@9CJ6CB6Comments2yrs ago

Well then, which god definitely doesn’t help your case

There’s thousands of gods and thousands of religions, and thousands of afterlife’s inside them. All believe resolutely that their god is right, and if you’re wrong, you’re likely screwed when you die. A secular perspective ignores these thousands of conflicting beliefs and focuses on what is empirical, tangible, and practical when deciding the basic rights of humans. The only logical assumption with thousands of conflicting religions, showing no public spectacle from those gods to prove their existence in the first place, is to focus on what benefits humanity as a whole, and what creates the highest degree of freedom and happiness for all regardless of things such as race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or sex. The most overall fairness and accountability is done by biasing no religion as a systemic measure for what is and isn’t okay for human rights. This is true today, even in religions. Most religious sects, especially in Christianity, skirt by certain written rules of the Bible, or add new beliefs, because they believe they’ve been ordained by god to do so, thereby creating controversy on who is right, yet never once does god himself or any miracle prove definitively that their god supports them. Every moment in humanity, every day of religious conquest and conflict was all done in the name that their religious beliefs and their deity they worship is right. Yet never once did supposedly all-powerful religious deities ever show up personally to confirm. It was always humans telling humans that they’ve been spoken to, yet no one has shown proof of that either. This leaves our morals up to our interpretation, and the ideal that we should pay a certain percentage of money is a common and often positively viewed one. Though we believe taxes shouldn’t be too high or too often, most believe it and most have seen success in the implementation of that belief in comparison to the very few societies with no taxation. The rules we, as the people, have set is that when one is a citizen, one is liable to taxes. John Locke was right about a lot of good philosophies, but we mustn’t hug the philosophies of the past and copy them word-for-word because we believe that’s 100% without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt right.

▲▲Reply to this Agree Disagree React Context •••Tell me more Request reference + My feed Report Block user Follow

Expand

6 Replies

@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…2yrs2Y

This Is Why I Believe What I Believe: (Part 1)

Actually, my belief in Christianity is based on the logical Law of Non-Contradiction, LNC, which states that two truths can't be contradictory to one another. You cannot have “p” and “not-p” at the same time. The sky can’t be both red and blue at once, information can’t be both true and false at once. Rocket science, this ain’t.

If you’re willing to sacrifice a few minutes of time to research major religions, it’s self-evidently clear that they are, in fact, totally contradictory to each… Read more other. In Matthew 12:30 (NKJV), Jesus says, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.” In John 14:6, He also says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Clearly, Christianity teaches that all other religions are false. And so does Mormonism. In 1 Nephi 14:10, Smith wrote, “Behold: there are save two churches only, the one is the church of the Lamb of God [speaking, unsurprisingly, of Mormonism] and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church which is the mother of abominations; and she is the ***** of all the earth.” Very loving and tolerant man, that Joseph Smith. Moving on, in the “holy” book of the Muslims, the Quran, chapter 3, verse 85, it says “Should anyone follow a religion other than Islam, it shall never be accepted from him, and he will be among the losers in the Hereafter.” In case you can’t read between the lines, that’s just a polite way of saying that if you’re not a wholehearted disciple of Islam, you’ll burn in hell for eternity. Are you noticing a pattern? All these religions are adamant that if you are not for them, you are against them. So aside from being an egregious violation of the most basic logical laws, a “neutral” position that holds that more than one religion can be true is impossible according to all these worldviews. Not only would a theoretical “middle ground” view necessarily interpret the world differently than all other worldviews – otherwise, of course, it would be identical to one of them – it would logically necessitate that all worldviews and religions other than your alleged posture of neutrality would be false, and their holy books, upon which their entire belief system is based, blatantly false. This would re-create the same alleged fallacy of “either/or” you’ve accused this channel of making (either the neutral worldview is absolutely true or it’s absolutely false) resolving absolutely nothing. In order to accept all worldviews, you have to reject all worldviews but the supposedly neutral one you’ve chosen to take. This channel, in claiming that Christianity is true and other religions are false, did not commit a logical fallacy in any way, shape, or form, but held to a position that is logically inevitable. The choice you now have to make is what worldview you hold to the be the absolute truth – the Bible or some post-modernist cult afraid to label any belief as self-evidently wrong.

▲▲ 1 Reply Link Context •••Agree Disagree Tell me more React Request reference + My feed Report Block user Follow

@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…2yrs2Y

This is Why I Believe What I Believe: (Part 2)

