noisedude

[quote name='Huge Hands' post='314365' date='Oct 25 2008, 09:47 AM']Sorry Kiwi, thought I had done a mix of both. Was trying to be as "this is only my opinion and experience" and non confrontational as possible. Slap on the wrist accepted.[/quote] I thought it was a good post. Certainly the level of musicianship depends on the style of music you're involved in. A friend of mine is in charge of music in a large church near here, and has recently been signed to a record label. Now he undoubtedly has an ear for a tune and an excellent singing voice, all his songs are five-chord tricks in G or E (occasionally different via the obligatory Kyser capo) and sound like Coldplay/Athlete-lite acoustic rock. I can't imagine it's all that rewarding to play really. I can understand how gospel style music could be different.

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313967' date='Oct 24 2008, 04:53 PM']I have the habit of assuming that most people have a degree of intelligence.[/quote] Why would you assume that someone who works for peanuts to spend their life teaching people about God is clever? Come on, Chief, you really can do better than this. I believe you have some good anti-god arguments in you, but these are just sloppy. Vicars are all liars who have a rubbish lifestyle in order to make people believe in something they think is nonsense? How on earth do they stand to benefit?

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313961' date='Oct 24 2008, 04:51 PM']Thats why I stated that a truly agnostic "neutral" would come back with the view that the existence of God is pretty unlikely. Solid academic work about God is pretty difficult when your only evidence is a pretty sunrise or the rantings of a kiddy-fiddler in a dress. Having said that, I'm a hypocrite. Although I don't believe in God, I think its quite feasible that all the evidence re: the age of the universe, age of the earth, evolution is nonsense and that its quite likely that we are living on a 6000 year old planet and are the descendats of Adam and Eve (one of whom coming from the others rib). I'm pretty sure of this because my uneducated parents and a old fella with a dog collar force fed me such sh*t when I wasn't old enough to make up my own mind.[/quote] We weren't talking about philosophy about God, we were talking about Biblical criticism. Whether you believe in God or not is totally irrelevant to the study of it as a collection of writings, trying to find meanings, learning about the authors, corroborating the accepted translations etc etc. Oh, and I don't know a single Christian who believes the planet is 6000 years old either.

[quote name='Josh' post='313959' date='Oct 24 2008, 04:50 PM']If a Vicar is preaching every Sunday and does not have a belief then he/she is a complete hypocrite.[/quote] Of course. But tBBC said they were all living a lie ....... but I don't think he has anything to show that they are any less believers than all of the churchgoers. I know plenty of clergy and I very much doubt they are atheists en masse, so they may be misguided but they aren't liars.

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313949' date='Oct 24 2008, 04:41 PM']Devoting your life and taking peoples money on behalf of a ridiculous myth that has no place in this century. They're as bad as those people who sell bracelets and pendants that supposedly reduce mobile radiation. No evidence to back it up (but not disproven), taking advantage of the mentaly vunerable.[/quote] What evidence do you have that vicars don't believe in God? It's only a lie if they are actually some other religion or atheists and I doubt you'll find many people willing to work for £14k pa on those terms.

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313944' date='Oct 24 2008, 04:36 PM']You think its unfair that people who no not believe in a god, when presented with ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE of the existence of god, conclude that there probably isn't a god??? Yeah, well unfair.[/quote] That's not what I said at all. Read it again and have think about how one goes about writing solid academic work (hint: it isn't by deciding what your outcome is before you've even identified the question).

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313934' date='Oct 24 2008, 04:27 PM']Living a lie like a vicar must be worse thant being a closet transvestite. Of course, the 2 are not mutually exclusive.[/quote] What makes you say it's living a lie?

[quote name='stevie' post='313932' date='Oct 24 2008, 04:21 PM']If I follow your train of thought correctly, agsnosticism is not only the scientific position (= I don't know), it is also the only logical position, given that you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of god. Right? Having said that, I think you will find that most atheists would have no problem accepting that there is a god if there was a viable reason for doing so. They would probably still have an issue with most religions, but that's another matter.[/quote] I dunno mate, I think a lot of atheists are more entrenched than that because the definite absence of god brings in some other belief system, even if it's just as basic as narcissism, lots of people still end up building their lives on it in the same way as a religious belief set! The person who believes totally in self-dependence and autonomy, for example, would have big problems accepting there was a god even if there was a viable reason to do so.

