Divinity of doubt - discussion

[ultimate777]

I tried to be conciliatory with lover 137 and/or those with similar viewpoints and he rebuffed my attempt. Hopefully if he looks at my last message on the thread he locked up he will see that this true.

[RickD]

I tried to be conciliatory with lover 137 and/or those with similar viewpoints and he rebuffed my attempt. Hopefully if he looks at my last message on the thread he locked up he will see that this true.

Ultimate777,

This is exactly why 1over137(not lover137) locked your thread. This post is in questions for Christians, and you haven't posed a question. And FYI, 1over137, aka Hana, is a she not a he.

For future posts, if you're going to make a post about something, please be willing to discuss the topic.

[1over137]

I tried to be conciliatory with lover 137 and/or those with similar viewpoints and he rebuffed my attempt. Hopefully if he looks at my last message on the thread he locked up he will see that this true.

You were the one who was rebuffing. Please look at ALL of my posts to you in that thread and think about them. If you then still feel like being treated wrongly, you can pm me (or make another post here)

God bless.

[ultimate777]

I tried to be conciliatory with lover 137 and/or those with similar viewpoints and he rebuffed my attempt. Hopefully if he looks at my last message on the thread he locked up he will see that this true.

You were the one who was rebuffing. Please look at ALL of my posts to you in that thread and think about them. If you then still feel like being treated wrongly, you can pm me (or make another post here)

God bless.

I feel there is room for compromise. In my last post I actually sent a link to a review to the book that was unfavorable. Which I thought was conciliatory on my part.
I will now see if there are any passages from the book online of the sort you seem to be asking for. If I find something I will cut and paste something to you and maybe in a seperate post send the link.

[ultimate777]

I tried to be conciliatory with lover 137 and/or those with similar viewpoints and he rebuffed my attempt. Hopefully if he looks at my last message on the thread he locked up he will see that this true.

You were the one who was rebuffing. Please look at ALL of my posts to you in that thread and think about them. If you then still feel like being treated wrongly, you can pm me (or make another post here)

God bless.

Sorry 1over 137 for getting your name and gender wrong I hope I have them right now.

I may have misunderstood, but I thought me providing quotes from the book was a big deal to you. Again, if I am wrong, and there is something you want more I am sorry. Maybe I can provide it.

Here is a fistfull of quotes. I will send you the link by seperate post:



Chapter 19: The Sense and Morality of Agnosticism

I can say with relative confidence (because what I'm saying, at least it would seem, has to be true) that there is only one necessary religion that has any merit to the people who inhabit this earth, and that's the Golden Rule: "Do unto others what you would want them to do unto you" (from the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 7:12]). To treat others as you would want them to treat you is the highest, most noble form of human behavior and the basis of all morality. No matter what some papal encyclical says; no matter what some bishops' conference says; no matter how many sacraments of the Catholic church there are, or chapters and verses in the bible, or thick and complex books by theologians, or Sunday school classes and sermons by pastors; no matter how many heated arguments there are about God, Jesus, and religion; no matter how many pilgrimages there are to Mecca, Jerusalem, and other holy places; no matter how many thousands of hours Jewish scholars struggle over the meaning of the Torah; no matter how many multimillion-dollar churches and synagogues and grand cathedrals to Christ are constructed, nothing can ever change that simple reality.

"When I do good, I feel good," Abraham Lincoln said. "When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion."

What can any church, religion, priest, minister, rabbi, theologian, seminary, religious book, or college course teach you beyond the Golden Rule that has any value? Anything else has to be man-made piffle.

If we must have religion, the seminal test as to the value and merit of any religion worth its salt has to be not what you believe, but what you do—that is, how you treat your fellow man. Yet in the thousands upon thousands of books, and billions upon billions of words that have been written, particularly about Christianity and the bible, what percentage of these books do you think are devoted to the only thing that counts—the Golden Rule?