You see, every worldview must rest on at least one major assumption, or ultimate standard of truth, upon which is built every other belief espoused by that worldview. With just a few moments of consideration, this can be proven to be true. For every belief an individual has, however minor, we can always ask him how he knows his belief is true, and he will supply another argument or piece of information in support of his belief. But inevitably we must ask who he knows his second proposition is true, and in defense of the second, our hypothetical… Read more individual must supply a third argument, which we then question, and a fourth, which we may also then question, until, as all chains of argumentation must, his line of reasoning comes to an end, terminating in a belief, or ultimate standard, upon which his entire worldview is built. When we ask him how to prove his ultimate standard, he must necessarily be reduced to circular reasoning, either vicious or virtuous, because it’s impossible for any fact or evidence or argument to precede an ultimate standard – otherwise it wouldn’t be ultimate. An ultimate standard cannot be proved by anything other than itself, or it would not be truly “ultimate.” Thus, when discussing ultimate standards, circular reasoning is inevitable, and not necessarily fallacious. In order to logically debate worldviews, we all make assumptions – the true test is whether, using information after we were forced to assume our ultimate standard, we find strong evidence to back it up. As an example of non-fallacious circular reasoning outside the worldview conversation, consider the following: (1) If there were no laws of logic, rational debate and argumentation would be impossible (2) We can rationally debate and make arguments (3) Therefore the laws of logic must exist. Clearly, this is a circular argument, assuming the existence of the laws of logic in order to argue for their existence, but it is a virtuous rather than vicious circle – as the assumptions it made were entirely necessary, as all rational argument is impossible without logical laws and principles of correct reasoning.

We know that every chain of argument must terminate at some point – it cannot go on forever – because any argument that goes on for infinity can never be completed, and an incomplete argument is irrational and never proves anything. In summary, everyone must have an ultimate standard he assumes to be true, an assumption that may be justified or unjustified, upon which his worldview rests. Obviously the ultimate standard of this channel is God’s word – but you cannot, without being hypocritical, accuse them of being irrational to use their ultimate standard to argue for its truth, as, inevitably, all human beings, yourself included, must have an ultimate standard that terminates in some degree of circular reasoning. The Bible, the Quran, empiricism, naturalism, secularism, science – all are ultimate standards whose adherents accept as the basis of all knowledge.

How, then, do we determine if an ultimate standard is rational or not? Because one’s ultimate standard is the basis for his entire worldview, a standard that simply proves itself is far from enough – any rational ultimate standard must provide a means by which to prove everything mankind can know. It must be indispensably logically necessary to explain all these things. It must also be self-consistent, and found to be justified after it is assumed. And the Bible is the ultimate standard through which we can do all these things.

Take, for example, our faith in the reliability of human senses. Everyone, after all, believes his sensory experience – what he sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells is an accurately representants reality in some basic form or another. When unbelievers are asked how they justify this, most would merely claim, in a completely arbitrary and illogical way, that their sensory organs can be trusted as reliable because they have functioned and proven themselves trustworthy before. In essence, the foundation of their faith in the reliability of human senses is the reliability of human senses. Bible-believing Christians take a different approach, appealing to the Word of God for proof of the reliability of their basic senses, particularly Proverbs 20:12, which tells us that all-knowing and all-loving God created our eyes and ears, and Luke 7:22 and John 3:11, which both attest that we are to draw correct conclusion about the world around us based on what we experience via our senses. In contrast to the arbitrary assumption of the critic, the Christian has this good, rational, and consistent reason to believe his senses are accurate and trustworthy. Of course, this is still circular reasoning – we must, after all, use our sense of the sight to read the text of Scripture – but it is a virtuous circle, as, after the Christian makes his assumption, he discovers his assumption can be logically justified and thus is non-arbitrary. While evolutionists too subscribe to this basic assumption, in their case it is totally arbitrary – in their theory, our ears, eyes, et cetera, have naturally evolved through accident, not by Divine design. But in a world where our senses arose through natural circumstances of Darwinian evolution, there is no reason to put your faith in human senses at all. Thus, while both Christianity and Darwinism use circular reasoning, the Christian circle is virtuous and self-consistent, and thus perfectly logical, while the Darwinian circle is arbitrary and thus fallacious.

▲▲ 1 Reply Link Context •••Agree Disagree Tell me more React Request reference + My feed Report Block user Follow

@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…2yrs2Y

Part 3

The same principle holds true for the assumption that the human mind can reason correctly and think rationally. The Christian trusts that the human mind can think logically because humans are made in the image of God, according to Genesis 1:26-27, and God’s mind is absolutely rational since He is the decider of truth (John 17:17) Since he has revealed some of his thoughts to us (Isaiah 1:18) and commands us to think consistently with His logical nature, according to Isaiah 55:7-8, it is obvious to any Christian that our minds are very capable of rational thought and logical anal… Read moreysis. Again, this is a virtuous circle – it’s impossible to analyze text, such as that of the Bible, without using our mind to think about it and transform the written symbols on the page into words that can be understood. But the circle is virtuous because we made only a necessary assumption and, operating on that assumption, discovered we had good and rational reasons to hold to it. Of course, those who believe our minds were not created by God – those who think an explosion without heat, fuel, oxygen, or even space itself created the universe, and that mankind is descended from electrified soup – have zero reason to make this assumption, though to function they must make it. There’s no reason to believe a brain that is just a clump of cells that accidently formed over billions of years is in any way reliable.

