Raf

One person in this conversation is actually a naturalist by definition. The one bloviating about what naturalists would know, while saying something no naturalist would say, is not that person.

Um. No. Not without a clear definition of what you mean by born again. No naturalist would say this meaningless drivel

It was mishearing the lyrics. Next song: When it almost seems too much I see your face and sense the grace And feel the magic in your touch

I used to call this song "Aunt Bunny Love." As opposed to "Can't Buy Me Love" by The Beatles.

Naturalism is a motive for humanism. You can be a naturalist and a nihilist, but I can't imagine any humanist would put up much of a fight if you equated humanism with naturalism.

Less polite than Sweeney but still entertaining. I actually laughed at this BEFORE my deconversion, but it resonates more now.

Same goes for a being "outside of time, space and matter."

I think the best I can do is point you to reviews that capture how this made other people feel. https://www.amazon.com/Letting-Go-God-Julia-Sweeney/product-reviews/B001J21JRQ

This has always been my favorite deconversion story. This is Julia Sweeney, who played the Androgynous "Pat" on Saturday Night Live.

Yeah I don't know what this means.

Nobody goes through deconversion. They only realize they've gone through it. We don't set out to lose faith. It just happens and we realize it almost after the fact. Deprogramming imposes a change of belief from without. Deconversion takes place within. It is slow and steady right up until the end, when the cognitive dissonance between what you believe and what you call yourself becomes unbearable. The final "decision" is conscious, but it's after-the-fact. By the time you call yourself an unbeliever, the believing is long gone. My entire journey played out in front of all of you. You can see it in the arguments I made and in the arguments I stopped making. Afterward, there was a period of reflection, retracing steps, realizing where, when and how things changed. Anyway, just some thoughts.

"When you have ruled out the impossible..." There's the rub. Nothing about the origin of the universe as it is known today makes sense to most people, especially not laymen. I've read renowned scientist after renowned scientist try to explain it, and my mind cannot grasp it. Science is funny that way. Imagine you're at a point in space and you send two objects in opposite directions, both at the speed of light. One object goes "east" at the speed of light for one year. The other object goes "west" at the speed of light for one year. When that year is over, how far apart will those objects be? Two light years, right? Right. So what is the relative velocity of those two objects (in relationship to each other). It should be 2 times the speed of light, right? But it's not. It's still the speed of light. How is that possible? I HAVE NO IDEA. But I do know it is correct. And THAT is why I am not an astrophysicist. Because I can't get that to make sense in my head. Relativity changes our normal understanding of the way natural laws are supposed to work. "When you have ruled out the impossible..." When it comes to the beginning of the known universe, I DARE YOU rule out the impossible. SO much easier said than done. How did nothing create everything without a Creator outside of time, space and energy? No idea. I have yet to see any evidence the universe was EVER in a state of "nothing," but even if it were, that "nothing" became "everything" is MORE probable than a being outside of time, space and energy sitting around forever and ever and ever without origin and without beginning before finally deciding to do what he always knew all along he was going to do! At some point our understanding breaks down. Whether it breaks down at the dawn of the universe or the dawn of a deity, it breaks down. We KNOW there's a universe. We surmise a deity because, what, we can't account for the beginning of the universe? OK. We can't account for the beginning of the deity either. So can we then surmise the existence of a superdeity, a God's GOD, to account for His existence? Great, let's do that. So now the universe has a God. That God has a GOD. But why stop there? Clearly, GOD could not have come from nothing. Maybe GOD came from GgOoDd, who came from GGOODD, who came from... Turtles all the way down. We have not established the existence of the first God, much less His,HIS, HhIiSs or HHIISS! Eliminate the impossible? I DARE you? But we DO know the universe exists. That it came into existence is evident. What happened before that? We have no idea, and any speculation is just that. "Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." The elimination of the impossible has not been established, and the inclusion of a deity in the field of "whatever remains, however improbable" has likewise not been established. Far from it.

Doctrinally, I'm inclined to agree. That Jesus is quoting a Psalm seems far more likely [and in keeping with his character] than the notion that he cried out a similar but not identical phrase with no scriptural foundation.

"I don't know" is a solid humanist response. I would say that we, as humanists, have no basis for knowing how the earth, the universe and matter came to be. There are multiple explanations that could be compatible with humanism. I'm partial to "Who ever said the universe was ever in a state of nothing?" On another note, I think the realization that we are one species among millions living one one planet among trillions circling one star among trillions and that there is nothing cosmically special about us... I don't know about you, but I would consider that position as far from "arrogant" as can be conceived. It's certainly less arrogant than "the creator who shaped the rings of Saturn and makes it rain diamonds on Jupiter has a deep interest in where I put my penis."