The second reality is that if there is a God and a heaven after our life on earth, no God who demands of those whom he created that in order to get to heaven they do something here on earth different from leading a life of the Golden Rule is worth spending one second in heaven with, much less eternity. If his main requirement for getting to heaven is not that we treat our fellow man fairly and decently, but we be born-again Christians who accept Jesus as our savior and that we love him more than anyone else with all of our being, then, as indicated earlier, who in the hell would want to spend eternity or even one second with someone who is so unbelievably self-centered and vainglorious? That type of God is not worth a tinker's damn.




Chapter 19: The Sense and Morality of Agnosticism (continued)

The word faith is a euphemism for hope and speculation. Indeed, the definition of faith is belief in the unknown. And if I may borrow a clichéd term, I, for one, have never had much faith in faith. Since faith is an acknowledgment that the truth is unknown, it is nothing more than wishful thinking, and the wish is no evidence of anything beyond itself. Yet so many religious people take their wishes for reality. If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, faith is the first refuge of an idle or apprehensive mind, and though it may perhaps be mentally and emotionally nutritious, it is not intellectually sustainable.

When devout Christians feel inadequate, in conversation or debate, in justifying their belief in God, they very frequently retreat by saying, "You have to have faith," saying this in the sense that faith is something that one should have, as if it's the proper and right thing to do. But I wonder if they have ever stopped to ask themselves why. If they are truthful with themselves, is it because they need there to be a God to give purpose to their life and mitigate their fear of death? But if so, is that really an intelligent justification for believing there is a God— merely wanting or needing him to exist to make them feel better?

I certainly do not mean to denigrate the value of faith. Faith has lit candles of warmth and softened pangs of fear and despair throughout human history. As nineteenth-century German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine said, "Human misery is too great for man to do without faith." Tolstoy went so far as to proclaim that "faith is the force of life." It's just that the comfort and solace, even strength, of faith should never be confused with the existence or nonexistence of the object of that faith. Faith and its object bear no relation to each other, though if one were to believe the great religions of the world, faith in God and God should be listed as synonyms in the dictionary. Religion even goes so far as to say that faith is itself virtuous. But under what conceivable theory?

Christianity, since its origins, has tried to infuse faith with a substance it does not have, calling it something it is not in a transparent attempt to change its nature. But as Lincoln pointed out, calling, for instance, the tail of a dog a leg doesn't change the number of legs a dog has from four to five. This is why the apostle Paul only succeeded in revealing that he knew faith is as substanceless as the froth of a vapor when he felt the need to come up with this embarrassing articulation in his letter to the Hebrews: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen" (Hebrews 11:1). But we know that faith is only the dream of things hoped for, the imagining of things unseen.

[ultimate777]

I tried to be conciliatory with lover 137 and/or those with similar viewpoints and he rebuffed my attempt. Hopefully if he looks at my last message on the thread he locked up he will see that this true.

You were the one who was rebuffing. Please look at ALL of my posts to you in that thread and think about them. If you then still feel like being treated wrongly, you can pm me (or make another post here)

God bless.

I feel there is room for compromise. In my last post I actually sent a link to a review to the book that was unfavorable. Which I thought was conciliatory on my part.
I will now see if there are any passages from the book online of the sort you seem to be asking for. If I find something I will cut and paste something to you and maybe in a seperate post send the link.

Here is the link:

http://divinityofdoubt.com/excerpt.html

If people think I should discuss this someone should do what I consider starting the discussion

[1over137]

Thank you for providing the quote. Now we have something to discuss. Get back to you on weekend as Fridays are full for me.

[jlay]

When devout Christians feel inadequate, in conversation or debate, in justifying their belief in God, they very frequently retreat by saying, "You have to have faith," saying this in the sense that faith is something that one should have, as if it's the proper and right thing to do. But I wonder if they have ever stopped to ask themselves why. If they are truthful with themselves, is it because they need there to be a God to give purpose to their life and mitigate their fear of death? But if so, is that really an intelligent justification for believing there is a God— merely wanting or needing him to exist to make them feel better?

So many errors in this paragraph alone.

[1over137]

ultimate777,

here are my reactions to the excerpt which is so full of errors:

1. To the Golder Rule: Well, not all people value the same things. I will take it to the extreme and say the example. Imagine, someone would think that killing someone would be great, (reasons may be various - from him thinking he would sent that someone to heaven to him thinking he would end with the miserious life of that someone). So, the Golder Rule in my opinion is not enough. But it is probably the greatest thing agnostics can come up with.