In the Bible, we find our only rational explanation for the Laws of Logic – all logical laws reflect the way God thinks. 2 Timothy 2:13, which illustrates that God cannot deny Himself, demonstrates the Law of Non-Contradiction (as well as numerous other passages I haven’t the time nor the patience to list here). In Exodus 3:14, where God says, “I am who I am” we find a rational basis for the Law of Identity, “if x is true, x is true.” Numerous other logical laws are all asserted and explained in the Bible. The atheist, as you may have already guessed, has no basis for these logical laws – they would merely be the by-product of chemical reactions and random chance. The evolutionists’ capacity to argue against the existence of God thus proves the existence of God.

The last remaining question to answer the question of if another god can account for logical laws, but this requires only a brief glance to give us a resounding “no.” Polytheistic religions can all instantly be eliminated – for if there are multiple gods, which god’s thinking should mankind pattern his thoughts after, which god would be the basis for the laws of logic? Different gods would result in different, contradictory laws of logic, undermining the fundamental nature of laws of logic, i.e., that they are universal and unchanging. The principle monotheistic religions of the world – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – are worth further consideration. As we have already seen, the Christian worldview can account for the laws of logic perfectly, and Christianity is the culmination of Judaism because of Jesus. But the Quran contains numerous blatant violations of the laws of logic, i.e., Allah endorsing the Christian Gospel, in Surah 3:3, and then demonstrating he does not support in Surah 4:157. And any god that has not revealed himself to humanity (i.e., a fictional god or a deist creator of sorts) cannot justify the laws of logic, the reliability of human senses, or the capacity of man to reason rationally, unless he has revealed justifications for this to humanity – thus violating the core beliefs of atheism and agnosticism.

My argument is not merely that the Bible is true because it says it is. My argument is that the Bible is true because it says it is AND you cannot justify any belief aside from it. Contrary to your accusations of using circular fallacies, the Christian’s trust in the Word of God is a virtuous circle that is perfectly justified and can account for all the preconditions of intelligibility, whilst every other worldview fails this test by leaps and bounds.

At this point any argument over supposedly contradictory archaeological and scientific evidence becomes background noise. We can battle endlessly over scientific and historical evidence all day – and that’s what many creationists foolishly do to the exclusion of meaningful logical discussion. But the reality is that we’ve all been given identical evidence – it’s merely a contest of which worldview we use to interpret it. And when every other worldview fails the fundamental test of justifying itself, we can truly rest on the confidence that our faith is based on a solid rock, and though the winds may blow and the waters may rise, it will stand firm.

▲▲ 1 Reply Link Context •••Agree Disagree Tell me more React Request reference + My feed Report Block user Follow

@9CJ6CB6 from Virginia commented…2yrs2Y

As a whole, these moral systems (of which all have contradictions) in both religion and non-religious philosophy are made, entirely in fact, by humans. I don’t expect to change your view, nor will I provide a long winded moral discussion (though I find it impressive how much you wrote and the quality of the argument), but I think that the very Bible we’ve written isn’t based in a god, it is based in a moral set and a long line of those who think that it is. Those that create and prime the social structure of a religion really do legitimately believe what they do, but their… Read more principles do contradict, in every religion and every ideal. Good moral principles, in some areas, were built in Christianity. Good moral principles were built in almost every religion. Every moral in religion is subjective and holds a “if you aren’t with me, you are my enemy” thought process. After all, that’s how they grow in the first place in so many ways. A secular perspective may not have a “middle ground”, but that’s because it doesn’t need it. If we endorse one religion, we make everyone else mad, when in reality, the only way to stop each religion from attacking one another in the area of both governance and established rights is to use none and all at the same time, as done by creating a system made to protect the people of all religions, creeds, races, sexual orientations, and genders alike. Every religion in history has attacked at least one of these traits with it’s own “virtuous” circular approaches, causing unnecessary and disgusting levels of suffering. The shedding of those beliefs often comes from outside pressure or the assumed “revelation” of recent or past prophets or highly influential members. Every religion tries to win, nearly every belief, even in religion, can break the stated “virtuous circle” when the right questions are asked. We created those logical laws, which is why god in the Bible is built on them. He didn’t create them, we created god, and used our logical laws that we had developed in the time of Abraham down to Jesus because we found the laws to be reliable, then claimed that those laws were gods.

▲▲ 1 Reply Link Context •••Agree Disagree Tell me more React Request reference + My feed Report Block user Follow

@Patriot-#1776Constitution from Washington commented…2yrs2Y

I'm glad you took the time to read it. But how you claim to "endorse all and none" of the religions of the world at once, when, as I demonstrated above, they are unanimous in their belief that such a position is impossible? In so doing you necessarily reject every religion but your posture of neutrality in existence as false and yours as true, as the only way to stop strife, as the only way to bring justice, thereby recreating every fallacy and issue you have falsely attributed to Christianity.

Don't be confused – I never said ALL religions have "Virtous circles… Read more" – as I demonstrated, every religion BUT Bible-believing Christianity is a VICIOUS circle, not a VIRTUOUS one, because no other viewpoint can account for the reliability of human senses, the laws of logic, and of science, and of objective morality.