[quote name='joe_bass' post='313907' date='Oct 24 2008, 03:48 PM']Ah right, so contradiction due to different accounts then. What about like actual teachings & beliefs etc though? & with churches do they pick & mix what bits they prefer or find more effective or something? When my gf took me to her church they were talking about the crucifixion & used as you've put it, John 19, as in they talked only about Jesus saying "it is finished". Nothing of the other accounts you listed.[/quote] Basically the Bible is a pretty diverse set of documents written at different times and by different people, to different audiences. The challenge to scholars is to reconstruct meanings with all the contextual information available to them ....... the challenge to normal believers is to work with that same text in a challenging atheist environment [i]without[/i] the tools to really work out what's going on in the books. Three years of theology in a totally atheist university, being taught mostly by non-believers (people who love the study/subject but haven't concluded to believe in it), didn't leave me with any major problems in the Bible that hadn't already been tackled extensively in research and writing. I do think, though, that a large number of Biblical scholars who DO have lots to say against the religion probably had those views before they started work and carried the predispositions throughout their writing. It's annoying because their work is just as biased as the believing critics who set out to give their opinions first and the facts second, but atheists seem to take their words as gospel.

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313674' date='Oct 24 2008, 11:57 AM']Noisedude, you've never met me. Who's to say I'm human? And I created the universe (again, prove I didn't) - is that superpower enough for you? God communicating via a bass forum is as likely as doing it through some hippy in the middle east and a book of questionable origins. And Kant is one.[/quote] It's not a bad effort but, like I say, it's a way off being a good analogy. Keep trying though, because I want to believe!

[quote name='dlloyd' post='313647' date='Oct 24 2008, 11:10 AM']Well, I'm an ex-believer, one who's fallen slightly further than most, but I'll give it a go. There's a number of classic logical arguments: There's the ontological argument which goes something like this: God is a perfect being by definition, and since existence is more perfect than non-existence, he therefore exists. There's the cosmological argument, which argues that God must exist because there must be a first cause. There's the teleological argument, which is the whole watchmaker thing... life and the universe exhibit complexity and apparent design, therefore there is a designer, God. Then there's the moral argument, which states that without God we could not have morality. They're all pretty weak in my opinion. The ontological argument was the one that used to annoy me most. I'm not convinced at all that existence is perfect. The teleological argument and moral argument have become less and less convincing the more we know about biology and the big bang theory goes some way to explain a first cause. Of course, you can take Stephen Hawking's approach, turn all these arguments around and say that God is the laws of Physics... I don't know that you'd want to sing to them on a Sunday. Religious belief is a faith position. One that I refuse to criticise.[/quote] They're all weak in the sense that you don't really prove anything by mind games. That's why we don't know whether we exist or not, there are some weak arguments to say that Kant was right and that we are all figments of someone else's imagination, and there are some other weak arguments to say that he was wrong because, well, we [i]feel[/i] real. Philosophy is fun but doesn't really [i]prove[/i] anything, does it?

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313576' date='Oct 24 2008, 09:45 AM']I can, but because I move in mysterious ways (or some such sh*t) I don't feel the need to prove it. You just need to believe me without a shred of evidence.[/quote] I guess the difference is that we [i]know[/i] you're human (just about, and certainly nothing more ) so we have no reason to believe you're not a delusional weirdo. If we had never seen you BUT we had some experiential evidence that you existed via observation of your superpowers, then we would be looking at a worthwhile analogy.

[quote name='BigBeefChief' post='313567' date='Oct 24 2008, 09:37 AM']Rubbish and nonsense. You're better than that! Can you prove I can't read minds? Or fly unaided? Or turn cheese into gold? Go on, prove I can't.[/quote] Well..... can you??