Jesus was a historical figure. Jesus is not God.

Go.

I pretty much never come to this forum, so when I saw the thread title I thought "oh no, poor RGT" thinking he/she was a regular poster in this forum.

If this forum is going to primarily be about irreverence, degeneracy, mockery, and contempt, then I say good riddance. Silence is better. If I contributed to shifting it from the former to the latter, then I consider that to have been worth doing.

Yes craig, this forum does seem to have become a place where mentally deranged individuals post long soliloquies that only they can comprehend.

Probably best to just let it die.

It’s difficult to teach something irrational to people who are going to try to comprehend it through rationality. And it’s difficult to persuade people to take actions of discomfort and uncertainty when they are conditioned for comfort and certainty. I’m still learning how to better communicate about this.

Yeah, being rational and logical sucks.

Yes, no one else is experiencing discomfort and uncertainty right now.

I would distinguish between "irrational" and "non-rational."

Similar to the distinction between "immoral" and "amoral.

An "irrational" belief would be one that violates a foundational tenent of, say, science or logic.

A "non-rational" belief would lack justification, but would not violate any foundational principles.

Even though there is currently no evidence of intelligent life in our solar system other than that on Earth, a belief that there IS intelligent life other than on Earth in our solar system could be non-rational, but not irrational.

I saw it as RBG and freaked out for a moment

I do wonder the degree to which forum is a microcosm for something else as well though. Perhaps it's just my own "awakening" or whatever, but in my early 20s I discovered movement atheism and consumed a lot of four horseman stuff and really enjoyed watching or reading debates between atheists and theists, and for a while being an atheist as a superior intellectual position to theism was a sort of important part of my identity. That kind of thing seems less prevalent 10-15 years a later, and I'm not 100% sure that's just me losing attention personally and maturing, but it seems that this kind of "movement atheism" is less strong these days as well, despite atheism itself probably being stronger. Who knows, maybe all over the place there are lively forums of atheists and theists going at it about whether a god exists and this place dieing is the outlier. What do you all think?

I think this forum might be an outlier.

This is basically a poker site, and poker has been slowly dying, at least here in the U.S.

This is probably true. I think there were a few things that happened that killed off that atheism.

1) Sam Harris proved himself to be basically an Islamophobe. That's just one possible source of many that could have been pointed to, including some debates inside this forum and maybe there was one in SMP (but I don't remember anymore).

2) Hitchens died in 2011.

3) Dawkins discovered Twitter and discovered the rush of going viral for making stupid statements.

4) Dennett... I have no clue what happened to him.

But from what I see, the thing fell apart from the inside and people just moved on with life.

For another perspective:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...wkins-hitchens

As far as this forum goes, it's dead because there's nothing new to debate among those that are left. The staunch atheism that tries to yell down religious folks mostly died away. (There are exceptions.) But the atheism that exists now is more reasoned and nuanced as its own thing rather than being mostly an anti-religion thing. There's much more common ground there, so we don't see vigorous debate. And so it ends up being both religious and non-religious folks going after people posting nonsense (both religious nonsense and non-religious nonsense), which isn't nearly as interesting.

From a religious perspective, the election of Donald Trump has led to most of the criticism of American Christianity to be in the form of non-white/non-conservative American Christians trying to figure out what is wrong with white conservative American Christians. (That's not to say that there isn't criticism for supporting Trump from non-Christians, but that one stays more in the realm of an actual political argument and not a religious one.)

And not a lot of people are willing to step up to defend Trump and the theology of supporting him in this forum. I think that's mostly just self-selection because people who skew conservative like that probably aren't visiting poker sites too often.

I think when many people realize there isn’t much life in the theism vs atheism conversation, then whatever spark of idealism that was present gets extinguished and they become strictly practical. The life that can maintain the spark is in the meaning crisis conversation.

Nietzsche and Kierkegaard identified the meaning crisis within Christendom. Camus helped broaden it to include secularity and existence in general. Frankl began to show that the meaning that calls us is still present even within hopelessness, and that it can be combined with truth. He discovered a new hope within the truth of hopelessness, or a new meaning within the truth of meaninglessness. Jordan Peterson revitalized this idea to some degree recently.

