While soulster detailed in Cooperative Problem Solving: Church Sex Scandals a Christian’s view of sex scandals within the church, I’d like to push the boundaries a bit and focus on something a bit more probing: homosexuality.

Continue reading Under Pressure

In the post Do Atheists Have Faith?, I agrue that they do not according to my defintion of faith. (Readers, please note that I do define faith as relational trust using Abraham in that post, and as such many of your comments may be missing my point.) I freely admit that my arguement is dependent on my particular defintion, and does not hold if you define faith differently. According to the comments on that post and drunkentune’s RESPONSE: Do Athiests Have Faith, it is clear that I use ‘faith’ differently than many of the readers here, so I will explain my sources of my definition in hopes of clarifying what I think ‘faith’ should refer to. While people are free to disagree, of course, I hope that this will be informative and will limit the criticism of my post at least to my working definition.

Continue reading My Definition of Faith

Drunkentune and I (soulster) thought we’d like to send each other some questions via email and share the answers with the readers of this blog. Here are three questions by drunkentune concerning my understanding of Christianity:

Drunkentune: Dominionism [wiki] is in part control of all parts of being: the control of the mind within congregation, the control of the dominionist’s body and the bodies of those that violate the dominionist’s rules of conduct, be them homosexual or abortionist, and ultimately, control over the environment. Calvinism [wiki] is the requisition of control to a higher power and absolving all responsibility. I see that all classes of Christianity have different interpretations of scripture that seem to pull from different worldviews existing independently of the Bible or their belief. A Christian may find any message he chooses in the Bible to fit his worldview, or a verse may reinforce such a worldview that had only begun to grow. Is it possible to learn what Jesus meant, or is it that, since Jesus’ words have been used historically for any purpose, is it worth it to even attempt such an endeavor?

Continue reading Drunkentune’s Christianty Questions

Perhaps I’ll be going on a rant here, but don’t take this personally. This began as a response to Ed Lynam, but spiraled out of my control. I am critical of his comments because of his certitude that Christianity is correct – not due to an argument for morality or the inerrancy of the Bible, but because it is both practiced across the globe and is applicable to many. I begin by answering his comment from here, then continued on for a bit, skirting several diverging issues. If you’re lost at any one point, it’s likely that I referred to something taking place in the comments of soulster’s excellent paper, The Ethics of Pleasure. That, or I’m just writing willy-nilly. 

Continue reading Me Arguing with No One in Particular

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

American psychologist and philosopher William James argued in his 1884 article “What is an emotion?” that our emotions begin in the body. While they feel ephemeral, they are rooted in the movements of muscles and flesh.

What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling of quickened heart beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose bumps nor of visceral stirrings, were present?

Without the body there would be no fear, for the emotion begins at the perception of a bodily change. The pupils dilate, the upper lip rises, the eyebrows rise and the forehead furrows, the lips stretch, the eyes widen, and the brow sweats. This theory was radical for his day, and made many people uncomfortable, so without the quantifiable scientific data to back this up, it was promptly tossed aside. Emotions must reside in the mind, it was said.

Continue reading Some Thoughts on Love

I. Intro…

(This is going to be a long one, so you might want to grab a snack and a cup of coffee now.) 

Drunkentune has given a great explanation of one theory on where religion comes from in his post The Evolution of Religion: Is Religion Natural?.  Avid commentor, beepbeepitsme has also written much on this blog about the natural origins of religion.

To summarize this view in my own words: Biologists agree that humans evolve in both physiology and psychology (some would argue primarily psychologically, and as an extension technologically, in our recent history). Our behaviors and thought patterns are just as much a part of how our species survives as are adaptations in our bodies, such as our leg-hips-spine configuration and upright locomotion. At some point in our specie's evolutionary history, we developed the thought pattrerns and behaviors associated with religion as a survival mechanism. Humans that believed in something beyond the material world were accessing certain social cues, memes [wiki], and powerful psychological structures, leading to more successful outcomes, evolutionarily speaking. For some people, it then follows from this theory that religion is not of divine origin in any sense, and that it is possible that the evolution of our species will one day outgrow religion if it no longer fulfills its evolutionary role.

Continue reading Is Naturalistic Religion Biblical?

I. Background: Is this pushing it too far?

I know this is a touchy topic, but I'd like to begin examining the Bible. I won't be arguing that the Bible is errant on issues, as per soulster's rule #5. Instead, I'll focus on evidence. My argument may offend you, but I hope my honest look at a story of the Bible will show why atheists do not believe. I'm not trying to deconvert anyone. I am only providing an issue that interests me.

During heated debates with Christians, sometimes I would ask God to appear before me, or guess a number I was thinking of, or some other flippant remark intending to put the Christian in a bind. If God can do everything, the logic went, then he could easily guess a number, stop gravity for a moment, strike me with lightning, or something that a skeptic such as myself could see as insurmountable proof of God's existence. You see, to me, if it can't be measured or quantified in some way, than it doesn't really exist. Of course, it could be an idea, or a philosophy, or another construct humanity forms in our boredom, but if I can't test for God's existence, than if I were to be a Christian, I would have to rely on a different faith than what soulster professes. I'd have to believe in something that has no positive evidence.

But what if we could test to see if God exists?

Continue reading Faith and the Bible