How do you know you have Sensus divinitatis?

[boatsnguitars]

Calvin proposed the idea: that like sight, he had a sense that was used to feel God.

Of course, there is no God, so it can better be explained that Calvin had a feeling of something, thought he was super special, and he wanted to murder people so he pretended there was a God and used his religion to murder Servitus.

The issue for debate: why do people think that if they feel like Dracula is in the room with them, Then it's true that Dracula is in the room, and if you don't believe it, Dracula fans will kill you?

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #69

We really don't know, but this some sorta god is not the logical default theory.

Neither is an infinite number of underlying causes.

So again. do you or do you not believe in any of the personal gods including the Abrahamic one or not?

I don't find organized religion compelling. And again, I don't see how a creator would have to be pinned down by the name of any of "the personal gods".

I'm actually in some strange company here.
https://images.app.goo.gl/pjBXh8qoGBZ1Z6q99

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to alexxcJRO in post #67

So you do not belief we need to account for something that exists: Omniverse?

If an omniverse were presumed materialistic, it would require a materialistic cause and its underlying material causes would have to be endless.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #69

We really don't know, but this some sorta god is not the logical default theory.

Neither is an infinite number of underlying causes.

But the materialist dfault is because we know things work without a god. What can you show that is a better evidence -based hypothesis?

So again. do you or do you not believe in any of the personal gods including the Abrahamic one or not?

I don't find organized religion compelling. And again, I don't see how a creator would have to be pinned down by the name of any of "the personal gods".

I'm actually in some strange company here.
https://images.app.goo.gl/pjBXh8qoGBZ1Z6q99

So that's a no you don't? I find it remarkable that you have to pussyfoot around a direct answer.

[Replying to alexxcJRO in post #67

So you do not belief we need to account for something that exists: Omniverse?

If an omniverse were presumed materialistic, it would require a materialistic cause and its underlying material causes would have to be endless.

So you are appealing to the absurdity of infinite regression and - we have done this before- appealing to an explanation that has two problems (origins and intelligence) as a better explanation that has only one (origin).


When we have little or no idea what is going on, we cannot use philosophy or commonsense arguments to reach any conclusions. We simply cannot guess let alone argue that any one hypothesis is better than another, let alone take it as reliable fact.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #73

So that's a no you don't? I find it remarkable that you have to pussyfoot around a direct answer.

Maybe it just isn't the answer you're looking for.

So you are appealing to the absurdity of infinite regression and - we have done this before- appealing to an explanation that has two problems (origins and intelligence) as a better explanation that has only one (origin).

As I've explained before, it isn't about regression. It's about reduction, and infinite reduction introduces an infinite number of problems.

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to alexxcJRO in post #67

So you do not belief we need to account for something that exists: Omniverse?

If an omniverse were presumed materialistic, it would require a materialistic cause and its underlying material causes would have to be endless.

It could be that we do not have an endless materialistic causes and effects.
The materialistic omniverse has maybe a necessary first conditions which are causeless, beginningless, mindless.
The infinity regress is a problem for our local universe only which may be part of a bigger, unimaginable, wondrous omniverse.
We could have our local universe inside a multiverse inside a ... cacaverse ... inside a omniverse. We could have more then 4 dimensions and more material things beside our space-time continuum. We could have beings(aliens) that are not bound by our 4 dimensional local universe that can travel back and forth in time because are not bound by only 4 dimensions.
Things could be so interesting and complicated that 2 digit IQ beings like ourself could not imagine or process through our limited cognition.

Ancient religious people could not imagine anything beyond the flat earth with a dome where stars are lights on the firmament.
They could not imagine a sphere floating in a vacuum.
How basic knowledge that seems now.
Let's not make the same mistake.

[alexxcJRO]

Don't give up Think of the undecided whom want to hear what both sides have to offer. It has never been about getting the Theist side to admit they have it wrong, ever.

:)Thanks. I certainly don't expect to convince anyone who does not know how to analyze facts or doesn't have a clue as to how to evaluate sources of information, but it's tiresome to hear the same absurdities and poor logic over and over. "I know it is true because the Bible told me so" is getting very old, especially when it is used here in Christianity and Apologetics where it, by rule, has no persuasive value.

I have become an atheist in my 19-20 thanks to such debates that are found here.
Debate most of the time is a positive thing. It puts bad ideas and false things to the garbage bin of failed hypothesis.
Your contribution to this process is still valued and important be it small as it is.

