Pick a Saved Child to Kill instead.
Offline A while back I was debating a theist who told me he would be foolish if he didn't allow his children to die in the name of his faith.
The situation is as follows:
I asked him what he would say if a man came over here from another country, held a gun to his kids' head, and said renounce your faith or he's dead. This man told me
"If he had the gun to one of the kids heads who wasn't saved, I would ask him to pick one of the others that was."
I thought I was just dealing with a regular debate. I couldn't take my hands from my mouth or stop repeating "I can't believe you just said that" over and over. Is there any help you can offer to this guy or little one two punch for such insane conviction? I've listened to your shows and read most the books and am just at a loss for how to go about this.
His blog is here: http://mikeyfsblog.blogspot.com/
Thanks,
[i]You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.
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man o man thats sad, that's why religion must end, that's why the atheists must be better heard and understood, thats why the devil tv must be fixed, thanks for caring bro, the answer is only LOVE .....
Atheism Books.
Within his belief system he is being entirely sensible. You can't debate this point with him on its own as it makes perfect sense to do what he says he will do. Within his beliefs the "saved" childs mortal life is not that relevant if it dies it goes to heaven. The unsaved child will go to hell if it dies but if it lives it still has a chance to get saved and hence eternal life. If we accept that
1-God exsits
2- Heaven and hell exist and
3- Entry to heaven or hell depends on ones "saved" satus.
Then his descision is entirely logical. The only way to shake this is to attack one of the 3 premises above. Luckily they are all readily attackable. But without falisifying one of the above his reasoning is sound.
well I know exactly why he thinks he logical the point of the matter really is that I was talking to him for weeks before that discussion and he managed to completely sidetrack what I was challenging him on and would go on to discredit a position I never took. He dosn't just have unquestioning faith he has unstoppable dance moves.
[i]You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.
error crap
[mod edit:Holy shit! How'd you manage that one?]
[mod edit: A quadruple post?!]
[mod edit: That's really impressive. You should get an award for that.
]
yup, the huge power of brainwash, .... understanding the enemy, good luck to you, we who care are very sad, with a high sense of what is joy.
Atheism Books.
There is a point that I have made for a long time, and this story illustrates it perfectly. The reason that religion is dangerous is that it deludes us into believing a false premise -- that we can take things on faith despite evidence to the contrary. While this may not seem so dangerous at first, the ironic truth is that it leads to the ultimate relative morality!
Yes, I said that religious belief leads to relative morality. Just as they project so many other things onto atheists, theists don't even realize that their absolutes only function within their own paradigms. Since the paradigms are entirely dependent on unfalsifiable circumstantial evidence, anyone can justify any absolute they like -- making all absolutes meaningless outside of individual understanding.
To put it simply, once we have accepted faith as valid, we have absolutely no rational grounds to disagree with someone who says something like the man in the OP. He's absolutely correct. Assuming the faith that he professes, his answer was completely logical.
This is why establishing the validity of ALL premises is so important, and why we cannot allow faith to be accepted in any sense. Moderate faith is just as much a facilitator of this kind of insanity as extreme faith. In all cases, it's a false premise, and invalidates any and all conclusions based on it.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Has anyone here even studied theism? Gone and read about it? Written about it?
So far the only thing that anyone has really offered so far is that:
(A) the man is wrong for believing differently than you
(B) the child is better alive than dead
(C) the man who must choose who dies is insane, not the man with the gun,
(D) Theism leads to insanity
(E) Atheism leads to mental stability
Get your arguments right. If someone isn't a philosophical naturalist that doesn't make them insane, it makes them different. In either case in this scenario a child dies, the man must choose, so he chooses from the standpoint of his understanding of the most fundemental nature of things.
Understand that you put as much faith in a magazine article about "science" as a man might put into a religious canon. When you can understand that ATHEISM is a form of THEISM, and that alternate viewpoints do not alter or prove the virtue of a choice, then rag the decision made in a situation like that.
For all the Act Utilitarianists in the crowd, you know that in a situation like this the results require too much detachement from the situation and it cannot be analyzed. Nihilists out there, it doesn't really matter does it? Philisophical naturalists, understand that without a moral objective, this situation doesn't matter because it could be that the man with the gun is the most moral.
So in the end, the man in question, who must choose who dies, is choosing according to an understanding that is not entirely material, and, while difficult to understand, is just a valid a choice or rationale as any.
For the determinists in the crowd, I suppose it doesn't matter, because the choice was only an illusion.
Anyways, tell me what you think, but please, please do so in a calm, rational manner. If you think I am harping on someone, tell me, don't yell, that makes people sad...
How can you say Atheism is a form of theism? That's a complete oxymoronic contradiction. No one is worshipping any articles in Science as the be all end all perfect divine rule. I don't know why you confuse undying faith in the unknowable with what science is actually about.
Insanity is making a decision about which child would die w/o knowing that its not a decision for you to make. Insanity is not say "Hey, take me instead perhaps? After all I am his father."
[i]You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.
Do you want me to answer your question? Are you happy in your thought that Atheism is not a study of theology?
As soon as you write off disagreement off like that you brand yourself as unthinking as those people who this site dislikes.
Atheism is theism in the same sense that any religion is. It is a study, not a belief. An atheist who does not study and just believes isn't smart, they are an idiot as they put their faith in the words of others. I am not talking about divinity, I am talking about trust. Read some Pascal, Humes or Aquinas to get a feel for what I am saying. I didn't say worship, and all worship means is "to draw close enough to kiss." Being without a god does not preclude the idea of worship or even faith, it is simply placed in the physical instead of the ethereal.
Atheism is Theism because they are both ontological in nature, metaphysical (in the classical sense of the word) if you will. They try to explain the fundemental nature of things.