To the degree that rationality is complicit in preserving our worldview, the deconstruction that I see as necessary is anti-rational. When it comes to morality/psychology/spirituality, we go from ‘I am right’ to ‘I think I am right’ despite, or by overcoming rationality, rather than because of it.

Rationality is incapable of doubting its worldview. Once doubt is accepted, then rationality will try to take credit for it in order to regain control.

I think there's probably some truth to all of these perspectives.

On the last two points, I think religion discussions (like politics) suffer somewhat from the fact that there is a set of topics that tend to be repeated ad infinitum. People who have argued them in the past get a little tired of them, so it tends to require some constant churn of new participants to keep them going. With politics there's also current events, so you can end up spending more time on that and less on well-trodden theoretical arguments, but there's maybe less interest in "current events" topics for religion?

I hadn't checked in for a while, but on another forum entirely dedicated to religion that I used to frequent my favorite perennial topic was always about the divinity of Christ. I think a thread on that topic was on the first page of the forums at all times for years. Just peaked in now... top of the page: "The Trinity Fails to Describe God."

I've tried to bring some topics of that here for interest, and some have had legs:

American Christianity's Response to Donald Trump

Gay Wedding Cakes

But then there's this:

Christianity Today vs. the Christian Post

In the last one (which is still an interesting conversation, especially as the political season is coming around again and the conservative Christians are still holding tight to Trump), there's not a lot of meaningful discussion. Mostly because there are no strongly argumentative conservative viewpoints that are willing to really go at it.

This is the dumbest thing you've ever written. And believe me, that says a lot.

Being rational is doubting everything, and believing nothing that can't be proven.

I stand by what I said. Rationality will not voluntarily give ground by doubting its worldview. It’s only after we consciously accept doubt that rationality will participate in the doubting.

You probably make the mistake in thinking that some people are not rational. Maybe it makes you feel superior? Everyone is rational.

Please show us your proof for the bolded. (Assuming you actually believe it, of course.)

Thanks.

This is where Aaron would say I am making "poorly thought out statements asserted confidently."

Not going to argue with that on this one.

Then we shall "leave it lay", as they used to say.

RoundGuy can you explain me in short whats bad about irrationality?
Why is it bad to hold believes?
Is it possible for a believer to push science on a new level?

This is all personal opinion and experience, so take it for what it is.

I was taught once (I apologize I can't attribute who or where) that a rational response to any "situation" is always more productive than an emotional reaction. Emotional reactions tend to be irrational.

I was taught that when you find yourself in a situation, you take a "snapshot" of that moment, and analyze it rationally.

What did that person say? Why did they say it? Is it true? Is believable? Is it just an emotional reaction to what you just said?

What did you just say? Why did you say it? Is it true? Is it believable? Or was it just an emotional reaction to what they just said?

And so on.....

Holding a belief is fine, if it's truthful, or at least believable. Just don't push your belief on me -- especially if it's nothing more than an emotional reaction.

I would prefer that science pushes the believer to a new level, but that's just me.

In my view, you are mistakenly equating truth seeking with rationality. Your emotions have rationalizations on top of them. Rationality should be more associated with confirmation bias, organization, and clarification.

I would actually associate irrationality with the higher forms of truth that are relevant when truth seeking. However, irrationality is also associated with darkness, chaos, uncertainty, resistance, and evil. That produces fear and anxiety which either pushes us to find refuge in rationality with the belief that rationality is truth while irrationality is falsity, or it causes us to deny the darker truths of irrationality, which leaves us with half truths that don’t cohere with the world (think prosperity gospel).

So it would be an error to see a die-hard prosperity gospel follower as misaligned because of their irrationality. They are misaligned because they haven’t yet accepted the darker truths of irrationality such as injustice, hopelessness, meaninglessness, etc. They need to be more truthful, but it’s not about rationality because they rationalize their irrationality. Everyone is rational and rationalizes what they believe.

This is from Revelation:
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

We can think of this being said by the ‘spirit of truth’. To me, it is a call for irrationality. The hyper-rational, overly cautious, and overly protective get spit out from the path of truth.

You kinda suck at interpreting Revelations. Stick to your day job -- oh, let me guess.....