Thank you. I wish we had a regular thread for conversion and deconversion stories (Theists prefer to put spin on it by talking of construction or deconstruction. It doesn't matter, as constructing a Tofu - dreg eglise is nothing to boast about and deconstructing it a public service). Deconversion -accounts (apart from the necessary bias - confirmation, are interesting as the conversion stories really always seem to be for bad reasons. More than half the deconversions seem to be a reluctant resistance to a once -held Faith eroding through thinking or seeing others thinking. All that is required is a mind even slightly open to doubt and question.

It is my firm conviction that the only Unforgivable sin or Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is entertaining doubts and question - outside the Bible-box. Oh the questions within the faith are ok, sectarian strife and Holy Wars apart, but qeustion OF the Bible, Jesusgod and Christianity is the only Real Sin. 'Nobody ever changes their mind' I often hear, but that isn't true, as the majority of atheists are theist who changed theirs.

I was brainwashed from when I was in kindergarten with ideas of God, sin, punishment, Hell by parents and grandparents, aunts. I often had feelings of fear of Hell when I was little because of awful, detailed description which were frequently spoken to me by my grandma, parents and Church pastors.
I was taken, me and my brothers most times against our will to the church every Sunday. We sincerely believed Yahweh-Jesus is the only God, Christianity the only religion and everybody believed in him, everybody was a Christian.

You have to understand in my country 99% of people are religious(almost all Christians). Atheist are so rare. I don't know any atheist beside me. There is a significant amount of intolerance against Gay people and non-believers. My father often has remarks like : "If any of you(his sons) were gay I would beaten that sinful behaviour out of you". Then proceeds to laughing which can only be described as evil and deeply awful.
I have often conflicts with my family members and other people because I am not religious. Talked down and ridiculed like I am an abomination.

"86.53% of the country's stable population identified as part of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the 2011 census (see also: History of Christianity in Romania). Other major Christian denominations include the Catholic Church (both Latin Catholicism (4.62%) and Greek Catholicism (0.8%–3.3%)), Calvinism (3.19%), and Pentecostal denominations (1.92%). This amounts to approximately 99% of the population identifying as Christian.[4] Romania also has a small but historically significant Muslim minority of around 44,000 people, concentrated in Northern Dobruja, who are mostly of Crimean Tatar and Turkish ethnicity. According to the 2011 census data, there are also approximately 3,500 Jews, around 21,000 atheists and about 19,000 people not identifying with any religion. The 2011 census numbers are based on a stable population of 20,121,641 people and exclude a portion of about 6% due to unavailable data.[5]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Romania

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #73

So that's a no you don't? I find it remarkable that you have to pussyfoot around a direct answer.

Maybe it just isn't the answer you're looking for.

So you are appealing to the absurdity of infinite regression and - we have done this before- appealing to an explanation that has two problems (origins and intelligence) as a better explanation that has only one (origin).

As I've explained before, it isn't about regression. It's about reduction, and infinite reduction introduces an infinite number of problems.

Keep going. Just on this one thing - a case for a sorta god - is so important to you that you cannot give the straight answer I was (not unreasonably) looking for. Do you believe in any personal gods or not, and you implied that you didn't. Why is a straight answer so hard for you and why should I not expect one? (1) It isn't a trick or trap but (like many theist apologists I have come across) they are always suspicious of the verbal or logical traps they are always setting for us - like the 'infinite regression' one. Never mind the dirty trick of implying that just asking for a straight yes or no is some kind of loaded question to feed my confirmation bias. Keep going, as I say.

Nit -picking about whether it's infinite recession, regression or reduction, isn't the point. It is the idea of a process that goes on repeating forever being absurd and so cannot be the explanation of cosmic origins. Fine, it seems absurd to me, too , and reduction must go on forever until it is non - existent, and this isn't infinite and leaves us with 'how did nothing come from nothing'. So it gets us nowhere and is a quibble about nothing. The only point is that nobody really knows and al we can say is that postulating an intelligent creator makes two problems where some sort of origin without intelligence makes for only one.

(1) I had to go back and look at what the point was You posted 'I don't see any Biblegod qualifier in "Of course, there is no God".' That is, you denied there were parameters that justified an atheist statement 'There is no God', being shorthand for 'On the basis of the Biblical evidence I am confident that god (Biblegod) does not exist. Just as we atheist (grinding our teeth ) take 'miracle' as a huge amount of luck or shill'.

