The biggest problem facing monotheism.

ZenMode said:
Sure. There's nothing inherently bad about creating stories in your mind to make yourself feel better. That doesn't make the stories any more real.
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Cypress tips his hand when he continually uses pejorative and emotionally charged language in this debate. Cypress wants what almost every single person on earth wants: a sense of some cosmic justice that is meted out to the bad people.

I think the hardest part of atheism is that sometimes we don't get what we want, even if we want it really badly and it sounds like a really good thing to get.

Cypress seems to think that reality MUST provide comfort and succor. Which is ironic given how much of the universe is completely uncaring and antithetical to life I wonder why we all want that in this little corner of the universe.
 
ZenMode said:
Summarizing his position...

God does nothing to prevent suffering on Earth, and in fact adds himself/his son into the suffering, because he's going to judge us after we die.

Swell. I'm sure that's a great relief to the 10 year old girl having cigarettes put out on her back by her drug addicted, physically abusive mom, right now.
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I once presented the story of the Amalekite Genocide story from the OT to a Christian friend and asked how he made sense of a loving God commanding through his prophet the slaughter of innocent non-combatants. The answer I got was that God would probably make everything better for the dead children up in heaven. It would be a much better deal for the children the Israelites were commanded to murder.
 

EdwinA said:
^^^ Has never read the books. lol
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The sense of the Jewish afterlife is almost never even discussed in the Old Testament. Apart from the Witch of Endor raising Samuel from the dead I can think of vanishingly few if any real mentions of an afterlife. CERTAINLY nothing like the "ultimate justice" heaven/hell type concept.

That required the input of the Greeks to help create a more expansive afterlife concept which was integrated into Christianity.
 
Daylight63 said:
Cypress tips his hand when he continually uses pejorative and emotionally charged language in this debate. Cypress wants what almost every single person on earth wants: a sense of some cosmic justice that is meted out to the bad people.

I think the hardest part of atheism is that sometimes we don't get what we want, even if we want it really badly and it sounds like a really good thing to get.

Cypress seems to think that reality MUST provide comfort and succor. Which is ironic given how much of the universe is completely uncaring and antithetical to life I wonder why we all want that in this little corner of the universe.
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Right. You'll hear religious people say things like "Well, I wouldn't want to live in a world where there isn't an afterlife or a god" or whatever. The perceived usefulness of religion doesn't make it any more true and the amount of time and money that people waste on fairy tales is pretty embarrassing when you think about it.
 
ZenMode said:
Right. You'll hear religious people say things like "Well, I wouldn't want to live in a world where there isn't an afterlife or a god" or whatever. The perceived usefulness of religion doesn't make it any more true and the amount of time and money that people waste on fairy tales is pretty embarrassing when you think about it.
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I don't necessarily see it as embarrassing so much as a normal human desire. It's part and parcel of our advanced brain function which is capable of conceiving of alternate outcomes for any given set of actions and can envision a world in which we are no longer here.

Our thirst for "justice" is definitely something we as a species carry.

I assume it is, itself, also an evolutionary adaptation for a social animal. Justice ensures that events which threaten the security of the social network are "disincentivized".

Justice really is a game for humans and that's probably it (although we have no real clue if justice is something other higher social mammals also seek, but we can be reasonably certain "justice" is in no way a part of NATURE per se. Things happen. Good wins as often as bad. Life ultimately fails to death.
 
ZenMode said:
Sure. There's nothing inherently bad about creating stories in your mind to make yourself feel better. That doesn't make the stories any more real.
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Okay. You seem to be absolutely certain about what happens at death. I do not share your confident certainty and omniscience.
 
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Daylight63 said:
Given that there is no real "afterlife" in Judaism, where is the justice per Judaism for the Holocaust?
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You would have to ask an informed Jew. Judaism is famously ambiguous about an afterlife. For certain, Orthodox Jews believe in a resurrection at the end of times. American Reform Judaism was not common, and perhaps even absent in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, where most holocaust victims came from.
 
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Cypress said:
Okay. You seem to be absolutely certain about what happens at death. I do not share your confident certainty and omniscience.
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What I know is that there is no reason to believe in any of the gods that man has believed in. Without an omniscient being, what kind of afterlife do you believe could exist, how would we get there and what part of us gets there?
 
