So he has read a bunch of things where in people think about the meaning of their received cultural religion and sometimes their own personal experiences. This could be interesting and could make the fellow into a cultural historian. I do not think there is much reason to think all that should make him believe in God or Jesus.
But all of that makes him understand Christianity, at least intellectually.
The guy goes to many churches, prays sincerely, and reads the scriptures. All that should make him believe in Jesus.
Well, I’m starting to wonder if he wasn’t involved in the book, The Periodic Table: Nature’s Building Blocks: An Introduction to the Naturally Occurring Elements, Their Origins and Their Uses, published by Elsevier, a Netherlands-based academic publishing company. It was pulled due to being “tipped off by an Finnish editor on Wikipedia,” because it was apparently largely plagiarized from, well, Wikipedia.
I kid, I kid. Although if you have a printed copy it might be as valuable as the Bay Psalm book.
- Doc
Hiring a part-time news entertainment anchor as SecDef, what could go wrong?
I’m going to take a shot at this, since we only have a small number of Christians who participate here and I see so much of my younger self in CosmicSkeptic.
You shouldn’t let the dynamics of the apologist vs counter-apologist conflicts set the agenda of your education. I don’t mean education in the sense of an institution granting you a credential, but the actual growth you experienced while working your way through a reading list or conducting personal research.
There comes a point in philosophy where eventually you get to a skill level where you fully understand the reality that arguments are completely person-relative. If you command a certain amount of knowledge in the relevant areas and possess some capacity for creativity, you can formulate a good counter argument to just about anything. Creating an argument, formalizing it, and defending it in print, is really more about exercising your wits and searching for interesting questions, overlooked distinctions, or hidden details, than it is about authoritatively establishing a doctrine that receives assent from your peers.
Disagreement is grist for the intellectual mill, it is why people who disagree often seek eachother out to have disputes. Some people get caught up in this fantasy that dialectic is some kind of sacred proving ground where bad ideas go to die and good ideas get to live on. There is no marketplace of ideas, it is just a humid jungle teeming with life over every square inch. Sure, some ideas experience success and flourish, until some subtle shift in the broader ecology happens and the entire settled order is shaken up again.
There is a certain kind of immaturity lurking beneath this short video that CosmicSkeptic clipped out from a larger talk. Tussling with God’s existence by dutifully reading through some canonical list of religious geniuses isn’t like James Randi getting on stage and popping an entire bottle of homeopathic sleep aids and then riffing for forty five minutes about how this should require hospitalization. The act of reading a book isn’t a recipe for conversion and if CosmicSkeptic has studied Anselm, I genuinely want to hear about it. What was the experience like? Did it impact you? What surprised you? Were there disappointments? Was there a part of a text you simply don't understand? If your knowledge of Anselm is limited merely to the textual portions where he gives his infamous ontological argument, I consider that a missed opportunity.
I understand there is a legion of street preaching evangelists and sober minded apologists out there in the world who think that some bevy of Christian scholars have totally mopped the floor with the opposition and insist that any reasonable person who reads the material will see that. Those types make for fun sport! Even now I’m in Facebook groups with presuppositional apologists where I critique Greg Bahnsen’s PhD dissertation simply because I have a blast doing it.
It is dangerous to mistake that kind of activity as being anything more meaningful than trash talking about sports or ranting about politics into the digital ether. The kind of people who focus on that stuff don’t do well in the long run because it is the mental equivalent of eating fast food.
If you are given an opportunity to speak, I consider saying everything he did a massive waste of time. If you have really spent time doing all that reading and exploring Christinaity, it is going to come out in the quality of what you have to say. It is like telling people you are some kind of tough guy by detailing all the training you’ve had, who are you trying to impress? Yourself?
So he has read a bunch of things where in people think about the meaning of their received cultural religion and sometimes their own personal experiences. This could be interesting and could make the fellow into a cultural historian. I do not think there is much reason to think all that should make him believe in God or Jesus.
But all of that makes him understand Christianity, at least intellectually.
The guy goes to many churches, prays sincerely, and reads the scriptures. All that should make him believe in Jesus.
I am sympathetic enough with mystics to say reading them is zero help but emptying oneself of all that excess self might be a help.
Are you a calvinist?
All this junk this guy is doing should make him believe in Jesus, why should it? Why is it that Jesus did not call those fishermen and give them a reading list and a schedual for daily Bible reading?
My comment about mystic teaching is not related to Calvinist doctrine. It is found spread very widely.
I am sometimes in the general area of Calvinist. I do not approve of Calvin and I am not strict about five points. I do believe in Gods sovereign choice .
There comes a point in philosophy where eventually you get to a skill level where you fully understand the reality that arguments are completely person-relative.
It's a good point, but you wouldn't want a person-relative jury in a court of law, or a person-relative team of heart surgeons in the operating room.
Some people get caught up in this fantasy that dialectic is some kind of sacred proving ground where bad ideas go to die and good ideas get to live on. There is no marketplace of ideas, it is just a humid jungle teeming with life over every square inch.
Excellent point. Idiots like Musk think "free speech" will solve all problems.
All this junk this guy is doing should make him believe in Jesus, why should it? Why is it that Jesus did not call those fishermen and give them a reading list and a schedual for daily Bible reading?
So should O'Connor just wait for Jesus to appear to him?
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus.
All this junk this guy is doing should make him believe in Jesus, why should it? Why is it that Jesus did not call those fishermen and give them a reading list and a schedual for daily Bible reading?
So should O'Connor just wait for Jesus to appear to him?
I thought I already proposed that he go to a baseball game.
and get a life.
You do not think I am being serious but I really do think God values a whole lot more of life than religious stuff.
Nonbelievers think God is only concerned about God and as a result may look for God in all the wrong places.
Whatever book Dr. Peterson recommends next, I would propose to him Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy. If ever The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and her apologists needed a book, this is it. And yes, I know the Peterson Routine... he'll announce he's already read it. He already practices it (not!), and he has moved on to greener pastures like Added Upon. There is not a single book which any ex-Mormon or critic has read which Peterson has not already beat her or him to the punch...
I thought I already proposed that he go to a baseball game.
and get a life.
You do not think I am being serious but I really do think God values a whole lot more of life than religious stuff.
Nonbelievers think God is only concerned about God and as a result may look for God in all the wrong places.
So why is faith a requirement to go to heaven? Shouldn't Jesus simply save all the people who are not evil?
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus.
I thought I already proposed that he go to a baseball game.
and get a life.
You do not think I am being serious but I really do think God values a whole lot more of life than religious stuff.
Nonbelievers think God is only concerned about God and as a result may look for God in all the wrong places.
So why is faith a requirement to go to heaven? Shouldn't Jesus simply save all the people who are not evil?
doubting thomas, You may be thinking of faith as holding to doctrines a,b,c etc. I think faith is a response in gratitude to life.
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huckelberry , that is a serious oversimplification.
Yes it is but to open it up introduces complications and ambiguities. I cannot speak for God to distinguish what all examples of faith is actually connected to grace in Jesus but my understanding is that a pleasant feeling in the afternoon is shy of what is being spoken of as saving faith.
Well it could be a step in the right direction. ... Yes but that is only a maybe.
Last edited by huckelberry on Wed Jun 01, 2022 11:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