The point being that if you don't believe the other religions and gods, you are doing the same as atheists do.

Even if you don't know this and have forgotten, or it bothers you unduly (2) to say that as an irreligious theist you reject the gods of other religions (and indeed Biblegod) just as much as atheists do. Thus 'there is not god' even if we do say it, is not an (untenable) claim to knowledge that a creator doesn't exist, which was the strawman apologetic you were trying to pull.

(2) for why seems hard to fathom and is usually because we have encroached on Faith, (belief that God is giving you knowledge) and the faithbased Theist cannot ever admit that any divinely -given knowledge is wrong, of the delusion collapses. I know it is dressed up in evidence or rather philosophy ("Who made everything, then?") but essentially a faithclaim. which is why 'agnosticism' is in fact irreligious Theism (deism). Because actual agnosticism about the god - claim (of any kind) logically mandates disbelief, Aka atheism. No wonder you treat this like a roadside bomb.

But do you know, it actually gets us back via the scenic route and larger taxi fare to Sensus Divinitatis. The belief that God is sending the Faithful correct information into their heads.

[TRANSPONDER]

quote=Athetotheist posted If an omniverse were presumed materialistic, it would require a materialistic cause and its underlying material causes would have to be endless

Aside the insistence on 'Omniverse' as though that was more correct than 'Cosmos' (but I get we are talking about the pre -universe stuff) just what is the point of this attempted logical trap? Even if the case could be made 'we can be sure the whole cosmic stuff had to have an origin' (since eternal regression (which is NOT the same thing as eternal reduction (1)

(1) which would reduce the Cosmic stuff to non existent, which to play the process in the right direction is 'something from nothing' while infinite regression means it does not reduce to nothing. That seems like foggy thinking but it could be a crafty way to make something from nothing the same argument as infinite regression, which it isn't.

[boatsnguitars]

[Replying to alexxcJRO in post #67

So you do not belief we need to account for something that exists: Omniverse?

If an omniverse were presumed materialistic, it would require a materialistic cause and its underlying material causes would have to be endless.

It could be that we do not have an endless materialistic causes and effects.
The materialistic omniverse has maybe a necessary first conditions which are causeless, beginningless, mindless.
The infinity regress is a problem for our local universe only which may be part of a bigger, unimaginable, wondrous omniverse.
We could have our local universe inside a multiverse inside a ... cacaverse ... inside a omniverse. We could have more then 4 dimensions and more material things beside our space-time continuum. We could have beings(aliens) that are not bound by our 4 dimensional local universe that can travel back and forth in time because are not bound by only 4 dimensions.
Things could be so interesting and complicated that 2 digit IQ beings like ourself could not imagine or process through our limited cognition.

Ancient religious people could not imagine anything beyond the flat earth with a dome where stars are lights on the firmament.
They could not imagine a sphere floating in a vacuum.
How basic knowledge that seems now.
Let's not make the same mistake.

I think that image sums up Theists and Supernaturalists views perfectly: "There must be something else!"

Refering to TRANSPONDERS post above, where Atheisttotheist says "If an omniverse were presumed materialistic, it would require a materialistic cause and its underlying material causes would have to be endless..."

They simply can't comprehend that there is only one thing. They've been taught that there is "something out there, and if you are special, it will be revealed to you." They see Ignorance, or gaps in our knowledge as confirmation of this, not simply gaps in our knowledge.

It's a horrible con that the Church has convinced people that the Church Knows! - and, says the Church, Science will either confirm it, or is evil because it doesn't. What a horrible stain on humanity.

[TRANSPONDER]

Don't give up Think of the undecided whom want to hear what both sides have to offer. It has never been about getting the Theist side to admit they have it wrong, ever.

:)Thanks. I certainly don't expect to convince anyone who does not know how to analyze facts or doesn't have a clue as to how to evaluate sources of information, but it's tiresome to hear the same absurdities and poor logic over and over. "I know it is true because the Bible told me so" is getting very old, especially when it is used here in Christianity and Apologetics where it, by rule, has no persuasive value.

I have become an atheist in my 19-20 thanks to such debates that are found here.
Debate most of the time is a positive thing. It puts bad ideas and false things to the garbage bin of failed hypothesis.
Your contribution to this process is still valued and important be it small as it is.