On the substance of that portion of the discussion, I don't see why it would be so strange to have an unbeliever ask a believer to take a deeper look at scripture. Why wouldn't we? It's from a deeper look at scripture that we realize the evolution of Yahweh as a character (we would add "fictional" to character, but that would be presumptuous). It's from a deeper look at scripture that you realize the cosmology of Genesis is incompatible with what we know to be true. There is no firmament (big solid wall) holding back water from the sky. I personally WELCOME in depth analyses of scripture. What I don't accept is ad hoc explanations that force scripture to say things it doesn't say. The firmament is not "the expanse" or "the universe." The Exodus from Egypt was not a secret prediction that Jesus would spend a couple of years as a baby in Egypt. The "virgin shall conceive and be with child" has nothing to do with the messiah. When you take a deeper look at the verses that are supposedly fulfilments of old testament prophecies, you will find more often than not that the prophecies are not talking about the messiah at all. Oh but they're types. Nope, that's made up.

What I like about the Humanist label is that it places the emphasis on what we believe while merely implying what we don't. That someone is an atheist only tells you what he doesn't believe. A humanist is to be distinguished from a nihilist, who believes life is ultimately meaningless. I personally believe nihilism = humanism + time. I'll agree with nihilists a billion years from now, but not today.

I consider myself humanist as well. Since there is no hierarchy in humanism, no one really gets to define it. This website gathers various definitions that permit us to ascertain some kind of consensus. For me, it boils down to the following: * No gods (or devils) or spirits, etc. * Morality is derived from human experience and based on both empathy and the greater good. * Humankind is responsible for its future and well-being. There's much more to it, of course.

By now it should be clear that Charity's answer would be the same as mine: These incidents never happened.

Folks are certainly entitled to those beliefs, but as Christopher Hitchens once said, "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." The new heavens and new earth are an assertion. Accusing people of being blind to them is a convenient way of sidestepping the fact that there is no evidence in favor of the assertion. Perhaps we are blind to the new heavens and the new earth for the same reason we are blind to pixie dust and the Loch Ness Monster: They are figments of the imagination of human beings. There is an end to our world here in the physical. But that doesn't make the spiritual more important unless the spiritual can be established to exist. I remember writing in another thread (and in a comPLETEly different context) that if you step back far enough in time, you can dismiss and minimize just about any atrocity, especially those committed in the name of a god. So God tells you to kill a baby, and you do it, figuring the baby gets eternal life in heaven/paradise, so from the eternal perspective, how much harm did you REALLY do? Yeah, that's a problem there. And it's not academic. Don't make me look up the verses where God commands Israel to kill heathen babies, or the honest-to-evilness exposition by the contemptuous William Lane Craig who argued with a straight face that the real victims of that episode were the Hebrew soldiers who had to carry it out. [Yes, he really said that. No, it's not out of context. Yes, he was serious]. Anyway, it's a LITTLE unfair to cman to make this point in response to what he posted, as I am SURE his meaning was much more benign. Nonetheless, I am compelled to respond with my reasons for rejecting the words of that post. [I re-read this post and I seem a little harder on cman than I intended. I hope I can convey that while I disagree with what was written, I do so respectfully, and my heart is to explain why. Things got a little hairy between us a couple of weeks ago and I am not intending to resume any hostility that I previously exhibited].

I think what believers don't realize about stories like this is how capricious, whimsical and arbitrary it makes God look. "See, he did it for so and so!" And all it makes us realize is the number of times he did NOT see fit to intervene. He has his reasons. Who are we to question? Yeah, we have every right to question. We are the recipients of failed promise after failed promise. He's lucky we think he doesn't exist: it's literally his only redeeming quality. Once you've eliminated his existence from consideration, it's impossible to be angry at him. It's impossible to hate him. Suddenly it's just ... the world looks exactly like you would expect the world to look if there were no God. "I survived a crash that killed three people! Praise God!" Do people who say such things even hear themselves?

"I wouldn't argue." Because it's not worth it. Chockfull thinks my answer fails to consider a possibility. I think Chockfull's position is batcrap crazy [heh heh heh]. Nothing to argue. We disagree and neither will budge. Who wants tea?

And I would not argue with that response as far as foreshadowing is concerned. I would argue in the sense of fulfilling prophecy, like the verse about the virgin beIng found with child.

First of all you are free to look at these verses any way you want. If you're asking for my response, I will offer it: Foreshadowing is a deliberate literary device. You would have to ask yourself whether the authors/writers actually intended the one to foreshadow the other. I contend they were human authors and had no such intention.

Actually, no. There was a hunt for reliable information about the fates of the apostles, but almost all of it was based on conjecture (including Peter and Paul's deaths in Rome, though we at least know Peter and Paul existed). Some apostles had multiple executions. In short, the best evidence we have for the resurrection, for which there is no evidence, is the fate of the apostles, for which there is no evidence.

yu vThe red thread is, um, how to put it politely... Bulls hit. It's a way for Christians to force their interpretation of scripture onto the O.T. when it's just not there. Like that verse about "he shall be called a Nazarene," which had flupall to do with Jesus. Yeah, the song in Psalm 119:54 his not Christ. Neither is Hosea's latter rain