Don't get mad when someone says something you don't agree with, get smarter.
You obviously haven't been reading the forums. Most of us know more about theism (not just a particular sect, but lots of religions) than most theologians.
Yes. We all have studied it extensively.
Come, and gone, and read about it, and without knowing a single thing about you, I'd bet you a hundred dollars I've read more than ten times as much as you have. And... I'm not nearly the best read person here.
Extensively. Rook's writing a book that's going to be peer reviewed. Have you noticed the section entitled "RRS Authors?" That's just a sample of our work. Most of us write outside of RRS, too.
Reading comprehension is an issue for you? If you read what I wrote, I said that he was correct based on the foundation of his reasoning.
Why don't you try reading my post again.
Seriously... reading is fun, but only when you focus on the meaning of words. IF you rely on the foundation of theist belief, THEN it is logical that the child is better off dead than alive. Who here doesn't believe in faith? That would be us. Therefore, by a process (seldom used by theists in matters like this) known as LOGIC, we can deduce that we don't believe that.
And you've missed the entire point.
First coherent thing you've said.
Second coherent thing you've said.
Now, take off your "All-or-nothing" glasses and think about this for a second. Do you think we're saying all theists are insane, or that all atheists are sane? If so, you need to check your own sanity at the door. That would be incredibly naive and irrational of us to say. (While you're at it, do some research on this thing called projection.)
Every conceivable option is not objectively equal. Different has no value correlation. We must weigh each options on its own merit. Then, we can decide who is sane and who is not.
Thank you for demonstrating why theism is dangerous.
Screw you, buddy. Magazine article my hairy white ass. It takes work to read the actual books, and the journals, and the peer reviews. Some of us actually take the time to do it. Take the chip off your shoulders. Your own lack of education is regrettable, but there are people who have dedicated their lives to learning instead of preaching.
Invest in a dictionary. "A" is a prefix that signifies negation. "Theist" is a word that indicates belief in a god. A-theist is one who is not a person who believes in god. This has been done so many times. Read. Think. Read again. Then think again. Then, when you think you have it, but you still believe atheism is a religion, stop reading books by preachers and read a book by someone who knows something about language or history or philosophy. Then think again.
Your ignorance is insulting.
I was perfectly calm until you decided that you know all about my education, and exactly what I know about science. You've projected your own lack of understanding onto me. Now, before you go off half cocked claiming that I'm assuming things about you, consider this. I know that you don't understand science because I do. If you understood, you wouldn't have said what you did about atheism being a religion, or suggested that I'm foolish enough to believe something just because it's in a magazine. That's god damned insulting.
If you'd like to take the chip off of your shoulder and discuss things rationally without making condescending remarks about what we know or don't know, we can do it, but so long as you've already assumed that we're wrong, there's nothing to talk about.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Horse shit.
It's no more a study than your a-unicornism is a study of the lack of unicorns. Anyone who doesn't believe in a thing's existence is an a-whateverist.
Kiddo, we don't study atheism. We study science, philosophy, history, and math. We are atheists largely because we study the other disciplines. It's simply a biproduct of using logic.
Pascal refuted his own wager. Hume solved the problem of induction. (You didn't finish the book, obviously.) Aquinas has been refuted for hundreds of years. Why don't you try reading something from the 20th century or later.
Uh huh. We've all been to church, and we're all capable of understanding the rhetorical trick of using old or antiquated definitions to obfuscate an otherwise clear question.
Are you trying to be dishonest about the word? Don't be a prick. Semantic games don't work here.
Read. Think. Read again. Think again. READ THIS ESSAY. Think.
Do we start with an assumption?
Fallacies Commonly Employed Against Materialism Refuted
All a posteriori Arguments For the Existence of God Are Intellectually Bankrupt
On the Monoism of the Brain and the Mind and the Debunking of Dualistic Propositions
The Absurdity of the Cosmological Argument
Pascal's Wager
Why the "Problem of Induction" really isn't a problem. (And why theists don't even get it right)
Part 6: Reasoning
Part 7: The Structure of Reasoning
Now. You read, and demonstrate a basic understanding of all of this before you start spouting platitudes again. You don't know what you are talking about. I know this because I do. Until you're ready to carry on this conversation, you should stop writing. You're embarrassing yourself.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I don't know if you've ever felt like you could see every hole and b/s statement someone has made and yet know you can't find the perfect words that clearly express just how ridiculous they actually look and just couldn't find them, but that was me reading this guys responces. Thank you for ripping him a new asshole with logical fluidity that will take me years to master.
[i]You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.
Interesting.
Someone would be hard pressed to have read more than me, but I suppose it is entirely and probably likely that you have indeed read more than me on this topic.
Humes refuted hmself, just as Pascal did (I did read the entire book)
I find it interesting that you think that only the authors of the last 100 years are worth reading.
I also think it rather comical how defensively insulting the people of this page are.
For instance: I offer an idea. Ask some questions, and offered some opinions. In return, I am harrassed for questioning. Forgive me, next time I will simply fall in line and be a free thinker.
Let us instead, being a new portion of debate that does not involve me insulting anyone, or anyone insulting me in return.
Ready?
Let's say that you are in an out of control tram, you notice that ahead on the track are ten workers who will be killed in moments if you do not react. You then see that a single child is on the left path that the tram will take if you hit the track switch and the child will be killed if you take the alternate path. What do you do? Why do you make that choice?
What would an Aristotlean virtue ethicist think?
What would an Act Utilitarianist think?
A Christian Ethicist?
A Muslim Ethicist?
A Philosophical Naturalist?
A Determinist?
Physicalist?
Materialist?
Darwinist?
Kantian Deontologist?
Nazi?
Neitsche?
Bentham?
Just pick a couple and see what would happen.
Why does the choice matter?