/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

Atheism and materialism in particular is entirely irrational, their whole world view precludes any kind of rationality in the first place. Watch this debate and see how the atheist basically just descends into saying he doesn't actually know anything at all and is just a monkey making noises.

>>634274

Also this

>>634274

that 3 hour video looks like it'll be a dread to go through, as is the analysis

do you have links to anything I can read on the issue?

>>634271

It is entirely possible to be rational in your worldview while believing in God concerning the things of matter while believing in God (though there are problems with this line of thinking once you've proven your faith). Religion is only destructive if you make it so, otherwise it's fabulous for man and God.

The problems with thinking like this with your Faith is that you end up making God the basis of your materialism, and just an added-on experience to your hedonistic life rather than the center of your being. This leads to experience-seeking in spiritual things like you experience-seek with entertainment, etc. This is why I strongly emphasize "duty to God" as the center of your life, no matter what happens or what doesn't happen, you never fail to follow Him because you must.

To answer your God question, no need to be on the fence. Read the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (this contains all the arguments for God and many references to other ones that you may have never seen before), then study the historical case for the Resurrection, and prepare yourself for the life of Faith and Virtue. After that, no worries.

>>634278

just put them on when you are cooking or something. You don't have to watch the whole debate tbh after the first 30 mins it is the same thing over and over again as JF refuses to acknowledge he knows anything

>>634271

>Do you believe it's possible to be completely rational in your worldview (in your dealings with matter and atoms) while still believing in God?

Atheism is a modern aberration. All the greatest scientists in history have been Christian or heretical.

>>634281

That proves nothing.

I only checked out that second link but the sheer number of purposefully deceptive fallacies in that article is genuinely staggering. To answer your question: I don't believe that any person can be "completely rational" to begin with, and that striving to be so outside of an empirical framework is counterproductive at best. Furthermore, there is a vast gulf of difference between empiricism/the scientific method, and what the rationalists are engaging in where they unconsciously stretch what empirical evidence they have to fill in the gaps of their understanding of reality. They do exactly what they criticize us for, but rather than having faith in God, they replace it with faith in their own ego and ignore that they've defeated their own presumption of rationality in doing so. I myself have a graduate degree in behavioral genetics but was able to understand how to properly wield the tool of empiricism and recognize its limits. And this is from someone who was "on the fence" as well not so long ago.

>>634278

Jay Dyer might be a bit tough for someone who isn't well versed in theological terminology, but it was actually his content that convinced me to read the Orthodox Catechism of St. Philaret which is what first got me off the fence.

>>634282

>can you be rational and believe in God

>yes literally every rational man pre 1890s believed in God

>thats not proof

Uh..

>>634279

You're right that I had a muddled sense of priorities, something like an is/ought problem. It is said things of the spirit look foolish to the non-believer because they are not filled with the spirit.

I have the problem of being double-minded, which was returned for querying "think" and "thought" on an online Bible.

https://www.gotquestions.org/double-minded.html

It is an easy trap to center your thoughts and life on your thoughts and life, it can become self-referential and recursive.

I will check out the books, thank you.

>>634280

I'll give it a watch soon

>>634281

The Whiggish and presentism approach to history, culture and thought is very ubiquitous at the moment. I believe this comes from the Enlightenment, a movement of hubris and self-interest.

>If we all adopt materialist-scientism worldviews the world would become a better place

If we adopt the retarded materialism-scientism, the world becomes a huge contradiction, and to begin with, there is no goodness, so the world can't become a better place because there would be no "good" or "bad".

The very sentence "we are nothing but atoms" is a contradiction, because it implies that there is something added to the mass of atoms that shape the world that makes some of them be associated to people.

All these and many things are lost in the simple minds of all those fedoras, who are failed people with no purpose, trying to fill the void they have created with plastic gods like "LE EPIC SCIENTIFIC METHOD, LE EPIC MATHEMATIC XDDDD". Those idiots know nothing about religions, nothing about theology, nothing about metaphysics, nothing about actual science. They are stupid people unable to grasp anything beyond "ooga booga I see things". They want to feel smart, special snowflakes that will bring an era of enlightment and destroy le evil religion, while they are retards that anyone with the slighest knowledge of the works from monks more than 1000 years ago will destroy in any discussion.

Just let me show you how much the scientific method is worth: things are true o false according to the "scientific method" (which is not scientific, since science encompasses much, much more, including theology), when the occurrences of some events surpasses a certain probabilistic threshold (assuming the probability is well measured, as well as the occurrence of the events, etc.). That threshold is usually 0.05 or 0.01. Do you know why those numbers exactly and not 0.03173 or 0.00135? Because they are nice, round numbers. That is the ultimate criteria of what is false or true according to the great scientific method: an arbitrary number that is considered to be nice looking enough.

There is nothing more irrational than atheism. It is a mass of contradictions. Retards filled with pride, talking about how there is no God, but at the same time discussing what is "better", telling you to be logical, but then making conclusions from arbitrary probabilistic thresholds, saying there is nothing but atoms and forces, but telling you there is some kind of "us". Only in the modern world of degeneracy and hedonism are these huge retards hailed as "enlightened".

>>634286

>I believe this comes from the Enlightenment

I'd say that this is when it came into its fully metastasized form, but that its roots run further back than that.

>>634286

>something like an is/ought problem

St. Philaret actually addresses this issue in the Orthodox Catechism:

>6. What is faith?

According to the definition of St. Paul, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb. xi. 1); that is, a trust in the unseen as though it were seen, in that which is hoped and waited for as if it were present.

>7. What is the difference between knowledge and faith?

Knowledge has for its object things visible and comprehensible; faith, things which are invisible, and even incomprehensible. Knowledge is founded on experience, on examination of its object; but faith on belief of testimony to truth. Knowledge belongs properly to the intellect, although it may also act on the heart; faith belongs principally to the heart, although it is imparted through the intellect.

