has posed.

It appears I misunderstood the jist of the thread. My bad.

Pull the other one Tilberian. No such thing as a true capitalist economy even exists let alone a global one. all existing capitalism is hampered and lame. Systematically rationalising freedom and equality out of every politic is what people do, not what theism does, or what religion did in any such exclusive sense. The generalisation is absurd. Secular people do it in secular systems morphing good libertarian ideas into the quasi-feudal lordships and nobilities we have today no less than any other historic atrocity you might mention.

How about you come see me when you find a real lasseiz faire society to speak of in terms of being anything in a hundred years other than another yesterday's feudal decline.

that is true my reading of history is limited, it's many times not my preferred subject. however current events are, and freedoms are in decline. i can only assume, but i believe i do fairhandedly, libertarian society has no claim on that title as of today, religious influence is not to blame the problems of material excess, fear and human indifference are global, not religious. You cite wars of religion, but ignore wars of conquest and indignation, you argue the corruption of the clergy and dismiss the corruption of the secular politics and legislation that kissed its arse. Sorry Tilberian I can't argue history with you but I can say your puritan faith in capitalist politics today is unfounded and mean it.

I won't argue that our standards haven't risen. And compared to feudal history who could? But standards rise and fall, and it's usually down to greedy men in and of themselves, their beliefs hardly differentiate. It's usually the peasants who have any claim to moral assertion no matter the system or the peripheral leanings of the individuals in it's priviledge.

To enhance their own standing, to exponentiate their privilege. This is an example of religion exploited by one and all, it's not an example of faith being exploitative.

Now I won't argue that it has nothing to do with social control, nor will you catch me trying to feign an innocent history for religion. This just would not be the honest thing to do, but I will question the singling out of 'religion' ad hoc as the basis of all corruption. The peasants were religious too, recall, what they didn't have was disproportionate money, power and status. The Libertarian function of capitalism is to recognise, above all, whereever there is a vulgar disproportion there is the apocalypse of your society, and it has failed. You wish to blame religion but who let the religious corruption pervade the secular tenet? Were they not also corrupt?

I know... see my signature.

I'd put you right of it too , actually, I don't think I am nearly saying you would be neo-anarchist, I'm far more that than you, I think. Not surprising I suspect, I'm from Australia where genuine lasseiz faire (she'll be right) has more contemporary sway. As far as moral majorities go, ours is a far more recent uprising subsuming the oppressed generations. And that of itself is a valuable example of the process. Hubris turns jaded, jaded to bitter and the bitter becomes sinister all too quickly. Seems to me the question is right, ie somewhere along this road we demonised and dismantled liberty, but in pinpointing the source of the wronging they are all of a group of blinfolded drunks at a dartboard. When uprising rises in synch from all quarters, each of them seething bitterly at each other, I'd dare say that all miss their target by a good few thousand miles. 

 By the by, you're right that I do informally equate capitalist ideology with libertarian archetype, I don't think I'm that far off, really.

 It seems we agree in principle that power is brokered, and religion is a commodity.

You entail that secular ideals are in a position to continue doing that and I disagree. You say devolve religious influence and my disagreement goes away, and I disagree with that equally. Capitalism is corrupted of its own means; and religion. Dismissal of the former does nothing to solve either problem in my modest opinion. And it is just a modest opinion.  

 Well, Tilberian, I admire your veracity, but my reading of history is very very reluctant, only when required of other study. Sorry I can't be more kindred on that aspect and only offer my singular stand which is basically Mixed Capitalism is corrupted of its own means as well.

I spin a good yarn, LOL. But I believe this is all bare fact anyway. Take a certain world leader for example, Ya he's christian radical of the nth degree, but he's also a spoiled pampered rich brat with a third rate, third grade education aspiring his so called profession. If you say his religious affiliation accreted this vulgarity more than the billions in well placed oil estate it's just a bald-faced lie.  

I say religions don't profit they succumb to disproportioned hedonistic reinvention just like any other ideology. In the end nobody profits because the filthy rich destroy their own civilisation.

I disagree, there is offsetting benefit in religion, only a biased cherry pick says otherwise. However the religious are as biased and as cherry picking as any other party so that's little consolation, I know. On this matter I am definitely with Spear there is a heirarchy of authority in religious doctrine, if it is ignored you're only getting half the picture and it's the wrong half.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for dispelling religion in its corruption, but not without the fair qualifying of its role and contribution (it's not the only madman in the ranks) and not with out a renewed treatise on the fundamental innocence and virtue of faith.  

LOL good one. But to me the big businessman doesn't have anything to do with the ideology apart from being a gaping, gargantuan wound in its implementation.  

Steady and accelerating growth? Beg to differ, Tilberian, the way down is always shorter; I'm not saying it didn't happen, because it did most definitely in the past, but it's a little optimistic to call it steady right now with every man woman and child in western society (the ones who have most benefited) teetering on the knife edge of abominable debt. I'm sure the uberwealthy don't mind that as long as they can move on to greener less demanding fields to sponge from anyway. But seriously, I'm not quite that jaded, really, or maybe I am.. Okay, I can't decide. Sometimes I think I am that jaded and can't wait for the top tier to do itself hari kiri. But otherwise.. no calamities for me ... la la la... *checks in to Pleasant Gardens to do some therapeutic knitting*

In all honesty, Tilberian, and lets be honest, the wealthy countries have millions of dispossessed starved peasants in them. It's not the 1950s and it hasn't been since the 1950s.

