You speak a lot of sense there, I too have seen both sides. I can’t deny that my religious upbringing, by very sensible parents I might add, has given me a lot. I do think for myself, that has always been true, from a very young age.
I always try for the benefit of the doubt.
Do you mean this? http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_carroll?currentPage=all I see no paywall.
Yeah that’s it. I have a subscription so it’s hard for me to figure out what’s paywalled sometimes.
Strictly speaking, this is what Paul says in the original Greek – that “you have been saved through the faith of Jesus Christ,” not “through faith in Jesus Christ.” The latter is a mistranslation that has stuck around.
When my New Testament & Origins of Christianity professor asserted this, one guy in the class (who read Greek) said “It can’t possibly say that. Here, let me see that Greek New Testament.” He pored over it for a few minutes, then handed it back and said “Wow. It does say that.”
So yeah. If you believe Paul, Jesus did save everybody, whether they believe or not. Even atheists.
(For the record, I’m a lapsed Catholic. So I’m not saying this from the perspective of necessarily believing in it myself. I majored in religious studies at a public university, and the aforementioned New Testament and Origins of Christianity class was very much from a secular, historical perspective.)
I can not add too the topic at hand but I can offer an off hand joke.
A Rabbi and an Atheists were arguing the merits of Religion.
After long dialogue the Atheist stood up and exclaimed, “THERE IS NO WAY THERE IS A GOD!”
The Rabbi stood up and said,“YEAH WAY!”
Thank you and you can use this in your comic routine if your short on material.
Good night
I think they’re busy with their president resigning and rumored sex scandals.
That said, while strong universalism has been around since the beginnings of Christianity, it doesn’t usually ascribe any power to doing good works, although it may ascribe this to wanting to be a better person and do good works.
Personally, I’m technically an agnostic, but generally call myself an atheist. Basically, since most people’s definition of a god requires that its existence can’t be proven, then there’s functionally no difference in the real world between there being a god and there not being a god. I go with there not being a god because it requires fewer assumptions.
Either the world works the way we see it work and there is no god, or there is a god who acts no differently than if it weren’t there in the first place. So technically I’m an agnostic, since I concede that if there were a god, it’d be impossible to prove, otherwise I’m an atheist because it’s tiresome to spend a day shooting down religious people’s broken logic and non-factual statements.
Yeah, Protestants and Catholics aren’t supposed to get along, and typically didn’t, historically. In America, they made a sort of temporary conservative alliance right around the Regan era, and it looks like that might start fracturing again if the good Catholics continue to follow the Pope (and/or the Pope brings people back into the fold).
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say atheists believe no god could exist
um, usually that premise is addressed when they tell you they are ‘athiests’.
thats the code word, the insider lingo that those types use to sneak it past innocents and hide their real beliefs.
Wait, what? I think that’s only true in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
“an atheist with agnostic tendencies, because I don’t know everything, so I leave open a possibility, but tend not to believe. Friends who are all out atheists do not believe and have no doubt.”
Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. I’m not a theist because I’ve not been convinced by any arguments for the existence of a god or gods. Agnosticism is an epistemological position – one is forced to be agnostic with respect to the existence of leprechauns. I don’t see any difference between Yahweh and leprechauns.
could, rather than do.
Oh, they are flipping their shit. Limbaugh is saying “someone must have gotten to him.”
(Reza Aslan says, basically “you’re right: It’s this guy Jesus.”)
How would one go about proving the existence of a god empirically? If we’re talking about the Abrahamic god, it’s an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being that refuses to present itself for testing. This is the one I can say with confidence that I don’t believe in within any logical framework I’ve worked out. After that, I consider any claim of a god’s existence to be an extraordinary claim that requires significant substantiation before I’ll even consider the idea as plausible or valid.
As far as I can tell, nobody can give any empirical evidence for a god, or rather, nobody can give evidence beyond a “god of the gaps” argument, which, depending on how it’s argued either falls into an argument from incredulity, an argument from ignorance, or special pleading.
That just leaves the god whose existence is indistinguishable from there being no god. In this circumstance I feel it makes more sense to assume there is no god and be done with it, than assume there is a god without any prior plausibility.
Since god’s role in the universe shrinks every time something new can be explained using science, then I can only deduce that god is simply a figment of the imagination used to generate feelings of certainty and control in situations where one would otherwise feel helpless.
Yeah, right here! I’m an Atheist, but I don’t refuse to believe in a god on principles of opposition to it. I don’t believe because I’m not convinced by anyone’s argument in favor. I can’t say I know there is no god, just that as far as I can tell, if a god does exist its existence is indistinguishable from its nonexistence.
TL;DR, you can’t prove a negative, but the evidence for the positive is unconvincing.
Snarky, knowing comment after snarky, knowing comment, almost none of which show any clue that this has been standard Catholic doctrine since as far back as I’m aware.
Catholics don’t believe you need to be Catholic to go to heaven. They don’t even believe you need to be Christian. Catholic doctrine is that, if you live a good, honest life of helping others, you are working your way closer to God, whether you realize it or not.
lllll AJ
Okaay. Let’s all mellow out and talk of something else for a bit. For instance…
I do not believe in flying saucers.
I might expect an older civilisation might send out light drones on solar sails before they sent rigid craft with living inhabitants across the stars. Maybe these drones would be complex enough to be recognisably intelligent, but they would probably not go on two legs and probe people. I think the probable gap in space and time between separately evolving civilisations is too large to span with the technology we have, but I would be fascinated to be proved wrong by real contact. We have learned a lot more about planets around other stars in the last ten years, so all we really need to do is to wait for better information. However, most witnessed reports of flying saucers turn out to be fakes, and misunderstandings, with occasionally a genuine new atmospheric or optical phenomenon, and a tiny residue of things I cannot explain, but could just be better fakes. Claims of sightings are not spread evenly between countries, and very few predate the first flying saucer films.
So, I have no active belief in flying causers. Here are some statements that I feel do not apply to me…
I had no active belief in flying saucers, nor in God. There are others who do. Some of them say things like this, which make me think they have never actually met, and talked to rather than talked at, a non-believer.
Peace!
agnostic, rather than atheist.
what?
if that was actually directed at me then i think you missed my brief point by a country mile.
i was saying that atheism means roughly 'without a conception of a deity,. and so all it means is that imagining a deity is beyond the scope for someone who is a self identified atheist.
to wonder if an atheist has an imagination which might ever include a deity is to assume that words have no meaning. or maybe its more like asking would be someone underwater water be dry? or if a botanist studies plants.