2. When Bugliosi says things like "most noble form of human behavior" he behaves like he has absolute truth. This is really not an agnostic kind of behaving. He behaves like he knows but agnosticism is about not-knowing. He is in my opinion poor model of agnosticism.

3. To the: "When I do good, I feel good," "When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.". Again an example, many people feel great after commiting murdery.

4. To the: "What can any church, religion, priest, minister, rabbi, theologian, seminary, religious book, or college course teach you beyond the Golden Rule that has any value? Anything else has to be man-made piffle." -> Well, for example such a seemingly trivial thing as "Do not murder!"

5. To the: "If we must have religion, the seminal test as to the value and merit of any religion worth its salt has to be not what you believe, but what you do—that is, how you treat your fellow man." -> I am so glad to announce you that Christianity is about both: believing and treating fellow man. Also, if one really believes in Christ, honors Christ, how come that he would want to treat fellow man badly? I think, that then he honestly does not believe.

6. Faith and belief in the unknown? Well, certainly it is truth that we do not know ALL about our God, but we do know enough to have faith that does not deserve to be named a faith in the unknown.

7. Faith as only wishes? There are many poeple that would tell you that they did not want to know God. Their wish was not to know Him. Yet, God came in their lives and they have faith, which is faith based not on wishes.

8. There are many Christians who would not retreat the way Bugliosi wrote down.

9. To the "faith is the force of life." -> When I was not Christian one my wise old friend (a great pastor told me): "Indeed, that is exactly what some people have for a god: their thoughts. And thoughts can be strong and weak. They are as good as you allow them to be. But they will never replace God." So, faith not with God behind it, would be much weaker than with God behind it.

10. Faith and comfort? Oh my, you know that sometimes you have to do things which are not comfortable? Important but not comfortable. Christianity is not about having party here. Yes, part of it is having party but inseparable part is exact opposite as well.

11. Bugliosi evidently does not understand the faith.

That excerpt of the book is in my opinion a trash. But I can imagine that it may be famous. We live in a consuming society and it is really sad to watch what many people eat. A poison.

My two cents.

[Icthus]

Excellent summary, 1over137. And might I add that in his discussion of the Golden Rule, Bugliosi is simply assuming Christianity (and other religions) are untrue. His claim that no religion has anything worthwhile to add to the Golden Rule is obviously untrue if Christianity is true as there are a whole host of issues in the Christian faith that, if it is true, are of the utmost importance. Bugliosi has, in this section, provided a mere assertion and then used that assertion to prove that his assertion is true.

[ultimate777]

When devout Christians feel inadequate, in conversation or debate, in justifying their belief in God, they very frequently retreat by saying, "You have to have faith," saying this in the sense that faith is something that one should have, as if it's the proper and right thing to do. But I wonder if they have ever stopped to ask themselves why. If they are truthful with themselves, is it because they need there to be a God to give purpose to their life and mitigate their fear of death? But if so, is that really an intelligent justification for believing there is a God— merely wanting or needing him to exist to make them feel better?

So many errors in this paragraph alone.

Thanks for pointing them out to me.

[ultimate777]

ultimate777,

here are my reactions to the excerpt which is so full of errors:

1. To the Golder Rule: Well, not all people value the same things. I will take it to the extreme and say the example. Imagine, someone would think that killing someone would be great, (reasons may be various - from him thinking he would sent that someone to heaven to him thinking he would end with the miserious life of that someone). So, the Golder Rule in my opinion is not enough. But it is probably the greatest thing agnostics can come up with.

2. When Bugliosi says things like "most noble form of human behavior" he behaves like he has absolute truth. This is really not an agnostic kind of behaving. He behaves like he knows but agnosticism is about not-knowing. He is in my opinion poor model of agnosticism.

3. To the: "When I do good, I feel good," "When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.". Again an example, many people feel great after commiting murdery.

