Not only has he considered it, he would be familiar with a much stronger formulation than you or I would be able to come up with, would have several rebuttals to that argument and would also be ready with the rebuttals to those rebuttals.

It's what these guys do. "How come Christians usually have Christian parents?" isnt a hard question to come up with.

It strikes me that with that question Mightyboosh is not granting Plantinga the existence of free will.

Speak for yourself

Great. I can't wait to ask him why he isn't a practicing Muslim.

Do you think you're as good at engineering as an engineer?
Yes, i understood the point.

Do you think that you know what I know or what I might be capable of understanding about engineering?

I have a hint, however if you do know about engineering, change it to something you don't.

The point was that plantinga's knowledge of the philosophy of religion is miles better than mine or yours. I can speak for both you and me on that.

The fact that you seriously considered the possibility that I thought you were referring specifically to engineering, enough to say that, and that I didn't recognise it as an analogy kinda proves my point regarding your assumptions about me.

You don't really know me or what I'm capable of, you should try to be a little less judgmental and presumptuous

That's not the point you were making before, you insinuated that I wasn't capable of critiquing his points. I can't argue with the quote above though, of course his knowledge is better, he's a philosopher....

None of this is actually progressing the debate though. Can we focus on that instead of your opinion of me?

Religions are built upon the mystical revelations of "adepts", that is why they exist in the first place. You seem to be under the impression that everyone who believes in a higher reality does so because they are weak-minded and unintelligent and have allowed themselves to be covertly and/or overtly coerced by environmental factors and if only they could see this they would abandon their philosophies and join you in atheism. The problem with this is that you have no counter to the mystical revelation that occurred in the first place, which in any event is a stronger motivating factor for belief or lack thereof than any post you are capable of making on an internet message board.

Believers can be split into two camps; those who have experienced mystical revelation for themselves, and those who have not, but choose to believe in the scriptures regardless. In either event why do you think you would persuade a person with your views? And why should you care enough to want to? I can't imagine why you feel it has much to do with you to be honest, it's quite curious.

How have you arrived at this conclusion?


True and I share that opinion with Einstien.

Not true. It took me a long time to understand how 'otherwise' intelligent people could believe in a god but the possibility that religion is a genetic and behavioural adaptation explains that.

True. Not sure about the use of 'covertly' and 'overtly', I think it's more simply a generally unquestioned and deeply embedded behavior, the origins of which have been lost in the mists of time. It doesn't take long, look how easily the USA demonised Marajuana in the 1930s to the point that people today still have a knee jerk reaction of disgust and have no idea that they are the victim of an 80 year old hoax, it's just 'how things are' right?

Ideally.


What mystical revelation?


Can they?

Because I believe religion to be a great force for harm and the enemy of real learning, I think it holds us back and hinders progress and that even the 'good' things about religion are in fact negatives that perpetuate harmful behaviour. It affects me on a day to basis and it affects the world my children are growing up into. Right now I believe that the greatest threat to world peace is the growing animosity between some of the Christian and Islamic countries, particularly Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. One of which already has a nuclear capability, one of which is very close, the other is on the verge of being run by fundamentalist lunatics.

That's why I care.

I am not a Christian solely because I was raised in a Christian atmosphere. Nor because I agree with the Bible. One of the strongest reasons I believe in Christ is because of a handful of 'mystical revelation' experiences. I was actually much more skeptical of the belief system before I had these experiences, because I found that my faith was defined by my environmental conditioning. I was a Christian because the people that surrounded me were all Christians, and they all believed it, so I should too. However, once the 'mystical revelation' made it personal, I think the chances of me changing my beliefs have gone down significantly.

In past threads I've admitted that I could still be wrong. Perhaps these experiences were a complex product of my brain giving me evidence that what I wanted to believe to be true... was true. I won't dismiss that possibility. But I find it more likely that these experiences were external in nature and not internal. (and totally understand if others think there is a higher chance of them being internal, not external.)

In my experience in the church, I've found believers who have had these 'mystical experiences' to have a much deeper/serious ownership of their beliefs, as compared to those who have not. I'm not knocking those who haven't, but whenever we have conversations concerning these experiences, I try to advise them (politely) to seek after something similar instead of being content without.

I think those are good reasons to care. But I think you are dismissing a plethora of instances where religion has been a great force for good as well. In your opinion, has religion ever produced good? Not just Christianity, of course.

I have a friend, and I'm not making this up, who believes that there must be 'something more than us' because of the erratic behaviour of a plastic bag outside his window one night. Whatever it is that he so desperately wanted to see, he saw it in a plastic bag being blown around by the wind.

