How Was Atheism Created, bis (Quora)

Same Q

How was atheism created?
https://www.quora.com/How-was-atheism-created

Other answer

with my comment.

Scott Berry

Former believer

Answered 22h ago

How was atheism created?

Let me tell you what happened to Dave yesterday: he came into his kitchen and a frying pan was floating three inches off the top of the counter. When he went to grab it, it disappeared.

What did you think of that? Did you say “Wow, that must have a supernatural explanation!”? Or did you say “You know, I don’t believe it”?

If you’re in the second group, then congratulations: you now know how atheism was created, as far as it’s a response to a theistic claim. Someone came up with a story about things, and someone else didn’t believe it.

(It’s fair to include it not being a response to a theistic claim, too. We could have a word for “someone who doesn’t think that pans float above countertops and then disappear,” and that word probably applies to even people who haven’t explicitly been told a story like this. If that’s how we’re treating it, then atheism precedes theism by quite a bit.)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Let me tell you what happened to Dave yesterday: he came into his kitchen and a frying pan was floating three inches off the top of the counter. When he went to grab it, it disappeared. What did you think of that? Did you say “Wow, that must have a supernatural explanation!”? Or did you say “You know, I don’t believe it”?

When it comes to your story, with Dave yesterday, I don't believe it. I think you made it up. If it had been true, you would have been very cynical to use it just the day after the way you do. I find it likelier you made it up to make a point.

When it comes to a similar story of what happened in a monastery (no disappearing things, just flying ones!), and what ceased to go on twice even before the exorcist came, just because Sor Eusebia Palomino prayed three Ave Maria, yes, I do believe it. I find it less likely the nuns surviving her made that up to make a point.

Especially as her prophecies of who was going to be martyred by the Reds in Spanish War of 36–39 and who was not going to be martyred were precise. Especially as one blind painter painted a perfect portrait. Or there was some other miracle about her portrait:



Blessed Eusebia Palomino Yenes
https://catholico.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/blessed-eusebia-palomino-yenes/

Guess I am not an atheist, after all.

Scott Berry

3m ago

Believers have the normal ability to reject other religions’ miracle claims, thinking that they should have the sort of evidence that you would normally require for these sorts of claims. Then when it comes to their own religion, they abandon that ability.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

I disagree with “ability” being used as if rejection were the only good use of it.

I accept more than one miraculous claim from other religions - at least if miracle is taken in the large sense.

In other words, your taking the normal stance of a religious believer as rejecting all miraculous claims outside his own religion, that is simply a Protestant bias.

It comes by and large from the Protestant rejection of Catholic miracles. Catholics need have no similar rejection of all Pentecostal miracles. And not even of all Hindoo miracles, some could be diabolic, and in some cases the true God prefers a miracle of his to be misattributed over Hindoos abandoning the concept of praying for miracles.

As for evidence, I think Catholic miraculous claims are among the most investigated and best evidenced events there are these days. There is more evidence for Sor Eusebia’s exorcisms by praying than for many other events in Spanish War (like claims of Franco’s involvment underhand in Badajoz massacre).

Scott Berry

8m ago

>I disagree with “ability” being used as if rejection were the only good use of it.

It’s not. It’s evaluation of what is likely, based on our experiences and the evidence at hand.

And yes, this leads to a rejection of a bunch of things: homeopathy, vampires, horoscopes, and other religions’ stories.

In your case, you’re for some reason exempting the Catholic Church’s claims of things that they say happened. The kind of claim you’re buying into isn’t warranted by the evidence you’ve given (if, in fact, you want to call it evidence at all).

>And not even of all Hindoo miracles, some could be diabolic, and in some cases the true God prefers a miracle of his to be misattributed over Hindoos abandoning the concept of praying for miracles.

Sorry, but you’ve gone and amused me. You’re showing that your attitude is worse than “Those miracles totally don’t count.” You’re off in “Those miracles are real — and from the devil!”-land.



Below was copied before this happened, but then it seems deleted:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

"It’s not. It’s evaluation of what is likely, based on our experiences and the evidence at hand."

There are tons of things I have no personal experience of, and accept due to the evidence at hand about the story. I have fortunately not died in pulmonar plague, I believe that happens.

"And yes, this leads to a rejection of a bunch of things: homeopathy, vampires, horoscopes, and other religions’ stories."

Homeopathic doses and horoscopes I reject for other reasons. Vampires I reject because a Pope in the 18th C seems to have decided in the negative (while some Orthodox in the same region would have decided in the affirmative).

"Other religions' stories" is a very broad subject and for some aspects, of course I have to reject it.

I cannot believe God sent Gabriel to Mohammed, and I cannot believe Zeus is the father of Hercules.

I can however believe a demon impersonated "Jibreel", like I can believe another one impersonated "Moroni" and even "the Trinity" to Joseph Smith, like I can believe the ghost of a Sibyl in a seance conducted by Odin (claiming before Swedes to be a god and even the mmost important one in certain aspects) was also impersonated by a demon.

The rejecting part is not based on "evaluation of what is likely based on my experience", but on the fact it conflicts with my religion.

Precisely like your rejection of miracles all over is most probably based on them conflicting with your religion. Western Atheism, a non-Christian branch of Protestantism.

"In your case, you’re for some reason exempting the Catholic Church’s claims of things that they say happened."

I am not.

"The kind of claim you’re buying into isn’t warranted by the evidence you’ve given (if, in fact, you want to call it evidence at all)."

That is your debunking the kind of evidence we have for MOST historic claims at all, just because they are against your religion of non-miracularity.

You think the monastery made it up? Well, they would have had to make up a lot of things in order to make it through the kind of process miraculous claims about claimed saints are getting in the Catholic Church, and even in its recent second-hand pseudo-Avatar, the Vatican Two Sect (Beatification was conducted by Antipope Wojtyla).

"You’re off in “Those miracles are real — and from the devil!”-land."

For the kind of miracles that would clinch Hindooism as true, definitely yes, like the recent one of spoons of milk offered before mouths of idols, in traditonal sacrifices, the milk was sucked up, all over the world, around same time.