4. To the: "What can any church, religion, priest, minister, rabbi, theologian, seminary, religious book, or college course teach you beyond the Golden Rule that has any value? Anything else has to be man-made piffle." -> Well, for example such a seemingly trivial thing as "Do not murder!"

5. To the: "If we must have religion, the seminal test as to the value and merit of any religion worth its salt has to be not what you believe, but what you do—that is, how you treat your fellow man." -> I am so glad to announce you that Christianity is about both: believing and treating fellow man. Also, if one really believes in Christ, honors Christ, how come that he would want to treat fellow man badly? I think, that then he honestly does not believe.

6. Faith and belief in the unknown? Well, certainly it is truth that we do not know ALL about our God, but we do know enough to have faith that does not deserve to be named a faith in the unknown.

7. Faith as only wishes? There are many poeple that would tell you that they did not want to know God. Their wish was not to know Him. Yet, God came in their lives and they have faith, which is faith based not on wishes.

8. There are many Christians who would not retreat the way Bugliosi wrote down.

9. To the "faith is the force of life." -> When I was not Christian one my wise old friend (a great pastor told me): "Indeed, that is exactly what some people have for a god: their thoughts. And thoughts can be strong and weak. They are as good as you allow them to be. But they will never replace God." So, faith not with God behind it, would be much weaker than with God behind it.

10. Faith and comfort? Oh my, you know that sometimes you have to do things which are not comfortable? Important but not comfortable. Christianity is not about having party here. Yes, part of it is having party but inseparable part is exact opposite as well.

11. Bugliosi evidently does not understand the faith.

That excerpt of the book is in my opinion a trash. But I can imagine that it may be famous. We live in a consuming society and it is really sad to watch what many people eat. A poison.

My two cents.

I have some concerns too, but so far this is the only link of text from the book I have found> I think there are other parts of tw book where he is on firmer ground.

[1over137]

You can also type it yourself, not only search interent. But then, please type also what you cited: author, book, chapter, pages.

Am curious.

[ultimate777]

ultimate777,

here are my reactions to the excerpt which is so full of errors:

1. To the Golder Rule: Well, not all people value the same things. I will take it to the extreme and say the example. Imagine, someone would think that killing someone would be great, (reasons may be various - from him thinking he would sent that someone to heaven to him thinking he would end with the miserious life of that someone). So, the Golder Rule in my opinion is not enough. But it is probably the greatest thing agnostics can come up with.

2. When Bugliosi says things like "most noble form of human behavior" he behaves like he has absolute truth. This is really not an agnostic kind of behaving. He behaves like he knows but agnosticism is about not-knowing. He is in my opinion poor model of agnosticism.

3. To the: "When I do good, I feel good," "When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.". Again an example, many people feel great after commiting murdery.

4. To the: "What can any church, religion, priest, minister, rabbi, theologian, seminary, religious book, or college course teach you beyond the Golden Rule that has any value? Anything else has to be man-made piffle." -> Well, for example such a seemingly trivial thing as "Do not murder!"

5. To the: "If we must have religion, the seminal test as to the value and merit of any religion worth its salt has to be not what you believe, but what you do—that is, how you treat your fellow man." -> I am so glad to announce you that Christianity is about both: believing and treating fellow man. Also, if one really believes in Christ, honors Christ, how come that he would want to treat fellow man badly? I think, that then he honestly does not believe.

6. Faith and belief in the unknown? Well, certainly it is truth that we do not know ALL about our God, but we do know enough to have faith that does not deserve to be named a faith in the unknown.

7. Faith as only wishes? There are many poeple that would tell you that they did not want to know God. Their wish was not to know Him. Yet, God came in their lives and they have faith, which is faith based not on wishes.

8. There are many Christians who would not retreat the way Bugliosi wrote down.

9. To the "faith is the force of life." -> When I was not Christian one my wise old friend (a great pastor told me): "Indeed, that is exactly what some people have for a god: their thoughts. And thoughts can be strong and weak. They are as good as you allow them to be. But they will never replace God." So, faith not with God behind it, would be much weaker than with God behind it.