I'm sorry to say, if you live in the US the evidence isn't that far from home, but as in all good doomed societies you're taught to believe that the homeless and disenfranchised have brought it all on themselves because they were living in a good freedom loving democracy that would never tread them down or force them into destitution, refuse them health care, a living or just plain human respect, heck you'll probably say they should have started their own business, right? instead of drinking and gambling their life away.

But the thing is all too many never had one of those 'life' things to begin with. Born on cheapside die on cheapside, preferrably in the gutter if you don't let me kick you cause I'm better and more libertarian than you are. And because a magazine has Paris Hilton snogging a tree on the cover you can see the value of you just doesn't come close.

Yeah I'm ranting, I know, you asked for a calamity though so I guess you probably should have expected the answer to come saddled with emotion.

the problem with a mixed economy capitalism is that it opens the door to outrageous inequality.

How can a two metre stride in front of fifty cameras be worth 20,000 dollars when an hour in the sun digging a two metre hole is only worth 10 maybe 15 if you're lucky. That's not capitalism. Its the most vulgar and distasteful distortion of the ideology imaginable, and it's rife, absolutely rampant.

How can a secular lasseiz faire ideology be in a position to say we have this in hand, no you can't have it in hand because you don't stand for that, what you stand for is what already happened.

give it time it will work? work at what? restoring feudal conditions to the underclass as the model gets to thinking 50,000 is more to her taste and the freedom loving agenda of course insists that she has the right to her capitalisation on a demand and carry on taking it from anyone without the means to put up a fight? There is no democracy once the people lose their power. And since when did capitalism stand for money equalling power? but it happened, and continues to happen.

and what answer does capitalism have to everything being owned again, because it is, everything is owned, this is not not feudal, it IS feudal. With strange Kings and Lords who wear suits instead of crowns and have podiums and first class flights instead of thrones. Everything's owned, and the price for wandering your world is high enough, the price for actually wanting to live in it is ludicrous.    

speaking of first class flights, you know planes contribute megatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in superexcess of any other average human activity. Yeah I mentioned Global warming... something had to distract me from my ranting. 

What are you on about? They're selling it!

But at least they have something to sell.  

You said yourself that communities of faith do achieve good in the world. 

I agree with you when you say gathering together to worship is basically wasteful and confers no benefit. But faith itself has many benefits, it inspires the imagination, not that other things can't inspire but why should we dictate what is right for someone to draw inspiration from.

there are timeless meaningful questions explored by faith and in religious doctrine, people have been contemplating existence for thousands of years, ha! so we may say we have it all the right now and what anyone else thought or felt is of no value, that doesn't make it true, and someday, like people of our time search through ancient truths to form themselves, people of our future are going to be interested in knowing. Whether we find it boorish and stupid makes no difference to them. Our human history is wrapped up in faith, and that reason alone is enough virtue.

 tod:  Dagnabbit, man, this portion of the site is called "Atheist vs. Theist," not "Theists give Atheists a Nice Relaxing Massage."  That's why I put this thread here.  Seemed in keeping with the intent of this section of the forums.

So you'd ban posting that challenges you..even on the section of the site that is set aside for such challenges?  Just like you RRSers had my YouTube censored a few months back, eh? Ah well.  At least you're consistent in that respect.

 As for your argument, I did respond to it specifically.  In your subsequent postings, you didn't counter my response...not a peep, not a whisper.  Nothing.  In part, that's why I figured that such a topic..your topic...deserved it's own forum.

A response is not a refutation or an addressing of stated facts or opinions. It's merely a response. I could say the world is flat, and you could say no, and you'd have given a response. It would be an invalid response, but a response. That is what you have done here as well.

vastet:  Sorry for not getting back to you.  My free time has been completely consumed by Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition.  It's bloody brilliant, and totally absorbing.  No, actually, a refutation is a form of response.  If one plays back through this thread, you can read:

1) my providing both the basic terms and the conceptual foundation of a theist ontology, in..ahem..response to todangst's request. 

2) a refutation of todangst's first internally incoherent assertion about theist morality, (the one in which he misuses the term panglossian, against the standards of both Voltaire's usage and contemporary usage.)

3) A point-by-point refutation of todangst's essay on Christian "borrowing" of secular morality, in which I show that both the "evidence" and the initial argument are critically flawed.

4) If you read back to deludedgod's portion of the discussion, he left the forum at the point at which I noted that he was...in effect...agreeing with my statement on the cogito.  It may have been in error, but I never heard back. 

At each of those points in the discussion, no counter-refutation was offered...just silence or invective.  Or "counter-response."  Have it as you like.

Precisely. All he's done is lie that he's responded, when in fact, he hasn't even demonstrated an abilty to recognize what the argument is... and he's now lying over why he'd be banned if it did happen: it would be precisely because he is NOT responding to the arguments, he's merely lying about that.

That is the most awesome picture in human history. :D 

Agree that the political discussion was kind of going nowhere... 

I didn't say that faith has never been valuable. Certainly it has. Unfortunately, the drawbacks have outweighed the rewards by a large margin. And it has not been valuable by adding to our knowledge of the natural world.

The fact that faithful people have made contributions to knowledge in no way links faith to those contributions. Show me where something new has been discovered or understood through faith. You can't, because it's never happened. 

The mind only models the universe, Eloise. We can imagine things that don't exist. That is why we perceive false results and why those results can be useful to us - so we know when we are wrong.

I am not attempting to equate faith and murder, I'm attempting to illustrate the flaw in your reasoning, which is that faith must be good only because it has always been around. If you want to claim that faith has some value that outweighs its drawbacks, you'll have to do better than that.