I place no credibility at all in personal experiences given how susceptible they are to external influence and whatever information the subject has been exposed to in their lives. Would you have had a mystical experience that you interpreted and attributed to a christian source if you'd never heard of Christianity and knew nothing about it?

It's my view that you're simply believing what you've been told.


On the contrary, I mentioned that the things people generally mention as being 'good' about religion are also behaviours and beliefs that ultimately have a negative effect.

I doubt there's anything 'good' about religion that you could suggest that I couldn't find a secular alternative for and that doesn't come with any superstitious baggage, that would hinder genuinely unbiased learning in the way that religions do and that would cause such misery and suffering as religions do.

As I said, I agree that that is a possibility. Just that I think it's more likely that the source was external. Whereas I don't think it would be impossible to not have those experiences given zero exposure to Christianity, I think it's more likely that I had the experiences because I was actively seeking God. To (selectively) quote the Bible: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." There is a theme in the Bible that God's response is more likely when you are genuinely seeking him as opposed to just going to church or whatever.

I didn't say, is there anything religion can do good that cannot be replicated without religion. I was just wondering if you believed that any good could ever come from religion. Glad to see that you do. Thankfully, we can both give each other a modicum of respect in that sense. Cheers.

Exactly, in the web development/marketing business you'd be known as 'qualified' traffic, i.e primed to be sold whatever the product is.

We're not agreeing anything and there's no respect being given by me at this stage, I know next to nothing about you. I believe respect should be earned not arbitrarily given out because someone has an opinion on something.

What you consider to be 'good' about religion I see as simply helping to perpetuate beliefs we should have abandoned in the Dark Ages. Providing a psychological crutch may make people feel better about life but ultimately hinders them in exactly the same way a drug that had the same numbing effect would.

Most of the 'good' done in the name of religion (which is often used as a recruitment opportunity) simply doesn't need religion to be done and it saddens me that it takes what I consider to be primitive philosophies to motivate ordinary people to do good. If religion didn't exist I have no doubt that those good deeds would ultimately be done anyway and for much better reasons.

That's true. If you strongly focus on this kind of stuff for long periods of time then eventually you will get experiences, be it in the form of lucid dreams, or visions in the middle of the day, or you will hear voices of the "higher self" (Jesus/god), blissful states (heaven), one also may experience the devil and hellish states... all kinds of perceptive distortions. The buddhists call it "makyo". Go further, the real deal is beyond these temporary states.

And I suppose you would be 'qualified' to be sold the opposite product?

That's a fair stance. I agree that respect should be earned. But I also believe that disrespect should be earned as well. Cheers.

Okay, let me give you a simple counterexample, since you are making the claim that no good can come of religion without it being for ulterior purposes.

I have some friends who, when they got married, instead of having their honeymoon geared towards self-pleasure, decided to go to Ghana instead and help build schools. The motivation for this was completely religious in nature. When they were in Ghana for that week, they focused solely on building the schools. They never tried to evangelize/proselytize/etc. So, 'good' was accomplished, while being religiously inspired, while having no overarching conspiratorial purposes.

In a certain sense I think Plantinga would agree with Mightyboosh, at least, that his Christian upbringing was one of his motivations for focusing on the intellectual basis for Christianity rather than, say Hinduism. Of course, it would be simplistic to claim that that his views are wholly due to that fact (especially given that most philosophers are atheists). However, as a holist about these matters, I have no problem with Plantinga starting with what he was.

However, I don't care for the pose of atheists as the rakish truth-tellers, willing to go wherever the evidence leads them. In fact, atheism is just as much of prior environmental causes as religious belief.

What's the 'opposite product'?


So do I.


In what way was the motivation 'completely religious'? How do you know that their being christian (presumably?) had no impact at all on the people they encountered, had the church already got to those people? I know large numbers of people on the African continent have already been recruited.

Given that this is your view, do you think you've earned respect from me or the other posters on this forum?

As nice as it is to be respected, ultimately it's not relevant to me in this context. Is it to you?

Respect given to me arbitrarily simply because I have a belief I don't give any value to anyway. It's meaningless.

In any case, I believe the whole 'you must respect my religion' thing is just the religion's latest way to protect themselves from criticism, since they can no longer burn people at the stake, I've already posted my view on that here but I'm happy to repeat them.

Very nice. Just when I thought I had a decent counterexample, you point out the fact that I don't know my own story's assumptions as well as you do. So let me try a simpler one.

One Christmas day, when I was a child, my dad decided that the proper thing to do was to take our Christmas honey-baked ham off of our dinner table, drive it down to the local food shelter, and drop it off there for people who really needed it. His intentions were completely religious in nature. The people who ended up eating that ham, whoever they were, had no exposure whatsoever to his intentions. But they ate a damn good ham which they otherwise wouldn't have. The shelter was also not religious.