10. Faith and comfort? Oh my, you know that sometimes you have to do things which are not comfortable? Important but not comfortable. Christianity is not about having party here. Yes, part of it is having party but inseparable part is exact opposite as well.

11. Bugliosi evidently does not understand the faith.

That excerpt of the book is in my opinion a trash. But I can imagine that it may be famous. We live in a consuming society and it is really sad to watch what many people eat. A poison.

My two cents.

This is not an exerpt but I think it gets in an area where "Divinity of Doubt" stands on firmer ground.

http://blogcritics.org/books/article/bo ... -doubt-by/

From the get-go, I must admit that Divinity of Doubt is my kind of reading. The reason is simple. This well stated five-star book examines the possibility of God’s existence by contrasting it with the impossibility of His Existence. Author Bugliosi is a thinker in this sense: he refuses to consider anything as truthful except that which is reasonable to the human mind.

Divinity of Doubt supposes we have a mind; but deny that and we have utter nothingness which we know is unreasonable. Moving on from there, Bugliosi begins to annihilate ALL religion including, Catholicism, Protestantism, Jewish Religions, Oriental Beliefs, Muslimism and -isms in general.

How can he so easily wipe out all this doctrine with one fell swoop of his hand. Simple! Every religion known to man is a priori. This means that belief in any religious system accepts proof that the tenets it holds are justifiable and verifiable, because those tenets say they are justifiable and verifiable. In many cases, religious doctrine is built like a pyramid on some already believed, mythical, questionable fact, like the all-seeing eye on the dollar bill.

So many religious –isms today descend from the basic Biblical fact in Genesis that God 1) created the cosmos. How do we know that to be truth? Because in the beginning verses of the Bible, 2) the Word states the fact that an Almighty Creator made all things. How do we know the Bible is inspired by God? Because 3) the Bible says so. How do we know god created the cosmos, oops, we've been here before, haven't we, because we have statement number 1) all over again!


Can you show me where this paragraph is wrong? It seems to be criticising circular reasoning. Do you want to defend circular reasoning?


This is like a wheel of fortune. Give it a spin and whatever religion the indicator points to is the winner of truth. Why? Because each space SAYS it is the truth. This is akin to religious belief today. Spinning the religions wheel is similar to believing the pointer because of where you were raised from childhood, and what religion your parents forced upon you.

Divinity of Doubt states reasonable proofs for 1) the all powerful, all knowing God (theism) and 2) the non existent God (atheism). Reading how author Bugliosi demolishes both beliefs is quite amusing. An example: theists profoundly believing in an all perfect God who is imperfect enough to allow the earthquake/tsunami in Japan to take place, or even the heinous holocaust. Then too, we have reduction to absurdity when atheists deny that God exists, but they themselves have existence from, from, from what? from nothingness?

This is an excellent book. I very highly recommend its researched material for study, not lightly; because it outlines the horrors religion has nailed through reason’s hands and feet. Look around the world today to see the painful crowns of thorns Israel and Jerusalem are attempting to beat down on each other’s brows in the name of religion. Then look at Pakistan, Arabia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria. But do not just look at the battles taking place, look at the real underlying reasons why — differences in religious and subsequent moral beliefs.

Vincent Bugliosi’s Divinity of Doubt would have all peoples share an agnostic view of the world. A view that says, for the sake of humanity, let's stop killing one another in the name of religion. We are here; we are what we are; we are alive, and although we are reasonable, we must live with the ugliest, cruelest dichotomy of all time — we will never know the answer to the God Question.

[1over137]

Let's see:

From the get-go, I must admit that Divinity of Doubt is my kind of reading. The reason is simple. This well stated five-star book examines the possibility of God’s existence by contrasting it with the impossibility of His Existence. Author Bugliosi is a thinker in this sense: he refuses to consider anything as truthful except that which is reasonable to the human mind.

Yeah, it may be five star book. Five stars from consumers.
Bugliosi is not a good thinker in my opinion. From what I have seen in the excerpt above.
He refuses anything as truthful except that which is reasonable to the human mind? And whose mind is that? His one? On this planet there are many minds and what is reasonable to one does not have to be reasonable to other.