>8. Why is faith, and not knowledge only, necessary in religious instruction?

Because the chief object of this instruction is God invisible and incomprehensible, and the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery; consequently, many parts of this learning can not be embraced by knowledge, but may be received by faith.

Faith, says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, is the eye which enlighteneth every man's conscience; it giveth man knowledge. For, as the prophet says, If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand. Isa. vii. 9; Cyr. Cat. v.

>9. Can you illustrate further the necessity of faith?

St. Cyril thus illustrates it:

It is not only amongst us, who hear the name of Christ, that faith is made so great a thing; but every thing which is done in the world, even by men who are unconnected with the Church, is done by faith. Agriculture is founded on faith; for no one who did not believe that he should gather in the increase of the fruits of the earth would undertake the labor of husbandry. Mariners are guided by faith when they intrust their fate to a slight plank, and prefer the agitation of the unstable waters to the more stable element of the earth. They give themselves up to uncertain expectations, and retain for themselves nothing but faith, to which they trust more than to any anchors. Cyr. Cat. v.

>Do you believe it's possible to be completely rational in your worldview (in your dealings with matter and atoms) while still believing in God?

What do you understand for being "completely rational"? With God you are asked to believe without direct evidence, but I would say there are a lot of indirect evidence. Anyway if you are a good scientist you will only attend to facts.

Why do all these supposedly rational atheists still cling to morality? If God doesn't exist and there is no objective moral order, than clearly the only imperative is to live the life that is most enjoyable for oneself. Sure, maybe the most enjoyable life is one in which you believe in concepts like morality. But if that is the case, then even believing in atheism or materialism might not be the most enjoyable thing either. If atheistic materialism was true, there would be no inherent obligation to believe in it. If it is wrong, then it would be incredibly foolish and evil to believe in it.

>>634278

I know you weren't particularly up for a three hour debate and watned something to read so this four part lecture series might not be what you were looking for either, but given that it's in four parts and therefore in smaller more digestable chunks might help. I've just finished watching it and it provides a good foundation for the reasonableness of believing in God from a philosophically empiricist perspective (not that I knew what that meant before I watched the lectures). Doesn't go into why Christianity is true, just belief in God is rational.

>>634335

part 2

3

and 4

>There's "nothing but" matter and energy, so you must arbitrarily deny that reality has a meaningful nonmaterial aspect

Also vids related explain how science (quantum physics) demonstrates that this simply isn't the case and on the other extreme that the opposite is true - that fundementally the nature of reality is such that there is no matter, only possibilities, (wave functions) outside of any observations of a mind (I think that's the gist)

>>634338

>>634337

>>634336

>>634335

These look fascinating thank you.

>>634310

I should clarify, complete rationality as having a strongly accurate picture of the world and a powerful set of means to negotiate it without falling into delusions or aberrations of thought. Is belief in God an aberration of thought?

On dwelling on this I realise the atheist-rationalist cannot presume to be neutral or objective by taking a non-human view of human thought, or ideal circumstances for human thought because their frames of reference (mathematical ideals) are derived and created by humans. Sure it's refined over time, but to say how and to what outcome is everybody's guess.

Funnily enough the focus of rationalist obsession that is Bayes' theorem was conceived by a Reverend. Much of the groundwork in math and science was laid by men of Christ, it is difficult to see how aberrant thought processes can lead to profoundly good and useful results in the sciences.

>>634340

What is rational is just what isn't contradictory. "Using reason" is taking a set of statements and infering things from them. Of course, that ignores the problem of why the first statements are accepted as true.

Many things are not covered by reason, because reason is a limited thing and does not cover what is beyond reaason. Things can also be perfectly rational and false.

>>634271

I honestly don't understand the atheists arguments all being based around observable phenomenon. They assume that we have the tools to completely and 100% accurately describe the nature of the universe, when for all we know the measuring instruments that have been developed so far could not even breech 1% of what makes the universe works.

There are observed phenomenon that are downright impossible to explain without there being some unseeable aspect of reality in play, but atheists often dismiss these out of turn as 'fake supernatural nonsense', and just work under the assumption that if one cannot explain something scientifically, then it is false.

They have forgotten that science can be wrong or incomplete, and assume that, since we are so much more advanced than people 1000 years ago, and we can't prove that God exists with science that is still advancing, then they must have all been wrong.

They have become so obsessed with the material world and how everything fits within it, that they discount the spiritual altogether, dismissing it as readily as any religion faced with thinking that ranges outside of its scope.

And atheism IS a religion, now, and their god that decrees all that is true is known by the name of science.

Hey guys OP here,

I have come to Christ. I'm going to church this Sunday.

I also received a very coincidental phone call from an old friend tonight who I have not seen in nearly a decade. He called at random and we ended up talking about God, he says he has also become Christian and seen some profound things since doing so. We both agreed that it wasn't a coincidence and the timing was incredible.

My inner conflict was over human philosophies, and now I appreciate how complete the Bible is in its wisdom about human nature:

> "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ." (Colossians 2:8)

>"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14)

>"They are all senseless and foolish; they are taught by worthless wooden idols." (Jeremiah 10:8)

and further with all the verses on false prophets, deception.

Thank you to all who replied

>>634339

That's the PopSci crypto-gnostic interpretation. "Observation" means measurement. In the case of many particles, measuring an experiment changes the outcome because "measuring" entails shining a laser at it, which of course will affect the experiment.

Example from Wikipedia:

In thermodynamics, a standard mercury-in-glass thermometer must ==absorb== or ==give up== some thermal energy to record a temperature, and therefore changes the temperature of the body which it is measuring.