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ZenMode said:
What I know is that there is no reason to believe in any of the gods that man has believed in. Without an omniscient being, what kind of afterlife do you believe could exist and how would we get there?
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I am on Team Confucius, who famously said we don't even understand life, how can we be expected to understand death?

What kind of proof would you need that there is a deity or transcendent reality?
 
Daylight63 said:
The sense of the Jewish afterlife is almost never even discussed in the Old Testament.
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It's not called the Old Testament in Judaism. The Hebrew Bible is only a small part of the corpus of Rabbinic Judaism.

The Talmud is the gold standard of Jewish theology and practice. That's why I usually don't run my mouth about Judaism - I've never read the Talmud which is thousands of pages long.

And I am dubious of anyone who claims expertise in Judaism if they haven't read, studied, and understood the Talmud.
 
Cypress said:
I am on Team Confucius, who famously said we don't even understand life, how can we be expected to understand death?

What kind of proof would you need that there is a deity or transcendent reality?
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What kind of proof? I don't know specifically. We believe a lot of things and not always based on the same evidence. I believe dogs exist, but for a different reason than I believe water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.
 
ZenMode said:
What kind of proof? I don't know specifically. We believe a lot of things and not always based on the same evidence.
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Wait, so you can't even tell me what kind of proof you need to convince you of a deity, even though you have obviously been thinking about this for decades?
 
Cypress said:
It's not called the Old Testament in Judaism. The Hebrew Bible is only a small part of the corpus of Rabbinic Judaism.

The Talmud is the gold standard of Jewish theology and practice. That's why I usually don't run my mouth about Judaism - I've never read the Talmud which is thousands of pages long.

And I am dubious of anyone who claims expertise in Judaism if they haven't read, studied, and understood the Talmud.
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I have not read the Talmud. Perhaps you can show me in the Talmud where Judaism has a well-developed afterlife complete with ultimate justice for the wronged and eternal reward for the good.
 
Cypress said:
You would have to ask an informed Jew. Judaism is famously ambiguous about an afterlife. For certain, Orthodox Jews believe in a resurrection at the end of times. American Reform Judaism was not common, and perhaps even absent in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, where most holocaust victims came from.
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Sounds kind of unsatisfying. Do you hold their philosophy in as much disdain as you do atheists because of this?
 
Daylight63 said:
I have not read the Talmud. Perhaps you can show me in the Talmud where Judaism has a well-developed afterlife complete with ultimate justice for the wronged and eternal reward for the good.
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So you didn't even know the Talmud is the gold standard in Jewish practice and theology?

You don't need to read the Talmud in this case

All you have to do read reputable Jewish scholars. Concepts of the immortal soul (via Plato), and resurrection are found throughout Orthodox Judaism and Jewish mysticism, according to the scholars I've read. . Overall, the exact nature of an afterlife is ambiguous in the Hebrew Bible (which predates Platonic influence), or I've heard it's generally ignored in liberal American Reform Judaism.

There weren't a lot of American Reform Jews in the death camps
 
Cypress said:
Wait, so you can't even tell me what kind of proof you need to convince you of a deity, even though you have obviously been thinking about this for decades?
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Right, because I don't know. Like I said, I believe water is 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen for different reasons than I believe squirrels exist in the world.

The better question is why anyone believes deities exist or afterlife exists.
 
Cypress said:
So you didn't even know the Talmud is the gold standard in Jewish practice and theology?
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I have not read the Talmud.

Cypress said:
You don't need to read the Talmud in this case
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So you mentioned it just to show off? OK.

Cypress said:
All you have to do read reputable Jewish scholars. Concepts of the immortal soul (via Plato), and resurrection are found throughout Orthodox Judaism and Jewish mysticism, according to the scholars I've read. . Overall, the exact nature of an afterlife is ambiguous in the Hebrew Bible (which predates Platonic influence), or I've heard it's generally ignored in liberal American Reform Judaism.

There weren't a lot of American Reform Jews in the death camps
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Then by all means you can acquaint me with the answer to my original question.
 
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