Divinity of Doubt supposes we have a mind; but deny that and we have utter nothingness which we know is unreasonable. Moving on from there, Bugliosi begins to annihilate ALL religion including, Catholicism, Protestantism, Jewish Religions, Oriental Beliefs, Muslimism and -isms in general.

Yeah, he annihilates all except his mind, except me-ism.

How can he so easily wipe out all this doctrine with one fell swoop of his hand. Simple! Every religion known to man is a priori. This means that belief in any religious system accepts proof that the tenets it holds are justifiable and verifiable, because those tenets say they are justifiable and verifiable. In many cases, religious doctrine is built like a pyramid on some already believed, mythical, questionable fact, like the all-seeing eye on the dollar bill.

False. He wiped out nothing from what I have seen from the exceprt above. What he wiped out easily was my recognition of him.
Christianity is not a priori. See my points in my previous long post. Christianity is not built on some myth. God is present in our lives even nowadays.

So many religious –isms today descend from the basic Biblical fact in Genesis that God 1) created the cosmos. How do we know that to be truth? Because in the beginning verses of the Bible, 2) the Word states the fact that an Almighty Creator made all things. How do we know the Bible is inspired by God? Because 3) the Bible says so. How do we know god created the cosmos, oops, we've been here before, haven't we, because we have statement number 1) all over again!

Christianity does not stand only on that few verses. We have expreriences, we have intelligence and thinking (yes, there are many intelligent Christians) and with that firm basement of pyramid it is not that hard to have faith in the top, which is God's creation of this world. There are many verses that I have seen myself are true. Observe people, observe this world and you may see some day.

This is like a wheel of fortune. Give it a spin and whatever religion the indicator points to is the winner of truth. Why? Because each space SAYS it is the truth. This is akin to religious belief today. Spinning the religions wheel is similar to believing the pointer because of where you were raised from childhood, and what religion your parents forced upon you.

I was raised as atheist. So?

Divinity of Doubt states reasonable proofs for 1) the all powerful, all knowing God (theism) and 2) the non existent God (atheism). Reading how author Bugliosi demolishes both beliefs is quite amusing. An example: theists profoundly believing in an all perfect God who is imperfect enough to allow the earthquake/tsunami in Japan to take place, or even the heinous holocaust. Then too, we have reduction to absurdity when atheists deny that God exists, but they themselves have existence from, from, from what? from nothingness?

I do not believe that book has reasonable proofs.
Amusing, well, I can imagine how many poeple have amusement from that.
About perfection and imperfection: The reader, and possible Bugliosi as well, does not understand it, so he wrote such ridiculuous thing.

This is an excellent book. I very highly recommend its researched material for study, not lightly; because it outlines the horrors religion has nailed through reason’s hands and feet. Look around the world today to see the painful crowns of thorns Israel and Jerusalem are attempting to beat down on each other’s brows in the name of religion. Then look at Pakistan, Arabia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria. But do not just look at the battles taking place, look at the real underlying reasons why — differences in religious and subsequent moral beliefs.

It is not excellent book. It is trash (at least that excerpt). I do not recommend to anybody.
Only thing one can indeed research is Bugliosi himself, his thinking and personality.
Yeah, one should look deep down for the reasons of those battles, but really deep down, not on surface as Bugliosi probably did.

Vincent Bugliosi’s Divinity of Doubt would have all peoples share an agnostic view of the world. A view that says, for the sake of humanity, let's stop killing one another in the name of religion. We are here; we are what we are; we are alive, and although we are reasonable, we must live with the ugliest, cruelest dichotomy of all time — we will never know the answer to the God Question.

If I read that book I would probably flee from agnosticism if I were agnostic.
And yes, stop killing. It is against God's commandmend. Oh wait, stop killing even killers.
Well, that humans are reasonable? Who considers himself reasonable? What is reasonable for one does not have to be reasonable for other. So, who is reasonable?
You know what is ugly? Trash being published.

Ultimate, you said I will get some firm things. Where are they? I may be blind, so please show them to me, cause I do not see them.

Have a nice blessed Sunday.