Feel free to find the ulterior motivations once again, lol.

And don't even make me go into less simple stories, such as Christians who fight to stop the sex trade, or such things.

This is really entertaining watching you reason your way out of admitting that religious people can do 'good'.

That's not really what happened. I took this "They never tried to evangelize/proselytize/etc. " to mean that there were no religious effects of their visit. I'm wondering how you could possibly know that?

I'm not sure how you got from that to this - "you point out the fact that I don't know my own story's assumptions as well as you do".


My mother once tried to volunteer at a shelter for the Christmas period, they told her to come back when it wasn't Christmas. I think we both know why.

Your father donated a Ham, and this you're holding up as a shining example of religiously motivated 'good'... I'm really not sure whether to laugh or sigh.

Yes, you have to be christian to fight the sex trade, it's not what a nice person would do anyway. Anything else? And, just in case your last sentence was serious, I didn't say that religious people can't do good. Perhaps you should read back to what I did say.

Your tone is getting a little snarky and defensive, is this a troubling issue for you?

Its not a fact - I didn't. You asked me a question, remember? So I answered.
I know you're not very good at logic. I know you don't bother responding to the opposing views put to you. I believe you think you're smarter than you are.

I'll point out that I'm not running around actively telling you you're wrong about being certain of your beliefs (for example). I mean how presumptuous and judgmental would that be? I base my opinions of you on your posts - what else?
That was exactly the point.
If you don't want an answer don't ask a question.

I don't see an answer to my question here.

I'm surprised there would be anyone who might not agree. It's an obvious fact that parents teach their kids religion. The "wonder if he's thought of THAT!" (Like it was some brilliant insight) is what irritated and now just amuses me.
I wouldn't have thought that - given the societal pressure (it's even over here, a bit, in what is basically an atheist country), I would have thought a self-identifying atheist is more likely to have come to their view in spite of their upbringing. (Unless you just mean "everything is environment" or something..)

ok

and you imply what by saying this exactly? Apart from the fact you spelt his name wrong.

your posts are constantly bordering on being offensive, and smack of ignorance. i'm sorry but it's true. you repeat the same basic assertions as if they are philosophical dynamite, whilst failing to acknowledge the responses of other posters.

I have an IQ of 130, a first-class degree, was born and raised completely as a secular atheist, and yet here I am a believer in God. While I am not religious, I am a believer in a deity and believe in the truth contained in certain religious writings. In your book does this make me weak-minded? Or stupid? Your stock response is that I was conditioned by environmental factors etc. but the truth is this utterly fails to address my situation, to the point where it is impossible to take you seriously.

You say you are here for two reasons: to listen to the perspectives of others to try and find out what motivates them to believe, and to try and persuade them they are wrong. Given that you have absolutely no insight whatsoever into my experience and perspective, I would strongly urge you to abandon the second half of your quest, and focus more on the first. It is arrogant and blinkered to assume you are in a position to make me question anything, as if you are bringing anything new and challenging into my sphere of perception by recycling basic concepts of pop psychology and whatnot that simply do not begin to address or even acknowledge my own particular views and life experience.

Basically, just give up.

I am not here to convert anyone because I am not arrogant enough to assume this is my role. It is not yours either. To openly discuss things is what should be your goal, to inform others of your perspectives and to learn about theirs, this whole bit about openly admitting you are here to persuade people like me to become atheists just makes you look bad.

Whether you choose to believe it or not there is a state of consciousness a man can enter which will convince him of the truth spoken about in the ancient texts, because he will recognise that truth as his own experience. That is it, there isn't anything else. Once you've experienced it even fleetingly there's no going back, and you see everything differently. Now you may choose to study this scripture or that scripture, to meditate, reflect, pray, exercise a certain way; whatever path you might choose have no doubt that if you are sincere and you have chosen a legit way of going about things, sooner or later you will catch sight of this state yourself, and you will know, and your entire being will change as a result. I am not talking about paying lip service in church once a week, I am talking about radical inner transformation and insight brought about by sincere spiritual practice, and I know it is real because I have experienced it for myself. This is the foundation of all religions, the experience of a truth that is "more" than the physical world our five senses can interpret, and this is the common ground shared by mystics and adepts from the east to the west, and from christianity to hinduism to buddhism.

When I see someone who has never experienced this trying to convince someone who has that he is "wrong", I can't help but take a little offence.

I don't care what people believe, and I certainly have no desire to cause an about-face in your philosophy. I only ask that you show a little respect, if not for "religion", which I myself am not a particular fan of, then for things that quite frankly sir, you clearly know f*ckall about.

Good day.