Thank you. I wish we had a regular thread for conversion and deconversion stories (Theists prefer to put spin on it by talking of construction or deconstruction. It doesn't matter, as constructing a Tofu - dreg eglise is nothing to boast about and deconstructing it a public service). Deconversion -accounts (apart from the necessary bias - confirmation, are interesting as the conversion stories really always seem to be for bad reasons. More than half the deconversions seem to be a reluctant resistance to a once -held Faith eroding through thinking or seeing others thinking. All that is required is a mind even slightly open to doubt and question.

It is my firm conviction that the only Unforgivable sin or Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is entertaining doubts and question - outside the Bible-box. Oh the questions within the faith are ok, sectarian strife and Holy Wars apart, but qeustion OF the Bible, Jesusgod and Christianity is the only Real Sin. 'Nobody ever changes their mind' I often hear, but that isn't true, as the majority of atheists are theist who changed theirs.

I was brainwashed from when I was in kindergarten with ideas of God, sin, punishment, Hell by parents and grandparents, aunts. I often had feelings of fear of Hell when I was little because of awful, detailed description which were frequently spoken to me by my grandma, parents and Church pastors.
I was taken, me and my brothers most times against our will to the church every Sunday. We sincerely believed Yahweh-Jesus is the only God, Christianity the only religion and everybody believed in him, everybody was a Christian.

You have to understand in my country 99% of people are religious(almost all Christians). Atheist are so rare. I don't know any atheist beside me. There is a significant amount of intolerance against Gay people and non-believers. My father often has remarks like : "If any of you(his sons) were gay I would beaten that sinful behaviour out of you". Then proceeds to laughing which can only be described as evil and deeply awful.
I have often conflicts with my family members and other people because I am not religious. Talked down and ridiculed like I am an abomination.

"86.53% of the country's stable population identified as part of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the 2011 census (see also: History of Christianity in Romania). Other major Christian denominations include the Catholic Church (both Latin Catholicism (4.62%) and Greek Catholicism (0.8%–3.3%)), Calvinism (3.19%), and Pentecostal denominations (1.92%). This amounts to approximately 99% of the population identifying as Christian.[4] Romania also has a small but historically significant Muslim minority of around 44,000 people, concentrated in Northern Dobruja, who are mostly of Crimean Tatar and Turkish ethnicity. According to the 2011 census data, there are also approximately 3,500 Jews, around 21,000 atheists and about 19,000 people not identifying with any religion. The 2011 census numbers are based on a stable population of 20,121,641 people and exclude a portion of about 6% due to unavailable data.[5]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Romania

As a lifetimer in a country where the Church is just for three times in your life It is hard for me to comprehend the degree of religious influence in the US and at political level,too. Here, politicians leave religion strictly alone as waving your Christian fundamentalist party - card will guarantee you lose, whereas in the US being a Party member is a pre-requisite for even being a candidate.

It wasn't until my office went internet that I first encountered the apologetics and creationism. I still recall when some poster on a discussion board posted 'The dinosaurs were on the Ark'. I was staggered. Why on earth would one double the problem that was already a logistics nightmare? After all, wasn't the Flood 'science in the Bible? 'it explains the KT extinction. Why not go that route? And later discussion with a Christian colleague introduced me to the various ploys of evading having to accept that stuff in the Bible was made up or dubious, at best. Including Keyword Exegesis and naturalising miracles (1). Since then I've seen it all, every trick, subterfuge and evasion and I even reckon I understand the mechanism. But even after thirty years, they can, like hobbits, surprise you at a pinch.

P.s Tracie Harriss in the required reading (2) 'religious family values' mentioned that it often seems that everyone in the district is theist and YOU are the only one that is not. But after starting a circle of doubters and first staring meetin g them it turned out many of the neighbours were also doubters but had to cover it up.

(1) what the apologist does, and did is not read with comprehension what I'd argued, but pick up a word like' forgive or teach or money and go off on an unrelated sermon using this word. It is a form of evasion. The other was (I remember) explaining the walking on water as wading in the shallows. It may make the miracle look credible and save the Bile from absurdity, but it deflates the miracle.

(2) posted before and often a bit lengthy, but a reading list of immense value to the atheists and atheist apologist.





and a a bit of light relief, but still on the reading list -



not too long and absolutely essential.Critical thinking is basic to assessing data, evidence and claims.



and again shot and amusing addresses the 'topic - which contact from God is the true one?