Comment by sinxoveretothex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sinxoveretothex | Hacker News Reader

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sinxoveretothex

> I find it optimistic, to say the least, that each individual can reasonably start from first principles, discover whether there is a Creator, discover if God wants anything from us, and then comply with the requirements of God before the afterlife (if there is one).

I am willing to bet that there is less people in this world who do this "search on their own and discover god" than there are atheists. In fact, if you hang around atheist circles (The Atheist Experience for example), you'll hear enough people say they lost friends/family after deconverting or even that they still fear Hell even after they stopped believing.

> but the Jesus of the Bible was clearly opposed to people using religion for personal ends

How would you know? You realize that, assuming that Jesus did exist as a single person and all, we only have accounts compiled by a single authority that had interest in not having any negative portrayal of the guy?

It's like saying that Steve Jobs was not a bad person because his authorized biography didn't mention any terrible things (and even then, Jobs' probably mentions his daughter in passing at least).

> Regarding nonsensical axioms, axioms can be nonsense if they are inherently contradictory.

If you believe in truth-coherence, which seems to be a belief that religiosity-inclined people have.

Monists/materialists seem to tend more towards the truth-correspondence view. Under the latter, axioms don't need to be contradictory to be nonsense. They just need to be contradictory with reality.

> How would you know?

I said "Jesus of the Bible" to avoid getting into that here.

> [Nonsensical axioms] just need to be contradictory with reality.

Sure, but there's no objective observation that can prove God does or does not exist. If He is omniscient and omnipotent, He cannot be a dependent variable in any experiment.

> I am willing to bet that there is less people in this world who do this "search on their own and discover god" than there are atheists.

Any self-professed Christian who deviates from the teachings of the Bible either intentionally or out of disinterest is doing this to some degree. And everyone who considers themselves theist without affirming some more established canon is doing this.

I would wager there are more of those than atheist or orthodox (in the broad sense) Christians.

> Sure, but there's no objective observation that can prove God does or does not exist. If He is omniscient and omnipotent, He cannot be a dependent variable in any experiment.

If she's omniscient, then free will doesn't exist. If she's omnipotent, then she can create a rock so heavy she can't lift it… but probably can lift it.

I also notice that you didn't mention omnibenevolent.

> Any self-professed Christian who deviates from the teachings of the Bible either intentionally or out of disinterest is doing this to some degree.

Really? Any Christian who works on Sunday is "reasonably start[ing] from first principles [and] discover[ing] whether there is a Creator"?

I agree with you: we don't use the same definition of "rational".

> If she's omnipotent, then she can create a rock so heavy she can't lift it… but probably can lift it.

God can't create a rock too heavy for God to lift because that's nonsense, not because deist philosophy contradicts itself. The question of predestination vs. free will is interesting, and there is plenty of literature on the subject. If nothing else, the Lutheran position might be dissatisfying to some, but it's hard to refute.

I didn't mention omnibenevolence, no, though we have no way of proving whether individual people are 'good', so I don't know why we think we can judge God fairly.

> Any Christian who works on Sunday is "reasonably start[ing] from first principles [and] discover[ing] whether there is a Creator"?

Allowing for exceptions, Christians who work seven days a week or do not belong to a local church (broadly defined) are ignoring clear instructions in scripture. When this happens, it's typically for one of two reasons. One, people know they should be doing things and are simply bad at doing them. Christian theology actually makes amazing amounts of room for people who genuinely struggle with obedience.

The second category is who I was mainly referring to earlier. These people don't obey the scripture because they believe the scriptures are not really authoritative in all cases. That opens up a whole can of worms about which scriptures count, why, and who decides. Regarding the issues addressed by those scriptures, what is really true, why, and who decides? The whole thing becomes very open-ended very fast. I'm not necessarily opposed to that exercise on an intellectual level, but it seems like a lot of work to expect each individual person to take that faith journey alone. When groups of people do it together, well, you end up with a new belief systems like Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, or even Christian Universalism.

Circling back to the particulars of observing the Sabbath, the Jesus of the Bible clearly said that the Sabbath was is for people, not God, and that the spirit of the law was much more important than the rule. In the epistles, it's specifically pointed out as an example of a rule that can be observed in different ways in good faith.

So Christians don't generally beat each other up about Sabbath issues, but it's widely (and casually) accepted that many Americans overwork, which causes personal and family issues, and that there's a lot of wisdom about being disciplined in observing a day of rest.

> God can't create a rock too heavy for God to lift because that's nonsense

Yes. Just like the omni concepts to begin with.

> These people don't obey the scripture because they believe the scriptures are not really authoritative in all cases.

If I tell you that I believe you don't really exist and yet I'm still talking to you, does that make me a fine rationalist? No. It makes me a total idiot.

People do stuff that makes no sense all the time. The fact that they do, does not suddenly make their actions exquisitely well intellectually justified or what not.

Actually, I think you are confusing 'rationalization' and 'rationalism' together.

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